ers
of noncombatants; to the frightful rapine and pillage of the early
months of the war. Her Majesty could not understand the scepticism of
America on this point. I suggested that it was difficult to say what
any army would do when it found itself in a prostrate and conquered
land.

"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.

What King Albert sees may not all be written; but this is certain:
Both these royal exiles--this Soldier-King who has won and deserved
the admiration of the world; this Queen who refuses to leave her
husband and her wounded, though day after day hostile aeroplanes are
overhead and the roar of German guns is in her ears--these royal
exiles live in hope and in deep conviction. They will return to
Belgium. Their country will be theirs again. Their houses will be
restored; their fields will be sown and yield harvest--not for
Germany, but for Belgium. Belgium, as Belgium, will live again!

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE RED BADGE OF MERCY

Immediately on the declaration of war by the Powers the vast machinery
of mercy was put in the field. The mobilisation of the Red Cross army
began--that great army which is of no nation, but of all n