Page:Her Majesty's Army.djvu/7

 HER MAJESTY'S ARMY, I. CAVALRY. " WITH such an army I could go anywhere and do anything." Such were the words of one who, on that terrible Sunday at Waterloo, proved them to be no idle boast; and for all—English, Irish, Scotch—whose pride it is to belong to the mightiest Empire the world has ever known, they represent an accepted, indubitable fact. The British army can go anywhere and do anything; whether it be beneath the glowing skies of India, amongst the scorching sands of Egypt, the tangled brush of New Zealand, the strange, historic, unfamiliar temples of China and Japan, the terrible dreariness of Crimean snows—no region is too remote, no task too hard. "We are apt to smile at the seeming anticlimax of the boast made two centuries ago— "Under the tropic is our language spoke, And part of Flanders hath received our yoke." But after all it was no empty one, and foreshadowed, though in a faint degree, the sober fact of to-day. In Europe, the English flag floats over the frowning fortress of Gibraltar, the impregnable defences of Malta, the classic hills of Cyprus; in Asia the Empire of India owns as sovereign the Queen of England, and the spicy breezes of Ceylon's isle fill and wave the folds of her standard; in America, "the loyal pines of Canada" sway above a populace British to the heart's core; in Africa, the Cape of Good Hope welcomes the emigrant to land which his forefathers took possession of nearly a hundred years ago; in Australia and New Zealand has a new England sprung up, prosperous, with the strong, priceless heritage of the mother land, and the bounteous promise of its own stalwart youth. Over nearly a seventh of the habitable globe, over