Flanders, through the sands of Palestine or Mesopotamia, or up the rugged steeps of Gallipoli, and too many of them shall never take the way homeward any more. Our hearts know what these barren patches mean, for the shadow of their barrenness falls far across the lives we live. Some day the grass will grow again and happiness return to some of us, but too much is gone that can never return.
Yet in our hearts, too, we know on an afterthought, that
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast—nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
These men, these boys, who died that Freedom might live and that the higher hopes of mankind should not be trampled under by the lower, knew why they made the great sacrifice, and made it willingly in such a cause. And it is part of our pride in them that in this they have done nothing new, have taken no new way, but have trodden instinctively and worthily in a beaten track; their courage, chivalry, love of justice, are theirs by inheritance,
