YOU MUST WEAR
A CORNFLOWER ON
YPRES DAY, OCTOBER 31st.
The Ypres Times.
141
TO REMEMBER AND TO KEEP FAITH.
By Beatrix Brice.
There is magic in beautiful words, beautiful names, that in romance and loveliness
call travellers across the world. What magic, then, holds the wonderful word Ypres
It has stood through many centuries for great beauty, it has stood high in history, to-day
it stands for the apotheosis of the spirit of Britain. Are there any homes in the Empire,
is there one home where the magic of that name is not calling, calling
The men sayWe fought at Wipers. We suffered unspeakable things at Wipers.
We made good friends at Wipers. We had cheery times, we had ghastly times. We
exchanged jestswe were deaf ended by thunder and scream of shells, of horses—of men.
Wipers, Wipers, Wiperswho can forget So some homes hear the magic word calling.
And in other homes it is a voice—the small voice of the Beloved, dead in action
the great voice in unison of 200,000 men and across the plains, across the sea it calls.
So we must come.
The fighters come again to join hands in the old places. The home people with
their own eyes must see this citadelthis core of the greatest battle line in history,
whose outposts and ramparts our men held, and in holding kept the ways to the sea.
The home people must see the land where sleep their beloved. So Ypres calls.
Round us the rolling plain, rolling upward to the far curve of the Salient, once lovely
in fertility, once a place of horror, once desolationnow growing, now blossoming anew.
The SalientA land where Last Postever echoesa land studded as with gems with the
graves of those who
Hold our pride in faith till Reveille' sounds at the call of God."
At the heart, ever pointing upward, rises the sorrowful, the triumphant witness of a spirit
unconquerable.
Not alone the splendour and the grief of memory draws us here. This place is the
earnest of that Brotherhood, that vision for men which blazed up in 1914, running a fiery
torch through the breadth of the land, and awakening the ardent spirit of sacrifice. This
light rose and sank, has flashed and flickered before us, and they who gave their lives for
it have left the flame for us to guard.
Ypres calls us to Belgium to-day, as once, riding down to battle in fulfilment of our
pledge, so now again with no less ardour to renew that pledge in peace. To uphold
the right, as God gives us to see the right." England and Belgium stand together here
to keep faith with their dead.
This is sacred ground.
We bring the flowers from home to lay at the foot of that broken tower. Look up
What a radiance is about it, what light, what glory This witness we behold, and beyond
itunseenhow great the Cloud of Witnesses. They are here. With the music of armies
victorious, in the white light of Peace attained.
In memory of the past, in inspiration for the future, Ypres is calling.
