It is the fate of all writers who would describe the lives of Princes to be exposed to the charge of sycophancy. Yet there is no life for a plant of this growth in the perfectly natural and wholesome atmosphere surrounding the Prince of Wales at the front. He is not playing at soldiering. His periods of leave are few and far between. His life must often be very monotonous by reason of the restrictions which considerations of State must necessarily place upon his young and ardent temperament. Nevertheless, he sticks to his work, because he feels that his place is with our army in France. In after years, when the land over which the young Prince will one day rule is reaping the harvest of that peace for which our men in Flanders endured and died, the months which Edward, Prince of Wales, spent, of his own wish, with the army in the field will surely form another and a closer tie between him and the Empire. CHAPTER XII THE GUARDS IN FLANDERS. “... They (the 3rd French Chasseurs) had neared the cross-road, when Wellingtons’s voice was heard clear above the storm, ‘Stand up, Guards!’ Then from the shelter of the wayside banks rose the line of Maitland’s brigade of Guards, four deep and fifteen hundred strong, which poured a withering volley into the square, and charging, swept them out of the combat.” (“The Guards at Waterloo.” From _The Life of Wellington_, by the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P.) “Tangier,” “Namur,” “Gibraltar,” “Blenheim,” “Malplaquet,” “Dettingen,” “Talavera,” “Fuentes d’Onor,” “Waterloo,” “Alma,” “Inkerman,” “Tel-el-Kebir,” “South Africa”--what a host of gallant memories these battle honours of the Guards call forth, what a glorious procession of heroic figures defiling through history amid the fire and smoke of a hundred deathless fights! Men come and go in war. The regiment remains. Its battle honours are the symbol of what it was, the promise of what it will be. No body of troops in the British Army has redeemed the promise of its battle honours more illustriously in this war than the Guards. Marlborough, Wellington, Raglan, who saw in their careers, each in his turn, that the Guards were true to the promise of their colours, must look down from the Elysian Fields in proud admiration of the way in which the Guards in this war have once more maintained the untarnished splendour of their name. It will be with rightful satisfaction that the historian of the future will record how, in an unmilitary age, the British Army proved itself not unmindful of its great traditions, but he will be able to add that no regiments showed themselves more highly imbued with respect for the noblest qualities of the soldier than the Guards.