What did she think of it all? What did she feel when that terrible
Roll of Honour came in, week by week, that Roll of Honour with its
photographs of splendid types of young manhood that no Anglo-Saxon can
look at without a clutch at his throat? What did she think when, one
by one, the friends of her girlhood put on the black of bereavement
and went uncomplainingly about the good works in which hers was the
guiding hand? What thoughts were hers during those anxious days before
the Prince of Wales went to the front, when, like any other mother,
she took every possible moment to be with him, walking about
arm-in-arm with her boy, talking of everything but the moment of
parting?
And when at last I was permitted to see the Queen of England, I
understood a part at least of what she was suffering. I had been to
the front. I had seen the English army in the field. I had been quite
close to the very trenches where the boyish Prince of Wales was facing
the enemies of his country and doing it with high courage. And I had
heard the rumble of the great German guns, as Queen Mary of England
must hear them in her sleep.
Even with no son in the field the Queen of England would be working
for the soldiers. It is a part of the tradition of her house. But a
good mother is a mother to all the world.
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