[Sidenote: Military automobiles and wagons.] The town square was full of military automobiles and a few provision wagons. I did not see any fieldpieces or machine guns. Every last one was right up on the firing-line. My feet were tired from walking over the Belgian blocks, and I held tenaciously to the sidewalk passing around the square, though it was mostly taken up with cafe tables and bay trees in boxes. At one point the tables were empty and a single sentry was sauntering up and down. I stopped to ask him the way to the _gendarmerie_, and, in the middle of giving me the directions, he came to attention, as a door opened behind me, and saluted. [Sidenote: Two Belgian generals.] Two men came out of the door, one rather tall, with an easy manner, and smartly dressed as a general in the Belgian army. The other was older, also a general, wearing, if anything, the more gold braid of the two. They entered a waiting automobile and drove off as casually as two men at home might leave their office for their club. Something about the first of the two men impressed me as familiar. I had only seen his back, but that had arrested my attention. I thought possibly I had seen him at the beginning of the war in Brussels, so I asked the sentry his name. [Sidenote: King Albert.] "That is our king, Albert," he said quite simply. During the next couple of days I saw the King of Belgium a number of times. He spent his nights at a small villa on the seashore at La Panne, a hundred yards possibly beyond the hotel where I spent mine. He passed through the streets as unnoticed as any one of the other Belgians who had retreated from Antwerp and Ghent ahead of the army, but preferred the chilly nights in an unheated seaside hotel in Belgium to comfort somewhere beyond. It seemed to be a point of courtesy on the part of the Belgians not to bother their king with ceremony at this trying time. I doubt if he cares much for ceremony, anyhow. Searching around for a single adjective to describe him, I should call him off-handed. His manner, even then, while alert, was casual. It is easy to see why the Belgians love him. If kings had always been as simple and direct as Albert, I am inclined to think democracy would have languished. [Sidenote: Luncheon at La Panne.]