graves. Is there anything to console us for such a
spectacle? The reply of the British Commander-in-Chief is that "the
issues involved in this stupendous struggle were far greater than
those concerned in any other war in recent history. Our existence as
an Empire, and civilisation itself as it is understood by the free
Western nations was at stake. Men fought as they had never fought
before."

"Go, stranger, and tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here, obedient
to their will." So the Greek epitaph that all men know. In the same
spirit, for country and home, for freedom and honour--at the Will of
that Power by whom "the most ancient heavens are fresh and
strong"--these fighters of our day laid down their ardent and obedient
lives. There is but one way in which we can truly honour them. A
better world, as their eternal memorial:--shame on us if we cannot
build it!

_May 20th._

Since the preceding paragraphs were written, the French General Staff
has published an illuminating analysis of those military conditions in
the concluding months of the war which compelled the German Command
and the German Government to sue for an Armistice. The German
proclamation, when the conclusion of the Armistice allowed those
armies to retreat, proclaimed them "unconquered." Our own
Commander-in-Chief declares, it will be remembered, on the other hand,
that the fighting along the front of the British Armies from November
1st to November 11th had "forced on the enemy a disorderly retreat.
Thereafter he was neither capable of accepting nor refusing battle.
The utter confusion of his troops, the state of his railways,
congested with abandoned trains, the capture of huge quantities of
rolling-stock and material--all showed that our attack had been
decisive.... The strategic plan of the Allies had been realised with a
completeness rarely seen in war. When the Armistice was signed, his
defensive powers had already been definitely destroyed. A continuance
of hostilities could only have meant disaster to the German Armies,
and the armed invasion of Germany."

To this statement from the leader of those armies to whom it fell to
strike the last decisive blows in the struggle may now be added the
testimony of the admirably served Intelligence Department of the
French General Staff, as to the precise condition of the German Armies
before the Armistice. "The strategic plan of the Allies," of which Sir
Douglas Haig speaks, was the supreme busines