Transcriber's note:
The cover was made from a cover image provided on The Internet Archive and is placed in the public domain.
THE SOUL OF A NATION
BY SIR PHILLIP GIBBS
Author of "Now it may be told"
Reprinted by
Permission of the
TORONTO "GLOBE"
Armistice Day, 1920
It did not seem an unknown warrior whosebody came on a gun carriage down Whitehall,where we were waiting for him. He wasknown to us all. It was one of "our boys" (notwarriors), as we called them in the days ofdarkness lit by faith.
To some women, weeping a little in thecrowd after an all-night vigil, he was their boy who wentmissing one day and was never found till now, though theirsouls went searching for him through the dreadful places inthe night.
To many men among those packed densely on each sideof the empty street wearing ribbons and badges on civilclothes, he was a familiar figure, one of their comrades, theone they liked best, perhaps, in the old crowd who into thefields of death went and stayed there with a great companionship.
It was a steel helmet, an old "tin hat," lying there on thecrimson of the flag, which revealed him instantly, not as amythical warrior, aloof from common humanity, a shadowytype of national pride and martial glory, but as one of thosefellows, dressed in the drab of khaki, stained by mud andgrease, who went into dirty ditches with this steel hat on hishead, and in his heart unspoken things which made him oneof us in courage and in fear, with some kind of faith, notclear, full of perplexities, often dim in the watchwords ofthose years of war.
So it seemed to me, at least, as I looked down Whitehalland listened to the music which told us that the Unknownwas coming down the road. The band was playing the old"Dead March in Saul" with heavy drumming, but as yet theroadway was clear where it led up to that altar of sacrifice,as it looked, covered by two flags hanging in long folds ofscarlet and white.
About that altar-cenotaph there were little groups ofstrange people, all waiting for the dead soldier. Why werethey there, these people? There were great folk to greet thedust of a simple soldier. There was the Archbishop ofCanterbury and the Bishop of London, and other clergy ingowns and hoods. What had they to do with the body ofthe soldier who had gone trudging through the mud and mucklike one ant in a legion of ants, unknown to fame, not moreheroic, perhaps, than all his pals about him, not missed muchwhen he fell dead between the tangled wire and shell holes?There were great Generals and Admirals, Lord Haig himself,Commander-in-Chief of our armies in France, and AdmiralBeatty, who held the seas; Lord French of Ypres, with Horneof the First Army, and Byng of the Third, and Air MarshalTrenchard, who had commanded all the birds that flew abovethe lines on mornings of enormous battle.