e. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in
the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and
between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little
tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden
cross. By each cross was a soldier's kepi, and sometimes a coat,
bleached by the sun and rain. Instinctively we bared our heads, and as
we walked from one grave to another I could hear the orderly behind us
muttering words of prayer. That lonely oratory was the battlefield of
the Marne. Seasons will come and go, man will plough and sow, the earth
will yield her increase, but those graves will never be disturbed by
share or sickle. They are holy ground.

So it is with the fields of Flanders. In those fields our gallant dead
lie where they fell, and where they lie the earth is dedicated to them
for ever. Of the British Expeditionary Force that landed in France in
August 1914 perhaps not 10 per cent remain. Like the dead heroes whose
ghostly voices whispered in the ears of L'Aiglon on the field of Wagram,
they haunt the plains of France. But their voices are the voices of
exhortation, and their breath and finer spirit have passed into the
drafts that have taken their place. Their successors greet Death like a
friend and go into battle as to a festival, counting no price--youth,
health, life--too high to pay for the country of their birth and their
devotion. The nation that can nurture men such as these can calmly meet
her enemy in the gate. Verily she shall not pass away.

* * * * *

The moon was at the full as I climbed the down where the shepherd was
guarding his flock behind the hurdles on the short turf and creeping
cinque-foil. Far below, whence you could faintly catch the altercation
of the pebbles on the beach under the importunities of the tide, I saw
an oily sea heaving like shot silk in the moonlight, the lonely beacon
was winking across the waste of waters, strange signals were flashing
from the pier, and merchantmen were coming up Channel plaintively
protesting their neutrality with such a garish display of coloured
lights as to suggest a midnight regatta of all the neutral nations. A
troop train was speeding north and a hospital train crawling south,
their coming and going betrayed only to the ear, for they showed no
lights. The one was freighted with youth, health, life; the other with
pain, wounds, death. It was the systo