Part 40 (2/2)

I bowed as she entered; and she shook hands with me at once and asked me to sit down. She sat on the sofa by the fireplace. Like the Queen of England, like King Albert, her first words were of grat.i.tude to America.

It is not my intention to record here anything but the substance of my conversation with Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. Much that was said was the free and unrestricted speech of two women, talking over together a situation which was tragic to them both; for Queen Elisabeth allowed me to forget, as I think she had ceased to remember, her own exalted rank, in her anxiety for her people.

A devoted churchwoman, she grieved over the treatment accorded by the invading German Army to the priests and nuns of Belgium. She referred to her own Bavarian birth, and to the confidence both King Albert and she had always felt in the friendliness of Germany.

”I am a Bavarian,” she said. ”I have always, from my childhood, heard this talk that Germany must grow, must get to the sea. I thought it was just talk--a pleasantry!”

She had seen many of the diaries of German soldiers, had read them in the very room where we were sitting. She went quite white over the recollection and closed her eyes.

”It is the women and children!” she said. ”It is terrible! There must be killing. That is war. But not this other thing.”

And later on she said, in reference to German criticism of King Albert's course during the early days of the war:

”Any one who knows the King knows that he cannot do a wrong thing. It is impossible for him. He cannot go any way but straight.”

And Queen Elisabeth was right. Any one who knows King Albert of Belgium knows that ”he cannot go any way but straight.”

The conversation s.h.i.+fted to the wounded soldiers and to the Queen's anxiety for them. I spoke of her hospital as being a remarkable one--practically under fire, but moving as smoothly as a great American inst.i.tution, thousands of miles from danger. She had looked very sad, but at the mention of the Ocean Ambulance her face brightened. She spoke of its equipment; of the difficulty in securing supplies; of the new surgery, which has saved so many limbs from amputation. They were installing new and larger sterilisers, she said.

”Things are in as good condition as can be expected now,” she said.

”The next problem will come when we get back into our own country.

What are the people to do? So many of the towns are gone; so many farms are razed!”

The Queen spoke of Brand Whitlock and praised highly his work in Brussels. From that to the relief work was only a step. I spoke of the interest America was taking in the relief work, and of the desire of so many American women to help.

”We are grateful for anything,” she said. ”The army seems to be as comfortable as is possible under the circ.u.mstances; but the people, of course, need everything.”

Inevitably the conversation turned again to the treatment of the Belgian people by the Germans; to the unnecessary and brutal murders of noncombatants; to the frightful rapine and pillage of the early months of the war. Her Majesty could not understand the scepticism of America on this point. I suggested that it was difficult to say what any army would do when it found itself in a prostrate and conquered land.

”The Belgian Army would never have behaved so,” said Her Majesty. ”Nor the English; nor the French. Never!”

And the Queen of the Belgians is a German! True, she has suffered much. Perhaps she is embittered; but there was no bitterness in her voice that afternoon in the little villa at La Panne--only sadness and great sorrow and, with it, deep conviction. What Queen Elisabeth of Belgium says, she believes; and who should know better? There, to that house on the sea front, in the fragment of Belgium that remains, go all the hideous details that are war. She knows them all. King Albert is not a figure-head; he is the actual fighting head of his army. The murder of Belgium has been done before his very eyes.

In those long evenings when he has returned from headquarters; when he and Queen Elisabeth sit by the fire in the room that overlooks the sea; when every blast that shakes the windows reminds them both of that little army, two-thirds gone, s.h.i.+vering in the trenches only a mile or two away, or of their people beyond the dead line, suffering both deprivation and terror--what pictures do they see in the glowing coals?

It is not hard to know. Queen Elisabeth sees her children, and the puzzled, boyish faces of those who are going down to the darkness of death that another nation may find a place in the sun.

What King Albert sees may not all be written; but this is certain: Both these royal exiles--this Soldier-King who has won and deserved the admiration of the world; this Queen who refuses to leave her husband and her wounded, though day after day hostile aeroplanes are overhead and the roar of German guns is in her ears--these royal exiles live in hope and in deep conviction. They will return to Belgium. Their country will be theirs again. Their houses will be restored; their fields will be sown and yield harvest--not for Germany, but for Belgium. Belgium, as Belgium, will live again!

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE RED BADGE OF MERCY

Immediately on the declaration of war by the Powers the vast machinery of mercy was put in the field. The mobilisation of the Red Cross army began--that great army which is of no nation, but of all nations, of no creed but of all faiths, of one flag for all the world and that flag the banner of the Crusaders.

The Red Cross is the wounded soldier's last defence. Worn as a bra.s.sard on the left arm of its volunteers, it conveys a higher message than the Victoria Cross of England, the Iron Cross of Germany, or the Cross of the Legion of Honour of France. It is greater than cannon, greater than hate, greater than blood-l.u.s.t, greater than vengeance. It triumphs over wrath as good triumphs over evil. Direct descendant of the cross of the Christian faith, it carries on to every battlefield the words of the Man of Peace: ”Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

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