VII
Come home!—Come home!
The winds are at rest in the restful trees,
At rest are the waves of the sundown seas;
And home—they're home—
The wearied hearts and the broken lives—
At home! At ease!
Lieut. Walter L. Wilkinson, At Last Post.
Clifford Flower, to whom a few lines back I made casual reference, was a Leeds boy, who began life at the age of thirteen and a half in the office of a local firm of iron and steel tube manufacturers. He had been promoted to the drawing office of the firm's headquarters at Birmingham, and was in his twenty-third year when Germany invaded Belgium. No sooner were Kitchener's posters calling from walls and hoardings for volunteers than he offered himself for enlistment, and was rejected. He tried to dodge in at two or three other recruiting depots, but was consistently barred out by them all because he was half an inch short of the standard
