Whether they sing with levity or seriousness (and levity of manner often veils their seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and goodwill they sing. To them the war is a hard road leading to a better life for mankind. It is to them what the desert was to the Israelites, when they left the bondage of Egypt for the liberty of the Land of Promise. Therefore they must tread it without faltering even as Christ trod the way of the Cross. "There’s a long, long trail awinding into the Land of their dreams" and they will not lose faith in their dreams however wearisome the way. Elderly navvies and laborers have come to smooth the roads for them, and nurses are tending those who have fallen broken by the way; while across the sundering sea are mothers and wives whose prayers make flowers spring up at their feet and blossoms break out on every tree that fringes the side of the road. *III* *THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT* There is an undoubted glamour about the Front, which when at home, in England, cannot be explained. In the army or out of it, the wine of life is white and still, but at the Front it runs red and sparkling. One day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and sat on a box by the side of one of the servants of the officer’s mess at the Aerodrome near by. He was going into Doullens, a market town, to buy food and some little luxuries. Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English flyers, was, up to the time of his death in the air, a member of the mess, and the servant was telling me how comfortable all the officers make their quarters. In a phrase he defined the glamour of the Front. "One day," he said, "when we were helping him to make his room comfortable, Captain Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled, ’We haven’t long to live, but we live well while we do live.’" There you have it. Life is concentrated. Death is near--just round the corner--so the men make the most of their time and "live well." It has the same quality as "leave" at home. Leave is short and uncertain, so we "live well." Our friends know it may be the last sight of us, and we know it may be our last sight of them. They are kind and generous to us, as we are to them; and so, the ten days of "leave" are just glorious. Ruskin says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts but a second, and that Turner went out early in the evening and watched with rapt attention for that one second of supreme splendor and delight. He lived for sunsets and while others were balancing their accounts, or taking tea, he went out to see the daily miracle. The one second in which he saw God pass by in the glory of the sunset was to him worth all the twenty-four hours. For one second in each day he caught the glamour of earth and heaven, and went back to his untidy studios blind to all but the splendor he had seen.