The Queen is living at La Panne, a tiny fishing village and resort on the coast—­an ugly village, robbed of quaintness by its rows of villas owned by summer visitors.  The villas are red and yellow brick, built chateau fashion and set at random on the sand.  Efforts at lawns have proved abortive.  The encroaching dunes gradually cover the grass.  Here and there are streets; and there is one main thoroughfare, along which is a tramway that formerly connected the town with other villages.

On one side the sea; on the other the dunes, with little shade and no beauty—­such is the location of the new capital of Belgium.  And here, in one of the six small villas that house the court, the King and Queen of Belgium, with the Crown Prince, are living.  They live very quietly, walking together along the sands at those times when King Albert is not with his troops, faring simply, waiting always—­as all Belgium is waiting to-day.  Waiting for the end of this terrible time.

I asked a member of the royal household what they did during those long winter evenings, when the only sounds in the little village were the wash of the sea and the continual rumble of the artillery at Nieuport.

“What can we do?” he replied.  “My wife and children are in Brussels.  It is not possible to read, and it is not wise to think too much.  We wait.”

But waiting does not imply inaction.  The members of His Majesty’s household are all officers in the army.  I saw only one gentleman in civilian dress, and he was the King’s secretary, M. Ingenbleek.  The King heads this activity, and the Queen of the Belgians is never idle.  The Ocean Ambulance, the great Belgian base hospital, is under her active supervision, and its location near the royal villa makes it possible for her to visit it daily.  She knows the wounded soldiers, who adore her.  Indeed, she is frankly beloved by the army.  Her appearance is always the signal for a demonstration; and again and again I saw copies of her photograph nailed up in sentry huts, in soldiers’ billets, in battered buildings that were temporary headquarters for divisions of the army.

In return for this devotion the young Queen regards the welfare of the troops as her especial charge.  She visits them when they are wounded, and many tales are told of her keen memory for their troubles.  One, a wounded Frenchman, had lost his pipe when he was injured.  As he recovered he mourned his pipe.  Other pipes were offered, but they were not the same.  There had been something about the curve of the stem of the old one, or the shape of the bowl—­whatever it was, he missed it.  And it had been his sole possession.

At last the Queen of the Belgians had him describe the old pipe exactly.  I believe he made a drawing—­and she secured a duplicate of it for him.  He told me the story himself.