had to be
dropped in 1914, and the excitement of getting, or missing, or
declining the O.B.E. The war is over, she keeps saying to herself,
thus inferring to everybody that they ought to forget all about it now.
So she ignores the maimed and the wrecked, the war poor, the sailors
and the soldiers, war books, war songs, all reference to the war, in
fact, and most especially the dead. "Why should we be depressed?" she
keeps crying, "the world is sad enough. . . ." Well, you know the old
"tag" of those who are not so much frightened of sorrow as frightened
by the fact that they can neither sympathise with it nor understand it.
She is an exceptional case, you declare. But alas! she isn't. There
are thousands of men and women who, behind a plea of war-weariness,
really mean a desire to forget all those memories, all those
obligations, all that work and faith in a New and Better World which
alone make justified--this war, or any other war. She has not
forgotten, so much as never realised what men suffered and endured in
order that she, and all the rest of her "clan" who remained at home,
might live on and rebuild the happiness and fortunes of their lives.
So she dislikes to be reminded of her obligations to the Present and
the Future; she dislikes to remember in reverence and sorrow the men
and boys who, without this war, would now be continuing happily, safe
and sound, the even tenor of their lives. "The world is sad enough,"
she again reiterates, and . . . oh, well, just BOSH!

_The Need to Remember_

For myself, I consider that it would do the world good if it had one
whole _day_ of silent remembrance each year. And if it be
depressing--well, that will be all to the good. The world will come to
no harm if it be depressed once a year--depressed for such a noble
cause. After all, we give up one day per year to the solemn
remembrance of the One who died for us--it would not, therefore, do
anything but good if we were to give up one day a year to the memory of
those millions who died for us no less. Sunday, too, is kept as a
quiet day, in order that the world may be encouraged to contemplate
those ideals for which it has erected churches in which it bows the
knee. Well, one whole day in the year given up to the memory of those
who died that the civilised world might live--who also died for an
ideal--will help us to remember that they died at all. Without some
such enforced remembrance, the world will, ala