and autocracy, so shall we, the Freemen of the
world, not only cross the Rhine, but will march even to Berlin for the sake
of Liberty, of Love, of Right and of Democracy.

CHAPTER XVII

THE LAST CHAPTER

by

"HERSELF"

War! It was the first of August, 1914, and I almost ran home from the city
to tell the news to my people.

War! It was like we'd be in it. War between England and Germany. That war
we had all heard of and knew was inevitable. The war of the ages was
imminent.

I had been free-lancing in Fleet Street for the past three months. Left
_The Daily Chronicle_ over the Home Rule questions, as well as other
things.

I was in Ireland for the Ulster gun-running. Ireland was a seething mass of
German-inspired sedition south of the Boyne. The authorities apparently
would not listen to the warnings of Ulster. But Ulster was ready for
anything. There were hospitals, clearing stations, bases. There were
despatch riders, signalers, transport men, all in readiness, besides the
ordinary infantry volunteers, who were pledged by all means in their power
to keep Ireland under the flag of the Union.

I was in a little country church one Sunday morning. A roll of a drum and
the skirl of a fife came wafting across the valley on the April breeze. The
minister paused a moment in his sermon. Two, three, half a dozen men rose
and softly left. They were going to the rendezvous in case of alarm. No one
knew what might happen. A conflagration might flare out at a moment's
notice.

But in August there came war, real war. Civilization was threatened. Ulster
handed over men, guns, ammunition, hospitals and nurses to the Imperial
government. Hundreds of the Ulster Volunteers in the Ulster Division have
died for Britain. Hundreds of the men south of the Boyne who have not been
bitten with the microbe of revolution, and a mistaken idea that England is
a tyrant, have died for the cause of world Liberty.

How we lived through those first electric four days of August! Would the
Liberal government funk? We doubted them unjustly. Then came
the devastation of Belgium, and Britain gave Germany its
disappointment--Britain declared war. Ireland rallied round the brave old
Union Jack; the colonies, rather we call them now the dominions overseas,
India, Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the smaller islands, sent
word that they were with us to a man.

And then the fight commenced. Those casualty lists of the first Imperia