, but you will agree that since it has pleased a God-made man
who was holy, innocent, without stain, to suffer and to die for us who
are sinners, who are guilty, who are perhaps criminals, it ill becomes
us to complain whatever we may be called upon to endure. The truth is
that no disaster on earth, striking creatures only, is comparable with
that which our sins provoked and whereof God Himself chose to be the
blameless victim.

Having recalled to mind this fundamental truth, I find it easier to
summon you to face what has befallen us and to speak to you simply and
directly of what is your duty and of what may be your hope. That duty I
shall express in two words--patriotism and endurance.

My dearest brethren, I desire to utter in your name and my own the
gratitude of those whose age, vocation, and social conditions cause them
to benefit by the heroism of others without bearing in it any active
part.

When, immediately on my return from Rome, I went to Havre to greet our
Belgian, French, and English wounded; when, later, at Malines, at
Louvain, at Antwerp, it was given to me to take the hands of those brave
men who carried a bullet in their flesh, a wound on their forehead,
because they had marched to the attack of the enemy or borne the shock
of his onslaught, it was a word of gratitude to them that rose to my
lips. "O valiant friends," I said, "it was for us, it was for each one
of us, it was for me, that you risked your lives and are now in pain. I
am moved to tell you of my respect, of my thankfulness, to assure you
that the whole nation knows how much she is in debt to you."

For in truth our soldiers are our saviors.

A first time, at Liege, they saved France; a second time, in Flanders,
they arrested the advance of the enemy upon Calais. France and England
know it; and Belgium stands before them both, and before the entire
world, as a nation of heroes.

Never before in my whole life did I feel so proud to be a Belgian as
when, on the platforms of French stations, and halting a while in Paris,
and visiting London, I was witness of the enthusiastic admiration our
allies feel for the heroism of our army. Our King is, in the esteem of
all, at the very summit of the moral scale. He is doubtless the only man
who does not recognize that fact, as, simple as the simplest of his
soldiers, he stands in the trenches and puts new courage, by the
serenity of his face, into the hearts of those of whom he requires that
th