How hard the Kaiser’s legions tried to obey his commands you will shortly see. Also how completely they failed, and that although, as I must again remind you, the great outstanding feature of the Battle of Mons was the overwhelming number of the enemy compared to our forces. The simplest and most homely account often brings a fact more truly home to us than any fine language would do, and I doubt if we shall ever read a more vivid picture of the opening of this terrific fight than the following passage in a letter written by a young British soldier to his father, who is a gardener: “You complained last summer, Dad, of the swarm of wasps that destroyed your fruit. That will give you an idea of how the Germans came for us!” Yet another who took part in this terrific battle, wrote: “It looked as if we were going to be snowed under! The mass of men who came on was an avalanche, and everyone of us must have been trodden to death, if not killed by shells or bullets, had not our infantry charged into them on the left wing, not 500 yards from the trench I was in.” A non-commissioned officer also shows how our side was outnumbered: “No regiment ever fought harder than we did, and no regiment has ever had better officers; they went shoulder to shoulder with their men. But you cannot expect impossibilities, no matter how brave the boys are, when one is fighting forces twenty to thirty times as strong.” Everyone of the great battles in the world’s history has some outstanding heroic action to its credit. The heroes of Mons were British cavalry, for the 9th Lancers made there a charge every whit as gallant and glorious as the famous Charge of the Light Brigade. A German battery of ten guns had been posted inside a wood, each gun having been skilfully made to look like a small haystack, which caused the British to approach them unsuspectingly. When the guns opened fire, terrible havoc was caused in our ranks, and it seemed impossible to silence them. It was then that the 9th Lancers made their splendid charge. The whole regiment rode straight at the German battery, cut down all the gunners, and put the guns out of action. As was the case in the Charge of the Light Brigade they lost more men as they rode back than on their way in. I think the best account of this wonderful cavalry charge was written by one who was wounded in it. “We were flying at one another as hard as the horses could go. It was a charge such as you see in a picture, every man hoping he would not get his knees crushed by the fellows on each side of him.” Does not that remind you of Sir Walter Scott’s splendid lines? “On came the whirlwind—like the last But fiercest sweep of tempest blast; On came the whirlwind—steel gleams broke Like lightning through the rolling smoke, The war was waked anew.”