THE CEMETERIES OF THE SALIENT.
198
The Ypres Times.
By Sir Philip Giëbs.
As in the old days, our folk went in for journeys asjpilgrims to holy places to get
refreshment of soul, more courage for life and death, some closer spiritual touch, in their
simple human way, with the divine meaning of things so now Ypres and those cemeteries
in the Salient are holy ground to which the spirit of our race must go on pilgrimage.
By those crossesa quarter of a million of them in those fields of Flandersthere
is a vital undying remembrance of all that was greatest, noblest, simplest, in the heart
of the youth that was ours, and some divine quality in which we who live may find
must findcourage and hope to. carry on.
We are all victims of the war now. We know its brutality, its tragedy, its waste.
Some of us are filled with disillusion and despair because of the degradation that has
followed war, and the unfulfilment of passionate hopes for the progress of humanity after
that frightful conflict. The very name of the last war sickens many minds who cannot
bear the' reminder of its blood and sacrifice, and who see nothing but mockery in its
results. It is they who should go to the Salient and stand bareheaded before those graves.
Above all, it is the people who have already forgotten the war, and never think back
five years or more, who should go to the cemeteries of the Salient, there to remember those
years of struggle, the spirit of the youth that fell here in such great numbers, and the lesson
they taught to the world. For if our race forgets too soon it will lose more than was lost
in the fields of Flandersits own soul.
These boys who died had no hatred in their heartythey were not politicians who
argued the causes of war, nor diplomats who arranged balances of power which failed
to balance. They were not conscious even, for the most part, of high ideals, or any
far-reaching spiritual purpose. They were, as I knew themofficers and mensimple
fellows with an instinctive inarticulate love of their country, or of some little house or
home in city or field which held the meaning of their country. They loved fair play,
they had a pride in their own manhood, they liked comradeship, they were laughing
fellows who'found a jest in life even close to death, they were afraid of fear, they were
stubborn in sticking out the worst that happened to them. They had a courage so
splendid that they were utterly unconscious of it, and in the grisly game of war, so
monstrous in its mechanics of slaughter, they were, in the mass, like schoolboys, rowdy,
obedient to discipline, but not fond of it, so full of life that death did not frighten them
much, for they had the sense of immortality.
They were the flower of our race, its most splendid youth, and unless we can recapture
the divine fire that was theirs, their gaiety in the face of hellish things, their simplicity
of soul, we shall not rise again to their heights of valour.
These words seem foolish, though I believe they are true. All words seem foolish
standing between those crosses, and especially to those of us who walked with this dead
youth through Ypres, passed their battalions down the Menin Road, went in their dirty
dug-outs, rubbed shoulders with them along the narrow trenches. These men hated
words. They jeered at the name of Hero." They grinned from ear to ear under
their old tin-hats when some war correspondent wrote of their valour and sacrifice.
It seemed such humbug to them, such tosh." They were doing their job, and not liking
it a little bit. The faith that made them do it, to the death, the little flame of the spirit
that kept them exalted when the odds were worst against them were so deep down in
their very nature, so masked by shyness and reserve, that it was impossible to get their
acknowledgment of such ideals as patriotism, duty, courage, sacrifice. That was their
splendour and their glory. They could not help doing what they did. They did it as
