Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front Part 39

"Please tell the Queen about your meeting with King Albert."

So I told about it. It had been unconventional, and the recital amused Her Majesty. It was then that I realised how humorous her mouth was, how very blue and alert her eyes. I told it all to her, the things that insisted on slipping off my lap, and the King's picking them up; the old envelope he gave me on which to make notes of the interview; how I had asked him whether he would let me know when the interview was over, or whether I ought to get up and go! And finally, when we were standing talking before my departure, how I had suddenly remembered that I was not to stand nearer to His Majesty than six feet, and had hastily backed away and explained, to his great amus.e.m.e.nt.

Queen Mary laughed. Then her face clouded.

"It is all so very tragic," she said. "Have you seen the Queen?"

I replied that the Queen of the Belgians had received me a few days after my conversation with the King.

"She is very sad," said Her Majesty. "It is a terrible thing for her, especially as she is a Bavarian by birth."

From that to the ever-imminent subject of the war itself was but a step. An English officer had recently made a sensational escape from a German prison camp, and having at last got back to England, had been sent for by the King. With the strange inconsistencies that seem to characterise the behaviour of the Germans, the man to whom he had surrendered after a gallant defence had treated him rather well. But from that time on his story was one of brutalities and starvation.

The officer in question had told me his story, and I ventured to refer to it Her Majesty knew it quite well, and there was no mistaking the grief in her Voice as she commented on it, especially on that part of it which showed discrimination against the British prisoners. Major V---- had especially emphasised the lack of food for the private soldiers and the fearful trials of being taken back along the lines of communication, some fifty-two men being locked in one of the small Continental box cars which are built to carry only six horses. Many of them were wounded. They were obliged to stand, the floor of the car being inches deep with filth. For thirty hours they had no water and no air, and for three days and three nights no food.

"I am to publish Major V----'s statement in America, Your Majesty," I said.

"I think America should know it," said the Queen. "It is most unjust.

German prisoners in England are well cared for. They are well fed, and games and other amus.e.m.e.nts are provided for them. They even play football!"

I stepped back as Her Majesty prepared to continue her visit round the long room. But she indicated that I was to accompany her. It was then that one realised that the Queen of England is the intensely practical daughter of a practical mother. Nothing that is done in this Guild, the successor of a similar guild founded by the late d.u.c.h.ess of Teck, Her Majesty's mother, escapes her notice. No detail is too small if it makes for efficiency. She selected at random garments from the tables, and examined them for warmth, for quality, for utility.

Generally she approved. Before a great heap of heavy socks she paused.

"The soldiers like the knitted ones, we are told," she said. "These are not all knitted but they are very warm."

A baby sweater of a hideous yellow roused in her something like wrath.

"All that labour!" she said, "and such a colour for a little baby!"

And again, when she happened on a pair of felt slippers, quite the largest slippers I have ever seen, she fell silent in sheer amazement.

They amused her even while they shocked her. And again, as she smiled, I regretted that the photographs of the Queen of England may not show her smiling.

A small canvas case, skilfully rolled and fastened, caught Her Majesty's attention. She opened it herself and revealed with evident pride its numerous contents. Many thousands of such cases had already been sent to the army.

This one was a model of packing. It contained in its small compa.s.s an extraordinary number of things--changes of under flannels, extra socks, an abdominal belt, and, in an inclosure, towel, soap, toothbrush, nailbrush and tooth powder. I am not certain, but I believe there was also a pack of cards.

"I am afraid I should never be able to get it all back again!" said Her Majesty. So one of the ladies took it in charge, and the Queen went on.

My audience was over. As Her Majesty pa.s.sed me she held out her hand.

I took it and curtsied.

"Were you not frightened the night you were in the Belgian trenches?"

she inquired.

"Not half so frightened as I was this afternoon, Your Majesty," I replied.

She pa.s.sed on, smiling.

And now, when enough time has elapsed to give perspective to my first impression of Queen Mary of England, I find that it loses nothing by this supreme test. I find that I remember her, not as a great Queen but as a gracious and kindly woman, greatly beloved by those of her immediate circle, totally without arrogance, and of a simplicity of speech and manner that must put to shame at times those lesser lights that group themselves about a throne.

I find another impression also--that the Queen of England is intensely and alertly mental--alive to her finger tips, we should say in America. She has always been active. Her days are crowded. A different type of royal woman would be content to be the honoured head of the Queen's Guild. But she is in close touch with it at all times. It is she who dictates its policy, and so competently that the ladies who are a.s.sociated with the work that is being done speak of her with admiration not unmixed with awe.

From a close and devoted friend of Queen Mary I obtained other characteristics to add to my picture: That the Queen is acutely sensitive to pain or distress in others--it hurts her; that she is punctual--and this not because of any particular sense of time but because she does not like to keep other people waiting. It is all a part of an overwhelming sense of that responsibility to others that has its origin in true kindliness.

The work of the Queen's Guild is surprising in its scope. In a way it is a vast clearing house. Supplies come in from every part of the world, from India, Ceylon, Java, Alaska, South America, from the most remote places. I saw the record book. I saw that a woman from my home city had sent cigarettes to the soldiers through the Guild, that Africa had sent flannels! Coming from a land where the sending, as regards Africa, is all the other way, I found this exciting. Indeed, the whole record seems to show how very small the earth is, and how the tragedy of a great war has overcome the barriers of distance and time and language.

From this clearing house in England's historic old palace, built so long ago by Bluff King Hal, these offerings of the world are sent wherever there is need, to Servia, to Egypt, to South and East Africa, to the Belgians. The work was inst.i.tuted by the Queen the moment war broke out, and three things are being very carefully insured: That a real want exists, that the clothing reaches its proper destination, and that there shall be no overlapping.

The result has been most gratifying to the Queen, but it was difficult to get so huge a business--for, as I have already said, it is a business now--under way at the beginning. Demand was insistent. There was no time to organise a system in advance. It had to be worked out in actual practice.

One of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting wrote in February, apropos of the human element in the work:

"There was a great deal of human element in the start with its various mistakes. The Queen wished, on the breaking out of war, to start the Guild in such a way as to prevent the waste and overlapping which occurred in the Boer War.... The fact that the ladies connected with the work have toiled daily and unceasingly for seven months is the most wonderful part of it all."

Before Christmas nine hundred and seventy thousand belts and socks were collected and sent as a special gift to the soldiers at the front, from the Queen and the women of the empire. That in itself is an amazing record of efficiency.

It is rather comforting to know that there were mistakes in the beginning. It is so human. It is comforting to think of this exceedingly human Queen being a party to them, and being divided between annoyance and mirth as they developed. It is very comforting also to think that, in the end, they were rectified.

We had a similar situation during our Civil War. There were mistakes then also, and they too were rectified. What the heroic women of the North and South did during that great conflict the women of Great Britain are doing to-day. They are showing the same high and courageous spirit, the same subordination of their personal griefs to the national cause, the same cheerful relinquishment of luxuries. It is a United Britain that confronts the enemy in France. It is a united womanhood, united in spirit, in labour, in faith and high moral courage, that looks east across the Channel to that land beyond the horizon, "somewhere in France," where the Empire is fighting for life.

A united womanhood, and at its head a steadfast and courageous Queen and mother, Mary of England.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS

On the third of August, 1914, the German Army crossed the frontier into Belgium. And on the following day, the fourth, King Albert made his now famous speech to the joint meeting of the Belgian Chamber and Senate. Come what might, the Belgian people would maintain the freedom that was their birthright.

"I have faith in our destinies," King Albert concluded. "A country which defends itself wins respect and cannot perish."

With these simple and dignified words Belgium took up the struggle.

She was beaten before she began, and she knew it. No matter what the ultimate out-come of the war, she must lose. The havoc would be hers.

The old battleground of Europe knew what war meant; no country in the world knew better. And, knowing, Belgium took up the burden.

To-day, Belgium is prostrate. That she lives, that she will rise again, no Belgian doubts. It may be after months--even after years; but never for a moment can there be any doubt of the national integrity. The Germans are in Belgium, but not of it. Belgium is still Belgium--not a part of the German Empire. Until the Germans are driven out she is waiting.

As I write this, one corner of her territory remains to her, a wedge-shaped piece, ten miles or so in width at the coast, narrowing to nothing at a point less than thirty miles inland. And in that tragic fragment there remains hardly an undestroyed town. Her revenues are gone, being collected as an indemnity, for G.o.d knows what, by the Germans. King Albert himself has been injured. The Queen of the Belgians has p.a.w.ned her jewels. The royal children are refugees in England. Two-thirds of the army is gone. And, of even that tiny remaining corner, much is covered by the salt floods of the sea.

The King of the Belgians is often heard of. We hear of him at the head of his army, consulting his staff, reviewing his weary and decimated troops. We know his calibre now, both as man and soldier. He stands out as one of the truly heroic figures of the war.

But what of the Bavarian-born Queen of the Belgians? What of this royal woman who has lost the land of her nativity through the same war that has cost her the country of her adoption; who must see her husband go each day to the battle line; who must herself live under the shadow of hostile aeroplanes, within earshot of the enemy's guns?

What was she thinking of during those fateful hours when, all night long, King Albert and his Ministers debated the course of Belgium--a shameful immunity, or a war? What does she think now, when, before the windows of her villa at La Panne, the ragged and weary remnant of the brave Belgian Army lines up for review? What does she hope for and pray for--this Queen without a country?