e
young untried troops go over the parapet in the July dawn and disappear
into the hell beyond. And there in the packed graveyards that dot these
slopes lie thousands of them in immortal sleep; and as the Greeks in
after days knew no nobler oath than that which pledged a man by those
who fell at Marathon, so may the memory of those who fell here burn ever
in the heart of England, a stern and consecrating force.

"Life is but the pebble sunk,
Deeds the circle growing!"

And from the deeds done on this hillside, the suffering endured, the
life given up, the victory won, by every kind and type of man within the
British State--rich and poor, noble and simple, street-men from British
towns, country-men from British villages, men from Canadian prairies,
from Australian and New Zealand homesteads--one has a vision, as one
looks on into the future, of the impulse given here spreading out
through history, unquenched and imperishable. The fight is not over--the
victory is not yet--but on the Somme no English or French heart can
doubt the end.

The same thoughts follow one along the sunken road to Contalmaison.
Here, first, is the cemetery of La Boisselle, this heaped confusion of
sandbags, of broken and overturned crosses, of graves tossed into a
common ruin. And a little further are the ruins of Contalmaison, where
the 3rd Division of the Prussian Guards was broken and 700 of them taken
prisoners. Terrible are the memories of Contalmaison! Recall one letter
only!--the letter written by a German soldier the day before the attack:
"Nothing comes to us--no letters. The English keep such a barrage on our
approaches--it is horrible. To-morrow morning it will be seven days
since this bombardment began; we cannot hold out much longer. Everything
is shot to pieces." And from another letter: "Every one of us in these
five days has become years older--we hardly know ourselves."

It was among these intricate remains of trenches and dug-outs, round the
fragments of the old chateau, that such things happened. Here, and among
those ghastly fragments of shattered woods that one sees to south and
east--Mametz, Trones, Delville, High Wood--human suffering and heroism,
human daring and human terror, on one side and on the other, reached
their height. For centuries after the battle of Marathon sounds of armed
men and horses were heard by night; and to pry upon that sacred
rendezvous of the souls of the slain was frowned on by the gods. On