The retreat from Mons to the Marne was one of terrible hardship and imminent danger. For nearly fourteen days, in obedience to orders, the British soldiers,--fighting terrific rear guard actions, which, in retarding the invaders, made possible the ultimate victory,--slowly retreated, never losing their morale, although suffering untold physical hardships and the greater agony of temporary defeats, which they could not at that time understand, and yet it is to their undying credit, in common with their brave comrades of the French Army, that when the moment came to cease the retreat and to turn upon a foe, which flushed with unprecedented victory still greatly outnumbered the retreating armies, the British soldier struck back with almost undiminished power. The "miracle of the Marne" is due to Tommy Atkins as well as to the French Poilu. Even more wonderful was the defense of Ypres. There was a time in the first battle of Ypres when the British high command, denuded of shells, were allotting among their commands, then engaged in a life-and-death struggle, ammunition which had not yet left England. So terribly was the "first seven divisions" of glorious memory decimated in this first battle of Ypres, that at a critical time, the bakers, cobblers and grooms were put into the trenches to fill the gaps made by the slain soldiers in that great charnel house. The "thin red line" held back--not for days, but for weeks,--an immensely superior force, and the soldiers of England unflinchingly bared their breasts to the most destructive artillery-fire that the world at that time had ever known. They held their ground and saved the day, and the glory of the first and second battles of Ypres, which saved Calais, and possibly the war itself, will ever be that of the British Army. Over four million Britons have volunteered in the war, and although very few of them had ever had an previous military experience, yet their stamina and unconquerable courage were such that the youth of the great Empire, on more than one occasion, when called upon, as on the Somme, to attack as well as defend, swept the famed Prussian guard out of seemingly impregnable positions, as for example at Contalmaison. Will the world ever forget the children of the Mother Empire who came so freely and nobly from far distant Canada, who wrenched Vimy and Messines ridges from a powerful foe? I hear still the tramp of marching thousands in the first days of the war, as they passed through the streets of Winchester en route to France via Southampton, singing with cheer and joy, "It is a long way to Tipperary." Alas! It is indeed a "long, long way," and many a gallant English boy has fallen in that way of glory.