A BELGIAN TRAGEDY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22202, 31 August 1935, Page 12

A BELGIAN TRAGEDY

For the second time within 18 months tragedy has fallen upon the Royal House of Belgium. The young King, who succeeded to the throne because his father, King Albert, heroic war-time figure, lost his life in a mountaineering accident, has now seen his wife die as the result of a motoring accident. It adds to the poignancy of the case that he was himself driving the car. The young Queen, whose career as consort, wife and mother, has thus been cut short, lived long enough among the Belgians to be accepted as their own, to have impressed on them a personality which, as even a brief sketch of her life shows, was of more than usual strength and quality. She is being mourned with a sincerity which shows how she captured the people among whom she went to live after her marriage. There is, to these successive Belgian Royal tragedies, another side beyond the merely personal. There was a time when members of any Royal House were likely to die by violence, but it would be deliberate and intended violence. They were guarded night and day against the risk, but could never be certain that the assassin would not pierce the cordon. There is less of that spirit and that danger nowadays though it has not entirely passed away as the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia not a year ago proves. Where the Royal House is head of the nation by universal consent, as in Great Britain and Belgium, national regard is a surer shield than armed men. Yet, since the aloofness of Royalty has 'so largely disappeared, since Kings and Queens in their moments of relaxation are given to following the ordinary pursuits of other people, without ceremony or special precaution, new risks have appeared. King Albert buffered the fate to which all who go mountaineering are liable. The young Queen has succumbed to the peril of the road, which takes increasing toll as the years go by. This adds nothing to and takes nothing from the tragedy of her death; it merely proves how Kings and Queens now tread the paths of other folks.