816 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
Like Withered Leaves
I HAVE spent the week at Versailles. It was a wonderful week.
Walking through the beautiful forests, the leaves were falling,
but not these alone. Empires and kingdoms, kings and crowns,
were falling like withered leaves. Mr Lloyd George at
the Guildhall Banquet
Three Men Lie Dying
THERE are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there
is much hope for them, either. One is an officer of a Scottish
regiment and the other a private in the Uhlans. They were struck
down after me., and when I came to myself I found them bending
over me, rendering first aid, f**»^
The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his flask,
while the German was endeavouring to stanch my wound with an
antiseptic preparation served out to their troops by the medical
corps. The Highlander had one of his legs shattered, and the German
had several pieces of shrapnel buried in his side.
In spite of their own sufferings, they were trying to help me, and
when I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia
injection and took one himself. His medical corps had also provided
him with the injection and the needle, together with printed
instructions for their use.
After the injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the
lives we had lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we
talked of the women we had left at home. Both the German and the
Britisher had been married only a year.
I wondered (and I suppose the others did) why we had fought each
other at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep,
exhausted, and, in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform,
he looked the embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the Tri-
colour of France and all that France had done for liberty. Then I
watched the German, who had ceased to speak. He had taken a
prayer book from his knapsack, and was trying to read a service for
soldiers wounded in battle. And while I watched him I realised what
we were fighting for. He was dying in vain, while the Britisher and
myself, by our deaths, would probably contribute something toward
the cause of civilisation and peace. A French officer dying on
the field in Flanders in 1915
That Fateful Morning
THUS, Mr Speaker, at eleven o'clock this morning, came to an end
the cruellest and most terrible war that has ever scourged man-
kind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an
end all wars. Mr Lloyd George in
the House of Commons