nothing short of wonderful. Had the Germans forgotten that we are and
always have been a fighting people? That fact, at any rate, was brought
home to them by the unbroken spirit of the troops who held the line in
France and Flanders in 1915 against all attempts to break through; and
at Neuve Chapelle, or Loos, or a hundred other minor engagements, only
wanted numbers and ammunition--above all ammunition!--to win them the
full victory they had rightly earned.

Of this whole earlier stage, the _junior subaltern_ was the leading
figure. It was he--let me insist upon it anew--whose spirit made the new
armies. If the tender figure of the "_Lady of the Lamp_" has become for
many of us the chief symbol of the Crimean struggle, when Britain comes
to embody in sculpture or in painting that which has touched her most
deeply in this war, she will choose--surely--the figure of a boy of
nineteen, laughing, eager, undaunted, as quick to die as to live,
carrying in his young hands the "Luck" of England.

* * * * *

But with the end of 1915, the first stage, the elementary stage, of the
new Armies came to an end. When I stood, in March 1916, on the
Scherpenberg hill, looking out over the Salient, new conditions reigned.
The Officer Cadet Corps had been formed; a lively and continuous
intercourse between the realities of the front and the training at home
had been set up; special schools in all subjects of military interest
had been founded, often, as we have seen, by the zeal of individual
officers, to be then gradually incorporated in the Army system. Men
insufficiently trained in the early months had been given the
opportunity--which they eagerly took--of beginning at the beginning
again, correcting mistakes and incorporating all the latest knowledge.