illustrated. Mr. Conan Doyle {199} writes, "Exhausted as
the troops were, there could he no halt or rest until they had extricated
themselves from the immediate danger. At the last point of human
endurance they still staggered on through the evening and the night time,
amid roaring thunder and flashing lightning, down the St. Quentin road.
Many fell from fatigue, and having fallen continued to sleep. . . . In
the case of some of the men the collapse was so complete that it was
almost impossible to get them on. Major Tom Bridges, of the 4th Royal
Irish Dragoons being sent to round up and hurry forward 250 stragglers at
St. Quentin, found them nearly comatose with fatigue. With quick wit he
bought a toy drum, and accompanied by a man with a penny whistle he fell
them in and marched them, laughing in all their misery, down the high
road towards Ham." When he stopped he found that the men stopped also,
so he was compelled to march and play the whole way to Roupy.

In Sir Henry Newbolt's _Song of the Great Retreat_ (_The Times_, Dec. 16,
1914), this triumphant success is described:

"Cheerly goes the dark road, cheerly goes the night,
Cheerly goes the blood to keep the beat:
Half a thousand dead men marching on to fight,
With a little penny drum to lift their feet."

This song ought to be especially interesting to our Society, because the
effect of a small drum and a penny whistle is roughly the same as that of
the pipe and tabor, and these are the traditional instruments for English
Folk Dances. It is perhaps worth noting that they must in old days have
been used in war, for there is an illustration in an ancient manuscript
of a taborer piping at the head of a body of troops marching out from a
town.

Man is a social animal, and his natural strength lies in community of
action with his fellows. It is this which gives music its power over
masses of men, the pulsation of the drum, the blare of the answering
trumpets, or the strident voice of the bagpipe cry to them in tones which
cannot be misunderstood, binding them into a brotherhood of courage and
obedience. But a society of Morris Dancers does not need to be reminded
of the noble effect of human movement controlled by music. The word
'caper' has somewhat ridiculous associations, but we have learned to
respect it for what it implies: the finely ordered strenuous movement of
strong bodies leaping in rhythmic dance. It suggests something pagan a