Leopold Goes to War

(See Cover)

When Herr Vicco Karl von Biilow-Schwante, Germany's Ambassador to Belgium, called upon Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, May 10, in Brussels to deliver Germany's notice of "protection," Mr. Spaak cut him short before he could speak. "I have something to say to you before you begin," said Spaak. "The answer is negative." And he presented the German with a Belgian note of his own. The German insisted that he came only to offer Belgium the "protection" of long-suffering Fuhrer Hitler against "invasion" by France and Great Britain. Again M. Spaak interrupted, reading from his own note:

"The German Army has just assaulted Belgium. This is the second time. . . . This time the crime is even more odious since no ultimatum, no protest was presented to the Belgian Government, which learned only by the assault itself that pacts between Germany and Belgium had been broken.

"This crime will rouse the general conscience, and the Reich will have to justify herself before history.

"Belgium is determined to defend herself, knowing that her cause is the cause of right, and therefore invincible."

His cynical duty done, Ambassador von Biilow-Schwante bowed himself out, prepared to leave for Germany. With half of Holland ready to go by default (see above) and with Belgium once more the anvil on which Britain and France must pound out their fears and hatred, Foreign Minister Spaak prepared to report to his chief, Premier Hubert Pierlot; to the Cabinet, which had been in session since 1 a.m.; and to grave young Leopold III, King of the Belgians, who that morning proclaimed himself, like his father before him, the active Commander in Chief of his armed forces, Belgium's second war king in 26 years.

King Leopold and his Government had been aware that the German Army was again on the march as early as 9 p.m. the night prior. It was moving up from Dusseldorf and Cologne and Aachen to cross the Dutch appendix province of Limburg and strike at the Liege forts (see map, p. 23); from Trier to strike through Luxembourg at Arlon and Neuf-chateau. At 5:20 a.m. the bombs started thudding into Brussels from 100 raiders that sloped over in waves. They killed 41 civilians, wounded 82. One gutted a house across the square from the U. S. Embassy. whose windows were smashed. Ambassador John Cudahy lost hearing in one ear. The Embassy staff, awakened by the crash, philosophically went to breakfast.

Schoolboy Guy de Liederkirche, 13. was not so lucky: a bomb picked him out as Brussels' first child to die. The body was taken to his school for a memorial service of his schoolmates. Salvos blasted the airfields at Nivelles and St. Trond. south and east of Brussels, followed by parachutists. Louvain (the university town), Malines, Hasselt, Verviers were other targets. So were Antwerp and even Ostend, over on the sea.

The first German ground troops crossed the Belgian border at 5:30 a.m. at Gem-menich, only 15 miles from Vise, where they first entered in 1914. Furious air-bombing ahead of their mechanized advance made up for any lack of surprise. They overwhelmed the key fortress of Eben Emael, commanding the junction of the Albert Canal and the Meuse River. Its commandant and 1,000 men surrendered within a few hours, paralyzed by "nerve gas" or some other secret German weapon. But unlike 1914, Belgium was not wholly unprepared this time. And even more than then, she was heartened to resist. In his war proclamation, King Leopold said:

. . . When it is a question of sacrifice or dishonor, the Belgian in 1940 will hesitate no more than his father did in 1914.

To my valiant Army and to my courageous soldiers I give greetings from the whole country. In them, the worthy heirs of the heroes of 1914, we place all our trust.

They will fight, foot for foot, the enemy's attempt to dash across our land and to reduce the amount of our soil violated by the invader.

Thanks to the efforts made by the country, our powers of resistance are infinitely greater today than they were in 1914. ...

1914 & 1940. Last time, Belgium could muster only 120,000 men for her field Army--six divisions of infantry, one of cavalry. Her main defense line was the Gette River protecting Brussels. Last week King Leopold's regulars numbered 170,000, including two cavalry divisions, a small mechanized force, 25,000 fortress troops and a division of Ardennes Chasseurs (guerrilla forest fighters). Another 480,000 men with some training were mobilized, though there was fighting equipment for only about 130,000 of these. Instead of a trench-furrowed valley, Belgium's defense line now was the 250-foot-wide Albert Canal running from Liege northwest to Antwerp, with reinforced concrete blockhouses and pillboxes along its inner bank; with open fields on the far bank to expose an invader; with a flooding system to bog down those fields; with tank traps and barriers, mined highways and bridges.

From Liege up the Meuse to Namur and down through the hills into the rough, forested Ardennes, ran fort systems calculated to hold the mass invader until mass help arrived. From Antwerp through Louvain to Namur ran another line of forts, completed in the last seven months. And across the Belgian hills for 100 miles ran a flexible wall of heavy steel fence set on rollers, calculated to enmesh all tank advances until defensive cannon could demolish them. In 1914, King Albert had to withdraw his forces from Liege after twelve days, first to Brussels, which fell in another four days; then to Antwerp, which held out 67 days longer, after the Germans turned on it to end Belgian sorties which were hampering their southward drive upon the French. Last week King Leopold had to wait only 90 minutes, instead of 17 days, before Belgium's sworn Allies marched in to his rescue and their own defense.

That this help was pre-arranged constituted the burden of Germany's bill of particulars last week against Belgium. Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop extended the accusation to include spying by Belgians to help Britain and France mount an offensive against the Reich's industrial heart in the Rhineland. The German High Command protested that Belgium's fortresses and military obstacles were all directed against Germany, none against France; that 14 out of 21 Belgian divisions mobilized last October were stationed in the east; that "this one-sided deployment" was not changed when Britain and France massed troops along Belgium's south border to the coast; that Belgian mayors near the German border were instructed long ago to prepare billets for Allied troops; that Allied engineers were allowed in to prepare gun emplacements; that Belgian roads and rolling stock were at the Allies' disposal at a moment's notice.

All this was speaking solemnly of undisputed things. It was no state secret that Belgium feared invasion by Germany and not by the Allies. No bones were ever made by King Leopold about his 1936 policy of "immunity," to replace "neutrality." He ended his alliance with Britain and France only lest it drag Belgium into war when they went. He desperately hoped and worked for peace right up to last week. He retained the Allies' pledge of defense in case Germany sought to attack them again through Belgium, because he more than guessed, he knew, that Germany would do so. There were no formal staff talks between the Belgians and the Allies after the war started, but there was rich "understanding." As the moment of invasion approached, Leopold had prepared to let his defenders through to his front lines, and beyond, at once. When the signal came last week and the Allied columns rolled up promptly, civilians eagerly joined border police in ripping up customs barriers to let them through.

To press Belgium to take Germany's side against the Allies, serve as a springboard for German attack upon Britain and France, Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop and Fiihrer Hitler had used threats and a Fifth Column. Neither worked. One of the first things that happened last Friday was the arrest of Rexist Leader Leon Degrelle, would-be Nazi Gauleiter of Belgium, and 2,000 of his followers. Force was the Nazis' last resort, and force was met with as effective force as a country of 8,300,000 can bring against one of 100,000,000. For in Leopold the Belgians have found a leader to whom their allegiance, based on respect and affection, is just as solid as the most fanatical Nazi's to Adolf Hitler. And Leopold III is a stand-up man as well as a King.

Education of a Prince. In 1915, when he was 14, before he went to Eton, Leopold demanded and for six months was allowed to serve in his father's trenches as a private soldier. After Eton, he was tutored for four years along special lines mapped by his father, emphasizing economics. Also, travel. Oldtime U. S. newspapermen remember the democratic young prince (no great contrast, except among gay ladies, to Britain's then Prince of Wales) who accompanied King Albert through the U. S. in 1919, playing poker with them, driving the locomotive. With his father he visited Brazil and Egypt. He went alone to the Belgian Congo and wrote a report on it so thorough that it earned him ranking as his father's colonial adviser. Later he visited The Netherlands East Indies to inspect Queen Wilhelmina's colonial administrative methods. He prepared himself to unify his bilingual country by learning and speaking Flemish as fluently as French. More self-assertive than his father, he prepared his people for an era of change and modernization, led by him, when he said that the Belgian Constitution, which he vowed in 1934 to uphold, was "sufficiently subtle to allow of adaptation to new circumstances."

He showed boldness as well as subtlety in trying to find economic solutions to the tangles that forced Europe toward war. He backed the economic rationalist, Paul Van Zeeland, as Belgian Premier as long as he could, and tried to realize free trade in the Oslo Group of small Northwestern nations. He thought economic collaboration would lead to other, higher ground. Said he: "Give humanity . . . not words, but proofs that the Western countries have, above their more immediate problems of material nature, a spiritual force emanating from the spirit of brotherhood. . . ."

Trial of a King. All this was fine and idealistic, but last week Leopold III and his people were faced by the jagged facts of war, of superlative aggression by an enemy whose morals, politics and economics are in another world; who would stop at nothing and was armed and powered for almost anything. Little good now did it do Belgium or 38-year-old Leopold, who is as perfect a gentleman in the British mold as his good friends and contemporaries, King George VI and War Secretary Anthony Eden.

Now it counted more that he is a strong Roman Catholic who has the earnest sympathy of Pope Pius XII; that his sister, Marie-Jose, married Crown Prince Umberto of Italy--possible checkrein to keep Benito Mussolini from jumping in on Hitler's side; that his late wife was the King of Sweden's popular niece, which is one more tug at Sweden's fearful heart; that Franklin Roosevelt called himself Leopold's "old friend" and sent a message saying the U. S. people were shocked and angry. Now it mattered that King Leopold retained Lieut. General Henri Jean Charles Eugene Denis as Defense Minister when, last year, he reached retirement age. General Denis, from an old military family, was a champion of Belgium's eastern defense line, as against the "fighting retreat" policy and a limited defense of the Scheldt basin; a student of army motorization, a specialist in communications, a believer in preventive mobilization. Last February, Defense Minister Denis substituted energetic Major General F. F. 0. Michiels as Chief of Staff in place of less pro-Ally Lieut. General Emile Van den Bergen, whose kidney was not for a "lastman" defense.

King Leopold had vigorously cultivated friendship and common interests with The Netherlands. He joined Queen Wilhelmina twice last autumn in trying to secure peace by mediation. Said he: "Side by side with Holland, Belgium stands." She joined him, meanwhile, with a Dutch preparedness program which, while not calculated to do more than delay Germany until Allied reinforcements arrived, was a wide departure from her unarmed neutrality in the last war. It helped cover Belgium's vital interests to the north. Wilhelmina was urged to adopt it by patriarchal Hendrikus Colijn, long her most trusted adviser. Last week the Dutch defense system stood ready and the men in it, commanded by hard-bitten old General Henri Gerard Winckelman, had their

Dutch up when the Nazi attack came.

As bombs poured in and taxi cabs streamed out of Brussels last week, rushing soldiers on leave back to their posts, Belgians saw their able young ruler standing with his men as a king should stand.

Thinking of the sorrows he had already borne--following first his father's coffin (1934) and the next year his young wife's --other nations wondered what his reward for being a model modern monarch would be--whether Belgium would be saved from the Nazi juggernaut or go down to bloody defeat and national extinction. If the former, he could thank his Allies. If the latter, it would be chiefly because King Leopold, gentleman and sportsman, was (like most Western World democrats) unconditioned to survive in a world containing Adolf Hitler.

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