V Dear H.
Our journey farther north through the deep February snow was scarcely less striking as an illustration of Great Britain’s constantly growing share in the war than the sight of the great supply bases themselves. The first part of it, indeed, led over solitary uplands, where the chained wheels of the motor rocked in the snow, and our military chauffeur dared make no stop, for fear he should never be able to start again. All that seemed alive in the white landscape were the partridges—sometimes in great flocks—which scudded at our approach, or occasional groups of hares in the middle distance holding winter parley. The road seemed interminably long and straight, and ours were almost the first tracks in it. The snow came down incessantly, and once or twice it looked as though we should be left stranded in the white wilderness.
But after a third of the journey was over, the snow began to lessen and the roads to clear. We dropped first into a seaport town which offered much the same mingled scene of French and English, of English nurses, and French poilus, of unloading ships, and British soldiers, as the bases we had left, only on a smaller scale. And beyond the town we climbed again on to the high land, through a beautiful country of interwoven downs, and more plentiful habitation. Soon, indeed, the roads began to show the signs of war—a village or small town, its picturesque market-place filled with a park of artillery wagons; roads lined with motor lorries with the painted shell upon them that tells ammunition; British artillerymen in khaki, bringing a band of horses out of a snow-bound farm; closed motor-cars filled with officers hurrying past; then an open car with King’s Messengers, tall, soldierly figures, looking in some astonishment at the two ladies, as they hurry by. And who or what is this horseman looming out of the sleet—like a figure from a piece of Indian or Persian embroidery, turbaned and swarthy, his cloak swelling out round his handsome head and shoulders, the buildings of a Norman farm behind him? “There are a few Indian cavalry about here,” says our guide—“they are billeted in the farms.” And presently the road is full of them. Their Eastern forms, their dark, intent faces pass strangely through the Norman landscape.
Now we are only some forty miles from the line, and we presently reach another town containing an important British Headquarters, where we are to stop for luncheon. The inn at which we put up is like the song in “Twelfth Night,” “old and plain”—and when lunch is done, our Colonel goes to pay an official call at Headquarters, and my daughter and I make our way to the historic church of the town. The Colonel joins us here with another officer, who brings the amazing news that “G.H.Q.”—General Headquarters—that mysterious centre and brain of all things—invites us for two days! If we accept, an officer will come for us on the morning of March 1st to our hotel in Boulogne and take us by motor, some forty miles, to the guest-house where G.H.Q. puts up its visitors. “Accept!” Ah, if one could only forget for a moment the human facts behind the absorbing interest and excitement of this journey, one might be content to feel only the stir of quickened pulses, of gratitude for a further opportunity so tremendous.
As it was, I saw all the journey henceforward with new eyes, because of that to which it was bringing us. On we sped, through the French countryside, past a great forest lying black on the edge of the white horizon—I open my map and find it marked Bois de Crecy!—past another old town, with Agincourt a few miles to the east, and so into a region of pine and sand that borders the sea. Darkness comes down, and we miss our way. What are these lines of light among the pine woods? Another military and hospital camp, which we are to see on the morrow—so we discover at last. But we have overshot our goal, and must grope our way back through the pine woods to the sea-shore, where a little primitive hotel, built for the summer, with walls that seem to be made of brown paper, receives us. But we have motored far that day, and greet it joyfully.
The following morning we woke to a silvery sunlight, with, at last, some promise of spring over a land cleared of snow. The day was spent in going through a camp which has been set down in one of the pleasantest and healthiest spots of France, a favourite haunt of French artists before the war. Now the sandy slopes, whence the pines, alack, have been cut away, are occupied by a British reinforcement camp, by long lines of hospitals, by a convalescent depot, and by the training-grounds, where, as at other bases, the newly arrived troops are put through their last instruction before going to the front. As usual, the magnitude of what has been done in one short year filled one with amazement. Here is the bare catalogue: Infantry Base Depots, i.e. sleeping and mess quarters, for thousands of men belonging to the new armies; 16 hospitals with 21,000 beds, 3 rifle ranges; 2 training-camps; a machine-gun training-school; a vast laundry worked by Frenchwomen under British organisation, which washes for all the hospitals, 30,000 pieces a day; recreation huts of all types and kinds, official and voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with performances twice a day; nurses’ clubs; officers’ clubs; a Supply Depot for food; an Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings to the railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while 1,000 men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can come in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera. And this is the work accomplished since last April in one camp.
Yet, as I look back upon it, my chief impression of that long day is an impression, first, of endless hospital huts and marquees, with their rows of beds, in which the pale or flushed faces are generally ready—unless pain or weariness forbid—as a visitor ventures timidly near, to turn and smile in response to the few halting words of sympathy or inquiry which are all one can find to say; and, next, of such a wealth of skill, and pity, and devotion poured out upon this terrible human need, as makes one thank God for doctors, and nurses, and bright-faced V.A.D.’s. After all, one tremblingly asks oneself, in spite of the appalling facts of wounds, and death, and violence in which the human world is now steeped, is it yet possible, is it yet true, that the ultimate thing, the final power behind the veil—to which at least this vast linked spectacle of suffering and tenderness, here in this great camp, testifies—is not Force, but Love? Is this the mysterious message which seems to breathe from these crowded wards—to make them just bearable. Let me recollect the open door of an operating theatre, and a young officer, quite a boy, lying there with a bullet in his chest, which the surgeons were just about to try and extract. The fine, pale features of the wounded man, the faces of the surgeon and the nurses, so intent and cheerfully absorbed, the shining surfaces and appliances of the white room—stamp themselves on memory. I recollect, too, one John S——, a very bad case, a private. “Oh, you must come and see John S——,” says one of the Sisters. “We get all the little distractions we can for John. Will he recover? Well, we thought so—but”—her face changes gravely—“John himself seems to have made up his mind lately. He knows—but he never complains.” Knows what? We go to see him, and he turns round philosophically from his tea. “Oh, I’m all right—a bit tired—that’s all.” And then a smile passes between him and his nurse. He has lost a leg, he has a deep wound in his back which won’t heal, which is draining his life away—poor, poor John S——! Close by is a short, plain man, with a look of fevered and patient endurance that haunts one now to think of. “It’s my eyes. I’m afraid they’re getting worse. I was hit in the head, you see. Yes, the pain’s bad—sometimes.” The nurse looks at him anxiously as we pass, and explains what is being tried to give relief.
This devotion of the nurses—how can one ever say enough of it! I recall the wrath of a medical officer in charge of a large hospital at Rouen. “Why don’t they give more Red Crosses to the working nurses? They don’t get half enough recognition. I have a nurse here who has been twelve months in the operating theatre. She ought to have a V.C.!—It’s worth it.”
And here is a dark-eyed young officer who had come from a distant colony to fight for England. I find him in an officer’s hospital, established not long after the war broke out, in a former Casino, where the huge baccarat-room has been turned into two large and splendid wards. He is courteously ready to talk about his wound, but much more ready to talk about his Sister.
“It’s simply wonderful what they do for us!” he says, all his face lighting up. “When I was worst there wasn’t an hour in the day or night my Sister wasn’t ready to try anything in the world to help me. But they’re all like that.”
Let me here gratefully recall, also, the hospitals organised by the Universities of Chicago and Harvard, entirely staffed by American Sisters and Doctors, each of them providing 34 doctors and 80 nurses, and dealing with 1,040 patients. Harvard has maintained a general hospital with the British Force in France since July, 1915. The first passages and uniforms were paid for by the British Government, but the University has itself paid all passages, and provided all uniforms since the start; and it is proposed, I am told, to carry on this generous help indefinitely.
Twenty thousand wounded!—while every day the ambulance trains come and go from the front, or to other bases—there to fill up one or other of the splendid hospital ships that take our brave fellows back to England, and home, and rest. And this city of hospitals, under its hard-pressed medical chief, with all its wealth of scientific invention, and painsaving device, and unremitting care, with its wonderful health and recovery statistics, has been the growth of just twelve months. The mind wavers between the two opposing images it suggests: war and its havoc on the one hand—the power of the human brain and the goodness of the human heart on the other.
II
It was late on the 29th of February that we reached our next resting-place, to find a kind greeting from another Base Commandant and final directions for our journey of the morrow. We put up at one of the old commercial inns of the town (it is not easy to find hotel quarters of any kind just now, when every building at all suitable has been pressed into the hospital service) and I found delight in watching the various types of French officers, naval and military, who came in to the table d’hôte, plunging as soon as they had thrown off their caps and cloaks, and while they waited for their consommé, into the papers with the latest news of Verdun. But we were too tired to try and talk! The morning came quickly, and with it our escort from G.H.Q. We said good-bye to Colonel S., who had guided our journey so smoothly through all the fierce drawbacks of the weather, and made friends at once with our new guide, the staff-officer who deals with the guests of G.H.Q. Never shall I forget that morning’s journey! I find in my notes: “A beautiful drive—far more beautiful than I had expected—over undulating country, with distant views of interlocking downs, and along typical French roads, tree or forest bordered, running straight as a line up-hill and down-hill, over upland and plain. One exquisite point of view especially comes back to me, where a road to the coast—that coast which the Germans so nearly reached!—diverged upon our left, and all the lowlands westward came into sight. It was pure Turner, the soft sunlight of the day, with its blue shadows, and pale-blue sky; the yellow chalk hills, still marked with streaks of snow; the woods, purple and madder brown, the distances ethereally blue; and the villages, bare and unlovely compared with the villages of Kent and Sussex, but expressing a strong old historic life, sprung from the soil, and one with it. The first distant glimpse, as we turned a hill-corner, of the old town which was our destination—extraordinarily fine!—its ancient church a towered mass of luminous grey under the sunshine, gathering the tiled roofs into one harmonious whole.”
But we avoided the town itself and found ourselves presently descending an avenue of trees to the eighteenth-century château, which is used by G.H.Q. as a hostel for its guests—allied and neutral correspondents, military attachés, special missions, and the like. In a few minutes I found myself standing bewildered by the strangeness and the interest of it all, in a charming Louis-Quinze room, plain and simple in the true manner of the genuine French country house, but with graceful panelled walls, an old armoire of the date, windows wide open to the spring sun, and a half-wild garden outside. A femme de ménage, much surprised to be waiting on two ladies, comes to look after us. And this is France!—and we are only thirty miles from that fighting line, which has drawn our English hearts to it all these days.
A map is waiting for each of us down-stairs, and we are told, roughly, where it is proposed to take us. A hurried lunch, and we are in the motor again, with Captain —— sitting in front. “You have your passes?” he asks us, and we anxiously verify the new and precious papers that brought us from our last stage, and will have to be shown on our way. We drive first to Arques, and Hazebrouck, then southeast. At a certain village we call at the Divisional Headquarters. The General comes out himself, and proposes to guide us on. “I will take you as near to the fighting line as I can.”
On we went, in two motors; the General with me, Captain —— and D. following. We passed through three villages, and after the first we were within shell range of the German batteries ahead. But I cannot remember giving a thought to the fact, so absorbing to the unaccustomed eye were all the accumulating signs of the actual battle-line; the endless rows of motor-lorries, either coming back from, or going up to the front, now with food, now with ammunition, reserve trenches to right and left of the road; a “dump” or food-station, whence carts filled from the heavy lorries go actually up to the trenches, lines of artillery wagons, parks of ammunition, or motor-ambulances, long lines of picketed horses, motor-cyclists dashing past. In one village we saw a merry crowd in the little place gathered round a field-kitchen whence came an excellent fragrance of good stew. A number of the men were wearing leeks in their ears for St. David’s Day. “You’re Welsh, then?” I said to one of the cooks (by this time we had left the motor and were walking). “I’m not!” said the little fellow, with a laughing look. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day I’m waitin’ for! But I’ve no objection to givin’ St. David a turn!”
He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we moved away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, who had done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. The General went to greet them. “Well, my boys, you could stick it all right?” It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to watch the group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village.
We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first time. We were now “actually in the battle,” according to my companion, and a shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can’t remember that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now parties of men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside the road, with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were waiting for the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the dusk was further advanced. “We shall meet them later,” said the General, “as we come back.”
At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the road: “Is your gun near here?” “Yes, sir, I was just going back to it.” He was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed over our heads. “Ah, not a Boche,” said Captain —— regretfully, “but we brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this village—a splendid fight.”
Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined village from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared away. The shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix quite intact still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the boyish artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined by a comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were creeping through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully concealed that no aeroplane overhead could guess it.
There it was—how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and northern workshops!—its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or ten high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One is put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my fingers in my ears and look straight at the gun. Then comes the shock—not so violent as I had expected—and the cartridge-case drops out. The shell has sped on its way to the German trenches—with what result to human flesh and blood? But I remember thinking very little of that—till afterwards. At the time, the excitement of the shot and of watching that little group of men in the darkness held all one’s nerves gripped.
In a few more minutes we were scrambling out again through the deep, muddy trench leading to the dugout, promising to come back to tea with the officers, in their billet, when our walk was done.
Now indeed we were “in the battle”! Our own guns were thundering away behind us, and the road was more and more broken up by shell holes. “Look at that group of trees to your left—beyond it is Neuve Chapelle,” said our guide. “And you see those ruined cottages, straight ahead, and the wood behind.” He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the war. “Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just in front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a mile.” It was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the fields to the entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was getting hotter, and Captain —— was evidently relieved when we elected to turn back. Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask me to write something about “the life of the soldiers in the trenches”—and that was the nearest that any woman could personally have come to it! But I doubt whether anything more—anything, at least, that was possible—could have deepened the whole effect. We had been already nearer than any woman—even a nurse—has been, in this war, to the actual fighting on the English line, and the cup of impressions was full.
As we turned back, I noticed a little ruined cottage, with a Red Cross flag floating. Our guide explained that it was a field dressing-station. It was not for us—who could not help—to ask to go in. But the thought of it—there were some badly wounded in it—pursued me as we walked on through the beautiful evening.
A little farther we came across what I think moved me more than anything else in that crowded hour—those same companies of men we had seen sitting waiting in the fields, now marching quietly, spaced one behind the other, up to the trenches, to take their turn there. Every day I am accustomed to see bodies, small and large, of khaki-clad men, marching through these Hertfordshire lanes. But this was different. The bearing was erect and manly, the faces perfectly cheerful; but there was the seriousness in them of men who knew well the work to which they were going. I caught a little quiet whistling, sometimes, but no singing. We greeted them as they passed, with a shy “Good luck!” and they smiled shyly back, surprised, of course, to see a couple of women on that road. But there was no shyness towards the General. It was very evident that the relations between him and them were as good as affection and confidence on both sides could make them.
I still see the bright tea-table in that corner of a ruined farm, where our young officers presently greeted us—the General marking our maps to make clear where he had actually been—the Captain of the battery springing up to show off his gramophone—while the guns crashed at intervals close beside us, range-finding, probably, searching out a portion of the German line, under the direction of some hidden observer with his telephone. It was over all too quickly. Time was up, and soon the motor was speeding back towards the Divisional Headquarters. The General and I talked of war, and what could be done to stop it. A more practical religion “lifting mankind again”?—a new St. Francis, preaching the old things in new ways? “But in this war we had and we have no choice. We are fighting for civilisation and freedom, and we must go on till we win.”
III
It was long before I closed my eyes in the pretty room of the old château, after an evening spent in talk with some officers of the Headquarters Staff. When I woke in the dawn I little guessed what the day (March 2nd) was to bring forth, or what was already happening thirty miles away on the firing line. Zélie, the femme de ménage, brought us our breakfast to our room, coffee and bread and eggs, and by half-past nine we were down-stairs, booted and spurred, to find the motor at the door, a simple lunch being packed up, and gas-helmets got ready! “We have had a very successful action this morning,” said Captain ——, evidently in the best of spirits. “We have taken back some trenches on the Ypres-Comines Canal that we lost a little while ago, and captured about 200 prisoners. If we go off at once, we shall be in time to see the German counter-attack.”
It was again fine, though not bright, and the distances far less clear. This time we struck northeast, passing first the sacred region of G.H.Q. itself, where we showed our passes. Then after making our way through roads lined interminably, as on the previous day, with the splendid motor-lorries laden with food and ammunition, which have made such a new thing of the transport of this war, interspersed with rows of ambulances and limbered wagons, with flying-stations and horse lines, we climbed a hill to one of the finest positions in this northern land; an old town, where Gaul and Roman, Frank and Fleming, English and French have clashed, which looks out northward towards the Yser and Dunkirk, and east towards Ypres. Now, if the mists will only clear, we shall see Ypres! But, alas, they lie heavy over the plain, and we descend the hill again without that vision. Now we are bound for Poperinghe, and must go warily, because there is a lively artillery action going on beyond Poperinghe, and it is necessary to find out what roads are being shelled.
On the way we stop at an air-station, to watch the aeroplanes rising and coming down, and at a point near Poperinghe we go over a casualty-clearing station—a collection of hospital huts, with storehouses and staff quarters—with the medical officer in charge. Here were women nurses who are not allowed in the field dressing-stations nearer the line. There were not many wounded, though they were coming in, and the Doctor was not for the moment very busy.
We stood on the threshold of a large ward, where we could not, I think, be seen. At the farther end a serious case was being attended by nurses and surgeons. Everything was passing in silence; and to me it was as if there came from the distant group a tragic message of suffering, possibly death. Then, as we passed lingeringly away, we saw three young officers, all wounded, running up from the ambulance at the gate, which had just brought them, and disappearing into one of the wards. The first—a splendid kilted figure—had his head bound up; the others were apparently wounded in the arm. But they seemed to walk on air, and to be quite unconscious that anything was wrong with them. It had been a success, a great success, and they had been in it!
The ambulances were now arriving fast from the field dressing-stations close to the line, and we hurried away, and were soon driving through Poperinghe. Here and there there was a house wrecked with shell-fire. The little town indeed with its picturesque place is constantly shelled. But, all the same, life seems to go on as usual. The Poperinghe boy, like his London brother, hangs on the back of carts; his father and mother come to their door to watch what is going on, or to ask eagerly for news of the counter-attack; and his little brothers and sisters go tripping to school, in short cloaks with the hoods drawn over their heads, as though no war existed. Here and in the country round, poor robbed Belgium is still at home on her own soil, and on the best of terms with the English Army, by which, indeed, this remnant of her prospers greatly. As I have already insisted, the relations everywhere between the British soldier and the French and Belgian populations are among the British—or shall I say the Allied?—triumphs of the war.
Farther on the road a company from a famous regiment, picked men all of them, comes swinging along, fresh from their baths!—life and force in every movement—young Harrys with their beavers on. Then, a house where men have their gas-helmets tested—a very strict and necessary business; and another, where an ex-Balliol tutor and Army Chaplain keeps open doors for the soldier in his hours of rest or amusement. But we go in search of a safe road to a neighbouring village, where some fresh passes have to be got. Each foot now of the way is crowded with the incidents and appurtenances of war, and war close at hand. An Australian transport base is pointed out, with a wholly Australian staff. “Some of the men,” says our guide, “are millionaires.” Close by is an aeroplane descending unexpectedly in a field, and a crowd of men rushing to help; and we turn away relieved to see the two aviators walking off unhurt. Meanwhile, I notice a regular game of football going on at a distance, and some carefully written names of bypaths—“Hyde Park Corner,” “Piccadilly,” “Queen Mary’s Road,” and the like. The animation, the life of the scene are indescribable.
At the next village the road was crowded both with natives and soldiers to see the German prisoners brought in. Alack! we did not see them. Ambulances were passing and re-passing, the slightly wounded men in cars open at the back, the more serious cases in closed cars, and everywhere the same va et vient of lorries and wagons, of staff-cars and motor-cyclists. It was not right for us to add to the congestion in the road. Moreover, the hours were drawing on, and the great sight was still to come. But to have watched those prisoners come in would have somehow rounded off the day!
IV
Our new passes took us to the top of a hill well known to the few onlookers of which this war admits. The motor stopped at a point on the road where a picket was stationed, who examined our papers. Then came a stiff and muddy climb, past a dugout for protection in case of shelling, Captain —— carrying the three gas-helmets. At the top was a flat green space—three or four soldiers playing football on it!—and an old windmill, and farm-buildings.
We sheltered behind the great beams supporting the windmill, and looked out through them, north and east, over a wide landscape; a plain bordered eastward by low hills, every mile of it, almost, watered by British blood, and consecrate to British dead. As we reached the windmill, as though in sombre greeting, the floating mists on the near horizon seemed to part, and there rose from them a dark, jagged tower, one side of it torn away. It was the tower of Ypres—mute victim!—mute witness to a crime, that, beyond the reparations of our own day, history will avenge through years to come.
A flash!—another!—from what appear to be the ruins at its base. It is the English guns speaking from the lines between us and Ypres; and as we watch we see the columns of white smoke rising from the German lines as the shells burst. There they are, the German lines—along the Messines ridge. We make them out quite clearly, thanks to a glass and Captain ——’s guidance. Their guns, too, are at work, and a couple of their shells are bursting on our trenches somewhere between Vlamertinghe and Dickebusche. Then the rattle of our machine-guns—as it seems from somewhere close below us, and again the boom of the artillery.
The counter-action is in progress, and we watch what can be seen or guessed of it, in fascination. We are too far off to see what is actually happening between the opposing trenches, but one of the chief fields of past and present battle, scenes which our children and our children’s children will go to visit, lie spread out before us. Half the famous sites of the earlier war can be dimly made out between us and Ypres. In front of us is the gleam of the Zillebeke Lake, beyond it Hooge. Hill 60 is in that band of shadow; a little farther east the point where the Prussian Guard was mown down at the close of the first Battle of Ypres; farther south the fields and woods made for ever famous by the charge of the Household Cavalry, by the deeds of the Worcesters, and the London Scottish, by all the splendid valour of that “thin red line,” French and English, cavalry and infantry, which in the first Battle of Ypres withstood an enemy four times as strong, saved France, and thereby England, and thereby Europe. In that tract of ground over which we are looking lie more than 100,000 graves, English and French; and to it the hearts of two great nations will turn for all time. Then if you try to pierce the northern haze, beyond that ruined tower, you may follow in imagination the course of the Yser westward to that Belgian coast where Admiral Hood’s guns broke down and scattered the German march upon Dunkirk and Calais; or if you turn south you are looking over the Belfry of Bailleul, towards Neuve Chapelle, and Festubert, and all the fierce fighting-ground round Souchez and the Labyrinth. Once English and French stood linked here in a common heroic defence. Now the English hold all this line firmly from the sea to the Somme; while the French, with the eyes of the world upon them, are making history, hour by hour, at Verdun.
So to this point we have followed one branch—the greatest—of England’s effort; and the mind, when eyes fail, pursues it afresh from its beginnings when we first stood to arms in August, 1914, through what Mr. Buchan has finely called the “rally of the Empire,” through the early rush and the rapid growth of the new armies, through the strengthening of Egypt, the disaster of Gallipoli, the seizure of the German Colonies; through all that vast upheaval at home which we have seen in the munition areas; through that steady, and ever-growing organisation on the friendly French soil we have watched in the supply bases. Yet here, for us, it culminates; and here and in the North Sea, we can hardly doubt—whatever may be the diversions in other fields—will be fought, for Great Britain, the decisive battles of the war. As I turn to those dim lines on the Messines ridge, I have come at last to sight of whither it all moves. There, in those trenches is The Aggressor—the enemy who has wantonly broken the peace of Europe, who has befouled civilisation with deeds of lust and blood, between whom and the Allies there can be no peace till the Allies’ right arm dictates it. Every week, every day, the British Armies grow, the British troops pour steadily across the Channel, and to the effort of England and her Allies there will be no truce till the righteous end is won.
But the shadows are coming down on the great scene, and with the sound of the guns still in our ears we speed back through the crowded roads to G.H.Q., and these wonderful days are over. Now, all that remains for me is to take you, far away from the armies, into the English homes whence the men fighting here are drawn, and to show you, if I can, very shortly, by a few instances, what rich and poor are doing as individuals to feed the effort of England in this war. What of the young, of all classes and opportunities, who have laid down their lives in this war? What of the mothers who reared them, the schools and universities which sent them forth?—the comrades who are making ready to carry on their work? You ask me as to the spirit of the nation—the foundation of all else. Let us look into a few lives, a few typical lives and families, and see.