And just a few minutes away along the sands there was a house
built by a German, a house whose foundation was a cemented site for a
gun. The house is destroyed now. It had been carefully located,
strategically, and built long before the war began. A gun on that
foundation would have commanded Nieuport.
Here, in six villas facing the sea, live King Albert and Queen
Elisabeth and their household, and here the Queen, grief-stricken at
the tragedy that has overtaken her innocent and injured people, visits
the hospital daily.
La Panne has not been bombarded. Hostile aeroplanes are always
overhead. The Germans undoubtedly know all about the town; but it has
not been touched. I do not believe that it will be. For one thing, it
is not at present strategically valuable. Much more important, Queen
Elisabeth is a Bavarian princess by birth. Quite aside from both
reasons, the outcry from the civilised world which would result from
injury to any member of the Belgian royal house, with the present
world-wide sympathy for Belgium, would make such an attack
inadvisable.
And yet who knows? So much that was considered fundamental in the
ethics of modern warfare has gone by the board; so certainly is this
war becoming one of reprisals, of hate and venom, that before this is
published La Panne may have been destroyed, or its evacuation by the
royal family have been decided.
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