CHAPTER XXX

KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM

The greatness of kings is not always proportionate to the size of the kingdoms they rule, and their fame does not run in accord with the breadth of their dominions, or the number of subjects who serve them. This has been proved many times in history,--but never more conclusively than in the little kingdom of Belgium, whose present ruler, Albert the First, has already won glory equal to that of any hero-king of any age.

Until he was a young man it was never expected that Albert would ever be King, for he was the younger son of the younger brother of King Leopold the Second. Much would have to take place before he could win the throne, and Albert, in consequence, was not trained for the severe duties of a ruler. But in the end this worked good rather than harm, for Albert received so thorough a military education that by practical advice and prompt action he was able to save his country in the terrible ordeal through which it passed. And as he had expected to be no more than one of the King's subjects, he had learned the ways of the people more intimately than he could have done if he had always been hemmed in with the restrictions of royalty.

When Albert was seventeen years old, his brother Baldwin died, and it was then seen that he might indeed become King, for Leopold had no direct male heirs. But this was not yet sure, for under certain conditions the King had the right to appoint his successor, and he did not decide to make Albert the heir to the throne until the Prince married and had two sons who would ensure the permanence of the royal Belgian family.

Albert was born in 1875 on the Eighth of April. His father was Count Philippe of Flanders who was Leopold's youngest brother. As a boy the young prince received an education such as would be given to any cultivated well bred gentleman, but as it was customary for younger sons of princes to enter the army particular attention was paid, as we have said, to his military training.

The young prince attended military school, was drilled as a common soldier and gradually worked his way up through the different grades to the rank of Major. He was intensely interested in the profession of arms and gave more than the required zeal and attention to its pursuit, following his training in a regiment of Grenadiers, and instructed by the most experienced officers.

Albert was not only studious, but fond of all sorts of athletic sports and exercises. He frequently visited the Tyrol for mountain climbing, and later tried his skill on the most rugged Alps. He was fond of shooting and shot well; he was an excellent horseman and his tall figure was frequently to be seen astride his hunter, which he managed with great skill.

The possibility that he might become King had effected a change in the young man's character, who became more reserved and serious, ardently devoted to his studies and eager to find out as much as possible about the lives of the people that one day he was to rule. He often lectured on military topics. He visited the mines and viewed the working conditions of the men that toiled incessantly underground. He watched the fishermen at work and even accompanied them on their trips; he worked in machine-shops and ran locomotives himself. To learn the secrets of modern shipping he visited foreign countries and traveled in disguise as a reporter of a newspaper, paying calls on various shipyards and taking notes on what he saw there.

In the year of the war between America and Spain, 1898, Albert came to the United States and saw President McKinley, and in his travels through our great country he paid a visit to the great financier James J. Hill with whom he talked about the problems that confronted Belgium and from whom he doubtless received valuable advice. He was much impressed by his visit to America, and often talked about it afterward, and thought out means by which the modern improvements he saw in America might be applied to the people of Belgium.

All this time, however, the Prince remained unmarried, and King Leopold, who was growing old, was worried about the succession to the throne. Finally he decided that as long as Albert was without issue he must choose a different heir which was a royal privilege in such a contingency, and his choice fell upon the Duc de Vendome, who had married Albert's sister.

But Albert, who had given no signs of attraction toward any one of the various beautiful ladies he might have married, was soon to fall in love and make a marriage that would gladden the heart of old King Leopold, and please the Belgian people.

Among other things that he had studied in his young manhood was the science of medicine, and a year after he came to America he went to Germany to see the clinic of a Bavarian duke named Charles Theodore, whose skill as an occulist had made him famous throughout Europe. Albert visited this Duke and was presented to his daughters, with one of whom, the Duchess Elizabeth, he promptly fell in love. The passion was mutual, and as the match was a good one from all points of view the young couple were married in Munich on October 2, 1900, where a celebration was held in honor of the event. When the newly wedded couple returned to Belgium no one less than King Leopold was waiting at the railroad station to receive them and offer his congratulations. Leopold was now more predisposed in favor of Albert, and when a son was born he was delighted. On the birth of a second son, the King made a speech in which he publicly confirmed Albert's claim to the throne, and public attention was now focussed on the Prince who was to be King.

Albert had no intention of meddling with political affairs until he actually should become the ruler of Belgium, and he gave scant encouragement to those who sought to sound him and find out what his future policies would be. While he surveyed all public affairs with a keen eye and attentive mind, he kept the public from knowing what he thought of them, and his mind seemed now as much of a mystery as his personality had seemed obscure before it had been known that he was to come to the throne.

Albert was greatly interested in the Belgian colony in Africa and asked permission from King Leopold to visit it and make a tour of inspection. The King was unwilling to have the heir to the throne take so long and presumably so dangerous a journey, but at last he consented and Albert departed for Africa and the Congo, where he spent three arduous months in which time, it is said, he walked more than fifteen hundred miles. The colonists took a great liking to the tall, reserved young man who studied all their interests and doings with such careful attention, and the impression that Albert made upon this part of his future kingdom was more than favorable.

He had not been at home long before King Leopold died, and on the 23rd of December, 1909, Albert came into his capital as King of the Belgians. After taking the oath to guard the constitution and preserve the territory of the Belgian nation, he made a carefully prepared and well thought out speech, in which he declared that the Belgian monarch must always obey the laws of the country and preserve the law with the utmost respect and care. And the first public appearance of Albert as King added to the good impression with which he was regarded everywhere.

His liberty and privacy were now over, and he was absorbed with the affairs of his country. He had become so interested in the Congo colony that he gave a great deal of his own money to better conditions there and to further medical research. The Queen was busy also. With her medical skill she visited the various hospitals and engaged in many charitable enterprises that endeared her to the hearts of the common people. It seemed that she could not do enough to relieve the sufferings of others, and the humblest of her subjects came to look on her as a member of their family, and almost literally worshipped the ground she walked on.

The threat of war was still far off, but Albert, who was greatly concerned over the state of the Belgian army, did all he could to increase its efficiency. He was not only concerned with the military preparedness of Belgium, but observed that the Germans seemed to be taking a firmer and firmer grip on his country. German merchants and business men swarmed in Brussels, and it was not hard to see too that German military experts were studying the topography of Belgium and sending reports back to the Fatherland.

The position of Belgium was peculiar in many ways. Not only did it lie as a little and weak nation between the great armed powers of France and Germany, exposed to the advance of an invading army in case of war, since it was the most convenient way from one country to the other, but its position on the coast made it a favorable vantage ground from which Germany might launch an attack on England. This geographical situation of Belgium has caused it throughout history to be the scene of some of the greatest battles that have ever been fought, and has gained for it the name of "the cockpit of Europe."

Even for its size, Belgium was in a woeful state of military unpreparedness for war, because it was supposed to be exempt from conflict through an agreement of the great powers. All the great nations of Europe had decided that it was safer and better to make Belgium neutral ground, and one and all they had promised to protect the neutrality of this little state with force of arms if necessary. This, as we have said, had given the Belgians a feeling of security. They believed that even if war broke out, Belgium would not be forced into the conflict, but sinister signs of danger, like the distant warnings of a hurricane, gradually obtruded themselves before King Albert's clear sighted vision. He received letters, not from one but from many sources, warning him that the Germans had decided in secret council to send their invading armies across Belgium in case of war with France, and he had seen only too clearly that German spies and military experts were mapping out the country for their own secret ends. So Albert struggled to increase the army and secured the passage of a favorable bill in October, 1913.

But the iron forces of Germany were forged and ready; the uniforms and equipment of her invading hordes were packed away in her storehouses and arsenals. Only the stroke of a pen was needed to loose the blind forces and mighty armaments of a war greater than any that history has known. King Albert's efforts in behalf of the Belgian army were too late, although he did not know it at the time.

In the summer of 1914, Albert went to Switzerland on a vacation, but his fear that Germany was preparing for speedy war forced him to return to Belgium in the middle of his holiday. And events soon proved that he was justified. War leaped up over night like a devouring flame, and immediately the German Government sent to Belgium a threat which declared that it was the purpose of the German High Command to move German troops across Belgium, and that the Belgians would resist at their own peril.

Many a ruler would have acceded to the terms that Germany gave. If a small boy is confronted by a trained pugilist of great weight and gigantic stature, surely none can blame the boy for consenting to the pugilist's demands. None could have blamed King Albert if he had yielded to such force and accepted the tyrant's terms. But the King determined to defend his country to the last drop of Belgian blood, not sparing his own, and the Belgians sent the following reply back to the German war lords:

"The German ultimatum has caused the Belgian Government deep and painful astonishment, and Belgium refuses to believe that her independence could only be preserved at the cost of violating her neutrality."

And Albert grimly added to some of his followers, "Germany appears to believe that Belgium is a road, not a country."

The German armies entered Belgium, and soon the roar of the guns was heard almost from one end of the little nation to the other. King Albert at once put on his uniform and took to the field with the Belgian army. The Germans laid siege to the Belgian fortress of Liège, expecting to overpower it easily. They advanced against it in mass formation, only to be met with such a hail of machine gun fire that they numbered their dead by thousands. The little Kingdom of Belgium had thrust a stick between the cogs of the great German war machine, and by doing so saved the world from a German victory. By delaying the Germans at Liège they allowed the French the vital time to organize their army and mobilize on the frontier, and by the splendid and stubborn resistance that the Germans encountered in Belgium the English too were given a breathing space. On the breast of this weak nation fell the whole weight of the mailed fist, and while the result was inevitable the burden was bravely supported.

Liège fell at last, and the Germans moved onward, in spite of attacks by the Belgians that temporarily halted them. With their great 42 centimeter howitzers the Germans pulverized the forts that held out against them and soon compelled King Albert to shift the seat of Belgian Government to Antwerp. Albert himself, however, stayed in the field with his army and when it fell back he was among the brave men that covered the retreat. He seemed to be everywhere that he was needed, and often in the front line the Belgian soldiers would be cheered by the sight of their King loading and firing a rifle by their side, in the place of some wounded comrade.

The King combined shrewdness with bravery. He ordered Brussels not to resist the German horde, but he fought to the knife wherever resistance would be effective. While the British were yet far away and the French were unable to help, Belgium alone held the enemy in check, and Belgium was animated more by the spirit of their King than by any other cause. It has been said in turn that each one of the Allied Nations won the war. And this is true of them all. Without the aid of the British navy, the bravery of the French army, the fresh strength that America lent to the fight, the Germans must have conquered. But it is practically certain that they would have won if Belgium had not withstood them. With their forces once in Paris and the French and British forces separated no human power could have triumphed against the Kaiser--and it remained for little Belgium to delay him to such an extent that Joffre was able at last to beat the Germans at the Marne and save the world.

Then the Germans turned their guns against the city of Antwerp and soon the giant shells from the monster howitzers were picking up whole buildings in the force of their blast and scattering bricks and timbers broadcast in crashing explosions. Queen Elizabeth had remained with the King, serving as a nurse in the hospitals and doing what she could to relieve the suffering of her people, but when it was seen that Antwerp must fall she decided to take her children to a place of safety. King Albert's eldest son served as a private with a Belgian regiment, but his brother and little sister were too young for any service and were taken to England by the Queen. She refused to remain, however, but returned to the stricken country to take her place with the remainder of her subjects who had not yet received the yoke of German slavery.

Albert refused to allow his army to be driven from Belgian territory. "It would be better to die here," he declared, "than in a foreign land." And always he was with the army, directing its strategy or wielding a weapon himself. "My place is with my brave soldiers," he declared.

All through the sinister days of the war the King's spirit did not weaken. When the Germans were pushing on again toward Paris in the spring of 1918, he kept his head cool and his heart composed. Then the gray lines broke, and the tide turned. The Allied Armies swept onward and the Germans retreated pell mell to save themselves from utter ruin. Back from the ruined villages and the oppressed and tortured countryside the German hordes retreated, and King Albert and Queen Elizabeth triumphantly took possession once more. Their children had returned and the royal family had passed the last year of the war within sound of the guns on the Nieuport front. Their hour of triumph was now come and they entered Brussels after four years of exile.

Their entry was planned to be as glorious and beautiful as possible and it is needless to say with what rejoicing they were received. Allied troops marched past in review, and the King and Queen were accompanied by the most famous generals of the Allied armies. The soldiers of the Belgian army were crowned with flowers when reviewed by the King that so bravely led them.

Peace terms were drawn up and the Germans compelled to repay the Belgians to the last penny for the havoc and vandalism they had wrought. And it is a kind of poetic justice that Albert was reigning, while the Kaiser fled from his own country to cling to the skirts of another weak little power that he would surely have violated as remorselessly as he violated Belgium if it had chanced to stand in his way.

In 1919, twenty-one years after his first trip to this country, King Albert with Queen Elizabeth came to the United States again. They received a warm welcome from one end of the country to the other and the good wishes of all Americans have gone back with them to the wrecked and devastated land that they are striving to restore. Whether King Albert will perform as great work in reconstruction as he has already performed as a soldier and a King the future will decide, but he has already gained an immortal place in the history of the world.