ies, 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 XXXI

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 retarded, 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 assume, 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, al