stood,
But the man-high thistle had been master of it all,
Or the bulrush by the flood;
And there was neither blade of grass
Or lone star in the sky,
But shook to see some spirit pass
And took its agony.

And the next land he found, it was bare and hilly ground
Where once the bread-corn grew,
But the fields were cankered and the water was defiled,
And the trees were riven through;
And there was neither paved highway,
Nor secret path in the wood,
But had borne its weight of the broken clay,
And darkened ’neath the blood.

(Father and Mother they put aside, and the nearer love also—
An hundred thousand men who died, whose grave shall no man know.)

And the last land he found, it was fair and level ground
Above a carven Stone,
And a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross
Where high and low are one;
And there was grass and the living trees,
And the flowers of the Spring,
And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas
That ever called him King.

(’Twixt Nieuport sands and the eastward lands where the Four Red Rivers spring
Five hundred thousand gentlemen of those that served the King.)

All that they had they gave—they gave—
In sure and single faith.
There can no knowledge reach the grave
To make them grudge their death
Save only if they understood
That, after all was done
We they redeemed denied their blood,
And mocked the gains it won.
Rudyard Kipling.

I: “Our King went forth on pilgrimage.”

It was our King’s wish that he should go as a private pilgrim, with no trappings of state nor pomp of ceremony, and with only a small suite, to visit the tombs in Belgium and France of his comrades who gave up their lives in the Great War. In the uniform which they wore on service, he passed from one to another of the cemeteries which, in their noble simplicity, express perfectly the proud grief of the British race in their dead; and, at the end, within sight of the white cliffs of England, spoke his thoughts in a message of eloquence which moved all his Empire to sympathy.

The Governments of France and of Belgium, our allies in the war for the freedom of the world, respected the King’s wish. Nowhere did official ceremony intrude on an office of private devotion. But nothing could prevent the people of the country-side gathering around the places which the King visited, bringing with them flowers, and joining their tribute to his. They acclaimed him not so much as King, but rather as the head of those khaki columns which crossed the Channel to help to guard their homes; in their minds the memory of the glad relief of August, 1914, when they learnt that the British were with them in the war and felt that the ultimate end was secure. Many of them were of the peasants who, before the scattered graves of our dead had been gathered into enduring cemeteries, had graced them with flowers, making vases of shell-cases gathered from the battle-fields. The King was deeply moved by their presence, at seeing them leave for an hour the task of building up their ruined homes and shattered farms, and coming with pious gratitude to share his homage to the men who