Feb. 19.
Grief, tinged almost with dismay, will mark. the world's reception of the news of the untimely death of King Albert I of Belgium. For nearly a quarter of a century he had reigned on the throne to which his grandfather, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, a3 Leopold J, was elected by the National Congress of newly-independent Belgium on June 4, 1831. Carefully trained for his high position, from the moment, that the death of his elder "brother, Prince Baldwin in. 1891, made him heir presumptive to his uncle, Leopold Il, King Albert came' to the throne at the age of 34, in the fullness of his manhood's powers. He retained them and turned them to great account for his country and the cause it espoused, through a period of unexampled strain and tragedy. For in less than five years from his accession, Belgium had to face the memel tous question put to her by the invading German hordes. Under the leadership of her King she proudly answered it with a gallantry and devotion which, perhaps, the present. seeneration apt to forget. She was overrun and occupied by the enam; her Government and her Army had to move to foreign soil; her people became refugees in neighbouring Lauds or had to submit to the relentless regime of the Government of Occupation. In the words of the famous cartoon, King Albert was confronted with ("Joss of everything saved his soul" and, with it, Belgium. He had left Antwerp only just in time to avoid capture' and, with the remnants of the Belgian. Army, he established: himself in personal command of them on the banks of Yser. His gracious Consort, Queen Elizabeth, remained with him as a hospital nurse at La Panne. His son and heir, Prince Leopold, Duke of Brabant, served with' the 12th Regiment as a private soldier, by his father's special request. The Belgian Army was recon tuted and its officers trained in French military colleges. 'This fortitude and resistance was in every respect worthy of the country for whom, in occupied Belgium, there were men, like the aged 31, Visart de Bocerme, burgomaster of Bruges and M.' Max, burgomaster of Brussels, to maintain the national morale, Revival of those memories is essential to one purpose and one purpose only. It affords convincing proof of the qualities of the King whose loss to-day his people and. the world must mourn. For four terrible years it could not but have been felt that Belgium's fateful choice, under King Albert's leadership, had brought upon her death, misery and destruction almost to the point of extinction, Yet never, it seems, did confidence in him falter. When, after, the Armistice, the superhuman task of reconstruction had to be faced by the little country, with what sometimes must have seemed to her to. be negligent sympathy from: her wartime Allies, King Albert proved as acceptable a Tender in peace as in war. His own intense patriotism inspired a fusion of the three political parties during the War and for the early stages of the reconstructional effort. His Queen and he, by their close contacts with all communities and all localities, made themselves unerring' exponents of the national will. So in the past year when Belgium, like other countries, has had to face grave economic' difficulties, the throne has been the rallying point for patriotic effort and the triumphant, solution of the country's problem. With it all political progress has not been impeded. To-day the important Socialist Opposition is as solid, for the throne and the country's integrity as its Catholic-Liberal countrymen in the Government.
King who could so command and maintain the affectionate esteem of his people through so bewildering a series of vicissi-{udes and anxieties, must be placed by thie historian among King, statesman, soldier, gent man, Albert I is to be envied few of his contemporaries claim so successfully to have endured the tests to which the events of their day have exposed them.
The death of a King by accident is in itself so rare an event that English people, for example, have to go back to William' IIT who died from the effects of a fall from his horse, to find the only parallel in their own history. King Albert's love of mountaineering was characteristic of his spirit and indeed showed itself in those days when at the Ecole Militaire under General Jungblut, he was receiv. ing his military training. Eminent soldiers in the neighbourhood of sixty find their favourite sports dangerously exacting. Only the other day Sir Percy Radcliffe met with a fatal accident at hunting. His wartime colleague and senior, i the late Lord Rawlinson, died within a week of playing a strenuous polo match on his sixtieth birthday. King Albert would not have been sixty until April 8, 1935, but it is fair to suggest' that' the fall which caused his death might have been avoided by him in his earlier and more vigorous days. However that may be, it is the sense of others' loss rather than his own fate which governs contemplation of his passing. For him it means the end of a ife full of service and high-minded devotion on which nothing but commendation can be bestowed by those who have to weigh the deeds and thoughts of men. The world of culture has lost a discriminating and enthusiastic patron. Europe loses a monarch whose statesmanship had been proved and was ever at the service of peacemaking. Belgium mourns a ruler who had kept her firmly entrenched in the stability of constitutionalism. Fortunately is training has extended to his son who, as Duke of Brabant and the husband of a greatly beloved Swedish princess, has already played his part Belgian affairs. He ascends the throne almost at the same age as that which his father had reached when the call.came in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.