Ah, yes, he was proud and swift and gay, but oh, how my eyes were dim! With the sun in his heart he went away, but he took the sun with him. For look! How the leaves are falling now, and the winter won't be long.... Oh, boy, my boy with the sunny brow, and the lips of love and of song! How we used to sit at the day's sweet end, we two by the fire-light's gleam, And we'd drift to the Valley of Let's Pretend, on the beautiful River of Dream. Oh, dear little heart! All wealth untold would I gladly, gladly pay Could I just for a moment closely hold that golden head to my gray. For I gaze in the fire, and I'm seeing there a child, and he waves to me; And I run and I hold him up in the air, and he laughs and shouts with glee; A little bundle of love and mirth, crying: "Come, Mumsie dear!" Ah, me! If he called from the ends of the earth I know that my heart would hear. * * * * * Yet the thought comes thrilling through all my pain: how worthier could he die? Yea, a loss like that is a glorious gain, and pitiful proud am I. For Peace must be bought with blood and tears, and the boys of our hearts must pay; And so in our joy of the after-years, let us bless them every day. And though I know there's a hasty grave with a poor little cross at its head, And the gold of his youth he so gladly gave, yet to me he'll never be dead. And the sun in my Devon lane will be gay, and my boy will be with me still, So I'm finding the heart to smile and say: "Oh God, if it be Thy Will!" ROBERT W. SERVICE. FOOTNOTES: [2] COPYRIGHT BY BARSE AND HOPKINS. THE CASE OF SERBIA But Belgium is not the only little nation that has been attacked in this war, and I make no excuse for referring to the case of the other little nation--the case of Serbia. The history of Serbia is not unblotted. What history in the list of nations is unblotted? The first nation that is without sin, let her cast a stone at Serbia--a nation trained in a horrible school. But she won her freedom with her tenacious valor, and she has maintained it by the same courage. If any Serbians were mixed up in the assassination of the Grand Duke, they ought to be punished. Serbia admits that. The Serbian Government had nothing to do with it. Not even Austria claimed that. The Serbian Prime Minister is one of the most capable and honored men in Europe. Serbia was willing to punish any one of her subjects who had been proved to have any complicity in that assassination. What more could you expect?