At the hour of armistice the line reached by the advanced guard ran from Montbliart in the south, west of Sautain, through the Bois de Martinsart, round the eastern edge of Grandrieu to the western skirts of Cousolre. It represented the easternmost point gained by any troops of the British Armies in France. The South Africans had the honour of finishing the War as the spear-point of the advance to victory. CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION. The Price of Victory—The Special Strength of the Brigade—An Example of True Race Integration—The Nation and the Individual. There is no need to pursue the chronicle of the Brigade through the slow months of demobilization, till in the following June the bulk of its members embarked for home in a German liner handed over to Britain under the terms of peace. When on that grey November morning the guns fell silent, it had accomplished the task to which it had dedicated itself in the summer of 1915. It had travelled a long road in the three years. Brought suddenly, after its short campaign in Egypt, into the thick of the fiercest struggle in the West, it had performed every duty allotted to it with whole-hearted devotion and supreme competence. Never more than a few thousand in numbers, and perpetually short of drafts, it had won for its country of origin a name in the field as proud as that of far larger and more populous territories. There is no soldier living who would deny that in quality the South Africans ranked with the best troops of any army. Twice by its own self-sacrifice the Brigade had been reduced to a handful, and had lost all semblance of a unit, and on each occasion its loss had been the salvation of the British cause. At Delville Wood, at Marrières Wood, and at Messines it had proved to what heights of resolution a defence may rise: in attack at Arras, at Third Ypres, and at Le Cateau it had shown the world, in Napier’s famous words, “with what majesty the British soldier fights.” The little contingent, one among some hundred British brigades, occupied small space on the battle-map. But scale must not be confused with kind; the men of Leonidas were not the less Spartans because they were only three hundred.