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Show nmvr \‘hlJUII . By J. L. GARVIN WE in England would rather be blotted out of the book of nations than that Belgium should not be lifted up from rum and gloriously restored. To that cause we have pledged our all, and until our pledge is redeemed in such sort that the justice of an overruling God shall be made manifest through us, never can we know soul's comfort in our own land spared by war nor cease our efforts to succour the bitter need of a desolate people and to hearten that little indomitable army of freedom and honour under its noble and beloved young King. No words of ours can be worthy of them and we can never do enough. The resistance of Belgiumyvill live as one of the great legends of the world, and I firmly believe that itsspiritual significance can only deepen with centuries. Nothing that we think of as heroic, tragic, inspiring in the past, or as confirming our faith that the best shall conquer the worst, exceeds what Flemings and Walloons over there have dared, suffered, and done in the twentieth century. They have made the name of their country an immortal word like Marathon-" the trumpet of a prophecy " that the reign of public law and peace shall yet be stablished upon the inviolable faith of treaties and that the sanctity of a scrap of paper shall be mightier than Krupp guns. WV By A. G. GARDINER . . WHATEVER the course of the war, whatever the fate of Europe, it is 111 King Albert that the future will see the most human, the most knightly figure of this Titanic struggle. Belgium has died for freedom, for our freedom, for the freedom of the world. Let us see that she rises again triumphant from her tears and ashes. And if righteousness endures beneath the sun she will rise. fie)»; %. By J. A. SPENDER SYMI'A'I‘HY with Belgium must be mingled with envy-envy 0f the noble courage and matehlcss national spirit which, in the hour of her affliction, make her great among the peoples of the world. She has fought the 'l‘liermopyla' of the allied cause and it remains for her brothers-in-arnis to see that her sacrifice is rewarded and her country restored. Our homage to the brave King who has dared all for the honour and liberty of the people committed to his charge. J , flt WM 74 By MRS. HUMPHRY WARD ALL SAINTs' DAY, 1914 I have been wandering through the English fields, and under the English woods in a last lingering blaze of summer, before the winter comes. All day the sun has been clear in heaven ; all last night the moon shone without a cloud. The oaks are still-the majority of them-defiantly green as though they challenged a tyrant ; and where the woods lie close and thick in the basins of the hills, they show sharp patterns of deep green and flaming gold, patterns of Nature's finest weaving. Amethyst and gold, the beeches; amethyst, blue, and gold, the distances ; and here and there a yew, violently black, or a hedgerow elm, its rounded leaf masses topped with yellow, or- on the common-~furze-bushes, alive with blossom. The children are in the park picking up acorns and walnuts ; a green woodpecker is paying his autumn visit to the lawn before my window, pecking and stabbing for dear life; the friendly robins sing round the house; slowly, slowly, the sun sinks into the quiet mists that rise towards it; and the glorious day will soon be done. Thus goes All Saints' Day in this valley of the Chiltcrns. And, meanwhile, how goes it 150 miles away, where Belgians, Frenchmen, and Englishmen are fighting in the blood-stained trenches of West Flanders ? No blood here, no hint of it lqsave where the sun strikes the deep carpet of fallen beech leaves, and the bright colour startles our sad thoughts. But there, men are pouring out their blood like water ; and all that, in this quiet English scene, we dare picture to ourselves of horror, of devilish pain and destruction, comes nowhere near the truth. Frenchmen and Englishmen, closely inter- linked, from west to east, from the sea to the Vosges, fronting the hideous onslaught of men, in whom a world uprisen sees a branded race-traitors to civilisation and to humanity ! And far to the north-west, in land hardly distinguishable from the sea, which has been won from the sea by infinite labour, there are thin lines of men in the Belgian trenches, " holding the pass" against the barbarian, as truly as any Greek did at Thermopylz‘e. Yet here are no blue mountains looking on. Only flat grey land, and featureless grey sea, and that grey advancing flood, where the Belgians have called in the sea to fight with them, and have given him in payment their hard-won fields, their dykes, and villages, to keep in trust for a nation of heroes, till the battle is won. " They told us to hold the trenches for 24 hours ; we held them ; then they said, ‘ IIold them 4.8 hours more,' and we have done it." So ran one of the most soul-stirring messages of war ever written. They have done it ! And now the English and French have come up, and the little army which has saved the left wing and protected Calais may fall back a while to count its dead. One in three, they say-(me in three I Shall we not write over the fallen Belgians what was written over the Spartan dead at Plataza: " These men having set a crown of immortal glory on their own land, were folded in the dark cloud of death. Yet being dead, they have not died, 75 |
