"My mother wept when I failed to return," he continued. "Night after night she waited at the window until it was foolish to hope any longer. Then she, too, wanted to die. But the neighbors came in and cheered her. 'You have given a son to save your country,' they cried. 'The Persians are driven back and Greece is freed. He died, but he left us a better world.'"
The Unknown paused for a moment, his voice grew dull and hard.
"The Romans swept over the Greece that I died for," he said. "The barbarians swept over Rome. I sometimes wonder whether it was worth while to die at twenty-eight—to sleep at Thermopylæ, unknown."
"I fought with Charles Martel at Tours," the second soldier said. "We turned back the Arab hosts; we saved Europe from Mohammedanism; we kept it a Christian continent.
"'It is splendid,' they said to my mother, 'splendid to sacrifice a son on the altar of peace and good-will.'
"That was twelve hundred years ago," the second soldier said. "And where is the peace that we died for? Where is the faith? The good-will?"
The third Unknown had stood with Wellington at Waterloo. It was a high enthusiasm that had carried him there—the vision of a world free
