line; and saw the Derby men come out and begin; and at the last
discovered that the conscripts were as good as the rest. Some of the
survivors were marching towards me.

But I did not recognize them. Many were elderly men who were displaying
proud tunics of volunteer regiments as old as Hyde Park Parades by Queen
Victoria. One looked then for the sections from the local lodges of the
Druids, Oddfellows, Buffaloes, and the He-Goats. There was the band of
the local cadets, spontaneous in its enthusiasm, its zest for martial
music no different, of course. Just behind these lads a strange figure
walked in the procession, a bent and misshapen old man, whose face had no
expression but a fixed and hypnotic stare. He was keeping time to the
measure of the boys' music by snapping the spring of a mouse-trap which
he held aloft. I could not find him in the program. Was he also drunk? Or
was he a terrible jest? Most of our triumphant display followed this
figure. If our illusions go, what is left to us? Ah, our memories of the
Somme! That young officer who turned away when he saw Triumph approaching
acted on a right instinct.

There is a hilltop near us. It looks to other hills over a great space of
southern England, and at night on the far promontories of the Downs
bonfires were to be lighted. I have no doubt signals flared from them
when the Romans were baffled. Again to-night they would signal that the
latest enemy had been vanquished.

It was raining gently, and from our own crest the lower and outer night
was void. A touch of distant phosphorescence that waned, and intensified
again to a strong white glow, presently gave the void one far and lonely
hilltop. A cloud elsewhere appeared out of nothing, and persisted, a
lenticular spectre of dull fire. These aerial spectres became a host;
some were so far away that they were faint smears of orange, and others
so near and great that they pulsed and revealed the shapes of the clouds.
It was all impersonal, it was England itself that was reflected, the
hills that had awakened. It was the emanation of a worthy tradition,
older than ourselves, that was re-kindled and was glowing, and that would
be here when we are not. It was so receptive, it was so spacious, that
our gravest memories could abide there, as if night were kind to the
secrets we dare not voice, and understood folly and remorse, and could
protect our better visions, and had sanctuary and consolation for that
grief which