THE  ARMY  71

inherit  the  benefits  of  it,  to  discharge  their  debt
towards  the  leaders  who  directed  it  and  the  soldiers
who  won  it,  towards  the  dead  as  towards  those  who
survived.  It  will  give  them  an  opportunity  of
offering  their  tribute  of  admiration  and  gratitude,
at  once,  to  all  the  men  who  fought  on  the  Yser,  in
that  they  contributed  by  the  heroism  of  their  deeds
and  their  trials,  whether  at  Dixmude,  Tervaete,
Nieuport,  Schoobakke,  Pervyse,  or  elsewhere,  to
the  shattering  of  the  German  invasion  and  to  the
preservation  of  that  inviolate  and  forever  sacred
corner  of  the  Fatherland.
This  inviolate  corner  our  Army  has  never  ceased
to  defend.  And  assuredly  the  memory  of  October
1914  will  never  cause  us  to  forget  or  to  fail  to  under-
stand what  tenacity,  what  skill,  what  heroism  have
been  lavished  there  at  every  moment  since  that  time.
Upon  the  day  when  Germany  shall  have  been
thrown  back  and  shall  have  freed  Belgium  from
her  odious  contamination,  with  what  enthusiasm  will
our  families — to-day  scattered,  but  then  reunited —
overwhelm  with  the  same  gratitude  all  their  defenders
and  all  their  liberators  !

Into  what  ingenious  and  touching  forms  that
gratitude  will  seek  to  translate  itself  we  have  already
an  indication  in  the  reports  which  come  to  us  from
the  occupied  territory.
