[Illustration: THE FINAL TOMMY;(ex-footballer): "We was just wipin' them
off the face of the earth when Foch blows his whistle and shouts 'Temps!'"]
These are only some of the heroes who have added to the glories of our
blood and State, but the roll is endless--wonderful gunners and sappers and
airmen and dispatch riders, devoted surgeons and heroic nurses,
stretcher-bearers and ambulance drivers. But Mr. Punch's special heroes are
the Second Lieutenants and the Tommy who went on winning the War all the
time and never said that he was winning it until it was won.
As for the young officers, dead and living, their record is the best answer
to the critics, mostly of the arm-chair type, who have chosen this time to
assail our public school system. In the papers of one of them killed on
August 28 there was found an article written in reply to "The Loom of
Youth," ending with these words: "Perhaps the greatest consolation of these
attacks on our greatest heritage in England (for we are the unique
possessors of the Public Schools) is the conviction that they will have but
little effect. Every public school boy is serving, and one in every six
gives up his life. They cannot be such bad places after all."
Of the great mistakes made by Germany perhaps the greatest was in reckoning
on the detachment of the Dominions. The Canadians have made answer on a
hundred stricken fields before and after Vimy Ridge. Australia gave her
goodliest at Gallipoli, crowning the imperishable glory of those who died
there by her refusal to make a grievance of the apparent failure of the
expedition, and by the amazing achievement of her troops in the last six
months of the War.
The immortal dead, British, Australians, New Zealanders, who fell in the
great adventure of the narrow straits are not forgotten in the hour of
triumph.
GALLIPOLI
_Qui procul hinc ante diem perierunt_.
Ye unforgotten, that for a great dream died,
Whose failing sense darkened on peaks unwon,
Whose souls went forth upon the wine-dark tide
To seas beyond the sun,
Far off, far off, but ours and England's yet,
Know she has conquered! Live again, and let
The clamouring trumpets break oblivion!
Not as we dreamed, nor as you strove to do,
The strait is cloven, the crag is made our own;
The salt grey herbs have withered over you,
The stars of Spring gone down,
And your long loneliness has lain unstirred
By touch of home, unless some migrant bird
Flashed eastward from the white cliffs to the brown.
Hard by the nameless dust of Argive men,
Remembered and remote, like theirs of Troy,
Your sleep has been, nor can ye wake again
To any cry of joy;
Summers and snows have melted on the waves.
And past the noble silence of your graves
The merging waters narrow and deploy.
But not in vain, not all in vain, thank God;
All that you were and all you might have been
Was given to the cold effacing sod,
Unstrewn with garlands green;
The valour and the vision that were yours
Lie not with broken spears and fallen towers,
With glories perishable of all things seen.
Children of one dear land and every sea,
At last fulfilment comes--the night is o'er;
Now, as at Samothrace, swift Victory
Walks winged on the shore;
And England, deathless Mother of the dead,
Gathers, with lifted eyes and unbowed head,
Her silent sons into her arms once more.
Crowns and thrones have rocked and toppled of late, but our King and Queen,
by their unsparing and unfaltering devotion to duty, by their simplicity of
life and unerring instinct for saying and doing the right thing, have not
only set a fine example, but strengthened their hold on the loyalty of all
classes. And King Albert, who defied Germany at the outset, shared the
dangers of his soldiers in retreat and disaster, and throughout the war
proved an inspiration to his people, has been spared to lead them to
victory and has gloriously come into his own again. His decision to resist
Germany was perhaps the most heroic act of the War, and he has emerged from
his tremendous ordeal with world-wide prestige and unabated distaste for
the limelight. The liberation and resurrection of Belgium and Serbia have
been two of the most splendid outcomes of the World War, as the
_débâcle_ in Russia and the martyrdom of Armenia have been its
greatest tragedies.
Parliament has been seen at its best and worst. When the Prime Minister
rose in the House on the afternoon of the 11th to announce the terms of the
Armistice signed at 5 A.M. that morning, members from nearly all parts of
the House rose to acclaim him. Even "the ranks of Tuscany" on the front
Opposition bench joined in the general cheering. Only Mr. Dillon and his
half-dozen supporters remained moody and silent, and when Mr. Speaker, in
his gold-embroidered joy-robes, headed a great procession to St. Margaret's
Church, and the ex-Premier and his successor--the man who drew the sword of
Britain in the war for freedom and the man whose good fortune it has been
to replace it in the sheath--fell in side by side, behind them walked the
representatives of every party save one. Mr. Dillon and his associates had
more urgent business in one of the side lobbies--to consider, perhaps, why
Lord Grey of Falloden, in his eve-of-war speech, had referred to Ireland as
"the one bright spot." This Irish aloofness is wondrously illustrated by
the _Sunday Independent_ of Dublin, which, in its issue of November
10, spoke of a racing event as the only redeeming feature of "an
unutterably dull week." We have to thank Mr. Dillon, however, for
unintentionally enlivening the dulness of the discussion on the relations
of Lord Northcliffe to the Ministry of Information and his forecast of the
peace terms. Mr. Baldwin, for the Government, while endeavouring to allay
the curiosity of members, said that "Napoleons will be Napoleons." Mr.
Dillon seemed to desire the appointment of a "Northcliffe Controller," but
that is impracticable. All our bravest men are too busy to take on the job.
Better still was the pointed query of Lord Henry Bentinck, "Is it not
possible to take Lord Northcliffe a little too seriously?" But there are
other problems to which the House has been addressing itself with a
justifiable seriousness--and demobilisation, the shortage of food and coal,
and the question how at the same time we are to provide for the outlay of
coals of fire and feed the Huns and not the guns.
And how has England taken the news? In the main soberly and in a spirit of
infinite thankfulness, though in too many thousands of homes the loss of
our splendid, noble and gallant sons--alas! so often only sons--who made
victory possible by the gift of their lives, has made rejoicing impossible
for those who are left to mourn them. Yet there is consolation in the
knowledge that if they had lived to extreme old age they could never have
made a nobler thing of their lives. Shakespeare, who "has always been there
before," wrote the epitaph of those who fell in France when he spoke of one
who gave
His body to that pleasant country's earth,
And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long.
[Illustration: ARMISTICE DAY
SMALL CHILD (excitedly): "Oh, Mother, what _do_ you think? They've
given us a whole holiday to-day in aid of the war."]
And it is a source of unspeakable joy that our children are safe. For
though to most of them their ignorance has been bliss, they have not
escaped the horrors of a war in which non-combatants have suffered worse
than ever before. Only the healing hand of time can allay the grief of
those for whom there can be no reunion on earth with their nearest and
dearest:
At last the dawn creeps in with golden fingers
Seeking my eyes, to bid them open wide
Upon a world at peace, where Sweetness lingers,
Where Terror is at rest and Hate has died.
Loud soon shall sound a paean of thanksgiving
From happy women, welcoming their men,
Life born anew of joy to see them living.
Mother of Pity, what shall I do then?
Of the people at large Mr. Punch cannot better the praise of one, the late
Mr. Henry James, who was nothing if not critical, and who proved his love
of England by adopting her citizenship in the darkest hour of her need:
"They were about as good, above all, when it came to the stress, as could
well be expected of people. They didn't know how good they were," and if
they lacked imagination they stimulated it immensely in others.
Apart from some effervescence in the great cities, Armistice Day was
celebrated without exultation or extravagance. In one village that we know
of the church bells were rung by women. In London our deliverance was to
many people marked in the most dramatic way by the breaking of his long
silence by Big Ben:
Gone are the days when sleep alone could break
War's grim and tyrannous spells;
Now it is rest and joy to lie awake
And listen to the bells.
So the Great War ended. But there yet remained the most dramatic episode of
all--the surrender of the German Fleet to Admiral Beatty at Scapa Flow--a
surrender unprecedented in naval history, a great victory won without
striking a blow, which yet brought no joy to our Grand Fleet. For our
admirals and captains and bluejackets felt that the Germans had smirched
the glory of the fighting men of the sea, hitherto maintained in
untarnished splendour by all vanquished captains from the days of Carthage
to those of Cervera and Cradock.
[Illustration: IN HONOUR OF THE BRITISH NAVY