TO THE KING OF SPAIN.
Your Majesty, There is a little village in England nestling among wooded hills. It has sent forth its bravest and best from cottage and farm and manor-house to fight for truth and liberty and justice. The news of grievous wounds and still more grievous deaths, of men missing and captured, comes often to that quiet hamlet, and the roll of honour in the little grey stone church grows longer and longer. In the big house on the hill, at sunrise and at sunset, the young Lady of the Manor stands at the bedside of her little son, and hears him lisp his simple prayers to God, and they always end like this:—
"And God bless Father and Mother and Nurse, and send Father back soon from his howwid prison in Germany. And God bless 'specially the dear King of Spain, who found out about Father. Amen."
The kings of the earth have many priceless possessions; they are able to confer upon each other various glittering orders of merit and distinction; but we doubt if any one of them has a dearer possession or a more genuine order of merit than this simple prayer of faith and gratitude offered at sunrise and at sunset on behalf of Your Majesty by the bedside of a little English child.