And the Queen of the Belgians is a German! True,
she has suffered much. Perhaps she is embittered;
but there was no bitterness in her voice that afternoon
in the little villa at La Panne—only sadness
and great sorrow and, with it, deep conviction.
What Queen Elisabeth of Belgium says, she believes;
and who should know better? There, to that house
on the sea front, in the fragment of Belgium that remains,
go all the hideous details that are war. She
knows them all. King Albert is not a figure-head;
he is the actual fighting head of his army. The
murder of Belgium has been done before his very eyes.
In those long evenings when he has returned from headquarters;
when he and Queen Elisabeth sit by the fire in the
room that overlooks the sea; when every blast that
shakes the windows reminds them both of that little
army, two-thirds gone, shivering in the trenches only
a mile or two away, or of their people beyond the
dead line, suffering both deprivation and terror—what
pictures do they see in the glowing coals?
It is not hard to know. Queen Elisabeth sees
her children, and the puzzled, boyish faces of those
who are going down to the darkness of death that another
nation may find a place in the sun.
What King Albert sees may not all be written; but
this is certain: Both these royal exiles—this
Soldier-King who has won and deserved the admiration
of the world; this Queen who refuses to leave her
husband and her wounded, though day after day hostile
aeroplanes are overhead and the roar of German guns
is in her ears—these royal exiles live
in hope and in deep conviction. They will return
to Belgium. Their country will be theirs again.
Their houses will be restored; their fields will be
sown and yield harvest—not for Germany,
but for Belgium. Belgium, as Belgium, will live
again!
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE RED BADGE OF MERCY
Immediately on the declaration of war by the Powers
the vast machinery of mercy was put in the field.
The mobilisation of the Red Cross army began—that
great army which is of no nation, but of all nations,
of no creed but of all faiths, of one flag for all
the world and that flag the banner of the Crusaders.
The Red Cross is the wounded soldier’s last
defence. Worn as a brassard on the left arm of
its volunteers, it conveys a higher message than the
Victoria Cross of England, the Iron Cross of Germany,
or the Cross of the Legion of Honour of France.
It is greater than cannon, greater than hate, greater
than blood-lust, greater than vengeance. It triumphs
over wrath as good triumphs over evil. Direct
descendant of the cross of the Christian faith, it
carries on to every battlefield the words of the Man
of Peace: “Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy.”
* * * *
*
The care of the wounded in war has been the problem
of the ages. Richard the Lion-Hearted took a
hospital ship to the coast of Palestine. The
German people of the Middle Ages had their wounded
in battle treated by their wives, who followed the
army for that purpose. It remained for Frederick
the First of Prussia to establish a military service
in connection with a standing army.
