"He was last seen going over the parapet into the German trenches."
What did you find after war's fierce alarms,
When the kind earth gave you a resting-place,
And comforting night gathered you in her arms,
With light dew falling on your upturned face?
Did your heart beat, remembering what had been?
Did you still hear around you, as you lay,
The wings of airmen sweeping by unseen,
The thunder of the guns at close of day?
All nature stoops to guard your lonely bed;
Sunshine and rain fall with their calming breath;
You need no pall, so young and newly dead,
Where the Lost Legion triumphs over death.
When with the morrow's dawn the bugle blew,
For the first time it summoned you in vain,
The Last Post does not sound for such as you,
But God's Reveille wakens you again.
The discomforts of railway travelling do not diminish. But impatient
passengers may find comfort in a maxim of R. L. Stevenson: "To travel
hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." And further solace is
forthcoming in the fact that our enemies are even worse off than we are.
Railway fares in Germany have been doubled; but it is doubtful if this
transparent artifice will prevent the Kaiser from going about the place
making speeches to his troops on all the fronts. Here all classes are
united by the solidarity of inconvenience. And they all have different ways
of meeting it. But we really think more care should be taken by the
authorities to see that while waging war on the Continent they do not
forget the defence of those at home. The fact that Mr. Winston Churchill
and Mr. Horatio Bottomley were away in France at the same time looks like
gross carelessness. In this context we may note the report that the Eskimos
had not until quite recently heard of war, which seems to argue slackness
on the part of the circulation manager of the _Daily Mail_.
[Illustration:
STOUT LADY (discussing the best thing to do in an air-raid): "Well, I
always runs about meself. You see, as my 'usband sez, an' very reasonable
too, a movin' targit is more difficult to 'it."]
_November, 1917_.
The best and the worst news comes from the outlying fronts. Allenby's
triumphant advance is unchecked in Palestine. Gaza has fallen. The British
are in Jaffa. Jerusalem is threatened. The German-Austrian drive which
began at Caporetto has been stemmed, and the Italians, stiffened by a
British army under General Plumer, are standing firm on the Piave. In
Mesopotamia we deplore the death of the gallant Maude, a great general and
a great gentleman, beloved by all ranks, whose career is an abiding answer
to those who maintain that no good can come out of our public schools or
the Staff training of regular officers. In Russia the Bolshevist _coup
d'état_ has overthrown the Kerensky _règime_ and installed as
dictator Lenin, a _déclassé_ aristocrat, always the most dangerous of
revolutionaries. On the Western front the tide has flowed and ebbed. The
Germans have yielded ground on the _Chemin des Dames_, the British
have stormed Passchendaele Ridge, but at terrible cost, and General Byng's
brilliant surprise attack and victory at Cambrai has been followed by the
fierce reaction of ten days later. But perhaps the greatest sensation of
the month has been Mr. Lloyd George's Paris speech, with its disquieting
references to the situation on the Western front, and its announcement of
the formation of the new Allied Council. The Premier's defence of, and, we
may perhaps say, recomposition of his Paris oration before the House of
Commons has appeased criticism without entirely convincing those who have
been anxious to know how the Allied Council would work, and what would be
the relations between the Council's military advisers and the existing
General Staff of the countries concerned. But as Mr. Lloyd George confessed
that he had deliberately made a "disagreeable speech" in Paris in order to
get it talked about, the Press critics whom he rebuked will probably
consider themselves absolved.
[ILLUSTRATION: A GREAT INCENTIVE
MEHMED (reading dispatch from the All-Highest): "Defend Jerusalem at all
costs for my sake. I was once there myself."]
[ILLUSTRATION: ONE UP!]
Parliament has for once repelled the gibe that it has ceased to represent
the people in the tribute of praise paid by Lords and Commons to our
sailors and soldiers and all the other gallant folk who are helping us to
win the War. On the strength of this capacity for rising to the occasion
one may pass over the many sittings at which a small minority of
Pacificists and irrelevant inquisitors have dragged the House down to the
depths of ineptitude or worse. In the debate on the Air Force in Committee,
one member, if we count speeches and interruptions, addressed the House
exactly one hundred times, and it is worthy of note that his last words
were: "This is what you call muzzling the House of Commons." If we were
to believe some critics, the British Navy is directed by a set of
doddering old gentlemen who are afraid to let it go at the Germans, and
cannot even safeguard it from attack. The truth, as expounded by the
First Lord, Sir Eric Geddes, in his maiden speech, is quite different.
Despite the Jeremiads of superannuated sailors and political longshoremen,
the Admiralty is not going to Davy Jones's locker, but under its present
chiefs, who have, with very few exceptions, seen service in this War,
maintains and supplements its glorious record.
Save for an occasional game of "tip and run," as with the North Sea convoy,
enemy vessels have disappeared on the surface of the ocean; and the long
arm of the British Navy is now stretching down into the depths and up into
the skies in successful pursuit of them. If the nation hardly realises what
it owes to the men of the Fleet and their splendid comrades of the
Auxiliary Services, it is because this work is done with such thoroughness
and so little fuss, and, as Mr. Asquith put it, "in the twilight and not in
the limelight."
[ILLUSTRATION:
AUNT MARIA: "Do you know I once actually saw the Kaiser riding through the
streets of London as bold as brass. If I'd known then what I know now I'd
have told a policeman."]
The general sense of the community is now practically agreed that
compulsory rationing must come, and the sooner the better. Lord Rhondda is
still hopeful that John Bull will tighten his own belt and save him the
trouble. But if we fail, the machinery for compulsion is all ready.
Reuter reports that a British prisoner has been sentenced to a year's
imprisonment for calling the Germans "Huns." On the Western front Tommy
usually calls them "Allymans," "Jerry," or "Fritz." But even if this
prisoner did use the word he cannot be blamed. The choice was the Kaiser's
when, as Attila's understudy, "Go forth," he said, "my sons. Go and behave
exactly as the Huns."
Apropos of the Kaiser, it appears that a certain Herr Stegerwald,
addressing a Berlin meeting, said: "We went to war at the side of the
Kaiser, and the All-Highest will return from war with us." If we may be
permitted to say anything, we expect he will be leading by at least a
couple of lengths.
The versatility and inventive genius of the Prime Minister provoke mingled
comment. An old Parliamentarian, when asked to what party Mr. Lloyd George
now belonged, recently answered: "He used to be a Radical; he will some day
be a Conservative; and at present he is the leader of the Improvisatories."
_December, 1917_.
It seems useless to attempt to cope with the staggering multiplicity of
events crowded into the last few weeks. Jerusalem captured in this last
crusade, which realises the dream of Coeur de Lion; Russia "down and out"
as a result of the armistice and the Brest-Litovsk Conference; Germany's
last colony conquered in East Africa; Lord Lansdowne's letter; the
retirement of Lord Jellicoe; while in one single week Cuba has declared war
on Austria, the Kaiser has threatened to make a Christmas peace offer, and
Mr. Bernard Shaw has described himself as "a mere individual." We have
traversed the whole gamut of sensation from the sublime and tragic to the
ridiculous; and Armageddon, vulgarised by the vulgar repetition of the
journalist, has redeemed its significance in the dispatches from our
Palestine front. The simplicity and dignity of General Allenby's entry into
the Syrian town--
Where on His grave with shining eyes
The Syrian stars look down--
afford a happy contrast to the boastful pagentry of the Kaiser's visit in
1898. Meanwhile it has not yet been decided in Berlin what the Sultan of
Turkey thinks of the capture of Jerusalem.
[ILLUSTRATION: BETRAYED