KING ALBERT'S HEROISM

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2344, 29 December 1914, Page 6

KING ALBERT'S HEROISM

■'AN INSPIRATION TO HIS ARMY. The heroic figure in this war is King Albert of the Belgians, whose devotion to duty and personal courage rallied the Belgian Army within the last few miles left of their country, and inspired them to turn and push back the invader. His resolution during the painful fetreat from Antwerp, his determination to resist the advice given to him to take refuge in France, have had perhaps more than any other single influence thegreatest efficacy in making the Belgian Army what it is to-day—a. hand of soldiers worthy of comparison with the Old Guard. The Belgian Army can he 6een reacting to his influence. One- recent day the' Germans ongaged in a spiteful bombardment of . The King had business that day in the town with his Staff. He did not permit the bombardment to disturb him. Word of this passed through the ranks. The next day two Belgian regiments with two French Tegiments, with a bayonet charge that could not be denied, won the key to the battle of the Yser; and the Belgians had been continually in tho trenches for sixteen days. "We like to do something for the King," said one soldier simply, when he was congratulated on his share in the. battle,, he having kept on with the bayonet to the end m spite of a flesh wound from a rifle ball.

The King of the Belgians is the real, active, directing Commander-m-Chief of lis Army. His Staff officers are quite near, to the front, and he is at his "office" early in the morning, sometimes as early as eight o'clock, rarely later than nine. •At midday a little inn near by sends to him luncheon. It is very simple; sometimes it is lacking even in what a middle-clase citizen of London would regard as the ordinary comforts of the table. Of course, tho King could get anything that he wanted if ho chose to employ the military transport to bring it up from a port on the coast.. He is so vitally absorbed in his work, however, as to be indifferent" to hie own comfort. So long as ho can get a cigar after luncheon he is satistied, and even that has been sometimes lacking. In the afternoon the King's labours continue. He has visits to receive and to make. He constantly visits the trenchee. Of late he has. wisely decided that the Belgian Army would be encouraged in its task if it saw a little of the ceremony and panoply of war. So reviews are fairly frequent. When there is a chance for a regiment, passing from one part of the front to tho other, to march past the King with music at its head the chance is' token. Sometimes it is nine in the evening before the King leaves his Staff office, but more usually six or seven. Probably going to his temporary palace— which German airmen, are always seeking out with their bombs, but which happily they have not yet found —he continues then to carry on the work of State. But his day's labour in tho public eye stretches to an average of eight or nine hours.