. And in their place we shall have
acquired those riches which shall not again perish within our hearts.
Our eyes were closed to many things; now they have opened upon wider
horizons. Of old we dared not avert our gaze from our wealth, our
petty comforts, our little rooted habits. But now our eyes have been
wrested from the soil; now they have achieved the sight of heights
that were hitherto unnoticed. We did not know ourselves; we used not
to love one another sufficiently; but we have learnt to know ourselves
in the amazement of glory and to love one another in the grievous
ardour of the most stupendous sacrifice that any people has ever
accomplished. We were on the point of forgetting the heroic virtues,
the unfettered thoughts, the eternal ideas that lead humanity. To-day,
not only do we know that they exist: we have taught the world that
they are always triumphant, that nothing is lost while faith is left,
while honour is intact, while love continues, while the soul does not
surrender and that the most monstrous of powers will never prevail
against those ideal forces which are the happiness and the glory of
man and the sole reason for his existence.

* * * * *

ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER

X

ON THE DEATH OF A LITTLE SOLDIER

1

When I speak of this little soldier who fell a few days ago, up there
in the Vosges, it is not that I may mourn him publicly. It behoves us
in these days to mourn our dead in secret. Personal sorrows no longer
count; and we must learn how to suppress them in the presence of that
greater sorrow which extends over all the world, the particular sorrow
of the mothers who are setting us an example of the most heroic
silence that human suffering has been taught to observe since
suffering first visited womankind. For the admirable silence of the
mothers is one of the great and striking lessons of this war. Amid
that tragic and sublime silence no regret dare make itself heard.

But, though my grief remains dumb, my admiration can still raise its
voice; and in speaking of this young soldier, who had not reached
man's estate and who died as the bravest of men, I speak of all his
brothers-in-arms and hail thousands like him in his name, which name
becomes a great and glorious symbol; for at this time, when a
prodigious wave of unselfishness and courage, surging up from the very
depths of the human race, uplifts the men who are fighting and givi