PRIVATE ARTHUR WILLIAM CALLANDER
LONDON REGIMENT
5TH SEPTEMBER 1915 AGE 28
BURIED: CABARET-ROUGE BRITISH CEMETERY, SOUCHEZ, FRANCE
Arthur Callander's inscription was chosen by his older brother, Henry. Their father had died when Arthur was 4 and Henry 17, and their mother when Arthur was 7 and Henry 20. Henry was quite possibly Arthur's next-of-kin. As an orphan, Arthur had attended the Commerical Travellers School for Orphan and Necessitous Children. His father had been a commercial traveller in the tea trade but Arthur went to work in a shop. By the time he joined up in 1914 he was the manager of the Costume Department at Messrs Green & Co. Oxford Circus. He went to France in March 1915 and was killed two months later.
His inscription comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and refers to Brutus. Brutus has killed himself, by running on his sword, having taken part in the murder of Caesar. Antony, a fellow murderer, says:
This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that he did in envy of great Caesar.
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man!'