ANOTHER WELCOME VISITOR

The Queen of Rumania has emerged from the war zone, in which Rumania stood in isolation from the Allies, to plead the cause of her martyred country. In Paris she has had a most cordial reception, and not less hearty will be her welcome in London, where, with her three daughters, she will be the guest, during a two or three weeks' sojourn, of the King and Queen. As the eldest daughter of the late Duke of Edinburgh, her Majesty is a first cousin of the King. She has been most devoted in her loyalty to the Allied cause.

THE Queen of Roumania is interesting not only for herself but as representing a country which has played a conspicuous part in the War. The eldest daughter of the late Duke of Edinburgh, who became Duke of Saxe – Coburg - Gotha, she was born at Eastwell Park, Kent, in 1875, and was married before she was eighteen to Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Roumania, her senior by ten years, who succeeded his uncle, King Charles, in October. 1914.

Queen Marie is not only a strikingly handsome woman, but she is a woman of great ability, a fitting co-ruler of a country that has long stood as an outpost of civilisation and culture in the wilds of barbarism. The average man often thinks of Roumania as simply one of the troublesome Balkan States. As a matter of fact, Roumania is essentially "a sentinel of Latin culture in the East of Europe, a racial link with Italy and France amid a world of alien peoples," having been created under the name of Dacia by Trajan as a Roman colony in the Far East. Much obscurity attaches to the early history of the plantation, but even admitting the introduction of Slavic elements, Roumania, as its language clearly shows, remains essentially a Latin nation.

ROUMANIA, with her thirteen millions, of whom one-third is still unredeemed, is the third link from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The Roumanians are numerically the strongest of the Balkan and Danubian systems, with enormous potentialities of wealth, and a standard of culture that has defied all attempts to destroy it, for, as a popular proverb truly says, "Roumania never dies." It was this instinct that, despite the traditions of its late Hohenzollern ruler, made it impossible for Roumania to aid the Teutons.

In joining the Entente, Roumania did a bold thing, for she was far removed from the help of the Allies, being attacked by Germany on one side and undermined by Russian treachery on the other; but she has won through, and that largely by the powerful personality of her Queen. The welcome she has received in Paris, and which she will receive in this country, ought to be some recompense for all that she and her family have suffered by the war.

THE ROUMANIAN QUEEN AS AN ANGEL OF MERCY

In this picture, drawn from a photograph by M. Jean Ursescu, the Queen of Roumania, in the costume of a Red Cross nurse, is seen distributing dainties to poor orphaned Roumanian children. As soon as Roumania took the field on the side of the Allies, Queen Marie at once devoted herself to the work of nursing the sick and wounded in the hospitals, but she found time also to minister to the wants of the families of the fallen, into whose midst her cheery presence ever brought rays of sunshine. Her Majesty is seen accompanied by her second son, Prince Nicolas, on her right.