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Show I44 145 world the semblance of order called "l‘ax Britannica," the British peacer To one who travels Widely through the counties of lingland some part of the cost is plain, cost of it all we may well heed his testimony. This he says of the rule of the sea: "There's 1i widow in sleepy Chester \\'ho mourns for her only son; There's a grave by the l‘aheng River-- A grave which the llurnlans shun." \fi‘fim" \‘tJJUW MUM! This is a condition repeated in every village in lingland. and its history is recorded on the walls of every parish church. livery» where can be seen tablets in memory of young iiien-gentleinen's sons from liton and Rugby and \\'inchester and Ilarrow, scholars from Oxford and Cambridge. who have given up their lives in some far-off petty war, Their bodies rest in Zululand, in Cainbodia, in the Gold Coast, in the Transvaal. In England only they are remembered. In the parish churches these records are numbered by the score, hi the cathedrals they are recorded by the thousand. Go from one cathedral town to another Canterbury, \l'inchestcr, Chichester. Exeter, Salisbury, \Vells, Ely, York, Lincoln, Durham, Litehfield, Chester (what a wonderful series of pie- tures this list of names calls tipl), and you will find always the same story, the same sad array of memorials to young men. What would be the effect on England if all of these "unreturning brave" and all that should have been their descendants could be num- bered among her sons today? Doubtless not all of these were young men of character. Doubtless not all are worthy even of the scant glory of a memorial tablet. But most of them were worthy. Most of them were brave and true, and most of them looked out on life with "frank blue British eyes." This too we may admit, that war is not the only destructive agency in modern society, and that in the struggle for existence the England of today has had many advantages which must hide or neutralize the waste of war. In default of facts unquestioned we may appeal to the poets, letting their testimony as to the reversal of selection stand for what it is worth. Rudyard Kipling is the poet of imperialism; and as to the "We have fed our sea for a thousand years, And she calls us, still unfed; Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead." Again, referring to dominion on land, Kipling warns the British soldier: "W'alk wide 0' the widow at W'indsor, For 'alf 0' creation she owns: \Ve 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame, An' we've salted it down with our bones. (Poor beggars l-it's blue with our bones !) ." Through all this we have the same refrain, the minor chord of victory, the hidden lesson of war. "The brightest are gone before us, The dullest are left behind." "The living are brave and noble, The dead were bravest of all I" "The kindly seasons love us, They smile over trench and clod; Where we left the bravest of us There's a deeper green of the sod." "Set in this stormy northern sea, Queen of these restless fields of tide, England! what shall men say of thee. iefore who<e feet the worlds divide ?" "And thou whose wounds are never healed, \Vhose weary race is never won, 0 Cromwell's England! must thou yield For every inch of ground a son?" |