O torn out of thy trance, O deathless, O my France, O many-wounded mother, O redeemed to reign! O rarely sweet and bitter The bright brief tears that glitter On thine unclosing eyelids, proud of their own pain; The beautiful brief tears That wash the stains of years White as the names immortal of thy chosen and slain. SWINBURNE. Tout homme deux pays—le sien et puis la France. VICTOR HUGO. Among the many changes which this great war will bring about, it will certainly again make true Victor Hugo’s touching boast, “Two countries hath each man—his own and France.” For nearly a thousand years this was true of all the gentlepeople in our three kingdoms. Scotsmen and Irishmen might be at daggers drawn with England, but always they remained not only friendly, but on the closest terms of intimacy with France. Charming French princesses married Scottish kings, and you will perhaps remember that when the great Scots wizard waved his wand, “the bells would ring in Notre Dame,” not, observe, in Westminster Abbey or in Old St. Paul’s! There was a Scots College and an Irish College in Paris, and no one in Scotland and Ireland was reckoned a scholar unless he had studied in France. The fact that England and France were almost always at war made no difference to this pleasant state of things, and now we like to remember that the one place where, till this year, British and French fought side by side, was in the Holy Land during the Crusades. In old days wars raged over years, not over weeks or months, and now and again great stretches of French country belonged to England. I know a beautiful parish church in the heart of France which was built by the British in the thirteenth century—seven hundred years ago. Those of you who have learned any history must know that poor Queen Mary exclaimed that when she died the word “Calais” would be found graven on her heart, so deeply had she felt its recapture by the French. Not long ago, speaking of the Germans’ desperate wish to get to Calais, a great English writer observed, smiling, “As to the effect which their occupation of Calais would produce on this country, they are three hundred years too late. Calais is not inscribed on the heart of _our_ Queen Mary!”