HOME-COMING OF THE UNKNOWN WARRIOR.
SERVICES’ HONOURS.
MID-CHANNEL SPECTACLE.
Never was warrior more greatly honoured in death than the Unknown British Warrior whose body was landed here to-day. It is six years to within a few days since the remains of a dead FieldMarshal were brought home from Flanders. No greater honour was paid him than was paid to the Unknown Warrior this afternoon. It is, as it seems, but a short time since the victorious captains of the war – Haig and Allenby and Pershing and Foch – landed at Dover from Flanders and were given triumphant ovations by tumultuous crowds in Dover and later in London. Yet no greater honour was paid them than was paid to-day to the Unknown Warrior. Ships of the Royal Navy lowered the Union Jack and the Ensign to half-mast when they met the Verdun in mid-channel – an honour paid only to the King and the King’s representatives on sea or land. A field-marshal’s salute of nineteen guns was fired from Dover Castle as the Verdun and its Unknown Soldier entered harbour. A guard of honour representing each arm of the Services stood round the casket of his remains, and every unit of the garrison in Dover was drawn up on the Admiralty Pier or in the harbour station, with reversed arms and lowered colours. In brief, the highest honour that the Services can pay to a soldier of renown was paid to an Unknown British Warrior of whom nothing more can be said than that he did his duty. Name, rank, unit, length of the service – all these are lost in the Odyssey and the mists of war.
Who was he? How long is it since he left England, or rushed to England to serve her? Where was his English hamlet and home? Had he wife and babes waiting to welcome their hero’s return? Or a mother who will never see “the boy” again? These were questions that must inevitably have been in the mind of every one of the dense crowds assembled outside Dover Station and at dozens of wayside stations and cuttings on the funeral cortège’s way to London – and the Abbey. I saw a woman older-looking – much older-looking – than her years, with two children at her side, who have grown up since the terrible war began. She swooned. Did she think that the body in that oaken casket, covered with a battle-scorched “Jack” and followed by fighting men, all of whom have seen battle service, might – might – be that of the husband and father whom they must wait, and wait, to meet again? God help her!
It was in these crowds at Dover and between Dover and London, and in the searching, pitiless psychology that afflicted us all with questions like this that the difference lay between to-day’s great and solemn ceremony and the victorious, jubilant reception of captains and kings that Dover has seen so often. The “key-note” might be said to have been sounded by an order by whistle that is often given in the Navy in moments of life’s intensest excitement, or yet again in mourning for the brave before the general salute – “Still.” It was exactly 3.30 p.m. when the coffin was landed. The air was still, the waters of harbour and of Channel beyond were still. Not a flag fluttered. Not a seagull flapped its wings. A diffused pearly-grey sky lay motionless above us.
I do not remember a scene so static, except the Two Minutes’ Silence last year. No doubt the Verdun commander gave his orders as usual. But it was in undertones, that reached no ear among the onlookers. There was not a sound and not a movement. This for many seconds that seemed like an hour, so tense were those moments of waiting. Only sailors and soldiers could endure the order – “Still!” – from long discipline. It was with this wonderful, vigilant, inviolable silence Dover received back on English earth its Unknown Warrior. It is the silence with which, no doubt, London in still greater and immeasurable tribute will pay to-morrow to our Dead.