Captains, Kings Depart

In 1918 the most notable refugee of World War I reached safety in The Netherlands, just in time, settled at Doom. Last week the world was significantly reminded that Adolf Hitler regards World

War II as the continuation of World War I when, at his special orders, his mechanical cavalry wheeled their Blitzkrieg harmlessly around the green parks of 8 1 year-old Wilhelm II, who from 1888 to 1918 by the grace of God was German Emperor and King of Prussia. Fuhrer Adolf, ac cording to some reports, would like to see Wilhelm II return to the Reich, live out his days as a Hohenzollern Junker; but the ex-Kaiser, while accepting the protection of Hitler's own guards, kept on chop ping wood at Doom.

Other big and little wigs in the path of Hitler's onslaught did not fare so well.

AND Far from sparing The Netherlands' Queen Wilhelmina, Nazi invaders dashed straight for her capital, drove her to refuge in England. Taken to London by a British destroyer, she was met and kissed by King George, welcomed to Buckingham Palace's Belgian wing (so called because Leopold I always stayed there in Victoria's day).

Juliana and her children, who had preceded the Queen, departed for the west of England, while Prince Bernhard returned to fight fellow Germans in Zeeland. The Dutch Ministers took up residence at London's Grosvenor House.

ANDWith bullet marks on her limousine, Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg was one of the week's first refugees to reach Paris.

ANDQuick on her heels tumbled Otto von Habsburg ("Otto the Last"), who, after his anti-Nazi pronouncements in the U. S.

last month, could scarcely expect such consideration as Wilhelm von Hohenzollern got. With Otto fled his dynamic mother, the former Empress Zita, five lesser Habsburgs.

AND First duty of Belgium's Leopold was to emulate his father, lead his Army in the field. His three children, nephews and niece of Italian Crown Prince Umberto, were reported to have gone to Italy. Small Princess Josephine Charlotte resumed the study of Latin with her tutor. Monsieur Du Pare.

AND In Norway, indomitable old King Haakon, a refugee within his own country, broadcast another appeal to his people to resist, gave no sign that he would flee abroad.

AND The Due de Guise, 66, refugee for 66 years, must have known what was up. For bidden by law to set foot within the Third Republic, and normally resident at Manoir d'Anjou, Belgium, the Bourbon pretender to France's vacant throne turned up this week in Morocco.

After the rulers went the people -by thousands. The older ones said it was just like 1914. The wiser ones felt it was coming, had either packed or departed when it all began.

A few hundred rich and lucky Dutch men, including many of Amsterdam's famed diamond-cutters, escaped across the North Sea to London. Some traded their cars for small boats, and fled that way.

Not many succeeded, and first arrivals saw few friends or relatives on later incoming boats. One youngster asked a photographer to take his picture, saying: "My mother and father might see it and know I got away

Great Britain, ready to take all who could come, expected 100,000, mainly Belgians. Emergency receiving centres were established at Wembley's Empire Stadium, Alexandra Palace, ten other London points. From these centres, where refugees were card-indexed, gas-masked, and handed ration cards, they were taken to designated reception areas - Greater London, Liverpool, Northern Ireland, even the Isle of Man.

France, accustomed like her ally to giving hospitality to refugees, got ready to receive 800,000 Belgians, resettle huge numbers from her own northern departments. To Paris' huge old northern rail road stations, where Centres d'Accueil had been prepared, rode, drove, cycled, walked thousands of Belgians and Luxembour-geois. Less adept at card-indexing, but strongly persuaded of the restorative powers of hot wine, the French fed, bathed and laundered their guests first, asked questions afterwards. In that searching quiz, authorities plucked out 37 Gestapo agents in two days, sadly admitted many more must have eluded them. As fast as possible, refugees were mustered out, sent in lumbering green municipal busses to Paris' other railway stations, whence they were whisked off to the south and west. Education authorities prepared to find place for 150,000 Belgian children, hoped to tide them over for a while in Paris' evacuated schools.

All kinds of folk found their way into the Centres d'Accueil, some with morale shattered, some with it intact. There were three cyclists from Namur who still found breath to joke about the bombs and bullets spent vainly on them. There was a truckload of twelve, of whom seven without much talk lifted out the other five as corpses, machine-gunned when they had all but reached Paris. There were children dead-eyed and frightened beyond protest. There was a boxcar with machine-gun holes in its roof and a charnel house inside, for disrupting refugee movements to clog the enemy's communication lines is a practice of total war.

Only after several days did France wake up to the magnitude of her refugee problem. She did not have beds, medicines or even tents for the terrorized hordes whom German troops and planes, in order to block the roads, had deliberately driven ahead of them.

France looked hopefully to the U. S. for Red Cross ships, for in her war-torn state the problem was too big for her to handle.

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