"There is no formality here; but if you are going we must find the
general for you."
So we shook hands and I went out; but the beautiful courtesy of the
soldier King of the Belgians brought him out to the doorstep with me.
That is the final picture I have of Albert I, King of the Belgians--a
tall young man, very fair and blue-eyed, in the dark blue uniform of a
lieutenant-general of his army, wearing no orders or decorations,
standing bareheaded in the wind and pointing out to me the direction
in which I should go to find the general who had brought me.
He is a very courteous gentleman, with the eyes of one who loves the
sea, for the King of the Belgians is a sailor in his heart; a tragic
and heroic figure but thinking himself neither--thinking of himself
not at all, indeed; only of his people, whose griefs are his to share
but not to lighten; living day and night under the rumble of German
artillery at Nieuport and Dixmude in that small corner of Belgium
which remains to him.
He is a King who, without suspicion of guilt, has lost his country;
who has seen since August of 1914 two-thirds of his army lost, his
beautiful and ancient towns destroyed, his fertile lands thrown open
to the sea.
I went on. The guns were still at work. At Nieuport, Dixmude, Furnes,
Pervyse--all along that flat, flooded region--the work of destruction
was going on.
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