Part 37

Since the opening of hostilities in the present war the Scottish regiments have given repeated proofs of a valour which adds new lustre to the great traditions of Scottish soldiership. Through all the early operations--on the retreat from Mons and at the battles of the Marne and the Aisne--the Royal Scots Guards, the Scots Greys, the Gordon, the Seaforth and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the King's Own Scottish Borderers gained many fresh laurels by their heroism and undaunted spirit. The London Scottish Territorials, too, have shown a prowess as signal as that of the Scots of the Regular Army; while the mettle of men of Scottish descent has made glorious contribution in France and elsewhere to the fine records of the Overseas armies.

It is the inevitable corollary that death should levy a heavy toll on Scottish soldiers in the field. Thousands of kilted youth have suffered the fate which Raemaekers depicts in the accompanying cartoon. It is not, of course, only the young Scot whose thought turns in the moment of death to the hearth of his home with vivid memories of his mother. But the word "home" and all that the word connotes often makes a more urgent appeal to the Scot abroad than to the man of another nationality. There is significance in the fact that, far as the Scots are wont to wander over the world's surface, they should, under every sky and in every turning fortune, treasure as a national anthem the song which has the refrain:--

"For it's hame, an' it's hame, fain wad I be, O! it's hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!"

The German soldier in this war would seem to have lost well nigh all touch of humanity. Yet the draughtsman here suggests that even the German soldier on occasion yields to the pathos of the young Scot's death-cry for home and mother. There is grim irony in the dying man's blurred vision which mistakes the hand of his mortal foe for that of his mother.

Of such trying scenes is the drama of war composed.

SIDNEY LEE.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

THE FATE OF FLEMISH ART AT THE HANDS OF KULTUR

It will not be possible to estimate the injury suffered by the monuments of art wherein Belgium was so rich till the war is ended and the ruins examined. Much of the irreparable loss we know, as in the cases of Louvain and Ypres. In general we may fairly conjecture that whatever is portable behind the German lines is stolen, or will be, and the rest destroyed. What is portable is stolen for its cash value, just as are money, furniture, clothes, and watches. So much of respect for works of art we may expect from the Prussians--the measure of respect for the cash shewn by the Prussian general at Termonde who robbed a helpless civilian of the 5,000 francs he had drawn to pay his workmen's wages, and then called earth and heaven to witness his exalted virtue in not also murdering his victim. But what cannot be carried--a cathedral, a monument, an ancient window--that is destroyed with an apish zest. Even a picture in time or place, inconvenient for removal, that also will be defiled, slashed to rags, burnt. And indeed why not? For the best use of a work of art as understood among the Prussian pundits is to make it the peg whereon to hang some ridiculous breach of statistics, some monstrous disquisition of bedevilled theory; and for such purposes a work no longer existing so as good as any--even better.

And so the marvels of the centuries go up in dust and flames, and the memorials of Memling and Matsijs, Van Eyck, and Rubens are treated as the masters' own bodies would have been treated, had fate delayed their time till the coming of the Boche.

ARTHUR MORRISON.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

THE GRAVES OF ALL HIS HOPES

"Look at the map," says the German Chancellor. Look at the map, and mark with a cross every German disappointment and you will have a history of the war more illuminating than many books on the subject. The Marne, Ypres, South Africa, West Africa, Egypt, Bagdad, India, Tripoli, Verdun. Look at the map indeed. The map of the world that Germany set out to conquer. Consider the vapouring and vainglory that marked each of these "successes" in political or military trickery and the fact that of the military crosses each upbears above a mountain of losses the refrain of the old German song Verdorben--Gestorben--Ruined--Dead.

It is a wonderful map to consider, this map of the world in 1916. A wonderful map to be studied by the mothers of the Fatherland who have suckled their children to manure the crops of the future, to feed the crematoriums and blast furnaces of Belgium, to fill the mad houses, blind asylums, and homes for incurables, when the frosts of Russia and the guns of the Allies have done with them.

And every cross marks the grave of a hope.

Paris Regrets eternels.

That wonderful inscription was the first to be cut. Galliene was the mason. Verdun was the last and will not be the least. But, whatever may come to be written on stone, on the heart of the mourner when he comes to die only one inscription will be found: "Calais." If he has a heart large enough to have even these six letters.

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"MY SIXTH SON IS NOW LYING HERE--WHERE ARE YOURS?"

There is a picture in Brussels that the Kaiser ought to study on one of his visits to the Belgian capital. It is Wertz's picture of Napoleon in Hades.

Wertz was a madman, he knew something of the horrors of war, but he knew, also, something of the grandeur and nobility of Napoleon.

Napoleon is surrounded by women holding up the mutilated remains of sons, lovers, and fathers, and still he remains Napoleon, the child of Destiny, the Inscrutable, the Calm, and, if one may say so, the Gentleman.

Women knew, at least, that their dead had fallen before the armies or at the will of a great man in those Napoleonic days; there was something of Fate in the business.

But to-day the widow or the mourning mother, whilst knowing that her son or her husband has fallen in defending Humanity from the Beast can find no quarter in their hearts for the form or the shape of manhood that stands, in the words of Swinburne:

"Curse consecrated, crowned with crime and flame!"

No taunt could be too bitter for their lips and none more bitter than the words of Raemaekers: