THE BATTLE FLAG.

The Hospital Unit which left yesterday for France is reported to have carried with it the banner of our nation; when the Unit unfolds it for the first time our flag of war will fly in Europe.

Other flags, sheltering and honoring other men, will follow that first flag, and Germany will see the Stars and Stripes flying at the forefront of armies. Yet some measure of sanctity must be accorded that pioneer banner, adventuring out on unknown fields against a people which we have never before held as our foe.

The nation has entered upon a new cycle of its life. It is no longer a confederation of colonies with martial dreams limited to the Atlantic Coast: nor a union of states hugging itself within its sheltering shores. The nation is a world power, and what it was, it may not be again.

Tremendous things will happen within this century. What they will be we do not know. But we may hope from those events this free government will emerge splendid and great. History is being written, as history is generally written, unknown to the writers, although they may feel some deep stirring of the pen that records. Knowing that the past is dissevered from the future, our young men of imagination might well be exalted to lofty and far-reaching hopes for their nation.

The battleflag of America upon the fields of France is the outward manifestation of a new national consciousness, and an omen however faint, of the part that we may be called upon to play in the destinies of world powers.