Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/52

40 a little trembling and a little sick and not knowing much about it, except that it had to be done, and then stood up to the dragon in the mud of that far land, and waited for him to come on.

I know what England was, before the war. She was a nation which had outgrown her machine, a nation which had forgotten her soul, a nation which had destroyed Jerusalem among her dark Satanic mills.

And then, at a day's notice, at the blowing of a horn, at the cry from a little people in distress, all that was changed, and she re-made her machine, and she remembered her soul, which was the soul of St. George who fought the dragon, and she cried, "I will rebuild Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land or die in the attempt."

Don't think that this was due to this or that man, to Kitchener, or to another, or to another. It was due to something kindling and alive in the nation's soul.

When I first went to the Somme, it was on the day we took Martinpuich and Flers. And on my way up, I passed a battalion going in. They were being played up by the band, to the tune of "It's a long, long trail awinding to the