It has required heroism of a high order.  It is, to a certain extent, a new heroism, almost a demonstration of the new faith whose foundation is responsibility—­responsibility of a nation to its sons, of rulers to their people, of a man to his neighbour.

It has been my privilege to meet and speak with two of these royal women, with the Queen of England and with the Queen of the Belgians.  In each instance I carried away with me an ineradicable impression of this quality—­of a grave and wearing responsibility borne quietly and simply, of a quiet courage that buries its own griefs and asks only to help.

From the beginning of the war I had felt a keen interest in the Queen of England.  Here was a great queen who had chosen to be, first of all, a wife and mother; a queen with courage and a conscience.  And into her reign had come the tragedy of a war that affected every nation of the world, many of them directly, all of them indirectly.  The war had come unsought, unexpected, unprepared for.  Peaceful England had become a camp.  The very palace in which the royal children were housed was open to an attack from a brutal enemy, which added to the new warfare of this century the ethics of barbarism.

What did she think of it all?  What did she feel when that terrible Roll of Honour came in, week by week, that Roll of Honour with its photographs of splendid types of young manhood that no Anglo-Saxon can look at without a clutch at his throat?  What did she think when, one by one, the friends of her girlhood put on the black of bereavement and went uncomplainingly about the good works in which hers was the guiding hand?  What thoughts were hers during those anxious days before the Prince of Wales went to the front, when, like any other mother, she took every possible moment to be with him, walking about arm-in-arm with her boy, talking of everything but the moment of parting?

And when at last I was permitted to see the Queen of England, I understood a part at least of what she was suffering.  I had been to the front.  I had seen the English army in the field.  I had been quite close to the very trenches where the boyish Prince of Wales was facing the enemies of his country and doing it with high courage.  And I had heard the rumble of the great German guns, as Queen Mary of England must hear them in her sleep.

Even with no son in the field the Queen of England would be working for the soldiers.  It is a part of the tradition of her house.  But a good mother is a mother to all the world.  When Queen Mary is supervising the great work of the Needlework Guild one feels sure that into each word of direction has gone a little additional tenderness, because of this boy of hers at the front.

It is because of Her Majesty’s interest in the material well-being of the soldiers at the front, and because of her most genuine gratitude for America’s part in this well-being, that I took such pleasure in meeting the Queen of England.