Men of Republican
instincts paid a homage in their hearts to this young king, sanctified
by sorrow and crowned with martyrdom. Living plainly as a simple
soldier, sharing the rations, the hardships and the dangers of his
men, visiting them in their trenches and in their field-hospitals,
steeling his nerves to the sight of bloody things and his heart to the
grim task of fighting to the last ditch of Belgian ground, he seemed to
be the type of early kingship, as it was idealized by poets and
minstrels, when those who were anointed by the Church dedicated
their souls to the service of the people and their swords to justice. He
stood in this modern world and in this modern war as the supreme
type of the Hero, and mythical stories are already making a legend of
his chivalrous acts and virtue, showing that in spite of all our
incredulities and disillusions hero-worship is still a natural instinct in
the minds of men.
7
I had a job to do on my first night in Furnes, and earned a dinner, for
a change, by honest work. The staff of an English hospital with a
mobile column attached to the Belgian cavalry for picking up the
wounded on the field, had come into the town before dusk with a
convoy of ambulances and motorcars.
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