A, B and C attack D, E and F. A superiority in weapons must be met by a superiority in morale or a superiority in tactics. Ability to attack and to endure attack are the proofs of fitness to survive. The victor will be the latter one to quit fighting. While the war must be won by masses of men, the quality of the mass is the algebraic total of the individual qualities. A hero is a man plus. A coward is a man minus. A few heroes will counteract the influence of many cowards or even lend them strength enough to become heroes also. In its individual heroes, moral, spiritual and physical, lies therefore the prosperity of a nation. It is well that a nation should keep its eye on its heroes, and reward them well, at least with fame. This volume devoted to accounts of individual achievements is something more than picturesque. It is as important to the record as the consideration of any of the larger aspects of war. It strikes the human note, and the human note is vital in so human a thing as a war; since war gives humanity its widest and fiercest vibration from the utmost baseness to the supreme nobility. THE SOLDIER _By_ Rupert Brooke If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. From _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke_, Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company. Deeds of Heroism and Daring “AND A FEW MARINES” Eye-witness Account of the Belleau Wood Action in the Marne Salient Beginning June 6th, 1918