My visit to the English lines was over. I had seen no valiant charges,
no hand-to-hand fighting. But in a way I had had a larger picture. I
had seen the efficiency of the methods behind the lines, the abundance
of supplies, the spirit that glowed in the eyes of every fighting man.
I had seen the colonial children of England in the field, volunteers
who had risen to the call of the mother country. I had seen and talked
with the commander-in-chief of the British forces, and had come away
convinced that the mother country had placed her honour in fine and
capable hands. And I had seen, between the first and second lines of
trenches, an army of volunteers and patriots--and gentlemen.
CHAPTER XXXI
QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND
The great European war affects profoundly all the women of each nation
involved. It affects doubly the royal women. The Queen of England, the
Czarina of Russia, the Queen of the Belgians, the Empress of Germany,
each carries in these momentous days a frightful burden. The young
Prince of Wales is at the front; the King of the Belgians has been
twice wounded; the Empress of Germany has her sons as well as her
husband in the field.
In addition to these cares these women of exalted rank have the
responsibility that comes always to the very great. To see a world
crisis approaching, to know every detail by which it has been
furthered or retarded, to realise at last its inevitability--to see,
in a word, every movement of the great drama and to be unable to check
its _denouement_--that has been a part of their burden.
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