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Updated: May 9, 2025
In these historic moments, when from the blood-deluged battlefields a new Europe is arising, and the idea of the sovereignty of nations and nationalities is triumphantly marching throughout the Continent, the Czech nation solemnly declares before the world its firm will for liberty and independence on the ground of the ancient historic rights of the Bohemian Crown.
What they cannot stand are repeated, long, hard marches; their legs give out under the load of rifle and pack. But their hearts are in the war, and right there is one very practical reason why they will fight well and they have fought better as they hardened with time and the old French spirit revived in their blood. "Allons, messieurs!" said the tall major, who wanted us to see battlefields.
The mere soldier who fights without a cause is unworthy our respect, but he who falls in defence of sound principles or valued rights deserves a nation's gratitude. Hence the battlefields of the Revolution shall gain new lustre, while Austerlitz and Waterloo shall be dimmed by the lapse of ages. Each nation cherishes and recurs to the leading events in its history.
At the end of April in this year 1915 I went to the most desolate part of the French front, along the battlefields of Champagne, where after nine months of desperate fighting the guns were still at work ceaselessly and great armies of France and Germany were still divided from each other by a few barren meadows, a burnt wood or two, a river bank, a few yards of trenches and a zone of Death.
How many stories of battlefields have been written of late, written to be scanned hastily over the breakfast table or comfortably lounged over in an easy-chair, stories warranted not to shock or disgust, wherein the reader may learn of the glorious achievements of our armies, of heroic deeds and noble self-sacrifice, so that frequently I have heard it said that war, since it produces heroes, is a goodly thing, a necessary thing.
Tie up their souls in official red tape and render their bodies anaemic with clothes, distort them in factories or slay them on battlefields. The doctor is herein the New Mystic at whose feet all must patiently learn the Revelation of Humanity.
Why he was sent, is, however, of little moment to this story, for he never made an investigation, nor, in fact, did he ever reach his destination. Clayton was the type of Englishman that one likes best to associate with the noblest monuments of historic achievement upon a thousand victorious battlefields a strong, virile man mentally, morally, and physically.
Even the most wonderful creations, the great historical plays where thousands fill the battlefields or the most fantastic caprices where fairies fly over the stage, could perhaps be performed in a theater, but this close-up leaves all stagecraft behind.
Of that labour the Somme battlefields we were now to see will always remain in my mind in spite of ruin, in spite of desolation as a kind of parable in action, never to be forgotten. No. 5 April 26th, 1917.
And so passing his life in the saddle and under fire, yet finding leisure to collect the materials for, and to complete the execution of, one of the most valuable and attractive histories of the age, the bold Welshman again and again appears, wearing the same humorous but truculent aspect that belonged to him when he was wont to run up and down in a great morion and feathers on Flemish battlefields, a mark for the Spanish sharpshooters.
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