There is no tale in all the world's mythology finer than the tale that began in August 1914. How future generations will tell the tale, who can say?
But we, for whom Life can never be the same again, can say with all earnestness: "It is the memory that the soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of light that follows the sunken sun--that is all which is worth caring for, which distinguishes the death of the brave or the ignoble."
And, surely, to all those who are fighting, and suffering, and dying for a noble cause, the GOD of gods, the GOD of battles, who is also the GOD of peace, and the GOD of Love, has become an ever near and eternally living entity.
"Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be, They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, oh Lord, art more than they."
[2] John Kelman, D.D., _Among Famous Books_.
"What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river?" _Frontispiece_
She checked her hounds, and stood beside Endymion 28
Swiftly he turned, and found his wife behind him 38
Thus did Psyche lose her fear, and enter the golden doors 52
She stopped, and picked up the treasure 80
Darkness fell on the eyes of Hyacinthus 132
A grey cold morning found her on the seashore 152
One touch for each with a magical wand of the Druids 294
Those who are interested in watching the mental development of a child must have noted that when the baby has learned to speak even a little, it begins to show its growing intelligence by asking questions. "What is this?" it would seem at first to ask with regard to simple things that to it are still mysteries. Soon it arrives at the more far-reaching inquiries--"Why is this so?" "How did this happen?" And as the child's mental growth continues, the painstaking and conscientious parent or guardian is many times faced by questions which lack of knowledge, or a sensitive honesty, prevents him from answering either with assurance or with ingenuity.
As with the child, so it has ever been with the human race. Man has always come into the world asking "How?" "Why?" "What?" and so the Hebrew, the Greek, the Maori, the Australian blackfellow, the Norseman--in a word, each race of mankind--has formed for itself an explanation of existence, an answer to the questions of the groping child-mind--"Who made the world?" "What is God?" "What made a God think of fire and air and water?" "Why am I, _I_?"