Then the hour strikes, and a word of command rings out from the half-obliterated square, where the khaki lines can be seen dimly through the driving snow. Umbrellas are lowered; cruel though the weather, German hats are all removed. A lad standing near me, obviously cold and shivering, shows signs of keeping his cap on; an older German man has it off in a moment. The trumpeters step forward on the cathedral steps, and in a silence broken only by the moaning of the wind the Last Post is heard. For most British folks those familiar notes, which salute the sinking sun and say farewell to the dead, are at all times full of poignant memory. But never surely have they been heard under conditions more poignant than in the heart of an enemy town on the first anniversary of the Armistice. Is it two minutes or two hours that we stand in that unbroken silence--no sound, no murmur, no movement from the dense crowd? For the men and women on the square, be they British or German, what memories are packed into those tense moments! The snow falls fitfully: again a word of command is heard: the brief ceremony is over. So we salute our glorious dead, and who is ungenerous enough in such an hour to withhold respect from the brave men among our foes who fell in the service of their country doing their duty as simply as those whose names and memories we cherish? “So long as men are doing their duty, even if it be greatly under a misapprehension, they are leading pattern lives,” writes Robert Louis Stevenson. Strife and bitterness belong to the things temporal. We may rest assured that the heroes of all races who meet and greet each other in Valhalla will drink without hatred in their hearts from the cup of reconciliation. * * * * *