Page:Our Girls.pdf/136

 courage in both hands, and say we shall be a happier people at this time next year. I think the great Peace will come before that, and when it comes it will be righteous and authentic and bring tidings of great joy not to Britain and her Allies only, but to the whole body of mankind, who have lived so long in the deep bondage of an unnatural fear. I think next Christmas will see the war ended, our soldiers coming home, and the world lit up afresh as by a flaming torch. I think it will be worth ten years of life to live to see the morning of that mighty day. May I not venture to describe it as I see it?

I see the great news of the new peace flying over Britain, not as the news of the peace of 1815 did, to the galloping o horses and the sounding of trumpets, by stage-coaches from Lombard Street, like spokes from the hub of a wheel, down the dark high roads to Bath, to Portsmouth, to Manchester, to York, to Edinburgh, but in one instant through the air to every corner of the kingdom, so that if