Answer by edW for What are the rules for calling the superclass constructor?

If you have default parameters in your base constructor the base class will be called automatically.

using namespace std;

class Base
{
    public:
    Base(int a=1) : _a(a) {}

    protected:
    int _a;
};

class Derived : public Base
{
  public:
  Derived() {}

  void printit() { cout << _a << endl; }
};

int main()
{
   Derived d;
   d.printit();
   return 0;
}

Output is: 1