Not in the thick of the fight, Not in the press of the odds, Do the heroes come to their height Or we know the demi-gods.
That stands over till peace. We can only perceive Men returned from the seas, Very grateful for leave.
They grant us sudden days Snatched from their business of war. We are too close to appraise What manner of men they are.
And whether their names go down With age-kept victories, Or whether they battle and drown Unreckoned is hid from our eyes.
They are too near to be great, But our children shall understand When and how our fate Was changed, and by whose hand.
Our children shall measure their worth. We are content to be blind, For we know that we walk on a new-born earth With the saviours of mankind.
What mystery is there like the mystery of the other man's job--or what world so cut off as that which he enters when he goes to it? The eminent surgeon is altogether such an one as ourselves, even till his hand falls on the knob of the theatre door. After that, in the silence, among the ether fumes, no man except his acolytes, and they won't tell, has ever seen his face. So with the unconsidered curate. Yet, before the war, he had more experience of the business and detail of death than any of the people who contemned him. His face also, as he stands his bedside-watches--that countenance with which he shall justify himself to his Maker--none have ever looked upon. Even the ditcher is a priest of mysteries at the high moment when he lays out in his mind his levels and the fall of the water that he alone can draw off clearly. But catch any of these men five minutes after they have left their altars, and you will find the doors are shut.
Chance sent me almost immediately after the Jutland fight a Lieutenant of one of the destroyers engaged. Among other matters, I asked him if there was any particular noise.
"Well, I haven't been in the trenches, of course," he replied, "but I don't think there could have been much more noise than there was."
This bears out a report of a destroyer who could not be certain whether an enemy battleship had blown up or not, saying that, in that particular corner, it would have been impossible to identify anything less than the explosion of a whole magazine.