villages north and south of Thermopylae, which saw the advance of the
Persians and the vigil of the Greeks--a confusion of things read and
heard, rush through one's mind, taking new form and vividness from
this actual scene in which they happened. There, at those cross roads,
broke the charge of the Worcesters, on that most critical day of all
in the First Battle of Ypres, when the fate of the Allies hung on a
thread, and this "homely English regiment," with its famous record in
the Peninsula and elsewhere, drove back the German advance and saved
the line. I turn a little to the south and I am looking towards Klein
Zillebeke where the Household Cavalry charged, and Major Hugh Dawnay
at their head "saved the British position," and lost his own gallant
life. Straight ahead of us, down the Menin road towards Gheluvelt,
came the Prussian Guards, the Emperor's own troops with their master's
eye on them, on November 11th, when the First Division in General
Haig's First Corps, checked them, enfiladed them, mowed them down,
till the flower of the Imperial troops fell back in defeat, never
knowing by how small a fraction they had missed victory, how thin a
line had held them, how little stood between them and the ports that
fed the British Army. Here on these flats to my right were Lord
Cavan's Guards, and on either side of him General Allenby's cavalry,
and General Byng's; while, if one turns to the north towards the
distance which hides Sonnebeke and Bixschoote, one is looking over the
ground so magnificently held on our extreme left by General Dubois and
his 9th French Corps.

Guards, Yorkshires, Lancashires, London Scottish, Worcesters, Royal
Scots Fusiliers, Highlanders, Gordons, Leicesters--all the familiar
names of the old Army are likend with this great story. It was an
English and Scotch victory, the victory of these Islands, won before
the "rally of the Empire" had time to develop, before a single