“Fellows!” he cried. “A toast! a toast not with wine—for wine with its blood-color belongs to the times which are going—which we hope are passing forever—I’m drinking a toast with crystal water—emblematic of the clean white civilization which is coming—for which we’re going ‘Over There’ to fight and die. “Here’s to every man who ever did a noble thing; volunteering his strength to help protect the weak! Here’s to every lad who ever fought out the terrible question in his heart and put the Greater Good above his life-hopes and ambitions. Here’s to every soul that ever laid in the dark, thinking of those at home, knowing that in the charge of dawn he might become to them but a bitter-sweet memory of days when every hour was a golden moment and time but a thing to pass away. Here’s to the dead—the illustrious dead—those who fell in battle, those of Forty-five, the men of Sixty-two, the men of every age and every land who fought the good fight nobly, to the best that was in them—for the things they believed to be right—and have gone to take finer and better orders under a Greater General, the Commander of Commanders, the Prince of—Peace!” He paused. He drew a long breath. He looked down the table. And he continued: “But along with our toast for the soldiers of the dead, boys—while the opportunity is ours—why not give also a toast—another kind of toast—to the soldiers of the living? Not ourselves, boys—but the ones—we’re leaving behind. It is little enough we can do for them!” His gaze wandered up to his glass. In a strange, inspired voice, he cried softly: “A toast!—a toast, also, to the truest and best soldiers of all—the mothers, the wives, and the girls we are leaving behind! “Here’s to the toil-hardened hands who cared for us when as helpless little kids, we were unable to care for ourselves. Here’s to the tears they have shed over our little torn clothes; the pillows that have been wet in the midnight with anxiety, longing, and heartache that we might be spared to do our duty as men. Here’s to the anguish they have suffered, the prayers they have prayed, the sacrifices they have made, the toil they have borne—all to be laid on the altar of war, all to be wiped out in a moment, perhaps, by a splinter of shrapnel or the thrust of a bayonet. Here’s to the nobility of their anguish when they come to learn we are no more; and the beauty of their faces when the divinity in their hearts tells the story upon their care-lined foreheads that they would climb the same weary Golgotha again—go through the same Gethsemane—bear the same cross—though they knew all along the end which it meant.