Page:Mr. Punch's history of the Great War, Graves, 1919.djvu/297

 And how has England taken the news? In the main soberly and in a spirit of infinite thankfulness, though in too many thousands of homes the loss of our splendid, noble and gallant sons—alas! so often only sons—who made victory possible by the gift of their lives, has made rejoicing impossible for those who are left to mourn them. Yet there is consolation in the knowledge that if they had lived to extreme old age they could never have made a nobler thing of their lives. Shakespeare, who "has always been there before," wrote the

ARMISTICE DAY

epitaph of those who fell in France when he spoke of one who gave

And it is a source of unspeakable joy that our children are safe. For though to most of them their ignorance has been bliss, they have not escaped the horrors of a war in which non-combatants have suffered worse than ever before. Only