ENGLAND IN THE WAR

Evening Star, Issue 16987, 8 March 1919, Page 10

ENGLAND IN THE WAR

ALL TITE EPICS SURPASSED. Mr James ?•!. Beck, a, distinguished American jurist, says: " All the epics of English history, all its mighty past, could bo merged in one, and yet not equal the stupendous total of the four yenrs now ended. Even-where England's white plume, like that of Henry of Navarre, has been in the forefront of every battle. Her soldiers entered the City of Caliphs of Ragdad, still dreaming of the Arabian Nisrhrs. '' They did that which the soldiers of the Lion-hearted lucVr.nl failed to do. They have taken the Holy Sepulchre from the Moslems. Was it not said of old of Arthur: 'And men say that he shall come again, and shall win the Holy Cross? If he slept

iat Avalon. was tt not also Baid that hs would awaken ai the sound of the trumpet 'if need for him was despurate'? " Could a poet's dream have a fairer realisation than when Allenby entered Jerusalem and rescued the place of the Holy Cross? The soldiers of England passed by the ruins of Nineveh and Ba lylon, and pitched their tents in the shadow of the Pyramids. You trod the paths of Cyrus and Darius. The shells from England's warships fell upon Achilles' Tomb and awoke Ilium sleeping its dreamless sleep of centuries. "Your great Dreadnoughts, after centuries of Turkish dominion, have now reconquered the once Christian city of Constantinople. I " Your soldiers crossed the Alps like HanI nibal and Cassar; they trod the Via Triumj phalis of ancient Borne, and in the shadow I of the Alps saved the plains of Lombardy

•rui Tenetia to Italy. They stood on tl» ilarne with the historio poilus of France and beat back the modsra Attila, and his Huns, They defended the banks of the Yser, and nothing in all the history of Great Britain ■will be more glorious to future generations than the 'thin red line" which from 14th October to 10th November held back tho overwhelming masses of Germans and saved the Channel ports, until the Kaiser galloped away and the enemy avalanche was defu at,6l »' • n than Milton's pajre and more wonderful than Shakespeare's dreams."