THE KING'S PILGRIMAGE. "T HE KING'S PILGRIMAGE " (Hodder and Stough-

ton, 2s. 6d. net) is a record made with good taste, good sense, and good feeling of a memorable and moving event—one in which the King showed in a high degree that instinctive good feeling—it was never prompted or advised—which marked his action during every stage of the War and every stage of the Peace. On the completion of the vast burial-grounds of our dead he determined to visit them just as they have been, and will be, visited by thousands of Englishmen and Englishwomen, not only during the next thirty years, but as long as the memory of the Great War remains. The King's Pilgrimage may, indeed, be said to have been taken in a double capacity. He went, not only as the Sovereign and representative of the whole nation to pay respect to the honoured dead, but ho went also as kinsman and as a close and intimate friend of a great number of men, young and old, who lie in the fields of French and Belgian Flanders. Probably— indeed, almost certainly—the King mourned more personal friends in the War than any other man. It is a part of 'a British King's business to know multitudes of men in every rank of hfe and in every period of youth and age ; and the King from the beginning took the greatest pains to remember and keep in touch with, not only his own friends at the front, but with the sons and relations of his friends, and with 'the hundreds of officers and men with whom he came in contact during the vigilant work of inspection done by him at the training grounds throughout the whole of Great Britain. There is hardly one of these garden grounds of the dead in which are not to be found some name and record which belong to a man known to the King. Therefore, what has been well and correctly called his " pilgrimage " was no ceremonial function, but as natural and inevitable as the visits of his subjects. The King, with his habitual goof breeding, naturalness and simplicity, strikes the right note in his introduction. Nothing could have been better for their purpose than these words :- " It grieves me to think how many relatives are prevented from visiting the graves of their dear ones through lack of means. During my recent visit to the Cemeteries in France and Belgium, I was glad to learn that various organizations are endeavouring to meet this difficulty by raising funds which I trust will be substantially assisted by the sale of the book."

It was right that a poet should give the meed of song to this volume, and it was also appropriate that that poet should be Mr. Kipling, for it was long ago that he made our soldiers our own and taught us to understand what Doctor Johnson so quaintly, yet with such comprehension, called " the plebeian magnanimity of the British common soldier." The poem, which is full of deep feeling—how could it be otherwise from one whose wound is still open ?- after describing the King's voyage across the sea, ends as follows :- " And the last land he found, it was fair and level ground

Above a carven Stone, And a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross, Where high and low are one ; And there was grass and the living trees, And the flowers of the Spring, And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas That ever called him King.

('Twixt Nieuport sands and the eastward lands, Where the Four Red Rivers spring, Five hundred thousand gentlemen of those that served the King.) All that they had they gave—they gave—. In sure and single faith. There can no knowledge reach the grave To make them grudge their death. Save only if they understood That, after all was done, We they redeemed denied their blood, And mocked the gains it won."

We must come next to the text of the record of the Pilgrimage. It is by a journalist, man of letters, and gallant soldier who has often contributed to these columns- Dir. Frank Fox. It is a special pleasure to us, and ws believe it will be to the great majority of readers, that Mr. Fox comes from the Dominions—from Australia, to be precise. No one who knows Mr. Fox and his writings will be surprised that it is not only vivid, but written with perfect taste and real insight. Yet the task was a very difficult one to perform with complete satisfaction. Mr. Fox throughout, doubtless by inclination as well as by an instinctive courtesy, conforms to the King's manner, and writes simply and without rhetoric or the pomp of words. At the same time, he had to remember that he was writing for very simple and natural people deeply moved, and that if he had eliminated all appearance of emotion or of sentiment from his book his reticence might very easily have been misunderstood. There might have been a feeling in many unhappy hearts that the man who drew up the record of the King's Pilgrimage did not feel and did not understand. We will only say that Mr. Fox has done his work with an admirable sympathy as well as an admirable discretion, and add that there are very few men of letters who, as they read, will not wonder whether they would have accomplished the same task with the same complete success.

To give an example of Mr. Fox's manner of narrative we will choose the account of the King's visit to the hill of Notre Dame de Lorette—a place memorable for sacrifices many and great by the French in their first great victory during the trench war, and also a place which is full of English and Dominion memories, owing to its being opposite the Vuny Ridge. Notre Dame de Lorette might, indeed, almost be called the centre place, or navel, of the war. Though Ypres, which lies to the left, is clothed with a pathos more magnificent for us, and the Somme to the right with even greater battle achieve- ments, Notre Dame de Lorette is the place from which perhaps more of the Flanders terrain can be seen than from any other point in the line. The present writer thought that his own visit in August, 1916, and while the guns were still firing—many months, that is, before the ridge was taken—had left no room for any addition to the emotions of memory. He is bound to confess, however, that Mr. Fox's simple account makes his heart beat faster :—

The King, reaching Notre Dame de Loretto, walked up the steep slope of the hill to a little plateau, in the centre of the thickly-clustered French graves, where he was met by Marshal Foch, General Weygand (the Marshal's Chief of Staff), General Lacapolle, commanding the First Army Corps, and M. Cauzel, Prefect of the Pas-de-Calais.

I have come,' said the King, as he took Marshal Foch by the hand, to lay a wreath in homage on the tombs of French heroes who have fallen for their country.'

The trumpets sounded a salute as the King arrived and inspected the French Guard of Honour, and then with Marshal Foch he walked along the lines of white wooden crosses of the cemetery.

The King came back to tho centre of the hill, where will be erected the memorial to the dead, and, addressing Marshal Foch, said : I am happy, M. le Marechal, that you are by my side at this moment, when I come to place this wreath in deserved homage to the heroic soldiers of France.' On a mound over which flew the French flag he placed his chaplet of red roses, palm and bay, bearing the simple inscription, From King George V.-12th May, 1922,' then stood for two minutes silent at the salute, Marshal Foch and Field-Marshal Earl Haig on either side.

Deeply moved was the King and those around him. All the tragedy and all the heroism which Notre Dame de Loretto symbolizes rose up before the mind. At the King's feet stretched in row after row the tombs of the French, who lost almost a complete generation of their glorious youth in defence of their country. Beyond the line of tombs showed for miles and miles devastated France—the ruins which had been great manufac- turing towns, the wastes which had been fertile fields, the dusty stains on the landscape which had been smiling villages, the tangles of splintered stumps which had been fruitful trees. Here was the record of the scientifically considered, the systematically prepared, the meticulously executed ruin of France ; and these graves were of those who stemmed the wave of that hideous desolation.

Leaving the cemetery and walking on a little distance, the .. King, Marshal Foch, and Earl Haig took their stand on a com- manding point of the hill and discussed the strategy of the campaign. Marshal Foch and Earl Haig talked over some of the great actions of the War, pointing out to the King various points the names of which are household words to-day—Souchez, Vimy, the Labyrinth, Loos, Lens, and those betraying dumps of the seal pits which caused the loss of so many a soldier. The King listened with keen interest and was clearly delighted at the cordial comradeship of the two great soldiers. He turned to them at one point with the confident query : Toujours bons amis, n'est ce pas ? ' Marshal Foch replied with fervour : Touiours, toujours, pour les memes causes et

lea memes raisons,' and grasped Earl Haig's hand. As the two Marshals °leaped hands in the grip of comradeship the King placed his hand over theirs.

A scene to be remembered for all time, the making of that pledge with the King's hand on the sacred hill of Notre Dame de Lorette."

" Those betraying dumps of the coal pits which caused the loss of so many a soldier " is a touch of inspiration in the picture of the painter in words. Even one who had to peer carefully out of a disused first line trench " under enemy observation " upon the scene could not fail to notice at once that the essential feature of the landscape was these curious triangular dumps like black pyramids. It is they that give the special character to the landscape of Notre Dame de Lorette. It must not be supposed, however, that, though we have found this passage the most appropriate for selection, Mr. Fox is less well inspired when he is dealing with his more immediate work—the description of the cemeteries. On the contrary, nothing could have been better than the way in which he describes the burial-places which the King saw on his pilgrimage and how he saw them. One of the most important things in a book of this kind is, of course, the photographs ; and of these we can say that not only is the production quite excellent, but that, taking them as a whole, the photographers who selected the spots did their work with great good taste Though clearly no attempt has been made to pose the persons of this pathetic drama, they have managed to make the series "of pictures as dignified as they are simple and natural. Though there is no straining after tragic effect in the photographs of the great ceme- teries with their endless vistas of stones, it happens that two pictures, one of " Etaples, at the Stone of Remem- brance," and one entitled " General View of Etaples," make a most soul-shaking impression. In both cases the photographs will give those to whom statistics make no intelligible appeal a proof of how appallingly vast was the harvest of the dead.

The only thing that we miss about this little book, though perhaps it is hardly fair to it to record our very slight touch of disappointment, is that we have not got more purely architectural records, and also that the letterpress does not give us quite so full an account as we should have liked of the designs adopted for the layireg out of the cemeteries. No doubt, however, before long we shall have a complete record of this side of the work, and we trust that Mr. Fox may be the recorder, for he evidently has just the gifts required. Before we leave the book there is one matter to be noted, which is specially moving, and that is the parades of the gardeners inspected by the King. The grave-grounds have, of course, to be kept in due order and the flowers tended, and for this work English soldiers have been chosen. Their task is one of honour, and we are delighted to see that particular attention has been paid to them in this record. We may add that it was charac- teristic of the King that he did not forget them in the official letter which was sent by one of his Staff—Sir Frederick Ponsonby—to the Vice-Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission, Sir Fabian Ware. The official letter in question ends as follows :- " The King was impressed by the ability and efficiency of the gardeners in the service of the Commission, and desires that

his appreciation may be expressed to them of the manner in which they carry out their precious charge. Although tho completion of these cemeteries must necessarily take some time, especially in the still-devastated areas, they may continue their work with the full conviction that they are earning the deep gratitude of the relatives and friends of those whose graves they tend."

We quote these words because they are characteristic at once of the thoroughness and of the sincerity of the King. J. St LOE STRACIIEY.