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But even if I do not, even if I die, as thousands of the brave men here are dying, I shall be glad to lay down my life for the cause of honour, and liberty, and peace. "I wonder if it is possible for you to get across to France or Belgium and get near the fighting-line? I wish you could. There are stories I could tell you that would set your heart on fire. Come, if you can!"
Only a sprinkling of the men who were there are in the Anzac units to-day. But they are the officers and the N.C.O.'s, and that means a great deal. We have been here long enough now to discover the differences between this front and the old fighting-line in Gallipoli. The rain has been heavier in March than for thirty-five years, and April until yesterday seemed almost as bad.
I think there were many millions of men on each side of the fighting-line who thanked God because President Wilson had come with a wisdom greater than the folly which was ours to lead the way to an honorable peace and a new order of nations. I was one of them... Months passed, and there was continual fighting, continued slaughter, and no sign that ideas would prevail over force.
The first view was that Volunteers of any kind were a superfluous encumbrance at a moment when the supreme need was for men in the actual fighting-line; that encouragement of Volunteers gave an excuse for shirking war; and further, that Volunteers outside the State's control were a danger; that the danger was increased when there were two rival Volunteer forces which might fly at each other's throats; and that it was a matter for satisfaction that one of these forces should be very greatly inferior to the other in point of arms and equipment, so that considerations of prudence would lessen the chance of collision.
Year by year England sends out fresh drafts for the first fighting-line, which is officially called the Indian Civil Service. These die, or kill themselves by overwork, or are worried to death or broken in health and hope in order that the land may be protected from death and sickness, famine and war, and may eventually become capable of standing alone.
As one looks out to-day upon the Italian fighting-line, where English troops are interwoven with those of Italy and France for the defense of the Lombard and Venetian plain against the attack of Italy's old and bitter enemy, an attack in which are concerned not only the fortunes of Italy, but those also of the British Empire, I wonder what touch of prophecy, what whisper from a far-off day, suggested these words written eighteen years ago?
Time, then, was required in which to gather French forces, and time in which to rush them over the rails, and by motor-transport along the roads, to the neighbourhood of Verdun, and then to push them up to the fighting-line.
We knew we would capture Santiago, but exactly how we would do it we could not tell. The failure to establish any depot for provisions on the fighting-line, where there was hardly ever more than twenty-four hours' food ahead, made the risk very serious.
He had missed the first onrush of the German Army and the Great Retreat, for he had been what they called "in reserve," kept for nearly three full weeks close to the French port where he had landed. Then there came a long, trying silence, till a letter written by his mother to Mrs. Otway revealed the fact that he was at last in the fighting-line, on the river Aisne.
These men were of a class who run for cover before a battle begins, and can never be kept in the fighting-line except with the bayonet in the small of their backs. Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness.
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