passionately patriotic and saw very clearly and quickly the long issues
involved to the country they loved. The fate of Belgium had a far more
moving influence with the ranks of the new army than the officer class,
I think, quite realised. Indeed, with the later recruits I gathered the
impression that indignation at the German atrocities in Belgium was the
prevailing motive in their enlistment. There can be no question in the
mind of any one who worked intimately among the men of the new armies in
the autumn and winter of 1914 that the invasion of Belgium was the one
shocking stroke that rallied the country as one man, and that nothing
else in the situation, as it was known, would have done this. The people
as a whole did not grasp the imminence of the German menace. Of the
torturing pressure on the thin khaki line that barred the pass to the
sea we knew nothing. Day by day and night by night we were regaled with
stories of 'heavy German losses' and futile tales of the deaths of
German princes; neither our manhood nor our imagination was fully
captured, for of the almost unbelievable heroism of our brothers we were
never told. Perhaps the silence was justified; the enemy might have
learned how near they were to victory, and with a supreme effort have
broken through. At all events, unavoidably or not, the youth of the
country as a whole was never, throughout this winter, really roused to
its best. All the more honour to the first hundred thousand!


III

_Ubique_

After this war is over no soldier can ask 'What does the Christian
Church do for me?' The members of the Church, acting through its
organisation, or more frequently through other organisations of which