Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/54

42 heard him and they took bottles and broke through the enemy pickets and filled their bottles and brought the water to David. But David would not drink water brought to him at such risk. He said, it would be like drinking blood; so he poured it out to his God.

The men of those armies in the mud are bringing us water at the risk of their lives, the living water of peace, that peace which I think will be the peace that passes all understanding, peace to have our lives again and do our work again and be with our loves again. But if we go back to the world of before the war, that peace won't serve us, it will be a drinking of the blood of all those millions of young men.

I said some time ago, that the only things which matter in war are courage and the love of your comrades. When this war ends, we shall need all our courage and all our comrades, in that re-making of the world, which will follow this destruction. And I hope that when that time comes, you will not think of us again, as cold, or contemptuous, or oppressive, but as a race of men who went down to the death for a friend in trouble, as St. George did, on this day, so many centuries ago.

And in the light of that adventure I hope