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THE YPRES TIMES
Let us away with all this false cant. There is no bitterness between soldiers
who fought in the Great War, but do not let us, in our eagerness to ensure
a world peace hide behind tapestries bitten through with insincerity. I am very
much against competitive and armed nationalism, and am all in favour of inter
national co-operation, but why belittle the efforts of the men who laid down their
lives in the War?
I have read most of the important war books, and have found many of them
most interesting, and some of them have tried my patience. Reading some of them
many people might get the idea that war was a bestial and entirely demoralizing
experience. To many it may have been so, but I can honestly say that the men
I had the privilege to serve with did not find it so, and it was a great test of
manhood. The bloody battles of the Somme and Ypres, and the agony of the
Fifth Army, tried men as few things could try them.
Let the country .choose men who have fought in the Great War as their
representatives, and send them abroad, and it will be found that they will prove
the best ambassadors of peace the country ever had.
In these days when the voice of poetry is silent, no longer stirring the hearts
of men, when no man dares to praise a man set above his fellows because he is
so busy observing the feet of clay, the Armistice Day comes as a reminder that
we cannot find satisfaction in a life such as led by a squirrel in a cage, and that we
must look to the higher reaches of the spirit and dare to believe in immortality.
If we do not believe in the immortal spirit of man, then I say that Armistice Day
is a joke and a farce, and its celebration should not be tolerated.
I am one who is so foolish as to believe that the Greeks were right in their
estimate of men as set forth by the address of Pericles to the Athenians. War is the
great sifter of souls, and the men who held the gate in war should be honoured.
I would rather trust myself to the company of soldiers than to any other class of
men, because they have been tested. Any officer in the line knew how difficult
it was to recommend men for stripes." However excellent a man might be on
parade he might prove something very different when he is called upon to act
in action. There is a difference in menmake no mistake about that. We are
taught to believe that we brought nothing into the world and we take nothing-
out of it. That I do not believe. I believe that a man when he dies passes with
a soul large or mean according to the manner in which he has allowed the forces
of life to impinge upon him. In these days of disillusionment men are asking what
did the Great War achieve? It achieved more than the wisest of us can ever
foresee. Only yesterday you had the Chancellor of the Exchequer pleading in the
House of Commons, with a voice shaken with emotion, for the poor of this
country. He said
Why should anybody who lives in such conditions vote for me or for my party If I lived
in such conditions I do not think my head would govern my actions. I should feel that the circum
stances to which I was condemned were intolerable, that there was something rotten in the State
which permitted them to exist so long."
That should have been said years ago by men of his position, and in the same
manner. But for the Great War we might have waited for a similar utterance
spoken with the same emotion another fifty years.
Armistice Day stands for all such noble utterance.
R. Henderson-Bland.
Formerly Gloucestershire Regiment.)
MESSAGE FROM THE BISHOP OF LONDON.
Dear Captain* Bland, Fulham Palace, S.W.6.
1 have read your article on Armistice Day with much approval. Often as I take the service and
stand by the Cenotaph I never fail to find it deeply moving, and it will be a bad day for the Country
when once the sacrifice made by our splendid men is forgotten. Yours sincerely
A. F. London.