Not many days after, the lesson was strengthened by the sight of heroes marching through an
admiring, worshipful multitude. I hadn't realised
that the war already had its memorial days. On
that morning the few that remained of the
Australian and New Zealand troops who made the
heroic and tragic landing at Gallipoli were
gathered in London for what will always be called
in their honour Anzac Day.
It brought the war very close to step into the Strand and to see above the bobbing heads of a nearly silent crowd the brown campaign hats with coloured bands of the New Zealanders. There were so many spectators—women, old men, young girls, and a multitude of youths in uniform—that it was difficult at first to get close to the marchers. At the curb finally, one no longer needed to probe that silence of the great crowd, singular, a little startling. The faces of the soldiers, beneath a bright animation, were serious and full of remembrance. The brisk, round notes of the bugles and the tapping of drums were unlike such sounds as we remember them on Fifth Avenue or in the armouries of a land at peace. With a lithe rhythm the thin brown line came on. It was a survival. With it marched ghosts, an infinite army of shadows—once such men as these, and familiar and friendly to these eyes which
