Chapter I: Have a Rendezvous with Death

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade;
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air--
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land,
And close my eyes and quench my breath--
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed on silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear--
But I've a rendezvous with Death,
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

[E]ALAN SEEGER
_From "Poems by Alan Seeger"--Copyright,
1916, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
By permission of the Publishers_

FOOTNOTE:

[E] Killed in action at Belloy-en-Santerre, July, 1916

IN MEMORIAM

Let pride with grief go hand in hand:
They join the hallowed hosts who died
In battle for their lovely land:
With light about their brows they ride.

Young hearts and hot, grey heads and wise,
Good knights of all the years foregone,
Faith in their England in their eyes,
Still ride they on, still ride they on!

By altars old their banners fade
Beneath dear spires; their names are set
In minster aisle, in yew-tree shade:
Their memories fight for England yet.

Let pride with grief go hand in hand,
Sad Love with Patience side by side;
In battle for their lovely land
Not vainly England's sons have died!

And well may pride this hour befit;
For not since England's days began
More fiery clear the word was writ:
Who dies for England dies for Man!

HELEN GRAY CONE
_From "The Post of Honour"--By permission
of J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., Toronto_

GUNS OF VERDUN

Guns of Verdun point to Metz
From the plated parapets;
Guns of Metz grin back again
O'er the fields of fair Lorraine.

Guns of Metz are long and gray,
Growling through a summer day;
Guns of Verdun, gray and long,
Boom an echo of their song.

Guns of Metz to Verdun roar,
"Sisters, you shall foot the score;"
Guns of Verdun say to Metz,
"Fear not, for we pay our debts."

Guns of Metz they grumble, "When?"
Guns of Verdun answer then,
"Sisters, when to guard Lorraine
Gunners lay you East again!"

PATRICK R. CHALMERS
_By permission of the Author_

VERDUN

(_Spoken in the vault of the citadel of Verdun, September, 1916_)

I wish to tell you how glad I am that you asked me to sit at table with your officers in the heart of Verdun's citadel. I am glad to see around me those who have come back from battle, those who will be fighting to-morrow, and those who, with you, General, are sentries on these impregnable walls. The name of Verdun alone will be enough to rouse imperishable memories throughout the centuries to come. There is not one of the great feats of arms which make the history of France which better shows the high qualities of the Army and the people of France; and that bravery and devotion to country, to which the world has ever paid homage, have been strengthened by a sang-froid and tenacity which yield nothing to British phlegm.

The memory of the victorious resistance of Verdun will be immortal because Verdun saved not only France, but the whole of the great cause which is common to ourselves and humanity. The evil-working force of the enemy has broken itself against the heights around this old citadel as an angry sea breaks upon a granite rock. These heights have conquered the storm which threatened the world.

I am deeply moved when I tread this sacred soil, and I do not speak for myself alone. I bring you a tribute of the admiration of my country, of the great Empire which I represent here. They bow with me before your sacrifice and before your glory. Once again, for the defence of the great causes with which its very future is bound up, mankind turns to France. "À la France! Aux hommes tombés sous Verdun!"

RT. HON. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

FOR THE FALLEN

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night.

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

LAURENCE BINYON
_By permission of the Author and
"The Times", London_

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

[F]JOHN MCCRAE
_Reprinted by special permission of
London "Punch"_

FOOTNOTE:

[F] Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae died of pneumonia in France, January, 1918.

THE ANXIOUS DEAD

O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear
Above their heads the legions pressing on:
(These fought their fight in time of bitter fear,
And died not knowing how the day had gone.)

O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see
The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar;
Then let your mighty chorus witness be
To them, and Cæsar, that we still make war.

Tell them, O guns, that we have heard their call,
That we have sworn, and will not turn aside,
That we will onward till we win or fall,
That we will keep the faith for which they died.

Bid them be patient, and some day, anon,
They shall feel earth enwrapt in silence deep;
Shall greet, in wonderment, the quiet dawn,
And in content may turn them to their sleep.

JOHN MCCRAE
_By permission of "The Spectator"_

EXTRACT FROM SPEECH OF RT. HON. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE ON BECOMING PREMIER

(_December 19, 1916_)

. . . . . . . . . .

I should like to say one word about the lesson of the fighting on the western front--not about the military strategy, but about the significance of the whole of that great struggle, one of the greatest struggles ever waged in the history of the world. It is full of encouragement and of hope. Just look at it! An absolutely new Army! The old had done its duty and spent itself in the achievement of that great task. This is a new Army. But a year ago it was ore in the earth of Britain, yea, and of Ireland. It became iron. It has passed through a fiery furnace, and the enemy knows that it is now fine steel. An absolutely new Army, new men, new officers taken from schools, from colleges, from counting-houses, never trained to war, never thought of war, many of them perhaps never handled a weapon of war, generals never given the opportunity of handling great masses of men. Some of us had seen the manoeuvres. A division which is now set to attack a small village is more than our generals ever had the opportunity of handling before the war. Compared with the great manoeuvres on the Continent, they were toy manoeuvres. And yet this new Army, new men, new officers, generals new to this kind of work, they have faced the greatest army in the world, the greatest army the world has ever seen, the best equipped and the best trained, and they have beaten them, beaten them, beaten them! Battle after battle, day after day, week after week! From the strongest entrenchments ever devised by human skill they have driven them out by valour, by valour which is incredible when you read the story of it.

SUBALTERNS

(_A Song of Oxford_)

They had so much to lose; their radiant laughter
Shook my old walls--how short a time ago.
I hold the echoes of their song hereafter
Among the precious things I used to know.

Their cup of life was full to overflowing,
All earth had laid its tribute at their feet.
What harvest might we hope from such a sowing?
What noonday from a dawning so complete?

And I--I watched them working, dreaming, playing,
Saw their young bodies fit the mind's desire,
Felt them reach outward, upward, still obeying
The passionate dictates of their hidden fire.

Yet here and there some graybeard breathed derision,
"Too much of luxury, too soft an age!
Your careless Galahads will see no vision,
Your knights will make no mark on honour's page."

No mark?--Go ask the broken fields in Flanders,
Ask the great dead who watched in ancient Troy,
Ask the old moon as round the world she wanders
What of the men who were my hope and joy!

They are but fragments of Imperial splendour,
Handfuls of might amid a mighty host,
Yet I, who saw them go with proud surrender,
May surely claim to love them first and most.

They who had all, gave all. Their half-writ story
Lies in the empty halls they knew so well,
But they, the knights of God, shall see His glory,
And find the Grail ev'n in the fire of hell.

MILDRED HUXLEY
_By permission of the Author_

THE SEARCHLIGHTS

(_Political morality differs from individual morality, because there is no power above the State.--General von Bernhardi_)

Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight
The lean black cruisers search the sea.
Night-long their level shafts of light
Revolve, and find no enemy.
Only they know each leaping wave
May hide the lightning, and their grave.

And in the land they guard so well
Is there no silent watch to keep?
An age is dying, and the bell
Rings midnight on a vaster deep.
But over all its waves, once more,
The searchlights move, from shore to shore.

And captains that we thought were dead,
And dreamers that we thought were dumb,
And voices that we thought were fled,
Arise, and call us, and we come:
And "search in thine own soul", they cry;
"For there, too, lurks thine enemy".

Search for the foe in thine own soul,
The sloth, the intellectual pride;
The trivial jest that veils the goal
For which our fathers lived and died;
The lawless dreams, the cynic Art,
That rend thy nobler self apart.

Not far, not far into the night,
These level swords of light can pierce;
Yet for her faith does England fight,
Her faith in this our universe,
Believing Truth and Justice draw
From founts of everlasting law:

The law that rules the stars, our stay,
Our compass through the world's wide sea,
The one sure light, the one sure way,
The one firm base of Liberty;
The one firm road that men have trod
Through Chaos to the throne of God.

Therefore a Power above the State,
The unconquerable Power returns.
The fire, the fire that made her great
Once more upon her altar burns.
Once more, redeemed, and healed and whole,
She moves to the Eternal Goal.

ALFRED NOYES
_Reprinted by permission from the "Lord of Misrule",
by Alfred Noyes. Copyright, 1915, by Frederick
A. Stokes Company_

THE SEA IS HIS

The Sea is His: He made it,
Black gulf and sunlit shoal,
From battered bight to where the long
Leagues of Atlantic roll:
Small strait and ceaseless ocean
He bade each one to be:
The Sea is His: He made it--
And England keeps it free.

By pain and stress and striving
Beyond the nations' ken,
By vigils stern when others slept,
By many lives of men;
Through nights of storm, through dawnings
Blacker than midnights be--
This Sea that God created,
England has kept it free.

Count me the splendid captains
Who sailed with courage high
To chart the perilous ways unknown--
Tell me where these men lie!
To light a path for ships to come
They moored at Dead Man's quay;
The Sea is God's--He made it,
And these men made it free.

Oh, little land of England,
Oh, Mother of hearts too brave,
Men say this trust shall pass from thee
Who guardest Nelson's grave.
Aye, but these braggarts yet shall learn,
Who'd hold the world in fee,
The Sea is God's--and England,
England shall keep it free.

[G]R. E. VERNÈDE
_From "War Poems", by R. E. Vernède.
By permission of the Publishers,
Wm. Heinemann, London_

FOOTNOTE:

[G] Died of wounds, April, 1917

VOLUNTEER

Here lies a clerk who half his life had spent
Toiling at ledgers in a city gray,
Thinking that so his days would drift away
With no lance broken in life's tournament:
Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes
The gleaming eagles of the legions came,
And horsemen, charging under phantom skies,
Went thundering past beneath the oriflamme.

And now those waiting dreams are satisfied;
From twilight into spacious dawn he went;
His lance is broken; but he lies content
With that high hour, in which he lived and died.
And falling thus he wants no recompense,
Who found his battle in the last resort;
Nor needs he any hearse to bear him hence,
Who goes to join the men of Agincourt.

HERBERT ASQUITH
_By permission of Rt. Hon. H. H. Asquith_

EXTRACT FROM PRESIDENT WILSON'S MESSAGE TO CONGRESS

(_April 2, 1917_)

We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and powers. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people included; for the rights of nations great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted foundations of political liberty.

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those have been made as secure as the faith and freedom of the nation can make them.

Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.... We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible Government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck.... There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us.

It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

FROM "VIMY RIDGE"

(_April, 1917_)

. . . . . . . . . .

England, our mother, we, thy sons, are young;
Our exultation this day cannot be
Bounded as thine: but thou wilt pardon us,
Thou wilt forgive us if we cry, "Now see!
See now, our mother, these are they that clung
Once to thy breasts, and are they not well sung?"

. . . . . . . . . .

Aye, not since France herself first stood at bay,
To conquer or to die on Marne's green banks,
Driving at last across its crimsoned flood
The flower of Germany in shattered ranks,
Has there been crowded in a single day
More breathless glory for heroic lay.
England, our mother, once our boasting hear!
And in thy streets let flags and banners fly!
To drums and bugles let the people march
While Vimy Ridge is shouted to the sky!

. . . . . . . . . .

Thereafter of our pride let naught be said,
Saving on stone, inscribed with but one line:
CANADA--VIMY RIDGE--1917
Our hearts the tablets of a secret shrine:
Though henceforth we shall lift a higher head
Because of Vimy and its glorious dead.

ALFRED GORDON
_From "Vimy Ridge and New Poems"--
By permission of the Author and
of J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., Toronto_

THE SILENT TOAST

(_Vimy Ridge, April, 1917_)

They stand with reverent faces,
And their merriment give o'er,
As they drink the toast to the unseen host,
Who have fought and gone before.

It is only a passing moment
In the midst of the feast and song,
But it grips the breath, as the wind of death
In a vision sweeps along.

No more they see the banquet
And the brilliant lights around:
But they charge again on the hideous plain
When the shell-bursts rip the ground.

Or they creep at night, like panthers,
Through the waste of No Man's Land,
Their hearts afire with a wild desire
And death on every hand.

And out of the roar and tumult,
Or the black night loud with rain,
Some face comes back on the fiery track
And looks in their eyes again.

And the love that is passing woman's,
And the bonds that are forged by death,
Now grip the soul with a strange control
And speak what no man saith.

The vision dies off in the stillness,
Once more the tables shine,
But the eyes of all in the banquet hall
Are lit with a light divine.

FREDERICK GEORGE SCOTT
_By permission of the Author and The
Musson Book Company, Limited,
Toronto_

PROSPICE

The ancient and the lovely land
Is sown with death; across the plain
Ungarnered now the orchards stand,
The Maxim nestles in the grain,
The shrapnel spreads a stinging flail
Where pallid nuns the cloister trod,
The airship spills her leaden hail;
But--after all the battles--God.

Athwart the vineyard's ordered banks,
Silent the red rent forms recline,
And from their stark and speechless ranks
There flows a richer, ruddier wine;
While down the lane and through the wall
The victors writhe upon the sod,
Nor heed the onward bugle call;
But--after all the bugles--God.

By night the blazing cities flare
Like mushroom torches in the sky;
The rocking ramparts tremble ere
The sullen cannon boom reply.
And shattered is the temple spire,
The vestment trampled on the clod,
And every altar black with fire;
But--after all the altars--God.

And all the prizes we have won
Are buried in a deadly dust;
The things we set our hearts upon
Beneath the stricken earth are thrust;
Again the Savage greets the sun,
Again his feet, with fury shod,
Across a world in anguish run;
But--after all the anguish--God.

The grim campaign, the gun, the sword,
The quick volcano from the sea,
The honour that reveres the word,
The sacrifice, the agony--
These be our heritage and pride,
Till the last despot kiss the rod,
And, with man's freedom purified,
We mark--behind our triumph--God.

ALAN SULLIVAN
_By permission of the Author_

THE OUTER GUARD

Bold Watchers of the deeps,
Guards of the Greater Ways,
How shall our swelling hearts express
Our heights and depths of thankfulness
For these safe-guarded days!

Grim is your vigil there,
Black day and blacker night,--
Watching for life, while knavish death
Lurks all around, above, beneath,
Waiting his chance to smite.

Your hearts are stouter than
The worst that Death can do.
Our thoughts for you!--our prayers for you!
There's One aloft that cares for you,
And He will see you through.

Don't think we e'er forget
The debt we owe to you!
Never a night but we pray for you!
Never a day but we say for you,--
"God bless the gallant lads in blue!
With mighty strength their hearts renew!
Bless every ship and every crew!
Give every man his rightful due!
And bring them all safe through!"

JOHN OXENHAM
_By permission of the Author_

SMALL CRAFT

When Drake sailed out from Devon to break King Philip's pride,
He had great ships at his bidding and little ones beside;
_Revenge_ was there, and _Lion_, and others known to fame,
And likewise he had small craft, which hadn't any name.

Small craft--small craft, to harry and to flout 'em!
Small craft--small craft, you cannot do without 'em!
Their deeds are unrecorded, their names are never seen,
But we know that there were small craft, because there must have been.

When Nelson was blockading for three long years and more,
With many a bluff first-rater and oaken seventy-four
To share the fun and fighting, the good chance and the bad,
Oh, he had also small craft, because he must have had.

Upon the skirts of battle, from Sluys to Trafalgar,
We know that there were small craft, because there always are;
Yacht, sweeper, sloop, and drifter, to-day as yesterday,
The big ships fight the battles, but the small craft clear the way.

They scout before the squadrons when mighty fleets engage;
They glean War's dreadful harvest when the fight has ceased to rage;
Too great they count no hazard, no task beyond their power,
And merchantmen bless small craft a hundred times an hour.

In Admirals' dispatches their names are seldom heard;
They justify their being by more than written word;
In battle, toil, and tempest, and dangers manifold
The doughty deeds of small craft will never all be told.

Scant ease, and scantier leisure--they take no heed of these,
For men lie hard in small craft when storm is on the seas;
A long watch and a weary, from dawn to set of sun--
The men who serve in small craft, their work is never done.

And if, as chance may have it, some bitter day they lie
Out-classed, out-gunned, out-numbered, with naught to do but die,
When the last gun's out of action, good-bye to ship and crew,
But men die hard in small craft, as they will always do.

Oh, death comes once to each man, and the game it pays for all,
And duty is but duty in great ship and in small,
And it will not vex their slumbers or make less sweet their rest,
Though there's never a big black headline for small craft going west.

Great ships and mighty captains--to these their meed of praise
For patience, skill, and daring, and loud victorious days;
To every man his portion, as is both right and fair,
But oh! forget not small craft, for they have done their share.

Small craft--small craft, from Scapa Flow to Dover,
Small craft--small craft, all the wide world over,
At risk of war and shipwreck, torpedo, mine, and shell,
All honour be to small craft, for oh, they've earned it well!