On the Fringe of the Great Fight

by George Gallie Nasmith

To be in London, not sixty miles from the firing line, in a city firmly convinced of coming Zeppelin raids and prepared for naval raids, and find the press discussing the plays and the music of the day seemed strange indeed. It must have made the men in the trenches nearly mad to realize that while they were fighting under the most adverse conditions day by day and being killed in the defence of their homeland, there were 30,000 slackers at one football match at home.

England is a strange country. We felt that perhaps if a force of 50,000 or 100,000 Germans would land in England she would waken from the long sleep she had slept since her shores had been invaded by William the Conqueror. 30,000 men could watch a football match at the very moment the British line in Flanders was actually so thin that if the Germans had tried to advance there was nothing to stop them. Fortunately, for the moment, the enemy, too, was exhausted and before he could recuperate our reinforcements had arrived.

The dying session of parliament was worth going to see; Bonar Law, Beresford, McKenna, and Winston Churchill spoke. The latter made his defence of the Navy which was as famous and as reassuring to the country as Kitchener's statement in the house of Lords the day before had been in regard to the Army. Mr. Bonar Law was the smoothest of the speakers; Churchill gave one the impression of having much force of character, despite his stuttering, but Bonar Law was the man you felt could be trusted to look upon any proposition with coolness and play the safe game for his country.

When the House was adjourned until February 2nd, there were very few members left. This closing of the House of Parliament after a three weeks' session in war time and after the raising of billions of dollars of war loan by public subscription was remarkable for its simplicity. There was no fuss or feathers, no music or formality. The members just strolled out—those that happened to be there.

From the great window of the Savoy Hotel, I watched the funeral of Lord Roberts, the national hero. The Thames embankment could be seen, but, though a garden of not fifty yards in width separated the building from the embankment, the fog was thick enough to make the people as indistinct as though they had been half a mile away. Beyond the embankment the grey wall of fog shut out everything but an occasional gull which flitted out for a moment and disappeared again.

The embankment road was lined with Highland soldiers in khaki greatcoats and Scotch caps, drawn up in quarter companies, while on either side of the road stood a solid black wall of humanity—waiting, some with umbrellas up to protect them from the fine drizzle. Not a hundred yards away Cleopatra's needle stood like a tall sentinel in the mist, and one wondered what tales of battle and heroic deeds it could tell, if it could speak. One could imagine that during the long ages it must have witnessed other magnificent funerals of kings and heroes, and smiled, perhaps, at the brevity of human life.

The silence was broken by the long roll of kettledrums, and the strains of Chopin's funeral march floated to us through the heavy air; sadder than ever before they seemed to me, and yet, too, more dignified than ever before. Then along the embankment, past Cleopatra's needle, the head of the procession burst up through the fog as though coming out of the ground.

The band came first, followed by the London Scottish with arms reversed, the brass butts of the guns visible before the soldiers themselves, making a curious reflection in the fog.

Then followed other regiments of infantry, squadrons of horses, Indian troops with strangely-laden mules, guns; then, more cavalry. The horses sent out great spurts of steam from their nostrils into the cold raw air.

Then a space, and the funeral car drawn by six horses with riders approached. The coffin, covered with a Union Jack, looked very small, and a big lump came into my throat as I realized that this was all that remained of the great little soldier, whose motor car not three weeks before at Salisbury Plain had stopped beside mine, and whose deeply seamed and furrowed face I had studied with the greatest interest, remarking then that he looked very, very old.