Flags: Some Account Of Their History And Uses Part 7

The royal standards of Norway and Sweden, and also the ensign of these kingdoms, are peculiar in preserving the ancient form of having the fly ending in three points. (See the Swedish standard, Plate V. No. 10.)

Greece has adopted the colours of Bavaria in compliment to her first king. (See Plate VI. No. 7.)

The devices on some of the Asiatic flags are peculiar. That of Burmah bears a peac.o.c.k; Siam, a white elephant; and China, a hideous-looking dragon. (See these flags, Plate VI. Nos. 1, 2, 3.) On the flag of Bolivia (Plate VI. No. 4) is the representation of a volcano, suggested in all probability by the great volcano of Serhama, which rises in Western Bolivia to the height of 23,000 feet. j.a.pan, the land of the far east, the source of the sun, as her name signifies, has adopted for her flag the sun rising blood-red. (See Plate V. No. 9.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: NATIONAL FLAGS AND STANDARDS. PLATE VI.]

The flag of Brazil, which is very inartistic in its construction, bears among other devices the armillary sphere of Portugal. (See Plate VI. No.

8.)

In Plates IV. V. and VI. will be found representations of the flags of other kingdoms and republics. These speak for themselves, and do not call for particular description.

But I must now bring these notices to a close. To the true patriot of every country the national flag must be a subject of pride. If, as a French writer observes, it does not always lead him to victory, it inspires him to fight well, and if need be to die well. "We pay to it,"

says the same writer, "royal honours. When it is paraded--in rags it may be, and with faded colours, bearing in letters of gold the names of victories--the troops present arms, the officers salute it with the sword, and the white heads of veteran generals are uncovered and bent before the ensign." To the soldier its loss is one of the greatest calamities. In Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow in 1812 not many of his flags remained with the Russians. Of those which were not carried off most were burned, and of some of these the officers drank the ashes. More recently the same thing is said to have been done at Metz and Sedan. So a French writer tells us, and he characterizes the act as "_communion sublime_!"

What the flag is, indeed, to the sailor and the soldier, whether when shaken out in battle or when displayed in memory of great victories, none but the soldier and the sailor can realize. At the interment of Lord Nelson, when his flag was about to be lowered into the grave, the sailors who a.s.sisted at the ceremony ran forward with one accord and tore it into small pieces, to be preserved as sacred relics. "I know,"

says Charles Kingsley--in those _Brave Words_ which he addressed to our soldiers then fighting in the trenches before Sebastopol, "I know that you would follow those colours into the mouth of the pit; that you would die twice over rather than let them be taken. Those n.o.ble rags, inscribed with n.o.ble names of victory, should remind you every day and every hour that he who fights for Queen and country in a just cause is fighting not only in the Queen's army but in Christ's army, and that he shall in no wise lose his reward."