The Homing Birds
From all parts of the Empire the old Mother Country saw her homing birds. From Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa came bronzed and hardy men who were the uncles or the cousins or the brothers of the boys who were still storming the recruiting stations at home. After them came wave after wave of young manhood from the far Dominions, and for the first time in history the British Empire, so loosely linked, so scattered, so jealous of restraint or control from the British Government, was seen to be a federation of English-speaking peoples more strongly bound by links of sentiment and kinship in time of peril than any Imperialist of the old school could have forged by autocratic power. They were free peoples enlisting for service, as they believed also, in the cause of civilisation and in the chivalrous defence of peace-loving peoples wantonly attacked by a brutal enemy.
Looking back now with disgust of war and all its filthiness and death in our inmost souls, after years of disillusion with the results of that war, with a more complicated knowledge of its causes back in history; with a legacy of debt; unsettled problems; with new causes of hate, revenge, conflict; with justice no longer all on one side, nor injustice, one must still acknowledge the splendour of that spiritual comradeship which made all classes offer themselves for service and sacrifice to the uttermost, which was death. Not in England, nor in France, nor later in the United States, was there any love of this war for war’s sake. It did not appeal to the imagination of youth as a great adventure. Here and there its call might have come as a liberation from dull existence, or as an escape from private tragedy, or as a primitive blood lust. In very rare cases it appealed to old fighting instincts as a better thing than peace. To most it was hateful. Our young men loved life and loathed the thought of death. They did not want to kill or be killed. They disliked military discipline, dirt, lice, the thought of shell-fire, the foreboding of wounds, blindness, mutilation, and horror. They were the heirs of a civilisation in which there had been a high standard of decency, refinement, comfort, and individual liberty. Each young man when he went to the recruiting office knew in his heart that he was saying good-bye, perhaps for ever, to the things and folk he loved, to all familiar decent things, to the joy of life itself. Yet in millions they went, tide after tide ... and the women hid their tears and their agony as best they could, and found out work to do. In great houses and little homes there was the same spirit. Out of the foulest slums as well as out of fine houses came the heroic soul of a people proud of its history, impelled unconsciously by old loyalties which had been stunted but never killed by social injustice.
That was the passion of England and her sister peoples when war began. Difficult to imagine, impossible to feel again—now!... So much has happened since.