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Queenliest of the royal qualities revealed that day were the quiet, matterof-course cheerfulness and courage of her Majesty. Her task is to set an example of serenity and optimism to a nation in sore straits. Defeat, disaster, and death have smitten little Rumania. More than a quarter of a million of men have been lost in battle. A hundred thousand persons perished last winter in the epidemics of typhus and other diseases. Three quarters of the country, including the capital, is now in the hands of the Germans, who are sowing no one knows what sort of seeds of Prussianism among the people. Rumania’s remaining food supply has been taken by the Russians. She is completely shut off from all her allies except sorely disorganized Russia. All munitions and clothes and food must come in over the one mismanaged Russian railway. If ever a ruler had cause for bitterness and railing it is the Queen of Rumania; yet her Majesty does not complain or lose her cheerfulness or show any traces of discouragement. Instead, she moves freely among the people, everywhere radiating courage and steadfastness. That is her task as queen, and royally she fulfils it. She does not preach optimism; she simply exemplifies it. Thus from a purely strategic point of view, it has come to pass that this one woman has been worth a whole army corps to Rumania.
That, however, is a digression from our motor-ride to a distant village—one does not name places in war-times—where a food station for orphans was to be opened. As the machine passed an aerodrome, two aeroplanes took flight and flew above us, like guardian angels, until our destination was reached, where they hovered over the queen and the multitude in great circles until the function was over, that no German machine might come near. Her Majesty expressed interest in the identity of the pilots, for she knows all the Rumanian airmen personally. Before arriving at the scene of festivities, the motor halted that another, carrying the gifts for the children, might arrive. As we waited, a sunny-faced urchin came up, bearing a few pathetic flowers to the queen, whom he had recognized. He was bursting with pride over the fact that he had met her once before, and told her so, with glowing face. Her kindly chat with the boy encouraged other youngsters to appear from unseen places,—one dirty little Gipsy without a shred of clothing upon him!—and each received a handful of candies.
Entering the village of our destination, we found garlands and green wreaths and inscriptions of welcome stretched across the streets, all rather primitive, but showing the touch of loving, loyal devotion. The whole community was en fête, and the commonest symbol of this was the hanging of all the gay-colored carpets and rugs in the place out on the fences and bushes to brighten the scene. The people themselves had all massed·in the center square, but before we reached them we came to a double line of soldiers perhaps a quarter of a mile long. Her Majesty alighted, throwing off her furs, and, attended by a staff of officers, walked in front of the troops, inspecting them, and bowing and smiling in response to their military salutes and shouts. First came the Russians, who cheered as they saluted, but with somewhat a note of uncertainty in their voices. Then the Transylvanians and other Rumanians, all in the steel helmets of the trenches, voiced the heavy “Hoo-raw! Hoo-raw!” that is like a salvo of artillery.
At the village square the wife of the commanding general presented a wreath of flowers; the mayor of the city bore a tray of bread and salt, of which her Majesty partook; and the village priest, in full vestments, made an address of welcome, and presented the Bible and the crucifix for the queen to kiss. Then she proceeded, to the music of songs of welcome by the village children, to a designated place for the formal review of the troops, stopping for a moment to receive another bunch of flowers from a scared youngster, who had to be prompted at almost every sentence by the schoolteacher behind him, and whose gestures were those of Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks. Quite different was the self-possession with which a pretty, blue-eyed lass of ten or twelve made her presentation of flowers at a later stage in the proceedings. The child never will know how greatly the queen admired her eyes.
For twenty or thirty minutes her Majesty stood alone, reviewing the soldiers, who are close to the trenches; and all the while our guardian aeroplanes circled closely above the square. It was entirely a military spectacle, except that the pampered royal spaniel entered into an acrimonious discussion with a village dog about the latter’s right to a share in the proceedings. After the military review, her Majesty publicly received the officers of the various regiments and, significantly, a deputation of private soldiers from the Russian troops. I wonder if she enjoyed the embarrassment of the men, who kissed her hand in all sorts of clumsy fashions, as much as did the American? Next came the distribution of candies to the children and of bundles of clothing to the orphans, each bundle marked with a name. The new quarters wherein the orphans are to have their meals were visited, and crosses were given the children. At a formal tea for officers and dignitaries which followed, the queen gave an autographed photograph of herself, signed on the spot, to each guest. A new bath for the troops, up among the village wells, the great sweeps of which, rising and falling, gave them the appearance of a flock of giant herons, had to be inspected, and the first meal of the orphans honored by the presence of her Majesty.
It was dusk when we again entered the automobile, and in all reason her Majesty should have been too tired to talk or listen. Not she, though. Her spirits were not dimmed in the slightest by the strenuous day; and when in the darkness we were halted in a village by tire trouble, the resourceful Colonel Ballif reported that the place was celebrated for its bread, and a chunk was brought forthwith, and divided with me and eaten on the spot, with jest over sharing a crust with a queen. Pickles, too, it appeared, the village produced, and they were good pickles, I can testify. Upon the queen’s declaring that the bread was better than that served at her own table, a loaf was forthcoming, and we had it for dinner, which was served at eight o’clock, half an hour after our arrival.
Conversation at that meal was entirely in English, most of those present understanding that tongue. It touched lightly upon many subjects, the one seriously discussed theme being American writers and books in general. Her Majesty grew enthusiastic over Mark Twain’s “Joan of Arc,” and spoke with special appreciation also of Bret Harte and O. Henry. She had questions to ask about who is who in American literature, her acquaintance with our contemporary writers being only fragmentary. There was the inevitable discussion of Wells. Kipling is a warm favorite with both the queen and the princess; I have never met an admirer of Kipling who talked with more intelligence and intimacy of his works than her Majesty. While she talked, I observed. Not until this meal had I seen the queen with uncovered head. Her wealth of shimmering chestnut hair is sufficient coronet. She wore an evening gown of creamy white and a braided necklace of small pearls, pendent from which was a large diamond cross, the stones being of rather unusual size, the gift of her mother at marriage. At a subsequent luncheon in the palace at Jassy I noted that while all the guests ate from silver plates, the members of the royal family drank from embossed golden goblets, set with jewels.
At this luncheon in the palace the talk ran largely to hospitals and supplies. Each of the ladies had spent the morning at her hospital, and the burden of the wounded was heavy on their spirits. How, in a country largely denuded of cattle, to get milk for soldiers whose jaws have been shot away, and who cannot eat solid food, was one of the acute problems. There was much balancing of the claims of the tubercular patients over against those of these wounded; for both cannot be supplied with the precious milk, since the babies, too, must have some share. Condensed milk is almost impossible to secure. The sympathies of the queen, who is naturally the arbiter, are sorely torn. As she said at the table, the government officials naturally put first the military needs; but to the queen, who must have a mother heart for the entire people, the claims of the hungry, and especially of the wounded and the sick, make the strongest appeal. Because of the lack of food, and especially of milk, many of the men who are healed of their wounds fall prey to tuberculosis, which is rapidly increasing in Rumania.
Her Majesty is greatly interested in her own literary work. She talks of her writings freely, and in a detached sort of fashion, with the naiveté that is possible only to royalty or to an unspoiled child of nature. Disclaiming all pretensions to professional literary ability, which, however, she really possesses to a marked degree, she writes, as she said with an animated gesture, “from the gush of my heart.” Morning, before arising, is her time for literary work, and she has produced fairy-tales and nature studies and interpretations of Rumania. Before she discovered her gift with the pen, the queen, like her daughter after her, expressed her love of nature with the brush. “I think in colors,” she said. As her writing shows, she is an artist first, observing accurately, and reproducing both the spirit and the letter of a place or a scene. It was Carmen Sylva who encouraged her Majesty to write for print. The Rumanian translation of her work—for it is in English that she writes and thinks—has become very popular with the people.
Now, as queen of a country that is one of the most afflicted of all those at war, she has taken up her pen to try to interpret her Rumania to America, the nation that will not misunderstand her open speech and her unveiled heart. Before the war she had written a little book for publication in Great Britain; but this is a better one, because her pen has been dipped in blood and in tears. With that spiritual strength which is woman’s peculiar inheritance, her Majesty has been able to wear a smile as she has moved among her people, a ministering servant and a regal leader.
Courage, a quality which rulers must possess, is instinctive with Queen Marie. Not for naught is she of Great Britain’s brave line of royalty. In all the terrible days of last winter, when plague and death ravaged the remnant of Rumania, she visited the hospitals, going among the smitten ones, indifferent to infection. Always she rides about without an armed escort. Her laughing disdain of the antiaircraft shrapnel which rained about us from the skies on the motor ride is of a piece with her complete disregard of all considerations of her personal safety. Two days after my visit with the queen at the Regina Maria Hospital I went to the front-line trenches, though with endless difficulty, because the commanders did not want an American killed while their guest. It chanced that I saw the very trenches where a few days earlier her Majesty had approached to within fifteen yards of the Prussians, so that her companions conversed with them, without betraying, of course, the presence of visitors. For a journalist the venture was right and proper, for it is in his day’s work; but for the queen it was too grave a risk. The road by which she approached was under fire and torn by big shells. I found that she had gone not only into the first-line trench, but also out into the observation-posts. How constant is the peril was illustrated by the fact that when the Germans heard an officer and me talking, they exploded a hand-grenade to try to catch us. Yet on speaking to me of her visit to the front, the queen had mentioned only its interest, never its danger
What soldiers think of such a queen was apparent at this front. All the trenches through which she had walked have been artistically railed and lined and paved with white birch branches, and placarded, “Viva Regina Maria.” Such is the queen who in the hour of her country’s most desperate need turns with confidence and expectancy to America, the land of the understanding heart.
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“Volumul este o contribuție la istoriografia primului razboi mondial și regalitate in context european.
