The mass followed
their lead, and even poor coward-hearts, of whom there were many, as
in all armies, had courage enough, as a rule, to get as far as the
center of the fury before their knees gave way or they dropped dead.
Each wave of boyhood that came out from England brought a new mass of
physical and spiritual valor as great as that which was spent, and in
the end it was an irresistible tide which broke down the last barriers
and swept through in a rush to victory, which we gained at the cost of
nearly a million dead, and a high sum of living agony, and all our
wealth, and a spiritual bankruptcy worse than material loss, so that
now England is for a time sick to death and drained of her old pride
and power.
VI
I remember, as though it were yesterday in vividness and a hundred
years ago in time, the bombardment which preceded the battles of the
Somme. With a group of officers I stood on the high ground above
Albert, looking over to Gommecourt and Thiepval and La Boisselle, on
the left side of the German salient, and then, by crossing the road,
to Fricourt, Mametz, and Montauban on the southern side.
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