I suppose it would be possible to go on and work out how long it was before he died after he was hit, how long he suffered and wondered, how long he lay before his ghost fell in with that immense still muster in the shades, those millions of his kind who had no longer country to serve nor years of life before them, who had been cut off as he had been cut off suddenly from sights and sounds and hopes and passions. But rather let us think of the motives and feelings that had brought him, in so gallant and cheerful a frame of mind, to this complete sacrifice.
What did the Unknown Soldier of the great war think he was doing when he died? What did we, we people who got him into the great war and who are still in possession of this world of his, what did we persuade him to think he was doing and what is the obligation we have incurred to him to atone for his death, for the life and sunlight he will know no more?
He was still too young a man to have his motives very clear. To conceive what moved him and what he desired is a difficult and disputable task. M. George Nobelmaire at a recent meeting of the League of Nations Assembly declared that he had heard French lads whisper “Vive la France!” and die. He suggested that German boys may have died saying, “Colonel, say to my mother, ‘Vive l’Allemagne!’” Possibly. But the French are trained harder in patriotism than any other people. I doubt if it was the common mood. It was certainly not the common mood among the British.
I cannot imagine many English boys using their last breath to say “Rule Britannia!” or “King George for Merry England!” Some of our young men swore out of vexation and fretted; some, and it was not always the youngest, became childish again and cried touchingly for their mothers; many maintained the ironical flippancy of our people to the end; many died in the vein of a young miner from Durham with whom I talked one morning in the trenches near Martinpuich, trenches which had been badly “strafed” overnight. War, he said, was a beastly job, “but we’ve got to clean this up.” That is the spirit of the lifeboat man or fireman. That is the great spirit. I believe that was far nearer to the true mind of the Unknown Soldier than any tinpot Viva-ing of any flag, nation or empire whatever.