Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/60

 "WHY SHOULDN'T THEY, SINCE THEY WERE ENGLISHMEN?" T next flash as of lightning that revealed to us the progress of the drama of the past 365 days came at the end of the first month of the war with the terrible story of Mons. That touched us yet more closely than the tragedy of Belgium, for it seemed at first to be our own tragedy. Between the departure of an army and the first news of victory or defeat there is always a time of exhausting suspense. At what moment our first Expeditionary Force had left England no one quite knew, but after we learned that it had landed in France we waited with anxious hearts and listened with strained ears.

We heard the tramp of the gigantic German army, pouring through the streets of Brussels, fully equipped down to its kitchens, its smoking coffee-wagons, its corps of gravediggers, and, of course, its cuirassiers in burnished helmets that were shining in the autumn sun. The huge, interminable, apparently irresistible multitude! Regiment after regiment, battalion after battalion, going on and on for hours, and even days——the mighty legions of the nation that a few days before had "never so much as dreamt" of war!

At last we had news of our men. Against overwhelming odds they had fought like heroes—why shouldn't they, since they were Englishmen?— 56