The grandeur of the doings of those First Seven Divisions lies, it may well be, in their immunity from the play of a cheap flashlight--a flashlight which too often distorts the perspective, and so illuminates the wrong spot. There is a gospel in the very reticence of the records of the regiments concerned--in the dignity with which, without any blare of trumpets, they tell of the daily answer to the call of a duty which balanced them ceaselessly on the edge of eternity. But it is always told as of a simple response to the call of duty, and not as a thing to be waved in the faces of an audience. But, though unflattered and unsung, those early deeds in France and Flanders can boast an epitaph which tells no lies, and which, in its simple tragedy, is more eloquent than a volume of strained panegyrics. The register of "missing" is an enigma; it may mean many things. But the register of killed and wounded is no enigma. It tells, in the simplest terms, a tale of death and mutilation faced and found at the call of duty. Let us leave it at that. The First Expeditionary Force is no more. The distinctive names and numbers of the units that composed it still face one from the pages of the "Army List;" but of the bronzed, cheery men who sailed in August, 1914, one third lie under the soil of France and Flanders. Of those that remain, some have been relegated for ever--and of a cruel necessity--to more peaceful pursuits; others--more hopefully convalescent--are looking forward with eagerness to the day when they will once more be fit to answer the call of duty and of country. THE END _Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._ End of Project Gutenberg's The First Seven Divisions, by Ernest W. Hamilton