The war that Germany had forced upon them the English accepted with a grim determination to see it through and, while they were about it, to make it final.

They were going ahead with no false illusions.

Fully did every one appreciate the enormous task, the personal loss that lay before him.

But each, in his or her way, went into the fight determined to do his duty.

There was no dismay, no hysteria, no "mafficking." The secrecy maintained by the press and the people regarding anything concerning the war, the knowledge of which might embarrass the War Office, was one of the most admirable and remarkable conspiracies of silence that modern times have known.
Officers of the same regiment even with each other would not discuss the orders they had received.