No building was habitable and no field fit for the plow.

The sameness was also striking.

One devastated area was exactly like another--a heap of rubble, a morass of shell-holes, and a tangle of wire.[80] The amount of human labor which would be required to restore such a countryside seemed incalculable; and to the returned traveler any number of milliards of dollars was inadequate to express in matter the destruction thus impressed upon his spirit.

Some Governments for a variety of intelligible reasons have not been ashamed to exploit these feelings a little.
Popular sentiment is most at fault, I think, in the case of Belgium.

In any event Belgium is a small country, and in its case the actual area of devastation is a small proportion of the whole.