“_Is it still a long way to the Beresina?_”
The whole civilised world sincerely hopes not.
Death, with the grin on his fleshless face, is hurrying them along
to it as fast as his troika can go. Three black horses abreast he
drives--Dishonour, Disappointment, and Disgrace--and the more audacious
of the carrion-crows fly croaking ominously alongside.
Little Willie, with the insignia of his family’s doom on his head, is
not happy in his mind. “Father’s” plans have not worked smoothly, his
promises have not been fulfilled. Little Willie is concerned for his
own future. He is the only sold in the world who is.
When the First--the real--Napoleon entered Russia, on June 24th,
1812, he led an army of 414,000 men--the grande armée. When the great
retreat began from burnt-out Moscow he had less than 100,000. By the
time the Beresina was reached but little of the grand army was left.
“Of the cavalry reserve, formerly 32,000 men, only 100 answered the
muster-roll.” The passage of the river, which was to interpose its
barrier between him and the pursuing Russians, was an inferno of panic,
selfishness, and utter demoralisation. Finally, to secure his own
safety, Napoleon had the bridges burnt before half his men had crossed.
The roll-call that night totalled 8,000 gaunt spectres, hardly to be
called men.
“_Father, is it still a long way to the Beresina?_”
We may surely and rightly put up that question as a prayer to the God
whom Kaiser William claims as friend, but whom he has flouted and
bruised as never mortal man since time began has bruised and flouted
friend before.
“_Is it still a long way to the Beresina?_”
God grant them a short quick course, an end for ever to militarism, to
the wastage it has entailed, and to all those evils which have made
such things possible in this year of grace 1916.