s has great
power--very great power. He is a czar."

He referred to President Wilson in terms of great esteem--not only as
the President but as a man. He spoke, also, with evident admiration of
Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. McKinley, both of whom he had met.

I looked at the clock. It was after three and the interview had begun
at two. I knew it was time for me to go, but I had been given no
indication that the interview was at an end. Fragments of the coaching
I had received came to my mind, but nothing useful; so I stated my
difficulty frankly, and again the King's serious face lighted up with
a smile.

"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. Overhead, flying high, were two German aeroplanes--the
eyes of the war.

* * * * *

Not politically, but humanely, it was time to make to America an
authoritative statement as to conditions in Belgium.

The principle of non-interference in European politics is one of
national policy and not to be questioned. But there can be no
justification for the destruction of property and loss of innocent
lives in Belgium. Germany had plead to the neutr