than we sent--and of these
six hundred and fifty-eight thousand, seven hundred and four, were
killed. Of her Navy, thirty-three thousand three hundred and sixty-one
were killed, six thousand four hundred and five wounded and missing;
of her merchant marine fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty-one were
killed; a total of forty-eight thousand killed--or ten per cent of all
in active service. Some of those of the merchant marine who escaped
drowning through torpedoes and mines went back to sea after being
torpedoed five, six, and seven times.

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

Through four frightful years she fought with splendor, she suffered with
splendor, she held on with splendor. The second battle of Ypres is but
one drop in the sea of her epic courage; yet it would fill full a canto
of a poem. So spent was Britain's single line, so worn and thin,
that after all the men available were brought, gaps remained. No more
ammunition was coming to these men, the last rounds had been served.
Wet through, heavy with mud, they were shelled for three days to prevent
sleep. Many came at last to sleep standing; and being jogged awake
when officers of the line passed down the trenches, would salute and
instantly be asleep again. On the fourth day, with the Kaiser come to
watch them crumble, three lines of Huns, wave after wave of Germany's
picked troops, fell and broke upon this single line of British--and
it held. The Kaiser, had he known of the exhausted ammunition and the
mounded dead, could have walked unarmed to the Channel. But he never
knew.

Surgeons being scantier than men at Ypres, one with a compound fracture
of the thigh had himself propped up, and thus all day worked on the
wounded at the front. He knew it meant death for him. The day over,
he let them carry him to the rear, and there, from blood-poisoning, he
died. Thus through four frightful years, the British met their duty and
their death.

There is the great story of the little penny steamers of the Thames--a
story lost amid the gigantic whole. Who will tell it right? Who will
make this drop of perfect valor shine in prose or verse for future eyes
to see? Imagine a Hoboken ferry boat, because her country needed her,
starting for San Francisco around Cape Horn, and getting there. Some ten
or eleven penny steamers under their own steam started from the Thames
down the Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and through
the submarined Medite