[Sidenote: Two Belgian generals.]

Two men came out of the door, one rather tall, with an easy manner, and
smartly dressed as a general in the Belgian army. The other was older,
also a general, wearing, if anything, the more gold braid of the two.
They entered a waiting automobile and drove off as casually as two men
at home might leave their office for their club.

Something about the first of the two men impressed me as familiar. I had
only seen his back, but that had arrested my attention. I thought
possibly I had seen him at the beginning of the war in Brussels, so I
asked the sentry his name.

[Sidenote: King Albert.]

"That is our king, Albert," he said quite simply.

During the next couple of days I saw the King of Belgium a number of
times. He spent his nights at a small villa on the seashore at La Panne,
a hundred yards possibly beyond the hotel where I spent mine. He passed
through the streets as unnoticed as any one of the other Belgians who
had retreated from Antwerp and Ghent ahead of the army, but preferred
the chilly nights in an unheated seaside hotel in Belgium to comfort
somewhere beyond. It seemed to be a point of courtesy on the part of the
Belgians not to bother their king with ceremony at this trying time. I
doubt if he cares much for ceremony, anyhow. Searching around for a
single adjective to describe him, I should call him off-handed. His
manner, even then, while alert, was casual. It is easy to see why the
Belgians love him. If kings had always been as simple and direct as
Albert, I am inclined to think democracy would have languished.

[Sidenote: Luncheon at La Panne.]

At La Panne, which I reached at noon on a little steam railway running
from Furnes, I had luncheon with several Belgian soldiers and a Belgian
in civilian clothes, who told me I would see all the fighting I was
looking for at Nieuport, just beyond. The civilian, a tall youth with a
blond beard, volunteered to show me the way to the beach, the shortest
route, and ended by going all the way. He told me he was recovering from
an "attack of Congo," which I take to be an intermittent fever. He had
just been mustered out of the civic guard and was waiting for a uniform
to join the army. He had the afternoon free and his Belgian sense of
hospitality impelled him to see that the stranger was properly looked
after.

For several miles along the wide, flat beach, which stretches
unobstructed as far as Ostend, except for the piers