Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1920, by The Mentor Association, Inc.
Before the windows of my cottage, facing the level beach of La Panne, there came very often in the summer of 1913 a monarch, tall and blond, and nearly always he was the center of a joyous group of youths and children. Three of the group were his sons and his daughter; six slim youngsters called the Emperor of Austria grandfather. During the long summer afternoons the friends laboriously erected and recklessly demolished sand forts and barricades amid the tufted dunes, while laughter and the clamor of mimic assault disturbed the peace of the strand. Sometimes I wished that the children of the King of Belgium and their cousins, the grandchildren of the Austrian emperor, would find another place to play their war games! I could not know that before the year was out three of these care-free companions would be playing the game in earnest—one of them in the ranks of the invaders.… That fishing sloops of La Panne, lying aslant on the beach or spreading their deep-hued sails to the North Sea wind, would within a twelve-month be consumed by monsters of the deep. That soon the wide smooth shore would be a tenting-ground for Belgian soldiers swept back from Antwerp. That neighbor villages would be fenced with arms. That only a few square miles of his country would be left to the dauntless King of the Belgians.
ON THE WAY TO BRUGES
This canal scene is typical of the water routes that connect Bruges with the seaports of Zee-Brugge and Ostend
On Belgian Roads
Traveling the roads of Belgium on foot or by steam tram, by slothful barge, or by the very efficient railways of the Belgian Government, we come upon many a picture of odd-fashioned roofs and mirroring water-streets, of city squares and gilded cornices, of farm cots scattered like sheep across the downs, of corpulent windmills busy at their grinding, of canal-boats moving among the flat Flemish fields, of soil-stained men and women tending crops of sugar-beets, flax and grains.
South of Flanders and Brabant, wide sea-freshened vistas give way to murky landscapes and cities that bristle with the spires of industry. Here, settlements of coal miners, steel workers, glass makers, cotton spinners, fill the foreground of the scene. Most of the factory people belong to the robust and spirited race of the Walloons, who live near the eastern and southern frontiers. Their Celtic ancestors occupied the valley of the Meuse (meuz) long before the Christian era. Among themselves they speak a dialect bequeathed by the Romans. Officially their language is French, just as the Flemish tongue, of “Low Country” origin, is the recognized language of the Belgians of the north.
