all parts of the land that she has devoted to the uses of the sick and the
wounded, she has given thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands of her
choicest youth, who have willingly surrendered their lives for the great
cause; young men of the noblest pedigree, without number, by their lives
and deaths have attested their right to be regarded as the flower of the
British youth; the professional classes and the universities have emptied
their halls so that the men of Oxford and Cambridge might take their
places with the rest, and offer up their lives as willing sacrifices, and
all the men of England of every degree have joined with them and been
welcomed as brothers in the ranks for the great sacrifice. The rank and
file, who are fighting and dying for England, are fighting in the same
spirit as their leaders and falling by the hundred thousand for the
nation's salvation. How exactly Emerson's noble verse fits them:

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'
The youth replies, 'I can!'"

No one who reads this book can doubt for a moment, I think, that ENGLAND
HAS DONE ALL SHE COULD, has put forth efforts worthy of her history and of
her great traditions, that her national spirit is invincible, her national
resources inexhaustible, and that her irresistible will to conquer and to
rescue freedom and civilization for all the world from this terrible
contest, is absolutely sure to win.

All America is vastly indebted to Mrs. Ward for her triumphant success in
proving that England has done her best and for making this great story so
clear.