a flash of Belgium's unexampled bravery we were compelled
to witness many flashes of her terrible sufferings. Liege fell before
overwhelming numbers, then Namur, Ter-monde, Brussels, Louvain, and,
last of all, Antwerp. What a spectacle of horror! The harvests of
Belgium trodden into the earth, her beautiful cities and ancient
villages given up to the flames, her historic monuments, that had
been associated with the learning and piety of centuries, razed to the
ground; and, above everything in its pathos and pain, the multitudes
of her people, old men, old women, young girls, and little children
in wooden shoes, after the unnameable atrocities of a brutalized,
infuriated, and licentious soldiery, flying before their faces as before
a plague!

WHAT KING ALBERT DID FOR KINGSHIP

But there were flashes of almost divine light in the black darkness
of Belgium's tragedy, and perhaps the brightest of them surrounded the
person of her King. What King Albert did in those dark days of August
1914, to keep the soul of his nation alive in the midst of the immense
sorrow of her utter overthrow his nation alone can fully know. But we
who are not Belgians were thrilled again and again by the inspired tones
of a great Spirit speaking to his subjects with that authority, dignity,
and courage which alone among free nations are sufficient to unite the
people to the Throne.

"A country which defends its liberties in the face of tyranny commands
the respect of all. Such a country does not perish." What King Albert
did for Belgium in the stand he made against German aggression is partly
known already, and will leave its record in history, but what he did
at the same time for kingship throughout the world, as well as in his
country, can only be realized by the few who are aware that almost
at the moment of the outbreak of war the Belgian Courts (much to the
unmerited humiliation of Belgium) were on the eve of such disclosures
in relation to the life and death of the King's predecessor as would
certainly have shaken the credit of monarchy for centuries.

Nobody who ever met the late King Leopold could have had any doubt that
he was a great man, if greatness can be separated from goodness and
measured solely by energy of intellect and character. I see him now as
I saw him in a garden of a house on the Riviera, the huge, unwieldy
creature, with the eyes of an eagle, the voice of a bull and the flat
tread of an elephant, and I recall th