lasting truth, we must learn to view the great masses and the great feelings of mankind from above.  It is in them and in their great and simple movements that the will of the soul and of destiny is asserted, for these two form the eternal substance of a people.  And, in the present case, the movement of the great masses and the great feelings of the people took the form of an immense impulse of sympathy and indignation, which gradually increased, penetrating farther and farther into the popular strata and gathering volume as it progressed, until it urged a whole nation to assume the burden of a war which it knew to be crushing and merciless, a war which each of those who called for it knew to be a war which he himself must wage, with his own hands, with his own body, a war which would wrest him from the pleasant ways of peace, from his labours and his comforts, which would weigh terribly upon all those whom he loved, which would expose him for weeks, perhaps for months, to incredible sufferings and which meant almost certain death to a third or a half of those who demanded the right to brave it.  And all this, I repeat, occurred without any material necessity, from no other motive than a fine sense of honour and a magnificent surge of admiration and pity for a small foreign nation that was being unjustly martyred.  We cannot repeat it too often:  here, as in the case of the sacrifice which Belgium and England offered to the ideal of honour, is a new and unprecedented fact in history.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 4:  Delivered in London, at the Queen’s Hall, 7 July, 1915.]

* * * * *

BELGIUM’S FLAG DAY

IX

BELGIUM’S FLAG DAY

1

To-day our flag will quiver in every French hand as a symbol of love and gratitude.  This day should be a day of hope and glory for all Belgium.

Let us forget for a moment our terrible distress; let us forget our plains and meadows, the fairest and most fertile in Europe, now ravaged to such a degree that the utmost that one can say is powerless to give any idea of a desolation which seems irremediable.  Let us forget—­if to forget them be possible—­the women, the children, the old men, peaceable and innocent, who have been massacred in their thousands, the tale of whom will amaze the world when once the grim barrier is broken behind which so many secret horrors are being committed.  Let us forget those who are dying of hunger in our country, a land without harvests and without homes, a land methodically taxed, pillaged and crushed until it is drained of the last drop of its life-blood.  Let us forget those remnants of our people who are scattered hither and thither, who have trodden the path of exile, who are living on public charity, which, though it show itself full