FROM KING TO PRISONER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 158, 4 June 1940, Page 6

FROM KING TO PRISONER.

Yiutually a prisoner and not allowed outside the grounds of the castle to which the Nazis have permitted him to retire, the King of the. Belgians has indeed fallen from his high estate. Unlike his gallant father who proudly took his' stand against the Kaiser of 1914, King Leopold preferred to treacherously hand over his country to the present rulers of Germany. But he reckoned without the courage and tenacity of his Government and many thousands of the people who called him their ruler, as well as a gallant section of the Belgian Army. - The Parliament is now meeting, in France, from whence it will direct what remains' of Belgium’s war effort, but greatey than this, it presents to Nazi Germany, to Hitler, and the arclicriminals of the Wilhelmstrasse, the spirit that is Belgium’s, the spirit of the Allies which refuses to be daunted in spite of most severe setbacks, and expresses the will to conquer the Huns as in 1918. Through it all a monarch in disgrace must ’sit in his prisoner’s home, dethroned from the Crowii his father nobly wore, stripped of an honour France accords to the gallant and courageous, and unsung by hundreds of thousands who praised Albert the Brave. The answer the King, had he been true to his country, would have given the Huns has been made by the Premier: “We will only lay down our arms when we have regained peace, independence, and freedom.” Until this is achieved a remnant of the Belgian army will fight with the Allies, a still greater number of that country’s citizens under Hitler’s domination will silently associate themselves with the nations striving to preserve democracy, and the Belgian Parliament will function as best it can, a beacon light for a people whose freedom for the time being has been taken from them by the tyrants of Europe.