“ For twenty years there had been growing up in Europe a sense of insecurity; the great Powers had become restless and suspicious of one another, and one Power, Germany, was seriously considering the possibility of some bold stroke which would put her beyond the reach of rivalry. Germany, since her victory over France in 1870, had become a very great and rich nation; she had spread her commerce over the world; and she was anxious to create an empire akin to those of Britain and France. But she began the task too late in the day; she could succeed only at the expense of her neighbours. ”

“ The war was an Allied victory, but let us be very clear what that means. It delivered the world's freedom from a deadly danger, and, though the price was colossal, the cause was worthy. But its positive fruits must be sought elsewhere—in that impulse to international brotherhood caused by the revulsion from the horrors of international strife, and the war's vindication of the essential greatness of our common humanity. Its hero was the ordinary man. Victory was won less by genius in the few than by faithfulness in the many. ”

“ But the qualities which they reveal in the men who shared in them were not confined to those men; they are typical qualities, and were possessed in no less degree by hundreds of thousands of men who fought in obscurity, but whose unrecorded service was equally the cause of victory. A war is won not only by the shining deeds of the few, but also by the faithfulness of the many, though it is the brilliant deeds which stand out most clearly in the world's memory and become the symbols and memorials of all the unrecorded faithfulness. ”

“ An occasional shell, an occasional burst of fire, told that peace was not yet, but there were long spells of quiet, save in the American area. Officers had their watches in their hands, and the troops waited with the same grave composure with which they had fought. Men were too weary for their imaginations to rise to the great moment, for it is not at the time of a crisis, but long afterwards, that the human mind grasps the drama. ”

“ All down the slopes towards Lens lay the tartans—Gordon and Black Watch, Seaforth and Cameron—like the drift left on the shore when the tide has ebbed, marking out a salient of the dead which, under happier auspices, might have been a living spear-point thrust into the enemy's heart. ”

“ But it must always be remembered that these are but incidents; the business of the British Navy is the right use of the sea, and not conquest or display. For it, therefore, victory is not the affair of a day here or a day there, however rousing to the blood: it lies rather in what is neither spectacular nor resounding—in the monotonous but manifold perfection of an indispensable service. ”

“ The Third Battle of Ypres was in many ways the sternest battle ever fought by British troops. It was not a defence, like the two other actions fought at Ypres, but an attack. It was an attack against the success of which the very stars in their courses seemed to fight. Everything—weather, landscape, events elsewhere on the front—conspired to frustrate its purpose. ”

“ Instead of acting thus, he signalled to raise steam and steer east with all speed. The battle-cruisers were now out of harbour, and visible to him; the Glasgow and the Kent were ahead, keeping touch, and Admiral Sturdee made the signal for "General Chase." The five German ships were hull down on the horizon, but the sky was clear; there was a light breeze and a calm sea; visibility was at its maximum: a combination fatal for the pursued. More fatal still was the character of the pursuer: a scientific seaman and tactician, a commander spirited and self-confident, cool and decisive. ”

“ A bank of sand, 5 or 6 feet high, runs at the back, and under its cover the survivors have taken shelter. In the steel side of the ship doors have been cut, which open and disgorge men into the lighters alongside, like some new Horse of Troy. But a tornado of shot and shell rained on her, and of the gallant men who leaped from the lighters to the reef and from the reef to the sea, very few reached the land. Those who did have joined their fellows lying flat under the sand-bank on that beach of death. ”

“ The right of the German assault was already in several places beyond the canal.
The Canadians were for the most part citizen soldiers without previous experience of battle. Among their officers were men from every kind of occupation—lawyers, professors, lumbermen, ranchers, merchants. To their eternal honour they did not break. Overwhelmed by superior numbers of men and guns, and sick to death with the poisonous fumes, they did all that men could do to stem the tide. All night long with an exposed flank they maintained the gossamer line of the British front. ”

“ A certain margin of discretion must be allowed to every admiral in time of war; and at the moment of crisis a man of powerful character and vision may go even further, and take the great responsibility of departing from the line of strict obedience to orders. To Cradock's friends it seems clear that he saw himself and his squadron as representing the prestige of his country in combat with a superior force which might be disabled, if it could not be destroyed; he saw that duty might be fulfilled, and honour and success attained, though victory should be impossible. ”

“ The Turks proclaimed that the retreat had been attended with desperate losses and great captures of guns. The claim was an absurd falsehood. We blew up and left behind the ruins of seventeen old worn-out pieces. Our total casualties at Helles amounted to one man wounded.
To avoid the disastrous consequences of a defeat is, as a military operation, usually more difficult than to win a victory. There is less chance of the high spirit of the attack, for such is the generosity of the human spirit that safety is less of an incentive to effort than the hope of victory. ”

“ The horrors of the four years sickened the world of war, and made thinking men realize that some other way than this monstrous folly must be found of settling disputes between peoples. A League of Nations was one of the first articles of peace, and the League then founded has already, in spite of hindrances and setbacks, and the opposition of an all too narrow patriotism, made itself a power in the world. ”

“ No man who once saw the Australians in action could ever forget them. In the famous landing at Gallipoli, in a dozen desperate fights in that peninsula, in the fight for Pozières during the First Battle of the Somme, at the Third Battle of Ypres, and in the action at Villers-Bretonneux just before the final advance, they had shown themselves incomparable in their fury of assault and in reckless personal valour. ”

“ It will be seen that these tasks, taken altogether, formed a work of which only one Power in the world was capable; while taken separately they appear plainly as seven threads upon every one of which the fate of the common cause depended absolutely. The effort of the Allies in this war was distinguished first by the early heroism of the Belgian, Serbian, and Russian troops; then by the long and desperate endurance of the French, British, and Italian armies; finally, it was reinforced by the large contingent of late-comers from America, and carried to victory by the supreme genius of Foch. ”

“ A light mist fills the air before dawn, but it disappears with the sun, and all day there are clear skies, still seas, and the fresh, invigorating warmth of spring. At the butt end of Gallipoli there are five little beaches, originally nameless, but now for all time to be known by the letters affixed to them on the war maps of the British Army. Beginning from the left, there is Beach Y, and, a little south of it, Beach X. Rounding Cape Tekke, we reach Beach W, where a narrow valley opens between the headlands of Tekke and Helles. ”

“ The First Battle of the Marne may well rank as the greatest, because the most critical, contest of the war. It was decisive in the sense that it defeated Germany's first plan of campaign. She had hoped for a "battle without a morrow"; but the battle had been fought and the morrow was come. She was now compelled to accept the slow war of entrenchments, and to see every week bringing her nearer to the condition of a beleaguered city. The immediate cause of victory was Maunoury's flank attack, which opened the way for the British and Franchet d'Esperey. ”

“ Weather such as had been experienced the year before on the Somme would make of it a morass where transport could scarcely move, and troops would be exposed to the last degree of misery. Moreover, the "tanks," which had been first used on the Somme the year before, and had done wonders at Arras in breaking through barbed wire and silencing machine-guns, could not be used in deep mud. Whatever might be the strength and skill of the enemy, it was less formidable than the obstacles which nature herself might place in the British path. ”

“ Among the great deeds of the war there is one which, though hardly to be described in detail, ranks in truth among the greatest of all. It is a collective deed: the conduct of the whole British Mercantile Marine and the Fishing Fleet—Services not less worthy than the professional Navy and Army to represent the "decent and dauntless people" of these islands. It had been prophesied before the war that after three ships had been sunk by enemy submarines no merchantman would put to sea. ”

“ Most men who fell died for honourable things. They were inspired by the eternal sanctities—love of country and home, comradeship, loyalty to manly virtues, the indomitable questing of youth. Against such a spirit the gates of death cannot prevail. We may dare to hope that the seed sown in sacrifice and pain will yet quicken and bear fruit to the purifying of the world, and in this confidence await the decrees of that Omnipotence to whom a thousand years are as one day. ”

“ If the banks of Scamander had seen men strive desperately with fate, so had the heights of Achi Baba and the loud beaches of Helles. Had the fashion continued of linking the gods with the strife of mankind, what strange myth might not have sprung from this rescue of the British troops in the teeth of winter gales and uncertain seas I It would have been rumoured, as of old at Troy, that Poseidon had done battle for his children. ”

“ Close to the spot where the South Africans made their great stand in the retreat of March 1918, it fell to the lot of troops from another of our Dominions to perform an almost miraculous exploit in the advance eastward to victory. By 30th August, as we have seen, the tide had fully turned. All the British armies were pressing back the enemy over the old Somme battlefield, and that enemy was struggling desperately to hold on to key positions long enough to enable him to retire in good order to the Hindenburg Line, where he hoped to stand on the defence over the winter. ”

“ Every position must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end." Not less solemn was Sir Arthur Currie's charge to the Canadian Corps before they entered the battle. "Under the orders of your devoted officers in the coming battle you will advance or fall where you stand, facing the enemy. To those who fall I say, 'You will not die, but will step into immortality. ”

“ The six days and five nights during which the South African Brigade held the most difficult post on the British front—a corner of death on which the enemy fire was concentrated from three sides at all hours, and into which fresh German troops, vastly superior in numbers, made periodic incursions, only to be broken and driven back—constituted an epoch of terror and glory scarcely equalled in the campaign. There were other positions as difficult, but they were not held so long; there were cases of as protracted a defence, but the assault was not so violent and continuous. ”

“ Germany was prepared for a war which she had always foreseen, and had the greater strength; but if the Allies did not suffer an early defeat, their strength was certain to grow with every month, while that of Germany must decline. But if the Allies were thus to grow in power they must be able to maintain free communications with the outer world and with one another, and for this they must rely on the supremacy of the British fleet. ”

“ There is no more solemn moment in war than the parade of men after a battle. The few hundred haggard survivors in the bright sunshine behind the lines were too weary and broken to realize how great a thing they had done. Sir Douglas Haig sent his congratulations. The Commander of the Fourth Army, Sir Henry Rawlinson, wrote that "In the capture of Delville Wood the gallantry, perseverance, and determination of the South African Brigade deserves the highest commendation." ”

“ For Foch this was to be the crowning battle of the war. If he could break through the German centre, and at the same time turn the German left, defeat would stare the enemy in the face, and there would be victory long before Christmas. If the Americans on the Meuse succeeded, they would make retreat imperative; but if Haig in the centre succeeded, he would make retreat impossible, and disaster must follow. The British were assigned the most difficult part. They had to attack in the area where the enemy defences were most highly organized and his forces strongest. ”