Grieved and embittered, they served under new leaders
of another race. Those tired soldiers were like spirited children who
had been playing an exciting game which they thought would be applauded.
And suddenly the best turned out the worst.
Sing, Belgians, sing, though our wounds are bleeding.
writes the poet of Flanders; but the song is no earthly song. It is the
voice of a lost cause that cries out of the trampled dust as it
prepares to make its flight beyond the place of betrayal.
For the Belgian soldiers no longer sang, or made merry in the evening. A
young Brussels corporal in our party suddenly broke into sobbing when he
heard the chorus of "Tipperary" float over the channel from a transport
of untried British lads. The Belgians are a race of children whose
feelings have been hurt. The pathos of the Belgian army is like the
pathos of an orphan-asylum: it is unconscious.
They are very lonely, the loneliest men I have known. Back of the
fighting Frenchman, you sense the gardens and fields of France, the
strong, victorious national will. In a year, in two years, having made
his peace with honor, he will return to a happiness richer than any that
France has known in fifty years. And the Englishman carries with him to
the stresses of the first line an unbroken calm which he has inherited
from a thousand years of his island peace. His little moment of pain and
death cannot trouble that consciousness of the eternal process in which
his people have been permitted to play a continuing part.
Pages:
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101