Chapter 34: The Splendour Of The Present Opportunity

Chapter 34: The Splendour Of The Present Opportunity

To those who are thrilled by the old-time tales of adventurous chivalry or moved by the narrative of high endeavour and heroic achievement for some noble ideal, I bring a conception of the marvellous glory of these present days. We have been wont to sing of the times when thousands left home and comfort on a Holy Crusade, but the Crusaders of these days are numbered in millions.

Never were there such stirring times as these, never since the first tick of time have the hours been so crowded ! Never before did so many men live nobly or die bravely. The young knights from many lands are seeking the Holy Grail, and finding it in forgetfulness of self and in sacrifice for their fellows. You and I are living to-day among the deeds of men that make the deeds of the heroes of past times pale into insignificance. Never were there bred men of such large and heroic mould as the men of to-day.

Here 's a trench - on which a shell falls - and where one shell falls another always follows in the same place;-the shell blows in a dug-out and there is little chance that the men sheltering therein shall be alive, yet those on either side, knowing that another shell will fall in a second or so, in utter forgetfulness of self leap in and with their bare fingers scrape away the dirt lest haply there should be some life yet remaining in this quivering, mangled human flesh.

Oh ! what chances the men of earth have today to be as God! The highest conception any religion has given us of God is that He is one that would sacrifice Himself - 'Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends' - and to-day they're doing it by the million. Every moment is adding names to the honour-roll of heaven of men who follow in His steps.

Have you conceived that the uniting together of the nations that love peace in this struggle will do more to guarantee peace in the future than anything else that has ever happened in world politics,-that it will join France, Britain, and America into a trinity of free peoples who will prevent war, at least for many generations ? We are being bound together by the strongest tie that ever tied nation to nation, that ever bound one people to another, not by political treaties that may be torn up, but by the great tie of common blood shed in a common cause on a common soil.

That narrow lane that stretches from Switzerland to the sea is the great international cemetery, and for many generations it will be the Mecca of pilgrimages from all our countries. The wreaths of America will mingle with the immortelles of France and the flowers from Britain, and the pilgrims shall there get to know, understand, and love each other as they engage in the holy task of paying a common tribute to their common dead. Shall not the mingling blood of Frenchmen, Britons, and Americans make the flowers of peace to grow ?

They never had such soil before.

There is being created, also, in all our countries a new aristocracy-the aristocracy of courage. We never had a chance up till now to prove who were our real, our best people, and we have been accustomed to measure our citizens by the false and small standards of wealth, birth, and intellect. Well ! There has been given to us to-day a new standard whereby we can measure ourselves, the standard of courage, sacrifice, and service. Nobody in England cares to-day whether you are descended from William the Conqueror or not.

No one will care in America whether your ancestor came over in the Mayflower, or whether he signed the Declaration of Independence. Every American has a chance to-day of signing a far greater declaration than that great one of '76 - the declaration of personal willingness to sacrifice all on the altar of liberty. In England, in America, in Australia, in all the countries of the world in the days that are to be, men and women will make their boast in this one thing, or have no cause for boasting at all, of the part that they had in this fight, the greatest fight that has ever been waged for liberty, for righteousness, and for the virtue of womanhood I

What a splendid opportunity it is for us to be able to personally pay the price of liberty. How easy to forget that freedom has either to be earned by ourselves or enjoyed because some one else has paid the price for us. Had we not forgotten in our countries that the democracy that we boast of is no credit to us because it was won by the blood of other men ? Men died that we might be able to govern ourselves. Women carried heartache and loneliness to the grave that we might make our own laws !

Liberty! Such an easy word to mouth, but how precious in the sight of God! Liberty is one of the treasures of heaven and only committed to men at great cost, lest they should undervalue it.

In these great and wonderful times there has been given to us the glorious opportunity to earn our own liberty, to prove our own personal right to citizenship in a free country.

You may not be able to pay in good, red blood, you may not be able to pay much in the coin of the republic, but if each of us does not pay in whatsoever coin we have, there will come soon to us the days in which we shall realise that we are thieves and robbers, enjoying that to which we have no right, won so hardly with the deaths and wounds of men and the salt tears of women.

In the New World that shall be born after the birth-pangs of the present days, we shall realise that we have no place, our soul shall shrink and shrivel as we gaze on the honour scars of those who have paid, and we shall be elbowed to the outskirts of the crowd, as the people bow before the men whom the President and people delight to honour-the men sightless, the men limbless, the memory of the men lifeless.