The Unknown Warrior. (By Our Special Correspondent on the Western Front 1914-18.) The Unknown Warrior I Unknown? Iis name, indeed, and where he comes from now: such things, perhaps, we do not know, nor do we need to inquire. But him we know, and did know weU through four long, terrible, and splendid years. We knew him as he came home on leave, arrivng tired and hump-backed with the burden which he bore, the stains of trench mud still upon his clothes,and the shadow of new and dreadful experience on his simple, wholesome face; rough he was and abrupt of speech, but with a curious gentleness that we had not known in him before,and inarticulately glad to be for'a breathing space among his own againL We knew him, too, as the leave-train left, drawing away from the packed platform which was a sea of tear-stained faces and wavmg handkerchiefs while he leaned from his carriage window, radiant, cheering, lest those he left behind should be too sad for him. And we knew him over there, in his billets, grousing, but wonderfuUy tender and helpful to the peasants whom he incommoded, to the little children and the patient, hard-worked French " mother," who grew to love her clumsy, kindly English boys. WVe knew him at his sports, and on the road " going up "-tramp, tramp ! tramp ! tramp !-through squelching mud or the thick dust of passing traffic, along the long straight roads with their uneven, exasperating pave between the rows of splintered trees, whistling perhaps or singing Jerkily- " Tipperary" or a hyma tune-or alted for rest by the wayside, leaning his heavy pack against a tree-trunk or hump of earth, grousing still, and breaking off with a laugh to help his mate. And beyond, where the roads ceased and not even splintered stumps of trees remained, we knew him, only vaguely visible in the dusk or dark, going, scattered in twos and threes to minimize the cost of an exploding shell, across the pitted ground or plodding in single file along the oozing duckboards to the com- inumcation trench. WVe knew him in the trenches, in the slime and mud and ankle deep in ice-cold water, or in the stewing heat, with the smell and the flies; less inclined to grouse now, but even more helpful to his mate, un- communicative except in whimsical phrases, and incomparably competent. We knew him when he was wounded-one of his many wounds-and he came back, limping and blood- stained, roughly tied up with his own emergency bandage, in pain and shaken, but helping over the shel-pitted ground another more seriously wounded than himself. And he died in many places. Bravery was his as a matter of course, as much a part of him as his humour, his tenderness, or his discontent. But to be "unknown" is alnost an extra, superfluous patent of gaUantry. Not often was he unidentified who fell behind our lines. The unknown were those who died far out, holding some desperate outpost against hopeless odds, chngmg to a fragment of trench, sur- rounded before being overwhelmed, pushing their way ahead through some bulet-swept wood-somewhere where no comrades or stretcher-bearers could reach them nor burial parties do their work. THE DEATHLESS STORY. What matters it from which of his many graves they have brought him now 7 There was that smal but matchless Army, the outlying rock-reef of our island strength, on which the enemy waves broke, whelming but never finally submerging it-was he of that, and does he come to us now perhaps from somewhere on the Yser or out beyond Ypres, where he has lain for six whole years, from Landrecies or Le Cateau ? Or from Loos or Neuve Chapelle ? Our commanders then were but learning how to make attacks-they had neither the ex- perience nor the tools-and often he pushed forward and held on where supports never got to him. So, also, on the terrible but triumphant First of July, 1916, upon the Somme: is this who comes to us perhaps one of the Ulstermen who pierced incredibly to the brow of Thiepval slope? Or perhaps it was farther to the left-before Serre or Gommecourt or Beaumont Hamel; a Newfoundlander perhaps, or a man from Middlesex itself, for they it was, from the fringe and the very heart of the Empire, who shared the grim honour of the heaviest fatalities that day. Up that long hideous slope to Pozieres, where the church and the windmill were already crumbling to the mere hummocks that they came to be, how many Australians did not, in the splendour of their recklessness, die in the tangled maze of trench and broken masonry where none could see or know ? And farther south, where the Scots- men and South Africans captured and held impossible positions by Longueval and in Delville Wood, how many lay Unknown, un- reachable ! Oh, those woods: Delville and Tr8nes and High WVood! It may be that he is a Welshman fr6m Mametz Wood; or one from the South of Ireland, perchance, who fell doing his best to redeem the honour of his land by Guillemont or Guinchy; or a New Zealander, who had come farto die in thenet- work of trenches up above Contalmaison. Or was he of one of those silent home battalions- men of the North or South-country, Londoners, or from the Midlands-on whom as always the main burden fell (four years ago now) of the hard continuous fighting wNhich broke the German strength from Grandecourt to Combles, from Fricourt to the Butte ? In 1917, again, after the first onset of our attack at Arras had spent itself, how un- grudgingly he gave himself through the spring and summer months and how often he had to be left " unknown " I Was he one of those who lay out on that long death-swept dip and rise between MIonchy and the Bois Vert ? W'as it the ruins of the chemical works at Roeux that hid him ? WVas it Oppy Wood ?or the angle of the great trench line towards Fontaine. les-Croisilles ? Or the tumbled heaps of Bulle. court outside the area which the Australians held so marvellously? Messines left few " unknown." The victory was too clean for .hat; but in the months between spring and :utumn how many Canadians did not make the last great sacrifice, having pushed some few yards farther than their nearest comrades, dying to lie beyond reach of succour among the broken outskirts of Lens ? Then in the awful fighting of that autumn, when almost yard by yard we vwidened out the circle of beleaguered Ypres, along the shudder- ing Menin Road, in Glencorse Wood or High. land Copse, by Polderhoek or Poelcapelle; and beyond, where the duckboards, daily shot away and every night renewed, ceased in the wilderness of slime and shellholes whence he pushed forward, wading through the quagmire whipped with machine-gun bullets, to the final triumph and agony of Passehendaele; how could anyone mark where he feU or bring him back to lie with his fellows ? Or who, again, could mark, three years ago this November, towards Cambrai, whether he died by Bourlon or Mceuvres, beyond the outskirts of our advance, or, in the German counter-attack on November 30, in the splendid resistance, as fine as anything in the war, which held the enempy on the Marcoing-Masni6re front, or whethe r he was in some outpost on the right when the enemy surged through our broken Divisions ? Last came the great German push of 1918, when our thin line wavered and bent and parted, and joined again and bent but never altogether broke; and everywhere it left hirn, the LTn- known Dead, behind; fiom the first outposts through and around which the enemy crept in the morning misf, back to and across the river, by Peronne and Frise and Chipilly to 3Iarcelcave and Villers Bretonneux. "HE WAS ALL." Cavalry, Infantry, Artillery, Engineers: he vwas all. He it was who held'to the last, his comrades dropping round him, the bit of trench or angle of vood, until the enemy swept on because there was none to stay them. Ho it was Who fought his gtn, firing writh open sights, single-handed at the last, until the tide surged over hin. He it was, with the blue and white band of " Signals " on his arm, who mended the telephone wires, broken by falling shells as often as he mended them, striving desperately to keep connexion between the solitary stronghold, already submerged, and Hieadquarters in the rear, till*the end came and hle dropped writh the broken erd of wire in his hand. HIe it was w ho started, as a rumner, to cross the ground where bullets sang like bees, in the hopeless effort to take one last message back from the brave handful who somehow still hung on when everything round them had gone. He it was who, plodding with his stretcher, sank smothered by the mud of the bursting shell on ground which an hour later the enemy was to cross. He it was who, running forward with his Lewis gtn, alone and with no scrap of cover, succeeded by some miracle in holding up the enemy advance for those 10 precious minutes before he fell. When he was shot donn in an aeroplane behind the German lines the enemy Xwrote upon his grave, " Here lies a brave English Flying Man." lWhen he climbed from the crippled tank and draggfcd a machine-gun with him and fought it, lying in the open, until he fell dend beside it, again they marked upon his grave, "Here lies an l,nknown English Soldier." He wvho comes to-day was, and is, one and all of these. And' he was more; for it was not only on land that he fought. But where he died at sea he lies too deep to be brought home, even by a nation's longing. So-for it is understood that this coffin of his comes from France-when he died far off, in Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia, in Africa, or wherever the outer- most wash of the Great War broke on the margins of the world, whether he lies in a grave scraped . in the dry sand among sun-baked rocks or in *the dank tangle of forest tundergrowth. Everywhere it is he, the UTnknown Dead, who niarks the farthest outposts of the Empire that he saved. A CONQUEROII. Perhaps, too, he knows. Let us dream and believe that he knows, whether he lies alone and.far awtay or nearer in the crowded, orderly burial fields in France. Surely, if one was thai'e, one might almost see the shadowy ranks; browvn-clad in their old khaki against the brown November earth, dim shapes, each witl lis' trench helmet on, platoon after platoon, brigade beyond brigade, whole army corps and ar2nies, leaning motionless on their reversed arnms and all gazing this way, out of deep eyes' which see flore than wve can see. watching as the coffin that comes to us to-day passes homewardl. All the honour that we can pay him is little for what he did for us. He earned more Victoria Crosses than ever were given to the living. He goes through the streets this mornig not as a lowly one uplifted, but as a conqueror and of right. With the grief with whiclh ve bow otur heads in silence there are mingled rejoicing and gratitude and pride. To future generations the grave to which he is borne w ill be not a monument of sorrow or the mere tomb of one unfortunate, but the very symbol of the strength and gentleness and love of Justice of the Empire. TWO YEARS AGO. THE LAST ADVANCE. (By a Temporary Officer.) It seems more than two years to-day since we rode hurriedly in the very dim and misty early light of a cold November morning from a small town south of Tournai due east in search of a vanished enemy. Wliatever was knoxvn at Army Headquarters about an Armistice, we knew nothing when we started out. It is true that there had been rumours-there always were such things in France-but they were very con- flicting. First it was said that the Armistice was certain, and then it w-as stated, on the excellent authority of a lorry driver, that the terms had been refused. In any case we set out to hunt thc enemy this very morning two years ago, each horse earrying a weight at which no decent huniter would be asked even to look. Roads were still blowing up, and others were marked as dangerous, small pieces of brushwood on each side of the road marking laid mines. WVheiv would they explode ? The local inhabi- tants turned out to watchl us go riding by, most of them obviously pleased, some of them indifferent, and a few almost hostile. By mid- day we were south of Ath, and from all accounts reasonably near the running .enemy. The country was not a'good oric for mounted troops, being divided into small fields, and not to be conipared in any xvay with the vast plain in front of Amiens, which had proved such good riding in August. The hour of the Armistice was passed, and we still had no news. Com- munication was difficult, and the November mist had turned into a driving rain. There was no sound of gunfire, but then with the enemy " gone away" one did not expect it. If we had been on the main road from Tournai to Ath we miglht have guessed that the end had come. At 12 o'clock noon a set of wireless, hurriedly erected, picked up the news, and the widely scattered Division was stopped for further orders. It has been said that the news was received with loud cheers, but all that most people did was just to look at each other.' The cheering was done by those who were lucky enough to be at home at the time or on leave in Paris. There is not much incentive to cheer whatever the news may be when you have nothing to celebrate the occasion with except bread and bully-in manv cases biscuits and bully-your horse is making a fool of himself, and you are wet through and standing in pouring rain. If we had been advancing on a main road we should have known that it was all over many lhours before we did actually receive the news. l;rom an early hour this morning therc had been a never-ending stream of returning exiles, tired and . hungry, shuffling dowm tho road from I3russels to Touniai. They were the " forced labour " which the Germans had recruited from Lille,and Tournai,and the other big towns wlich a few weeks earlier had been behind the German line. They had been released yesterday and told to go home. They were hungry and dirty and ill and weary. - We waited about in. the rain for two hours and then rode back to the very same town south of Tonmai which we had left at earliest dawn. It was still raining and pitch dark when we arrived. The streets, narrow and hilly and winding, paved with uneven stones, were slippery. Horses, tired out with a long day, were all at sea, and many came down. Good billets were impossible to find for the men, etabling almost non-existent. There has never been a darker night, and there was no artificial light in the pla.^e-the Germans had ruined all thlat. Horses had to be groomed and fed and watered. Such rations as there were were nearly all " hard " ; goodness knows where the nearest canteens were. It will be seen how ideal tho conditions were for a celebration There was not even any rum until the next day. Iocal estaminets produced from some hidden store a bottle or two of wine and some German coffee. Celebrations on real coffee are dull on German war coffee they cannot be described. Such was the real Armistice Day two years ago for those of us who were still out in Flanders. Not exactly a day of wild excitement or hilarious celebrations such as it is said were witnessed in London, THE UNKNOWN WARRIOR. WHAT WE KNOW OF HIM. HIS ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE WAR. THE EMPIRE'S PRIDE.