Saint George and the Dragon, painted by V. Carpaccio in 1516, Venice; S. Giorgio Maggiore. The background, as in most medieval paintings, gives scenes that explain further the legend depicted.]
But as soon as the British Tommy had reached the dragon's lair, he became the British player in a great championship game of the nations. He was the British sportsman, hunting big game; for in matters of life or death, he is always the player or the sportsman. That it was a hideous dragon breathing out poison gas and fire and destroying Christian maidens, made the sport all the more interesting and worth while. Philip Gibbs says of the English Tommy:—
"They take great risks sometimes as a kind of sport, as Arctic explorers or big game hunters will face danger and endure great bodily suffering for their own sake. Those men are natural soldiers. There are some even who like war, though very few. But most of them would jeer at any kind of pity for them, because they do not pity themselves, except in most dreadful moments which they put away from their minds if they escape. They scorn pity, yet they hate worse still, with a most deadly hatred, all the talk about 'our cheerful men.' For they know that, however cheerful they may be, it is not because of a jolly life or lack of fear. They loathe shell-fire and machine-gun fire. They know what it is 'to have the wind up.' They have seen what a battlefield looks like before it has been cleared of its dead. It is not for non-combatants to call them 'cheerful'; because non-combatants do not understand and never will, not from now until the ending of the world. 'Not so much of your cheerfulness,' they say, and 'Cut it out about the brave boys in the trenches.' So it is difficult to describe them, or to give any idea of what goes on in their minds, for they belong to another world than the world of peace that we knew, and there is no code which can decipher their secret, nor any means of self-expression on their lips."
The Tommy dislikes to show emotion or to brag or to be praised when he is present. To outsiders and to soldiers of other nations sent to help him, he likes to make the duties and the dangers seem as disagreeable, as horrible, and as inevitable as he possibly can, but when he has discharged a particularly tiresome and obnoxious duty himself or has met without flinching a terrible danger, he declares his act was "nothing."
"The poilu and the Tommy are vastly different. The Frenchman works himself up into a fanatical state of enthusiasm, and in a wild burst of excitement dashes into the fray. The Englishman finishes his cigarette, exchanges a joke with his 'bunkie' and coolly goes 'over the top.' Both are wonderful fighters with the profoundest admiration for each other."
The Tommy wants his tea and the officers like to carry their canes and swagger sticks with them "over the top" into battle. A brave, unpretending man, who likes his own ways and wishes to be allowed to follow them and who is willing to fight and die that others also may be free—such is the English Tommy. With him it is all a part of the game, the game of war, and the greatest game of all, the game of life. He must play his part and play it well.
THE YANK
The boche went into the war as a robber, the poilu as a crusader determined to save the sacred and holy things of the world from desecration and destruction, the Tommy as a player in a great game, and the Yank as a policeman whose job it was to "clean up" the affair.
To the American soldiers, the Yanks, and to the American people, the war was a job, a most disagreeable one, but one that must be done. No one else was ready and able to do it; so they went at it smilingly and "jollied" every one with whom they came in contact.
French children were asked to write descriptions of the "Yanks" for a New York paper. They nearly all said that they were big and handsome and quick, that they always smiled and were always hungry, especially for chocolate and candy. The French noticed the everlasting smile of the Yank, for after three years of war and suffering the French, even the children, had ceased to smile. It is said the children had even forgotten how to play, but they responded to the love in the hearts of the Yanks, as did the German children when the American soldiers crossed the Rhine. To the Yanks there were no enemies among the children; they loved them, French or German.
The Yank did not smile because he failed to realize the seriousness of his job, but because with him the harder, the more dangerous, and the dirtier the job, the more must he smile and "jolly" about it.
"They had come to France to do a certain piece of work. It was a bloody, dusty, sweaty, unclean, disagreeable one, and they proposed to finish it. … We are a people given to discounting futures, and the average American soldier, to put it bluntly, discounted being killed in action. If our Allies, whose fortitude was sustained in a dark hour by the way that our men fought, could have probed what was in the mind of these Americans, they would have found still further reason for faith in our military strength." So declares Major Palmer of General Pershing's staff.
Raymond Fosdick says the character of the American soldier was shown when a Y.M.C.A. secretary asked a large body of Yanks to write on little slips of paper distributed to them what they thought were the three greatest sins in a soldier. When the papers were passed back and examined, it was found that they agreed unanimously upon the first sin. It was cowardice. And almost unanimously upon the second. It was selfishness. And the third was big-headedness.
The Yank is wonderfully free from the sins he hates. Dashing, fearless, willing to die rather than to surrender, unable, as General Bundy said, to understand an order to retreat, he is always a "jollier." It is said one platoon of Yanks went "over the top" wearing tall silk hats with grenades in one hand and carrying pink parasols in the other. This may be only a story of what the Yanks would have done if permitted, but it is true to their nature.
The Yanks have written the noblest chapter of American history. They have honored their fathers and mothers, their churches, the American public school, and the land of Washington and Lincoln. Those who sleep beneath foreign soil have not died in vain.
DUTY
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, "Thou must," The youth replies, "I can."
WHERE THE FOUR WINDS MEET
There are songs of the north and songs of the south,
And songs of the east and west;
But the songs of the place where the four winds meet
Are the ones that we love the best.
"And where do the four winds meet?" you ask.
The answer is ready at hand—
"Wherever our dear ones chance to be
By air, or by sea, or land."
So the sailor, keeping his midnight watch
'Mid icicles, snow, and sleet,
Can think of a village near Portsmouth town
As the place where the four winds meet.
And mother, perhaps, and sweetheart true
Pray hard for the North Sea Fleet,
And harder still for the boy who's gone
To his place, where the four winds meet.
And the man on guard at the "firing-step,"
'Mid star-shells shimmering down,
Can think of his home—where the four winds meet