going," said the village boy.

"'Dulce et decorum est--'" said the undergraduate.

"I hate the idea, but it's got to be done," said the city--bred man.

So they disappeared from their familiar haunts--more and more of them
as the months passed. They were put into training-camps, "pigged" it on
dirty straw in dirty barns, were ill-fed and ill-equipped, and trained
by hard--mouthed sergeants--tyrants and bullies in a good cause--until
they became automata at the word of command, lost their souls, as it
seemed, in that grinding-machine of military training, and cursed their
fate. Only comradeship helped them--not always jolly, if they happened
to be a class above their fellows, a moral peg above foul-mouthed
slum-dwellers and men of filthy habits, but splendid if they were in
their own crowd of decent, laughter-loving, companionable lads. Eleven
months' training! Were they ever going to the front? The war would be
over before they landed in France... Then, at last, they came.

III

It was not until July of 1915 that the Commander-in-Chief announced
that a part of the New Army was in France, and lifted the veil from the
secret which had mystified people at home whose boys had gone from them,
but who could not get a word of their doings in France.

I saw the first of the "Kitchener men," as we called them then. The
tramp of their feet in a steady scrunch, scrunch, along a gritty road of
France, passed the window of my billet very early in the mornings, and I
poked my head out to get another glimpse of those lads marching forward
to the firing-line. For as long as history lasts the imagination of our
people will strive to conjure up the vision of those boys who, in the
year of 1915, went out to Flanders, not as conscript soldiers, but as
volunteers, for the old country's sake, to take their risks and "do
their bit" in the world's bloodiest war. I saw those fellows day by day,
touched hands with them, went into the trenches with them, heard their
first tales, and strolled into their billets when they had shaken down
for a night or two within sound of the guns. History will envy me that,
this living touch with the men who, beyond any doubt, did in their
simple way act and suffer things before the war ended which revealed
new wonders of human courage and endurance. Some people envied me
then--those people at home to whom those boys belonged, and who in
country towns and villages and suburban houses would have given