the desolate craters in front of Cuinchy and Le Plantin. In their
patience and fortitude amid these wastes lies their strongest title to
the gratitude of Christendom.

Peace is already dimming men's memories of the War as effectually as the
grass is covering the ruins of devastated France. The Manchester
Territorial is back at his job. The broken home no longer feels the same
first poignancy of grief. "Man goeth forth unto his work and unto his
labour until the evening," and it is a good thing for the world that he
does. Nevertheless, all men and women who cherish associations with the
7th Manchesters will, I think, read and re-read Captain Wilson's work
for many years to come. From amid all the hardships and miseries of
soldiering which the Englishman readily forgets, the light of
self-sacrifice shines upon the human race with a never fading beauty.
Herein lies the true romance of war. As the reader turns over the
ensuing pages he cannot but realise something of the cumulative drudgery
and hardships which these men endured for their country.

To the 7th Manchesters themselves they mean much more. The very place
names of our warfare recall the memory of the comrades whom we have
loved and lost, the early enthusiasms which we shall never feel
again:--Khartoumn, Gallipoli, Shallufa, Suez, Ashton-in-Sinai, Coxyde,
Nieuport, Aire, Béthune, Ypres, Bucquoy, Havrincourt. When we are very
old, many of us will still conjure up the tune of "Keep the Home Fires
Burning" on the lips of tired men beneath the stars on Geoghegan's
Bluff; the thud of the shovel falling upon the sand ridges of Sinai
while a blazing sun rose over Asia; the refrain of "Annie Laurie" sung
by candle-light in some high roofed barn behind the lines in Belgium.

I hear them now.