in adversity, self-effacing in the hour of victory.  Glorious also is the record of the other French Generals:  the strong-souled Petain, hero of Verdun; the heroic Maunoury; Castlenau and Mangin, Gouraud.  Debeney, and Franchet d’Esperey, Captains Courageous, worthy of France, her cause, and her indomitable poilus.  In the record of acknowledgment France stands first since her sacrifices and losses have been heaviest, and she gave us in Foch the chief organiser of victory, in Clemenceau the most inspiring example of intrepid statesmanship.  But the War could not have been won without England and the Empire; without the ceaseless vigil in the North Sea; without the heroes of Jutland and Coronel, of the Falkland Isles and Zeebrugge, of the Fleets behind the Fleet; without the services of Smith-Dorrien at Mons, French at Ypres; without the dogged endurance, the inflexible will and the self-sacrificing loyalty of Haig; the dash of Maude and Allenby; the steadfast leadership in defence and offence of Plumer and Byng, Home and Rawlinson and Birdwood.

[Illustration:  OUR MAN

With Mr. Punch’s Grateful Compliments to Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.]

[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.