European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - April 10, 1948, Darmstadt, Hesse                                F a 1 j ? i i i Ripe is Safe like the through its history and its current affairs Liege is proud rather than pretty i be Belgium by Dan Regan and Ralph l. Harwood photographs by Michael Vaccaro the Walloon capital is a City with rolled up sleeves and Grimy hands and to illusions about its Good looks. Its Rich past has been obscured in the energetic business of the present Crystal from the factories of Val St. Lambert is the Best known product of local Industry. I have been barging Coal and Ore Andi steel goods out of Liege for a great Many years said the seamy old Riverman. Have been up and Down the River Meuse from Verdun to the sea and Over the Albert canal to Antwerp More times than i can remember. Liege is my town. No it is not Beautiful. If you wish to see a Beautiful City in Belgium my Friend go to Bruges or Ghent but Liege is Strong and full of life the old Man went on. Perhaps it is the difference Between living a Little in the past and living in the present. Have you Ever noticed Monsieur How the Meuse refuses to run to the Rhine the Meuse is proud and Independent Sven when she is dirty Liege is Jike that  tradition and history almost got lost in the Rush when Liege pitched headlong into the machine age it is not because the City is lacking in ties with Antiquity. Roman Catholic records of the place go Back fourteen Hundred years and relics of the past abound. But Liegeois Are More interested nowadays in the Gerstal arms works or production at the Coal mines thai they Are in the old Bishop s Palace. By Choice the narrow twisting streets Wear Neon rather than an air of quaintness huge heaps of slag and myriad blackened chimneys for Miles about Are the City s monuments today. Silhouetted against a night sky Pink with the Glare of blast furnaces they make whatever went before seem  Chance that nineteenth Century Liege May have had for a gradual transition to modern times went by the boards with the arrival in town in 1807 of an englishman name William Cockerill. An erstwhile Mechanic he had already made history and the beginnings of his Fortune by setting up at nearby Vervier in1799, the first Wool carding and Wool spinning machines on the continent. Now in Liege reopened a Large machine workshop and was soon deluged with orders. Napoleon thoroughly impressed granted the enterprising foreigner full citizenship in 1810. Cockerill s shops employed the unheard of Force of two thousand men by the time he re tired a few years later. The Industrial pattern for Liege had been set. Under a son John Cockerill the business continued to flourish and the City with it. From the King of the Netherlands under whose Rule Liege fell after Waterloo Sites were obtained for an Iron foundry and blast Furnace at serving a suburb Southwest of Liege on the Meuse and the site to this Day of the corporation which retains the Cockerill  manufacture of firearms and Cannon has been a principal Industry of the. City for. Hundred years. The vast arms factory at Gerstal. Northern Extension of the City along the River employed some ten thousand men and women prior to world War ii making it one of the largest concerns of its kind in the world. John Browning the american gun inventor died i Liege in 192g. After having sold some of his