BE COMFORTED, YE MOTHERS

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 8 June 1917, Page 1

BE COMFORTED, YE MOTHERS

[By Harold Begbie.] The other day there died in Prance a boy froin Clayesmere School, who had been loved by all who knew him. He was a boy's hero, a mother's hero, and the pride of his regiment. He had won the Military Cross and the D.S.O. He died in the flush and rapture of his youth. His mother's letter to the head master has been printed in the school magazine, with the story of his end, in language so moving and so beautiful that I wish to give it u wider public. This boy was in the Rifle Brigade, and his colonel said of him: '"' He was the best company commander by far that I have seen out here. ... As f said in my recommendation of him for a D.5.0., he was the finest type of fighting officer I have ever seen." A telegram from the War Office came to the boy's home one day, telling his parents shat he had been seriously" wounded, and that they might visit him at Abbeville. The father was unable to go, but the mother and another son started for France. They arrived an hour and a-hait' too late, and yet not too late for such a farewell as will live in their souls for ever. This is what the mother says: We. saw him in the mortuary, looking such a soldier, and the dear forehead was hardly cold when I kissed it. Ho was covered with the Union Jack, and lay in front of the little altar, just the supreme sacrifice. We stayed to the funeral, early 'Thursday, when a. Captain Johnson and three privates shared the sa.me service. One other mother was there, who had nursed her boy for some days ere he went, and we three mourners stood in the glorious sunshine, the blue sky piled with grand banks of white clouds, and when the service was over' the buglers saluted us and them, and, standing between us and the open graves, sounded the 'Last Post' and the ' Reveille' as I have never heard them before and never shall again. It must have rolled beyond the clouds, and down the vaults of heaven till J himself must have heard it. Then we hastened back to England to" tell the news we dared not wire. When you read these few words do you liot seem to see in this one mother and this one sou the whole human tragedy, and also the whole human glory of war? The boy was what he was. because of that breast which had fed him, those arms which had held him, that love which had enriched him, inspired him, and 'consecrated his young soul. And this devotion of the mother has for its end a grave in France. There was the brave parting in England when he went out to fight, and then the last kiss on the " dear forehead which was hardly cold." And yet there were no agonised cry of revolt from the mother, no furious imprecations, and no bitterness of soul. For the son, death in the glory and beauty of his youth; for the mother, a. memory of all he was to her from infancy to the hour of farewell. "He was covered with the Union Jack, and lay in front of the little altar—just the supreme sacrifice." So England stoops and kisses the " dear foreheads " of her youth, covering them with her flag, laying them before the altar of God's judgment, leaving them there as "just the supreme sacrifice." She . has mothered tl,„„, p,™„ ;„?„..•.. ~..,1 _„ i _ ._._

theni from infancy ■under summer and winter skies, giving them her roses to love, her hedgerows to hunt, her hills to climb, her great winds to make them strong, and her history for a tradition and an inspiration. She is bereft of her youth. She hears the 'Last Post' sounding for them, and wonders if the 'Reveille' will sound for. us. Shall it be in vain, His dazzling courage, his piteous pain? Shall our glorious Flag, that he flung so high, Slide down but an inch iii the starry, sky? There is only one thing in England more moving than the death of these glorious children—it is the courage of their mothers. And that courage for us who remain should sound an eternal, a resistless 'Reveille' in our souls.