The 2nd Grenadiers received the highest praise from Lord Cavan for their part in this day's fighting. This battalion had now lost 30 officers and 1,300 men since the beginning of the campaign, and on the following day it was sent back into reserve to recoup and reorganize.
With the German failure of November 17th the first chapter in the Great War may be considered closed. The desperate and all but uninterrupted fighting which, for three months, followed the defence of the Mons canal, was succeeded by a long lull, during which both sides were busily engaged fighting a common foe. The winter of 1914 proved the wettest in the memory of man, and ague, rheumatism, frost-bite, gangrene and tetanus filled the hospitals with little less regularity than had the shot and shell of the autumn. Then came the great battle of Neuve Chapelle, and in another part of the world the grim struggles of the Dardanelles. These are another story, and some day this will be told; but great as may have been--and undoubtedly has been--the glory won in other fields, nothing can ever surpass, as a story of simple, sublime pluck, the history of the first three months of England's participation in the Great War. The word "pluck" is used with intention, for it conveys, perhaps, better than any other word a sense of that indomitable spirit which is superior to every rub of adverse fortune. There were no War Correspondents present with the First Expeditionary Force. There was no wrapping of specially favoured deeds in tinsel for the eyes of a cheap gallery. Even if the wrappers had been present, the general standard was too high for invidious selection. A mole-hill stands out on a plain, but makes no show in the uplands. V.C.'s, it is true, were won; but for every one given a hundred were earned. Military honours are the fruit of recommendation; but when Generals, Colonels, Company Officers and Sergeants are no more, the deed must be its own record; there is none left to recommend.
The grandeur of the doings of those First Seven Divisions lies, it may well be, in their immunity from the play of a cheap flashlight--a flashlight which too often distorts the perspective, and so illuminates the wrong spot. There is a gospel in the very reticence of the records of the regiments concerned--in the dignity with which, without any blare of trumpets, they tell of the daily answer to the call of a duty which balanced them ceaselessly on the edge of eternity. But it is always told as of a simple response to the call of duty, and not as a thing to be waved in the faces of an audience.