The Project Gutenberg EBook of The King's Pilgrimage, by Frank Fox

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: The King's Pilgrimage

Author: Frank Fox

Release Date: May 10, 2011 [EBook #36075]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KING'S PILGRIMAGE ***




Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive.)

THE KING’S

PILGRIMAGE

PROFITS FROM THE SALE OF THIS BOOK WILL, BY HIS MAJESTY’S DESIRE, BE DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE PHILANTHROPIC ORGANIZATIONS WHICH FOR SOME TIME HAVE BEEN ASSISTING RELATIVES TO VISIT THE CEMETERIES ABROAD

“THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE”

TERLINCTHUN

“Standing beneath this cross of sacrifice and
facing the great stone of remembrance”

The King’s Pilgrimage

London:
Hodder and Stoughton, Limited
1922

The Imperial War Graves Commission has to acknowledge the permission of the following for the publication of the photographs which are contained in this book: Central News Agency, Graphic Photo Union, “Daily Mail,” Press Photographic Agency, “The Times,” Topical Press Agency, Lt.-Col. H. Ellissen, Mr. F. C. See, Mr. A. H. W. Brown

PRINTED IN PHOTOGRAVURE
BY
THE SUN ENGRAVING CO., LTD.
LONDON AND WATFORD

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

May 1922.

I am interested to hear of the proposed publication of the record of my pilgrimage to the War Graves.

It grieves me to think how many relatives are prevented from visiting the graves of their dear ones through lack of means. During my recent visit to the Cemeteries in France and Belgium, I was glad to learn that various organisations are endeavouring to meet this difficulty by raising funds which I trust will be substantially assisted by the sale of the book.

 

[Pg 1]

The King’s Pilgrimage

[Pg 4]

I: “Our King went forth on pilgrimage.”

It was our King’s wish that he should go as a private pilgrim, with no trappings of state nor pomp of ceremony, and with only a small suite, to visit the tombs in Belgium and France of his comrades who gave up their lives in the Great War. In the uniform which they wore on service, he passed from one to another of the cemeteries which, in their noble simplicity, express perfectly the proud grief of the British race in their dead; and, at the end, within sight of the white cliffs of England, spoke his thoughts in a message of eloquence which moved all his Empire to sympathy.

The Governments of France and of Belgium, our allies in the war for the freedom of the world, respected the King’s wish. Nowhere did official ceremony intrude on an office of private devotion. But nothing could prevent the people of the country-side gathering around the places which the King visited, bringing with them flowers, and joining their tribute to his. They acclaimed him not so much as King, but rather as the head of those khaki columns which crossed the Channel to help to guard their homes; in their minds the memory of the glad relief of August, 1914, when they learnt that the British were with them in the war and felt that the ultimate end was secure. Many of them were of the peasants who, before the scattered graves of our dead had been gathered into enduring cemeteries, had graced them with flowers, making vases of[Pg 5] shell-cases gathered from the battle-fields. The King was deeply moved by their presence, at seeing them leave for an hour the task of building up their ruined homes and shattered farms, and coming with pious gratitude to share his homage to the men who had been faithful to their trust unto death. To those around him he spoke more than once in thankful appreciation of this good feeling of the people of France and Belgium. Especially was he pleased to see the children of the country-side crowd around him, and when little choirs of them sang “God Save the King” in quaintly accented words his feeling was manifest.

There came thus to the pilgrimage from the first an atmosphere of affectionate intimacy between these people who were not his subjects and the British King. They gathered around him as around a friend, the old women leaning forward to catch his words, the children trying to come close enough to touch him, seeing in his uniform again the “Tommy” who had proved such a gentle soul when he came for a brief rest from the horrors of the battle-field to the villages behind the line and helped “mother” with the housework and nursed the baby. At one village a gendarme, feeling in his official soul that this was really no way to treat a King, tried to arrange some more formal atmosphere. But in vain. The villagers saw the old friendly good-humoured British Army back in France, and could not be official.

Now and then at a cemetery the King met relatives, in some cases from far-off Pacific Dominions, visiting their dead, and he stopped to speak with them because they were on the same mission as he was, of gratitude and reverence. One mother, moved by the kindness of the King’s greeting, opened her heart to him and told, with the simple eloquence of real feeling,[Pg 6] how she had just come from her son’s grave and was proud that he had died for his King and country; that every care had been taken to find and identify it, and “more could not have been done if it had been the Prince of Wales himself.”

At several points the workers of the Imperial War Graves Commission—practically all of whom had gone through the campaign, and now are reverently and carefully tending the last resting-places of their fallen comrades—assembled to greet the King. He spoke with them also, giving them thanks for their work and noting their war medals and asking them about their life in the camps, or with the mobile caravans which, in the districts where housing cannot yet be found, move from cemetery to cemetery, keeping fresh the tribute of grass and flowers and trees—caravans which bring back vividly one’s memory of the old British supply columns, for they are almost invariably led by a small self-important and well-fed dog.

When at Vlamertinghe—where are the graves of the first Dominion soldiers who fell in the war—the High Commissioner for Canada, the Hon. P. C. Larkin, was met visiting the Canadian graves there; the King gave him a very warm greeting. He showed that there is never absent from his mind the thought that in the greatest Ordeal of Battle which the British race has had to pass through, the children nations of his Empire came to the side of the Mother Country, with the instinctive spontaneity of the blood in a limb responding to a message from the heart; and that the crimson tie of kinship never broke nor slackened through all the perilous anxious years. Across the sea, held for them as a safe path by the Navy, the men of the Empire—and the women, too—kept passing at the King’s word to whatsoever point at which the peril was greatest, the work most exacting. The graves of[Pg 7] the Flanders battle-fields told triumphantly of this august Imperial assembly—the dead of the Mother Country having around them those of India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, the West Indies, the Pacific Islands.[1] At every point the voices of the dead bespoke, in the King’s words, “the single-hearted assembly of nations and races which form our Empire.”

········

It was at the close of a State visit to the King of the Belgians that the King left Brussels on a special train early on the morning of May 11. The King lived on the train (in his own carriage which had been in France throughout the war) during the tour, motor-cars meeting it at fixed halting-places for the visits to the cemeteries. He was accompanied by Field-Marshal Earl Haig, whom His Majesty specially wished to be at his side on this pilgrimage. The Royal Party was a small one; in addition to Lord Haig, it consisted of Major-General Sir Fabian Ware (who, as Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission, was in charge of all the arrangements) and of three members of the suite, the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Ponsonby, Colonel Clive Wigram, and Major R. Seymour. The first visit paid was to Zeebrugge Churchyard, where rest some of those who fell in the Zeebrugge Battle which marked St. George’s Day, 1918. Many of the graves are still unidentified, but, with the aid of enemy burial lists recently secured, it is hoped that the identity of some, at any rate, will be established. There was, by the King’s express wish, no formal ceremony at this nor any other cemetery before Terlincthun, but the school children of Zeebrugge[Pg 8] assembled and sang the British National Anthem and brought flowers for the graves.

The King went on to examine the scene of the exploit of Vindictive and her supporting ships. The day was bright and breezy, and, by a happy chance, a Belgian fishing fleet was making for harbour with the night’s harvest of the sea. To the eye of the sailor this gave clear indication of the lay of the harbour approaches and of its entrance, and helped materially to illustrate the way in which the Mole was approached and the task with which the British naval forces were faced. The King took the keenest interest in every detail of the exploit and of the tactics employed. He stayed for some time at the point where the submarine, loaded with high explosives, rammed the Mole to breach it, with the double object of cutting off the enemy garrison on the Mole from reinforcements and of helping the obstacles which were to be sunk in the fairway to silt up the harbour by letting in the drifting sands. The positions where the ships were sunk in the fairway were examined, and the King, with his professional knowledge of the Service in which he spent his young manhood, could reconstruct the whole battle. He made particular inspection of the spot where the landing party from Vindictive scaled the Mole—perhaps the most astonishing “boarding” feat of naval history.

With some reluctance the King turned his back to the sea, and the Royal party went on by train to Zonnebeke. Here the party left the train and proceeded by car to visit Tyne Cot Cemetery, which is in the midst of what was the most desolate and terrible of all battle-fields—the Passchendaele marshes. Tyne Cot (or cottage) was on the north side of the Ypres-Roulers railway, near the village of Passchendaele. It was here that the enemy first built their “pill boxes” or concrete forts. The water-logged ground would not allow[Pg 9] of the construction of dug-outs nor of effective shelter trenches, and the enemy sought to hold their line with these strong points of reinforced concrete, heavily armed with machine guns, to attack which the British storming infantry often had to wade waist-deep in mire up to the very muzzles of the guns.

No part of the long trench line which stretched from the sea to Switzerland has such shuddering memories for the British Army as Passchendaele. There it had the problem of storming a whole series of miniature Zeebrugge Moles standing in seas of slimy mud, to sink into which from the narrow built paths of trench-boards was to perish. Of the nine thousand British soldiers buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery, over six thousand are “unknown.” The hateful mud swallowed up their identity with their lives.

Many places on the long trench line which stretched like a dreadful scar across Belgium and France the King knew during the days of the war. Very jealously the secrets of his visits to the Front had to be guarded then, especially when both the King and the Heir Apparent were at the same time in the battle-line; and no public record exists of them. But it is safe to say that Tyne Cot he saw for the first time this May afternoon. He understood how appalling was the task which his soldiers faced there, and, turning to the great “pill box” which still stands in the middle of the cemetery, he said that it should never be moved, should remain always as a monument to the heroes whose graves stood thickly around. From its roof he gazed sadly over the sea of wooden crosses, a “massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.” It is indeed fitting that this should form, as it will, the foundation for the great Cross of Sacrifice shortly to be built up as a central memorial in this cemetery.

 [Pg 10]

ZEEBRUGGE

ARRIVAL AT THE MOLE

 [Pg 11]

ZEEBRUGGE

INSPECTING THE MOLE

 [Pg 12]

ZEEBRUGGE

AT THE BREACH IN THE MOLE

 [Pg 13]

ZEEBRUGGE CHURCHYARD

INSPECTING BRITISH GRAVES

 [Pg 14]

AT BRANDHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY.

 [Pg 15]

TYNE COT CEMETERY

THE KING AND THE GARDENERS

 [Pg 16]

TYNE COT CEMETERY

 [Pg 17]

TYNE COT CEMETERY

THE KING READING INSCRIPTIONS ON WOODEN CROSSES

 [Pg 18]

TYNE COT CEMETERY

INSPECTING THE GERMAN BLOCKHOUSE WHICH WILL FORM THE BASE OF THE CENTRAL MEMORIAL

 [Pg 19]

YPRES TOWN CEMETERY

THE GRAVE OF H.H. PRINCE MAURICE OF BATTENBERG

 [Pg 20]

YPRES TOWN CEMETERY

 [Pg 21]

MENIN GATE, YPRES

EXAMINING THE PLANS FOR THE MEMORIAL TO THOSE WHO HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE

 [Pg 22]

VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY

 [Pg 23]

VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY

THE BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER PRESENTING A WREATH

 [Pg 24]

 [Pg 25]

“I have been on a solemn pilgrimage in honour
of a peoplewho died for all free men”

[Pg 26]

II: “It was low and hollow ground where once the cities stood”

The King’s route after leaving Tyne Cot Cemetery brought him to the salient where the British Army held Ypres as the gate guarding the Channel ports. The enemy rush to Paris had failed, and he was seeking a way to victory by a rush to seize the French side of the English Channel as a prelude to the invasion of England. In the first Battle of Ypres the enemy sought with enormous superiority of numbers to overwhelm the British force which barred the Calais Road. To hold Ypres was vital, and yet Ypres was, humanly speaking, indefensible, within a saucer-shaped salient dominated on three sides by the German artillery.

The attack was pushed on with fierce energy from October 21st, 1914, onwards, and was met with heroic stubbornness by a woefully thin khaki line. At one stage there was no question of reliefs. Every man practically in the British Force, including cooks and batmen, was in the front line, and these men held to the trenches day after day, night after night, without sleep, with little food, with no intermission from rifle and shell fire.

During the second Battle of Ypres, in the spring of 1915, the war took on a new phase with the enemy use of asphyxiating gas as a weapon. Of this odious and unexpected form of warfare the Canadians were the first victims, but withstood the surprise with a cool heroism which saved the day.

[Pg 27]There were other battles of Ypres, and all the land around was saturated with the blood of heroes. So this “low and hollow ground,” stiffened with our dead, is holy soil to the British race. The King chose fitly to render there his homage to the dead of the Belgian Army who on the Yser held the left flank of the line through all the years of bitter fighting for Ypres.

On his way to the Menin Gate of Ypres city, the King directed the cars to turn aside to the Town Cemetery, that he might stand silent for a few moments by the graves of Prince Maurice of Battenberg, Lord Charles Mercer-Nairne, Major the Hon. W. Cadogan, and other officers, some of those of his own personal friends whom the war claimed, and whose graves lie among those of their men, marked by the same simple memorials.

········

Ypres to-day is no longer a mass of shell-shattered ruins. The work of reconstruction has been carried on earnestly, and thousands of new houses have been built. But nothing can ever restore the mediæval beauty of the city which grew like a noble wood in carved stone on the Flanders Plain. The ruins of the Cloth Hall will remain as the monument of the old city which was once a world’s capital for those who wove wool into fine cloth. The old ramparts at the Menin Gate—stout walls which provided security for the British signallers even in the most furious bombardments—will remain as another monument, an effective symbol of the British Army at Ypres, very sorely battered, but still holding secure.

It is proposed by the Imperial War Graves Commission that at the Menin Gate there should be a memorial to those of the[Pg 28] Empire’s Armies who fell in this area but have no known graves. It will crown these ramparts with a great double arch, enclosing a vaulted hall, in which will be recorded the names of all those lost in the neighbouring battle-fields whose bodies have not been recovered and identified. The design provides that the arch facing Menin, where once the foe was drawn up, will be surmounted by the great figure of a lion alert in defence, the arch facing Ypres by some other symbolical sculpture.

········

The King was met at the Menin Gate by representatives of the Belgian Government and Army, by Major Michelet and M. Lorel of the Belgian Graves Services, and by the Burgomaster of Ypres. The industrious re-builders of Ypres paused from their work for an hour and assembled to give him a hearty greeting. The King entrusted a chaplet of palms and bay leaves with a spray of red roses in memory of the Belgian dead to Major Michelet. He then congratulated the Burgomaster on the progress his citizens were making with the work of reconstruction. Sir Reginald Blomfield, architect of the memorial at the Menin Gate, submitted to the King the designs and plans of the monument. His Majesty emphasised the need that the names inscribed should be clear to all to read.

········

Leaving the Menin Gate, the King passed by the ruins of the Cloth Hall and of the Cathedral, noting the irreparable loss to the world through the destruction of these magnificent examples of Flemish architecture. It was observed that the[Pg 29] drivers found it somewhat difficult to find a way through the new Ypres which is growing up under the industrious hands of the Belgian population. Ypres, the “Museum City” of 1914, is known to many. The “Wipers” of 1918, a tumble of desolation through which the soldiers passed under constant shell fire by burrowed paths, became familiar to almost every British regiment. But this new, re-building Ypres is a stranger.

The route of the pilgrimage went from Ypres to Vlamertinghe, passing on the way the British cemetery behind Ypres Reservoir, the Asylum British Cemetery, the cemetery on the Dickebusch Road, and the Railway Château Cemetery. At Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery the King stopped and, as has already been noted, visited the Canadian graves with the High Commissioner for Canada, as well as paying his tribute to the many British buried there. This cemetery, between Poperinghe and Ypres, was begun by the French troops, then holding part of the line here. It contains 1,114 graves of British soldiers, 52 of Canadian, 4 of Australian, 2 of South African, 2 of soldiers of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, one of an Indian soldier, and one of an unknown soldier. Very many of the British graves are of Territorial dead. There are, for example, nearly 250 Lancashire Territorials buried there: those splendid men who proved, both in Gallipoli and France, that the town-bred population of the Mother Country was fit, in courage and endurance, to rank with the historic regiments of the line and with the young giants from the Oversea Dominions.

········

From Vlamertinghe, along the granite-set roads which were[Pg 30] for years pounded by our ammunition wagons and supply trains, but the dust arising from which now proclaims the works of peace as the country-folk drive their carts loaded with bricks and timber for re-building, the King went on to the Hop Store Cemetery, greeted everywhere with cordial sympathy. Hop Store village was used from time to time as headquarters both by our heavy artillery and by our field ambulances. The site of the cemetery is on a marshy patch of ground, but it was drained by the Royal Engineers early in 1917, and recently a moat has been constructed on three sides. It holds 247 of our dead.

From Hop Store the King went on to Brandhoek, which was a comparatively safe area during the war, and therefore a post for field ambulances. The old Military Cemetery, which the King visited, was opened in May, 1915, in a field adjoining the Dressing Station, and was closed in July, 1917. It shelters the bodies of 601 soldiers from the Home Country, 62 from Canada, 4 from Australia, and 2 of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps. In July, 1917, the Military Cemetery was opened 300 yards away, and in August, 1917, a third cemetery was opened.

Poperinghe was next visited. This agricultural town on the road between Ypres and Hazebrouck, situated among hopfields and dairy farms, was a haven of rest in the early days of the war. Although occasionally bombarded at long range, it was the nearest town to Ypres which was reasonably safe. It was at first a casualty clearing station centre. Later, in 1916, when shell fire increased, it was decided to move back the casualty clearing station to a safer zone, and Poperinghe became a field ambulance station. The earliest British graves at Poperinghe are in the Communal Cemetery, a walled graveyard[Pg 31] at the entrance to the town. The old Military Cemetery was made in the course of the first Battle of Ypres, and was closed (so far as British burials were concerned) in May, 1915. The New Military Cemetery was made in June, 1915. It contains the graves of 596 soldiers from the Home Country, 55 from Canada, 20 from Australia, 3 from New Zealand, and 2 of the British West Indies Regiment.

Lijssenthoek was the last of the cemeteries on Belgian soil visited. This cemetery is at Remy Siding, on the south side of the Hazebrouck-Ypres railway line, between Poperinghe and Abeele. The site was first used for burials by a French military hospital, and there is a group of French graves on what is now the eastern boundary of the cemetery. The earliest British burial dates from June, 1915. This cemetery had to be repeatedly enlarged as the campaign levied its toll on our forces. It now contains 9,795 British and Dominion graves, 892 French, 2 Belgian, 52 American, and 32 Chinese. The majority of burials took place from the Canadian casualty clearing stations at Remy. Of the French graves, 10 are those of unknown soldiers and 689 will remain in the cemetery.

········

Going out of Belgium to France the sun was shining and the graciousness of Nature, covering with herb and blossom the ulcers of the old battle-fields, made this corner of Flanders seem a fair and human country. For those who now saw the district for the first time, the concrete forts lying like the bleached skeletons of strange monsters in the fields, and the serried ranks of the graves, coming up in line after line to give their mute witness, told something of what it cost to hold the Ypres Salient. But the King knew all that it had been in the[Pg 32] long dark winters of the war, when the very abomination of desolation brooded over it, and in its pools of slime his soldiers struggled and choked that the fields of England might be kept free of the foe. He did not hide from those with him that the memory of it weighed heavy on him and that in his mind, with pride in the thought of such superhuman devotion, there was a passionate hope that never again in the world’s history would men be called upon to suffer as these men had suffered.

Speaking, too, of the cemeteries, where general and private rest side by side beneath the same simple stones, equal in the honour of their death for duty’s sake, he agreed that this was the only possible way.

 [Pg 33]

NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE

THE KING MEETING MARSHAL FOCH

 [Pg 34]

NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE

SALUTING THE FRENCH COLOUR PARTY

 [Pg 35]

NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE

SALUTING THE FRENCH COLOUR PARTY

 [Pg 36]

NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE

THE FRENCH GUARD OF HONOUR

 [Pg 37]

NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE

THE KING AND MARSHAL FOCH

 [Pg 38]

NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE

“I have come to lay a wreath in homage on the tombs
of French heroes who have fallen for their country”

 [Pg 39]

NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE

THE SILENCE AND THE SALUTE TO THE DEAD

 [Pg 40]

NOTRE DAME DE LORETTE

THE BROW OF THE HILL OVERLOOKING THE RIDGE

THE KING WITH MARSHAL FOCH, GENERAL WEYGAND AND FIELD-MARSHAL EARL HAIG

 [Pg 41]

INSPECTION OF GARDENERS

 [Pg 42]

FORCEVILLE CEMETERY

 [Pg 43]

FORCEVILLE

 [Pg 44]

FORCEVILLE

THE KING SPEAKING TO THE MAYOR

 [Pg 45]

LOUVENCOURT

 [Pg 46]

LOUVENCOURT

A TRAVELLING GARDENING PARTY

 [Pg 47]

PICQUIGNY

WHERE A NUMBER OF AUSTRALIANS LIE

 [Pg 48]

CROUY BRITISH CEMETERY

THE KING TALKING TO TWO BEREAVED AUSTRALIAN RELATIVES

[Pg 49]

III: “It was bare and hilly ground where once the bread-corn grew.”

In the evening of May 11 the King passed from Belgium into France on his way to Vimy, which had been chosen as the resting-place for the night. As the train arrived at Hazebrouck, the first stop after crossing the frontier, the Prefect of the Nord, together with the Maire of Hazebrouck, received His Majesty. The Maire (M. l’Abbé Lemire) is a figure known to every soldier who passed through Hazebrouck during the war; not only had he been a constant friend to all ranks of the British Army, but his courageous and imperturbable control of his townspeople during the early days of 1914 will always be remembered in the history of the war.

The journey through the stricken area of French Flanders was full of memories of heroic resolution and accomplishment. Those fields yonder were tilled during the war by the French—the old men, women, and children—under the guns of the enemy, the plough-share’s orderly cutting of the soil now and again interrupted as exploding shells dug their pits, but the stubborn peasants going on with their toil. Those same fields, later, knew at its best the practical heroism of the British soldier (is not that the dominant characteristic of the British race, its power to bring the highest courage to the common labour of life?). The German onrush had brought areas (which the French had cultivated under shell fire) within the[Pg 50] zone of the front line and the civilians had to be sent back. Since every ear of wheat was precious at that time, the British Army organized to save this part of the French harvest, and actually reaped the product of eighteen thousand acres. It was gallant work, chiefly done by fighting men between their turns in the trenches. When an area was under the direct fire and close observation of the enemy the crop was cut at night. When the enemy used gas shells to prevent the work, the soldier reapers went on with their task in gas masks. One area of six acres of corn was so close to the enemy trenches that the idea of saving it seemed desperate. But one night seventeen volunteers with hand scythes cleared the whole of it in the three hours of darkness that were available. This, more perhaps than any deeds done in the heat and ardour of battle, impressed the French farmers and set in their minds an imperishable memory of the gallant friendliness of the British.

········

Coming to Vimy and looking out on its ridge, the King bethought of the great battle in which his Canadian troops had won this key-position, and telegraphed to Lord Byng, the present Governor-General of Canada, and before in command of the Canadian Corps, the following message of thankfulness and congratulation:—

“I have just spent the night at Vimy. My thoughts are with you.”

It was a right royal remembrance which delighted Canada.

········

The first act of the King on May 12 was to pay his homage to the dead of the armies of France, and he passed through the torn and shattered country at its base to Notre Dame de Lorette, the great bastion hill which was the centre of the[Pg 51] Allies’ resistance in the North. Noticing that his train would pass by it, he had written personally to Marshal Foch asking him to meet him there, so that the great commander might be at his side when he paid his homage.

To the French people Notre Dame de Lorette is la colline sacrée of the Great War. It was the key for the defence of Flanders and Artois, the most bitterly contested strong point on French soil, not excepting Verdun. For twelve continuous months, without a day’s interruption, one battle raged round the hill. Every yard of its soil bears shell scars and has been dyed with noble blood. Altogether, over 100,000 men gave up their lives around this hallowed hill, and it was the most fitting place for the King to pay his homage to the noble dead of the French Army.

Nor is Notre Dame de Lorette without its proud memories for the British Army, which held for long the Artois line of defences. Hardly one of the many thousands of British officers who served in the Royal Regiment of Artillery during the Great War but who has at one time “observed” for his guns from Lorette. All the batteries, field and heavy, for miles around were directed from the observation posts on the hill, which gave a great range of view, north and south, so far behind the enemy lines that the housing of his balloons and the movements of his railways could be followed.

As it stands to-day, Lorette has been cleared of much of its timber and is thicketed with the clustering crosses of the French cemeteries. It is intended to erect upon it a memorial to the dead of the Artois and Flanders fronts. The design by M. Louis Cordonnier, an architect of Lille (which was shown by him to the King), provides for a Basilica on the spot where once was built the chapel of Notre Dame de Lorette. One[Pg 52] hundred metres from the Basilica will be built a beacon tower which will show a perpetual light visible for fifty miles around, reminding the miner and agriculturist and trader of future generations with what great sacrifice their country was held free.

········

The King, reaching Notre Dame de Lorette, walked up the steep slope of the hill to a little plateau, in the centre of the thickly clustered French graves, where he was met by Marshal Foch, General Weygand (the Marshal’s Chief of Staff), General Lacapelle, commanding the First Army Corps, and M. Cauzel, Prefect of the Pas-de-Calais.

“I have come,” said the King as he took Marshal Foch by the hand, “to lay a wreath in homage on the tombs of French heroes who have fallen for their country.”

The trumpets sounded a salute as the King arrived and inspected the French Guard of Honour, and then with Marshal Foch he walked along the lines of white wooden crosses of the cemetery.

The King came back to the centre of the hill, where will be erected the memorial to the dead, and, addressing Marshal Foch, said: “I am happy, M. le Maréchal, that you are by my side at this moment, when I come to place this wreath in deserved homage to the heroic soldiers of France.” On a mound over which flew the French flag he placed his chaplet of red roses, palm and bay, bearing the simple inscription, “From King George V,—12th May, 1922,” then stood for two minutes silent at the salute, Marshal Foch and Field-Marshal Earl Haig on either side.

Deeply moved was the King and those around him. All the tragedy and all the heroism which Notre Dame de Lorette symbolizes rose up before the mind. At the King’s feet[Pg 53] stretched, in row after row, the tombs of the French, who lost almost a complete generation of their glorious youth in defence of their country. Beyond the line of tombs showed for miles and miles devastated France—the ruins which had been great manufacturing towns, the wastes which had been fertile fields, the dusty stains on the landscape which had been smiling villages, the tangles of splintered stumps which had been fruitful trees. Here was the record of the scientifically considered, the systematically prepared, the meticulously executed ruin of France; and these graves were of those who stemmed the wave of that hideous desolation.

Leaving the cemetery and walking on a little distance, the King, Marshal Foch, and Earl Haig took their stand on a commanding point of the hill and discussed the strategy of the campaign. Marshal Foch and Earl Haig talked over some of the great actions of the war, pointing out to the King various points the names of which are household words to-day—Souchez, Vimy, the Labyrinth, Loos, Lens, and those betraying dumps of the coal pits which caused the loss of so many a soldier.

The King listened with keen interest and was clearly delighted at the cordial comradeship of the two great soldiers. He turned to them at one point with the confident query: “Toujours bons amis, n’est ce pas?” Marshal Foch replied with fervour: “Toujours, toujours, pour les mêmes causes et les mêmes raisons,” and grasped Earl Haig’s hand. As the two Marshals clasped hands in the grip of comradeship the King placed his hand over theirs.

A scene to be remembered for all time, the making of that pledge and its sealing with the King’s hand on the sacred hill of Notre Dame de Lorette.

[Pg 54]Leaving the hill, the King and his party proceeded by car in the direction of Albert, going through the mining villages, still mostly ruins, but busy now again with useful industry. The route followed passed such well-known places as Souchez and Mont St. Eloy. The day being a crowded one, there was no time to stop in the ruined town of Arras, but with the thought which characterized all the arrangements which the French had made, the Prefect had detailed a guard of cyclists to meet the cars at the entrance to the town. They conducted the King’s car through Arras, passing all the chief points in the town which had suffered from the enemy’s fire.

From thence the King went on to Bapaume, Warlencourt, and Le Sars, seeing again the Somme battle-field, the scene of the first great British offensive attack in the summer of 1916. It was there the New Armies were put to the crucial test and proved that they were worthy to take up and guard the tradition of the old Regular Army. In many hundreds of thousands of British homes to-day the Battle of the Somme is the greatest memory of the campaign, for it marked the end of the wearisome trench war, the first move to drive the enemy from out of the land he had invaded, though he had made of it, as he thought, an invincible fortress. They can remember the joy they had in the heartening roar of our guns as they prepared the attack, the multitudinous clamour of the field guns, the sharp scream of the 12-inch guns which reared their monstrous throats by street corners of Albert, the deep note, as of a giant’s cough, of the 15-inch howitzers, pushing out shells as big almost as mines.

Bitter was the fighting on the Somme, most bitter when in moving to the attack the infantry encountered rain and the chalky downs became as grease under their feet. But there was the exultant feeling of advancing, of winning back day by day[Pg 55] a little bit of France. The Somme heartened the British soldier with the knowledge that impregnableness had lost its meaning, heartened them, too, with the knowledge that our Air Force had won supremacy in the air, and now could blind the enemy at will by driving his aeroplanes and observation balloons out of the sky.

Passing by several cemeteries and battle exploit memorials erected by both home and Dominion units, the party reached Albert, from the ruined cathedral tower of which a great statue of the Virgin and Child hung perilously through years of the war. It was said that, when it fell, the war would end; and in truth it did not fall until the end was near. A halt at Albert had not been arranged, but the King, noting a party of workers of the War Graves Commission in a camp there, stopped and talked with the men.

The afternoon was occupied in visiting cemeteries in the surrounding districts.

········

For the Somme victories we paid heavy price, as the crowding Somme cemeteries show. The King visited of these:—

Warlencourt.—This cemetery is 500 yards north of the Butte de Warlencourt, across the Albert-Bapaume road. It is entirely a concentration cemetery, begun towards the end of 1919. It includes the graves brought from the original cemeteries at Hexham Road, Le Sars, and Seven Elms, Flers, as well as over 3,000 British graves due to the fighting which took place around the Butte de Warlencourt from the autumn of 1916 to the spring of 1917, and again in the German advance and retreat of 1918.

Warloy-Baillon.—There are two cemeteries at the village of that name. The Communal Cemetery is on the east of the[Pg 56] village and the Extension is in an apple orchard on the eastern side of the cemetery. The apple trees around the graves, in blossom on this spring day, made the burial ground very beautiful. All the cemeteries of France and Belgium have in common a noble simplicity of design, but each one has some particular feature. One is beautiful with orchard trees; another is graced with rose trees; of another sentinel poplars are a feature; of another the shroud-like cypresses. In every case the planning of a cemetery, its alignment, the site of the Cross of Sacrifice, and the Stone of Remembrance, its plantations and walls, are designed by the architects to harmonize with the natural features of the country. Not often on the French and Belgian sites has it been possible to attain the supreme loveliness of some of the Italian cemeteries, but all are beautiful. The first British burial took place in the Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery in October, 1915, and the last on July 1st, 1916. By that date field ambulances had come to the village in readiness for the attack on the German line, five miles away, and the Extension was begun. There are buried in the Extension 857 soldiers from the Home Country, 318 from Australia, 152 from Canada, and 3 unknown. The Communal Cemetery records 46 British burials.

Forceville.—This cemetery is to the west of the village of Forceville, about twelve miles from Doullens and six miles from Albert. In 1915 British troops of the Third Army took over the area from the French. In February, 1916, a field ambulance was established in the village, and it was followed by others until the end of July, 1916. Early in August, 1915, additional land to the south of the Communal Cemetery was enclosed to provide space for military graves. This land is enclosed by a low wall and a hedge. Some of the old poplar[Pg 57] trees have been preserved and fragrant lime trees planted (the lime-tree avenues of Amiens will be recalled by the troops on whom they showered their perfume as they went forward for the first Battle of the Somme).

Louvencourt.—The Military Cemetery here is south-east of the village, which is midway between Albert and Doullens. The French soldiers’ graves dated June and July, 1915, mark the end of the French occupation of the Allied front on the Somme. The British graves cover the period from July, 1915, to July, 1918. Louvencourt Military Cemetery is enclosed by a great stone wall and the paths are stone paved. The Cross of Sacrifice is placed at the entrance. The Stone of Remembrance is at the east side of the cemetery, and the steps of it command a wide view over the north country. The cemetery holds 151 British dead.

Picquigny.—There are here a communal cemetery and a British military cemetery. The historic town (where a treaty of peace between France and England was signed in 1475) lies in the valley of the Somme River, on the main road between Abbeville and Amiens. During the first four years of the war Picquigny was on lines of communication, and the ten British soldiers who died in or near the town were buried in the Communal Cemetery. At the end of March, 1918, casualty clearing stations were brought to Picquigny, and the British Cemetery was opened a little west of the town. It shelters 94 soldiers from the Home Country, 29 from Australia, one from Canada and one unknown, and one French soldier.

Crouy.—The British Cemetery here is about half a mile south of the village, near the Amiens-Abbeville main road. It was opened in April, 1918, when the enemy advance sent two casualty clearing stations to the village. In October, 1919, the[Pg 58] graves from the British Cemetery at Riviere, a few miles nearer Abbeville, were brought to Crouy. There are now buried in Crouy 281 soldiers from the Home Country, 275 from Australia, 179 from Canada and one of the British West Indies Regiment, 2 labourers of the Indian Labour Corps, and 6 French soldiers.

Longpré-les-Corps Saints.—The village owes its name to relics sent from the Holy Land by the founder of the church in the twelfth century. In April, 1918, there was opened a British cemetery. It was closed before the end of the month, and the present cemetery opened about half a mile south of the village. In May, 1919, the graves from the first cemetery were moved to it. The cemetery now contains 56 British graves, 20 Australians, and one French.

········

On this day, during the morning and afternoon, the only bad weather occurred, but the rainstorms did not in any way deter the King from carrying out the programme which he had determined on. At all the cemeteries visited in the afternoon there were striking demonstrations of affection by the country people. The smaller cemeteries were surrounded by the villagers, five or six deep, the children standing on the low walls, the King as he inspected the graves passing close to them. All maintained an attitude of sympathetic reverence. The King, who was evidently moved, showed on many occasions how he felt himself among friends and was visibly interested in the little children who stared round-eyed at “the King of the British soldiers.”

As the train steamed into Picquigny Station, the Bishop of Amiens was seen standing with his clergy on the platform, having come out from Amiens, specially and without[Pg 59] interfering with the privacy of the pilgrimage, sympathetically to greet our King. The Bishop reminded His Majesty that the last time a King of England had come to Picquigny was in 1475, when Edward IV agreed there on a treaty of peace with the French King. King George V must have been interested to remember the piquant contrast between then and now, for when in 1475 Edward met Louis at Picquigny a close fence was built across a bridge “with no longer intervals than would allow the arm to pass,” and the two Kings came from opposite sides to meet and confer under those precautions of mistrust. Now a British King moved among the people of France with no guard but their respect and love for him and his Army.

 [Pg 60]

ETAPLES

INSPECTING SOUTH AFRICAN GRAVES

 [Pg 61]

ETAPLES

INSPECTING NEWFOUNDLAND GRAVES

 [Pg 62]

ETAPLES

THE KING READING THE LETTER FROM A BEREAVED MOTHER ASKING THE
QUEEN TO PLACE A BUNCH OF FORGET-ME-NOTS ON HER SON’S GRAVE

 [Pg 63]

ETAPLES

THE KING PLACING THE FORGET-ME-NOTS ON THE GRAVE

 [Pg 64]

ETAPLES

AT THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE

GENERAL VIEW OF ETAPLES

THE KING AND DOMINION REPRESENTATIVES

 [Pg 65]

ETAPLES

EXAMINING PLANS OF CONSTRUCTIONAL WORK

 [Pg 66]

MEERUT INDIAN CEMETERY

INSPECTING INDIAN GRAVES

 [Pg 67 & 68]

Larger Image

TERLINCTHUN THE LAST POST

“They lie in the keeping of a tried and generous friend, a resolute and chivalrous comrade-in-arms, who, with ready and quick sympathy has set aside for ever the soil in which they sleep, so that we ourselves and our descendants may for all time reverently tend and preserve their resting-places.”

 [Pg 69]

TERLINCTHUN

THE FRENCH GUARD OF HONOUR AT THE CROSS OF SACRIFICE

 [Pg 70]

TERLINCTHUN

THE KING PLACING A WREATH ON THE CROSS OF SACRIFICE

 [Pg 71]

TERLINCTHUN

THE SILENCE AND THE SALUTE AT THE CROSS

 [Pg 72]

TERLINCTHUN

THE KING’S ADDRESS

 [Pg 73]

TERLINCTHUN

GENERAL DE CASTELNAU’S REPLY

 [Pg 74]

TERLINCTHUN

PROCESSION TO THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE

 [Pg 75]

TERLINCTHUN

PROCESSION TO THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE

“All that they had they gave—they gave”

 [Pg 76]

TERLINCTHUN

THE QUEEN LAYING A WREATH ON THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE

 [Pg 77]

TERLINCTHUN

THE SALUTE AT THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE

 [Pg 78]

TERLINCTHUN

THE QUEEN AT THE GRAVES

 [Pg 79]

TERLINCTHUN

THE QUEEN AT THE GRAVES

 [Pg 80]

TERLINCTHUN

THE STONE OF REMEMBRANCE WITH THE QUEEN’S WREATH

“Their name liveth for evermore”

 [Pg 81]

TERLINCTHUN

NAPOLEON’S COLUMN IN THE BACKGROUND

“And here ... the shadow of his monument falling almost across their graves, the greatest of French soldiers—of all soldiers—stands guard over them”

 [Pg 82]

LEAVING ETAPLES

 [Pg 83]

“In the course of my pilgrimage I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war”

[Pg 84]

IV: “And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas.”

On the evening of May 12 the King’s train left Longpré and went down to the coast. The night was spent at Etaples, a fishing port at the mouth of the River Canche, which has figured since many centuries back in the history of the British Empire, and now is the site of what has come to be known as our “Empire Cemetery” in France.

When the Romans were bringing in the path of their legions order and civilization into Europe—misfortunately thwarted by forest or bog or sea from reaching some countries, which have suffered from the fact since—they had their chief naval station for northern Gaul at the mouth of the Canche. This station, no doubt, Julius Cæsar used in his expedition against Britain. Later, when Carausius, a Roman Briton, revolted against the Roman Empire, he won the command of the English Channel with his fleet and maintained for some time an independent Britain, assuming the state of Cæsar and founding a Roman-British Empire. The Classis Britannica of the Roman Empire had had its chief station on the Canche. With the revolt of Carausius there was no longer a “British Fleet” of the Roman Empire, and the Classis Samarica (the Fleet of the Somme) took its place and had as its task to hold the coasts of Gaul for the Roman Power against the British Carausius. This Fleet of the Somme also had its base on the Canche. Doubtless in the very early years of the Christian era there was many a naval action between the British sea forces and those of the Romans stationed on the Canche. Etaples is thus linked with the memory of Carausius, the man who first taught England that her fate depended on the holding of the Narrow Seas.

[Pg 85]Etaples during the Great War was for long our chief hospital centre. In the middle of the coast base line, having good railway communications with most points, within sight and smell of the sea, the sand dunes around Etaples were ideal for hospital hutments. To the Etaples hospitals there came wounded from every battle-field. To them there came also in 1918 the attacking air squadrons of the enemy, which accounts in part for the number of nurses and other medical personnel buried in Etaples Cemetery. One hospital at Etaples was set on fire and destroyed by the enemy. These aircraft attacks on the Etaples hospitals came in June, 1918, when the enemy concentrated his strategy on trying to cripple our means of supply. They inflicted grave embarrassment on our High Command, for, at a time when material was very scanty and lines of transport very congested, we had to construct new hospitals elsewhere and move patients and staff. That was probably the effect aimed at. The difference, from an enemy point of view, in bombing a camp and a hospital is this: If you bomb a camp, you kill a few men, but the camp does not move; if you bomb a hospital, you kill a few patients, nurses, and doctors, and you force the hospital to move (if it can move) to a safer place. But to the end of the war some hospitals remained because it was impossible to move them.

In 1917 the hospitals at Etaples (which included eleven general, one stationary, and four Red Cross hospitals and a convalescent depot) could deal with 22,000 wounded or sick. The earliest burial in the cemetery dates from May, 1915. The graves to-day number more than 11,000. Of these, 1,984 were from the Overseas Dominions, divided as follows: Canada, 1,122; Australia, 461; New Zealand, 261; South Africa, 67; West Indies, 29; India, 26; and Newfoundland, 18.

The site of Etaples Cemetery is very beautiful. It rises from the margin of the sea in three great terraces, in the middle one of which is the Stone of Remembrance and on the highest the Cross of Sacrifice, standing up stark against a grove of pine trees. From the cemetery the valley of the Canche flows up to[Pg 86] the walls of Montreuil-sur-Mer, which was the General Headquarters of the British Army from 1916 until the close of the war.

It was early when the King arrived at Etaples Cemetery. The sea was a soft flood of silver grey in the morning light, and its salt breath, which is the very vigour of our British blood, came up sharp and strong to meet the smell of the pines, which is the smell of a ship’s cordage. A seemly place for the graves of a sailor race.

Outside the gates of Etaples Cemetery, the Mayor of Etaples and the sub-prefect of Montreuil greeted the King, and there were presented to him French veterans of the Great War and of the war of 1870. The King remained a few moments talking with them and with two Anzac motor drivers, who are of the very small band of the Australian Army Corps still remaining in France. The King had expressed the wish that at this cemetery he should meet representatives of the Dominions and visit with them the graves of their fellow-countrymen. Accordingly, on entering the cemetery, the King was met by the Hon. P. C. Larkin, High Commissioner for Canada; Sir James Allen, High Commissioner for New Zealand; Sir Edgar Bowring, High Commissioner for Newfoundland; Lieutenant-Colonel G. J. Hogben and Colonel F. R. Collins, representing Australia and South Africa respectively in the absence of their High Commissioners at the Genoa Conference. With each of these in turn the King visited the graves of their Dominions, and spoke to them in proud appreciation of the gallant aid that the children nations of the Empire had given to the Mother Country. That this Imperial Cemetery should stand by the side of the sea, the communicating bond of the world-girdling British race, was referred to as the fitting thing.

Before leaving, the King showed, by an act of simple homage at the grave of a soldier, his feeling of kinship with those comrades of his who had fallen in the war. A woman in the West of England had written to the Queen, as one mother to another, begging that she might lay on the tomb of her dead son,[Pg 87] Sergeant Matthew, R.A.S.C., in Etaples Cemetery, a spray of forget-me-nots which she enclosed. The Queen was unable to be present (she arrived later from Belgium), but confided the mission to the King. He had brought with him the letter, and carried out reverently, dutifully the pious task, taking care, accompanied by Mr. Harry Gosling and the gardener, to find the grave and, bending down in homage, to place upon it the mother’s flowers. Standing by his side was Sir James Allen, the High Commissioner for New Zealand, who had lost a son in Gallipoli.

Going up, then, to the Cross of Sacrifice, the King looked long out over the marshalled graves to the sea, and turned back towards the pine wood which encloses the cemetery on the east. From Etaples Cemetery the King and his party returned to the train, and then proceeded along the coastline to Wimereux Station, where they again took car and visited Meerut Cemetery, which commemorates the devotion of India to the King Emperor. Here rest men of every rank and every caste and every race of India who crossed the black water to fight for their Emperor. This cemetery, austere, remote, dark cypresses breaking the line of its turf, with no flower nor Western symbol of remembrance and hope, records the British respect for whatever form the aspiration towards God takes in the human heart.

The King was met by General Sir Alexander Cobbe, V.C., representing the Secretary of State for India, and the Mayor of the Commune of St. Martin, in which commune the cemetery is situated. It was pointed out to the King that some 330 native soldiers and followers were commemorated after the disposition of their bodies according to their creeds. The headstones had been erected by the Indian Soldiers’ Fund, the walls around the cemetery by the War Office.

The King inquired as to a central memorial in the cemetery, and was told that probably a Great War stone would be erected in the centre, and that in erecting headstones where required the War Graves Commission would follow the same pattern as[Pg 88] already existed in the cemetery. He suggested that the crematorium might be now removed, and showed in other ways his deep interest that all the sentiments should be respected of the kinfolk of these men, of race and religion apart from our own but united to us in the bond of a common sacrifice.

········

Now had come the last stage of the King’s pilgrimage. Already outside the port of Boulogne there was assembled a squadron of French destroyers to escort him out of French waters, and further at sea a British squadron waited to take over the guard. For all that their task to-day was to be one of honour and ceremony, they could abate nothing of that eager, crouching-forward attitude, and they seemed to sniff at every wave for a submarine. They waited, hunters become courtiers, but the King for a time turned his back to them, his duty not yet accomplished. He had seen the graves of his sailors, soldiers, and airmen who had held to their trust by sea and land and air, from the gates of Ypres to the banks of the Somme; had mourned at their loss and had thrilled with the pride of their courage. Now he went his way to the high Terlincthun Cemetery, by Napoleon’s column on the Boulogne cliffs, to say to his people what was in his mind.

Of all the war cemeteries in France there is none more nobly planned than this of Terlincthun. It is set at the foot of Napoleon’s column, where rested the right wing of the Grand Army when its face was turned towards England. But the guardian sea lay between. It is on record that there was offered to France a plan of conquering the Channel passage by the use of submarine boats; and refused on the ground that the sentiment of humanity would not tolerate the use of such a weapon even against warships. “It seems impossible,” wrote the French Minister for Marine, Admiral Pleville de Pelley in 1801, “to serve a commission as belligerents to men who employ such a method of destroying the fleets of the enemy.” The British dead can rest content and comradely beneath the monument of so gallant a foe.

[Pg 89]From its high wind-swept cliff, Terlincthun Cemetery looks over the English Channel, and on a clear day the white cliffs of our coast shine out in the distance. The Stone of Remembrance faces towards home, the Cross of Sacrifice, bearing its great bronze sword, looks towards the old enemy lines. Between, like guardian walls, are ranked the lines of grave-stones, and around them flower-beds carpeted in this season with the foliage of wallflowers. Happy was the choice of this flower for a soldiers’ grave-yard, since it loves to spread its tapestry of gold and red over ramparts. The cemetery shelters 3,327 dead. They are in almost all cases men who died at the base hospitals at Boulogne and Wimereux. But some are the bodies of British seamen washed up on the coast and buried here. Many graves are of Royal Air Force members. The graves of the Empire dead number 2,551 of the Home Country, 277 Canadian, 88 Australian, 29 New Zealand, 10 Newfoundland, one South African, one Guernsey, 33 South African Native, and 5 West Indian Native. In addition, there are 92 American graves, 27 Italian, 4 Russian, 3 Polish, 2 Serbian, and 16 of unknown nationality.

For this, the crowning act of homage, the King was joined by the Queen, who had travelled that morning from Brussels. With the Royal Party were Admiral the Earl Beatty and Field-Marshal the Earl Haig (who jointly represented the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force). At the gate of the cemetery the King and Queen were received by General de Castelnau, representing the French Army; M. Cauzel, prefect of the Département of Pas-de-Calais; Admiral Barthes, naval prefect of Cherbourg; General Lacapelle, commanding the First Army Corps; General Philippeau, commanding the Second Army Corps; Mgr. Julien, Bishop of Arras; M. de Lavergne, K.B.E.; M. Lahan, sub-prefect of Boulogne; the Mayor of Boulogne, and other French officials, and the members of the Imperial War Graves Commission, whom it was His Majesty’s expressed desire to meet at the close of his pilgrimage. Mr. Herbert Baker, the architect who designed the cemetery, and Captain[Pg 90] A. W. Hill, D.Sc., were also present. Among the French officials was M. Le Sous-Intendant Bezombes, C.B.E., who is the administrative head of the French Government services dealing with their own war graves. All who realize the extent of the French losses can understand what a tremendous task falls to him; but he has never been too busy to help our Commission in overcoming any of their difficulties. One of the first acts of the King, after his arrival, was to express to M. Bezombes and his staff the deep and sincere gratitude of the British Empire for their ungrudging support and sympathy in this work. The citizens of Boulogne had assembled around the cemetery and gave the King and Queen a cordial greeting. Within the open space before the Cross of Sacrifice were gathered many relatives of the dead, members of the British Colony and of the staff of the Imperial War Graves Commission, and a number of French sympathisers.

King George and Queen Mary, passing through an aisle between the serried ranks of graves, advanced to the Cross of Sacrifice, and the King placed at its foot his chaplet of red roses, palms, and bay, and stood at the salute. The French Guard of Honour, clean, clear-cut figures in their helmets of classic line, recalling the Roman Legionaries, came to the salute, and for two hushed minutes, even as our whole realm stands for two minutes on each 11th of November, all thoughts were given up to the memory of the dead.

Still standing at the Cross of Sacrifice, the King turned his face then towards the Stone of Remembrance, both in direct alignment with Napoleon’s Column, which closed the perspective, and, his voice vibrant with emotion, but under rigid control, delivered his message to his people over all the seas, in the name of the Queen and of himself:—

General de Castelnau responded with like eloquence and feeling. Two sentences of his reply voiced a sacred pledge:—

General de Castelnau then laid at the foot of the Cross of Sacrifice a wreath in the name of the Anglo-French Committee of our War Graves Commission, and General Lacapelle another in the name of the French Army.

One more act of homage was to be made. The King and Queen, passing slowly through the cemetery, ascended the steps to the Stone of Remembrance and then, bending lowly, the Queen placed before the stone, over which was draped the Union Jack—the merited pall of a soldier’s tomb—a wreath of rosemary for remembrance, and carnations, these last of the colour which takes its name from the stricken battle-field of Magenta. The French Guard of Honour saluted, lowering their standard. Its colours, mingled with the colours of our flag and with the deep purple of the Queen’s tribute, suffused the white stone as with heroes’ blood. The King and those around him saluted, while from the bugles of the Coldstream and Grenadier Guards, posted near the Great Napoleon’s Column, there came the sound, as of a long-drawn-out sigh, of “The Last Post.”

There is no music, of all the music of the world, that so brings home to the soldier’s heart, proud sorrow, healing consolation. In the daily round of his dutiful work “The Last Post” comes to tell him of the end of a day of this troublous[Pg 93] life, that the shades have lengthened, the evening come, the busy world hushed, his work done, and he may rest. And, when he goes to the graveside to say the last farewell to a comrade who has found for ever peace, he hears again “The Last Post,” to say to him that his mate is not dead, but sleepeth, and will rise again. The common and everyday use of the music takes nothing from its nobility, but constantly communicates its message of immortality so as to make of it a habit of mind.

The call of “The Last Post” ended; and to the closing moment of the King’s pilgrimage came a sense of over-powering emotion, which made men look resolutely forward, not wishing to catch their neighbour’s glance. The spirits of the mighty army of the dead seemed to marshall in that God’s Acre, set high on the cliff looking over the sea; come to receive the homage of the King, for whom they died, and to hear that in the land which they saved their names will live for evermore.

Frank Fox.

[Pg 94]

The King’s Thanks

On the point of leaving France, the King sent the following telegram to the President of the French Republic:—

The following message was sent to the King of the Belgians:

... May I add how touched I was by the sympathetic attitude of all classes whom I met last Thursday, when visiting the graves of our dead resting for ever on Belgian soil.

The King later caused the following letter to be sent to the Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission:—

The High Commissioners cabled to the Governments and peoples of the Dominions the terms of the King’s assurance that the graves of their dead will be honoured for all time.

Footnotes:

[1] The total number of the dead of the British Empire in the Great War was recently officially stated in the House of Commons to be 946,023, distributed as follows:—Great Britain and Ireland, 743,702; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, Colonies, 140,923; India, 61,398.

[2] The following are the members of the Imperial War Graves Commission, those marked with a † being unavoidably prevented, owing to the Genoa Conference and other reasons, from personally attending: † Secretary of State for War (Chairman), † Secretary of State for the Colonies, † Secretary of State for India, † First Commissioner of Works, The Hon. Peter C. Larkin (High Commissioner for Canada), † The Right Hon. Sir Joseph Cook, G.C.M.G. (High Commissioner for Australia), The Hon. Sir James Allen, K.C.B. (High Commissioner for New Zealand), † The Hon. Sir Edgar Walton, K.C.M.G. (High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa), The Hon. Sir Edgar Bowring (High Commissioner for Newfoundland), Sir William Garstin, G.C.M.G., G.B.E., Harry Gosling, Esq., C.H., J.P., Rudyard Kipling, Esq., Lieutenant-General Sir George Macdonogh, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., Sir Robert Hudson, G.B.E., Vice-Admiral Sir Morgan Singer, K.C.V.O., C.B., † H. Maddocks, Esq., K.C., M.F., Major-General Sir Fabian Ware, K.C.V.O., K.B.E., C.B., C.M.G. (Vice-Chairman).

Transcriber’s Note: The original text does not contain page numbers.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The King's Pilgrimage, by Frank Fox

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KING'S PILGRIMAGE ***

***** This file should be named 36075-h.htm or 36075-h.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/0/7/36075/

Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive.)


Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.



*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.net/license).


Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works

1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.  See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.

1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.

1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.net),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that

- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
     License.  You must require such a user to return or
     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
     Project Gutenberg-tm works.

- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
     of receipt of the work.

- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.

1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.


Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.


Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org

For additional contact information:
     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
     Chief Executive and Director
     gbnewby@pglaf.org


Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations.  To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate


Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.

Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.


Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.


Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

     http://www.gutenberg.net

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.