asted; for grief is felt not so much for the
want of what we have never known as for the loss of that to
which we have been long accustomed. Yet you who are still of
an age to beget children must bear up in the hope of having
others in their stead: not only will they help you to forget
those whom you have lost, but they will be to the state at
once a reinforcement and a security; for never can a fair or
just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like
his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and
apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have
passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the
thought that the best part of your life was fortunate and
that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame
of the departed. For it is only the love of honour that
never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would
have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness.

"And, now that you have brought to a close your lamentations
for your relatives, you may depart."

These words spoken twenty-three centuries ago ring in our hearts as
though they were uttered yesterday. They celebrate our dead better
than could any eloquence of ours, however poignant it might be. Let us
bow before their paramount beauty and before the great people that
could applaud and understand.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: This and the later passage from Pericles' funeral oration
I have quoted from the late Richard Crawley's admirable translation of
Thucydides' _Peloponnesian War_, now published in the _Temple
Classics_.--A. T. de M.]

* * * * *

THE DEAD DO NOT DIE

XIV

THE DEAD DO NOT DIE

1

When we behold the terrible loss of so many young lives, when we see
so many incarnations of physical and moral vigour, of intellect and of
glorious promise pitilessly cut off in their first flower, we are on
the verge of despair. Never before have the fairest energies and
aspirations of men been flung recklessly and incessantly into an abyss
whence comes no sound or answer. Never since it came into existence
has humanity squandered its treasure, its substance and its prospects
so lavishly. For more than twelve months, on every battlefield, where
the bravest, the truest, the most ardent and self-sacrificing are
necessarily the first to die and where the less courageous, the less
g