n the moment war
broke out, and three things are being very carefully insured: That a
real want exists, that the clothing reaches its proper destination,
and that there shall be no overlapping.

The result has been most gratifying to the Queen, but it was difficult
to get so huge a business--for, as I have already said, it is a
business now--under way at the beginning. Demand was insistent. There
was no time to organise a system in advance. It had to be worked out
in actual practice.

One of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting wrote in February, apropos of the
human element in the work:

"There was a great deal of human element in the start with its various
mistakes. The Queen wished, on the breaking out of war, to start the
Guild in such a way as to prevent the waste and overlapping which
occurred in the Boer War.... The fact that the ladies connected with
the work have toiled daily and unceasingly for seven months is the
most wonderful part of it all."

Before Christmas nine hundred and seventy thousand belts and socks
were collected and sent as a special gift to the soldiers at the
front, from the Queen and the women of the empire. That in itself is
an amazing record of efficiency.

It is rather comforting to know that there were mistakes in the
beginning. It is so human. It is comforting to think of this
exceedingly human Queen being a party to them, and being divided
between annoyance and mirth as they developed. It is very comforting
also to think that, in the end, they were rectified.

We had a similar situation during our Civil War. There were mistakes
then also, and they too were rectified. What the heroic women of the
North and South did during that great conflict the women of Great
Britain are doing to-day. They are showing the same high and
courageous spirit, the same subordination of their personal griefs to
the national cause, the same cheerful relinquishment of luxuries. It
is a United Britain that confronts the enemy in France. It is a united
womanhood, united in spirit, in labour, in faith and high moral
courage, that looks east across the Channel to that land beyond the
horizon, "somewhere in France," where the Empire is fighting for life.

A united womanhood, and at its head a steadfast and courageous Queen
and mother, Mary of England.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS

On the third of August, 1914, the German Army crossed the frontier
into Belgium. And on the following day, th