The Project Gutenberg EBook of 'All's Well!', by John Oxenham

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Title: 'All's Well!'

Author: John Oxenham

Release Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #27126]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 'ALL'S WELL!' ***

Produced by Al Haines

"ALL'S WELL!"

BY

JOHN OXENHAM

AUTHOR OF "BEES IN AMBER," ETC.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1916,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

TO

MY SON HUGO

2nd LIEUT. ARGYLL AND SUTHERLAND HIGHLANDERS

TO

ALL HIS COMRADES IN ARMS
ON LAND AND ON SEA

AND TO

ALL SORELY-TRIED HEARTS
AT HOME AND ELSEWHERE

_THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED_

IN PROFOUNDEST ADMIRATION,
IN MOST LOVING SYMPATHY,
AND IN PERFECT ASSURANCE
THAT SINCE GOD IS,
RIGHT MUST WIN
AND THE FUTURE WILL BE
BETTER THAN THE PAST

FOREWORD

For those who were chiefly in my heart when these verses came to me
from time to time--our men and boys at the Front, and those they leave
behind them in grievous sorrow and anxiety at home--my little message
is that, so far as they are concerned--"ALL'S WELL!"

Those who have so nobly responded to the Call, and those who, with
quiet faces and breaking hearts, have so bravely bidden them "God
speed!"--with these, All is truly Well, for they are equally giving
their best to what, in this case, we most of us devoutly believe to be
the service of God and humanity.

War is red horror. But, better war than the utter crushing-out of
liberty and civilisation under the heel of Prussian or _any other_
militarism.

Germany has avowedly outmarched Christianity and left it in the rear,
along with its outclassed guns and higher ideals of, say, 1870, its
honour, its humanity, and all the other lumber, useless to an
absolutely materialistic people whose only object is to win the world
even at the price of its soul.

The world is witnessing with abhorrence the results, and, we may surely
hope, learning therefrom The Final Lesson for its own future guidance.

The war-cloud still hangs over us--as I write, but, grim as it is,
there are not lacking gleams of its silv