I was frequently in La Panne after that day.
I got to know well the road from Dunkirk, with its
bordering of mud and ditch, its heavy transports,
its grey gunboats in the canals that followed it on
one side, its long lines of over-laden soldiers, its
automobiles that travelled always at top speed.
I saw pictures that no artist will ever paint—of
horrors and beauties, of pathos and comedy; of soldiers
washing away the filth of the trenches in the cold
waters of canals and ditches; of refugees flying by
day from the towns, and returning at night to their
ruined houses to sleep in the cellars; of long processions
of Spahis, Arabs from Algeria, silhouetted against
the flat sky line against a setting sun, their tired
horses moving slowly, with drooping heads, while their
riders, in burnoose and turban, rode with loose reins;
of hostile aeroplanes sailing the afternoon breeze
like lazy birds, while shells from the anti-aircraft
guns burst harmlessly below them in small balloon-shaped
clouds of smoke.
But never in all that time did I overcome the sense
of unreality, and always I was obsessed by the injustice,
the wanton waste and cost and injustice of it all.
The baby at La Panne—why should it go through
life on stumps instead of legs? The boyish officer—why
should he have died? The little sixteen-year-old
soldier who had been blinded and who sat all day by
the phonograph, listening to Madame Butterfly, Tipperary,
and Harry Lauder’s A Wee Deoch-an’-Doris—why
should he never see again what I could see from the
window beside him, the winter sunset over the sea,
the glistening white of the sands, the flat line of
the surf as it crept in to the sentries’ feet?
Why? Why?
All these wrecks of boys and men, where are they to
go? What are they to do? Blind and maimed,
weak from long privation followed by great suffering,
what is to become of them when the hospital has fulfilled
its function and they are discharged “cured”?
Their occupations, their homes, their usefulness are
gone. They have not always even clothing in which
to leave the hospital. If it was not destroyed
by the shell or shrapnel that mutilated them it was
worn beyond belief and redemption. Such ragged
uniforms as I have seen! Such tragedies of trousers!
Such absurd and heart-breaking tunics!
When, soon after, I was presented to the King of the
Belgians, these very questions had written lines in
his face. It is easy to believe that King Albert
of Belgium has buried his private anxieties in the
common grief and stress of his people.
CHAPTER V
A TALK WITH THE KING OF THE BELGIANS
The letter announcing that I was to have an audience
with the King of the Belgians reached me at Dunkirk,
France, on the evening of the day before the date
set. It was brief and to the effect that the King
would receive me the next afternoon at two o’clock
at the Belgian Army headquarters.
