The men who
went to Zeebrugge were the true sons of those who fought the Spanish
Armada and singed the King o' Spain's beard in Cadiz harbor. The
victors of the Jutland battle were better men than Nelson's (the
scourings of the prisons and the sweepings of the press-gang) and not
less brave in frightful hours. Without the service of the British
seamen the war would have been lost for France and Italy and Belgium,
and all of us.
The flower of our youth went out to France and Flanders, to Egypt,
Palestine, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Saloniki, and it was a fine
flower of gallant boyhood, clean, for the most part eager, not brutal
except by intensive training, simple in minds and hearts, chivalrous
in instinct, without hatred, adventurous, laughter-loving, and
dutiful. That is God's truth, in spite of vice-rotted, criminal,
degenerate, and brutal fellows in many battalions, as in all crowds of
men.
In millions of words during the years of war I recorded the bravery of
our troops on the western front, their patience, their cheerfulness,
suffering, and agony; yet with all those words describing day by day
the incidents of their life in war I did not exaggerate the splendor
of their stoic spirit or the measure of their sacrifice.
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