A "REMEMBRANCE DAY."

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 13, 15 July 1905, Page 11

A "REMEMBRANCE DAY."

Under the head of "A Day of Remembrance for all Britons," a correspondent of the Spectator ("Duke Domum ") gives expression, to a feeling which is shared by thousands of his countrymen scattered over the world.

•Ho writes : — Here, on my table in Southern California, I have a bit of lilac from a friend's garden. The sight and the scent of it have given me a .particularly keen, sweet stab of homesickness; and I wonder whether it is not the case that all over the northern half of the world .there, are thousands of exiled Britons wfro feel each year at this eeasoJi, as I do, the push of the fresh spring growth of love an-d loyalty to their homeland. There will bo no lack, in any land or. season, of sights or sounds or occasions that will have the power to draw the magic veil across 'the exile's eyes. Nor will time, nor new friendships, nor new allegiances avail to cut or wear the long, 6trong cable ; but after many years of absence, he will still have sacred moments when, unawares, he will h& ript suddenly back home. When tho tall eucalyptus is blown in the hot wind, his anointed eyes see rainladen poplars swaying over a deep Surrey lane, and tho rattle of the leaves seems to 'him the patter of the big drops tossed down by tho gusty southwester. The sight of far-off hills across the level valley takes him back, perhaps, to that long summer evening when last he lay out on Dartmoor edge and watched the solemn splendour come slowly down and wreathe the lonely itors with a sweet and wistful glory. In the mountains, when the noiseless billows of .tho white sea-fog flood into fhw canon below him, 'he is plucked back for a happy sad instant to stand at dawn on Sasrwfell, looking down on mist-hidden Wastwater. And to give an instance of how the commonplaceness of tho commonplace is transfigured away by this everyday magic, .ihe smell of merely a pile of pine-boaids lately sent me by a before unknown air-path, thirty-four years and eight thousand miles long, straight from the midst of this dusty city, back to a very precis© spot on a hill that overlooks a pleasant ted town among tho Lakes, and to the occasion of my first learning tho points of the compass. To many of us, no doubt, the Christmas season brings homo most to mind. I remember it occurred to mo as I sat writing Christmas letters here in California, what a fascinating task it would be to imagine and traco tho genesis and exodus of those tons and sheaves of letters that in tho one, two, three day 3 before Christmas would bo unloaded upon tho littlo island in the North Atlantic, and then in due time would settle down, a blessed black-and-white^ snowstorm, on tha Christmas breakfast tables of the people at Home. I thought, as I was writing my letters — there nvnst bo dog-trains running over starlit Hudson's Bay trails; there must be stages lurching down Australian mountain-glades ; there might be, even, camels — descendants in true pedigree of those three bestridden of' the Magipacing over Asian or African plains; there must be trains thrashing and steamships shearing through every known continent and ocean; all bringing mails from heard and xmheard of places, and all converging on the Briton's magnetic pole, there to " dump " t'lleir cargoes of precious ointment. Just occurs to' me the incident in " Westward Ho!" wherein Ainyais Leisrh and other four worthies of Devon, with Mrs. Leigh and ths populace of tho town and neighbourhood of Bideford, gentlo and simple, came all, one November morning of 1580, to Bideford Church, "to give God thanks." My illustration is indirect ; but often I find .myself wishing, wishing deeply, that there were a day 6et apart — a Sunday—^as an annual Day of Remembrance between Britons at Homo and Britons abroad — whether in the colonies, or, like- myself, naturalised among other nations, would not matter — a day whe-n Britoiis and British-born, high and low, rich and poor together, might, in their own places of worship — church or dhapel or camp — remember one another as members of a family.