Death of Albert

The door banged. Alfred Haine who runs a little inn in the village of Marche-les-Dames looked up just at dinner time to see a man in tweeds, very pale, very breathless, but despite his nervousness, very polite.

"Please may I use your telephone?" he asked. "My friend, my friend was climbing the cliffs. He seems to be lost. Perhaps he has had an accident. Please, I must telephone at once to Brussels."

"But of course," said M. Haine. The man in tweeds put through his call and darted out into the night again. An hour and a half later he was back, with his knees muddy and his jacket torn.

"Has my friend come back? A tall gentleman, red cheeks, curly hair, a white mustache?" He dove to the telephone again, then went off to continue his search, this time with several helpers. Alfred Haine was told to stay in his inn. At ten o'clock a heavy automobile roared up and then Alfred Haine knew that something dreadful had happened. Out stepped two of King Albert's personal aides, Count Xavier de Grunne and General Baron Jacques de Dixmunde with a doctor. They joined the searching parties crawling over the cliffs, shouting to each other, their flashlights flickering like wintry fireflies.

There are more carillons and bell towers in Belgium than in any other country in Europe. Next morning in every village and town the deepest bell in every tower began to toll. The last time they had sounded like that was 1914. This was not the next war, but the passing of one of the greatest heroes of the last. Albert King of the Belgians was dead.

Early that afternoon in Brussels King Albert, eager for exercise, had slipped into his dressing room and put on an old pair of riding breeches and hobnail boots. His son, Crown Prince Leopold, was where he himself longed to be, at Adelbogen, high in the Swiss Alps. For a passionate Alpinist most of Belgium is as flat as a hand but lusty Albert thought he knew a place. Only a few days earlier the Belgian Cabinet had set aside the cliffs near Marche-les-Dames as a national park. Marche-les-Dames--"The Walk of the Ladies"-- got its name from 139 Noble Widows of Crusaders who in 1101 pooled their resources, built an abbey above those cliffs and retired there to spend the rest of their lives. King Albert knew that the cliffs were nearly 600 feet high, full of exciting chimneys, crevasses and pinnacles. With only his valet, van Dyck, he jumped in a little car and drove over. At the foot of the cliffs he looked at his watch, recalled that he had an engagement at the Palais des Sports in Brussels that evening. Then he took a rope, a canvas knapsack and a climbing ax out of the rear of the car and started up the cliffs.

At two in the morning, when the search seemed most hopeless, Baron de Dixmunde atop the cliff, tripped over a rope caught round the limb of a tree. The end was broken. Twenty feet below were the King's broken glasses and his cap. There were traces of blood on the rocks. At the foot of the cliff lay the body of Albert. He was quite dead. There was a great hole in the back of his skull.

In the royal residence, Castle Laeken, he lay in state in his own very simple bedroom. A heavy white bandage was wrapped round his head, and he wore the olive drab uniform of a general. The scarlet sash of the Grand Cross of Leopold was across his chest. There was an ivory crucifix in his bruised hands. The plain rosewood bed on which he lay was covered with white lilacs. Two yellow altar candles burned steadily at its foot, two black-gowned nuns prayed at its head. His clock ticked steadily away on the bedside table.

Albert of Belgium was a German prince. His father was a prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. His mother was a Hohenzollern. Like George of England, Albert of Belgium had little expectation as a young man of ever succeeding to the throne. His father was white-bearded old King Leopold's younger brother. Leopold had an heir, the Comte de Hainaut. Albert himself had an older brother, Prince Baudoin. But the Comte de Hainaut died. So, very mysteriously, did Prince Baudoin, and Albert's father renounced his own right to the throne.

In 1898 Albert went to the U. S. for the first time, a gangling blond young man loosely disguised as the Comte de Rethy. Quickly losing his entertainers, he got a job as a reporter on a Brooklyn paper. Later he worked on another paper in St. Paul. Famed old Railway Tycoon James J. Hill taught him to drive a locomotive.

In 1900 he married another German, Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria, and succeeded his uncle as King of the Belgians nine years later. On July 31, 1914 Albert of Belgium rejected the demands of his royal cousin Wilhelm II to give German troops free passage through Belgium to France, and what happened after that all the world knows.

Albert of Belgium became one of the great heroes of the 20th Century. Tall, handsome, he was the only king in Europe to take personal command of his troops and fight in the trenches with them through the war.

"I listened to the generals," he once said to Marshal Joffre, ''and it seemed to me a great responsibility to decide between their different plans, so I would just pick out the one that made the most sense."

With his own hands he shot and killed a traitorous chauffeur who was trying to kidnap him through the lines to Germany. He let his young son Leopold enlist as a private at the age of 13 so that he should know "what a serious business this is, being a king."

After the War, perhaps because Belgium's royal family has never been a rich one, King Albert's simple way of living became world famed. He rode on street cars unattended. When mountain climbing, the sport he loved best, he shared his sandwiches with his guides, and he dug himself very deep into the world's affections.

In most countries, the sovereign never dies. Edward of Wales will be King of England the instant King George's death is known. But Albert was King of the Belgians, not King of Belgium, and the Belgians will have no king until he has sworn allegiance to their Constitution, a ceremony that was postponed last week until after the funeral of King Albert. For seven days then, the Belgians had no king. They were lucky in their king-to-be. Like his father, Crown Prince Leopold has had a hard practical schooling. He has served in the Belgian Senate. He has specialized in the study of Colonial administration. He likes to monkey with engines; he drives his own car. But his hobbies are safer: trout fishing and collecting butterflies. In 1926 he married dark-haired Princess Astrid of Sweden after a courtship that set lady-novelists' hearts aflutter. In order not to attract attention Prince Leopold paid flying visits to Sweden in a third class railway coach, carrying his own bags. People thought he was a new butler. Announcing the engagement, beaming King Albert said:

"Their marriage is entirely one of inclination. They are making their decision without interference from anybody."

Brussels housewives still remember how Princess Astrid pushed her own baby carriage up & down the shady Avenue Louise after her little Daughter Charlotte was born.

Thirty-two years old, Leopold, who will be the youngest king in Europe, reached Brussels last week still in pale grey plus fours, after an all night ride from Switzerland. There are problems he must face at once. Communists were threatening a general strike. The Flemish separatists, always a noisy group, were supposed to have marked pro-Nazi leanings. Belgium's frontier defenses cannot compare with the new steel and concrete chain of France, but all young Leopold could hear last week was the sound of guns, fired one every half hour, to mourn the death of his father.

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