[1] The letter, which was the work of Van Severen and other intellectual soldiers such as Corporal Adiel de Beuckelaere, included calls for internal self-government and a separate Flemish Army.

[2] When this was discovered Van Severen was interrogated by Military Police about his Flemish nationalist activities and after informing them that he supported the terms of the letter he was sentenced to eight days of house arrest.

[5] Demobilised after the war, Van Severen returned to his studies at Ghent University, where he was chosen as president of the General Flemish Student Union.

[5] As a member of the Chamber he supported a policy of "flemicization", encouraging the appointment of Flemings to leading roles in the judiciary, government, armed forces and other public institutions.

[5] As a parliamentarian he gained a reputation as a fiery and committed polemicist although he would lose interest and simply read passages from Charles Péguy in the Chamber instead of making speeches.

[5] Van Severen lost his seat in the 1929 general election by a technicality despite gaining more votes than his opponent, by then publicly expressing admiration for Benito Mussolini and Italian fascism, he established his own journal, Jong Dietschland.

[5] His vision would eventually expand to that of the Dietsche Rijk which, rather than splitting Flanders off from Belgium to form the new state, advocated the practical union of the Benelux countries into a single entity.

On 20 May, when the advancing German Army cut off the area, a group of French soldiers carried out a massacre and killed a number of members of Verdinaso, Rex and the Belgian Communist Party, among them Van Severen.

[9] With Van Severen dead, Verdinaso fell apart, with some activists falling into collaboration with the German occupation forces and others following his non-Nazi example by joining the resistance.