Notes
La Libre Belgique currently sold under the name La Libre is a major daily newspaper in Belgium. Together with Le Soir, it is one of the country's major French-language newspapers and is popular in Brussels and Wallonia. La Libre was founded in 1884 and has historically had a centre-right Christian Democratic political stance. The paper is particularly celebrated for its role as an underground newspaper during World War I and World War II when Belgium was occupied. Since 1999, the newspaper has become increasingly liberal but is still considered more conservative than Le Soir.
The modern La Libre traces its origins to the Le Patriote newspaper, founded by Victor and Louis Jourdain in 1884. Politically, the newspaper supported the dominant centre-right Catholic Party.
After the German invasion of Belgium in World War I, Le Patriote was banned by the German occupation authorities. In February 1915, however, it was re-founded in secret by the Jourdain brothers as an underground newspaper called La Libre Belgique ("Free Belgium"). The new title was an allusion to a collaborationist paper called La Belgique ("Belgium"). A total of 171 issues of La Libre Belgique appeared during the occupation. It soon became famous as an example of the Belgian resistance. Several weeks before the end of the hostilities, both of the Jourdain brothers died of natural causes. Their work was continued by Victor’s two sons Joseph and Paul Jourdain.
The newspaper was also published secretly in German-occupied Belgium during World War II in a number of unofficial editions. The largest, known as the La Libre Belgique of Peter Pan (after the fictional editor's name given on the masthead) achieved a circulation of 10,000 to 30,000 copies. 85 bi-monthly issues were published.
After the war, La Libre Belgique supported the mainstream Christian Social Party and, until 1999, the paper had a strong Christian Democratic stance. Currently, the newspaper has a centrist editorial policy.