Meanwhile the brigade hurled forward, through the dense pall of smoke before the guns, into that dreadful impact which has shown the nations for ever what our heroes can do. Those who passed between the shot and shell passed also between the guns, sabring the gunners as they went, until they launched upon the squadron beyond. Then ensued a mighty conflict for the possession of the guns. While those in the first line fought fiercely with the enemy's cavalry the second and third lines thundered in and made their business plain. It was to silence the guns, and with all the courage of their kind they did it. Their tracks could be traced next day on the field by the lines of dead whose heads were not left upon their bodies, or were cloven "from the nave to the chaps." The fight was unequal, but they did not seem to realise it, for they fought their way back with a persistency that sent an undying thrill through all the world. These heroes fought on, and would have done so to the last drop had it not been for a timely charge of the French Chasseurs d'Afrique upon the pressing hosts of the enemy. Thus they were extricated--all that were left of them. "Then they rode back"--some 170 in formation. When they lined up in their original position and Lord Cardigan counted them in a glance, he said "Men, it was a mad-brained trick, but it was no fault of mine." Later, when the French General was asked his opinion, he replied, "It was magnificent, but it was not war." Later still, when Lord Cardigan came home, Queen Victoria asked him simply, "Where is my army?" Yet, though critics may speak of "absolute inutility," and calculating militarists of "sheer waste of life," it still remains that the crowning glory of the Light Brigade, born that day at Balaclava, has outlived all the survivors of that deathless fray, and will still live on when the sword of the conquered has been beaten once more into the ploughshare of peace. Ask any man of the 11th Hussars fighting at the front to-day what he thinks about the Charge of the Light Brigade, and, whatever he says, he will stand an inch higher while saying it. And so it is with the nation. In these days, from the Secretary for War to the latest recruit--even to the humblest non-combatant grimly enduring--we are greater, stronger, more whole-hearted for the memory of that glorious episode. It is far reaching. It is immortal. "When can their glory fade? Oh! the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honour the charge they made, Honour the Light Brigade; Noble Six Hundred!" Ten days had elapsed since their defeat at Balaclava when the Russians planned an over-whelming attack on our besieging army. Their objective was Mount Inkerman, their methods were secret, and their men 60,000. The event shows that they hoped, by sending a strong force to the west of Sevastopol and some 20,000 men to engage our army in the field, to carry Inkerman, and so compel us to raise the siege.