Kings, Queens and Pawns Part 38

The English are not demonstrative. London, compared with Paris, is normal. British officers at the front and at headquarters treat the war as a part of the day's work, a thing not to talk about but to do.

But my frequent meetings with British soldiers, naval men, members of the flying contingent and the army medical service, revealed under the surface of each man's quiet manner a grimness, a red heat of patriotism, a determination to fight fair but to fight to the death.

They concede to the Germans, with the British sense of fairness, courage, science, infinite resource and patriotism. Two things they deny them, civilisation and humanity--civilisation in its spiritual, not its material, side; humanity of the sort that is the Englishman's creed and his religion--the safeguarding of noncombatants, the keeping of the national word and the national honour.

My visit to the English lines was over. I had seen no valiant charges, no hand-to-hand fighting. But in a way I had had a larger picture. I had seen the efficiency of the methods behind the lines, the abundance of supplies, the spirit that glowed in the eyes of every fighting man.

I had seen the colonial children of England in the field, volunteers who had risen to the call of the mother country. I had seen and talked with the commander-in-chief of the British forces, and had come away convinced that the mother country had placed her honour in fine and capable hands. And I had seen, between the first and second lines of trenches, an army of volunteers and patriots--and gentlemen.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND

The great European war affects profoundly all the women of each nation involved. It affects doubly the royal women. The Queen of England, the Czarina of Russia, the Queen of the Belgians, the Empress of Germany, each carries in these momentous days a frightful burden. The young Prince of Wales is at the front; the King of the Belgians has been twice wounded; the Empress of Germany has her sons as well as her husband in the field.

In addition to these cares these women of exalted rank have the responsibility that comes always to the very great. To see a world crisis approaching, to know every detail by which it has been furthered or r.e.t.a.r.ded, to realise at last its inevitability--to see, in a word, every movement of the great drama and to be unable to check its _denouement_--that has been a part of their burden. And when the _denouement_ came, to sink their private anxieties in the public welfare, to a.s.sume, not a double immunity but a double responsibility to their people, has been the other part.

It has required heroism of a high order. It is, to a certain extent, a new heroism, almost a demonstration of the new faith whose foundation is responsibility--responsibility of a nation to its sons, of rulers to their people, of a man to his neighbour.

It has been my privilege to meet and speak with two of these royal women, with the Queen of England and with the Queen of the Belgians.

In each instance I carried away with me an ineradicable impression of this quality--of a grave and wearing responsibility borne quietly and simply, of a quiet courage that buries its own griefs and asks only to help.

From the beginning of the war I had felt a keen interest in the Queen of England. Here was a great queen who had chosen to be, first of all, a wife and mother; a queen with courage and a conscience. And into her reign had come the tragedy of a war that affected every nation of the world, many of them directly, all of them indirectly. The war had come unsought, unexpected, unprepared for. Peaceful England had become a camp. The very palace in which the royal children were housed was open to an attack from a brutal enemy, which added to the new warfare of this century the ethics of barbarism.

What did she think of it all? What did she feel when that terrible Roll of Honour came in, week by week, that Roll of Honour with its photographs of splendid types of young manhood that no Anglo-Saxon can look at without a clutch at his throat? What did she think when, one by one, the friends of her girlhood put on the black of bereavement and went uncomplainingly about the good works in which hers was the guiding hand? What thoughts were hers during those anxious days before the Prince of Wales went to the front, when, like any other mother, she took every possible moment to be with him, walking about arm-in-arm with her boy, talking of everything but the moment of parting?

And when at last I was permitted to see the Queen of England, I understood a part at least of what she was suffering. I had been to the front. I had seen the English army in the field. I had been quite close to the very trenches where the boyish Prince of Wales was facing the enemies of his country and doing it with high courage. And I had heard the rumble of the great German guns, as Queen Mary of England must hear them in her sleep.

Even with no son in the field the Queen of England would be working for the soldiers. It is a part of the tradition of her house. But a good mother is a mother to all the world. When Queen Mary is supervising the great work of the Needlework Guild one feels sure that into each word of direction has gone a little additional tenderness, because of this boy of hers at the front.

It is because of Her Majesty's interest in the material well-being of the soldiers at the front, and because of her most genuine grat.i.tude for America's part in this well-being, that I took such pleasure in meeting the Queen of England.

It was characteristic of Her Majesty that she put an American woman--a very nervous American woman--at her ease at once, that she showed that American woman the various departments of her Needlework Guild under way, and that she conveyed, in every word she said, a deep feeling of friends.h.i.+p for America and her a.s.sistance to Belgium in this crisis.

Although our amba.s.sadors are still accredited to the Court of St.

James's, the old palace has ceased to be the royal residence. The King still holds there his levees, to which only gentlemen are admitted.

But the formal Drawing Rooms are held at Buckingham Palace. To those who have seen St. James's during a levee, or to those London tourists who have watched the Scots Guards, or the Coldstream or the Grenadiers, preceded by a splendid band, swinging into the old Friary Court to perform the impressive ceremony of changing guard, the change in these days of war is most amazing. Friary Court is guarded by London policemen, and filled with great vans piled high with garments and supplies for the front--that front where the Coldstream and the Grenadiers and the others, shorn of their magnificence, are waiting grimly in muddy trenches or leading charges to victory--or the Roll of Honour. Under the winter sky of London the crenelated towers and brick walls of the old palace give little indication of the former grandeur of this most historic of England's palaces, built on the site of an old leper hospital and still retaining the name of the saint to whom that hospital was dedicated.

There had been a shower just before I arrived; and, although it was February, there was already a hint of spring in the air. The sun came out, drying the roads in the park close by, and s.h.i.+ning brightly on the lovely English gra.s.s, green even then with the green of June at home. Riders, caught in the shower and standing by the sheltered sides of trees for protection, took again to the bridle paths. The hollows of Friary Court were pools where birds were splas.h.i.+ng. As I got out of my car a Boy Scout emerged from the palace and carried a large parcel to a waiting van.

"Do you want the Q.M.N.G.?" said a tall policeman.

This, being interpreted, I was given to understand was Queen Mary's Needlework Guild.

Later on, when I was taken to Buckingham Palace to write my name in the Queen's book, which is etiquette after a presentation, there was all the formality the visit to St. James's had lacked--the drive into the inclosure, where the guard was changing, the stately footmen, the great book with its pages containing the dignitaries and great people of all the earth.

But the Boy Scout and the policeman had restored my failing courage that day at St. James's Palace. Except for a tendency to breathe at twice my normal rate as the Queen entered the room I felt almost calm.

As she advanced toward us, stopping to speak cordially to the various ladies who are carrying on the work of the Guild for her, I had an opportunity to see this royal woman who has suffered so grossly from the camera.

It will be a surprise to many Americans to learn that the Queen of England is very lovely to look at. So much emphasis has always been placed on her virtues, and so little has been written of her charm, that this tribute is only fair to Her Majesty. She is tall, perhaps five feet eight inches, with deep-blue eyes and beautiful colouring.

She has a rather wide, humorous mouth. There is not a trace of austerity in her face or in any single feature. The whole impression was of sincerity and kindliness, with more than a trace of humour.

I could quite believe, after I saw Her Majesty, the delightful story that I had heard from a member of her own circle, that now and then, when during some court solemnity an absurdity occurred, it was positively dangerous to catch the Queen's eye!

Queen Mary came up the long room. As she paused and held out her hand, each lady took it and curtsied at the same time. The Queen talked, smiling as she spoke. There was no formality. Near at hand the lady-in-waiting who was in attendance stood, sometimes listening, sometimes joining in the conversation. The talk was all of supplies, for these days in England one thinks in terms of war. Certain things had come in; other things had gone or were going. For the Queen of England is to-day at the head of a great business, one that in a few months has already collected and distributed over a million garments, all new, all practical, all of excellent quality.

The Queen came toward me and paused. There was an agonised moment while the lady-in-waiting presented me. Her Majesty held out her hand.

I took it and bowed. The next instant she was speaking.

She spoke at once of America, of what had already been done by Americans for the Belgians both in England and in their desolated country. And she hastened to add her grat.i.tude for the support they have given her Guild.

"The response has been more than generous," said Her Majesty. "We are very grateful. We are glad to find that the sympathy of America is with us,"

She expressed a desire also to have America know fully just what was being done with the supplies that are being constantly sent over, both from Canada and from the United States.

"Canada has been wonderful," she said. "They are doing everything."

The ready response of Canada to the demand for both troops and supplies appeared to have touched Her Majesty. She spoke at length about the troops, the distance they had come, the fine appearance the men made, and their popularity with the crowds when they paraded on the streets of London. I had already noticed this. A Canadian regiment was sure to elicit cheers at any time, although London, generally speaking, has ceased any but silent demonstration over the soldiers.

"Have you seen any of the English hospitals on the Continent?" the Queen asked.

"I have seen a number, Your Majesty,"

"Do they seem well supplied?"

I replied that they appeared to be thoroughly equipped, but that the amount of supplies required w&s terrifying and that at one time some of the hospitals had experienced difficulty in securing what they needed.

"One hospital in Calais," I said, "received twelve thousand pairs of bed socks in one week last autumn, and could not get a bandage."

"Those things happened early in the war. We are doing much better now.

England had not expected war. We were totally unprepared."

And in the great a.n.a.lysis that is to come, that speech of the Queen of England is the answer to many questions. England had not expected war.

Every roll of the drum as the men of the new army march along the streets, every readjustment necessary to a peaceful people suddenly thrust into war, every month added to the length of time it has taken to put England in force into the field, s.h.i.+fts the responsibility to where it belongs. Back of all fine questions of diplomatic negotiation stands this one undeniable fact. To deny it is absurd; to accept it is final.

"What is your impression of the French and Belgian hospitals?" Her Majesty inquired.

I replied that none were so good as the English, that France had always depended on her nuns in such emergencies, and, there being no nuns in France now, her hospital situation was still not good.

"The priests of Belgium are doing wonderful work," I said. "They have suffered terribly during the war."

"It is very terrible," said Her Majesty. "Both priests and nuns have suffered, as England has reason to know."

The Queen spoke of the ladies connected with the Guild.

"They are really much overworked," she said. "They are giving all their time day after day. They are splendid. And many of them, of course, are in great anxiety."