Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/53

Rh land of my dreams." It wasn't a long trail, nor a winding trail to most of those men, but only a few miles of a quite straight road to le Sars, where I found their graves afterwards.

That tune is perhaps the favourite tune of the army today. The army knows that it is a long, long trail, and a winding one, to the land of our dreams.

And if in this war it has seemed, that we have done little, if it has seemed, that we retreated at Mons, and only just held at Ypres, and withdrew from Gallipoli, and stood still at Salonika, and were driven back at St. Quentin and are hard pressed on the Ridge, I think you somehow feel, that with it all, no matter how long the trail is, nor how winding, nor how bitter nor how bloody, we'll stick it, as long as we've a light to go by, even if we're not so clever as some, nor so attractive.

And what is the land of our dreams? We must think of that.

In the Bible there is the story of King David, who was a very generous and very bloody yet very noble man. And David, besieging a city in the summer, was faint from thirst, and he said, "I wish I had some of the water from that pool by the city gate." And three men