The Soul of a Nation

by Philip Gibbs

To some women, weeping a little in the crowd after an all-night vigil, he was their boy who went missing one day and was never found till now, though their souls went searching for him through the dreadful places in the night.

To many men among those packed densely on each side of the empty street wearing ribbons and badges on civil clothes, he was a familiar figure, one of their comrades, the one they liked best, perhaps, in the old crowd who into the fields of death went and stayed there with a great companionship.

It was a steel helmet, an old "tin hat," lying there on the crimson of the flag, which revealed him instantly, not as a mythical warrior, aloof from common humanity, a shadowy type of national pride and martial glory, but as one of those fellows, dressed in the drab of khaki, stained by mud and grease, who went into dirty ditches with this steel hat on his head, and in his heart unspoken things which made him one of us in courage and in fear, with some kind of faith, not clear, full of perplexities, often dim in the watchwords of those years of war.

So it seemed to me, at least, as I looked down Whitehall and listened to the music which told us that the Unknown was coming down the road. The band was playing the old "Dead March in Saul" with heavy drumming, but as yet the roadway was clear where it led up to that altar of sacrifice, as it looked, covered by two flags hanging in long folds of scarlet and white.

About that altar-cenotaph there were little groups of strange people, all waiting for the dead soldier. Why were they there, these people? There were great folk to greet the dust of a simple soldier. There was the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, and other clergy in gowns and hoods. What had they to do with the body of the soldier who had gone trudging through the mud and muck like one ant in a legion of ants, unknown to fame, not more heroic, perhaps, than all his pals about him, not missed much when he fell dead between the tangled wire and shell holes? There were great Generals and Admirals, Lord Haig himself, Commander-in-Chief of our armies in France, and Admiral Beatty, who held the seas; Lord French of Ypres, with Horne of the First Army, and Byng of the Third, and Air Marshal Trenchard, who had commanded all the birds that flew above the lines on mornings of enormous battle.

These were high powers, infinitely remote, perhaps, in the imagination of the man whose dust was now being brought toward them. It was their brains that had directed his movements down the long roads which galled his feet, over ground churned up by gunfire, up the duckboards, from which he slipped under his heavy pack, if he were a foot-slogger, and, whatever his class as a soldier, ordained at last the end of his journey, which finished in the grave marked by the metal disc. Unknown in life, he had looked upon these Generals as terrifying in their power "for the likes of him." Sometimes, perhaps, he had saluted them as they rode past. Now they stood in Whitehall to salute him, to keep silence in his presence, to render him homage more wonderful, with deeper reverence, than any General of them all has had.

There were Princes there about the cenotaph, not only of England, but of the Indian Empire. These Indian Rajahs, that old white-bearded, white-turbaned man, with the face of an Eastern prophet, was it possible they, too, were out to pay homage to the unknown British soldier? There was something of the light of Flanders in Whitehall—the strange light that the tattered ruins of the Cloth Hall at Ypres used to shine with through the mist—suffused a little by wan sunlight, white as the walls and turrets of the War Office in the mist of London. The tower of Big Ben was dim through the mist like the tower of Albert Church until it fell into a heap of dust under the fury of gunfire. Presently the sun shone brighter, so that the picture of Whitehall was etched with deeper lines. On all the buildings flags were flying at half-mast.

The people who kept moving about the cenotaph were there for mourning, not for mere pageantry. Grenadier officers who walked about with drawn swords wore crepe on their arms. Presently they passed the word along "Reverse arms!" and all along the line of route soldiers turned over their rifles and bent their heads over the butts. It was when the music of the Dead March came louder up the street.

A number of black figures stood in a separate group, apart from the Admirals and Generals, people of importance, to whom the eyes of the crowd turned, while men and women tiptoed to get a glimpse of them. The Prime Minister and the Ministers and ex-Ministers of Britain were there. Asquith, Lord Curzon and other statesmen, who, in those years of conflict, were responsible for all the mighty effort of the nation, who stirred up its passions and emotions, who organized its labor and service, who won that victory and this peace. I thought the people about me stared at them as though conscious of the task that is theirs, now that peace is the test of victory.

But it was one figure who stood alone as the symbol of the nation in this tribute to the spirit of our dead. As Big Ben struck three-quarters after 10, the King advanced toward the cenotaph, followed by the Prince of Wales, the Prince's two brothers, and the Duke of Connaught, and while others stood in line looking toward the top of Whitehall, the King was a few paces ahead of them, alone, waiting, motionless, for the body of the Unknown Warrior who had died in his service.