ON THE RUE DU BOIS
(Written at Sailly, France, 1915)
O pallid Christ within this broken shrine,
Not those torn Hands and not that Heart of Thine
Have given the nations blood to drink like wine.
Through weary years and 'neath the changing skies
Men turned their back on those appealing Eyes
And scorned as vain Thine awful Sacrifice.
Kings with their armies, children in their play,
Have passed unheeding down this shell-ploughed way:
The great world knew not where its true strength lay.
In pomp and luxury, in lust of gold,
In selfish ease, in pleasures manifold,
"Evil is good, good evil", we were told.
Yet here, where nightly the great flare-lights gleam,
And murder stalks triumphant in their beam,
The world has wakened from its empty dream.
At last, O Christ, in this strange, darkened land,
Where ruined homes lie round on every hand,
Life's deeper truths men come to understand.
For lonely graves along the countryside,
Where sleep those brave hearts who for others died,
Tell of life's union with the Crucified.
And new light kindles in the mourner's eyes,
Like day-dawn breaking through the rifted skies,
For Life is born through life's self-sacrifice.
Frederick George Scott
From "In the Battle Silences"—By permission of the Author and The Musson Book Company, Limited, Toronto
EXTRACT FROM "FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR
OWN PART"
(February, 1916)
The English navy was mobilized with a rapidity and efficiency as great as that of the German army. It has driven every warship except an occasional submarine, and every merchant ship of Germany off the seas, and has kept the ocean as a highway of life not only for England, but for France, and largely also for Russia. In all history there has been no such gigantic and successful naval feat accomplished as that which the seamen and shipwrights of England have to their credit during the last eighteen months. It was not originally expected that England would have much to do on the continent; and although her wisest sons emphatically desired that she should be ready to do more, yet this desire represented only a recognition of the duty owed by England to herself. To her Allies she has more than kept the promise she has made. She has given Russia the financial assistance that none but she could give; her money effort has been unparalleled in all previous history. Eighteen months ago no Frenchman would have expected that in the event of war England would do more than put a couple of hundred thousand men in France. She has already put in a million, and is training and arming more than double that number. Her soldiers have done their duty fearlessly and well; they have won high honour on the fields of horror and glory; they have shown the same gallantry and stubborn valour that have been so evident in the armies of France and Russia. Her women are working with all the steadfast courage and self-sacrifice that the women of France have shown. Her men from every class have thronged into the army. Her fisher folk, and her seafarers generally, have come forward in such numbers that her fleet is nearly double as strong as it was at the outset of the war. Her mines and war factories have steadily enlarged their output, and it is now enormous, although many of the factories had literally to build from the ground up, and the very plant itself had to be created.
Coal, food, guns, munitions, are being supplied with sustained energy. From across the sea the free Commonwealths of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and the Indian Empire, have responded with splendid loyalty, and have sent their sons from the ends of the earth to do battle for liberty and civilization. Of Canada I can speak from personal knowledge. Canada has faced the time that tries men's souls, and with gallant heroism she has risen level to the time's need. Mighty days have come to her, and she has been equal to the mighty days. Greatness comes only through labour and courage, through the iron willingness to face sorrow and death, the tears of women and the blood of men, if only thereby it is possible to serve a lofty ideal. Canada has won that honourable place among the nations of the past and the present which can only come to the people whose sons are willing and able to dare and do and die at need. The spirit shown by her sister-commonwealths is the same. High of heart and undaunted of soul the men and women of the British Islands and of the whole British Empire now front the crisis that is upon them.
Theodore Roosevelt
From "Fear God and Take Your Own Part"—Copyright, 1916. By permission of George II. Doran Company
TO THE MEMORY OF FIELD-MARSHAL
EARL KITCHENER
Born, June 24th, 1850
Died on Service, June 5th, 1916
Soldier of England, you who served her well
And in that service, silent and apart,
Achieved a name that never lost its spell
Over your country's heart;—
Who saw your work accomplished ere at length
Shadows of evening fell, and creeping Time
Had bent your stature or resolved the strength
That kept its manhood prime;—
Great was your life, and great the end you made,
As through the plunging seas that whelmed your head
Your spirit passed, unconquered, unafraid,
But not by death that spell could pass away
That fixed our gaze upon the far-off goal,
Who, by your magic, stand in arms to-day
A nation one and whole,
Now doubly pledged to bring your vision true
Of darkness vanquished and the dawn set free
In that full triumph which your faith foreknew
But might not live to see.
Sir Owen Seaman
Reprinted by permission of London "Punch"