The King's decoration for the men who fought at Mons,
Le Cateau, the Marne, and Ypres will, it is announoed,. take the form of a bronze star with a watered-silk ribbon of rod, white, and blue. The star will be granted to all officers and men of the British and Indian Armies who served in France or Belgium between August nth, 1914, and midnight of the following November 22nd-23rd. Civilian (looters, nurses, and others employed in military hospitals in France or Belgium within that period will also receive the star. The fixing of the date at the close of the first battle of Ypres will doubtless seem arbitrary to some who served and fought as gallantly as their comrades who were earlier in the field by a day or two. But the line must be drawn somewhere, and the date chosen meets the King's wish to recognize specially the services of the Old Army which saved the situation in the first critical months of the war.
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