Do you recall the school map on which the state of Texas was always pink and Rhode Island green? And Canada a region without colour, and therefore without existence?
The map of Europe has become a battle line painted in three colours: yellow for the Belgian Army, blue for the British and red for the French. It is really a double line, for the confronting German Army is drawn in black. It is a narrow line to signify what it does--not only death and wanton destruction, but the end of the myth of civilisation; a narrow line to prove that the brotherhood of man is a dream, that modern science is but an improvement on fifth-century barbarity; that right, after all, is only might.
It took exactly twenty-four hours to strip the shirt off the diplomacy of Europe and show the coat of mail underneath.
It will take a century to hide that coat of mail. It will take a thousand years to rebuild the historic towns of Belgium. But not years, nor a reclothed diplomacy, nor the punishment of whichever traitor to the world brought this thing to pass, nor anything but God's great eternity, will ever restore to one mother her uselessly sacrificed son; will quicken one of the figures that lie rotting along the battle line; will heal this scar that extends, yellow and blue and red and black, across the heart of Western Europe.
It is a long scar--long and irregular. It begins at Nieuport, on the North Sea, extends south to the region of Soissons, east to Verdun, and then irregularly southeast to the Swiss border.
The map from which I am working was coloured and marked for me by General Foch, commander of the French Army of the North, at his headquarters. It is a little map, and so this line, which crosses empires and cuts civilisation in half, is only fourteen inches long, although it represents a battle line of over four hundred miles. Of this the Belgian front is one-half inch, or approximately one-twenty-eighth. The British front is a trifle more than twice as long. All the rest of that line is red--French.
That is the most impressive thing about the map, the length of the French line.
With the arrival of Kitchener's army this last spring the blue portion grew somewhat. The yellow remained as it was, for the Belgian casualties have been two-thirds of her army. There have been many tragedies in Belgium. That is one of them.