“Go, stranger, and tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, obedient to their will.”  So the Greek epitaph that all men know.  In the same spirit, for country and home, for freedom and honour—­at the Will of that Power by whom “the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong”—­these fighters of our day laid down their ardent and obedient lives.  There is but one way in which we can truly honour them.  A better world, as their eternal memorial:—­shame on us if we cannot build it!

May 20th.

Since the preceding paragraphs were written, the French General Staff has published an illuminating analysis of those military conditions in the concluding months of the war which compelled the German Command and the German Government to sue for an Armistice.  The German proclamation, when the conclusion of the Armistice allowed those armies to retreat, proclaimed them “unconquered.”  Our own Commander-in-Chief declares, it will be remembered, on the other hand, that the fighting along the front of the British Armies from November 1st to November 11th had “forced on the enemy a disorderly retreat.  Thereafter he was neither capable of accepting nor refusing battle.  The utter confusion of his troops, the state of his railways, congested with abandoned trains, the capture of huge quantities of rolling-stock and material—­all showed that our attack had been decisive....  The strategic plan of the Allies had been realised with a completeness rarely seen in war.  When the Armistice was signed, his defensive powers had already been definitely destroyed.  A continuance of hostilities could only have meant disaster to the German Armies, and the armed invasion of Germany.”

To this statement from the leader of those armies to whom it fell to strike the last decisive blows in the struggle may now be added the testimony of the admirably served Intelligence Department of the French General Staff, as to the precise condition of the German Armies before the Armistice.  “The strategic plan of the Allies,” of which Sir Douglas Haig speaks, was the supreme business of Marshal Foch, and the facts and figures now given show how closely the great Frenchman was informed and how “completely,” to use Marshal Haig’s word, his plans were carried out.  On the 3rd of October Hindenburg had written to Prince Max of Baden, that “as a result ... of our complete inability to fill up the gaps caused by the very heavy losses inflicted on us during the recent battles, no hope is left ... of forcing the enemy to make peace.”  How true this was is made plain by the details just published.  On September 25th—­that is to say, the day before the British attack on the Hindenburg line, and the French and American attacks east and west of the Argonne—­the Intelligence Department of the French General Staff reported to Marshal Foch that since July 15th, in the Marne salient, at St. Mihiel, and in the British battles of Amiens, Bapaume, and the Scarpe, the enemy had engaged 163 divisions.