There is a world of meaning in those half-sad, half-smiling lines, and many an hour-long discourse might fail to throw more lurid light on one of the strangest historical problems in the world.  The flower of England’s manhood must needs go; and our most brilliant scholars, our boldest riders, our most perfect specimens of physical humanity drop like rabbits to the fire of half-naked savages!  The bright boy, the hero of school and college, the brisk, active officer, passes away into obscurity.  The mother weeps—­perhaps some one nearer and dearer than all is stricken:  but the dead Englishman’s name vanishes from memory like a fleck of haze on the side of the valley where he sleeps.  England—­cold, inexorable, indifferent—­has other sons to take the dead man’s place and perhaps share his obscurity; and the doomed host of fair gallant youths moves forward ever in serried, fearless lines towards the shadows.  That is what it costs to be a mighty nation.  It is sorrowful to think of the sacrificed men—­sacrificed to fulfil England’s imposing destiny; it is sorrowful to think of the mourners who cannot even see their darling’s grave; yet there is something grandiose and almost morbidly impressive in the attitude of Britain.  She waves her imperial hand and says, “See what my place in the world is!  My bravest, my most skilful, may die in a fight that is no more than a scuffling brawl; they go down to the dust of death unknown, but the others come on unflinching.  It is hard that I should part with my precious sons in mean warfare, but the fates will have it so, and I am equal to the call of fate.”  Thus the sovereign nation.  Those who have no very pompous notions are willing to recognize the savage grandeur of our advance; but I cannot help thinking of the lonely graves, the rich lives squandered, the reckless casting away of human life, which are involved in carrying out our mysterious mission in the great peninsula.  Our graves are spread thickly over the deadly plains; our brightest and best toil and suffer and die, and they have hardly so much as a stone to mark their sleeping-place; our blood has watered those awful stretches from the Himalayas to Comorin, and we may call Hindostan the graveyard of Britain’s noblest.  People who see only the grizzled veterans who lounge away their days at Cheltenham or Brighton think that the fighting trade must be a very nice one after all.  To retire at fifty with a thousand a year is very pleasant no doubt; but then every one of those war-worn gentlemen who returns to take his ease represents a score who have perished in fights as undignified as a street brawl.  “More legions!” said Varus; “More legions!” says England; and our regiments depart without any man thinking of Morituri te salittant! Yes; that phrase might well be in the mind of every British man who fares down the Red Sea and enters the Indian furnace.  Those about to die, salute thee, O England, our mother!  Is it worth while?  Sometimes I have my doubts.