Twelve months of
wounds and wastage, wet trenches and tinned food, and still they go out
with hope.
[Illustration: BELGIANS IN THEIR NEW KHAKI UNIFORM. IN PRAISE OF WHICH
THEY WROTE A SONG.
Albert's son, the Crown Prince Leopold, has been a common soldier in
this regiment.]
And the helpers of the army have shown good heart. Breaking the silence
of Rome, the splendid priesthood of Belgium, from the cardinal to the
humblest cure, has played the man. On the front line near Pervyse, where
my wife lived for three months, a soldier-monk has remained through the
daily shell-fire to take artillery observations and to comfort the
fighting men. Just before leaving Flanders, I called on the sisters in
the convent school of Furnes. They were still cheery and busy in their
care of sick and wounded civilians. Every few days the Germans shell the
town from seven miles away, but the sisters will continue there through
the coming months as through the last year. The spirit of the best of
the race is spoken in what King Albert said recently in an unpublished
conversation to the gentlemen of the English mission:
"The English will cease fighting before the Belgians. If there is talk
of yielding, it will come from the English, not from us."
That was a playful way of saying that there will be no yielding by any
of the Western Allies. The truth is still as true as it was at Liege
that the Belgians held up the enemy till France was ready to receive
them.
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