Yet there was one thing lacking to Belgium: she had not been purified by sorrow or hallowed by suffering. This crown of thorns was at last thrust upon her head by the cruelty of the Germans. Then the little nation was seen to stiffen under its martyrdom, without abandoning the struggle to live and to resist. The shining example of heroism came to it from above, from its young royal pair, to whom it was devoted, and in whom it centred its fondest hopes. Ten months have passed, and King Albert still remains planted, firmly as an oak, in the last shred of territory, facing the enemy, whose strength is powerless to bend or to break him. Around him is his young army, sadly thinned by unequal struggles, but galvanized into new life, having repaired its losses by an accession of fresh blood, certain of victory, for it knows that the very heart of its country is throbbing beneath the folds of its flag. Not far off is the Government, which would not yield up the honour of Belgium at the German bidding, and which labours busily in its exile, in order to relieve our refugees, to maintain the public services, and to act as intermediary for the generous and sympathetic aid tendered from foreign sources.
If Europe turns aside from the sight of this indomitable resistance, and looks at our country, what does she see there? The head of the Belgian clergy, the very incarnation of civic patriotism and priestly virtues, stimulating his flock to courage and endurance, caring nought for coercion or threats, and awaiting with full trust in the Divine Judge the day when in his church (not spared, alas! by the invader) he shall celebrate the _Te Deum_ of our deliverance. Everywhere she sees devotion to the fatherland and to Christian solidarity: she sees the burgomaster of Brussels, whose brave voice could only be silenced by imprisonment, although even now his memory and his example still hover, as an ever-present encouragement, above his fellow-citizens and his city; she sees men who yesterday were rich, heads of banks that to-day are closed and of workshops that to-day are empty, joining with the intellectual flower of Brussels citizens to provide for the poor, to ensure that the people shall not die of hunger and privation; she sees women of all sorts and conditions turned into Sisters of Charity; she sees fathers and mothers, stricken to the heart by the death of their sons or anxious as to their fate, living often in homes that the enemy has rifled, yet with calm, tearless eyes and faces ennobled by sacrifice; and last of all she sees, behind the classes that once were privileged, the admirable crowd, the army of humble toilers, stoically enduring their forced loss of work or their inability to help their country, watching in grim silence the countless dead and wounded brought in from the enemy regiments, who do not cease to dye with their blood that Belgian soil where they thought they had only to appear in order to conquer!