"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, shivering 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.
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