But the stubbornness, the discipline, the sacrifice of the armies in the field are not all we want.  The stubbornness of the nation at home, of the men and the women, is no less necessary to the great end.  In these early days of March every week’s news was bringing home to England the growing peril of the submarine attack.  Would the married women, the elder women of the nation, rise to the demand for personal thought and saving, for training—­in the matter of food—­with the same eager goodwill as thousands of the younger women had shown in meeting the armies’ demand for munitions?  For the women heads of households have it largely in their hands.

The answer at the beginning of March was matter for anxiety.  It is still matter for anxiety now—­at the beginning of May.

Let us, however, return for a little to the Army.  What would the marvellous organisation which England has produced in three years avail us, without the spirit in it,—­the body, without the soul?  All through these days I have been conscious, in the responsible men I have been meeting, of ideals of which no one talks, except when, on very rare occasions, it happens to be in the day’s work like anything else to talk of ideals—­but which are, in fact, omnipresent.

I find, for instance, among my War Office Notes, a short address given in the ordinary course of duty by an unnamed commandant to his officer-cadets.  It appears here, in its natural place, just as part of the whole; revealing for a moment the thoughts which constantly underlie it.

“Believe me when I tell you that I have never found an officer who worked who did not come through.  Only ill-health and death stand in your way.  The former you can guard against in a great measure.  The latter comes to us all, and for a soldier, a soldier’s death is the finest of all.  Fear of death does not exist for the man who has led a good and honest life.  You must discipline your bodies and your minds—­your bodies by keeping them healthy and strong, your minds by prayer and thought.”

As to the relation between officers and men, that also is not talked about much, except in its more practical and workaday aspects—­the interest taken by officers in the men’s comfort and welfare, their readiness to share in the men’s games and amusements, and so on.  And no one pretends that the whole British Army is an army of “plaster saints,” that every officer is the “little father” of his men, and all relations ideal.

But what becomes evident, as one penetrates a little nearer to the great organism, is a sense of passionate responsibility in all the finer minds of the Army towards their men, a readiness to make any sacrifice for them, a deep and abiding sense of their sufferings and dangers, of all that they are giving to their country.  How this comes out again and again in the innumerable death-stories of British officers—­those few words that commemorate them in the daily newspapers!  And how evident is the profound response of the men to such a temper in their officers!  There is not a day’s action in the field—­I am but quoting the eye-witnesses—­that does not bring out such facts.  Let a senior officer—­an “old and tried soldier”—­speak.  He is describing a walk over a battlefield on the Ancre after one of our victories there last November: