Premature celebrations

Fighting on the Western front may end in a day or last a month, may last three; save for the useless carnage it matters little.

The war is won. Doubts, fears, hesitations, the jeremiads of Faintheart and Feebleguts, the croakings of Dismal Jerry, the whinings of the frustrated pacifist, we have done with all that. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. The war is won! It is a day for tears as well as laughter; sadness mingles with our gladness, cypress is twined among our

bays. At a high price have we bought victory, paying for it in life and limb. Recited in the years that follow, our record will not shame us. Posterity will crown the British of this generation among the paragons of ancient valour.

Receiving the news as true, the Dunedin people proceeded to let themselves go. Hurrying crowds, faces broad in smiles, excitement, noise, movement colour, a sudden efflorescence of innumerable flags; impromptu processions in march with tossing pennons hither, thither, any whither; all the schools loose, all the factories; men waving and shouting like maniacs, laughing girls arm in arm possessing the street from side to side; incessant over all and everywhere the maddening clamour of the bells. — Civis