long grass, then grey and dry with winter, grass that was beaten under
the wind into waves that surge and hiss.

The beach is wide and level. There is no surf. The sea comes in in
long, flat lines of white that wash unheralded about the feet of the
cavalry horses drilling there. Here and there a fisherman's boat close
to the line of villas marks the limit of high tide; marks more than
that; marks the fisherman who has become a soldier; marks the end of
the peaceful occupations of the little town; marks the change from a
sea that was a livelihood to a sea that has become a menace and a
hidden death.

The beach at La Panne has its story. There are guns there now,
waiting. The men in charge of them wait, and, waiting, shiver in the
cold. And just a few minutes away along the sands there was a house
built by a German, a house whose foundation was a cemented site for a
gun. The house is destroyed now. It had been carefully located,
strategically, and built long before the war began. A gun on that
foundation would have commanded Nieuport.

Here, in six villas facing the sea, live King Albert and Queen
Elisabeth and their household, and here the Queen, grief-stricken at
the tragedy that has overtaken her innocent and injured people, visits
the hospital daily.

La Panne has not been bombarded. Hostile aëroplanes are always
overhead. The Germans undoubtedly know all about the town; but it has
not been touched. I do not believe that it will be. For one thing, it
is not at present strategically valuable. Much more important, Queen
Elisabeth is a Bavarian princess by birth. Quite aside from both