For a few brief days the
nation endured with patience its self-imposed silence. In the newspapers
were no brave columns of farewell scenes, no exultant send-off
greetings, no stirring pictures of troopships passing out into the
night. All was silence, the silence of a nation preparing for the "iron
sacrifice," as Kipling calls it, of a devastating war. Then suddenly the
silence was broken, and across the Channel was flashed the news that the
troops had been safely landed, and were only waiting orders to throw
themselves upon the German brigands who had broken the sacred peace of
Europe.
And so the scene changes to France and Belgium. Tommy Atkins is on his
way to the Front. He has already begun to send home some of those
gallant letters that throb throughout the pages of this book. If he felt
the absence of the stimulating send-off, necessitated by official
caution and the exigencies of a European war, he at least had the new
joy of a welcome on foreign soil. It is difficult to find words with the
right quality in them to express the feelings aroused in our men by
their reception, or the exquisite gratitude felt by the Franco-Belgian
people. They welcomed the British troops as their deliverers.
"The first person to meet us in France," writes a British officer, "was
the pilot, and the first intimation of his presence was a huge voice in
the darkness, which roared out 'A bas Guillaume.
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