As the eldest daughter of a great man and a great King, whose magnificent intelligence has enriched his people, I owe nothing but misfortune to my royal origin. Ever since I was born I have suffered and been deceived. I have idealized Life too much.

In the evening of my days I do not wish to remain under the cloud of the false impression which is now prevalent concerning me.

Without desiring to allude too much to the past, and to retrace the road of my Calvary, I should like at least to borrow a few pages from my memories and reflections, inspired by events which have destroyed thrones in whose proximity I once lived. The Emperor of Austria, the German Emperor, the Tsar of Bulgaria were all familiar figures to me.

Driven to Munich by the War, then to Budapest, taken prisoner for a brief space by Hungarian Bolshevists, I have survived the European tempest, and I have seen all those who disowned and crushed me, beaten and punished. And I trembled every day for my poor Belgium, so strong in her courage and her travail, but so unjust to me—oh no, not the people—the good people are naturally heroic and indefatigable. I refer to certain of their leaders, who have been misled on my account, and who are also, perhaps, too fond of money. Unjust themselves, they all equally violated justice by illicit interests which had the appearance of legality, as well as by the false attitude which appeared merely to be forgetfulness, but which was actually ingratitude.

My father has not yet had a monument erected to him in the country which he esteemed so highly; his Government has remembered the follies of his old age rather than its privileges, and his memory has suffered accordingly.

But what is past is past. My memory remains faithfully and affectionately attached to my native land; my sole thought is to love and honour her.

It is of Belgium that I wish to speak before passing on to the Courts of Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Sofia, and to the many doings which these names recall, certain of which deserve better knowledge and consideration.

I have never entertained any feelings for Belgium other than those of imperishable affection. The most painful of my reflections during the horrible war was that she was more to be pitied than I was.

On the day when I was being searched by Hungarian Bolshevists at Budapest I heard one of them say to another—having proved for himself the simplicity to which I was reduced: "Here is a king's daughter who is poorer than I am." I have thought of the unhappy women of Ypres, of Dixmude, of France, Poland, Servia, and elsewhere—unfortunate creatures without fire or bread through the crime of war, and I have wept for them and not for myself.

More than one of them, perhaps, envied my position before 1914; little did they realize that I should have preferred theirs!

Married at seventeen, I expected to find in marriage the joys that a husband and children can give. I have had bitter proof to the contrary.

Rupture was inevitable where my own intimate feelings were concerned and those who surrounded me. I was too independent to make use of what was offensive to me.

Honours are often without honour, however high they may seem to be. Save for rare exceptions, fortune and power only develop in us the appetite for pleasure and urge us to depravity. Those whom La BruyÈre calls "the Great" easily lose the knowledge of human conditions. Life is to them no longer the mysterious proof of the existence of a soul which will be eventually rewarded or punished according to its deserts. Religion seems to them only a mask or an instrument.

Led to judge their fellow-creatures through the flatteries, calculations, ambitions and treacheries by which they are surrounded, they arrive, through mistrust of human nature, at a state of indifference to God, and they accommodate His laws to their needs in the assurance of adjusting themselves with the Creator as they adjust their doings with their ministers.

When I review the past, and when I am reminded of the various phases of my unhappy existence, I never despair of ultimately finding a justice which I have not yet come across in this world; I have always believed that it exists somewhere. If it were not so, things would be inconceivable.

I owe this spirit of confidence to the lessons I learnt in my infancy, chiefly from those taught me by the Queen, my mother. "Always endeavour to be a Christian," she used to say. I could not understand the import of these words when I was a child, but the misfortunes of my life have helped to explain them.

Stirred into revolt by humanity in so many ways, I have now submitted myself to a Superior Will, and I know the happiness of not hating my enemies. Pardon has always followed my rebellion.

I have never doubted that those who wronged me would be punished sooner or later on earth or elsewhere, and I have been sorry for my persecutors.

I have pitied them for their dislike of my frankness, because I am an enemy of all family and Court hypocrisy—I have pitied them for having censured my fidelity to one affection, and, above all, I have pitied their exaggeration of my disregard for that ancient idol—money!

Convinced as I was, and not without foundation, that immense wealth was to come, not only to myself but to my sisters, I maintained that our duty was to make full use of our resources. Was it not better to circulate money and assist trade? This opinion, however, was not shared either by a husband who was inclined to hoard or by a family who were afraid of any fresh ideas or customs, and who only saw in the aspirations of the masses an inevitable and horrible catastrophe against which they ought to protect themselves by saving as much as possible.

At the same time, when I have been engaged in a struggle I have never met with anything save cruel treatment on the part of my enemies (first and foremost by the slanders intended to ruin me in the eyes of the world), but I have hurled myself at the onset against all the obstacles which violence and enmity have conceived against me.

Being unable to live and act normally, and compelled by force and privations to treat what I held as despicable with obedience and respect, I lacked the means of existence to which I was entitled. The trouble I took in order to assure myself of my liberty on my native soil, in the order and dignity for which I had hoped, was nullified by those who were themselves morally responsible for it. I was compelled to become a prisoner or a fugitive, taken away and kept away from my rightful position by difficulties of every description. By these methods my enemies imagined that I should be more easily deprived of all to which I had clung.

What would have become of me had I not found a man who devoted himself to saving me from all kinds of snares and dangers, and who found devoted beings to second him—many of whom have sprung from the humbler ranks of life—I am unable to conjecture.

If I have known the wickedness of an aristocracy devoid of nobility, I have also benefited by the most chivalrous delicacy which has been extended to me by the populace, and my recognition of this is chiefly what I wish to write about to-day.

But deep in my heart I have the impelling desire not to allow the legend which has been created around meand my name to exist any longer.