and noblest pages. Certainly Belgium would have been loyal and true to
her word; and any government would have been swept away, pitilessly
and irresistibly, by the indignation of a people that had never,
however far we probe into the past, played false. But there would have
been much of that confusion and irresolution inevitable in a host
suddenly threatened with disaster. There would have been vain talking,
mistaken measures, excusable but irreparable vacillations; and, above
all, the much-needed words, the precise and final words, would not
have been spoken and the deeds, than which we can picture none more
resolute, none greater, would not have been done at the right moment.

Thanks to the king, the peerless act shines forth and is maintained
complete, unfaltering; and the path of heroism is straight and
clearly defined and splendid as that of Thermopylae indefinitely
extended.

2

But what he has suffered, what he suffers day by day only those can
understand who have had the privilege of access to this hero: the most
sensitive and the gentlest of men, silent and reserved; a man of
controlled emotions, modest with a timidity that is at once baffling
and delightful; loving his people less as a father loves his children
than as a son loves his adoring mother. Of all that cherished kingdom,
his pride and his joy, the seat of his happiness, the centre of his
love and his security, there is left intact but a handful of cities,
which are threatened at every moment by the foulest invader that the
world has ever borne.

All the others--so quaint or so beautiful, so bright, so serene, happy
to be there, so inoffensive--jewels in the crown of Peace, models of
pure and upright family life, homes of loyal and dutiful industry, of
ready, ever-smiling geniality, with the natural welcome, the
ever-proffered hand and the ever-open heart: all the others are dead
cities, of which not one stone is left upon another; and the very
country-side, one of the fairest in this world, with its gentle
pastures, is now no more than one vast field of horror.

Treasures have perished that were numbered among the noblest and
dearest possessions of mankind; monuments have disappeared which
nothing can replace; and the half of a nation, among all nations the
most attached to its old simple habits, its humble homes, is at
present wandering along the roads of Europe. Thousands of innocent
people have been massacred; and of those who remain near