army will offer the greatest possible resistance to invasion by them. The neutrality of Belgium is guaranteed by the powers, among them Germany, and the attack which the German Government threatens to make on Belgium would be a violation of the Law of Nations. No military necessity can justify such a violation of right.

The Belgian Government, if it accepted the proposals of Germany, would sacrifice the honor of the nation and betray its duty to Europe; and it therefore refuses to believe that this will be demanded in order to maintain its independence. If this expectation proves unfounded, the Belgian Government is fully decided to resist by all means in its power any attack against its rights.

On Tuesday the King brought in person a message to the Belgian Legislature, as President Wilson has often brought such messages to the American Congress. King Albert's message was in substance as follows:

Not since 1830 has Belgium passed through such an anxious hour. Our independence is threatened. We still have hope that what we dread may not happen; but if we have to resist invasion and defend our homes, that duty will find us armed, courageous, and ready for any sacrifice. Already our young men have risen to defend their country in danger. I send to them, in the name of the nation, a brotherly greeting. Everywhere in the provinces of Flanders and of Walloon alike, in city · and country, one feeling fills all minds that our duty is to resist the enemies of our independence with firm courage and as a united nation.

The perfect mobilization of our army, the great number of

volunteers, the devotion of the citizens, the self-denial of families have shown beyond doubt the bravery of the Belgian people. The moment to act has come.

No one in this nation will betray his duty. The army is ready, and the Government has absolute trust in its leaders and its soldiers.

If the foreigner violates our territory, he will find all Belgians grouped round their King and their Government, in which they have absolute confidence.

I have faith in our destinies. A nation which defends its rights commands the respect of all. Such a nation cannot die. God will be with us in a just cause. Long live independent Belgium!

Hardly had the King finished his noble message, when the Prime Minister announced to the Legislature that Germany had declared war upon Belgium, and that her troops were moving against Liége.

Never as long as men remember the history of these fateful days will the decisive action of the heroic Belgian people and of their heroic king be forgotten. The slightest hesitation between right and wrong would have set civilization and human liberty back perhaps a thousand years. And the decision had to be made not only by a people, but by a young king with German blood in his veins and married to a German princess and between sunset and sunrise.

Did he see the horrors before him and his people? Did he see the destruction of the most beautiful buildings in the world, the pride of his people? Did he

see the tearing down and burning of the entire city of Louvain, with its university and its valuable library containing some of the oldest and most nearly priceless books and manuscripts? Did he see the children and the aged dying by the roadside of hunger and fatigue? Did he see the Belgian men carried off as slaves to work in Germany?

Do you think he or his Queen would have hesitated if he had? No one who really knows them thinks so. Nothing can justify choosing the wrong. King Albert, the King of Heroes, and Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians are honored and respected by all who love liberty and justice, for it has been well said, "Treaties and engagements are certainly scraps of paper, just as promises are no more than breaths. But upon such scraps of paper and breaths the fabric of civilization has been built, and without them its everyday activity would come to an end." They represent truly the heroic Belgian people who by their decision on Sunday night, August 2, 1914, saved the world. Queen Elizabeth, although a Bavarian princess, has said of the Germans, "Between them and me has fallen a curtain of iron which will never again be lifted."

The Belgian Minister to the United States said of King Albert after the war had begun :

"It is when one talks with our soldiers that one perceives how he is loved; they say, all of them, that they will die for him. He is constantly at their side,

encouraging them by his presence and his courage. At certain moments, he adventures too far; always he is in the very midst of combat."

The King and Queen are both of them unusually brave and daring. Not many royal pairs would trust their lives to cross the English Channel and return in an airplane, as they did in the summer of 1918 to attend a celebration held by the King and Queen of England.

A Belgian soldier writing of King Albert said: "The King came and placed himself at my side in the trench. He took the rifle of a soldier so tired he could not stand, to give him a chance to rest, and fired, just like the other soldiers, for an hour and a half. He himself often carries their letters to the soldiers and distributes among them the little bundles which their friends and parents send them from the homes now destroyed. He shares their mess with the soldiers and he calls them always 'my friends.' He does not want that they shall do him honor; he wishes simply to be a soldier in all that the word soldier means. One night he was seen, exhausted by fatigue, sleeping on the grass at the side of the road."

Do you wonder that the Belgians love their King and that the world honors him as the Hero King of a Nation of Heroes?