TEN YEARS AFTER.
THE LITTLE WORLD OF PICARDT WAS A
VALE OF WOODEN CROSSES."
62
The Ypres Times.
THE BATTEE OF THE SOMME.
The free men rose and took the sword
When the Teuton gauntlet fell
Followed the vanguard, held and fought,
And, dear in War, War's lesson bought
Till they camea weapon finely wrought
To the thunder of Boisselle.
As thunder springs, they stormed the field
With the crash of the monster mines
And Montauban, Fricourt, Mamets
Fell, as the Armies forward swept
To Combles and Flers and Courcelette,
Breaking the battle lines.
The glow, the rapture, the divine
Element that sent them forth
Fulfilled upon this roaring field
All the virtue it could yield,
And back the conscript Army reeled
From the free men of the North.
The free men reached the flowering
Of their surrendered lives
And life to some was yielded back,
But legions trod the blood-dyed track
Whose scarlet flowers ne'er shall lack
Till the Meeting Day arrives.
Beatrix Brice.
By E. M. CHANNING-RENTON [Editor of "Home and Abroad").
I have never really discovered the reason why the average person (who has
never heard a gun fire) so deeply resents any allusion to the Great War. I do not neces
sarily include those unfortunate fathers and mothers who perhaps lost an only son
they have every reason to hate Armageddonbut I refer to those who, as far as can be
ascertained, are not relatives of the fallen, who never sloped arms or marked time
during 1914-18, and who are oft-times overheard retorting For Heaven's sake, stop
talking about the damned old War."
To those of us who fought through Mons, Ypres or the Sommethe very sound of
War at times is apt to stir in us a sense of absolute horror. And naturally so. A deep
loathing fills us as we are reminded of the hundred and one miseries of front-line life in
France and Flanders. There are many of us who have inherited a legacy of war in the
form of wounds or shell-shock. The latter, and those who suffer from nerves," can
perhaps recount many nights of horror spent in the battleground of their own bedrooms.
How many times have we lived through those experiences of Armageddon, as the mid
night candle burned low," and we have been aloneeverything still and quiet for our
thoughts to wander And we have sprung up in bedin our dreams, maybe, and almost
jumped for cover under the table, thinking old Jerry over yonder had spotted us
with his old pop-gun.
But still there are other times when a simple reminderperhaps a face
a memory a date an episode, plunges us back, like an express train, to the
old crowd," as we were fond of calling them, and it is there and then that we long to
linger to ponder and think of France and Flandersthe mud, the misery, the old trenches
and the guns. And there is nothing in the world that we would not give to see the old
crowd back. We picture in our minds an old familiar face, a battered trench in which
we livedyes, actually lived. For that was our home. We slept, we ate, we drank, and
fought in that trench. No wonder we speak of the trenches with mingled feelings of
horror and passion 1
