As I look back I find that the one thing that stands
out with distinctness above everything else is the
quality of the men that constitute the British Army
in the field. I had seen thousands in that one
day. But I had seen them also north of Ypres,
at Dunkirk, at Boulogne and Calais, on the Channel
boats. I have said before that they show race.
But it is much more than a matter of physique.
It is a thing of steady eyes, of high-held heads,
of a clean thrust of jaw.
The English are not demonstrative. London, compared
with Paris, is normal. British officers at the
front and at headquarters treat the war as a part
of the day’s work, a thing not to talk about
but to do. But my frequent meetings with British
soldiers, naval men, members of the flying contingent
and the army medical service, revealed under the surface
of each man’s quiet manner a grimness, a red
heat of patriotism, a determination to fight fair
but to fight to the death.
They concede to the Germans, with the British sense
of fairness, courage, science, infinite resource and
patriotism. Two things they deny them, civilisation
and humanity—civilisation in its spiritual,
not its material, side; humanity of the sort that is
the Englishman’s creed and his religion—the
safeguarding of noncombatants, the keeping of the
national word and the national honour.
My visit to the English lines was over. I had
seen no valiant charges, no hand-to-hand fighting.
But in a way I had had a larger picture. I had
seen the efficiency of the methods behind the lines,
the abundance of supplies, the spirit that glowed
in the eyes of every fighting man. I had seen
the colonial children of England in the field, volunteers
who had risen to the call of the mother country.
I had seen and talked with the commander-in-chief
of the British forces, and had come away convinced
that the mother country had placed her honour in fine
and capable hands. And I had seen, between the
first and second lines of trenches, an army of volunteers
and patriots—and gentlemen.
QUEEN MARY OF ENGLAND
The great European war affects profoundly all the
women of each nation involved. It affects doubly
the royal women. The Queen of England, the Czarina
of Russia, the Queen of the Belgians, the Empress of
Germany, each carries in these momentous days a frightful
burden. The young Prince of Wales is at the front;
the King of the Belgians has been twice wounded; the
Empress of Germany has her sons as well as her husband
in the field.
In addition to these cares these women of exalted
rank have the responsibility that comes always to
the very great. To see a world crisis approaching,
to know every detail by which it has been furthered
or retarded, to realise at last its inevitability—to
see, in a word, every movement of the great drama
and to be unable to check its denouement—that
has been a part of their burden. And when the
denouement came, to sink their private anxieties
in the public welfare, to assume, not a double immunity
but a double responsibility to their people, has been
the other part.
