(I don't think!)
Send out the boys' and the girls' brigade,
They will keep old England free:
Send out my mother, my sister, and my brother,
But for goodness sake don't send me."
It is doggerel, of course, but it has a certain cleverness as a satire
on the music-hall song of the day, and the Gordons carried it gaily with
them to their battlefields, blending it in that odd mixture of humor and
tragedy that makes up the soldier's life. The bravest, it is truly said,
are always the happiest, and of the happy warriors who have fallen in
this campaign one must be remembered here in this little book of British
heroism. He died bravely on the hill of Jouarre, near La Ferte, and his
comrades buried him where he fell. On a little wooden cross are
inscribed the simple words, "T. Campbell, Seaforths."
VII
THE INTREPID IRISH
"There's been a divil av lot av talk about Irish disunion," says Mr.
Dooley somewhere, "but if there's foightin' to be done it's the bhoys
that'll let nobody else thread on the Union Jack." That is the Irish
temperament all over, and in these days when history is being written in
lightning flashes the rally of Ireland to the old flag is inspiring, but
not surprising.
Political cynics have always said that England's difficulty would be
Ireland's opportunity, but they did not reckon with the paradoxical
character of the Irish people.
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