I am sure that you have read with feelings of great pride and thankfulness this brief account of how the Empire rallied as one man in the day of trial. What an effect this splendid response must have had upon the Germans! They had sent their agents with bribes and lying tales into every part of the Empire where they thought men were discontented with British rule, and they hoped that when war broke out we should be so troubled with risings in many lands that we should be quite unable to fight them on the continent of Europe. A bitter disappointment awaited them. Except in South Africa, where there was a small rebellion which was easily put down without a single soldier being sent from Great Britain, the Empire proved as firm as a rock and as staunch as steel. Our Allies, the French and the Russians, were much struck by this wonderful unity. It proved to them, as it has proved to all the world, that, though we may have made mistakes in the government of our Empire, the races under the Union Jack know that we have honestly tried to do our duty by them, and have made their welfare our first and foremost consideration. So in this great and fateful struggle they stand by us, one in heart and mind, and we are knitted closer to them, and they to us, by their splendid loyalty in this hour of danger. The Germans call the British army "a multicoloured travelling circus." One of their writers has said that the British have got together the peoples of the earth to fight them, and have shipped to France a variegated white, black, brown, yellow, and red medley of races. What else did they expect when they challenged an Empire that has possessions in every continent on the face of the globe? We have every right to be proud that men of such diverse races, creeds, and colours have united so gladly and freely against the common foe. In an earlier chapter of this book I told you how the states of Germany were welded together into an empire after they had fought side by side in the war against France. As Lord Rosebery tells us, "blood shed in common is the cement of nations." Now that miners of the Yukon, trappers of Athabasca, backwoodsmen of British Columbia, cowboys of Alberta, stalwart sons of Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, stockmen and sheep farmers of Australia and New Zealand, Boers of South Africa, and men of a thousand towns and villages in the old country, stand shoulder to shoulder with Sikhs of the Punjab, tribesmen of the Khyber, Gurkhas of Nepal, Egyptians of the Nile, and Maoris of the Southern Seas, may we not hope that hereafter a new and stronger bond will unite all the scattered states of the British Empire? The war of 1870-71 made the German Empire; the great war in which we are engaged bids fair to make the British Empire. [Footnote 243: Close them up in ranks. The verses are adapted from W. E. Henley's "A New Song to an Old Tune."]