"When I behold the tense and tragic night
Shrouding the earth in vague, symbolic gloom,
And when I think that ere my fancy's flight
Has reached the portals of the inner room
Where knightly ghosts, guarding the secret ark
Of brave romance, through me shall sing again,
Death may ingulf me in eternal dark,—
Still I have no regret nor poignant pain.
Better in one ecstatic, epic day
To strike a blow for Glory and for Truth,
With ardent, singing heart to toss away
In Freedom's holy cause my eager youth,
Than bear, as weary years pass one by one,
The knowledge of a sacred task undone."
Lieutenant Dinsmore Ely was killed in France in the aviation service on April 21, 1918. On April 29 his father, Dr. James O. Ely of Winnetka, Ill., received a letter from him written just before his death. The letter ends thus:
"And I want to say in closing, If anything should happen to me, let's have no mourning in spirit or in dress. Like a Liberty Bond, it is an investment, not a loss, when a man dies for his country. It is an honor to a family, and is that the time for weeping?"
"It is an investment, not a loss, when a man dies for his country." Here is the spirit of the trenches: it is the spirit that cries, "With this I give myself." It is sacrifice, and sacrifice is the spirit of victory.
Chapter X
THE GREATEST MOTHER IN THE WORLD
I saw her first in a great base hospital in the north of England. Her ward was filled with wounded British soldiers. In writing of her one hesitates to use the only word in the language of our race that expresses the adoration of those young heroes as their eyes companioned her from cot to cot. One hesitates to use the word because it has been associated with so many small and trifling things, because it has become such a commonplace. But it is the only word: they worshipped her.
What I saw in their eyes that day I have seen in my mother's eyes as she arose from prayer; I saw it once in the eyes of a battle-widow kneeling before a shrine in Paris; I caught a glimpse of it in the eyes of my son when, leaning against the cradling embrace of his mother's arms, he looked for an instant with a baby's questioning into his mother's face; I beheld it in supernatural glory near the fortress city of Toul when a soldier of my country, a lad in years but a veteran in sacrifice, in the delirium of his suffering whispered that name which is above all other names in the vocabulary of the dying. It is not the tribute of either sex exclusively, nor of any particular age; it is the supreme testimony of the human soul, and to those who behold it a fleeting glimpse of the things that are "hid with Christ in God."
This woman was not old, and she was not young. Her hair was white, and her cheeks were the vivid hue of her native land. She was not beautiful by the artist's test, but it is seldom given to any one to study a more attractive face. A stranger would always see first and remember last her eyes and her mouth; why, I cannot say, for as I write I find it impossible to describe them. She was just above the medium in height, athletic of figure; and she moved about with the unhurried swiftness of the born nurse.