The “dear friends and allies” show neither the feeling of comfort nor confidence about which their imperial taskmaster speaks and inquires so glibly.
Bound thus to the wheels of the car of Germany’s destiny, they begin evidently to question the wisdom of their choice. Already Ferdinand’s doubts must have commenced to take definite shape, for the luck of “the great game” has begun to run against him at Monastir, and “crushed and destroyed” Serbia is once more in fighting trim and eager to expel the invader.
The Burial of Private Walker
ON September 9, 1914, Joseph Walker enlisted for the duration of the war; on January 11, 1916, the sea bore his dead body to the dyke at West Capelle. Usually a body washed ashore in this neighborhood is buried at the foot of the dunes, without coffin, without ceremony. But not this time. This afternoon, at 1 P.M., while the northwest wind whistled over Walcheren, the English soldier was buried in the churchyard of West Capelle. Behind the walls of the tower where we sought protection from the gale the burial service was read.
First the vice-consul in the name of England spread the British flag over him who for England had sacrificed his young life. Four men of West Capelle carried the coffin outside and placed it at the foot of the tower, that old gray giant, which has witnessed so much world’s woe, here opposite the sea. The Reverend Mr. Fraser, the English clergyman at Kortryk, himself an exile, said we were gathered to pay the last homage to a Briton who had died for his country. It was a simple, but touching ceremony.
“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live.... He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down.” Thus spoke the voice of the minister and the wind carried his words, and the wind played with the flag of England, the flag that flies over all seas, in Flanders, in France, in the Balkans, in Egypt, as the symbol of threatened freedom—the flag whose folds here covered a fallen warrior. Deeply were we moved when the clergyman in his prayer asked for a “message of comfort to his home.”
Who, tell me, oh silent field,
Who lies buried here? Here?