Yet, while following the fortunes of our army in the field, I have often found myself pondering the fact whether, after all, war is such an abnormal thing to this great host of ours, Britishers of all stamps and from every clime drawn to the fighting-line by the same high ideal. The world, I grant you, has never seen so many men of Britain arrayed for battle on their own or any other soil. Yet we were once a military nation. The whole history of these lands of Picardy and Flanders, where our army is now fighting, during the past six centuries proclaims it. Since the days of the third Edward to the present time Englishmen have fought at intervals in these richly cultivated fields. The bones of many a fair-haired, straight-backed bowman of England are crumbling beneath the smiling plains through which our trenches run in a long winding line. The country is replete with souvenirs of our military past, of the Black Prince, of Henry V., of the Duke of York, of Marlborough. There are houses still standing in Ypres, despite German “frightfulness,” which witnessed the burning of the suburbs of the ancient capital of Flanders by the English and the burghers of Ghent in 1383. Half an hour’s motor drive from General Headquarters of our army in France will take you to the field of Agincourt, where, 500 years ago, King Harry and his archers struck a brave blow for England. I went to the field of Agincourt. It was a pious pilgrimage. As another son of England with England’s fighting men in Picardy, I wanted to stretch forth a hand across that gulf of 500 years, and say to those stout English bowmen, who from their native shires followed their knights and squires across the sea, “It is well. We are carrying on. You may rest in peace.” I wanted to tell them in their graves beneath the warm grass ablaze, as I saw it, with buttercups and daisies and the gentle speedwell, that theirs was a clean fight that had left no bitter memories, that the gentlemen of France who fought so valiantly at Agincourt are with us to-day in spirit as surely as their descendants are with us in the flesh; that, like the Dickons and Peterkins and Wats of Agincourt, our men in Picardy and Flanders are brave and steadfast and true till death. A little grove of trees enclosing a great crucifix planted in a solid base of brick is the only memorial on the battlefield. On a slab of stone affixed to the plinth the inscription runs: 25 OCTOBER, 1415. C’EST ICI QUE NOS VAILLANS GUERRIERS ONT SUCCOMBÉ. LEUR ESPÉRANCE EST PLEINE D’IMMORTALITÉ. LA PRIÈRE POUR LES MORTS AFIN QU’ILS SOIENT DÉLIVRÉS DE LA PEINE QU’ILS SUBISSENT POUR LEURS FAUTES EST UNE SAINTE ET SALUTAIRE PENSÉE. CETTE CROIX A ÉTÉ ÉRIGÉE PAR VICTOR MARIE LÉONARD MARQUIS DE TRAMECOURT ET MADAME ALINE MARIE CÉCILE DE TRAMECOURT, SON ÉPOUSE, À LA MÉMOIRE DE CEUX QUI AVEC LEURS ANCÊTRES ONT PÉRI DANS LA FATALE JOURNÉE D’AGINCOURT. PRIEZ POUR EUX.