Ordinary anniversaries lead to retrospect: after a year of the greatest of all wars it is natural to indulge in a stock-taking of the national spirit, and comforting to find that, in spite of disillusions and disappointments, the alternation of exultations and agonies, the soul of the fighting men of England remains unshaken and unconquerable. Three of the Great Powers of Europe espoused the cause of Liberty a year ago; now there are four, and the aid of Italy in engaging and detaching large Austrian forces enables us to contemplate with greater equanimity a month of continuous Russian withdrawal, and the tragic loss of Warsaw and the great fortresses of Novo-Georgievsk and Brest-Litovsk. And if there is no outward sign of the awakening of Germany, no slackening in frightfulness, no abatement in the blasphemous and overweening confidence of her Ruler and his War-lords who can tell whether they have not moments of self-distrust?
August 4th, 1915.
Now with the full year Memory holds her tryst,
Heavy with such a tale of bitter loss
As never Earth has suffered since the Christ
Hung for us on the Cross.
If God, O Kaiser, makes the vision plain;
Gives you on some lone Calvary to see
The Man of Sorrows Who endured the pain
And died to set us free--
How will you face beneath its crown of thorn
That figure stark against the smoking skies,
The arms outstretched, the sacred head forlorn,
And those reproachful eyes?
How dare confront the false quest with the true,
Or think what gulfs between the ideals lie
Of Him Who died that men may live--and you
Who live that man may die?
Ah, turn your eyes away; He reads your heart;
Pass on and, having done your work abhorred,
Join hands with JUDAS in his place apart,
You who betrayed your Lord.
It is the way of modern war that we know little of what is going on, least of all on sea. Some of our sailormen have had their chance in the Heligoland Bight, off the Dogger Bank and Falkland Isles, and in the Dardanelles. It is well that we should remember what we owe to the patient vigil of their less fortunate comrades, the officers and men of the Grand Fleet, and to the indefatigable and ubiquitous activities of the ships officially classified as "Light Cruisers (Old)":
AFTER ONE YEAR
From Pole unto Pole, all the oceans between,
Patrolling, protecting, unwearied, unseen,
By night or by noonday, the Navy is there,
And the out-of-date cruisers are doing their share,
The creaky old cruisers whose day is not done,
Built some time before Nineteen-hundred-and-one.
At any rate, we know for certain that British submarines have made their way into the Baltic, a "sea change" extremely disquieting to the Germans, who, for the rest, have suffered in a naval scrap in the Gulf of Riga with the Russians. On the Western front our troops are suffering from two plagues--large shells and little flies. These troubles have not prevented them from scoring a small though costly success at Hooge. From Gallipoli comes the news of fresh deeds of amazing heroism at Suvla Bay and Anzac.
The war of Notes goes on with unabated energy between Germany and the U.S.A. At home a brief period has been set to the pernicious activities of importunate inquisitors by the adjournment of the House till mid-September. "Dr. Punch" is of opinion that the Mother of Parliaments is sorely in need of a rest and needs every hour of a seven weeks' holiday. In the Thrift campaign, which has now set in, everybody expects that everybody else should do his duty; and the universal eruption of posters imploring us to subscribe to the War Loan indicates the emergence of a new Art--that of Government by advertisement. To the obvious appeals to duty, patriotism, conscience, appeals to shame, appeals romantic and even facetious are now added. It may be necessary, but the method is not dignified. All that can be said is that "Govertisement," or government by advertisement, is better than Government by the Press, a new terror with which we are daily threatened.