Before the war Madame was very close to the Queen. She lived in our quarter of Brussels; we became friends. And how generous the friendship between a Belgian and an American can be, only the members of the Commission for Relief truly know! It is swift and complete.
I had been in Brussels five months when she said to me one day:
“My dear, I understand only too well the difficulties of your position—the guaranty you gave on entering. As you know, I have never once suggested that you carry a note for me, or bring a message—tho I have seen you starting in your car behind your blessed little white flag for the city of my daughter and my grandchildren! Nor have I,” she laughed, with the swift play so typical of the Belgian mind, “once hinted at a pound of butter or a potato! But lately I have been suffering so many, many fears, that I am tempted just to ask if you think this would be wrong for you—if it would, forget that I asked it: I have a relation who has always been closer to me than a brother—we were brought up together. He is eighty-two now, and, at the beginning of the war, was living near X in Occupied France. He was important in his district, his name is known. Now, if I should merely give you that name, and, when you next see your American delegate from that district, you should speak it, might it not be possible that he would recognize it, and could tell you if my dear, dear M. is suffering, or if he is yet able to care for himself? Would that be breaking your agreement?”
As she stood there—intelligence, distinction speaking from all her person—fearfully putting this pitiful question, I experienced another of those maddening moments we live through in Belgium. One swiftly doubts one’s reason—the situation—everything! The world simply can not be so completely lost as it seems!
Mercifully this would not be breaking any promise; and I begged for the name.
But even then I was rather hopeless that our American would know. In the North of France he must live with his German officer; he is not free to mingle with the French people.
Thursday, conference day, came, when all the little white flags rush in from their provinces, bringing our splendid American men—their faces stern, strained, but with that beautiful light in them that testifies they are giving without measure the best they have to others.