They
march along the roads, heads well up, eyes ahead, thousands of them.
What a tragedy for the country that gives them up! Who will take their
places?--these splendid Scots with their picturesque kilts, their
bare, muscular knees, their great shoulders; the cheery Irish,
swaggering a bit and with a twinkle in their blue eyes; these tall
young English boys, showing race in every line; these dashing
Canadians, so impressive that their every appearance on a London
street was certain to set the crowds to cheering.
I saw them in London, and later on I saw them at the front. Still
later I saw them again, prostrate on the ground, in hospital trains,
on hospital ships. I saw mounds, too, marked with wooden crosses.
Volunteers and patriots! A race incapable of a mean thing, incapable
of a cruelty. A race of sportsmen, playing this horrible game of war
fairly, almost too honestly. A race, not of diplomats, but of
gentlemen.
"You will always be fools," said a captured German naval officer to
his English captors, "and we shall never be gentlemen!"
But they are not fools. It is that attitude toward the English that
may defeat Germany in the end.
Every man in the British Army to-day has counted the cost. He is there
because he elected to be there. He is going to stay by until the thing
is done, or he is.
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