The war has been singularly barren of heroic figures, perhaps because
the magnitude of the events has called forth such a multitude of
individually heroic acts that no one can be placed before the rest;
yet, when this greatest phase of history comes to be written down with
historic perspective, one figure--that of King Albert of Belgium--will
stand as that of a twentieth-century Bayard, a great knight without
fear and without reproach.
Action on such far-flung lines as those of the European conflict has
called for no great leaders in the sense in which that phrase has
applied to previous wars; no Napoleon has arisen, though William
Hohenzollern has aspired to Napoleonic dignity; war has become more
mechanical, more a matter of mathematics--and the barbarians of Germany
have made it more horrible. But, as if to accentuate German brutality
and crime, this figure of King Albert stands emblematic of the virtues
in which civilisation is rooted; to the broken word of Germany it
opposes untarnished honour; to the treacherous spirit of Germany it
opposes inviolable truth; to the relentless selfishness of Germany it
opposes the vicarious sacrifice of self, of a whole country and nation
for the sake of a principle. And, in later days, men will remember how
this truly great king held steadfastly to the little portion of his
kingdom that the invasion left him; how he remained to inspirit his
men by noble example, stubbornly rejecting peace without honour, and
holding, when all else was wrecked, to the remnants of that army which
saved Europe in the gateway of Liége. Amid violation, desecration, and
destruction, Albert of Belgium has won imperishable fame.