A great man gone

The Belgian-born American writer, editor and defender of liberty, Arnaud de Borchgrave, has been laid to rest in Washington, his passing marked by Quadrant‘s John O’Sullivan in National Review:

… Able Seaman de Borchgave felt that he wasn’t contributing as much to the Allied war effort as he would like. After all, he knew Belgium well, had many highly placed contacts there, and could speak the local languages. So he sent a letter to the Free Belgian authorities in London and proposed himself as a spy to be landed on the Belgian coast.

A few weeks later he was summoned to an address in Eaton Square and, after a brief waiting time, marched into a room to find himself facing a panel of three senior officers, one of whom was his father. Until that moment he had not known that his father was head of Belgian intelligence with a network of agents throughout the occupied country.

“Age?” he was asked. “Seventeen,” he replied.

His father had difficulty suppressing a smile. So Arnaud was never parachuted into Brussels
…

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