A correspondent writing from the front describes the expression in the eyes of the friendly officer, who has been his guide, as he pointed out the myriad crosses of the burial-ground. “He looked envious,” he says, and adds that he noticed that all out there “speak with envy of the dead.”
Is not the nation’s honour sharpened to its finest point when the ideal of its manhood is to die for the country? _Dulce et decorum...._
We were very glad, nevertheless, when, in spite of his repeated applications to return to his own men, H. was ordered to take a command in the Persian Gulf. The link that binds a man to comrades with whom he has shared every possible danger and hardship, to those who have faced death with him, whom he has himself led on to peril and agony, the while they have been to him as his children--such a link is indeed one that is hard to break! Their peril has been his; their glory is his pride.
“If I can single out one regiment for special praise,” said the Commander-in-Chief, “it is the Worcesters.”
“I consider the Worcesters saved Europe on that day.”
It is no wonder that H. should be proud of them; that the thousand fibres should draw him back to them.
But, when the summons came, he was told “to prepare for a hot climate.” And then, of all strange things, or so it seemed to us, we found that his destination was Persia. The Garden of Eden! Further, it was rumoured, the objective was likely to be Bagdad. It sounded like a fairy tale. He promised us Attar of Roses; and indeed, we think, carpets. And a flippant niece wrote to him that she was sure that by a little perseverance he could find a magic one, and come sailing across the sky some night after duty, like the merchant in the Arabian nights. She added: “And do bring me a hanging garden, if you can.” But when the parting came it was a very cruel reality. It’s a far cry to Persia!
He started on the day of the sinking of the _Lusitania_; a date branded on the history of the world till the end of all time. The two who had gone to fetch him and brought him home--so contented in their tender anxiety that he was safely wounded--saw him on board the great liner.
Many Indians returning to Bombay, a few officers ordered to his own destination, a batch of nurses for Malta, and one or two ladies hurrying to their sons wounded in the Dardanelles--these were all his fellow-passengers.