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+                        THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER
+
+
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+
+Title: The Soul of the Soldier
+       Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
+Author: Thomas Tiplady
+Release Date: July 18, 2014 [EBook #46323]
+Language: English
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover art]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Captain Guy Drummond, 13th Royal Canadian Highlanders.
+Killed in action, April, 1915.
+"A SON OF THE MOTHERLAND"]
+
+
+
+
+                       The Soul _of_ The Soldier
+
+                       _Sketches from the Western
+                             Battle-Front_
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+                             THOMAS TIPLADY
+
+                        _Chaplain to the Forces_
+
+                Author of "THE CROSS AT THE FRONT," etc.
+
+
+
+                        NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
+                       Fleming H. Revell Company
+                          LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+                          Copyright, 1918, by
+                       FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+
+
+
+                       New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
+                     Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
+                     London: 21 Paternoster Square
+                      Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
+
+
+
+
+                 TO THE MEMORY OF THE MANY "WHITE MEN"
+
+I have known and loved in the London Territorials, who, being dedicate
+to their Country and the cause of Liberty, went over the parapet and did
+not return.
+
+"These laid the world away; poured out the red
+Sweet wine of youth: gave up the years to be
+Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
+That men call age; and those who would have been
+Their sons they gave--their immortality."
+
+
+
+
+                         *THE MOTHER’S ANSWER*
+
+    God gave my son in trust to me.
+    Christ died for him.  He should be
+    A man for Christ.  He is his own
+    And God’s and man’s, not mine alone.
+    He was not mine to give.  He gave
+    Himself, that he might help to save
+    All that a Christian should revere
+    All that enlightened men hold dear.
+
+    "To feed the guns."  Ah! torpid soul,
+    Awake, and see life as a whole.
+    When freedom, honor, justice, right,
+    Were threatened by the despot’s might,
+    He bravely went for God, to fight
+    Against base savages, whose pride
+    The laws of God and man defied;
+    Who slew the mother and the child;
+    Who maidens, pure and sweet, defiled;
+    He did not go to feed the guns,
+    He went to save from ruthless Huns
+    His home and country, and to be
+    A guardian of democracy.
+
+    "What if he does not come?" you say;
+    Well, then, my sky will be more gray,
+    But through the clouds the sun will shine
+    And vital memories be mine.
+    God’s test of manhood is, I know
+    Not, will he come--_but did he go_?
+
+    JAMES L. HUGHES.
+
+
+
+
+                               *PREFACE*
+
+
+The sketches in this book and in my previous one, "The Cross at the
+Front," are attempts to show the soul of the soldier serving in France
+as I have seen it during the year and a half that I have been with him.
+It is a padre’s privilege and duty to be the voice with which, in public
+worship, the soldiers speak to God; and through which their last
+thoughts are borne to their friends at home.  He is their voice both
+when they are sick or wounded, and when they lie silent in the grave.
+He speaks of their hopes and fears, hardships and heroisms, laughter and
+tears.  As best he may he tries to tell, to those who have a right and a
+longing to know, how they thought, and how they bore themselves in the
+great day of trial when all risked their lives and many laid them down.
+
+Soldiers, as a rule, are either inarticulate or do not care to speak of
+themselves; and the padre has to be their spokesman if ever their deeper
+thoughts and finer actions are to be known to their friends.  To do this
+he may have to bring himself into the picture, or even illustrate a
+common thing in their lives by a personal experience of his own.  To
+reveal life and thought at the Front in the third person, and without
+sacrificing truth and vividness, requires a degree of literary power and
+art which cannot be expected of a padre to whom writing is but a
+by-product, and not his main work.
+
+I have written but little of military operations--these things are not
+in my province. Moreover, they are not the things which are most
+revealing.  The presence of Spring is first and most surely revealed by
+the flowers in our gardens and lanes; and the soldier is most clearly
+seen in the little things that happen on the march--in his billet or in
+the Dressing Station.  Some things are not seen at all.  They are only
+felt, and my opinion about them must be taken for what it is worth.  One
+knows what the men are by their influence on one’s own mind and life.  I
+do not judge the morality and spirituality of our soldiers entirely by
+their habits and speech, for these are but outward and clumsy
+expressions of the inner life and are largely conventional.  There is
+something else to put in the reckoning, and to find out what the
+soldiers are worth to us we must somehow get behind their words and
+actions and find out what they are worth to God, whose terrible wheel of
+war is shaping their characters.
+
+I appraise them mostly by the total effect of the impact of their souls
+on mine.  I know their thoughts and feelings by the thoughts and
+feelings they inspire in me.  "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of
+thistles?"  There are certain thoughts and emotions that only come to me
+strongly when I am with the soldiers or when I am living again with them
+in memory, and so, I take these as their gift to me and judge the men by
+their influence on my character.  Character is, in its influence, subtle
+as Spring.  Words and actions by themselves are too coarse and
+conventional to do anything but mislead us in judging the quality of our
+men.  "By their fruits ye shall know them."  Not by their leaves.  Fruit
+is _seed_.  In the seed the tree reproduces itself. And reproduction,
+whether in physical, moral or spiritual life, is the test of vitality.
+
+I have not unduly loaded my pages with ghastly details of war, because
+their effect on the mind of the reader who has not been at the Front
+would be false and distorting.  The reader would be more horrified in
+imagining them than our soldiers are in seeing them.  I have tried
+rather to show life at the Front, with its mingling of red and gold,
+horror and happiness, as it affects the soldier; so that his friends at
+home may see it as he sees it, and with his sense of proportion.  If I
+could only do it, as well as I intend it, my pictures would create a
+truer sympathy between the home and the trench.  Some would find comfort
+for their hearts, and others would awake to a new and noble seriousness.
+Soldiers have suffered much through imperfect sympathies.  They have
+been pitied for the wrong things, and left to freeze when they needed
+warmth. Only when we realize their dignity and greatness and the true
+nature of their experiences can we be their comrades and helpers.  Life
+at the Front is brutal and terrifying, and yet our soldiers are neither
+brutalized nor terrorized, for there is something great and noble at the
+Front which keeps life pure and sweet and the men gentle and chivalrous.
+When "the boys" come home their friends will, in almost every case, find
+them just as bright, affectionate and good as when they went out. The
+only change will be a subtle one--a deepening in character and manly
+quality, a broadening in mind and creed, and an impatience with cant and
+make-believe whether in politics or business, Christianity or
+Rationalism. There will be an air of indefinable greatness about them as
+of men who have been at grips with the realities of life and death.
+
+In a footnote to one of his songs, Edward Teschemacher says that the
+gypsies, as they wander through the country, leave a sprinkling of grass
+or wild flowers at the cross-roads to indicate, to those who come after
+them, the road they have taken.  These flowers are known as the
+"Patterain."
+
+These essays are my Patterain--wild flowers plucked in France, and left
+to mark the red path trod during the months I have been with my comrades
+at the Front.
+
+I would the flowers were worthier, but such as I have, I give; and they
+are taken out of my heart.
+
+    "Where my caravan has rested
+      Flowers I leave you on the grass;
+    All the flowers of love and memory;
+      You will find them when you pass."
+
+    THOMAS TIPLADY.
+
+BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, FRANCE.
+
+
+
+
+                               *CONTENTS*
+
+CHAP.
+
+      I. The Swan at Ypres
+     II. The Roadmakers
+    III. The Glamour of the Front
+     IV. A White Handkerchief
+      V. The Songs Our Soldiers Sing
+     VI. Easter Sunday
+    VII. "Now the Day is Over"
+   VIII. Sons of the Motherland
+     IX. The Terror by Night
+      X. "Eton Boys Never Duck!"
+     XI. "Missing"
+    XII. "It Must be Sunday"
+   XIII. Our Tommies Never Fail Us
+    XIV. The Cross at Neuve Chapelle
+     XV. The Children of Our Dead
+    XVI. A Funeral under Fire
+   XVII. A Soldier’s Calvary
+  XVIII. The Hospital Train
+    XIX. After Winter, Spring
+
+
+
+
+                                  *I*
+
+                          *THE SWAN AT YPRES*
+
+
+For three years the storm center of the British battle front has been at
+Ypres. Every day and night it has been the standing target of thousands
+of guns.  Yet, amid all the havoc and thunder of the artillery, the
+graceful white form of a swan had been seen gliding over the water of
+the moat.  It never lacked food, and was always welcome to a share of
+Tommy’s rations.  In the Battle of Messines--I had the story first-hand
+from a lieutenant of artillery whose battery was hidden close by, and
+who was an eye-witness of the incident--a shell burst near the swan, and
+it was mortally wounded.  For three long years it had spread its white
+wings as gallantly as the white sails of Drake’s flagship when he sailed
+out of Plymouth Sound to pluck the beard of the Spaniard.  But now its
+adventurous voyaging was over.  Another beautiful and innocent thing had
+been destroyed by the war and had passed beyond recall.  There was no
+dying swan-song heard on the waters, but all who saw its passing felt
+that the war had taken on a deeper shade of tragedy.
+
+Many a "white man" had been slain near the spot but somehow the swan
+seemed a mystical being, and invulnerable.  It was a relic of the days
+of peace, and a sign of the survival of purity and grace amid the
+horrors and cruelties of war.  It spoke of the sacred things that yet
+remain--the beautiful things of the soul upon which war can lay no
+defiling finger. Now it had gone from the water and Ypres seems more
+charred than ever, and the war more terrible.  The death of the swan
+revealed against its white wings the peculiar inhumanity of the present
+war.  It is a war in which the enemy spares nothing and no one.  He is
+more blind and merciless than the Angel of Death which swept over Egypt,
+for the angel had regard to the blood which the Israelites had sprinkled
+over the lintels of their doors and he passed by in mercy.  To the
+German Eagle every living creature is legitimate prey.  No blood upon
+the lintel can save the inmate; not even the cross of blood on the
+hospital tent or ship.  Wounded or whole, combatant or non-combatant,
+its beak and talons tear the tender flesh of all and its lust is not
+sated.
+
+In Belgium and Serbia it is believed that more women and children
+perished than men. Things too hideous for words were done publicly in
+the market-squares.  Neither age nor sex escaped fire and sword.  The
+innocent babe was left to suck the breast of its dead mother or was
+dandled on the point of the bayonet. What resistance can the Belgian
+swan make to the German eagle?  It needs must lie torn and bleeding
+beneath its talons.  The German Emperor has waded deeper in blood than
+Macbeth, and has slain the innocent in their sleep.  Even the sea is
+full of the women, children, and non-combatant men he has drowned.  His
+crown is cemented together with innocent blood and its jewels are the
+eyes of murdered men and women.  The wretched man has made rivers of
+blood to flow yet not a drop in them is from his own veins or the veins
+of his many sons.  Napoleon risked his life with his men in every battle
+but this man never once.  While sending millions to their death he yet
+consents to live, and protects his life with the anxious care a miser
+bestows on his gold.  Alone among large families in Germany his
+household is without a casualty. Though a nation be white and innocent
+as the Belgian swan it will not escape his sword, and he will swoop upon
+it the more readily because it is unarmed.  The swan cannot live where
+the eagle flies, and one or the other must die.
+
+But the stricken swan of Ypres is not merely the symbol of Belgium and
+her fate.  There are other innocents who have perished or been sorely
+wounded.  The whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain.  The
+neutral nations are suffering with the belligerent, and the lower
+creatures are suffering with mankind.
+
+Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at the front, I think the
+saddest sight is that of dying horses and mules.  Last winter they had
+to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter blasts.  It was
+impossible to keep them clean or dry, for the roads were churned into
+liquid mud and both mules and drivers were plastered with it from head
+to foot.  To make things worse there was a shortage of fodder; and
+horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding. Before the fine weather had
+given them a chance to recover weight and strength, the Battle of Arras
+began, and every living beast of burden, as well as every motor-engine,
+was strained to its utmost.  The mule is magnificent for war, and our
+battles have been won as much by mules as men.  Haig could rely on one
+as much as on the other.  The mule will eat anything, endure anything,
+and, when understood and humored by its driver, will do anything.  It
+works until it falls dead by the roadside.  In the spring, hundreds died
+in harness.  In fact, few die except in harness.  They die facing the
+foe, dragging rations along shell-swept roads to the men in the
+trenches.
+
+On two miles of road I have counted a dozen dead mules; and burial
+parties are sent out to put them out of sight.  One night, alone, I got
+three dying mules shot.  The road was crowded with traffic, yet it was
+difficult to find either an officer with a revolver or a
+transport-driver with a rifle.  I had to approach scores before I could
+find a man who had the means to put a mule out of its misery; and we
+were within two miles of our Front.  So rigid is our line of defense
+that those behind it do not trouble to take arms.  Even when I found a
+rifleman he hesitated to shoot a mule.  There is a rule that no horse or
+mule must be shot without proper authority, and when you consider the
+enormous cost of one the necessity for the rule is obvious. I had
+therefore to assure a rifleman that I would take full responsibility for
+his action. He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the mule’s
+forehead and pulled the trigger.  A tremor passed through the poor
+thing’s body and its troubles were over.  It had come all the way from
+South America to wear itself out carrying food to fighting men, and it
+died by the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.
+
+The mule knows neither love nor offspring. Apart from a few gambols in
+the field, or while tethered to the horse-lines, it knows nothing but
+work.  It is the supreme type of the drudge.  It is one of the greatest
+factors in the war, and yet it receives scarcely any recognition and
+more of whipping than of praise.  Only too often I have seen their poor
+shell-mangled bodies lying by the roadside waiting till the battle
+allowed time for their burial.  Yet what could be more innocent of any
+responsibility for the war?  They are as innocent as the swan on the
+moat at Ypres.
+
+Yet the greatest suffering among innocents is not found at the Front at
+all.  It is found at home.  At the Front there is suffering of body and
+mind, but at home there is the suffering of the heart.  Every soldier
+knows that his mother and wife suffer more than he does, and he pities
+them from his soul.  War is a cross on which Woman is crucified.  The
+soldier dies of his wounds in the morning of life, but his wife lingers
+on in pain through the long garish day until the evening shadows fall.
+There is no laughter at home such as you hear at the Front, or even in
+the hospitals.  One finds a gayety among the regiments in France such as
+is unknown among the people left at home.  It is the sunshine of the
+street as compared with the light in a shaded room.  There is a youth
+and buoyancy at the Front that one misses sadly in the homeland.
+
+To a true woman with a son or husband at the Front, life becomes a
+nightmare.  To her distorted imagination the most important man in the
+country is not the Prime Minister but the postman.  She cannot get on
+with her breakfast for listening for his footsteps.  There is no need
+for him to knock at the door, she has heard him open the gate and walk
+up the gravel path.  Her heart is tossed like a bubble on the winds of
+hope and fear.  She finds herself behind the door without knowing how
+she got there, and her hand trembles as she picks up the letter to see
+if the address is in "his" handwriting or an official’s.  The words, "On
+His Majesty’s Service," she dreads like a witch’s incantation.  They may
+be innocent enough, and cover nothing more than belated Commission
+Papers, but she trembles lest they should be but the fair face of a
+dark-hearted messenger, who is to blot out the light of her life
+forever.  If she goes out shopping and sees a telegraph-boy go in the
+direction of her home she forgets her purchases and hurries back to see
+if he is going to knock at her door.  The rosy-faced messenger has
+become a sinister figure, an imp from the nether world.  He may be
+bringing news of her loved one’s arrival "on leave," but so many evil
+faces of fear and doubt peer through the windows of her heart that she
+cannot believe in the innocence and good-will of the whistling boy.  Her
+whole world is wrapped up in his little orange-colored envelope.
+
+The boys at the Front know of the anxiety and suspense that darken their
+homes, and they do all they can to lighten them.  There were times on
+the Somme when the men were utterly exhausted with fighting and long
+vigils in the trenches.  Water was scarce, and a mild dysentery came
+into evidence.  No fire could be lighted to cook food or make hot tea.
+The ranks had been thinned, and only two officers were left to each
+company.  The weather was bad and the captured trench uncomfortable. Any
+moment word might come for another attack.  The campaign was near its
+close, and the work must be completed despite the prevalent exhaustion.
+The officers were too tired, depressed and preoccupied to censor
+hundreds of letters.  In front of him each could see a gaping grave.
+The sun was rapidly "going west" and leaving them to the cold and dark.
+Nothing seemed to matter in comparison with _that_. To hold services
+were impossible and I felt that the best I could do was to walk through
+the trench, chat with the officers and men, gather up the men’s letters
+and take them back and censor in my tent.  This gave the officers times
+to write their own, and an opportunity to post them.
+
+But note, I pray you, the nobility of these gallant fellows.  All of
+them were exhausted and depressed.  The shadows of death were thick
+about them, yet when I opened their letters, I found myself--with two
+exceptions out of three or four hundred--in an entirely different
+atmosphere.  It was a sunny atmosphere in which birds were singing.  The
+men said nothing of their suffering, their depression, their fears for
+the future.  The black wings of death cast no shadow over their pages.
+They said they were "all right," "merry and bright" and "soon going back
+for a long rest."  They told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to
+send, and gave them details how to make up the next parcel.  They talked
+as if death were out of sight--a sinister fellow with whom they had
+nothing to do.
+
+The officers, of course, censor their own letters, so I did not see how
+they wrote.  But I know.  They wrote as the men wrote, and probably with
+a still lighter touch.  Their homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet
+not by any word of theirs would the shadows be deepened.  They could not
+shield themselves from war’s horrors but they would do their best to
+shield their white swans at home.  They could not keep their women folk
+out of the war, but they would deliver them from its worst horrors.  Not
+till they had fallen would they let the shafts pass them to their
+mothers and wives; rather would they gather them in their own breasts.
+In the hour of the world’s supreme tragedy there was a woman standing by
+the cross, and the august Sufferer, with dying breath, bade His closest
+friend take her, when the last beam faded, to his own home and be in His
+place, a son to her.  I know no scene that better represents the
+feelings of our soldiers towards their loved ones at home.
+
+Their women gave them inspiration and joy in the days of peace, and they
+still float before their vision amid the blackened ruins of war, as
+beautiful and stainless in their purity as the white swan on the moat of
+Ypres.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *II*
+
+                            *THE ROADMAKERS*
+
+
+We had just marched from one part of the Front to another and by a
+round-about way.  Each morning the Quartermaster and "the billeting
+party" went on before, and each evening we slept in a village that was
+strange to us.  Each of the men carried on his back a pack and equipment
+weighing about eighty or ninety pounds. Through sleet and blizzard and,
+for the most part, through open, exposed country, we continued our march
+without a day of rest.  By the fifth evening we reached the village
+where we were to have three or four weeks of rest and training before
+entering the trenches for the spring offensive.  We had unpacked and
+were sitting at dinner when a telegram came announcing that all previous
+plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must take to the road again.
+Something unexpected had happened, good or ill, we knew not which, and
+we had to enter the line in front of Arras. For three days more we
+marched.  Daily the sound of the guns came nearer, and the men were
+tired and footsore.  They were also deeply disappointed of the long rest
+to which they had been looking forward after a winter in the trenches at
+Neuve Chapelle.  Yet they marched cheerily enough.  "It’s the War!" they
+said one to another and, true to their own philosophy, "packed up their
+troubles in their old kit bags and smiled."  When any man faltered a
+bit, as if about to fall out by the way, the others cheered him on by
+singing "Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the old Sunday school
+hymn, "Kind words can never die."  Sometimes an officer would shoulder a
+man’s rifle to the end of the march, or until he felt better.  In eight
+unbroken days of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and finally
+arrived at a camp of huts within a day’s march of the trenches we are to
+occupy.  Here, where our huts stand like islands in a sea of mud, we
+are, unless suddenly needed, to take a few days’ rest.
+
+On the ninety-eight miles of road over which we tramped, we passed
+company after company of British roadmakers.  In some parts they were
+widening the road, in other parts repairing it.  The roads of
+Northeastern France are handed over to our care as completely as if they
+were in England.  Our road-makers are everywhere, and as we pass they
+stand, pick or shovel in hand, to salute the colonel and shout some
+humorous remark to the laughing riflemen--only to get back as much as
+they give.
+
+This morning I visited the neighboring village to arrange for a Sunday
+service.  The roads are hopeless for bicycles at this time of the year,
+so I fell back on Adam’s method of getting about.  The road to the
+village was torn and broken, and "thaw precautions" were being observed.
+Everywhere it was ankle-deep in mud and, in the holes, knee-deep.
+Innumerable motor-wagons had crushed it beneath their ponderous weight,
+and my feet had need of my eyes to guide them.  In skirting the holes
+and rough places, I added quite a mile to the journey.
+
+It was annoying to get along so slowly, and I called the road "rotten"
+and blamed the War for its destructive work.  Then I saw that I had been
+unjust in judgment.  The War had constructed more than it had destroyed.
+The road had been a little muddy country lane, but the soldiers had made
+it wide as Fleet Street, and it was bearing a mightier traffic than that
+famous thoroughfare night and day.  The little road with its mean
+perfections and imperfections had gone, and the large road with big
+faults and big virtues had come.  This soldiers’ road has faults the
+farmers’ road knew not, but then it has burdens and duties unknown
+before, and it has had no time to prepare for them.  Like our
+boy-officers who are bearing grown men’s burdens of responsibility and
+bearing them well, the road has had no time to harden.  To strengthen
+itself for its duties, it eats up stones as a giant eats up food.  I had
+no right to look for the smoothness of Oxford Street or the Strand.
+Such avenues represent the work of centuries, this of days.  They have
+grown with their burdens, but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it
+suddenly, and while it was immature.  Oxford Street and Fleet Street are
+the roads of peace, and laden with wealth and luxury, law and
+literature--things that can wait.  But on this road of the soldiers’
+making, nothing is allowed except it be concerned with matters of life
+and death.  It is the road of war, and there is a terrible urgency about
+it.  Over it pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the soldiers in the
+trenches, ambulances bearing back the wounded to the hospital.  Whatever
+its conditions the work must be done, and there is no room for a halting
+prudence or the pride of appearance.  Rough though it is and muddy, over
+it is passing, for all who have eyes to see, a new and better
+civilization and a wider liberty.  I had grumbled at the worn-out road
+when I ought to have praised it.  I was as an ingrate who finds fault
+with his father’s hands because they are rough and horny.
+
+It was a group of soldier-roadmakers who brought me to my senses.  They
+were making a new road through the fields, and it branched off from the
+one I was on.  I saw its crude beginning and considered the burdens it
+would soon have to bear.  As I stood watching these English roadmakers
+my mind wandered down the avenues of time, and I saw the Roman soldiers
+building their immortal roads through England.  They were joining town
+to town and country to country.  They were introducing the people of the
+North to those of the South, and bringing the East into fellowship with
+the West.  I saw come along their roads the union of all England
+followed at, some distance, by that of England, Scotland and Wales; and
+I regretted that there was no foundation on which they could build a
+road to Ireland. I saw on those soldier-built roads, also, Christianity
+and Civilization marching, and in the villages and towns by the wayside
+they found a home whence they have sent out missionaries and teachers to
+the ends of the earth.
+
+"The captains and the kings depart."  The Roman Empire is no more, but
+the Roman roads remain.  They direct our modern life and business with
+an inevitability the Roman soldiers never exercised.  In two thousand
+years the Empire may have fallen apart and become a thing of the past;
+but the roads her sons have built in France, these two-and-a-half years,
+will abide forever and be a perpetual blessing; for, of things made by
+hands, there is, after the church and the home, nothing more sacred than
+the road.  The roadmaker does more for the brotherhood of man and the
+federation of the world than the most eloquent orator.  The roadmaker
+has his dreams and visions as well as the poet, and he expresses them in
+broken stones.  He uses stones as artists use colors, and orators words.
+He touches them--transient as they are--with immortality.  A little of
+his soul sticks to each stone he uses, and though the stone perishes the
+road remains.  His body may perish more quickly than the stones and be
+laid in some quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul will never
+utterly forsake the road he helped to make.  In man’s nature, and in all
+his works, there is a strange blending of the temporal and the eternal,
+and in nothing is it more marked than in the roads he builds.
+
+The roadmaker is the pioneer among men and without him there would be
+neither artist nor orator.  He goes before civilization as John the
+Baptist went before Christ, and he is as rough and elemental.  Hard as
+his own stones, without him mankind would have remained savage and
+suspicious as beasts of prey; and art, science and literature would have
+had no beginning.  His road may begin in war, but it ends in peace.
+
+The pioneers I saw roadmaking were, for the greater part, over military
+age, and such as I had often seen leaning heavily on the bar of some
+miserable beer-house.  In those days they seemed of the earth, earthy,
+and the stars that lure to high thoughts and noble endeavors seemed to
+shine on them in vain.  But one never knows what is passing in the heart
+of another.  Of all things human nature is the most mysterious and
+deceptive.  God seems to play at hide-and-seek with men.  He hides
+pearls in oysters lying in the ooze of the sea; and gold under the
+everlasting snows of the Arctic regions.  Diamonds he buries deep down
+in the dirt beneath the African veldt.  He places Christ in a
+carpenter’s shop, Joan of Arc in a peasant’s dwelling, Lincoln in a
+settler’s cabin, and Burns in a crude cottage built by his father’s own
+hands.  He hides generous impulses and heroic traits in types of men
+that in our mean imaginations we can only associate with the saw-dust
+sprinkled bar-room. Only when war or pestilence have kindled their
+fierce and lurid flames do we find the hidden nobility that God has
+stored away in strange places--places often as foul and unlikely as
+those where a miser stores his gold.
+
+When Diogenes went about with a candle in search of an honest man did he
+think to look in the taverns and slums?  I fancy not. Not Diogenes’
+candle but the "Light of the World" was needed to reveal the treasure
+God has hidden in men.  Christ alone knew where His Father had hidden
+His wealth and could guide us to it.  In this time of peril when every
+man with any nobility in him is needed to stand in the deadly breach,
+and with body and soul hold back the brutality and tyranny that would
+enslave the world we have, like the woman in the parable, lit a candle
+and searched every corner of our kingdom diligently.  In the dust of
+unswept corners we have found many a coin of value that, but for our
+exceeding need, would have remained hidden. To me, the wealth and wonder
+of the war have been found in its sweepings.  Time and again we have
+found those who were lost, and a new happiness has come into life.  To
+the end of my days I shall walk the earth with reverent feet.  I did not
+know men were so great.  I have looked at life without seeing the gold
+through the dust, and have been no better than a Kaffir child playing
+marbles with diamonds, unaware of their value.  I have gone among my
+fellows with proud step where I ought to have walked humbly, and have
+rushed in where angels feared to tread.
+
+Life at the Front has made me feel mean among mankind.  My comrades have
+been so great.  In days long past, I have trodden on the hem of Christ’s
+garment without knowing it.  I have not seen its jewels because I, and
+others, have so often trodden it in the mire. Yet, through the mire of
+slum and tavern, the jewels have emerged pearl-white and ruby-red. And I
+feel that I owe to a large part of mankind an apology for having been
+before the war so blind, callous and superficial.  But for the agony and
+bloody sweat in which I have seen my fellows, I should never have known
+them for what they are, and the darkness of death would have covered me
+before I had realized what made the death of Christ and the sufferings
+of all the martyrs well worth while.  Now there is a new light upon my
+path and I shall see the features of an angel through the dirt on a
+slum-child’s face.  Words of Christ that once lay in the shadow now
+stand out clearly, for whenever we get below the surface of life we come
+to _Him_.  He is there before us, and awaiting our coming.
+
+I also understand, now, something of the meaning of the words which the
+Unemployed scrawled upon their banner before the war--"Damn your
+charity.  Give us work."  It was a deep and true saying, and taught them
+by a stern teacher.  When the war came we _did_ "damn our charity" and
+gave them "work."  Many a man got his first chance of doing "a man’s
+job," and rose to the full height of his manhood.  Many hitherto idle
+and drunken, were touched in their finer parts.  They saw their
+country’s need, and though their country had done little to merit their
+gratitude, they responded to her call before some of the more prudent
+and sober.  Those who were young went out to fight, and every officer
+can tell stories about their behavior in the hours of danger and
+suffering which bring tears to the eyes and penitence to the heart.
+Those above military age went out to make roads over which their younger
+brothers and sons could march, and get food, ammunition, or an ambulance
+according to their needs.  Among the group of middle-aged roadmakers
+that I saw there were, I doubt not, some who had been counted wastrels
+and who had made but a poor show of life.  Now they had got work that
+made them feel that they were men and not mendicants, and they were
+"making good."
+
+While I watched them a lark rose from a neighboring field and sang over
+them a song of the coming spring.  It was the first lark I had heard
+this year, and I was glad it mingled its notes with the sounds of the
+roadmakers’ shovels.  Nature is not so indifferent to human struggles as
+it sometimes seems.  The man who stands steadfastly by the right and
+true and bids tyranny and wrong give place will find, at last, that he
+is in league with the stones of the field and the birds of the air, and
+that the stars in their courses fight for him.  The roadmaker and the
+lark are born friends. Both are heralds of coming gladness, and while
+one works, the other sings.  True work and pure song are never far
+apart.  They are both born of hope and seek to body forth the immortal.
+A man works while he has faith. Would he sow if he did not believe the
+promise, made under the rainbow, that seed-time and harvest shall never
+fail?  Or could he sing with despair choking his heart?  Yet he can sing
+with death choking it.  In the very act of dying Wesley sang the hymn,
+"I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath."  He sang because of the hope
+of immortality.  He was not turning his face to the blank wall of death
+and oblivion but to the opening gate of a fuller life.  He was soaring
+sunwards like the lark, and soaring sang,
+
+    "And when my voice is lost in death
+    Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
+    My days of praise shall ne’er be past."
+
+
+Joy can sing and Sorrow can sing, but Despair is dumb.  It has not even
+a cry, for a cry is a call for help as every mother knows, and Despair
+knows no helper.  Even the saddest song has hope in it, as the dreariest
+desert has a well.  The loved one is dead but Love lives on and whispers
+of a trysting place beyond this bourne of time, where loved and lover
+meet again.  The patriot’s life may be pouring from a dozen wounds on
+the muddy field of battle, but his fast-emptying heart is singing with
+each heavy beat, "Who dies, if my country live?"
+
+Roadmakers have prepared the way for missionaries in every land.
+Trail-blazers are not always religious men--often they are wild,
+reckless fellows whom few would allow a place in the Kingdom of God--but
+is not their work religious in its final upshot?  Do they not, however
+unconsciously, "prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert
+a highway for our God?"  Close on their heels go the missionaries, urged
+on faster by the pure love of souls than the trader by love of lucre.
+The greatest among the roadmakers was a missionary himself--David
+Livingstone.  And for such an one the name Living-stone is perfect.  It
+has the touch of destiny.  Through swamp and forest he went where white
+feet had never trod, and blazed a trail for the messengers of Christ,
+until, worn out with fever and hardship, he fell asleep at his prayers,
+to wake no more to toil and suffering.
+
+But while the roadmaker bestows benefits on us he also lays obligations,
+for there can be no enlargement of privilege without a corresponding
+increase of responsibility.  The roads the men are making here in France
+will be good for trade.  They will open up the country as did the
+military roads of Caesar and Napoleon; and along them soldiers are
+marching who, at tremendous cost to themselves, are buying for posterity
+great benefits, and laying upon posterity great obligations.  Posterity
+must hold and enlarge the liberties won for them, and prove worthy of
+their citizenship by resisting tyranny "even unto blood."  We are here
+because our fathers were heroes and lovers of liberty.  Had they been
+cowards and slaves there would have been no war for us.  As we follow
+our fathers our sons must be ready to follow us.  The present springs
+out of the past, and the future will spring out of the present.
+Inheritance implies defense on the part of the inheritors.
+
+The very names they give to their roads show that our soldiers have
+grasped this fact. The cold canvas hut in which I am writing is
+officially described as No. 1 Hut, _Oxford Street_.  A little farther
+off, and running parallel with it, is _Cambridge_ Road.  There is also
+an _Eton_ Road, _Harrow_ Road, and _Marlborough_ Road.  Students of the
+universities and schools after which these roads are named are out here
+to defend what these institutions have stood for through the hoary
+centuries.  They are out to preserve the true conception of Liberty and
+Fair-play, and to build roads along which all peoples who desire it can
+travel unmolested by attacks from either tyrants or anarchists.
+
+Right from the beginning of the war, the idea of a Road has taken hold
+of the imagination of our soldiers.  The first divisions came out
+singing, "It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right
+there."  Nowadays the popular song is "There’s a long, long trail
+awinding into the Land of my dreams."
+
+They are making a Road of Liberty along which all nations may pass to
+universal peace and brotherhood, and where the weak will be as safe from
+oppression as the strong.  "It’s a long, long way to go," but they have
+seen their goal on the horizon, and will either reach it or die on the
+way to it.  They have made up their minds that never again shall the
+shadow of the Kaiser’s mailed fist, or that any other tyrant fall across
+their path.  These men never sing of war.  They hate war.  It is a
+brutal necessity forced on them by the ambition of a tyrant.  Their
+songs are all of peace and none of war.  Of the future and not the
+present they sing:
+
+    "Tiddley-iddley-ighty,
+    Hurry me home to Blighty;
+    Blighty is the place for me."
+
+
+Whether they sing with levity or seriousness (and levity of manner often
+veils their seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and
+goodwill they sing.  To them the war is a hard road leading to a better
+life for mankind.  It is to them what the desert was to the Israelites,
+when they left the bondage of Egypt for the liberty of the Land of
+Promise. Therefore they must tread it without faltering even as Christ
+trod the way of the Cross. "There’s a long, long trail awinding into the
+Land of their dreams" and they will not lose faith in their dreams
+however wearisome the way.  Elderly navvies and laborers have come to
+smooth the roads for them, and nurses are tending those who have fallen
+broken by the way; while across the sundering sea are mothers and wives
+whose prayers make flowers spring up at their feet and blossoms break
+out on every tree that fringes the side of the road.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *III*
+
+                       *THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT*
+
+
+There is an undoubted glamour about the Front, which when at home, in
+England, cannot be explained.  In the army or out of it, the wine of
+life is white and still, but at the Front it runs red and sparkling. One
+day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and sat on a box by the side of one of
+the servants of the officer’s mess at the Aerodrome near by.  He was
+going into Doullens, a market town, to buy food and some little
+luxuries. Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English flyers, was, up to
+the time of his death in the air, a member of the mess, and the servant
+was telling me how comfortable all the officers make their quarters.  In
+a phrase he defined the glamour of the Front.
+
+"One day," he said, "when we were helping him to make his room
+comfortable, Captain Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled, ’We
+haven’t long to live, but we live well while we do live.’"
+
+There you have it.  Life is concentrated. Death is near--just round the
+corner--so the men make the most of their time and "live well."  It has
+the same quality as "leave" at home.  Leave is short and uncertain, so
+we "live well."  Our friends know it may be the last sight of us, and we
+know it may be our last sight of them.  They are kind and generous to
+us, as we are to them; and so, the ten days of "leave" are just
+glorious.  Ruskin says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts but a
+second, and that Turner went out early in the evening and watched with
+rapt attention for that one second of supreme splendor and delight.  He
+lived for sunsets and while others were balancing their accounts, or
+taking tea, he went out to see the daily miracle.  The one second in
+which he saw God pass by in the glory of the sunset was to him worth all
+the twenty-four hours.  For one second in each day he caught the glamour
+of earth and heaven, and went back to his untidy studios blind to all
+but the splendor he had seen.
+
+That second each day was life, indeed, and the glamour of the Front is
+like unto it.  It is the place where life sets, and the darkness of
+death draws on.  The commonest soldier feels it and with true instinct,
+not less true because unconscious, he describes death at the Front as
+"going West."  It is the presence of death that gives the Front its
+glamour, and life its concentrated joy and fascination.  Captain Ball
+saw it with the intuition of genius when he said: "We haven’t long to
+live, but we live well while we _do_ live."
+
+The immediate presence of death at the Front gives tone to every
+expression of life, and makes it the kindest place in the world.  No one
+feels he can do too much for you, and there is nothing you would not do
+for another. Whether you are an officer or a private, you can get a lift
+on any road, in any vehicle, that has an inch of room in it.  How often
+have I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up the back of an empty
+motor-lorry which has stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in. It is
+one of the merriest sights of the war and redounds to the credit of
+human nature. Cigarettes are passed round by those who have, to those
+who have not, with a generosity that reminds one of nothing so much as
+that of the early Christians who "had all things common; and sold their
+possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had
+need."  You need never go hungry while others have food.  Officers are
+welcome at every mess they go near, and privates will get food in the
+servants’ kitchen or may go shares with the men in any billet.  It may
+be a man’s own fault that he took no food on the march, and his comrades
+may tell him so in plain strong language, but they will compel him to
+share what they have just the same.
+
+One wet night on the Somme I got lost in "Happy Valley" and could not
+find my regiment. Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it. It was a
+pioneers’ tent, but they invited me to come in out of the storm and stay
+the night. They were at supper and had only a small supply of
+bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea; but they insisted on me sharing
+what they had. I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one of their
+blankets.  One of them gave me a box to sleep on, while he shared his
+chum’s. Some lost privates came in later wet to the skin, and the
+pioneers gave them all the eatables left over from supper, and shared
+out their blankets and clothes.  It was pure Christianity--whatever
+creeds they may think they believe.  And it is the glamour of the Front.
+England feels cold and dull after it.  Kindness and comradeship pervade
+the air in France. You feel that everyone is a friend and brother. It
+will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back to their churches.  They
+have been spoiled by too much kindness.  How can they go back to the
+cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow judgments which prevail in so
+many churches--that is, unless the war has brought changes there also?
+And after preaching to dying men who listen as it their destiny depended
+upon their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits where large numbers
+in the congregations regard their messages as of less importance than
+dinner, and as merely supplying material for an exercise in more or less
+kindly criticism during the discussion of that meal?
+
+The glamour of the services at the Front! How the scenes are
+photographed on my heart!  As a congregation sits in a church at home
+how stolid its features often are--how dull its eyes!  One glance around
+and the preacher’s heart sinks within him and his inspiration flies
+away.  Nothing is expected of him, and nothing particularly desired.
+People have come by force of habit, and not of need. But how the eyes of
+the soldiers in France glow and burn; how their features speak, and make
+the preacher speak in reply!  Who could help being eloquent there!  Such
+faces would make the dumb speak.  One can see the effect of his words as
+plainly in their expressions as he can see the effect of wind on a
+cornfield.  Every emotion from humor to concern leaps from the heart to
+the face as the subject touches them at, first this point of their life,
+then at that. The men’s eyes are unforgettable.  Months afterwards they
+come vividly to mind, and one is back again answering the questions they
+silently ask, and seeing the look of content or gratitude that takes the
+place of the perplexed or troubled expression.  Eyes are said to be the
+windows of the soul, and as I have spoken I have seen men’s souls
+looking out.  At home the windows are darkened and there seemed to be no
+souls behind the panes.  The dwellers within the houses are busy with
+other matters, and will not come to the windows.  The preacher feels
+like an organ-grinder in the street--those who hear do not heed nor come
+to the windows of the soul.  In France there is a soul looking out at
+every window; and the preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to
+his listeners of the love of God and of the love of women and children
+which make sweet this vale of tears and light man on his lone way beyond
+the grave.
+
+One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the singing of a hymn in the ward
+below, a young officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said: "Why
+doesn’t the chaplain hold a service for us?  Why does he only hold them
+for the Tommies?  We need them and want them, just as much as the
+Tommies.  We are officers but we are also men."  I passed the word to
+the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when in the evening he gave us a
+service and the officers of the next ward asked the orderlies to carry
+them in.
+
+There is the same naturalness and spirit of fellowship between members
+of various churches.  Many lasting friendships have been formed between
+chaplains of differing communions.  There has been no change of creed
+but something greater, a change of spirit. They have been touched by the
+common spirit, and have lived and worked in free and happy fellowship.
+On my last Sunday in a hospital in France, the chaplain, a canon of the
+Church of England, invited me to read the lesson at the morning parade
+service, and to administer the wine at Holy Communion.  This I did; and
+a colonel who was present stayed behind to express to us both the
+pleasure which had been given to him by the sight of Anglican and
+Methodist churchmen serving together at the Lord’s Table.
+
+To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of the Front is found in this
+warm fellowship between men of differing creeds and varying religious
+communions.  We have not knocked down our garden walls but we have taken
+off the cut glass that had been cemented on them by our fathers; and now
+we can lean over and talk to our neighbors.  We have already found that
+our neighbors are human beings, and quite normal.  The chief difference
+between us seems to be that while one has an obsession for roses the
+other has an obsession for dahlias.  On pansies, sweet peas and
+chrysanthemums we seem equally keen and exchange plants.  A Roman
+Catholic officer who had been appointed to the Ulster Division told me
+that though he was received coldly at first, he had not been with the
+Division more than a few weeks when every officer in his regiment, and
+every soldier in his company, accepted him as cordially as if he were a
+Protestant.  He was from Dublin and they from Belfast, but they did not
+allow it to make any difference, and feelings of the warmest loyalty and
+friendship sprang up. His Tommies would fight to the death by his side,
+as readily as around any Ulsterman; and he was just as popular in the
+officers’ mess. When, he said, it passed the Irish Guards or any other
+Roman Catholic regiment, his regiment would sing some provoking song
+about "hanging the Pope with a good strong rope," and the Dublin
+regiment would reply with some song equally obnoxious and defiant; but
+whereas, in peace time, the songs would have caused a free fight to the
+accompaniment of bloodshed, now it caused nothing worse than laughter.
+The songs were just a bit of teasing such as every regiment likes to
+regale another with--perhaps, too, a common memory of the dear country
+they have left behind.  The men of Belfast and the men of Dublin have
+learned to respect and value one another.  They know that in a scrap
+with the enemy they can count on one another to the last drop of blood,
+for, whether from North or South, the Irish are "bonnie fighters."  Of
+such are the miracles at the Front.
+
+Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the Front is found in the nobility
+to which common men rise.  An artillery officer told me that he had in
+his battery a soldier who seemed utterly worthless.  He was dirty in all
+his ways, and unreliable in character.  In despair they made him
+sanitary orderly, that is, the scavenger whose duty it was to remove all
+refuse.  One night the officer wanted a man to go on a perilous errand
+and there were few men available.  Instantly this lad volunteered. The
+officer looked at him in amazement, and with a reverence born on the
+instant.  "No," he thought, "I will not let him go and get killed.  I’ll
+go myself."  He told the lad so, and disappointment was plainly written
+on his features.
+
+"But, you’ll let me come with you, sir?" he replied.
+
+"Why should two risk their lives," asked the officer, "when one can do
+the job?"
+
+"But you might get wounded, sir," was the quick response; and they went
+together.
+
+An Irish officer told me of one man who seemed bad from top to toe.  All
+the others had some redeeming feature but this man appeared not to
+possess any.  He used the filthiest language and was dirty in his habits
+and dress. He was drunken and stole the officers’ whisky out of the
+mess.  He was unchaste and had been in the hospital with venereal
+disease; and neither as man nor soldier was there anything good to say
+of him.  The regiment was sent to France, and in due time took its place
+in the trenches; and then appeared in this man something that had never
+risen to the surface before.  Wherever there were wounded and dying men
+he proved himself to be the noblest man in the regiment.  When a man
+fell in No Man’s Land, he was over the parapet in the twinkling of an
+eye to bring him in.  No barrage could keep him away from the wounded.
+It was a sort of passion with him that nothing could restrain.  To save
+others he risked his life scores of times.  In rest-billets he would
+revert to some of his evil ways, but in the trenches he was the
+Greatheart of the regiment and, though he did not receive it, he earned
+the Victoria Cross over and over again.  There is a glamour at the Front
+that holds the heart with an irresistible grip.  In the light of War’s
+deathly fires the hearts of men are revealed and the black sheep often
+get their chance.  Life is intense and deep and men are drawn together
+by a common peril. They find the things that unite and forget the things
+that separate.
+
+"We haven’t long to live," said Captain Ball joyfully, "but we live well
+while we _do_ live," and in those words he expressed the glamour of the
+Front.  Ball found, as thousands of his comrades-in-arms had found, that
+
+    "One crowded hour of glorious life
+    Is worth an age without a name."
+
+
+
+
+                                  *IV*
+
+                         *A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF*
+
+
+In his _History of the Somme Campaign_ John Buchan quotes, from an
+official report, an incident which, though I have tried, I cannot get my
+imagination to believe. Probably the incident is a true one but,
+unfortunately for me, my mind will not let it in. I cannot visualize it
+and the report is turned from the door as an impostor.  The report
+states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes fired on the Germans in
+their trenches and that the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token of
+surrender.  Without the slightest difficulty I can imagine all except
+the white handkerchiefs. Where did they get them to wave? Men in the
+firing trenches don’t carry anything so conspicuous as white
+handkerchiefs.  To draw one out in a thoughtless moment might bring a
+sniper’s bullet, and there are risks enough without inviting more.  I
+doubt if in any English regiment two white handkerchiefs could be found:
+and I have little expectation that more could be found among the enemy.
+Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage of the war, if a white
+handkerchief would be regarded as a sign, of surrender.  It might be
+taken as a taunt.
+
+There is nothing more remarkable in the war than the psychological
+change that has been wrought in white.  A white feather used to be the
+badge of cowardice and a white flag the token of surrender.  It is not
+so now. White has taken on a peculiar sacredness.  If a new medal were
+to be struck of the same high value as the Victoria Cross it would
+probably be given a white ribbon, as the other has a red or (for the
+navy) blue.  This change in the moral significance of white was brought
+home to me by an incident in a billet. I had gone to a barn to give the
+men some shirts and socks that had been sent to me.  I stood on the
+steps, and like an auctioneer, offered my goods for acceptance.  "Who
+wants a shirt?  Who a scarf?  Who wants this pair of mittens?  Who a
+pair of socks?"  Hands shot up at each question, and the fun grew fast
+and furious.  Then I drew out and held up a white handkerchief.  "A-ah!
+A-ah!" they cried wistfully in chorus.  For a moment they stood gazing
+at it and forgot to raise their hands towards it; then, with a single
+movement, every hand shot up.  Unwittingly I had stirred them to the
+depths; and I felt sorry for them.
+
+The Magic Carpet of Baghdad is not a fiction after all.  In the
+twinkling of an eye my white handkerchief had carried every boy and man
+to his home, and placed him by the fireside.  I saw it in their eyes and
+heard it in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices as they
+ejaculated "A-ah!"  They had not seen a white handkerchief for months.
+The last they saw was at home.  A vision of home flashed before their
+minds and they were back in the dear old days of peace when they used
+white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were unknown to them.  If in battle
+they were to see Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think it would
+make them savage and unwilling to give quarter.  They would think the
+enemy was taunting them with all they had lost.  And they would be
+maddened by the thought that here were the very men who, by their
+war-lust, had caused them to lose it.  For a German to wave a white
+handkerchief before a British soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting
+a red flag before a bull.  It would bring death rather than pity.
+Anything of pure white is rare at the front, and it has gradually taken
+on a meaning it never held before.  About the only white thing we have
+is the paper we write home on, and that use of the color helps to
+sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.
+
+In the army it is a term of supreme praise to call a man _white_.  When
+you say a comrade is a "_white man_" there is no more to be said. It is
+worth more than the Victoria Cross with its red ribbon, for it includes
+gallantry, and adds to it goodness.  A man must be brave to be called
+white and he must be generous, noble and good.  To reach whiteness is a
+great achievement.  To be dubbed white is, in the army, like being
+dubbed knight at King Arthur’s Court or canonized saint in the Church.
+He stands out among a soldier’s comrades distinct as a white
+handkerchief among khaki ones.
+
+I don’t know where the term came from, but, wherever it may have tarried
+on the way, I think its footprints could be traced back to the Book of
+Revelation for its starting place. In the first chapter we have a
+picture of Christ as the first "White Man"--"His Head and His Hairs were
+white like wool, as white as snow."  In the second chapter His faithful
+followers are given "a white stone, and in the stone a new name
+written."  Is not the new name "White man"?  In the third chapter we
+read of "a few names even in Sardis which have _not defiled their
+garments_; and they shall _walk with Me in white_; for they are worthy."
+There, too, the Laodiceans are counseled to buy "white raiment."  In the
+fourth chapter we see the four and twenty elders, sitting around the
+throne under the rainbow arch, "clothed in white raiment."  In the sixth
+chapter we have the crowned King going "forth conquering, and to
+conquer" and He is sitting on "a white horse," that is, He uses "white"
+instruments to carry out His conquests.  Death, in the same chapter,
+rides on a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one.  Under the altar were
+the souls of the martyrs, "And white robes were given unto every one of
+them."  And surely the climax is reached when we read in the seventh
+chapter that "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all
+nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne,
+and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes."  So striking was the
+scene that one of the elders asked, "What are these which are arrayed in
+white robes? and whence came they?"  And the answer is given, "These are
+they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes,
+and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before
+the throne of God."  In the army white has come back to its ancient
+significance.  The brave and noble martyrs of the early Church were
+given "white robes" and in the army to-day the brave and pure wear
+"white robes" in the eyes of their comrades.  When Clifford Reed was
+killed by a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel wrote of him
+that he was the "whitest man" he had ever known.  He had done more than
+wear "the white flower of a _blameless_ life."  His virtues were
+positive, not merely negative. He wore a "white _robe_"; not a mere
+speck of white such as a white flower in a buttonhole would appear.
+White is a positive color, not a negative.  Reed was more than
+"blameless," he was "white and all white."  To our soldiers a white
+handkerchief speaks of home, and a "white man" speaks of honor and
+heroism and heaven.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *V*
+
+                     *THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING*
+
+
+The necessity for poetry and song is fully and officially recognized by
+the military authorities at the Front.  Every Division has its own
+concert party.  These men are chosen out of the ranks because they can
+sing, and their one task is to furnish nightly concerts for the men.
+They are provided with a good hall, or tent, or open-air position; and
+they are given enough money to buy stage scenery and appropriate dress.
+Everybody attends the concerts from the general to the private; and
+while the entertainments last, the war is forgotten.  A charge is made
+at the door but the balance sheet is published for all ranks to see; and
+the profits are distributed among the Divisional charities.
+
+Among the many Divisional Concert Parties may be named "The Bow Bells,"
+"The Duds," "The Follies," "The Whizz-bangs," "The Fancies" and, "The
+Giddigoats."  But, after all, the singing in the concert rooms is but a
+small fraction of the singing one hears in the Army.  On every march, in
+every billet and mess, there is the sound of singing.  Nor must the
+singing at our religious services and in the Y.M.C.A. huts be forgotten.
+Song seems to be the great renewer of hope and courage. It is the joy
+bringer.  Moreover, it is an expression of emotions that can find no
+other voice.
+
+There is no real difference between the songs sung by the officers, and
+those sung by the men. All attend the concerts and all sing on the
+march.  The same songs do for both commanders and commanded, and I have
+heard the same songs in the men’s billets as in the officers’
+mess-rooms.  How real these songs are to the soldiers is indicated by
+one striking omission.  There are no patriotic songs at the Front.
+Except the National Anthem rendered on formal occasions, I have never,
+in eighteen months, heard a single patriotic song.  The reason is not
+far to seek.  The soldiers’ patriotism calls for no expression in song.
+They are expressing it night and day in the endurance of hardship and
+wounds--in the risking of their lives.  Their hearts are satisfied with
+their deeds, and songs of such a character become superfluous.  In
+peace-time they sing their love of the homeland, but in war-time they
+suffer for her and are content.  They would never think of singing a
+patriotic song as they march into battle.  It would be painting the lily
+and gilding refined gold.  Are not their deathless deeds, songs for
+which they make a foil by singing some inconsequential and evanescent
+song such as, "There’s something in the sea-side air."
+
+On analysis I should say that there are five subjects on which our
+soldiers sing.  First, there are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it,
+songs of soldier-philosophy.  They know that no theory will explain the
+war; it is too big a thing for any sheet of philosophy to cover.  It has
+burst in on our little hum-drum life like a colliding planet.  The thing
+to do is not to evolve a theory as to how the planet got astray but to
+clear up the mess it has made.  Our soldiers show this sense of the
+vastness of war-happenings, by singing of things having no real
+importance at all, and keeping steadily at their duties.  The path of
+duty is, they find, the only path of sanity.  The would-be war
+philosopher they put on one side.  The war is too big for him.  Let him
+leave his explanation of the war and lend a hand to bring it to an end.
+So they sing, with laughing irony,
+
+    "We’re here because we’re here, because
+    We’re here, because we’re here."
+
+Or,
+
+    "While you’ve got a lucifer to light your fag,
+    Smile, boys, that’s the style.
+    What’s the use of worrying?
+    It never was worth while,
+    So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag
+    And smile, smile, smile."
+
+Another favorite is,
+
+    "Oh, there was a little hen and she had a wooden leg,
+    The best little hen that ever laid an egg,
+    And she laid more eggs than any hen on the farm,
+    And another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm."
+
+I have seen them dancing round some old piano singing,
+
+    "Oh, that fascinating Bow Bells’ glide,
+    It’s a captivating Bow Bells’ slide.
+    There’s a rumor that the puma does it now,
+    Monkeys have taken to it,
+    Leopards and lions do it.
+    All the elephants wear dancing shoes,
+    They keep hopping with the kangaroos;
+    Hear them chatter, it’s a matter for some talk;
+    Now the Jungle’s got the Bow Bells’ walk."
+
+
+The second class of song is the Love Song, of a more or less serious
+character.  The Tommies came out of England singing "Tipperary," but
+they dropped it in France, and the only one on whose lips I have heard
+it was a little French boy sitting on the tail of a cart.  The chorus
+alone gave it popularity for it was the expression, ready to hand, of a
+long farewell; and with its "long long way to go" showed that, like
+Kitchener, the soldiers were not deceived by hopes of an early peace.
+
+Now another song with verses more expressive of their sentiments has
+taken its place. The chorus runs:
+
+    "There’s a long, long trail a-winding
+      Into the land of my dreams,
+    Where the nightingales are singing
+      And a white moon beams;
+    There’s a long, long night of waiting
+      Until my dreams all come true;
+    Till the day when I’ll be going down
+      That long, long trail with you."
+
+Then the mood changes, and we hear the lads piping out,
+
+    "Taffy’s got his Jennie in Glamorgan,
+      Sandy’s got his Maggie in Dundee,
+    While Michael O’Leary thinks of his dearie
+      Far across the Irish Sea.
+    Billy’s got his Lily up in London,
+      So the boys march on with smiles;
+    For every Tommy’s got a girl somewhere
+      In the dear old British Isles."
+
+Again the mood veers round, and we hear,
+
+    "Every little while I feel so lonely,
+      Every little while I feel so blue,
+    I’m always dreaming, I’m always scheming,
+      Because I want you, and only you.
+    Every little while my heart is aching,
+      Every little while I miss your smile,
+    And all the time I seem to miss you;
+    I want to, want to kiss you,
+      Every, every, every little while."
+
+
+Here is part of a song I have heard sung, many and many a time, by young
+officers and men whose voices are now silent in death:
+
+    "If you were the only girl in the world,
+    And I were the only boy,
+    Nothing else would matter in the world to-day,
+    We could go on loving in the same old way;
+    A Garden of Eden just made for two,
+    With nothing to mar our joy;
+    I would say such wonderful things to you,
+    There would be such wonderful things to do,
+    If you were the only girl in the world,
+    And I were the only boy."
+
+
+Sometimes the imagination will wander into the days that are to be--for
+some--and they sing,
+
+    "We don’t want a lot of flags flying,
+      We don’t want your big brass bands;
+    We don’t want a lot of speechifying,
+      And we don’t want a lot of waving hands;
+    We don’t want a lot of interfering,
+      When we’ve safely crossed the foam;
+    But we _do_ want to find the girls we left behind,
+      When we all come marching home."
+
+
+Will the girls remember!  The words are not without tragedy.  How deeply
+some of the men love may perhaps never be realized by those at home.
+The longing of their hearts is, at times, almost unbearable.  A captain,
+past middle life, took my arm one day and led me aside.  He was, he
+said, a little anxious about himself, for he was getting into the habit
+of taking more drink than he was wont to take. He had been taking it
+when he felt lonely and depressed to ease the longing of his heart.
+
+"I never touch it at home," he said, "the society of my dear little wife
+is all the stimulant I need.  I would give the world to be with her
+now--just to sit in my chair and watch her at her sewing or knitting.
+The separation is too much for me and, you know, it has lasted nearly
+three years now."
+
+I have caught this yearning in more than one of the songs our soldiers
+sing, but especially in the following, which is called "Absent":
+
+    "Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass,
+    The little truant waves of sunlight pass;
+    My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while
+    Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.
+
+    "And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart,
+    The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart;
+    From my fond lips the eager answers fall,
+    Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call."
+
+
+The men’s thoughts pass easily from the sweetheart to the mother who
+bore them, and we have a third class, the Home Song.  I have been
+awakened in the night by men, going up to the line, singing "Keep the
+Home Fires Burning."  It is very thrilling to hear in the dead of night,
+when every singer is within range of the enemy’s guns.
+
+Another great favorite is,
+
+    "They built a little garden for the rose,
+      And they called it Dixie-land;
+    They built a summer breeze to keep the snows
+      Far away from Dixie-land;
+    They built the finest place I’ve known,
+      When they built my home sweet home;
+    Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton,
+      From the clover to the honey-comb,
+    And then they took an angel from the skies
+      And they gave her heart to me.
+    She had a bit of heaven in her eyes
+      Just as blue as blue can be;
+    They put some fine spring chickens in the land,
+      And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan.
+    They made it twice as nice as paradise,
+      And they called it Dixie-land."
+
+
+Being Londoners, the following song called "Leave" never fails in its
+appeal to our Division:
+
+    "I’m so delighted, I’m so excited,
+    With my folks I’m going to be united.
+    The train’s departing, ’twill soon be starting;
+    I’ll see my mother, my dad and my baby brother.
+    My!  How I’ll meet them, My! how I’ll greet them.
+    What a happy happy day.
+    Just see that bustle, I’d better hustle,
+    Good-bye--so long--can’t stay--
+
+    Chorus
+
+    "I’m on my way back to dear old Shepherd’s Bush,
+    That’s the spot where I was born,
+    Can’t you hear the porter calling,
+    Queen’s Road, Piccadilly, Marble Arch and Bond Street?
+    Oh, I’ll not hesitate, I’ll reach the gate;
+    Through the crowd I mean to push,
+    Find me a seat anywhere--please anywhere,
+    Tram, train, tube, ’bus I don’t care--
+    For mother and daddy are waiting there--
+    In dear old Shepherd’s Bush."
+
+
+On the eve of one big battle, a soldier handed me a letter in which he
+gave me the addresses of his father and his sweetheart, so that I could
+write to them if he fell.
+
+"In the last battle," he said, "one of my brothers was killed and
+another wounded.  If I fall I shall die without regrets and with a heart
+content; but it will go hard with those at home; and I want you to break
+the news gently. These are terrible times for those at home."  "These
+are terrible times _for those at home_."  That is their constant
+refrain, and it finds an echo in a song often sung by them.
+
+    "It’s a long long way to my home in Kentucky,
+      Where the blue-bells grow ’round the old cabin door;
+    It’s a long, long way and I’ll be mighty lucky
+      When I see my dear old mammy once more.
+    So weep no more, my lady,
+      Just brush those tears away;
+    It’s a long long way to my home in Kentucky,
+      But I’m bound to get there some day."
+
+
+But the chief favorite of all Home Songs is, I think, the following:
+
+    "There’s an old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned street;
+      In a quaint little old-fashioned town;
+    There’s a street where the cobble stones harass the feet,
+      As it straggles up hill and then down;
+    And, though to and fro through the world I must go,
+      My heart while it beats in my breast,
+    Where e’er I may roam, to that old-fashioned home
+      Will fly like a bird to its nest.
+
+    "In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned street,
+      Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair;
+    I can see their two faces so tender and sweet,
+      And I love every wrinkle that’s there.
+    I love ev’ry mouse in that old-fashioned house
+      In the street that runs up hill and down;
+    Each stone and each stick, ev’ry cobble and brick,
+      In that quaint little old-fashioned town."
+
+
+The charm of the Army is its comradeship. Our soldiers have left their
+homes and friends but they have found new friends, and some of the
+friendships have become very precious. Men slept side by side in barn
+and trench, cooked their rations at the same little wood fire, and stood
+together in the hour of danger and imminent death.  Many of them owe
+their lives to their comrades.  There are few songs that express this
+wonderful comradeship, but there is one that is known and sung through
+the army.  It represents the Songs of Comradeship:
+
+    "When you come to the end of a perfect day,
+      And you sit alone with your thought,
+    While the chimes ring out with a carol gay,
+      For the joy that the day has brought;
+    Do you think what the end of a perfect day
+      Can mean to a tired heart,
+    When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,
+      And the dear friends have to part?
+
+    "Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
+      Near the end of a journey too;
+    But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
+      With a wish that is kind and true.
+    For mem’ry has painted this perfect day
+      With colors that never fade;
+    And we find at the end of a perfect day
+      _The soul of a friend we’ve made_."
+
+
+The fifth class of song is that of the inner life.  It is the Religious
+Hymn.  The soldiers are extremely fond of hymns in their services. You
+cannot give them too many.  "Rock of Ages," "Jesus lover of my soul,"
+"Fight the good fight," "There is a green hill," "At even ere the sun
+was set," "O God our help in ages past," and "Eternal Father strong to
+save" cannot be chosen too often.  But there are two hymns which have
+stood out above all others; they are "Abide with me," and "When I survey
+the wondrous Cross."
+
+There is nothing written by the hand of man which can compete with these
+two in the blessing and strength which they have brought to our
+soldiers, especially during an offensive when death has cast his shadow
+over the hearts of all.  During the bitterest weeks in the Somme
+fighting there was scarcely a service in which we did not sing "When I
+survey the wondrous Cross."  With its assurance of redemption it gave
+comfort in the face of death.  It also gave, for an example, the Supreme
+Sacrifice.
+
+Some of the songs I have quoted look bare and ungainly as trees in
+winter, but when the musician has clothed them with music and the singer
+added to them a touch of his own personality they are fair as trees in
+summer.  Still the fact remains that none of these songs will live on
+their own merits.  They are not born to immortality.  Like the daisies
+they have their day and pass away to make room for others.  It is best
+so.  There is not room in the world for everything to be immortal, and
+the transient has a work of its own to do. The charm and rare beauty of
+the English countryside are due to the transience of its flowers and
+foliage and little of the evergreen is enough.  We tire of the eternal.
+The transient songs I have quoted here have been meat and drink to our
+soldiers in the most terrible war ever waged.  They may be poor stuff in
+comparison with our classic songs but a good appetite can get
+nourishment out of plain food and grow strong on it.  For the purpose in
+hand these songs have been better than the classics; otherwise they
+would not have been chosen.  There is a time and place for all things.
+The robin may not be compared with the nightingale but it is not the
+less welcome, for it sings when the nightingale is silent.  Our
+soldiers’ songs will die, some are already dead, but they have done
+their work and justified their existence.  They have given pleasure and
+strength to men as they went out to do immortal deeds.  No wounded
+soldier, or parched traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water because
+it perished in the using; and so it is with the songs our soldiers sing.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *VI*
+
+                            *EASTER SUNDAY*
+
+
+Night and day for a week, the fearful bombardment continued.  Our guns
+were everywhere, and belching forth without intermission.  Dumps of
+shells were almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field, and processions
+of ammunition-wagons piled the shells up faster than the gorging guns
+could take them.  The noise was something beyond imagination.  It was as
+though all the devils in hell had come out to demoniacally celebrate the
+end of the world.  We were living--two transport officers and I--in an
+empty farm-house that, some time before we came in, had been a target
+for direct hits.  One shell had gone through the roof, and another
+through the gable wall.  The windows had been shattered, and the garden
+and fields were pitted with shell-holes.  Our first care had been to
+look at the cellar, but we had decided, if things became too hot, to
+make for the open fields.  We all slept in the same room, and were at
+times wakened up by "an arrival" and passed an opinion as to its
+distance.  If, for a time, none came nearer, we turned over and went to
+sleep again, for a man must sleep even though it be on the edge of a
+volcano.
+
+One morning the servants found a shell nose-cap beneath the window--just
+that, and nothing more.  The week was wearing on. Another morning some
+of the 7th Middlesex Regiment were in the baths in the village over the
+way, and a company of the London Scottish was passing by.  Two shells
+fell in the road.  The bathers scampered out of the bath and ran naked,
+here and there, for shelter; the Scottish "scattered"; but some
+forty-five soldiers, mostly kilted, lay in the road dead or wounded.  In
+the dead of night a party of machine gunners, just returned from the
+firing-trench, stood outside their billet in our village square debating
+if they should make a cup of tea before turning in to sleep.  A shell
+decided the matter, and, next morning, I laid two of them to rest in the
+little cemetery, and the others stood by as mourners.
+
+The week of terror reached its crisis on the Sunday--an Easter Sunday
+never to be forgotten.  The infantry of the Brigade had been away to a
+camp, beyond range, for a week’s rest.  They had now returned ready for
+the battle.  Three of the regiments had taken up their positions in the
+reserve trenches, but my own regiment was quartered in the fatal
+village.  The day dawned bright and fair, but its smiles were the smiles
+of a deceiver.  The Germans had decided on the destruction of the
+village, a sort of devil’s "hail-and-farewell" before being driven back
+at the points of bayonets.  We were awakened by the firing of
+machine-guns over our heads, and rushed to the door to see a fight in
+the air.  High up in the blue, two aeroplanes circled about for
+positions of vantage, and then rushed at one another like hawks in
+mortal combat.  A silence followed.  Then one rose and made off towards
+the battle-line but fell to a shot of our gunners before it could reach
+safety.  The other, with its petrol-tank on fire, was planing down to
+earth.  Down and down an invisible spiral staircase it seemed to rush,
+while the golden fire burnt at its vitals, and a trailing cloud of smoke
+marked its path of doom.  Breathlessly we watched its descent.  It was
+under perfect control, but its path to the ground was too long and
+spiral, and the faster it rushed through the air the greater the draught
+became and the more madly the flames leapt up. Every second was precious
+and the certainty of its doom made us sick.  We saw the body of the
+observer fall out, and still the flaming machine pursued its course.
+Then the wings fell away and twirled to the ground like feathers, while
+the engine and the pilot dropped like a stone.  When the bodies were
+picked up, it was found that the observer had been shot through the
+head, and that the pilot, with his dead comrade behind him, had worked
+the wheel until the furious encroaching flame had swept over him, and
+robbed him of mortal life.
+
+Shells were now dropping in the village every few minutes.  Our
+farm-house was on the right wing, and we stood watching the bombardment.
+With each burst there rose a cloud of black smoke and red brick-dust,
+and we knew that another cottage has been destroyed. Then the shells
+began to creep round to the right as if the enemy was feeling for the
+bridge over which the ammunition wagons were passing.  On one side of
+the little bridge was a white bell-tent, and we watched the shells
+dropping within a few feet of it without destroying it.  Between the
+tent and our street lay a stagnant pool, and we saw about a dozen shells
+fall in its water.  The range was lengthening and it seemed as if some
+invisible octopus were stretching out its feelers towards us.  A shell
+smashed against the farm-house at the bottom of our street.  The deadly
+thing was coming nearer.  Some of our sergeants were in a farm-house a
+few doors away, and, hearing a shell fall in the field between them and
+the pool, they came to the decision that the moment had come "to
+scatter," but they were too late.  It would have been better had they
+stayed indoors.  As they rushed out a shell burst over the yard three of
+them fell to the ground dead, and three more were blown back into the
+house by the force of the explosion.  The coping stone of the outhouse
+where the shell burst was blown away and three ragged seams were scored
+on the green doorway of the yard outside which the three lads lay dead.
+One of them had, ten days before, shown me to my billet thirty yards
+farther up.  He acted as interpreter to the regiment and as he had not
+to go into the line, we thought that he was one of those who would see
+the end of the war.  Yet there he lay.
+
+But the worst calamity of the day was yet to befall.  Some fifteen or
+sixteen ammunition wagons, unable to get through the village, had halted
+in the Square--"Wipers Square" it had been named.  Each wagon was loaded
+with nine-point-two shells.  An enemy-shot fell on a wagon and set it on
+fire; then the village became like unto Sodom and Gomorrah on their day
+of doom.  One or two drivers bravely stuck to their wagons, and got them
+out but the rest of the wagons were lost.  The scene that followed was
+indescribable.  Doré could never have pictured such horrors.  The wagons
+all caught fire and their loads of shells began to explode.  We stood
+out in the fields and watched the conflagration, while all the time the
+Germans continued to shell the village. The large village-hall and the
+houses on each side of the square were utterly destroyed. Great
+explosions sent fragments of wagons and houses sky-high, and showers of
+missiles fell even where we stood.  The fore part of one wagon was blown
+on to the roof of a house. Houses caught fire and blazed all afternoon.
+Some machine-gunners joined us and told how, when choking smoke began to
+penetrate into their cellar they had to rush through the square and its
+bursting shells to preserve their lives. A German shell burst in a
+billet where a platoon of our men were sheltering in the cellar, and
+those who were not killed by the shell were crushed to death by the fall
+of the house. Another shell hit the roof of the house in the cellar of
+which was our Advanced Dressing Station for the morrow’s battle.  Two
+orderlies who happened to be in the street were killed, and the colonel
+was knocked down.  In the cellars of almost every house were soldiers or
+civilians, and all day the ammunition wagons continued burning; shell
+after shell getting red hot and exploding.
+
+All day the German bombardment continued and, amid a terrific din, our
+own gunners returned a score or more for every one received. By the
+bridge another long line of loaded ammunition wagons stood for two
+hours, and though shells were bursting close by, not one hit the wagons.
+The drivers stood by them and, as soon as the road was cleared, got them
+away to the guns.  Yet, while the Square was burning and the German
+shells falling, hundreds of men from the London regiments entered the
+village from the right, and crossed the bridge to stack their packs so
+as to be ready for the coming battle.  They walked in single file and
+with wide gaps between, but not a man ran or quickened his pace.  My
+blood tingled with pride at their courage and anger at their
+carelessness.  What _would_ make a British soldier run?  An officer was
+walking near the pool.  A shell fell near enough for fragments to kill
+him, but he merely looked round, stopped to light a cigarette and walked
+leisurely on as if nothing had happened. Three men stood with their
+backs against a small building near the bridge as if sheltering from the
+rain.  Several shells fell uncomfortably near, so, concluding that the
+rain had changed its direction, they moved round the corner.  And it was
+not till more shells had fallen near them that they condescended to move
+away altogether.
+
+Yet this was not bravado for, so far as they knew, no one was watching
+them.  It was due to a certain dignity peculiar to our fighting man.  He
+is too proud to acknowledge defeat. He is a man, and whether any one is
+watching or not, he is not going to run away from a shell.  Hundreds of
+lives must have been lost through this stubborn pride but, on the other
+hand, thousands of lives must have been saved by it, for it makes the
+Army absolutely proof against panic, than which, nothing is so fatal in
+war.  In eighteen months on the Front I have never seen or heard of a
+single case of panic either with many or few.  Our soldiers are always
+masters of themselves.  They have the coolness to judge what is the
+wisest thing to do in the circumstances, and they have the nerve to
+carry it out.  They run unnecessary risks through pride but never
+through panic. All that day on the bridge, a military policeman stood at
+his post of duty.  Like Vesuvius of old the exploding shells in the
+Square sent up their deadly eruption, and like the Roman sentry at
+Pompeii, he stood at his post.  As he stood there I saw a young French
+woman leave her house and pass him on the bridge. She was leaving the
+village for a safer place but she seemed quite composed and carried a
+basket on her left arm.
+
+While our village was being destroyed we were startled by a tremendous
+explosion a few miles away; and looking to our left we saw a huge tongue
+of flame leap up to the sky, followed by a wonderful pillar of smoke
+which stood rigid for some moments like a monster tower of Babel
+reaching up to the heavens. Evidently a dump of cordite had been fired
+by an enemy shell.  Farther off still, another dump was on fire.  Time
+and again, bright flames leapt from the ground only to be smothered
+again by dense curling masses of smoke. It seemed as if our whole front
+was on fire, and news came to us that our main road of communication had
+been heavily shelled, and was now strewn with dead horses and men.
+Before the battle of the Somme there were no signs and portents so
+terrible as these: It was evident that the enemy knew what was in store
+for him on the morrow, and was preparing against it, but if the prelude
+was so magnificent in its terror, what would the battle be? Imagination
+staggered under the contemplation.  By four o’clock the bombardment was
+almost at an end, and nearly all the shells in the Square had exploded.
+The soldiers began to creep out of the cellars.  On passing through the
+Square we were amazed at the sight.  In fact the Transport Officer
+passed through at my side without recognizing the place.  At the
+entrance was a team of six dead mules lying prone on the ground and
+terribly torn.  Two rows of houses had disappeared, leaving mere heaps
+of stones in their places.  The pavement was torn up, and the wrecks of
+the ammunition wagons lay scattered about.  Two houses were still
+burning.  Our colonel and adjutant we found by the side of the stream.
+They had been in a cellar near the Square all day but, fortunately, they
+were little the worse for the experience. They were giving orders for
+the assembling of the scattered regiment.
+
+By this time, civilians were leaving the cellars, and with armfuls of
+household goods hastening from the village.  To them it seemed the end
+of all things--the day of doom.  Some of them had slight wounds and as
+they passed us they cried mournfully, "Finis, Messieurs, Finis."  All
+was lost.  This exodus of the despairing civilians was the saddest sight
+of the day.  By sunset the regiment had been gathered together--all
+except the wounded who had been sent to the Main Dressing Station and
+the dead who had been placed side by side and covered with blankets.
+Most of our officers and men had lost all their belongings, but in the
+twilight they marched out of the village and took their places in the
+reserve trenches near the other battalions.  These had suffered no
+losses.  They had been saved the long day’s agony.  Early in the morning
+the battle was to begin but the Westminsters knew that no worse
+experience could await them than that through which they had already
+passed.
+
+Next morning I buried, near the ruined church, the bodies of the
+sergeants who had been killed a few doors from us; and on the following
+day I laid to rest, side by side, in one long grave, two drivers who had
+died at their posts in the Square, together with an officer and twenty
+men belonging to the 1st Queen’s Westminster Rifles.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *VII*
+
+                        *"NOW THE DAY IS OVER"*
+
+
+Achicourt is a little village about a mile out of Arras.  It has two
+churches, one Roman Catholic, the other, Lutheran.  The former church
+has been utterly destroyed by German shells, and will have to be rebuilt
+from the foundations.  The Lutheran church was less prominently placed,
+and its four walls are still standing.  Its humility has saved it, but,
+as by fire.  All its windows are gone, and its walls are torn and
+scarred by fragments of shells.  Most of its slates have been destroyed
+and the rain pours through the roof.  But, on dry days, and until the
+Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little place for services.  It stood,
+however, at a corner of the village Square, and the Square was destroyed
+by hundreds of exploding shells on Easter Sunday.  As I passed it in the
+afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered, my heart grew sad
+within me.
+
+Often it had sheltered us at worship, and many of our most sacred
+memories will, for ever, cling like ivy to its walls.  The door was
+smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as by lightning.  The pews
+were strewn on the floor with their backs broken; even the frames of the
+windows had been blown out.  There was a little portable organ that we
+had used with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the floor like a
+slaughtered child.  The floor was white with plaster, as when a sharp
+frost has brought low the cherry blossom.  Never again, I thought,
+should I gather my men for worship within its humble, hospitable walls.
+One more of the beautiful and sacred things of life had perished in this
+all-devouring war.  Only the fields remained, and there all my future
+services must be held.
+
+But "fears may be liars" and so mine proved. I had reckoned without the
+man in khaki--that master of fate whose head "beneath the bludgeonings
+of chance, is bloody but unbowed."  In a week he had cleared the Square
+of its dead--mules and men--filled in its craters, and cleared away the
+debris that blocked the roads.  He was even removing the fallen houses
+in order to mend the roads with their bricks and stones; and he had
+thrown together all the scraps of iron for salvage. There I found, lying
+side by side, the burned tin-soldiers of the children; officers’
+revolvers which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat; bayonets and
+rifle-barrels of the men; broken sewing machines of the women.  He had
+taken in hand, too, the little church.  Sacking was spread across the
+windows; the remnants of the little organ were carefully placed under
+the pulpit where they lay like the body of a saint beneath an altar; the
+floor was swept of its fallen plaster.  The pews were repaired and
+placed in order again, and a new door was made.  Even timber was brought
+for a new vestibule.  The wood was rough and unpainted--Tommy had to use
+what he could get--but it served.  The twisted railings were drawn away
+from the entrance, and, on the following Sunday, we were back in our old
+sanctuary.  We felt that it was more sacred than ever.  These are the
+deeds of our fighting-man that make us love him so much, and these are
+the acts of kindness and common sense that make us admire our
+commanders. Both officers and men have the heart of a lion in the hour
+of battle, the gentleness of a lamb when it is over.  Whatever their
+circumstances, they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget the fathers
+that begat them.
+
+Let him who doubts the future of England come hither.  He will see the
+past through the present, and the future through both.  Tommy’s eyes are
+the crystal gazing-glasses in which he will discern the future.  Tommy
+is living history and the prophecy of the future made flesh.  The
+pessimists have not seen Tommy here, and that is why they are what they
+are. "Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his infinite freshness and
+resource.  He is a sword that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the
+might of an enemy break, and he will be found flashing wherever there
+are wrongs to right and weak to be defended.  On Easter Sunday he was
+calmly enduring the horror of the German bombardment and the explosions
+of his own dump of shells.  On Easter Monday he was driving the Germans
+at the point of his bayonet, or accepting their surrender at the doors
+of their dug-outs!  On Easter Tuesday and Wednesday he was repairing a
+little French chapel for worship.  Take him which day you will, and you
+will find him mighty hard to match.  To me he is the king of men, and
+his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness beyond the range of
+explanations.
+
+After some weeks of fighting we had come to our last Sunday in
+Achicourt, and were gathered for the evening service.  The chapel was
+jammed with officers and men, but not all my flock was there.  There was
+Rifleman Gibson absent.  He was carrying his beloved Lewis gun in an
+attack when a bullet struck him, and he died, as his comrades report,
+with a smile upon his face.  Before going into the battle he had given
+me his father’s address and thanked me for the spiritual help he had
+received at the services.  It was his farewell to me, and his father now
+has the penciled words.  And Rifleman Stone was absent, too. He was but
+a boy, and beautiful with youth and goodness.  His comrades loved him as
+David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the love of women.  Every day,
+they told me in their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his prayers
+and to read his Bible.  One night after praying he laid him down and
+slept.  He had often sung the evening hymn:
+
+    "Jesus protects; my fears, be gone!
+      What can the Rock of Ages move?
+    Safe in Thy arm I lay me down,
+      Thy everlasting arms of love.
+
+    "While Thou art intimately nigh,
+      Who, then, shall violate my rest?
+    Sin, earth, and hell I now defy;
+      I lean upon my Saviour’s breast.
+
+    "Me for Thine own Thou lov’st to take,
+      In time and in eternity,
+    Thou never, never wilt forsake
+      A helpless soul that trusts in Thee."
+
+And as he slept, God took him from the misery of this world--took him
+without waking him.  His broken-hearted comrades gathered together his
+broken body, and a friend, a Congregational preacher, who, though over
+military age, was serving in the ranks, read the burial service over
+him.  Lance-corporal Gilbert James was missing, too--he whom I had known
+to lose his breakfast to attend a service in a cold, dirty, old barn.
+And many others were absent whose departure to the Land beyond our
+mortal reach was to us like the putting out of stars.
+
+We were leaving the Arras front and we sang a hymn for those who had
+taken our places:
+
+    "O Lord of Hosts, Whose mighty arm
+    In safety keeps ’mid war’s alarm,
+    Protect our comrades at the Front
+    Who bear of war the bitter brunt.
+      And in the hour of danger spread
+      Thy sheltering wings above each head,
+
+    "In battle’s harsh and dreadful hour,
+    Make bare Thine arm of sovereign power,
+    And fight for them who fight for Thee,
+    And give to justice, victory.
+      O in the hour of danger spread
+      Thy sheltering wings above each head.
+
+    "If by the way they wounded lie,
+    O listen to their plaintive cry;
+    And rest them on Thy loving breast,
+    O Thou on Whom the cross was pressed;
+      And in the hour of danger shed
+      Thy glorious radiance o’er each head.
+
+    "When pestilence at noonday wastes,
+    And death in triumph onward hastes,
+    O Saviour Christ, remember Nain,
+    And give us our beloved again.
+      In every ward of sickness tread,
+      And lay Thy hand upon each head.
+
+    "O Friend and Comforter divine,
+    Who makest light at midnight shine,
+    Give consolation to the sad
+    Who in the days of peace were glad.
+      And in the hour of sorrow spread
+      Thy wings above each drooping head.
+        Amen."
+
+I had to find a new voice to start it, for our little organ had been
+destroyed by a shell, and our precentor was lying in a grave beside his
+Medical Aid Post at Guemappe.  When, on Good Friday, we had sung the
+hymn before, the regiment returned from rest billets to the line, he had
+started the tune.  His love for music was second only to that of risking
+his life for the wounded.  In one of his letters given me to censor, he
+had written, "How nice it will be to be back in my old place in the
+choir."  But he was destined not to go back. His path was onward and
+upward, and his place was in the heavenly choir.  I had seen it in his
+large, tender blue eyes.  There was in them an expression as if he had
+seen "the land that is very far off."  I felt that he was chosen as a
+sacrifice--that the seal of God was on his forehead.
+
+Still, we had to sing, though his voice was silent.  So we sang--several
+tunes, for hymns seemed all our spirits needed.  What need was there for
+a sermon when we had hymns? We left the rag-time type of hymn and sang
+the real deep things that come from men’s hearts, and ever after are
+taken up by their fellows to express their deepest aspirations and
+experiences.  The ruined chapel vibrated with music, and men, I am told,
+stood in the street to listen while "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," "Rock of
+Ages," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and "The Sands of Time are
+Sinking" told of the faith and love that lift up the heart.  We also
+sang "Abide with Me."  After hearing us sing it one night, a Roman
+Catholic officer in the regiment, a Canadian and one of the bravest,
+most beloved men that ever walked, told me that he was a great-grandson
+of the author.  He is in hospital now with severe wounds, but his men
+were present.
+
+"Couldn’t we take up a collection for the repair of the chapel when
+peace comes?" whispered a rifleman; "it would be a sort of thanksgiving
+for the good times we have had in it, and for the kindness of the
+congregation in giving us the use of it so freely."
+
+I put the suggestion to the men and they voted for it with enthusiasm.
+Two of them went round with their caps and out of their shallow purses
+the big-hearted fellows gave over 100 francs.  In the name of the men I
+presented the full caps to a lady of the congregation who was present,
+and she was moved to tears.  The time was quickly passing, so I mounted
+the pulpit and told them of words spoken after the earth’s first great
+trouble, when the black wings of death had cast their shadow over every
+home: "And God said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a
+token of a covenant between me and the earth.  And it shall come to
+pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
+the cloud."
+
+"God," I said, "has made a covenant with man, for man is His neighbor
+and subject; and there must be an understanding between them, if there
+is to be peace and happiness.  Man must know God’s will or he will
+grieve Him and there will be discord and pain.  Also, man must know
+God’s intentions concerning him, and something of His ways, or else he
+will live in fear and dread of the Almighty One in whose power he lies.
+There were no books and parchment in the first days, so God took the sky
+for His parchment, and dipping His fingers in the most lovely of colors,
+wrote out His covenant with man.  He spread it out between earth and
+heaven so that man might look up and see it without obstruction, and so
+that He Himself might look down on it and remember His agreement.  ’The
+bow,’ He said, ’shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I
+may remember the everlasting covenant.’"
+
+"When you draw up a covenant with a neighbor, you look well at it and
+then give it to your attorney, who puts it away in the darkness of the
+safe.  But it is taken out at intervals for fresh examination.  And the
+rainbow-covenant was put away behind the clouds, to be brought out again
+from time to time to bring comfort and strength to man by its
+appearance. The rainbow is only half seen by man. The lower half of its
+circle is lost in the earth.  It exists, but unseen.  And the full
+circle of God’s beautiful covenant with man has never appeared to our
+eyes.  A full half is lost in the unapprehending darkness of man’s mind.
+The full purpose of God is not realized.  His plans are too vast and
+glorious for the intellect or imagination to span; but half the rainbow
+is seen and it is enough. Seeing half we can take the rest on trust.  In
+the covenant we are assured that we shall never be given darkness
+without light, winter without summer, seedtime without harvest, death
+without birth, sorrow without joy, or a thick cloud without a rainbow.
+He binds Himself not to give evil without good, or to bring tears
+without laughter.  "I do set My bow in the cloud; and it shall come to
+pass when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
+the cloud."
+
+"A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine and life is woven of the same
+stuff--tears and laughter.  The most glorious sunshine is incapable of a
+rainbow without the co-operation of the dark trailing clouds; and it is
+impossible for the human character to reach its ripest maturity and
+beauty on joy alone.  Sorrow is as beneficent and necessary as joy.
+There are untutored natives who dread the rainbow. They believe that it
+is a serpent that rises out of the pools to devour men; and there are
+unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread adversity no less.  They do
+not believe that _God_ ’brings the cloud.’  The rainbow is their
+refutation and it is written across the sky for all to see.  On the
+other hand, there are unbelieving men who see only the cloud and are
+blind to the sunshine.  To them life is one long tragedy.  It is an
+immense futility.  They regard man as a mere cork in the sea, thrown
+about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural forces void of purpose;
+active indeed but ungoverned.  Human life to them is a black cloud
+driven through immensity by the winds of unintelligent fate.  It has no
+meaning and its darkness is the deeper because they cannot call a halt
+and disperse it into nothingness. Like Job’s wife they would say ’Curse
+God and die,’ yet they cannot die.  But Job, as he sits on the dunghill,
+looks up at the rainbow and finds a truer philosophy.  ’What?’ says he,
+’shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive
+evil?’  Under the rainbow’s arch there are fruitful fields and beautiful
+gardens for where the rainbow hangs in air there is sunshine and there
+is rain--the parents of fruitfulness.  And to whom God gives in equal
+measure joy and sorrow there is beauty and fruitfulness of heart and
+life.  His promise to ’every living creature’ is that He will never send
+the cloud without the sunshine and, what is not less gracious, He will
+never send the sunshine without the cloud.  When by day the Israelites
+tramped the fiery desert He led them by a pillar of cloud, and they
+marched in its shade; and in the blackness of night He threw in the sky
+a pillar of sunshine; and they walked through the gloom in its light.
+
+"In these terrible days of war when our hearts begin to fail us and dark
+doubts cloud the mind, let us look at the Covenant God has made with us.
+He has set it in rainbow colors across the sky, that ’he who runs may
+read’ and ’the wayfaring man though a fool may not err.’  God has flung
+his rainbow over the trench and the grave; over the Garden of
+Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary.  It is over the tomb in the
+Arimathean’s Garden; and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven. We
+are born under the rainbow, live under it, die under it.  At the last we
+shall find it over the throne of Judgment.  Water and blood flowed from
+Christ’s side; and life and death, joy and pain, light and darkness,
+summer and winter, peace and war come forth from God.
+
+"Let us take life as it comes with obedient wills and grateful hearts.
+The bee finds honey in the thistle as well as in the rose, and ’where
+the bee sucks there suck I,’ for He who guides the bee guides me.  Only
+in loving obedience to God shall we find true wisdom.  It is not so much
+what we are given as how we take it that matters.  To be humble nothing
+may be so sweet as sorrow; and to the proud nothing may be so bitter as
+pleasure.  Let us leave God to mix the ingredients of our life, for ’all
+things work together for good to them that love God.’  It is all in the
+covenant written by God’s fingers in the colors of the rainbow, and
+whenever He brings it from beyond the clouds, let us look at it with
+reverent eyes, and ponder its promise.  Then shall we be able to say,
+with Wordsworth,
+
+    ’My heart leaps up when I behold
+    A rainbow in the sky.’"
+
+
+After I had finished speaking we sang, at the request of one of the
+sergeants, the hymn commencing
+
+    "The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended,
+    The darkness falls at Thy behest."
+
+And beautiful indeed was the singing of it.
+
+The Benediction followed.  Just as I was ending it an impulse came to
+me, and I yielded to its importunity.  "Before we part and before we
+leave Achicourt which has meant so much to us of joy and sorrow," I
+said, "let us sing a kiddies’ hymn.  We still shelter in our hearts a
+little child.  Though we have grown moustaches and some of us gray
+hairs, the child that we once were, never quite dies.  Let us have a
+hymn for the boy within us who never grows up and never dies."  Then I
+read out verse by verse, for it was not in their books:
+
+    "Now the day is over,
+    Night is drawing nigh,
+    Shadows of the evening
+    Steal across the sky.
+
+    "Jesus, give the weary
+    Calm and sweet repose;
+    With Thy tenderest blessing
+    May their eyelids close.
+
+    "Grant to little children
+    Visions bright of Thee;
+    Guarding the sailors tossing
+    On the angry sea.
+
+    "Comfort every sufferer
+    Watching late in pain;
+    Those who plan some evil
+    From their sin restrain.
+
+    "When the morning wakens,
+    Then may I arise
+    Pure and fresh, and sinless
+    In Thy holy eyes."
+
+I have witnessed many moving sights in my time and heard much deep and
+thrilling music; but I have never been so deeply moved by anything as by
+the rich, deep voices of these gallant men and boys who, after winning
+the Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined church and were singing
+this beautiful kiddies’ hymn as their last farewell.
+
+The collection the boys had taken up had been so heavy that we carried
+it to the French lady’s house for her.  As we entered her home she said
+in her simple way, as her eyes grew radiant with gratitude, "I like the
+English soldiers."  It was the voice of France.  And she was worthy to
+speak for France.  For two-and-a-half years her house had stood within a
+mile of the German trenches, and but a few hundred yards from our own
+firing line. Yet she and her mother had never left it.  She introduced
+me to her mother, who had lived in London, and spoke English.  Then she
+brought in coffee.  I had noticed a most remarkable thing about the
+house.  There was not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of war on the
+walls.  It was the only house I have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras,
+upon which the war has not laid its monstrous and bloody finger.  "How
+is it," I asked the mother, "that your house has not been touched?"  Her
+eyes shone and a sweet smile lit up her face.  "It is the will of God,"
+she said simply.  "Shells have fallen a little short of us and a little
+beyond us.  They have passed within a yard of the house, and we have
+heard the rushing of the wind as they passed, but they have not touched
+us.  When the village has been bombarded we have gone down into the
+cellar as was but discretion and duty, but we have had the conviction
+all along that we should be spared, and we refused to leave the house.
+We do not know God’s purpose but we believe that it is God’s will to
+spare us."  I leave the fact to speak for itself and offer no
+explanation.  Skeptics will say the house was spared by accident; but
+they would not have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting to such
+an accident.  These two women, without a man in the house, stayed on the
+very confines of hell with its hourly suspense and danger for nearly
+three years, because they believed it was God’s will and that, though
+they walked through the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than it
+was wont to be heated, He would not allow so much as a hair of their
+heads to be singed.  And not a hair was singed. They were women in whom
+faith burned like a bright pillar of fire.  One caught its light, and
+felt its heat.  I have met patriots and heroes and know their quality
+when I see them and come near them.  These were "the real thing."  Faith
+in God and faith in their country were interwoven in their spirits like
+sun and shower in a rainbow.  They were of the same breed as the Maid of
+France, and like her, with their white banner bearing the device of the
+Cross, they withstood and defied the might and terror of the invader.
+They believed it was God’s will they should stay, to "Be still and know
+that I am God."  Their experience was expressed by the Psalmist
+centuries ago: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in
+trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and
+though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.  Though the
+waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the
+swellings thereof ... Come behold the works of the Lord, what
+desolations He hath made in the earth.  He maketh wars to cease unto the
+end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
+He burneth the chariot in the fire.... The Lord of Hosts is with us; the
+God of Jacob is our refuge."
+
+Such was the faith of these two women, and their courage few men have
+approached.  It is a practical matter, and after comparing it with the
+skeptic’s theory of accident and coincidence and remembering his
+probable haste in seeking a place not so liable to untoward accidents, I
+accept the explanation of the women. Their house was spared and not a
+hair of their heads injured because "it was God’s will."  If it is not
+the correct theory, it ought to be. Otherwise falsehood is more
+sustaining than truth, and inspires nobler conduct.
+
+The day was now over.  A new chapter of life had been written, and in
+the morning, we left behind us this village of precious memories, and
+marched out again into the unknown.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *VIII*
+
+                        *SONS OF THE MOTHERLAND*
+
+
+It is said that the eel is born in the deepest part of the ocean,
+thousands of miles from any country, and that, urged by an overpowering
+instinct it begins almost at once to rise towards the light and to head
+for the land.  After slowly swimming thousands of miles it reaches our
+rivers, and pushes its way up to their sources, and even crawls through
+the grass out of one stream into another.  Here, if uncaught by man, it
+lives for years gorging an appetite which only developed on reaching the
+fresh water.  Then, the overmastering instinct that brought it out,
+takes it back.  It returns through the illimitable waters until it finds
+the place where it was born.  There the female lays her eggs and there
+male and female die.  The eggs hatch, and the young do as their parents
+did before them.
+
+I do not think I could kill or eat an eel. I have too much reverence for
+it now that I have learned its story.  When in the fish market I see an
+eel struggling, I feel that I want to take it and drop it into the sea
+that it may go to its long home "far from the madding crowd’s ignoble
+strife."  How passionate and wild must be its desire to get back to its
+own ocean depths where it may perpetuate its kind and die in peace. Its
+appetite is voracious, but then, what but the mightiest and most
+elemental instincts and appetites could carry it through achievements so
+sublime and tragic.  Picture it on its lone way through the deep, urged
+on by it knows not what.  Scientists say that man has evolved from a
+tiny form of life that passed through the fish stage.  If so, it
+explains a lot and I, for one, shall not be ashamed to acknowledge
+relationship to a fish with a life story as sublime as that of the eel.
+I know that Genesis speaks truly when it says that God made us out of
+the dust of the earth and breathed into our souls the breath of His own
+being thus animating dust with divinity.  And if from the other inspired
+book, the book of Nature, scientists can teach how God mixed the clay
+when He fashioned man I will accept the teaching with gratitude, for it
+will help me to understand things that are dark in me and in my fellows.
+It will throw light on the wild longings, and instincts immature, that
+baffle the mind, and come into the clear shallow streams of life like
+eels out of the dark unfathomable depths of the ocean.
+
+Since I went to France I have been amazed at the homing instinct as
+revealed in the coming together of the sons of the British Motherland.
+People at home do not quite realize what has happened.  Britain’s sons
+have come back to her--have come back to die that their race may be
+saved and perpetuated.  The British are a roving race.  A large number
+of them yield to an overpowering desire to go out into the world.  The
+South Pole and the North Pole have known the tread of their feet. Their
+ships have anchored in every creek of every sea.  There is no town or
+country however remote where their voices have not been heard.  Even
+Mecca could not keep the Briton out.  He must look upon its Black Stone.
+All lands call him to come, and see, and conquer. He colonizes and
+absorbs but cannot be absorbed.  He is a Briton still.  A friend of mine
+told me that when visiting Australia strangers who had never seen
+England, except in and through their fathers, would come to him in
+railway carriage or ’bus, and ask "How is everything at _Home_?"  And
+Dr. Fitchett, Australia’s splendid author, confesses that when he first
+saw the land of his fathers he knelt down and kissed its shore.
+
+Loving the homeland with a passion stronger than death the Briton leaves
+it, for he hears the call of the world borne on the winds and waves from
+afar, and cannot refuse it.  In foreign lands he lives and labors.  He
+roams their fields and swims in their streams, but always with an ear
+listening for the voice of the Motherland; for he is hers, and at her
+service if she calls.
+
+The Declaration of War on Aug. 4, 1914, was the Mother’s call to her
+children.  Swifter than lightning it passed through the waves and on the
+wings of the wind.  The settler left his lonely cabin, the gold-digger
+his shovel, the prospector his surveying instruments, the rancher his
+herds, the missionary his church, the teacher his school, the clerk his
+office, and all made for the nearest port.  Within a month there was not
+a ship on the wide seas but was bearing loyal sons back to their
+Motherland’s defense.  I have met, in France, British soldiers from
+every country under heaven.  I bent over a dying soldier near Arras who
+was a clerk in Riga, Russia, when the call came. And one night on the
+Somme a fine young fellow from Africa entered my tent, and slept by my
+side.  He was one of the most charming and handsome men I have ever met,
+and had come from Durban.  He had fought with Botha in Southwest Africa,
+and at the conclusion of that campaign had shipped for home. Next day I
+took him to Delville Wood for he wanted to see the place where his
+brother had died.  I found that he was of my own communion and we talked
+about some of my college friends who had gone out to Natal.  Two days
+later, he died of wounds in a dressing station.  Most of the transport
+officers in our Division have come home from abroad, and have been given
+their posts because they are accustomed to horses.  One was prospecting
+in Nigeria, another salmon-canning in Siberia, a third on a plantation
+in South America.
+
+In addition to Canadians, South Africans, Australians, and New
+Zealanders, who have come by the hundred thousand at the call of the
+Motherland, there are hundreds of thousands who have come singly, or in
+small parties, from remote corners of the earth.  For five weeks I was a
+patient in a Canadian hospital in France.  The entire staff was
+Canadian. Some were Canadian born; others had gone out to that country
+years ago.  All were of British blood.  The colonel was a magnificent
+specimen of manhood from London, Ontario, in which city he had been
+born.  He would sit on the bed and tell us tales of the great snow-land.
+Sometimes he would scold us for being so blind to the greatness of the
+Empire and tell us what Canada thought of the Motherland. One of the
+night orderlies would, on occasion, recite to us some poem such as "Jim
+Bludso," before the lights went out.  Then he would come to my locker
+and take "Palgrave’s Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" with which to regale
+his soul during the long watches of the night.  He was of the full
+stature of men and straight as a pine.  He had gone out from Ireland as
+a boy, and settled on a cattle ranch in the United States.  One day
+there was trouble and one of the other cowboys sent a bullet clean
+through his chest.  The moment war was declared he left his roving herds
+of cattle, crossed the frontier into Canada and traveled hundreds of
+miles to Winnipeg to enlist.  The doctor looked at him.  "What is this
+scar on your chest?" he asked.  "Oh," replied the cowboy, "I fell off a
+wagon and knocked the skin off."  The doctor turned him round and put
+his finger in the scar on his back where the bullet had passed out.
+"And what is this scar at the back?  Did you fall off another wagon?"
+And the two men understood one another and laughed.  The doctor could
+not find it in his heart to send the cowboy back to his ranch, so he was
+passed into the Canadian contingent.
+
+One of the nurses we called "the Little Mother."  She had gone to Canada
+five years before, but the war had brought her back, and well was it for
+us that it had.  Among the patients was a doctor in the American A.M.C.
+His ancestors had left England generations ago and settled in New
+England, but he had come back at the call of war--a grandson of the
+Motherland.  Then there was a lieutenant of British stock who had been
+born and brought up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were destroying
+his native city he took ship to enlist in the British army.  "Anzac"
+was, as his nickname denotes, an Australian.  He was in the Flying
+Corps.  He had heard the call at school and had come "home" to the land
+of his fathers.
+
+In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who had been born in China.
+But, out there in Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Motherland they
+had never seen, and came post haste to her help.  Sitting near me as I
+write, is an officer back from the Argentine, and already, on his arm,
+is a gold wound-stripe.  Another in the mess had been pearl-fishing in
+Australia, but stored his boats to come and fight.  Another at our table
+was born in Australia.  He was with Captain Falcon Scott on his last
+expedition, and saw him go out to the South Pole and death.  He has
+already been wounded. When the war broke out its tumult seemed to wake
+our fathers and we felt them stir in our blood; for ancestors are not
+put into graves but are buried alive in their sons.  We felt the call to
+defend our race as our fathers did in their day.  It was a master
+instinct, and the millions of men who voluntarily left home and business
+to fight show how deeply nationality is rooted in human nature.
+Returning from a far land to die--if needs be--that their kind may live,
+the scattered sons of our Motherland have come by all the seas to defend
+her, in her hour of need.
+
+    "They came as the winds come
+      When forests are rended;
+    They came as the waves come
+      When navies are stranded."
+
+
+
+
+                                  *IX*
+
+                         *THE TERROR BY NIGHT*
+
+
+June was a flaming month on the high ground we had captured beyond
+Arras. The Quartermaster and Transport Officer with whom I was messing
+were both "on leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the camp, a
+Baptist padre, whose regiment was near, came to live with me.  I had a
+little brown tent five feet wide and six feet long which a rifleman had
+lent to me because the bell-tent I was expecting had not arrived.  The
+rifleman did not need his tent, for he and his chums had built
+themselves a little dug-out. Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the
+other padre took possession of it, while I held on to the little brown
+shelter.  Next to it was the kitchen where the servants slept and
+cooked. It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood, corrugated iron
+and ground-sheets.  The Baptist chaplain’s tent was round, my shelter
+oblong, but what shape the kitchen was, would pass the wit of man to
+say.  It was a shape never seen on earth before.  It had no ancestor and
+it could have no descendant.  Such a design could not occur twice.
+Beyond the kitchen were the horse-lines of the regiment and close by
+them the regimental stores.  It was so hot that we all wore our lightest
+clothing; and when the servants got lemons from Arras, the lemonade they
+made lasted about five minutes only, for what was left by us was quickly
+drunk up by the servants with the assistance of those who like to
+frequent such happy places as mess kitchens.
+
+All our meals were served out of doors, under the blue sky.  We had
+guests most days, for officers coming out from the homeland stayed with
+us for a night or a day before going up with the rations to join the
+regiment in the trench.  Other officers had come down to stay with us on
+their way to a course at some military school; and one, at least, came
+to wait for the day on which he was to take his "leave."  We were,
+therefore, a very merry party.  It was almost like camping on the
+Yorkshire moors, for we had an uninterrupted view of many miles.  To
+those who love vast stretches of wild barren country as I do, the scene
+under the flaming June sun was exceedingly impressive. There were no
+houses, streams, hedges, or trees, but the whole area was scored with
+trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing clearly at great
+distances.  The ground, with but short spaces between, was covered with
+encampments.  These consisted of the stores and horse-lines of the
+regiments and batteries in the line.  The circle of the horizon was
+bounded by the charred ruins of French villages--Beaurains, Neuville,
+Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy and Tilloy.  We could see the flashing of our
+own guns, and the black bursts of shells from those of the enemy.
+
+All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes, and many were too high to be
+seen except through strong field glasses.  We watched a German aeroplane
+circling over Arras and directing the fire of the long guns.  Soon the
+streets were strewn with dead and wounded, for the town was full of
+troops.  The firing only lasted a few minutes, however.  One of our
+aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to single combat; and we soon
+saw the German machine falling from an immense height, wing over wing
+and head over tail, utterly out of control.
+
+Dinner, in the cool of the evening, was a most pleasant meal.  As we
+drank our coffee we watched the aeroplanes returning from the line like
+birds to their nests.  Sometimes we counted as many as twenty, all
+heading for home at the same time.  The sun set in red and golden
+splendor, and we wondered what darkness would bring.  On the night
+before our arrival, the regiment which made way for us had one of its
+storemen killed by a shell; and on most nights a few shells fell in some
+part or other of the vast camp.  One evening shells fell a little beyond
+us and the transport-sergeant moved his horse-lines.  After that, he
+moved them every evening at dark, so that the ground where the enemy had
+observed the horses in the day-time was left vacant when he opened fire
+at night.  It was a game of chess with horses and men for pawns, and
+life and death for the stakes.
+
+On the evening before, our guest--a young lieutenant--was to go on
+leave, he got very uneasy.  As gulls scent the approach of stormy
+weather and come inland, or blackbirds and larks feel the approach of
+winter and migrate to summer lands, so men can sometimes scent danger
+and coming death.  He had with him a bottle of whisky, and he kept it on
+the table outside my tent--a safe place for it.
+
+"I don’t mind telling you, Padre," he said, as he poured out a glass,
+"I’ve got the ’wind-up’ badly to-night.  I don’t like the feel of
+things.  I would rather be in the trenches than here, because I know
+what is likely to happen there, but here in the open I feel strange and
+unprotected.  I shall be glad when it is morning."
+
+His feeling was quite natural.  We always feel another man’s dangers
+more than our own because they are new to us and we don’t know what to
+expect or how to meet them.  A man will choose a big danger that he is
+used to, sooner than a lesser danger that is new to him.  Besides, the
+lieutenant had his "leave-warrant" in his breast pocket and that will
+sap any man’s courage.  He has a feeling that the shells are after his
+"leave-warrant" and that the gunners know where it is.  He suspects that
+fate is malignant and takes a special delight in killing a man when he
+is on the way to "Blighty."  Many a man has been killed with a
+"leave-warrant" in his pocket, or "commission papers" in it which were
+taking him home.
+
+Our doctor told me how one night he and the chaplain who preceded me
+were riding on the front of an ambulance car when a shell burst and with
+a fragment killed the chaplain. In the padre’s pocket was his warrant,
+and he was taking his last ride before going home; but instead of going
+home in "Blighty" he went to his _long_ home, and the warrant lies in
+the grave with him.  A man feels particularly vulnerable when the
+long-looked-for "leave-warrant" is in his pocket.  He does not fear
+death after "leave," but he does on the eve of "leave."  He wants one
+more look at his home and loved ones before going on the long and lone
+journey which, despite all the comfort which the Christian religion
+gives, still retains much of its terror to the human spirit.  There have
+been few better Christians than Samuel Johnson and John Bunyan, but
+neither of them could contemplate fording the river of death without
+misgivings.  When they came to it they found it much less formidable
+than they had expected.  Had they been at the Front with
+"leave-warrants" in their pockets to "Fleet Street, London," or "Elstow,
+Bedford," I fancy neither of them would have taken undue risks.
+
+I could sympathize with the young lieutenant for, a few months before, a
+"leave-warrant" had made a bit of a coward of myself.  I was in two
+minds whether or not to go up to the firing line to see the men again
+before shipping for home.  The "leave-warrant" was in my pocket, and I
+was to go next morning; but the doctor’s story of my predecessor came to
+my mind, and the "leave-warrant" spread itself out before the eyes of my
+imagination.  I saw the faces of my wife, and mother, and dog, and the
+faces of my friends.  The old home and the green fields stretched out
+before me; and I decided to see them first and the "boys" after. I had
+just been with my men, but it was a long time since I had been with
+those at home.  If there was a shell with my name and address on it, I
+thought I would make the Hun wait till I had been home, before I let him
+deliver it into my hands.  I think a "leave-warrant" would make a coward
+of any man.  At any rate, the feeling is quite understood and recognized
+by everyone at the Front; and this young officer had been sent down from
+the trenches to us, three days before his train was due to start, so
+that he might have a better chance of using his "warrant," and at the
+same time, feel more at ease in mind.
+
+I undressed and got into bed, and lay reading by the light of a candle
+when the lieutenant came to the tent door again.  "It’s no use, Padre,"
+he said, "I can’t go to bed yet.  I feel too uneasy.  I wish I were on
+the train."  He went back to the bell-tent he was sharing with the other
+chaplain, and I put out my light.
+
+There was the silence of a summer evening broken only by the distant
+bursting of shells. Then, suddenly, there was a crash about seventy
+yards from our tents, and two more near the horse-lines.  "To run or not
+run?" that was the question; and my answer was in the negative.  If I
+ran, it was just as likely that I should run into a shell, as out of the
+way of one.  On Easter Sunday I had seen three of our non-commissioned
+officers killed in that way.  Besides, I like my bed, once I have taken
+the trouble to get into it.  I therefore put on my steel helmet which I
+had placed by the bed-side, and waited to see what would happen. (A
+steel helmet is a wonderful comfort when men are under fire.  We may not
+have much in our heads but we feel more anxious about them than about
+all the rest of the body.  The helmets are heavy and uncomfortable and
+we don’t like wearing them, but, nevertheless, may blessings ever rest
+on the head of the man who invented them.  I have seen scores of lives
+saved by them, and they have given infinite comfort and assurance in
+trying moments.)
+
+A long silence elapsed, then the lieutenant appeared at the door of the
+tent again.
+
+"You haven’t been here all the time, have you?" he asked.  "We went down
+to the old trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is rather cold and
+wearisome there, and I think the worst is over now.  I’m just going to
+take another sip of the ’Scotch wine’ and then turn in for the night;
+but I’m not going to undress."
+
+Ten minutes later there was a tremendous crash as if a star had fallen
+on top of us. There came a blinding flash of light, a strong smell of
+powder, and a spluttering of bullets on the ground.  That was enough to
+get the laziest man living out of bed, and to answer the question, "to
+run or not to run?" in the affirmative.  I slipped on my boots without
+fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade my little tent a fond
+farewell.  There were some old German gun-pits close by, and I sought
+refuge there.  "Come in here, sir," cried a voice, and I found myself by
+the side of a sergeant.  Then the cook ran in bare-foot and laughing.
+No one seemed to have been hit, and all had now sought shelter.  We
+waited for some time and nothing further happened.  The night was cold
+and I began to shiver in my pajamas.  So I started to look about for a
+place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement had grown up between me
+and the little brown tent.  There was a path across a shallow bit of
+trench, and underneath it I found the barber, lying comfortably on his
+bed.  He invited me in, and said that I could have the bed, and he would
+sleep at the side of it on his ground-sheet.  He could, he said, sleep
+as soundly on the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking. I therefore
+returned to my tent to get blankets. The time-fuse of a shell had gone
+through the kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my servant, but
+without doing him any injury and he proposed sleeping there for the
+night.  He only agreed to move to some safer place, when I ordered him
+to do so.  There was no one in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants
+were quite safe somewhere.  On striking a light to get my blankets, I
+noticed three small holes in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel
+bullets had missed me only by inches.  It had been a close shave and it
+was not inappropriate that I was now going to be the guest of a barber.
+
+The psychological effect was not one I should have expected.  The
+incident caused no shell-shock, and but little immediate excitement; so
+I was soon asleep.  All the others were in a like case.  The excitement
+came with the morning when we examined the tents and the ground.  In the
+bell-tent there were ten shrapnel bullet holes.  One had gone through
+the piece of wood on which the officers’ clothing had been hung, and
+must have passed immediately over the body of the Baptist chaplain as he
+lay in bed.  Others must have passed equally near the lieutenant who was
+not in bed, but, standing up at the time, fully dressed.  In my own
+little tent I found eleven holes and they were in all parts of the
+canvas.  Some of the bullets must have gone in at one side and out at
+the other, for only five were found embedded in the hard, chalky ground.
+A sixth had passed through the box at the bed-head and entered deeply
+into the book I had been reading.  Outside the kitchen, the servants
+picked up a lump of shell a foot long and three or four inches wide.
+Well was it for them that the fragment fell outside the kitchen and not
+inside.  The ground around the tents was sprinkled with shrapnel bullets
+and bits of shell.  The shells which fell near the horses had burst on
+touching the ground, and not like ours, in the air.  They had dug deep
+holes in the earth, and as the horses were within a few yards of them,
+it seemed miraculous that none was hurt.  The transport had just
+returned from taking up the rations, and, as one of the drivers leapt
+off his horse, a bullet hit the saddle where his leg had been a second
+before. Not a man or horse received a scratch, although the shells had
+made a direct hit on our camp. On other occasions one shell has laid out
+scores of men and horses.
+
+They say that sailors don’t like padres on board ship, because they
+think the latter bring them bad luck.  And most people are a little
+afraid of the figure thirteen, but though it was the thirteenth of June
+and there were two padres in the tents, we had the best of what is
+called "luck."  So I think we may say it was one up for the padres.
+After breakfast we gathered together some of the fragments lying around
+the tents, and found the nose-cap of a shell which had burst seventy
+yards away. With these, and the time-fuse which hit my servant, the
+other chaplain and I went to a battery and asked the officers to tell us
+something about the gun, just as one might take a bone of some extinct
+creature to a scientist, and ask him to draw an outline of the whole
+animal.  They told us that the gun was a long-range, high-velocity,
+naval gun with a possible range of fifteen miles.  They knew where it
+was, but could not hit it.  The shot was a large high-explosive,
+shrapnel shell, and the time-fuse indicated that it had come to us from
+about eleven miles away.
+
+On our return we built ourselves dug-outs for the nights, and only lived
+in the tents by day.  Sometimes we were shelled in the day-time, but by
+taking cover took no hurt, though a lad in the transport next to us was
+seriously wounded.  When they were shelling us by day, we could
+distinctly hear the report of the gun, a second or two later, see the
+shell burst in the air; and a second later still, we could hear it.  We
+saw the burst before we heard it.
+
+I have given this personal incident not, I hope, out of any impulse of
+egotism, but because it furnishes those who have not been at the Front
+with an idea of the terror which assails our men by night, both in the
+trenches and in the "back areas."  There can be but few who, having been
+any length of time at the Front, have not had similar experiences and
+equally narrow escapes.  They are so common that men get used to them
+and do not take nearly enough care to protect themselves. Loss by such
+stray shells is expected, and the soldiers regard it much as a tradesman
+regards the deterioration of his stock.  One gets used to the frequent
+occurrence of death as he does to anything else.  At home there are
+thousands of preventable deaths--deaths through street accidents,
+diseases and underfeeding.  The number could be enormously reduced if
+the nation would rouse itself.  And human nature is much the same at the
+Front.  Men prefer ease and comfort to safety.  Also, men grow
+fatalistic.  They have seen men sought out by shells after they have
+taken every precaution to escape them; and they have seen others go
+untouched when they seemed to be inviting shells to destroy them.  Men
+are conscious of a Power that is not themselves directing their lives.
+They feel that in life which the Greek tragedians called Fate.  They do
+not know quite what to call it.  Most of them would call it Providence
+if they spoke frankly and gave it a name at all.  One of the finest
+Christian officers I know told me that he believed that God’s finger had
+already written what his fate should be.  If he had to die nothing could
+save him, and if he had to live, nothing could kill him.  All he was
+concerned with was to be able to do his duty, and take whatever God sent
+him.  This, he said, was the only suitable working philosophy for a man
+at the Front.
+
+There is a widespread fatalism at the Front, but it is the fatalism of
+Christ rather than of old Omar Khayyam: "Take no thought for your life
+... for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
+things, but seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.
+Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take
+thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil
+thereof."  And this works.  It enables men to "put a cheerful courage
+on" and do their duty.  There is none of the paralysis of will and
+cessation of effort which follows the fatalistic philosophy of the East.
+All that Omar Khayyam’s fatalism leaves a man to strive after is "Red,
+Red Wine," in which he drowns memory, honor and reputation and
+character.  When he has passed from among his peers, there is nothing
+left to remember him by but a "turned-down empty glass."  The Christian
+fatalism at the Front destroys no man’s initiative, but keeps him merry
+and bright, and helps him to "do his bit."  When he shall pass from the
+banqueting-house of life, into the Great Unexplored, he will leave as
+his memorial, not a turned-down glass, but a world redeemed from tyranny
+and wrong.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *X*
+
+                       *"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"*
+
+
+An army is more courageous than the individuals who compose it.  The
+coward finds sufficient courage for his job while doing it with his
+regiment, and the brave is at his bravest.  He has a courage which is
+not his own but which, somehow, he puts on with his uniform.  He does
+deeds of daring he could not have done as a civilian.  The army has a
+corporate courage and each soldier receives a portion of it just as he
+receives a ration of the army’s food.  It is added to what he has of his
+own.
+
+The badge of the army is courage.  When a recruit joins the army he
+knows that he is putting away the civilian standard of courage with his
+derby hat, and is putting on the soldier’s standard of courage with his
+uniform. His great fear is that he will not be able to live up to it.
+He wonders if he is made of the stuff that produces heroes.  He is a
+mystery to himself and has a haunting fear that there may be a strain of
+the coward in his make-up. He wishes it were possible to have a
+rehearsal for he would rather die than fail on the appointed day.
+
+The chaplain fears that he will faint and become a hindrance instead of
+a help when he first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing station;
+and the recruit is afraid of being afraid in the hour of battle and of
+bringing dishonor and weakness upon his regiment.  He will be glad when
+the trial is over--when he knows the stuff of which nature has made him.
+A friend of mine told me one day that he was walking over a heavily
+shelled field with a young aristocrat of a highly strung temperament.
+The man was afraid, but would not yield to his fear.  His lips twitched
+and his face became drawn and white.  His movements were jerky but he
+made no other sign.  He talked about paltry things in which, at the
+moment, he had not the slightest interest, and passed jocular or
+sardonic remarks about the things that were happening around them.  My
+friend ducked his head when a shell burst near as we all have done often
+enough, but the young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff as if
+he were being crowned.  He held it up defiantly; was it not filled with
+the bluest blood of England?  The shells might blow it off if they
+liked.  That was their concern, not his, but they should never make him
+bow.  His fathers had fought on British battlefields for centuries, and
+had never bowed their heads to a foe, and he would not break the great
+tradition.  Shells might break his neck but they should never bend it.
+He would face the enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a neck
+as ever his fathers did.  He knew his personal weakness and reinforced
+his strength with that of his fathers’.  He was not afraid of death.  He
+was afraid of being afraid.
+
+My friend was a coachman’s son who by courage and capacity of the
+highest order had won a commission.  He had no traditions either to
+haunt or help him, and he had often been tried in the fire and knew his
+strength.  He was not afraid of being afraid.  It was natural to duck
+when a shell burst near and it did him no harm and made no difference to
+the performance of his duties; so he ducked as he felt inclined, and
+then laughed at his nerves for the tricks they were allowing the shells
+to play on them.  But, knowing his companion’s more sensitive nature and
+temperamental weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff neck and
+proudly erect head.  He showed a self-control which only centuries of
+breeding could give.  Here was a hero indeed.  The shells he was defying
+were as nothing to the fears which haunted his imaginative nature and
+which, with his back to the wall of his family traditions, he was
+fighting and keeping at bay. My friend could not refrain from
+complimenting him on resisting the natural tendency to duck the head
+when a shell screamed above them.
+
+"Eton boys never duck," replied the young aristocrat.
+
+He was an Eton boy and would die rather than fall short of the Eton
+standard.  In this war hundreds of them have died rather than save
+themselves by something which did not measure up to the Eton standard.
+The ranks of young British aristocrats have been terribly thinned in
+this war and I have heard their deeds spoken of with a reverence such as
+is only given to legendary heroes.  They have gone sauntering over the
+crater-fields to their deaths with the same self-mastery and outward
+calm which the French aristocracy manifested as they mounted the steps
+of the guillotine in the Reign of Terror.  To their own personal courage
+was added the courage of their race, and the accumulation of the
+centuries.
+
+We speak of our new armies.  There can be no "new" armies of Britons.
+The tradition of our newest army goes back to Boadicea. Its forerunners,
+without shields or armor, and almost without weapons, dared the
+Romans--the proud conquerors of the world--to battle; and gave them the
+longest odds warriors ever gave.  They knew they could not win but they
+knew they could die.  Dead warriors they might become but never living
+slaves.  They ran up Boadicea’s proud banner because they knew that
+while the Romans might soak it in British blood, no power on earth could
+drag it through the mire.
+
+Our forefathers crossed swords with Cæsar and his Roman legions, and our
+newest army goes into battle with the prestige born of two thousand
+years of war.  They have a morale that belongs to the race in addition
+to the morale they possess as individuals.  It is said that "the British
+do not know when they are beaten."  How should they know?  They have had
+no teachers.  All they know is that if they have not gained the victory
+the battle is not ended and must go on until they pitch their tents on
+the undisputed field.  The German Emperor spreads out his War Map but it
+is as undecipherable as the mountains in the moon to our soldiers.
+Tyrants have never found them apt scholars at geography.  They prefer to
+make their own maps even though they have no paint to color them with
+except the red blood in their veins.  The Kaiser may roll up his War Map
+of Europe; our soldiers have no use for it, and will not commit to
+memory its new boundaries.  They feel in their souls the capacity to
+make a new one more in line with their ideas of fair play.
+
+"Eton boys never duck."  If the muscles of their necks show a tendency
+to relax they call to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood in
+bygone days, and their necks become stiff and taut once more.
+Wellington said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.  It
+is still true that "Eton boys never duck" to the foe; nor do the
+soldiers they lead.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *XI*
+
+                              *"MISSING"*
+
+
+The word "Missing" has come to exercise an even more terrible power over
+the human heart than the word "Death."  The latter kills the heart’s joy
+and hope with a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy stroke from
+the executioner’s axe.  In a few cases the wounded victim is spared and
+allowed to recover, but in the majority of cases there is no reprieve
+and a second blow is struck after a period of suspense and suffering.  A
+chaplain dreads the word.  As he opens his correspondence after a
+battle, it fixes him as the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner
+fastened the wedding guest.  It leaps from the page at him with the
+malignant suddenness of a serpent.  Wounds and death he can explain to
+relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation. No one who has not been
+at the Front can conceive how a lad can disappear and no one see what
+becomes him.  A man may read graphic accounts of conditions of life in
+the battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to visualize it with
+any real approach to truth.
+
+After the first day of the Somme Campaign we had hundreds of casualties
+and most of them were classed as "Missing."  The soldiers went "over the
+top" and did not return, and no one knew why.  They were simply
+"missing."  Why did no one know their fate?  It came about in this way.
+The men scrambled over the parapet and, forming in line, charged across
+No Man’s Land in extended order. Some fell immediately.  The wounded
+among them got back to the dressing station, and the bodies of the dead
+were found within a few days, at least.  So far, there are no "Missing."
+The rest of the men press on, some falling at every step; the line
+thins, and the men get separated.  When a man falls his neighbor cannot
+stay with him.  He must press on to the objective, otherwise, if the
+unwounded stayed to succor the wounded, there would be none to continue
+the attack; and under the hail of shells and bullets sweeping the open
+ground, everyone would perish.  The only way to succor the wounded is to
+press on, capture the enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine-gun
+fire.  Consequently, the man who presses on does not, as a rule, know
+whether his comrade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took cover in a
+shell hole.  And even though he were to know, he may be killed himself
+later, and his knowledge die with him.
+
+If the attack succeeds, and the German trench is held by us, No Man’s
+Land can be searched.  The wounded and dead are found, and but few are
+reported "missing."  But if the attack fail, and the regiment has to
+retire to its own line, it becomes impossible for us to search that part
+of No Man’s Land, adjoining the German trench (for there is rarely any
+truce after a battle in this war), and so, it is impossible to find out
+whether those who have failed to return were killed, wounded, or taken
+prisoners.  The comrades who saw them fall are probably killed, for the
+return is as fatal as the attack.  If they come back wounded they are
+taken straight to the hospitals and so have no chance of reporting to
+their officers the fate of those whom they saw fall.  Only the unwounded
+return to the regiment and, in a lost battle, these are few and know but
+little of what happened to those around them.  They were excited and
+were fighting for their lives. They had no leisure to observe the fate
+of others.
+
+On one occasion our men took some German trenches opposite them and held
+them for some hours by desperate fighting, but before dusk had to
+retire.  Many were left dead or wounded in the captured trenches, and
+many fell on the return journey.  The few who got back to us unwounded
+could give very little information about individuals who were missing.
+They had been separated one from another and fighting hour after hour
+with desperation.  All therefore who did not return to the regiment or
+dressing station, and whose bodies were not recovered, were reported as
+"Missing" unless declared dead by reliable eye-witnesses.  The evidence
+of eye-witnesses must be carefully examined before a regiment dare
+report a soldier dead on the strength of it.  During an attack a man is
+in an abnormal state of excitement and the observations of his senses
+are not entirely reliable.  Men imagine they see things, and frequently
+make mistakes in identity.  I have known many cases in which a man has
+sworn that he saw another being carried to the dressing station, yet the
+missing man’s body has afterwards been found near the German lines.  The
+eye-witness simply mistook one man for another.  No end of pain to
+relatives has been caused by these mistakes and a regiment rightly
+declines on such evidence to report a soldier as killed.
+
+Some weeks after the attack just referred to, we received letters from
+some of the officers and men who had been taken prisoners; information
+about others came through The Geneva Red Cross Society.  Those of whom
+we heard nothing for six months we knew to be, in all probability, dead.
+Nine months later, the Germans retired from the position, and many of
+our dead were found still lying out in No Man’s Land.  Some were
+identified. Others could not be, their discs having perished by reason
+of the long exposure.  Many of the dead had been left in the German
+trenches.  These had been buried by the enemy and he had left no crosses
+to mark the graves. After more than a year there is no direct evidence
+of the death of many who fought on that day.  They are "Missing," and we
+can only conclude that they were killed.
+
+In other cases, men are reported missing for several weeks, and then
+reported dead.  A typical case may be cited to show how it comes about.
+We attacked one morning at dawn. The enemy were on the run, and in a
+state of exhaustion.  An immediate attack would, it was believed, carry
+the position without much loss of life, even though our big guns had not
+had time to come up in support.  Unfortunately the Germans were, unknown
+to us, reinforced during the night.  Their new troops met our men with a
+hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, and the regiment was ordered to
+retire. Several failed to return.  We knew that some of the men had been
+forced to surrender, especially the wounded.  Others had been killed.
+Those who returned unwounded were not able, however, to give us the
+names of those who had been killed or of those who had been taken
+prisoners.  The attack had been made in the half-light of dawn so that
+our men could not be seen distinctly.  They had also advanced in
+extended order so as to avoid making themselves an easy target.  The
+half-light and the distance of one man from another made it difficult,
+therefore, for anyone to see either who fell or why they fell.  Most of
+those who were killed or taken prisoners were therefore reported as
+"missing."
+
+A few days later the whole Division was moved to another part of the
+Front.  A fresh regiment took our place, and, a few weeks later, with
+adequate artillery support, carried the German trenches.  After the
+battle, burial parties were sent out by the regiment to bury both its
+own dead and ours who had been left in the German half of No Man’s Land.
+Each grave was marked with the soldier’s name, and his disc and paybook
+were sent to our regiment as proof of his death.  The War Office was
+then informed that such and such a man "previously reported missing, is
+now reported killed."
+
+There are, however, cases of missing men which cannot be explained.  The
+facts never come to light, and we can only guess what happened.  They
+may have been buried by the enemy, or they may have been buried in the
+dark by some regimental burial party which could not find their discs.
+They may even have been buried by a shell or blown to fragments by a
+direct hit.  We have no evidence.
+
+After the attack on Gommécourt a youth I knew had his wound dressed at
+the Regimental Aid post and was seen, by more than one of his chums,
+passing down the communication trench to the Advanced Dressing Station
+where I happened to be.  Yet he never arrived, slight though his wound
+was.  It was impossible for him to have got lost.  His brother and I
+made every possible enquiry about him, but nothing ever came to light,
+and we both came to the conclusion that on his way down the trench he
+had been buried by a shell.  In another case an officer was wounded and
+four stretcher bearers went out to bring him in.  None were ever seen
+again, and later, when we came into possession of the ground, the body
+of none of them were found.  It was scarcely possible for them to have
+been taken prisoners, and they were never reported as having been
+captured.  We concluded, therefore, that a shell had both killed and
+buried them.
+
+One day a rifleman reported sick to the Doctor and was sent down the
+line to the Dressing Station whence he would be sent on to a Rest Camp.
+He was not seriously ill, and needed no escort.  It was impossible for
+him to have wandered into the German lines, yet he never reported at the
+Dressing Station or anywhere else.  Loss of memory is very rare, but
+even if that had happened to him, he could not have wandered about
+behind our lines without being found and arrested.  No report of his
+burial ever reached us and we were led to the conclusion that he was
+killed by a shell on the way down, and in such a way that all means of
+identification were lost.  In another case a private, wounded in the
+arm, was sent down the line in company with a party of stretcher bearers
+who were carrying a "lying case."  Evidently he got separated from them
+in the dark, and was hit by a shell, for he never reached any dressing
+station, and his fate was never known.
+
+Conditions at the front are such that these mysterious disappearances
+must inevitably occur.  Every possible arrangement which circumstances
+will allow is made to prevent them; but they cannot be altogether
+eliminated. People at home may sometimes think that more might have been
+done, but it is because they have no conception of the amazing
+conditions under which the war is carried on.  Every officer and private
+knows that he may disappear without leaving a trace.  That being so,
+they, if only from common prudence and the instinct of
+self-preservation, combine to reduce the danger to its lowest limits;
+but, when all has been done, war is war; and nothing can rob it of its
+horrors.
+
+Every day, officers and men die in trying to save their comrades, and
+nothing could be more unjust than to blame those who survive for not
+having done more to prevent others from being lost; for those who are
+surviving, to-day, may become missing to-morrow, and leave no trace
+behind.  Officers have sometimes shown me letters from poor distracted
+relatives which could never have been written if they could have
+imagined the deadly peril in which the officers stood and the manifold
+distractions that wore them down.  Sometimes an officer’s letter is
+short and business-like in reply to an enquiry, but it must be
+remembered that his first duty is to the living.  He must hold the line
+and save his men; and he has, despite the tragedy of his position, to
+answer not one enquiry but scores.  And before he has finished answering
+all the enquiries, his own parents, perhaps, will be making enquiries
+about his own fate.  Our officers are the bravest and kindest-hearted
+men that ever had the lives of others in their keeping; and when the
+chaplain asks them for details about any missing or slain soldier, they
+will go to endless trouble for him. They know what their own death will
+mean to their parents; and the knowledge makes their hearts go out in
+sympathy to the parents of their men, and it makes them do all that is
+possible to prevent lives being lost.
+
+When Moses died no man knew the place of his burial.  It has not been
+found to this day.  We know nothing of his last thoughts or of the
+manner of his death.  His end is a perfect mystery.  But we know that he
+died in the presence of God; that God strengthened him in the dread
+hour; and that with His own fingers He closed the lids over the
+prophet’s brave, tender eyes.  God buried Moses in a grave dug by His
+own hands and He will know where to find the poor worn-out body of the
+great patriot at the resurrection of the just. And God was with every
+one of our missing lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed in
+which each lies sleeping.  The grave may have no cross above it, but it
+will often know the tread of an angel’s feet as he comes to plant
+poppies, primroses and daffodils above the resting-place of the brave.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XII*
+
+                         *"IT MUST BE SUNDAY"*
+
+
+The Psalmist of Israel tells us that God has "ordained" the moon and the
+stars. These "flaming fires" are "ministers of His that do His
+pleasure."  Nor are they the only ones chosen from Nature.  Mungo Park,
+having laid down in the desert to die, notices beside him a tiny flower,
+and it awakens hope in him.  The winter of his despair is ended.  He
+rises again, and pushes on until he finds a human habitation where he is
+cared for by native women as though he were their brother.  The little
+flower had been "ordained" to minister hope to a lost and despairing
+traveler.
+
+At the Front such ministering by Nature is of common occurrence.  No
+Man’s Land is desolate enough to look upon, but there is life there, and
+music.  Larks have chosen it for their nests, and amid its desolation
+they rear their young.  Even the pheasants have taken to some parts of
+it.  If we could but know the thoughts of the wounded who have lain out
+there waiting for death, we should find that the moon and the stars, the
+birds and the field mice, had not allowed them die without some
+comforting of the spirit.
+
+One Sunday our regiment was resting in reserve trenches after a period
+in the firing line. It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun sank
+westward I administered the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  The day was
+far spent but, as the bread was broken, there came to us a vision of the
+Face which the two disciples saw on another such evening in the far-off
+village of Emmaus.  On the way back to my billet I met a platoon of
+Royal Engineers returning from the baths.  One of them had been a member
+of my church in London, and he dropped out to talk with me.  Those who
+have not been in the Expeditionary Force can hardly understand the
+pleasure a man feels when he meets someone he knew in the days of peace,
+or even someone who knows the street or town out of which he came.  He
+was full of talk, and as I listened his excitement and pleasure bubbled
+over like a spring.
+
+"Last night," he said, "was the night of my life.  I never expected to
+see daylight again.  Talk about a ’tight corner,’ there was never one to
+match it, and as you know, my chums and I have been in many.  The Huns
+simply plastered us with shells.  The bombardment was terrific.  It was
+like being in a hailstorm and we expected every moment to be our last.
+
+"You know the trench which the infantry took yesterday?  Well, we were
+there.  We went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of it ready for
+the counter-attack.  We were out in No Man’s Land for about two hours,
+working as swiftly and silently as we could. Whenever the enemy sent his
+lights up, we laid down, and so far we had escaped notice and were
+congratulating ourselves that the work was nearly done, and that our
+skins were still whole.  Then, somehow, the Germans spotted us, and let
+fly.  It was like hell let loose.  We ran to the trench for shelter, but
+it seemed as if nothing could save us from such a deluge of shells.  It
+was just like being naked in a driving snow-storm.  We felt as if there
+was no trench at all, and as if the gunners could see us in the dark.
+After that experience I can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after it.
+But we just sat tight with such cover as we had and made the best of it.
+There was nothing else to do.  If we were to be killed, we should be
+killed.  Nothing that we could do would have made any difference.  Yet,
+though there didn’t seem shelter for even a mouse, only one of us was
+hit, and that was the sergeant.  He was rather badly ’done in,’ and we
+could only save his life by getting him quickly to the dressing station.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN"
+_Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London_]
+
+"I am one of the taller and stronger men of my platoon so, of course, I
+volunteered as a stretcher-bearer.  There was no communication trench,
+so we had no choice but to lift him up and make a dash across the open.
+They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare not delay because, if we
+were overtaken by daylight, it would be impossible to get him away till
+the next night, and by that time he would be dead.  So we decided to try
+our luck. We had just lifted him up when a shell burst right on top of
+us, and knocked us all down. For a minute or two I was unconscious, and
+when I came round I thought I must surely be wounded, so I ran my
+fingers over my body but found neither blood nor a rent in my clothes.
+I was covered with chalk but that didn’t matter.  Except for a touch of
+concussion in the brain I was none the worse, and soon pulled myself
+together.  The sergeant was a sight!  He was half-buried, and we could
+scarce see him for chalk; but we dug him out and got him on the
+stretcher again. After that we sat down in the bottom of the trench till
+the effect of the shock had worn off a bit, for we all felt like rats
+that had been shaken by a terrier.
+
+"Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shelling stopped.  The calm
+that followed was wonderful.  I never felt anything so restful before.
+It was like the delicious restfulness that, sometimes, immediately
+follows hours of fever. Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out
+of No Man’s Land and began to sing.  The effect on us was magical.  It
+was the sweetest music I have ever heard, and I shall remember it to my
+dying day.  The countryside was dark and silent, and, as I listened to
+the lark, old days came back to mind.  You remember that Saturday
+midnight in the June before the war when you took us into Epping Forest
+to see the dawn break over it?  Well, as I listened to the lark, I was
+back there in the forest. Then some impulse seized me and, hardly
+knowing what I did, I cried aloud, ’Why bless me, it must be Sunday,’
+and so it was, although I had forgotten.
+
+"Then we jumped up for we saw that the dawn was breaking and, lifting
+the sergeant out of the trench, we rushed across the open ground in the
+direction of the dressing station. Talk about ’feeling protected!’  Why,
+I felt that God was all around us--that no harm could touch us.  A great
+calm stole over me, and I felt utterly devoid of fear.  We had, as you
+know, to bring the sergeant some two miles to the dressing station, just
+down the road there, but we got him safely in, and I think he will get
+better."
+
+While we were talking, a shell burst near the trench where my men had
+been taking of the Sacrament, and another burst by the roadside close to
+the Engineers.  With a laugh and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands,
+saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades. The shells were part of the
+game.  In London we had been in the same football team.  He had kept
+goal and I had played full back, and he regarded the shells that had
+fallen as bad shots at goal made by the opposing team. They might have
+been serious but, as it happened, the ball had each time gone out of
+play.
+
+I waited a minute or two in the hope of getting a lift.  A motor car
+came along; I stopped it and got in; for at the Front everything is
+Government property and more or less at one’s service.  I found myself
+sitting by the side of a private, who had been wounded in the face and
+right hand by the shell that had just fallen near the platoon of
+Engineers.
+
+He had left his horse with a comrade, and was being driven to the
+Advanced Dressing Station by a driver who, happening to pass at the
+moment, had kindly offered him a lift. After a little wait at the
+Dressing Station I got on the front of an ambulance car.  There were
+only two cases inside, and they were being taken to the Main Dressing
+Station in Arras. One of them had his feet and arms tied to the
+stretcher, for he was suffering from shell-shock; and three orderlies
+were in charge of him.  The poor fellow laughed and cried alternately
+and struggled to break loose.  "I’m a British soldier," he cried, "and I
+will not be tied up.  I’ve done my bit, and this is the way you pay me
+out.  I’ll not have it."  And time and again he struggled desperately to
+break away.
+
+The orderlies in charge of him were wise and tactful as women.  They
+asked him questions about the fight, and he fought his battle over
+again.  They praised his regiment and told him it had done
+magnificently, and he laughed and chuckled like a young mother, dandling
+her first baby on her knee.  And so, without mishap, we reached the
+ruined town of Arras where nightly the shells fall among the forsaken
+houses in which our soldiers are billeted. The wounded private was
+carried into the hospital, and I walked away to my room in an adjoining
+street.
+
+So ended the day which, in the hour of dawn, the dark had told the young
+engineer "must be Sunday."
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIII*
+
+                      *OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US*
+
+
+On Easter Monday, in the Battle of Arras, I saw two sights such as I
+shall never forget.  One revealed the kind and forgiving spirit of our
+men, the other their unflinching courage.  After burying three
+non-commissioned officers who had been killed the day before, I reached
+the Advanced Dressing Station near which our regiment was "standing to"
+in a support trench.  Other regiments of our Division were carrying out
+the attack and, with small loss, had taken the enemy lines. The German
+trenches had been blotted out by our shells but their deep dug-outs,
+with machine-guns at their mouths, remained untouched, and it was almost
+impossible for our soldiers to discover them until they got within a few
+yards of the entrances.
+
+The German commander’s idea was to keep his men in the shelter of the
+dug-outs until our barrage lifted.  They were then to rush out with
+machine-guns and rifles to destroy our men who were following it up.  If
+the idea had been carried out, the German line would have been
+impregnable for our men would have been mown down like corn before the
+reaper.  It failed because German human nature could not rise to the
+occasion.  The German soldiers had been demoralized by the safety of the
+dug-outs and by the thunder of our shells above them.  They cowered in
+the dug-outs when they should have rushed out. The critical moment
+passed, and with its passing our soldiers leapt to the entrances and
+threw down hand grenades.  There was a wild cry of pain and fear from
+below.  Arms went up and the cry of "Kamerad."  The surrender was
+accepted and the beaten soldiers crawled out.  From some dug-outs as
+many as two hundred prisoners were taken.  In other parts of the line
+there was a stiff fight, but, on the whole, our casualties were very
+light. From my own observation I should say that we took more prisoners
+than we suffered casualties.  Some companies could boast a prisoner for
+each man engaged in the attack.
+
+The Advanced Dressing Station was at the corner of Cross Roads and the
+sight around it was wonderful to behold.  A crowd of prisoners was
+assembling ready to be marched to the cages, and wounded officers and
+men, British and German, were being bandaged. The prisoners were hungry.
+For some days our artillery had cut off their rations.  A platoon of our
+soldiers came marching by, and, to save time, eating their breakfasts as
+they passed along.  The prisoners looked at them with hungry eyes.  Our
+men saw the look and stopped.  Breaking rank for a moment they passed in
+and out among the prisoners and shared out their rations.  "Here,
+Fritzy, old boy, take this," I heard all around me, and Fritz did not
+need asking twice.  He took the biscuits and cheese gratefully and
+eagerly. The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and he felt that he
+had found friends where he had only expected to find enemies.  He began
+to hope for kindness in his captivity.  The scene was one of pure
+goodwill.
+
+Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy. Our Tommies laughed and
+cracked jokes which no German could understand, but I heard not a single
+taunt or bitter word.  In fact, Fritz was treated more like a pet than a
+prisoner. One who had worked in London, and who spoke English, asked me
+for a cup of tea for a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I got one
+in the dressing station.  The platoon of Tommies re-formed and marched
+away to the battle and the prisoners were led off to the cages.  There
+were still large numbers of prisoners on the road, and they were moving
+about without guards.  Many of them were being used as stretcher-bearers
+and they seemed to do their work out of goodwill and not of constraint.
+
+Their assistance was of great help to the wounded.  The battle was going
+well with us. Everyone felt in good heart and kindly disposed.  An
+officer who lay seriously wounded and waiting for a car told me of the
+splendid work which his regiment had done.  His eyes shone with
+suppressed excitement and pride as he told the story.  While he was
+speaking two soldiers came limping down the road and their appearance
+was greeted with a burst of laughter.  One was English, the other
+German. Tommy had his arm round the German’s neck and was leaning on him
+while Fritz, with his arm round the lad’s waist, helped him along. They
+came along very slowly for both were wounded, but they laughed and
+talked together like long-lost brothers.  Yet neither could understand a
+word the other said.
+
+I passed down the road towards the line. Gunners of the Territorials
+were hurriedly hitching their guns to the horses ready to advance to new
+positions.  In the ruined village a party of engineers was already
+unloading a wagon of rails with which to build a light railway.  I
+continued along the road towards the next village.  It had just fallen
+into our hands and not one stone was left on another.  There were scores
+of wounded men hobbling back from it and I gave my arm to such as needed
+it most.  A badly wounded Tommy was being brought along on a wheeler by
+two orderlies and as I helped them through the traffic we heard the
+heavy rumble of the advancing field-guns.
+
+The road was cleared with the quickness of lightning.  Out of the
+village the batteries burst at a mad gallop and down the road they came
+at break-neck speed.  With the swiftness of a fire engine in a city
+street the rocking guns swept past.  The gunners clung to the ammunition
+limbers with both hands and the drivers whipped and spurred the excited
+foam-flecked horses as though they were fiery beings leaping through the
+air and incapable of fatigue or weakness.  Suddenly the drivers raised
+their whips as a sign to those behind, and the trembling horses and
+bounding guns came to a dead halt.  The leading gun had overturned at a
+nasty place where the road dipped down into the hollow.  The rest of the
+batteries stood exposed on the crest of the ridge.  Before retiring the
+Germans had felled all the trees that grew by the roadside so that
+nothing might obstruct their line of vision.  Such a catastrophe as this
+was what the enemy had been hoping for.  The sun shone brilliantly, and
+our batteries were a direct target for the German gunners such as seldom
+occurs.  Our boys were caught like rats in a trap.  By the side of the
+road ran a shallow trench and near us two broad steps into it.  We laid
+the wounded lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down by his side.
+Shells were falling all around and fountains of dirt and debris rose
+into the air and, on five or six occasions, covered us with their spray.
+
+I covered the lad’s face.  He was barely conscious and uttered no word.
+It seemed as if nothing could live in such a bombardment.  A shell burst
+near, and the cry of dying horses rent the air.  The traces were cut and
+the horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road. Every second I expected
+to see the horses and drivers in front of me blown into the air and I
+watched them with fascinated eyes.  Not a man stirred.  They sat on
+their horses and gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze.
+Not a man sought the trench and not a man relieved the tension by going
+forward to see what was wrong or to lend a hand.  Each knew his place,
+and if death sought him it would know where to find him.  The horses
+felt that they had brave men on their backs and, in that mysterious way
+peculiar to horses, caught the spirit of their riders.  Every shell
+covered men and horses with chalk and soil, but they remained an
+immobile as statuary.  It was magnificent and it was war.  A driver in
+the battery beside us got wounded in the leg and hand.  He jumped off
+his horse and came to us to be bandaged.  Then he leapt back into the
+saddle.  It seemed an age, but I suppose it was only a few minutes,
+before the obstruction was removed.  The whips flashed in the air and
+the horses sprang forward.  The guns rocked and swayed as they swept
+past us and within a few minutes they were in their new positions under
+the hill upon which lay the ruins of Neuville Vitasse.
+
+The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had started and we lifted out our
+wounded soldier and went in the direction of the dressing station.  Some
+distance up the road my attention was called to one of the drivers whom
+the artillery had left in the care of some privates. He was living, but
+his skull was broken, and he would never wake again to consciousness. He
+was fast "going West."  His day was over and his work was done.  I got
+him lifted on to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station so that
+he might die in peace and be buried in the little soldiers’ cemetery
+behind it.
+
+When I returned in the evening to our billet I told the transport
+officer of the magnificent bravery of the artillery drivers.
+
+"Any other drivers would behave just as well, if caught in the same
+trap," he replied.
+
+He spoke the simple truth.  They would. Such supreme courage and
+devotion to duty are common to the army.  Their presence among all ranks
+and in all sections of the army makes the fact the more wonderful.  Both
+officers and men love life, but they love duty more, and commanders in
+drawing up their plans know that they can rely on their soldiers to
+carry them out.  Our Tommies never fail us whether in France,
+Mesopotamia, or Palestine.  Devotion to duty is inwoven with the fibers
+of their hearts.  They are men who, either in kindness to captives or
+courage amid disaster and destruction, never fail us.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIV*
+
+                     *THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE*
+
+
+The war on the Western Front has been fought in a Roman Catholic country
+where crucifixes are erected at all the chief cross-roads to remind us
+that, in every moment of doubt as to the way of life, and on whichever
+road we finally decide to walk, whether rough or smooth, we shall need
+the Saviour and His redeeming love.  We have seen a cross so often when
+on the march, or when passing down some trench, that it has become
+inextricably mixed up with the war. When we think of the great struggle
+the vision of the cross rises before us, and when we see the cross, we
+think of processions of wounded men who have been broken to save the
+world. Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to rest, we have placed
+over him, as the comment on his death, a simple white cross bearing his
+name.  We never paint any tribute on it. None is needed, for nothing
+else could speak so eloquently as a cross--a white cross.  White is the
+sacred color in the army of to-day, and the cross is the sacred form.
+In after years there will never be any doubt as to where the line of
+liberty ran that held back the flood and force of German tyranny.  From
+the English Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all time with the
+crosses on the graves of the British and French soldiers.  Whatever may
+be our views about the erection of crucifixes by the wayside and at the
+cross-roads, no one can deny that they have had an immense influence for
+good on our men during the war in France.
+
+The experience of many a gallant soldier is expressed in the following
+Belgian poem:
+
+    "I came to a halt at the bend of the road;
+    I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;
+    I came to a halt at the bend of the road.
+
+    "O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,
+    My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;
+    O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee.
+
+    "And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,
+    I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony’s cup;
+    And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up.
+
+    "For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,
+    Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;
+    For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave.
+
+    "Then I cried, ’I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.’
+    And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.
+    Then I cried, ’I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.’
+
+    "Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?
+    Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.
+    Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?"
+
+
+The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier and has provided him with
+the only acceptable philosophy of the war.  It has taught boys just
+entering upon life’s experience that, out-topping all history and
+standing out against the background of all human life, is a Cross on
+which died the Son of God.  It has made the hill of Calvary stand out
+above all other hills in history.  Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon--these may
+stand at the foot of the hill, as did the Roman soldiers, but they are
+made to look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises above them,
+showing forth the figure of the Son of Man.  Against the sky-line of
+human history the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in shadow.  The
+wayside crosses at the Front and the flashes of roaring guns may not
+have taught our soldiers much history, but they have taught them the
+central fact of history; and all else will have to accommodate itself to
+that, or be disbelieved.  The Cross of Christ is the center of the
+picture for evermore, and the grouping of all other figures must be
+round it.
+
+To the soldiers it can never again be made a detail in some other
+picture.  Seen also in the light of their personal experience it has
+taught them that as a cross lies at the basis of the world’s life and
+shows bare at every crisis of national and international life so, at the
+root of all individual life, is a cross.  They have been taught to look
+for it at every parting of the ways.  Suffering to redeem others and
+make others happy will now be seen as the true aim of life and not the
+grasping of personal pleasure or profit.  They have stood where high
+explosive shells thresh out the corn from the chaff--the true from the
+false.  They have seen facts in a light that lays things stark and bare;
+and the cant talked by skeptical armchair-philosophers will move them as
+little as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops. For three long
+years our front-line trenches have run through what was once a village
+called Neuve Chapelle.  There is nothing left of it now.  But there is
+something there which is tremendously impressive.  It is a crucifix. It
+stands out above everything, for the land is quite flat around it.  The
+cross is immediately behind our firing trench, and within two or three
+hundred yards of the German front trench.  The figure of Christ is
+looking across the waste of No Man’s Land.  Under His right arm and
+under His left, are British soldiers holding the line.  Two dud shells
+lie at the the foot.  One is even touching the wood, but though hundreds
+of shells must have swept by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it
+remains undamaged.  Trenches form a labyrinth all round it.  When our
+men awake and "stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is the cross;
+and when at night they lie down in the side of the trench, or turn into
+their dug-outs, their last sight is the cross.  It stands clear in the
+noon-day sun; and in the moonlight it takes on a solemn grandeur.
+
+I first saw it on a November afternoon when the sun was sinking under
+heavy banks of cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene as it must
+have been on the first Good Friday, when the sun died with its dying
+Lord, and darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and covered Him with its
+funeral pall to hide His dying agonies from the curious eyes of
+unbelieving men.  I had had tea in a dug-out, and it was dark when I
+left.  Machine-guns were sweeping No Man’s Land to brush back enemies
+that might be creeping towards us through the long grass; and the air
+was filled with a million clear, cracking sounds.  Star-shells rose and
+fell and their brilliant lights lit up the silent form on the cross.
+
+For three years, night and day, Christ has been standing there in the
+midst of our soldiers, with arms outstretched in blessing.  They have
+looked up at Him through the clear starlight of a frosty night; and they
+have seen His pale face by the silver rays of the moon as she has sailed
+her course through the heavens.  In the gloom of a stormy night they
+have seen the dark outline, and caught a passing glimpse of Christ’s
+effigy by the flare of the star-shells.  What must have been the
+thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts as all night long they
+have gazed at the cross; or of the officers as they have passed down the
+trench to see that all was well; or of some private sleeping in the
+trench and, being awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to restore
+blood-circulation?  Deep thoughts, I imagine, much too deep for words of
+theirs or mine.
+
+And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was raging and the wounded, whose
+blood was turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what thoughts must
+have been theirs then?  Did they not feel that He was their big Brother
+and remember that blood had flowed from Him as from them; that pain had
+racked Him as it racked them; and that He thought of His mother and of
+Nazareth as they thought of their mother and the little cottage they
+were never to see again?  When their throats became parched and their
+lips swollen with thirst did they not remember how He, too, had cried
+for a drink; and, most of all, did they not call to mind the fact that
+He might have saved Himself, as they might, if He had cared more for His
+own happiness than for the world’s? As their spirits passed out through
+the wounds in their bodies would they not ask Him to remember them as
+their now homeless souls knocked at the gate of His Kingdom?  He had
+stood by them all through the long and bloody battle while hurricanes of
+shells swept over and around Him.  I do not wonder that the men at the
+Front flock to the Lord’s Supper to commemorate His death.  They will
+not go without it.  If the Sacrament be not provided, they ask for it.
+At home there was never such a demand for it as exists at the Front.
+There is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the Cross, between the
+soldier and his Saviour.
+
+And yet, to those who willed the war and drank to the day of its coming,
+even the Cross has no sacredness.  It is to them but a tool of war.  An
+officer told me that during the German retreat from the Somme they
+noticed a peculiar accuracy in the enemy’s firing.  The shells followed
+an easily distinguishable course. So many casualties occurred from this
+accurate shelling that the officers set themselves to discover the
+cause.  They found that the circle of shells had for its center the
+cross-roads, and that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood up
+clearly as a land-mark.  Evidently the crosses were being used to guide
+the gunners, and was causing the death of our men.  But a more
+remarkable thing came to light.  The cross stood close to the road, and
+when the Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the cross-roads to
+delay our advance.  Everything near had been blown to bits by the
+explosion except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it. And yet it
+could not have escaped, except by a miracle.  They therefore set
+themselves to examine the seeming miracle and came across one of the
+most astounding cases of fiendish cunning.  They found that the Germans
+had made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that they could take it
+out or put it in at pleasure. Before blowing up the cross-roads they had
+taken the cross out of its socket and removed it to a safe distance,
+then, when the mine had exploded, they put the cross back so that it
+might be a landmark to direct their shooting. And now they were using
+Christ’s instrument of redemption as an instrument for men’s
+destruction.
+
+But our young officers resolved to restore the cross to its work of
+saving men.  They waited till night fell, and then removed the cross to
+a point a hundred or two yards to the left. When in the morning the
+German gunners fired their shells their observers found that the shells
+fell too far wide of the cross and they could make nothing of the
+mystery.  It looked as if someone had been tampering with their guns in
+the night.  To put matters right they altered the position of their guns
+so that once more the shells made a circle round the cross. And
+henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the shells fell harmlessly into
+the outlying fields. Nor was this the only time during their retreat
+that the Germans put the cross to this base use and were foiled in their
+knavery.
+
+When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ and turns it into a tool to
+gain an advantage over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to ask who
+began the war, and folly to close our eyes to the horrors and
+depravities which are being reached in the waging of it.
+
+There is a new judgment of the nations now proceeding and who shall
+predict what shall be?  The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and our
+attitude towards it decides our fate.  I have seen the attitude of our
+soldiers towards the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards that for which
+it stands; and I find more comfort in their reverence for Christ and
+Christianity than in all their guns and impediments of war.
+
+The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks of time, and the nations
+will survive that stand beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of
+righteousness, liberty and truth.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *XV*
+
+                       *THE CHILDREN OF OUR DEAD*
+
+
+There are times when we get away from the Front for a rest.  We hear no
+more the sound of the guns, but give ourselves up to the silence and
+charm of the country.  Before going into the Somme fighting we were
+billeted for ten days in the neighboring village to Cressy; and as the
+anniversary of the battle came that week the colonel chose the day for a
+march to the battlefield.  The owner of the field, when the old windmill
+stood, from which King Edward III directed his army, came to meet us and
+describe the battle.  When the war is over he is going to erect a
+monument on the spot to the memory of the French and British troops who
+in comradeship have died fighting against the common foe.
+
+They were happy days that we spent around Cressy.  The last that some
+were destined to know this side of the Great Divide.  The bedroom next
+to mine was occupied by two fine young officers of utterly different
+type.  One was a Greek whose father had taken out naturalization papers
+and loved the country of his adoption with a worshiping passion that
+would shame many native born.  The other was a charming, argumentative,
+systematic, theological student of Scots parentage.  The night before we
+left, the Greek accidentally broke his mirror and was much upset.  It
+was, he said, a token that Death was about to claim him.  The Scot
+laughed heartily, for he had not a trace of the superstitious in him;
+or, if he had--which was more than likely--it was kept under by his
+strong reasoning faculties.
+
+"If you are to be killed," he replied, "I am to be killed too, for I
+also have broken my mirror."
+
+He spoke the words in jest, or with hardly a discernible undercurrent of
+seriousness; but they were true words nevertheless.  The two bed-mates
+were killed in the same battle a week or two later.  I had tea with them
+in their dug-out on the eve of the fight.  They were to take up their
+positions in an hour, but the student could not resist having just one
+more argument.  He directed the conversation to the New Theology, and to
+German philosophers and Biblical scholars.  He simply talked me off my
+feet, for he possessed the most brilliant intellect in the regiment,
+combined with self-reliance and perfect modesty.  Then the conversation
+turned to the question of taking a tot of rum before going over the
+parapet.  He was a rigid teetotaler, "for," said he, "drink is the ruin
+of my country."  He was opposed to the idea of taking rum to help one’s
+courage or allay his fears.  He would not, he said, go under with his
+eyes bandaged.  He would take a good look at Death and dare him to do
+his worst.  He was superb, and Death never felled a manlier man.
+Browning would have loved him as his own soul for he had Browning’s
+attitude to life exactly, and could have sung with him,
+
+      "Fear death? ...
+    I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
+      The best and the last!
+    I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
+      And bade me creep past.
+    No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
+      The heroes of old,
+    Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears
+      Of pain, darkness and cold.
+    For sudden the worst turns best to the brave,
+      The black minute’s at end,
+    And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
+      Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+    Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
+      Then a light...
+      And with God be the rest!"
+
+
+He was found with his "body against the wall where the forts of folly
+fall."  His brave, intelligent face was completely blown away. His Greek
+friend was wounded, and while being dressed in a shell-hole by his
+servant, was hit again and killed.
+
+Some weeks later all that remained of the regiment was drawn out to a
+little village some miles from Amiens, and very similar to the one we
+had occupied near Cressy.  We were taken to it in motor-’buses for the
+men were too exhausted to march, and the days spent there were days of
+great delight.  We had a glorious, crowded-out service on the Sunday. It
+was both a thanksgiving and a memorial service, and I spoke to the men
+on "The Passing of the Angels."
+
+"When the music ceased," I said, "and the herald-angels departed, the
+sky became very empty, cold and gray to the Shepherds; and they said one
+to another, ’let us now go even unto Bethlehem.’  And they went and
+found out Jesus.  If the angels had stayed the shepherds would have
+stayed with them.  The angels had to come to point them to Jesus but,
+that done, they had to go away to make the shepherds desire Jesus and
+seek Him.  ’When the half-gods go the gods arrive.’  The angels had to
+make room for Jesus and the second best had to yield place to the best.
+When John the Baptist was killed his disciples went in their sorrow to
+Jesus; and having lost our noble comrades, we must go to Him also.  The
+best in our friends came from Jesus as the sweet light of the moon comes
+from the sun; and we must go to the Source.  If we find and keep to
+Jesus, sooner or later we shall find our lost friends again, for ’them
+also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him!’"
+
+In some such words I tried to comfort those who had left their comrades
+behind in the graves on the Somme; for I know how deeply they felt the
+loss.  During the week we had dinner parties, and all kinds of jolly
+social intercourse.  It was amusing to see the delight everyone felt at
+having a bed to sleep in. "Look Padre, at these white sheets," an
+officer cried as I passed his window.  He was as merry over them as if a
+rich maiden aunt had remembered him in her will.  Some got "leave" home,
+and were so frankly joyful about it that it made the rest of us both
+glad and envious. We made up for it somewhat by getting leave to spend
+an occasional day in Amiens.  There I went into the glorious cathedral.
+Almost the whole of the front was sandbagged, but even thus, it was a
+"thing of beauty" and has become for me a "joy forever."
+
+Except Rouen Cathedral I have seen nothing to equal it.  Notre Dame,
+with its invisible yet clinging tapestry of history, is more deeply
+moving.  But it is sadder--more sombre. Something of the ugliness and
+tragedy of by-gone days peep out in it; but Amiens Cathedral is a thing
+of pure joy and beauty.  It suggests fairies, while Notre Dame suggests
+goblins.
+
+While I was looking at its glorious rose-windows which were casting
+their rich colors on the pillars, a father and his two children came in.
+The man and son dipped their fingers in the shell of holy water, crossed
+their foreheads and breasts with the water, and were passing on; but the
+little girl who was too short to reach the shell, took hold of her
+father’s arm and pulled him back.  She, too, wished to dip her fingers
+in holy water, and make the sign of the cross over her mind and heart.
+The father yielded to her importunity and touched her hand with his wet
+fingers. She made the sacred sign and was satisfied. The father and son
+had remembered their own needs but forgotten the child’s.
+
+After all the tragic happenings on the Somme why should this little
+incident linger in my memory like a primrose in a crater?  Did it not
+linger _because_ of the tragedy of the preceding weeks?  I had been
+living weeks together without seeing a child and after the slaughter of
+youth which I had witnessed the sight of a child in a cathedral was
+inexpressibly beautiful.  The father’s neglect of its finer needs gave
+me pain.  We have lost so many young men, that every child and youth
+left to us ought to be cared for as the apple of our eye.  We have lost
+more than our young men. We have lost those who would have been their
+children.  The little ones who might have been, have gone to their
+graves with their fathers.
+
+The old recruiting cry, "the young and single first" was necessary from
+a military standpoint but, from a merely human point of view, I could
+never see much justice in it.  The young had no responsibility, direct
+or indirect, for the war.  They were given life and yet before they
+could taste it, they were called upon to die in our behalf.  We who are
+older have tasted of life and love; the residue of our years will be
+much the same as those that have gone before; there will be little of
+surprise or newness of experience.  Perhaps, too, we have living
+memorials of ourselves, so that if we die, our personality and name will
+still live on. Our death will only be partial.  While William Pitt lived
+could it be said that Lord Chatham had died?  His body was dead, truly,
+but his spirit found utterance in the British House of Commons every
+time his son spoke, and Napoleon felt the strength of his arm as truly
+did Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham.  I should not have mourned the
+loss of the young Scot and the Greek so much, had they left to the world
+some image and likeness of themselves.  In dying, they gave more than
+themselves to death;
+
+    "Those who would have been
+    Their sons they gave--their immortality."
+
+
+After a summer on the Somme, I have come to understand something of how
+fear of the devouring maw of Time became almost an obsession with
+Shakespeare.  Death had taken from him some of the dearest intimates of
+his heart, and taken them young.  And so, like the sound of a
+funeral-bell echoing down the lane where lovers walk, there is heard
+through all his sonnets and poems of love the approaching footsteps of
+death.  Sometimes the footsteps sound faintly, but they are seldom
+absent. How then would he have felt in a war like this, in which the
+"young and single" have gone out by the hundred thousand to prematurely
+die?
+
+Others, however, who have given their lives were married men, and they
+have left images of themselves in trust to the nation.  We know the last
+thoughts of a dying father.  Captain Falcon Scott as he lay dying at the
+South Pole has expressed them for all time.  "Take care of the boy," he
+said, "there should be good stuff in him."  He found comfort in the
+reflection that he would, though he died, live on in his son; but he was
+saddened by the thought that the son would have to face the battle of
+life without a father to back him up.  The boy would therefore need
+special "care."
+
+On the evening of the first battle of the Somme I spoke to a young
+officer as he lay in a bed at the Field Ambulance.  He had lost his
+right arm and he told me how it had happened.  He was charging across No
+Man’s Land when a shell cut it off near the shoulder, and flung it
+several yards away.  As he saw it fall to the ground the sight so
+overcame him that he cried aloud in distress, "Oh my arm! My beautiful
+arm."  He was still mourning its loss, so, to comfort him, I told him
+that Nelson lost _his_ right arm and won the Battle of Trafalgar after
+he had lost it.  Like Nelson, I told him, he would learn to write with
+his left hand and still do a man’s job.  He would not be useless in life
+as he feared. When the children of our dead soldiers charge across No
+Man’s Land in the battle of life they will think of their lost fathers,
+and the agonizing cry of the young wounded soldier will rise to their
+lips, "Oh my arm, my beautiful arm."  The State is providing artificial
+arms for our wounded soldiers.  Will it be a right arm to the children
+of its dead?  Will it be a father to the fatherless and a husband to the
+widow?  Unless it is ready for this sacred task, it had no right to ask
+for and accept the lives of these men.
+
+The State, with the help of the Church, must resolve that no child shall
+suffer because its father was a hero and patriot.  The State must help
+the child to the shell of holy water without the little one having to
+pull at its arm to remind it of its duties.  If the children of our dead
+soldiers lack education, food, moral and spiritual guidance, or a proper
+start in life, no words will be condemnatory enough to adequately
+describe the nation’s crime and ingratitude.  They are the sons and
+daughters of heroes and there "should be good stuff" in them.  It is the
+nation’s privilege, as well as its duty, to take the place of their
+fathers.
+
+A few days later I walked into Arras from the neighboring village.
+There were guns all along the road, and there was not a house but bore
+the mark of shells.  Some of the civilians had remained, but these were
+mostly old people who could not settle elsewhere, and who preferred to
+die at home rather than live in a strange place.  One house impressed me
+greatly.  It had been badly damaged but, its garden was untouched and in
+it were half a dozen rose-trees.  It was the beginning of spring, and
+each tree was covered over with sacking to preserve it from the cold and
+fragments of shells.  The owner did not care sufficiently for his own
+life to move away, but he cared for the life of his roses.  And so, when
+the summer came there were roses in at least one garden in Arras.
+
+The noise of the guns was terrific and the old man had to live in the
+cellar, but he found leisure of soul to cultivate his roses.  His action
+was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in the entire war.  The
+children of our homes are more beautiful than Arras roses, and more
+difficult to rear.  May we trust our country not to neglect them?  Will
+she save them from the mark of the shell, and help them to grow up to a
+full and perfect loveliness? Our dying soldiers have trusted her to do
+it. From their graves they plead,
+
+    "If ye break faith with us who die,
+    We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
+    In Flanders fields."
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XVI*
+
+                         *A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE*
+
+
+It was in a ruined village behind the trenches.  A fatigue party had
+just come out of the line, and was on its way to rest-billets in the
+next village.  The men were tired so they sat down to rest in the
+deserted street.  Suddenly, a scream, as from a disembodied spirit,
+pierced the air.  There was a crash, a cloud of smoke, and five men lay
+dead on the pavement, and twelve wounded. Next morning I was asked to
+bury one of the dead.  Under a glorious July sky a Roman Catholic
+chaplain and I cycled between desolate fields into the village.  A
+rifleman guided us down a communication-trench till we came to the
+cemetery.  It was a little field fenced with trees.  There we found a
+Church of England chaplain.  He and the Catholic chaplain had two men
+each to bury.
+
+A burial party was at work on the five graves. It was the fatigue party
+of the evening before, and the men were preparing the last resting place
+of those who had died at their side. They worked rapidly, for all the
+morning the village had been under a bombardment which had not as yet
+ceased.  Before they had finished they were startled by the familiar but
+fatal scream of a shell and threw themselves on the ground.  It burst a
+short distance away without doing harm, and the soldiers went on with
+their work, as if nothing had happened. When the graves were ready, two
+of the bodies were brought out and lowered with ropes. The Church of
+England chaplain read the burial service over them, and we all stood
+round as mourners.  Two more bodies were brought out and we formed a
+circle round them while the Roman Catholic chaplain read the burial
+service of his Church--chiefly, in Latin.  There now remained but one,
+and he, in turn, was quietly lowered into his grave.  He was still
+wearing his boots and uniform and was wrapped around with his blanket.
+
+    "No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
+    Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
+    But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
+    With his martial cloak around him."
+
+
+All his comrades who had been with him in the dread hour of death were
+mourning by his grave, and standing with them were his officer and two
+chaplains.  I read the full service as it is given in our Prayer Book.
+It was all that one could do for him.  The Catholic chaplain had
+sprinkled consecrated water on the bodies and I sprinkled consecrated
+soil.  Was it not in truth holy soil?  Behind me was one long, common
+grave in which lay buried a hundred and ten French soldiers; "110
+Braves" was the inscription the cross bore.  In front of me were three
+rows of graves in which were lying British soldiers.  French and British
+soldiers were mingling their dust.  In death, as in life, they were not
+divided.
+
+I felt led to offer no prayer for the lad at my feet, nor for his dead
+comrades.  He needed no prayer of mine; rather did I need his.  He was
+safe home in port.  The storm had spent itself and neither rock, nor
+fog, nor fire would trouble him again.  His living comrades and I were
+still out in the storm, battling towards the land.  He had no need of
+us, but his parents and comrades had need of him.  We were there to pay
+a tribute to his life and death, to pray for his loved ones, and to
+learn how frail we are and how dependent upon Him who is beyond the
+reach of the chances and changes of this mortal life.
+
+I was half way through the recital of the last prayer--"We bless Thy
+Holy Name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and
+fear"--when that fatal, well-known scream, as of a vulture darting down
+on its prey, again tore the air.  The men, as they had been taught,
+dropped to the ground like stones.  My office demanded that I should
+continue the prayer, and leave with God the decision as to how it should
+end.  There was a crash, and the branches of the trees overhead trembled
+as some fragments of shell smote them.  But there was nothing more.  The
+men rose as quickly as they had fallen, and all were reverently standing
+to attention before the last words of the prayer found utterance.  The
+graves were filled in and we went our several ways.  Next day white
+crosses were placed over the five mounds, and we bade them a long and
+last farewell.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XVII*
+
+                         *A SOLDIER’S CALVARY*
+
+
+There is one afternoon on the Somme that stands out in my memory like a
+dark hill when the sun has sunk below the verge and left a lingering bar
+of red across the sky.  It was a Calvary thick with the bodies of our
+men.  I was looking for the Westminsters and they were difficult to
+find.  I passed over one trench and reached another. There I asked the
+men if they knew where the Westminsters were, and they expressed the
+opinion that the regiment was in the trench ahead.  There was no
+communication trench so I followed a fatigue-party for some distance
+which was marching in single file, and carrying hand-grenades to the
+firing line.  They turned to the right and I kept straight on. Every few
+yards I passed rifles reversed and fastened in the ground by their
+bayonets.  They marked the graves of the dead.  A few soldiers, but
+newly killed, were still lying out.
+
+At last I reached a trench and found in it a number of Westminsters.
+They were signalers on special duty, and they told me that I had already
+passed the regiment on my left. The poor fellows were in a sad plight.
+The weather was cold and they were without shelter.  There were German
+dug-outs but they were partly blown in and full of German dead. The
+stench that rose from these, and from the shallow graves around, was
+almost unbearable. Yet there amid falling shells, the lads had to remain
+day and night.  Their rations were brought to them, but as every ounce
+of food and drop of water, in addition to the letters from home, had to
+be brought on pack mules through seven or eight miles of field tracks in
+which the mules struggled on up to the knees in sticky mud and sometimes
+up to the belly, it was impossible for the regiment to receive anything
+beyond water and "iron rations," i.e., hard biscuits.  Water was so
+precious that not a drop could be spared to wash faces or clean teeth
+with, and I always took my own water-bottle and food, to avoid sharing
+the scanty supplies of the officers.  After a little time spent with the
+signalers I moved up the trench and looked in at the little dug-out of
+the Colonel commanding.  All the officers present, bearded almost beyond
+recognition, were sitting on the floor.  The enemy had left a small red
+electric light, which added an almost absurd touch of luxury to the
+miserable place.  Farther up the trench I found the Brigade Staff
+Captain in a similar dug-out and after making inquiries as to the
+position of the Queen’s Westminster Regiment which was my objective, I
+left to find it; for the sun was already setting. The path was across
+the open fields, and the saddest I have ever trod.  I was alone and had
+but little idea of location, but it was impossible to miss the path.  On
+the right and left, it was marked at every few steps with dead men.
+Most of them were still grasping their rifles.  They had fallen forward
+as they rushed over the ground, and their faces--their poor, blackened,
+lipless faces--were towards the foe.  There had, as yet, been no
+opportunity to bury them for the ground was still being shelled and the
+burial parties had been all too busily engaged in other parts of the
+field.  I longed to search for their identity discs that I might know
+who they were and make a note of the names; but I had to leave it to the
+burial party.  I was already feeling sick with the foul smells in the
+trench and the sights on the way, and lacked the strength to look for
+the discs around the wrists and necks of the poor, decomposed bodies.
+It had to be left to men of the burial party whose nerves were somewhat
+more hardened to the task by other experiences of the kind.  It was a
+new Calvary on which I was standing.  These poor bodies miles from home
+and with no woman’s hands to perform the last offices of affection were
+lying there as the price of the world’s freedom.
+
+Would that all who talk glibly of freedom and justice might have seen
+what I saw on that dreary journey, that they might the better realize
+the spiritual depths of liberty and righteousness, and the high cost at
+which they are won for the race.  It is fatally easy to persuade
+ourselves that there is no need for us to tread the bitter path of
+suffering and death--that we can achieve freedom and justice by being
+charitable, and by talking amiably to our enemies.  We try to believe
+that they are as anxious to achieve liberty for the world as we are,
+that they are striving to bind mankind in fetters of iron, only through
+lack of knowledge as to our intentions.  Their hearts and intentions are
+good but they are misled, and after a little talk with them around a
+table they would put off their "shining armor" and become angels of
+light carrying palm branches in place of swords and fetters.
+
+This is a mighty pleasant theory, only it is not true; and we cannot get
+rid of evil by ignoring it, nor of the devil by buying him a new suit.
+There are men willing to die to destroy liberty, just as there are
+others willing to die in its defense.  It is not that they do not
+understand liberty.  They _do_, and that is why they wish to destroy it.
+It is the enemy of their ideal.  Whether liberty will survive or not,
+depends upon whether there are more men inspired to die in defending
+liberty, than there are willing to die in opposing it.  A thing lives
+while men love it sufficiently well to die for it. We get what we
+deserve; and readiness to die for it is the price God has put on
+liberty.
+
+Words are things too cheap to buy it.  When someone suggested
+establishing a new religion to supersede Christianity, Voltaire is
+reported to have asked if the founder were willing to be crucified for
+it?  Otherwise, it would stand no chance of success.  It was a deep
+criticism, and showed that Voltaire was no fool.  Blood is the test, not
+words.  A nation can only achieve liberty when it is determined to be
+free or die. "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it."
+"Never man spake" as Christ spake, but He did not save the world by
+talking to it, but by dying for it.  Outpoured blood, not outpoured
+words, is the proof of moral convictions and the means of their
+propaganda; our soldiers may not be learned in some things, but they
+have learned _that_.  They know the cause will win which has most moral
+power, and that the cause with most moral strength will prove itself to
+be the one with most martyrs. And the side with most men ready to be
+martyrs will outstay the other.  The spirit of martyrdom, not
+negotiation, is the path to liberty and peace.  You cannot negotiate
+with a tiger.  The dispute is too simple for negotiation. You have to
+kill the tiger, or yourself be killed.
+
+While I was on leave, a man told me that he had asked some soldiers from
+the Front why they were fighting, and they could not tell him.
+Probably.  All the deepest things are of life beyond telling.  No true
+man can tell why he loves his wife or children.  This trust in words, in
+being able to "tell why," is truly pathetic.  I would not trust a wife’s
+love if she could tell her husband exactly _why_ she loved him; nor
+would I trust our soldiers not to turn tail in battle if they could
+_tell_ just why they are fighting.  They cannot _tell_, but with their
+poor lipless faces turned defiantly against the foe they can _show_ why
+they are fighting. Let those who want to know the soldiers’ reason _why_
+they fight go and see them there on the blasted field of battle, not ask
+them when they come home on leave.  The lips of a soldier perish
+_first_, as his dead body lies exposed on the battlefield; his rifle he
+clutches to the last; and it is a lesson terrible enough for even the
+densest talker to understand.
+
+The dead lads lying out in the open with their rifles pointing towards
+the enemy voice their reason why loud enough for the deaf to hear and
+the world to heed.  Ideals must be died for if they are to be realized
+on earth, for they have bitter enemies who stick at nothing.  And we
+have to defend our ideal with our lives or be cravens and let it perish.
+
+History, with unimportant variations, is constantly repeating itself;
+and in nothing is it so consistent as in the price it puts on liberty.
+The lease of liberty runs out; the lease has to be renewed, and it is
+renewed by suffering and martyrdom.  The dear dead lads whom I saw on
+that terrible afternoon were renewing the lease.  With their bodies they
+had marked out a highway over which the peoples of the earth may march
+to freedom and to justice.
+
+The view, all too common, that our soldiers regard the war as a kind of
+picnic, and an attack as a sort of rush for the goal in a game of
+football, is false--false as sin.  It is a view blind to the whole
+psychology of the war, and misses the meaning of our soldiers’ gayety as
+much as it ignores their fear and sorrow.  The trenches are a Gethsemane
+to them and their prayer is, "Our Father, all things are possible unto
+Thee: take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what
+Thou wilt."
+
+One day, when I went into a mess-room in which letters were being
+censored, an officer said to me, "Read this, Padre, there’s a reference
+to you, and a candid expression of a man’s attitude towards religion."
+
+I took the letter and it read: "Our chaplain isn’t far out when he says,
+in his book, that though we may speak lightly of the church we don’t
+think or speak lightly of Christ. However careless we may be when we are
+out of the trenches, when we are in we all pray. There is nothing else
+we can do."
+
+I have been eighteen months with a fighting regiment on the Front, and I
+have never spoken to any officer who did not regard it as a mathematical
+certainty that, unless he happened to fall sick or be
+transferred--neither of which he expected--he would be either killed or
+wounded.  And I agreed with him without saying it.  He does not even
+hope to escape wounds.  They are inevitable if he stays long enough; for
+one battle follows another and his time comes.  He only hopes to escape
+death and the more ghastly wounds.  He hopes the wound when it comes
+will be a "cushy one."  The men take the same view.  The period before
+going into the trenches, or into battle, is to them like the Garden of
+Gethsemane was to Christ; they are "exceeding sorrowful" and in their
+presence I have often felt as one who stood "as it were, a stone’s
+throw" from them. They are going out with the expectation of meeting
+death.
+
+On the 1st of July, 1916, twenty officers in our regiment went over the
+top.  Nineteen were killed or wounded and the one who returned to the
+regiment was suffering from shell-shock and had to be sent home.
+Although our losses are much lower now, the officers and men experience
+the agony and bloody sweat of Gethsemane rather than the pleasure of a
+picnic in Epping Forest.  This explains, too, their gayety.  It is the
+happiness of men who know that they are doing their bit for the world’s
+good, and playing the man, not the cad.  The rise of happiness into
+gayety is the natural reaction from the sorrow and alarm which have been
+clouding their hearts.  In peace time they will never know either the
+intensity of joy or sorrow they know now.  A man never feels so truly
+humorous as when he is sad.  Humor is a kind of inverted sadness. The
+most exquisite sadness produces the most exquisite humor as the deepest
+wells give the sweetest, purest and coldest water.
+
+    Tears and laughter are never far from one another,
+    The heart overflows on one side, and then on the other.
+
+
+Our soldiers’ minds are not filled with thoughts of Germans, but with
+thoughts of the friends they have left behind them.  Nor do they often
+think of killing Germans.  They neither think so much of the Germans nor
+so bitterly of them as do the people at home. The Germans have not the
+same prominence in the picture.  Deeds relieve their emotions in regard
+to the Germans and leave their hearts open for the things and folk they
+love.
+
+It is commonly supposed (and this idea is fostered by some war
+correspondents), that when our men go over the top they are possessed
+with a mad lust to kill Germans.  The ultimate aim of a general planning
+a battle is to kill Germans no doubt, for that is the only way to
+achieve victory; and if the Germans do not want to be killed they know
+what to do. Let them surrender or retire.  The private agrees with the
+general in the necessity for killing Germans, but that is not what he is
+thinking of when he goes over the top; nor is it what we should be
+thinking of in his place. He is thinking of the Germans killing him.
+Life is sweet at nineteen or one-and-twenty.  It pleads to be spared a
+little longer.  A lad does not want to die; and as he goes over the
+parapet he is thinking less of taking German lives than of losing his
+own.  He knows that German heads will not fit English shoulders, and
+that, however many enemy lives he may take, none of them will restore
+his own if he loses it, as he is quite likely to do.  He is going out to
+be mutilated or to die.  That is his standpoint whatever may be the
+general’s or the war-correspondent’s.  He goes for his country’s sake
+and the right.  It is his duty, and there is an end of it.
+
+Most of the killing in modern war is done by the artillery and
+machine-guns.  Comparatively few men have seen the face of an enemy they
+know themselves to have killed.  A regiment goes out to be shot at,
+rather than to shoot.  Unless this simple fact be grasped, the mentality
+of the soldier cannot be understood. The lust for killing Germans would
+never take a man out of his dug-out; but the love of his country and the
+resolve to do his duty will take him out and lead him over the top.  It
+is what he volunteered for, but it goes hard when the time comes for all
+that.
+
+The unburied men I saw had, but a short while ago, no idea of becoming
+soldiers.  They were the light of a home and the stay of a business.
+With that they were content.  But the challenge came; and they went out
+to defend the right against the wrong--the true against the false.  They
+toiled up a new Calvary "with the cross that turns not back," and now
+they lie buried in a strange land.  They have lost all for themselves,
+but they have gained all for us and for those who will come after us.
+Yet although they saved others, themselves they could not save.
+
+
+
+
+                                *XVIII*
+
+                          *THE HOSPITAL TRAIN*
+
+
+We were carried from our regiments to the hospital in ambulance cars.
+I, and several others, had trench fever. Some were suffering from gas
+poisoning.  One lovely boy--for he was nothing more--was near to death
+with "mustard" gas.  The doctor at the Dressing Station had opened a
+vein and bled him of a pint of blood.  It was the only hope of saving
+him.  But as the car bumped over the rough roads and the gas in his
+lungs grew more suffocating he almost despaired of reaching the hospital
+alive.  Others were wounded; and one had appendicitis.  After a period
+in hospital, during which we were honored with a visit by General Byng,
+it was decided that we should go to the Base.  We lay down on
+stretchers, and orderlies carried us to the waiting cars.  At the
+station we were lifted into the hospital train.  The racks had been
+taken down and stretchers put in their places. These were reserved for
+the "lying cases."  The "sitting cases" occupied the seats--one to each
+corner.  It was afternoon and as soon as the train began to move tea was
+served.  The train sped on and, about sun-set, a most excellent dinner
+was provided by the orderlies on board.
+
+It was the time of the new moon.  "Keep the window open," said one, "it
+is unlucky to see the new moon through glass, and we need all the good
+luck we can get," and he avoided looking through the glass until he had
+seen the moon through the open window.  We chatted, read our magazines,
+or slept--just as we felt inclined.  The night wore on and at about two
+o’clock we reached Rouen.  Cars rushed us to one of the Red Cross
+hospitals.  A doctor slipped out of bed, examined our cards, decided in
+which wards we should be put, and orderlies led or carried us thither.
+A nurse showed each of us to his room.  We were got to bed and another
+nurse brought some tea.  Next morning we were examined and put down for
+removal across the Channel.
+
+The nurses are radiant as sunshine, and diffuse a spirit of merriment
+throughout the hospital.  It was a pure joy to be under their care.  At
+three o’clock the following morning, without previous warning, a nurse
+came and awakened us.  We had half an hour to dress. Another nurse then
+came round with a dainty breakfast.  We were then put into cars and
+taken to the hospital train.  It left as dawn was breaking, and we were
+on our way to "Blighty."  We had a comfortable journey and reached Havre
+about nine.  Orderlies carried us on board ship and we were taken to our
+cots.  Breakfast was served immediately.  We felt a huge content; and
+hoped to be across by night.  But the ship remained by the quay all day.
+In the evening it moved out of the harbor and lay near its mouth.
+Towards midnight it slipped its anchor and headed for home.
+
+All had received life-belts and a card directing us which boat to make
+for, should the ship be torpedoed.  Mine was "Boat 5, Starboard."  My
+neighbor on the right had been on a torpedoed boat once and had no
+desire to be on another.  The lights of the ship were obscured or put
+out, and we silently stole over the waters towards the much desired
+haven.  There was no sound but the steady thump of the engines, and we
+were soon asleep.  Shortly after dawn we awoke to find ourselves in
+Southampton Water.  A water-plane drew near, settled like a gull on the
+water, and then plowed its way through the waves with the speed of a
+motor-boat.
+
+About nine o’clock we were carried off the boat to the station.  Women
+workers supplied us with telegraph forms, confectionery and cigarettes;
+orderlies brought us tea.  We were then taken to the train.  It was even
+more comfortable than the hospital trains in France; and we had women
+nurses.  On each side of the train, for its full length, were
+comfortable beds and we were able to sit up or recline at our pleasure.
+Lunch was served on board, and of a character to tempt the most ailing
+man.  No shortage of food is allowed to obtain on the hospital train.
+It has the first claim on the food supply and it has the first claim to
+the railroad.  It stops at no station except for its own convenience.
+Even the King’s train stops to let the hospital train pass.
+
+We were under the care of a nurse who had reached middle life.  She had
+been on a torpedoed hospital ship! on one that struck a mine without
+bursting it; and on another that collided with a destroyer in the dark.
+She was greatly disappointed at the decision which had removed nurses
+from the hospital ships because of the danger from submarines.  She
+fully appreciated the chivalry of the men who would not let their women
+be drowned; but it had robbed the women of a chance of proving their
+devotion, and she could not see why the men should do all the dying.
+The women were ready to meet death with the men and as their mates and
+equals.  Their place was with the wounded whatever might befall, and
+they were ready.
+
+Hospital trains have run daily for three years now, and human nature can
+get used to anything.  We thought, therefore, that the people would have
+become used to the hospital train.  But greater surprise never gladdened
+a man’s heart than the one which awaited us as we steamed out of
+Southampton.  All the women and children by the side of the railway were
+at their windows or in their gardens, waving their hands to us.  And all
+the way to Manchester the waving of welcoming hands never ceased.  At
+every station the porters doffed their caps to the hospital train as it
+sped past.  There was not a station large or small that did not greet us
+with a group of proud smiling faces.  Our eyes were glued to the windows
+all the way.  For one day in our lives, at least, we were kings, and our
+procession through "England’s green and pleasant land" was a royal one.
+We passed through quiet country districts but at every wall or fence
+there were happy faces.  We wondered where they all came from, and how
+they knew of our coming.  There were tiny children sitting on all the
+railway fences waving hands to us. One little girl of four or five was
+sitting on the fence by a country station and waving her little hand.
+We had not seen English children for months and Pope Gregory spoke the
+truth ages ago when he said that they are "not Angles but Angels."  The
+sight of them after so long an absence was as refreshing to the spirit
+as the sight of violets and primroses after a long and bitter winter.
+
+At Birmingham the train made its only stop. Men and women of the St.
+John Ambulance Association boarded the train and supplied us with tea;
+and, as the train moved out, stood at attention on the platform.  At
+Manchester we received a warm welcome that told us we were in
+Lancashire.  Men and women helped us to the waiting cars and handed cups
+of tea to us.  It was raining of course--being Manchester--but as we
+passed near a railway arch a waiting crowd rushed out into the rain and
+startled us with a cry of welcome which was also a cry of pain.  Most of
+the men in the cars were Lancashire lads and in the welcome given them
+there were tears as well as smiles. Lancashire has a great heart as well
+as a long head. It suffers with those who suffer and the cry of the
+heart was heard in the welcome of its voice.  There was a welcome too,
+at the door of the hospital and at the door of each ward. Water was
+brought to our bedside, and then a tray bearing a well-cooked dinner.
+
+We had reached home.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIX*
+
+                         *AFTER WINTER, SPRING*
+
+
+A man’s heart must be dead within him if, under the summer sun, he can
+look on the desolated ground of the Western battle-front without feeling
+emotions of joy and hope.  In the winter-time the clumps of blasted
+trees looked like groups of forsaken cripples.  Their broken branches
+stood out against the gray sky in utter nakedness, as if appealing to
+heaven against the inhumanity of man.  In a way, it was more depressing
+to pass a ruined wood than a destroyed village. Some of the trees had
+all their limbs shattered; others, thicker than a man’s body, were cut
+clean through the middle; others, again, were torn clean up by the roots
+and lay sprawling on the ground.  It seemed impossible that spring could
+ever again clothe them in her garments of gladdening green.  We imagined
+the trees would appear amid the sunshine of the summer black, gaunt and
+irreconcilable; pointing their mangled stumps towards those who had done
+them such irreparable wrong and, as the wind whistled through them,
+calling on all decent men to rise up and avenge them of their enemies.
+
+But, suddenly, we found that the reconciling spring was back in the
+woods exercising all her oldtime witchery.  Each broken limb was covered
+with fresh foliage and each scarred stump put out sprouts of green.  The
+broken but blossoming woods grew into a picture of Hope, infinitely more
+sublime and touching than the one to which Watts gave the name. It was a
+picture drawn and colored by the finger of God, and it made the fairest
+of man’s handiwork look weak and incomplete.  Uprooted trees lay on the
+ground in full blossom, and shell-lopped branches again took on the form
+of beauty.  The transformation was wonderful to behold.
+
+And it all happened in a week.  When our men went into the trenches the
+trees were black, bare and bruised, but when they came out of the front
+line into the support-trenches the wood behind them was a tender green
+and had grown curved and symmetrical.  It seemed as if the fairies of
+our childhood had returned to the earth and were dwelling in the wood.
+Although two long-range naval guns lay hidden behind it, which, with
+deep imprecations opened their terrible mouths to hurl fiery
+thunderbolts at the enemy, the fairies seemed unafraid and daily
+continued to weave for the trees beautiful garments of leaf and blossom.
+I have seen nothing that brought such gladness to both officers and men.
+A new spirit seemed abroad. We were in a new atmosphere and a new world.
+The war seemed already won, and the work of renewal and reconstruction
+begun.
+
+And now the summer had done for the ground what the spring did for the
+trees.  One Sunday, I was to hold a service on ground that was, in the
+springtime, No Man’s Land. Having ample time I left the dusty road and
+walked across the broken fields through which our front-line trenches
+had run.  There were innumerable shell holes and I had to pick my way
+with care through the long grass and lingering barbed wire.  I had been
+over the ground on the day following the advance. Then it was a sea of
+mud, with vast breakwaters of rusty barbed wire.  Now, however, Nature’s
+healing hand was at work.  Slowly but surely the trenches were falling
+in, and the shell-holes filling up.  The lips of the craters and
+trenches were red as a maiden’s--red with the poppies which come to
+them.  Here and there were large patches of gold and white where unseen
+hands had sown the mud with dog-daisies.  There were other patches all
+ablaze with the red fire of the poppies, and as the slender plants
+swayed in the wind, the fire leaped up or died down.
+
+When the war broke out I was in "Poppyland" near Cromer, in East Anglia.
+There I first heard the tramp of armed men on the way to France, and
+there first caught the strain of "Tipperary"--the farewell song of the
+First Seven Divisions--a strain I can never hear now without having to
+stifle back my tears. As I passed by these patches of blood-red poppies
+I thought of those old and stirring days at Cromer when we watched a
+regiment of the original Expeditionary Force singing "Tipperary" as it
+marched swingingly through the narrow streets.  The declaration of war
+was hourly expected and the pier and some of the Sunday-school rooms
+were given to the soldiers for billets.  By morning every soldier had
+vanished and we could only guess where, but a remark made by one of them
+to another lingers still.  They were standing apart, and watching the
+fuss the people were making over the regiment.
+
+"Yes," he said to his comrade, "they think a great deal of the soldiers
+in time of war, but they don’t think much of us in days of peace."
+
+The remark was so true that it cut like a knife and the wound rankles
+yet.  I have often wondered what became of the lad that went out to
+France to the horrors of war, with such memories of our attitude towards
+him in the times of peace.  I hope he lived long enough to see our
+repentance.  His memory haunted me among the poppies of Beaurains.  In
+the English Poppyland there was nothing to compare with the red-coated
+army of poppies now occupying our old front line.  In these trenches our
+gallant men had for nearly three years fought and bled, and it seemed as
+if every drop of blood poured out by them had turned into a glorious and
+triumphant poppy.
+
+The spring and summer have taught me afresh that there is in our lives a
+Power that is not ourselves.  It is imminent in us and in all things,
+yet transcends all.  "Change and decay in all around we see," and still
+there is One who changes not; He "_from_ everlasting _to_ everlasting is
+God."  He is the fountain of eternal life that no drought can touch.  He
+heals the broken tree and the broken heart. He clothes the desolate
+fields of war with the golden corn of peace, and in the trenches that
+war has scored across the souls of men, he plants the rich poppies of
+memory.  He drives away the icy oppression of winter with the breath or
+spring, and in His mercy assuages "the grief that saps the mind for
+those that here we see no more."
+
+He who turns rain-mists into rainbows and brings out of mud scarlet
+poppies and white-petaled daisies without a speck of dirt upon them, is
+at work in human life.  Out of mud He has formed the poppy and out of
+the dust the body of man.  Who then can set Him limits when He works in
+the finer material of man’s soul?  Eye hath not seen nor heart conceived
+the beauty that will come forth when His workmanship is complete.  "If
+God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is
+cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little
+faith" who were made for immortality?  His ways are past finding out,
+but they are good.  He puts out the sun but brings forth millions of
+stars in its stead.  At His call they come flocking forth as doves to
+their windows.  He blinds Milton but brings into his soul a flood of
+light such as never shone on sea or land, and in its rays he sees
+Paradise, lost and regained.  He shuts Bunyan in a noisome prison, and
+closes against him the door to his beloved Bedford, but He opens to him
+a magic window that looks on heaven, and the years pass swiftly as he
+watches the progress of the pilgrims towards the Celestial City.  In the
+mud that has been stained and even saturated with the life-blood of our
+soldiers, He has made poppies to spring to loveliness.  It is a parable
+He is speaking to us, that the heart of man may feel and believe that
+which it is beyond the power of the mind to grasp, or the tongue to
+explain.
+
+The wounds of France are deep and deadly but they are not self-inflicted
+and they will heal. She will blossom again with a glory greater and
+purer than all her former glories.  She is even now finding her soul,
+and revealing a moral beauty and endurance such as few, even of her
+dearest friends, could have foreseen or foretold.  For ashes, God has
+given her beauty, and it is worth all her suffering.  Not Voltaire, but
+Joan of Arc is her pride to-day.  When I was in Rouen I saw the fresh
+flowers which the people daily place on the spot where she died.  France
+knows where her strength lies. Over Napoleon she has built a magnificent
+tomb of marble, but in it, she has not placed a single flower.  As I
+walked through it, some time ago, I felt depressed.  It made me shiver.
+It is magnificent, but dead.  One of Joan of Arc’s living flowers would
+be worth the whole pile.  It is the most tremendous sermon ever preached
+on the vanity of military glory and the emptiness of genius when
+uninspired by moral and spiritual worth.  France knows. She gives Joan
+of Arc a flower, but Napoleon a stone.  France was never so great as
+now, and never of such supreme importance to the world.  We could not do
+without her.  On her coins she represents herself as a Sower that goes
+forth sowing.  It is a noble ideal, and truly, where she scatters her
+seeds of thought the fair flowers of liberty, equality and fraternity
+spring up as poppies spring, where the blood of our soldiers has watered
+her fields. France is the fair Sower among the nations, and it will be
+our eternal glory that when she was suddenly and murderously attacked in
+her fields by her brutal and envious neighbor--who shamelessly stamps a
+bird of prey on his coins for _his_ symbol, and a skull and cross-bones
+on his soldiers’ headgear as the expression of his ambition--England
+came to her rescue, and not in vain.  The German sword has gone deeply
+into the heart of France, but it will leave not a festering wound but a
+well of water at which mankind will drink and be refreshed. Wound the
+earth, and there springs forth water; wound France and there springs
+forth inspiration.  Trample France in the mud, and she comes forth pure
+again, passionate and free as a poppy blown by the summer wind.
+
+
+
+               _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+                     _*By CHAPLAIN THOMAS TIPLADY*_
+
+                           _*FIFTH EDITION*_
+
+
+                        *The Cross at the Front*
+
+                      Fragments from the Trenches.
+
+                      12mo.  Cloth.  _Net $1.00_.
+
+"’Vivid’ is too dim a word to express the living pictures which this
+chaplain has seen in France.  Some of the chapters are among the finest
+pieces of pathos we have read anywhere.  Read the book and you will be a
+better man for all your tasks."--_Chicago Standard_.
+
+
+
+                       *The Soul of the Soldier*
+
+                     Echoes from the Western Front.
+
+                      12mo.  Cloth.  _Net $1.25_.
+
+An astonishing story Chaplain Tiplady here has to tell--one in which the
+very foundations of existence seem temporarily uprooted, and the world
+turned upside-down. Yet never, in the telling, does he lose the
+unswerving faith and cheering optimism which formed the prevailing note
+of THE CROSS AT THE FRONT, nor for a moment relaxes his belief that the
+cause of justice, truth and righteousness is that for which the Allied
+armies are now fighting.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER ***
+
+
+
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+                        THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER
+
+
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+
+Title: The Soul of the Soldier
+       Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
+Author: Thomas Tiplady
+Release Date: July 18, 2014 [EBook #46323]
+Language: English
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover art]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Captain Guy Drummond, 13th Royal Canadian Highlanders.
+Killed in action, April, 1915.
+"A SON OF THE MOTHERLAND"]
+
+
+
+
+                       The Soul _of_ The Soldier
+
+                       _Sketches from the Western
+                             Battle-Front_
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+                             THOMAS TIPLADY
+
+                        _Chaplain to the Forces_
+
+                Author of "THE CROSS AT THE FRONT," etc.
+
+
+
+                        NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
+                       Fleming H. Revell Company
+                          LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+                          Copyright, 1918, by
+                       FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+
+
+
+                       New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
+                     Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
+                     London: 21 Paternoster Square
+                      Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
+
+
+
+
+                 TO THE MEMORY OF THE MANY "WHITE MEN"
+
+I have known and loved in the London Territorials, who, being dedicate
+to their Country and the cause of Liberty, went over the parapet and did
+not return.
+
+"These laid the world away; poured out the red
+Sweet wine of youth: gave up the years to be
+Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
+That men call age; and those who would have been
+Their sons they gave--their immortality."
+
+
+
+
+                         *THE MOTHER'S ANSWER*
+
+    God gave my son in trust to me.
+    Christ died for him.  He should be
+    A man for Christ.  He is his own
+    And God's and man's, not mine alone.
+    He was not mine to give.  He gave
+    Himself, that he might help to save
+    All that a Christian should revere
+    All that enlightened men hold dear.
+
+    "To feed the guns."  Ah! torpid soul,
+    Awake, and see life as a whole.
+    When freedom, honor, justice, right,
+    Were threatened by the despot's might,
+    He bravely went for God, to fight
+    Against base savages, whose pride
+    The laws of God and man defied;
+    Who slew the mother and the child;
+    Who maidens, pure and sweet, defiled;
+    He did not go to feed the guns,
+    He went to save from ruthless Huns
+    His home and country, and to be
+    A guardian of democracy.
+
+    "What if he does not come?" you say;
+    Well, then, my sky will be more gray,
+    But through the clouds the sun will shine
+    And vital memories be mine.
+    God's test of manhood is, I know
+    Not, will he come--_but did he go_?
+
+    JAMES L. HUGHES.
+
+
+
+
+                               *PREFACE*
+
+
+The sketches in this book and in my previous one, "The Cross at the
+Front," are attempts to show the soul of the soldier serving in France
+as I have seen it during the year and a half that I have been with him.
+It is a padre's privilege and duty to be the voice with which, in public
+worship, the soldiers speak to God; and through which their last
+thoughts are borne to their friends at home.  He is their voice both
+when they are sick or wounded, and when they lie silent in the grave.
+He speaks of their hopes and fears, hardships and heroisms, laughter and
+tears.  As best he may he tries to tell, to those who have a right and a
+longing to know, how they thought, and how they bore themselves in the
+great day of trial when all risked their lives and many laid them down.
+
+Soldiers, as a rule, are either inarticulate or do not care to speak of
+themselves; and the padre has to be their spokesman if ever their deeper
+thoughts and finer actions are to be known to their friends.  To do this
+he may have to bring himself into the picture, or even illustrate a
+common thing in their lives by a personal experience of his own.  To
+reveal life and thought at the Front in the third person, and without
+sacrificing truth and vividness, requires a degree of literary power and
+art which cannot be expected of a padre to whom writing is but a
+by-product, and not his main work.
+
+I have written but little of military operations--these things are not
+in my province. Moreover, they are not the things which are most
+revealing.  The presence of Spring is first and most surely revealed by
+the flowers in our gardens and lanes; and the soldier is most clearly
+seen in the little things that happen on the march--in his billet or in
+the Dressing Station.  Some things are not seen at all.  They are only
+felt, and my opinion about them must be taken for what it is worth.  One
+knows what the men are by their influence on one's own mind and life.  I
+do not judge the morality and spirituality of our soldiers entirely by
+their habits and speech, for these are but outward and clumsy
+expressions of the inner life and are largely conventional.  There is
+something else to put in the reckoning, and to find out what the
+soldiers are worth to us we must somehow get behind their words and
+actions and find out what they are worth to God, whose terrible wheel of
+war is shaping their characters.
+
+I appraise them mostly by the total effect of the impact of their souls
+on mine.  I know their thoughts and feelings by the thoughts and
+feelings they inspire in me.  "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of
+thistles?"  There are certain thoughts and emotions that only come to me
+strongly when I am with the soldiers or when I am living again with them
+in memory, and so, I take these as their gift to me and judge the men by
+their influence on my character.  Character is, in its influence, subtle
+as Spring.  Words and actions by themselves are too coarse and
+conventional to do anything but mislead us in judging the quality of our
+men.  "By their fruits ye shall know them."  Not by their leaves.  Fruit
+is _seed_.  In the seed the tree reproduces itself. And reproduction,
+whether in physical, moral or spiritual life, is the test of vitality.
+
+I have not unduly loaded my pages with ghastly details of war, because
+their effect on the mind of the reader who has not been at the Front
+would be false and distorting.  The reader would be more horrified in
+imagining them than our soldiers are in seeing them.  I have tried
+rather to show life at the Front, with its mingling of red and gold,
+horror and happiness, as it affects the soldier; so that his friends at
+home may see it as he sees it, and with his sense of proportion.  If I
+could only do it, as well as I intend it, my pictures would create a
+truer sympathy between the home and the trench.  Some would find comfort
+for their hearts, and others would awake to a new and noble seriousness.
+Soldiers have suffered much through imperfect sympathies.  They have
+been pitied for the wrong things, and left to freeze when they needed
+warmth. Only when we realize their dignity and greatness and the true
+nature of their experiences can we be their comrades and helpers.  Life
+at the Front is brutal and terrifying, and yet our soldiers are neither
+brutalized nor terrorized, for there is something great and noble at the
+Front which keeps life pure and sweet and the men gentle and chivalrous.
+When "the boys" come home their friends will, in almost every case, find
+them just as bright, affectionate and good as when they went out. The
+only change will be a subtle one--a deepening in character and manly
+quality, a broadening in mind and creed, and an impatience with cant and
+make-believe whether in politics or business, Christianity or
+Rationalism. There will be an air of indefinable greatness about them as
+of men who have been at grips with the realities of life and death.
+
+In a footnote to one of his songs, Edward Teschemacher says that the
+gypsies, as they wander through the country, leave a sprinkling of grass
+or wild flowers at the cross-roads to indicate, to those who come after
+them, the road they have taken.  These flowers are known as the
+"Patterain."
+
+These essays are my Patterain--wild flowers plucked in France, and left
+to mark the red path trod during the months I have been with my comrades
+at the Front.
+
+I would the flowers were worthier, but such as I have, I give; and they
+are taken out of my heart.
+
+    "Where my caravan has rested
+      Flowers I leave you on the grass;
+    All the flowers of love and memory;
+      You will find them when you pass."
+
+    THOMAS TIPLADY.
+
+BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, FRANCE.
+
+
+
+
+                               *CONTENTS*
+
+CHAP.
+
+      I. The Swan at Ypres
+     II. The Roadmakers
+    III. The Glamour of the Front
+     IV. A White Handkerchief
+      V. The Songs Our Soldiers Sing
+     VI. Easter Sunday
+    VII. "Now the Day is Over"
+   VIII. Sons of the Motherland
+     IX. The Terror by Night
+      X. "Eton Boys Never Duck!"
+     XI. "Missing"
+    XII. "It Must be Sunday"
+   XIII. Our Tommies Never Fail Us
+    XIV. The Cross at Neuve Chapelle
+     XV. The Children of Our Dead
+    XVI. A Funeral under Fire
+   XVII. A Soldier's Calvary
+  XVIII. The Hospital Train
+    XIX. After Winter, Spring
+
+
+
+
+                                  *I*
+
+                          *THE SWAN AT YPRES*
+
+
+For three years the storm center of the British battle front has been at
+Ypres. Every day and night it has been the standing target of thousands
+of guns.  Yet, amid all the havoc and thunder of the artillery, the
+graceful white form of a swan had been seen gliding over the water of
+the moat.  It never lacked food, and was always welcome to a share of
+Tommy's rations.  In the Battle of Messines--I had the story first-hand
+from a lieutenant of artillery whose battery was hidden close by, and
+who was an eye-witness of the incident--a shell burst near the swan, and
+it was mortally wounded.  For three long years it had spread its white
+wings as gallantly as the white sails of Drake's flagship when he sailed
+out of Plymouth Sound to pluck the beard of the Spaniard.  But now its
+adventurous voyaging was over.  Another beautiful and innocent thing had
+been destroyed by the war and had passed beyond recall.  There was no
+dying swan-song heard on the waters, but all who saw its passing felt
+that the war had taken on a deeper shade of tragedy.
+
+Many a "white man" had been slain near the spot but somehow the swan
+seemed a mystical being, and invulnerable.  It was a relic of the days
+of peace, and a sign of the survival of purity and grace amid the
+horrors and cruelties of war.  It spoke of the sacred things that yet
+remain--the beautiful things of the soul upon which war can lay no
+defiling finger. Now it had gone from the water and Ypres seems more
+charred than ever, and the war more terrible.  The death of the swan
+revealed against its white wings the peculiar inhumanity of the present
+war.  It is a war in which the enemy spares nothing and no one.  He is
+more blind and merciless than the Angel of Death which swept over Egypt,
+for the angel had regard to the blood which the Israelites had sprinkled
+over the lintels of their doors and he passed by in mercy.  To the
+German Eagle every living creature is legitimate prey.  No blood upon
+the lintel can save the inmate; not even the cross of blood on the
+hospital tent or ship.  Wounded or whole, combatant or non-combatant,
+its beak and talons tear the tender flesh of all and its lust is not
+sated.
+
+In Belgium and Serbia it is believed that more women and children
+perished than men. Things too hideous for words were done publicly in
+the market-squares.  Neither age nor sex escaped fire and sword.  The
+innocent babe was left to suck the breast of its dead mother or was
+dandled on the point of the bayonet. What resistance can the Belgian
+swan make to the German eagle?  It needs must lie torn and bleeding
+beneath its talons.  The German Emperor has waded deeper in blood than
+Macbeth, and has slain the innocent in their sleep.  Even the sea is
+full of the women, children, and non-combatant men he has drowned.  His
+crown is cemented together with innocent blood and its jewels are the
+eyes of murdered men and women.  The wretched man has made rivers of
+blood to flow yet not a drop in them is from his own veins or the veins
+of his many sons.  Napoleon risked his life with his men in every battle
+but this man never once.  While sending millions to their death he yet
+consents to live, and protects his life with the anxious care a miser
+bestows on his gold.  Alone among large families in Germany his
+household is without a casualty. Though a nation be white and innocent
+as the Belgian swan it will not escape his sword, and he will swoop upon
+it the more readily because it is unarmed.  The swan cannot live where
+the eagle flies, and one or the other must die.
+
+But the stricken swan of Ypres is not merely the symbol of Belgium and
+her fate.  There are other innocents who have perished or been sorely
+wounded.  The whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain.  The
+neutral nations are suffering with the belligerent, and the lower
+creatures are suffering with mankind.
+
+Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at the front, I think the
+saddest sight is that of dying horses and mules.  Last winter they had
+to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter blasts.  It was
+impossible to keep them clean or dry, for the roads were churned into
+liquid mud and both mules and drivers were plastered with it from head
+to foot.  To make things worse there was a shortage of fodder; and
+horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding. Before the fine weather had
+given them a chance to recover weight and strength, the Battle of Arras
+began, and every living beast of burden, as well as every motor-engine,
+was strained to its utmost.  The mule is magnificent for war, and our
+battles have been won as much by mules as men.  Haig could rely on one
+as much as on the other.  The mule will eat anything, endure anything,
+and, when understood and humored by its driver, will do anything.  It
+works until it falls dead by the roadside.  In the spring, hundreds died
+in harness.  In fact, few die except in harness.  They die facing the
+foe, dragging rations along shell-swept roads to the men in the
+trenches.
+
+On two miles of road I have counted a dozen dead mules; and burial
+parties are sent out to put them out of sight.  One night, alone, I got
+three dying mules shot.  The road was crowded with traffic, yet it was
+difficult to find either an officer with a revolver or a
+transport-driver with a rifle.  I had to approach scores before I could
+find a man who had the means to put a mule out of its misery; and we
+were within two miles of our Front.  So rigid is our line of defense
+that those behind it do not trouble to take arms.  Even when I found a
+rifleman he hesitated to shoot a mule.  There is a rule that no horse or
+mule must be shot without proper authority, and when you consider the
+enormous cost of one the necessity for the rule is obvious. I had
+therefore to assure a rifleman that I would take full responsibility for
+his action. He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the mule's
+forehead and pulled the trigger.  A tremor passed through the poor
+thing's body and its troubles were over.  It had come all the way from
+South America to wear itself out carrying food to fighting men, and it
+died by the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.
+
+The mule knows neither love nor offspring. Apart from a few gambols in
+the field, or while tethered to the horse-lines, it knows nothing but
+work.  It is the supreme type of the drudge.  It is one of the greatest
+factors in the war, and yet it receives scarcely any recognition and
+more of whipping than of praise.  Only too often I have seen their poor
+shell-mangled bodies lying by the roadside waiting till the battle
+allowed time for their burial.  Yet what could be more innocent of any
+responsibility for the war?  They are as innocent as the swan on the
+moat at Ypres.
+
+Yet the greatest suffering among innocents is not found at the Front at
+all.  It is found at home.  At the Front there is suffering of body and
+mind, but at home there is the suffering of the heart.  Every soldier
+knows that his mother and wife suffer more than he does, and he pities
+them from his soul.  War is a cross on which Woman is crucified.  The
+soldier dies of his wounds in the morning of life, but his wife lingers
+on in pain through the long garish day until the evening shadows fall.
+There is no laughter at home such as you hear at the Front, or even in
+the hospitals.  One finds a gayety among the regiments in France such as
+is unknown among the people left at home.  It is the sunshine of the
+street as compared with the light in a shaded room.  There is a youth
+and buoyancy at the Front that one misses sadly in the homeland.
+
+To a true woman with a son or husband at the Front, life becomes a
+nightmare.  To her distorted imagination the most important man in the
+country is not the Prime Minister but the postman.  She cannot get on
+with her breakfast for listening for his footsteps.  There is no need
+for him to knock at the door, she has heard him open the gate and walk
+up the gravel path.  Her heart is tossed like a bubble on the winds of
+hope and fear.  She finds herself behind the door without knowing how
+she got there, and her hand trembles as she picks up the letter to see
+if the address is in "his" handwriting or an official's.  The words, "On
+His Majesty's Service," she dreads like a witch's incantation.  They may
+be innocent enough, and cover nothing more than belated Commission
+Papers, but she trembles lest they should be but the fair face of a
+dark-hearted messenger, who is to blot out the light of her life
+forever.  If she goes out shopping and sees a telegraph-boy go in the
+direction of her home she forgets her purchases and hurries back to see
+if he is going to knock at her door.  The rosy-faced messenger has
+become a sinister figure, an imp from the nether world.  He may be
+bringing news of her loved one's arrival "on leave," but so many evil
+faces of fear and doubt peer through the windows of her heart that she
+cannot believe in the innocence and good-will of the whistling boy.  Her
+whole world is wrapped up in his little orange-colored envelope.
+
+The boys at the Front know of the anxiety and suspense that darken their
+homes, and they do all they can to lighten them.  There were times on
+the Somme when the men were utterly exhausted with fighting and long
+vigils in the trenches.  Water was scarce, and a mild dysentery came
+into evidence.  No fire could be lighted to cook food or make hot tea.
+The ranks had been thinned, and only two officers were left to each
+company.  The weather was bad and the captured trench uncomfortable. Any
+moment word might come for another attack.  The campaign was near its
+close, and the work must be completed despite the prevalent exhaustion.
+The officers were too tired, depressed and preoccupied to censor
+hundreds of letters.  In front of him each could see a gaping grave.
+The sun was rapidly "going west" and leaving them to the cold and dark.
+Nothing seemed to matter in comparison with _that_. To hold services
+were impossible and I felt that the best I could do was to walk through
+the trench, chat with the officers and men, gather up the men's letters
+and take them back and censor in my tent.  This gave the officers times
+to write their own, and an opportunity to post them.
+
+But note, I pray you, the nobility of these gallant fellows.  All of
+them were exhausted and depressed.  The shadows of death were thick
+about them, yet when I opened their letters, I found myself--with two
+exceptions out of three or four hundred--in an entirely different
+atmosphere.  It was a sunny atmosphere in which birds were singing.  The
+men said nothing of their suffering, their depression, their fears for
+the future.  The black wings of death cast no shadow over their pages.
+They said they were "all right," "merry and bright" and "soon going back
+for a long rest."  They told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to
+send, and gave them details how to make up the next parcel.  They talked
+as if death were out of sight--a sinister fellow with whom they had
+nothing to do.
+
+The officers, of course, censor their own letters, so I did not see how
+they wrote.  But I know.  They wrote as the men wrote, and probably with
+a still lighter touch.  Their homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet
+not by any word of theirs would the shadows be deepened.  They could not
+shield themselves from war's horrors but they would do their best to
+shield their white swans at home.  They could not keep their women folk
+out of the war, but they would deliver them from its worst horrors.  Not
+till they had fallen would they let the shafts pass them to their
+mothers and wives; rather would they gather them in their own breasts.
+In the hour of the world's supreme tragedy there was a woman standing by
+the cross, and the august Sufferer, with dying breath, bade His closest
+friend take her, when the last beam faded, to his own home and be in His
+place, a son to her.  I know no scene that better represents the
+feelings of our soldiers towards their loved ones at home.
+
+Their women gave them inspiration and joy in the days of peace, and they
+still float before their vision amid the blackened ruins of war, as
+beautiful and stainless in their purity as the white swan on the moat of
+Ypres.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *II*
+
+                            *THE ROADMAKERS*
+
+
+We had just marched from one part of the Front to another and by a
+round-about way.  Each morning the Quartermaster and "the billeting
+party" went on before, and each evening we slept in a village that was
+strange to us.  Each of the men carried on his back a pack and equipment
+weighing about eighty or ninety pounds. Through sleet and blizzard and,
+for the most part, through open, exposed country, we continued our march
+without a day of rest.  By the fifth evening we reached the village
+where we were to have three or four weeks of rest and training before
+entering the trenches for the spring offensive.  We had unpacked and
+were sitting at dinner when a telegram came announcing that all previous
+plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must take to the road again.
+Something unexpected had happened, good or ill, we knew not which, and
+we had to enter the line in front of Arras. For three days more we
+marched.  Daily the sound of the guns came nearer, and the men were
+tired and footsore.  They were also deeply disappointed of the long rest
+to which they had been looking forward after a winter in the trenches at
+Neuve Chapelle.  Yet they marched cheerily enough.  "It's the War!" they
+said one to another and, true to their own philosophy, "packed up their
+troubles in their old kit bags and smiled."  When any man faltered a
+bit, as if about to fall out by the way, the others cheered him on by
+singing "Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the old Sunday school
+hymn, "Kind words can never die."  Sometimes an officer would shoulder a
+man's rifle to the end of the march, or until he felt better.  In eight
+unbroken days of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and finally
+arrived at a camp of huts within a day's march of the trenches we are to
+occupy.  Here, where our huts stand like islands in a sea of mud, we
+are, unless suddenly needed, to take a few days' rest.
+
+On the ninety-eight miles of road over which we tramped, we passed
+company after company of British roadmakers.  In some parts they were
+widening the road, in other parts repairing it.  The roads of
+Northeastern France are handed over to our care as completely as if they
+were in England.  Our road-makers are everywhere, and as we pass they
+stand, pick or shovel in hand, to salute the colonel and shout some
+humorous remark to the laughing riflemen--only to get back as much as
+they give.
+
+This morning I visited the neighboring village to arrange for a Sunday
+service.  The roads are hopeless for bicycles at this time of the year,
+so I fell back on Adam's method of getting about.  The road to the
+village was torn and broken, and "thaw precautions" were being observed.
+Everywhere it was ankle-deep in mud and, in the holes, knee-deep.
+Innumerable motor-wagons had crushed it beneath their ponderous weight,
+and my feet had need of my eyes to guide them.  In skirting the holes
+and rough places, I added quite a mile to the journey.
+
+It was annoying to get along so slowly, and I called the road "rotten"
+and blamed the War for its destructive work.  Then I saw that I had been
+unjust in judgment.  The War had constructed more than it had destroyed.
+The road had been a little muddy country lane, but the soldiers had made
+it wide as Fleet Street, and it was bearing a mightier traffic than that
+famous thoroughfare night and day.  The little road with its mean
+perfections and imperfections had gone, and the large road with big
+faults and big virtues had come.  This soldiers' road has faults the
+farmers' road knew not, but then it has burdens and duties unknown
+before, and it has had no time to prepare for them.  Like our
+boy-officers who are bearing grown men's burdens of responsibility and
+bearing them well, the road has had no time to harden.  To strengthen
+itself for its duties, it eats up stones as a giant eats up food.  I had
+no right to look for the smoothness of Oxford Street or the Strand.
+Such avenues represent the work of centuries, this of days.  They have
+grown with their burdens, but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it
+suddenly, and while it was immature.  Oxford Street and Fleet Street are
+the roads of peace, and laden with wealth and luxury, law and
+literature--things that can wait.  But on this road of the soldiers'
+making, nothing is allowed except it be concerned with matters of life
+and death.  It is the road of war, and there is a terrible urgency about
+it.  Over it pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the soldiers in the
+trenches, ambulances bearing back the wounded to the hospital.  Whatever
+its conditions the work must be done, and there is no room for a halting
+prudence or the pride of appearance.  Rough though it is and muddy, over
+it is passing, for all who have eyes to see, a new and better
+civilization and a wider liberty.  I had grumbled at the worn-out road
+when I ought to have praised it.  I was as an ingrate who finds fault
+with his father's hands because they are rough and horny.
+
+It was a group of soldier-roadmakers who brought me to my senses.  They
+were making a new road through the fields, and it branched off from the
+one I was on.  I saw its crude beginning and considered the burdens it
+would soon have to bear.  As I stood watching these English roadmakers
+my mind wandered down the avenues of time, and I saw the Roman soldiers
+building their immortal roads through England.  They were joining town
+to town and country to country.  They were introducing the people of the
+North to those of the South, and bringing the East into fellowship with
+the West.  I saw come along their roads the union of all England
+followed at, some distance, by that of England, Scotland and Wales; and
+I regretted that there was no foundation on which they could build a
+road to Ireland. I saw on those soldier-built roads, also, Christianity
+and Civilization marching, and in the villages and towns by the wayside
+they found a home whence they have sent out missionaries and teachers to
+the ends of the earth.
+
+"The captains and the kings depart."  The Roman Empire is no more, but
+the Roman roads remain.  They direct our modern life and business with
+an inevitability the Roman soldiers never exercised.  In two thousand
+years the Empire may have fallen apart and become a thing of the past;
+but the roads her sons have built in France, these two-and-a-half years,
+will abide forever and be a perpetual blessing; for, of things made by
+hands, there is, after the church and the home, nothing more sacred than
+the road.  The roadmaker does more for the brotherhood of man and the
+federation of the world than the most eloquent orator.  The roadmaker
+has his dreams and visions as well as the poet, and he expresses them in
+broken stones.  He uses stones as artists use colors, and orators words.
+He touches them--transient as they are--with immortality.  A little of
+his soul sticks to each stone he uses, and though the stone perishes the
+road remains.  His body may perish more quickly than the stones and be
+laid in some quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul will never
+utterly forsake the road he helped to make.  In man's nature, and in all
+his works, there is a strange blending of the temporal and the eternal,
+and in nothing is it more marked than in the roads he builds.
+
+The roadmaker is the pioneer among men and without him there would be
+neither artist nor orator.  He goes before civilization as John the
+Baptist went before Christ, and he is as rough and elemental.  Hard as
+his own stones, without him mankind would have remained savage and
+suspicious as beasts of prey; and art, science and literature would have
+had no beginning.  His road may begin in war, but it ends in peace.
+
+The pioneers I saw roadmaking were, for the greater part, over military
+age, and such as I had often seen leaning heavily on the bar of some
+miserable beer-house.  In those days they seemed of the earth, earthy,
+and the stars that lure to high thoughts and noble endeavors seemed to
+shine on them in vain.  But one never knows what is passing in the heart
+of another.  Of all things human nature is the most mysterious and
+deceptive.  God seems to play at hide-and-seek with men.  He hides
+pearls in oysters lying in the ooze of the sea; and gold under the
+everlasting snows of the Arctic regions.  Diamonds he buries deep down
+in the dirt beneath the African veldt.  He places Christ in a
+carpenter's shop, Joan of Arc in a peasant's dwelling, Lincoln in a
+settler's cabin, and Burns in a crude cottage built by his father's own
+hands.  He hides generous impulses and heroic traits in types of men
+that in our mean imaginations we can only associate with the saw-dust
+sprinkled bar-room. Only when war or pestilence have kindled their
+fierce and lurid flames do we find the hidden nobility that God has
+stored away in strange places--places often as foul and unlikely as
+those where a miser stores his gold.
+
+When Diogenes went about with a candle in search of an honest man did he
+think to look in the taverns and slums?  I fancy not. Not Diogenes'
+candle but the "Light of the World" was needed to reveal the treasure
+God has hidden in men.  Christ alone knew where His Father had hidden
+His wealth and could guide us to it.  In this time of peril when every
+man with any nobility in him is needed to stand in the deadly breach,
+and with body and soul hold back the brutality and tyranny that would
+enslave the world we have, like the woman in the parable, lit a candle
+and searched every corner of our kingdom diligently.  In the dust of
+unswept corners we have found many a coin of value that, but for our
+exceeding need, would have remained hidden. To me, the wealth and wonder
+of the war have been found in its sweepings.  Time and again we have
+found those who were lost, and a new happiness has come into life.  To
+the end of my days I shall walk the earth with reverent feet.  I did not
+know men were so great.  I have looked at life without seeing the gold
+through the dust, and have been no better than a Kaffir child playing
+marbles with diamonds, unaware of their value.  I have gone among my
+fellows with proud step where I ought to have walked humbly, and have
+rushed in where angels feared to tread.
+
+Life at the Front has made me feel mean among mankind.  My comrades have
+been so great.  In days long past, I have trodden on the hem of Christ's
+garment without knowing it.  I have not seen its jewels because I, and
+others, have so often trodden it in the mire. Yet, through the mire of
+slum and tavern, the jewels have emerged pearl-white and ruby-red. And I
+feel that I owe to a large part of mankind an apology for having been
+before the war so blind, callous and superficial.  But for the agony and
+bloody sweat in which I have seen my fellows, I should never have known
+them for what they are, and the darkness of death would have covered me
+before I had realized what made the death of Christ and the sufferings
+of all the martyrs well worth while.  Now there is a new light upon my
+path and I shall see the features of an angel through the dirt on a
+slum-child's face.  Words of Christ that once lay in the shadow now
+stand out clearly, for whenever we get below the surface of life we come
+to _Him_.  He is there before us, and awaiting our coming.
+
+I also understand, now, something of the meaning of the words which the
+Unemployed scrawled upon their banner before the war--"Damn your
+charity.  Give us work."  It was a deep and true saying, and taught them
+by a stern teacher.  When the war came we _did_ "damn our charity" and
+gave them "work."  Many a man got his first chance of doing "a man's
+job," and rose to the full height of his manhood.  Many hitherto idle
+and drunken, were touched in their finer parts.  They saw their
+country's need, and though their country had done little to merit their
+gratitude, they responded to her call before some of the more prudent
+and sober.  Those who were young went out to fight, and every officer
+can tell stories about their behavior in the hours of danger and
+suffering which bring tears to the eyes and penitence to the heart.
+Those above military age went out to make roads over which their younger
+brothers and sons could march, and get food, ammunition, or an ambulance
+according to their needs.  Among the group of middle-aged roadmakers
+that I saw there were, I doubt not, some who had been counted wastrels
+and who had made but a poor show of life.  Now they had got work that
+made them feel that they were men and not mendicants, and they were
+"making good."
+
+While I watched them a lark rose from a neighboring field and sang over
+them a song of the coming spring.  It was the first lark I had heard
+this year, and I was glad it mingled its notes with the sounds of the
+roadmakers' shovels.  Nature is not so indifferent to human struggles as
+it sometimes seems.  The man who stands steadfastly by the right and
+true and bids tyranny and wrong give place will find, at last, that he
+is in league with the stones of the field and the birds of the air, and
+that the stars in their courses fight for him.  The roadmaker and the
+lark are born friends. Both are heralds of coming gladness, and while
+one works, the other sings.  True work and pure song are never far
+apart.  They are both born of hope and seek to body forth the immortal.
+A man works while he has faith. Would he sow if he did not believe the
+promise, made under the rainbow, that seed-time and harvest shall never
+fail?  Or could he sing with despair choking his heart?  Yet he can sing
+with death choking it.  In the very act of dying Wesley sang the hymn,
+"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath."  He sang because of the hope
+of immortality.  He was not turning his face to the blank wall of death
+and oblivion but to the opening gate of a fuller life.  He was soaring
+sunwards like the lark, and soaring sang,
+
+    "And when my voice is lost in death
+    Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
+    My days of praise shall ne'er be past."
+
+
+Joy can sing and Sorrow can sing, but Despair is dumb.  It has not even
+a cry, for a cry is a call for help as every mother knows, and Despair
+knows no helper.  Even the saddest song has hope in it, as the dreariest
+desert has a well.  The loved one is dead but Love lives on and whispers
+of a trysting place beyond this bourne of time, where loved and lover
+meet again.  The patriot's life may be pouring from a dozen wounds on
+the muddy field of battle, but his fast-emptying heart is singing with
+each heavy beat, "Who dies, if my country live?"
+
+Roadmakers have prepared the way for missionaries in every land.
+Trail-blazers are not always religious men--often they are wild,
+reckless fellows whom few would allow a place in the Kingdom of God--but
+is not their work religious in its final upshot?  Do they not, however
+unconsciously, "prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert
+a highway for our God?"  Close on their heels go the missionaries, urged
+on faster by the pure love of souls than the trader by love of lucre.
+The greatest among the roadmakers was a missionary himself--David
+Livingstone.  And for such an one the name Living-stone is perfect.  It
+has the touch of destiny.  Through swamp and forest he went where white
+feet had never trod, and blazed a trail for the messengers of Christ,
+until, worn out with fever and hardship, he fell asleep at his prayers,
+to wake no more to toil and suffering.
+
+But while the roadmaker bestows benefits on us he also lays obligations,
+for there can be no enlargement of privilege without a corresponding
+increase of responsibility.  The roads the men are making here in France
+will be good for trade.  They will open up the country as did the
+military roads of Caesar and Napoleon; and along them soldiers are
+marching who, at tremendous cost to themselves, are buying for posterity
+great benefits, and laying upon posterity great obligations.  Posterity
+must hold and enlarge the liberties won for them, and prove worthy of
+their citizenship by resisting tyranny "even unto blood."  We are here
+because our fathers were heroes and lovers of liberty.  Had they been
+cowards and slaves there would have been no war for us.  As we follow
+our fathers our sons must be ready to follow us.  The present springs
+out of the past, and the future will spring out of the present.
+Inheritance implies defense on the part of the inheritors.
+
+The very names they give to their roads show that our soldiers have
+grasped this fact. The cold canvas hut in which I am writing is
+officially described as No. 1 Hut, _Oxford Street_.  A little farther
+off, and running parallel with it, is _Cambridge_ Road.  There is also
+an _Eton_ Road, _Harrow_ Road, and _Marlborough_ Road.  Students of the
+universities and schools after which these roads are named are out here
+to defend what these institutions have stood for through the hoary
+centuries.  They are out to preserve the true conception of Liberty and
+Fair-play, and to build roads along which all peoples who desire it can
+travel unmolested by attacks from either tyrants or anarchists.
+
+Right from the beginning of the war, the idea of a Road has taken hold
+of the imagination of our soldiers.  The first divisions came out
+singing, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right
+there."  Nowadays the popular song is "There's a long, long trail
+awinding into the Land of my dreams."
+
+They are making a Road of Liberty along which all nations may pass to
+universal peace and brotherhood, and where the weak will be as safe from
+oppression as the strong.  "It's a long, long way to go," but they have
+seen their goal on the horizon, and will either reach it or die on the
+way to it.  They have made up their minds that never again shall the
+shadow of the Kaiser's mailed fist, or that any other tyrant fall across
+their path.  These men never sing of war.  They hate war.  It is a
+brutal necessity forced on them by the ambition of a tyrant.  Their
+songs are all of peace and none of war.  Of the future and not the
+present they sing:
+
+    "Tiddley-iddley-ighty,
+    Hurry me home to Blighty;
+    Blighty is the place for me."
+
+
+Whether they sing with levity or seriousness (and levity of manner often
+veils their seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and
+goodwill they sing.  To them the war is a hard road leading to a better
+life for mankind.  It is to them what the desert was to the Israelites,
+when they left the bondage of Egypt for the liberty of the Land of
+Promise. Therefore they must tread it without faltering even as Christ
+trod the way of the Cross. "There's a long, long trail awinding into the
+Land of their dreams" and they will not lose faith in their dreams
+however wearisome the way.  Elderly navvies and laborers have come to
+smooth the roads for them, and nurses are tending those who have fallen
+broken by the way; while across the sundering sea are mothers and wives
+whose prayers make flowers spring up at their feet and blossoms break
+out on every tree that fringes the side of the road.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *III*
+
+                       *THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT*
+
+
+There is an undoubted glamour about the Front, which when at home, in
+England, cannot be explained.  In the army or out of it, the wine of
+life is white and still, but at the Front it runs red and sparkling. One
+day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and sat on a box by the side of one of
+the servants of the officer's mess at the Aerodrome near by.  He was
+going into Doullens, a market town, to buy food and some little
+luxuries. Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English flyers, was, up to
+the time of his death in the air, a member of the mess, and the servant
+was telling me how comfortable all the officers make their quarters.  In
+a phrase he defined the glamour of the Front.
+
+"One day," he said, "when we were helping him to make his room
+comfortable, Captain Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled, 'We
+haven't long to live, but we live well while we do live.'"
+
+There you have it.  Life is concentrated. Death is near--just round the
+corner--so the men make the most of their time and "live well."  It has
+the same quality as "leave" at home.  Leave is short and uncertain, so
+we "live well."  Our friends know it may be the last sight of us, and we
+know it may be our last sight of them.  They are kind and generous to
+us, as we are to them; and so, the ten days of "leave" are just
+glorious.  Ruskin says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts but a
+second, and that Turner went out early in the evening and watched with
+rapt attention for that one second of supreme splendor and delight.  He
+lived for sunsets and while others were balancing their accounts, or
+taking tea, he went out to see the daily miracle.  The one second in
+which he saw God pass by in the glory of the sunset was to him worth all
+the twenty-four hours.  For one second in each day he caught the glamour
+of earth and heaven, and went back to his untidy studios blind to all
+but the splendor he had seen.
+
+That second each day was life, indeed, and the glamour of the Front is
+like unto it.  It is the place where life sets, and the darkness of
+death draws on.  The commonest soldier feels it and with true instinct,
+not less true because unconscious, he describes death at the Front as
+"going West."  It is the presence of death that gives the Front its
+glamour, and life its concentrated joy and fascination.  Captain Ball
+saw it with the intuition of genius when he said: "We haven't long to
+live, but we live well while we _do_ live."
+
+The immediate presence of death at the Front gives tone to every
+expression of life, and makes it the kindest place in the world.  No one
+feels he can do too much for you, and there is nothing you would not do
+for another. Whether you are an officer or a private, you can get a lift
+on any road, in any vehicle, that has an inch of room in it.  How often
+have I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up the back of an empty
+motor-lorry which has stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in. It is
+one of the merriest sights of the war and redounds to the credit of
+human nature. Cigarettes are passed round by those who have, to those
+who have not, with a generosity that reminds one of nothing so much as
+that of the early Christians who "had all things common; and sold their
+possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had
+need."  You need never go hungry while others have food.  Officers are
+welcome at every mess they go near, and privates will get food in the
+servants' kitchen or may go shares with the men in any billet.  It may
+be a man's own fault that he took no food on the march, and his comrades
+may tell him so in plain strong language, but they will compel him to
+share what they have just the same.
+
+One wet night on the Somme I got lost in "Happy Valley" and could not
+find my regiment. Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it. It was a
+pioneers' tent, but they invited me to come in out of the storm and stay
+the night. They were at supper and had only a small supply of
+bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea; but they insisted on me sharing
+what they had. I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one of their
+blankets.  One of them gave me a box to sleep on, while he shared his
+chum's. Some lost privates came in later wet to the skin, and the
+pioneers gave them all the eatables left over from supper, and shared
+out their blankets and clothes.  It was pure Christianity--whatever
+creeds they may think they believe.  And it is the glamour of the Front.
+England feels cold and dull after it.  Kindness and comradeship pervade
+the air in France. You feel that everyone is a friend and brother. It
+will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back to their churches.  They
+have been spoiled by too much kindness.  How can they go back to the
+cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow judgments which prevail in so
+many churches--that is, unless the war has brought changes there also?
+And after preaching to dying men who listen as it their destiny depended
+upon their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits where large numbers
+in the congregations regard their messages as of less importance than
+dinner, and as merely supplying material for an exercise in more or less
+kindly criticism during the discussion of that meal?
+
+The glamour of the services at the Front! How the scenes are
+photographed on my heart!  As a congregation sits in a church at home
+how stolid its features often are--how dull its eyes!  One glance around
+and the preacher's heart sinks within him and his inspiration flies
+away.  Nothing is expected of him, and nothing particularly desired.
+People have come by force of habit, and not of need. But how the eyes of
+the soldiers in France glow and burn; how their features speak, and make
+the preacher speak in reply!  Who could help being eloquent there!  Such
+faces would make the dumb speak.  One can see the effect of his words as
+plainly in their expressions as he can see the effect of wind on a
+cornfield.  Every emotion from humor to concern leaps from the heart to
+the face as the subject touches them at, first this point of their life,
+then at that. The men's eyes are unforgettable.  Months afterwards they
+come vividly to mind, and one is back again answering the questions they
+silently ask, and seeing the look of content or gratitude that takes the
+place of the perplexed or troubled expression.  Eyes are said to be the
+windows of the soul, and as I have spoken I have seen men's souls
+looking out.  At home the windows are darkened and there seemed to be no
+souls behind the panes.  The dwellers within the houses are busy with
+other matters, and will not come to the windows.  The preacher feels
+like an organ-grinder in the street--those who hear do not heed nor come
+to the windows of the soul.  In France there is a soul looking out at
+every window; and the preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to
+his listeners of the love of God and of the love of women and children
+which make sweet this vale of tears and light man on his lone way beyond
+the grave.
+
+One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the singing of a hymn in the ward
+below, a young officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said: "Why
+doesn't the chaplain hold a service for us?  Why does he only hold them
+for the Tommies?  We need them and want them, just as much as the
+Tommies.  We are officers but we are also men."  I passed the word to
+the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when in the evening he gave us a
+service and the officers of the next ward asked the orderlies to carry
+them in.
+
+There is the same naturalness and spirit of fellowship between members
+of various churches.  Many lasting friendships have been formed between
+chaplains of differing communions.  There has been no change of creed
+but something greater, a change of spirit. They have been touched by the
+common spirit, and have lived and worked in free and happy fellowship.
+On my last Sunday in a hospital in France, the chaplain, a canon of the
+Church of England, invited me to read the lesson at the morning parade
+service, and to administer the wine at Holy Communion.  This I did; and
+a colonel who was present stayed behind to express to us both the
+pleasure which had been given to him by the sight of Anglican and
+Methodist churchmen serving together at the Lord's Table.
+
+To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of the Front is found in this
+warm fellowship between men of differing creeds and varying religious
+communions.  We have not knocked down our garden walls but we have taken
+off the cut glass that had been cemented on them by our fathers; and now
+we can lean over and talk to our neighbors.  We have already found that
+our neighbors are human beings, and quite normal.  The chief difference
+between us seems to be that while one has an obsession for roses the
+other has an obsession for dahlias.  On pansies, sweet peas and
+chrysanthemums we seem equally keen and exchange plants.  A Roman
+Catholic officer who had been appointed to the Ulster Division told me
+that though he was received coldly at first, he had not been with the
+Division more than a few weeks when every officer in his regiment, and
+every soldier in his company, accepted him as cordially as if he were a
+Protestant.  He was from Dublin and they from Belfast, but they did not
+allow it to make any difference, and feelings of the warmest loyalty and
+friendship sprang up. His Tommies would fight to the death by his side,
+as readily as around any Ulsterman; and he was just as popular in the
+officers' mess. When, he said, it passed the Irish Guards or any other
+Roman Catholic regiment, his regiment would sing some provoking song
+about "hanging the Pope with a good strong rope," and the Dublin
+regiment would reply with some song equally obnoxious and defiant; but
+whereas, in peace time, the songs would have caused a free fight to the
+accompaniment of bloodshed, now it caused nothing worse than laughter.
+The songs were just a bit of teasing such as every regiment likes to
+regale another with--perhaps, too, a common memory of the dear country
+they have left behind.  The men of Belfast and the men of Dublin have
+learned to respect and value one another.  They know that in a scrap
+with the enemy they can count on one another to the last drop of blood,
+for, whether from North or South, the Irish are "bonnie fighters."  Of
+such are the miracles at the Front.
+
+Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the Front is found in the nobility
+to which common men rise.  An artillery officer told me that he had in
+his battery a soldier who seemed utterly worthless.  He was dirty in all
+his ways, and unreliable in character.  In despair they made him
+sanitary orderly, that is, the scavenger whose duty it was to remove all
+refuse.  One night the officer wanted a man to go on a perilous errand
+and there were few men available.  Instantly this lad volunteered. The
+officer looked at him in amazement, and with a reverence born on the
+instant.  "No," he thought, "I will not let him go and get killed.  I'll
+go myself."  He told the lad so, and disappointment was plainly written
+on his features.
+
+"But, you'll let me come with you, sir?" he replied.
+
+"Why should two risk their lives," asked the officer, "when one can do
+the job?"
+
+"But you might get wounded, sir," was the quick response; and they went
+together.
+
+An Irish officer told me of one man who seemed bad from top to toe.  All
+the others had some redeeming feature but this man appeared not to
+possess any.  He used the filthiest language and was dirty in his habits
+and dress. He was drunken and stole the officers' whisky out of the
+mess.  He was unchaste and had been in the hospital with venereal
+disease; and neither as man nor soldier was there anything good to say
+of him.  The regiment was sent to France, and in due time took its place
+in the trenches; and then appeared in this man something that had never
+risen to the surface before.  Wherever there were wounded and dying men
+he proved himself to be the noblest man in the regiment.  When a man
+fell in No Man's Land, he was over the parapet in the twinkling of an
+eye to bring him in.  No barrage could keep him away from the wounded.
+It was a sort of passion with him that nothing could restrain.  To save
+others he risked his life scores of times.  In rest-billets he would
+revert to some of his evil ways, but in the trenches he was the
+Greatheart of the regiment and, though he did not receive it, he earned
+the Victoria Cross over and over again.  There is a glamour at the Front
+that holds the heart with an irresistible grip.  In the light of War's
+deathly fires the hearts of men are revealed and the black sheep often
+get their chance.  Life is intense and deep and men are drawn together
+by a common peril. They find the things that unite and forget the things
+that separate.
+
+"We haven't long to live," said Captain Ball joyfully, "but we live well
+while we _do_ live," and in those words he expressed the glamour of the
+Front.  Ball found, as thousands of his comrades-in-arms had found, that
+
+    "One crowded hour of glorious life
+    Is worth an age without a name."
+
+
+
+
+                                  *IV*
+
+                         *A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF*
+
+
+In his _History of the Somme Campaign_ John Buchan quotes, from an
+official report, an incident which, though I have tried, I cannot get my
+imagination to believe. Probably the incident is a true one but,
+unfortunately for me, my mind will not let it in. I cannot visualize it
+and the report is turned from the door as an impostor.  The report
+states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes fired on the Germans in
+their trenches and that the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token of
+surrender.  Without the slightest difficulty I can imagine all except
+the white handkerchiefs. Where did they get them to wave? Men in the
+firing trenches don't carry anything so conspicuous as white
+handkerchiefs.  To draw one out in a thoughtless moment might bring a
+sniper's bullet, and there are risks enough without inviting more.  I
+doubt if in any English regiment two white handkerchiefs could be found:
+and I have little expectation that more could be found among the enemy.
+Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage of the war, if a white
+handkerchief would be regarded as a sign, of surrender.  It might be
+taken as a taunt.
+
+There is nothing more remarkable in the war than the psychological
+change that has been wrought in white.  A white feather used to be the
+badge of cowardice and a white flag the token of surrender.  It is not
+so now. White has taken on a peculiar sacredness.  If a new medal were
+to be struck of the same high value as the Victoria Cross it would
+probably be given a white ribbon, as the other has a red or (for the
+navy) blue.  This change in the moral significance of white was brought
+home to me by an incident in a billet. I had gone to a barn to give the
+men some shirts and socks that had been sent to me.  I stood on the
+steps, and like an auctioneer, offered my goods for acceptance.  "Who
+wants a shirt?  Who a scarf?  Who wants this pair of mittens?  Who a
+pair of socks?"  Hands shot up at each question, and the fun grew fast
+and furious.  Then I drew out and held up a white handkerchief.  "A-ah!
+A-ah!" they cried wistfully in chorus.  For a moment they stood gazing
+at it and forgot to raise their hands towards it; then, with a single
+movement, every hand shot up.  Unwittingly I had stirred them to the
+depths; and I felt sorry for them.
+
+The Magic Carpet of Baghdad is not a fiction after all.  In the
+twinkling of an eye my white handkerchief had carried every boy and man
+to his home, and placed him by the fireside.  I saw it in their eyes and
+heard it in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices as they
+ejaculated "A-ah!"  They had not seen a white handkerchief for months.
+The last they saw was at home.  A vision of home flashed before their
+minds and they were back in the dear old days of peace when they used
+white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were unknown to them.  If in battle
+they were to see Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think it would
+make them savage and unwilling to give quarter.  They would think the
+enemy was taunting them with all they had lost.  And they would be
+maddened by the thought that here were the very men who, by their
+war-lust, had caused them to lose it.  For a German to wave a white
+handkerchief before a British soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting
+a red flag before a bull.  It would bring death rather than pity.
+Anything of pure white is rare at the front, and it has gradually taken
+on a meaning it never held before.  About the only white thing we have
+is the paper we write home on, and that use of the color helps to
+sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.
+
+In the army it is a term of supreme praise to call a man _white_.  When
+you say a comrade is a "_white man_" there is no more to be said. It is
+worth more than the Victoria Cross with its red ribbon, for it includes
+gallantry, and adds to it goodness.  A man must be brave to be called
+white and he must be generous, noble and good.  To reach whiteness is a
+great achievement.  To be dubbed white is, in the army, like being
+dubbed knight at King Arthur's Court or canonized saint in the Church.
+He stands out among a soldier's comrades distinct as a white
+handkerchief among khaki ones.
+
+I don't know where the term came from, but, wherever it may have tarried
+on the way, I think its footprints could be traced back to the Book of
+Revelation for its starting place. In the first chapter we have a
+picture of Christ as the first "White Man"--"His Head and His Hairs were
+white like wool, as white as snow."  In the second chapter His faithful
+followers are given "a white stone, and in the stone a new name
+written."  Is not the new name "White man"?  In the third chapter we
+read of "a few names even in Sardis which have _not defiled their
+garments_; and they shall _walk with Me in white_; for they are worthy."
+There, too, the Laodiceans are counseled to buy "white raiment."  In the
+fourth chapter we see the four and twenty elders, sitting around the
+throne under the rainbow arch, "clothed in white raiment."  In the sixth
+chapter we have the crowned King going "forth conquering, and to
+conquer" and He is sitting on "a white horse," that is, He uses "white"
+instruments to carry out His conquests.  Death, in the same chapter,
+rides on a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one.  Under the altar were
+the souls of the martyrs, "And white robes were given unto every one of
+them."  And surely the climax is reached when we read in the seventh
+chapter that "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all
+nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne,
+and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes."  So striking was the
+scene that one of the elders asked, "What are these which are arrayed in
+white robes? and whence came they?"  And the answer is given, "These are
+they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes,
+and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before
+the throne of God."  In the army white has come back to its ancient
+significance.  The brave and noble martyrs of the early Church were
+given "white robes" and in the army to-day the brave and pure wear
+"white robes" in the eyes of their comrades.  When Clifford Reed was
+killed by a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel wrote of him
+that he was the "whitest man" he had ever known.  He had done more than
+wear "the white flower of a _blameless_ life."  His virtues were
+positive, not merely negative. He wore a "white _robe_"; not a mere
+speck of white such as a white flower in a buttonhole would appear.
+White is a positive color, not a negative.  Reed was more than
+"blameless," he was "white and all white."  To our soldiers a white
+handkerchief speaks of home, and a "white man" speaks of honor and
+heroism and heaven.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *V*
+
+                     *THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING*
+
+
+The necessity for poetry and song is fully and officially recognized by
+the military authorities at the Front.  Every Division has its own
+concert party.  These men are chosen out of the ranks because they can
+sing, and their one task is to furnish nightly concerts for the men.
+They are provided with a good hall, or tent, or open-air position; and
+they are given enough money to buy stage scenery and appropriate dress.
+Everybody attends the concerts from the general to the private; and
+while the entertainments last, the war is forgotten.  A charge is made
+at the door but the balance sheet is published for all ranks to see; and
+the profits are distributed among the Divisional charities.
+
+Among the many Divisional Concert Parties may be named "The Bow Bells,"
+"The Duds," "The Follies," "The Whizz-bangs," "The Fancies" and, "The
+Giddigoats."  But, after all, the singing in the concert rooms is but a
+small fraction of the singing one hears in the Army.  On every march, in
+every billet and mess, there is the sound of singing.  Nor must the
+singing at our religious services and in the Y.M.C.A. huts be forgotten.
+Song seems to be the great renewer of hope and courage. It is the joy
+bringer.  Moreover, it is an expression of emotions that can find no
+other voice.
+
+There is no real difference between the songs sung by the officers, and
+those sung by the men. All attend the concerts and all sing on the
+march.  The same songs do for both commanders and commanded, and I have
+heard the same songs in the men's billets as in the officers'
+mess-rooms.  How real these songs are to the soldiers is indicated by
+one striking omission.  There are no patriotic songs at the Front.
+Except the National Anthem rendered on formal occasions, I have never,
+in eighteen months, heard a single patriotic song.  The reason is not
+far to seek.  The soldiers' patriotism calls for no expression in song.
+They are expressing it night and day in the endurance of hardship and
+wounds--in the risking of their lives.  Their hearts are satisfied with
+their deeds, and songs of such a character become superfluous.  In
+peace-time they sing their love of the homeland, but in war-time they
+suffer for her and are content.  They would never think of singing a
+patriotic song as they march into battle.  It would be painting the lily
+and gilding refined gold.  Are not their deathless deeds, songs for
+which they make a foil by singing some inconsequential and evanescent
+song such as, "There's something in the sea-side air."
+
+On analysis I should say that there are five subjects on which our
+soldiers sing.  First, there are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it,
+songs of soldier-philosophy.  They know that no theory will explain the
+war; it is too big a thing for any sheet of philosophy to cover.  It has
+burst in on our little hum-drum life like a colliding planet.  The thing
+to do is not to evolve a theory as to how the planet got astray but to
+clear up the mess it has made.  Our soldiers show this sense of the
+vastness of war-happenings, by singing of things having no real
+importance at all, and keeping steadily at their duties.  The path of
+duty is, they find, the only path of sanity.  The would-be war
+philosopher they put on one side.  The war is too big for him.  Let him
+leave his explanation of the war and lend a hand to bring it to an end.
+So they sing, with laughing irony,
+
+    "We're here because we're here, because
+    We're here, because we're here."
+
+Or,
+
+    "While you've got a lucifer to light your fag,
+    Smile, boys, that's the style.
+    What's the use of worrying?
+    It never was worth while,
+    So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag
+    And smile, smile, smile."
+
+Another favorite is,
+
+    "Oh, there was a little hen and she had a wooden leg,
+    The best little hen that ever laid an egg,
+    And she laid more eggs than any hen on the farm,
+    And another little drink wouldn't do us any harm."
+
+I have seen them dancing round some old piano singing,
+
+    "Oh, that fascinating Bow Bells' glide,
+    It's a captivating Bow Bells' slide.
+    There's a rumor that the puma does it now,
+    Monkeys have taken to it,
+    Leopards and lions do it.
+    All the elephants wear dancing shoes,
+    They keep hopping with the kangaroos;
+    Hear them chatter, it's a matter for some talk;
+    Now the Jungle's got the Bow Bells' walk."
+
+
+The second class of song is the Love Song, of a more or less serious
+character.  The Tommies came out of England singing "Tipperary," but
+they dropped it in France, and the only one on whose lips I have heard
+it was a little French boy sitting on the tail of a cart.  The chorus
+alone gave it popularity for it was the expression, ready to hand, of a
+long farewell; and with its "long long way to go" showed that, like
+Kitchener, the soldiers were not deceived by hopes of an early peace.
+
+Now another song with verses more expressive of their sentiments has
+taken its place. The chorus runs:
+
+    "There's a long, long trail a-winding
+      Into the land of my dreams,
+    Where the nightingales are singing
+      And a white moon beams;
+    There's a long, long night of waiting
+      Until my dreams all come true;
+    Till the day when I'll be going down
+      That long, long trail with you."
+
+Then the mood changes, and we hear the lads piping out,
+
+    "Taffy's got his Jennie in Glamorgan,
+      Sandy's got his Maggie in Dundee,
+    While Michael O'Leary thinks of his dearie
+      Far across the Irish Sea.
+    Billy's got his Lily up in London,
+      So the boys march on with smiles;
+    For every Tommy's got a girl somewhere
+      In the dear old British Isles."
+
+Again the mood veers round, and we hear,
+
+    "Every little while I feel so lonely,
+      Every little while I feel so blue,
+    I'm always dreaming, I'm always scheming,
+      Because I want you, and only you.
+    Every little while my heart is aching,
+      Every little while I miss your smile,
+    And all the time I seem to miss you;
+    I want to, want to kiss you,
+      Every, every, every little while."
+
+
+Here is part of a song I have heard sung, many and many a time, by young
+officers and men whose voices are now silent in death:
+
+    "If you were the only girl in the world,
+    And I were the only boy,
+    Nothing else would matter in the world to-day,
+    We could go on loving in the same old way;
+    A Garden of Eden just made for two,
+    With nothing to mar our joy;
+    I would say such wonderful things to you,
+    There would be such wonderful things to do,
+    If you were the only girl in the world,
+    And I were the only boy."
+
+
+Sometimes the imagination will wander into the days that are to be--for
+some--and they sing,
+
+    "We don't want a lot of flags flying,
+      We don't want your big brass bands;
+    We don't want a lot of speechifying,
+      And we don't want a lot of waving hands;
+    We don't want a lot of interfering,
+      When we've safely crossed the foam;
+    But we _do_ want to find the girls we left behind,
+      When we all come marching home."
+
+
+Will the girls remember!  The words are not without tragedy.  How deeply
+some of the men love may perhaps never be realized by those at home.
+The longing of their hearts is, at times, almost unbearable.  A captain,
+past middle life, took my arm one day and led me aside.  He was, he
+said, a little anxious about himself, for he was getting into the habit
+of taking more drink than he was wont to take. He had been taking it
+when he felt lonely and depressed to ease the longing of his heart.
+
+"I never touch it at home," he said, "the society of my dear little wife
+is all the stimulant I need.  I would give the world to be with her
+now--just to sit in my chair and watch her at her sewing or knitting.
+The separation is too much for me and, you know, it has lasted nearly
+three years now."
+
+I have caught this yearning in more than one of the songs our soldiers
+sing, but especially in the following, which is called "Absent":
+
+    "Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass,
+    The little truant waves of sunlight pass;
+    My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while
+    Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.
+
+    "And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart,
+    The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart;
+    From my fond lips the eager answers fall,
+    Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call."
+
+
+The men's thoughts pass easily from the sweetheart to the mother who
+bore them, and we have a third class, the Home Song.  I have been
+awakened in the night by men, going up to the line, singing "Keep the
+Home Fires Burning."  It is very thrilling to hear in the dead of night,
+when every singer is within range of the enemy's guns.
+
+Another great favorite is,
+
+    "They built a little garden for the rose,
+      And they called it Dixie-land;
+    They built a summer breeze to keep the snows
+      Far away from Dixie-land;
+    They built the finest place I've known,
+      When they built my home sweet home;
+    Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton,
+      From the clover to the honey-comb,
+    And then they took an angel from the skies
+      And they gave her heart to me.
+    She had a bit of heaven in her eyes
+      Just as blue as blue can be;
+    They put some fine spring chickens in the land,
+      And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan.
+    They made it twice as nice as paradise,
+      And they called it Dixie-land."
+
+
+Being Londoners, the following song called "Leave" never fails in its
+appeal to our Division:
+
+    "I'm so delighted, I'm so excited,
+    With my folks I'm going to be united.
+    The train's departing, 'twill soon be starting;
+    I'll see my mother, my dad and my baby brother.
+    My!  How I'll meet them, My! how I'll greet them.
+    What a happy happy day.
+    Just see that bustle, I'd better hustle,
+    Good-bye--so long--can't stay--
+
+    Chorus
+
+    "I'm on my way back to dear old Shepherd's Bush,
+    That's the spot where I was born,
+    Can't you hear the porter calling,
+    Queen's Road, Piccadilly, Marble Arch and Bond Street?
+    Oh, I'll not hesitate, I'll reach the gate;
+    Through the crowd I mean to push,
+    Find me a seat anywhere--please anywhere,
+    Tram, train, tube, 'bus I don't care--
+    For mother and daddy are waiting there--
+    In dear old Shepherd's Bush."
+
+
+On the eve of one big battle, a soldier handed me a letter in which he
+gave me the addresses of his father and his sweetheart, so that I could
+write to them if he fell.
+
+"In the last battle," he said, "one of my brothers was killed and
+another wounded.  If I fall I shall die without regrets and with a heart
+content; but it will go hard with those at home; and I want you to break
+the news gently. These are terrible times for those at home."  "These
+are terrible times _for those at home_."  That is their constant
+refrain, and it finds an echo in a song often sung by them.
+
+    "It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky,
+      Where the blue-bells grow 'round the old cabin door;
+    It's a long, long way and I'll be mighty lucky
+      When I see my dear old mammy once more.
+    So weep no more, my lady,
+      Just brush those tears away;
+    It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky,
+      But I'm bound to get there some day."
+
+
+But the chief favorite of all Home Songs is, I think, the following:
+
+    "There's an old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned street;
+      In a quaint little old-fashioned town;
+    There's a street where the cobble stones harass the feet,
+      As it straggles up hill and then down;
+    And, though to and fro through the world I must go,
+      My heart while it beats in my breast,
+    Where e'er I may roam, to that old-fashioned home
+      Will fly like a bird to its nest.
+
+    "In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned street,
+      Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair;
+    I can see their two faces so tender and sweet,
+      And I love every wrinkle that's there.
+    I love ev'ry mouse in that old-fashioned house
+      In the street that runs up hill and down;
+    Each stone and each stick, ev'ry cobble and brick,
+      In that quaint little old-fashioned town."
+
+
+The charm of the Army is its comradeship. Our soldiers have left their
+homes and friends but they have found new friends, and some of the
+friendships have become very precious. Men slept side by side in barn
+and trench, cooked their rations at the same little wood fire, and stood
+together in the hour of danger and imminent death.  Many of them owe
+their lives to their comrades.  There are few songs that express this
+wonderful comradeship, but there is one that is known and sung through
+the army.  It represents the Songs of Comradeship:
+
+    "When you come to the end of a perfect day,
+      And you sit alone with your thought,
+    While the chimes ring out with a carol gay,
+      For the joy that the day has brought;
+    Do you think what the end of a perfect day
+      Can mean to a tired heart,
+    When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,
+      And the dear friends have to part?
+
+    "Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
+      Near the end of a journey too;
+    But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
+      With a wish that is kind and true.
+    For mem'ry has painted this perfect day
+      With colors that never fade;
+    And we find at the end of a perfect day
+      _The soul of a friend we've made_."
+
+
+The fifth class of song is that of the inner life.  It is the Religious
+Hymn.  The soldiers are extremely fond of hymns in their services. You
+cannot give them too many.  "Rock of Ages," "Jesus lover of my soul,"
+"Fight the good fight," "There is a green hill," "At even ere the sun
+was set," "O God our help in ages past," and "Eternal Father strong to
+save" cannot be chosen too often.  But there are two hymns which have
+stood out above all others; they are "Abide with me," and "When I survey
+the wondrous Cross."
+
+There is nothing written by the hand of man which can compete with these
+two in the blessing and strength which they have brought to our
+soldiers, especially during an offensive when death has cast his shadow
+over the hearts of all.  During the bitterest weeks in the Somme
+fighting there was scarcely a service in which we did not sing "When I
+survey the wondrous Cross."  With its assurance of redemption it gave
+comfort in the face of death.  It also gave, for an example, the Supreme
+Sacrifice.
+
+Some of the songs I have quoted look bare and ungainly as trees in
+winter, but when the musician has clothed them with music and the singer
+added to them a touch of his own personality they are fair as trees in
+summer.  Still the fact remains that none of these songs will live on
+their own merits.  They are not born to immortality.  Like the daisies
+they have their day and pass away to make room for others.  It is best
+so.  There is not room in the world for everything to be immortal, and
+the transient has a work of its own to do. The charm and rare beauty of
+the English countryside are due to the transience of its flowers and
+foliage and little of the evergreen is enough.  We tire of the eternal.
+The transient songs I have quoted here have been meat and drink to our
+soldiers in the most terrible war ever waged.  They may be poor stuff in
+comparison with our classic songs but a good appetite can get
+nourishment out of plain food and grow strong on it.  For the purpose in
+hand these songs have been better than the classics; otherwise they
+would not have been chosen.  There is a time and place for all things.
+The robin may not be compared with the nightingale but it is not the
+less welcome, for it sings when the nightingale is silent.  Our
+soldiers' songs will die, some are already dead, but they have done
+their work and justified their existence.  They have given pleasure and
+strength to men as they went out to do immortal deeds.  No wounded
+soldier, or parched traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water because
+it perished in the using; and so it is with the songs our soldiers sing.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *VI*
+
+                            *EASTER SUNDAY*
+
+
+Night and day for a week, the fearful bombardment continued.  Our guns
+were everywhere, and belching forth without intermission.  Dumps of
+shells were almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field, and processions
+of ammunition-wagons piled the shells up faster than the gorging guns
+could take them.  The noise was something beyond imagination.  It was as
+though all the devils in hell had come out to demoniacally celebrate the
+end of the world.  We were living--two transport officers and I--in an
+empty farm-house that, some time before we came in, had been a target
+for direct hits.  One shell had gone through the roof, and another
+through the gable wall.  The windows had been shattered, and the garden
+and fields were pitted with shell-holes.  Our first care had been to
+look at the cellar, but we had decided, if things became too hot, to
+make for the open fields.  We all slept in the same room, and were at
+times wakened up by "an arrival" and passed an opinion as to its
+distance.  If, for a time, none came nearer, we turned over and went to
+sleep again, for a man must sleep even though it be on the edge of a
+volcano.
+
+One morning the servants found a shell nose-cap beneath the window--just
+that, and nothing more.  The week was wearing on. Another morning some
+of the 7th Middlesex Regiment were in the baths in the village over the
+way, and a company of the London Scottish was passing by.  Two shells
+fell in the road.  The bathers scampered out of the bath and ran naked,
+here and there, for shelter; the Scottish "scattered"; but some
+forty-five soldiers, mostly kilted, lay in the road dead or wounded.  In
+the dead of night a party of machine gunners, just returned from the
+firing-trench, stood outside their billet in our village square debating
+if they should make a cup of tea before turning in to sleep.  A shell
+decided the matter, and, next morning, I laid two of them to rest in the
+little cemetery, and the others stood by as mourners.
+
+The week of terror reached its crisis on the Sunday--an Easter Sunday
+never to be forgotten.  The infantry of the Brigade had been away to a
+camp, beyond range, for a week's rest.  They had now returned ready for
+the battle.  Three of the regiments had taken up their positions in the
+reserve trenches, but my own regiment was quartered in the fatal
+village.  The day dawned bright and fair, but its smiles were the smiles
+of a deceiver.  The Germans had decided on the destruction of the
+village, a sort of devil's "hail-and-farewell" before being driven back
+at the points of bayonets.  We were awakened by the firing of
+machine-guns over our heads, and rushed to the door to see a fight in
+the air.  High up in the blue, two aeroplanes circled about for
+positions of vantage, and then rushed at one another like hawks in
+mortal combat.  A silence followed.  Then one rose and made off towards
+the battle-line but fell to a shot of our gunners before it could reach
+safety.  The other, with its petrol-tank on fire, was planing down to
+earth.  Down and down an invisible spiral staircase it seemed to rush,
+while the golden fire burnt at its vitals, and a trailing cloud of smoke
+marked its path of doom.  Breathlessly we watched its descent.  It was
+under perfect control, but its path to the ground was too long and
+spiral, and the faster it rushed through the air the greater the draught
+became and the more madly the flames leapt up. Every second was precious
+and the certainty of its doom made us sick.  We saw the body of the
+observer fall out, and still the flaming machine pursued its course.
+Then the wings fell away and twirled to the ground like feathers, while
+the engine and the pilot dropped like a stone.  When the bodies were
+picked up, it was found that the observer had been shot through the
+head, and that the pilot, with his dead comrade behind him, had worked
+the wheel until the furious encroaching flame had swept over him, and
+robbed him of mortal life.
+
+Shells were now dropping in the village every few minutes.  Our
+farm-house was on the right wing, and we stood watching the bombardment.
+With each burst there rose a cloud of black smoke and red brick-dust,
+and we knew that another cottage has been destroyed. Then the shells
+began to creep round to the right as if the enemy was feeling for the
+bridge over which the ammunition wagons were passing.  On one side of
+the little bridge was a white bell-tent, and we watched the shells
+dropping within a few feet of it without destroying it.  Between the
+tent and our street lay a stagnant pool, and we saw about a dozen shells
+fall in its water.  The range was lengthening and it seemed as if some
+invisible octopus were stretching out its feelers towards us.  A shell
+smashed against the farm-house at the bottom of our street.  The deadly
+thing was coming nearer.  Some of our sergeants were in a farm-house a
+few doors away, and, hearing a shell fall in the field between them and
+the pool, they came to the decision that the moment had come "to
+scatter," but they were too late.  It would have been better had they
+stayed indoors.  As they rushed out a shell burst over the yard three of
+them fell to the ground dead, and three more were blown back into the
+house by the force of the explosion.  The coping stone of the outhouse
+where the shell burst was blown away and three ragged seams were scored
+on the green doorway of the yard outside which the three lads lay dead.
+One of them had, ten days before, shown me to my billet thirty yards
+farther up.  He acted as interpreter to the regiment and as he had not
+to go into the line, we thought that he was one of those who would see
+the end of the war.  Yet there he lay.
+
+But the worst calamity of the day was yet to befall.  Some fifteen or
+sixteen ammunition wagons, unable to get through the village, had halted
+in the Square--"Wipers Square" it had been named.  Each wagon was loaded
+with nine-point-two shells.  An enemy-shot fell on a wagon and set it on
+fire; then the village became like unto Sodom and Gomorrah on their day
+of doom.  One or two drivers bravely stuck to their wagons, and got them
+out but the rest of the wagons were lost.  The scene that followed was
+indescribable.  Dor� could never have pictured such horrors.  The wagons
+all caught fire and their loads of shells began to explode.  We stood
+out in the fields and watched the conflagration, while all the time the
+Germans continued to shell the village. The large village-hall and the
+houses on each side of the square were utterly destroyed. Great
+explosions sent fragments of wagons and houses sky-high, and showers of
+missiles fell even where we stood.  The fore part of one wagon was blown
+on to the roof of a house. Houses caught fire and blazed all afternoon.
+Some machine-gunners joined us and told how, when choking smoke began to
+penetrate into their cellar they had to rush through the square and its
+bursting shells to preserve their lives. A German shell burst in a
+billet where a platoon of our men were sheltering in the cellar, and
+those who were not killed by the shell were crushed to death by the fall
+of the house. Another shell hit the roof of the house in the cellar of
+which was our Advanced Dressing Station for the morrow's battle.  Two
+orderlies who happened to be in the street were killed, and the colonel
+was knocked down.  In the cellars of almost every house were soldiers or
+civilians, and all day the ammunition wagons continued burning; shell
+after shell getting red hot and exploding.
+
+All day the German bombardment continued and, amid a terrific din, our
+own gunners returned a score or more for every one received. By the
+bridge another long line of loaded ammunition wagons stood for two
+hours, and though shells were bursting close by, not one hit the wagons.
+The drivers stood by them and, as soon as the road was cleared, got them
+away to the guns.  Yet, while the Square was burning and the German
+shells falling, hundreds of men from the London regiments entered the
+village from the right, and crossed the bridge to stack their packs so
+as to be ready for the coming battle.  They walked in single file and
+with wide gaps between, but not a man ran or quickened his pace.  My
+blood tingled with pride at their courage and anger at their
+carelessness.  What _would_ make a British soldier run?  An officer was
+walking near the pool.  A shell fell near enough for fragments to kill
+him, but he merely looked round, stopped to light a cigarette and walked
+leisurely on as if nothing had happened. Three men stood with their
+backs against a small building near the bridge as if sheltering from the
+rain.  Several shells fell uncomfortably near, so, concluding that the
+rain had changed its direction, they moved round the corner.  And it was
+not till more shells had fallen near them that they condescended to move
+away altogether.
+
+Yet this was not bravado for, so far as they knew, no one was watching
+them.  It was due to a certain dignity peculiar to our fighting man.  He
+is too proud to acknowledge defeat. He is a man, and whether any one is
+watching or not, he is not going to run away from a shell.  Hundreds of
+lives must have been lost through this stubborn pride but, on the other
+hand, thousands of lives must have been saved by it, for it makes the
+Army absolutely proof against panic, than which, nothing is so fatal in
+war.  In eighteen months on the Front I have never seen or heard of a
+single case of panic either with many or few.  Our soldiers are always
+masters of themselves.  They have the coolness to judge what is the
+wisest thing to do in the circumstances, and they have the nerve to
+carry it out.  They run unnecessary risks through pride but never
+through panic. All that day on the bridge, a military policeman stood at
+his post of duty.  Like Vesuvius of old the exploding shells in the
+Square sent up their deadly eruption, and like the Roman sentry at
+Pompeii, he stood at his post.  As he stood there I saw a young French
+woman leave her house and pass him on the bridge. She was leaving the
+village for a safer place but she seemed quite composed and carried a
+basket on her left arm.
+
+While our village was being destroyed we were startled by a tremendous
+explosion a few miles away; and looking to our left we saw a huge tongue
+of flame leap up to the sky, followed by a wonderful pillar of smoke
+which stood rigid for some moments like a monster tower of Babel
+reaching up to the heavens. Evidently a dump of cordite had been fired
+by an enemy shell.  Farther off still, another dump was on fire.  Time
+and again, bright flames leapt from the ground only to be smothered
+again by dense curling masses of smoke. It seemed as if our whole front
+was on fire, and news came to us that our main road of communication had
+been heavily shelled, and was now strewn with dead horses and men.
+Before the battle of the Somme there were no signs and portents so
+terrible as these: It was evident that the enemy knew what was in store
+for him on the morrow, and was preparing against it, but if the prelude
+was so magnificent in its terror, what would the battle be? Imagination
+staggered under the contemplation.  By four o'clock the bombardment was
+almost at an end, and nearly all the shells in the Square had exploded.
+The soldiers began to creep out of the cellars.  On passing through the
+Square we were amazed at the sight.  In fact the Transport Officer
+passed through at my side without recognizing the place.  At the
+entrance was a team of six dead mules lying prone on the ground and
+terribly torn.  Two rows of houses had disappeared, leaving mere heaps
+of stones in their places.  The pavement was torn up, and the wrecks of
+the ammunition wagons lay scattered about.  Two houses were still
+burning.  Our colonel and adjutant we found by the side of the stream.
+They had been in a cellar near the Square all day but, fortunately, they
+were little the worse for the experience. They were giving orders for
+the assembling of the scattered regiment.
+
+By this time, civilians were leaving the cellars, and with armfuls of
+household goods hastening from the village.  To them it seemed the end
+of all things--the day of doom.  Some of them had slight wounds and as
+they passed us they cried mournfully, "Finis, Messieurs, Finis."  All
+was lost.  This exodus of the despairing civilians was the saddest sight
+of the day.  By sunset the regiment had been gathered together--all
+except the wounded who had been sent to the Main Dressing Station and
+the dead who had been placed side by side and covered with blankets.
+Most of our officers and men had lost all their belongings, but in the
+twilight they marched out of the village and took their places in the
+reserve trenches near the other battalions.  These had suffered no
+losses.  They had been saved the long day's agony.  Early in the morning
+the battle was to begin but the Westminsters knew that no worse
+experience could await them than that through which they had already
+passed.
+
+Next morning I buried, near the ruined church, the bodies of the
+sergeants who had been killed a few doors from us; and on the following
+day I laid to rest, side by side, in one long grave, two drivers who had
+died at their posts in the Square, together with an officer and twenty
+men belonging to the 1st Queen's Westminster Rifles.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *VII*
+
+                        *"NOW THE DAY IS OVER"*
+
+
+Achicourt is a little village about a mile out of Arras.  It has two
+churches, one Roman Catholic, the other, Lutheran.  The former church
+has been utterly destroyed by German shells, and will have to be rebuilt
+from the foundations.  The Lutheran church was less prominently placed,
+and its four walls are still standing.  Its humility has saved it, but,
+as by fire.  All its windows are gone, and its walls are torn and
+scarred by fragments of shells.  Most of its slates have been destroyed
+and the rain pours through the roof.  But, on dry days, and until the
+Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little place for services.  It stood,
+however, at a corner of the village Square, and the Square was destroyed
+by hundreds of exploding shells on Easter Sunday.  As I passed it in the
+afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered, my heart grew sad
+within me.
+
+Often it had sheltered us at worship, and many of our most sacred
+memories will, for ever, cling like ivy to its walls.  The door was
+smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as by lightning.  The pews
+were strewn on the floor with their backs broken; even the frames of the
+windows had been blown out.  There was a little portable organ that we
+had used with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the floor like a
+slaughtered child.  The floor was white with plaster, as when a sharp
+frost has brought low the cherry blossom.  Never again, I thought,
+should I gather my men for worship within its humble, hospitable walls.
+One more of the beautiful and sacred things of life had perished in this
+all-devouring war.  Only the fields remained, and there all my future
+services must be held.
+
+But "fears may be liars" and so mine proved. I had reckoned without the
+man in khaki--that master of fate whose head "beneath the bludgeonings
+of chance, is bloody but unbowed."  In a week he had cleared the Square
+of its dead--mules and men--filled in its craters, and cleared away the
+debris that blocked the roads.  He was even removing the fallen houses
+in order to mend the roads with their bricks and stones; and he had
+thrown together all the scraps of iron for salvage. There I found, lying
+side by side, the burned tin-soldiers of the children; officers'
+revolvers which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat; bayonets and
+rifle-barrels of the men; broken sewing machines of the women.  He had
+taken in hand, too, the little church.  Sacking was spread across the
+windows; the remnants of the little organ were carefully placed under
+the pulpit where they lay like the body of a saint beneath an altar; the
+floor was swept of its fallen plaster.  The pews were repaired and
+placed in order again, and a new door was made.  Even timber was brought
+for a new vestibule.  The wood was rough and unpainted--Tommy had to use
+what he could get--but it served.  The twisted railings were drawn away
+from the entrance, and, on the following Sunday, we were back in our old
+sanctuary.  We felt that it was more sacred than ever.  These are the
+deeds of our fighting-man that make us love him so much, and these are
+the acts of kindness and common sense that make us admire our
+commanders. Both officers and men have the heart of a lion in the hour
+of battle, the gentleness of a lamb when it is over.  Whatever their
+circumstances, they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget the fathers
+that begat them.
+
+Let him who doubts the future of England come hither.  He will see the
+past through the present, and the future through both.  Tommy's eyes are
+the crystal gazing-glasses in which he will discern the future.  Tommy
+is living history and the prophecy of the future made flesh.  The
+pessimists have not seen Tommy here, and that is why they are what they
+are. "Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his infinite freshness and
+resource.  He is a sword that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the
+might of an enemy break, and he will be found flashing wherever there
+are wrongs to right and weak to be defended.  On Easter Sunday he was
+calmly enduring the horror of the German bombardment and the explosions
+of his own dump of shells.  On Easter Monday he was driving the Germans
+at the point of his bayonet, or accepting their surrender at the doors
+of their dug-outs!  On Easter Tuesday and Wednesday he was repairing a
+little French chapel for worship.  Take him which day you will, and you
+will find him mighty hard to match.  To me he is the king of men, and
+his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness beyond the range of
+explanations.
+
+After some weeks of fighting we had come to our last Sunday in
+Achicourt, and were gathered for the evening service.  The chapel was
+jammed with officers and men, but not all my flock was there.  There was
+Rifleman Gibson absent.  He was carrying his beloved Lewis gun in an
+attack when a bullet struck him, and he died, as his comrades report,
+with a smile upon his face.  Before going into the battle he had given
+me his father's address and thanked me for the spiritual help he had
+received at the services.  It was his farewell to me, and his father now
+has the penciled words.  And Rifleman Stone was absent, too. He was but
+a boy, and beautiful with youth and goodness.  His comrades loved him as
+David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the love of women.  Every day,
+they told me in their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his prayers
+and to read his Bible.  One night after praying he laid him down and
+slept.  He had often sung the evening hymn:
+
+    "Jesus protects; my fears, be gone!
+      What can the Rock of Ages move?
+    Safe in Thy arm I lay me down,
+      Thy everlasting arms of love.
+
+    "While Thou art intimately nigh,
+      Who, then, shall violate my rest?
+    Sin, earth, and hell I now defy;
+      I lean upon my Saviour's breast.
+
+    "Me for Thine own Thou lov'st to take,
+      In time and in eternity,
+    Thou never, never wilt forsake
+      A helpless soul that trusts in Thee."
+
+And as he slept, God took him from the misery of this world--took him
+without waking him.  His broken-hearted comrades gathered together his
+broken body, and a friend, a Congregational preacher, who, though over
+military age, was serving in the ranks, read the burial service over
+him.  Lance-corporal Gilbert James was missing, too--he whom I had known
+to lose his breakfast to attend a service in a cold, dirty, old barn.
+And many others were absent whose departure to the Land beyond our
+mortal reach was to us like the putting out of stars.
+
+We were leaving the Arras front and we sang a hymn for those who had
+taken our places:
+
+    "O Lord of Hosts, Whose mighty arm
+    In safety keeps 'mid war's alarm,
+    Protect our comrades at the Front
+    Who bear of war the bitter brunt.
+      And in the hour of danger spread
+      Thy sheltering wings above each head,
+
+    "In battle's harsh and dreadful hour,
+    Make bare Thine arm of sovereign power,
+    And fight for them who fight for Thee,
+    And give to justice, victory.
+      O in the hour of danger spread
+      Thy sheltering wings above each head.
+
+    "If by the way they wounded lie,
+    O listen to their plaintive cry;
+    And rest them on Thy loving breast,
+    O Thou on Whom the cross was pressed;
+      And in the hour of danger shed
+      Thy glorious radiance o'er each head.
+
+    "When pestilence at noonday wastes,
+    And death in triumph onward hastes,
+    O Saviour Christ, remember Nain,
+    And give us our beloved again.
+      In every ward of sickness tread,
+      And lay Thy hand upon each head.
+
+    "O Friend and Comforter divine,
+    Who makest light at midnight shine,
+    Give consolation to the sad
+    Who in the days of peace were glad.
+      And in the hour of sorrow spread
+      Thy wings above each drooping head.
+        Amen."
+
+I had to find a new voice to start it, for our little organ had been
+destroyed by a shell, and our precentor was lying in a grave beside his
+Medical Aid Post at Guemappe.  When, on Good Friday, we had sung the
+hymn before, the regiment returned from rest billets to the line, he had
+started the tune.  His love for music was second only to that of risking
+his life for the wounded.  In one of his letters given me to censor, he
+had written, "How nice it will be to be back in my old place in the
+choir."  But he was destined not to go back. His path was onward and
+upward, and his place was in the heavenly choir.  I had seen it in his
+large, tender blue eyes.  There was in them an expression as if he had
+seen "the land that is very far off."  I felt that he was chosen as a
+sacrifice--that the seal of God was on his forehead.
+
+Still, we had to sing, though his voice was silent.  So we sang--several
+tunes, for hymns seemed all our spirits needed.  What need was there for
+a sermon when we had hymns? We left the rag-time type of hymn and sang
+the real deep things that come from men's hearts, and ever after are
+taken up by their fellows to express their deepest aspirations and
+experiences.  The ruined chapel vibrated with music, and men, I am told,
+stood in the street to listen while "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," "Rock of
+Ages," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and "The Sands of Time are
+Sinking" told of the faith and love that lift up the heart.  We also
+sang "Abide with Me."  After hearing us sing it one night, a Roman
+Catholic officer in the regiment, a Canadian and one of the bravest,
+most beloved men that ever walked, told me that he was a great-grandson
+of the author.  He is in hospital now with severe wounds, but his men
+were present.
+
+"Couldn't we take up a collection for the repair of the chapel when
+peace comes?" whispered a rifleman; "it would be a sort of thanksgiving
+for the good times we have had in it, and for the kindness of the
+congregation in giving us the use of it so freely."
+
+I put the suggestion to the men and they voted for it with enthusiasm.
+Two of them went round with their caps and out of their shallow purses
+the big-hearted fellows gave over 100 francs.  In the name of the men I
+presented the full caps to a lady of the congregation who was present,
+and she was moved to tears.  The time was quickly passing, so I mounted
+the pulpit and told them of words spoken after the earth's first great
+trouble, when the black wings of death had cast their shadow over every
+home: "And God said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a
+token of a covenant between me and the earth.  And it shall come to
+pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
+the cloud."
+
+"God," I said, "has made a covenant with man, for man is His neighbor
+and subject; and there must be an understanding between them, if there
+is to be peace and happiness.  Man must know God's will or he will
+grieve Him and there will be discord and pain.  Also, man must know
+God's intentions concerning him, and something of His ways, or else he
+will live in fear and dread of the Almighty One in whose power he lies.
+There were no books and parchment in the first days, so God took the sky
+for His parchment, and dipping His fingers in the most lovely of colors,
+wrote out His covenant with man.  He spread it out between earth and
+heaven so that man might look up and see it without obstruction, and so
+that He Himself might look down on it and remember His agreement.  'The
+bow,' He said, 'shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I
+may remember the everlasting covenant.'"
+
+"When you draw up a covenant with a neighbor, you look well at it and
+then give it to your attorney, who puts it away in the darkness of the
+safe.  But it is taken out at intervals for fresh examination.  And the
+rainbow-covenant was put away behind the clouds, to be brought out again
+from time to time to bring comfort and strength to man by its
+appearance. The rainbow is only half seen by man. The lower half of its
+circle is lost in the earth.  It exists, but unseen.  And the full
+circle of God's beautiful covenant with man has never appeared to our
+eyes.  A full half is lost in the unapprehending darkness of man's mind.
+The full purpose of God is not realized.  His plans are too vast and
+glorious for the intellect or imagination to span; but half the rainbow
+is seen and it is enough. Seeing half we can take the rest on trust.  In
+the covenant we are assured that we shall never be given darkness
+without light, winter without summer, seedtime without harvest, death
+without birth, sorrow without joy, or a thick cloud without a rainbow.
+He binds Himself not to give evil without good, or to bring tears
+without laughter.  "I do set My bow in the cloud; and it shall come to
+pass when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
+the cloud."
+
+"A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine and life is woven of the same
+stuff--tears and laughter.  The most glorious sunshine is incapable of a
+rainbow without the co-operation of the dark trailing clouds; and it is
+impossible for the human character to reach its ripest maturity and
+beauty on joy alone.  Sorrow is as beneficent and necessary as joy.
+There are untutored natives who dread the rainbow. They believe that it
+is a serpent that rises out of the pools to devour men; and there are
+unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread adversity no less.  They do
+not believe that _God_ 'brings the cloud.'  The rainbow is their
+refutation and it is written across the sky for all to see.  On the
+other hand, there are unbelieving men who see only the cloud and are
+blind to the sunshine.  To them life is one long tragedy.  It is an
+immense futility.  They regard man as a mere cork in the sea, thrown
+about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural forces void of purpose;
+active indeed but ungoverned.  Human life to them is a black cloud
+driven through immensity by the winds of unintelligent fate.  It has no
+meaning and its darkness is the deeper because they cannot call a halt
+and disperse it into nothingness. Like Job's wife they would say 'Curse
+God and die,' yet they cannot die.  But Job, as he sits on the dunghill,
+looks up at the rainbow and finds a truer philosophy.  'What?' says he,
+'shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive
+evil?'  Under the rainbow's arch there are fruitful fields and beautiful
+gardens for where the rainbow hangs in air there is sunshine and there
+is rain--the parents of fruitfulness.  And to whom God gives in equal
+measure joy and sorrow there is beauty and fruitfulness of heart and
+life.  His promise to 'every living creature' is that He will never send
+the cloud without the sunshine and, what is not less gracious, He will
+never send the sunshine without the cloud.  When by day the Israelites
+tramped the fiery desert He led them by a pillar of cloud, and they
+marched in its shade; and in the blackness of night He threw in the sky
+a pillar of sunshine; and they walked through the gloom in its light.
+
+"In these terrible days of war when our hearts begin to fail us and dark
+doubts cloud the mind, let us look at the Covenant God has made with us.
+He has set it in rainbow colors across the sky, that 'he who runs may
+read' and 'the wayfaring man though a fool may not err.'  God has flung
+his rainbow over the trench and the grave; over the Garden of
+Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary.  It is over the tomb in the
+Arimathean's Garden; and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven. We
+are born under the rainbow, live under it, die under it.  At the last we
+shall find it over the throne of Judgment.  Water and blood flowed from
+Christ's side; and life and death, joy and pain, light and darkness,
+summer and winter, peace and war come forth from God.
+
+"Let us take life as it comes with obedient wills and grateful hearts.
+The bee finds honey in the thistle as well as in the rose, and 'where
+the bee sucks there suck I,' for He who guides the bee guides me.  Only
+in loving obedience to God shall we find true wisdom.  It is not so much
+what we are given as how we take it that matters.  To be humble nothing
+may be so sweet as sorrow; and to the proud nothing may be so bitter as
+pleasure.  Let us leave God to mix the ingredients of our life, for 'all
+things work together for good to them that love God.'  It is all in the
+covenant written by God's fingers in the colors of the rainbow, and
+whenever He brings it from beyond the clouds, let us look at it with
+reverent eyes, and ponder its promise.  Then shall we be able to say,
+with Wordsworth,
+
+    'My heart leaps up when I behold
+    A rainbow in the sky.'"
+
+
+After I had finished speaking we sang, at the request of one of the
+sergeants, the hymn commencing
+
+    "The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended,
+    The darkness falls at Thy behest."
+
+And beautiful indeed was the singing of it.
+
+The Benediction followed.  Just as I was ending it an impulse came to
+me, and I yielded to its importunity.  "Before we part and before we
+leave Achicourt which has meant so much to us of joy and sorrow," I
+said, "let us sing a kiddies' hymn.  We still shelter in our hearts a
+little child.  Though we have grown moustaches and some of us gray
+hairs, the child that we once were, never quite dies.  Let us have a
+hymn for the boy within us who never grows up and never dies."  Then I
+read out verse by verse, for it was not in their books:
+
+    "Now the day is over,
+    Night is drawing nigh,
+    Shadows of the evening
+    Steal across the sky.
+
+    "Jesus, give the weary
+    Calm and sweet repose;
+    With Thy tenderest blessing
+    May their eyelids close.
+
+    "Grant to little children
+    Visions bright of Thee;
+    Guarding the sailors tossing
+    On the angry sea.
+
+    "Comfort every sufferer
+    Watching late in pain;
+    Those who plan some evil
+    From their sin restrain.
+
+    "When the morning wakens,
+    Then may I arise
+    Pure and fresh, and sinless
+    In Thy holy eyes."
+
+I have witnessed many moving sights in my time and heard much deep and
+thrilling music; but I have never been so deeply moved by anything as by
+the rich, deep voices of these gallant men and boys who, after winning
+the Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined church and were singing
+this beautiful kiddies' hymn as their last farewell.
+
+The collection the boys had taken up had been so heavy that we carried
+it to the French lady's house for her.  As we entered her home she said
+in her simple way, as her eyes grew radiant with gratitude, "I like the
+English soldiers."  It was the voice of France.  And she was worthy to
+speak for France.  For two-and-a-half years her house had stood within a
+mile of the German trenches, and but a few hundred yards from our own
+firing line. Yet she and her mother had never left it.  She introduced
+me to her mother, who had lived in London, and spoke English.  Then she
+brought in coffee.  I had noticed a most remarkable thing about the
+house.  There was not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of war on the
+walls.  It was the only house I have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras,
+upon which the war has not laid its monstrous and bloody finger.  "How
+is it," I asked the mother, "that your house has not been touched?"  Her
+eyes shone and a sweet smile lit up her face.  "It is the will of God,"
+she said simply.  "Shells have fallen a little short of us and a little
+beyond us.  They have passed within a yard of the house, and we have
+heard the rushing of the wind as they passed, but they have not touched
+us.  When the village has been bombarded we have gone down into the
+cellar as was but discretion and duty, but we have had the conviction
+all along that we should be spared, and we refused to leave the house.
+We do not know God's purpose but we believe that it is God's will to
+spare us."  I leave the fact to speak for itself and offer no
+explanation.  Skeptics will say the house was spared by accident; but
+they would not have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting to such
+an accident.  These two women, without a man in the house, stayed on the
+very confines of hell with its hourly suspense and danger for nearly
+three years, because they believed it was God's will and that, though
+they walked through the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than it
+was wont to be heated, He would not allow so much as a hair of their
+heads to be singed.  And not a hair was singed. They were women in whom
+faith burned like a bright pillar of fire.  One caught its light, and
+felt its heat.  I have met patriots and heroes and know their quality
+when I see them and come near them.  These were "the real thing."  Faith
+in God and faith in their country were interwoven in their spirits like
+sun and shower in a rainbow.  They were of the same breed as the Maid of
+France, and like her, with their white banner bearing the device of the
+Cross, they withstood and defied the might and terror of the invader.
+They believed it was God's will they should stay, to "Be still and know
+that I am God."  Their experience was expressed by the Psalmist
+centuries ago: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in
+trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and
+though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.  Though the
+waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the
+swellings thereof ... Come behold the works of the Lord, what
+desolations He hath made in the earth.  He maketh wars to cease unto the
+end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
+He burneth the chariot in the fire.... The Lord of Hosts is with us; the
+God of Jacob is our refuge."
+
+Such was the faith of these two women, and their courage few men have
+approached.  It is a practical matter, and after comparing it with the
+skeptic's theory of accident and coincidence and remembering his
+probable haste in seeking a place not so liable to untoward accidents, I
+accept the explanation of the women. Their house was spared and not a
+hair of their heads injured because "it was God's will."  If it is not
+the correct theory, it ought to be. Otherwise falsehood is more
+sustaining than truth, and inspires nobler conduct.
+
+The day was now over.  A new chapter of life had been written, and in
+the morning, we left behind us this village of precious memories, and
+marched out again into the unknown.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *VIII*
+
+                        *SONS OF THE MOTHERLAND*
+
+
+It is said that the eel is born in the deepest part of the ocean,
+thousands of miles from any country, and that, urged by an overpowering
+instinct it begins almost at once to rise towards the light and to head
+for the land.  After slowly swimming thousands of miles it reaches our
+rivers, and pushes its way up to their sources, and even crawls through
+the grass out of one stream into another.  Here, if uncaught by man, it
+lives for years gorging an appetite which only developed on reaching the
+fresh water.  Then, the overmastering instinct that brought it out,
+takes it back.  It returns through the illimitable waters until it finds
+the place where it was born.  There the female lays her eggs and there
+male and female die.  The eggs hatch, and the young do as their parents
+did before them.
+
+I do not think I could kill or eat an eel. I have too much reverence for
+it now that I have learned its story.  When in the fish market I see an
+eel struggling, I feel that I want to take it and drop it into the sea
+that it may go to its long home "far from the madding crowd's ignoble
+strife."  How passionate and wild must be its desire to get back to its
+own ocean depths where it may perpetuate its kind and die in peace. Its
+appetite is voracious, but then, what but the mightiest and most
+elemental instincts and appetites could carry it through achievements so
+sublime and tragic.  Picture it on its lone way through the deep, urged
+on by it knows not what.  Scientists say that man has evolved from a
+tiny form of life that passed through the fish stage.  If so, it
+explains a lot and I, for one, shall not be ashamed to acknowledge
+relationship to a fish with a life story as sublime as that of the eel.
+I know that Genesis speaks truly when it says that God made us out of
+the dust of the earth and breathed into our souls the breath of His own
+being thus animating dust with divinity.  And if from the other inspired
+book, the book of Nature, scientists can teach how God mixed the clay
+when He fashioned man I will accept the teaching with gratitude, for it
+will help me to understand things that are dark in me and in my fellows.
+It will throw light on the wild longings, and instincts immature, that
+baffle the mind, and come into the clear shallow streams of life like
+eels out of the dark unfathomable depths of the ocean.
+
+Since I went to France I have been amazed at the homing instinct as
+revealed in the coming together of the sons of the British Motherland.
+People at home do not quite realize what has happened.  Britain's sons
+have come back to her--have come back to die that their race may be
+saved and perpetuated.  The British are a roving race.  A large number
+of them yield to an overpowering desire to go out into the world.  The
+South Pole and the North Pole have known the tread of their feet. Their
+ships have anchored in every creek of every sea.  There is no town or
+country however remote where their voices have not been heard.  Even
+Mecca could not keep the Briton out.  He must look upon its Black Stone.
+All lands call him to come, and see, and conquer. He colonizes and
+absorbs but cannot be absorbed.  He is a Briton still.  A friend of mine
+told me that when visiting Australia strangers who had never seen
+England, except in and through their fathers, would come to him in
+railway carriage or 'bus, and ask "How is everything at _Home_?"  And
+Dr. Fitchett, Australia's splendid author, confesses that when he first
+saw the land of his fathers he knelt down and kissed its shore.
+
+Loving the homeland with a passion stronger than death the Briton leaves
+it, for he hears the call of the world borne on the winds and waves from
+afar, and cannot refuse it.  In foreign lands he lives and labors.  He
+roams their fields and swims in their streams, but always with an ear
+listening for the voice of the Motherland; for he is hers, and at her
+service if she calls.
+
+The Declaration of War on Aug. 4, 1914, was the Mother's call to her
+children.  Swifter than lightning it passed through the waves and on the
+wings of the wind.  The settler left his lonely cabin, the gold-digger
+his shovel, the prospector his surveying instruments, the rancher his
+herds, the missionary his church, the teacher his school, the clerk his
+office, and all made for the nearest port.  Within a month there was not
+a ship on the wide seas but was bearing loyal sons back to their
+Motherland's defense.  I have met, in France, British soldiers from
+every country under heaven.  I bent over a dying soldier near Arras who
+was a clerk in Riga, Russia, when the call came. And one night on the
+Somme a fine young fellow from Africa entered my tent, and slept by my
+side.  He was one of the most charming and handsome men I have ever met,
+and had come from Durban.  He had fought with Botha in Southwest Africa,
+and at the conclusion of that campaign had shipped for home. Next day I
+took him to Delville Wood for he wanted to see the place where his
+brother had died.  I found that he was of my own communion and we talked
+about some of my college friends who had gone out to Natal.  Two days
+later, he died of wounds in a dressing station.  Most of the transport
+officers in our Division have come home from abroad, and have been given
+their posts because they are accustomed to horses.  One was prospecting
+in Nigeria, another salmon-canning in Siberia, a third on a plantation
+in South America.
+
+In addition to Canadians, South Africans, Australians, and New
+Zealanders, who have come by the hundred thousand at the call of the
+Motherland, there are hundreds of thousands who have come singly, or in
+small parties, from remote corners of the earth.  For five weeks I was a
+patient in a Canadian hospital in France.  The entire staff was
+Canadian. Some were Canadian born; others had gone out to that country
+years ago.  All were of British blood.  The colonel was a magnificent
+specimen of manhood from London, Ontario, in which city he had been
+born.  He would sit on the bed and tell us tales of the great snow-land.
+Sometimes he would scold us for being so blind to the greatness of the
+Empire and tell us what Canada thought of the Motherland. One of the
+night orderlies would, on occasion, recite to us some poem such as "Jim
+Bludso," before the lights went out.  Then he would come to my locker
+and take "Palgrave's Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" with which to regale
+his soul during the long watches of the night.  He was of the full
+stature of men and straight as a pine.  He had gone out from Ireland as
+a boy, and settled on a cattle ranch in the United States.  One day
+there was trouble and one of the other cowboys sent a bullet clean
+through his chest.  The moment war was declared he left his roving herds
+of cattle, crossed the frontier into Canada and traveled hundreds of
+miles to Winnipeg to enlist.  The doctor looked at him.  "What is this
+scar on your chest?" he asked.  "Oh," replied the cowboy, "I fell off a
+wagon and knocked the skin off."  The doctor turned him round and put
+his finger in the scar on his back where the bullet had passed out.
+"And what is this scar at the back?  Did you fall off another wagon?"
+And the two men understood one another and laughed.  The doctor could
+not find it in his heart to send the cowboy back to his ranch, so he was
+passed into the Canadian contingent.
+
+One of the nurses we called "the Little Mother."  She had gone to Canada
+five years before, but the war had brought her back, and well was it for
+us that it had.  Among the patients was a doctor in the American A.M.C.
+His ancestors had left England generations ago and settled in New
+England, but he had come back at the call of war--a grandson of the
+Motherland.  Then there was a lieutenant of British stock who had been
+born and brought up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were destroying
+his native city he took ship to enlist in the British army.  "Anzac"
+was, as his nickname denotes, an Australian.  He was in the Flying
+Corps.  He had heard the call at school and had come "home" to the land
+of his fathers.
+
+In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who had been born in China.
+But, out there in Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Motherland they
+had never seen, and came post haste to her help.  Sitting near me as I
+write, is an officer back from the Argentine, and already, on his arm,
+is a gold wound-stripe.  Another in the mess had been pearl-fishing in
+Australia, but stored his boats to come and fight.  Another at our table
+was born in Australia.  He was with Captain Falcon Scott on his last
+expedition, and saw him go out to the South Pole and death.  He has
+already been wounded. When the war broke out its tumult seemed to wake
+our fathers and we felt them stir in our blood; for ancestors are not
+put into graves but are buried alive in their sons.  We felt the call to
+defend our race as our fathers did in their day.  It was a master
+instinct, and the millions of men who voluntarily left home and business
+to fight show how deeply nationality is rooted in human nature.
+Returning from a far land to die--if needs be--that their kind may live,
+the scattered sons of our Motherland have come by all the seas to defend
+her, in her hour of need.
+
+    "They came as the winds come
+      When forests are rended;
+    They came as the waves come
+      When navies are stranded."
+
+
+
+
+                                  *IX*
+
+                         *THE TERROR BY NIGHT*
+
+
+June was a flaming month on the high ground we had captured beyond
+Arras. The Quartermaster and Transport Officer with whom I was messing
+were both "on leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the camp, a
+Baptist padre, whose regiment was near, came to live with me.  I had a
+little brown tent five feet wide and six feet long which a rifleman had
+lent to me because the bell-tent I was expecting had not arrived.  The
+rifleman did not need his tent, for he and his chums had built
+themselves a little dug-out. Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the
+other padre took possession of it, while I held on to the little brown
+shelter.  Next to it was the kitchen where the servants slept and
+cooked. It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood, corrugated iron
+and ground-sheets.  The Baptist chaplain's tent was round, my shelter
+oblong, but what shape the kitchen was, would pass the wit of man to
+say.  It was a shape never seen on earth before.  It had no ancestor and
+it could have no descendant.  Such a design could not occur twice.
+Beyond the kitchen were the horse-lines of the regiment and close by
+them the regimental stores.  It was so hot that we all wore our lightest
+clothing; and when the servants got lemons from Arras, the lemonade they
+made lasted about five minutes only, for what was left by us was quickly
+drunk up by the servants with the assistance of those who like to
+frequent such happy places as mess kitchens.
+
+All our meals were served out of doors, under the blue sky.  We had
+guests most days, for officers coming out from the homeland stayed with
+us for a night or a day before going up with the rations to join the
+regiment in the trench.  Other officers had come down to stay with us on
+their way to a course at some military school; and one, at least, came
+to wait for the day on which he was to take his "leave."  We were,
+therefore, a very merry party.  It was almost like camping on the
+Yorkshire moors, for we had an uninterrupted view of many miles.  To
+those who love vast stretches of wild barren country as I do, the scene
+under the flaming June sun was exceedingly impressive. There were no
+houses, streams, hedges, or trees, but the whole area was scored with
+trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing clearly at great
+distances.  The ground, with but short spaces between, was covered with
+encampments.  These consisted of the stores and horse-lines of the
+regiments and batteries in the line.  The circle of the horizon was
+bounded by the charred ruins of French villages--Beaurains, Neuville,
+Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy and Tilloy.  We could see the flashing of our
+own guns, and the black bursts of shells from those of the enemy.
+
+All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes, and many were too high to be
+seen except through strong field glasses.  We watched a German aeroplane
+circling over Arras and directing the fire of the long guns.  Soon the
+streets were strewn with dead and wounded, for the town was full of
+troops.  The firing only lasted a few minutes, however.  One of our
+aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to single combat; and we soon
+saw the German machine falling from an immense height, wing over wing
+and head over tail, utterly out of control.
+
+Dinner, in the cool of the evening, was a most pleasant meal.  As we
+drank our coffee we watched the aeroplanes returning from the line like
+birds to their nests.  Sometimes we counted as many as twenty, all
+heading for home at the same time.  The sun set in red and golden
+splendor, and we wondered what darkness would bring.  On the night
+before our arrival, the regiment which made way for us had one of its
+storemen killed by a shell; and on most nights a few shells fell in some
+part or other of the vast camp.  One evening shells fell a little beyond
+us and the transport-sergeant moved his horse-lines.  After that, he
+moved them every evening at dark, so that the ground where the enemy had
+observed the horses in the day-time was left vacant when he opened fire
+at night.  It was a game of chess with horses and men for pawns, and
+life and death for the stakes.
+
+On the evening before, our guest--a young lieutenant--was to go on
+leave, he got very uneasy.  As gulls scent the approach of stormy
+weather and come inland, or blackbirds and larks feel the approach of
+winter and migrate to summer lands, so men can sometimes scent danger
+and coming death.  He had with him a bottle of whisky, and he kept it on
+the table outside my tent--a safe place for it.
+
+"I don't mind telling you, Padre," he said, as he poured out a glass,
+"I've got the 'wind-up' badly to-night.  I don't like the feel of
+things.  I would rather be in the trenches than here, because I know
+what is likely to happen there, but here in the open I feel strange and
+unprotected.  I shall be glad when it is morning."
+
+His feeling was quite natural.  We always feel another man's dangers
+more than our own because they are new to us and we don't know what to
+expect or how to meet them.  A man will choose a big danger that he is
+used to, sooner than a lesser danger that is new to him.  Besides, the
+lieutenant had his "leave-warrant" in his breast pocket and that will
+sap any man's courage.  He has a feeling that the shells are after his
+"leave-warrant" and that the gunners know where it is.  He suspects that
+fate is malignant and takes a special delight in killing a man when he
+is on the way to "Blighty."  Many a man has been killed with a
+"leave-warrant" in his pocket, or "commission papers" in it which were
+taking him home.
+
+Our doctor told me how one night he and the chaplain who preceded me
+were riding on the front of an ambulance car when a shell burst and with
+a fragment killed the chaplain. In the padre's pocket was his warrant,
+and he was taking his last ride before going home; but instead of going
+home in "Blighty" he went to his _long_ home, and the warrant lies in
+the grave with him.  A man feels particularly vulnerable when the
+long-looked-for "leave-warrant" is in his pocket.  He does not fear
+death after "leave," but he does on the eve of "leave."  He wants one
+more look at his home and loved ones before going on the long and lone
+journey which, despite all the comfort which the Christian religion
+gives, still retains much of its terror to the human spirit.  There have
+been few better Christians than Samuel Johnson and John Bunyan, but
+neither of them could contemplate fording the river of death without
+misgivings.  When they came to it they found it much less formidable
+than they had expected.  Had they been at the Front with
+"leave-warrants" in their pockets to "Fleet Street, London," or "Elstow,
+Bedford," I fancy neither of them would have taken undue risks.
+
+I could sympathize with the young lieutenant for, a few months before, a
+"leave-warrant" had made a bit of a coward of myself.  I was in two
+minds whether or not to go up to the firing line to see the men again
+before shipping for home.  The "leave-warrant" was in my pocket, and I
+was to go next morning; but the doctor's story of my predecessor came to
+my mind, and the "leave-warrant" spread itself out before the eyes of my
+imagination.  I saw the faces of my wife, and mother, and dog, and the
+faces of my friends.  The old home and the green fields stretched out
+before me; and I decided to see them first and the "boys" after. I had
+just been with my men, but it was a long time since I had been with
+those at home.  If there was a shell with my name and address on it, I
+thought I would make the Hun wait till I had been home, before I let him
+deliver it into my hands.  I think a "leave-warrant" would make a coward
+of any man.  At any rate, the feeling is quite understood and recognized
+by everyone at the Front; and this young officer had been sent down from
+the trenches to us, three days before his train was due to start, so
+that he might have a better chance of using his "warrant," and at the
+same time, feel more at ease in mind.
+
+I undressed and got into bed, and lay reading by the light of a candle
+when the lieutenant came to the tent door again.  "It's no use, Padre,"
+he said, "I can't go to bed yet.  I feel too uneasy.  I wish I were on
+the train."  He went back to the bell-tent he was sharing with the other
+chaplain, and I put out my light.
+
+There was the silence of a summer evening broken only by the distant
+bursting of shells. Then, suddenly, there was a crash about seventy
+yards from our tents, and two more near the horse-lines.  "To run or not
+run?" that was the question; and my answer was in the negative.  If I
+ran, it was just as likely that I should run into a shell, as out of the
+way of one.  On Easter Sunday I had seen three of our non-commissioned
+officers killed in that way.  Besides, I like my bed, once I have taken
+the trouble to get into it.  I therefore put on my steel helmet which I
+had placed by the bed-side, and waited to see what would happen. (A
+steel helmet is a wonderful comfort when men are under fire.  We may not
+have much in our heads but we feel more anxious about them than about
+all the rest of the body.  The helmets are heavy and uncomfortable and
+we don't like wearing them, but, nevertheless, may blessings ever rest
+on the head of the man who invented them.  I have seen scores of lives
+saved by them, and they have given infinite comfort and assurance in
+trying moments.)
+
+A long silence elapsed, then the lieutenant appeared at the door of the
+tent again.
+
+"You haven't been here all the time, have you?" he asked.  "We went down
+to the old trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is rather cold and
+wearisome there, and I think the worst is over now.  I'm just going to
+take another sip of the 'Scotch wine' and then turn in for the night;
+but I'm not going to undress."
+
+Ten minutes later there was a tremendous crash as if a star had fallen
+on top of us. There came a blinding flash of light, a strong smell of
+powder, and a spluttering of bullets on the ground.  That was enough to
+get the laziest man living out of bed, and to answer the question, "to
+run or not to run?" in the affirmative.  I slipped on my boots without
+fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade my little tent a fond
+farewell.  There were some old German gun-pits close by, and I sought
+refuge there.  "Come in here, sir," cried a voice, and I found myself by
+the side of a sergeant.  Then the cook ran in bare-foot and laughing.
+No one seemed to have been hit, and all had now sought shelter.  We
+waited for some time and nothing further happened.  The night was cold
+and I began to shiver in my pajamas.  So I started to look about for a
+place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement had grown up between me
+and the little brown tent.  There was a path across a shallow bit of
+trench, and underneath it I found the barber, lying comfortably on his
+bed.  He invited me in, and said that I could have the bed, and he would
+sleep at the side of it on his ground-sheet.  He could, he said, sleep
+as soundly on the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking. I therefore
+returned to my tent to get blankets. The time-fuse of a shell had gone
+through the kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my servant, but
+without doing him any injury and he proposed sleeping there for the
+night.  He only agreed to move to some safer place, when I ordered him
+to do so.  There was no one in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants
+were quite safe somewhere.  On striking a light to get my blankets, I
+noticed three small holes in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel
+bullets had missed me only by inches.  It had been a close shave and it
+was not inappropriate that I was now going to be the guest of a barber.
+
+The psychological effect was not one I should have expected.  The
+incident caused no shell-shock, and but little immediate excitement; so
+I was soon asleep.  All the others were in a like case.  The excitement
+came with the morning when we examined the tents and the ground.  In the
+bell-tent there were ten shrapnel bullet holes.  One had gone through
+the piece of wood on which the officers' clothing had been hung, and
+must have passed immediately over the body of the Baptist chaplain as he
+lay in bed.  Others must have passed equally near the lieutenant who was
+not in bed, but, standing up at the time, fully dressed.  In my own
+little tent I found eleven holes and they were in all parts of the
+canvas.  Some of the bullets must have gone in at one side and out at
+the other, for only five were found embedded in the hard, chalky ground.
+A sixth had passed through the box at the bed-head and entered deeply
+into the book I had been reading.  Outside the kitchen, the servants
+picked up a lump of shell a foot long and three or four inches wide.
+Well was it for them that the fragment fell outside the kitchen and not
+inside.  The ground around the tents was sprinkled with shrapnel bullets
+and bits of shell.  The shells which fell near the horses had burst on
+touching the ground, and not like ours, in the air.  They had dug deep
+holes in the earth, and as the horses were within a few yards of them,
+it seemed miraculous that none was hurt.  The transport had just
+returned from taking up the rations, and, as one of the drivers leapt
+off his horse, a bullet hit the saddle where his leg had been a second
+before. Not a man or horse received a scratch, although the shells had
+made a direct hit on our camp. On other occasions one shell has laid out
+scores of men and horses.
+
+They say that sailors don't like padres on board ship, because they
+think the latter bring them bad luck.  And most people are a little
+afraid of the figure thirteen, but though it was the thirteenth of June
+and there were two padres in the tents, we had the best of what is
+called "luck."  So I think we may say it was one up for the padres.
+After breakfast we gathered together some of the fragments lying around
+the tents, and found the nose-cap of a shell which had burst seventy
+yards away. With these, and the time-fuse which hit my servant, the
+other chaplain and I went to a battery and asked the officers to tell us
+something about the gun, just as one might take a bone of some extinct
+creature to a scientist, and ask him to draw an outline of the whole
+animal.  They told us that the gun was a long-range, high-velocity,
+naval gun with a possible range of fifteen miles.  They knew where it
+was, but could not hit it.  The shot was a large high-explosive,
+shrapnel shell, and the time-fuse indicated that it had come to us from
+about eleven miles away.
+
+On our return we built ourselves dug-outs for the nights, and only lived
+in the tents by day.  Sometimes we were shelled in the day-time, but by
+taking cover took no hurt, though a lad in the transport next to us was
+seriously wounded.  When they were shelling us by day, we could
+distinctly hear the report of the gun, a second or two later, see the
+shell burst in the air; and a second later still, we could hear it.  We
+saw the burst before we heard it.
+
+I have given this personal incident not, I hope, out of any impulse of
+egotism, but because it furnishes those who have not been at the Front
+with an idea of the terror which assails our men by night, both in the
+trenches and in the "back areas."  There can be but few who, having been
+any length of time at the Front, have not had similar experiences and
+equally narrow escapes.  They are so common that men get used to them
+and do not take nearly enough care to protect themselves. Loss by such
+stray shells is expected, and the soldiers regard it much as a tradesman
+regards the deterioration of his stock.  One gets used to the frequent
+occurrence of death as he does to anything else.  At home there are
+thousands of preventable deaths--deaths through street accidents,
+diseases and underfeeding.  The number could be enormously reduced if
+the nation would rouse itself.  And human nature is much the same at the
+Front.  Men prefer ease and comfort to safety.  Also, men grow
+fatalistic.  They have seen men sought out by shells after they have
+taken every precaution to escape them; and they have seen others go
+untouched when they seemed to be inviting shells to destroy them.  Men
+are conscious of a Power that is not themselves directing their lives.
+They feel that in life which the Greek tragedians called Fate.  They do
+not know quite what to call it.  Most of them would call it Providence
+if they spoke frankly and gave it a name at all.  One of the finest
+Christian officers I know told me that he believed that God's finger had
+already written what his fate should be.  If he had to die nothing could
+save him, and if he had to live, nothing could kill him.  All he was
+concerned with was to be able to do his duty, and take whatever God sent
+him.  This, he said, was the only suitable working philosophy for a man
+at the Front.
+
+There is a widespread fatalism at the Front, but it is the fatalism of
+Christ rather than of old Omar Khayyam: "Take no thought for your life
+... for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
+things, but seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.
+Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take
+thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil
+thereof."  And this works.  It enables men to "put a cheerful courage
+on" and do their duty.  There is none of the paralysis of will and
+cessation of effort which follows the fatalistic philosophy of the East.
+All that Omar Khayyam's fatalism leaves a man to strive after is "Red,
+Red Wine," in which he drowns memory, honor and reputation and
+character.  When he has passed from among his peers, there is nothing
+left to remember him by but a "turned-down empty glass."  The Christian
+fatalism at the Front destroys no man's initiative, but keeps him merry
+and bright, and helps him to "do his bit."  When he shall pass from the
+banqueting-house of life, into the Great Unexplored, he will leave as
+his memorial, not a turned-down glass, but a world redeemed from tyranny
+and wrong.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *X*
+
+                       *"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"*
+
+
+An army is more courageous than the individuals who compose it.  The
+coward finds sufficient courage for his job while doing it with his
+regiment, and the brave is at his bravest.  He has a courage which is
+not his own but which, somehow, he puts on with his uniform.  He does
+deeds of daring he could not have done as a civilian.  The army has a
+corporate courage and each soldier receives a portion of it just as he
+receives a ration of the army's food.  It is added to what he has of his
+own.
+
+The badge of the army is courage.  When a recruit joins the army he
+knows that he is putting away the civilian standard of courage with his
+derby hat, and is putting on the soldier's standard of courage with his
+uniform. His great fear is that he will not be able to live up to it.
+He wonders if he is made of the stuff that produces heroes.  He is a
+mystery to himself and has a haunting fear that there may be a strain of
+the coward in his make-up. He wishes it were possible to have a
+rehearsal for he would rather die than fail on the appointed day.
+
+The chaplain fears that he will faint and become a hindrance instead of
+a help when he first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing station;
+and the recruit is afraid of being afraid in the hour of battle and of
+bringing dishonor and weakness upon his regiment.  He will be glad when
+the trial is over--when he knows the stuff of which nature has made him.
+A friend of mine told me one day that he was walking over a heavily
+shelled field with a young aristocrat of a highly strung temperament.
+The man was afraid, but would not yield to his fear.  His lips twitched
+and his face became drawn and white.  His movements were jerky but he
+made no other sign.  He talked about paltry things in which, at the
+moment, he had not the slightest interest, and passed jocular or
+sardonic remarks about the things that were happening around them.  My
+friend ducked his head when a shell burst near as we all have done often
+enough, but the young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff as if
+he were being crowned.  He held it up defiantly; was it not filled with
+the bluest blood of England?  The shells might blow it off if they
+liked.  That was their concern, not his, but they should never make him
+bow.  His fathers had fought on British battlefields for centuries, and
+had never bowed their heads to a foe, and he would not break the great
+tradition.  Shells might break his neck but they should never bend it.
+He would face the enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a neck
+as ever his fathers did.  He knew his personal weakness and reinforced
+his strength with that of his fathers'.  He was not afraid of death.  He
+was afraid of being afraid.
+
+My friend was a coachman's son who by courage and capacity of the
+highest order had won a commission.  He had no traditions either to
+haunt or help him, and he had often been tried in the fire and knew his
+strength.  He was not afraid of being afraid.  It was natural to duck
+when a shell burst near and it did him no harm and made no difference to
+the performance of his duties; so he ducked as he felt inclined, and
+then laughed at his nerves for the tricks they were allowing the shells
+to play on them.  But, knowing his companion's more sensitive nature and
+temperamental weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff neck and
+proudly erect head.  He showed a self-control which only centuries of
+breeding could give.  Here was a hero indeed.  The shells he was defying
+were as nothing to the fears which haunted his imaginative nature and
+which, with his back to the wall of his family traditions, he was
+fighting and keeping at bay. My friend could not refrain from
+complimenting him on resisting the natural tendency to duck the head
+when a shell screamed above them.
+
+"Eton boys never duck," replied the young aristocrat.
+
+He was an Eton boy and would die rather than fall short of the Eton
+standard.  In this war hundreds of them have died rather than save
+themselves by something which did not measure up to the Eton standard.
+The ranks of young British aristocrats have been terribly thinned in
+this war and I have heard their deeds spoken of with a reverence such as
+is only given to legendary heroes.  They have gone sauntering over the
+crater-fields to their deaths with the same self-mastery and outward
+calm which the French aristocracy manifested as they mounted the steps
+of the guillotine in the Reign of Terror.  To their own personal courage
+was added the courage of their race, and the accumulation of the
+centuries.
+
+We speak of our new armies.  There can be no "new" armies of Britons.
+The tradition of our newest army goes back to Boadicea. Its forerunners,
+without shields or armor, and almost without weapons, dared the
+Romans--the proud conquerors of the world--to battle; and gave them the
+longest odds warriors ever gave.  They knew they could not win but they
+knew they could die.  Dead warriors they might become but never living
+slaves.  They ran up Boadicea's proud banner because they knew that
+while the Romans might soak it in British blood, no power on earth could
+drag it through the mire.
+
+Our forefathers crossed swords with C�sar and his Roman legions, and our
+newest army goes into battle with the prestige born of two thousand
+years of war.  They have a morale that belongs to the race in addition
+to the morale they possess as individuals.  It is said that "the British
+do not know when they are beaten."  How should they know?  They have had
+no teachers.  All they know is that if they have not gained the victory
+the battle is not ended and must go on until they pitch their tents on
+the undisputed field.  The German Emperor spreads out his War Map but it
+is as undecipherable as the mountains in the moon to our soldiers.
+Tyrants have never found them apt scholars at geography.  They prefer to
+make their own maps even though they have no paint to color them with
+except the red blood in their veins.  The Kaiser may roll up his War Map
+of Europe; our soldiers have no use for it, and will not commit to
+memory its new boundaries.  They feel in their souls the capacity to
+make a new one more in line with their ideas of fair play.
+
+"Eton boys never duck."  If the muscles of their necks show a tendency
+to relax they call to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood in
+bygone days, and their necks become stiff and taut once more.
+Wellington said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.  It
+is still true that "Eton boys never duck" to the foe; nor do the
+soldiers they lead.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *XI*
+
+                              *"MISSING"*
+
+
+The word "Missing" has come to exercise an even more terrible power over
+the human heart than the word "Death."  The latter kills the heart's joy
+and hope with a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy stroke from
+the executioner's axe.  In a few cases the wounded victim is spared and
+allowed to recover, but in the majority of cases there is no reprieve
+and a second blow is struck after a period of suspense and suffering.  A
+chaplain dreads the word.  As he opens his correspondence after a
+battle, it fixes him as the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner
+fastened the wedding guest.  It leaps from the page at him with the
+malignant suddenness of a serpent.  Wounds and death he can explain to
+relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation. No one who has not been
+at the Front can conceive how a lad can disappear and no one see what
+becomes him.  A man may read graphic accounts of conditions of life in
+the battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to visualize it with
+any real approach to truth.
+
+After the first day of the Somme Campaign we had hundreds of casualties
+and most of them were classed as "Missing."  The soldiers went "over the
+top" and did not return, and no one knew why.  They were simply
+"missing."  Why did no one know their fate?  It came about in this way.
+The men scrambled over the parapet and, forming in line, charged across
+No Man's Land in extended order. Some fell immediately.  The wounded
+among them got back to the dressing station, and the bodies of the dead
+were found within a few days, at least.  So far, there are no "Missing."
+The rest of the men press on, some falling at every step; the line
+thins, and the men get separated.  When a man falls his neighbor cannot
+stay with him.  He must press on to the objective, otherwise, if the
+unwounded stayed to succor the wounded, there would be none to continue
+the attack; and under the hail of shells and bullets sweeping the open
+ground, everyone would perish.  The only way to succor the wounded is to
+press on, capture the enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine-gun
+fire.  Consequently, the man who presses on does not, as a rule, know
+whether his comrade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took cover in a
+shell hole.  And even though he were to know, he may be killed himself
+later, and his knowledge die with him.
+
+If the attack succeeds, and the German trench is held by us, No Man's
+Land can be searched.  The wounded and dead are found, and but few are
+reported "missing."  But if the attack fail, and the regiment has to
+retire to its own line, it becomes impossible for us to search that part
+of No Man's Land, adjoining the German trench (for there is rarely any
+truce after a battle in this war), and so, it is impossible to find out
+whether those who have failed to return were killed, wounded, or taken
+prisoners.  The comrades who saw them fall are probably killed, for the
+return is as fatal as the attack.  If they come back wounded they are
+taken straight to the hospitals and so have no chance of reporting to
+their officers the fate of those whom they saw fall.  Only the unwounded
+return to the regiment and, in a lost battle, these are few and know but
+little of what happened to those around them.  They were excited and
+were fighting for their lives. They had no leisure to observe the fate
+of others.
+
+On one occasion our men took some German trenches opposite them and held
+them for some hours by desperate fighting, but before dusk had to
+retire.  Many were left dead or wounded in the captured trenches, and
+many fell on the return journey.  The few who got back to us unwounded
+could give very little information about individuals who were missing.
+They had been separated one from another and fighting hour after hour
+with desperation.  All therefore who did not return to the regiment or
+dressing station, and whose bodies were not recovered, were reported as
+"Missing" unless declared dead by reliable eye-witnesses.  The evidence
+of eye-witnesses must be carefully examined before a regiment dare
+report a soldier dead on the strength of it.  During an attack a man is
+in an abnormal state of excitement and the observations of his senses
+are not entirely reliable.  Men imagine they see things, and frequently
+make mistakes in identity.  I have known many cases in which a man has
+sworn that he saw another being carried to the dressing station, yet the
+missing man's body has afterwards been found near the German lines.  The
+eye-witness simply mistook one man for another.  No end of pain to
+relatives has been caused by these mistakes and a regiment rightly
+declines on such evidence to report a soldier as killed.
+
+Some weeks after the attack just referred to, we received letters from
+some of the officers and men who had been taken prisoners; information
+about others came through The Geneva Red Cross Society.  Those of whom
+we heard nothing for six months we knew to be, in all probability, dead.
+Nine months later, the Germans retired from the position, and many of
+our dead were found still lying out in No Man's Land.  Some were
+identified. Others could not be, their discs having perished by reason
+of the long exposure.  Many of the dead had been left in the German
+trenches.  These had been buried by the enemy and he had left no crosses
+to mark the graves. After more than a year there is no direct evidence
+of the death of many who fought on that day.  They are "Missing," and we
+can only conclude that they were killed.
+
+In other cases, men are reported missing for several weeks, and then
+reported dead.  A typical case may be cited to show how it comes about.
+We attacked one morning at dawn. The enemy were on the run, and in a
+state of exhaustion.  An immediate attack would, it was believed, carry
+the position without much loss of life, even though our big guns had not
+had time to come up in support.  Unfortunately the Germans were, unknown
+to us, reinforced during the night.  Their new troops met our men with a
+hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, and the regiment was ordered to
+retire. Several failed to return.  We knew that some of the men had been
+forced to surrender, especially the wounded.  Others had been killed.
+Those who returned unwounded were not able, however, to give us the
+names of those who had been killed or of those who had been taken
+prisoners.  The attack had been made in the half-light of dawn so that
+our men could not be seen distinctly.  They had also advanced in
+extended order so as to avoid making themselves an easy target.  The
+half-light and the distance of one man from another made it difficult,
+therefore, for anyone to see either who fell or why they fell.  Most of
+those who were killed or taken prisoners were therefore reported as
+"missing."
+
+A few days later the whole Division was moved to another part of the
+Front.  A fresh regiment took our place, and, a few weeks later, with
+adequate artillery support, carried the German trenches.  After the
+battle, burial parties were sent out by the regiment to bury both its
+own dead and ours who had been left in the German half of No Man's Land.
+Each grave was marked with the soldier's name, and his disc and paybook
+were sent to our regiment as proof of his death.  The War Office was
+then informed that such and such a man "previously reported missing, is
+now reported killed."
+
+There are, however, cases of missing men which cannot be explained.  The
+facts never come to light, and we can only guess what happened.  They
+may have been buried by the enemy, or they may have been buried in the
+dark by some regimental burial party which could not find their discs.
+They may even have been buried by a shell or blown to fragments by a
+direct hit.  We have no evidence.
+
+After the attack on Gomm�court a youth I knew had his wound dressed at
+the Regimental Aid post and was seen, by more than one of his chums,
+passing down the communication trench to the Advanced Dressing Station
+where I happened to be.  Yet he never arrived, slight though his wound
+was.  It was impossible for him to have got lost.  His brother and I
+made every possible enquiry about him, but nothing ever came to light,
+and we both came to the conclusion that on his way down the trench he
+had been buried by a shell.  In another case an officer was wounded and
+four stretcher bearers went out to bring him in.  None were ever seen
+again, and later, when we came into possession of the ground, the body
+of none of them were found.  It was scarcely possible for them to have
+been taken prisoners, and they were never reported as having been
+captured.  We concluded, therefore, that a shell had both killed and
+buried them.
+
+One day a rifleman reported sick to the Doctor and was sent down the
+line to the Dressing Station whence he would be sent on to a Rest Camp.
+He was not seriously ill, and needed no escort.  It was impossible for
+him to have wandered into the German lines, yet he never reported at the
+Dressing Station or anywhere else.  Loss of memory is very rare, but
+even if that had happened to him, he could not have wandered about
+behind our lines without being found and arrested.  No report of his
+burial ever reached us and we were led to the conclusion that he was
+killed by a shell on the way down, and in such a way that all means of
+identification were lost.  In another case a private, wounded in the
+arm, was sent down the line in company with a party of stretcher bearers
+who were carrying a "lying case."  Evidently he got separated from them
+in the dark, and was hit by a shell, for he never reached any dressing
+station, and his fate was never known.
+
+Conditions at the front are such that these mysterious disappearances
+must inevitably occur.  Every possible arrangement which circumstances
+will allow is made to prevent them; but they cannot be altogether
+eliminated. People at home may sometimes think that more might have been
+done, but it is because they have no conception of the amazing
+conditions under which the war is carried on.  Every officer and private
+knows that he may disappear without leaving a trace.  That being so,
+they, if only from common prudence and the instinct of
+self-preservation, combine to reduce the danger to its lowest limits;
+but, when all has been done, war is war; and nothing can rob it of its
+horrors.
+
+Every day, officers and men die in trying to save their comrades, and
+nothing could be more unjust than to blame those who survive for not
+having done more to prevent others from being lost; for those who are
+surviving, to-day, may become missing to-morrow, and leave no trace
+behind.  Officers have sometimes shown me letters from poor distracted
+relatives which could never have been written if they could have
+imagined the deadly peril in which the officers stood and the manifold
+distractions that wore them down.  Sometimes an officer's letter is
+short and business-like in reply to an enquiry, but it must be
+remembered that his first duty is to the living.  He must hold the line
+and save his men; and he has, despite the tragedy of his position, to
+answer not one enquiry but scores.  And before he has finished answering
+all the enquiries, his own parents, perhaps, will be making enquiries
+about his own fate.  Our officers are the bravest and kindest-hearted
+men that ever had the lives of others in their keeping; and when the
+chaplain asks them for details about any missing or slain soldier, they
+will go to endless trouble for him. They know what their own death will
+mean to their parents; and the knowledge makes their hearts go out in
+sympathy to the parents of their men, and it makes them do all that is
+possible to prevent lives being lost.
+
+When Moses died no man knew the place of his burial.  It has not been
+found to this day.  We know nothing of his last thoughts or of the
+manner of his death.  His end is a perfect mystery.  But we know that he
+died in the presence of God; that God strengthened him in the dread
+hour; and that with His own fingers He closed the lids over the
+prophet's brave, tender eyes.  God buried Moses in a grave dug by His
+own hands and He will know where to find the poor worn-out body of the
+great patriot at the resurrection of the just. And God was with every
+one of our missing lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed in
+which each lies sleeping.  The grave may have no cross above it, but it
+will often know the tread of an angel's feet as he comes to plant
+poppies, primroses and daffodils above the resting-place of the brave.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XII*
+
+                         *"IT MUST BE SUNDAY"*
+
+
+The Psalmist of Israel tells us that God has "ordained" the moon and the
+stars. These "flaming fires" are "ministers of His that do His
+pleasure."  Nor are they the only ones chosen from Nature.  Mungo Park,
+having laid down in the desert to die, notices beside him a tiny flower,
+and it awakens hope in him.  The winter of his despair is ended.  He
+rises again, and pushes on until he finds a human habitation where he is
+cared for by native women as though he were their brother.  The little
+flower had been "ordained" to minister hope to a lost and despairing
+traveler.
+
+At the Front such ministering by Nature is of common occurrence.  No
+Man's Land is desolate enough to look upon, but there is life there, and
+music.  Larks have chosen it for their nests, and amid its desolation
+they rear their young.  Even the pheasants have taken to some parts of
+it.  If we could but know the thoughts of the wounded who have lain out
+there waiting for death, we should find that the moon and the stars, the
+birds and the field mice, had not allowed them die without some
+comforting of the spirit.
+
+One Sunday our regiment was resting in reserve trenches after a period
+in the firing line. It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun sank
+westward I administered the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.  The day was
+far spent but, as the bread was broken, there came to us a vision of the
+Face which the two disciples saw on another such evening in the far-off
+village of Emmaus.  On the way back to my billet I met a platoon of
+Royal Engineers returning from the baths.  One of them had been a member
+of my church in London, and he dropped out to talk with me.  Those who
+have not been in the Expeditionary Force can hardly understand the
+pleasure a man feels when he meets someone he knew in the days of peace,
+or even someone who knows the street or town out of which he came.  He
+was full of talk, and as I listened his excitement and pleasure bubbled
+over like a spring.
+
+"Last night," he said, "was the night of my life.  I never expected to
+see daylight again.  Talk about a 'tight corner,' there was never one to
+match it, and as you know, my chums and I have been in many.  The Huns
+simply plastered us with shells.  The bombardment was terrific.  It was
+like being in a hailstorm and we expected every moment to be our last.
+
+"You know the trench which the infantry took yesterday?  Well, we were
+there.  We went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of it ready for
+the counter-attack.  We were out in No Man's Land for about two hours,
+working as swiftly and silently as we could. Whenever the enemy sent his
+lights up, we laid down, and so far we had escaped notice and were
+congratulating ourselves that the work was nearly done, and that our
+skins were still whole.  Then, somehow, the Germans spotted us, and let
+fly.  It was like hell let loose.  We ran to the trench for shelter, but
+it seemed as if nothing could save us from such a deluge of shells.  It
+was just like being naked in a driving snow-storm.  We felt as if there
+was no trench at all, and as if the gunners could see us in the dark.
+After that experience I can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after it.
+But we just sat tight with such cover as we had and made the best of it.
+There was nothing else to do.  If we were to be killed, we should be
+killed.  Nothing that we could do would have made any difference.  Yet,
+though there didn't seem shelter for even a mouse, only one of us was
+hit, and that was the sergeant.  He was rather badly 'done in,' and we
+could only save his life by getting him quickly to the dressing station.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN"
+_Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London_]
+
+"I am one of the taller and stronger men of my platoon so, of course, I
+volunteered as a stretcher-bearer.  There was no communication trench,
+so we had no choice but to lift him up and make a dash across the open.
+They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare not delay because, if we
+were overtaken by daylight, it would be impossible to get him away till
+the next night, and by that time he would be dead.  So we decided to try
+our luck. We had just lifted him up when a shell burst right on top of
+us, and knocked us all down. For a minute or two I was unconscious, and
+when I came round I thought I must surely be wounded, so I ran my
+fingers over my body but found neither blood nor a rent in my clothes.
+I was covered with chalk but that didn't matter.  Except for a touch of
+concussion in the brain I was none the worse, and soon pulled myself
+together.  The sergeant was a sight!  He was half-buried, and we could
+scarce see him for chalk; but we dug him out and got him on the
+stretcher again. After that we sat down in the bottom of the trench till
+the effect of the shock had worn off a bit, for we all felt like rats
+that had been shaken by a terrier.
+
+"Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shelling stopped.  The calm
+that followed was wonderful.  I never felt anything so restful before.
+It was like the delicious restfulness that, sometimes, immediately
+follows hours of fever. Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out
+of No Man's Land and began to sing.  The effect on us was magical.  It
+was the sweetest music I have ever heard, and I shall remember it to my
+dying day.  The countryside was dark and silent, and, as I listened to
+the lark, old days came back to mind.  You remember that Saturday
+midnight in the June before the war when you took us into Epping Forest
+to see the dawn break over it?  Well, as I listened to the lark, I was
+back there in the forest. Then some impulse seized me and, hardly
+knowing what I did, I cried aloud, 'Why bless me, it must be Sunday,'
+and so it was, although I had forgotten.
+
+"Then we jumped up for we saw that the dawn was breaking and, lifting
+the sergeant out of the trench, we rushed across the open ground in the
+direction of the dressing station. Talk about 'feeling protected!'  Why,
+I felt that God was all around us--that no harm could touch us.  A great
+calm stole over me, and I felt utterly devoid of fear.  We had, as you
+know, to bring the sergeant some two miles to the dressing station, just
+down the road there, but we got him safely in, and I think he will get
+better."
+
+While we were talking, a shell burst near the trench where my men had
+been taking of the Sacrament, and another burst by the roadside close to
+the Engineers.  With a laugh and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands,
+saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades. The shells were part of the
+game.  In London we had been in the same football team.  He had kept
+goal and I had played full back, and he regarded the shells that had
+fallen as bad shots at goal made by the opposing team. They might have
+been serious but, as it happened, the ball had each time gone out of
+play.
+
+I waited a minute or two in the hope of getting a lift.  A motor car
+came along; I stopped it and got in; for at the Front everything is
+Government property and more or less at one's service.  I found myself
+sitting by the side of a private, who had been wounded in the face and
+right hand by the shell that had just fallen near the platoon of
+Engineers.
+
+He had left his horse with a comrade, and was being driven to the
+Advanced Dressing Station by a driver who, happening to pass at the
+moment, had kindly offered him a lift. After a little wait at the
+Dressing Station I got on the front of an ambulance car.  There were
+only two cases inside, and they were being taken to the Main Dressing
+Station in Arras. One of them had his feet and arms tied to the
+stretcher, for he was suffering from shell-shock; and three orderlies
+were in charge of him.  The poor fellow laughed and cried alternately
+and struggled to break loose.  "I'm a British soldier," he cried, "and I
+will not be tied up.  I've done my bit, and this is the way you pay me
+out.  I'll not have it."  And time and again he struggled desperately to
+break away.
+
+The orderlies in charge of him were wise and tactful as women.  They
+asked him questions about the fight, and he fought his battle over
+again.  They praised his regiment and told him it had done
+magnificently, and he laughed and chuckled like a young mother, dandling
+her first baby on her knee.  And so, without mishap, we reached the
+ruined town of Arras where nightly the shells fall among the forsaken
+houses in which our soldiers are billeted. The wounded private was
+carried into the hospital, and I walked away to my room in an adjoining
+street.
+
+So ended the day which, in the hour of dawn, the dark had told the young
+engineer "must be Sunday."
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIII*
+
+                      *OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US*
+
+
+On Easter Monday, in the Battle of Arras, I saw two sights such as I
+shall never forget.  One revealed the kind and forgiving spirit of our
+men, the other their unflinching courage.  After burying three
+non-commissioned officers who had been killed the day before, I reached
+the Advanced Dressing Station near which our regiment was "standing to"
+in a support trench.  Other regiments of our Division were carrying out
+the attack and, with small loss, had taken the enemy lines. The German
+trenches had been blotted out by our shells but their deep dug-outs,
+with machine-guns at their mouths, remained untouched, and it was almost
+impossible for our soldiers to discover them until they got within a few
+yards of the entrances.
+
+The German commander's idea was to keep his men in the shelter of the
+dug-outs until our barrage lifted.  They were then to rush out with
+machine-guns and rifles to destroy our men who were following it up.  If
+the idea had been carried out, the German line would have been
+impregnable for our men would have been mown down like corn before the
+reaper.  It failed because German human nature could not rise to the
+occasion.  The German soldiers had been demoralized by the safety of the
+dug-outs and by the thunder of our shells above them.  They cowered in
+the dug-outs when they should have rushed out. The critical moment
+passed, and with its passing our soldiers leapt to the entrances and
+threw down hand grenades.  There was a wild cry of pain and fear from
+below.  Arms went up and the cry of "Kamerad."  The surrender was
+accepted and the beaten soldiers crawled out.  From some dug-outs as
+many as two hundred prisoners were taken.  In other parts of the line
+there was a stiff fight, but, on the whole, our casualties were very
+light. From my own observation I should say that we took more prisoners
+than we suffered casualties.  Some companies could boast a prisoner for
+each man engaged in the attack.
+
+The Advanced Dressing Station was at the corner of Cross Roads and the
+sight around it was wonderful to behold.  A crowd of prisoners was
+assembling ready to be marched to the cages, and wounded officers and
+men, British and German, were being bandaged. The prisoners were hungry.
+For some days our artillery had cut off their rations.  A platoon of our
+soldiers came marching by, and, to save time, eating their breakfasts as
+they passed along.  The prisoners looked at them with hungry eyes.  Our
+men saw the look and stopped.  Breaking rank for a moment they passed in
+and out among the prisoners and shared out their rations.  "Here,
+Fritzy, old boy, take this," I heard all around me, and Fritz did not
+need asking twice.  He took the biscuits and cheese gratefully and
+eagerly. The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and he felt that he
+had found friends where he had only expected to find enemies.  He began
+to hope for kindness in his captivity.  The scene was one of pure
+goodwill.
+
+Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy. Our Tommies laughed and
+cracked jokes which no German could understand, but I heard not a single
+taunt or bitter word.  In fact, Fritz was treated more like a pet than a
+prisoner. One who had worked in London, and who spoke English, asked me
+for a cup of tea for a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I got one
+in the dressing station.  The platoon of Tommies re-formed and marched
+away to the battle and the prisoners were led off to the cages.  There
+were still large numbers of prisoners on the road, and they were moving
+about without guards.  Many of them were being used as stretcher-bearers
+and they seemed to do their work out of goodwill and not of constraint.
+
+Their assistance was of great help to the wounded.  The battle was going
+well with us. Everyone felt in good heart and kindly disposed.  An
+officer who lay seriously wounded and waiting for a car told me of the
+splendid work which his regiment had done.  His eyes shone with
+suppressed excitement and pride as he told the story.  While he was
+speaking two soldiers came limping down the road and their appearance
+was greeted with a burst of laughter.  One was English, the other
+German. Tommy had his arm round the German's neck and was leaning on him
+while Fritz, with his arm round the lad's waist, helped him along. They
+came along very slowly for both were wounded, but they laughed and
+talked together like long-lost brothers.  Yet neither could understand a
+word the other said.
+
+I passed down the road towards the line. Gunners of the Territorials
+were hurriedly hitching their guns to the horses ready to advance to new
+positions.  In the ruined village a party of engineers was already
+unloading a wagon of rails with which to build a light railway.  I
+continued along the road towards the next village.  It had just fallen
+into our hands and not one stone was left on another.  There were scores
+of wounded men hobbling back from it and I gave my arm to such as needed
+it most.  A badly wounded Tommy was being brought along on a wheeler by
+two orderlies and as I helped them through the traffic we heard the
+heavy rumble of the advancing field-guns.
+
+The road was cleared with the quickness of lightning.  Out of the
+village the batteries burst at a mad gallop and down the road they came
+at break-neck speed.  With the swiftness of a fire engine in a city
+street the rocking guns swept past.  The gunners clung to the ammunition
+limbers with both hands and the drivers whipped and spurred the excited
+foam-flecked horses as though they were fiery beings leaping through the
+air and incapable of fatigue or weakness.  Suddenly the drivers raised
+their whips as a sign to those behind, and the trembling horses and
+bounding guns came to a dead halt.  The leading gun had overturned at a
+nasty place where the road dipped down into the hollow.  The rest of the
+batteries stood exposed on the crest of the ridge.  Before retiring the
+Germans had felled all the trees that grew by the roadside so that
+nothing might obstruct their line of vision.  Such a catastrophe as this
+was what the enemy had been hoping for.  The sun shone brilliantly, and
+our batteries were a direct target for the German gunners such as seldom
+occurs.  Our boys were caught like rats in a trap.  By the side of the
+road ran a shallow trench and near us two broad steps into it.  We laid
+the wounded lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down by his side.
+Shells were falling all around and fountains of dirt and debris rose
+into the air and, on five or six occasions, covered us with their spray.
+
+I covered the lad's face.  He was barely conscious and uttered no word.
+It seemed as if nothing could live in such a bombardment.  A shell burst
+near, and the cry of dying horses rent the air.  The traces were cut and
+the horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road. Every second I expected
+to see the horses and drivers in front of me blown into the air and I
+watched them with fascinated eyes.  Not a man stirred.  They sat on
+their horses and gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze.
+Not a man sought the trench and not a man relieved the tension by going
+forward to see what was wrong or to lend a hand.  Each knew his place,
+and if death sought him it would know where to find him.  The horses
+felt that they had brave men on their backs and, in that mysterious way
+peculiar to horses, caught the spirit of their riders.  Every shell
+covered men and horses with chalk and soil, but they remained an
+immobile as statuary.  It was magnificent and it was war.  A driver in
+the battery beside us got wounded in the leg and hand.  He jumped off
+his horse and came to us to be bandaged.  Then he leapt back into the
+saddle.  It seemed an age, but I suppose it was only a few minutes,
+before the obstruction was removed.  The whips flashed in the air and
+the horses sprang forward.  The guns rocked and swayed as they swept
+past us and within a few minutes they were in their new positions under
+the hill upon which lay the ruins of Neuville Vitasse.
+
+The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had started and we lifted out our
+wounded soldier and went in the direction of the dressing station.  Some
+distance up the road my attention was called to one of the drivers whom
+the artillery had left in the care of some privates. He was living, but
+his skull was broken, and he would never wake again to consciousness. He
+was fast "going West."  His day was over and his work was done.  I got
+him lifted on to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station so that
+he might die in peace and be buried in the little soldiers' cemetery
+behind it.
+
+When I returned in the evening to our billet I told the transport
+officer of the magnificent bravery of the artillery drivers.
+
+"Any other drivers would behave just as well, if caught in the same
+trap," he replied.
+
+He spoke the simple truth.  They would. Such supreme courage and
+devotion to duty are common to the army.  Their presence among all ranks
+and in all sections of the army makes the fact the more wonderful.  Both
+officers and men love life, but they love duty more, and commanders in
+drawing up their plans know that they can rely on their soldiers to
+carry them out.  Our Tommies never fail us whether in France,
+Mesopotamia, or Palestine.  Devotion to duty is inwoven with the fibers
+of their hearts.  They are men who, either in kindness to captives or
+courage amid disaster and destruction, never fail us.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIV*
+
+                     *THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE*
+
+
+The war on the Western Front has been fought in a Roman Catholic country
+where crucifixes are erected at all the chief cross-roads to remind us
+that, in every moment of doubt as to the way of life, and on whichever
+road we finally decide to walk, whether rough or smooth, we shall need
+the Saviour and His redeeming love.  We have seen a cross so often when
+on the march, or when passing down some trench, that it has become
+inextricably mixed up with the war. When we think of the great struggle
+the vision of the cross rises before us, and when we see the cross, we
+think of processions of wounded men who have been broken to save the
+world. Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to rest, we have placed
+over him, as the comment on his death, a simple white cross bearing his
+name.  We never paint any tribute on it. None is needed, for nothing
+else could speak so eloquently as a cross--a white cross.  White is the
+sacred color in the army of to-day, and the cross is the sacred form.
+In after years there will never be any doubt as to where the line of
+liberty ran that held back the flood and force of German tyranny.  From
+the English Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all time with the
+crosses on the graves of the British and French soldiers.  Whatever may
+be our views about the erection of crucifixes by the wayside and at the
+cross-roads, no one can deny that they have had an immense influence for
+good on our men during the war in France.
+
+The experience of many a gallant soldier is expressed in the following
+Belgian poem:
+
+    "I came to a halt at the bend of the road;
+    I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;
+    I came to a halt at the bend of the road.
+
+    "O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,
+    My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;
+    O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee.
+
+    "And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,
+    I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup;
+    And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up.
+
+    "For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,
+    Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;
+    For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave.
+
+    "Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'
+    And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.
+    Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'
+
+    "Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?
+    Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.
+    Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?"
+
+
+The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier and has provided him with
+the only acceptable philosophy of the war.  It has taught boys just
+entering upon life's experience that, out-topping all history and
+standing out against the background of all human life, is a Cross on
+which died the Son of God.  It has made the hill of Calvary stand out
+above all other hills in history.  Hannibal, C�sar, Napoleon--these may
+stand at the foot of the hill, as did the Roman soldiers, but they are
+made to look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises above them,
+showing forth the figure of the Son of Man.  Against the sky-line of
+human history the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in shadow.  The
+wayside crosses at the Front and the flashes of roaring guns may not
+have taught our soldiers much history, but they have taught them the
+central fact of history; and all else will have to accommodate itself to
+that, or be disbelieved.  The Cross of Christ is the center of the
+picture for evermore, and the grouping of all other figures must be
+round it.
+
+To the soldiers it can never again be made a detail in some other
+picture.  Seen also in the light of their personal experience it has
+taught them that as a cross lies at the basis of the world's life and
+shows bare at every crisis of national and international life so, at the
+root of all individual life, is a cross.  They have been taught to look
+for it at every parting of the ways.  Suffering to redeem others and
+make others happy will now be seen as the true aim of life and not the
+grasping of personal pleasure or profit.  They have stood where high
+explosive shells thresh out the corn from the chaff--the true from the
+false.  They have seen facts in a light that lays things stark and bare;
+and the cant talked by skeptical armchair-philosophers will move them as
+little as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops. For three long
+years our front-line trenches have run through what was once a village
+called Neuve Chapelle.  There is nothing left of it now.  But there is
+something there which is tremendously impressive.  It is a crucifix. It
+stands out above everything, for the land is quite flat around it.  The
+cross is immediately behind our firing trench, and within two or three
+hundred yards of the German front trench.  The figure of Christ is
+looking across the waste of No Man's Land.  Under His right arm and
+under His left, are British soldiers holding the line.  Two dud shells
+lie at the the foot.  One is even touching the wood, but though hundreds
+of shells must have swept by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it
+remains undamaged.  Trenches form a labyrinth all round it.  When our
+men awake and "stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is the cross;
+and when at night they lie down in the side of the trench, or turn into
+their dug-outs, their last sight is the cross.  It stands clear in the
+noon-day sun; and in the moonlight it takes on a solemn grandeur.
+
+I first saw it on a November afternoon when the sun was sinking under
+heavy banks of cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene as it must
+have been on the first Good Friday, when the sun died with its dying
+Lord, and darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and covered Him with its
+funeral pall to hide His dying agonies from the curious eyes of
+unbelieving men.  I had had tea in a dug-out, and it was dark when I
+left.  Machine-guns were sweeping No Man's Land to brush back enemies
+that might be creeping towards us through the long grass; and the air
+was filled with a million clear, cracking sounds.  Star-shells rose and
+fell and their brilliant lights lit up the silent form on the cross.
+
+For three years, night and day, Christ has been standing there in the
+midst of our soldiers, with arms outstretched in blessing.  They have
+looked up at Him through the clear starlight of a frosty night; and they
+have seen His pale face by the silver rays of the moon as she has sailed
+her course through the heavens.  In the gloom of a stormy night they
+have seen the dark outline, and caught a passing glimpse of Christ's
+effigy by the flare of the star-shells.  What must have been the
+thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts as all night long they
+have gazed at the cross; or of the officers as they have passed down the
+trench to see that all was well; or of some private sleeping in the
+trench and, being awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to restore
+blood-circulation?  Deep thoughts, I imagine, much too deep for words of
+theirs or mine.
+
+And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was raging and the wounded, whose
+blood was turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what thoughts must
+have been theirs then?  Did they not feel that He was their big Brother
+and remember that blood had flowed from Him as from them; that pain had
+racked Him as it racked them; and that He thought of His mother and of
+Nazareth as they thought of their mother and the little cottage they
+were never to see again?  When their throats became parched and their
+lips swollen with thirst did they not remember how He, too, had cried
+for a drink; and, most of all, did they not call to mind the fact that
+He might have saved Himself, as they might, if He had cared more for His
+own happiness than for the world's? As their spirits passed out through
+the wounds in their bodies would they not ask Him to remember them as
+their now homeless souls knocked at the gate of His Kingdom?  He had
+stood by them all through the long and bloody battle while hurricanes of
+shells swept over and around Him.  I do not wonder that the men at the
+Front flock to the Lord's Supper to commemorate His death.  They will
+not go without it.  If the Sacrament be not provided, they ask for it.
+At home there was never such a demand for it as exists at the Front.
+There is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the Cross, between the
+soldier and his Saviour.
+
+And yet, to those who willed the war and drank to the day of its coming,
+even the Cross has no sacredness.  It is to them but a tool of war.  An
+officer told me that during the German retreat from the Somme they
+noticed a peculiar accuracy in the enemy's firing.  The shells followed
+an easily distinguishable course. So many casualties occurred from this
+accurate shelling that the officers set themselves to discover the
+cause.  They found that the circle of shells had for its center the
+cross-roads, and that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood up
+clearly as a land-mark.  Evidently the crosses were being used to guide
+the gunners, and was causing the death of our men.  But a more
+remarkable thing came to light.  The cross stood close to the road, and
+when the Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the cross-roads to
+delay our advance.  Everything near had been blown to bits by the
+explosion except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it. And yet it
+could not have escaped, except by a miracle.  They therefore set
+themselves to examine the seeming miracle and came across one of the
+most astounding cases of fiendish cunning.  They found that the Germans
+had made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that they could take it
+out or put it in at pleasure. Before blowing up the cross-roads they had
+taken the cross out of its socket and removed it to a safe distance,
+then, when the mine had exploded, they put the cross back so that it
+might be a landmark to direct their shooting. And now they were using
+Christ's instrument of redemption as an instrument for men's
+destruction.
+
+But our young officers resolved to restore the cross to its work of
+saving men.  They waited till night fell, and then removed the cross to
+a point a hundred or two yards to the left. When in the morning the
+German gunners fired their shells their observers found that the shells
+fell too far wide of the cross and they could make nothing of the
+mystery.  It looked as if someone had been tampering with their guns in
+the night.  To put matters right they altered the position of their guns
+so that once more the shells made a circle round the cross. And
+henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the shells fell harmlessly into
+the outlying fields. Nor was this the only time during their retreat
+that the Germans put the cross to this base use and were foiled in their
+knavery.
+
+When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ and turns it into a tool to
+gain an advantage over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to ask who
+began the war, and folly to close our eyes to the horrors and
+depravities which are being reached in the waging of it.
+
+There is a new judgment of the nations now proceeding and who shall
+predict what shall be?  The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and our
+attitude towards it decides our fate.  I have seen the attitude of our
+soldiers towards the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards that for which
+it stands; and I find more comfort in their reverence for Christ and
+Christianity than in all their guns and impediments of war.
+
+The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks of time, and the nations
+will survive that stand beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of
+righteousness, liberty and truth.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *XV*
+
+                       *THE CHILDREN OF OUR DEAD*
+
+
+There are times when we get away from the Front for a rest.  We hear no
+more the sound of the guns, but give ourselves up to the silence and
+charm of the country.  Before going into the Somme fighting we were
+billeted for ten days in the neighboring village to Cressy; and as the
+anniversary of the battle came that week the colonel chose the day for a
+march to the battlefield.  The owner of the field, when the old windmill
+stood, from which King Edward III directed his army, came to meet us and
+describe the battle.  When the war is over he is going to erect a
+monument on the spot to the memory of the French and British troops who
+in comradeship have died fighting against the common foe.
+
+They were happy days that we spent around Cressy.  The last that some
+were destined to know this side of the Great Divide.  The bedroom next
+to mine was occupied by two fine young officers of utterly different
+type.  One was a Greek whose father had taken out naturalization papers
+and loved the country of his adoption with a worshiping passion that
+would shame many native born.  The other was a charming, argumentative,
+systematic, theological student of Scots parentage.  The night before we
+left, the Greek accidentally broke his mirror and was much upset.  It
+was, he said, a token that Death was about to claim him.  The Scot
+laughed heartily, for he had not a trace of the superstitious in him;
+or, if he had--which was more than likely--it was kept under by his
+strong reasoning faculties.
+
+"If you are to be killed," he replied, "I am to be killed too, for I
+also have broken my mirror."
+
+He spoke the words in jest, or with hardly a discernible undercurrent of
+seriousness; but they were true words nevertheless.  The two bed-mates
+were killed in the same battle a week or two later.  I had tea with them
+in their dug-out on the eve of the fight.  They were to take up their
+positions in an hour, but the student could not resist having just one
+more argument.  He directed the conversation to the New Theology, and to
+German philosophers and Biblical scholars.  He simply talked me off my
+feet, for he possessed the most brilliant intellect in the regiment,
+combined with self-reliance and perfect modesty.  Then the conversation
+turned to the question of taking a tot of rum before going over the
+parapet.  He was a rigid teetotaler, "for," said he, "drink is the ruin
+of my country."  He was opposed to the idea of taking rum to help one's
+courage or allay his fears.  He would not, he said, go under with his
+eyes bandaged.  He would take a good look at Death and dare him to do
+his worst.  He was superb, and Death never felled a manlier man.
+Browning would have loved him as his own soul for he had Browning's
+attitude to life exactly, and could have sung with him,
+
+      "Fear death? ...
+    I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
+      The best and the last!
+    I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
+      And bade me creep past.
+    No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
+      The heroes of old,
+    Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
+      Of pain, darkness and cold.
+    For sudden the worst turns best to the brave,
+      The black minute's at end,
+    And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
+      Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+    Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
+      Then a light...
+      And with God be the rest!"
+
+
+He was found with his "body against the wall where the forts of folly
+fall."  His brave, intelligent face was completely blown away. His Greek
+friend was wounded, and while being dressed in a shell-hole by his
+servant, was hit again and killed.
+
+Some weeks later all that remained of the regiment was drawn out to a
+little village some miles from Amiens, and very similar to the one we
+had occupied near Cressy.  We were taken to it in motor-'buses for the
+men were too exhausted to march, and the days spent there were days of
+great delight.  We had a glorious, crowded-out service on the Sunday. It
+was both a thanksgiving and a memorial service, and I spoke to the men
+on "The Passing of the Angels."
+
+"When the music ceased," I said, "and the herald-angels departed, the
+sky became very empty, cold and gray to the Shepherds; and they said one
+to another, 'let us now go even unto Bethlehem.'  And they went and
+found out Jesus.  If the angels had stayed the shepherds would have
+stayed with them.  The angels had to come to point them to Jesus but,
+that done, they had to go away to make the shepherds desire Jesus and
+seek Him.  'When the half-gods go the gods arrive.'  The angels had to
+make room for Jesus and the second best had to yield place to the best.
+When John the Baptist was killed his disciples went in their sorrow to
+Jesus; and having lost our noble comrades, we must go to Him also.  The
+best in our friends came from Jesus as the sweet light of the moon comes
+from the sun; and we must go to the Source.  If we find and keep to
+Jesus, sooner or later we shall find our lost friends again, for 'them
+also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him!'"
+
+In some such words I tried to comfort those who had left their comrades
+behind in the graves on the Somme; for I know how deeply they felt the
+loss.  During the week we had dinner parties, and all kinds of jolly
+social intercourse.  It was amusing to see the delight everyone felt at
+having a bed to sleep in. "Look Padre, at these white sheets," an
+officer cried as I passed his window.  He was as merry over them as if a
+rich maiden aunt had remembered him in her will.  Some got "leave" home,
+and were so frankly joyful about it that it made the rest of us both
+glad and envious. We made up for it somewhat by getting leave to spend
+an occasional day in Amiens.  There I went into the glorious cathedral.
+Almost the whole of the front was sandbagged, but even thus, it was a
+"thing of beauty" and has become for me a "joy forever."
+
+Except Rouen Cathedral I have seen nothing to equal it.  Notre Dame,
+with its invisible yet clinging tapestry of history, is more deeply
+moving.  But it is sadder--more sombre. Something of the ugliness and
+tragedy of by-gone days peep out in it; but Amiens Cathedral is a thing
+of pure joy and beauty.  It suggests fairies, while Notre Dame suggests
+goblins.
+
+While I was looking at its glorious rose-windows which were casting
+their rich colors on the pillars, a father and his two children came in.
+The man and son dipped their fingers in the shell of holy water, crossed
+their foreheads and breasts with the water, and were passing on; but the
+little girl who was too short to reach the shell, took hold of her
+father's arm and pulled him back.  She, too, wished to dip her fingers
+in holy water, and make the sign of the cross over her mind and heart.
+The father yielded to her importunity and touched her hand with his wet
+fingers. She made the sacred sign and was satisfied. The father and son
+had remembered their own needs but forgotten the child's.
+
+After all the tragic happenings on the Somme why should this little
+incident linger in my memory like a primrose in a crater?  Did it not
+linger _because_ of the tragedy of the preceding weeks?  I had been
+living weeks together without seeing a child and after the slaughter of
+youth which I had witnessed the sight of a child in a cathedral was
+inexpressibly beautiful.  The father's neglect of its finer needs gave
+me pain.  We have lost so many young men, that every child and youth
+left to us ought to be cared for as the apple of our eye.  We have lost
+more than our young men. We have lost those who would have been their
+children.  The little ones who might have been, have gone to their
+graves with their fathers.
+
+The old recruiting cry, "the young and single first" was necessary from
+a military standpoint but, from a merely human point of view, I could
+never see much justice in it.  The young had no responsibility, direct
+or indirect, for the war.  They were given life and yet before they
+could taste it, they were called upon to die in our behalf.  We who are
+older have tasted of life and love; the residue of our years will be
+much the same as those that have gone before; there will be little of
+surprise or newness of experience.  Perhaps, too, we have living
+memorials of ourselves, so that if we die, our personality and name will
+still live on. Our death will only be partial.  While William Pitt lived
+could it be said that Lord Chatham had died?  His body was dead, truly,
+but his spirit found utterance in the British House of Commons every
+time his son spoke, and Napoleon felt the strength of his arm as truly
+did Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham.  I should not have mourned the
+loss of the young Scot and the Greek so much, had they left to the world
+some image and likeness of themselves.  In dying, they gave more than
+themselves to death;
+
+    "Those who would have been
+    Their sons they gave--their immortality."
+
+
+After a summer on the Somme, I have come to understand something of how
+fear of the devouring maw of Time became almost an obsession with
+Shakespeare.  Death had taken from him some of the dearest intimates of
+his heart, and taken them young.  And so, like the sound of a
+funeral-bell echoing down the lane where lovers walk, there is heard
+through all his sonnets and poems of love the approaching footsteps of
+death.  Sometimes the footsteps sound faintly, but they are seldom
+absent. How then would he have felt in a war like this, in which the
+"young and single" have gone out by the hundred thousand to prematurely
+die?
+
+Others, however, who have given their lives were married men, and they
+have left images of themselves in trust to the nation.  We know the last
+thoughts of a dying father.  Captain Falcon Scott as he lay dying at the
+South Pole has expressed them for all time.  "Take care of the boy," he
+said, "there should be good stuff in him."  He found comfort in the
+reflection that he would, though he died, live on in his son; but he was
+saddened by the thought that the son would have to face the battle of
+life without a father to back him up.  The boy would therefore need
+special "care."
+
+On the evening of the first battle of the Somme I spoke to a young
+officer as he lay in a bed at the Field Ambulance.  He had lost his
+right arm and he told me how it had happened.  He was charging across No
+Man's Land when a shell cut it off near the shoulder, and flung it
+several yards away.  As he saw it fall to the ground the sight so
+overcame him that he cried aloud in distress, "Oh my arm! My beautiful
+arm."  He was still mourning its loss, so, to comfort him, I told him
+that Nelson lost _his_ right arm and won the Battle of Trafalgar after
+he had lost it.  Like Nelson, I told him, he would learn to write with
+his left hand and still do a man's job.  He would not be useless in life
+as he feared. When the children of our dead soldiers charge across No
+Man's Land in the battle of life they will think of their lost fathers,
+and the agonizing cry of the young wounded soldier will rise to their
+lips, "Oh my arm, my beautiful arm."  The State is providing artificial
+arms for our wounded soldiers.  Will it be a right arm to the children
+of its dead?  Will it be a father to the fatherless and a husband to the
+widow?  Unless it is ready for this sacred task, it had no right to ask
+for and accept the lives of these men.
+
+The State, with the help of the Church, must resolve that no child shall
+suffer because its father was a hero and patriot.  The State must help
+the child to the shell of holy water without the little one having to
+pull at its arm to remind it of its duties.  If the children of our dead
+soldiers lack education, food, moral and spiritual guidance, or a proper
+start in life, no words will be condemnatory enough to adequately
+describe the nation's crime and ingratitude.  They are the sons and
+daughters of heroes and there "should be good stuff" in them.  It is the
+nation's privilege, as well as its duty, to take the place of their
+fathers.
+
+A few days later I walked into Arras from the neighboring village.
+There were guns all along the road, and there was not a house but bore
+the mark of shells.  Some of the civilians had remained, but these were
+mostly old people who could not settle elsewhere, and who preferred to
+die at home rather than live in a strange place.  One house impressed me
+greatly.  It had been badly damaged but, its garden was untouched and in
+it were half a dozen rose-trees.  It was the beginning of spring, and
+each tree was covered over with sacking to preserve it from the cold and
+fragments of shells.  The owner did not care sufficiently for his own
+life to move away, but he cared for the life of his roses.  And so, when
+the summer came there were roses in at least one garden in Arras.
+
+The noise of the guns was terrific and the old man had to live in the
+cellar, but he found leisure of soul to cultivate his roses.  His action
+was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in the entire war.  The
+children of our homes are more beautiful than Arras roses, and more
+difficult to rear.  May we trust our country not to neglect them?  Will
+she save them from the mark of the shell, and help them to grow up to a
+full and perfect loveliness? Our dying soldiers have trusted her to do
+it. From their graves they plead,
+
+    "If ye break faith with us who die,
+    We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
+    In Flanders fields."
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XVI*
+
+                         *A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE*
+
+
+It was in a ruined village behind the trenches.  A fatigue party had
+just come out of the line, and was on its way to rest-billets in the
+next village.  The men were tired so they sat down to rest in the
+deserted street.  Suddenly, a scream, as from a disembodied spirit,
+pierced the air.  There was a crash, a cloud of smoke, and five men lay
+dead on the pavement, and twelve wounded. Next morning I was asked to
+bury one of the dead.  Under a glorious July sky a Roman Catholic
+chaplain and I cycled between desolate fields into the village.  A
+rifleman guided us down a communication-trench till we came to the
+cemetery.  It was a little field fenced with trees.  There we found a
+Church of England chaplain.  He and the Catholic chaplain had two men
+each to bury.
+
+A burial party was at work on the five graves. It was the fatigue party
+of the evening before, and the men were preparing the last resting place
+of those who had died at their side. They worked rapidly, for all the
+morning the village had been under a bombardment which had not as yet
+ceased.  Before they had finished they were startled by the familiar but
+fatal scream of a shell and threw themselves on the ground.  It burst a
+short distance away without doing harm, and the soldiers went on with
+their work, as if nothing had happened. When the graves were ready, two
+of the bodies were brought out and lowered with ropes. The Church of
+England chaplain read the burial service over them, and we all stood
+round as mourners.  Two more bodies were brought out and we formed a
+circle round them while the Roman Catholic chaplain read the burial
+service of his Church--chiefly, in Latin.  There now remained but one,
+and he, in turn, was quietly lowered into his grave.  He was still
+wearing his boots and uniform and was wrapped around with his blanket.
+
+    "No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
+    Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
+    But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
+    With his martial cloak around him."
+
+
+All his comrades who had been with him in the dread hour of death were
+mourning by his grave, and standing with them were his officer and two
+chaplains.  I read the full service as it is given in our Prayer Book.
+It was all that one could do for him.  The Catholic chaplain had
+sprinkled consecrated water on the bodies and I sprinkled consecrated
+soil.  Was it not in truth holy soil?  Behind me was one long, common
+grave in which lay buried a hundred and ten French soldiers; "110
+Braves" was the inscription the cross bore.  In front of me were three
+rows of graves in which were lying British soldiers.  French and British
+soldiers were mingling their dust.  In death, as in life, they were not
+divided.
+
+I felt led to offer no prayer for the lad at my feet, nor for his dead
+comrades.  He needed no prayer of mine; rather did I need his.  He was
+safe home in port.  The storm had spent itself and neither rock, nor
+fog, nor fire would trouble him again.  His living comrades and I were
+still out in the storm, battling towards the land.  He had no need of
+us, but his parents and comrades had need of him.  We were there to pay
+a tribute to his life and death, to pray for his loved ones, and to
+learn how frail we are and how dependent upon Him who is beyond the
+reach of the chances and changes of this mortal life.
+
+I was half way through the recital of the last prayer--"We bless Thy
+Holy Name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and
+fear"--when that fatal, well-known scream, as of a vulture darting down
+on its prey, again tore the air.  The men, as they had been taught,
+dropped to the ground like stones.  My office demanded that I should
+continue the prayer, and leave with God the decision as to how it should
+end.  There was a crash, and the branches of the trees overhead trembled
+as some fragments of shell smote them.  But there was nothing more.  The
+men rose as quickly as they had fallen, and all were reverently standing
+to attention before the last words of the prayer found utterance.  The
+graves were filled in and we went our several ways.  Next day white
+crosses were placed over the five mounds, and we bade them a long and
+last farewell.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XVII*
+
+                         *A SOLDIER'S CALVARY*
+
+
+There is one afternoon on the Somme that stands out in my memory like a
+dark hill when the sun has sunk below the verge and left a lingering bar
+of red across the sky.  It was a Calvary thick with the bodies of our
+men.  I was looking for the Westminsters and they were difficult to
+find.  I passed over one trench and reached another. There I asked the
+men if they knew where the Westminsters were, and they expressed the
+opinion that the regiment was in the trench ahead.  There was no
+communication trench so I followed a fatigue-party for some distance
+which was marching in single file, and carrying hand-grenades to the
+firing line.  They turned to the right and I kept straight on. Every few
+yards I passed rifles reversed and fastened in the ground by their
+bayonets.  They marked the graves of the dead.  A few soldiers, but
+newly killed, were still lying out.
+
+At last I reached a trench and found in it a number of Westminsters.
+They were signalers on special duty, and they told me that I had already
+passed the regiment on my left. The poor fellows were in a sad plight.
+The weather was cold and they were without shelter.  There were German
+dug-outs but they were partly blown in and full of German dead. The
+stench that rose from these, and from the shallow graves around, was
+almost unbearable. Yet there amid falling shells, the lads had to remain
+day and night.  Their rations were brought to them, but as every ounce
+of food and drop of water, in addition to the letters from home, had to
+be brought on pack mules through seven or eight miles of field tracks in
+which the mules struggled on up to the knees in sticky mud and sometimes
+up to the belly, it was impossible for the regiment to receive anything
+beyond water and "iron rations," i.e., hard biscuits.  Water was so
+precious that not a drop could be spared to wash faces or clean teeth
+with, and I always took my own water-bottle and food, to avoid sharing
+the scanty supplies of the officers.  After a little time spent with the
+signalers I moved up the trench and looked in at the little dug-out of
+the Colonel commanding.  All the officers present, bearded almost beyond
+recognition, were sitting on the floor.  The enemy had left a small red
+electric light, which added an almost absurd touch of luxury to the
+miserable place.  Farther up the trench I found the Brigade Staff
+Captain in a similar dug-out and after making inquiries as to the
+position of the Queen's Westminster Regiment which was my objective, I
+left to find it; for the sun was already setting. The path was across
+the open fields, and the saddest I have ever trod.  I was alone and had
+but little idea of location, but it was impossible to miss the path.  On
+the right and left, it was marked at every few steps with dead men.
+Most of them were still grasping their rifles.  They had fallen forward
+as they rushed over the ground, and their faces--their poor, blackened,
+lipless faces--were towards the foe.  There had, as yet, been no
+opportunity to bury them for the ground was still being shelled and the
+burial parties had been all too busily engaged in other parts of the
+field.  I longed to search for their identity discs that I might know
+who they were and make a note of the names; but I had to leave it to the
+burial party.  I was already feeling sick with the foul smells in the
+trench and the sights on the way, and lacked the strength to look for
+the discs around the wrists and necks of the poor, decomposed bodies.
+It had to be left to men of the burial party whose nerves were somewhat
+more hardened to the task by other experiences of the kind.  It was a
+new Calvary on which I was standing.  These poor bodies miles from home
+and with no woman's hands to perform the last offices of affection were
+lying there as the price of the world's freedom.
+
+Would that all who talk glibly of freedom and justice might have seen
+what I saw on that dreary journey, that they might the better realize
+the spiritual depths of liberty and righteousness, and the high cost at
+which they are won for the race.  It is fatally easy to persuade
+ourselves that there is no need for us to tread the bitter path of
+suffering and death--that we can achieve freedom and justice by being
+charitable, and by talking amiably to our enemies.  We try to believe
+that they are as anxious to achieve liberty for the world as we are,
+that they are striving to bind mankind in fetters of iron, only through
+lack of knowledge as to our intentions.  Their hearts and intentions are
+good but they are misled, and after a little talk with them around a
+table they would put off their "shining armor" and become angels of
+light carrying palm branches in place of swords and fetters.
+
+This is a mighty pleasant theory, only it is not true; and we cannot get
+rid of evil by ignoring it, nor of the devil by buying him a new suit.
+There are men willing to die to destroy liberty, just as there are
+others willing to die in its defense.  It is not that they do not
+understand liberty.  They _do_, and that is why they wish to destroy it.
+It is the enemy of their ideal.  Whether liberty will survive or not,
+depends upon whether there are more men inspired to die in defending
+liberty, than there are willing to die in opposing it.  A thing lives
+while men love it sufficiently well to die for it. We get what we
+deserve; and readiness to die for it is the price God has put on
+liberty.
+
+Words are things too cheap to buy it.  When someone suggested
+establishing a new religion to supersede Christianity, Voltaire is
+reported to have asked if the founder were willing to be crucified for
+it?  Otherwise, it would stand no chance of success.  It was a deep
+criticism, and showed that Voltaire was no fool.  Blood is the test, not
+words.  A nation can only achieve liberty when it is determined to be
+free or die. "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it."
+"Never man spake" as Christ spake, but He did not save the world by
+talking to it, but by dying for it.  Outpoured blood, not outpoured
+words, is the proof of moral convictions and the means of their
+propaganda; our soldiers may not be learned in some things, but they
+have learned _that_.  They know the cause will win which has most moral
+power, and that the cause with most moral strength will prove itself to
+be the one with most martyrs. And the side with most men ready to be
+martyrs will outstay the other.  The spirit of martyrdom, not
+negotiation, is the path to liberty and peace.  You cannot negotiate
+with a tiger.  The dispute is too simple for negotiation. You have to
+kill the tiger, or yourself be killed.
+
+While I was on leave, a man told me that he had asked some soldiers from
+the Front why they were fighting, and they could not tell him.
+Probably.  All the deepest things are of life beyond telling.  No true
+man can tell why he loves his wife or children.  This trust in words, in
+being able to "tell why," is truly pathetic.  I would not trust a wife's
+love if she could tell her husband exactly _why_ she loved him; nor
+would I trust our soldiers not to turn tail in battle if they could
+_tell_ just why they are fighting.  They cannot _tell_, but with their
+poor lipless faces turned defiantly against the foe they can _show_ why
+they are fighting. Let those who want to know the soldiers' reason _why_
+they fight go and see them there on the blasted field of battle, not ask
+them when they come home on leave.  The lips of a soldier perish
+_first_, as his dead body lies exposed on the battlefield; his rifle he
+clutches to the last; and it is a lesson terrible enough for even the
+densest talker to understand.
+
+The dead lads lying out in the open with their rifles pointing towards
+the enemy voice their reason why loud enough for the deaf to hear and
+the world to heed.  Ideals must be died for if they are to be realized
+on earth, for they have bitter enemies who stick at nothing.  And we
+have to defend our ideal with our lives or be cravens and let it perish.
+
+History, with unimportant variations, is constantly repeating itself;
+and in nothing is it so consistent as in the price it puts on liberty.
+The lease of liberty runs out; the lease has to be renewed, and it is
+renewed by suffering and martyrdom.  The dear dead lads whom I saw on
+that terrible afternoon were renewing the lease.  With their bodies they
+had marked out a highway over which the peoples of the earth may march
+to freedom and to justice.
+
+The view, all too common, that our soldiers regard the war as a kind of
+picnic, and an attack as a sort of rush for the goal in a game of
+football, is false--false as sin.  It is a view blind to the whole
+psychology of the war, and misses the meaning of our soldiers' gayety as
+much as it ignores their fear and sorrow.  The trenches are a Gethsemane
+to them and their prayer is, "Our Father, all things are possible unto
+Thee: take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what
+Thou wilt."
+
+One day, when I went into a mess-room in which letters were being
+censored, an officer said to me, "Read this, Padre, there's a reference
+to you, and a candid expression of a man's attitude towards religion."
+
+I took the letter and it read: "Our chaplain isn't far out when he says,
+in his book, that though we may speak lightly of the church we don't
+think or speak lightly of Christ. However careless we may be when we are
+out of the trenches, when we are in we all pray. There is nothing else
+we can do."
+
+I have been eighteen months with a fighting regiment on the Front, and I
+have never spoken to any officer who did not regard it as a mathematical
+certainty that, unless he happened to fall sick or be
+transferred--neither of which he expected--he would be either killed or
+wounded.  And I agreed with him without saying it.  He does not even
+hope to escape wounds.  They are inevitable if he stays long enough; for
+one battle follows another and his time comes.  He only hopes to escape
+death and the more ghastly wounds.  He hopes the wound when it comes
+will be a "cushy one."  The men take the same view.  The period before
+going into the trenches, or into battle, is to them like the Garden of
+Gethsemane was to Christ; they are "exceeding sorrowful" and in their
+presence I have often felt as one who stood "as it were, a stone's
+throw" from them. They are going out with the expectation of meeting
+death.
+
+On the 1st of July, 1916, twenty officers in our regiment went over the
+top.  Nineteen were killed or wounded and the one who returned to the
+regiment was suffering from shell-shock and had to be sent home.
+Although our losses are much lower now, the officers and men experience
+the agony and bloody sweat of Gethsemane rather than the pleasure of a
+picnic in Epping Forest.  This explains, too, their gayety.  It is the
+happiness of men who know that they are doing their bit for the world's
+good, and playing the man, not the cad.  The rise of happiness into
+gayety is the natural reaction from the sorrow and alarm which have been
+clouding their hearts.  In peace time they will never know either the
+intensity of joy or sorrow they know now.  A man never feels so truly
+humorous as when he is sad.  Humor is a kind of inverted sadness. The
+most exquisite sadness produces the most exquisite humor as the deepest
+wells give the sweetest, purest and coldest water.
+
+    Tears and laughter are never far from one another,
+    The heart overflows on one side, and then on the other.
+
+
+Our soldiers' minds are not filled with thoughts of Germans, but with
+thoughts of the friends they have left behind them.  Nor do they often
+think of killing Germans.  They neither think so much of the Germans nor
+so bitterly of them as do the people at home. The Germans have not the
+same prominence in the picture.  Deeds relieve their emotions in regard
+to the Germans and leave their hearts open for the things and folk they
+love.
+
+It is commonly supposed (and this idea is fostered by some war
+correspondents), that when our men go over the top they are possessed
+with a mad lust to kill Germans.  The ultimate aim of a general planning
+a battle is to kill Germans no doubt, for that is the only way to
+achieve victory; and if the Germans do not want to be killed they know
+what to do. Let them surrender or retire.  The private agrees with the
+general in the necessity for killing Germans, but that is not what he is
+thinking of when he goes over the top; nor is it what we should be
+thinking of in his place. He is thinking of the Germans killing him.
+Life is sweet at nineteen or one-and-twenty.  It pleads to be spared a
+little longer.  A lad does not want to die; and as he goes over the
+parapet he is thinking less of taking German lives than of losing his
+own.  He knows that German heads will not fit English shoulders, and
+that, however many enemy lives he may take, none of them will restore
+his own if he loses it, as he is quite likely to do.  He is going out to
+be mutilated or to die.  That is his standpoint whatever may be the
+general's or the war-correspondent's.  He goes for his country's sake
+and the right.  It is his duty, and there is an end of it.
+
+Most of the killing in modern war is done by the artillery and
+machine-guns.  Comparatively few men have seen the face of an enemy they
+know themselves to have killed.  A regiment goes out to be shot at,
+rather than to shoot.  Unless this simple fact be grasped, the mentality
+of the soldier cannot be understood. The lust for killing Germans would
+never take a man out of his dug-out; but the love of his country and the
+resolve to do his duty will take him out and lead him over the top.  It
+is what he volunteered for, but it goes hard when the time comes for all
+that.
+
+The unburied men I saw had, but a short while ago, no idea of becoming
+soldiers.  They were the light of a home and the stay of a business.
+With that they were content.  But the challenge came; and they went out
+to defend the right against the wrong--the true against the false.  They
+toiled up a new Calvary "with the cross that turns not back," and now
+they lie buried in a strange land.  They have lost all for themselves,
+but they have gained all for us and for those who will come after us.
+Yet although they saved others, themselves they could not save.
+
+
+
+
+                                *XVIII*
+
+                          *THE HOSPITAL TRAIN*
+
+
+We were carried from our regiments to the hospital in ambulance cars.
+I, and several others, had trench fever. Some were suffering from gas
+poisoning.  One lovely boy--for he was nothing more--was near to death
+with "mustard" gas.  The doctor at the Dressing Station had opened a
+vein and bled him of a pint of blood.  It was the only hope of saving
+him.  But as the car bumped over the rough roads and the gas in his
+lungs grew more suffocating he almost despaired of reaching the hospital
+alive.  Others were wounded; and one had appendicitis.  After a period
+in hospital, during which we were honored with a visit by General Byng,
+it was decided that we should go to the Base.  We lay down on
+stretchers, and orderlies carried us to the waiting cars.  At the
+station we were lifted into the hospital train.  The racks had been
+taken down and stretchers put in their places. These were reserved for
+the "lying cases."  The "sitting cases" occupied the seats--one to each
+corner.  It was afternoon and as soon as the train began to move tea was
+served.  The train sped on and, about sun-set, a most excellent dinner
+was provided by the orderlies on board.
+
+It was the time of the new moon.  "Keep the window open," said one, "it
+is unlucky to see the new moon through glass, and we need all the good
+luck we can get," and he avoided looking through the glass until he had
+seen the moon through the open window.  We chatted, read our magazines,
+or slept--just as we felt inclined.  The night wore on and at about two
+o'clock we reached Rouen.  Cars rushed us to one of the Red Cross
+hospitals.  A doctor slipped out of bed, examined our cards, decided in
+which wards we should be put, and orderlies led or carried us thither.
+A nurse showed each of us to his room.  We were got to bed and another
+nurse brought some tea.  Next morning we were examined and put down for
+removal across the Channel.
+
+The nurses are radiant as sunshine, and diffuse a spirit of merriment
+throughout the hospital.  It was a pure joy to be under their care.  At
+three o'clock the following morning, without previous warning, a nurse
+came and awakened us.  We had half an hour to dress. Another nurse then
+came round with a dainty breakfast.  We were then put into cars and
+taken to the hospital train.  It left as dawn was breaking, and we were
+on our way to "Blighty."  We had a comfortable journey and reached Havre
+about nine.  Orderlies carried us on board ship and we were taken to our
+cots.  Breakfast was served immediately.  We felt a huge content; and
+hoped to be across by night.  But the ship remained by the quay all day.
+In the evening it moved out of the harbor and lay near its mouth.
+Towards midnight it slipped its anchor and headed for home.
+
+All had received life-belts and a card directing us which boat to make
+for, should the ship be torpedoed.  Mine was "Boat 5, Starboard."  My
+neighbor on the right had been on a torpedoed boat once and had no
+desire to be on another.  The lights of the ship were obscured or put
+out, and we silently stole over the waters towards the much desired
+haven.  There was no sound but the steady thump of the engines, and we
+were soon asleep.  Shortly after dawn we awoke to find ourselves in
+Southampton Water.  A water-plane drew near, settled like a gull on the
+water, and then plowed its way through the waves with the speed of a
+motor-boat.
+
+About nine o'clock we were carried off the boat to the station.  Women
+workers supplied us with telegraph forms, confectionery and cigarettes;
+orderlies brought us tea.  We were then taken to the train.  It was even
+more comfortable than the hospital trains in France; and we had women
+nurses.  On each side of the train, for its full length, were
+comfortable beds and we were able to sit up or recline at our pleasure.
+Lunch was served on board, and of a character to tempt the most ailing
+man.  No shortage of food is allowed to obtain on the hospital train.
+It has the first claim on the food supply and it has the first claim to
+the railroad.  It stops at no station except for its own convenience.
+Even the King's train stops to let the hospital train pass.
+
+We were under the care of a nurse who had reached middle life.  She had
+been on a torpedoed hospital ship! on one that struck a mine without
+bursting it; and on another that collided with a destroyer in the dark.
+She was greatly disappointed at the decision which had removed nurses
+from the hospital ships because of the danger from submarines.  She
+fully appreciated the chivalry of the men who would not let their women
+be drowned; but it had robbed the women of a chance of proving their
+devotion, and she could not see why the men should do all the dying.
+The women were ready to meet death with the men and as their mates and
+equals.  Their place was with the wounded whatever might befall, and
+they were ready.
+
+Hospital trains have run daily for three years now, and human nature can
+get used to anything.  We thought, therefore, that the people would have
+become used to the hospital train.  But greater surprise never gladdened
+a man's heart than the one which awaited us as we steamed out of
+Southampton.  All the women and children by the side of the railway were
+at their windows or in their gardens, waving their hands to us.  And all
+the way to Manchester the waving of welcoming hands never ceased.  At
+every station the porters doffed their caps to the hospital train as it
+sped past.  There was not a station large or small that did not greet us
+with a group of proud smiling faces.  Our eyes were glued to the windows
+all the way.  For one day in our lives, at least, we were kings, and our
+procession through "England's green and pleasant land" was a royal one.
+We passed through quiet country districts but at every wall or fence
+there were happy faces.  We wondered where they all came from, and how
+they knew of our coming.  There were tiny children sitting on all the
+railway fences waving hands to us. One little girl of four or five was
+sitting on the fence by a country station and waving her little hand.
+We had not seen English children for months and Pope Gregory spoke the
+truth ages ago when he said that they are "not Angles but Angels."  The
+sight of them after so long an absence was as refreshing to the spirit
+as the sight of violets and primroses after a long and bitter winter.
+
+At Birmingham the train made its only stop. Men and women of the St.
+John Ambulance Association boarded the train and supplied us with tea;
+and, as the train moved out, stood at attention on the platform.  At
+Manchester we received a warm welcome that told us we were in
+Lancashire.  Men and women helped us to the waiting cars and handed cups
+of tea to us.  It was raining of course--being Manchester--but as we
+passed near a railway arch a waiting crowd rushed out into the rain and
+startled us with a cry of welcome which was also a cry of pain.  Most of
+the men in the cars were Lancashire lads and in the welcome given them
+there were tears as well as smiles. Lancashire has a great heart as well
+as a long head. It suffers with those who suffer and the cry of the
+heart was heard in the welcome of its voice.  There was a welcome too,
+at the door of the hospital and at the door of each ward. Water was
+brought to our bedside, and then a tray bearing a well-cooked dinner.
+
+We had reached home.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIX*
+
+                         *AFTER WINTER, SPRING*
+
+
+A man's heart must be dead within him if, under the summer sun, he can
+look on the desolated ground of the Western battle-front without feeling
+emotions of joy and hope.  In the winter-time the clumps of blasted
+trees looked like groups of forsaken cripples.  Their broken branches
+stood out against the gray sky in utter nakedness, as if appealing to
+heaven against the inhumanity of man.  In a way, it was more depressing
+to pass a ruined wood than a destroyed village. Some of the trees had
+all their limbs shattered; others, thicker than a man's body, were cut
+clean through the middle; others, again, were torn clean up by the roots
+and lay sprawling on the ground.  It seemed impossible that spring could
+ever again clothe them in her garments of gladdening green.  We imagined
+the trees would appear amid the sunshine of the summer black, gaunt and
+irreconcilable; pointing their mangled stumps towards those who had done
+them such irreparable wrong and, as the wind whistled through them,
+calling on all decent men to rise up and avenge them of their enemies.
+
+But, suddenly, we found that the reconciling spring was back in the
+woods exercising all her oldtime witchery.  Each broken limb was covered
+with fresh foliage and each scarred stump put out sprouts of green.  The
+broken but blossoming woods grew into a picture of Hope, infinitely more
+sublime and touching than the one to which Watts gave the name. It was a
+picture drawn and colored by the finger of God, and it made the fairest
+of man's handiwork look weak and incomplete.  Uprooted trees lay on the
+ground in full blossom, and shell-lopped branches again took on the form
+of beauty.  The transformation was wonderful to behold.
+
+And it all happened in a week.  When our men went into the trenches the
+trees were black, bare and bruised, but when they came out of the front
+line into the support-trenches the wood behind them was a tender green
+and had grown curved and symmetrical.  It seemed as if the fairies of
+our childhood had returned to the earth and were dwelling in the wood.
+Although two long-range naval guns lay hidden behind it, which, with
+deep imprecations opened their terrible mouths to hurl fiery
+thunderbolts at the enemy, the fairies seemed unafraid and daily
+continued to weave for the trees beautiful garments of leaf and blossom.
+I have seen nothing that brought such gladness to both officers and men.
+A new spirit seemed abroad. We were in a new atmosphere and a new world.
+The war seemed already won, and the work of renewal and reconstruction
+begun.
+
+And now the summer had done for the ground what the spring did for the
+trees.  One Sunday, I was to hold a service on ground that was, in the
+springtime, No Man's Land. Having ample time I left the dusty road and
+walked across the broken fields through which our front-line trenches
+had run.  There were innumerable shell holes and I had to pick my way
+with care through the long grass and lingering barbed wire.  I had been
+over the ground on the day following the advance. Then it was a sea of
+mud, with vast breakwaters of rusty barbed wire.  Now, however, Nature's
+healing hand was at work.  Slowly but surely the trenches were falling
+in, and the shell-holes filling up.  The lips of the craters and
+trenches were red as a maiden's--red with the poppies which come to
+them.  Here and there were large patches of gold and white where unseen
+hands had sown the mud with dog-daisies.  There were other patches all
+ablaze with the red fire of the poppies, and as the slender plants
+swayed in the wind, the fire leaped up or died down.
+
+When the war broke out I was in "Poppyland" near Cromer, in East Anglia.
+There I first heard the tramp of armed men on the way to France, and
+there first caught the strain of "Tipperary"--the farewell song of the
+First Seven Divisions--a strain I can never hear now without having to
+stifle back my tears. As I passed by these patches of blood-red poppies
+I thought of those old and stirring days at Cromer when we watched a
+regiment of the original Expeditionary Force singing "Tipperary" as it
+marched swingingly through the narrow streets.  The declaration of war
+was hourly expected and the pier and some of the Sunday-school rooms
+were given to the soldiers for billets.  By morning every soldier had
+vanished and we could only guess where, but a remark made by one of them
+to another lingers still.  They were standing apart, and watching the
+fuss the people were making over the regiment.
+
+"Yes," he said to his comrade, "they think a great deal of the soldiers
+in time of war, but they don't think much of us in days of peace."
+
+The remark was so true that it cut like a knife and the wound rankles
+yet.  I have often wondered what became of the lad that went out to
+France to the horrors of war, with such memories of our attitude towards
+him in the times of peace.  I hope he lived long enough to see our
+repentance.  His memory haunted me among the poppies of Beaurains.  In
+the English Poppyland there was nothing to compare with the red-coated
+army of poppies now occupying our old front line.  In these trenches our
+gallant men had for nearly three years fought and bled, and it seemed as
+if every drop of blood poured out by them had turned into a glorious and
+triumphant poppy.
+
+The spring and summer have taught me afresh that there is in our lives a
+Power that is not ourselves.  It is imminent in us and in all things,
+yet transcends all.  "Change and decay in all around we see," and still
+there is One who changes not; He "_from_ everlasting _to_ everlasting is
+God."  He is the fountain of eternal life that no drought can touch.  He
+heals the broken tree and the broken heart. He clothes the desolate
+fields of war with the golden corn of peace, and in the trenches that
+war has scored across the souls of men, he plants the rich poppies of
+memory.  He drives away the icy oppression of winter with the breath or
+spring, and in His mercy assuages "the grief that saps the mind for
+those that here we see no more."
+
+He who turns rain-mists into rainbows and brings out of mud scarlet
+poppies and white-petaled daisies without a speck of dirt upon them, is
+at work in human life.  Out of mud He has formed the poppy and out of
+the dust the body of man.  Who then can set Him limits when He works in
+the finer material of man's soul?  Eye hath not seen nor heart conceived
+the beauty that will come forth when His workmanship is complete.  "If
+God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is
+cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little
+faith" who were made for immortality?  His ways are past finding out,
+but they are good.  He puts out the sun but brings forth millions of
+stars in its stead.  At His call they come flocking forth as doves to
+their windows.  He blinds Milton but brings into his soul a flood of
+light such as never shone on sea or land, and in its rays he sees
+Paradise, lost and regained.  He shuts Bunyan in a noisome prison, and
+closes against him the door to his beloved Bedford, but He opens to him
+a magic window that looks on heaven, and the years pass swiftly as he
+watches the progress of the pilgrims towards the Celestial City.  In the
+mud that has been stained and even saturated with the life-blood of our
+soldiers, He has made poppies to spring to loveliness.  It is a parable
+He is speaking to us, that the heart of man may feel and believe that
+which it is beyond the power of the mind to grasp, or the tongue to
+explain.
+
+The wounds of France are deep and deadly but they are not self-inflicted
+and they will heal. She will blossom again with a glory greater and
+purer than all her former glories.  She is even now finding her soul,
+and revealing a moral beauty and endurance such as few, even of her
+dearest friends, could have foreseen or foretold.  For ashes, God has
+given her beauty, and it is worth all her suffering.  Not Voltaire, but
+Joan of Arc is her pride to-day.  When I was in Rouen I saw the fresh
+flowers which the people daily place on the spot where she died.  France
+knows where her strength lies. Over Napoleon she has built a magnificent
+tomb of marble, but in it, she has not placed a single flower.  As I
+walked through it, some time ago, I felt depressed.  It made me shiver.
+It is magnificent, but dead.  One of Joan of Arc's living flowers would
+be worth the whole pile.  It is the most tremendous sermon ever preached
+on the vanity of military glory and the emptiness of genius when
+uninspired by moral and spiritual worth.  France knows. She gives Joan
+of Arc a flower, but Napoleon a stone.  France was never so great as
+now, and never of such supreme importance to the world.  We could not do
+without her.  On her coins she represents herself as a Sower that goes
+forth sowing.  It is a noble ideal, and truly, where she scatters her
+seeds of thought the fair flowers of liberty, equality and fraternity
+spring up as poppies spring, where the blood of our soldiers has watered
+her fields. France is the fair Sower among the nations, and it will be
+our eternal glory that when she was suddenly and murderously attacked in
+her fields by her brutal and envious neighbor--who shamelessly stamps a
+bird of prey on his coins for _his_ symbol, and a skull and cross-bones
+on his soldiers' headgear as the expression of his ambition--England
+came to her rescue, and not in vain.  The German sword has gone deeply
+into the heart of France, but it will leave not a festering wound but a
+well of water at which mankind will drink and be refreshed. Wound the
+earth, and there springs forth water; wound France and there springs
+forth inspiration.  Trample France in the mud, and she comes forth pure
+again, passionate and free as a poppy blown by the summer wind.
+
+
+
+               _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+                     _*By CHAPLAIN THOMAS TIPLADY*_
+
+                           _*FIFTH EDITION*_
+
+
+                        *The Cross at the Front*
+
+                      Fragments from the Trenches.
+
+                      12mo.  Cloth.  _Net $1.00_.
+
+"'Vivid' is too dim a word to express the living pictures which this
+chaplain has seen in France.  Some of the chapters are among the finest
+pieces of pathos we have read anywhere.  Read the book and you will be a
+better man for all your tasks."--_Chicago Standard_.
+
+
+
+                       *The Soul of the Soldier*
+
+                     Echoes from the Western Front.
+
+                      12mo.  Cloth.  _Net $1.25_.
+
+An astonishing story Chaplain Tiplady here has to tell--one in which the
+very foundations of existence seem temporarily uprooted, and the world
+turned upside-down. Yet never, in the telling, does he lose the
+unswerving faith and cheering optimism which formed the prevailing note
+of THE CROSS AT THE FRONT, nor for a moment relaxes his belief that the
+cause of justice, truth and righteousness is that for which the Allied
+armies are now fighting.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER ***
+
+
+
+
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+<title>THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER</title>
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+<meta name="PG.Title" content="The Soul of the Soldier" />
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+<p class="noindent pfirst"><span>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the </span><a class="reference internal" href="#project-gutenberg-license">Project Gutenberg License</a><span>
+included with this eBook or online at
+</span><a class="reference external" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license</a><span>.</span></p>
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+<p class="noindent pfirst"><span>Title: The Soul of the Soldier
+<br />       Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
+<br />
+<br />Author: Thomas Tiplady
+<br />
+<br />Release Date: July 18, 2014 [EBook #46323]
+<br />
+<br />Language: English
+<br />
+<br />Character set encoding: UTF-8</span></p>
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+<p class="noindent pfirst" id="pg-start-line"><span>*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK </span><span>THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER</span><span> ***</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
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+<p class="noindent pfirst" id="pg-produced-by"><span>Produced by Al Haines.</span></p>
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+<div class="vspace" style="height: 3em">
+</div>
+<div class="align-center auto-scaled figure margin" style="width: 74%" id="figure-28">
+<img class="align-center block" style="display: block; width: 100%" alt="Cover art" src="images/img-cover.jpg" />
+<div class="caption centerleft figure-caption margin">
+<span class="italics">Cover art</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="align-None container frontispiece">
+<div class="align-center auto-scaled figure margin" style="width: 56%" id="figure-29">
+<img class="align-center block" style="display: block; width: 100%" alt="Captain Guy Drummond, 13th Royal Canadian Highlanders. Killed in action, April, 1915. &quot;A SON OF THE MOTHERLAND&quot;" src="images/img-front.jpg" />
+<div class="caption centerleft figure-caption margin">
+<span class="italics">Captain Guy Drummond, 13th Royal Canadian Highlanders.
+<br />Killed in action, April, 1915.
+<br />"A SON OF THE MOTHERLAND"</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="align-None container titlepage">
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="xx-large">The Soul </span><em class="italics xx-large">of</em><span class="xx-large"> The Soldier</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><em class="italics large">Sketches from the Western
+<br />Battle-Front</em></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="medium">BY</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="large">THOMAS TIPLADY</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><em class="italics small">Chaplain to the Forces</em></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="small">Author of "THE CROSS AT THE FRONT," etc.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 3em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="medium">NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
+<br />Fleming H. Revell Company
+<br />LONDON AND EDINBURGH</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="align-None container verso">
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="small">Copyright, 1918, by
+<br />FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 3em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="small">New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
+<br />Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
+<br />London: 21 Paternoster Square
+<br />Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="align-None container dedication">
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="medium">TO THE MEMORY OF THE MANY "WHITE MEN"</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>I have known and loved in the London Territorials, who,
+being dedicate to their Country and the cause of Liberty, went
+over the parapet and did not return.</span></p>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"These laid the world away; poured out the red</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Sweet wine of youth: gave up the years to be</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>That men call age; and those who would have been</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Their sons they gave--their immortality."</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="bold medium">THE MOTHER'S ANSWER</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em">
+</div>
+<!--  -->
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>God gave my son in trust to me.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Christ died for him.  He should be</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>A man for Christ.  He is his own</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And God's and man's, not mine alone.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>He was not mine to give.  He gave</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Himself, that he might help to save</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>All that a Christian should revere</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>All that enlightened men hold dear.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"To feed the guns."  Ah! torpid soul,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Awake, and see life as a whole.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>When freedom, honor, justice, right,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Were threatened by the despot's might,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>He bravely went for God, to fight</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Against base savages, whose pride</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>The laws of God and man defied;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Who slew the mother and the child;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Who maidens, pure and sweet, defiled;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>He did not go to feed the guns,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>He went to save from ruthless Huns</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>His home and country, and to be</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>A guardian of democracy.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"What if he does not come?" you say;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Well, then, my sky will be more gray,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>But through the clouds the sun will shine</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And vital memories be mine.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>God's test of manhood is, I know</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Not, will he come--</span><em class="italics">but did he go</em><span>?</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>JAMES L. HUGHES.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="bold large">PREFACE</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The sketches in this book and in my
+previous one, "The Cross at the
+Front," are attempts to show the soul
+of the soldier serving in France as I have
+seen it during the year and a half that I have
+been with him.  It is a padre's privilege and
+duty to be the voice with which, in public
+worship, the soldiers speak to God; and
+through which their last thoughts are borne to
+their friends at home.  He is their voice both
+when they are sick or wounded, and when they
+lie silent in the grave.  He speaks of their
+hopes and fears, hardships and heroisms,
+laughter and tears.  As best he may he tries
+to tell, to those who have a right and a
+longing to know, how they thought, and how they
+bore themselves in the great day of trial when
+all risked their lives and many laid them down.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Soldiers, as a rule, are either inarticulate or
+do not care to speak of themselves; and the
+padre has to be their spokesman if ever their
+deeper thoughts and finer actions are to be
+known to their friends.  To do this he may
+have to bring himself into the picture, or even
+illustrate a common thing in their lives by a
+personal experience of his own.  To reveal life
+and thought at the Front in the third person,
+and without sacrificing truth and vividness,
+requires a degree of literary power and art which
+cannot be expected of a padre to whom writing
+is but a by-product, and not his main work.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I have written but little of military
+operations--these things are not in my province.
+Moreover, they are not the things which are
+most revealing.  The presence of Spring is first
+and most surely revealed by the flowers in our
+gardens and lanes; and the soldier is most
+clearly seen in the little things that happen on
+the march--in his billet or in the Dressing
+Station.  Some things are not seen at all.  They
+are only felt, and my opinion about them must
+be taken for what it is worth.  One knows
+what the men are by their influence on one's
+own mind and life.  I do not judge the
+morality and spirituality of our soldiers
+entirely by their habits and speech, for these are
+but outward and clumsy expressions of the
+inner life and are largely conventional.  There
+is something else to put in the reckoning, and
+to find out what the soldiers are worth to us
+we must somehow get behind their words and
+actions and find out what they are worth to
+God, whose terrible wheel of war is shaping
+their characters.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I appraise them mostly by the total effect
+of the impact of their souls on mine.  I know
+their thoughts and feelings by the thoughts
+and feelings they inspire in me.  "Do men
+gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"  There
+are certain thoughts and emotions that
+only come to me strongly when I am with the
+soldiers or when I am living again with them
+in memory, and so, I take these as their gift
+to me and judge the men by their influence
+on my character.  Character is, in its
+influence, subtle as Spring.  Words and actions
+by themselves are too coarse and conventional
+to do anything but mislead us in judging the
+quality of our men.  "By their fruits ye shall
+know them."  Not by their leaves.  Fruit is
+</span><em class="italics">seed</em><span>.  In the seed the tree reproduces itself.
+And reproduction, whether in physical, moral
+or spiritual life, is the test of vitality.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I have not unduly loaded my pages with
+ghastly details of war, because their effect on the
+mind of the reader who has not been at the
+Front would be false and distorting.  The
+reader would be more horrified in imagining
+them than our soldiers are in seeing them.  I
+have tried rather to show life at the Front,
+with its mingling of red and gold, horror and
+happiness, as it affects the soldier; so that his
+friends at home may see it as he sees it, and
+with his sense of proportion.  If I could only
+do it, as well as I intend it, my pictures would
+create a truer sympathy between the home and
+the trench.  Some would find comfort for their
+hearts, and others would awake to a new and
+noble seriousness.  Soldiers have suffered
+much through imperfect sympathies.  They
+have been pitied for the wrong things, and
+left to freeze when they needed warmth.
+Only when we realize their dignity and
+greatness and the true nature of their experiences
+can we be their comrades and helpers.  Life
+at the Front is brutal and terrifying, and yet
+our soldiers are neither brutalized nor
+terrorized, for there is something great and noble
+at the Front which keeps life pure and sweet
+and the men gentle and chivalrous.  When
+"the boys" come home their friends will, in
+almost every case, find them just as bright,
+affectionate and good as when they went out.
+The only change will be a subtle one--a
+deepening in character and manly quality, a
+broadening in mind and creed, and an impatience
+with cant and make-believe whether in politics
+or business, Christianity or Rationalism.
+There will be an air of indefinable greatness
+about them as of men who have been at grips
+with the realities of life and death.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>In a footnote to one of his songs, Edward
+Teschemacher says that the gypsies, as they
+wander through the country, leave a sprinkling
+of grass or wild flowers at the cross-roads to
+indicate, to those who come after them, the
+road they have taken.  These flowers are
+known as the "Patterain."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>These essays are my Patterain--wild flowers
+plucked in France, and left to mark the red
+path trod during the months I have been with
+my comrades at the Front.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I would the flowers were worthier, but such
+as I have, I give; and they are taken out of
+my heart.</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Where my caravan has rested</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Flowers I leave you on the grass;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>All the flowers of love and memory;</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>You will find them when you pass."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>THOMAS TIPLADY.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, FRANCE.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="bold large">CONTENTS</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em">
+</div>
+<p class="noindent pfirst"><span class="small">CHAP.</span></p>
+<ol class="upperroman simple">
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-swan-at-ypres">The Swan at Ypres</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-roadmakers">The Roadmakers</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-glamour-of-the-front">The Glamour of the Front</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#a-white-handkerchief">A White Handkerchief</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-songs-our-soldiers-sing">The Songs Our Soldiers Sing</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#easter-sunday">Easter Sunday</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#now-the-day-is-over">"Now the Day is Over"</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#sons-of-the-motherland">Sons of the Motherland</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-terror-by-night">The Terror by Night</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#eton-boys-never-duck">"Eton Boys Never Duck!"</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#missing">"Missing"</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#it-must-be-sunday">"It Must be Sunday"</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#our-tommies-never-fail-us">Our Tommies Never Fail Us</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-cross-at-neuve-chapelle">The Cross at Neuve Chapelle</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-children-of-our-dead">The Children of Our Dead</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#a-funeral-under-fire">A Funeral under Fire</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#a-soldier-s-calvary">A Soldier's Calvary</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-hospital-train">The Hospital Train</a></p>
+</li>
+<li><p class="first noindent pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#after-winter-spring">After Winter, Spring</a></p>
+</li>
+</ol>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="the-swan-at-ypres"><span class="bold large">I</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">THE SWAN AT YPRES</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>For three years the storm center of the
+British battle front has been at Ypres.
+Every day and night it has been the
+standing target of thousands of guns.  Yet,
+amid all the havoc and thunder of the artillery,
+the graceful white form of a swan had been
+seen gliding over the water of the moat.  It
+never lacked food, and was always welcome
+to a share of Tommy's rations.  In the Battle
+of Messines--I had the story first-hand from
+a lieutenant of artillery whose battery was
+hidden close by, and who was an eye-witness
+of the incident--a shell burst near the swan,
+and it was mortally wounded.  For three long
+years it had spread its white wings as gallantly
+as the white sails of Drake's flagship when he
+sailed out of Plymouth Sound to pluck the beard
+of the Spaniard.  But now its adventurous
+voyaging was over.  Another beautiful and
+innocent thing had been destroyed by the war
+and had passed beyond recall.  There was no
+dying swan-song heard on the waters, but all
+who saw its passing felt that the war had taken
+on a deeper shade of tragedy.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Many a "white man" had been slain near
+the spot but somehow the swan seemed a
+mystical being, and invulnerable.  It was a relic
+of the days of peace, and a sign of the survival
+of purity and grace amid the horrors and
+cruelties of war.  It spoke of the sacred things
+that yet remain--the beautiful things of the
+soul upon which war can lay no defiling finger.
+Now it had gone from the water and Ypres
+seems more charred than ever, and the war
+more terrible.  The death of the swan revealed
+against its white wings the peculiar inhumanity
+of the present war.  It is a war in which the
+enemy spares nothing and no one.  He is more
+blind and merciless than the Angel of Death
+which swept over Egypt, for the angel had
+regard to the blood which the Israelites had
+sprinkled over the lintels of their doors and
+he passed by in mercy.  To the German Eagle
+every living creature is legitimate prey.  No
+blood upon the lintel can save the inmate; not
+even the cross of blood on the hospital tent or
+ship.  Wounded or whole, combatant or
+non-combatant, its beak and talons tear the tender
+flesh of all and its lust is not sated.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>In Belgium and Serbia it is believed that
+more women and children perished than men.
+Things too hideous for words were done
+publicly in the market-squares.  Neither age nor
+sex escaped fire and sword.  The innocent babe
+was left to suck the breast of its dead mother
+or was dandled on the point of the bayonet.
+What resistance can the Belgian swan make
+to the German eagle?  It needs must lie torn
+and bleeding beneath its talons.  The German
+Emperor has waded deeper in blood than
+Macbeth, and has slain the innocent in their
+sleep.  Even the sea is full of the women,
+children, and non-combatant men he has
+drowned.  His crown is cemented together with
+innocent blood and its jewels are the eyes of
+murdered men and women.  The wretched
+man has made rivers of blood to flow yet not
+a drop in them is from his own veins or the
+veins of his many sons.  Napoleon risked his
+life with his men in every battle but this man
+never once.  While sending millions to their
+death he yet consents to live, and protects his
+life with the anxious care a miser bestows on
+his gold.  Alone among large families in
+Germany his household is without a casualty.
+Though a nation be white and innocent as the
+Belgian swan it will not escape his sword, and
+he will swoop upon it the more readily because
+it is unarmed.  The swan cannot live where
+the eagle flies, and one or the other must die.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>But the stricken swan of Ypres is not merely
+the symbol of Belgium and her fate.  There
+are other innocents who have perished or been
+sorely wounded.  The whole creation is groaning
+and travailing in pain.  The neutral nations
+are suffering with the belligerent, and the lower
+creatures are suffering with mankind.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at
+the front, I think the saddest sight is that of
+dying horses and mules.  Last winter they had
+to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter
+blasts.  It was impossible to keep them clean
+or dry, for the roads were churned into liquid
+mud and both mules and drivers were plastered
+with it from head to foot.  To make things
+worse there was a shortage of fodder; and
+horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding.
+Before the fine weather had given them a
+chance to recover weight and strength, the
+Battle of Arras began, and every living beast
+of burden, as well as every motor-engine, was
+strained to its utmost.  The mule is magnificent
+for war, and our battles have been won as
+much by mules as men.  Haig could rely on
+one as much as on the other.  The mule will
+eat anything, endure anything, and, when
+understood and humored by its driver, will do
+anything.  It works until it falls dead by the
+roadside.  In the spring, hundreds died in
+harness.  In fact, few die except in harness.  They
+die facing the foe, dragging rations along
+shell-swept roads to the men in the trenches.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>On two miles of road I have counted a dozen
+dead mules; and burial parties are sent out to
+put them out of sight.  One night, alone, I got
+three dying mules shot.  The road was crowded
+with traffic, yet it was difficult to find either
+an officer with a revolver or a transport-driver
+with a rifle.  I had to approach scores before
+I could find a man who had the means to put
+a mule out of its misery; and we were within
+two miles of our Front.  So rigid is our line of
+defense that those behind it do not trouble to
+take arms.  Even when I found a rifleman he
+hesitated to shoot a mule.  There is a rule that
+no horse or mule must be shot without proper
+authority, and when you consider the enormous
+cost of one the necessity for the rule is obvious.
+I had therefore to assure a rifleman that I
+would take full responsibility for his action.
+He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the
+mule's forehead and pulled the trigger.  A
+tremor passed through the poor thing's body
+and its troubles were over.  It had come all
+the way from South America to wear itself out
+carrying food to fighting men, and it died by
+the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The mule knows neither love nor offspring.
+Apart from a few gambols in the field, or
+while tethered to the horse-lines, it knows
+nothing but work.  It is the supreme type of
+the drudge.  It is one of the greatest factors
+in the war, and yet it receives scarcely any
+recognition and more of whipping than of
+praise.  Only too often I have seen their poor
+shell-mangled bodies lying by the roadside
+waiting till the battle allowed time for their
+burial.  Yet what could be more innocent of
+any responsibility for the war?  They are as
+innocent as the swan on the moat at Ypres.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Yet the greatest suffering among innocents is
+not found at the Front at all.  It is found at
+home.  At the Front there is suffering of body
+and mind, but at home there is the suffering
+of the heart.  Every soldier knows that his
+mother and wife suffer more than he does, and
+he pities them from his soul.  War is a cross
+on which Woman is crucified.  The soldier dies
+of his wounds in the morning of life, but his
+wife lingers on in pain through the long garish
+day until the evening shadows fall.  There is
+no laughter at home such as you hear at the
+Front, or even in the hospitals.  One finds a
+gayety among the regiments in France such as
+is unknown among the people left at home.  It
+is the sunshine of the street as compared with
+the light in a shaded room.  There is a youth
+and buoyancy at the Front that one misses
+sadly in the homeland.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>To a true woman with a son or husband at
+the Front, life becomes a nightmare.  To her
+distorted imagination the most important man
+in the country is not the Prime Minister but
+the postman.  She cannot get on with her
+breakfast for listening for his footsteps.  There
+is no need for him to knock at the door, she
+has heard him open the gate and walk up the
+gravel path.  Her heart is tossed like a bubble
+on the winds of hope and fear.  She finds
+herself behind the door without knowing how she
+got there, and her hand trembles as she picks
+up the letter to see if the address is in "his"
+handwriting or an official's.  The words, "On
+His Majesty's Service," she dreads like a
+witch's incantation.  They may be innocent
+enough, and cover nothing more than belated
+Commission Papers, but she trembles lest they
+should be but the fair face of a dark-hearted
+messenger, who is to blot out the light of her
+life forever.  If she goes out shopping and sees
+a telegraph-boy go in the direction of her home
+she forgets her purchases and hurries back to
+see if he is going to knock at her door.  The
+rosy-faced messenger has become a sinister
+figure, an imp from the nether world.  He may
+be bringing news of her loved one's arrival "on
+leave," but so many evil faces of fear and
+doubt peer through the windows of her heart
+that she cannot believe in the innocence and
+good-will of the whistling boy.  Her whole
+world is wrapped up in his little orange-colored
+envelope.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The boys at the Front know of the anxiety
+and suspense that darken their homes, and they
+do all they can to lighten them.  There were
+times on the Somme when the men were utterly
+exhausted with fighting and long vigils in the
+trenches.  Water was scarce, and a mild
+dysentery came into evidence.  No fire could be
+lighted to cook food or make hot tea.  The
+ranks had been thinned, and only two officers
+were left to each company.  The weather was
+bad and the captured trench uncomfortable.
+Any moment word might come for another
+attack.  The campaign was near its close, and
+the work must be completed despite the
+prevalent exhaustion.  The officers were too tired,
+depressed and preoccupied to censor hundreds
+of letters.  In front of him each could see a
+gaping grave.  The sun was rapidly "going west"
+and leaving them to the cold and dark.
+Nothing seemed to matter in comparison with </span><em class="italics">that</em><span>.
+To hold services were impossible and I felt
+that the best I could do was to walk through
+the trench, chat with the officers and men,
+gather up the men's letters and take them back
+and censor in my tent.  This gave the officers
+times to write their own, and an opportunity
+to post them.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>But note, I pray you, the nobility of these
+gallant fellows.  All of them were exhausted
+and depressed.  The shadows of death were
+thick about them, yet when I opened their
+letters, I found myself--with two exceptions out
+of three or four hundred--in an entirely
+different atmosphere.  It was a sunny atmosphere
+in which birds were singing.  The men said
+nothing of their suffering, their depression,
+their fears for the future.  The black wings of
+death cast no shadow over their pages.  They
+said they were "all right," "merry and bright"
+and "soon going back for a long rest."  They
+told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to
+send, and gave them details how to make up
+the next parcel.  They talked as if death were
+out of sight--a sinister fellow with whom they
+had nothing to do.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The officers, of course, censor their own
+letters, so I did not see how they wrote.  But
+I know.  They wrote as the men wrote, and
+probably with a still lighter touch.  Their
+homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet not
+by any word of theirs would the shadows be
+deepened.  They could not shield themselves
+from war's horrors but they would do their
+best to shield their white swans at home.  They
+could not keep their women folk out of the
+war, but they would deliver them from its
+worst horrors.  Not till they had fallen would
+they let the shafts pass them to their mothers
+and wives; rather would they gather them in
+their own breasts.  In the hour of the world's
+supreme tragedy there was a woman standing
+by the cross, and the august Sufferer, with
+dying breath, bade His closest friend take her,
+when the last beam faded, to his own home
+and be in His place, a son to her.  I know
+no scene that better represents the feelings of
+our soldiers towards their loved ones at home.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Their women gave them inspiration and joy
+in the days of peace, and they still float before
+their vision amid the blackened ruins of war,
+as beautiful and stainless in their purity as the
+white swan on the moat of Ypres.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="the-roadmakers"><span class="bold large">II</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">THE ROADMAKERS</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>We had just marched from one part of
+the Front to another and by a
+round-about way.  Each morning the
+Quartermaster and "the billeting party" went
+on before, and each evening we slept in a
+village that was strange to us.  Each of the men
+carried on his back a pack and equipment
+weighing about eighty or ninety pounds.
+Through sleet and blizzard and, for the
+most part, through open, exposed country,
+we continued our march without a day of
+rest.  By the fifth evening we reached the
+village where we were to have three or four
+weeks of rest and training before entering the
+trenches for the spring offensive.  We had
+unpacked and were sitting at dinner when a
+telegram came announcing that all previous
+plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must
+take to the road again.  Something unexpected
+had happened, good or ill, we knew not which,
+and we had to enter the line in front of Arras.
+For three days more we marched.  Daily the
+sound of the guns came nearer, and the men
+were tired and footsore.  They were also
+deeply disappointed of the long rest to which
+they had been looking forward after a winter
+in the trenches at Neuve Chapelle.  Yet they
+marched cheerily enough.  "It's the War!"
+they said one to another and, true to their own
+philosophy, "packed up their troubles in their
+old kit bags and smiled."  When any man
+faltered a bit, as if about to fall out by the
+way, the others cheered him on by singing
+"Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the
+old Sunday school hymn, "Kind words can
+never die."  Sometimes an officer would
+shoulder a man's rifle to the end of the march,
+or until he felt better.  In eight unbroken days
+of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and
+finally arrived at a camp of huts within a day's
+march of the trenches we are to occupy.  Here,
+where our huts stand like islands in a sea of
+mud, we are, unless suddenly needed, to take
+a few days' rest.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>On the ninety-eight miles of road over which
+we tramped, we passed company after
+company of British roadmakers.  In some parts
+they were widening the road, in other parts
+repairing it.  The roads of Northeastern
+France are handed over to our care as
+completely as if they were in England.  Our
+road-makers are everywhere, and as we pass they
+stand, pick or shovel in hand, to salute the
+colonel and shout some humorous remark to
+the laughing riflemen--only to get back as much
+as they give.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>This morning I visited the neighboring
+village to arrange for a Sunday service.  The
+roads are hopeless for bicycles at this time of
+the year, so I fell back on Adam's method of
+getting about.  The road to the village was
+torn and broken, and "thaw precautions" were
+being observed.  Everywhere it was ankle-deep
+in mud and, in the holes, knee-deep.  Innumerable
+motor-wagons had crushed it beneath their
+ponderous weight, and my feet had need of
+my eyes to guide them.  In skirting the holes
+and rough places, I added quite a mile to the
+journey.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>It was annoying to get along so slowly, and
+I called the road "rotten" and blamed the War
+for its destructive work.  Then I saw that I
+had been unjust in judgment.  The War had
+constructed more than it had destroyed.  The
+road had been a little muddy country lane, but
+the soldiers had made it wide as Fleet Street,
+and it was bearing a mightier traffic than that
+famous thoroughfare night and day.  The
+little road with its mean perfections and
+imperfections had gone, and the large road with
+big faults and big virtues had come.  This
+soldiers' road has faults the farmers' road
+knew not, but then it has burdens and duties
+unknown before, and it has had no time to
+prepare for them.  Like our boy-officers who
+are bearing grown men's burdens of responsibility
+and bearing them well, the road has had
+no time to harden.  To strengthen itself for
+its duties, it eats up stones as a giant eats up
+food.  I had no right to look for the smoothness
+of Oxford Street or the Strand.  Such
+avenues represent the work of centuries, this
+of days.  They have grown with their burdens,
+but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it
+suddenly, and while it was immature.  Oxford
+Street and Fleet Street are the roads of peace,
+and laden with wealth and luxury, law and
+literature--things that can wait.  But on this
+road of the soldiers' making, nothing is
+allowed except it be concerned with matters of
+life and death.  It is the road of war, and
+there is a terrible urgency about it.  Over it
+pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the
+soldiers in the trenches, ambulances bearing
+back the wounded to the hospital.  Whatever
+its conditions the work must be done, and there
+is no room for a halting prudence or the pride
+of appearance.  Rough though it is and muddy,
+over it is passing, for all who have eyes to
+see, a new and better civilization and a wider
+liberty.  I had grumbled at the worn-out road
+when I ought to have praised it.  I was as an
+ingrate who finds fault with his father's hands
+because they are rough and horny.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>It was a group of soldier-roadmakers who
+brought me to my senses.  They were making
+a new road through the fields, and it branched
+off from the one I was on.  I saw its crude
+beginning and considered the burdens it would
+soon have to bear.  As I stood watching these
+English roadmakers my mind wandered down
+the avenues of time, and I saw the Roman
+soldiers building their immortal roads through
+England.  They were joining town to town and
+country to country.  They were introducing
+the people of the North to those of the South,
+and bringing the East into fellowship with the
+West.  I saw come along their roads the
+union of all England followed at, some
+distance, by that of England, Scotland and Wales;
+and I regretted that there was no foundation
+on which they could build a road to Ireland.
+I saw on those soldier-built roads, also,
+Christianity and Civilization marching, and in the
+villages and towns by the wayside they found
+a home whence they have sent out missionaries
+and teachers to the ends of the earth.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"The captains and the kings depart."  The
+Roman Empire is no more, but the Roman
+roads remain.  They direct our modern life
+and business with an inevitability the Roman
+soldiers never exercised.  In two thousand
+years the Empire may have fallen apart and
+become a thing of the past; but the roads her
+sons have built in France, these two-and-a-half
+years, will abide forever and be a perpetual
+blessing; for, of things made by hands, there
+is, after the church and the home, nothing more
+sacred than the road.  The roadmaker does
+more for the brotherhood of man and the
+federation of the world than the most eloquent
+orator.  The roadmaker has his dreams and
+visions as well as the poet, and he expresses
+them in broken stones.  He uses stones as
+artists use colors, and orators words.  He
+touches them--transient as they are--with
+immortality.  A little of his soul sticks to each
+stone he uses, and though the stone perishes
+the road remains.  His body may perish more
+quickly than the stones and be laid in some
+quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul
+will never utterly forsake the road he helped
+to make.  In man's nature, and in all his works,
+there is a strange blending of the temporal
+and the eternal, and in nothing is it more
+marked than in the roads he builds.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The roadmaker is the pioneer among men
+and without him there would be neither artist
+nor orator.  He goes before civilization as
+John the Baptist went before Christ, and he
+is as rough and elemental.  Hard as his own
+stones, without him mankind would have
+remained savage and suspicious as beasts of prey;
+and art, science and literature would have had
+no beginning.  His road may begin in war, but
+it ends in peace.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The pioneers I saw roadmaking were, for the
+greater part, over military age, and such as
+I had often seen leaning heavily on the bar
+of some miserable beer-house.  In those days
+they seemed of the earth, earthy, and the stars
+that lure to high thoughts and noble
+endeavors seemed to shine on them in vain.  But
+one never knows what is passing in the heart
+of another.  Of all things human nature is
+the most mysterious and deceptive.  God seems
+to play at hide-and-seek with men.  He hides
+pearls in oysters lying in the ooze of the sea;
+and gold under the everlasting snows of the
+Arctic regions.  Diamonds he buries deep down
+in the dirt beneath the African veldt.  He
+places Christ in a carpenter's shop, Joan of
+Arc in a peasant's dwelling, Lincoln in a
+settler's cabin, and Burns in a crude cottage
+built by his father's own hands.  He hides
+generous impulses and heroic traits in types of
+men that in our mean imaginations we can only
+associate with the saw-dust sprinkled bar-room.
+Only when war or pestilence have kindled their
+fierce and lurid flames do we find the hidden
+nobility that God has stored away in strange
+places--places often as foul and unlikely as
+those where a miser stores his gold.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>When Diogenes went about with a candle
+in search of an honest man did he think to
+look in the taverns and slums?  I fancy not.
+Not Diogenes' candle but the "Light of the
+World" was needed to reveal the treasure God
+has hidden in men.  Christ alone knew where
+His Father had hidden His wealth and could
+guide us to it.  In this time of peril when
+every man with any nobility in him is needed
+to stand in the deadly breach, and with body
+and soul hold back the brutality and tyranny
+that would enslave the world we have, like the
+woman in the parable, lit a candle and searched
+every corner of our kingdom diligently.  In
+the dust of unswept corners we have found
+many a coin of value that, but for our
+exceeding need, would have remained hidden.
+To me, the wealth and wonder of the war have
+been found in its sweepings.  Time and again
+we have found those who were lost, and a new
+happiness has come into life.  To the end of
+my days I shall walk the earth with reverent
+feet.  I did not know men were so great.  I
+have looked at life without seeing the gold
+through the dust, and have been no better than
+a Kaffir child playing marbles with diamonds,
+unaware of their value.  I have gone among
+my fellows with proud step where I ought to
+have walked humbly, and have rushed in where
+angels feared to tread.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Life at the Front has made me feel mean
+among mankind.  My comrades have been so
+great.  In days long past, I have trodden on
+the hem of Christ's garment without knowing
+it.  I have not seen its jewels because I, and
+others, have so often trodden it in the mire.
+Yet, through the mire of slum and tavern, the
+jewels have emerged pearl-white and ruby-red.
+And I feel that I owe to a large part of
+mankind an apology for having been before the
+war so blind, callous and superficial.  But for
+the agony and bloody sweat in which I have
+seen my fellows, I should never have known
+them for what they are, and the darkness of
+death would have covered me before I had
+realized what made the death of Christ
+and the sufferings of all the martyrs well
+worth while.  Now there is a new light upon
+my path and I shall see the features of
+an angel through the dirt on a slum-child's
+face.  Words of Christ that once lay in the
+shadow now stand out clearly, for whenever
+we get below the surface of life we come to
+</span><em class="italics">Him</em><span>.  He is there before us, and awaiting our
+coming.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I also understand, now, something of the
+meaning of the words which the Unemployed
+scrawled upon their banner before the
+war--"Damn your charity.  Give us work."  It was
+a deep and true saying, and taught them by a
+stern teacher.  When the war came we </span><em class="italics">did</em><span>
+"damn our charity" and gave them "work."  Many
+a man got his first chance of doing "a
+man's job," and rose to the full height of his
+manhood.  Many hitherto idle and drunken,
+were touched in their finer parts.  They saw
+their country's need, and though their country
+had done little to merit their gratitude, they
+responded to her call before some of the more
+prudent and sober.  Those who were young
+went out to fight, and every officer can tell
+stories about their behavior in the hours of
+danger and suffering which bring tears to the
+eyes and penitence to the heart.  Those above
+military age went out to make roads over which
+their younger brothers and sons could march,
+and get food, ammunition, or an ambulance
+according to their needs.  Among the group
+of middle-aged roadmakers that I saw there
+were, I doubt not, some who had been counted
+wastrels and who had made but a poor show
+of life.  Now they had got work that made
+them feel that they were men and not
+mendicants, and they were "making good."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>While I watched them a lark rose from a
+neighboring field and sang over them a song
+of the coming spring.  It was the first lark I
+had heard this year, and I was glad it mingled
+its notes with the sounds of the roadmakers'
+shovels.  Nature is not so indifferent to human
+struggles as it sometimes seems.  The man
+who stands steadfastly by the right and true
+and bids tyranny and wrong give place will
+find, at last, that he is in league with the stones
+of the field and the birds of the air, and that
+the stars in their courses fight for him.  The
+roadmaker and the lark are born friends.
+Both are heralds of coming gladness, and while
+one works, the other sings.  True work and
+pure song are never far apart.  They are both
+born of hope and seek to body forth the
+immortal.  A man works while he has faith.
+Would he sow if he did not believe the promise,
+made under the rainbow, that seed-time and
+harvest shall never fail?  Or could he sing
+with despair choking his heart?  Yet he can
+sing with death choking it.  In the very act
+of dying Wesley sang the hymn, "I'll praise my
+Maker while I've breath."  He sang because
+of the hope of immortality.  He was not
+turning his face to the blank wall of death and
+oblivion but to the opening gate of a fuller
+life.  He was soaring sunwards like the lark,
+and soaring sang,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"And when my voice is lost in death</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Praise shall employ my nobler powers;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>My days of praise shall ne'er be past."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Joy can sing and Sorrow can sing, but
+Despair is dumb.  It has not even a cry, for a
+cry is a call for help as every mother knows,
+and Despair knows no helper.  Even the saddest
+song has hope in it, as the dreariest desert
+has a well.  The loved one is dead but Love
+lives on and whispers of a trysting place beyond
+this bourne of time, where loved and lover
+meet again.  The patriot's life may be pouring
+from a dozen wounds on the muddy field of
+battle, but his fast-emptying heart is singing
+with each heavy beat, "Who dies, if my country
+live?"</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Roadmakers have prepared the way for
+missionaries in every land.  Trail-blazers are
+not always religious men--often they are wild,
+reckless fellows whom few would allow a place
+in the Kingdom of God--but is not their work
+religious in its final upshot?  Do they not,
+however unconsciously, "prepare the way of
+the Lord, make straight in the desert a
+highway for our God?"  Close on their heels go
+the missionaries, urged on faster by the pure
+love of souls than the trader by love of lucre.
+The greatest among the roadmakers was a
+missionary himself--David Livingstone.  And
+for such an one the name Living-stone is
+perfect.  It has the touch of destiny.  Through
+swamp and forest he went where white feet
+had never trod, and blazed a trail for the
+messengers of Christ, until, worn out with fever
+and hardship, he fell asleep at his prayers, to
+wake no more to toil and suffering.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>But while the roadmaker bestows benefits on
+us he also lays obligations, for there can be
+no enlargement of privilege without a
+corresponding increase of responsibility.  The roads
+the men are making here in France will be good
+for trade.  They will open up the country as
+did the military roads of Caesar and Napoleon;
+and along them soldiers are marching who, at
+tremendous cost to themselves, are buying for
+posterity great benefits, and laying upon
+posterity great obligations.  Posterity must hold and
+enlarge the liberties won for them, and prove
+worthy of their citizenship by resisting tyranny
+"even unto blood."  We are here because our
+fathers were heroes and lovers of liberty.  Had
+they been cowards and slaves there would have
+been no war for us.  As we follow our fathers
+our sons must be ready to follow us.  The
+present springs out of the past, and the future
+will spring out of the present.  Inheritance
+implies defense on the part of the inheritors.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The very names they give to their roads
+show that our soldiers have grasped this fact.
+The cold canvas hut in which I am writing is
+officially described as No. 1 Hut, </span><em class="italics">Oxford
+Street</em><span>.  A little farther off, and running parallel
+with it, is </span><em class="italics">Cambridge</em><span> Road.  There is also an
+</span><em class="italics">Eton</em><span> Road, </span><em class="italics">Harrow</em><span> Road, and </span><em class="italics">Marlborough</em><span>
+Road.  Students of the universities and schools
+after which these roads are named are out
+here to defend what these institutions have
+stood for through the hoary centuries.  They
+are out to preserve the true conception of
+Liberty and Fair-play, and to build roads along
+which all peoples who desire it can travel
+unmolested by attacks from either tyrants or
+anarchists.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Right from the beginning of the war, the
+idea of a Road has taken hold of the imagination
+of our soldiers.  The first divisions came
+out singing, "It's a long, long way to
+Tipperary, but my heart's right there."  Nowadays
+the popular song is "There's a long, long
+trail awinding into the Land of my dreams."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>They are making a Road of Liberty along
+which all nations may pass to universal peace
+and brotherhood, and where the weak will be
+as safe from oppression as the strong.  "It's
+a long, long way to go," but they have seen
+their goal on the horizon, and will either reach
+it or die on the way to it.  They have made
+up their minds that never again shall the
+shadow of the Kaiser's mailed fist, or that any
+other tyrant fall across their path.  These men
+never sing of war.  They hate war.  It is a
+brutal necessity forced on them by the
+ambition of a tyrant.  Their songs are all of peace
+and none of war.  Of the future and not the
+present they sing:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Tiddley-iddley-ighty,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Hurry me home to Blighty;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Blighty is the place for me."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Whether they sing with levity or seriousness
+(and levity of manner often veils their
+seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and
+goodwill they sing.  To them the war is a
+hard road leading to a better life for
+mankind.  It is to them what the desert was to
+the Israelites, when they left the bondage of
+Egypt for the liberty of the Land of Promise.
+Therefore they must tread it without faltering
+even as Christ trod the way of the Cross.
+"There's a long, long trail awinding into the
+Land of their dreams" and they will not lose
+faith in their dreams however wearisome the
+way.  Elderly navvies and laborers have come
+to smooth the roads for them, and nurses are
+tending those who have fallen broken by the
+way; while across the sundering sea are
+mothers and wives whose prayers make flowers
+spring up at their feet and blossoms break out
+on every tree that fringes the side of the road.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="the-glamour-of-the-front"><span class="bold large">III</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>There is an undoubted glamour about
+the Front, which when at home, in
+England, cannot be explained.  In the army
+or out of it, the wine of life is white and still,
+but at the Front it runs red and sparkling.
+One day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and
+sat on a box by the side of one of the servants
+of the officer's mess at the Aerodrome near
+by.  He was going into Doullens, a market
+town, to buy food and some little luxuries.
+Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English
+flyers, was, up to the time of his death in the
+air, a member of the mess, and the servant
+was telling me how comfortable all the officers
+make their quarters.  In a phrase he defined
+the glamour of the Front.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"One day," he said, "when we were helping
+him to make his room comfortable, Captain
+Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled,
+'We haven't long to live, but we live well while
+we do live.'"</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There you have it.  Life is concentrated.
+Death is near--just round the corner--so the
+men make the most of their time and "live
+well."  It has the same quality as "leave" at
+home.  Leave is short and uncertain, so we
+"live well."  Our friends know it may be the
+last sight of us, and we know it may be our
+last sight of them.  They are kind and
+generous to us, as we are to them; and so, the
+ten days of "leave" are just glorious.  Ruskin
+says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts
+but a second, and that Turner went out early
+in the evening and watched with rapt attention
+for that one second of supreme splendor and
+delight.  He lived for sunsets and while others
+were balancing their accounts, or taking tea, he
+went out to see the daily miracle.  The one
+second in which he saw God pass by in the glory
+of the sunset was to him worth all the
+twenty-four hours.  For one second in each day he
+caught the glamour of earth and heaven, and
+went back to his untidy studios blind to all but
+the splendor he had seen.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>That second each day was life, indeed, and
+the glamour of the Front is like unto it.  It is
+the place where life sets, and the darkness of
+death draws on.  The commonest soldier feels
+it and with true instinct, not less true because
+unconscious, he describes death at the Front
+as "going West."  It is the presence of death
+that gives the Front its glamour, and life its
+concentrated joy and fascination.  Captain
+Ball saw it with the intuition of genius when
+he said: "We haven't long to live, but we live
+well while we </span><em class="italics">do</em><span> live."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The immediate presence of death at the
+Front gives tone to every expression of life, and
+makes it the kindest place in the world.  No
+one feels he can do too much for you, and
+there is nothing you would not do for another.
+Whether you are an officer or a private, you
+can get a lift on any road, in any vehicle, that
+has an inch of room in it.  How often have
+I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up
+the back of an empty motor-lorry which has
+stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in.
+It is one of the merriest sights of the war and
+redounds to the credit of human nature.
+Cigarettes are passed round by those who have, to
+those who have not, with a generosity that
+reminds one of nothing so much as that of the
+early Christians who "had all things common;
+and sold their possessions and goods, and
+parted them to all men, as every man had
+need."  You need never go hungry while others
+have food.  Officers are welcome at every mess
+they go near, and privates will get food in the
+servants' kitchen or may go shares with the
+men in any billet.  It may be a man's own
+fault that he took no food on the march, and
+his comrades may tell him so in plain strong
+language, but they will compel him to share
+what they have just the same.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>One wet night on the Somme I got lost in
+"Happy Valley" and could not find my regiment.
+Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it.
+It was a pioneers' tent, but they invited me to
+come in out of the storm and stay the night.
+They were at supper and had only a small
+supply of bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea;
+but they insisted on me sharing what they had.
+I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one
+of their blankets.  One of them gave me a
+box to sleep on, while he shared his chum's.
+Some lost privates came in later wet to the
+skin, and the pioneers gave them all the
+eatables left over from supper, and shared out
+their blankets and clothes.  It was pure
+Christianity--whatever creeds they may think they
+believe.  And it is the glamour of the Front.
+England feels cold and dull after it.  Kindness
+and comradeship pervade the air in France.
+You feel that everyone is a friend and brother.
+It will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back
+to their churches.  They have been spoiled by
+too much kindness.  How can they go back
+to the cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow
+judgments which prevail in so many churches--that
+is, unless the war has brought changes
+there also?  And after preaching to dying men
+who listen as it their destiny depended upon
+their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits
+where large numbers in the congregations
+regard their messages as of less importance than
+dinner, and as merely supplying material for
+an exercise in more or less kindly criticism
+during the discussion of that meal?</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The glamour of the services at the Front!
+How the scenes are photographed on my
+heart!  As a congregation sits in a church at
+home how stolid its features often are--how
+dull its eyes!  One glance around and the
+preacher's heart sinks within him and his
+inspiration flies away.  Nothing is expected of
+him, and nothing particularly desired.  People
+have come by force of habit, and not of need.
+But how the eyes of the soldiers in France glow
+and burn; how their features speak, and make
+the preacher speak in reply!  Who could help
+being eloquent there!  Such faces would make
+the dumb speak.  One can see the effect of his
+words as plainly in their expressions as he can
+see the effect of wind on a cornfield.  Every
+emotion from humor to concern leaps from
+the heart to the face as the subject touches
+them at, first this point of their life, then at that.
+The men's eyes are unforgettable.  Months
+afterwards they come vividly to mind, and one
+is back again answering the questions they
+silently ask, and seeing the look of content or
+gratitude that takes the place of the perplexed
+or troubled expression.  Eyes are said to be
+the windows of the soul, and as I have spoken
+I have seen men's souls looking out.  At home
+the windows are darkened and there seemed
+to be no souls behind the panes.  The dwellers
+within the houses are busy with other matters,
+and will not come to the windows.  The
+preacher feels like an organ-grinder in the
+street--those who hear do not heed nor come
+to the windows of the soul.  In France there
+is a soul looking out at every window; and the
+preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to
+his listeners of the love of God and of
+the love of women and children which make
+sweet this vale of tears and light man on his
+lone way beyond the grave.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the
+singing of a hymn in the ward below, a young
+officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said:
+"Why doesn't the chaplain hold a service for
+us?  Why does he only hold them for the
+Tommies?  We need them and want them,
+just as much as the Tommies.  We are officers
+but we are also men."  I passed the word to
+the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when
+in the evening he gave us a service and the
+officers of the next ward asked the orderlies
+to carry them in.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There is the same naturalness and spirit
+of fellowship between members of various
+churches.  Many lasting friendships have been
+formed between chaplains of differing
+communions.  There has been no change of creed
+but something greater, a change of spirit.
+They have been touched by the common spirit,
+and have lived and worked in free and happy
+fellowship.  On my last Sunday in a hospital
+in France, the chaplain, a canon of the Church
+of England, invited me to read the lesson at
+the morning parade service, and to administer
+the wine at Holy Communion.  This I did;
+and a colonel who was present stayed behind
+to express to us both the pleasure which had
+been given to him by the sight of Anglican
+and Methodist churchmen serving together at
+the Lord's Table.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of
+the Front is found in this warm fellowship
+between men of differing creeds and varying
+religious communions.  We have not knocked
+down our garden walls but we have taken off
+the cut glass that had been cemented on them
+by our fathers; and now we can lean over and
+talk to our neighbors.  We have already found
+that our neighbors are human beings, and quite
+normal.  The chief difference between us seems
+to be that while one has an obsession for roses
+the other has an obsession for dahlias.  On
+pansies, sweet peas and chrysanthemums we
+seem equally keen and exchange plants.  A
+Roman Catholic officer who had been appointed
+to the Ulster Division told me that though he
+was received coldly at first, he had not been
+with the Division more than a few weeks when
+every officer in his regiment, and every soldier
+in his company, accepted him as cordially as
+if he were a Protestant.  He was from Dublin
+and they from Belfast, but they did not allow
+it to make any difference, and feelings of the
+warmest loyalty and friendship sprang up.
+His Tommies would fight to the death by his
+side, as readily as around any Ulsterman; and
+he was just as popular in the officers' mess.
+When, he said, it passed the Irish Guards or
+any other Roman Catholic regiment, his
+regiment would sing some provoking song about
+"hanging the Pope with a good strong rope,"
+and the Dublin regiment would reply with some
+song equally obnoxious and defiant; but whereas,
+in peace time, the songs would have caused a free
+fight to the accompaniment of bloodshed, now
+it caused nothing worse than laughter.  The
+songs were just a bit of teasing such as every
+regiment likes to regale another with--perhaps,
+too, a common memory of the dear
+country they have left behind.  The men of
+Belfast and the men of Dublin have learned
+to respect and value one another.  They know
+that in a scrap with the enemy they can count
+on one another to the last drop of blood, for,
+whether from North or South, the Irish are
+"bonnie fighters."  Of such are the miracles
+at the Front.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the
+Front is found in the nobility to which
+common men rise.  An artillery officer told me
+that he had in his battery a soldier who seemed
+utterly worthless.  He was dirty in all his
+ways, and unreliable in character.  In despair
+they made him sanitary orderly, that is, the
+scavenger whose duty it was to remove all
+refuse.  One night the officer wanted a man
+to go on a perilous errand and there were few
+men available.  Instantly this lad volunteered.
+The officer looked at him in amazement, and
+with a reverence born on the instant.  "No,"
+he thought, "I will not let him go and get
+killed.  I'll go myself."  He told the lad so,
+and disappointment was plainly written on his
+features.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"But, you'll let me come with you, sir?" he replied.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Why should two risk their lives," asked
+the officer, "when one can do the job?"</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"But you might get wounded, sir," was the
+quick response; and they went together.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>An Irish officer told me of one man who
+seemed bad from top to toe.  All the others
+had some redeeming feature but this man appeared
+not to possess any.  He used the filthiest
+language and was dirty in his habits and dress.
+He was drunken and stole the officers' whisky
+out of the mess.  He was unchaste and had
+been in the hospital with venereal disease;
+and neither as man nor soldier was there
+anything good to say of him.  The regiment was
+sent to France, and in due time took its place
+in the trenches; and then appeared in this man
+something that had never risen to the surface
+before.  Wherever there were wounded and
+dying men he proved himself to be the noblest
+man in the regiment.  When a man fell in
+No Man's Land, he was over the parapet in
+the twinkling of an eye to bring him in.  No
+barrage could keep him away from the
+wounded.  It was a sort of passion with him
+that nothing could restrain.  To save others
+he risked his life scores of times.  In
+rest-billets he would revert to some of his evil ways,
+but in the trenches he was the Greatheart of
+the regiment and, though he did not receive it,
+he earned the Victoria Cross over and over
+again.  There is a glamour at the Front that
+holds the heart with an irresistible grip.  In
+the light of War's deathly fires the hearts of
+men are revealed and the black sheep often
+get their chance.  Life is intense and deep and
+men are drawn together by a common peril.
+They find the things that unite and forget the
+things that separate.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"We haven't long to live," said Captain Ball
+joyfully, "but we live well while we </span><em class="italics">do</em><span> live,"
+and in those words he expressed the glamour
+of the Front.  Ball found, as thousands of his
+comrades-in-arms had found, that</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"One crowded hour of glorious life</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Is worth an age without a name."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="a-white-handkerchief"><span class="bold large">IV</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>In his </span><em class="italics">History of the Somme Campaign</em><span>
+John Buchan quotes, from an official
+report, an incident which, though I have
+tried, I cannot get my imagination to believe.
+Probably the incident is a true one but,
+unfortunately for me, my mind will not let it in.
+I cannot visualize it and the report is turned
+from the door as an impostor.  The report
+states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes
+fired on the Germans in their trenches and that
+the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token
+of surrender.  Without the slightest difficulty
+I can imagine all except the white handkerchiefs.
+Where did they get them to wave?
+Men in the firing trenches don't carry anything
+so conspicuous as white handkerchiefs.  To
+draw one out in a thoughtless moment might
+bring a sniper's bullet, and there are risks
+enough without inviting more.  I doubt if in
+any English regiment two white handkerchiefs
+could be found: and I have little expectation
+that more could be found among the enemy.
+Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage
+of the war, if a white handkerchief would be
+regarded as a sign, of surrender.  It might be
+taken as a taunt.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There is nothing more remarkable in the war
+than the psychological change that has been
+wrought in white.  A white feather used to
+be the badge of cowardice and a white flag
+the token of surrender.  It is not so now.
+White has taken on a peculiar sacredness.  If
+a new medal were to be struck of the same
+high value as the Victoria Cross it would
+probably be given a white ribbon, as the other
+has a red or (for the navy) blue.  This
+change in the moral significance of white was
+brought home to me by an incident in a billet.
+I had gone to a barn to give the men some
+shirts and socks that had been sent to me.  I
+stood on the steps, and like an auctioneer,
+offered my goods for acceptance.  "Who wants
+a shirt?  Who a scarf?  Who wants this pair
+of mittens?  Who a pair of socks?"  Hands
+shot up at each question, and the fun grew
+fast and furious.  Then I drew out and held
+up a white handkerchief.  "A-ah!  A-ah!" they
+cried wistfully in chorus.  For a moment
+they stood gazing at it and forgot to raise
+their hands towards it; then, with a single
+movement, every hand shot up.  Unwittingly
+I had stirred them to the depths; and I felt
+sorry for them.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The Magic Carpet of Baghdad is not a
+fiction after all.  In the twinkling of an eye
+my white handkerchief had carried every boy
+and man to his home, and placed him by the
+fireside.  I saw it in their eyes and heard it
+in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices
+as they ejaculated "A-ah!"  They had not
+seen a white handkerchief for months.  The
+last they saw was at home.  A vision of home
+flashed before their minds and they were back
+in the dear old days of peace when they used
+white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were
+unknown to them.  If in battle they were to see
+Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think
+it would make them savage and unwilling to
+give quarter.  They would think the enemy
+was taunting them with all they had lost.  And
+they would be maddened by the thought that
+here were the very men who, by their war-lust,
+had caused them to lose it.  For a German to
+wave a white handkerchief before a British
+soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting a
+red flag before a bull.  It would bring death
+rather than pity.  Anything of pure white is
+rare at the front, and it has gradually taken
+on a meaning it never held before.  About the
+only white thing we have is the paper we write
+home on, and that use of the color helps to
+sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>In the army it is a term of supreme praise
+to call a man </span><em class="italics">white</em><span>.  When you say a comrade
+is a "</span><em class="italics">white man</em><span>" there is no more to be said.
+It is worth more than the Victoria Cross with
+its red ribbon, for it includes gallantry, and
+adds to it goodness.  A man must be brave to
+be called white and he must be generous, noble
+and good.  To reach whiteness is a great
+achievement.  To be dubbed white is, in the
+army, like being dubbed knight at King Arthur's
+Court or canonized saint in the Church.  He
+stands out among a soldier's comrades
+distinct as a white handkerchief among khaki ones.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I don't know where the term came from,
+but, wherever it may have tarried on the way,
+I think its footprints could be traced back to
+the Book of Revelation for its starting place.
+In the first chapter we have a picture of Christ
+as the first "White Man"--"His Head and
+His Hairs were white like wool, as white as
+snow."  In the second chapter His faithful
+followers are given "a white stone, and in
+the stone a new name written."  Is not the
+new name "White man"?  In the third chapter
+we read of "a few names even in Sardis which
+have </span><em class="italics">not defiled their garments</em><span>; and they shall
+</span><em class="italics">walk with Me in white</em><span>; for they are worthy."  There,
+too, the Laodiceans are counseled to
+buy "white raiment."  In the fourth chapter
+we see the four and twenty elders, sitting
+around the throne under the rainbow arch,
+"clothed in white raiment."  In the sixth
+chapter we have the crowned King going
+"forth conquering, and to conquer" and He is
+sitting on "a white horse," that is, He uses
+"white" instruments to carry out His
+conquests.  Death, in the same chapter, rides on
+a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one.  Under
+the altar were the souls of the martyrs, "And
+white robes were given unto every one of
+them."  And surely the climax is reached when
+we read in the seventh chapter that "a great
+multitude, which no man could number, of all
+nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues,
+stood before the throne, and before the Lamb,
+clothed with white robes."  So striking was
+the scene that one of the elders asked, "What
+are these which are arrayed in white
+robes? and whence came they?"  And the answer is
+given, "These are they which came out of
+great tribulation, and have washed their robes,
+and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
+Therefore are they before the throne of
+God."  In the army white has come back to its
+ancient significance.  The brave and noble
+martyrs of the early Church were given "white
+robes" and in the army to-day the brave and
+pure wear "white robes" in the eyes of their
+comrades.  When Clifford Reed was killed by
+a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel
+wrote of him that he was the "whitest man"
+he had ever known.  He had done more than
+wear "the white flower of a </span><em class="italics">blameless</em><span> life."  His
+virtues were positive, not merely negative.
+He wore a "white </span><em class="italics">robe</em><span>"; not a mere speck of
+white such as a white flower in a buttonhole
+would appear.  White is a positive color, not
+a negative.  Reed was more than "blameless,"
+he was "white and all white."  To our soldiers
+a white handkerchief speaks of home, and a
+"white man" speaks of honor and heroism
+and heaven.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="the-songs-our-soldiers-sing"><span class="bold large">V</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The necessity for poetry and song is fully
+and officially recognized by the military
+authorities at the Front.  Every Division
+has its own concert party.  These men are
+chosen out of the ranks because they can sing,
+and their one task is to furnish nightly concerts
+for the men.  They are provided with a good
+hall, or tent, or open-air position; and they are
+given enough money to buy stage scenery and
+appropriate dress.  Everybody attends the
+concerts from the general to the private; and
+while the entertainments last, the war is
+forgotten.  A charge is made at the door but the
+balance sheet is published for all ranks to see;
+and the profits are distributed among the
+Divisional charities.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Among the many Divisional Concert Parties
+may be named "The Bow Bells," "The Duds,"
+"The Follies," "The Whizz-bangs," "The
+Fancies" and, "The Giddigoats."  But, after
+all, the singing in the concert rooms is but a
+small fraction of the singing one hears in the
+Army.  On every march, in every billet and
+mess, there is the sound of singing.  Nor must
+the singing at our religious services and in the
+Y.M.C.A. huts be forgotten.  Song seems
+to be the great renewer of hope and courage.
+It is the joy bringer.  Moreover, it is an
+expression of emotions that can find no other
+voice.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There is no real difference between the songs
+sung by the officers, and those sung by the men.
+All attend the concerts and all sing on the
+march.  The same songs do for both
+commanders and commanded, and I have heard
+the same songs in the men's billets as in the
+officers' mess-rooms.  How real these songs are
+to the soldiers is indicated by one striking
+omission.  There are no patriotic songs at the
+Front.  Except the National Anthem rendered
+on formal occasions, I have never, in eighteen
+months, heard a single patriotic song.  The
+reason is not far to seek.  The soldiers'
+patriotism calls for no expression in song.
+They are expressing it night and day in the
+endurance of hardship and wounds--in the
+risking of their lives.  Their hearts are
+satisfied with their deeds, and songs of such a
+character become superfluous.  In peace-time they
+sing their love of the homeland, but in
+war-time they suffer for her and are content.  They
+would never think of singing a patriotic song
+as they march into battle.  It would be painting
+the lily and gilding refined gold.  Are not their
+deathless deeds, songs for which they make a
+foil by singing some inconsequential and
+evanescent song such as, "There's something in the
+sea-side air."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>On analysis I should say that there are five
+subjects on which our soldiers sing.  First, there
+are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it, songs
+of soldier-philosophy.  They know that no
+theory will explain the war; it is too big a thing
+for any sheet of philosophy to cover.  It has
+burst in on our little hum-drum life like a
+colliding planet.  The thing to do is not to evolve
+a theory as to how the planet got astray but
+to clear up the mess it has made.  Our soldiers
+show this sense of the vastness of war-happenings,
+by singing of things having no real
+importance at all, and keeping steadily at their
+duties.  The path of duty is, they find, the only
+path of sanity.  The would-be war philosopher
+they put on one side.  The war is too big for
+him.  Let him leave his explanation of the war
+and lend a hand to bring it to an end.  So they
+sing, with laughing irony,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"We're here because we're here, because</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>We're here, because we're here."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Or,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"While you've got a lucifer to light your fag,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Smile, boys, that's the style.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>What's the use of worrying?</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>It never was worth while,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And smile, smile, smile."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Another favorite is,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Oh, there was a little hen and she had a wooden leg,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>The best little hen that ever laid an egg,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And she laid more eggs than any hen on the farm,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And another little drink wouldn't do us any harm."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>I have seen them dancing round some old piano
+singing,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Oh, that fascinating Bow Bells' glide,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>It's a captivating Bow Bells' slide.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>There's a rumor that the puma does it now,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Monkeys have taken to it,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Leopards and lions do it.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>All the elephants wear dancing shoes,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>They keep hopping with the kangaroos;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Hear them chatter, it's a matter for some talk;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Now the Jungle's got the Bow Bells' walk."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The second class of song is the Love Song,
+of a more or less serious character.  The
+Tommies came out of England singing "Tipperary,"
+but they dropped it in France, and the only one
+on whose lips I have heard it was a little French
+boy sitting on the tail of a cart.  The chorus
+alone gave it popularity for it was the
+expression, ready to hand, of a long farewell; and
+with its "long long way to go" showed that,
+like Kitchener, the soldiers were not deceived
+by hopes of an early peace.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Now another song with verses more expressive
+of their sentiments has taken its place.
+The chorus runs:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"There's a long, long trail a-winding</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Into the land of my dreams,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Where the nightingales are singing</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And a white moon beams;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>There's a long, long night of waiting</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Until my dreams all come true;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Till the day when I'll be going down</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>That long, long trail with you."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Then the mood changes, and we hear the lads
+piping out,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Taffy's got his Jennie in Glamorgan,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Sandy's got his Maggie in Dundee,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>While Michael O'Leary thinks of his dearie</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Far across the Irish Sea.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Billy's got his Lily up in London,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>So the boys march on with smiles;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>For every Tommy's got a girl somewhere</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>In the dear old British Isles."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Again the mood veers round, and we hear,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Every little while I feel so lonely,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Every little while I feel so blue,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>I'm always dreaming, I'm always scheming,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Because I want you, and only you.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Every little while my heart is aching,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Every little while I miss your smile,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>And all the time I seem to miss you;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>I want to, want to kiss you,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Every, every, every little while."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Here is part of a song I have heard sung,
+many and many a time, by young officers and
+men whose voices are now silent in death:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"If you were the only girl in the world,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And I were the only boy,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Nothing else would matter in the world to-day,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>We could go on loving in the same old way;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>A Garden of Eden just made for two,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>With nothing to mar our joy;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>I would say such wonderful things to you,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>There would be such wonderful things to do,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>If you were the only girl in the world,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And I were the only boy."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Sometimes the imagination will wander into
+the days that are to be--for some--and they
+sing,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"We don't want a lot of flags flying,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>We don't want your big brass bands;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>We don't want a lot of speechifying,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And we don't want a lot of waving hands;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>We don't want a lot of interfering,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>When we've safely crossed the foam;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>But we </span><em class="italics">do</em><span> want to find the girls we left behind,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>When we all come marching home."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Will the girls remember!  The words are
+not without tragedy.  How deeply some of the
+men love may perhaps never be realized by
+those at home.  The longing of their hearts is,
+at times, almost unbearable.  A captain, past
+middle life, took my arm one day and led me
+aside.  He was, he said, a little anxious about
+himself, for he was getting into the habit of
+taking more drink than he was wont to take.
+He had been taking it when he felt lonely and
+depressed to ease the longing of his heart.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"I never touch it at home," he said, "the
+society of my dear little wife is all the stimulant
+I need.  I would give the world to be with
+her now--just to sit in my chair and watch her
+at her sewing or knitting.  The separation is
+too much for me and, you know, it has lasted
+nearly three years now."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I have caught this yearning in more than one
+of the songs our soldiers sing, but especially in
+the following, which is called "Absent":</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>The little truant waves of sunlight pass;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>From my fond lips the eager answers fall,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The men's thoughts pass easily from the
+sweetheart to the mother who bore them, and
+we have a third class, the Home Song.  I
+have been awakened in the night by men, going
+up to the line, singing "Keep the Home Fires
+Burning."  It is very thrilling to hear in the
+dead of night, when every singer is within range
+of the enemy's guns.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Another great favorite is,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"They built a little garden for the rose,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And they called it Dixie-land;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>They built a summer breeze to keep the snows</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Far away from Dixie-land;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>They built the finest place I've known,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>When they built my home sweet home;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>From the clover to the honey-comb,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>And then they took an angel from the skies</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And they gave her heart to me.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>She had a bit of heaven in her eyes</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Just as blue as blue can be;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>They put some fine spring chickens in the land,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>They made it twice as nice as paradise,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And they called it Dixie-land."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Being Londoners, the following song called
+"Leave" never fails in its appeal to our Division:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"I'm so delighted, I'm so excited,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>With my folks I'm going to be united.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>The train's departing, 'twill soon be starting;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>I'll see my mother, my dad and my baby brother.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>My!  How I'll meet them, My! how I'll greet them.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>What a happy happy day.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Just see that bustle, I'd better hustle,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Good-bye--so long--can't stay--</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>Chorus</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"I'm on my way back to dear old Shepherd's Bush,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>That's the spot where I was born,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Can't you hear the porter calling,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Queen's Road, Piccadilly, Marble Arch and Bond Street?</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Oh, I'll not hesitate, I'll reach the gate;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Through the crowd I mean to push,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Find me a seat anywhere--please anywhere,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Tram, train, tube, 'bus I don't care--</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>For mother and daddy are waiting there--</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>In dear old Shepherd's Bush."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>On the eve of one big battle, a soldier
+handed me a letter in which he gave me the
+addresses of his father and his sweetheart, so
+that I could write to them if he fell.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"In the last battle," he said, "one of my
+brothers was killed and another wounded.  If I
+fall I shall die without regrets and with a heart
+content; but it will go hard with those at home;
+and I want you to break the news gently.
+These are terrible times for those at home."  "These
+are terrible times </span><em class="italics">for those at home</em><span>."  That
+is their constant refrain, and it finds an
+echo in a song often sung by them.</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Where the blue-bells grow 'round the old cabin door;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>It's a long, long way and I'll be mighty lucky</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>When I see my dear old mammy once more.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>So weep no more, my lady,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Just brush those tears away;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>But I'm bound to get there some day."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>But the chief favorite of all Home Songs is,
+I think, the following:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"There's an old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned street;</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>In a quaint little old-fashioned town;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>There's a street where the cobble stones harass the feet,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>As it straggles up hill and then down;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>And, though to and fro through the world I must go,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>My heart while it beats in my breast,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Where e'er I may roam, to that old-fashioned home</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Will fly like a bird to its nest.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned street,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>I can see their two faces so tender and sweet,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And I love every wrinkle that's there.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>I love ev'ry mouse in that old-fashioned house</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>In the street that runs up hill and down;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Each stone and each stick, ev'ry cobble and brick,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>In that quaint little old-fashioned town."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The charm of the Army is its comradeship.
+Our soldiers have left their homes and friends
+but they have found new friends, and some of
+the friendships have become very precious.
+Men slept side by side in barn and trench,
+cooked their rations at the same little wood fire,
+and stood together in the hour of danger and
+imminent death.  Many of them owe their lives
+to their comrades.  There are few songs that
+express this wonderful comradeship, but there
+is one that is known and sung through the
+army.  It represents the Songs of Comradeship:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"When you come to the end of a perfect day,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And you sit alone with your thought,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>While the chimes ring out with a carol gay,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>For the joy that the day has brought;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Do you think what the end of a perfect day</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Can mean to a tired heart,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And the dear friends have to part?</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Well, this is the end of a perfect day,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Near the end of a journey too;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>With a wish that is kind and true.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>For mem'ry has painted this perfect day</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>With colors that never fade;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>And we find at the end of a perfect day</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><em class="italics">The soul of a friend we've made</em><span>."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The fifth class of song is that of the inner
+life.  It is the Religious Hymn.  The soldiers
+are extremely fond of hymns in their services.
+You cannot give them too many.  "Rock of
+Ages," "Jesus lover of my soul," "Fight the
+good fight," "There is a green hill," "At even
+ere the sun was set," "O God our help in ages
+past," and "Eternal Father strong to save"
+cannot be chosen too often.  But there are two
+hymns which have stood out above all others;
+they are "Abide with me," and "When I
+survey the wondrous Cross."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There is nothing written by the hand of man
+which can compete with these two in the
+blessing and strength which they have brought to our
+soldiers, especially during an offensive when
+death has cast his shadow over the hearts of
+all.  During the bitterest weeks in the Somme
+fighting there was scarcely a service in which
+we did not sing "When I survey the wondrous
+Cross."  With its assurance of redemption it
+gave comfort in the face of death.  It also
+gave, for an example, the Supreme Sacrifice.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Some of the songs I have quoted look bare
+and ungainly as trees in winter, but when the
+musician has clothed them with music and the
+singer added to them a touch of his own
+personality they are fair as trees in summer.  Still
+the fact remains that none of these songs will
+live on their own merits.  They are not born
+to immortality.  Like the daisies they have
+their day and pass away to make room for
+others.  It is best so.  There is not room in
+the world for everything to be immortal, and
+the transient has a work of its own to do.
+The charm and rare beauty of the English
+countryside are due to the transience of its
+flowers and foliage and little of the evergreen
+is enough.  We tire of the eternal.  The
+transient songs I have quoted here have been
+meat and drink to our soldiers in the most
+terrible war ever waged.  They may be poor stuff
+in comparison with our classic songs but a good
+appetite can get nourishment out of plain food
+and grow strong on it.  For the purpose in
+hand these songs have been better than the
+classics; otherwise they would not have been
+chosen.  There is a time and place for all
+things.  The robin may not be compared with
+the nightingale but it is not the less welcome,
+for it sings when the nightingale is silent.  Our
+soldiers' songs will die, some are already dead,
+but they have done their work and justified
+their existence.  They have given pleasure and
+strength to men as they went out to do
+immortal deeds.  No wounded soldier, or parched
+traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water
+because it perished in the using; and so it is with
+the songs our soldiers sing.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="easter-sunday"><span class="bold large">VI</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">EASTER SUNDAY</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Night and day for a week, the fearful
+bombardment continued.  Our guns
+were everywhere, and belching forth
+without intermission.  Dumps of shells were
+almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field,
+and processions of ammunition-wagons piled
+the shells up faster than the gorging guns
+could take them.  The noise was something
+beyond imagination.  It was as though all the
+devils in hell had come out to demoniacally
+celebrate the end of the world.  We were
+living--two transport officers and I--in an empty
+farm-house that, some time before we came in,
+had been a target for direct hits.  One shell
+had gone through the roof, and another
+through the gable wall.  The windows had
+been shattered, and the garden and fields were
+pitted with shell-holes.  Our first care had been
+to look at the cellar, but we had decided, if
+things became too hot, to make for the open
+fields.  We all slept in the same room, and
+were at times wakened up by "an arrival" and
+passed an opinion as to its distance.  If, for
+a time, none came nearer, we turned over and
+went to sleep again, for a man must sleep even
+though it be on the edge of a volcano.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>One morning the servants found a shell
+nose-cap beneath the window--just that, and
+nothing more.  The week was wearing on.
+Another morning some of the 7th Middlesex
+Regiment were in the baths in the village over
+the way, and a company of the London
+Scottish was passing by.  Two shells fell in the
+road.  The bathers scampered out of the bath
+and ran naked, here and there, for shelter;
+the Scottish "scattered"; but some forty-five
+soldiers, mostly kilted, lay in the road dead
+or wounded.  In the dead of night a party of
+machine gunners, just returned from the
+firing-trench, stood outside their billet in our village
+square debating if they should make a cup of
+tea before turning in to sleep.  A shell
+decided the matter, and, next morning, I laid
+two of them to rest in the little cemetery, and
+the others stood by as mourners.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The week of terror reached its crisis on the
+Sunday--an Easter Sunday never to be
+forgotten.  The infantry of the Brigade had been
+away to a camp, beyond range, for a week's
+rest.  They had now returned ready for the
+battle.  Three of the regiments had taken up
+their positions in the reserve trenches, but my
+own regiment was quartered in the fatal
+village.  The day dawned bright and fair, but
+its smiles were the smiles of a deceiver.  The
+Germans had decided on the destruction of the
+village, a sort of devil's "hail-and-farewell"
+before being driven back at the points of
+bayonets.  We were awakened by the firing of
+machine-guns over our heads, and rushed to the
+door to see a fight in the air.  High up in the
+blue, two aeroplanes circled about for
+positions of vantage, and then rushed at one another
+like hawks in mortal combat.  A silence
+followed.  Then one rose and made off towards
+the battle-line but fell to a shot of our
+gunners before it could reach safety.  The other,
+with its petrol-tank on fire, was planing down
+to earth.  Down and down an invisible spiral
+staircase it seemed to rush, while the golden
+fire burnt at its vitals, and a trailing cloud
+of smoke marked its path of doom.  Breathlessly
+we watched its descent.  It was under
+perfect control, but its path to the ground was
+too long and spiral, and the faster it rushed
+through the air the greater the draught
+became and the more madly the flames leapt up.
+Every second was precious and the certainty
+of its doom made us sick.  We saw the body
+of the observer fall out, and still the flaming
+machine pursued its course.  Then the wings
+fell away and twirled to the ground like
+feathers, while the engine and the pilot dropped
+like a stone.  When the bodies were picked
+up, it was found that the observer had been
+shot through the head, and that the pilot, with
+his dead comrade behind him, had worked the
+wheel until the furious encroaching flame had
+swept over him, and robbed him of mortal life.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Shells were now dropping in the village
+every few minutes.  Our farm-house was on the
+right wing, and we stood watching the
+bombardment.  With each burst there rose a cloud
+of black smoke and red brick-dust, and we
+knew that another cottage has been destroyed.
+Then the shells began to creep round to the
+right as if the enemy was feeling for the
+bridge over which the ammunition wagons
+were passing.  On one side of the little bridge
+was a white bell-tent, and we watched the
+shells dropping within a few feet of it
+without destroying it.  Between the tent and our
+street lay a stagnant pool, and we saw about
+a dozen shells fall in its water.  The range
+was lengthening and it seemed as if some
+invisible octopus were stretching out its feelers
+towards us.  A shell smashed against the
+farm-house at the bottom of our street.  The
+deadly thing was coming nearer.  Some of our
+sergeants were in a farm-house a few doors
+away, and, hearing a shell fall in the field
+between them and the pool, they came to the
+decision that the moment had come "to
+scatter," but they were too late.  It would have
+been better had they stayed indoors.  As they
+rushed out a shell burst over the yard three
+of them fell to the ground dead, and three
+more were blown back into the house by the
+force of the explosion.  The coping stone of
+the outhouse where the shell burst was blown
+away and three ragged seams were scored on
+the green doorway of the yard outside which
+the three lads lay dead.  One of them had,
+ten days before, shown me to my billet thirty
+yards farther up.  He acted as interpreter to
+the regiment and as he had not to go into the
+line, we thought that he was one of those who
+would see the end of the war.  Yet there he lay.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>But the worst calamity of the day was yet
+to befall.  Some fifteen or sixteen ammunition
+wagons, unable to get through the village, had
+halted in the Square--"Wipers Square" it had
+been named.  Each wagon was loaded with
+nine-point-two shells.  An enemy-shot fell on a
+wagon and set it on fire; then the village
+became like unto Sodom and Gomorrah on their
+day of doom.  One or two drivers bravely
+stuck to their wagons, and got them out but
+the rest of the wagons were lost.  The scene
+that followed was indescribable.  Doré could
+never have pictured such horrors.  The wagons
+all caught fire and their loads of shells began
+to explode.  We stood out in the fields and
+watched the conflagration, while all the time
+the Germans continued to shell the village.
+The large village-hall and the houses on each
+side of the square were utterly destroyed.
+Great explosions sent fragments of wagons and
+houses sky-high, and showers of missiles fell
+even where we stood.  The fore part of one
+wagon was blown on to the roof of a house.
+Houses caught fire and blazed all afternoon.
+Some machine-gunners joined us and told how,
+when choking smoke began to penetrate into
+their cellar they had to rush through the square
+and its bursting shells to preserve their lives.
+A German shell burst in a billet where a platoon
+of our men were sheltering in the cellar, and
+those who were not killed by the shell were
+crushed to death by the fall of the house.
+Another shell hit the roof of the house in the
+cellar of which was our Advanced Dressing
+Station for the morrow's battle.  Two
+orderlies who happened to be in the street were
+killed, and the colonel was knocked down.  In
+the cellars of almost every house were soldiers
+or civilians, and all day the ammunition wagons
+continued burning; shell after shell getting red
+hot and exploding.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>All day the German bombardment continued
+and, amid a terrific din, our own gunners
+returned a score or more for every one received.
+By the bridge another long line of loaded
+ammunition wagons stood for two hours, and
+though shells were bursting close by, not one
+hit the wagons.  The drivers stood by them
+and, as soon as the road was cleared, got them
+away to the guns.  Yet, while the Square was
+burning and the German shells falling,
+hundreds of men from the London regiments
+entered the village from the right, and crossed
+the bridge to stack their packs so as to be
+ready for the coming battle.  They walked in
+single file and with wide gaps between, but not
+a man ran or quickened his pace.  My blood
+tingled with pride at their courage and anger
+at their carelessness.  What </span><em class="italics">would</em><span> make a
+British soldier run?  An officer was walking
+near the pool.  A shell fell near enough for
+fragments to kill him, but he merely looked
+round, stopped to light a cigarette and walked
+leisurely on as if nothing had happened.
+Three men stood with their backs against a
+small building near the bridge as if sheltering
+from the rain.  Several shells fell
+uncomfortably near, so, concluding that the rain had
+changed its direction, they moved round the
+corner.  And it was not till more shells had
+fallen near them that they condescended to
+move away altogether.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Yet this was not bravado for, so far as they
+knew, no one was watching them.  It was due
+to a certain dignity peculiar to our fighting
+man.  He is too proud to acknowledge defeat.
+He is a man, and whether any one is watching
+or not, he is not going to run away from a
+shell.  Hundreds of lives must have been lost
+through this stubborn pride but, on the other
+hand, thousands of lives must have been saved
+by it, for it makes the Army absolutely proof
+against panic, than which, nothing is so fatal
+in war.  In eighteen months on the Front I
+have never seen or heard of a single case of
+panic either with many or few.  Our soldiers
+are always masters of themselves.  They have
+the coolness to judge what is the wisest thing
+to do in the circumstances, and they have the
+nerve to carry it out.  They run unnecessary
+risks through pride but never through panic.
+All that day on the bridge, a military
+policeman stood at his post of duty.  Like Vesuvius
+of old the exploding shells in the Square sent
+up their deadly eruption, and like the Roman
+sentry at Pompeii, he stood at his post.  As
+he stood there I saw a young French woman
+leave her house and pass him on the bridge.
+She was leaving the village for a safer place
+but she seemed quite composed and carried a
+basket on her left arm.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>While our village was being destroyed we
+were startled by a tremendous explosion a few
+miles away; and looking to our left we saw
+a huge tongue of flame leap up to the sky,
+followed by a wonderful pillar of smoke which
+stood rigid for some moments like a monster
+tower of Babel reaching up to the heavens.
+Evidently a dump of cordite had been fired
+by an enemy shell.  Farther off still, another
+dump was on fire.  Time and again, bright
+flames leapt from the ground only to be
+smothered again by dense curling masses of smoke.
+It seemed as if our whole front was on fire,
+and news came to us that our main road of
+communication had been heavily shelled, and
+was now strewn with dead horses and men.
+Before the battle of the Somme there were no
+signs and portents so terrible as these: It was
+evident that the enemy knew what was in store
+for him on the morrow, and was preparing
+against it, but if the prelude was so magnificent
+in its terror, what would the battle be?
+Imagination staggered under the contemplation.  By
+four o'clock the bombardment was almost at an
+end, and nearly all the shells in the Square had
+exploded.  The soldiers began to creep out of
+the cellars.  On passing through the Square we
+were amazed at the sight.  In fact the
+Transport Officer passed through at my side without
+recognizing the place.  At the entrance was a
+team of six dead mules lying prone on the
+ground and terribly torn.  Two rows of houses
+had disappeared, leaving mere heaps of stones
+in their places.  The pavement was torn up,
+and the wrecks of the ammunition wagons lay
+scattered about.  Two houses were still
+burning.  Our colonel and adjutant we found by
+the side of the stream.  They had been in a
+cellar near the Square all day but, fortunately,
+they were little the worse for the experience.
+They were giving orders for the assembling
+of the scattered regiment.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>By this time, civilians were leaving the
+cellars, and with armfuls of household goods
+hastening from the village.  To them it seemed
+the end of all things--the day of doom.  Some
+of them had slight wounds and as they passed
+us they cried mournfully, "Finis, Messieurs,
+Finis."  All was lost.  This exodus of the
+despairing civilians was the saddest sight of the
+day.  By sunset the regiment had been gathered
+together--all except the wounded who had
+been sent to the Main Dressing Station and
+the dead who had been placed side by side and
+covered with blankets.  Most of our officers
+and men had lost all their belongings, but in
+the twilight they marched out of the village
+and took their places in the reserve trenches
+near the other battalions.  These had suffered
+no losses.  They had been saved the long day's
+agony.  Early in the morning the battle was
+to begin but the Westminsters knew that no
+worse experience could await them than that
+through which they had already passed.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Next morning I buried, near the ruined
+church, the bodies of the sergeants who had
+been killed a few doors from us; and on the
+following day I laid to rest, side by side, in one
+long grave, two drivers who had died at their
+posts in the Square, together with an officer
+and twenty men belonging to the 1st Queen's
+Westminster Rifles.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="now-the-day-is-over"><span class="bold large">VII</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">"NOW THE DAY IS OVER"</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Achicourt is a little village about
+a mile out of Arras.  It has two
+churches, one Roman Catholic, the
+other, Lutheran.  The former church has been
+utterly destroyed by German shells, and will
+have to be rebuilt from the foundations.  The
+Lutheran church was less prominently placed,
+and its four walls are still standing.  Its
+humility has saved it, but, as by fire.  All its
+windows are gone, and its walls are torn and
+scarred by fragments of shells.  Most of its
+slates have been destroyed and the rain pours
+through the roof.  But, on dry days, and until
+the Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little
+place for services.  It stood, however, at a
+corner of the village Square, and the Square
+was destroyed by hundreds of exploding shells
+on Easter Sunday.  As I passed it in the
+afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered,
+my heart grew sad within me.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Often it had sheltered us at worship, and
+many of our most sacred memories will, for
+ever, cling like ivy to its walls.  The door was
+smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as
+by lightning.  The pews were strewn on the
+floor with their backs broken; even the frames
+of the windows had been blown out.  There
+was a little portable organ that we had used
+with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the
+floor like a slaughtered child.  The floor was
+white with plaster, as when a sharp frost has
+brought low the cherry blossom.  Never again,
+I thought, should I gather my men for worship
+within its humble, hospitable walls.  One more
+of the beautiful and sacred things of life had
+perished in this all-devouring war.  Only the
+fields remained, and there all my future services
+must be held.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>But "fears may be liars" and so mine proved.
+I had reckoned without the man in khaki--that
+master of fate whose head "beneath the
+bludgeonings of chance, is bloody but
+unbowed."  In a week he had cleared the Square
+of its dead--mules and men--filled in its
+craters, and cleared away the debris that
+blocked the roads.  He was even removing the
+fallen houses in order to mend the roads with
+their bricks and stones; and he had thrown
+together all the scraps of iron for salvage.
+There I found, lying side by side, the burned
+tin-soldiers of the children; officers' revolvers
+which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat;
+bayonets and rifle-barrels of the men; broken
+sewing machines of the women.  He had taken
+in hand, too, the little church.  Sacking was
+spread across the windows; the remnants of
+the little organ were carefully placed under
+the pulpit where they lay like the body of a
+saint beneath an altar; the floor was swept of
+its fallen plaster.  The pews were repaired and
+placed in order again, and a new door was
+made.  Even timber was brought for a new
+vestibule.  The wood was rough and
+unpainted--Tommy had to use what he could
+get--but it served.  The twisted railings were
+drawn away from the entrance, and, on the
+following Sunday, we were back in our old
+sanctuary.  We felt that it was more sacred
+than ever.  These are the deeds of our
+fighting-man that make us love him so much, and
+these are the acts of kindness and common
+sense that make us admire our commanders.
+Both officers and men have the heart of a lion
+in the hour of battle, the gentleness of a lamb
+when it is over.  Whatever their circumstances,
+they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget
+the fathers that begat them.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Let him who doubts the future of England
+come hither.  He will see the past through the
+present, and the future through both.  Tommy's
+eyes are the crystal gazing-glasses in which he
+will discern the future.  Tommy is living
+history and the prophecy of the future made
+flesh.  The pessimists have not seen Tommy
+here, and that is why they are what they are.
+"Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his
+infinite freshness and resource.  He is a sword
+that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the
+might of an enemy break, and he will be found
+flashing wherever there are wrongs to right and
+weak to be defended.  On Easter Sunday he
+was calmly enduring the horror of the German
+bombardment and the explosions of his own
+dump of shells.  On Easter Monday he was
+driving the Germans at the point of his bayonet,
+or accepting their surrender at the doors of
+their dug-outs!  On Easter Tuesday and
+Wednesday he was repairing a little French
+chapel for worship.  Take him which day
+you will, and you will find him mighty hard to
+match.  To me he is the king of men, and
+his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness
+beyond the range of explanations.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>After some weeks of fighting we had come
+to our last Sunday in Achicourt, and were
+gathered for the evening service.  The chapel
+was jammed with officers and men, but not all
+my flock was there.  There was Rifleman
+Gibson absent.  He was carrying his beloved
+Lewis gun in an attack when a bullet struck
+him, and he died, as his comrades report, with
+a smile upon his face.  Before going into the
+battle he had given me his father's address
+and thanked me for the spiritual help he had
+received at the services.  It was his farewell
+to me, and his father now has the penciled
+words.  And Rifleman Stone was absent, too.
+He was but a boy, and beautiful with youth
+and goodness.  His comrades loved him as
+David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the
+love of women.  Every day, they told me in
+their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his
+prayers and to read his Bible.  One night after
+praying he laid him down and slept.  He had
+often sung the evening hymn:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Jesus protects; my fears, be gone!</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>What can the Rock of Ages move?</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Safe in Thy arm I lay me down,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Thy everlasting arms of love.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"While Thou art intimately nigh,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Who, then, shall violate my rest?</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Sin, earth, and hell I now defy;</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>I lean upon my Saviour's breast.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Me for Thine own Thou lov'st to take,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>In time and in eternity,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Thou never, never wilt forsake</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>A helpless soul that trusts in Thee."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>And as he slept, God took him from the
+misery of this world--took him without
+waking him.  His broken-hearted comrades
+gathered together his broken body, and a friend,
+a Congregational preacher, who, though over
+military age, was serving in the ranks, read the
+burial service over him.  Lance-corporal
+Gilbert James was missing, too--he whom I had
+known to lose his breakfast to attend a service
+in a cold, dirty, old barn.  And many others
+were absent whose departure to the Land beyond
+our mortal reach was to us like the putting
+out of stars.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>We were leaving the Arras front and we
+sang a hymn for those who had taken our places:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"O Lord of Hosts, Whose mighty arm</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>In safety keeps 'mid war's alarm,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Protect our comrades at the Front</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Who bear of war the bitter brunt.</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And in the hour of danger spread</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Thy sheltering wings above each head,</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"In battle's harsh and dreadful hour,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Make bare Thine arm of sovereign power,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And fight for them who fight for Thee,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And give to justice, victory.</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>O in the hour of danger spread</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Thy sheltering wings above each head.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"If by the way they wounded lie,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>O listen to their plaintive cry;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And rest them on Thy loving breast,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>O Thou on Whom the cross was pressed;</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And in the hour of danger shed</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Thy glorious radiance o'er each head.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"When pestilence at noonday wastes,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And death in triumph onward hastes,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>O Saviour Christ, remember Nain,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And give us our beloved again.</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>In every ward of sickness tread,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And lay Thy hand upon each head.</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"O Friend and Comforter divine,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Who makest light at midnight shine,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Give consolation to the sad</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Who in the days of peace were glad.</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And in the hour of sorrow spread</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Thy wings above each drooping head.</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Amen."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>I had to find a new voice to start it, for our
+little organ had been destroyed by a shell,
+and our precentor was lying in a grave beside
+his Medical Aid Post at Guemappe.  When,
+on Good Friday, we had sung the hymn
+before, the regiment returned from rest billets to
+the line, he had started the tune.  His love
+for music was second only to that of risking
+his life for the wounded.  In one of his letters
+given me to censor, he had written, "How nice
+it will be to be back in my old place in the
+choir."  But he was destined not to go back.
+His path was onward and upward, and his
+place was in the heavenly choir.  I had seen
+it in his large, tender blue eyes.  There was
+in them an expression as if he had seen "the
+land that is very far off."  I felt that he was
+chosen as a sacrifice--that the seal of God was
+on his forehead.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Still, we had to sing, though his voice was
+silent.  So we sang--several tunes, for hymns
+seemed all our spirits needed.  What need
+was there for a sermon when we had hymns?
+We left the rag-time type of hymn and sang
+the real deep things that come from men's
+hearts, and ever after are taken up by their
+fellows to express their deepest aspirations and
+experiences.  The ruined chapel vibrated with
+music, and men, I am told, stood in the street
+to listen while "Jesus, Lover of my Soul,"
+"Rock of Ages," "When I Survey the
+Wondrous Cross" and "The Sands of Time are
+Sinking" told of the faith and love that lift
+up the heart.  We also sang "Abide with
+Me."  After hearing us sing it one night, a Roman
+Catholic officer in the regiment, a Canadian
+and one of the bravest, most beloved men that
+ever walked, told me that he was a
+great-grandson of the author.  He is in hospital
+now with severe wounds, but his men were present.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Couldn't we take up a collection for the
+repair of the chapel when peace comes?"
+whispered a rifleman; "it would be a sort of
+thanksgiving for the good times we have had
+in it, and for the kindness of the congregation
+in giving us the use of it so freely."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I put the suggestion to the men and they
+voted for it with enthusiasm.  Two of them
+went round with their caps and out of their
+shallow purses the big-hearted fellows gave
+over 100 francs.  In the name of the men I
+presented the full caps to a lady of the
+congregation who was present, and she was
+moved to tears.  The time was quickly passing,
+so I mounted the pulpit and told them of
+words spoken after the earth's first great
+trouble, when the black wings of death had
+cast their shadow over every home: "And God
+said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it
+shall be for a token of a covenant between me
+and the earth.  And it shall come to pass, when
+I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow
+shall be seen in the cloud."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"God," I said, "has made a covenant with
+man, for man is His neighbor and subject; and
+there must be an understanding between them,
+if there is to be peace and happiness.  Man
+must know God's will or he will grieve Him
+and there will be discord and pain.  Also, man
+must know God's intentions concerning him,
+and something of His ways, or else he will live
+in fear and dread of the Almighty One in
+whose power he lies.  There were no books
+and parchment in the first days, so God took
+the sky for His parchment, and dipping His
+fingers in the most lovely of colors, wrote out
+His covenant with man.  He spread it out
+between earth and heaven so that man might look
+up and see it without obstruction, and so that
+He Himself might look down on it and
+remember His agreement.  'The bow,' He said,
+'shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon
+it, that I may remember the everlasting
+covenant.'"</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"When you draw up a covenant with a neighbor,
+you look well at it and then give it to your
+attorney, who puts it away in the darkness
+of the safe.  But it is taken out at intervals
+for fresh examination.  And the rainbow-covenant
+was put away behind the clouds, to be
+brought out again from time to time to bring
+comfort and strength to man by its appearance.
+The rainbow is only half seen by man.
+The lower half of its circle is lost in the
+earth.  It exists, but unseen.  And the full
+circle of God's beautiful covenant with man
+has never appeared to our eyes.  A full half
+is lost in the unapprehending darkness of
+man's mind.  The full purpose of God is not
+realized.  His plans are too vast and glorious
+for the intellect or imagination to span; but
+half the rainbow is seen and it is enough.
+Seeing half we can take the rest on trust.  In the
+covenant we are assured that we shall never be
+given darkness without light, winter without
+summer, seedtime without harvest, death
+without birth, sorrow without joy, or a thick cloud
+without a rainbow.  He binds Himself not to
+give evil without good, or to bring tears
+without laughter.  "I do set My bow in the cloud;
+and it shall come to pass when I bring a cloud
+over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine
+and life is woven of the same stuff--tears and
+laughter.  The most glorious sunshine is
+incapable of a rainbow without the co-operation
+of the dark trailing clouds; and it is impossible
+for the human character to reach its ripest
+maturity and beauty on joy alone.  Sorrow is
+as beneficent and necessary as joy.  There are
+untutored natives who dread the rainbow.
+They believe that it is a serpent that rises out
+of the pools to devour men; and there are
+unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread
+adversity no less.  They do not believe that
+</span><em class="italics">God</em><span> 'brings the cloud.'  The rainbow is their
+refutation and it is written across the sky for
+all to see.  On the other hand, there are
+unbelieving men who see only the cloud and are
+blind to the sunshine.  To them life is one long
+tragedy.  It is an immense futility.  They
+regard man as a mere cork in the sea, thrown
+about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural
+forces void of purpose; active indeed but
+ungoverned.  Human life to them is a black
+cloud driven through immensity by the winds
+of unintelligent fate.  It has no meaning and
+its darkness is the deeper because they cannot
+call a halt and disperse it into nothingness.
+Like Job's wife they would say 'Curse God and
+die,' yet they cannot die.  But Job, as he sits
+on the dunghill, looks up at the rainbow and
+finds a truer philosophy.  'What?' says he,
+'shall we receive good at the hand of God, and
+shall we not receive evil?'  Under the rainbow's
+arch there are fruitful fields and beautiful
+gardens for where the rainbow hangs in air
+there is sunshine and there is rain--the parents
+of fruitfulness.  And to whom God gives in
+equal measure joy and sorrow there is beauty
+and fruitfulness of heart and life.  His promise
+to 'every living creature' is that He will never
+send the cloud without the sunshine and, what
+is not less gracious, He will never send the
+sunshine without the cloud.  When by day the
+Israelites tramped the fiery desert He led them
+by a pillar of cloud, and they marched in its
+shade; and in the blackness of night He threw
+in the sky a pillar of sunshine; and they
+walked through the gloom in its light.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"In these terrible days of war when our
+hearts begin to fail us and dark doubts cloud
+the mind, let us look at the Covenant God
+has made with us.  He has set it in rainbow
+colors across the sky, that 'he who runs may
+read' and 'the wayfaring man though a fool
+may not err.'  God has flung his rainbow over
+the trench and the grave; over the Garden of
+Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary.  It
+is over the tomb in the Arimathean's Garden;
+and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven.
+We are born under the rainbow, live under it,
+die under it.  At the last we shall find it over
+the throne of Judgment.  Water and blood
+flowed from Christ's side; and life and death,
+joy and pain, light and darkness, summer and
+winter, peace and war come forth from God.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Let us take life as it comes with obedient
+wills and grateful hearts.  The bee finds honey
+in the thistle as well as in the rose, and 'where
+the bee sucks there suck I,' for He who guides
+the bee guides me.  Only in loving obedience
+to God shall we find true wisdom.  It is not
+so much what we are given as how we take
+it that matters.  To be humble nothing may
+be so sweet as sorrow; and to the proud nothing
+may be so bitter as pleasure.  Let us leave
+God to mix the ingredients of our life, for
+'all things work together for good to them
+that love God.'  It is all in the covenant
+written by God's fingers in the colors of the
+rainbow, and whenever He brings it from beyond
+the clouds, let us look at it with reverent
+eyes, and ponder its promise.  Then shall we
+be able to say, with Wordsworth,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>'My heart leaps up when I behold</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>A rainbow in the sky.'"</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>After I had finished speaking we sang, at
+the request of one of the sergeants, the hymn
+commencing</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>The darkness falls at Thy behest."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>And beautiful indeed was the singing of it.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The Benediction followed.  Just as I was
+ending it an impulse came to me, and I yielded
+to its importunity.  "Before we part and before
+we leave Achicourt which has meant so much
+to us of joy and sorrow," I said, "let us sing
+a kiddies' hymn.  We still shelter in our hearts
+a little child.  Though we have grown moustaches
+and some of us gray hairs, the child
+that we once were, never quite dies.  Let us
+have a hymn for the boy within us who never
+grows up and never dies."  Then I read out
+verse by verse, for it was not in their books:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Now the day is over,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Night is drawing nigh,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Shadows of the evening</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Steal across the sky.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Jesus, give the weary</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Calm and sweet repose;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>With Thy tenderest blessing</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>May their eyelids close.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Grant to little children</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Visions bright of Thee;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Guarding the sailors tossing</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>On the angry sea.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Comfort every sufferer</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Watching late in pain;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Those who plan some evil</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>From their sin restrain.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"When the morning wakens,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Then may I arise</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Pure and fresh, and sinless</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>In Thy holy eyes."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>I have witnessed many moving sights in my
+time and heard much deep and thrilling music;
+but I have never been so deeply moved by
+anything as by the rich, deep voices of these
+gallant men and boys who, after winning the
+Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined
+church and were singing this beautiful kiddies'
+hymn as their last farewell.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The collection the boys had taken up had
+been so heavy that we carried it to the French
+lady's house for her.  As we entered her home
+she said in her simple way, as her eyes grew
+radiant with gratitude, "I like the English
+soldiers."  It was the voice of France.  And
+she was worthy to speak for France.  For
+two-and-a-half years her house had stood
+within a mile of the German trenches, and but
+a few hundred yards from our own firing line.
+Yet she and her mother had never left it.  She
+introduced me to her mother, who had lived
+in London, and spoke English.  Then she
+brought in coffee.  I had noticed a most
+remarkable thing about the house.  There was
+not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of
+war on the walls.  It was the only house I
+have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras, upon
+which the war has not laid its monstrous and
+bloody finger.  "How is it," I asked the
+mother, "that your house has not been
+touched?"  Her eyes shone and a sweet smile
+lit up her face.  "It is the will of God," she
+said simply.  "Shells have fallen a little short
+of us and a little beyond us.  They have passed
+within a yard of the house, and we have heard
+the rushing of the wind as they passed, but
+they have not touched us.  When the village
+has been bombarded we have gone down into
+the cellar as was but discretion and duty, but
+we have had the conviction all along that we
+should be spared, and we refused to leave the
+house.  We do not know God's purpose but
+we believe that it is God's will to spare us."  I
+leave the fact to speak for itself and offer
+no explanation.  Skeptics will say the house
+was spared by accident; but they would not
+have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting
+to such an accident.  These two women,
+without a man in the house, stayed on the very
+confines of hell with its hourly suspense and
+danger for nearly three years, because they
+believed it was God's will and that, though they
+walked through the fiery furnace heated seven
+times hotter than it was wont to be heated,
+He would not allow so much as a hair of their
+heads to be singed.  And not a hair was singed.
+They were women in whom faith burned like
+a bright pillar of fire.  One caught its light,
+and felt its heat.  I have met patriots and
+heroes and know their quality when I see them
+and come near them.  These were "the real
+thing."  Faith in God and faith in their
+country were interwoven in their spirits like sun
+and shower in a rainbow.  They were of the
+same breed as the Maid of France, and like
+her, with their white banner bearing the
+device of the Cross, they withstood and defied
+the might and terror of the invader.  They
+believed it was God's will they should stay,
+to "Be still and know that I am God."  Their
+experience was expressed by the Psalmist
+centuries ago: "God is our refuge and
+strength, a very present help in trouble.
+Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be
+removed, and though the mountains be carried
+into the midst of the sea.  Though the waters
+thereof roar and be troubled, though the
+mountains shake with the swellings thereof
+... Come behold the works of the Lord, what
+desolations He hath made in the earth.  He
+maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;
+He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in
+sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire....
+The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of
+Jacob is our refuge."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Such was the faith of these two women, and
+their courage few men have approached.  It
+is a practical matter, and after comparing it
+with the skeptic's theory of accident and
+coincidence and remembering his probable haste in
+seeking a place not so liable to untoward
+accidents, I accept the explanation of the women.
+Their house was spared and not a hair of
+their heads injured because "it was God's will."  If
+it is not the correct theory, it ought to be.
+Otherwise falsehood is more sustaining than
+truth, and inspires nobler conduct.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The day was now over.  A new chapter of
+life had been written, and in the morning, we
+left behind us this village of precious memories,
+and marched out again into the unknown.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="sons-of-the-motherland"><span class="bold large">VIII</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">SONS OF THE MOTHERLAND</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>It is said that the eel is born in the deepest
+part of the ocean, thousands of miles
+from any country, and that, urged by an
+overpowering instinct it begins almost at once
+to rise towards the light and to head for the
+land.  After slowly swimming thousands of
+miles it reaches our rivers, and pushes its way
+up to their sources, and even crawls through
+the grass out of one stream into another.  Here,
+if uncaught by man, it lives for years gorging
+an appetite which only developed on reaching
+the fresh water.  Then, the overmastering
+instinct that brought it out, takes it back.  It
+returns through the illimitable waters until it
+finds the place where it was born.  There the
+female lays her eggs and there male and female
+die.  The eggs hatch, and the young do as
+their parents did before them.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I do not think I could kill or eat an eel.
+I have too much reverence for it now that
+I have learned its story.  When in the fish
+market I see an eel struggling, I feel that
+I want to take it and drop it into the sea
+that it may go to its long home "far from
+the madding crowd's ignoble strife."  How
+passionate and wild must be its desire to
+get back to its own ocean depths where it
+may perpetuate its kind and die in peace.
+Its appetite is voracious, but then, what but
+the mightiest and most elemental instincts and
+appetites could carry it through achievements
+so sublime and tragic.  Picture it on its lone
+way through the deep, urged on by it knows
+not what.  Scientists say that man has evolved
+from a tiny form of life that passed through
+the fish stage.  If so, it explains a lot and I,
+for one, shall not be ashamed to acknowledge
+relationship to a fish with a life story as
+sublime as that of the eel.  I know that Genesis
+speaks truly when it says that God made us
+out of the dust of the earth and breathed into
+our souls the breath of His own being thus
+animating dust with divinity.  And if from the
+other inspired book, the book of Nature,
+scientists can teach how God mixed the clay when
+He fashioned man I will accept the teaching
+with gratitude, for it will help me to
+understand things that are dark in me and in my
+fellows.  It will throw light on the wild
+longings, and instincts immature, that baffle the
+mind, and come into the clear shallow streams
+of life like eels out of the dark unfathomable
+depths of the ocean.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Since I went to France I have been amazed
+at the homing instinct as revealed in the
+coming together of the sons of the British
+Motherland.  People at home do not quite realize
+what has happened.  Britain's sons have come
+back to her--have come back to die that their
+race may be saved and perpetuated.  The
+British are a roving race.  A large number of
+them yield to an overpowering desire to go
+out into the world.  The South Pole and the
+North Pole have known the tread of their feet.
+Their ships have anchored in every creek of
+every sea.  There is no town or country
+however remote where their voices have not been
+heard.  Even Mecca could not keep the Briton
+out.  He must look upon its Black Stone.  All
+lands call him to come, and see, and conquer.
+He colonizes and absorbs but cannot be
+absorbed.  He is a Briton still.  A friend of
+mine told me that when visiting Australia
+strangers who had never seen England, except
+in and through their fathers, would come to
+him in railway carriage or 'bus, and ask "How
+is everything at </span><em class="italics">Home</em><span>?"  And Dr. Fitchett,
+Australia's splendid author, confesses that when
+he first saw the land of his fathers he knelt
+down and kissed its shore.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Loving the homeland with a passion stronger
+than death the Briton leaves it, for he hears
+the call of the world borne on the winds and
+waves from afar, and cannot refuse it.  In
+foreign lands he lives and labors.  He roams
+their fields and swims in their streams, but
+always with an ear listening for the voice of the
+Motherland; for he is hers, and at her service
+if she calls.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The Declaration of War on Aug. 4, 1914,
+was the Mother's call to her children.  Swifter
+than lightning it passed through the waves and
+on the wings of the wind.  The settler left his
+lonely cabin, the gold-digger his shovel, the
+prospector his surveying instruments, the
+rancher his herds, the missionary his church,
+the teacher his school, the clerk his office, and
+all made for the nearest port.  Within a month
+there was not a ship on the wide seas but was
+bearing loyal sons back to their Motherland's
+defense.  I have met, in France, British
+soldiers from every country under heaven.  I
+bent over a dying soldier near Arras who was
+a clerk in Riga, Russia, when the call came.
+And one night on the Somme a fine young
+fellow from Africa entered my tent, and slept
+by my side.  He was one of the most charming
+and handsome men I have ever met, and had
+come from Durban.  He had fought with
+Botha in Southwest Africa, and at the
+conclusion of that campaign had shipped for home.
+Next day I took him to Delville Wood for he
+wanted to see the place where his brother had
+died.  I found that he was of my own
+communion and we talked about some of my
+college friends who had gone out to Natal.  Two
+days later, he died of wounds in a dressing
+station.  Most of the transport officers in our
+Division have come home from abroad, and
+have been given their posts because they are
+accustomed to horses.  One was prospecting in
+Nigeria, another salmon-canning in Siberia, a
+third on a plantation in South America.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>In addition to Canadians, South Africans,
+Australians, and New Zealanders, who have
+come by the hundred thousand at the call of
+the Motherland, there are hundreds of thousands
+who have come singly, or in small parties,
+from remote corners of the earth.  For five
+weeks I was a patient in a Canadian hospital
+in France.  The entire staff was Canadian.
+Some were Canadian born; others had gone out
+to that country years ago.  All were of British
+blood.  The colonel was a magnificent
+specimen of manhood from London, Ontario, in
+which city he had been born.  He would sit
+on the bed and tell us tales of the great
+snow-land.  Sometimes he would scold us for being
+so blind to the greatness of the Empire and tell
+us what Canada thought of the Motherland.
+One of the night orderlies would, on occasion,
+recite to us some poem such as "Jim Bludso,"
+before the lights went out.  Then he would
+come to my locker and take "Palgrave's
+Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" with which to
+regale his soul during the long watches of the
+night.  He was of the full stature of men and
+straight as a pine.  He had gone out from
+Ireland as a boy, and settled on a cattle ranch
+in the United States.  One day there was
+trouble and one of the other cowboys sent a
+bullet clean through his chest.  The moment
+war was declared he left his roving herds of
+cattle, crossed the frontier into Canada and
+traveled hundreds of miles to Winnipeg to
+enlist.  The doctor looked at him.  "What is
+this scar on your chest?" he asked.  "Oh,"
+replied the cowboy, "I fell off a wagon and
+knocked the skin off."  The doctor turned him
+round and put his finger in the scar on his
+back where the bullet had passed out.  "And
+what is this scar at the back?  Did you fall
+off another wagon?"  And the two men understood
+one another and laughed.  The doctor
+could not find it in his heart to send the
+cowboy back to his ranch, so he was passed into
+the Canadian contingent.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>One of the nurses we called "the Little
+Mother."  She had gone to Canada five years
+before, but the war had brought her back, and
+well was it for us that it had.  Among the
+patients was a doctor in the American A.M.C.
+His ancestors had left England generations ago
+and settled in New England, but he had come
+back at the call of war--a grandson of the
+Motherland.  Then there was a lieutenant of
+British stock who had been born and brought
+up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were
+destroying his native city he took ship to enlist
+in the British army.  "Anzac" was, as his
+nickname denotes, an Australian.  He was in the
+Flying Corps.  He had heard the call at school
+and had come "home" to the land of his fathers.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who
+had been born in China.  But, out there in
+Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Motherland
+they had never seen, and came post haste
+to her help.  Sitting near me as I write, is an
+officer back from the Argentine, and already, on
+his arm, is a gold wound-stripe.  Another in the
+mess had been pearl-fishing in Australia, but
+stored his boats to come and fight.  Another
+at our table was born in Australia.  He was
+with Captain Falcon Scott on his last
+expedition, and saw him go out to the South Pole
+and death.  He has already been wounded.
+When the war broke out its tumult seemed to
+wake our fathers and we felt them stir in our
+blood; for ancestors are not put into graves
+but are buried alive in their sons.  We felt the
+call to defend our race as our fathers did in
+their day.  It was a master instinct, and the
+millions of men who voluntarily left home and
+business to fight show how deeply nationality
+is rooted in human nature.  Returning from a
+far land to die--if needs be--that their kind
+may live, the scattered sons of our Motherland
+have come by all the seas to defend her, in her
+hour of need.</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"They came as the winds come</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>When forests are rended;</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>They came as the waves come</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>When navies are stranded."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="the-terror-by-night"><span class="bold large">IX</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">THE TERROR BY NIGHT</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>June was a flaming month on the high
+ground we had captured beyond Arras.
+The Quartermaster and Transport
+Officer with whom I was messing were both "on
+leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the
+camp, a Baptist padre, whose regiment was
+near, came to live with me.  I had a little brown
+tent five feet wide and six feet long which a
+rifleman had lent to me because the bell-tent
+I was expecting had not arrived.  The
+rifleman did not need his tent, for he and his
+chums had built themselves a little dug-out.
+Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the other
+padre took possession of it, while I held on to
+the little brown shelter.  Next to it was the
+kitchen where the servants slept and cooked.
+It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood,
+corrugated iron and ground-sheets.  The
+Baptist chaplain's tent was round, my shelter
+oblong, but what shape the kitchen was, would
+pass the wit of man to say.  It was a shape
+never seen on earth before.  It had no ancestor
+and it could have no descendant.  Such a
+design could not occur twice.  Beyond the kitchen
+were the horse-lines of the regiment and close
+by them the regimental stores.  It was so hot
+that we all wore our lightest clothing; and
+when the servants got lemons from Arras, the
+lemonade they made lasted about five minutes
+only, for what was left by us was quickly drunk
+up by the servants with the assistance of those
+who like to frequent such happy places as mess
+kitchens.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>All our meals were served out of doors,
+under the blue sky.  We had guests most days,
+for officers coming out from the homeland
+stayed with us for a night or a day before
+going up with the rations to join the regiment
+in the trench.  Other officers had come down
+to stay with us on their way to a course at some
+military school; and one, at least, came to wait
+for the day on which he was to take his "leave."  We
+were, therefore, a very merry party.  It
+was almost like camping on the Yorkshire
+moors, for we had an uninterrupted view of
+many miles.  To those who love vast stretches
+of wild barren country as I do, the scene under
+the flaming June sun was exceedingly impressive.
+There were no houses, streams, hedges,
+or trees, but the whole area was scored with
+trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing
+clearly at great distances.  The ground, with
+but short spaces between, was covered with
+encampments.  These consisted of the stores and
+horse-lines of the regiments and batteries in
+the line.  The circle of the horizon was bounded
+by the charred ruins of French villages--Beaurains,
+Neuville, Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy
+and Tilloy.  We could see the flashing of our
+own guns, and the black bursts of shells from
+those of the enemy.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes,
+and many were too high to be seen except
+through strong field glasses.  We watched a
+German aeroplane circling over Arras and
+directing the fire of the long guns.  Soon the
+streets were strewn with dead and wounded,
+for the town was full of troops.  The firing
+only lasted a few minutes, however.  One of
+our aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to
+single combat; and we soon saw the German
+machine falling from an immense height, wing
+over wing and head over tail, utterly out of
+control.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Dinner, in the cool of the evening, was a
+most pleasant meal.  As we drank our coffee
+we watched the aeroplanes returning from the
+line like birds to their nests.  Sometimes we
+counted as many as twenty, all heading for
+home at the same time.  The sun set in red
+and golden splendor, and we wondered what
+darkness would bring.  On the night before
+our arrival, the regiment which made way for
+us had one of its storemen killed by a shell;
+and on most nights a few shells fell in some
+part or other of the vast camp.  One evening
+shells fell a little beyond us and the
+transport-sergeant moved his horse-lines.  After that,
+he moved them every evening at dark, so that
+the ground where the enemy had observed the
+horses in the day-time was left vacant when
+he opened fire at night.  It was a game of
+chess with horses and men for pawns, and life
+and death for the stakes.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>On the evening before, our guest--a young
+lieutenant--was to go on leave, he got very
+uneasy.  As gulls scent the approach of stormy
+weather and come inland, or blackbirds and
+larks feel the approach of winter and migrate
+to summer lands, so men can sometimes scent
+danger and coming death.  He had with him a
+bottle of whisky, and he kept it on the table
+outside my tent--a safe place for it.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"I don't mind telling you, Padre," he said,
+as he poured out a glass, "I've got the
+'wind-up' badly to-night.  I don't like the feel of
+things.  I would rather be in the trenches than
+here, because I know what is likely to happen
+there, but here in the open I feel strange and
+unprotected.  I shall be glad when it is
+morning."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>His feeling was quite natural.  We always
+feel another man's dangers more than our own
+because they are new to us and we don't know
+what to expect or how to meet them.  A man
+will choose a big danger that he is used to,
+sooner than a lesser danger that is new to
+him.  Besides, the lieutenant had his
+"leave-warrant" in his breast pocket and that will sap
+any man's courage.  He has a feeling that the
+shells are after his "leave-warrant" and that
+the gunners know where it is.  He suspects that
+fate is malignant and takes a special delight
+in killing a man when he is on the way to
+"Blighty."  Many a man has been killed with
+a "leave-warrant" in his pocket, or "commission
+papers" in it which were taking him home.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Our doctor told me how one night he and
+the chaplain who preceded me were riding on
+the front of an ambulance car when a shell
+burst and with a fragment killed the chaplain.
+In the padre's pocket was his warrant, and he
+was taking his last ride before going home;
+but instead of going home in "Blighty" he went
+to his </span><em class="italics">long</em><span> home, and the warrant lies in the
+grave with him.  A man feels particularly
+vulnerable when the long-looked-for
+"leave-warrant" is in his pocket.  He does not fear
+death after "leave," but he does on the eve of
+"leave."  He wants one more look at his home
+and loved ones before going on the long and
+lone journey which, despite all the comfort
+which the Christian religion gives, still retains
+much of its terror to the human spirit.  There
+have been few better Christians than Samuel
+Johnson and John Bunyan, but neither of them
+could contemplate fording the river of death
+without misgivings.  When they came to it they
+found it much less formidable than they had
+expected.  Had they been at the Front with
+"leave-warrants" in their pockets to "Fleet
+Street, London," or "Elstow, Bedford," I
+fancy neither of them would have taken undue risks.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I could sympathize with the young lieutenant
+for, a few months before, a "leave-warrant"
+had made a bit of a coward of myself.  I was
+in two minds whether or not to go up to the
+firing line to see the men again before shipping
+for home.  The "leave-warrant" was in my
+pocket, and I was to go next morning; but the
+doctor's story of my predecessor came to my
+mind, and the "leave-warrant" spread itself out
+before the eyes of my imagination.  I saw the
+faces of my wife, and mother, and dog, and
+the faces of my friends.  The old home and
+the green fields stretched out before me; and
+I decided to see them first and the "boys" after.
+I had just been with my men, but it was a long
+time since I had been with those at home.  If
+there was a shell with my name and address
+on it, I thought I would make the Hun wait
+till I had been home, before I let him deliver
+it into my hands.  I think a "leave-warrant"
+would make a coward of any man.  At any
+rate, the feeling is quite understood and
+recognized by everyone at the Front; and this young
+officer had been sent down from the trenches
+to us, three days before his train was due to
+start, so that he might have a better chance of
+using his "warrant," and at the same time, feel
+more at ease in mind.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I undressed and got into bed, and lay reading
+by the light of a candle when the lieutenant
+came to the tent door again.  "It's no use,
+Padre," he said, "I can't go to bed yet.  I feel
+too uneasy.  I wish I were on the train."  He
+went back to the bell-tent he was sharing with
+the other chaplain, and I put out my light.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There was the silence of a summer evening
+broken only by the distant bursting of shells.
+Then, suddenly, there was a crash about seventy
+yards from our tents, and two more near the
+horse-lines.  "To run or not run?" that was
+the question; and my answer was in the
+negative.  If I ran, it was just as likely that I
+should run into a shell, as out of the way of
+one.  On Easter Sunday I had seen three of
+our non-commissioned officers killed in that
+way.  Besides, I like my bed, once I have taken
+the trouble to get into it.  I therefore put on
+my steel helmet which I had placed by the
+bed-side, and waited to see what would happen.
+(A steel helmet is a wonderful comfort when
+men are under fire.  We may not have much
+in our heads but we feel more anxious about
+them than about all the rest of the body.  The
+helmets are heavy and uncomfortable and we
+don't like wearing them, but, nevertheless, may
+blessings ever rest on the head of the man
+who invented them.  I have seen scores of lives
+saved by them, and they have given infinite
+comfort and assurance in trying moments.)</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>A long silence elapsed, then the lieutenant
+appeared at the door of the tent again.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"You haven't been here all the time, have
+you?" he asked.  "We went down to the old
+trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is
+rather cold and wearisome there, and I think
+the worst is over now.  I'm just going to take
+another sip of the 'Scotch wine' and then turn
+in for the night; but I'm not going to undress."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Ten minutes later there was a tremendous
+crash as if a star had fallen on top of us.
+There came a blinding flash of light, a strong
+smell of powder, and a spluttering of bullets
+on the ground.  That was enough to get the
+laziest man living out of bed, and to answer
+the question, "to run or not to run?" in the
+affirmative.  I slipped on my boots without
+fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade
+my little tent a fond farewell.  There were
+some old German gun-pits close by, and I
+sought refuge there.  "Come in here, sir," cried
+a voice, and I found myself by the side of a
+sergeant.  Then the cook ran in bare-foot and
+laughing.  No one seemed to have been hit, and
+all had now sought shelter.  We waited for
+some time and nothing further happened.  The
+night was cold and I began to shiver in my
+pajamas.  So I started to look about for a
+place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement
+had grown up between me and the little brown
+tent.  There was a path across a shallow bit
+of trench, and underneath it I found the barber,
+lying comfortably on his bed.  He invited me
+in, and said that I could have the bed, and
+he would sleep at the side of it on his
+ground-sheet.  He could, he said, sleep as soundly on
+the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking.
+I therefore returned to my tent to get blankets.
+The time-fuse of a shell had gone through the
+kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my
+servant, but without doing him any injury and
+he proposed sleeping there for the night.  He
+only agreed to move to some safer place, when
+I ordered him to do so.  There was no one
+in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants were
+quite safe somewhere.  On striking a light to
+get my blankets, I noticed three small holes
+in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel
+bullets had missed me only by inches.  It had
+been a close shave and it was not inappropriate
+that I was now going to be the guest of a
+barber.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The psychological effect was not one I should
+have expected.  The incident caused no
+shell-shock, and but little immediate excitement; so
+I was soon asleep.  All the others were in a
+like case.  The excitement came with the
+morning when we examined the tents and the
+ground.  In the bell-tent there were ten
+shrapnel bullet holes.  One had gone through the
+piece of wood on which the officers' clothing
+had been hung, and must have passed immediately
+over the body of the Baptist chaplain as
+he lay in bed.  Others must have passed equally
+near the lieutenant who was not in bed, but,
+standing up at the time, fully dressed.  In my
+own little tent I found eleven holes and they
+were in all parts of the canvas.  Some of the
+bullets must have gone in at one side and out
+at the other, for only five were found
+embedded in the hard, chalky ground.  A sixth
+had passed through the box at the bed-head
+and entered deeply into the book I had been
+reading.  Outside the kitchen, the servants
+picked up a lump of shell a foot long and
+three or four inches wide.  Well was it for
+them that the fragment fell outside the kitchen
+and not inside.  The ground around the tents
+was sprinkled with shrapnel bullets and bits of
+shell.  The shells which fell near the horses
+had burst on touching the ground, and not like
+ours, in the air.  They had dug deep holes in
+the earth, and as the horses were within a few
+yards of them, it seemed miraculous that none
+was hurt.  The transport had just returned
+from taking up the rations, and, as one of the
+drivers leapt off his horse, a bullet hit the
+saddle where his leg had been a second before.
+Not a man or horse received a scratch, although
+the shells had made a direct hit on our camp.
+On other occasions one shell has laid out scores
+of men and horses.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>They say that sailors don't like padres on
+board ship, because they think the latter bring
+them bad luck.  And most people are a little
+afraid of the figure thirteen, but though it was
+the thirteenth of June and there were two
+padres in the tents, we had the best of what
+is called "luck."  So I think we may say it was
+one up for the padres.  After breakfast we
+gathered together some of the fragments lying
+around the tents, and found the nose-cap of a
+shell which had burst seventy yards away.
+With these, and the time-fuse which hit my
+servant, the other chaplain and I went to a
+battery and asked the officers to tell us
+something about the gun, just as one might take a
+bone of some extinct creature to a scientist,
+and ask him to draw an outline of the whole
+animal.  They told us that the gun was a
+long-range, high-velocity, naval gun with a possible
+range of fifteen miles.  They knew where it
+was, but could not hit it.  The shot was a
+large high-explosive, shrapnel shell, and the
+time-fuse indicated that it had come to us from
+about eleven miles away.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>On our return we built ourselves dug-outs
+for the nights, and only lived in the tents by
+day.  Sometimes we were shelled in the
+day-time, but by taking cover took no hurt, though
+a lad in the transport next to us was
+seriously wounded.  When they were shelling us
+by day, we could distinctly hear the report
+of the gun, a second or two later, see the shell
+burst in the air; and a second later still, we
+could hear it.  We saw the burst before we
+heard it.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I have given this personal incident not, I
+hope, out of any impulse of egotism, but
+because it furnishes those who have not been at
+the Front with an idea of the terror which
+assails our men by night, both in the trenches
+and in the "back areas."  There can be but
+few who, having been any length of time at
+the Front, have not had similar experiences
+and equally narrow escapes.  They are so
+common that men get used to them and do not
+take nearly enough care to protect themselves.
+Loss by such stray shells is expected, and the
+soldiers regard it much as a tradesman regards
+the deterioration of his stock.  One gets used
+to the frequent occurrence of death as he does
+to anything else.  At home there are thousands
+of preventable deaths--deaths through street
+accidents, diseases and underfeeding.  The
+number could be enormously reduced if the
+nation would rouse itself.  And human nature
+is much the same at the Front.  Men prefer
+ease and comfort to safety.  Also, men grow
+fatalistic.  They have seen men sought out by
+shells after they have taken every precaution
+to escape them; and they have seen others go
+untouched when they seemed to be inviting
+shells to destroy them.  Men are conscious of
+a Power that is not themselves directing their
+lives.  They feel that in life which the Greek
+tragedians called Fate.  They do not know
+quite what to call it.  Most of them would call
+it Providence if they spoke frankly and gave
+it a name at all.  One of the finest Christian
+officers I know told me that he believed that
+God's finger had already written what his fate
+should be.  If he had to die nothing could save
+him, and if he had to live, nothing could kill
+him.  All he was concerned with was to be able
+to do his duty, and take whatever God sent
+him.  This, he said, was the only suitable
+working philosophy for a man at the Front.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There is a widespread fatalism at the Front,
+but it is the fatalism of Christ rather than of
+old Omar Khayyam: "Take no thought for
+your life ... for your heavenly Father
+knoweth that ye have need of all these things, but
+seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
+righteousness.  Take therefore no thought for
+the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought
+for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day
+is the evil thereof."  And this works.  It
+enables men to "put a cheerful courage on"
+and do their duty.  There is none of the
+paralysis of will and cessation of effort which
+follows the fatalistic philosophy of the East.
+All that Omar Khayyam's fatalism leaves a
+man to strive after is "Red, Red Wine," in
+which he drowns memory, honor and reputation
+and character.  When he has passed from
+among his peers, there is nothing left to
+remember him by but a "turned-down empty
+glass."  The Christian fatalism at the Front
+destroys no man's initiative, but keeps him
+merry and bright, and helps him to "do his
+bit."  When he shall pass from the
+banqueting-house of life, into the Great Unexplored,
+he will leave as his memorial, not a turned-down
+glass, but a world redeemed from tyranny
+and wrong.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="eton-boys-never-duck"><span class="bold large">X</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>An army is more courageous than the
+individuals who compose it.  The coward
+finds sufficient courage for his job
+while doing it with his regiment, and the brave
+is at his bravest.  He has a courage which is
+not his own but which, somehow, he puts on
+with his uniform.  He does deeds of daring
+he could not have done as a civilian.  The
+army has a corporate courage and each soldier
+receives a portion of it just as he receives a
+ration of the army's food.  It is added to what
+he has of his own.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The badge of the army is courage.  When
+a recruit joins the army he knows that he is
+putting away the civilian standard of courage
+with his derby hat, and is putting on the
+soldier's standard of courage with his uniform.
+His great fear is that he will not be able to
+live up to it.  He wonders if he is made of
+the stuff that produces heroes.  He is a mystery
+to himself and has a haunting fear that there
+may be a strain of the coward in his make-up.
+He wishes it were possible to have a rehearsal
+for he would rather die than fail on the
+appointed day.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The chaplain fears that he will faint and
+become a hindrance instead of a help when he
+first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing
+station; and the recruit is afraid of being afraid
+in the hour of battle and of bringing dishonor
+and weakness upon his regiment.  He will be
+glad when the trial is over--when he knows
+the stuff of which nature has made him.  A
+friend of mine told me one day that he was
+walking over a heavily shelled field with a
+young aristocrat of a highly strung
+temperament.  The man was afraid, but would not
+yield to his fear.  His lips twitched and his
+face became drawn and white.  His movements
+were jerky but he made no other sign.  He
+talked about paltry things in which, at the
+moment, he had not the slightest interest, and
+passed jocular or sardonic remarks about the
+things that were happening around them.  My
+friend ducked his head when a shell burst near
+as we all have done often enough, but the
+young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff
+as if he were being crowned.  He held it up
+defiantly; was it not filled with the bluest
+blood of England?  The shells might blow it
+off if they liked.  That was their concern, not
+his, but they should never make him bow.  His
+fathers had fought on British battlefields for
+centuries, and had never bowed their heads to
+a foe, and he would not break the great
+tradition.  Shells might break his neck but they
+should never bend it.  He would face the
+enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a
+neck as ever his fathers did.  He knew his
+personal weakness and reinforced his strength
+with that of his fathers'.  He was not afraid
+of death.  He was afraid of being afraid.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>My friend was a coachman's son who by
+courage and capacity of the highest order had
+won a commission.  He had no traditions
+either to haunt or help him, and he had often
+been tried in the fire and knew his strength.  He
+was not afraid of being afraid.  It was natural
+to duck when a shell burst near and it did
+him no harm and made no difference to the
+performance of his duties; so he ducked as he
+felt inclined, and then laughed at his nerves
+for the tricks they were allowing the shells to
+play on them.  But, knowing his companion's
+more sensitive nature and temperamental
+weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff
+neck and proudly erect head.  He showed a
+self-control which only centuries of breeding
+could give.  Here was a hero indeed.  The
+shells he was defying were as nothing to the
+fears which haunted his imaginative nature and
+which, with his back to the wall of his family
+traditions, he was fighting and keeping at bay.
+My friend could not refrain from complimenting
+him on resisting the natural tendency
+to duck the head when a shell screamed above
+them.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Eton boys never duck," replied the young
+aristocrat.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>He was an Eton boy and would die rather
+than fall short of the Eton standard.  In this
+war hundreds of them have died rather than
+save themselves by something which did not
+measure up to the Eton standard.  The ranks
+of young British aristocrats have been terribly
+thinned in this war and I have heard their
+deeds spoken of with a reverence such as is
+only given to legendary heroes.  They have
+gone sauntering over the crater-fields to their
+deaths with the same self-mastery and outward
+calm which the French aristocracy manifested
+as they mounted the steps of the guillotine in
+the Reign of Terror.  To their own personal
+courage was added the courage of their race,
+and the accumulation of the centuries.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>We speak of our new armies.  There can be
+no "new" armies of Britons.  The tradition
+of our newest army goes back to Boadicea.
+Its forerunners, without shields or armor, and
+almost without weapons, dared the Romans--the
+proud conquerors of the world--to battle;
+and gave them the longest odds warriors ever
+gave.  They knew they could not win but they
+knew they could die.  Dead warriors they
+might become but never living slaves.  They
+ran up Boadicea's proud banner because they
+knew that while the Romans might soak it in
+British blood, no power on earth could drag
+it through the mire.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Our forefathers crossed swords with Cæsar
+and his Roman legions, and our newest army
+goes into battle with the prestige born of two
+thousand years of war.  They have a morale
+that belongs to the race in addition to the
+morale they possess as individuals.  It is said
+that "the British do not know when they are
+beaten."  How should they know?  They have
+had no teachers.  All they know is that if they
+have not gained the victory the battle is not
+ended and must go on until they pitch their
+tents on the undisputed field.  The German
+Emperor spreads out his War Map but it
+is as undecipherable as the mountains in the
+moon to our soldiers.  Tyrants have never
+found them apt scholars at geography.  They
+prefer to make their own maps even though
+they have no paint to color them with except
+the red blood in their veins.  The Kaiser may
+roll up his War Map of Europe; our soldiers
+have no use for it, and will not commit to
+memory its new boundaries.  They feel in their
+souls the capacity to make a new one more in
+line with their ideas of fair play.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Eton boys never duck."  If the muscles of
+their necks show a tendency to relax they call
+to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood
+in bygone days, and their necks become stiff
+and taut once more.  Wellington said that
+Waterloo was won on the playing fields of
+Eton.  It is still true that "Eton boys never
+duck" to the foe; nor do the soldiers they lead.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="missing"><span class="bold large">XI</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">"MISSING"</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The word "Missing" has come to exercise
+an even more terrible power over
+the human heart than the word "Death."  The
+latter kills the heart's joy and hope with
+a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy
+stroke from the executioner's axe.  In a few
+cases the wounded victim is spared and allowed
+to recover, but in the majority of cases there
+is no reprieve and a second blow is struck after
+a period of suspense and suffering.  A chaplain
+dreads the word.  As he opens his
+correspondence after a battle, it fixes him as the
+glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner fastened
+the wedding guest.  It leaps from the page
+at him with the malignant suddenness of a
+serpent.  Wounds and death he can explain to
+relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation.
+No one who has not been at the Front can
+conceive how a lad can disappear and no one
+see what becomes him.  A man may read
+graphic accounts of conditions of life in the
+battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to
+visualize it with any real approach to truth.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>After the first day of the Somme Campaign
+we had hundreds of casualties and most of
+them were classed as "Missing."  The soldiers
+went "over the top" and did not return, and
+no one knew why.  They were simply
+"missing."  Why did no one know their fate?  It
+came about in this way.  The men scrambled
+over the parapet and, forming in line, charged
+across No Man's Land in extended order.
+Some fell immediately.  The wounded among
+them got back to the dressing station, and the
+bodies of the dead were found within a few
+days, at least.  So far, there are no "Missing."  The
+rest of the men press on, some falling
+at every step; the line thins, and the men get
+separated.  When a man falls his neighbor
+cannot stay with him.  He must press on to the
+objective, otherwise, if the unwounded stayed
+to succor the wounded, there would be none
+to continue the attack; and under the hail of
+shells and bullets sweeping the open ground,
+everyone would perish.  The only way to
+succor the wounded is to press on, capture the
+enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine-gun
+fire.  Consequently, the man who presses
+on does not, as a rule, know whether his
+comrade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took
+cover in a shell hole.  And even though he
+were to know, he may be killed himself later,
+and his knowledge die with him.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>If the attack succeeds, and the German trench
+is held by us, No Man's Land can be
+searched.  The wounded and dead are found,
+and but few are reported "missing."  But if
+the attack fail, and the regiment has to retire
+to its own line, it becomes impossible for us
+to search that part of No Man's Land, adjoining
+the German trench (for there is rarely
+any truce after a battle in this war), and so,
+it is impossible to find out whether those who
+have failed to return were killed, wounded, or
+taken prisoners.  The comrades who saw them
+fall are probably killed, for the return is as
+fatal as the attack.  If they come back wounded
+they are taken straight to the hospitals and so
+have no chance of reporting to their officers
+the fate of those whom they saw fall.  Only
+the unwounded return to the regiment and, in
+a lost battle, these are few and know but little
+of what happened to those around them.  They
+were excited and were fighting for their lives.
+They had no leisure to observe the fate of
+others.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>On one occasion our men took some German
+trenches opposite them and held them for
+some hours by desperate fighting, but before
+dusk had to retire.  Many were left dead or
+wounded in the captured trenches, and many
+fell on the return journey.  The few who got
+back to us unwounded could give very little
+information about individuals who were
+missing.  They had been separated one from
+another and fighting hour after hour with
+desperation.  All therefore who did not return
+to the regiment or dressing station, and whose
+bodies were not recovered, were reported as
+"Missing" unless declared dead by reliable
+eye-witnesses.  The evidence of eye-witnesses
+must be carefully examined before a regiment
+dare report a soldier dead on the strength of
+it.  During an attack a man is in an abnormal
+state of excitement and the observations of
+his senses are not entirely reliable.  Men
+imagine they see things, and frequently make
+mistakes in identity.  I have known many cases
+in which a man has sworn that he saw another
+being carried to the dressing station, yet the
+missing man's body has afterwards been found
+near the German lines.  The eye-witness
+simply mistook one man for another.  No end
+of pain to relatives has been caused by these
+mistakes and a regiment rightly declines on
+such evidence to report a soldier as killed.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Some weeks after the attack just referred to,
+we received letters from some of the officers
+and men who had been taken prisoners;
+information about others came through The
+Geneva Red Cross Society.  Those of whom
+we heard nothing for six months we knew to
+be, in all probability, dead.  Nine months later,
+the Germans retired from the position, and
+many of our dead were found still lying out
+in No Man's Land.  Some were identified.
+Others could not be, their discs having
+perished by reason of the long exposure.  Many
+of the dead had been left in the German
+trenches.  These had been buried by the enemy
+and he had left no crosses to mark the graves.
+After more than a year there is no direct
+evidence of the death of many who fought
+on that day.  They are "Missing," and we can
+only conclude that they were killed.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>In other cases, men are reported missing for
+several weeks, and then reported dead.  A
+typical case may be cited to show how it comes
+about.  We attacked one morning at dawn.
+The enemy were on the run, and in a state of
+exhaustion.  An immediate attack would, it
+was believed, carry the position without much
+loss of life, even though our big guns had not
+had time to come up in support.  Unfortunately
+the Germans were, unknown to us, reinforced
+during the night.  Their new troops met our
+men with a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire,
+and the regiment was ordered to retire.
+Several failed to return.  We knew that some
+of the men had been forced to surrender,
+especially the wounded.  Others had been
+killed.  Those who returned unwounded were
+not able, however, to give us the names of
+those who had been killed or of those who had
+been taken prisoners.  The attack had been
+made in the half-light of dawn so that our men
+could not be seen distinctly.  They had also
+advanced in extended order so as to avoid
+making themselves an easy target.  The
+half-light and the distance of one man from another
+made it difficult, therefore, for anyone to see
+either who fell or why they fell.  Most of
+those who were killed or taken prisoners were
+therefore reported as "missing."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>A few days later the whole Division was
+moved to another part of the Front.  A fresh
+regiment took our place, and, a few weeks
+later, with adequate artillery support, carried
+the German trenches.  After the battle, burial
+parties were sent out by the regiment to bury
+both its own dead and ours who had been left
+in the German half of No Man's Land.
+Each grave was marked with the soldier's
+name, and his disc and paybook were sent to
+our regiment as proof of his death.  The War
+Office was then informed that such and such a
+man "previously reported missing, is now
+reported killed."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There are, however, cases of missing men
+which cannot be explained.  The facts never
+come to light, and we can only guess what
+happened.  They may have been buried by the
+enemy, or they may have been buried in the
+dark by some regimental burial party which
+could not find their discs.  They may even have
+been buried by a shell or blown to fragments
+by a direct hit.  We have no evidence.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>After the attack on Gommécourt a youth I
+knew had his wound dressed at the Regimental
+Aid post and was seen, by more than one of
+his chums, passing down the communication
+trench to the Advanced Dressing Station where
+I happened to be.  Yet he never arrived, slight
+though his wound was.  It was impossible for
+him to have got lost.  His brother and I made
+every possible enquiry about him, but nothing
+ever came to light, and we both came to the
+conclusion that on his way down the trench
+he had been buried by a shell.  In another
+case an officer was wounded and four stretcher
+bearers went out to bring him in.  None were
+ever seen again, and later, when we came into
+possession of the ground, the body of none
+of them were found.  It was scarcely possible
+for them to have been taken prisoners, and
+they were never reported as having been
+captured.  We concluded, therefore, that a shell
+had both killed and buried them.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>One day a rifleman reported sick to the
+Doctor and was sent down the line to the
+Dressing Station whence he would be sent on
+to a Rest Camp.  He was not seriously ill,
+and needed no escort.  It was impossible for
+him to have wandered into the German lines,
+yet he never reported at the Dressing Station
+or anywhere else.  Loss of memory is very
+rare, but even if that had happened to him,
+he could not have wandered about behind our
+lines without being found and arrested.  No
+report of his burial ever reached us and we
+were led to the conclusion that he was killed
+by a shell on the way down, and in such a way
+that all means of identification were lost.  In
+another case a private, wounded in the arm,
+was sent down the line in company with a
+party of stretcher bearers who were carrying
+a "lying case."  Evidently he got separated
+from them in the dark, and was hit by a shell,
+for he never reached any dressing station, and
+his fate was never known.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Conditions at the front are such that these
+mysterious disappearances must inevitably
+occur.  Every possible arrangement which
+circumstances will allow is made to prevent them;
+but they cannot be altogether eliminated.
+People at home may sometimes think that more
+might have been done, but it is because they
+have no conception of the amazing conditions
+under which the war is carried on.  Every
+officer and private knows that he may
+disappear without leaving a trace.  That being so,
+they, if only from common prudence and the
+instinct of self-preservation, combine to reduce
+the danger to its lowest limits; but, when all
+has been done, war is war; and nothing can
+rob it of its horrors.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Every day, officers and men die in trying to
+save their comrades, and nothing could be more
+unjust than to blame those who survive for
+not having done more to prevent others from
+being lost; for those who are surviving, to-day,
+may become missing to-morrow, and leave no
+trace behind.  Officers have sometimes shown
+me letters from poor distracted relatives which
+could never have been written if they could
+have imagined the deadly peril in which the
+officers stood and the manifold distractions
+that wore them down.  Sometimes an officer's
+letter is short and business-like in reply to an
+enquiry, but it must be remembered that his
+first duty is to the living.  He must hold the
+line and save his men; and he has, despite the
+tragedy of his position, to answer not one
+enquiry but scores.  And before he has finished
+answering all the enquiries, his own parents,
+perhaps, will be making enquiries about his
+own fate.  Our officers are the bravest and
+kindest-hearted men that ever had the lives of
+others in their keeping; and when the chaplain
+asks them for details about any missing or slain
+soldier, they will go to endless trouble for him.
+They know what their own death will mean
+to their parents; and the knowledge makes their
+hearts go out in sympathy to the parents of
+their men, and it makes them do all that is
+possible to prevent lives being lost.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>When Moses died no man knew the place
+of his burial.  It has not been found to this
+day.  We know nothing of his last thoughts
+or of the manner of his death.  His end is a
+perfect mystery.  But we know that he died in
+the presence of God; that God strengthened
+him in the dread hour; and that with His own
+fingers He closed the lids over the prophet's
+brave, tender eyes.  God buried Moses in a
+grave dug by His own hands and He will know
+where to find the poor worn-out body of the
+great patriot at the resurrection of the just.
+And God was with every one of our missing
+lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed
+in which each lies sleeping.  The grave may
+have no cross above it, but it will often know
+the tread of an angel's feet as he comes to
+plant poppies, primroses and daffodils above
+the resting-place of the brave.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="it-must-be-sunday"><span class="bold large">XII</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">"IT MUST BE SUNDAY"</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The Psalmist of Israel tells us that God
+has "ordained" the moon and the stars.
+These "flaming fires" are "ministers of
+His that do His pleasure."  Nor are they
+the only ones chosen from Nature.  Mungo
+Park, having laid down in the desert to die,
+notices beside him a tiny flower, and it awakens
+hope in him.  The winter of his despair is
+ended.  He rises again, and pushes on until
+he finds a human habitation where he is cared
+for by native women as though he were their
+brother.  The little flower had been "ordained"
+to minister hope to a lost and despairing traveler.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>At the Front such ministering by Nature is
+of common occurrence.  No Man's Land is
+desolate enough to look upon, but there is life
+there, and music.  Larks have chosen it for
+their nests, and amid its desolation they rear
+their young.  Even the pheasants have taken
+to some parts of it.  If we could but know
+the thoughts of the wounded who have lain
+out there waiting for death, we should find
+that the moon and the stars, the birds and the
+field mice, had not allowed them die without
+some comforting of the spirit.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>One Sunday our regiment was resting in
+reserve trenches after a period in the firing line.
+It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun
+sank westward I administered the Sacrament
+of the Lord's Supper.  The day was far spent
+but, as the bread was broken, there came to
+us a vision of the Face which the two disciples
+saw on another such evening in the far-off
+village of Emmaus.  On the way back to my
+billet I met a platoon of Royal Engineers
+returning from the baths.  One of them had
+been a member of my church in London, and
+he dropped out to talk with me.  Those who
+have not been in the Expeditionary Force can
+hardly understand the pleasure a man feels
+when he meets someone he knew in the days of
+peace, or even someone who knows the street
+or town out of which he came.  He was full
+of talk, and as I listened his excitement and
+pleasure bubbled over like a spring.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Last night," he said, "was the night of
+my life.  I never expected to see daylight
+again.  Talk about a 'tight corner,' there was
+never one to match it, and as you know, my
+chums and I have been in many.  The Huns
+simply plastered us with shells.  The
+bombardment was terrific.  It was like being in a
+hailstorm and we expected every moment to be
+our last.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"You know the trench which the infantry
+took yesterday?  Well, we were there.  We
+went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of
+it ready for the counter-attack.  We were out
+in No Man's Land for about two hours,
+working as swiftly and silently as we could.
+Whenever the enemy sent his lights up, we laid down,
+and so far we had escaped notice and were
+congratulating ourselves that the work was
+nearly done, and that our skins were still
+whole.  Then, somehow, the Germans spotted
+us, and let fly.  It was like hell let loose.  We
+ran to the trench for shelter, but it seemed as
+if nothing could save us from such a deluge
+of shells.  It was just like being naked in a
+driving snow-storm.  We felt as if there was
+no trench at all, and as if the gunners could
+see us in the dark.  After that experience I
+can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after
+it.  But we just sat tight with such cover as
+we had and made the best of it.  There was
+nothing else to do.  If we were to be killed,
+we should be killed.  Nothing that we could
+do would have made any difference.  Yet,
+though there didn't seem shelter for even a
+mouse, only one of us was hit, and that was
+the sergeant.  He was rather badly 'done in,'
+and we could only save his life by getting him
+quickly to the dressing station.</span></p>
+<div class="align-center auto-scaled figure margin" style="width: 92%" id="figure-30">
+<img class="align-center block" style="display: block; width: 100%" alt="&quot;HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN&quot; Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London" src="images/img-144.jpg" />
+<div class="caption centerleft figure-caption margin">
+<span class="italics">"HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN"
+<br /></span><em class="italics">Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London</em></div>
+</div>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"I am one of the taller and stronger men
+of my platoon so, of course, I volunteered as
+a stretcher-bearer.  There was no communication
+trench, so we had no choice but to lift
+him up and make a dash across the open.
+They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare
+not delay because, if we were overtaken by
+daylight, it would be impossible to get him
+away till the next night, and by that time he
+would be dead.  So we decided to try our luck.
+We had just lifted him up when a shell burst
+right on top of us, and knocked us all down.
+For a minute or two I was unconscious, and
+when I came round I thought I must surely
+be wounded, so I ran my fingers over my body
+but found neither blood nor a rent in my
+clothes.  I was covered with chalk but that
+didn't matter.  Except for a touch of
+concussion in the brain I was none the worse, and
+soon pulled myself together.  The sergeant
+was a sight!  He was half-buried, and we
+could scarce see him for chalk; but we dug
+him out and got him on the stretcher again.
+After that we sat down in the bottom of the
+trench till the effect of the shock had worn
+off a bit, for we all felt like rats that had been
+shaken by a terrier.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Then, as suddenly as it had started, the
+shelling stopped.  The calm that followed was
+wonderful.  I never felt anything so restful
+before.  It was like the delicious restfulness that,
+sometimes, immediately follows hours of fever.
+Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out
+of No Man's Land and began to sing.  The
+effect on us was magical.  It was the sweetest
+music I have ever heard, and I shall remember
+it to my dying day.  The countryside was dark
+and silent, and, as I listened to the lark, old
+days came back to mind.  You remember that
+Saturday midnight in the June before the war
+when you took us into Epping Forest to see
+the dawn break over it?  Well, as I listened
+to the lark, I was back there in the forest.
+Then some impulse seized me and, hardly
+knowing what I did, I cried aloud, 'Why bless
+me, it must be Sunday,' and so it was, although
+I had forgotten.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Then we jumped up for we saw that the
+dawn was breaking and, lifting the sergeant
+out of the trench, we rushed across the open
+ground in the direction of the dressing station.
+Talk about 'feeling protected!'  Why, I felt
+that God was all around us--that no harm
+could touch us.  A great calm stole over me,
+and I felt utterly devoid of fear.  We had,
+as you know, to bring the sergeant some two
+miles to the dressing station, just down the
+road there, but we got him safely in, and I
+think he will get better."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>While we were talking, a shell burst near
+the trench where my men had been taking of
+the Sacrament, and another burst by the
+roadside close to the Engineers.  With a laugh
+and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands,
+saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades.
+The shells were part of the game.  In London
+we had been in the same football team.  He
+had kept goal and I had played full back, and
+he regarded the shells that had fallen as bad
+shots at goal made by the opposing team.
+They might have been serious but, as it
+happened, the ball had each time gone out of play.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I waited a minute or two in the hope of
+getting a lift.  A motor car came along; I
+stopped it and got in; for at the Front
+everything is Government property and more or
+less at one's service.  I found myself sitting
+by the side of a private, who had been wounded
+in the face and right hand by the shell that
+had just fallen near the platoon of Engineers.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>He had left his horse with a comrade, and
+was being driven to the Advanced Dressing
+Station by a driver who, happening to pass at
+the moment, had kindly offered him a lift.
+After a little wait at the Dressing Station I
+got on the front of an ambulance car.  There
+were only two cases inside, and they were being
+taken to the Main Dressing Station in Arras.
+One of them had his feet and arms tied to
+the stretcher, for he was suffering from
+shell-shock; and three orderlies were in charge of
+him.  The poor fellow laughed and cried
+alternately and struggled to break loose.  "I'm
+a British soldier," he cried, "and I will not
+be tied up.  I've done my bit, and this is the
+way you pay me out.  I'll not have it."  And
+time and again he struggled desperately to
+break away.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The orderlies in charge of him were wise and
+tactful as women.  They asked him questions
+about the fight, and he fought his battle over
+again.  They praised his regiment and told him
+it had done magnificently, and he laughed and
+chuckled like a young mother, dandling her
+first baby on her knee.  And so, without
+mishap, we reached the ruined town of Arras
+where nightly the shells fall among the forsaken
+houses in which our soldiers are billeted.
+The wounded private was carried into the
+hospital, and I walked away to my room in an
+adjoining street.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>So ended the day which, in the hour of
+dawn, the dark had told the young engineer
+"must be Sunday."</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="our-tommies-never-fail-us"><span class="bold large">XIII</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>On Easter Monday, in the Battle of
+Arras, I saw two sights such as I shall
+never forget.  One revealed the kind
+and forgiving spirit of our men, the other their
+unflinching courage.  After burying three
+non-commissioned officers who had been killed the
+day before, I reached the Advanced Dressing
+Station near which our regiment was "standing
+to" in a support trench.  Other regiments of
+our Division were carrying out the attack and,
+with small loss, had taken the enemy lines.
+The German trenches had been blotted out by
+our shells but their deep dug-outs, with
+machine-guns at their mouths, remained
+untouched, and it was almost impossible for our
+soldiers to discover them until they got within
+a few yards of the entrances.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The German commander's idea was to keep
+his men in the shelter of the dug-outs until
+our barrage lifted.  They were then to rush
+out with machine-guns and rifles to destroy our
+men who were following it up.  If the idea
+had been carried out, the German line would
+have been impregnable for our men would
+have been mown down like corn before the
+reaper.  It failed because German human
+nature could not rise to the occasion.  The
+German soldiers had been demoralized by the
+safety of the dug-outs and by the thunder of
+our shells above them.  They cowered in the
+dug-outs when they should have rushed out.
+The critical moment passed, and with its
+passing our soldiers leapt to the entrances and
+threw down hand grenades.  There was a wild
+cry of pain and fear from below.  Arms went
+up and the cry of "Kamerad."  The surrender
+was accepted and the beaten soldiers
+crawled out.  From some dug-outs as many as
+two hundred prisoners were taken.  In other
+parts of the line there was a stiff fight, but, on
+the whole, our casualties were very light.
+From my own observation I should say that
+we took more prisoners than we suffered
+casualties.  Some companies could boast a prisoner
+for each man engaged in the attack.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The Advanced Dressing Station was at the
+corner of Cross Roads and the sight around
+it was wonderful to behold.  A crowd of
+prisoners was assembling ready to be marched
+to the cages, and wounded officers and men,
+British and German, were being bandaged.
+The prisoners were hungry.  For some days
+our artillery had cut off their rations.  A
+platoon of our soldiers came marching by, and,
+to save time, eating their breakfasts as they
+passed along.  The prisoners looked at them
+with hungry eyes.  Our men saw the look and
+stopped.  Breaking rank for a moment they
+passed in and out among the prisoners and
+shared out their rations.  "Here, Fritzy, old
+boy, take this," I heard all around me, and
+Fritz did not need asking twice.  He took the
+biscuits and cheese gratefully and eagerly.
+The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and
+he felt that he had found friends where he
+had only expected to find enemies.  He began
+to hope for kindness in his captivity.  The
+scene was one of pure goodwill.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy.
+Our Tommies laughed and cracked jokes which
+no German could understand, but I heard not
+a single taunt or bitter word.  In fact, Fritz
+was treated more like a pet than a prisoner.
+One who had worked in London, and who
+spoke English, asked me for a cup of tea for
+a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I
+got one in the dressing station.  The platoon
+of Tommies re-formed and marched away to
+the battle and the prisoners were led off to
+the cages.  There were still large numbers of
+prisoners on the road, and they were moving
+about without guards.  Many of them were
+being used as stretcher-bearers and they seemed
+to do their work out of goodwill and not of
+constraint.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Their assistance was of great help to the
+wounded.  The battle was going well with us.
+Everyone felt in good heart and kindly
+disposed.  An officer who lay seriously wounded
+and waiting for a car told me of the splendid
+work which his regiment had done.  His eyes
+shone with suppressed excitement and pride as
+he told the story.  While he was speaking two
+soldiers came limping down the road and their
+appearance was greeted with a burst of
+laughter.  One was English, the other German.
+Tommy had his arm round the German's neck
+and was leaning on him while Fritz, with his
+arm round the lad's waist, helped him along.
+They came along very slowly for both were
+wounded, but they laughed and talked together
+like long-lost brothers.  Yet neither could
+understand a word the other said.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I passed down the road towards the line.
+Gunners of the Territorials were hurriedly
+hitching their guns to the horses ready to
+advance to new positions.  In the ruined village
+a party of engineers was already unloading a
+wagon of rails with which to build a light
+railway.  I continued along the road towards the
+next village.  It had just fallen into our hands
+and not one stone was left on another.  There
+were scores of wounded men hobbling back
+from it and I gave my arm to such as needed
+it most.  A badly wounded Tommy was being
+brought along on a wheeler by two orderlies
+and as I helped them through the traffic we
+heard the heavy rumble of the advancing field-guns.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The road was cleared with the quickness of
+lightning.  Out of the village the batteries burst
+at a mad gallop and down the road they came
+at break-neck speed.  With the swiftness of
+a fire engine in a city street the rocking guns
+swept past.  The gunners clung to the
+ammunition limbers with both hands and the
+drivers whipped and spurred the excited
+foam-flecked horses as though they were fiery beings
+leaping through the air and incapable of fatigue
+or weakness.  Suddenly the drivers raised their
+whips as a sign to those behind, and the
+trembling horses and bounding guns came to a
+dead halt.  The leading gun had overturned at
+a nasty place where the road dipped down into
+the hollow.  The rest of the batteries stood
+exposed on the crest of the ridge.  Before
+retiring the Germans had felled all the trees that
+grew by the roadside so that nothing might
+obstruct their line of vision.  Such a
+catastrophe as this was what the enemy had been
+hoping for.  The sun shone brilliantly, and
+our batteries were a direct target for the
+German gunners such as seldom occurs.  Our boys
+were caught like rats in a trap.  By the side
+of the road ran a shallow trench and near us
+two broad steps into it.  We laid the wounded
+lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down
+by his side.  Shells were falling all around and
+fountains of dirt and debris rose into the air
+and, on five or six occasions, covered us with
+their spray.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I covered the lad's face.  He was barely
+conscious and uttered no word.  It seemed as if
+nothing could live in such a bombardment.  A
+shell burst near, and the cry of dying horses
+rent the air.  The traces were cut and the
+horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road.
+Every second I expected to see the horses and
+drivers in front of me blown into the air and
+I watched them with fascinated eyes.  Not a
+man stirred.  They sat on their horses and
+gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze.
+Not a man sought the trench and not a man
+relieved the tension by going forward to see
+what was wrong or to lend a hand.  Each
+knew his place, and if death sought him it
+would know where to find him.  The horses
+felt that they had brave men on their backs
+and, in that mysterious way peculiar to horses,
+caught the spirit of their riders.  Every shell
+covered men and horses with chalk and soil,
+but they remained an immobile as statuary.  It
+was magnificent and it was war.  A driver in
+the battery beside us got wounded in the leg
+and hand.  He jumped off his horse and came
+to us to be bandaged.  Then he leapt back into
+the saddle.  It seemed an age, but I suppose
+it was only a few minutes, before the obstruction
+was removed.  The whips flashed in the
+air and the horses sprang forward.  The guns
+rocked and swayed as they swept past us and
+within a few minutes they were in their new
+positions under the hill upon which lay the
+ruins of Neuville Vitasse.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had
+started and we lifted out our wounded soldier
+and went in the direction of the dressing
+station.  Some distance up the road my attention
+was called to one of the drivers whom the
+artillery had left in the care of some privates.
+He was living, but his skull was broken, and
+he would never wake again to consciousness.
+He was fast "going West."  His day was over
+and his work was done.  I got him lifted on
+to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station
+so that he might die in peace and be buried
+in the little soldiers' cemetery behind it.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>When I returned in the evening to our billet
+I told the transport officer of the magnificent
+bravery of the artillery drivers.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Any other drivers would behave just as
+well, if caught in the same trap," he replied.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>He spoke the simple truth.  They would.
+Such supreme courage and devotion to duty are
+common to the army.  Their presence among
+all ranks and in all sections of the army makes
+the fact the more wonderful.  Both officers and
+men love life, but they love duty more, and
+commanders in drawing up their plans know
+that they can rely on their soldiers to carry
+them out.  Our Tommies never fail us whether
+in France, Mesopotamia, or Palestine.  Devotion
+to duty is inwoven with the fibers of their
+hearts.  They are men who, either in kindness
+to captives or courage amid disaster and
+destruction, never fail us.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="the-cross-at-neuve-chapelle"><span class="bold large">XIV</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The war on the Western Front has been
+fought in a Roman Catholic country
+where crucifixes are erected at all the
+chief cross-roads to remind us that, in every
+moment of doubt as to the way of life, and
+on whichever road we finally decide to walk,
+whether rough or smooth, we shall need the
+Saviour and His redeeming love.  We have
+seen a cross so often when on the march, or
+when passing down some trench, that it has
+become inextricably mixed up with the war.
+When we think of the great struggle the vision
+of the cross rises before us, and when we see
+the cross, we think of processions of wounded
+men who have been broken to save the world.
+Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to
+rest, we have placed over him, as the comment
+on his death, a simple white cross bearing his
+name.  We never paint any tribute on it.
+None is needed, for nothing else could speak so
+eloquently as a cross--a white cross.  White
+is the sacred color in the army of to-day, and
+the cross is the sacred form.  In after years
+there will never be any doubt as to where the
+line of liberty ran that held back the flood and
+force of German tyranny.  From the English
+Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all
+time with the crosses on the graves of the
+British and French soldiers.  Whatever may
+be our views about the erection of crucifixes
+by the wayside and at the cross-roads, no one
+can deny that they have had an immense
+influence for good on our men during the war
+in France.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The experience of many a gallant soldier is
+expressed in the following Belgian poem:</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"I came to a halt at the bend of the road;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>I came to a halt at the bend of the road.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?"</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier
+and has provided him with the only acceptable
+philosophy of the war.  It has taught boys
+just entering upon life's experience that,
+out-topping all history and standing out against
+the background of all human life, is a Cross
+on which died the Son of God.  It has made
+the hill of Calvary stand out above all other
+hills in history.  Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon--these
+may stand at the foot of the hill, as
+did the Roman soldiers, but they are made to
+look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises
+above them, showing forth the figure of the Son
+of Man.  Against the sky-line of human history
+the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in
+shadow.  The wayside crosses at the Front and
+the flashes of roaring guns may not have taught
+our soldiers much history, but they have taught
+them the central fact of history; and all else
+will have to accommodate itself to that, or
+be disbelieved.  The Cross of Christ is the
+center of the picture for evermore, and the
+grouping of all other figures must be round it.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>To the soldiers it can never again be made a
+detail in some other picture.  Seen also in the
+light of their personal experience it has taught
+them that as a cross lies at the basis of the
+world's life and shows bare at every crisis of
+national and international life so, at the root
+of all individual life, is a cross.  They have
+been taught to look for it at every parting of
+the ways.  Suffering to redeem others and make
+others happy will now be seen as the true
+aim of life and not the grasping of personal
+pleasure or profit.  They have stood where
+high explosive shells thresh out the corn from
+the chaff--the true from the false.  They have
+seen facts in a light that lays things stark
+and bare; and the cant talked by skeptical
+armchair-philosophers will move them as little
+as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops.
+For three long years our front-line trenches
+have run through what was once a village
+called Neuve Chapelle.  There is nothing left
+of it now.  But there is something there which
+is tremendously impressive.  It is a crucifix.
+It stands out above everything, for the land
+is quite flat around it.  The cross is immediately
+behind our firing trench, and within two
+or three hundred yards of the German front
+trench.  The figure of Christ is looking across
+the waste of No Man's Land.  Under His right
+arm and under His left, are British soldiers
+holding the line.  Two dud shells lie at the
+the foot.  One is even touching the wood,
+but though hundreds of shells must have swept
+by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it
+remains undamaged.  Trenches form a labyrinth
+all round it.  When our men awake and
+"stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is
+the cross; and when at night they lie down in
+the side of the trench, or turn into their
+dug-outs, their last sight is the cross.  It stands
+clear in the noon-day sun; and in the moonlight
+it takes on a solemn grandeur.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I first saw it on a November afternoon when
+the sun was sinking under heavy banks of
+cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene
+as it must have been on the first Good Friday,
+when the sun died with its dying Lord, and
+darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and
+covered Him with its funeral pall to hide His
+dying agonies from the curious eyes of
+unbelieving men.  I had had tea in a dug-out, and
+it was dark when I left.  Machine-guns were
+sweeping No Man's Land to brush back
+enemies that might be creeping towards us through
+the long grass; and the air was filled with a
+million clear, cracking sounds.  Star-shells rose
+and fell and their brilliant lights lit up the
+silent form on the cross.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>For three years, night and day, Christ has
+been standing there in the midst of our soldiers,
+with arms outstretched in blessing.  They
+have looked up at Him through the clear
+starlight of a frosty night; and they have seen
+His pale face by the silver rays of the moon
+as she has sailed her course through the
+heavens.  In the gloom of a stormy night they
+have seen the dark outline, and caught a
+passing glimpse of Christ's effigy by the flare
+of the star-shells.  What must have been the
+thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts
+as all night long they have gazed at the cross;
+or of the officers as they have passed down
+the trench to see that all was well; or of some
+private sleeping in the trench and, being
+awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to
+restore blood-circulation?  Deep thoughts, I
+imagine, much too deep for words of theirs
+or mine.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was
+raging and the wounded, whose blood was
+turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what
+thoughts must have been theirs then?  Did
+they not feel that He was their big Brother
+and remember that blood had flowed from
+Him as from them; that pain had racked Him
+as it racked them; and that He thought of
+His mother and of Nazareth as they thought
+of their mother and the little cottage they were
+never to see again?  When their throats
+became parched and their lips swollen with thirst
+did they not remember how He, too, had cried
+for a drink; and, most of all, did they not
+call to mind the fact that He might have saved
+Himself, as they might, if He had cared more
+for His own happiness than for the world's?
+As their spirits passed out through the wounds
+in their bodies would they not ask Him to
+remember them as their now homeless souls
+knocked at the gate of His Kingdom?  He had
+stood by them all through the long and bloody
+battle while hurricanes of shells swept over
+and around Him.  I do not wonder that the
+men at the Front flock to the Lord's Supper
+to commemorate His death.  They will not go
+without it.  If the Sacrament be not provided,
+they ask for it.  At home there was never such
+a demand for it as exists at the Front.  There
+is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the
+Cross, between the soldier and his Saviour.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>And yet, to those who willed the war and
+drank to the day of its coming, even the Cross
+has no sacredness.  It is to them but a tool
+of war.  An officer told me that during the
+German retreat from the Somme they noticed
+a peculiar accuracy in the enemy's firing.  The
+shells followed an easily distinguishable course.
+So many casualties occurred from this accurate
+shelling that the officers set themselves to
+discover the cause.  They found that the circle
+of shells had for its center the cross-roads, and
+that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood
+up clearly as a land-mark.  Evidently the
+crosses were being used to guide the gunners,
+and was causing the death of our men.  But
+a more remarkable thing came to light.  The
+cross stood close to the road, and when the
+Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the
+cross-roads to delay our advance.  Everything
+near had been blown to bits by the explosion
+except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it.
+And yet it could not have escaped, except by
+a miracle.  They therefore set themselves to
+examine the seeming miracle and came across
+one of the most astounding cases of fiendish
+cunning.  They found that the Germans had
+made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that
+they could take it out or put it in at pleasure.
+Before blowing up the cross-roads they had
+taken the cross out of its socket and removed
+it to a safe distance, then, when the mine had
+exploded, they put the cross back so that it
+might be a landmark to direct their shooting.
+And now they were using Christ's instrument
+of redemption as an instrument for men's destruction.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>But our young officers resolved to restore
+the cross to its work of saving men.  They
+waited till night fell, and then removed the cross
+to a point a hundred or two yards to the left.
+When in the morning the German gunners
+fired their shells their observers found that the
+shells fell too far wide of the cross and they
+could make nothing of the mystery.  It looked
+as if someone had been tampering with their
+guns in the night.  To put matters right they
+altered the position of their guns so that once
+more the shells made a circle round the cross.
+And henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the
+shells fell harmlessly into the outlying fields.
+Nor was this the only time during their retreat
+that the Germans put the cross to this base use
+and were foiled in their knavery.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ
+and turns it into a tool to gain an advantage
+over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to
+ask who began the war, and folly to close our
+eyes to the horrors and depravities which are
+being reached in the waging of it.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>There is a new judgment of the nations now
+proceeding and who shall predict what shall
+be?  The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and
+our attitude towards it decides our fate.  I
+have seen the attitude of our soldiers towards
+the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards
+that for which it stands; and I find more
+comfort in their reverence for Christ and
+Christianity than in all their guns and impediments
+of war.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks
+of time, and the nations will survive that stand
+beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of
+righteousness, liberty and truth.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="the-children-of-our-dead"><span class="bold large">XV</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">THE CHILDREN OF OUR DEAD</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>There are times when we get away from
+the Front for a rest.  We hear no
+more the sound of the guns, but give
+ourselves up to the silence and charm of the
+country.  Before going into the Somme
+fighting we were billeted for ten days in the
+neighboring village to Cressy; and as the anniversary
+of the battle came that week the colonel chose
+the day for a march to the battlefield.  The
+owner of the field, when the old windmill
+stood, from which King Edward III directed
+his army, came to meet us and describe the
+battle.  When the war is over he is going to
+erect a monument on the spot to the memory
+of the French and British troops who in comradeship
+have died fighting against the common foe.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>They were happy days that we spent around
+Cressy.  The last that some were destined to
+know this side of the Great Divide.  The
+bedroom next to mine was occupied by two fine
+young officers of utterly different type.  One
+was a Greek whose father had taken out
+naturalization papers and loved the country of
+his adoption with a worshiping passion that
+would shame many native born.  The other
+was a charming, argumentative, systematic,
+theological student of Scots parentage.  The
+night before we left, the Greek accidentally
+broke his mirror and was much upset.  It was,
+he said, a token that Death was about to claim
+him.  The Scot laughed heartily, for he had
+not a trace of the superstitious in him; or, if he
+had--which was more than likely--it was kept
+under by his strong reasoning faculties.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"If you are to be killed," he replied, "I am
+to be killed too, for I also have broken my
+mirror."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>He spoke the words in jest, or with hardly
+a discernible undercurrent of seriousness; but
+they were true words nevertheless.  The two
+bed-mates were killed in the same battle a week
+or two later.  I had tea with them in their
+dug-out on the eve of the fight.  They were
+to take up their positions in an hour, but the
+student could not resist having just one more
+argument.  He directed the conversation to the
+New Theology, and to German philosophers
+and Biblical scholars.  He simply talked me
+off my feet, for he possessed the most brilliant
+intellect in the regiment, combined with
+self-reliance and perfect modesty.  Then the
+conversation turned to the question of taking a tot
+of rum before going over the parapet.  He
+was a rigid teetotaler, "for," said he, "drink
+is the ruin of my country."  He was opposed
+to the idea of taking rum to help one's courage
+or allay his fears.  He would not, he said, go
+under with his eyes bandaged.  He would
+take a good look at Death and dare him to
+do his worst.  He was superb, and Death never
+felled a manlier man.  Browning would have
+loved him as his own soul for he had Browning's
+attitude to life exactly, and could have
+sung with him,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>"Fear death? ...</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>The best and the last!</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>And bade me creep past.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>The heroes of old,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Of pain, darkness and cold.</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>For sudden the worst turns best to the brave,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>The black minute's at end,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Shall dwindle, shall blend,</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="line"><span>Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,</span></div>
+<div class="inner line-block">
+<div class="line"><span>Then a light...</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>And with God be the rest!"</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>He was found with his "body against the
+wall where the forts of folly fall."  His brave,
+intelligent face was completely blown away.
+His Greek friend was wounded, and while
+being dressed in a shell-hole by his servant, was
+hit again and killed.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Some weeks later all that remained of the
+regiment was drawn out to a little village some
+miles from Amiens, and very similar to the
+one we had occupied near Cressy.  We were
+taken to it in motor-'buses for the men were
+too exhausted to march, and the days spent
+there were days of great delight.  We had a
+glorious, crowded-out service on the Sunday.
+It was both a thanksgiving and a memorial
+service, and I spoke to the men on "The
+Passing of the Angels."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"When the music ceased," I said, "and the
+herald-angels departed, the sky became very
+empty, cold and gray to the Shepherds; and
+they said one to another, 'let us now go even
+unto Bethlehem.'  And they went and found
+out Jesus.  If the angels had stayed the
+shepherds would have stayed with them.  The
+angels had to come to point them to Jesus but,
+that done, they had to go away to make the
+shepherds desire Jesus and seek Him.  'When
+the half-gods go the gods arrive.'  The angels
+had to make room for Jesus and the second
+best had to yield place to the best.  When John
+the Baptist was killed his disciples went in their
+sorrow to Jesus; and having lost our noble
+comrades, we must go to Him also.  The best
+in our friends came from Jesus as the sweet
+light of the moon comes from the sun; and we
+must go to the Source.  If we find and keep
+to Jesus, sooner or later we shall find our lost
+friends again, for 'them also which sleep in
+Jesus will God bring with him!'"</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>In some such words I tried to comfort those
+who had left their comrades behind in the
+graves on the Somme; for I know how deeply
+they felt the loss.  During the week we had
+dinner parties, and all kinds of jolly social
+intercourse.  It was amusing to see the delight
+everyone felt at having a bed to sleep in.
+"Look Padre, at these white sheets," an officer
+cried as I passed his window.  He was as
+merry over them as if a rich maiden aunt had
+remembered him in her will.  Some got "leave"
+home, and were so frankly joyful about it that
+it made the rest of us both glad and envious.
+We made up for it somewhat by getting leave
+to spend an occasional day in Amiens.  There
+I went into the glorious cathedral.  Almost the
+whole of the front was sandbagged, but even
+thus, it was a "thing of beauty" and has
+become for me a "joy forever."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Except Rouen Cathedral I have seen nothing
+to equal it.  Notre Dame, with its invisible
+yet clinging tapestry of history, is more deeply
+moving.  But it is sadder--more sombre.
+Something of the ugliness and tragedy of
+by-gone days peep out in it; but Amiens Cathedral
+is a thing of pure joy and beauty.  It suggests
+fairies, while Notre Dame suggests goblins.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>While I was looking at its glorious
+rose-windows which were casting their rich colors
+on the pillars, a father and his two children
+came in.  The man and son dipped their
+fingers in the shell of holy water, crossed their
+foreheads and breasts with the water, and were
+passing on; but the little girl who was too
+short to reach the shell, took hold of her
+father's arm and pulled him back.  She, too,
+wished to dip her fingers in holy water, and
+make the sign of the cross over her mind and
+heart.  The father yielded to her importunity
+and touched her hand with his wet fingers.
+She made the sacred sign and was satisfied.
+The father and son had remembered their own
+needs but forgotten the child's.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>After all the tragic happenings on the
+Somme why should this little incident linger in
+my memory like a primrose in a crater?  Did
+it not linger </span><em class="italics">because</em><span> of the tragedy of the
+preceding weeks?  I had been living weeks
+together without seeing a child and after the
+slaughter of youth which I had witnessed the
+sight of a child in a cathedral was inexpressibly
+beautiful.  The father's neglect of its finer
+needs gave me pain.  We have lost so many
+young men, that every child and youth left to
+us ought to be cared for as the apple of our
+eye.  We have lost more than our young men.
+We have lost those who would have been their
+children.  The little ones who might have been,
+have gone to their graves with their fathers.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The old recruiting cry, "the young and single
+first" was necessary from a military standpoint
+but, from a merely human point of view,
+I could never see much justice in it.  The young
+had no responsibility, direct or indirect, for the
+war.  They were given life and yet before
+they could taste it, they were called upon to
+die in our behalf.  We who are older have
+tasted of life and love; the residue of our years
+will be much the same as those that have gone
+before; there will be little of surprise or
+newness of experience.  Perhaps, too, we have
+living memorials of ourselves, so that if we die,
+our personality and name will still live on.
+Our death will only be partial.  While William
+Pitt lived could it be said that Lord Chatham
+had died?  His body was dead, truly, but his
+spirit found utterance in the British House of
+Commons every time his son spoke, and
+Napoleon felt the strength of his arm as truly
+did Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham.  I
+should not have mourned the loss of the young
+Scot and the Greek so much, had they left to
+the world some image and likeness of
+themselves.  In dying, they gave more than
+themselves to death;</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"Those who would have been</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Their sons they gave--their immortality."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>After a summer on the Somme, I have come
+to understand something of how fear of the
+devouring maw of Time became almost an
+obsession with Shakespeare.  Death had taken
+from him some of the dearest intimates of his
+heart, and taken them young.  And so, like the
+sound of a funeral-bell echoing down the lane
+where lovers walk, there is heard through all
+his sonnets and poems of love the approaching
+footsteps of death.  Sometimes the footsteps
+sound faintly, but they are seldom absent.
+How then would he have felt in a war like
+this, in which the "young and single" have gone
+out by the hundred thousand to prematurely die?</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Others, however, who have given their lives
+were married men, and they have left images
+of themselves in trust to the nation.  We know
+the last thoughts of a dying father.  Captain
+Falcon Scott as he lay dying at the South Pole
+has expressed them for all time.  "Take care
+of the boy," he said, "there should be good
+stuff in him."  He found comfort in the
+reflection that he would, though he died, live on
+in his son; but he was saddened by the thought
+that the son would have to face the battle of
+life without a father to back him up.  The
+boy would therefore need special "care."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>On the evening of the first battle of the
+Somme I spoke to a young officer as he lay in
+a bed at the Field Ambulance.  He had lost
+his right arm and he told me how it had
+happened.  He was charging across No Man's
+Land when a shell cut it off near the shoulder,
+and flung it several yards away.  As he saw
+it fall to the ground the sight so overcame him
+that he cried aloud in distress, "Oh my arm!
+My beautiful arm."  He was still mourning
+its loss, so, to comfort him, I told him that
+Nelson lost </span><em class="italics">his</em><span> right arm and won the Battle
+of Trafalgar after he had lost it.  Like
+Nelson, I told him, he would learn to write with
+his left hand and still do a man's job.  He
+would not be useless in life as he feared.
+When the children of our dead soldiers charge
+across No Man's Land in the battle of life
+they will think of their lost fathers, and the
+agonizing cry of the young wounded soldier
+will rise to their lips, "Oh my arm, my
+beautiful arm."  The State is providing artificial
+arms for our wounded soldiers.  Will it be a
+right arm to the children of its dead?  Will
+it be a father to the fatherless and a husband
+to the widow?  Unless it is ready for this
+sacred task, it had no right to ask for and
+accept the lives of these men.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The State, with the help of the Church, must
+resolve that no child shall suffer because its
+father was a hero and patriot.  The State must
+help the child to the shell of holy water without
+the little one having to pull at its arm to
+remind it of its duties.  If the children of our
+dead soldiers lack education, food, moral and
+spiritual guidance, or a proper start in life,
+no words will be condemnatory enough to
+adequately describe the nation's crime and
+ingratitude.  They are the sons and daughters
+of heroes and there "should be good stuff" in
+them.  It is the nation's privilege, as well as
+its duty, to take the place of their fathers.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>A few days later I walked into Arras from
+the neighboring village.  There were guns all
+along the road, and there was not a house but
+bore the mark of shells.  Some of the civilians
+had remained, but these were mostly old people
+who could not settle elsewhere, and who
+preferred to die at home rather than live in a
+strange place.  One house impressed me
+greatly.  It had been badly damaged but, its
+garden was untouched and in it were half a
+dozen rose-trees.  It was the beginning of
+spring, and each tree was covered over with
+sacking to preserve it from the cold and
+fragments of shells.  The owner did not care
+sufficiently for his own life to move away, but he
+cared for the life of his roses.  And so, when
+the summer came there were roses in at least
+one garden in Arras.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The noise of the guns was terrific and the
+old man had to live in the cellar, but he found
+leisure of soul to cultivate his roses.  His action
+was one of the most beautiful things I have
+seen in the entire war.  The children of our
+homes are more beautiful than Arras roses,
+and more difficult to rear.  May we trust our
+country not to neglect them?  Will she save
+them from the mark of the shell, and help
+them to grow up to a full and perfect loveliness?
+Our dying soldiers have trusted her to do it.
+From their graves they plead,</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"If ye break faith with us who die,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>We shall not sleep, though poppies blow</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>In Flanders fields."</span></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="a-funeral-under-fire"><span class="bold large">XVI</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>It was in a ruined village behind the
+trenches.  A fatigue party had just come
+out of the line, and was on its way to
+rest-billets in the next village.  The men were
+tired so they sat down to rest in the deserted
+street.  Suddenly, a scream, as from a
+disembodied spirit, pierced the air.  There was a
+crash, a cloud of smoke, and five men lay
+dead on the pavement, and twelve wounded.
+Next morning I was asked to bury one of the
+dead.  Under a glorious July sky a Roman
+Catholic chaplain and I cycled between desolate
+fields into the village.  A rifleman guided
+us down a communication-trench till we came
+to the cemetery.  It was a little field fenced
+with trees.  There we found a Church of
+England chaplain.  He and the Catholic
+chaplain had two men each to bury.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>A burial party was at work on the five graves.
+It was the fatigue party of the evening before,
+and the men were preparing the last resting
+place of those who had died at their side.
+They worked rapidly, for all the morning the
+village had been under a bombardment which
+had not as yet ceased.  Before they had
+finished they were startled by the familiar but
+fatal scream of a shell and threw themselves
+on the ground.  It burst a short distance away
+without doing harm, and the soldiers went on
+with their work, as if nothing had happened.
+When the graves were ready, two of the bodies
+were brought out and lowered with ropes.
+The Church of England chaplain read the
+burial service over them, and we all stood round
+as mourners.  Two more bodies were brought
+out and we formed a circle round them while
+the Roman Catholic chaplain read the burial
+service of his Church--chiefly, in Latin.  There
+now remained but one, and he, in turn, was
+quietly lowered into his grave.  He was still
+wearing his boots and uniform and was wrapped
+around with his blanket.</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>"No useless coffin enclosed his breast,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>But he lay like a warrior taking his rest</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>With his martial cloak around him."</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>All his comrades who had been with him in
+the dread hour of death were mourning by his
+grave, and standing with them were his officer
+and two chaplains.  I read the full service as
+it is given in our Prayer Book.  It was all
+that one could do for him.  The Catholic
+chaplain had sprinkled consecrated water on the
+bodies and I sprinkled consecrated soil.  Was
+it not in truth holy soil?  Behind me was one
+long, common grave in which lay buried a
+hundred and ten French soldiers; "110 Braves"
+was the inscription the cross bore.  In front of
+me were three rows of graves in which were
+lying British soldiers.  French and British
+soldiers were mingling their dust.  In death, as in
+life, they were not divided.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I felt led to offer no prayer for the lad at
+my feet, nor for his dead comrades.  He needed
+no prayer of mine; rather did I need his.  He
+was safe home in port.  The storm had spent
+itself and neither rock, nor fog, nor fire would
+trouble him again.  His living comrades and
+I were still out in the storm, battling towards
+the land.  He had no need of us, but his parents
+and comrades had need of him.  We were
+there to pay a tribute to his life and death, to
+pray for his loved ones, and to learn how frail
+we are and how dependent upon Him who is
+beyond the reach of the chances and changes
+of this mortal life.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I was half way through the recital of the
+last prayer--"We bless Thy Holy Name for
+all Thy servants departed this life in Thy
+faith and fear"--when that fatal, well-known
+scream, as of a vulture darting down on its
+prey, again tore the air.  The men, as they
+had been taught, dropped to the ground like
+stones.  My office demanded that I should
+continue the prayer, and leave with God the
+decision as to how it should end.  There was a
+crash, and the branches of the trees overhead
+trembled as some fragments of shell smote
+them.  But there was nothing more.  The men
+rose as quickly as they had fallen, and all were
+reverently standing to attention before the last
+words of the prayer found utterance.  The
+graves were filled in and we went our several
+ways.  Next day white crosses were placed
+over the five mounds, and we bade them a long
+and last farewell.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="a-soldier-s-calvary"><span class="bold large">XVII</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">A SOLDIER'S CALVARY</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>There is one afternoon on the Somme
+that stands out in my memory like a
+dark hill when the sun has sunk below
+the verge and left a lingering bar of red across
+the sky.  It was a Calvary thick with the bodies
+of our men.  I was looking for the
+Westminsters and they were difficult to find.  I
+passed over one trench and reached another.
+There I asked the men if they knew where the
+Westminsters were, and they expressed the
+opinion that the regiment was in the trench
+ahead.  There was no communication trench
+so I followed a fatigue-party for some distance
+which was marching in single file, and
+carrying hand-grenades to the firing line.  They
+turned to the right and I kept straight on.
+Every few yards I passed rifles reversed and
+fastened in the ground by their bayonets.  They
+marked the graves of the dead.  A few
+soldiers, but newly killed, were still lying out.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>At last I reached a trench and found in it
+a number of Westminsters.  They were
+signalers on special duty, and they told me that
+I had already passed the regiment on my left.
+The poor fellows were in a sad plight.  The
+weather was cold and they were without
+shelter.  There were German dug-outs but they
+were partly blown in and full of German dead.
+The stench that rose from these, and from the
+shallow graves around, was almost unbearable.
+Yet there amid falling shells, the lads had to
+remain day and night.  Their rations were
+brought to them, but as every ounce of food
+and drop of water, in addition to the letters
+from home, had to be brought on pack mules
+through seven or eight miles of field tracks in
+which the mules struggled on up to the knees
+in sticky mud and sometimes up to the belly,
+it was impossible for the regiment to receive
+anything beyond water and "iron rations," i.e.,
+hard biscuits.  Water was so precious that not
+a drop could be spared to wash faces or clean
+teeth with, and I always took my own
+water-bottle and food, to avoid sharing the scanty
+supplies of the officers.  After a little time
+spent with the signalers I moved up the trench
+and looked in at the little dug-out of the
+Colonel commanding.  All the officers present,
+bearded almost beyond recognition, were sitting
+on the floor.  The enemy had left a small red
+electric light, which added an almost absurd
+touch of luxury to the miserable place.  Farther
+up the trench I found the Brigade Staff
+Captain in a similar dug-out and after making
+inquiries as to the position of the Queen's
+Westminster Regiment which was my objective, I
+left to find it; for the sun was already setting.
+The path was across the open fields, and the
+saddest I have ever trod.  I was alone and
+had but little idea of location, but it was
+impossible to miss the path.  On the right and
+left, it was marked at every few steps with
+dead men.  Most of them were still grasping
+their rifles.  They had fallen forward as they
+rushed over the ground, and their faces--their
+poor, blackened, lipless faces--were towards
+the foe.  There had, as yet, been no
+opportunity to bury them for the ground was still
+being shelled and the burial parties had been
+all too busily engaged in other parts of the
+field.  I longed to search for their identity
+discs that I might know who they were and
+make a note of the names; but I had to leave
+it to the burial party.  I was already feeling
+sick with the foul smells in the trench and the
+sights on the way, and lacked the strength to
+look for the discs around the wrists and necks
+of the poor, decomposed bodies.  It had to be
+left to men of the burial party whose nerves
+were somewhat more hardened to the task by
+other experiences of the kind.  It was a new
+Calvary on which I was standing.  These poor
+bodies miles from home and with no woman's
+hands to perform the last offices of affection
+were lying there as the price of the world's
+freedom.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Would that all who talk glibly of freedom
+and justice might have seen what I saw on that
+dreary journey, that they might the better
+realize the spiritual depths of liberty and
+righteousness, and the high cost at which they are won
+for the race.  It is fatally easy to persuade
+ourselves that there is no need for us to tread the
+bitter path of suffering and death--that we can
+achieve freedom and justice by being charitable,
+and by talking amiably to our enemies.  We
+try to believe that they are as anxious to
+achieve liberty for the world as we are, that
+they are striving to bind mankind in fetters of
+iron, only through lack of knowledge as to
+our intentions.  Their hearts and intentions are
+good but they are misled, and after a little talk
+with them around a table they would put off
+their "shining armor" and become angels of
+light carrying palm branches in place of swords
+and fetters.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>This is a mighty pleasant theory, only it is
+not true; and we cannot get rid of evil by
+ignoring it, nor of the devil by buying him a new
+suit.  There are men willing to die to destroy
+liberty, just as there are others willing to die
+in its defense.  It is not that they do not
+understand liberty.  They </span><em class="italics">do</em><span>, and that is why they
+wish to destroy it.  It is the enemy of their
+ideal.  Whether liberty will survive or not,
+depends upon whether there are more men
+inspired to die in defending liberty, than there
+are willing to die in opposing it.  A thing lives
+while men love it sufficiently well to die for it.
+We get what we deserve; and readiness to die
+for it is the price God has put on liberty.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Words are things too cheap to buy it.  When
+someone suggested establishing a new religion
+to supersede Christianity, Voltaire is reported
+to have asked if the founder were willing to
+be crucified for it?  Otherwise, it would stand
+no chance of success.  It was a deep criticism,
+and showed that Voltaire was no fool.  Blood is
+the test, not words.  A nation can only achieve
+liberty when it is determined to be free or die.
+"Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall
+lose it."  "Never man spake" as Christ spake,
+but He did not save the world by talking to
+it, but by dying for it.  Outpoured blood, not
+outpoured words, is the proof of moral
+convictions and the means of their propaganda;
+our soldiers may not be learned in some things,
+but they have learned </span><em class="italics">that</em><span>.  They know the
+cause will win which has most moral power, and
+that the cause with most moral strength will
+prove itself to be the one with most martyrs.
+And the side with most men ready to be
+martyrs will outstay the other.  The spirit of
+martyrdom, not negotiation, is the path to
+liberty and peace.  You cannot negotiate with
+a tiger.  The dispute is too simple for negotiation.
+You have to kill the tiger, or yourself be
+killed.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>While I was on leave, a man told me that
+he had asked some soldiers from the Front
+why they were fighting, and they could not tell
+him.  Probably.  All the deepest things are
+of life beyond telling.  No true man can tell
+why he loves his wife or children.  This trust
+in words, in being able to "tell why," is truly
+pathetic.  I would not trust a wife's love if
+she could tell her husband exactly </span><em class="italics">why</em><span> she
+loved him; nor would I trust our soldiers not
+to turn tail in battle if they could </span><em class="italics">tell</em><span> just why
+they are fighting.  They cannot </span><em class="italics">tell</em><span>, but with
+their poor lipless faces turned defiantly against
+the foe they can </span><em class="italics">show</em><span> why they are fighting.
+Let those who want to know the soldiers'
+reason </span><em class="italics">why</em><span> they fight go and see them there on
+the blasted field of battle, not ask them when
+they come home on leave.  The lips of a soldier
+perish </span><em class="italics">first</em><span>, as his dead body lies exposed on
+the battlefield; his rifle he clutches to the last;
+and it is a lesson terrible enough for even the
+densest talker to understand.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The dead lads lying out in the open with
+their rifles pointing towards the enemy voice
+their reason why loud enough for the deaf
+to hear and the world to heed.  Ideals must
+be died for if they are to be realized on
+earth, for they have bitter enemies who
+stick at nothing.  And we have to defend our
+ideal with our lives or be cravens and let it
+perish.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>History, with unimportant variations, is
+constantly repeating itself; and in nothing is it
+so consistent as in the price it puts on liberty.
+The lease of liberty runs out; the lease has
+to be renewed, and it is renewed by suffering
+and martyrdom.  The dear dead lads whom
+I saw on that terrible afternoon were
+renewing the lease.  With their bodies they had
+marked out a highway over which the peoples
+of the earth may march to freedom and to
+justice.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The view, all too common, that our soldiers
+regard the war as a kind of picnic, and an
+attack as a sort of rush for the goal in a game
+of football, is false--false as sin.  It is a view
+blind to the whole psychology of the war, and
+misses the meaning of our soldiers' gayety as
+much as it ignores their fear and sorrow.  The
+trenches are a Gethsemane to them and their
+prayer is, "Our Father, all things are possible
+unto Thee: take away this cup from me:
+nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>One day, when I went into a mess-room in
+which letters were being censored, an officer
+said to me, "Read this, Padre, there's a
+reference to you, and a candid expression of a man's
+attitude towards religion."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I took the letter and it read: "Our chaplain
+isn't far out when he says, in his book, that
+though we may speak lightly of the church we
+don't think or speak lightly of Christ.
+However careless we may be when we are out of
+the trenches, when we are in we all pray.
+There is nothing else we can do."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>I have been eighteen months with a fighting
+regiment on the Front, and I have never spoken
+to any officer who did not regard it as a
+mathematical certainty that, unless he happened to
+fall sick or be transferred--neither of which
+he expected--he would be either killed or
+wounded.  And I agreed with him without
+saying it.  He does not even hope to escape
+wounds.  They are inevitable if he stays long
+enough; for one battle follows another and his
+time comes.  He only hopes to escape death
+and the more ghastly wounds.  He hopes the
+wound when it comes will be a "cushy one."  The
+men take the same view.  The period before
+going into the trenches, or into battle, is
+to them like the Garden of Gethsemane was
+to Christ; they are "exceeding sorrowful" and
+in their presence I have often felt as one who
+stood "as it were, a stone's throw" from them.
+They are going out with the expectation of
+meeting death.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>On the 1st of July, 1916, twenty officers in
+our regiment went over the top.  Nineteen
+were killed or wounded and the one who
+returned to the regiment was suffering from
+shell-shock and had to be sent home.  Although
+our losses are much lower now, the officers and
+men experience the agony and bloody sweat
+of Gethsemane rather than the pleasure of a
+picnic in Epping Forest.  This explains, too,
+their gayety.  It is the happiness of men who
+know that they are doing their bit for the
+world's good, and playing the man, not the
+cad.  The rise of happiness into gayety is the
+natural reaction from the sorrow and alarm
+which have been clouding their hearts.  In
+peace time they will never know either the
+intensity of joy or sorrow they know now.  A
+man never feels so truly humorous as when he
+is sad.  Humor is a kind of inverted sadness.
+The most exquisite sadness produces the most
+exquisite humor as the deepest wells give the
+sweetest, purest and coldest water.</span></p>
+<blockquote>
+<div>
+<div class="line-block outermost">
+<div class="line"><span>Tears and laughter are never far from one another,</span></div>
+<div class="line"><span>The heart overflows on one side, and then on the other.</span></div>
+<div class="line"> </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>Our soldiers' minds are not filled with
+thoughts of Germans, but with thoughts of the
+friends they have left behind them.  Nor do
+they often think of killing Germans.  They
+neither think so much of the Germans nor so
+bitterly of them as do the people at home.
+The Germans have not the same prominence
+in the picture.  Deeds relieve their emotions in
+regard to the Germans and leave their hearts
+open for the things and folk they love.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>It is commonly supposed (and this idea is
+fostered by some war correspondents), that
+when our men go over the top they are
+possessed with a mad lust to kill Germans.  The
+ultimate aim of a general planning a battle is
+to kill Germans no doubt, for that is the only
+way to achieve victory; and if the Germans do
+not want to be killed they know what to do.
+Let them surrender or retire.  The private
+agrees with the general in the necessity for
+killing Germans, but that is not what he is
+thinking of when he goes over the top; nor is
+it what we should be thinking of in his place.
+He is thinking of the Germans killing him.
+Life is sweet at nineteen or one-and-twenty.  It
+pleads to be spared a little longer.  A lad does
+not want to die; and as he goes over the parapet
+he is thinking less of taking German lives than
+of losing his own.  He knows that German
+heads will not fit English shoulders, and that,
+however many enemy lives he may take, none
+of them will restore his own if he loses it, as
+he is quite likely to do.  He is going out to
+be mutilated or to die.  That is his standpoint
+whatever may be the general's or the
+war-correspondent's.  He goes for his country's sake
+and the right.  It is his duty, and there is an
+end of it.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Most of the killing in modern war is done
+by the artillery and machine-guns.  Comparatively
+few men have seen the face of an enemy
+they know themselves to have killed.  A
+regiment goes out to be shot at, rather than to
+shoot.  Unless this simple fact be grasped, the
+mentality of the soldier cannot be understood.
+The lust for killing Germans would never take
+a man out of his dug-out; but the love of his
+country and the resolve to do his duty will take
+him out and lead him over the top.  It is what
+he volunteered for, but it goes hard when the
+time comes for all that.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The unburied men I saw had, but a short
+while ago, no idea of becoming soldiers.  They
+were the light of a home and the stay of a
+business.  With that they were content.  But
+the challenge came; and they went out to
+defend the right against the wrong--the true
+against the false.  They toiled up a new
+Calvary "with the cross that turns not back," and
+now they lie buried in a strange land.  They
+have lost all for themselves, but they have
+gained all for us and for those who will come
+after us.  Yet although they saved others,
+themselves they could not save.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="the-hospital-train"><span class="bold large">XVIII</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">THE HOSPITAL TRAIN</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>We were carried from our regiments to
+the hospital in ambulance cars.  I,
+and several others, had trench fever.
+Some were suffering from gas poisoning.  One
+lovely boy--for he was nothing more--was
+near to death with "mustard" gas.  The doctor
+at the Dressing Station had opened a vein and
+bled him of a pint of blood.  It was the only
+hope of saving him.  But as the car bumped
+over the rough roads and the gas in his lungs
+grew more suffocating he almost despaired of
+reaching the hospital alive.  Others were
+wounded; and one had appendicitis.  After a
+period in hospital, during which we were
+honored with a visit by General Byng, it was
+decided that we should go to the Base.  We lay
+down on stretchers, and orderlies carried us to
+the waiting cars.  At the station we were lifted
+into the hospital train.  The racks had been
+taken down and stretchers put in their places.
+These were reserved for the "lying cases."  The
+"sitting cases" occupied the seats--one to
+each corner.  It was afternoon and as soon as
+the train began to move tea was served.  The
+train sped on and, about sun-set, a most
+excellent dinner was provided by the orderlies on
+board.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>It was the time of the new moon.  "Keep
+the window open," said one, "it is unlucky to
+see the new moon through glass, and we need
+all the good luck we can get," and he avoided
+looking through the glass until he had seen the
+moon through the open window.  We chatted,
+read our magazines, or slept--just as we felt
+inclined.  The night wore on and at about two
+o'clock we reached Rouen.  Cars rushed us to
+one of the Red Cross hospitals.  A doctor
+slipped out of bed, examined our cards, decided
+in which wards we should be put, and orderlies
+led or carried us thither.  A nurse showed each
+of us to his room.  We were got to bed and
+another nurse brought some tea.  Next
+morning we were examined and put down for
+removal across the Channel.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The nurses are radiant as sunshine, and
+diffuse a spirit of merriment throughout the
+hospital.  It was a pure joy to be under their
+care.  At three o'clock the following morning,
+without previous warning, a nurse came and
+awakened us.  We had half an hour to dress.
+Another nurse then came round with a dainty
+breakfast.  We were then put into cars and
+taken to the hospital train.  It left as dawn
+was breaking, and we were on our way to
+"Blighty."  We had a comfortable journey and
+reached Havre about nine.  Orderlies carried
+us on board ship and we were taken to our
+cots.  Breakfast was served immediately.  We
+felt a huge content; and hoped to be across by
+night.  But the ship remained by the quay all
+day.  In the evening it moved out of the harbor
+and lay near its mouth.  Towards midnight it
+slipped its anchor and headed for home.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>All had received life-belts and a card directing
+us which boat to make for, should the ship
+be torpedoed.  Mine was "Boat 5, Starboard."  My
+neighbor on the right had been on a torpedoed
+boat once and had no desire to be on
+another.  The lights of the ship were obscured
+or put out, and we silently stole over the waters
+towards the much desired haven.  There was
+no sound but the steady thump of the engines,
+and we were soon asleep.  Shortly after dawn
+we awoke to find ourselves in Southampton
+Water.  A water-plane drew near, settled like
+a gull on the water, and then plowed its way
+through the waves with the speed of a motor-boat.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>About nine o'clock we were carried off the
+boat to the station.  Women workers supplied us
+with telegraph forms, confectionery and
+cigarettes; orderlies brought us tea.  We were then
+taken to the train.  It was even more comfortable
+than the hospital trains in France; and we had
+women nurses.  On each side of the train, for
+its full length, were comfortable beds and we
+were able to sit up or recline at our pleasure.
+Lunch was served on board, and of a character
+to tempt the most ailing man.  No shortage
+of food is allowed to obtain on the hospital
+train.  It has the first claim on the food supply
+and it has the first claim to the railroad.  It
+stops at no station except for its own
+convenience.  Even the King's train stops to let
+the hospital train pass.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>We were under the care of a nurse who had
+reached middle life.  She had been on a
+torpedoed hospital ship! on one that struck a
+mine without bursting it; and on another that
+collided with a destroyer in the dark.  She was
+greatly disappointed at the decision which had
+removed nurses from the hospital ships because
+of the danger from submarines.  She fully
+appreciated the chivalry of the men who would
+not let their women be drowned; but it had
+robbed the women of a chance of proving their
+devotion, and she could not see why the men
+should do all the dying.  The women were
+ready to meet death with the men and as their
+mates and equals.  Their place was with the
+wounded whatever might befall, and they were
+ready.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>Hospital trains have run daily for three
+years now, and human nature can get used to
+anything.  We thought, therefore, that the
+people would have become used to the hospital
+train.  But greater surprise never gladdened a
+man's heart than the one which awaited us as
+we steamed out of Southampton.  All the
+women and children by the side of the railway
+were at their windows or in their gardens,
+waving their hands to us.  And all the way to
+Manchester the waving of welcoming hands
+never ceased.  At every station the porters
+doffed their caps to the hospital train as it sped
+past.  There was not a station large or small
+that did not greet us with a group of proud
+smiling faces.  Our eyes were glued to the
+windows all the way.  For one day in our lives,
+at least, we were kings, and our procession
+through "England's green and pleasant land"
+was a royal one.  We passed through quiet
+country districts but at every wall or fence
+there were happy faces.  We wondered where
+they all came from, and how they knew of our
+coming.  There were tiny children sitting on
+all the railway fences waving hands to us.
+One little girl of four or five was sitting on the
+fence by a country station and waving her little
+hand.  We had not seen English children for
+months and Pope Gregory spoke the truth
+ages ago when he said that they are "not
+Angles but Angels."  The sight of them after
+so long an absence was as refreshing to the
+spirit as the sight of violets and primroses
+after a long and bitter winter.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>At Birmingham the train made its only stop.
+Men and women of the St. John Ambulance
+Association boarded the train and supplied us
+with tea; and, as the train moved out, stood
+at attention on the platform.  At Manchester
+we received a warm welcome that told us we
+were in Lancashire.  Men and women helped
+us to the waiting cars and handed cups of tea
+to us.  It was raining of course--being
+Manchester--but as we passed near a railway arch
+a waiting crowd rushed out into the rain and
+startled us with a cry of welcome which was also
+a cry of pain.  Most of the men in the cars
+were Lancashire lads and in the welcome given
+them there were tears as well as smiles.
+Lancashire has a great heart as well as a long head.
+It suffers with those who suffer and the cry of
+the heart was heard in the welcome of its
+voice.  There was a welcome too, at the door
+of the hospital and at the door of each ward.
+Water was brought to our bedside, and then
+a tray bearing a well-cooked dinner.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>We had reached home.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst" id="after-winter-spring"><span class="bold large">XIX</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="bold large">AFTER WINTER, SPRING</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>A man's heart must be dead within him
+if, under the summer sun, he can look
+on the desolated ground of the Western
+battle-front without feeling emotions of
+joy and hope.  In the winter-time the clumps
+of blasted trees looked like groups of forsaken
+cripples.  Their broken branches stood out
+against the gray sky in utter nakedness, as if
+appealing to heaven against the inhumanity of
+man.  In a way, it was more depressing to
+pass a ruined wood than a destroyed village.
+Some of the trees had all their limbs shattered;
+others, thicker than a man's body, were cut
+clean through the middle; others, again, were
+torn clean up by the roots and lay sprawling
+on the ground.  It seemed impossible that spring
+could ever again clothe them in her garments
+of gladdening green.  We imagined the trees
+would appear amid the sunshine of the
+summer black, gaunt and irreconcilable; pointing
+their mangled stumps towards those who had
+done them such irreparable wrong and, as the
+wind whistled through them, calling on all
+decent men to rise up and avenge them of their
+enemies.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>But, suddenly, we found that the reconciling
+spring was back in the woods exercising all
+her oldtime witchery.  Each broken limb was
+covered with fresh foliage and each scarred
+stump put out sprouts of green.  The broken
+but blossoming woods grew into a picture of
+Hope, infinitely more sublime and touching
+than the one to which Watts gave the name.
+It was a picture drawn and colored by the
+finger of God, and it made the fairest of man's
+handiwork look weak and incomplete.  Uprooted
+trees lay on the ground in full blossom,
+and shell-lopped branches again took on the
+form of beauty.  The transformation was
+wonderful to behold.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>And it all happened in a week.  When our
+men went into the trenches the trees were
+black, bare and bruised, but when they came
+out of the front line into the support-trenches
+the wood behind them was a tender green and
+had grown curved and symmetrical.  It seemed
+as if the fairies of our childhood had returned
+to the earth and were dwelling in the wood.
+Although two long-range naval guns lay hidden
+behind it, which, with deep imprecations opened
+their terrible mouths to hurl fiery thunderbolts
+at the enemy, the fairies seemed unafraid and
+daily continued to weave for the trees beautiful
+garments of leaf and blossom.  I have seen
+nothing that brought such gladness to both
+officers and men.  A new spirit seemed abroad.
+We were in a new atmosphere and a new
+world.  The war seemed already won, and the
+work of renewal and reconstruction begun.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>And now the summer had done for the
+ground what the spring did for the trees.  One
+Sunday, I was to hold a service on ground
+that was, in the springtime, No Man's Land.
+Having ample time I left the dusty road and
+walked across the broken fields through which
+our front-line trenches had run.  There were
+innumerable shell holes and I had to pick my
+way with care through the long grass and
+lingering barbed wire.  I had been over the
+ground on the day following the advance.
+Then it was a sea of mud, with vast breakwaters
+of rusty barbed wire.  Now, however,
+Nature's healing hand was at work.  Slowly
+but surely the trenches were falling in, and the
+shell-holes filling up.  The lips of the craters
+and trenches were red as a maiden's--red with
+the poppies which come to them.  Here and
+there were large patches of gold and white
+where unseen hands had sown the mud with
+dog-daisies.  There were other patches all
+ablaze with the red fire of the poppies, and as
+the slender plants swayed in the wind, the fire
+leaped up or died down.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>When the war broke out I was in "Poppyland"
+near Cromer, in East Anglia.  There I
+first heard the tramp of armed men on the way
+to France, and there first caught the strain of
+"Tipperary"--the farewell song of the First
+Seven Divisions--a strain I can never hear
+now without having to stifle back my tears.
+As I passed by these patches of blood-red
+poppies I thought of those old and stirring days
+at Cromer when we watched a regiment of the
+original Expeditionary Force singing
+"Tipperary" as it marched swingingly through the
+narrow streets.  The declaration of war was
+hourly expected and the pier and some of the
+Sunday-school rooms were given to the soldiers
+for billets.  By morning every soldier had
+vanished and we could only guess where, but
+a remark made by one of them to another
+lingers still.  They were standing apart, and
+watching the fuss the people were making over
+the regiment.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>"Yes," he said to his comrade, "they think
+a great deal of the soldiers in time of war,
+but they don't think much of us in days of
+peace."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The remark was so true that it cut like a
+knife and the wound rankles yet.  I have often
+wondered what became of the lad that went
+out to France to the horrors of war, with such
+memories of our attitude towards him in the
+times of peace.  I hope he lived long enough
+to see our repentance.  His memory haunted
+me among the poppies of Beaurains.  In the
+English Poppyland there was nothing to
+compare with the red-coated army of poppies now
+occupying our old front line.  In these trenches
+our gallant men had for nearly three years
+fought and bled, and it seemed as if every drop
+of blood poured out by them had turned into
+a glorious and triumphant poppy.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The spring and summer have taught me
+afresh that there is in our lives a Power that
+is not ourselves.  It is imminent in us and in
+all things, yet transcends all.  "Change and
+decay in all around we see," and still there is
+One who changes not; He "</span><em class="italics">from</em><span> everlasting
+</span><em class="italics">to</em><span> everlasting is God."  He is the fountain of
+eternal life that no drought can touch.  He
+heals the broken tree and the broken heart.
+He clothes the desolate fields of war with the
+golden corn of peace, and in the trenches that
+war has scored across the souls of men, he
+plants the rich poppies of memory.  He drives
+away the icy oppression of winter with the
+breath or spring, and in His mercy assuages
+"the grief that saps the mind for those that
+here we see no more."</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>He who turns rain-mists into rainbows and
+brings out of mud scarlet poppies and
+white-petaled daisies without a speck of dirt upon
+them, is at work in human life.  Out of mud
+He has formed the poppy and out of the dust
+the body of man.  Who then can set Him
+limits when He works in the finer material of
+man's soul?  Eye hath not seen nor heart
+conceived the beauty that will come forth when
+His workmanship is complete.  "If God so
+clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is,
+and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He
+not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith"
+who were made for immortality?  His ways
+are past finding out, but they are good.  He
+puts out the sun but brings forth millions of
+stars in its stead.  At His call they come
+flocking forth as doves to their windows.  He
+blinds Milton but brings into his soul a flood
+of light such as never shone on sea or land,
+and in its rays he sees Paradise, lost and
+regained.  He shuts Bunyan in a noisome prison,
+and closes against him the door to his beloved
+Bedford, but He opens to him a magic window
+that looks on heaven, and the years pass swiftly
+as he watches the progress of the pilgrims
+towards the Celestial City.  In the mud that
+has been stained and even saturated with the
+life-blood of our soldiers, He has made poppies
+to spring to loveliness.  It is a parable He is
+speaking to us, that the heart of man may feel
+and believe that which it is beyond the power
+of the mind to grasp, or the tongue to explain.</span></p>
+<p class="pnext"><span>The wounds of France are deep and deadly
+but they are not self-inflicted and they will heal.
+She will blossom again with a glory greater
+and purer than all her former glories.  She
+is even now finding her soul, and revealing a
+moral beauty and endurance such as few, even
+of her dearest friends, could have foreseen or
+foretold.  For ashes, God has given her beauty,
+and it is worth all her suffering.  Not Voltaire,
+but Joan of Arc is her pride to-day.  When
+I was in Rouen I saw the fresh flowers which
+the people daily place on the spot where she
+died.  France knows where her strength lies.
+Over Napoleon she has built a magnificent
+tomb of marble, but in it, she has not placed
+a single flower.  As I walked through it, some
+time ago, I felt depressed.  It made me shiver.
+It is magnificent, but dead.  One of Joan of
+Arc's living flowers would be worth the whole
+pile.  It is the most tremendous sermon ever
+preached on the vanity of military glory and
+the emptiness of genius when uninspired by
+moral and spiritual worth.  France knows.
+She gives Joan of Arc a flower, but Napoleon
+a stone.  France was never so great as now,
+and never of such supreme importance to the
+world.  We could not do without her.  On her
+coins she represents herself as a Sower that
+goes forth sowing.  It is a noble ideal, and
+truly, where she scatters her seeds of thought
+the fair flowers of liberty, equality and
+fraternity spring up as poppies spring, where the
+blood of our soldiers has watered her fields.
+France is the fair Sower among the nations, and
+it will be our eternal glory that when she was
+suddenly and murderously attacked in her fields
+by her brutal and envious neighbor--who
+shamelessly stamps a bird of prey on his coins
+for </span><em class="italics">his</em><span> symbol, and a skull and cross-bones on
+his soldiers' headgear as the expression of his
+ambition--England came to her rescue, and
+not in vain.  The German sword has gone
+deeply into the heart of France, but it will leave
+not a festering wound but a well of water at
+which mankind will drink and be refreshed.
+Wound the earth, and there springs forth
+water; wound France and there springs forth
+inspiration.  Trample France in the mud, and
+she comes forth pure again, passionate and free
+as a poppy blown by the summer wind.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 3em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><em class="italics small">Printed in the United States of America</em></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span>*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><em class="bold italics large">By CHAPLAIN THOMAS TIPLADY</em></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><em class="bold italics large">FIFTH EDITION</em></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 2em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="bold x-large">The Cross at the Front</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="medium">Fragments from the Trenches.</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="medium">12mo.  Cloth.  </span><em class="italics medium">Net $1.00</em><span class="medium">.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>"'Vivid' is too dim a word to express
+the living pictures which this chaplain has
+seen in France.  Some of the chapters are
+among the finest pieces of pathos we have
+read anywhere.  Read the book and you
+will be a better man for all your
+tasks."--</span><em class="italics">Chicago Standard</em><span>.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 3em">
+</div>
+<p class="center pfirst"><span class="bold x-large">The Soul of the Soldier</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="medium">Echoes from the Western Front.</span></p>
+<p class="center pnext"><span class="medium">12mo.  Cloth.  </span><em class="italics medium">Net $1.25</em><span class="medium">.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst"><span>An astonishing story Chaplain Tiplady
+here has to tell--one in which the very
+foundations of existence seem temporarily
+uprooted, and the world turned upside-down.
+Yet never, in the telling, does he lose the
+unswerving faith and cheering optimism which
+formed the prevailing note of THE CROSS
+AT THE FRONT, nor for a moment relaxes his
+belief that the cause of justice, truth and
+righteousness is that for which the Allied
+armies are now fighting.</span></p>
+<div class="vspace" style="height: 6em">
+</div>
+<!-- -*- encoding: utf-8 -*- -->
+<div class="backmatter">
+</div>
+<p class="pfirst" id="pg-end-line"><span>*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK </span><span>THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER</span><span> ***</span></p>
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@@ -0,0 +1,6314 @@
+.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

+

+.. meta::

+   :PG.Id: 46323

+   :PG.Title: The Soul of the Soldier

+   :PG.Released: 2014-07-18

+   :PG.Rights: Public Domain

+   :PG.Producer: Al Haines

+   :DC.Creator: Thomas Tiplady

+   :DC.Title: The Soul of the Soldier

+              Sketches from the Western Battle-Front

+   :DC.Language: en

+   :DC.Created: 1918

+   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

+

+=======================

+THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER

+=======================

+

+.. clearpage::

+

+.. pgheader::

+

+.. container:: coverpage

+

+   .. vspace:: 3

+

+   .. figure:: images/img-cover.jpg

+      :align: center

+      :alt: Cover art

+

+      Cover art

+

+   .. vspace:: 4

+

+.. container:: frontispiece

+

+   .. figure:: images/img-front.jpg

+      :figclass: white-space-pre-line

+      :align: center

+      :alt: Captain Guy Drummond, 13th Royal Canadian Highlanders. Killed in action, April, 1915. "A SON OF THE MOTHERLAND"

+

+      Captain Guy Drummond, 13th Royal Canadian Highlanders. 

+      Killed in action, April, 1915. 

+      "A SON OF THE MOTHERLAND"

+

+   .. vspace:: 4

+

+.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line

+

+   .. class:: xx-large

+

+      The Soul *of* The Soldier

+

+   .. class:: large

+

+      *Sketches from the Western

+      Battle-Front*

+

+   .. vspace:: 2

+

+   .. class:: medium

+

+      BY

+

+   .. class:: large

+

+      THOMAS TIPLADY

+

+   .. class:: small

+

+      *Chaplain to the Forces*

+

+   .. class:: small

+

+      Author of "THE CROSS AT THE FRONT," etc.

+

+   .. vspace:: 3

+

+   .. class:: medium

+

+      NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO

+      Fleming H. Revell Company

+      LONDON AND EDINBURGH  

+

+   .. vspace:: 4

+

+.. container:: verso center white-space-pre-line

+

+   .. class:: small

+

+      Copyright, 1918, by

+      FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

+

+   .. vspace:: 3

+

+   .. class:: small

+

+      New York: 158 Fifth Avenue

+      Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.

+      London: 21 Paternoster Square

+      Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

+

+   .. vspace:: 4

+

+.. container:: dedication

+

+   .. class:: center medium

+

+      TO THE MEMORY OF THE MANY "WHITE MEN"

+

+   .. vspace:: 1

+

+   I have known and loved in the London Territorials, who,

+   being dedicate to their Country and the cause of Liberty, went

+   over the parapet and did not return.

+

+   |  "These laid the world away; poured out the red

+   |  Sweet wine of youth: gave up the years to be

+   |  Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene

+   |  That men call age; and those who would have been

+   |  Their sons they gave--their immortality."

+

+   .. vspace:: 4

+

+.. class:: center medium bold

+

+   THE MOTHER'S ANSWER

+

+.. vspace:: 1

+

+..

+

+   |  God gave my son in trust to me.

+   |  Christ died for him.  He should be

+   |  A man for Christ.  He is his own

+   |  And God's and man's, not mine alone.

+   |  He was not mine to give.  He gave

+   |  Himself, that he might help to save

+   |  All that a Christian should revere

+   |  All that enlightened men hold dear.

+

+   |  "To feed the guns."  Ah! torpid soul,

+   |  Awake, and see life as a whole.

+   |  When freedom, honor, justice, right,

+   |  Were threatened by the despot's might,

+   |  He bravely went for God, to fight

+   |  Against base savages, whose pride

+   |  The laws of God and man defied;

+   |  Who slew the mother and the child;

+   |  Who maidens, pure and sweet, defiled;

+   |  He did not go to feed the guns,

+   |  He went to save from ruthless Huns

+   |  His home and country, and to be

+   |  A guardian of democracy.

+

+   |  "What if he does not come?" you say;

+   |  Well, then, my sky will be more gray,

+   |  But through the clouds the sun will shine

+   |  And vital memories be mine.

+   |  God's test of manhood is, I know

+   |  Not, will he come--*but did he go*?

+

+   |  JAMES L. HUGHES.

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   PREFACE

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+The sketches in this book and in my

+previous one, "The Cross at the

+Front," are attempts to show the soul

+of the soldier serving in France as I have

+seen it during the year and a half that I have

+been with him.  It is a padre's privilege and

+duty to be the voice with which, in public

+worship, the soldiers speak to God; and

+through which their last thoughts are borne to

+their friends at home.  He is their voice both

+when they are sick or wounded, and when they

+lie silent in the grave.  He speaks of their

+hopes and fears, hardships and heroisms,

+laughter and tears.  As best he may he tries

+to tell, to those who have a right and a

+longing to know, how they thought, and how they

+bore themselves in the great day of trial when

+all risked their lives and many laid them down.

+

+Soldiers, as a rule, are either inarticulate or

+do not care to speak of themselves; and the

+padre has to be their spokesman if ever their

+deeper thoughts and finer actions are to be

+known to their friends.  To do this he may

+have to bring himself into the picture, or even

+illustrate a common thing in their lives by a

+personal experience of his own.  To reveal life

+and thought at the Front in the third person,

+and without sacrificing truth and vividness,

+requires a degree of literary power and art which

+cannot be expected of a padre to whom writing

+is but a by-product, and not his main work.

+

+I have written but little of military

+operations--these things are not in my province.

+Moreover, they are not the things which are

+most revealing.  The presence of Spring is first

+and most surely revealed by the flowers in our

+gardens and lanes; and the soldier is most

+clearly seen in the little things that happen on

+the march--in his billet or in the Dressing

+Station.  Some things are not seen at all.  They

+are only felt, and my opinion about them must

+be taken for what it is worth.  One knows

+what the men are by their influence on one's

+own mind and life.  I do not judge the

+morality and spirituality of our soldiers

+entirely by their habits and speech, for these are

+but outward and clumsy expressions of the

+inner life and are largely conventional.  There

+is something else to put in the reckoning, and

+to find out what the soldiers are worth to us

+we must somehow get behind their words and

+actions and find out what they are worth to

+God, whose terrible wheel of war is shaping

+their characters.

+

+I appraise them mostly by the total effect

+of the impact of their souls on mine.  I know

+their thoughts and feelings by the thoughts

+and feelings they inspire in me.  "Do men

+gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"  There

+are certain thoughts and emotions that

+only come to me strongly when I am with the

+soldiers or when I am living again with them

+in memory, and so, I take these as their gift

+to me and judge the men by their influence

+on my character.  Character is, in its

+influence, subtle as Spring.  Words and actions

+by themselves are too coarse and conventional

+to do anything but mislead us in judging the

+quality of our men.  "By their fruits ye shall

+know them."  Not by their leaves.  Fruit is

+*seed*.  In the seed the tree reproduces itself.

+And reproduction, whether in physical, moral

+or spiritual life, is the test of vitality.

+

+I have not unduly loaded my pages with

+ghastly details of war, because their effect on the

+mind of the reader who has not been at the

+Front would be false and distorting.  The

+reader would be more horrified in imagining

+them than our soldiers are in seeing them.  I

+have tried rather to show life at the Front,

+with its mingling of red and gold, horror and

+happiness, as it affects the soldier; so that his

+friends at home may see it as he sees it, and

+with his sense of proportion.  If I could only

+do it, as well as I intend it, my pictures would

+create a truer sympathy between the home and

+the trench.  Some would find comfort for their

+hearts, and others would awake to a new and

+noble seriousness.  Soldiers have suffered

+much through imperfect sympathies.  They

+have been pitied for the wrong things, and

+left to freeze when they needed warmth.

+Only when we realize their dignity and

+greatness and the true nature of their experiences

+can we be their comrades and helpers.  Life

+at the Front is brutal and terrifying, and yet

+our soldiers are neither brutalized nor

+terrorized, for there is something great and noble

+at the Front which keeps life pure and sweet

+and the men gentle and chivalrous.  When

+"the boys" come home their friends will, in

+almost every case, find them just as bright,

+affectionate and good as when they went out.

+The only change will be a subtle one--a

+deepening in character and manly quality, a

+broadening in mind and creed, and an impatience

+with cant and make-believe whether in politics

+or business, Christianity or Rationalism.

+There will be an air of indefinable greatness

+about them as of men who have been at grips

+with the realities of life and death.

+

+In a footnote to one of his songs, Edward

+Teschemacher says that the gypsies, as they

+wander through the country, leave a sprinkling

+of grass or wild flowers at the cross-roads to

+indicate, to those who come after them, the

+road they have taken.  These flowers are

+known as the "Patterain."

+

+These essays are my Patterain--wild flowers

+plucked in France, and left to mark the red

+path trod during the months I have been with

+my comrades at the Front.

+

+I would the flowers were worthier, but such

+as I have, I give; and they are taken out of

+my heart.

+

+   |  "Where my caravan has rested

+   |    Flowers I leave you on the grass;

+   |  All the flowers of love and memory;

+   |    You will find them when you pass."

+   |

+   |  THOMAS TIPLADY.

+

+.. vspace:: 1

+

+BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, FRANCE.

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   CONTENTS

+

+.. vspace:: 1

+

+.. class:: noindent small

+

+CHAP.

+

+.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

+

+I.  `The Swan at Ypres`_

+II.  `The Roadmakers`_

+III.  `The Glamour of the Front`_

+IV.  `A White Handkerchief`_

+V.  `The Songs Our Soldiers Sing`_

+VI.  `Easter Sunday`_

+VII.  `"Now the Day is Over"`_

+VIII.  `Sons of the Motherland`_

+IX.  `The Terror by Night`_

+X.  `"Eton Boys Never Duck!"`_

+XI.  `"Missing"`_

+XII.  `"It Must be Sunday"`_

+XIII.  `Our Tommies Never Fail Us`_

+XIV.  `The Cross at Neuve Chapelle`_

+XV.  `The Children of Our Dead`_

+XVI.  `A Funeral under Fire`_

+XVII.  `A Soldier's Calvary`_

+XVIII.  `The Hospital Train`_

+XIX.  `After Winter, Spring`_

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`THE SWAN AT YPRES`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   I

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   THE SWAN AT YPRES

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+For three years the storm center of the

+British battle front has been at Ypres.

+Every day and night it has been the

+standing target of thousands of guns.  Yet,

+amid all the havoc and thunder of the artillery,

+the graceful white form of a swan had been

+seen gliding over the water of the moat.  It

+never lacked food, and was always welcome

+to a share of Tommy's rations.  In the Battle

+of Messines--I had the story first-hand from

+a lieutenant of artillery whose battery was

+hidden close by, and who was an eye-witness

+of the incident--a shell burst near the swan,

+and it was mortally wounded.  For three long

+years it had spread its white wings as gallantly

+as the white sails of Drake's flagship when he

+sailed out of Plymouth Sound to pluck the beard

+of the Spaniard.  But now its adventurous

+voyaging was over.  Another beautiful and

+innocent thing had been destroyed by the war

+and had passed beyond recall.  There was no

+dying swan-song heard on the waters, but all

+who saw its passing felt that the war had taken

+on a deeper shade of tragedy.

+

+Many a "white man" had been slain near

+the spot but somehow the swan seemed a

+mystical being, and invulnerable.  It was a relic

+of the days of peace, and a sign of the survival

+of purity and grace amid the horrors and

+cruelties of war.  It spoke of the sacred things

+that yet remain--the beautiful things of the

+soul upon which war can lay no defiling finger.

+Now it had gone from the water and Ypres

+seems more charred than ever, and the war

+more terrible.  The death of the swan revealed

+against its white wings the peculiar inhumanity

+of the present war.  It is a war in which the

+enemy spares nothing and no one.  He is more

+blind and merciless than the Angel of Death

+which swept over Egypt, for the angel had

+regard to the blood which the Israelites had

+sprinkled over the lintels of their doors and

+he passed by in mercy.  To the German Eagle

+every living creature is legitimate prey.  No

+blood upon the lintel can save the inmate; not

+even the cross of blood on the hospital tent or

+ship.  Wounded or whole, combatant or

+non-combatant, its beak and talons tear the tender

+flesh of all and its lust is not sated.

+

+In Belgium and Serbia it is believed that

+more women and children perished than men.

+Things too hideous for words were done

+publicly in the market-squares.  Neither age nor

+sex escaped fire and sword.  The innocent babe

+was left to suck the breast of its dead mother

+or was dandled on the point of the bayonet.

+What resistance can the Belgian swan make

+to the German eagle?  It needs must lie torn

+and bleeding beneath its talons.  The German

+Emperor has waded deeper in blood than

+Macbeth, and has slain the innocent in their

+sleep.  Even the sea is full of the women,

+children, and non-combatant men he has

+drowned.  His crown is cemented together with

+innocent blood and its jewels are the eyes of

+murdered men and women.  The wretched

+man has made rivers of blood to flow yet not

+a drop in them is from his own veins or the

+veins of his many sons.  Napoleon risked his

+life with his men in every battle but this man

+never once.  While sending millions to their

+death he yet consents to live, and protects his

+life with the anxious care a miser bestows on

+his gold.  Alone among large families in

+Germany his household is without a casualty.

+Though a nation be white and innocent as the

+Belgian swan it will not escape his sword, and

+he will swoop upon it the more readily because

+it is unarmed.  The swan cannot live where

+the eagle flies, and one or the other must die.

+

+But the stricken swan of Ypres is not merely

+the symbol of Belgium and her fate.  There

+are other innocents who have perished or been

+sorely wounded.  The whole creation is groaning

+and travailing in pain.  The neutral nations

+are suffering with the belligerent, and the lower

+creatures are suffering with mankind.

+

+Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at

+the front, I think the saddest sight is that of

+dying horses and mules.  Last winter they had

+to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter

+blasts.  It was impossible to keep them clean

+or dry, for the roads were churned into liquid

+mud and both mules and drivers were plastered

+with it from head to foot.  To make things

+worse there was a shortage of fodder; and

+horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding.

+Before the fine weather had given them a

+chance to recover weight and strength, the

+Battle of Arras began, and every living beast

+of burden, as well as every motor-engine, was

+strained to its utmost.  The mule is magnificent

+for war, and our battles have been won as

+much by mules as men.  Haig could rely on

+one as much as on the other.  The mule will

+eat anything, endure anything, and, when

+understood and humored by its driver, will do

+anything.  It works until it falls dead by the

+roadside.  In the spring, hundreds died in

+harness.  In fact, few die except in harness.  They

+die facing the foe, dragging rations along

+shell-swept roads to the men in the trenches.

+

+On two miles of road I have counted a dozen

+dead mules; and burial parties are sent out to

+put them out of sight.  One night, alone, I got

+three dying mules shot.  The road was crowded

+with traffic, yet it was difficult to find either

+an officer with a revolver or a transport-driver

+with a rifle.  I had to approach scores before

+I could find a man who had the means to put

+a mule out of its misery; and we were within

+two miles of our Front.  So rigid is our line of

+defense that those behind it do not trouble to

+take arms.  Even when I found a rifleman he

+hesitated to shoot a mule.  There is a rule that

+no horse or mule must be shot without proper

+authority, and when you consider the enormous

+cost of one the necessity for the rule is obvious.

+I had therefore to assure a rifleman that I

+would take full responsibility for his action.

+He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the

+mule's forehead and pulled the trigger.  A

+tremor passed through the poor thing's body

+and its troubles were over.  It had come all

+the way from South America to wear itself out

+carrying food to fighting men, and it died by

+the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.

+

+The mule knows neither love nor offspring.

+Apart from a few gambols in the field, or

+while tethered to the horse-lines, it knows

+nothing but work.  It is the supreme type of

+the drudge.  It is one of the greatest factors

+in the war, and yet it receives scarcely any

+recognition and more of whipping than of

+praise.  Only too often I have seen their poor

+shell-mangled bodies lying by the roadside

+waiting till the battle allowed time for their

+burial.  Yet what could be more innocent of

+any responsibility for the war?  They are as

+innocent as the swan on the moat at Ypres.

+

+Yet the greatest suffering among innocents is

+not found at the Front at all.  It is found at

+home.  At the Front there is suffering of body

+and mind, but at home there is the suffering

+of the heart.  Every soldier knows that his

+mother and wife suffer more than he does, and

+he pities them from his soul.  War is a cross

+on which Woman is crucified.  The soldier dies

+of his wounds in the morning of life, but his

+wife lingers on in pain through the long garish

+day until the evening shadows fall.  There is

+no laughter at home such as you hear at the

+Front, or even in the hospitals.  One finds a

+gayety among the regiments in France such as

+is unknown among the people left at home.  It

+is the sunshine of the street as compared with

+the light in a shaded room.  There is a youth

+and buoyancy at the Front that one misses

+sadly in the homeland.

+

+To a true woman with a son or husband at

+the Front, life becomes a nightmare.  To her

+distorted imagination the most important man

+in the country is not the Prime Minister but

+the postman.  She cannot get on with her

+breakfast for listening for his footsteps.  There

+is no need for him to knock at the door, she

+has heard him open the gate and walk up the

+gravel path.  Her heart is tossed like a bubble

+on the winds of hope and fear.  She finds

+herself behind the door without knowing how she

+got there, and her hand trembles as she picks

+up the letter to see if the address is in "his"

+handwriting or an official's.  The words, "On

+His Majesty's Service," she dreads like a

+witch's incantation.  They may be innocent

+enough, and cover nothing more than belated

+Commission Papers, but she trembles lest they

+should be but the fair face of a dark-hearted

+messenger, who is to blot out the light of her

+life forever.  If she goes out shopping and sees

+a telegraph-boy go in the direction of her home

+she forgets her purchases and hurries back to

+see if he is going to knock at her door.  The

+rosy-faced messenger has become a sinister

+figure, an imp from the nether world.  He may

+be bringing news of her loved one's arrival "on

+leave," but so many evil faces of fear and

+doubt peer through the windows of her heart

+that she cannot believe in the innocence and

+good-will of the whistling boy.  Her whole

+world is wrapped up in his little orange-colored

+envelope.

+

+The boys at the Front know of the anxiety

+and suspense that darken their homes, and they

+do all they can to lighten them.  There were

+times on the Somme when the men were utterly

+exhausted with fighting and long vigils in the

+trenches.  Water was scarce, and a mild

+dysentery came into evidence.  No fire could be

+lighted to cook food or make hot tea.  The

+ranks had been thinned, and only two officers

+were left to each company.  The weather was

+bad and the captured trench uncomfortable.

+Any moment word might come for another

+attack.  The campaign was near its close, and

+the work must be completed despite the

+prevalent exhaustion.  The officers were too tired,

+depressed and preoccupied to censor hundreds

+of letters.  In front of him each could see a

+gaping grave.  The sun was rapidly "going west"

+and leaving them to the cold and dark.

+Nothing seemed to matter in comparison with *that*.

+To hold services were impossible and I felt

+that the best I could do was to walk through

+the trench, chat with the officers and men,

+gather up the men's letters and take them back

+and censor in my tent.  This gave the officers

+times to write their own, and an opportunity

+to post them.

+

+But note, I pray you, the nobility of these

+gallant fellows.  All of them were exhausted

+and depressed.  The shadows of death were

+thick about them, yet when I opened their

+letters, I found myself--with two exceptions out

+of three or four hundred--in an entirely

+different atmosphere.  It was a sunny atmosphere

+in which birds were singing.  The men said

+nothing of their suffering, their depression,

+their fears for the future.  The black wings of

+death cast no shadow over their pages.  They

+said they were "all right," "merry and bright"

+and "soon going back for a long rest."  They

+told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to

+send, and gave them details how to make up

+the next parcel.  They talked as if death were

+out of sight--a sinister fellow with whom they

+had nothing to do.

+

+The officers, of course, censor their own

+letters, so I did not see how they wrote.  But

+I know.  They wrote as the men wrote, and

+probably with a still lighter touch.  Their

+homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet not

+by any word of theirs would the shadows be

+deepened.  They could not shield themselves

+from war's horrors but they would do their

+best to shield their white swans at home.  They

+could not keep their women folk out of the

+war, but they would deliver them from its

+worst horrors.  Not till they had fallen would

+they let the shafts pass them to their mothers

+and wives; rather would they gather them in

+their own breasts.  In the hour of the world's

+supreme tragedy there was a woman standing

+by the cross, and the august Sufferer, with

+dying breath, bade His closest friend take her,

+when the last beam faded, to his own home

+and be in His place, a son to her.  I know

+no scene that better represents the feelings of

+our soldiers towards their loved ones at home.

+

+Their women gave them inspiration and joy

+in the days of peace, and they still float before

+their vision amid the blackened ruins of war,

+as beautiful and stainless in their purity as the

+white swan on the moat of Ypres.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`THE ROADMAKERS`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   II

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   THE ROADMAKERS

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+We had just marched from one part of

+the Front to another and by a

+round-about way.  Each morning the

+Quartermaster and "the billeting party" went

+on before, and each evening we slept in a

+village that was strange to us.  Each of the men

+carried on his back a pack and equipment

+weighing about eighty or ninety pounds.

+Through sleet and blizzard and, for the

+most part, through open, exposed country,

+we continued our march without a day of

+rest.  By the fifth evening we reached the

+village where we were to have three or four

+weeks of rest and training before entering the

+trenches for the spring offensive.  We had

+unpacked and were sitting at dinner when a

+telegram came announcing that all previous

+plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must

+take to the road again.  Something unexpected

+had happened, good or ill, we knew not which,

+and we had to enter the line in front of Arras.

+For three days more we marched.  Daily the

+sound of the guns came nearer, and the men

+were tired and footsore.  They were also

+deeply disappointed of the long rest to which

+they had been looking forward after a winter

+in the trenches at Neuve Chapelle.  Yet they

+marched cheerily enough.  "It's the War!"

+they said one to another and, true to their own

+philosophy, "packed up their troubles in their

+old kit bags and smiled."  When any man

+faltered a bit, as if about to fall out by the

+way, the others cheered him on by singing

+"Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the

+old Sunday school hymn, "Kind words can

+never die."  Sometimes an officer would

+shoulder a man's rifle to the end of the march,

+or until he felt better.  In eight unbroken days

+of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and

+finally arrived at a camp of huts within a day's

+march of the trenches we are to occupy.  Here,

+where our huts stand like islands in a sea of

+mud, we are, unless suddenly needed, to take

+a few days' rest.

+

+On the ninety-eight miles of road over which

+we tramped, we passed company after

+company of British roadmakers.  In some parts

+they were widening the road, in other parts

+repairing it.  The roads of Northeastern

+France are handed over to our care as

+completely as if they were in England.  Our

+road-makers are everywhere, and as we pass they

+stand, pick or shovel in hand, to salute the

+colonel and shout some humorous remark to

+the laughing riflemen--only to get back as much

+as they give.

+

+This morning I visited the neighboring

+village to arrange for a Sunday service.  The

+roads are hopeless for bicycles at this time of

+the year, so I fell back on Adam's method of

+getting about.  The road to the village was

+torn and broken, and "thaw precautions" were

+being observed.  Everywhere it was ankle-deep

+in mud and, in the holes, knee-deep.  Innumerable

+motor-wagons had crushed it beneath their

+ponderous weight, and my feet had need of

+my eyes to guide them.  In skirting the holes

+and rough places, I added quite a mile to the

+journey.

+

+It was annoying to get along so slowly, and

+I called the road "rotten" and blamed the War

+for its destructive work.  Then I saw that I

+had been unjust in judgment.  The War had

+constructed more than it had destroyed.  The

+road had been a little muddy country lane, but

+the soldiers had made it wide as Fleet Street,

+and it was bearing a mightier traffic than that

+famous thoroughfare night and day.  The

+little road with its mean perfections and

+imperfections had gone, and the large road with

+big faults and big virtues had come.  This

+soldiers' road has faults the farmers' road

+knew not, but then it has burdens and duties

+unknown before, and it has had no time to

+prepare for them.  Like our boy-officers who

+are bearing grown men's burdens of responsibility

+and bearing them well, the road has had

+no time to harden.  To strengthen itself for

+its duties, it eats up stones as a giant eats up

+food.  I had no right to look for the smoothness

+of Oxford Street or the Strand.  Such

+avenues represent the work of centuries, this

+of days.  They have grown with their burdens,

+but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it

+suddenly, and while it was immature.  Oxford

+Street and Fleet Street are the roads of peace,

+and laden with wealth and luxury, law and

+literature--things that can wait.  But on this

+road of the soldiers' making, nothing is

+allowed except it be concerned with matters of

+life and death.  It is the road of war, and

+there is a terrible urgency about it.  Over it

+pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the

+soldiers in the trenches, ambulances bearing

+back the wounded to the hospital.  Whatever

+its conditions the work must be done, and there

+is no room for a halting prudence or the pride

+of appearance.  Rough though it is and muddy,

+over it is passing, for all who have eyes to

+see, a new and better civilization and a wider

+liberty.  I had grumbled at the worn-out road

+when I ought to have praised it.  I was as an

+ingrate who finds fault with his father's hands

+because they are rough and horny.

+

+It was a group of soldier-roadmakers who

+brought me to my senses.  They were making

+a new road through the fields, and it branched

+off from the one I was on.  I saw its crude

+beginning and considered the burdens it would

+soon have to bear.  As I stood watching these

+English roadmakers my mind wandered down

+the avenues of time, and I saw the Roman

+soldiers building their immortal roads through

+England.  They were joining town to town and

+country to country.  They were introducing

+the people of the North to those of the South,

+and bringing the East into fellowship with the

+West.  I saw come along their roads the

+union of all England followed at, some

+distance, by that of England, Scotland and Wales;

+and I regretted that there was no foundation

+on which they could build a road to Ireland.

+I saw on those soldier-built roads, also,

+Christianity and Civilization marching, and in the

+villages and towns by the wayside they found

+a home whence they have sent out missionaries

+and teachers to the ends of the earth.

+

+"The captains and the kings depart."  The

+Roman Empire is no more, but the Roman

+roads remain.  They direct our modern life

+and business with an inevitability the Roman

+soldiers never exercised.  In two thousand

+years the Empire may have fallen apart and

+become a thing of the past; but the roads her

+sons have built in France, these two-and-a-half

+years, will abide forever and be a perpetual

+blessing; for, of things made by hands, there

+is, after the church and the home, nothing more

+sacred than the road.  The roadmaker does

+more for the brotherhood of man and the

+federation of the world than the most eloquent

+orator.  The roadmaker has his dreams and

+visions as well as the poet, and he expresses

+them in broken stones.  He uses stones as

+artists use colors, and orators words.  He

+touches them--transient as they are--with

+immortality.  A little of his soul sticks to each

+stone he uses, and though the stone perishes

+the road remains.  His body may perish more

+quickly than the stones and be laid in some

+quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul

+will never utterly forsake the road he helped

+to make.  In man's nature, and in all his works,

+there is a strange blending of the temporal

+and the eternal, and in nothing is it more

+marked than in the roads he builds.

+

+The roadmaker is the pioneer among men

+and without him there would be neither artist

+nor orator.  He goes before civilization as

+John the Baptist went before Christ, and he

+is as rough and elemental.  Hard as his own

+stones, without him mankind would have

+remained savage and suspicious as beasts of prey;

+and art, science and literature would have had

+no beginning.  His road may begin in war, but

+it ends in peace.

+

+The pioneers I saw roadmaking were, for the

+greater part, over military age, and such as

+I had often seen leaning heavily on the bar

+of some miserable beer-house.  In those days

+they seemed of the earth, earthy, and the stars

+that lure to high thoughts and noble

+endeavors seemed to shine on them in vain.  But

+one never knows what is passing in the heart

+of another.  Of all things human nature is

+the most mysterious and deceptive.  God seems

+to play at hide-and-seek with men.  He hides

+pearls in oysters lying in the ooze of the sea;

+and gold under the everlasting snows of the

+Arctic regions.  Diamonds he buries deep down

+in the dirt beneath the African veldt.  He

+places Christ in a carpenter's shop, Joan of

+Arc in a peasant's dwelling, Lincoln in a

+settler's cabin, and Burns in a crude cottage

+built by his father's own hands.  He hides

+generous impulses and heroic traits in types of

+men that in our mean imaginations we can only

+associate with the saw-dust sprinkled bar-room.

+Only when war or pestilence have kindled their

+fierce and lurid flames do we find the hidden

+nobility that God has stored away in strange

+places--places often as foul and unlikely as

+those where a miser stores his gold.

+

+When Diogenes went about with a candle

+in search of an honest man did he think to

+look in the taverns and slums?  I fancy not.

+Not Diogenes' candle but the "Light of the

+World" was needed to reveal the treasure God

+has hidden in men.  Christ alone knew where

+His Father had hidden His wealth and could

+guide us to it.  In this time of peril when

+every man with any nobility in him is needed

+to stand in the deadly breach, and with body

+and soul hold back the brutality and tyranny

+that would enslave the world we have, like the

+woman in the parable, lit a candle and searched

+every corner of our kingdom diligently.  In

+the dust of unswept corners we have found

+many a coin of value that, but for our

+exceeding need, would have remained hidden.

+To me, the wealth and wonder of the war have

+been found in its sweepings.  Time and again

+we have found those who were lost, and a new

+happiness has come into life.  To the end of

+my days I shall walk the earth with reverent

+feet.  I did not know men were so great.  I

+have looked at life without seeing the gold

+through the dust, and have been no better than

+a Kaffir child playing marbles with diamonds,

+unaware of their value.  I have gone among

+my fellows with proud step where I ought to

+have walked humbly, and have rushed in where

+angels feared to tread.

+

+Life at the Front has made me feel mean

+among mankind.  My comrades have been so

+great.  In days long past, I have trodden on

+the hem of Christ's garment without knowing

+it.  I have not seen its jewels because I, and

+others, have so often trodden it in the mire.

+Yet, through the mire of slum and tavern, the

+jewels have emerged pearl-white and ruby-red.

+And I feel that I owe to a large part of

+mankind an apology for having been before the

+war so blind, callous and superficial.  But for

+the agony and bloody sweat in which I have

+seen my fellows, I should never have known

+them for what they are, and the darkness of

+death would have covered me before I had

+realized what made the death of Christ

+and the sufferings of all the martyrs well

+worth while.  Now there is a new light upon

+my path and I shall see the features of

+an angel through the dirt on a slum-child's

+face.  Words of Christ that once lay in the

+shadow now stand out clearly, for whenever

+we get below the surface of life we come to

+*Him*.  He is there before us, and awaiting our

+coming.

+

+I also understand, now, something of the

+meaning of the words which the Unemployed

+scrawled upon their banner before the

+war--"Damn your charity.  Give us work."  It was

+a deep and true saying, and taught them by a

+stern teacher.  When the war came we *did*

+"damn our charity" and gave them "work."  Many

+a man got his first chance of doing "a

+man's job," and rose to the full height of his

+manhood.  Many hitherto idle and drunken,

+were touched in their finer parts.  They saw

+their country's need, and though their country

+had done little to merit their gratitude, they

+responded to her call before some of the more

+prudent and sober.  Those who were young

+went out to fight, and every officer can tell

+stories about their behavior in the hours of

+danger and suffering which bring tears to the

+eyes and penitence to the heart.  Those above

+military age went out to make roads over which

+their younger brothers and sons could march,

+and get food, ammunition, or an ambulance

+according to their needs.  Among the group

+of middle-aged roadmakers that I saw there

+were, I doubt not, some who had been counted

+wastrels and who had made but a poor show

+of life.  Now they had got work that made

+them feel that they were men and not

+mendicants, and they were "making good."

+

+While I watched them a lark rose from a

+neighboring field and sang over them a song

+of the coming spring.  It was the first lark I

+had heard this year, and I was glad it mingled

+its notes with the sounds of the roadmakers'

+shovels.  Nature is not so indifferent to human

+struggles as it sometimes seems.  The man

+who stands steadfastly by the right and true

+and bids tyranny and wrong give place will

+find, at last, that he is in league with the stones

+of the field and the birds of the air, and that

+the stars in their courses fight for him.  The

+roadmaker and the lark are born friends.

+Both are heralds of coming gladness, and while

+one works, the other sings.  True work and

+pure song are never far apart.  They are both

+born of hope and seek to body forth the

+immortal.  A man works while he has faith.

+Would he sow if he did not believe the promise,

+made under the rainbow, that seed-time and

+harvest shall never fail?  Or could he sing

+with despair choking his heart?  Yet he can

+sing with death choking it.  In the very act

+of dying Wesley sang the hymn, "I'll praise my

+Maker while I've breath."  He sang because

+of the hope of immortality.  He was not

+turning his face to the blank wall of death and

+oblivion but to the opening gate of a fuller

+life.  He was soaring sunwards like the lark,

+and soaring sang,

+

+   |  "And when my voice is lost in death

+   |  Praise shall employ my nobler powers;

+   |  My days of praise shall ne'er be past."

+   |

+

+Joy can sing and Sorrow can sing, but

+Despair is dumb.  It has not even a cry, for a

+cry is a call for help as every mother knows,

+and Despair knows no helper.  Even the saddest

+song has hope in it, as the dreariest desert

+has a well.  The loved one is dead but Love

+lives on and whispers of a trysting place beyond

+this bourne of time, where loved and lover

+meet again.  The patriot's life may be pouring

+from a dozen wounds on the muddy field of

+battle, but his fast-emptying heart is singing

+with each heavy beat, "Who dies, if my country

+live?"

+

+Roadmakers have prepared the way for

+missionaries in every land.  Trail-blazers are

+not always religious men--often they are wild,

+reckless fellows whom few would allow a place

+in the Kingdom of God--but is not their work

+religious in its final upshot?  Do they not,

+however unconsciously, "prepare the way of

+the Lord, make straight in the desert a

+highway for our God?"  Close on their heels go

+the missionaries, urged on faster by the pure

+love of souls than the trader by love of lucre.

+The greatest among the roadmakers was a

+missionary himself--David Livingstone.  And

+for such an one the name Living-stone is

+perfect.  It has the touch of destiny.  Through

+swamp and forest he went where white feet

+had never trod, and blazed a trail for the

+messengers of Christ, until, worn out with fever

+and hardship, he fell asleep at his prayers, to

+wake no more to toil and suffering.

+

+But while the roadmaker bestows benefits on

+us he also lays obligations, for there can be

+no enlargement of privilege without a

+corresponding increase of responsibility.  The roads

+the men are making here in France will be good

+for trade.  They will open up the country as

+did the military roads of Caesar and Napoleon;

+and along them soldiers are marching who, at

+tremendous cost to themselves, are buying for

+posterity great benefits, and laying upon

+posterity great obligations.  Posterity must hold and

+enlarge the liberties won for them, and prove

+worthy of their citizenship by resisting tyranny

+"even unto blood."  We are here because our

+fathers were heroes and lovers of liberty.  Had

+they been cowards and slaves there would have

+been no war for us.  As we follow our fathers

+our sons must be ready to follow us.  The

+present springs out of the past, and the future

+will spring out of the present.  Inheritance

+implies defense on the part of the inheritors.

+

+The very names they give to their roads

+show that our soldiers have grasped this fact.

+The cold canvas hut in which I am writing is

+officially described as No. 1 Hut, *Oxford

+Street*.  A little farther off, and running parallel

+with it, is *Cambridge* Road.  There is also an

+*Eton* Road, *Harrow* Road, and *Marlborough*

+Road.  Students of the universities and schools

+after which these roads are named are out

+here to defend what these institutions have

+stood for through the hoary centuries.  They

+are out to preserve the true conception of

+Liberty and Fair-play, and to build roads along

+which all peoples who desire it can travel

+unmolested by attacks from either tyrants or

+anarchists.

+

+Right from the beginning of the war, the

+idea of a Road has taken hold of the imagination

+of our soldiers.  The first divisions came

+out singing, "It's a long, long way to

+Tipperary, but my heart's right there."  Nowadays

+the popular song is "There's a long, long

+trail awinding into the Land of my dreams."

+

+They are making a Road of Liberty along

+which all nations may pass to universal peace

+and brotherhood, and where the weak will be

+as safe from oppression as the strong.  "It's

+a long, long way to go," but they have seen

+their goal on the horizon, and will either reach

+it or die on the way to it.  They have made

+up their minds that never again shall the

+shadow of the Kaiser's mailed fist, or that any

+other tyrant fall across their path.  These men

+never sing of war.  They hate war.  It is a

+brutal necessity forced on them by the

+ambition of a tyrant.  Their songs are all of peace

+and none of war.  Of the future and not the

+present they sing:

+

+   |  "Tiddley-iddley-ighty,

+   |  Hurry me home to Blighty;

+   |  Blighty is the place for me."

+   |

+

+Whether they sing with levity or seriousness

+(and levity of manner often veils their

+seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and

+goodwill they sing.  To them the war is a

+hard road leading to a better life for

+mankind.  It is to them what the desert was to

+the Israelites, when they left the bondage of

+Egypt for the liberty of the Land of Promise.

+Therefore they must tread it without faltering

+even as Christ trod the way of the Cross.

+"There's a long, long trail awinding into the

+Land of their dreams" and they will not lose

+faith in their dreams however wearisome the

+way.  Elderly navvies and laborers have come

+to smooth the roads for them, and nurses are

+tending those who have fallen broken by the

+way; while across the sundering sea are

+mothers and wives whose prayers make flowers

+spring up at their feet and blossoms break out

+on every tree that fringes the side of the road.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   III

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+There is an undoubted glamour about

+the Front, which when at home, in

+England, cannot be explained.  In the army

+or out of it, the wine of life is white and still,

+but at the Front it runs red and sparkling.

+One day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and

+sat on a box by the side of one of the servants

+of the officer's mess at the Aerodrome near

+by.  He was going into Doullens, a market

+town, to buy food and some little luxuries.

+Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English

+flyers, was, up to the time of his death in the

+air, a member of the mess, and the servant

+was telling me how comfortable all the officers

+make their quarters.  In a phrase he defined

+the glamour of the Front.

+

+"One day," he said, "when we were helping

+him to make his room comfortable, Captain

+Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled,

+'We haven't long to live, but we live well while

+we do live.'"

+

+There you have it.  Life is concentrated.

+Death is near--just round the corner--so the

+men make the most of their time and "live

+well."  It has the same quality as "leave" at

+home.  Leave is short and uncertain, so we

+"live well."  Our friends know it may be the

+last sight of us, and we know it may be our

+last sight of them.  They are kind and

+generous to us, as we are to them; and so, the

+ten days of "leave" are just glorious.  Ruskin

+says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts

+but a second, and that Turner went out early

+in the evening and watched with rapt attention

+for that one second of supreme splendor and

+delight.  He lived for sunsets and while others

+were balancing their accounts, or taking tea, he

+went out to see the daily miracle.  The one

+second in which he saw God pass by in the glory

+of the sunset was to him worth all the

+twenty-four hours.  For one second in each day he

+caught the glamour of earth and heaven, and

+went back to his untidy studios blind to all but

+the splendor he had seen.

+

+That second each day was life, indeed, and

+the glamour of the Front is like unto it.  It is

+the place where life sets, and the darkness of

+death draws on.  The commonest soldier feels

+it and with true instinct, not less true because

+unconscious, he describes death at the Front

+as "going West."  It is the presence of death

+that gives the Front its glamour, and life its

+concentrated joy and fascination.  Captain

+Ball saw it with the intuition of genius when

+he said: "We haven't long to live, but we live

+well while we *do* live."

+

+The immediate presence of death at the

+Front gives tone to every expression of life, and

+makes it the kindest place in the world.  No

+one feels he can do too much for you, and

+there is nothing you would not do for another.

+Whether you are an officer or a private, you

+can get a lift on any road, in any vehicle, that

+has an inch of room in it.  How often have

+I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up

+the back of an empty motor-lorry which has

+stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in.

+It is one of the merriest sights of the war and

+redounds to the credit of human nature.

+Cigarettes are passed round by those who have, to

+those who have not, with a generosity that

+reminds one of nothing so much as that of the

+early Christians who "had all things common;

+and sold their possessions and goods, and

+parted them to all men, as every man had

+need."  You need never go hungry while others

+have food.  Officers are welcome at every mess

+they go near, and privates will get food in the

+servants' kitchen or may go shares with the

+men in any billet.  It may be a man's own

+fault that he took no food on the march, and

+his comrades may tell him so in plain strong

+language, but they will compel him to share

+what they have just the same.

+

+One wet night on the Somme I got lost in

+"Happy Valley" and could not find my regiment.

+Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it.

+It was a pioneers' tent, but they invited me to

+come in out of the storm and stay the night.

+They were at supper and had only a small

+supply of bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea;

+but they insisted on me sharing what they had.

+I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one

+of their blankets.  One of them gave me a

+box to sleep on, while he shared his chum's.

+Some lost privates came in later wet to the

+skin, and the pioneers gave them all the

+eatables left over from supper, and shared out

+their blankets and clothes.  It was pure

+Christianity--whatever creeds they may think they

+believe.  And it is the glamour of the Front.

+England feels cold and dull after it.  Kindness

+and comradeship pervade the air in France.

+You feel that everyone is a friend and brother.

+It will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back

+to their churches.  They have been spoiled by

+too much kindness.  How can they go back

+to the cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow

+judgments which prevail in so many churches--that

+is, unless the war has brought changes

+there also?  And after preaching to dying men

+who listen as it their destiny depended upon

+their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits

+where large numbers in the congregations

+regard their messages as of less importance than

+dinner, and as merely supplying material for

+an exercise in more or less kindly criticism

+during the discussion of that meal?

+

+The glamour of the services at the Front!

+How the scenes are photographed on my

+heart!  As a congregation sits in a church at

+home how stolid its features often are--how

+dull its eyes!  One glance around and the

+preacher's heart sinks within him and his

+inspiration flies away.  Nothing is expected of

+him, and nothing particularly desired.  People

+have come by force of habit, and not of need.

+But how the eyes of the soldiers in France glow

+and burn; how their features speak, and make

+the preacher speak in reply!  Who could help

+being eloquent there!  Such faces would make

+the dumb speak.  One can see the effect of his

+words as plainly in their expressions as he can

+see the effect of wind on a cornfield.  Every

+emotion from humor to concern leaps from

+the heart to the face as the subject touches

+them at, first this point of their life, then at that.

+The men's eyes are unforgettable.  Months

+afterwards they come vividly to mind, and one

+is back again answering the questions they

+silently ask, and seeing the look of content or

+gratitude that takes the place of the perplexed

+or troubled expression.  Eyes are said to be

+the windows of the soul, and as I have spoken

+I have seen men's souls looking out.  At home

+the windows are darkened and there seemed

+to be no souls behind the panes.  The dwellers

+within the houses are busy with other matters,

+and will not come to the windows.  The

+preacher feels like an organ-grinder in the

+street--those who hear do not heed nor come

+to the windows of the soul.  In France there

+is a soul looking out at every window; and the

+preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to

+his listeners of the love of God and of

+the love of women and children which make

+sweet this vale of tears and light man on his

+lone way beyond the grave.

+

+One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the

+singing of a hymn in the ward below, a young

+officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said:

+"Why doesn't the chaplain hold a service for

+us?  Why does he only hold them for the

+Tommies?  We need them and want them,

+just as much as the Tommies.  We are officers

+but we are also men."  I passed the word to

+the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when

+in the evening he gave us a service and the

+officers of the next ward asked the orderlies

+to carry them in.

+

+There is the same naturalness and spirit

+of fellowship between members of various

+churches.  Many lasting friendships have been

+formed between chaplains of differing

+communions.  There has been no change of creed

+but something greater, a change of spirit.

+They have been touched by the common spirit,

+and have lived and worked in free and happy

+fellowship.  On my last Sunday in a hospital

+in France, the chaplain, a canon of the Church

+of England, invited me to read the lesson at

+the morning parade service, and to administer

+the wine at Holy Communion.  This I did;

+and a colonel who was present stayed behind

+to express to us both the pleasure which had

+been given to him by the sight of Anglican

+and Methodist churchmen serving together at

+the Lord's Table.

+

+To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of

+the Front is found in this warm fellowship

+between men of differing creeds and varying

+religious communions.  We have not knocked

+down our garden walls but we have taken off

+the cut glass that had been cemented on them

+by our fathers; and now we can lean over and

+talk to our neighbors.  We have already found

+that our neighbors are human beings, and quite

+normal.  The chief difference between us seems

+to be that while one has an obsession for roses

+the other has an obsession for dahlias.  On

+pansies, sweet peas and chrysanthemums we

+seem equally keen and exchange plants.  A

+Roman Catholic officer who had been appointed

+to the Ulster Division told me that though he

+was received coldly at first, he had not been

+with the Division more than a few weeks when

+every officer in his regiment, and every soldier

+in his company, accepted him as cordially as

+if he were a Protestant.  He was from Dublin

+and they from Belfast, but they did not allow

+it to make any difference, and feelings of the

+warmest loyalty and friendship sprang up.

+His Tommies would fight to the death by his

+side, as readily as around any Ulsterman; and

+he was just as popular in the officers' mess.

+When, he said, it passed the Irish Guards or

+any other Roman Catholic regiment, his

+regiment would sing some provoking song about

+"hanging the Pope with a good strong rope,"

+and the Dublin regiment would reply with some

+song equally obnoxious and defiant; but whereas,

+in peace time, the songs would have caused a free

+fight to the accompaniment of bloodshed, now

+it caused nothing worse than laughter.  The

+songs were just a bit of teasing such as every

+regiment likes to regale another with--perhaps,

+too, a common memory of the dear

+country they have left behind.  The men of

+Belfast and the men of Dublin have learned

+to respect and value one another.  They know

+that in a scrap with the enemy they can count

+on one another to the last drop of blood, for,

+whether from North or South, the Irish are

+"bonnie fighters."  Of such are the miracles

+at the Front.

+

+Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the

+Front is found in the nobility to which

+common men rise.  An artillery officer told me

+that he had in his battery a soldier who seemed

+utterly worthless.  He was dirty in all his

+ways, and unreliable in character.  In despair

+they made him sanitary orderly, that is, the

+scavenger whose duty it was to remove all

+refuse.  One night the officer wanted a man

+to go on a perilous errand and there were few

+men available.  Instantly this lad volunteered.

+The officer looked at him in amazement, and

+with a reverence born on the instant.  "No,"

+he thought, "I will not let him go and get

+killed.  I'll go myself."  He told the lad so,

+and disappointment was plainly written on his

+features.

+

+"But, you'll let me come with you, sir?" he replied.

+

+"Why should two risk their lives," asked

+the officer, "when one can do the job?"

+

+"But you might get wounded, sir," was the

+quick response; and they went together.

+

+An Irish officer told me of one man who

+seemed bad from top to toe.  All the others

+had some redeeming feature but this man appeared

+not to possess any.  He used the filthiest

+language and was dirty in his habits and dress.

+He was drunken and stole the officers' whisky

+out of the mess.  He was unchaste and had

+been in the hospital with venereal disease;

+and neither as man nor soldier was there

+anything good to say of him.  The regiment was

+sent to France, and in due time took its place

+in the trenches; and then appeared in this man

+something that had never risen to the surface

+before.  Wherever there were wounded and

+dying men he proved himself to be the noblest

+man in the regiment.  When a man fell in

+No Man's Land, he was over the parapet in

+the twinkling of an eye to bring him in.  No

+barrage could keep him away from the

+wounded.  It was a sort of passion with him

+that nothing could restrain.  To save others

+he risked his life scores of times.  In

+rest-billets he would revert to some of his evil ways,

+but in the trenches he was the Greatheart of

+the regiment and, though he did not receive it,

+he earned the Victoria Cross over and over

+again.  There is a glamour at the Front that

+holds the heart with an irresistible grip.  In

+the light of War's deathly fires the hearts of

+men are revealed and the black sheep often

+get their chance.  Life is intense and deep and

+men are drawn together by a common peril.

+They find the things that unite and forget the

+things that separate.

+

+"We haven't long to live," said Captain Ball

+joyfully, "but we live well while we *do* live,"

+and in those words he expressed the glamour

+of the Front.  Ball found, as thousands of his

+comrades-in-arms had found, that

+

+   |  "One crowded hour of glorious life

+   |  Is worth an age without a name."

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   IV

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+In his *History of the Somme Campaign*

+John Buchan quotes, from an official

+report, an incident which, though I have

+tried, I cannot get my imagination to believe.

+Probably the incident is a true one but,

+unfortunately for me, my mind will not let it in.

+I cannot visualize it and the report is turned

+from the door as an impostor.  The report

+states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes

+fired on the Germans in their trenches and that

+the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token

+of surrender.  Without the slightest difficulty

+I can imagine all except the white handkerchiefs.

+Where did they get them to wave?

+Men in the firing trenches don't carry anything

+so conspicuous as white handkerchiefs.  To

+draw one out in a thoughtless moment might

+bring a sniper's bullet, and there are risks

+enough without inviting more.  I doubt if in

+any English regiment two white handkerchiefs

+could be found: and I have little expectation

+that more could be found among the enemy.

+Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage

+of the war, if a white handkerchief would be

+regarded as a sign, of surrender.  It might be

+taken as a taunt.

+

+There is nothing more remarkable in the war

+than the psychological change that has been

+wrought in white.  A white feather used to

+be the badge of cowardice and a white flag

+the token of surrender.  It is not so now.

+White has taken on a peculiar sacredness.  If

+a new medal were to be struck of the same

+high value as the Victoria Cross it would

+probably be given a white ribbon, as the other

+has a red or (for the navy) blue.  This

+change in the moral significance of white was

+brought home to me by an incident in a billet.

+I had gone to a barn to give the men some

+shirts and socks that had been sent to me.  I

+stood on the steps, and like an auctioneer,

+offered my goods for acceptance.  "Who wants

+a shirt?  Who a scarf?  Who wants this pair

+of mittens?  Who a pair of socks?"  Hands

+shot up at each question, and the fun grew

+fast and furious.  Then I drew out and held

+up a white handkerchief.  "A-ah!  A-ah!" they

+cried wistfully in chorus.  For a moment

+they stood gazing at it and forgot to raise

+their hands towards it; then, with a single

+movement, every hand shot up.  Unwittingly

+I had stirred them to the depths; and I felt

+sorry for them.

+

+The Magic Carpet of Baghdad is not a

+fiction after all.  In the twinkling of an eye

+my white handkerchief had carried every boy

+and man to his home, and placed him by the

+fireside.  I saw it in their eyes and heard it

+in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices

+as they ejaculated "A-ah!"  They had not

+seen a white handkerchief for months.  The

+last they saw was at home.  A vision of home

+flashed before their minds and they were back

+in the dear old days of peace when they used

+white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were

+unknown to them.  If in battle they were to see

+Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think

+it would make them savage and unwilling to

+give quarter.  They would think the enemy

+was taunting them with all they had lost.  And

+they would be maddened by the thought that

+here were the very men who, by their war-lust,

+had caused them to lose it.  For a German to

+wave a white handkerchief before a British

+soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting a

+red flag before a bull.  It would bring death

+rather than pity.  Anything of pure white is

+rare at the front, and it has gradually taken

+on a meaning it never held before.  About the

+only white thing we have is the paper we write

+home on, and that use of the color helps to

+sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.

+

+In the army it is a term of supreme praise

+to call a man *white*.  When you say a comrade

+is a "*white man*" there is no more to be said.

+It is worth more than the Victoria Cross with

+its red ribbon, for it includes gallantry, and

+adds to it goodness.  A man must be brave to

+be called white and he must be generous, noble

+and good.  To reach whiteness is a great

+achievement.  To be dubbed white is, in the

+army, like being dubbed knight at King Arthur's

+Court or canonized saint in the Church.  He

+stands out among a soldier's comrades

+distinct as a white handkerchief among khaki ones.

+

+I don't know where the term came from,

+but, wherever it may have tarried on the way,

+I think its footprints could be traced back to

+the Book of Revelation for its starting place.

+In the first chapter we have a picture of Christ

+as the first "White Man"--"His Head and

+His Hairs were white like wool, as white as

+snow."  In the second chapter His faithful

+followers are given "a white stone, and in

+the stone a new name written."  Is not the

+new name "White man"?  In the third chapter

+we read of "a few names even in Sardis which

+have *not defiled their garments*; and they shall

+*walk with Me in white*; for they are worthy."  There,

+too, the Laodiceans are counseled to

+buy "white raiment."  In the fourth chapter

+we see the four and twenty elders, sitting

+around the throne under the rainbow arch,

+"clothed in white raiment."  In the sixth

+chapter we have the crowned King going

+"forth conquering, and to conquer" and He is

+sitting on "a white horse," that is, He uses

+"white" instruments to carry out His

+conquests.  Death, in the same chapter, rides on

+a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one.  Under

+the altar were the souls of the martyrs, "And

+white robes were given unto every one of

+them."  And surely the climax is reached when

+we read in the seventh chapter that "a great

+multitude, which no man could number, of all

+nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues,

+stood before the throne, and before the Lamb,

+clothed with white robes."  So striking was

+the scene that one of the elders asked, "What

+are these which are arrayed in white

+robes? and whence came they?"  And the answer is

+given, "These are they which came out of

+great tribulation, and have washed their robes,

+and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

+Therefore are they before the throne of

+God."  In the army white has come back to its

+ancient significance.  The brave and noble

+martyrs of the early Church were given "white

+robes" and in the army to-day the brave and

+pure wear "white robes" in the eyes of their

+comrades.  When Clifford Reed was killed by

+a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel

+wrote of him that he was the "whitest man"

+he had ever known.  He had done more than

+wear "the white flower of a *blameless* life."  His

+virtues were positive, not merely negative.

+He wore a "white *robe*"; not a mere speck of

+white such as a white flower in a buttonhole

+would appear.  White is a positive color, not

+a negative.  Reed was more than "blameless,"

+he was "white and all white."  To our soldiers

+a white handkerchief speaks of home, and a

+"white man" speaks of honor and heroism

+and heaven.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   V

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+The necessity for poetry and song is fully

+and officially recognized by the military

+authorities at the Front.  Every Division

+has its own concert party.  These men are

+chosen out of the ranks because they can sing,

+and their one task is to furnish nightly concerts

+for the men.  They are provided with a good

+hall, or tent, or open-air position; and they are

+given enough money to buy stage scenery and

+appropriate dress.  Everybody attends the

+concerts from the general to the private; and

+while the entertainments last, the war is

+forgotten.  A charge is made at the door but the

+balance sheet is published for all ranks to see;

+and the profits are distributed among the

+Divisional charities.

+

+Among the many Divisional Concert Parties

+may be named "The Bow Bells," "The Duds,"

+"The Follies," "The Whizz-bangs," "The

+Fancies" and, "The Giddigoats."  But, after

+all, the singing in the concert rooms is but a

+small fraction of the singing one hears in the

+Army.  On every march, in every billet and

+mess, there is the sound of singing.  Nor must

+the singing at our religious services and in the

+Y.M.C.A. huts be forgotten.  Song seems

+to be the great renewer of hope and courage.

+It is the joy bringer.  Moreover, it is an

+expression of emotions that can find no other

+voice.

+

+There is no real difference between the songs

+sung by the officers, and those sung by the men.

+All attend the concerts and all sing on the

+march.  The same songs do for both

+commanders and commanded, and I have heard

+the same songs in the men's billets as in the

+officers' mess-rooms.  How real these songs are

+to the soldiers is indicated by one striking

+omission.  There are no patriotic songs at the

+Front.  Except the National Anthem rendered

+on formal occasions, I have never, in eighteen

+months, heard a single patriotic song.  The

+reason is not far to seek.  The soldiers'

+patriotism calls for no expression in song.

+They are expressing it night and day in the

+endurance of hardship and wounds--in the

+risking of their lives.  Their hearts are

+satisfied with their deeds, and songs of such a

+character become superfluous.  In peace-time they

+sing their love of the homeland, but in

+war-time they suffer for her and are content.  They

+would never think of singing a patriotic song

+as they march into battle.  It would be painting

+the lily and gilding refined gold.  Are not their

+deathless deeds, songs for which they make a

+foil by singing some inconsequential and

+evanescent song such as, "There's something in the

+sea-side air."

+

+On analysis I should say that there are five

+subjects on which our soldiers sing.  First, there

+are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it, songs

+of soldier-philosophy.  They know that no

+theory will explain the war; it is too big a thing

+for any sheet of philosophy to cover.  It has

+burst in on our little hum-drum life like a

+colliding planet.  The thing to do is not to evolve

+a theory as to how the planet got astray but

+to clear up the mess it has made.  Our soldiers

+show this sense of the vastness of war-happenings,

+by singing of things having no real

+importance at all, and keeping steadily at their

+duties.  The path of duty is, they find, the only

+path of sanity.  The would-be war philosopher

+they put on one side.  The war is too big for

+him.  Let him leave his explanation of the war

+and lend a hand to bring it to an end.  So they

+sing, with laughing irony,

+

+   |  "We're here because we're here, because

+   |  We're here, because we're here."

+

+Or,

+

+   |  "While you've got a lucifer to light your fag,

+   |  Smile, boys, that's the style.

+   |  What's the use of worrying?

+   |  It never was worth while,

+   |  So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag

+   |  And smile, smile, smile."

+

+Another favorite is,

+

+   |  "Oh, there was a little hen and she had a wooden leg,

+   |  The best little hen that ever laid an egg,

+   |  And she laid more eggs than any hen on the farm,

+   |  And another little drink wouldn't do us any harm."

+

+I have seen them dancing round some old piano

+singing,

+

+   |  "Oh, that fascinating Bow Bells' glide,

+   |  It's a captivating Bow Bells' slide.

+   |  There's a rumor that the puma does it now,

+   |  Monkeys have taken to it,

+   |  Leopards and lions do it.

+   |  All the elephants wear dancing shoes,

+   |  They keep hopping with the kangaroos;

+   |  Hear them chatter, it's a matter for some talk;

+   |  Now the Jungle's got the Bow Bells' walk."

+   |

+

+The second class of song is the Love Song,

+of a more or less serious character.  The

+Tommies came out of England singing "Tipperary,"

+but they dropped it in France, and the only one

+on whose lips I have heard it was a little French

+boy sitting on the tail of a cart.  The chorus

+alone gave it popularity for it was the

+expression, ready to hand, of a long farewell; and

+with its "long long way to go" showed that,

+like Kitchener, the soldiers were not deceived

+by hopes of an early peace.

+

+Now another song with verses more expressive

+of their sentiments has taken its place.

+The chorus runs:

+

+   |  "There's a long, long trail a-winding

+   |    Into the land of my dreams,

+   |  Where the nightingales are singing

+   |    And a white moon beams;

+   |  There's a long, long night of waiting

+   |    Until my dreams all come true;

+   |  Till the day when I'll be going down

+   |    That long, long trail with you."

+

+Then the mood changes, and we hear the lads

+piping out,

+

+   |  "Taffy's got his Jennie in Glamorgan,

+   |    Sandy's got his Maggie in Dundee,

+   |  While Michael O'Leary thinks of his dearie

+   |    Far across the Irish Sea.

+   |  Billy's got his Lily up in London,

+   |    So the boys march on with smiles;

+   |  For every Tommy's got a girl somewhere

+   |    In the dear old British Isles."

+

+Again the mood veers round, and we hear,

+

+   |  "Every little while I feel so lonely,

+   |    Every little while I feel so blue,

+   |  I'm always dreaming, I'm always scheming,

+   |    Because I want you, and only you.

+   |  Every little while my heart is aching,

+   |    Every little while I miss your smile,

+   |  And all the time I seem to miss you;

+   |  I want to, want to kiss you,

+   |    Every, every, every little while."

+   |

+

+Here is part of a song I have heard sung,

+many and many a time, by young officers and

+men whose voices are now silent in death:

+

+   |  "If you were the only girl in the world,

+   |  And I were the only boy,

+   |  Nothing else would matter in the world to-day,

+   |  We could go on loving in the same old way;

+   |  A Garden of Eden just made for two,

+   |  With nothing to mar our joy;

+   |  I would say such wonderful things to you,

+   |  There would be such wonderful things to do,

+   |  If you were the only girl in the world,

+   |  And I were the only boy."

+   |

+

+Sometimes the imagination will wander into

+the days that are to be--for some--and they

+sing,

+

+   |  "We don't want a lot of flags flying,

+   |    We don't want your big brass bands;

+   |  We don't want a lot of speechifying,

+   |    And we don't want a lot of waving hands;

+   |  We don't want a lot of interfering,

+   |    When we've safely crossed the foam;

+   |  But we *do* want to find the girls we left behind,

+   |    When we all come marching home."

+   |

+

+Will the girls remember!  The words are

+not without tragedy.  How deeply some of the

+men love may perhaps never be realized by

+those at home.  The longing of their hearts is,

+at times, almost unbearable.  A captain, past

+middle life, took my arm one day and led me

+aside.  He was, he said, a little anxious about

+himself, for he was getting into the habit of

+taking more drink than he was wont to take.

+He had been taking it when he felt lonely and

+depressed to ease the longing of his heart.

+

+"I never touch it at home," he said, "the

+society of my dear little wife is all the stimulant

+I need.  I would give the world to be with

+her now--just to sit in my chair and watch her

+at her sewing or knitting.  The separation is

+too much for me and, you know, it has lasted

+nearly three years now."

+

+I have caught this yearning in more than one

+of the songs our soldiers sing, but especially in

+the following, which is called "Absent":

+

+   |  "Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass,

+   |  The little truant waves of sunlight pass;

+   |  My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while

+   |  Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.

+

+   |  "And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart,

+   |  The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart;

+   |  From my fond lips the eager answers fall,

+   |  Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call."

+   |

+

+The men's thoughts pass easily from the

+sweetheart to the mother who bore them, and

+we have a third class, the Home Song.  I

+have been awakened in the night by men, going

+up to the line, singing "Keep the Home Fires

+Burning."  It is very thrilling to hear in the

+dead of night, when every singer is within range

+of the enemy's guns.

+

+Another great favorite is,

+

+   |  "They built a little garden for the rose,

+   |    And they called it Dixie-land;

+   |  They built a summer breeze to keep the snows

+   |    Far away from Dixie-land;

+   |  They built the finest place I've known,

+   |    When they built my home sweet home;

+   |  Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton,

+   |    From the clover to the honey-comb,

+   |  And then they took an angel from the skies

+   |    And they gave her heart to me.

+   |  She had a bit of heaven in her eyes

+   |    Just as blue as blue can be;

+   |  They put some fine spring chickens in the land,

+   |    And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan.

+   |  They made it twice as nice as paradise,

+   |    And they called it Dixie-land."

+   |

+

+Being Londoners, the following song called

+"Leave" never fails in its appeal to our Division:

+

+   |  "I'm so delighted, I'm so excited,

+   |  With my folks I'm going to be united.

+   |  The train's departing, 'twill soon be starting;

+   |  I'll see my mother, my dad and my baby brother.

+   |  My!  How I'll meet them, My! how I'll greet them.

+   |  What a happy happy day.

+   |  Just see that bustle, I'd better hustle,

+   |  Good-bye--so long--can't stay--

+

+   |  Chorus

+

+   |  "I'm on my way back to dear old Shepherd's Bush,

+   |  That's the spot where I was born,

+   |  Can't you hear the porter calling,

+   |  Queen's Road, Piccadilly, Marble Arch and Bond Street?

+   |  Oh, I'll not hesitate, I'll reach the gate;

+   |  Through the crowd I mean to push,

+   |  Find me a seat anywhere--please anywhere,

+   |  Tram, train, tube, 'bus I don't care--

+   |  For mother and daddy are waiting there--

+   |  In dear old Shepherd's Bush."

+   |

+

+On the eve of one big battle, a soldier

+handed me a letter in which he gave me the

+addresses of his father and his sweetheart, so

+that I could write to them if he fell.

+

+"In the last battle," he said, "one of my

+brothers was killed and another wounded.  If I

+fall I shall die without regrets and with a heart

+content; but it will go hard with those at home;

+and I want you to break the news gently.

+These are terrible times for those at home."  "These

+are terrible times *for those at home*."  That

+is their constant refrain, and it finds an

+echo in a song often sung by them.

+

+   |  "It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky,

+   |    Where the blue-bells grow 'round the old cabin door;

+   |  It's a long, long way and I'll be mighty lucky

+   |    When I see my dear old mammy once more.

+   |  So weep no more, my lady,

+   |    Just brush those tears away;

+   |  It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky,

+   |    But I'm bound to get there some day."

+   |

+

+But the chief favorite of all Home Songs is,

+I think, the following:

+

+   |  "There's an old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned street;

+   |    In a quaint little old-fashioned town;

+   |  There's a street where the cobble stones harass the feet,

+   |    As it straggles up hill and then down;

+   |  And, though to and fro through the world I must go,

+   |    My heart while it beats in my breast,

+   |  Where e'er I may roam, to that old-fashioned home

+   |    Will fly like a bird to its nest.

+

+   |  "In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned street,

+   |    Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair;

+   |  I can see their two faces so tender and sweet,

+   |    And I love every wrinkle that's there.

+   |  I love ev'ry mouse in that old-fashioned house

+   |    In the street that runs up hill and down;

+   |  Each stone and each stick, ev'ry cobble and brick,

+   |    In that quaint little old-fashioned town."

+   |

+

+The charm of the Army is its comradeship.

+Our soldiers have left their homes and friends

+but they have found new friends, and some of

+the friendships have become very precious.

+Men slept side by side in barn and trench,

+cooked their rations at the same little wood fire,

+and stood together in the hour of danger and

+imminent death.  Many of them owe their lives

+to their comrades.  There are few songs that

+express this wonderful comradeship, but there

+is one that is known and sung through the

+army.  It represents the Songs of Comradeship:

+

+   |  "When you come to the end of a perfect day,

+   |    And you sit alone with your thought,

+   |  While the chimes ring out with a carol gay,

+   |    For the joy that the day has brought;

+   |  Do you think what the end of a perfect day

+   |    Can mean to a tired heart,

+   |  When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,

+   |    And the dear friends have to part?

+

+   |  "Well, this is the end of a perfect day,

+   |    Near the end of a journey too;

+   |  But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,

+   |    With a wish that is kind and true.

+   |  For mem'ry has painted this perfect day

+   |    With colors that never fade;

+   |  And we find at the end of a perfect day

+   |    *The soul of a friend we've made*."

+   |

+

+The fifth class of song is that of the inner

+life.  It is the Religious Hymn.  The soldiers

+are extremely fond of hymns in their services.

+You cannot give them too many.  "Rock of

+Ages," "Jesus lover of my soul," "Fight the

+good fight," "There is a green hill," "At even

+ere the sun was set," "O God our help in ages

+past," and "Eternal Father strong to save"

+cannot be chosen too often.  But there are two

+hymns which have stood out above all others;

+they are "Abide with me," and "When I

+survey the wondrous Cross."

+

+There is nothing written by the hand of man

+which can compete with these two in the

+blessing and strength which they have brought to our

+soldiers, especially during an offensive when

+death has cast his shadow over the hearts of

+all.  During the bitterest weeks in the Somme

+fighting there was scarcely a service in which

+we did not sing "When I survey the wondrous

+Cross."  With its assurance of redemption it

+gave comfort in the face of death.  It also

+gave, for an example, the Supreme Sacrifice.

+

+Some of the songs I have quoted look bare

+and ungainly as trees in winter, but when the

+musician has clothed them with music and the

+singer added to them a touch of his own

+personality they are fair as trees in summer.  Still

+the fact remains that none of these songs will

+live on their own merits.  They are not born

+to immortality.  Like the daisies they have

+their day and pass away to make room for

+others.  It is best so.  There is not room in

+the world for everything to be immortal, and

+the transient has a work of its own to do.

+The charm and rare beauty of the English

+countryside are due to the transience of its

+flowers and foliage and little of the evergreen

+is enough.  We tire of the eternal.  The

+transient songs I have quoted here have been

+meat and drink to our soldiers in the most

+terrible war ever waged.  They may be poor stuff

+in comparison with our classic songs but a good

+appetite can get nourishment out of plain food

+and grow strong on it.  For the purpose in

+hand these songs have been better than the

+classics; otherwise they would not have been

+chosen.  There is a time and place for all

+things.  The robin may not be compared with

+the nightingale but it is not the less welcome,

+for it sings when the nightingale is silent.  Our

+soldiers' songs will die, some are already dead,

+but they have done their work and justified

+their existence.  They have given pleasure and

+strength to men as they went out to do

+immortal deeds.  No wounded soldier, or parched

+traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water

+because it perished in the using; and so it is with

+the songs our soldiers sing.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`EASTER SUNDAY`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   VI

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   EASTER SUNDAY

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+Night and day for a week, the fearful

+bombardment continued.  Our guns

+were everywhere, and belching forth

+without intermission.  Dumps of shells were

+almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field,

+and processions of ammunition-wagons piled

+the shells up faster than the gorging guns

+could take them.  The noise was something

+beyond imagination.  It was as though all the

+devils in hell had come out to demoniacally

+celebrate the end of the world.  We were

+living--two transport officers and I--in an empty

+farm-house that, some time before we came in,

+had been a target for direct hits.  One shell

+had gone through the roof, and another

+through the gable wall.  The windows had

+been shattered, and the garden and fields were

+pitted with shell-holes.  Our first care had been

+to look at the cellar, but we had decided, if

+things became too hot, to make for the open

+fields.  We all slept in the same room, and

+were at times wakened up by "an arrival" and

+passed an opinion as to its distance.  If, for

+a time, none came nearer, we turned over and

+went to sleep again, for a man must sleep even

+though it be on the edge of a volcano.

+

+One morning the servants found a shell

+nose-cap beneath the window--just that, and

+nothing more.  The week was wearing on.

+Another morning some of the 7th Middlesex

+Regiment were in the baths in the village over

+the way, and a company of the London

+Scottish was passing by.  Two shells fell in the

+road.  The bathers scampered out of the bath

+and ran naked, here and there, for shelter;

+the Scottish "scattered"; but some forty-five

+soldiers, mostly kilted, lay in the road dead

+or wounded.  In the dead of night a party of

+machine gunners, just returned from the

+firing-trench, stood outside their billet in our village

+square debating if they should make a cup of

+tea before turning in to sleep.  A shell

+decided the matter, and, next morning, I laid

+two of them to rest in the little cemetery, and

+the others stood by as mourners.

+

+The week of terror reached its crisis on the

+Sunday--an Easter Sunday never to be

+forgotten.  The infantry of the Brigade had been

+away to a camp, beyond range, for a week's

+rest.  They had now returned ready for the

+battle.  Three of the regiments had taken up

+their positions in the reserve trenches, but my

+own regiment was quartered in the fatal

+village.  The day dawned bright and fair, but

+its smiles were the smiles of a deceiver.  The

+Germans had decided on the destruction of the

+village, a sort of devil's "hail-and-farewell"

+before being driven back at the points of

+bayonets.  We were awakened by the firing of

+machine-guns over our heads, and rushed to the

+door to see a fight in the air.  High up in the

+blue, two aeroplanes circled about for

+positions of vantage, and then rushed at one another

+like hawks in mortal combat.  A silence

+followed.  Then one rose and made off towards

+the battle-line but fell to a shot of our

+gunners before it could reach safety.  The other,

+with its petrol-tank on fire, was planing down

+to earth.  Down and down an invisible spiral

+staircase it seemed to rush, while the golden

+fire burnt at its vitals, and a trailing cloud

+of smoke marked its path of doom.  Breathlessly

+we watched its descent.  It was under

+perfect control, but its path to the ground was

+too long and spiral, and the faster it rushed

+through the air the greater the draught

+became and the more madly the flames leapt up.

+Every second was precious and the certainty

+of its doom made us sick.  We saw the body

+of the observer fall out, and still the flaming

+machine pursued its course.  Then the wings

+fell away and twirled to the ground like

+feathers, while the engine and the pilot dropped

+like a stone.  When the bodies were picked

+up, it was found that the observer had been

+shot through the head, and that the pilot, with

+his dead comrade behind him, had worked the

+wheel until the furious encroaching flame had

+swept over him, and robbed him of mortal life.

+

+Shells were now dropping in the village

+every few minutes.  Our farm-house was on the

+right wing, and we stood watching the

+bombardment.  With each burst there rose a cloud

+of black smoke and red brick-dust, and we

+knew that another cottage has been destroyed.

+Then the shells began to creep round to the

+right as if the enemy was feeling for the

+bridge over which the ammunition wagons

+were passing.  On one side of the little bridge

+was a white bell-tent, and we watched the

+shells dropping within a few feet of it

+without destroying it.  Between the tent and our

+street lay a stagnant pool, and we saw about

+a dozen shells fall in its water.  The range

+was lengthening and it seemed as if some

+invisible octopus were stretching out its feelers

+towards us.  A shell smashed against the

+farm-house at the bottom of our street.  The

+deadly thing was coming nearer.  Some of our

+sergeants were in a farm-house a few doors

+away, and, hearing a shell fall in the field

+between them and the pool, they came to the

+decision that the moment had come "to

+scatter," but they were too late.  It would have

+been better had they stayed indoors.  As they

+rushed out a shell burst over the yard three

+of them fell to the ground dead, and three

+more were blown back into the house by the

+force of the explosion.  The coping stone of

+the outhouse where the shell burst was blown

+away and three ragged seams were scored on

+the green doorway of the yard outside which

+the three lads lay dead.  One of them had,

+ten days before, shown me to my billet thirty

+yards farther up.  He acted as interpreter to

+the regiment and as he had not to go into the

+line, we thought that he was one of those who

+would see the end of the war.  Yet there he lay.

+

+But the worst calamity of the day was yet

+to befall.  Some fifteen or sixteen ammunition

+wagons, unable to get through the village, had

+halted in the Square--"Wipers Square" it had

+been named.  Each wagon was loaded with

+nine-point-two shells.  An enemy-shot fell on a

+wagon and set it on fire; then the village

+became like unto Sodom and Gomorrah on their

+day of doom.  One or two drivers bravely

+stuck to their wagons, and got them out but

+the rest of the wagons were lost.  The scene

+that followed was indescribable.  Doré could

+never have pictured such horrors.  The wagons

+all caught fire and their loads of shells began

+to explode.  We stood out in the fields and

+watched the conflagration, while all the time

+the Germans continued to shell the village.

+The large village-hall and the houses on each

+side of the square were utterly destroyed.

+Great explosions sent fragments of wagons and

+houses sky-high, and showers of missiles fell

+even where we stood.  The fore part of one

+wagon was blown on to the roof of a house.

+Houses caught fire and blazed all afternoon.

+Some machine-gunners joined us and told how,

+when choking smoke began to penetrate into

+their cellar they had to rush through the square

+and its bursting shells to preserve their lives.

+A German shell burst in a billet where a platoon

+of our men were sheltering in the cellar, and

+those who were not killed by the shell were

+crushed to death by the fall of the house.

+Another shell hit the roof of the house in the

+cellar of which was our Advanced Dressing

+Station for the morrow's battle.  Two

+orderlies who happened to be in the street were

+killed, and the colonel was knocked down.  In

+the cellars of almost every house were soldiers

+or civilians, and all day the ammunition wagons

+continued burning; shell after shell getting red

+hot and exploding.

+

+All day the German bombardment continued

+and, amid a terrific din, our own gunners

+returned a score or more for every one received.

+By the bridge another long line of loaded

+ammunition wagons stood for two hours, and

+though shells were bursting close by, not one

+hit the wagons.  The drivers stood by them

+and, as soon as the road was cleared, got them

+away to the guns.  Yet, while the Square was

+burning and the German shells falling,

+hundreds of men from the London regiments

+entered the village from the right, and crossed

+the bridge to stack their packs so as to be

+ready for the coming battle.  They walked in

+single file and with wide gaps between, but not

+a man ran or quickened his pace.  My blood

+tingled with pride at their courage and anger

+at their carelessness.  What *would* make a

+British soldier run?  An officer was walking

+near the pool.  A shell fell near enough for

+fragments to kill him, but he merely looked

+round, stopped to light a cigarette and walked

+leisurely on as if nothing had happened.

+Three men stood with their backs against a

+small building near the bridge as if sheltering

+from the rain.  Several shells fell

+uncomfortably near, so, concluding that the rain had

+changed its direction, they moved round the

+corner.  And it was not till more shells had

+fallen near them that they condescended to

+move away altogether.

+

+Yet this was not bravado for, so far as they

+knew, no one was watching them.  It was due

+to a certain dignity peculiar to our fighting

+man.  He is too proud to acknowledge defeat.

+He is a man, and whether any one is watching

+or not, he is not going to run away from a

+shell.  Hundreds of lives must have been lost

+through this stubborn pride but, on the other

+hand, thousands of lives must have been saved

+by it, for it makes the Army absolutely proof

+against panic, than which, nothing is so fatal

+in war.  In eighteen months on the Front I

+have never seen or heard of a single case of

+panic either with many or few.  Our soldiers

+are always masters of themselves.  They have

+the coolness to judge what is the wisest thing

+to do in the circumstances, and they have the

+nerve to carry it out.  They run unnecessary

+risks through pride but never through panic.

+All that day on the bridge, a military

+policeman stood at his post of duty.  Like Vesuvius

+of old the exploding shells in the Square sent

+up their deadly eruption, and like the Roman

+sentry at Pompeii, he stood at his post.  As

+he stood there I saw a young French woman

+leave her house and pass him on the bridge.

+She was leaving the village for a safer place

+but she seemed quite composed and carried a

+basket on her left arm.

+

+While our village was being destroyed we

+were startled by a tremendous explosion a few

+miles away; and looking to our left we saw

+a huge tongue of flame leap up to the sky,

+followed by a wonderful pillar of smoke which

+stood rigid for some moments like a monster

+tower of Babel reaching up to the heavens.

+Evidently a dump of cordite had been fired

+by an enemy shell.  Farther off still, another

+dump was on fire.  Time and again, bright

+flames leapt from the ground only to be

+smothered again by dense curling masses of smoke.

+It seemed as if our whole front was on fire,

+and news came to us that our main road of

+communication had been heavily shelled, and

+was now strewn with dead horses and men.

+Before the battle of the Somme there were no

+signs and portents so terrible as these: It was

+evident that the enemy knew what was in store

+for him on the morrow, and was preparing

+against it, but if the prelude was so magnificent

+in its terror, what would the battle be?

+Imagination staggered under the contemplation.  By

+four o'clock the bombardment was almost at an

+end, and nearly all the shells in the Square had

+exploded.  The soldiers began to creep out of

+the cellars.  On passing through the Square we

+were amazed at the sight.  In fact the

+Transport Officer passed through at my side without

+recognizing the place.  At the entrance was a

+team of six dead mules lying prone on the

+ground and terribly torn.  Two rows of houses

+had disappeared, leaving mere heaps of stones

+in their places.  The pavement was torn up,

+and the wrecks of the ammunition wagons lay

+scattered about.  Two houses were still

+burning.  Our colonel and adjutant we found by

+the side of the stream.  They had been in a

+cellar near the Square all day but, fortunately,

+they were little the worse for the experience.

+They were giving orders for the assembling

+of the scattered regiment.

+

+By this time, civilians were leaving the

+cellars, and with armfuls of household goods

+hastening from the village.  To them it seemed

+the end of all things--the day of doom.  Some

+of them had slight wounds and as they passed

+us they cried mournfully, "Finis, Messieurs,

+Finis."  All was lost.  This exodus of the

+despairing civilians was the saddest sight of the

+day.  By sunset the regiment had been gathered

+together--all except the wounded who had

+been sent to the Main Dressing Station and

+the dead who had been placed side by side and

+covered with blankets.  Most of our officers

+and men had lost all their belongings, but in

+the twilight they marched out of the village

+and took their places in the reserve trenches

+near the other battalions.  These had suffered

+no losses.  They had been saved the long day's

+agony.  Early in the morning the battle was

+to begin but the Westminsters knew that no

+worse experience could await them than that

+through which they had already passed.

+

+Next morning I buried, near the ruined

+church, the bodies of the sergeants who had

+been killed a few doors from us; and on the

+following day I laid to rest, side by side, in one

+long grave, two drivers who had died at their

+posts in the Square, together with an officer

+and twenty men belonging to the 1st Queen's

+Westminster Rifles.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`"NOW THE DAY IS OVER"`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   VII

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   "NOW THE DAY IS OVER"

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+Achicourt is a little village about

+a mile out of Arras.  It has two

+churches, one Roman Catholic, the

+other, Lutheran.  The former church has been

+utterly destroyed by German shells, and will

+have to be rebuilt from the foundations.  The

+Lutheran church was less prominently placed,

+and its four walls are still standing.  Its

+humility has saved it, but, as by fire.  All its

+windows are gone, and its walls are torn and

+scarred by fragments of shells.  Most of its

+slates have been destroyed and the rain pours

+through the roof.  But, on dry days, and until

+the Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little

+place for services.  It stood, however, at a

+corner of the village Square, and the Square

+was destroyed by hundreds of exploding shells

+on Easter Sunday.  As I passed it in the

+afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered,

+my heart grew sad within me.

+

+Often it had sheltered us at worship, and

+many of our most sacred memories will, for

+ever, cling like ivy to its walls.  The door was

+smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as

+by lightning.  The pews were strewn on the

+floor with their backs broken; even the frames

+of the windows had been blown out.  There

+was a little portable organ that we had used

+with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the

+floor like a slaughtered child.  The floor was

+white with plaster, as when a sharp frost has

+brought low the cherry blossom.  Never again,

+I thought, should I gather my men for worship

+within its humble, hospitable walls.  One more

+of the beautiful and sacred things of life had

+perished in this all-devouring war.  Only the

+fields remained, and there all my future services

+must be held.

+

+But "fears may be liars" and so mine proved.

+I had reckoned without the man in khaki--that

+master of fate whose head "beneath the

+bludgeonings of chance, is bloody but

+unbowed."  In a week he had cleared the Square

+of its dead--mules and men--filled in its

+craters, and cleared away the debris that

+blocked the roads.  He was even removing the

+fallen houses in order to mend the roads with

+their bricks and stones; and he had thrown

+together all the scraps of iron for salvage.

+There I found, lying side by side, the burned

+tin-soldiers of the children; officers' revolvers

+which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat;

+bayonets and rifle-barrels of the men; broken

+sewing machines of the women.  He had taken

+in hand, too, the little church.  Sacking was

+spread across the windows; the remnants of

+the little organ were carefully placed under

+the pulpit where they lay like the body of a

+saint beneath an altar; the floor was swept of

+its fallen plaster.  The pews were repaired and

+placed in order again, and a new door was

+made.  Even timber was brought for a new

+vestibule.  The wood was rough and

+unpainted--Tommy had to use what he could

+get--but it served.  The twisted railings were

+drawn away from the entrance, and, on the

+following Sunday, we were back in our old

+sanctuary.  We felt that it was more sacred

+than ever.  These are the deeds of our

+fighting-man that make us love him so much, and

+these are the acts of kindness and common

+sense that make us admire our commanders.

+Both officers and men have the heart of a lion

+in the hour of battle, the gentleness of a lamb

+when it is over.  Whatever their circumstances,

+they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget

+the fathers that begat them.

+

+Let him who doubts the future of England

+come hither.  He will see the past through the

+present, and the future through both.  Tommy's

+eyes are the crystal gazing-glasses in which he

+will discern the future.  Tommy is living

+history and the prophecy of the future made

+flesh.  The pessimists have not seen Tommy

+here, and that is why they are what they are.

+"Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his

+infinite freshness and resource.  He is a sword

+that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the

+might of an enemy break, and he will be found

+flashing wherever there are wrongs to right and

+weak to be defended.  On Easter Sunday he

+was calmly enduring the horror of the German

+bombardment and the explosions of his own

+dump of shells.  On Easter Monday he was

+driving the Germans at the point of his bayonet,

+or accepting their surrender at the doors of

+their dug-outs!  On Easter Tuesday and

+Wednesday he was repairing a little French

+chapel for worship.  Take him which day

+you will, and you will find him mighty hard to

+match.  To me he is the king of men, and

+his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness

+beyond the range of explanations.

+

+After some weeks of fighting we had come

+to our last Sunday in Achicourt, and were

+gathered for the evening service.  The chapel

+was jammed with officers and men, but not all

+my flock was there.  There was Rifleman

+Gibson absent.  He was carrying his beloved

+Lewis gun in an attack when a bullet struck

+him, and he died, as his comrades report, with

+a smile upon his face.  Before going into the

+battle he had given me his father's address

+and thanked me for the spiritual help he had

+received at the services.  It was his farewell

+to me, and his father now has the penciled

+words.  And Rifleman Stone was absent, too.

+He was but a boy, and beautiful with youth

+and goodness.  His comrades loved him as

+David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the

+love of women.  Every day, they told me in

+their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his

+prayers and to read his Bible.  One night after

+praying he laid him down and slept.  He had

+often sung the evening hymn:

+

+   |  "Jesus protects; my fears, be gone!

+   |    What can the Rock of Ages move?

+   |  Safe in Thy arm I lay me down,

+   |    Thy everlasting arms of love.

+

+   |  "While Thou art intimately nigh,

+   |    Who, then, shall violate my rest?

+   |  Sin, earth, and hell I now defy;

+   |    I lean upon my Saviour's breast.

+

+   |  "Me for Thine own Thou lov'st to take,

+   |    In time and in eternity,

+   |  Thou never, never wilt forsake

+   |    A helpless soul that trusts in Thee."

+

+And as he slept, God took him from the

+misery of this world--took him without

+waking him.  His broken-hearted comrades

+gathered together his broken body, and a friend,

+a Congregational preacher, who, though over

+military age, was serving in the ranks, read the

+burial service over him.  Lance-corporal

+Gilbert James was missing, too--he whom I had

+known to lose his breakfast to attend a service

+in a cold, dirty, old barn.  And many others

+were absent whose departure to the Land beyond

+our mortal reach was to us like the putting

+out of stars.

+

+We were leaving the Arras front and we

+sang a hymn for those who had taken our places:

+

+   |  "O Lord of Hosts, Whose mighty arm

+   |  In safety keeps 'mid war's alarm,

+   |  Protect our comrades at the Front

+   |  Who bear of war the bitter brunt.

+   |    And in the hour of danger spread

+   |    Thy sheltering wings above each head,

+

+   |  "In battle's harsh and dreadful hour,

+   |  Make bare Thine arm of sovereign power,

+   |  And fight for them who fight for Thee,

+   |  And give to justice, victory.

+   |    O in the hour of danger spread

+   |    Thy sheltering wings above each head.

+

+   |  "If by the way they wounded lie,

+   |  O listen to their plaintive cry;

+   |  And rest them on Thy loving breast,

+   |  O Thou on Whom the cross was pressed;

+   |    And in the hour of danger shed

+   |    Thy glorious radiance o'er each head.

+

+   |  "When pestilence at noonday wastes,

+   |  And death in triumph onward hastes,

+   |  O Saviour Christ, remember Nain,

+   |  And give us our beloved again.

+   |    In every ward of sickness tread,

+   |    And lay Thy hand upon each head.

+

+   |  "O Friend and Comforter divine,

+   |  Who makest light at midnight shine,

+   |  Give consolation to the sad

+   |  Who in the days of peace were glad.

+   |    And in the hour of sorrow spread

+   |    Thy wings above each drooping head.

+   |                                  Amen."

+

+I had to find a new voice to start it, for our

+little organ had been destroyed by a shell,

+and our precentor was lying in a grave beside

+his Medical Aid Post at Guemappe.  When,

+on Good Friday, we had sung the hymn

+before, the regiment returned from rest billets to

+the line, he had started the tune.  His love

+for music was second only to that of risking

+his life for the wounded.  In one of his letters

+given me to censor, he had written, "How nice

+it will be to be back in my old place in the

+choir."  But he was destined not to go back.

+His path was onward and upward, and his

+place was in the heavenly choir.  I had seen

+it in his large, tender blue eyes.  There was

+in them an expression as if he had seen "the

+land that is very far off."  I felt that he was

+chosen as a sacrifice--that the seal of God was

+on his forehead.

+

+Still, we had to sing, though his voice was

+silent.  So we sang--several tunes, for hymns

+seemed all our spirits needed.  What need

+was there for a sermon when we had hymns?

+We left the rag-time type of hymn and sang

+the real deep things that come from men's

+hearts, and ever after are taken up by their

+fellows to express their deepest aspirations and

+experiences.  The ruined chapel vibrated with

+music, and men, I am told, stood in the street

+to listen while "Jesus, Lover of my Soul,"

+"Rock of Ages," "When I Survey the

+Wondrous Cross" and "The Sands of Time are

+Sinking" told of the faith and love that lift

+up the heart.  We also sang "Abide with

+Me."  After hearing us sing it one night, a Roman

+Catholic officer in the regiment, a Canadian

+and one of the bravest, most beloved men that

+ever walked, told me that he was a

+great-grandson of the author.  He is in hospital

+now with severe wounds, but his men were present.

+

+"Couldn't we take up a collection for the

+repair of the chapel when peace comes?"

+whispered a rifleman; "it would be a sort of

+thanksgiving for the good times we have had

+in it, and for the kindness of the congregation

+in giving us the use of it so freely."

+

+I put the suggestion to the men and they

+voted for it with enthusiasm.  Two of them

+went round with their caps and out of their

+shallow purses the big-hearted fellows gave

+over 100 francs.  In the name of the men I

+presented the full caps to a lady of the

+congregation who was present, and she was

+moved to tears.  The time was quickly passing,

+so I mounted the pulpit and told them of

+words spoken after the earth's first great

+trouble, when the black wings of death had

+cast their shadow over every home: "And God

+said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it

+shall be for a token of a covenant between me

+and the earth.  And it shall come to pass, when

+I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow

+shall be seen in the cloud."

+

+"God," I said, "has made a covenant with

+man, for man is His neighbor and subject; and

+there must be an understanding between them,

+if there is to be peace and happiness.  Man

+must know God's will or he will grieve Him

+and there will be discord and pain.  Also, man

+must know God's intentions concerning him,

+and something of His ways, or else he will live

+in fear and dread of the Almighty One in

+whose power he lies.  There were no books

+and parchment in the first days, so God took

+the sky for His parchment, and dipping His

+fingers in the most lovely of colors, wrote out

+His covenant with man.  He spread it out

+between earth and heaven so that man might look

+up and see it without obstruction, and so that

+He Himself might look down on it and

+remember His agreement.  'The bow,' He said,

+'shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon

+it, that I may remember the everlasting

+covenant.'"

+

+"When you draw up a covenant with a neighbor,

+you look well at it and then give it to your

+attorney, who puts it away in the darkness

+of the safe.  But it is taken out at intervals

+for fresh examination.  And the rainbow-covenant

+was put away behind the clouds, to be

+brought out again from time to time to bring

+comfort and strength to man by its appearance.

+The rainbow is only half seen by man.

+The lower half of its circle is lost in the

+earth.  It exists, but unseen.  And the full

+circle of God's beautiful covenant with man

+has never appeared to our eyes.  A full half

+is lost in the unapprehending darkness of

+man's mind.  The full purpose of God is not

+realized.  His plans are too vast and glorious

+for the intellect or imagination to span; but

+half the rainbow is seen and it is enough.

+Seeing half we can take the rest on trust.  In the

+covenant we are assured that we shall never be

+given darkness without light, winter without

+summer, seedtime without harvest, death

+without birth, sorrow without joy, or a thick cloud

+without a rainbow.  He binds Himself not to

+give evil without good, or to bring tears

+without laughter.  "I do set My bow in the cloud;

+and it shall come to pass when I bring a cloud

+over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud."

+

+"A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine

+and life is woven of the same stuff--tears and

+laughter.  The most glorious sunshine is

+incapable of a rainbow without the co-operation

+of the dark trailing clouds; and it is impossible

+for the human character to reach its ripest

+maturity and beauty on joy alone.  Sorrow is

+as beneficent and necessary as joy.  There are

+untutored natives who dread the rainbow.

+They believe that it is a serpent that rises out

+of the pools to devour men; and there are

+unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread

+adversity no less.  They do not believe that

+*God* 'brings the cloud.'  The rainbow is their

+refutation and it is written across the sky for

+all to see.  On the other hand, there are

+unbelieving men who see only the cloud and are

+blind to the sunshine.  To them life is one long

+tragedy.  It is an immense futility.  They

+regard man as a mere cork in the sea, thrown

+about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural

+forces void of purpose; active indeed but

+ungoverned.  Human life to them is a black

+cloud driven through immensity by the winds

+of unintelligent fate.  It has no meaning and

+its darkness is the deeper because they cannot

+call a halt and disperse it into nothingness.

+Like Job's wife they would say 'Curse God and

+die,' yet they cannot die.  But Job, as he sits

+on the dunghill, looks up at the rainbow and

+finds a truer philosophy.  'What?' says he,

+'shall we receive good at the hand of God, and

+shall we not receive evil?'  Under the rainbow's

+arch there are fruitful fields and beautiful

+gardens for where the rainbow hangs in air

+there is sunshine and there is rain--the parents

+of fruitfulness.  And to whom God gives in

+equal measure joy and sorrow there is beauty

+and fruitfulness of heart and life.  His promise

+to 'every living creature' is that He will never

+send the cloud without the sunshine and, what

+is not less gracious, He will never send the

+sunshine without the cloud.  When by day the

+Israelites tramped the fiery desert He led them

+by a pillar of cloud, and they marched in its

+shade; and in the blackness of night He threw

+in the sky a pillar of sunshine; and they

+walked through the gloom in its light.

+

+"In these terrible days of war when our

+hearts begin to fail us and dark doubts cloud

+the mind, let us look at the Covenant God

+has made with us.  He has set it in rainbow

+colors across the sky, that 'he who runs may

+read' and 'the wayfaring man though a fool

+may not err.'  God has flung his rainbow over

+the trench and the grave; over the Garden of

+Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary.  It

+is over the tomb in the Arimathean's Garden;

+and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven.

+We are born under the rainbow, live under it,

+die under it.  At the last we shall find it over

+the throne of Judgment.  Water and blood

+flowed from Christ's side; and life and death,

+joy and pain, light and darkness, summer and

+winter, peace and war come forth from God.

+

+"Let us take life as it comes with obedient

+wills and grateful hearts.  The bee finds honey

+in the thistle as well as in the rose, and 'where

+the bee sucks there suck I,' for He who guides

+the bee guides me.  Only in loving obedience

+to God shall we find true wisdom.  It is not

+so much what we are given as how we take

+it that matters.  To be humble nothing may

+be so sweet as sorrow; and to the proud nothing

+may be so bitter as pleasure.  Let us leave

+God to mix the ingredients of our life, for

+'all things work together for good to them

+that love God.'  It is all in the covenant

+written by God's fingers in the colors of the

+rainbow, and whenever He brings it from beyond

+the clouds, let us look at it with reverent

+eyes, and ponder its promise.  Then shall we

+be able to say, with Wordsworth,

+

+   |  'My heart leaps up when I behold

+   |  A rainbow in the sky.'"

+   |

+

+After I had finished speaking we sang, at

+the request of one of the sergeants, the hymn

+commencing

+

+   |  "The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended,

+   |  The darkness falls at Thy behest."

+

+And beautiful indeed was the singing of it.

+

+The Benediction followed.  Just as I was

+ending it an impulse came to me, and I yielded

+to its importunity.  "Before we part and before

+we leave Achicourt which has meant so much

+to us of joy and sorrow," I said, "let us sing

+a kiddies' hymn.  We still shelter in our hearts

+a little child.  Though we have grown moustaches

+and some of us gray hairs, the child

+that we once were, never quite dies.  Let us

+have a hymn for the boy within us who never

+grows up and never dies."  Then I read out

+verse by verse, for it was not in their books:

+

+   |  "Now the day is over,

+   |  Night is drawing nigh,

+   |  Shadows of the evening

+   |  Steal across the sky.

+

+   |  "Jesus, give the weary

+   |  Calm and sweet repose;

+   |  With Thy tenderest blessing

+   |  May their eyelids close.

+

+   |  "Grant to little children

+   |  Visions bright of Thee;

+   |  Guarding the sailors tossing

+   |  On the angry sea.

+

+   |  "Comfort every sufferer

+   |  Watching late in pain;

+   |  Those who plan some evil

+   |  From their sin restrain.

+

+   |  "When the morning wakens,

+   |  Then may I arise

+   |  Pure and fresh, and sinless

+   |  In Thy holy eyes."

+

+I have witnessed many moving sights in my

+time and heard much deep and thrilling music;

+but I have never been so deeply moved by

+anything as by the rich, deep voices of these

+gallant men and boys who, after winning the

+Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined

+church and were singing this beautiful kiddies'

+hymn as their last farewell.

+

+The collection the boys had taken up had

+been so heavy that we carried it to the French

+lady's house for her.  As we entered her home

+she said in her simple way, as her eyes grew

+radiant with gratitude, "I like the English

+soldiers."  It was the voice of France.  And

+she was worthy to speak for France.  For

+two-and-a-half years her house had stood

+within a mile of the German trenches, and but

+a few hundred yards from our own firing line.

+Yet she and her mother had never left it.  She

+introduced me to her mother, who had lived

+in London, and spoke English.  Then she

+brought in coffee.  I had noticed a most

+remarkable thing about the house.  There was

+not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of

+war on the walls.  It was the only house I

+have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras, upon

+which the war has not laid its monstrous and

+bloody finger.  "How is it," I asked the

+mother, "that your house has not been

+touched?"  Her eyes shone and a sweet smile

+lit up her face.  "It is the will of God," she

+said simply.  "Shells have fallen a little short

+of us and a little beyond us.  They have passed

+within a yard of the house, and we have heard

+the rushing of the wind as they passed, but

+they have not touched us.  When the village

+has been bombarded we have gone down into

+the cellar as was but discretion and duty, but

+we have had the conviction all along that we

+should be spared, and we refused to leave the

+house.  We do not know God's purpose but

+we believe that it is God's will to spare us."  I

+leave the fact to speak for itself and offer

+no explanation.  Skeptics will say the house

+was spared by accident; but they would not

+have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting

+to such an accident.  These two women,

+without a man in the house, stayed on the very

+confines of hell with its hourly suspense and

+danger for nearly three years, because they

+believed it was God's will and that, though they

+walked through the fiery furnace heated seven

+times hotter than it was wont to be heated,

+He would not allow so much as a hair of their

+heads to be singed.  And not a hair was singed.

+They were women in whom faith burned like

+a bright pillar of fire.  One caught its light,

+and felt its heat.  I have met patriots and

+heroes and know their quality when I see them

+and come near them.  These were "the real

+thing."  Faith in God and faith in their

+country were interwoven in their spirits like sun

+and shower in a rainbow.  They were of the

+same breed as the Maid of France, and like

+her, with their white banner bearing the

+device of the Cross, they withstood and defied

+the might and terror of the invader.  They

+believed it was God's will they should stay,

+to "Be still and know that I am God."  Their

+experience was expressed by the Psalmist

+centuries ago: "God is our refuge and

+strength, a very present help in trouble.

+Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be

+removed, and though the mountains be carried

+into the midst of the sea.  Though the waters

+thereof roar and be troubled, though the

+mountains shake with the swellings thereof

+... Come behold the works of the Lord, what

+desolations He hath made in the earth.  He

+maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;

+He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in

+sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire....

+The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of

+Jacob is our refuge."

+

+Such was the faith of these two women, and

+their courage few men have approached.  It

+is a practical matter, and after comparing it

+with the skeptic's theory of accident and

+coincidence and remembering his probable haste in

+seeking a place not so liable to untoward

+accidents, I accept the explanation of the women.

+Their house was spared and not a hair of

+their heads injured because "it was God's will."  If

+it is not the correct theory, it ought to be.

+Otherwise falsehood is more sustaining than

+truth, and inspires nobler conduct.

+

+The day was now over.  A new chapter of

+life had been written, and in the morning, we

+left behind us this village of precious memories,

+and marched out again into the unknown.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`SONS OF THE MOTHERLAND`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   VIII

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   SONS OF THE MOTHERLAND

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+It is said that the eel is born in the deepest

+part of the ocean, thousands of miles

+from any country, and that, urged by an

+overpowering instinct it begins almost at once

+to rise towards the light and to head for the

+land.  After slowly swimming thousands of

+miles it reaches our rivers, and pushes its way

+up to their sources, and even crawls through

+the grass out of one stream into another.  Here,

+if uncaught by man, it lives for years gorging

+an appetite which only developed on reaching

+the fresh water.  Then, the overmastering

+instinct that brought it out, takes it back.  It

+returns through the illimitable waters until it

+finds the place where it was born.  There the

+female lays her eggs and there male and female

+die.  The eggs hatch, and the young do as

+their parents did before them.

+

+I do not think I could kill or eat an eel.

+I have too much reverence for it now that

+I have learned its story.  When in the fish

+market I see an eel struggling, I feel that

+I want to take it and drop it into the sea

+that it may go to its long home "far from

+the madding crowd's ignoble strife."  How

+passionate and wild must be its desire to

+get back to its own ocean depths where it

+may perpetuate its kind and die in peace.

+Its appetite is voracious, but then, what but

+the mightiest and most elemental instincts and

+appetites could carry it through achievements

+so sublime and tragic.  Picture it on its lone

+way through the deep, urged on by it knows

+not what.  Scientists say that man has evolved

+from a tiny form of life that passed through

+the fish stage.  If so, it explains a lot and I,

+for one, shall not be ashamed to acknowledge

+relationship to a fish with a life story as

+sublime as that of the eel.  I know that Genesis

+speaks truly when it says that God made us

+out of the dust of the earth and breathed into

+our souls the breath of His own being thus

+animating dust with divinity.  And if from the

+other inspired book, the book of Nature,

+scientists can teach how God mixed the clay when

+He fashioned man I will accept the teaching

+with gratitude, for it will help me to

+understand things that are dark in me and in my

+fellows.  It will throw light on the wild

+longings, and instincts immature, that baffle the

+mind, and come into the clear shallow streams

+of life like eels out of the dark unfathomable

+depths of the ocean.

+

+Since I went to France I have been amazed

+at the homing instinct as revealed in the

+coming together of the sons of the British

+Motherland.  People at home do not quite realize

+what has happened.  Britain's sons have come

+back to her--have come back to die that their

+race may be saved and perpetuated.  The

+British are a roving race.  A large number of

+them yield to an overpowering desire to go

+out into the world.  The South Pole and the

+North Pole have known the tread of their feet.

+Their ships have anchored in every creek of

+every sea.  There is no town or country

+however remote where their voices have not been

+heard.  Even Mecca could not keep the Briton

+out.  He must look upon its Black Stone.  All

+lands call him to come, and see, and conquer.

+He colonizes and absorbs but cannot be

+absorbed.  He is a Briton still.  A friend of

+mine told me that when visiting Australia

+strangers who had never seen England, except

+in and through their fathers, would come to

+him in railway carriage or 'bus, and ask "How

+is everything at *Home*?"  And Dr. Fitchett,

+Australia's splendid author, confesses that when

+he first saw the land of his fathers he knelt

+down and kissed its shore.

+

+Loving the homeland with a passion stronger

+than death the Briton leaves it, for he hears

+the call of the world borne on the winds and

+waves from afar, and cannot refuse it.  In

+foreign lands he lives and labors.  He roams

+their fields and swims in their streams, but

+always with an ear listening for the voice of the

+Motherland; for he is hers, and at her service

+if she calls.

+

+The Declaration of War on Aug. 4, 1914,

+was the Mother's call to her children.  Swifter

+than lightning it passed through the waves and

+on the wings of the wind.  The settler left his

+lonely cabin, the gold-digger his shovel, the

+prospector his surveying instruments, the

+rancher his herds, the missionary his church,

+the teacher his school, the clerk his office, and

+all made for the nearest port.  Within a month

+there was not a ship on the wide seas but was

+bearing loyal sons back to their Motherland's

+defense.  I have met, in France, British

+soldiers from every country under heaven.  I

+bent over a dying soldier near Arras who was

+a clerk in Riga, Russia, when the call came.

+And one night on the Somme a fine young

+fellow from Africa entered my tent, and slept

+by my side.  He was one of the most charming

+and handsome men I have ever met, and had

+come from Durban.  He had fought with

+Botha in Southwest Africa, and at the

+conclusion of that campaign had shipped for home.

+Next day I took him to Delville Wood for he

+wanted to see the place where his brother had

+died.  I found that he was of my own

+communion and we talked about some of my

+college friends who had gone out to Natal.  Two

+days later, he died of wounds in a dressing

+station.  Most of the transport officers in our

+Division have come home from abroad, and

+have been given their posts because they are

+accustomed to horses.  One was prospecting in

+Nigeria, another salmon-canning in Siberia, a

+third on a plantation in South America.

+

+In addition to Canadians, South Africans,

+Australians, and New Zealanders, who have

+come by the hundred thousand at the call of

+the Motherland, there are hundreds of thousands

+who have come singly, or in small parties,

+from remote corners of the earth.  For five

+weeks I was a patient in a Canadian hospital

+in France.  The entire staff was Canadian.

+Some were Canadian born; others had gone out

+to that country years ago.  All were of British

+blood.  The colonel was a magnificent

+specimen of manhood from London, Ontario, in

+which city he had been born.  He would sit

+on the bed and tell us tales of the great

+snow-land.  Sometimes he would scold us for being

+so blind to the greatness of the Empire and tell

+us what Canada thought of the Motherland.

+One of the night orderlies would, on occasion,

+recite to us some poem such as "Jim Bludso,"

+before the lights went out.  Then he would

+come to my locker and take "Palgrave's

+Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" with which to

+regale his soul during the long watches of the

+night.  He was of the full stature of men and

+straight as a pine.  He had gone out from

+Ireland as a boy, and settled on a cattle ranch

+in the United States.  One day there was

+trouble and one of the other cowboys sent a

+bullet clean through his chest.  The moment

+war was declared he left his roving herds of

+cattle, crossed the frontier into Canada and

+traveled hundreds of miles to Winnipeg to

+enlist.  The doctor looked at him.  "What is

+this scar on your chest?" he asked.  "Oh,"

+replied the cowboy, "I fell off a wagon and

+knocked the skin off."  The doctor turned him

+round and put his finger in the scar on his

+back where the bullet had passed out.  "And

+what is this scar at the back?  Did you fall

+off another wagon?"  And the two men understood

+one another and laughed.  The doctor

+could not find it in his heart to send the

+cowboy back to his ranch, so he was passed into

+the Canadian contingent.

+

+One of the nurses we called "the Little

+Mother."  She had gone to Canada five years

+before, but the war had brought her back, and

+well was it for us that it had.  Among the

+patients was a doctor in the American A.M.C.

+His ancestors had left England generations ago

+and settled in New England, but he had come

+back at the call of war--a grandson of the

+Motherland.  Then there was a lieutenant of

+British stock who had been born and brought

+up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were

+destroying his native city he took ship to enlist

+in the British army.  "Anzac" was, as his

+nickname denotes, an Australian.  He was in the

+Flying Corps.  He had heard the call at school

+and had come "home" to the land of his fathers.

+

+In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who

+had been born in China.  But, out there in

+Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Motherland

+they had never seen, and came post haste

+to her help.  Sitting near me as I write, is an

+officer back from the Argentine, and already, on

+his arm, is a gold wound-stripe.  Another in the

+mess had been pearl-fishing in Australia, but

+stored his boats to come and fight.  Another

+at our table was born in Australia.  He was

+with Captain Falcon Scott on his last

+expedition, and saw him go out to the South Pole

+and death.  He has already been wounded.

+When the war broke out its tumult seemed to

+wake our fathers and we felt them stir in our

+blood; for ancestors are not put into graves

+but are buried alive in their sons.  We felt the

+call to defend our race as our fathers did in

+their day.  It was a master instinct, and the

+millions of men who voluntarily left home and

+business to fight show how deeply nationality

+is rooted in human nature.  Returning from a

+far land to die--if needs be--that their kind

+may live, the scattered sons of our Motherland

+have come by all the seas to defend her, in her

+hour of need.

+

+   |  "They came as the winds come

+   |    When forests are rended;

+   |  They came as the waves come

+   |    When navies are stranded."

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`THE TERROR BY NIGHT`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   IX

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   THE TERROR BY NIGHT

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+June was a flaming month on the high

+ground we had captured beyond Arras.

+The Quartermaster and Transport

+Officer with whom I was messing were both "on

+leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the

+camp, a Baptist padre, whose regiment was

+near, came to live with me.  I had a little brown

+tent five feet wide and six feet long which a

+rifleman had lent to me because the bell-tent

+I was expecting had not arrived.  The

+rifleman did not need his tent, for he and his

+chums had built themselves a little dug-out.

+Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the other

+padre took possession of it, while I held on to

+the little brown shelter.  Next to it was the

+kitchen where the servants slept and cooked.

+It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood,

+corrugated iron and ground-sheets.  The

+Baptist chaplain's tent was round, my shelter

+oblong, but what shape the kitchen was, would

+pass the wit of man to say.  It was a shape

+never seen on earth before.  It had no ancestor

+and it could have no descendant.  Such a

+design could not occur twice.  Beyond the kitchen

+were the horse-lines of the regiment and close

+by them the regimental stores.  It was so hot

+that we all wore our lightest clothing; and

+when the servants got lemons from Arras, the

+lemonade they made lasted about five minutes

+only, for what was left by us was quickly drunk

+up by the servants with the assistance of those

+who like to frequent such happy places as mess

+kitchens.

+

+All our meals were served out of doors,

+under the blue sky.  We had guests most days,

+for officers coming out from the homeland

+stayed with us for a night or a day before

+going up with the rations to join the regiment

+in the trench.  Other officers had come down

+to stay with us on their way to a course at some

+military school; and one, at least, came to wait

+for the day on which he was to take his "leave."  We

+were, therefore, a very merry party.  It

+was almost like camping on the Yorkshire

+moors, for we had an uninterrupted view of

+many miles.  To those who love vast stretches

+of wild barren country as I do, the scene under

+the flaming June sun was exceedingly impressive.

+There were no houses, streams, hedges,

+or trees, but the whole area was scored with

+trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing

+clearly at great distances.  The ground, with

+but short spaces between, was covered with

+encampments.  These consisted of the stores and

+horse-lines of the regiments and batteries in

+the line.  The circle of the horizon was bounded

+by the charred ruins of French villages--Beaurains,

+Neuville, Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy

+and Tilloy.  We could see the flashing of our

+own guns, and the black bursts of shells from

+those of the enemy.

+

+All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes,

+and many were too high to be seen except

+through strong field glasses.  We watched a

+German aeroplane circling over Arras and

+directing the fire of the long guns.  Soon the

+streets were strewn with dead and wounded,

+for the town was full of troops.  The firing

+only lasted a few minutes, however.  One of

+our aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to

+single combat; and we soon saw the German

+machine falling from an immense height, wing

+over wing and head over tail, utterly out of

+control.

+

+Dinner, in the cool of the evening, was a

+most pleasant meal.  As we drank our coffee

+we watched the aeroplanes returning from the

+line like birds to their nests.  Sometimes we

+counted as many as twenty, all heading for

+home at the same time.  The sun set in red

+and golden splendor, and we wondered what

+darkness would bring.  On the night before

+our arrival, the regiment which made way for

+us had one of its storemen killed by a shell;

+and on most nights a few shells fell in some

+part or other of the vast camp.  One evening

+shells fell a little beyond us and the

+transport-sergeant moved his horse-lines.  After that,

+he moved them every evening at dark, so that

+the ground where the enemy had observed the

+horses in the day-time was left vacant when

+he opened fire at night.  It was a game of

+chess with horses and men for pawns, and life

+and death for the stakes.

+

+On the evening before, our guest--a young

+lieutenant--was to go on leave, he got very

+uneasy.  As gulls scent the approach of stormy

+weather and come inland, or blackbirds and

+larks feel the approach of winter and migrate

+to summer lands, so men can sometimes scent

+danger and coming death.  He had with him a

+bottle of whisky, and he kept it on the table

+outside my tent--a safe place for it.

+

+"I don't mind telling you, Padre," he said,

+as he poured out a glass, "I've got the

+'wind-up' badly to-night.  I don't like the feel of

+things.  I would rather be in the trenches than

+here, because I know what is likely to happen

+there, but here in the open I feel strange and

+unprotected.  I shall be glad when it is

+morning."

+

+His feeling was quite natural.  We always

+feel another man's dangers more than our own

+because they are new to us and we don't know

+what to expect or how to meet them.  A man

+will choose a big danger that he is used to,

+sooner than a lesser danger that is new to

+him.  Besides, the lieutenant had his

+"leave-warrant" in his breast pocket and that will sap

+any man's courage.  He has a feeling that the

+shells are after his "leave-warrant" and that

+the gunners know where it is.  He suspects that

+fate is malignant and takes a special delight

+in killing a man when he is on the way to

+"Blighty."  Many a man has been killed with

+a "leave-warrant" in his pocket, or "commission

+papers" in it which were taking him home.

+

+Our doctor told me how one night he and

+the chaplain who preceded me were riding on

+the front of an ambulance car when a shell

+burst and with a fragment killed the chaplain.

+In the padre's pocket was his warrant, and he

+was taking his last ride before going home;

+but instead of going home in "Blighty" he went

+to his *long* home, and the warrant lies in the

+grave with him.  A man feels particularly

+vulnerable when the long-looked-for

+"leave-warrant" is in his pocket.  He does not fear

+death after "leave," but he does on the eve of

+"leave."  He wants one more look at his home

+and loved ones before going on the long and

+lone journey which, despite all the comfort

+which the Christian religion gives, still retains

+much of its terror to the human spirit.  There

+have been few better Christians than Samuel

+Johnson and John Bunyan, but neither of them

+could contemplate fording the river of death

+without misgivings.  When they came to it they

+found it much less formidable than they had

+expected.  Had they been at the Front with

+"leave-warrants" in their pockets to "Fleet

+Street, London," or "Elstow, Bedford," I

+fancy neither of them would have taken undue risks.

+

+I could sympathize with the young lieutenant

+for, a few months before, a "leave-warrant"

+had made a bit of a coward of myself.  I was

+in two minds whether or not to go up to the

+firing line to see the men again before shipping

+for home.  The "leave-warrant" was in my

+pocket, and I was to go next morning; but the

+doctor's story of my predecessor came to my

+mind, and the "leave-warrant" spread itself out

+before the eyes of my imagination.  I saw the

+faces of my wife, and mother, and dog, and

+the faces of my friends.  The old home and

+the green fields stretched out before me; and

+I decided to see them first and the "boys" after.

+I had just been with my men, but it was a long

+time since I had been with those at home.  If

+there was a shell with my name and address

+on it, I thought I would make the Hun wait

+till I had been home, before I let him deliver

+it into my hands.  I think a "leave-warrant"

+would make a coward of any man.  At any

+rate, the feeling is quite understood and

+recognized by everyone at the Front; and this young

+officer had been sent down from the trenches

+to us, three days before his train was due to

+start, so that he might have a better chance of

+using his "warrant," and at the same time, feel

+more at ease in mind.

+

+I undressed and got into bed, and lay reading

+by the light of a candle when the lieutenant

+came to the tent door again.  "It's no use,

+Padre," he said, "I can't go to bed yet.  I feel

+too uneasy.  I wish I were on the train."  He

+went back to the bell-tent he was sharing with

+the other chaplain, and I put out my light.

+

+There was the silence of a summer evening

+broken only by the distant bursting of shells.

+Then, suddenly, there was a crash about seventy

+yards from our tents, and two more near the

+horse-lines.  "To run or not run?" that was

+the question; and my answer was in the

+negative.  If I ran, it was just as likely that I

+should run into a shell, as out of the way of

+one.  On Easter Sunday I had seen three of

+our non-commissioned officers killed in that

+way.  Besides, I like my bed, once I have taken

+the trouble to get into it.  I therefore put on

+my steel helmet which I had placed by the

+bed-side, and waited to see what would happen.

+(A steel helmet is a wonderful comfort when

+men are under fire.  We may not have much

+in our heads but we feel more anxious about

+them than about all the rest of the body.  The

+helmets are heavy and uncomfortable and we

+don't like wearing them, but, nevertheless, may

+blessings ever rest on the head of the man

+who invented them.  I have seen scores of lives

+saved by them, and they have given infinite

+comfort and assurance in trying moments.)

+

+A long silence elapsed, then the lieutenant

+appeared at the door of the tent again.

+

+"You haven't been here all the time, have

+you?" he asked.  "We went down to the old

+trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is

+rather cold and wearisome there, and I think

+the worst is over now.  I'm just going to take

+another sip of the 'Scotch wine' and then turn

+in for the night; but I'm not going to undress."

+

+Ten minutes later there was a tremendous

+crash as if a star had fallen on top of us.

+There came a blinding flash of light, a strong

+smell of powder, and a spluttering of bullets

+on the ground.  That was enough to get the

+laziest man living out of bed, and to answer

+the question, "to run or not to run?" in the

+affirmative.  I slipped on my boots without

+fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade

+my little tent a fond farewell.  There were

+some old German gun-pits close by, and I

+sought refuge there.  "Come in here, sir," cried

+a voice, and I found myself by the side of a

+sergeant.  Then the cook ran in bare-foot and

+laughing.  No one seemed to have been hit, and

+all had now sought shelter.  We waited for

+some time and nothing further happened.  The

+night was cold and I began to shiver in my

+pajamas.  So I started to look about for a

+place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement

+had grown up between me and the little brown

+tent.  There was a path across a shallow bit

+of trench, and underneath it I found the barber,

+lying comfortably on his bed.  He invited me

+in, and said that I could have the bed, and

+he would sleep at the side of it on his

+ground-sheet.  He could, he said, sleep as soundly on

+the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking.

+I therefore returned to my tent to get blankets.

+The time-fuse of a shell had gone through the

+kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my

+servant, but without doing him any injury and

+he proposed sleeping there for the night.  He

+only agreed to move to some safer place, when

+I ordered him to do so.  There was no one

+in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants were

+quite safe somewhere.  On striking a light to

+get my blankets, I noticed three small holes

+in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel

+bullets had missed me only by inches.  It had

+been a close shave and it was not inappropriate

+that I was now going to be the guest of a

+barber.

+

+The psychological effect was not one I should

+have expected.  The incident caused no

+shell-shock, and but little immediate excitement; so

+I was soon asleep.  All the others were in a

+like case.  The excitement came with the

+morning when we examined the tents and the

+ground.  In the bell-tent there were ten

+shrapnel bullet holes.  One had gone through the

+piece of wood on which the officers' clothing

+had been hung, and must have passed immediately

+over the body of the Baptist chaplain as

+he lay in bed.  Others must have passed equally

+near the lieutenant who was not in bed, but,

+standing up at the time, fully dressed.  In my

+own little tent I found eleven holes and they

+were in all parts of the canvas.  Some of the

+bullets must have gone in at one side and out

+at the other, for only five were found

+embedded in the hard, chalky ground.  A sixth

+had passed through the box at the bed-head

+and entered deeply into the book I had been

+reading.  Outside the kitchen, the servants

+picked up a lump of shell a foot long and

+three or four inches wide.  Well was it for

+them that the fragment fell outside the kitchen

+and not inside.  The ground around the tents

+was sprinkled with shrapnel bullets and bits of

+shell.  The shells which fell near the horses

+had burst on touching the ground, and not like

+ours, in the air.  They had dug deep holes in

+the earth, and as the horses were within a few

+yards of them, it seemed miraculous that none

+was hurt.  The transport had just returned

+from taking up the rations, and, as one of the

+drivers leapt off his horse, a bullet hit the

+saddle where his leg had been a second before.

+Not a man or horse received a scratch, although

+the shells had made a direct hit on our camp.

+On other occasions one shell has laid out scores

+of men and horses.

+

+They say that sailors don't like padres on

+board ship, because they think the latter bring

+them bad luck.  And most people are a little

+afraid of the figure thirteen, but though it was

+the thirteenth of June and there were two

+padres in the tents, we had the best of what

+is called "luck."  So I think we may say it was

+one up for the padres.  After breakfast we

+gathered together some of the fragments lying

+around the tents, and found the nose-cap of a

+shell which had burst seventy yards away.

+With these, and the time-fuse which hit my

+servant, the other chaplain and I went to a

+battery and asked the officers to tell us

+something about the gun, just as one might take a

+bone of some extinct creature to a scientist,

+and ask him to draw an outline of the whole

+animal.  They told us that the gun was a

+long-range, high-velocity, naval gun with a possible

+range of fifteen miles.  They knew where it

+was, but could not hit it.  The shot was a

+large high-explosive, shrapnel shell, and the

+time-fuse indicated that it had come to us from

+about eleven miles away.

+

+On our return we built ourselves dug-outs

+for the nights, and only lived in the tents by

+day.  Sometimes we were shelled in the

+day-time, but by taking cover took no hurt, though

+a lad in the transport next to us was

+seriously wounded.  When they were shelling us

+by day, we could distinctly hear the report

+of the gun, a second or two later, see the shell

+burst in the air; and a second later still, we

+could hear it.  We saw the burst before we

+heard it.

+

+I have given this personal incident not, I

+hope, out of any impulse of egotism, but

+because it furnishes those who have not been at

+the Front with an idea of the terror which

+assails our men by night, both in the trenches

+and in the "back areas."  There can be but

+few who, having been any length of time at

+the Front, have not had similar experiences

+and equally narrow escapes.  They are so

+common that men get used to them and do not

+take nearly enough care to protect themselves.

+Loss by such stray shells is expected, and the

+soldiers regard it much as a tradesman regards

+the deterioration of his stock.  One gets used

+to the frequent occurrence of death as he does

+to anything else.  At home there are thousands

+of preventable deaths--deaths through street

+accidents, diseases and underfeeding.  The

+number could be enormously reduced if the

+nation would rouse itself.  And human nature

+is much the same at the Front.  Men prefer

+ease and comfort to safety.  Also, men grow

+fatalistic.  They have seen men sought out by

+shells after they have taken every precaution

+to escape them; and they have seen others go

+untouched when they seemed to be inviting

+shells to destroy them.  Men are conscious of

+a Power that is not themselves directing their

+lives.  They feel that in life which the Greek

+tragedians called Fate.  They do not know

+quite what to call it.  Most of them would call

+it Providence if they spoke frankly and gave

+it a name at all.  One of the finest Christian

+officers I know told me that he believed that

+God's finger had already written what his fate

+should be.  If he had to die nothing could save

+him, and if he had to live, nothing could kill

+him.  All he was concerned with was to be able

+to do his duty, and take whatever God sent

+him.  This, he said, was the only suitable

+working philosophy for a man at the Front.

+

+There is a widespread fatalism at the Front,

+but it is the fatalism of Christ rather than of

+old Omar Khayyam: "Take no thought for

+your life ... for your heavenly Father

+knoweth that ye have need of all these things, but

+seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his

+righteousness.  Take therefore no thought for

+the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought

+for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day

+is the evil thereof."  And this works.  It

+enables men to "put a cheerful courage on"

+and do their duty.  There is none of the

+paralysis of will and cessation of effort which

+follows the fatalistic philosophy of the East.

+All that Omar Khayyam's fatalism leaves a

+man to strive after is "Red, Red Wine," in

+which he drowns memory, honor and reputation

+and character.  When he has passed from

+among his peers, there is nothing left to

+remember him by but a "turned-down empty

+glass."  The Christian fatalism at the Front

+destroys no man's initiative, but keeps him

+merry and bright, and helps him to "do his

+bit."  When he shall pass from the

+banqueting-house of life, into the Great Unexplored,

+he will leave as his memorial, not a turned-down

+glass, but a world redeemed from tyranny

+and wrong.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   \X

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   "ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+An army is more courageous than the

+individuals who compose it.  The coward

+finds sufficient courage for his job

+while doing it with his regiment, and the brave

+is at his bravest.  He has a courage which is

+not his own but which, somehow, he puts on

+with his uniform.  He does deeds of daring

+he could not have done as a civilian.  The

+army has a corporate courage and each soldier

+receives a portion of it just as he receives a

+ration of the army's food.  It is added to what

+he has of his own.

+

+The badge of the army is courage.  When

+a recruit joins the army he knows that he is

+putting away the civilian standard of courage

+with his derby hat, and is putting on the

+soldier's standard of courage with his uniform.

+His great fear is that he will not be able to

+live up to it.  He wonders if he is made of

+the stuff that produces heroes.  He is a mystery

+to himself and has a haunting fear that there

+may be a strain of the coward in his make-up.

+He wishes it were possible to have a rehearsal

+for he would rather die than fail on the

+appointed day.

+

+The chaplain fears that he will faint and

+become a hindrance instead of a help when he

+first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing

+station; and the recruit is afraid of being afraid

+in the hour of battle and of bringing dishonor

+and weakness upon his regiment.  He will be

+glad when the trial is over--when he knows

+the stuff of which nature has made him.  A

+friend of mine told me one day that he was

+walking over a heavily shelled field with a

+young aristocrat of a highly strung

+temperament.  The man was afraid, but would not

+yield to his fear.  His lips twitched and his

+face became drawn and white.  His movements

+were jerky but he made no other sign.  He

+talked about paltry things in which, at the

+moment, he had not the slightest interest, and

+passed jocular or sardonic remarks about the

+things that were happening around them.  My

+friend ducked his head when a shell burst near

+as we all have done often enough, but the

+young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff

+as if he were being crowned.  He held it up

+defiantly; was it not filled with the bluest

+blood of England?  The shells might blow it

+off if they liked.  That was their concern, not

+his, but they should never make him bow.  His

+fathers had fought on British battlefields for

+centuries, and had never bowed their heads to

+a foe, and he would not break the great

+tradition.  Shells might break his neck but they

+should never bend it.  He would face the

+enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a

+neck as ever his fathers did.  He knew his

+personal weakness and reinforced his strength

+with that of his fathers'.  He was not afraid

+of death.  He was afraid of being afraid.

+

+My friend was a coachman's son who by

+courage and capacity of the highest order had

+won a commission.  He had no traditions

+either to haunt or help him, and he had often

+been tried in the fire and knew his strength.  He

+was not afraid of being afraid.  It was natural

+to duck when a shell burst near and it did

+him no harm and made no difference to the

+performance of his duties; so he ducked as he

+felt inclined, and then laughed at his nerves

+for the tricks they were allowing the shells to

+play on them.  But, knowing his companion's

+more sensitive nature and temperamental

+weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff

+neck and proudly erect head.  He showed a

+self-control which only centuries of breeding

+could give.  Here was a hero indeed.  The

+shells he was defying were as nothing to the

+fears which haunted his imaginative nature and

+which, with his back to the wall of his family

+traditions, he was fighting and keeping at bay.

+My friend could not refrain from complimenting

+him on resisting the natural tendency

+to duck the head when a shell screamed above

+them.

+

+"Eton boys never duck," replied the young

+aristocrat.

+

+He was an Eton boy and would die rather

+than fall short of the Eton standard.  In this

+war hundreds of them have died rather than

+save themselves by something which did not

+measure up to the Eton standard.  The ranks

+of young British aristocrats have been terribly

+thinned in this war and I have heard their

+deeds spoken of with a reverence such as is

+only given to legendary heroes.  They have

+gone sauntering over the crater-fields to their

+deaths with the same self-mastery and outward

+calm which the French aristocracy manifested

+as they mounted the steps of the guillotine in

+the Reign of Terror.  To their own personal

+courage was added the courage of their race,

+and the accumulation of the centuries.

+

+We speak of our new armies.  There can be

+no "new" armies of Britons.  The tradition

+of our newest army goes back to Boadicea.

+Its forerunners, without shields or armor, and

+almost without weapons, dared the Romans--the

+proud conquerors of the world--to battle;

+and gave them the longest odds warriors ever

+gave.  They knew they could not win but they

+knew they could die.  Dead warriors they

+might become but never living slaves.  They

+ran up Boadicea's proud banner because they

+knew that while the Romans might soak it in

+British blood, no power on earth could drag

+it through the mire.

+

+Our forefathers crossed swords with Cæsar

+and his Roman legions, and our newest army

+goes into battle with the prestige born of two

+thousand years of war.  They have a morale

+that belongs to the race in addition to the

+morale they possess as individuals.  It is said

+that "the British do not know when they are

+beaten."  How should they know?  They have

+had no teachers.  All they know is that if they

+have not gained the victory the battle is not

+ended and must go on until they pitch their

+tents on the undisputed field.  The German

+Emperor spreads out his War Map but it

+is as undecipherable as the mountains in the

+moon to our soldiers.  Tyrants have never

+found them apt scholars at geography.  They

+prefer to make their own maps even though

+they have no paint to color them with except

+the red blood in their veins.  The Kaiser may

+roll up his War Map of Europe; our soldiers

+have no use for it, and will not commit to

+memory its new boundaries.  They feel in their

+souls the capacity to make a new one more in

+line with their ideas of fair play.

+

+"Eton boys never duck."  If the muscles of

+their necks show a tendency to relax they call

+to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood

+in bygone days, and their necks become stiff

+and taut once more.  Wellington said that

+Waterloo was won on the playing fields of

+Eton.  It is still true that "Eton boys never

+duck" to the foe; nor do the soldiers they lead.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`"MISSING"`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XI

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   "MISSING"

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+The word "Missing" has come to exercise

+an even more terrible power over

+the human heart than the word "Death."  The

+latter kills the heart's joy and hope with

+a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy

+stroke from the executioner's axe.  In a few

+cases the wounded victim is spared and allowed

+to recover, but in the majority of cases there

+is no reprieve and a second blow is struck after

+a period of suspense and suffering.  A chaplain

+dreads the word.  As he opens his

+correspondence after a battle, it fixes him as the

+glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner fastened

+the wedding guest.  It leaps from the page

+at him with the malignant suddenness of a

+serpent.  Wounds and death he can explain to

+relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation.

+No one who has not been at the Front can

+conceive how a lad can disappear and no one

+see what becomes him.  A man may read

+graphic accounts of conditions of life in the

+battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to

+visualize it with any real approach to truth.

+

+After the first day of the Somme Campaign

+we had hundreds of casualties and most of

+them were classed as "Missing."  The soldiers

+went "over the top" and did not return, and

+no one knew why.  They were simply

+"missing."  Why did no one know their fate?  It

+came about in this way.  The men scrambled

+over the parapet and, forming in line, charged

+across No Man's Land in extended order.

+Some fell immediately.  The wounded among

+them got back to the dressing station, and the

+bodies of the dead were found within a few

+days, at least.  So far, there are no "Missing."  The

+rest of the men press on, some falling

+at every step; the line thins, and the men get

+separated.  When a man falls his neighbor

+cannot stay with him.  He must press on to the

+objective, otherwise, if the unwounded stayed

+to succor the wounded, there would be none

+to continue the attack; and under the hail of

+shells and bullets sweeping the open ground,

+everyone would perish.  The only way to

+succor the wounded is to press on, capture the

+enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine-gun

+fire.  Consequently, the man who presses

+on does not, as a rule, know whether his

+comrade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took

+cover in a shell hole.  And even though he

+were to know, he may be killed himself later,

+and his knowledge die with him.

+

+If the attack succeeds, and the German trench

+is held by us, No Man's Land can be

+searched.  The wounded and dead are found,

+and but few are reported "missing."  But if

+the attack fail, and the regiment has to retire

+to its own line, it becomes impossible for us

+to search that part of No Man's Land, adjoining

+the German trench (for there is rarely

+any truce after a battle in this war), and so,

+it is impossible to find out whether those who

+have failed to return were killed, wounded, or

+taken prisoners.  The comrades who saw them

+fall are probably killed, for the return is as

+fatal as the attack.  If they come back wounded

+they are taken straight to the hospitals and so

+have no chance of reporting to their officers

+the fate of those whom they saw fall.  Only

+the unwounded return to the regiment and, in

+a lost battle, these are few and know but little

+of what happened to those around them.  They

+were excited and were fighting for their lives.

+They had no leisure to observe the fate of

+others.

+

+On one occasion our men took some German

+trenches opposite them and held them for

+some hours by desperate fighting, but before

+dusk had to retire.  Many were left dead or

+wounded in the captured trenches, and many

+fell on the return journey.  The few who got

+back to us unwounded could give very little

+information about individuals who were

+missing.  They had been separated one from

+another and fighting hour after hour with

+desperation.  All therefore who did not return

+to the regiment or dressing station, and whose

+bodies were not recovered, were reported as

+"Missing" unless declared dead by reliable

+eye-witnesses.  The evidence of eye-witnesses

+must be carefully examined before a regiment

+dare report a soldier dead on the strength of

+it.  During an attack a man is in an abnormal

+state of excitement and the observations of

+his senses are not entirely reliable.  Men

+imagine they see things, and frequently make

+mistakes in identity.  I have known many cases

+in which a man has sworn that he saw another

+being carried to the dressing station, yet the

+missing man's body has afterwards been found

+near the German lines.  The eye-witness

+simply mistook one man for another.  No end

+of pain to relatives has been caused by these

+mistakes and a regiment rightly declines on

+such evidence to report a soldier as killed.

+

+Some weeks after the attack just referred to,

+we received letters from some of the officers

+and men who had been taken prisoners;

+information about others came through The

+Geneva Red Cross Society.  Those of whom

+we heard nothing for six months we knew to

+be, in all probability, dead.  Nine months later,

+the Germans retired from the position, and

+many of our dead were found still lying out

+in No Man's Land.  Some were identified.

+Others could not be, their discs having

+perished by reason of the long exposure.  Many

+of the dead had been left in the German

+trenches.  These had been buried by the enemy

+and he had left no crosses to mark the graves.

+After more than a year there is no direct

+evidence of the death of many who fought

+on that day.  They are "Missing," and we can

+only conclude that they were killed.

+

+In other cases, men are reported missing for

+several weeks, and then reported dead.  A

+typical case may be cited to show how it comes

+about.  We attacked one morning at dawn.

+The enemy were on the run, and in a state of

+exhaustion.  An immediate attack would, it

+was believed, carry the position without much

+loss of life, even though our big guns had not

+had time to come up in support.  Unfortunately

+the Germans were, unknown to us, reinforced

+during the night.  Their new troops met our

+men with a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire,

+and the regiment was ordered to retire.

+Several failed to return.  We knew that some

+of the men had been forced to surrender,

+especially the wounded.  Others had been

+killed.  Those who returned unwounded were

+not able, however, to give us the names of

+those who had been killed or of those who had

+been taken prisoners.  The attack had been

+made in the half-light of dawn so that our men

+could not be seen distinctly.  They had also

+advanced in extended order so as to avoid

+making themselves an easy target.  The

+half-light and the distance of one man from another

+made it difficult, therefore, for anyone to see

+either who fell or why they fell.  Most of

+those who were killed or taken prisoners were

+therefore reported as "missing."

+

+A few days later the whole Division was

+moved to another part of the Front.  A fresh

+regiment took our place, and, a few weeks

+later, with adequate artillery support, carried

+the German trenches.  After the battle, burial

+parties were sent out by the regiment to bury

+both its own dead and ours who had been left

+in the German half of No Man's Land.

+Each grave was marked with the soldier's

+name, and his disc and paybook were sent to

+our regiment as proof of his death.  The War

+Office was then informed that such and such a

+man "previously reported missing, is now

+reported killed."

+

+There are, however, cases of missing men

+which cannot be explained.  The facts never

+come to light, and we can only guess what

+happened.  They may have been buried by the

+enemy, or they may have been buried in the

+dark by some regimental burial party which

+could not find their discs.  They may even have

+been buried by a shell or blown to fragments

+by a direct hit.  We have no evidence.

+

+After the attack on Gommécourt a youth I

+knew had his wound dressed at the Regimental

+Aid post and was seen, by more than one of

+his chums, passing down the communication

+trench to the Advanced Dressing Station where

+I happened to be.  Yet he never arrived, slight

+though his wound was.  It was impossible for

+him to have got lost.  His brother and I made

+every possible enquiry about him, but nothing

+ever came to light, and we both came to the

+conclusion that on his way down the trench

+he had been buried by a shell.  In another

+case an officer was wounded and four stretcher

+bearers went out to bring him in.  None were

+ever seen again, and later, when we came into

+possession of the ground, the body of none

+of them were found.  It was scarcely possible

+for them to have been taken prisoners, and

+they were never reported as having been

+captured.  We concluded, therefore, that a shell

+had both killed and buried them.

+

+One day a rifleman reported sick to the

+Doctor and was sent down the line to the

+Dressing Station whence he would be sent on

+to a Rest Camp.  He was not seriously ill,

+and needed no escort.  It was impossible for

+him to have wandered into the German lines,

+yet he never reported at the Dressing Station

+or anywhere else.  Loss of memory is very

+rare, but even if that had happened to him,

+he could not have wandered about behind our

+lines without being found and arrested.  No

+report of his burial ever reached us and we

+were led to the conclusion that he was killed

+by a shell on the way down, and in such a way

+that all means of identification were lost.  In

+another case a private, wounded in the arm,

+was sent down the line in company with a

+party of stretcher bearers who were carrying

+a "lying case."  Evidently he got separated

+from them in the dark, and was hit by a shell,

+for he never reached any dressing station, and

+his fate was never known.

+

+Conditions at the front are such that these

+mysterious disappearances must inevitably

+occur.  Every possible arrangement which

+circumstances will allow is made to prevent them;

+but they cannot be altogether eliminated.

+People at home may sometimes think that more

+might have been done, but it is because they

+have no conception of the amazing conditions

+under which the war is carried on.  Every

+officer and private knows that he may

+disappear without leaving a trace.  That being so,

+they, if only from common prudence and the

+instinct of self-preservation, combine to reduce

+the danger to its lowest limits; but, when all

+has been done, war is war; and nothing can

+rob it of its horrors.

+

+Every day, officers and men die in trying to

+save their comrades, and nothing could be more

+unjust than to blame those who survive for

+not having done more to prevent others from

+being lost; for those who are surviving, to-day,

+may become missing to-morrow, and leave no

+trace behind.  Officers have sometimes shown

+me letters from poor distracted relatives which

+could never have been written if they could

+have imagined the deadly peril in which the

+officers stood and the manifold distractions

+that wore them down.  Sometimes an officer's

+letter is short and business-like in reply to an

+enquiry, but it must be remembered that his

+first duty is to the living.  He must hold the

+line and save his men; and he has, despite the

+tragedy of his position, to answer not one

+enquiry but scores.  And before he has finished

+answering all the enquiries, his own parents,

+perhaps, will be making enquiries about his

+own fate.  Our officers are the bravest and

+kindest-hearted men that ever had the lives of

+others in their keeping; and when the chaplain

+asks them for details about any missing or slain

+soldier, they will go to endless trouble for him.

+They know what their own death will mean

+to their parents; and the knowledge makes their

+hearts go out in sympathy to the parents of

+their men, and it makes them do all that is

+possible to prevent lives being lost.

+

+When Moses died no man knew the place

+of his burial.  It has not been found to this

+day.  We know nothing of his last thoughts

+or of the manner of his death.  His end is a

+perfect mystery.  But we know that he died in

+the presence of God; that God strengthened

+him in the dread hour; and that with His own

+fingers He closed the lids over the prophet's

+brave, tender eyes.  God buried Moses in a

+grave dug by His own hands and He will know

+where to find the poor worn-out body of the

+great patriot at the resurrection of the just.

+And God was with every one of our missing

+lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed

+in which each lies sleeping.  The grave may

+have no cross above it, but it will often know

+the tread of an angel's feet as he comes to

+plant poppies, primroses and daffodils above

+the resting-place of the brave.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`"IT MUST BE SUNDAY"`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XII

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   "IT MUST BE SUNDAY"

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+The Psalmist of Israel tells us that God

+has "ordained" the moon and the stars.

+These "flaming fires" are "ministers of

+His that do His pleasure."  Nor are they

+the only ones chosen from Nature.  Mungo

+Park, having laid down in the desert to die,

+notices beside him a tiny flower, and it awakens

+hope in him.  The winter of his despair is

+ended.  He rises again, and pushes on until

+he finds a human habitation where he is cared

+for by native women as though he were their

+brother.  The little flower had been "ordained"

+to minister hope to a lost and despairing traveler.

+

+At the Front such ministering by Nature is

+of common occurrence.  No Man's Land is

+desolate enough to look upon, but there is life

+there, and music.  Larks have chosen it for

+their nests, and amid its desolation they rear

+their young.  Even the pheasants have taken

+to some parts of it.  If we could but know

+the thoughts of the wounded who have lain

+out there waiting for death, we should find

+that the moon and the stars, the birds and the

+field mice, had not allowed them die without

+some comforting of the spirit.

+

+One Sunday our regiment was resting in

+reserve trenches after a period in the firing line.

+It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun

+sank westward I administered the Sacrament

+of the Lord's Supper.  The day was far spent

+but, as the bread was broken, there came to

+us a vision of the Face which the two disciples

+saw on another such evening in the far-off

+village of Emmaus.  On the way back to my

+billet I met a platoon of Royal Engineers

+returning from the baths.  One of them had

+been a member of my church in London, and

+he dropped out to talk with me.  Those who

+have not been in the Expeditionary Force can

+hardly understand the pleasure a man feels

+when he meets someone he knew in the days of

+peace, or even someone who knows the street

+or town out of which he came.  He was full

+of talk, and as I listened his excitement and

+pleasure bubbled over like a spring.

+

+"Last night," he said, "was the night of

+my life.  I never expected to see daylight

+again.  Talk about a 'tight corner,' there was

+never one to match it, and as you know, my

+chums and I have been in many.  The Huns

+simply plastered us with shells.  The

+bombardment was terrific.  It was like being in a

+hailstorm and we expected every moment to be

+our last.

+

+"You know the trench which the infantry

+took yesterday?  Well, we were there.  We

+went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of

+it ready for the counter-attack.  We were out

+in No Man's Land for about two hours,

+working as swiftly and silently as we could.

+Whenever the enemy sent his lights up, we laid down,

+and so far we had escaped notice and were

+congratulating ourselves that the work was

+nearly done, and that our skins were still

+whole.  Then, somehow, the Germans spotted

+us, and let fly.  It was like hell let loose.  We

+ran to the trench for shelter, but it seemed as

+if nothing could save us from such a deluge

+of shells.  It was just like being naked in a

+driving snow-storm.  We felt as if there was

+no trench at all, and as if the gunners could

+see us in the dark.  After that experience I

+can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after

+it.  But we just sat tight with such cover as

+we had and made the best of it.  There was

+nothing else to do.  If we were to be killed,

+we should be killed.  Nothing that we could

+do would have made any difference.  Yet,

+though there didn't seem shelter for even a

+mouse, only one of us was hit, and that was

+the sergeant.  He was rather badly 'done in,'

+and we could only save his life by getting him

+quickly to the dressing station.

+

+.. figure:: images/img-144.jpg

+   :figclass: white-space-pre-line

+   :align: center

+   :alt: "HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN" Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London

+

+   "HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN" 

+   *Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London*

+

+"I am one of the taller and stronger men

+of my platoon so, of course, I volunteered as

+a stretcher-bearer.  There was no communication

+trench, so we had no choice but to lift

+him up and make a dash across the open.

+They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare

+not delay because, if we were overtaken by

+daylight, it would be impossible to get him

+away till the next night, and by that time he

+would be dead.  So we decided to try our luck.

+We had just lifted him up when a shell burst

+right on top of us, and knocked us all down.

+For a minute or two I was unconscious, and

+when I came round I thought I must surely

+be wounded, so I ran my fingers over my body

+but found neither blood nor a rent in my

+clothes.  I was covered with chalk but that

+didn't matter.  Except for a touch of

+concussion in the brain I was none the worse, and

+soon pulled myself together.  The sergeant

+was a sight!  He was half-buried, and we

+could scarce see him for chalk; but we dug

+him out and got him on the stretcher again.

+After that we sat down in the bottom of the

+trench till the effect of the shock had worn

+off a bit, for we all felt like rats that had been

+shaken by a terrier.

+

+"Then, as suddenly as it had started, the

+shelling stopped.  The calm that followed was

+wonderful.  I never felt anything so restful

+before.  It was like the delicious restfulness that,

+sometimes, immediately follows hours of fever.

+Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out

+of No Man's Land and began to sing.  The

+effect on us was magical.  It was the sweetest

+music I have ever heard, and I shall remember

+it to my dying day.  The countryside was dark

+and silent, and, as I listened to the lark, old

+days came back to mind.  You remember that

+Saturday midnight in the June before the war

+when you took us into Epping Forest to see

+the dawn break over it?  Well, as I listened

+to the lark, I was back there in the forest.

+Then some impulse seized me and, hardly

+knowing what I did, I cried aloud, 'Why bless

+me, it must be Sunday,' and so it was, although

+I had forgotten.

+

+"Then we jumped up for we saw that the

+dawn was breaking and, lifting the sergeant

+out of the trench, we rushed across the open

+ground in the direction of the dressing station.

+Talk about 'feeling protected!'  Why, I felt

+that God was all around us--that no harm

+could touch us.  A great calm stole over me,

+and I felt utterly devoid of fear.  We had,

+as you know, to bring the sergeant some two

+miles to the dressing station, just down the

+road there, but we got him safely in, and I

+think he will get better."

+

+While we were talking, a shell burst near

+the trench where my men had been taking of

+the Sacrament, and another burst by the

+roadside close to the Engineers.  With a laugh

+and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands,

+saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades.

+The shells were part of the game.  In London

+we had been in the same football team.  He

+had kept goal and I had played full back, and

+he regarded the shells that had fallen as bad

+shots at goal made by the opposing team.

+They might have been serious but, as it

+happened, the ball had each time gone out of play.

+

+I waited a minute or two in the hope of

+getting a lift.  A motor car came along; I

+stopped it and got in; for at the Front

+everything is Government property and more or

+less at one's service.  I found myself sitting

+by the side of a private, who had been wounded

+in the face and right hand by the shell that

+had just fallen near the platoon of Engineers.

+

+He had left his horse with a comrade, and

+was being driven to the Advanced Dressing

+Station by a driver who, happening to pass at

+the moment, had kindly offered him a lift.

+After a little wait at the Dressing Station I

+got on the front of an ambulance car.  There

+were only two cases inside, and they were being

+taken to the Main Dressing Station in Arras.

+One of them had his feet and arms tied to

+the stretcher, for he was suffering from

+shell-shock; and three orderlies were in charge of

+him.  The poor fellow laughed and cried

+alternately and struggled to break loose.  "I'm

+a British soldier," he cried, "and I will not

+be tied up.  I've done my bit, and this is the

+way you pay me out.  I'll not have it."  And

+time and again he struggled desperately to

+break away.

+

+The orderlies in charge of him were wise and

+tactful as women.  They asked him questions

+about the fight, and he fought his battle over

+again.  They praised his regiment and told him

+it had done magnificently, and he laughed and

+chuckled like a young mother, dandling her

+first baby on her knee.  And so, without

+mishap, we reached the ruined town of Arras

+where nightly the shells fall among the forsaken

+houses in which our soldiers are billeted.

+The wounded private was carried into the

+hospital, and I walked away to my room in an

+adjoining street.

+

+So ended the day which, in the hour of

+dawn, the dark had told the young engineer

+"must be Sunday."

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XIII

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+On Easter Monday, in the Battle of

+Arras, I saw two sights such as I shall

+never forget.  One revealed the kind

+and forgiving spirit of our men, the other their

+unflinching courage.  After burying three

+non-commissioned officers who had been killed the

+day before, I reached the Advanced Dressing

+Station near which our regiment was "standing

+to" in a support trench.  Other regiments of

+our Division were carrying out the attack and,

+with small loss, had taken the enemy lines.

+The German trenches had been blotted out by

+our shells but their deep dug-outs, with

+machine-guns at their mouths, remained

+untouched, and it was almost impossible for our

+soldiers to discover them until they got within

+a few yards of the entrances.

+

+The German commander's idea was to keep

+his men in the shelter of the dug-outs until

+our barrage lifted.  They were then to rush

+out with machine-guns and rifles to destroy our

+men who were following it up.  If the idea

+had been carried out, the German line would

+have been impregnable for our men would

+have been mown down like corn before the

+reaper.  It failed because German human

+nature could not rise to the occasion.  The

+German soldiers had been demoralized by the

+safety of the dug-outs and by the thunder of

+our shells above them.  They cowered in the

+dug-outs when they should have rushed out.

+The critical moment passed, and with its

+passing our soldiers leapt to the entrances and

+threw down hand grenades.  There was a wild

+cry of pain and fear from below.  Arms went

+up and the cry of "Kamerad."  The surrender

+was accepted and the beaten soldiers

+crawled out.  From some dug-outs as many as

+two hundred prisoners were taken.  In other

+parts of the line there was a stiff fight, but, on

+the whole, our casualties were very light.

+From my own observation I should say that

+we took more prisoners than we suffered

+casualties.  Some companies could boast a prisoner

+for each man engaged in the attack.

+

+The Advanced Dressing Station was at the

+corner of Cross Roads and the sight around

+it was wonderful to behold.  A crowd of

+prisoners was assembling ready to be marched

+to the cages, and wounded officers and men,

+British and German, were being bandaged.

+The prisoners were hungry.  For some days

+our artillery had cut off their rations.  A

+platoon of our soldiers came marching by, and,

+to save time, eating their breakfasts as they

+passed along.  The prisoners looked at them

+with hungry eyes.  Our men saw the look and

+stopped.  Breaking rank for a moment they

+passed in and out among the prisoners and

+shared out their rations.  "Here, Fritzy, old

+boy, take this," I heard all around me, and

+Fritz did not need asking twice.  He took the

+biscuits and cheese gratefully and eagerly.

+The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and

+he felt that he had found friends where he

+had only expected to find enemies.  He began

+to hope for kindness in his captivity.  The

+scene was one of pure goodwill.

+

+Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy.

+Our Tommies laughed and cracked jokes which

+no German could understand, but I heard not

+a single taunt or bitter word.  In fact, Fritz

+was treated more like a pet than a prisoner.

+One who had worked in London, and who

+spoke English, asked me for a cup of tea for

+a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I

+got one in the dressing station.  The platoon

+of Tommies re-formed and marched away to

+the battle and the prisoners were led off to

+the cages.  There were still large numbers of

+prisoners on the road, and they were moving

+about without guards.  Many of them were

+being used as stretcher-bearers and they seemed

+to do their work out of goodwill and not of

+constraint.

+

+Their assistance was of great help to the

+wounded.  The battle was going well with us.

+Everyone felt in good heart and kindly

+disposed.  An officer who lay seriously wounded

+and waiting for a car told me of the splendid

+work which his regiment had done.  His eyes

+shone with suppressed excitement and pride as

+he told the story.  While he was speaking two

+soldiers came limping down the road and their

+appearance was greeted with a burst of

+laughter.  One was English, the other German.

+Tommy had his arm round the German's neck

+and was leaning on him while Fritz, with his

+arm round the lad's waist, helped him along.

+They came along very slowly for both were

+wounded, but they laughed and talked together

+like long-lost brothers.  Yet neither could

+understand a word the other said.

+

+I passed down the road towards the line.

+Gunners of the Territorials were hurriedly

+hitching their guns to the horses ready to

+advance to new positions.  In the ruined village

+a party of engineers was already unloading a

+wagon of rails with which to build a light

+railway.  I continued along the road towards the

+next village.  It had just fallen into our hands

+and not one stone was left on another.  There

+were scores of wounded men hobbling back

+from it and I gave my arm to such as needed

+it most.  A badly wounded Tommy was being

+brought along on a wheeler by two orderlies

+and as I helped them through the traffic we

+heard the heavy rumble of the advancing field-guns.

+

+The road was cleared with the quickness of

+lightning.  Out of the village the batteries burst

+at a mad gallop and down the road they came

+at break-neck speed.  With the swiftness of

+a fire engine in a city street the rocking guns

+swept past.  The gunners clung to the

+ammunition limbers with both hands and the

+drivers whipped and spurred the excited

+foam-flecked horses as though they were fiery beings

+leaping through the air and incapable of fatigue

+or weakness.  Suddenly the drivers raised their

+whips as a sign to those behind, and the

+trembling horses and bounding guns came to a

+dead halt.  The leading gun had overturned at

+a nasty place where the road dipped down into

+the hollow.  The rest of the batteries stood

+exposed on the crest of the ridge.  Before

+retiring the Germans had felled all the trees that

+grew by the roadside so that nothing might

+obstruct their line of vision.  Such a

+catastrophe as this was what the enemy had been

+hoping for.  The sun shone brilliantly, and

+our batteries were a direct target for the

+German gunners such as seldom occurs.  Our boys

+were caught like rats in a trap.  By the side

+of the road ran a shallow trench and near us

+two broad steps into it.  We laid the wounded

+lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down

+by his side.  Shells were falling all around and

+fountains of dirt and debris rose into the air

+and, on five or six occasions, covered us with

+their spray.

+

+I covered the lad's face.  He was barely

+conscious and uttered no word.  It seemed as if

+nothing could live in such a bombardment.  A

+shell burst near, and the cry of dying horses

+rent the air.  The traces were cut and the

+horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road.

+Every second I expected to see the horses and

+drivers in front of me blown into the air and

+I watched them with fascinated eyes.  Not a

+man stirred.  They sat on their horses and

+gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze.

+Not a man sought the trench and not a man

+relieved the tension by going forward to see

+what was wrong or to lend a hand.  Each

+knew his place, and if death sought him it

+would know where to find him.  The horses

+felt that they had brave men on their backs

+and, in that mysterious way peculiar to horses,

+caught the spirit of their riders.  Every shell

+covered men and horses with chalk and soil,

+but they remained an immobile as statuary.  It

+was magnificent and it was war.  A driver in

+the battery beside us got wounded in the leg

+and hand.  He jumped off his horse and came

+to us to be bandaged.  Then he leapt back into

+the saddle.  It seemed an age, but I suppose

+it was only a few minutes, before the obstruction

+was removed.  The whips flashed in the

+air and the horses sprang forward.  The guns

+rocked and swayed as they swept past us and

+within a few minutes they were in their new

+positions under the hill upon which lay the

+ruins of Neuville Vitasse.

+

+The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had

+started and we lifted out our wounded soldier

+and went in the direction of the dressing

+station.  Some distance up the road my attention

+was called to one of the drivers whom the

+artillery had left in the care of some privates.

+He was living, but his skull was broken, and

+he would never wake again to consciousness.

+He was fast "going West."  His day was over

+and his work was done.  I got him lifted on

+to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station

+so that he might die in peace and be buried

+in the little soldiers' cemetery behind it.

+

+When I returned in the evening to our billet

+I told the transport officer of the magnificent

+bravery of the artillery drivers.

+

+"Any other drivers would behave just as

+well, if caught in the same trap," he replied.

+

+He spoke the simple truth.  They would.

+Such supreme courage and devotion to duty are

+common to the army.  Their presence among

+all ranks and in all sections of the army makes

+the fact the more wonderful.  Both officers and

+men love life, but they love duty more, and

+commanders in drawing up their plans know

+that they can rely on their soldiers to carry

+them out.  Our Tommies never fail us whether

+in France, Mesopotamia, or Palestine.  Devotion

+to duty is inwoven with the fibers of their

+hearts.  They are men who, either in kindness

+to captives or courage amid disaster and

+destruction, never fail us.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XIV

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+The war on the Western Front has been

+fought in a Roman Catholic country

+where crucifixes are erected at all the

+chief cross-roads to remind us that, in every

+moment of doubt as to the way of life, and

+on whichever road we finally decide to walk,

+whether rough or smooth, we shall need the

+Saviour and His redeeming love.  We have

+seen a cross so often when on the march, or

+when passing down some trench, that it has

+become inextricably mixed up with the war.

+When we think of the great struggle the vision

+of the cross rises before us, and when we see

+the cross, we think of processions of wounded

+men who have been broken to save the world.

+Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to

+rest, we have placed over him, as the comment

+on his death, a simple white cross bearing his

+name.  We never paint any tribute on it.

+None is needed, for nothing else could speak so

+eloquently as a cross--a white cross.  White

+is the sacred color in the army of to-day, and

+the cross is the sacred form.  In after years

+there will never be any doubt as to where the

+line of liberty ran that held back the flood and

+force of German tyranny.  From the English

+Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all

+time with the crosses on the graves of the

+British and French soldiers.  Whatever may

+be our views about the erection of crucifixes

+by the wayside and at the cross-roads, no one

+can deny that they have had an immense

+influence for good on our men during the war

+in France.

+

+The experience of many a gallant soldier is

+expressed in the following Belgian poem:

+

+   |  "I came to a halt at the bend of the road;

+   |  I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;

+   |  I came to a halt at the bend of the road.

+

+   |  "O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,

+   |  My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;

+   |  O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee.

+

+   |  "And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,

+   |  I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup;

+   |  And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up.

+

+   |  "For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,

+   |  Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;

+   |  For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave.

+

+   |  "Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'

+   |  And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.

+   |  Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'

+

+   |  "Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?

+   |  Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.

+   |  Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?"

+   |

+

+The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier

+and has provided him with the only acceptable

+philosophy of the war.  It has taught boys

+just entering upon life's experience that,

+out-topping all history and standing out against

+the background of all human life, is a Cross

+on which died the Son of God.  It has made

+the hill of Calvary stand out above all other

+hills in history.  Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon--these

+may stand at the foot of the hill, as

+did the Roman soldiers, but they are made to

+look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises

+above them, showing forth the figure of the Son

+of Man.  Against the sky-line of human history

+the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in

+shadow.  The wayside crosses at the Front and

+the flashes of roaring guns may not have taught

+our soldiers much history, but they have taught

+them the central fact of history; and all else

+will have to accommodate itself to that, or

+be disbelieved.  The Cross of Christ is the

+center of the picture for evermore, and the

+grouping of all other figures must be round it.

+

+To the soldiers it can never again be made a

+detail in some other picture.  Seen also in the

+light of their personal experience it has taught

+them that as a cross lies at the basis of the

+world's life and shows bare at every crisis of

+national and international life so, at the root

+of all individual life, is a cross.  They have

+been taught to look for it at every parting of

+the ways.  Suffering to redeem others and make

+others happy will now be seen as the true

+aim of life and not the grasping of personal

+pleasure or profit.  They have stood where

+high explosive shells thresh out the corn from

+the chaff--the true from the false.  They have

+seen facts in a light that lays things stark

+and bare; and the cant talked by skeptical

+armchair-philosophers will move them as little

+as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops.

+For three long years our front-line trenches

+have run through what was once a village

+called Neuve Chapelle.  There is nothing left

+of it now.  But there is something there which

+is tremendously impressive.  It is a crucifix.

+It stands out above everything, for the land

+is quite flat around it.  The cross is immediately

+behind our firing trench, and within two

+or three hundred yards of the German front

+trench.  The figure of Christ is looking across

+the waste of No Man's Land.  Under His right

+arm and under His left, are British soldiers

+holding the line.  Two dud shells lie at the

+the foot.  One is even touching the wood,

+but though hundreds of shells must have swept

+by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it

+remains undamaged.  Trenches form a labyrinth

+all round it.  When our men awake and

+"stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is

+the cross; and when at night they lie down in

+the side of the trench, or turn into their

+dug-outs, their last sight is the cross.  It stands

+clear in the noon-day sun; and in the moonlight

+it takes on a solemn grandeur.

+

+I first saw it on a November afternoon when

+the sun was sinking under heavy banks of

+cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene

+as it must have been on the first Good Friday,

+when the sun died with its dying Lord, and

+darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and

+covered Him with its funeral pall to hide His

+dying agonies from the curious eyes of

+unbelieving men.  I had had tea in a dug-out, and

+it was dark when I left.  Machine-guns were

+sweeping No Man's Land to brush back

+enemies that might be creeping towards us through

+the long grass; and the air was filled with a

+million clear, cracking sounds.  Star-shells rose

+and fell and their brilliant lights lit up the

+silent form on the cross.

+

+For three years, night and day, Christ has

+been standing there in the midst of our soldiers,

+with arms outstretched in blessing.  They

+have looked up at Him through the clear

+starlight of a frosty night; and they have seen

+His pale face by the silver rays of the moon

+as she has sailed her course through the

+heavens.  In the gloom of a stormy night they

+have seen the dark outline, and caught a

+passing glimpse of Christ's effigy by the flare

+of the star-shells.  What must have been the

+thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts

+as all night long they have gazed at the cross;

+or of the officers as they have passed down

+the trench to see that all was well; or of some

+private sleeping in the trench and, being

+awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to

+restore blood-circulation?  Deep thoughts, I

+imagine, much too deep for words of theirs

+or mine.

+

+And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was

+raging and the wounded, whose blood was

+turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what

+thoughts must have been theirs then?  Did

+they not feel that He was their big Brother

+and remember that blood had flowed from

+Him as from them; that pain had racked Him

+as it racked them; and that He thought of

+His mother and of Nazareth as they thought

+of their mother and the little cottage they were

+never to see again?  When their throats

+became parched and their lips swollen with thirst

+did they not remember how He, too, had cried

+for a drink; and, most of all, did they not

+call to mind the fact that He might have saved

+Himself, as they might, if He had cared more

+for His own happiness than for the world's?

+As their spirits passed out through the wounds

+in their bodies would they not ask Him to

+remember them as their now homeless souls

+knocked at the gate of His Kingdom?  He had

+stood by them all through the long and bloody

+battle while hurricanes of shells swept over

+and around Him.  I do not wonder that the

+men at the Front flock to the Lord's Supper

+to commemorate His death.  They will not go

+without it.  If the Sacrament be not provided,

+they ask for it.  At home there was never such

+a demand for it as exists at the Front.  There

+is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the

+Cross, between the soldier and his Saviour.

+

+And yet, to those who willed the war and

+drank to the day of its coming, even the Cross

+has no sacredness.  It is to them but a tool

+of war.  An officer told me that during the

+German retreat from the Somme they noticed

+a peculiar accuracy in the enemy's firing.  The

+shells followed an easily distinguishable course.

+So many casualties occurred from this accurate

+shelling that the officers set themselves to

+discover the cause.  They found that the circle

+of shells had for its center the cross-roads, and

+that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood

+up clearly as a land-mark.  Evidently the

+crosses were being used to guide the gunners,

+and was causing the death of our men.  But

+a more remarkable thing came to light.  The

+cross stood close to the road, and when the

+Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the

+cross-roads to delay our advance.  Everything

+near had been blown to bits by the explosion

+except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it.

+And yet it could not have escaped, except by

+a miracle.  They therefore set themselves to

+examine the seeming miracle and came across

+one of the most astounding cases of fiendish

+cunning.  They found that the Germans had

+made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that

+they could take it out or put it in at pleasure.

+Before blowing up the cross-roads they had

+taken the cross out of its socket and removed

+it to a safe distance, then, when the mine had

+exploded, they put the cross back so that it

+might be a landmark to direct their shooting.

+And now they were using Christ's instrument

+of redemption as an instrument for men's destruction.

+

+But our young officers resolved to restore

+the cross to its work of saving men.  They

+waited till night fell, and then removed the cross

+to a point a hundred or two yards to the left.

+When in the morning the German gunners

+fired their shells their observers found that the

+shells fell too far wide of the cross and they

+could make nothing of the mystery.  It looked

+as if someone had been tampering with their

+guns in the night.  To put matters right they

+altered the position of their guns so that once

+more the shells made a circle round the cross.

+And henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the

+shells fell harmlessly into the outlying fields.

+Nor was this the only time during their retreat

+that the Germans put the cross to this base use

+and were foiled in their knavery.

+

+When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ

+and turns it into a tool to gain an advantage

+over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to

+ask who began the war, and folly to close our

+eyes to the horrors and depravities which are

+being reached in the waging of it.

+

+There is a new judgment of the nations now

+proceeding and who shall predict what shall

+be?  The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and

+our attitude towards it decides our fate.  I

+have seen the attitude of our soldiers towards

+the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards

+that for which it stands; and I find more

+comfort in their reverence for Christ and

+Christianity than in all their guns and impediments

+of war.

+

+The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks

+of time, and the nations will survive that stand

+beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of

+righteousness, liberty and truth.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`THE CHILDREN OF OUR DEAD`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XV

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   THE CHILDREN OF OUR DEAD

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+There are times when we get away from

+the Front for a rest.  We hear no

+more the sound of the guns, but give

+ourselves up to the silence and charm of the

+country.  Before going into the Somme

+fighting we were billeted for ten days in the

+neighboring village to Cressy; and as the anniversary

+of the battle came that week the colonel chose

+the day for a march to the battlefield.  The

+owner of the field, when the old windmill

+stood, from which King Edward III directed

+his army, came to meet us and describe the

+battle.  When the war is over he is going to

+erect a monument on the spot to the memory

+of the French and British troops who in comradeship

+have died fighting against the common foe.

+

+They were happy days that we spent around

+Cressy.  The last that some were destined to

+know this side of the Great Divide.  The

+bedroom next to mine was occupied by two fine

+young officers of utterly different type.  One

+was a Greek whose father had taken out

+naturalization papers and loved the country of

+his adoption with a worshiping passion that

+would shame many native born.  The other

+was a charming, argumentative, systematic,

+theological student of Scots parentage.  The

+night before we left, the Greek accidentally

+broke his mirror and was much upset.  It was,

+he said, a token that Death was about to claim

+him.  The Scot laughed heartily, for he had

+not a trace of the superstitious in him; or, if he

+had--which was more than likely--it was kept

+under by his strong reasoning faculties.

+

+"If you are to be killed," he replied, "I am

+to be killed too, for I also have broken my

+mirror."

+

+He spoke the words in jest, or with hardly

+a discernible undercurrent of seriousness; but

+they were true words nevertheless.  The two

+bed-mates were killed in the same battle a week

+or two later.  I had tea with them in their

+dug-out on the eve of the fight.  They were

+to take up their positions in an hour, but the

+student could not resist having just one more

+argument.  He directed the conversation to the

+New Theology, and to German philosophers

+and Biblical scholars.  He simply talked me

+off my feet, for he possessed the most brilliant

+intellect in the regiment, combined with

+self-reliance and perfect modesty.  Then the

+conversation turned to the question of taking a tot

+of rum before going over the parapet.  He

+was a rigid teetotaler, "for," said he, "drink

+is the ruin of my country."  He was opposed

+to the idea of taking rum to help one's courage

+or allay his fears.  He would not, he said, go

+under with his eyes bandaged.  He would

+take a good look at Death and dare him to

+do his worst.  He was superb, and Death never

+felled a manlier man.  Browning would have

+loved him as his own soul for he had Browning's

+attitude to life exactly, and could have

+sung with him,

+

+   |      "Fear death? ...

+   |  I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,

+   |      The best and the last!

+   |  I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,

+   |      And bade me creep past.

+   |  No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers

+   |      The heroes of old,

+   |  Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears

+   |      Of pain, darkness and cold.

+   |  For sudden the worst turns best to the brave,

+   |      The black minute's at end,

+   |  And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,

+   |      Shall dwindle, shall blend,

+   |  Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,

+   |      Then a light...

+   |      And with God be the rest!"

+   |

+

+He was found with his "body against the

+wall where the forts of folly fall."  His brave,

+intelligent face was completely blown away.

+His Greek friend was wounded, and while

+being dressed in a shell-hole by his servant, was

+hit again and killed.

+

+Some weeks later all that remained of the

+regiment was drawn out to a little village some

+miles from Amiens, and very similar to the

+one we had occupied near Cressy.  We were

+taken to it in motor-'buses for the men were

+too exhausted to march, and the days spent

+there were days of great delight.  We had a

+glorious, crowded-out service on the Sunday.

+It was both a thanksgiving and a memorial

+service, and I spoke to the men on "The

+Passing of the Angels."

+

+"When the music ceased," I said, "and the

+herald-angels departed, the sky became very

+empty, cold and gray to the Shepherds; and

+they said one to another, 'let us now go even

+unto Bethlehem.'  And they went and found

+out Jesus.  If the angels had stayed the

+shepherds would have stayed with them.  The

+angels had to come to point them to Jesus but,

+that done, they had to go away to make the

+shepherds desire Jesus and seek Him.  'When

+the half-gods go the gods arrive.'  The angels

+had to make room for Jesus and the second

+best had to yield place to the best.  When John

+the Baptist was killed his disciples went in their

+sorrow to Jesus; and having lost our noble

+comrades, we must go to Him also.  The best

+in our friends came from Jesus as the sweet

+light of the moon comes from the sun; and we

+must go to the Source.  If we find and keep

+to Jesus, sooner or later we shall find our lost

+friends again, for 'them also which sleep in

+Jesus will God bring with him!'"

+

+In some such words I tried to comfort those

+who had left their comrades behind in the

+graves on the Somme; for I know how deeply

+they felt the loss.  During the week we had

+dinner parties, and all kinds of jolly social

+intercourse.  It was amusing to see the delight

+everyone felt at having a bed to sleep in.

+"Look Padre, at these white sheets," an officer

+cried as I passed his window.  He was as

+merry over them as if a rich maiden aunt had

+remembered him in her will.  Some got "leave"

+home, and were so frankly joyful about it that

+it made the rest of us both glad and envious.

+We made up for it somewhat by getting leave

+to spend an occasional day in Amiens.  There

+I went into the glorious cathedral.  Almost the

+whole of the front was sandbagged, but even

+thus, it was a "thing of beauty" and has

+become for me a "joy forever."

+

+Except Rouen Cathedral I have seen nothing

+to equal it.  Notre Dame, with its invisible

+yet clinging tapestry of history, is more deeply

+moving.  But it is sadder--more sombre.

+Something of the ugliness and tragedy of

+by-gone days peep out in it; but Amiens Cathedral

+is a thing of pure joy and beauty.  It suggests

+fairies, while Notre Dame suggests goblins.

+

+While I was looking at its glorious

+rose-windows which were casting their rich colors

+on the pillars, a father and his two children

+came in.  The man and son dipped their

+fingers in the shell of holy water, crossed their

+foreheads and breasts with the water, and were

+passing on; but the little girl who was too

+short to reach the shell, took hold of her

+father's arm and pulled him back.  She, too,

+wished to dip her fingers in holy water, and

+make the sign of the cross over her mind and

+heart.  The father yielded to her importunity

+and touched her hand with his wet fingers.

+She made the sacred sign and was satisfied.

+The father and son had remembered their own

+needs but forgotten the child's.

+

+After all the tragic happenings on the

+Somme why should this little incident linger in

+my memory like a primrose in a crater?  Did

+it not linger *because* of the tragedy of the

+preceding weeks?  I had been living weeks

+together without seeing a child and after the

+slaughter of youth which I had witnessed the

+sight of a child in a cathedral was inexpressibly

+beautiful.  The father's neglect of its finer

+needs gave me pain.  We have lost so many

+young men, that every child and youth left to

+us ought to be cared for as the apple of our

+eye.  We have lost more than our young men.

+We have lost those who would have been their

+children.  The little ones who might have been,

+have gone to their graves with their fathers.

+

+The old recruiting cry, "the young and single

+first" was necessary from a military standpoint

+but, from a merely human point of view,

+I could never see much justice in it.  The young

+had no responsibility, direct or indirect, for the

+war.  They were given life and yet before

+they could taste it, they were called upon to

+die in our behalf.  We who are older have

+tasted of life and love; the residue of our years

+will be much the same as those that have gone

+before; there will be little of surprise or

+newness of experience.  Perhaps, too, we have

+living memorials of ourselves, so that if we die,

+our personality and name will still live on.

+Our death will only be partial.  While William

+Pitt lived could it be said that Lord Chatham

+had died?  His body was dead, truly, but his

+spirit found utterance in the British House of

+Commons every time his son spoke, and

+Napoleon felt the strength of his arm as truly

+did Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham.  I

+should not have mourned the loss of the young

+Scot and the Greek so much, had they left to

+the world some image and likeness of

+themselves.  In dying, they gave more than

+themselves to death;

+

+   |  "Those who would have been

+   |  Their sons they gave--their immortality."

+   |

+

+After a summer on the Somme, I have come

+to understand something of how fear of the

+devouring maw of Time became almost an

+obsession with Shakespeare.  Death had taken

+from him some of the dearest intimates of his

+heart, and taken them young.  And so, like the

+sound of a funeral-bell echoing down the lane

+where lovers walk, there is heard through all

+his sonnets and poems of love the approaching

+footsteps of death.  Sometimes the footsteps

+sound faintly, but they are seldom absent.

+How then would he have felt in a war like

+this, in which the "young and single" have gone

+out by the hundred thousand to prematurely die?

+

+Others, however, who have given their lives

+were married men, and they have left images

+of themselves in trust to the nation.  We know

+the last thoughts of a dying father.  Captain

+Falcon Scott as he lay dying at the South Pole

+has expressed them for all time.  "Take care

+of the boy," he said, "there should be good

+stuff in him."  He found comfort in the

+reflection that he would, though he died, live on

+in his son; but he was saddened by the thought

+that the son would have to face the battle of

+life without a father to back him up.  The

+boy would therefore need special "care."

+

+On the evening of the first battle of the

+Somme I spoke to a young officer as he lay in

+a bed at the Field Ambulance.  He had lost

+his right arm and he told me how it had

+happened.  He was charging across No Man's

+Land when a shell cut it off near the shoulder,

+and flung it several yards away.  As he saw

+it fall to the ground the sight so overcame him

+that he cried aloud in distress, "Oh my arm!

+My beautiful arm."  He was still mourning

+its loss, so, to comfort him, I told him that

+Nelson lost *his* right arm and won the Battle

+of Trafalgar after he had lost it.  Like

+Nelson, I told him, he would learn to write with

+his left hand and still do a man's job.  He

+would not be useless in life as he feared.

+When the children of our dead soldiers charge

+across No Man's Land in the battle of life

+they will think of their lost fathers, and the

+agonizing cry of the young wounded soldier

+will rise to their lips, "Oh my arm, my

+beautiful arm."  The State is providing artificial

+arms for our wounded soldiers.  Will it be a

+right arm to the children of its dead?  Will

+it be a father to the fatherless and a husband

+to the widow?  Unless it is ready for this

+sacred task, it had no right to ask for and

+accept the lives of these men.

+

+The State, with the help of the Church, must

+resolve that no child shall suffer because its

+father was a hero and patriot.  The State must

+help the child to the shell of holy water without

+the little one having to pull at its arm to

+remind it of its duties.  If the children of our

+dead soldiers lack education, food, moral and

+spiritual guidance, or a proper start in life,

+no words will be condemnatory enough to

+adequately describe the nation's crime and

+ingratitude.  They are the sons and daughters

+of heroes and there "should be good stuff" in

+them.  It is the nation's privilege, as well as

+its duty, to take the place of their fathers.

+

+A few days later I walked into Arras from

+the neighboring village.  There were guns all

+along the road, and there was not a house but

+bore the mark of shells.  Some of the civilians

+had remained, but these were mostly old people

+who could not settle elsewhere, and who

+preferred to die at home rather than live in a

+strange place.  One house impressed me

+greatly.  It had been badly damaged but, its

+garden was untouched and in it were half a

+dozen rose-trees.  It was the beginning of

+spring, and each tree was covered over with

+sacking to preserve it from the cold and

+fragments of shells.  The owner did not care

+sufficiently for his own life to move away, but he

+cared for the life of his roses.  And so, when

+the summer came there were roses in at least

+one garden in Arras.

+

+The noise of the guns was terrific and the

+old man had to live in the cellar, but he found

+leisure of soul to cultivate his roses.  His action

+was one of the most beautiful things I have

+seen in the entire war.  The children of our

+homes are more beautiful than Arras roses,

+and more difficult to rear.  May we trust our

+country not to neglect them?  Will she save

+them from the mark of the shell, and help

+them to grow up to a full and perfect loveliness?

+Our dying soldiers have trusted her to do it.

+From their graves they plead,

+

+   |  "If ye break faith with us who die,

+   |  We shall not sleep, though poppies blow

+   |  In Flanders fields."

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XVI

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+It was in a ruined village behind the

+trenches.  A fatigue party had just come

+out of the line, and was on its way to

+rest-billets in the next village.  The men were

+tired so they sat down to rest in the deserted

+street.  Suddenly, a scream, as from a

+disembodied spirit, pierced the air.  There was a

+crash, a cloud of smoke, and five men lay

+dead on the pavement, and twelve wounded.

+Next morning I was asked to bury one of the

+dead.  Under a glorious July sky a Roman

+Catholic chaplain and I cycled between desolate

+fields into the village.  A rifleman guided

+us down a communication-trench till we came

+to the cemetery.  It was a little field fenced

+with trees.  There we found a Church of

+England chaplain.  He and the Catholic

+chaplain had two men each to bury.

+

+A burial party was at work on the five graves.

+It was the fatigue party of the evening before,

+and the men were preparing the last resting

+place of those who had died at their side.

+They worked rapidly, for all the morning the

+village had been under a bombardment which

+had not as yet ceased.  Before they had

+finished they were startled by the familiar but

+fatal scream of a shell and threw themselves

+on the ground.  It burst a short distance away

+without doing harm, and the soldiers went on

+with their work, as if nothing had happened.

+When the graves were ready, two of the bodies

+were brought out and lowered with ropes.

+The Church of England chaplain read the

+burial service over them, and we all stood round

+as mourners.  Two more bodies were brought

+out and we formed a circle round them while

+the Roman Catholic chaplain read the burial

+service of his Church--chiefly, in Latin.  There

+now remained but one, and he, in turn, was

+quietly lowered into his grave.  He was still

+wearing his boots and uniform and was wrapped

+around with his blanket.

+

+   |  "No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

+   |  Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;

+   |  But he lay like a warrior taking his rest

+   |  With his martial cloak around him."

+   |

+

+All his comrades who had been with him in

+the dread hour of death were mourning by his

+grave, and standing with them were his officer

+and two chaplains.  I read the full service as

+it is given in our Prayer Book.  It was all

+that one could do for him.  The Catholic

+chaplain had sprinkled consecrated water on the

+bodies and I sprinkled consecrated soil.  Was

+it not in truth holy soil?  Behind me was one

+long, common grave in which lay buried a

+hundred and ten French soldiers; "110 Braves"

+was the inscription the cross bore.  In front of

+me were three rows of graves in which were

+lying British soldiers.  French and British

+soldiers were mingling their dust.  In death, as in

+life, they were not divided.

+

+I felt led to offer no prayer for the lad at

+my feet, nor for his dead comrades.  He needed

+no prayer of mine; rather did I need his.  He

+was safe home in port.  The storm had spent

+itself and neither rock, nor fog, nor fire would

+trouble him again.  His living comrades and

+I were still out in the storm, battling towards

+the land.  He had no need of us, but his parents

+and comrades had need of him.  We were

+there to pay a tribute to his life and death, to

+pray for his loved ones, and to learn how frail

+we are and how dependent upon Him who is

+beyond the reach of the chances and changes

+of this mortal life.

+

+I was half way through the recital of the

+last prayer--"We bless Thy Holy Name for

+all Thy servants departed this life in Thy

+faith and fear"--when that fatal, well-known

+scream, as of a vulture darting down on its

+prey, again tore the air.  The men, as they

+had been taught, dropped to the ground like

+stones.  My office demanded that I should

+continue the prayer, and leave with God the

+decision as to how it should end.  There was a

+crash, and the branches of the trees overhead

+trembled as some fragments of shell smote

+them.  But there was nothing more.  The men

+rose as quickly as they had fallen, and all were

+reverently standing to attention before the last

+words of the prayer found utterance.  The

+graves were filled in and we went our several

+ways.  Next day white crosses were placed

+over the five mounds, and we bade them a long

+and last farewell.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`A SOLDIER'S CALVARY`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XVII

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   A SOLDIER'S CALVARY

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+There is one afternoon on the Somme

+that stands out in my memory like a

+dark hill when the sun has sunk below

+the verge and left a lingering bar of red across

+the sky.  It was a Calvary thick with the bodies

+of our men.  I was looking for the

+Westminsters and they were difficult to find.  I

+passed over one trench and reached another.

+There I asked the men if they knew where the

+Westminsters were, and they expressed the

+opinion that the regiment was in the trench

+ahead.  There was no communication trench

+so I followed a fatigue-party for some distance

+which was marching in single file, and

+carrying hand-grenades to the firing line.  They

+turned to the right and I kept straight on.

+Every few yards I passed rifles reversed and

+fastened in the ground by their bayonets.  They

+marked the graves of the dead.  A few

+soldiers, but newly killed, were still lying out.

+

+At last I reached a trench and found in it

+a number of Westminsters.  They were

+signalers on special duty, and they told me that

+I had already passed the regiment on my left.

+The poor fellows were in a sad plight.  The

+weather was cold and they were without

+shelter.  There were German dug-outs but they

+were partly blown in and full of German dead.

+The stench that rose from these, and from the

+shallow graves around, was almost unbearable.

+Yet there amid falling shells, the lads had to

+remain day and night.  Their rations were

+brought to them, but as every ounce of food

+and drop of water, in addition to the letters

+from home, had to be brought on pack mules

+through seven or eight miles of field tracks in

+which the mules struggled on up to the knees

+in sticky mud and sometimes up to the belly,

+it was impossible for the regiment to receive

+anything beyond water and "iron rations," i.e.,

+hard biscuits.  Water was so precious that not

+a drop could be spared to wash faces or clean

+teeth with, and I always took my own

+water-bottle and food, to avoid sharing the scanty

+supplies of the officers.  After a little time

+spent with the signalers I moved up the trench

+and looked in at the little dug-out of the

+Colonel commanding.  All the officers present,

+bearded almost beyond recognition, were sitting

+on the floor.  The enemy had left a small red

+electric light, which added an almost absurd

+touch of luxury to the miserable place.  Farther

+up the trench I found the Brigade Staff

+Captain in a similar dug-out and after making

+inquiries as to the position of the Queen's

+Westminster Regiment which was my objective, I

+left to find it; for the sun was already setting.

+The path was across the open fields, and the

+saddest I have ever trod.  I was alone and

+had but little idea of location, but it was

+impossible to miss the path.  On the right and

+left, it was marked at every few steps with

+dead men.  Most of them were still grasping

+their rifles.  They had fallen forward as they

+rushed over the ground, and their faces--their

+poor, blackened, lipless faces--were towards

+the foe.  There had, as yet, been no

+opportunity to bury them for the ground was still

+being shelled and the burial parties had been

+all too busily engaged in other parts of the

+field.  I longed to search for their identity

+discs that I might know who they were and

+make a note of the names; but I had to leave

+it to the burial party.  I was already feeling

+sick with the foul smells in the trench and the

+sights on the way, and lacked the strength to

+look for the discs around the wrists and necks

+of the poor, decomposed bodies.  It had to be

+left to men of the burial party whose nerves

+were somewhat more hardened to the task by

+other experiences of the kind.  It was a new

+Calvary on which I was standing.  These poor

+bodies miles from home and with no woman's

+hands to perform the last offices of affection

+were lying there as the price of the world's

+freedom.

+

+Would that all who talk glibly of freedom

+and justice might have seen what I saw on that

+dreary journey, that they might the better

+realize the spiritual depths of liberty and

+righteousness, and the high cost at which they are won

+for the race.  It is fatally easy to persuade

+ourselves that there is no need for us to tread the

+bitter path of suffering and death--that we can

+achieve freedom and justice by being charitable,

+and by talking amiably to our enemies.  We

+try to believe that they are as anxious to

+achieve liberty for the world as we are, that

+they are striving to bind mankind in fetters of

+iron, only through lack of knowledge as to

+our intentions.  Their hearts and intentions are

+good but they are misled, and after a little talk

+with them around a table they would put off

+their "shining armor" and become angels of

+light carrying palm branches in place of swords

+and fetters.

+

+This is a mighty pleasant theory, only it is

+not true; and we cannot get rid of evil by

+ignoring it, nor of the devil by buying him a new

+suit.  There are men willing to die to destroy

+liberty, just as there are others willing to die

+in its defense.  It is not that they do not

+understand liberty.  They *do*, and that is why they

+wish to destroy it.  It is the enemy of their

+ideal.  Whether liberty will survive or not,

+depends upon whether there are more men

+inspired to die in defending liberty, than there

+are willing to die in opposing it.  A thing lives

+while men love it sufficiently well to die for it.

+We get what we deserve; and readiness to die

+for it is the price God has put on liberty.

+

+Words are things too cheap to buy it.  When

+someone suggested establishing a new religion

+to supersede Christianity, Voltaire is reported

+to have asked if the founder were willing to

+be crucified for it?  Otherwise, it would stand

+no chance of success.  It was a deep criticism,

+and showed that Voltaire was no fool.  Blood is

+the test, not words.  A nation can only achieve

+liberty when it is determined to be free or die.

+"Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall

+lose it."  "Never man spake" as Christ spake,

+but He did not save the world by talking to

+it, but by dying for it.  Outpoured blood, not

+outpoured words, is the proof of moral

+convictions and the means of their propaganda;

+our soldiers may not be learned in some things,

+but they have learned *that*.  They know the

+cause will win which has most moral power, and

+that the cause with most moral strength will

+prove itself to be the one with most martyrs.

+And the side with most men ready to be

+martyrs will outstay the other.  The spirit of

+martyrdom, not negotiation, is the path to

+liberty and peace.  You cannot negotiate with

+a tiger.  The dispute is too simple for negotiation.

+You have to kill the tiger, or yourself be

+killed.

+

+While I was on leave, a man told me that

+he had asked some soldiers from the Front

+why they were fighting, and they could not tell

+him.  Probably.  All the deepest things are

+of life beyond telling.  No true man can tell

+why he loves his wife or children.  This trust

+in words, in being able to "tell why," is truly

+pathetic.  I would not trust a wife's love if

+she could tell her husband exactly *why* she

+loved him; nor would I trust our soldiers not

+to turn tail in battle if they could *tell* just why

+they are fighting.  They cannot *tell*, but with

+their poor lipless faces turned defiantly against

+the foe they can *show* why they are fighting.

+Let those who want to know the soldiers'

+reason *why* they fight go and see them there on

+the blasted field of battle, not ask them when

+they come home on leave.  The lips of a soldier

+perish *first*, as his dead body lies exposed on

+the battlefield; his rifle he clutches to the last;

+and it is a lesson terrible enough for even the

+densest talker to understand.

+

+The dead lads lying out in the open with

+their rifles pointing towards the enemy voice

+their reason why loud enough for the deaf

+to hear and the world to heed.  Ideals must

+be died for if they are to be realized on

+earth, for they have bitter enemies who

+stick at nothing.  And we have to defend our

+ideal with our lives or be cravens and let it

+perish.

+

+History, with unimportant variations, is

+constantly repeating itself; and in nothing is it

+so consistent as in the price it puts on liberty.

+The lease of liberty runs out; the lease has

+to be renewed, and it is renewed by suffering

+and martyrdom.  The dear dead lads whom

+I saw on that terrible afternoon were

+renewing the lease.  With their bodies they had

+marked out a highway over which the peoples

+of the earth may march to freedom and to

+justice.

+

+The view, all too common, that our soldiers

+regard the war as a kind of picnic, and an

+attack as a sort of rush for the goal in a game

+of football, is false--false as sin.  It is a view

+blind to the whole psychology of the war, and

+misses the meaning of our soldiers' gayety as

+much as it ignores their fear and sorrow.  The

+trenches are a Gethsemane to them and their

+prayer is, "Our Father, all things are possible

+unto Thee: take away this cup from me:

+nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt."

+

+One day, when I went into a mess-room in

+which letters were being censored, an officer

+said to me, "Read this, Padre, there's a

+reference to you, and a candid expression of a man's

+attitude towards religion."

+

+I took the letter and it read: "Our chaplain

+isn't far out when he says, in his book, that

+though we may speak lightly of the church we

+don't think or speak lightly of Christ.

+However careless we may be when we are out of

+the trenches, when we are in we all pray.

+There is nothing else we can do."

+

+I have been eighteen months with a fighting

+regiment on the Front, and I have never spoken

+to any officer who did not regard it as a

+mathematical certainty that, unless he happened to

+fall sick or be transferred--neither of which

+he expected--he would be either killed or

+wounded.  And I agreed with him without

+saying it.  He does not even hope to escape

+wounds.  They are inevitable if he stays long

+enough; for one battle follows another and his

+time comes.  He only hopes to escape death

+and the more ghastly wounds.  He hopes the

+wound when it comes will be a "cushy one."  The

+men take the same view.  The period before

+going into the trenches, or into battle, is

+to them like the Garden of Gethsemane was

+to Christ; they are "exceeding sorrowful" and

+in their presence I have often felt as one who

+stood "as it were, a stone's throw" from them.

+They are going out with the expectation of

+meeting death.

+

+On the 1st of July, 1916, twenty officers in

+our regiment went over the top.  Nineteen

+were killed or wounded and the one who

+returned to the regiment was suffering from

+shell-shock and had to be sent home.  Although

+our losses are much lower now, the officers and

+men experience the agony and bloody sweat

+of Gethsemane rather than the pleasure of a

+picnic in Epping Forest.  This explains, too,

+their gayety.  It is the happiness of men who

+know that they are doing their bit for the

+world's good, and playing the man, not the

+cad.  The rise of happiness into gayety is the

+natural reaction from the sorrow and alarm

+which have been clouding their hearts.  In

+peace time they will never know either the

+intensity of joy or sorrow they know now.  A

+man never feels so truly humorous as when he

+is sad.  Humor is a kind of inverted sadness.

+The most exquisite sadness produces the most

+exquisite humor as the deepest wells give the

+sweetest, purest and coldest water.

+

+   |  Tears and laughter are never far from one another,

+   |  The heart overflows on one side, and then on the other.

+   |

+

+Our soldiers' minds are not filled with

+thoughts of Germans, but with thoughts of the

+friends they have left behind them.  Nor do

+they often think of killing Germans.  They

+neither think so much of the Germans nor so

+bitterly of them as do the people at home.

+The Germans have not the same prominence

+in the picture.  Deeds relieve their emotions in

+regard to the Germans and leave their hearts

+open for the things and folk they love.

+

+It is commonly supposed (and this idea is

+fostered by some war correspondents), that

+when our men go over the top they are

+possessed with a mad lust to kill Germans.  The

+ultimate aim of a general planning a battle is

+to kill Germans no doubt, for that is the only

+way to achieve victory; and if the Germans do

+not want to be killed they know what to do.

+Let them surrender or retire.  The private

+agrees with the general in the necessity for

+killing Germans, but that is not what he is

+thinking of when he goes over the top; nor is

+it what we should be thinking of in his place.

+He is thinking of the Germans killing him.

+Life is sweet at nineteen or one-and-twenty.  It

+pleads to be spared a little longer.  A lad does

+not want to die; and as he goes over the parapet

+he is thinking less of taking German lives than

+of losing his own.  He knows that German

+heads will not fit English shoulders, and that,

+however many enemy lives he may take, none

+of them will restore his own if he loses it, as

+he is quite likely to do.  He is going out to

+be mutilated or to die.  That is his standpoint

+whatever may be the general's or the

+war-correspondent's.  He goes for his country's sake

+and the right.  It is his duty, and there is an

+end of it.

+

+Most of the killing in modern war is done

+by the artillery and machine-guns.  Comparatively

+few men have seen the face of an enemy

+they know themselves to have killed.  A

+regiment goes out to be shot at, rather than to

+shoot.  Unless this simple fact be grasped, the

+mentality of the soldier cannot be understood.

+The lust for killing Germans would never take

+a man out of his dug-out; but the love of his

+country and the resolve to do his duty will take

+him out and lead him over the top.  It is what

+he volunteered for, but it goes hard when the

+time comes for all that.

+

+The unburied men I saw had, but a short

+while ago, no idea of becoming soldiers.  They

+were the light of a home and the stay of a

+business.  With that they were content.  But

+the challenge came; and they went out to

+defend the right against the wrong--the true

+against the false.  They toiled up a new

+Calvary "with the cross that turns not back," and

+now they lie buried in a strange land.  They

+have lost all for themselves, but they have

+gained all for us and for those who will come

+after us.  Yet although they saved others,

+themselves they could not save.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`THE HOSPITAL TRAIN`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XVIII

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   THE HOSPITAL TRAIN

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+We were carried from our regiments to

+the hospital in ambulance cars.  I,

+and several others, had trench fever.

+Some were suffering from gas poisoning.  One

+lovely boy--for he was nothing more--was

+near to death with "mustard" gas.  The doctor

+at the Dressing Station had opened a vein and

+bled him of a pint of blood.  It was the only

+hope of saving him.  But as the car bumped

+over the rough roads and the gas in his lungs

+grew more suffocating he almost despaired of

+reaching the hospital alive.  Others were

+wounded; and one had appendicitis.  After a

+period in hospital, during which we were

+honored with a visit by General Byng, it was

+decided that we should go to the Base.  We lay

+down on stretchers, and orderlies carried us to

+the waiting cars.  At the station we were lifted

+into the hospital train.  The racks had been

+taken down and stretchers put in their places.

+These were reserved for the "lying cases."  The

+"sitting cases" occupied the seats--one to

+each corner.  It was afternoon and as soon as

+the train began to move tea was served.  The

+train sped on and, about sun-set, a most

+excellent dinner was provided by the orderlies on

+board.

+

+It was the time of the new moon.  "Keep

+the window open," said one, "it is unlucky to

+see the new moon through glass, and we need

+all the good luck we can get," and he avoided

+looking through the glass until he had seen the

+moon through the open window.  We chatted,

+read our magazines, or slept--just as we felt

+inclined.  The night wore on and at about two

+o'clock we reached Rouen.  Cars rushed us to

+one of the Red Cross hospitals.  A doctor

+slipped out of bed, examined our cards, decided

+in which wards we should be put, and orderlies

+led or carried us thither.  A nurse showed each

+of us to his room.  We were got to bed and

+another nurse brought some tea.  Next

+morning we were examined and put down for

+removal across the Channel.

+

+The nurses are radiant as sunshine, and

+diffuse a spirit of merriment throughout the

+hospital.  It was a pure joy to be under their

+care.  At three o'clock the following morning,

+without previous warning, a nurse came and

+awakened us.  We had half an hour to dress.

+Another nurse then came round with a dainty

+breakfast.  We were then put into cars and

+taken to the hospital train.  It left as dawn

+was breaking, and we were on our way to

+"Blighty."  We had a comfortable journey and

+reached Havre about nine.  Orderlies carried

+us on board ship and we were taken to our

+cots.  Breakfast was served immediately.  We

+felt a huge content; and hoped to be across by

+night.  But the ship remained by the quay all

+day.  In the evening it moved out of the harbor

+and lay near its mouth.  Towards midnight it

+slipped its anchor and headed for home.

+

+All had received life-belts and a card directing

+us which boat to make for, should the ship

+be torpedoed.  Mine was "Boat 5, Starboard."  My

+neighbor on the right had been on a torpedoed

+boat once and had no desire to be on

+another.  The lights of the ship were obscured

+or put out, and we silently stole over the waters

+towards the much desired haven.  There was

+no sound but the steady thump of the engines,

+and we were soon asleep.  Shortly after dawn

+we awoke to find ourselves in Southampton

+Water.  A water-plane drew near, settled like

+a gull on the water, and then plowed its way

+through the waves with the speed of a motor-boat.

+

+About nine o'clock we were carried off the

+boat to the station.  Women workers supplied us

+with telegraph forms, confectionery and

+cigarettes; orderlies brought us tea.  We were then

+taken to the train.  It was even more comfortable

+than the hospital trains in France; and we had

+women nurses.  On each side of the train, for

+its full length, were comfortable beds and we

+were able to sit up or recline at our pleasure.

+Lunch was served on board, and of a character

+to tempt the most ailing man.  No shortage

+of food is allowed to obtain on the hospital

+train.  It has the first claim on the food supply

+and it has the first claim to the railroad.  It

+stops at no station except for its own

+convenience.  Even the King's train stops to let

+the hospital train pass.

+

+We were under the care of a nurse who had

+reached middle life.  She had been on a

+torpedoed hospital ship! on one that struck a

+mine without bursting it; and on another that

+collided with a destroyer in the dark.  She was

+greatly disappointed at the decision which had

+removed nurses from the hospital ships because

+of the danger from submarines.  She fully

+appreciated the chivalry of the men who would

+not let their women be drowned; but it had

+robbed the women of a chance of proving their

+devotion, and she could not see why the men

+should do all the dying.  The women were

+ready to meet death with the men and as their

+mates and equals.  Their place was with the

+wounded whatever might befall, and they were

+ready.

+

+Hospital trains have run daily for three

+years now, and human nature can get used to

+anything.  We thought, therefore, that the

+people would have become used to the hospital

+train.  But greater surprise never gladdened a

+man's heart than the one which awaited us as

+we steamed out of Southampton.  All the

+women and children by the side of the railway

+were at their windows or in their gardens,

+waving their hands to us.  And all the way to

+Manchester the waving of welcoming hands

+never ceased.  At every station the porters

+doffed their caps to the hospital train as it sped

+past.  There was not a station large or small

+that did not greet us with a group of proud

+smiling faces.  Our eyes were glued to the

+windows all the way.  For one day in our lives,

+at least, we were kings, and our procession

+through "England's green and pleasant land"

+was a royal one.  We passed through quiet

+country districts but at every wall or fence

+there were happy faces.  We wondered where

+they all came from, and how they knew of our

+coming.  There were tiny children sitting on

+all the railway fences waving hands to us.

+One little girl of four or five was sitting on the

+fence by a country station and waving her little

+hand.  We had not seen English children for

+months and Pope Gregory spoke the truth

+ages ago when he said that they are "not

+Angles but Angels."  The sight of them after

+so long an absence was as refreshing to the

+spirit as the sight of violets and primroses

+after a long and bitter winter.

+

+At Birmingham the train made its only stop.

+Men and women of the St. John Ambulance

+Association boarded the train and supplied us

+with tea; and, as the train moved out, stood

+at attention on the platform.  At Manchester

+we received a warm welcome that told us we

+were in Lancashire.  Men and women helped

+us to the waiting cars and handed cups of tea

+to us.  It was raining of course--being

+Manchester--but as we passed near a railway arch

+a waiting crowd rushed out into the rain and

+startled us with a cry of welcome which was also

+a cry of pain.  Most of the men in the cars

+were Lancashire lads and in the welcome given

+them there were tears as well as smiles.

+Lancashire has a great heart as well as a long head.

+It suffers with those who suffer and the cry of

+the heart was heard in the welcome of its

+voice.  There was a welcome too, at the door

+of the hospital and at the door of each ward.

+Water was brought to our bedside, and then

+a tray bearing a well-cooked dinner.

+

+We had reached home.

+

+

+

+

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. _`AFTER WINTER, SPRING`:

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   XIX

+

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   AFTER WINTER, SPRING

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+A man's heart must be dead within him

+if, under the summer sun, he can look

+on the desolated ground of the Western

+battle-front without feeling emotions of

+joy and hope.  In the winter-time the clumps

+of blasted trees looked like groups of forsaken

+cripples.  Their broken branches stood out

+against the gray sky in utter nakedness, as if

+appealing to heaven against the inhumanity of

+man.  In a way, it was more depressing to

+pass a ruined wood than a destroyed village.

+Some of the trees had all their limbs shattered;

+others, thicker than a man's body, were cut

+clean through the middle; others, again, were

+torn clean up by the roots and lay sprawling

+on the ground.  It seemed impossible that spring

+could ever again clothe them in her garments

+of gladdening green.  We imagined the trees

+would appear amid the sunshine of the

+summer black, gaunt and irreconcilable; pointing

+their mangled stumps towards those who had

+done them such irreparable wrong and, as the

+wind whistled through them, calling on all

+decent men to rise up and avenge them of their

+enemies.

+

+But, suddenly, we found that the reconciling

+spring was back in the woods exercising all

+her oldtime witchery.  Each broken limb was

+covered with fresh foliage and each scarred

+stump put out sprouts of green.  The broken

+but blossoming woods grew into a picture of

+Hope, infinitely more sublime and touching

+than the one to which Watts gave the name.

+It was a picture drawn and colored by the

+finger of God, and it made the fairest of man's

+handiwork look weak and incomplete.  Uprooted

+trees lay on the ground in full blossom,

+and shell-lopped branches again took on the

+form of beauty.  The transformation was

+wonderful to behold.

+

+And it all happened in a week.  When our

+men went into the trenches the trees were

+black, bare and bruised, but when they came

+out of the front line into the support-trenches

+the wood behind them was a tender green and

+had grown curved and symmetrical.  It seemed

+as if the fairies of our childhood had returned

+to the earth and were dwelling in the wood.

+Although two long-range naval guns lay hidden

+behind it, which, with deep imprecations opened

+their terrible mouths to hurl fiery thunderbolts

+at the enemy, the fairies seemed unafraid and

+daily continued to weave for the trees beautiful

+garments of leaf and blossom.  I have seen

+nothing that brought such gladness to both

+officers and men.  A new spirit seemed abroad.

+We were in a new atmosphere and a new

+world.  The war seemed already won, and the

+work of renewal and reconstruction begun.

+

+And now the summer had done for the

+ground what the spring did for the trees.  One

+Sunday, I was to hold a service on ground

+that was, in the springtime, No Man's Land.

+Having ample time I left the dusty road and

+walked across the broken fields through which

+our front-line trenches had run.  There were

+innumerable shell holes and I had to pick my

+way with care through the long grass and

+lingering barbed wire.  I had been over the

+ground on the day following the advance.

+Then it was a sea of mud, with vast breakwaters

+of rusty barbed wire.  Now, however,

+Nature's healing hand was at work.  Slowly

+but surely the trenches were falling in, and the

+shell-holes filling up.  The lips of the craters

+and trenches were red as a maiden's--red with

+the poppies which come to them.  Here and

+there were large patches of gold and white

+where unseen hands had sown the mud with

+dog-daisies.  There were other patches all

+ablaze with the red fire of the poppies, and as

+the slender plants swayed in the wind, the fire

+leaped up or died down.

+

+When the war broke out I was in "Poppyland"

+near Cromer, in East Anglia.  There I

+first heard the tramp of armed men on the way

+to France, and there first caught the strain of

+"Tipperary"--the farewell song of the First

+Seven Divisions--a strain I can never hear

+now without having to stifle back my tears.

+As I passed by these patches of blood-red

+poppies I thought of those old and stirring days

+at Cromer when we watched a regiment of the

+original Expeditionary Force singing

+"Tipperary" as it marched swingingly through the

+narrow streets.  The declaration of war was

+hourly expected and the pier and some of the

+Sunday-school rooms were given to the soldiers

+for billets.  By morning every soldier had

+vanished and we could only guess where, but

+a remark made by one of them to another

+lingers still.  They were standing apart, and

+watching the fuss the people were making over

+the regiment.

+

+"Yes," he said to his comrade, "they think

+a great deal of the soldiers in time of war,

+but they don't think much of us in days of

+peace."

+

+The remark was so true that it cut like a

+knife and the wound rankles yet.  I have often

+wondered what became of the lad that went

+out to France to the horrors of war, with such

+memories of our attitude towards him in the

+times of peace.  I hope he lived long enough

+to see our repentance.  His memory haunted

+me among the poppies of Beaurains.  In the

+English Poppyland there was nothing to

+compare with the red-coated army of poppies now

+occupying our old front line.  In these trenches

+our gallant men had for nearly three years

+fought and bled, and it seemed as if every drop

+of blood poured out by them had turned into

+a glorious and triumphant poppy.

+

+The spring and summer have taught me

+afresh that there is in our lives a Power that

+is not ourselves.  It is imminent in us and in

+all things, yet transcends all.  "Change and

+decay in all around we see," and still there is

+One who changes not; He "*from* everlasting

+*to* everlasting is God."  He is the fountain of

+eternal life that no drought can touch.  He

+heals the broken tree and the broken heart.

+He clothes the desolate fields of war with the

+golden corn of peace, and in the trenches that

+war has scored across the souls of men, he

+plants the rich poppies of memory.  He drives

+away the icy oppression of winter with the

+breath or spring, and in His mercy assuages

+"the grief that saps the mind for those that

+here we see no more."

+

+He who turns rain-mists into rainbows and

+brings out of mud scarlet poppies and

+white-petaled daisies without a speck of dirt upon

+them, is at work in human life.  Out of mud

+He has formed the poppy and out of the dust

+the body of man.  Who then can set Him

+limits when He works in the finer material of

+man's soul?  Eye hath not seen nor heart

+conceived the beauty that will come forth when

+His workmanship is complete.  "If God so

+clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is,

+and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He

+not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith"

+who were made for immortality?  His ways

+are past finding out, but they are good.  He

+puts out the sun but brings forth millions of

+stars in its stead.  At His call they come

+flocking forth as doves to their windows.  He

+blinds Milton but brings into his soul a flood

+of light such as never shone on sea or land,

+and in its rays he sees Paradise, lost and

+regained.  He shuts Bunyan in a noisome prison,

+and closes against him the door to his beloved

+Bedford, but He opens to him a magic window

+that looks on heaven, and the years pass swiftly

+as he watches the progress of the pilgrims

+towards the Celestial City.  In the mud that

+has been stained and even saturated with the

+life-blood of our soldiers, He has made poppies

+to spring to loveliness.  It is a parable He is

+speaking to us, that the heart of man may feel

+and believe that which it is beyond the power

+of the mind to grasp, or the tongue to explain.

+

+The wounds of France are deep and deadly

+but they are not self-inflicted and they will heal.

+She will blossom again with a glory greater

+and purer than all her former glories.  She

+is even now finding her soul, and revealing a

+moral beauty and endurance such as few, even

+of her dearest friends, could have foreseen or

+foretold.  For ashes, God has given her beauty,

+and it is worth all her suffering.  Not Voltaire,

+but Joan of Arc is her pride to-day.  When

+I was in Rouen I saw the fresh flowers which

+the people daily place on the spot where she

+died.  France knows where her strength lies.

+Over Napoleon she has built a magnificent

+tomb of marble, but in it, she has not placed

+a single flower.  As I walked through it, some

+time ago, I felt depressed.  It made me shiver.

+It is magnificent, but dead.  One of Joan of

+Arc's living flowers would be worth the whole

+pile.  It is the most tremendous sermon ever

+preached on the vanity of military glory and

+the emptiness of genius when uninspired by

+moral and spiritual worth.  France knows.

+She gives Joan of Arc a flower, but Napoleon

+a stone.  France was never so great as now,

+and never of such supreme importance to the

+world.  We could not do without her.  On her

+coins she represents herself as a Sower that

+goes forth sowing.  It is a noble ideal, and

+truly, where she scatters her seeds of thought

+the fair flowers of liberty, equality and

+fraternity spring up as poppies spring, where the

+blood of our soldiers has watered her fields.

+France is the fair Sower among the nations, and

+it will be our eternal glory that when she was

+suddenly and murderously attacked in her fields

+by her brutal and envious neighbor--who

+shamelessly stamps a bird of prey on his coins

+for *his* symbol, and a skull and cross-bones on

+his soldiers' headgear as the expression of his

+ambition--England came to her rescue, and

+not in vain.  The German sword has gone

+deeply into the heart of France, but it will leave

+not a festering wound but a well of water at

+which mankind will drink and be refreshed.

+Wound the earth, and there springs forth

+water; wound France and there springs forth

+inspiration.  Trample France in the mud, and

+she comes forth pure again, passionate and free

+as a poppy blown by the summer wind.

+

+.. vspace:: 3

+

+.. class:: center small

+

+   *Printed in the United States of America*

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

+

+   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

+

+.. vspace:: 4

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   *By CHAPLAIN THOMAS TIPLADY*

+

+.. class:: center large bold

+

+   *FIFTH EDITION*

+

+.. vspace:: 2

+

+.. class:: center x-large bold

+

+   The Cross at the Front

+

+.. class:: center medium

+

+   Fragments from the Trenches.

+

+.. class:: center medium

+

+   12mo.  Cloth.  *Net $1.00*.

+

+.. vspace:: 1

+

+"'Vivid' is too dim a word to express

+the living pictures which this chaplain has

+seen in France.  Some of the chapters are

+among the finest pieces of pathos we have

+read anywhere.  Read the book and you

+will be a better man for all your

+tasks."--*Chicago Standard*.

+

+.. vspace:: 3

+

+.. class:: center x-large bold

+

+   The Soul of the Soldier

+

+.. class:: center medium

+

+   Echoes from the Western Front.

+

+.. class:: center medium

+

+   12mo.  Cloth.  *Net $1.25*.

+

+.. vspace:: 1

+

+An astonishing story Chaplain Tiplady

+here has to tell--one in which the very

+foundations of existence seem temporarily

+uprooted, and the world turned upside-down.

+Yet never, in the telling, does he lose the

+unswerving faith and cheering optimism which

+formed the prevailing note of THE CROSS

+AT THE FRONT, nor for a moment relaxes his

+belief that the cause of justice, truth and

+righteousness is that for which the Allied

+armies are now fighting.

+

+.. vspace:: 6

+

+.. pgfooter::

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+                        THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER
+
+
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+
+Title: The Soul of the Soldier
+       Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
+Author: Thomas Tiplady
+Release Date: July 18, 2014 [EBook #46323]
+Language: English
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover art]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Captain Guy Drummond, 13th Royal Canadian Highlanders.
+Killed in action, April, 1915.
+"A SON OF THE MOTHERLAND"]
+
+
+
+
+                       The Soul _of_ The Soldier
+
+                       _Sketches from the Western
+                             Battle-Front_
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+                             THOMAS TIPLADY
+
+                        _Chaplain to the Forces_
+
+                Author of "THE CROSS AT THE FRONT," etc.
+
+
+
+                        NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
+                       Fleming H. Revell Company
+                          LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+                          Copyright, 1918, by
+                       FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+
+
+
+                       New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
+                     Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
+                     London: 21 Paternoster Square
+                      Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
+
+
+
+
+                 TO THE MEMORY OF THE MANY "WHITE MEN"
+
+I have known and loved in the London Territorials, who, being dedicate
+to their Country and the cause of Liberty, went over the parapet and did
+not return.
+
+"These laid the world away; poured out the red
+Sweet wine of youth: gave up the years to be
+Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
+That men call age; and those who would have been
+Their sons they gave--their immortality."
+
+
+
+
+                         *THE MOTHER'S ANSWER*
+
+    God gave my son in trust to me.
+    Christ died for him.  He should be
+    A man for Christ.  He is his own
+    And God's and man's, not mine alone.
+    He was not mine to give.  He gave
+    Himself, that he might help to save
+    All that a Christian should revere
+    All that enlightened men hold dear.
+
+    "To feed the guns."  Ah! torpid soul,
+    Awake, and see life as a whole.
+    When freedom, honor, justice, right,
+    Were threatened by the despot's might,
+    He bravely went for God, to fight
+    Against base savages, whose pride
+    The laws of God and man defied;
+    Who slew the mother and the child;
+    Who maidens, pure and sweet, defiled;
+    He did not go to feed the guns,
+    He went to save from ruthless Huns
+    His home and country, and to be
+    A guardian of democracy.
+
+    "What if he does not come?" you say;
+    Well, then, my sky will be more gray,
+    But through the clouds the sun will shine
+    And vital memories be mine.
+    God's test of manhood is, I know
+    Not, will he come--_but did he go_?
+
+    JAMES L. HUGHES.
+
+
+
+
+                               *PREFACE*
+
+
+The sketches in this book and in my previous one, "The Cross at the
+Front," are attempts to show the soul of the soldier serving in France
+as I have seen it during the year and a half that I have been with him.
+It is a padre's privilege and duty to be the voice with which, in public
+worship, the soldiers speak to God; and through which their last
+thoughts are borne to their friends at home.  He is their voice both
+when they are sick or wounded, and when they lie silent in the grave.
+He speaks of their hopes and fears, hardships and heroisms, laughter and
+tears.  As best he may he tries to tell, to those who have a right and a
+longing to know, how they thought, and how they bore themselves in the
+great day of trial when all risked their lives and many laid them down.
+
+Soldiers, as a rule, are either inarticulate or do not care to speak of
+themselves; and the padre has to be their spokesman if ever their deeper
+thoughts and finer actions are to be known to their friends.  To do this
+he may have to bring himself into the picture, or even illustrate a
+common thing in their lives by a personal experience of his own.  To
+reveal life and thought at the Front in the third person, and without
+sacrificing truth and vividness, requires a degree of literary power and
+art which cannot be expected of a padre to whom writing is but a
+by-product, and not his main work.
+
+I have written but little of military operations--these things are not
+in my province. Moreover, they are not the things which are most
+revealing.  The presence of Spring is first and most surely revealed by
+the flowers in our gardens and lanes; and the soldier is most clearly
+seen in the little things that happen on the march--in his billet or in
+the Dressing Station.  Some things are not seen at all.  They are only
+felt, and my opinion about them must be taken for what it is worth.  One
+knows what the men are by their influence on one's own mind and life.  I
+do not judge the morality and spirituality of our soldiers entirely by
+their habits and speech, for these are but outward and clumsy
+expressions of the inner life and are largely conventional.  There is
+something else to put in the reckoning, and to find out what the
+soldiers are worth to us we must somehow get behind their words and
+actions and find out what they are worth to God, whose terrible wheel of
+war is shaping their characters.
+
+I appraise them mostly by the total effect of the impact of their souls
+on mine.  I know their thoughts and feelings by the thoughts and
+feelings they inspire in me.  "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of
+thistles?"  There are certain thoughts and emotions that only come to me
+strongly when I am with the soldiers or when I am living again with them
+in memory, and so, I take these as their gift to me and judge the men by
+their influence on my character.  Character is, in its influence, subtle
+as Spring.  Words and actions by themselves are too coarse and
+conventional to do anything but mislead us in judging the quality of our
+men.  "By their fruits ye shall know them."  Not by their leaves.  Fruit
+is _seed_.  In the seed the tree reproduces itself. And reproduction,
+whether in physical, moral or spiritual life, is the test of vitality.
+
+I have not unduly loaded my pages with ghastly details of war, because
+their effect on the mind of the reader who has not been at the Front
+would be false and distorting.  The reader would be more horrified in
+imagining them than our soldiers are in seeing them.  I have tried
+rather to show life at the Front, with its mingling of red and gold,
+horror and happiness, as it affects the soldier; so that his friends at
+home may see it as he sees it, and with his sense of proportion.  If I
+could only do it, as well as I intend it, my pictures would create a
+truer sympathy between the home and the trench.  Some would find comfort
+for their hearts, and others would awake to a new and noble seriousness.
+Soldiers have suffered much through imperfect sympathies.  They have
+been pitied for the wrong things, and left to freeze when they needed
+warmth. Only when we realize their dignity and greatness and the true
+nature of their experiences can we be their comrades and helpers.  Life
+at the Front is brutal and terrifying, and yet our soldiers are neither
+brutalized nor terrorized, for there is something great and noble at the
+Front which keeps life pure and sweet and the men gentle and chivalrous.
+When "the boys" come home their friends will, in almost every case, find
+them just as bright, affectionate and good as when they went out. The
+only change will be a subtle one--a deepening in character and manly
+quality, a broadening in mind and creed, and an impatience with cant and
+make-believe whether in politics or business, Christianity or
+Rationalism. There will be an air of indefinable greatness about them as
+of men who have been at grips with the realities of life and death.
+
+In a footnote to one of his songs, Edward Teschemacher says that the
+gypsies, as they wander through the country, leave a sprinkling of grass
+or wild flowers at the cross-roads to indicate, to those who come after
+them, the road they have taken.  These flowers are known as the
+"Patterain."
+
+These essays are my Patterain--wild flowers plucked in France, and left
+to mark the red path trod during the months I have been with my comrades
+at the Front.
+
+I would the flowers were worthier, but such as I have, I give; and they
+are taken out of my heart.
+
+    "Where my caravan has rested
+      Flowers I leave you on the grass;
+    All the flowers of love and memory;
+      You will find them when you pass."
+
+    THOMAS TIPLADY.
+
+BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, FRANCE.
+
+
+
+
+                               *CONTENTS*
+
+CHAP.
+
+      I. The Swan at Ypres
+     II. The Roadmakers
+    III. The Glamour of the Front
+     IV. A White Handkerchief
+      V. The Songs Our Soldiers Sing
+     VI. Easter Sunday
+    VII. "Now the Day is Over"
+   VIII. Sons of the Motherland
+     IX. The Terror by Night
+      X. "Eton Boys Never Duck!"
+     XI. "Missing"
+    XII. "It Must be Sunday"
+   XIII. Our Tommies Never Fail Us
+    XIV. The Cross at Neuve Chapelle
+     XV. The Children of Our Dead
+    XVI. A Funeral under Fire
+   XVII. A Soldier's Calvary
+  XVIII. The Hospital Train
+    XIX. After Winter, Spring
+
+
+
+
+                                  *I*
+
+                          *THE SWAN AT YPRES*
+
+
+For three years the storm center of the British battle front has been at
+Ypres. Every day and night it has been the standing target of thousands
+of guns.  Yet, amid all the havoc and thunder of the artillery, the
+graceful white form of a swan had been seen gliding over the water of
+the moat.  It never lacked food, and was always welcome to a share of
+Tommy's rations.  In the Battle of Messines--I had the story first-hand
+from a lieutenant of artillery whose battery was hidden close by, and
+who was an eye-witness of the incident--a shell burst near the swan, and
+it was mortally wounded.  For three long years it had spread its white
+wings as gallantly as the white sails of Drake's flagship when he sailed
+out of Plymouth Sound to pluck the beard of the Spaniard.  But now its
+adventurous voyaging was over.  Another beautiful and innocent thing had
+been destroyed by the war and had passed beyond recall.  There was no
+dying swan-song heard on the waters, but all who saw its passing felt
+that the war had taken on a deeper shade of tragedy.
+
+Many a "white man" had been slain near the spot but somehow the swan
+seemed a mystical being, and invulnerable.  It was a relic of the days
+of peace, and a sign of the survival of purity and grace amid the
+horrors and cruelties of war.  It spoke of the sacred things that yet
+remain--the beautiful things of the soul upon which war can lay no
+defiling finger. Now it had gone from the water and Ypres seems more
+charred than ever, and the war more terrible.  The death of the swan
+revealed against its white wings the peculiar inhumanity of the present
+war.  It is a war in which the enemy spares nothing and no one.  He is
+more blind and merciless than the Angel of Death which swept over Egypt,
+for the angel had regard to the blood which the Israelites had sprinkled
+over the lintels of their doors and he passed by in mercy.  To the
+German Eagle every living creature is legitimate prey.  No blood upon
+the lintel can save the inmate; not even the cross of blood on the
+hospital tent or ship.  Wounded or whole, combatant or non-combatant,
+its beak and talons tear the tender flesh of all and its lust is not
+sated.
+
+In Belgium and Serbia it is believed that more women and children
+perished than men. Things too hideous for words were done publicly in
+the market-squares.  Neither age nor sex escaped fire and sword.  The
+innocent babe was left to suck the breast of its dead mother or was
+dandled on the point of the bayonet. What resistance can the Belgian
+swan make to the German eagle?  It needs must lie torn and bleeding
+beneath its talons.  The German Emperor has waded deeper in blood than
+Macbeth, and has slain the innocent in their sleep.  Even the sea is
+full of the women, children, and non-combatant men he has drowned.  His
+crown is cemented together with innocent blood and its jewels are the
+eyes of murdered men and women.  The wretched man has made rivers of
+blood to flow yet not a drop in them is from his own veins or the veins
+of his many sons.  Napoleon risked his life with his men in every battle
+but this man never once.  While sending millions to their death he yet
+consents to live, and protects his life with the anxious care a miser
+bestows on his gold.  Alone among large families in Germany his
+household is without a casualty. Though a nation be white and innocent
+as the Belgian swan it will not escape his sword, and he will swoop upon
+it the more readily because it is unarmed.  The swan cannot live where
+the eagle flies, and one or the other must die.
+
+But the stricken swan of Ypres is not merely the symbol of Belgium and
+her fate.  There are other innocents who have perished or been sorely
+wounded.  The whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain.  The
+neutral nations are suffering with the belligerent, and the lower
+creatures are suffering with mankind.
+
+Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at the front, I think the
+saddest sight is that of dying horses and mules.  Last winter they had
+to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter blasts.  It was
+impossible to keep them clean or dry, for the roads were churned into
+liquid mud and both mules and drivers were plastered with it from head
+to foot.  To make things worse there was a shortage of fodder; and
+horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding. Before the fine weather had
+given them a chance to recover weight and strength, the Battle of Arras
+began, and every living beast of burden, as well as every motor-engine,
+was strained to its utmost.  The mule is magnificent for war, and our
+battles have been won as much by mules as men.  Haig could rely on one
+as much as on the other.  The mule will eat anything, endure anything,
+and, when understood and humored by its driver, will do anything.  It
+works until it falls dead by the roadside.  In the spring, hundreds died
+in harness.  In fact, few die except in harness.  They die facing the
+foe, dragging rations along shell-swept roads to the men in the
+trenches.
+
+On two miles of road I have counted a dozen dead mules; and burial
+parties are sent out to put them out of sight.  One night, alone, I got
+three dying mules shot.  The road was crowded with traffic, yet it was
+difficult to find either an officer with a revolver or a
+transport-driver with a rifle.  I had to approach scores before I could
+find a man who had the means to put a mule out of its misery; and we
+were within two miles of our Front.  So rigid is our line of defense
+that those behind it do not trouble to take arms.  Even when I found a
+rifleman he hesitated to shoot a mule.  There is a rule that no horse or
+mule must be shot without proper authority, and when you consider the
+enormous cost of one the necessity for the rule is obvious. I had
+therefore to assure a rifleman that I would take full responsibility for
+his action. He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the mule's
+forehead and pulled the trigger.  A tremor passed through the poor
+thing's body and its troubles were over.  It had come all the way from
+South America to wear itself out carrying food to fighting men, and it
+died by the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.
+
+The mule knows neither love nor offspring. Apart from a few gambols in
+the field, or while tethered to the horse-lines, it knows nothing but
+work.  It is the supreme type of the drudge.  It is one of the greatest
+factors in the war, and yet it receives scarcely any recognition and
+more of whipping than of praise.  Only too often I have seen their poor
+shell-mangled bodies lying by the roadside waiting till the battle
+allowed time for their burial.  Yet what could be more innocent of any
+responsibility for the war?  They are as innocent as the swan on the
+moat at Ypres.
+
+Yet the greatest suffering among innocents is not found at the Front at
+all.  It is found at home.  At the Front there is suffering of body and
+mind, but at home there is the suffering of the heart.  Every soldier
+knows that his mother and wife suffer more than he does, and he pities
+them from his soul.  War is a cross on which Woman is crucified.  The
+soldier dies of his wounds in the morning of life, but his wife lingers
+on in pain through the long garish day until the evening shadows fall.
+There is no laughter at home such as you hear at the Front, or even in
+the hospitals.  One finds a gayety among the regiments in France such as
+is unknown among the people left at home.  It is the sunshine of the
+street as compared with the light in a shaded room.  There is a youth
+and buoyancy at the Front that one misses sadly in the homeland.
+
+To a true woman with a son or husband at the Front, life becomes a
+nightmare.  To her distorted imagination the most important man in the
+country is not the Prime Minister but the postman.  She cannot get on
+with her breakfast for listening for his footsteps.  There is no need
+for him to knock at the door, she has heard him open the gate and walk
+up the gravel path.  Her heart is tossed like a bubble on the winds of
+hope and fear.  She finds herself behind the door without knowing how
+she got there, and her hand trembles as she picks up the letter to see
+if the address is in "his" handwriting or an official's.  The words, "On
+His Majesty's Service," she dreads like a witch's incantation.  They may
+be innocent enough, and cover nothing more than belated Commission
+Papers, but she trembles lest they should be but the fair face of a
+dark-hearted messenger, who is to blot out the light of her life
+forever.  If she goes out shopping and sees a telegraph-boy go in the
+direction of her home she forgets her purchases and hurries back to see
+if he is going to knock at her door.  The rosy-faced messenger has
+become a sinister figure, an imp from the nether world.  He may be
+bringing news of her loved one's arrival "on leave," but so many evil
+faces of fear and doubt peer through the windows of her heart that she
+cannot believe in the innocence and good-will of the whistling boy.  Her
+whole world is wrapped up in his little orange-colored envelope.
+
+The boys at the Front know of the anxiety and suspense that darken their
+homes, and they do all they can to lighten them.  There were times on
+the Somme when the men were utterly exhausted with fighting and long
+vigils in the trenches.  Water was scarce, and a mild dysentery came
+into evidence.  No fire could be lighted to cook food or make hot tea.
+The ranks had been thinned, and only two officers were left to each
+company.  The weather was bad and the captured trench uncomfortable. Any
+moment word might come for another attack.  The campaign was near its
+close, and the work must be completed despite the prevalent exhaustion.
+The officers were too tired, depressed and preoccupied to censor
+hundreds of letters.  In front of him each could see a gaping grave.
+The sun was rapidly "going west" and leaving them to the cold and dark.
+Nothing seemed to matter in comparison with _that_. To hold services
+were impossible and I felt that the best I could do was to walk through
+the trench, chat with the officers and men, gather up the men's letters
+and take them back and censor in my tent.  This gave the officers times
+to write their own, and an opportunity to post them.
+
+But note, I pray you, the nobility of these gallant fellows.  All of
+them were exhausted and depressed.  The shadows of death were thick
+about them, yet when I opened their letters, I found myself--with two
+exceptions out of three or four hundred--in an entirely different
+atmosphere.  It was a sunny atmosphere in which birds were singing.  The
+men said nothing of their suffering, their depression, their fears for
+the future.  The black wings of death cast no shadow over their pages.
+They said they were "all right," "merry and bright" and "soon going back
+for a long rest."  They told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to
+send, and gave them details how to make up the next parcel.  They talked
+as if death were out of sight--a sinister fellow with whom they had
+nothing to do.
+
+The officers, of course, censor their own letters, so I did not see how
+they wrote.  But I know.  They wrote as the men wrote, and probably with
+a still lighter touch.  Their homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet
+not by any word of theirs would the shadows be deepened.  They could not
+shield themselves from war's horrors but they would do their best to
+shield their white swans at home.  They could not keep their women folk
+out of the war, but they would deliver them from its worst horrors.  Not
+till they had fallen would they let the shafts pass them to their
+mothers and wives; rather would they gather them in their own breasts.
+In the hour of the world's supreme tragedy there was a woman standing by
+the cross, and the august Sufferer, with dying breath, bade His closest
+friend take her, when the last beam faded, to his own home and be in His
+place, a son to her.  I know no scene that better represents the
+feelings of our soldiers towards their loved ones at home.
+
+Their women gave them inspiration and joy in the days of peace, and they
+still float before their vision amid the blackened ruins of war, as
+beautiful and stainless in their purity as the white swan on the moat of
+Ypres.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *II*
+
+                            *THE ROADMAKERS*
+
+
+We had just marched from one part of the Front to another and by a
+round-about way.  Each morning the Quartermaster and "the billeting
+party" went on before, and each evening we slept in a village that was
+strange to us.  Each of the men carried on his back a pack and equipment
+weighing about eighty or ninety pounds. Through sleet and blizzard and,
+for the most part, through open, exposed country, we continued our march
+without a day of rest.  By the fifth evening we reached the village
+where we were to have three or four weeks of rest and training before
+entering the trenches for the spring offensive.  We had unpacked and
+were sitting at dinner when a telegram came announcing that all previous
+plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must take to the road again.
+Something unexpected had happened, good or ill, we knew not which, and
+we had to enter the line in front of Arras. For three days more we
+marched.  Daily the sound of the guns came nearer, and the men were
+tired and footsore.  They were also deeply disappointed of the long rest
+to which they had been looking forward after a winter in the trenches at
+Neuve Chapelle.  Yet they marched cheerily enough.  "It's the War!" they
+said one to another and, true to their own philosophy, "packed up their
+troubles in their old kit bags and smiled."  When any man faltered a
+bit, as if about to fall out by the way, the others cheered him on by
+singing "Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the old Sunday school
+hymn, "Kind words can never die."  Sometimes an officer would shoulder a
+man's rifle to the end of the march, or until he felt better.  In eight
+unbroken days of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and finally
+arrived at a camp of huts within a day's march of the trenches we are to
+occupy.  Here, where our huts stand like islands in a sea of mud, we
+are, unless suddenly needed, to take a few days' rest.
+
+On the ninety-eight miles of road over which we tramped, we passed
+company after company of British roadmakers.  In some parts they were
+widening the road, in other parts repairing it.  The roads of
+Northeastern France are handed over to our care as completely as if they
+were in England.  Our road-makers are everywhere, and as we pass they
+stand, pick or shovel in hand, to salute the colonel and shout some
+humorous remark to the laughing riflemen--only to get back as much as
+they give.
+
+This morning I visited the neighboring village to arrange for a Sunday
+service.  The roads are hopeless for bicycles at this time of the year,
+so I fell back on Adam's method of getting about.  The road to the
+village was torn and broken, and "thaw precautions" were being observed.
+Everywhere it was ankle-deep in mud and, in the holes, knee-deep.
+Innumerable motor-wagons had crushed it beneath their ponderous weight,
+and my feet had need of my eyes to guide them.  In skirting the holes
+and rough places, I added quite a mile to the journey.
+
+It was annoying to get along so slowly, and I called the road "rotten"
+and blamed the War for its destructive work.  Then I saw that I had been
+unjust in judgment.  The War had constructed more than it had destroyed.
+The road had been a little muddy country lane, but the soldiers had made
+it wide as Fleet Street, and it was bearing a mightier traffic than that
+famous thoroughfare night and day.  The little road with its mean
+perfections and imperfections had gone, and the large road with big
+faults and big virtues had come.  This soldiers' road has faults the
+farmers' road knew not, but then it has burdens and duties unknown
+before, and it has had no time to prepare for them.  Like our
+boy-officers who are bearing grown men's burdens of responsibility and
+bearing them well, the road has had no time to harden.  To strengthen
+itself for its duties, it eats up stones as a giant eats up food.  I had
+no right to look for the smoothness of Oxford Street or the Strand.
+Such avenues represent the work of centuries, this of days.  They have
+grown with their burdens, but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it
+suddenly, and while it was immature.  Oxford Street and Fleet Street are
+the roads of peace, and laden with wealth and luxury, law and
+literature--things that can wait.  But on this road of the soldiers'
+making, nothing is allowed except it be concerned with matters of life
+and death.  It is the road of war, and there is a terrible urgency about
+it.  Over it pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the soldiers in the
+trenches, ambulances bearing back the wounded to the hospital.  Whatever
+its conditions the work must be done, and there is no room for a halting
+prudence or the pride of appearance.  Rough though it is and muddy, over
+it is passing, for all who have eyes to see, a new and better
+civilization and a wider liberty.  I had grumbled at the worn-out road
+when I ought to have praised it.  I was as an ingrate who finds fault
+with his father's hands because they are rough and horny.
+
+It was a group of soldier-roadmakers who brought me to my senses.  They
+were making a new road through the fields, and it branched off from the
+one I was on.  I saw its crude beginning and considered the burdens it
+would soon have to bear.  As I stood watching these English roadmakers
+my mind wandered down the avenues of time, and I saw the Roman soldiers
+building their immortal roads through England.  They were joining town
+to town and country to country.  They were introducing the people of the
+North to those of the South, and bringing the East into fellowship with
+the West.  I saw come along their roads the union of all England
+followed at, some distance, by that of England, Scotland and Wales; and
+I regretted that there was no foundation on which they could build a
+road to Ireland. I saw on those soldier-built roads, also, Christianity
+and Civilization marching, and in the villages and towns by the wayside
+they found a home whence they have sent out missionaries and teachers to
+the ends of the earth.
+
+"The captains and the kings depart."  The Roman Empire is no more, but
+the Roman roads remain.  They direct our modern life and business with
+an inevitability the Roman soldiers never exercised.  In two thousand
+years the Empire may have fallen apart and become a thing of the past;
+but the roads her sons have built in France, these two-and-a-half years,
+will abide forever and be a perpetual blessing; for, of things made by
+hands, there is, after the church and the home, nothing more sacred than
+the road.  The roadmaker does more for the brotherhood of man and the
+federation of the world than the most eloquent orator.  The roadmaker
+has his dreams and visions as well as the poet, and he expresses them in
+broken stones.  He uses stones as artists use colors, and orators words.
+He touches them--transient as they are--with immortality.  A little of
+his soul sticks to each stone he uses, and though the stone perishes the
+road remains.  His body may perish more quickly than the stones and be
+laid in some quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul will never
+utterly forsake the road he helped to make.  In man's nature, and in all
+his works, there is a strange blending of the temporal and the eternal,
+and in nothing is it more marked than in the roads he builds.
+
+The roadmaker is the pioneer among men and without him there would be
+neither artist nor orator.  He goes before civilization as John the
+Baptist went before Christ, and he is as rough and elemental.  Hard as
+his own stones, without him mankind would have remained savage and
+suspicious as beasts of prey; and art, science and literature would have
+had no beginning.  His road may begin in war, but it ends in peace.
+
+The pioneers I saw roadmaking were, for the greater part, over military
+age, and such as I had often seen leaning heavily on the bar of some
+miserable beer-house.  In those days they seemed of the earth, earthy,
+and the stars that lure to high thoughts and noble endeavors seemed to
+shine on them in vain.  But one never knows what is passing in the heart
+of another.  Of all things human nature is the most mysterious and
+deceptive.  God seems to play at hide-and-seek with men.  He hides
+pearls in oysters lying in the ooze of the sea; and gold under the
+everlasting snows of the Arctic regions.  Diamonds he buries deep down
+in the dirt beneath the African veldt.  He places Christ in a
+carpenter's shop, Joan of Arc in a peasant's dwelling, Lincoln in a
+settler's cabin, and Burns in a crude cottage built by his father's own
+hands.  He hides generous impulses and heroic traits in types of men
+that in our mean imaginations we can only associate with the saw-dust
+sprinkled bar-room. Only when war or pestilence have kindled their
+fierce and lurid flames do we find the hidden nobility that God has
+stored away in strange places--places often as foul and unlikely as
+those where a miser stores his gold.
+
+When Diogenes went about with a candle in search of an honest man did he
+think to look in the taverns and slums?  I fancy not. Not Diogenes'
+candle but the "Light of the World" was needed to reveal the treasure
+God has hidden in men.  Christ alone knew where His Father had hidden
+His wealth and could guide us to it.  In this time of peril when every
+man with any nobility in him is needed to stand in the deadly breach,
+and with body and soul hold back the brutality and tyranny that would
+enslave the world we have, like the woman in the parable, lit a candle
+and searched every corner of our kingdom diligently.  In the dust of
+unswept corners we have found many a coin of value that, but for our
+exceeding need, would have remained hidden. To me, the wealth and wonder
+of the war have been found in its sweepings.  Time and again we have
+found those who were lost, and a new happiness has come into life.  To
+the end of my days I shall walk the earth with reverent feet.  I did not
+know men were so great.  I have looked at life without seeing the gold
+through the dust, and have been no better than a Kaffir child playing
+marbles with diamonds, unaware of their value.  I have gone among my
+fellows with proud step where I ought to have walked humbly, and have
+rushed in where angels feared to tread.
+
+Life at the Front has made me feel mean among mankind.  My comrades have
+been so great.  In days long past, I have trodden on the hem of Christ's
+garment without knowing it.  I have not seen its jewels because I, and
+others, have so often trodden it in the mire. Yet, through the mire of
+slum and tavern, the jewels have emerged pearl-white and ruby-red. And I
+feel that I owe to a large part of mankind an apology for having been
+before the war so blind, callous and superficial.  But for the agony and
+bloody sweat in which I have seen my fellows, I should never have known
+them for what they are, and the darkness of death would have covered me
+before I had realized what made the death of Christ and the sufferings
+of all the martyrs well worth while.  Now there is a new light upon my
+path and I shall see the features of an angel through the dirt on a
+slum-child's face.  Words of Christ that once lay in the shadow now
+stand out clearly, for whenever we get below the surface of life we come
+to _Him_.  He is there before us, and awaiting our coming.
+
+I also understand, now, something of the meaning of the words which the
+Unemployed scrawled upon their banner before the war--"Damn your
+charity.  Give us work."  It was a deep and true saying, and taught them
+by a stern teacher.  When the war came we _did_ "damn our charity" and
+gave them "work."  Many a man got his first chance of doing "a man's
+job," and rose to the full height of his manhood.  Many hitherto idle
+and drunken, were touched in their finer parts.  They saw their
+country's need, and though their country had done little to merit their
+gratitude, they responded to her call before some of the more prudent
+and sober.  Those who were young went out to fight, and every officer
+can tell stories about their behavior in the hours of danger and
+suffering which bring tears to the eyes and penitence to the heart.
+Those above military age went out to make roads over which their younger
+brothers and sons could march, and get food, ammunition, or an ambulance
+according to their needs.  Among the group of middle-aged roadmakers
+that I saw there were, I doubt not, some who had been counted wastrels
+and who had made but a poor show of life.  Now they had got work that
+made them feel that they were men and not mendicants, and they were
+"making good."
+
+While I watched them a lark rose from a neighboring field and sang over
+them a song of the coming spring.  It was the first lark I had heard
+this year, and I was glad it mingled its notes with the sounds of the
+roadmakers' shovels.  Nature is not so indifferent to human struggles as
+it sometimes seems.  The man who stands steadfastly by the right and
+true and bids tyranny and wrong give place will find, at last, that he
+is in league with the stones of the field and the birds of the air, and
+that the stars in their courses fight for him.  The roadmaker and the
+lark are born friends. Both are heralds of coming gladness, and while
+one works, the other sings.  True work and pure song are never far
+apart.  They are both born of hope and seek to body forth the immortal.
+A man works while he has faith. Would he sow if he did not believe the
+promise, made under the rainbow, that seed-time and harvest shall never
+fail?  Or could he sing with despair choking his heart?  Yet he can sing
+with death choking it.  In the very act of dying Wesley sang the hymn,
+"I'll praise my Maker while I've breath."  He sang because of the hope
+of immortality.  He was not turning his face to the blank wall of death
+and oblivion but to the opening gate of a fuller life.  He was soaring
+sunwards like the lark, and soaring sang,
+
+    "And when my voice is lost in death
+    Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
+    My days of praise shall ne'er be past."
+
+
+Joy can sing and Sorrow can sing, but Despair is dumb.  It has not even
+a cry, for a cry is a call for help as every mother knows, and Despair
+knows no helper.  Even the saddest song has hope in it, as the dreariest
+desert has a well.  The loved one is dead but Love lives on and whispers
+of a trysting place beyond this bourne of time, where loved and lover
+meet again.  The patriot's life may be pouring from a dozen wounds on
+the muddy field of battle, but his fast-emptying heart is singing with
+each heavy beat, "Who dies, if my country live?"
+
+Roadmakers have prepared the way for missionaries in every land.
+Trail-blazers are not always religious men--often they are wild,
+reckless fellows whom few would allow a place in the Kingdom of God--but
+is not their work religious in its final upshot?  Do they not, however
+unconsciously, "prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert
+a highway for our God?"  Close on their heels go the missionaries, urged
+on faster by the pure love of souls than the trader by love of lucre.
+The greatest among the roadmakers was a missionary himself--David
+Livingstone.  And for such an one the name Living-stone is perfect.  It
+has the touch of destiny.  Through swamp and forest he went where white
+feet had never trod, and blazed a trail for the messengers of Christ,
+until, worn out with fever and hardship, he fell asleep at his prayers,
+to wake no more to toil and suffering.
+
+But while the roadmaker bestows benefits on us he also lays obligations,
+for there can be no enlargement of privilege without a corresponding
+increase of responsibility.  The roads the men are making here in France
+will be good for trade.  They will open up the country as did the
+military roads of Caesar and Napoleon; and along them soldiers are
+marching who, at tremendous cost to themselves, are buying for posterity
+great benefits, and laying upon posterity great obligations.  Posterity
+must hold and enlarge the liberties won for them, and prove worthy of
+their citizenship by resisting tyranny "even unto blood."  We are here
+because our fathers were heroes and lovers of liberty.  Had they been
+cowards and slaves there would have been no war for us.  As we follow
+our fathers our sons must be ready to follow us.  The present springs
+out of the past, and the future will spring out of the present.
+Inheritance implies defense on the part of the inheritors.
+
+The very names they give to their roads show that our soldiers have
+grasped this fact. The cold canvas hut in which I am writing is
+officially described as No. 1 Hut, _Oxford Street_.  A little farther
+off, and running parallel with it, is _Cambridge_ Road.  There is also
+an _Eton_ Road, _Harrow_ Road, and _Marlborough_ Road.  Students of the
+universities and schools after which these roads are named are out here
+to defend what these institutions have stood for through the hoary
+centuries.  They are out to preserve the true conception of Liberty and
+Fair-play, and to build roads along which all peoples who desire it can
+travel unmolested by attacks from either tyrants or anarchists.
+
+Right from the beginning of the war, the idea of a Road has taken hold
+of the imagination of our soldiers.  The first divisions came out
+singing, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right
+there."  Nowadays the popular song is "There's a long, long trail
+awinding into the Land of my dreams."
+
+They are making a Road of Liberty along which all nations may pass to
+universal peace and brotherhood, and where the weak will be as safe from
+oppression as the strong.  "It's a long, long way to go," but they have
+seen their goal on the horizon, and will either reach it or die on the
+way to it.  They have made up their minds that never again shall the
+shadow of the Kaiser's mailed fist, or that any other tyrant fall across
+their path.  These men never sing of war.  They hate war.  It is a
+brutal necessity forced on them by the ambition of a tyrant.  Their
+songs are all of peace and none of war.  Of the future and not the
+present they sing:
+
+    "Tiddley-iddley-ighty,
+    Hurry me home to Blighty;
+    Blighty is the place for me."
+
+
+Whether they sing with levity or seriousness (and levity of manner often
+veils their seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and
+goodwill they sing.  To them the war is a hard road leading to a better
+life for mankind.  It is to them what the desert was to the Israelites,
+when they left the bondage of Egypt for the liberty of the Land of
+Promise. Therefore they must tread it without faltering even as Christ
+trod the way of the Cross. "There's a long, long trail awinding into the
+Land of their dreams" and they will not lose faith in their dreams
+however wearisome the way.  Elderly navvies and laborers have come to
+smooth the roads for them, and nurses are tending those who have fallen
+broken by the way; while across the sundering sea are mothers and wives
+whose prayers make flowers spring up at their feet and blossoms break
+out on every tree that fringes the side of the road.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *III*
+
+                       *THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT*
+
+
+There is an undoubted glamour about the Front, which when at home, in
+England, cannot be explained.  In the army or out of it, the wine of
+life is white and still, but at the Front it runs red and sparkling. One
+day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and sat on a box by the side of one of
+the servants of the officer's mess at the Aerodrome near by.  He was
+going into Doullens, a market town, to buy food and some little
+luxuries. Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English flyers, was, up to
+the time of his death in the air, a member of the mess, and the servant
+was telling me how comfortable all the officers make their quarters.  In
+a phrase he defined the glamour of the Front.
+
+"One day," he said, "when we were helping him to make his room
+comfortable, Captain Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled, 'We
+haven't long to live, but we live well while we do live.'"
+
+There you have it.  Life is concentrated. Death is near--just round the
+corner--so the men make the most of their time and "live well."  It has
+the same quality as "leave" at home.  Leave is short and uncertain, so
+we "live well."  Our friends know it may be the last sight of us, and we
+know it may be our last sight of them.  They are kind and generous to
+us, as we are to them; and so, the ten days of "leave" are just
+glorious.  Ruskin says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts but a
+second, and that Turner went out early in the evening and watched with
+rapt attention for that one second of supreme splendor and delight.  He
+lived for sunsets and while others were balancing their accounts, or
+taking tea, he went out to see the daily miracle.  The one second in
+which he saw God pass by in the glory of the sunset was to him worth all
+the twenty-four hours.  For one second in each day he caught the glamour
+of earth and heaven, and went back to his untidy studios blind to all
+but the splendor he had seen.
+
+That second each day was life, indeed, and the glamour of the Front is
+like unto it.  It is the place where life sets, and the darkness of
+death draws on.  The commonest soldier feels it and with true instinct,
+not less true because unconscious, he describes death at the Front as
+"going West."  It is the presence of death that gives the Front its
+glamour, and life its concentrated joy and fascination.  Captain Ball
+saw it with the intuition of genius when he said: "We haven't long to
+live, but we live well while we _do_ live."
+
+The immediate presence of death at the Front gives tone to every
+expression of life, and makes it the kindest place in the world.  No one
+feels he can do too much for you, and there is nothing you would not do
+for another. Whether you are an officer or a private, you can get a lift
+on any road, in any vehicle, that has an inch of room in it.  How often
+have I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up the back of an empty
+motor-lorry which has stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in. It is
+one of the merriest sights of the war and redounds to the credit of
+human nature. Cigarettes are passed round by those who have, to those
+who have not, with a generosity that reminds one of nothing so much as
+that of the early Christians who "had all things common; and sold their
+possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had
+need."  You need never go hungry while others have food.  Officers are
+welcome at every mess they go near, and privates will get food in the
+servants' kitchen or may go shares with the men in any billet.  It may
+be a man's own fault that he took no food on the march, and his comrades
+may tell him so in plain strong language, but they will compel him to
+share what they have just the same.
+
+One wet night on the Somme I got lost in "Happy Valley" and could not
+find my regiment. Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it. It was a
+pioneers' tent, but they invited me to come in out of the storm and stay
+the night. They were at supper and had only a small supply of
+bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea; but they insisted on me sharing
+what they had. I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one of their
+blankets.  One of them gave me a box to sleep on, while he shared his
+chum's. Some lost privates came in later wet to the skin, and the
+pioneers gave them all the eatables left over from supper, and shared
+out their blankets and clothes.  It was pure Christianity--whatever
+creeds they may think they believe.  And it is the glamour of the Front.
+England feels cold and dull after it.  Kindness and comradeship pervade
+the air in France. You feel that everyone is a friend and brother. It
+will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back to their churches.  They
+have been spoiled by too much kindness.  How can they go back to the
+cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow judgments which prevail in so
+many churches--that is, unless the war has brought changes there also?
+And after preaching to dying men who listen as it their destiny depended
+upon their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits where large numbers
+in the congregations regard their messages as of less importance than
+dinner, and as merely supplying material for an exercise in more or less
+kindly criticism during the discussion of that meal?
+
+The glamour of the services at the Front! How the scenes are
+photographed on my heart!  As a congregation sits in a church at home
+how stolid its features often are--how dull its eyes!  One glance around
+and the preacher's heart sinks within him and his inspiration flies
+away.  Nothing is expected of him, and nothing particularly desired.
+People have come by force of habit, and not of need. But how the eyes of
+the soldiers in France glow and burn; how their features speak, and make
+the preacher speak in reply!  Who could help being eloquent there!  Such
+faces would make the dumb speak.  One can see the effect of his words as
+plainly in their expressions as he can see the effect of wind on a
+cornfield.  Every emotion from humor to concern leaps from the heart to
+the face as the subject touches them at, first this point of their life,
+then at that. The men's eyes are unforgettable.  Months afterwards they
+come vividly to mind, and one is back again answering the questions they
+silently ask, and seeing the look of content or gratitude that takes the
+place of the perplexed or troubled expression.  Eyes are said to be the
+windows of the soul, and as I have spoken I have seen men's souls
+looking out.  At home the windows are darkened and there seemed to be no
+souls behind the panes.  The dwellers within the houses are busy with
+other matters, and will not come to the windows.  The preacher feels
+like an organ-grinder in the street--those who hear do not heed nor come
+to the windows of the soul.  In France there is a soul looking out at
+every window; and the preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to
+his listeners of the love of God and of the love of women and children
+which make sweet this vale of tears and light man on his lone way beyond
+the grave.
+
+One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the singing of a hymn in the ward
+below, a young officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said: "Why
+doesn't the chaplain hold a service for us?  Why does he only hold them
+for the Tommies?  We need them and want them, just as much as the
+Tommies.  We are officers but we are also men."  I passed the word to
+the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when in the evening he gave us a
+service and the officers of the next ward asked the orderlies to carry
+them in.
+
+There is the same naturalness and spirit of fellowship between members
+of various churches.  Many lasting friendships have been formed between
+chaplains of differing communions.  There has been no change of creed
+but something greater, a change of spirit. They have been touched by the
+common spirit, and have lived and worked in free and happy fellowship.
+On my last Sunday in a hospital in France, the chaplain, a canon of the
+Church of England, invited me to read the lesson at the morning parade
+service, and to administer the wine at Holy Communion.  This I did; and
+a colonel who was present stayed behind to express to us both the
+pleasure which had been given to him by the sight of Anglican and
+Methodist churchmen serving together at the Lord's Table.
+
+To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of the Front is found in this
+warm fellowship between men of differing creeds and varying religious
+communions.  We have not knocked down our garden walls but we have taken
+off the cut glass that had been cemented on them by our fathers; and now
+we can lean over and talk to our neighbors.  We have already found that
+our neighbors are human beings, and quite normal.  The chief difference
+between us seems to be that while one has an obsession for roses the
+other has an obsession for dahlias.  On pansies, sweet peas and
+chrysanthemums we seem equally keen and exchange plants.  A Roman
+Catholic officer who had been appointed to the Ulster Division told me
+that though he was received coldly at first, he had not been with the
+Division more than a few weeks when every officer in his regiment, and
+every soldier in his company, accepted him as cordially as if he were a
+Protestant.  He was from Dublin and they from Belfast, but they did not
+allow it to make any difference, and feelings of the warmest loyalty and
+friendship sprang up. His Tommies would fight to the death by his side,
+as readily as around any Ulsterman; and he was just as popular in the
+officers' mess. When, he said, it passed the Irish Guards or any other
+Roman Catholic regiment, his regiment would sing some provoking song
+about "hanging the Pope with a good strong rope," and the Dublin
+regiment would reply with some song equally obnoxious and defiant; but
+whereas, in peace time, the songs would have caused a free fight to the
+accompaniment of bloodshed, now it caused nothing worse than laughter.
+The songs were just a bit of teasing such as every regiment likes to
+regale another with--perhaps, too, a common memory of the dear country
+they have left behind.  The men of Belfast and the men of Dublin have
+learned to respect and value one another.  They know that in a scrap
+with the enemy they can count on one another to the last drop of blood,
+for, whether from North or South, the Irish are "bonnie fighters."  Of
+such are the miracles at the Front.
+
+Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the Front is found in the nobility
+to which common men rise.  An artillery officer told me that he had in
+his battery a soldier who seemed utterly worthless.  He was dirty in all
+his ways, and unreliable in character.  In despair they made him
+sanitary orderly, that is, the scavenger whose duty it was to remove all
+refuse.  One night the officer wanted a man to go on a perilous errand
+and there were few men available.  Instantly this lad volunteered. The
+officer looked at him in amazement, and with a reverence born on the
+instant.  "No," he thought, "I will not let him go and get killed.  I'll
+go myself."  He told the lad so, and disappointment was plainly written
+on his features.
+
+"But, you'll let me come with you, sir?" he replied.
+
+"Why should two risk their lives," asked the officer, "when one can do
+the job?"
+
+"But you might get wounded, sir," was the quick response; and they went
+together.
+
+An Irish officer told me of one man who seemed bad from top to toe.  All
+the others had some redeeming feature but this man appeared not to
+possess any.  He used the filthiest language and was dirty in his habits
+and dress. He was drunken and stole the officers' whisky out of the
+mess.  He was unchaste and had been in the hospital with venereal
+disease; and neither as man nor soldier was there anything good to say
+of him.  The regiment was sent to France, and in due time took its place
+in the trenches; and then appeared in this man something that had never
+risen to the surface before.  Wherever there were wounded and dying men
+he proved himself to be the noblest man in the regiment.  When a man
+fell in No Man's Land, he was over the parapet in the twinkling of an
+eye to bring him in.  No barrage could keep him away from the wounded.
+It was a sort of passion with him that nothing could restrain.  To save
+others he risked his life scores of times.  In rest-billets he would
+revert to some of his evil ways, but in the trenches he was the
+Greatheart of the regiment and, though he did not receive it, he earned
+the Victoria Cross over and over again.  There is a glamour at the Front
+that holds the heart with an irresistible grip.  In the light of War's
+deathly fires the hearts of men are revealed and the black sheep often
+get their chance.  Life is intense and deep and men are drawn together
+by a common peril. They find the things that unite and forget the things
+that separate.
+
+"We haven't long to live," said Captain Ball joyfully, "but we live well
+while we _do_ live," and in those words he expressed the glamour of the
+Front.  Ball found, as thousands of his comrades-in-arms had found, that
+
+    "One crowded hour of glorious life
+    Is worth an age without a name."
+
+
+
+
+                                  *IV*
+
+                         *A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF*
+
+
+In his _History of the Somme Campaign_ John Buchan quotes, from an
+official report, an incident which, though I have tried, I cannot get my
+imagination to believe. Probably the incident is a true one but,
+unfortunately for me, my mind will not let it in. I cannot visualize it
+and the report is turned from the door as an impostor.  The report
+states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes fired on the Germans in
+their trenches and that the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token of
+surrender.  Without the slightest difficulty I can imagine all except
+the white handkerchiefs. Where did they get them to wave? Men in the
+firing trenches don't carry anything so conspicuous as white
+handkerchiefs.  To draw one out in a thoughtless moment might bring a
+sniper's bullet, and there are risks enough without inviting more.  I
+doubt if in any English regiment two white handkerchiefs could be found:
+and I have little expectation that more could be found among the enemy.
+Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage of the war, if a white
+handkerchief would be regarded as a sign, of surrender.  It might be
+taken as a taunt.
+
+There is nothing more remarkable in the war than the psychological
+change that has been wrought in white.  A white feather used to be the
+badge of cowardice and a white flag the token of surrender.  It is not
+so now. White has taken on a peculiar sacredness.  If a new medal were
+to be struck of the same high value as the Victoria Cross it would
+probably be given a white ribbon, as the other has a red or (for the
+navy) blue.  This change in the moral significance of white was brought
+home to me by an incident in a billet. I had gone to a barn to give the
+men some shirts and socks that had been sent to me.  I stood on the
+steps, and like an auctioneer, offered my goods for acceptance.  "Who
+wants a shirt?  Who a scarf?  Who wants this pair of mittens?  Who a
+pair of socks?"  Hands shot up at each question, and the fun grew fast
+and furious.  Then I drew out and held up a white handkerchief.  "A-ah!
+A-ah!" they cried wistfully in chorus.  For a moment they stood gazing
+at it and forgot to raise their hands towards it; then, with a single
+movement, every hand shot up.  Unwittingly I had stirred them to the
+depths; and I felt sorry for them.
+
+The Magic Carpet of Baghdad is not a fiction after all.  In the
+twinkling of an eye my white handkerchief had carried every boy and man
+to his home, and placed him by the fireside.  I saw it in their eyes and
+heard it in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices as they
+ejaculated "A-ah!"  They had not seen a white handkerchief for months.
+The last they saw was at home.  A vision of home flashed before their
+minds and they were back in the dear old days of peace when they used
+white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were unknown to them.  If in battle
+they were to see Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think it would
+make them savage and unwilling to give quarter.  They would think the
+enemy was taunting them with all they had lost.  And they would be
+maddened by the thought that here were the very men who, by their
+war-lust, had caused them to lose it.  For a German to wave a white
+handkerchief before a British soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting
+a red flag before a bull.  It would bring death rather than pity.
+Anything of pure white is rare at the front, and it has gradually taken
+on a meaning it never held before.  About the only white thing we have
+is the paper we write home on, and that use of the color helps to
+sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.
+
+In the army it is a term of supreme praise to call a man _white_.  When
+you say a comrade is a "_white man_" there is no more to be said. It is
+worth more than the Victoria Cross with its red ribbon, for it includes
+gallantry, and adds to it goodness.  A man must be brave to be called
+white and he must be generous, noble and good.  To reach whiteness is a
+great achievement.  To be dubbed white is, in the army, like being
+dubbed knight at King Arthur's Court or canonized saint in the Church.
+He stands out among a soldier's comrades distinct as a white
+handkerchief among khaki ones.
+
+I don't know where the term came from, but, wherever it may have tarried
+on the way, I think its footprints could be traced back to the Book of
+Revelation for its starting place. In the first chapter we have a
+picture of Christ as the first "White Man"--"His Head and His Hairs were
+white like wool, as white as snow."  In the second chapter His faithful
+followers are given "a white stone, and in the stone a new name
+written."  Is not the new name "White man"?  In the third chapter we
+read of "a few names even in Sardis which have _not defiled their
+garments_; and they shall _walk with Me in white_; for they are worthy."
+There, too, the Laodiceans are counseled to buy "white raiment."  In the
+fourth chapter we see the four and twenty elders, sitting around the
+throne under the rainbow arch, "clothed in white raiment."  In the sixth
+chapter we have the crowned King going "forth conquering, and to
+conquer" and He is sitting on "a white horse," that is, He uses "white"
+instruments to carry out His conquests.  Death, in the same chapter,
+rides on a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one.  Under the altar were
+the souls of the martyrs, "And white robes were given unto every one of
+them."  And surely the climax is reached when we read in the seventh
+chapter that "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all
+nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne,
+and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes."  So striking was the
+scene that one of the elders asked, "What are these which are arrayed in
+white robes? and whence came they?"  And the answer is given, "These are
+they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes,
+and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before
+the throne of God."  In the army white has come back to its ancient
+significance.  The brave and noble martyrs of the early Church were
+given "white robes" and in the army to-day the brave and pure wear
+"white robes" in the eyes of their comrades.  When Clifford Reed was
+killed by a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel wrote of him
+that he was the "whitest man" he had ever known.  He had done more than
+wear "the white flower of a _blameless_ life."  His virtues were
+positive, not merely negative. He wore a "white _robe_"; not a mere
+speck of white such as a white flower in a buttonhole would appear.
+White is a positive color, not a negative.  Reed was more than
+"blameless," he was "white and all white."  To our soldiers a white
+handkerchief speaks of home, and a "white man" speaks of honor and
+heroism and heaven.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *V*
+
+                     *THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING*
+
+
+The necessity for poetry and song is fully and officially recognized by
+the military authorities at the Front.  Every Division has its own
+concert party.  These men are chosen out of the ranks because they can
+sing, and their one task is to furnish nightly concerts for the men.
+They are provided with a good hall, or tent, or open-air position; and
+they are given enough money to buy stage scenery and appropriate dress.
+Everybody attends the concerts from the general to the private; and
+while the entertainments last, the war is forgotten.  A charge is made
+at the door but the balance sheet is published for all ranks to see; and
+the profits are distributed among the Divisional charities.
+
+Among the many Divisional Concert Parties may be named "The Bow Bells,"
+"The Duds," "The Follies," "The Whizz-bangs," "The Fancies" and, "The
+Giddigoats."  But, after all, the singing in the concert rooms is but a
+small fraction of the singing one hears in the Army.  On every march, in
+every billet and mess, there is the sound of singing.  Nor must the
+singing at our religious services and in the Y.M.C.A. huts be forgotten.
+Song seems to be the great renewer of hope and courage. It is the joy
+bringer.  Moreover, it is an expression of emotions that can find no
+other voice.
+
+There is no real difference between the songs sung by the officers, and
+those sung by the men. All attend the concerts and all sing on the
+march.  The same songs do for both commanders and commanded, and I have
+heard the same songs in the men's billets as in the officers'
+mess-rooms.  How real these songs are to the soldiers is indicated by
+one striking omission.  There are no patriotic songs at the Front.
+Except the National Anthem rendered on formal occasions, I have never,
+in eighteen months, heard a single patriotic song.  The reason is not
+far to seek.  The soldiers' patriotism calls for no expression in song.
+They are expressing it night and day in the endurance of hardship and
+wounds--in the risking of their lives.  Their hearts are satisfied with
+their deeds, and songs of such a character become superfluous.  In
+peace-time they sing their love of the homeland, but in war-time they
+suffer for her and are content.  They would never think of singing a
+patriotic song as they march into battle.  It would be painting the lily
+and gilding refined gold.  Are not their deathless deeds, songs for
+which they make a foil by singing some inconsequential and evanescent
+song such as, "There's something in the sea-side air."
+
+On analysis I should say that there are five subjects on which our
+soldiers sing.  First, there are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it,
+songs of soldier-philosophy.  They know that no theory will explain the
+war; it is too big a thing for any sheet of philosophy to cover.  It has
+burst in on our little hum-drum life like a colliding planet.  The thing
+to do is not to evolve a theory as to how the planet got astray but to
+clear up the mess it has made.  Our soldiers show this sense of the
+vastness of war-happenings, by singing of things having no real
+importance at all, and keeping steadily at their duties.  The path of
+duty is, they find, the only path of sanity.  The would-be war
+philosopher they put on one side.  The war is too big for him.  Let him
+leave his explanation of the war and lend a hand to bring it to an end.
+So they sing, with laughing irony,
+
+    "We're here because we're here, because
+    We're here, because we're here."
+
+Or,
+
+    "While you've got a lucifer to light your fag,
+    Smile, boys, that's the style.
+    What's the use of worrying?
+    It never was worth while,
+    So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag
+    And smile, smile, smile."
+
+Another favorite is,
+
+    "Oh, there was a little hen and she had a wooden leg,
+    The best little hen that ever laid an egg,
+    And she laid more eggs than any hen on the farm,
+    And another little drink wouldn't do us any harm."
+
+I have seen them dancing round some old piano singing,
+
+    "Oh, that fascinating Bow Bells' glide,
+    It's a captivating Bow Bells' slide.
+    There's a rumor that the puma does it now,
+    Monkeys have taken to it,
+    Leopards and lions do it.
+    All the elephants wear dancing shoes,
+    They keep hopping with the kangaroos;
+    Hear them chatter, it's a matter for some talk;
+    Now the Jungle's got the Bow Bells' walk."
+
+
+The second class of song is the Love Song, of a more or less serious
+character.  The Tommies came out of England singing "Tipperary," but
+they dropped it in France, and the only one on whose lips I have heard
+it was a little French boy sitting on the tail of a cart.  The chorus
+alone gave it popularity for it was the expression, ready to hand, of a
+long farewell; and with its "long long way to go" showed that, like
+Kitchener, the soldiers were not deceived by hopes of an early peace.
+
+Now another song with verses more expressive of their sentiments has
+taken its place. The chorus runs:
+
+    "There's a long, long trail a-winding
+      Into the land of my dreams,
+    Where the nightingales are singing
+      And a white moon beams;
+    There's a long, long night of waiting
+      Until my dreams all come true;
+    Till the day when I'll be going down
+      That long, long trail with you."
+
+Then the mood changes, and we hear the lads piping out,
+
+    "Taffy's got his Jennie in Glamorgan,
+      Sandy's got his Maggie in Dundee,
+    While Michael O'Leary thinks of his dearie
+      Far across the Irish Sea.
+    Billy's got his Lily up in London,
+      So the boys march on with smiles;
+    For every Tommy's got a girl somewhere
+      In the dear old British Isles."
+
+Again the mood veers round, and we hear,
+
+    "Every little while I feel so lonely,
+      Every little while I feel so blue,
+    I'm always dreaming, I'm always scheming,
+      Because I want you, and only you.
+    Every little while my heart is aching,
+      Every little while I miss your smile,
+    And all the time I seem to miss you;
+    I want to, want to kiss you,
+      Every, every, every little while."
+
+
+Here is part of a song I have heard sung, many and many a time, by young
+officers and men whose voices are now silent in death:
+
+    "If you were the only girl in the world,
+    And I were the only boy,
+    Nothing else would matter in the world to-day,
+    We could go on loving in the same old way;
+    A Garden of Eden just made for two,
+    With nothing to mar our joy;
+    I would say such wonderful things to you,
+    There would be such wonderful things to do,
+    If you were the only girl in the world,
+    And I were the only boy."
+
+
+Sometimes the imagination will wander into the days that are to be--for
+some--and they sing,
+
+    "We don't want a lot of flags flying,
+      We don't want your big brass bands;
+    We don't want a lot of speechifying,
+      And we don't want a lot of waving hands;
+    We don't want a lot of interfering,
+      When we've safely crossed the foam;
+    But we _do_ want to find the girls we left behind,
+      When we all come marching home."
+
+
+Will the girls remember!  The words are not without tragedy.  How deeply
+some of the men love may perhaps never be realized by those at home.
+The longing of their hearts is, at times, almost unbearable.  A captain,
+past middle life, took my arm one day and led me aside.  He was, he
+said, a little anxious about himself, for he was getting into the habit
+of taking more drink than he was wont to take. He had been taking it
+when he felt lonely and depressed to ease the longing of his heart.
+
+"I never touch it at home," he said, "the society of my dear little wife
+is all the stimulant I need.  I would give the world to be with her
+now--just to sit in my chair and watch her at her sewing or knitting.
+The separation is too much for me and, you know, it has lasted nearly
+three years now."
+
+I have caught this yearning in more than one of the songs our soldiers
+sing, but especially in the following, which is called "Absent":
+
+    "Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass,
+    The little truant waves of sunlight pass;
+    My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while
+    Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.
+
+    "And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart,
+    The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart;
+    From my fond lips the eager answers fall,
+    Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call."
+
+
+The men's thoughts pass easily from the sweetheart to the mother who
+bore them, and we have a third class, the Home Song.  I have been
+awakened in the night by men, going up to the line, singing "Keep the
+Home Fires Burning."  It is very thrilling to hear in the dead of night,
+when every singer is within range of the enemy's guns.
+
+Another great favorite is,
+
+    "They built a little garden for the rose,
+      And they called it Dixie-land;
+    They built a summer breeze to keep the snows
+      Far away from Dixie-land;
+    They built the finest place I've known,
+      When they built my home sweet home;
+    Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton,
+      From the clover to the honey-comb,
+    And then they took an angel from the skies
+      And they gave her heart to me.
+    She had a bit of heaven in her eyes
+      Just as blue as blue can be;
+    They put some fine spring chickens in the land,
+      And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan.
+    They made it twice as nice as paradise,
+      And they called it Dixie-land."
+
+
+Being Londoners, the following song called "Leave" never fails in its
+appeal to our Division:
+
+    "I'm so delighted, I'm so excited,
+    With my folks I'm going to be united.
+    The train's departing, 'twill soon be starting;
+    I'll see my mother, my dad and my baby brother.
+    My!  How I'll meet them, My! how I'll greet them.
+    What a happy happy day.
+    Just see that bustle, I'd better hustle,
+    Good-bye--so long--can't stay--
+
+    Chorus
+
+    "I'm on my way back to dear old Shepherd's Bush,
+    That's the spot where I was born,
+    Can't you hear the porter calling,
+    Queen's Road, Piccadilly, Marble Arch and Bond Street?
+    Oh, I'll not hesitate, I'll reach the gate;
+    Through the crowd I mean to push,
+    Find me a seat anywhere--please anywhere,
+    Tram, train, tube, 'bus I don't care--
+    For mother and daddy are waiting there--
+    In dear old Shepherd's Bush."
+
+
+On the eve of one big battle, a soldier handed me a letter in which he
+gave me the addresses of his father and his sweetheart, so that I could
+write to them if he fell.
+
+"In the last battle," he said, "one of my brothers was killed and
+another wounded.  If I fall I shall die without regrets and with a heart
+content; but it will go hard with those at home; and I want you to break
+the news gently. These are terrible times for those at home."  "These
+are terrible times _for those at home_."  That is their constant
+refrain, and it finds an echo in a song often sung by them.
+
+    "It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky,
+      Where the blue-bells grow 'round the old cabin door;
+    It's a long, long way and I'll be mighty lucky
+      When I see my dear old mammy once more.
+    So weep no more, my lady,
+      Just brush those tears away;
+    It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky,
+      But I'm bound to get there some day."
+
+
+But the chief favorite of all Home Songs is, I think, the following:
+
+    "There's an old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned street;
+      In a quaint little old-fashioned town;
+    There's a street where the cobble stones harass the feet,
+      As it straggles up hill and then down;
+    And, though to and fro through the world I must go,
+      My heart while it beats in my breast,
+    Where e'er I may roam, to that old-fashioned home
+      Will fly like a bird to its nest.
+
+    "In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned street,
+      Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair;
+    I can see their two faces so tender and sweet,
+      And I love every wrinkle that's there.
+    I love ev'ry mouse in that old-fashioned house
+      In the street that runs up hill and down;
+    Each stone and each stick, ev'ry cobble and brick,
+      In that quaint little old-fashioned town."
+
+
+The charm of the Army is its comradeship. Our soldiers have left their
+homes and friends but they have found new friends, and some of the
+friendships have become very precious. Men slept side by side in barn
+and trench, cooked their rations at the same little wood fire, and stood
+together in the hour of danger and imminent death.  Many of them owe
+their lives to their comrades.  There are few songs that express this
+wonderful comradeship, but there is one that is known and sung through
+the army.  It represents the Songs of Comradeship:
+
+    "When you come to the end of a perfect day,
+      And you sit alone with your thought,
+    While the chimes ring out with a carol gay,
+      For the joy that the day has brought;
+    Do you think what the end of a perfect day
+      Can mean to a tired heart,
+    When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,
+      And the dear friends have to part?
+
+    "Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
+      Near the end of a journey too;
+    But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
+      With a wish that is kind and true.
+    For mem'ry has painted this perfect day
+      With colors that never fade;
+    And we find at the end of a perfect day
+      _The soul of a friend we've made_."
+
+
+The fifth class of song is that of the inner life.  It is the Religious
+Hymn.  The soldiers are extremely fond of hymns in their services. You
+cannot give them too many.  "Rock of Ages," "Jesus lover of my soul,"
+"Fight the good fight," "There is a green hill," "At even ere the sun
+was set," "O God our help in ages past," and "Eternal Father strong to
+save" cannot be chosen too often.  But there are two hymns which have
+stood out above all others; they are "Abide with me," and "When I survey
+the wondrous Cross."
+
+There is nothing written by the hand of man which can compete with these
+two in the blessing and strength which they have brought to our
+soldiers, especially during an offensive when death has cast his shadow
+over the hearts of all.  During the bitterest weeks in the Somme
+fighting there was scarcely a service in which we did not sing "When I
+survey the wondrous Cross."  With its assurance of redemption it gave
+comfort in the face of death.  It also gave, for an example, the Supreme
+Sacrifice.
+
+Some of the songs I have quoted look bare and ungainly as trees in
+winter, but when the musician has clothed them with music and the singer
+added to them a touch of his own personality they are fair as trees in
+summer.  Still the fact remains that none of these songs will live on
+their own merits.  They are not born to immortality.  Like the daisies
+they have their day and pass away to make room for others.  It is best
+so.  There is not room in the world for everything to be immortal, and
+the transient has a work of its own to do. The charm and rare beauty of
+the English countryside are due to the transience of its flowers and
+foliage and little of the evergreen is enough.  We tire of the eternal.
+The transient songs I have quoted here have been meat and drink to our
+soldiers in the most terrible war ever waged.  They may be poor stuff in
+comparison with our classic songs but a good appetite can get
+nourishment out of plain food and grow strong on it.  For the purpose in
+hand these songs have been better than the classics; otherwise they
+would not have been chosen.  There is a time and place for all things.
+The robin may not be compared with the nightingale but it is not the
+less welcome, for it sings when the nightingale is silent.  Our
+soldiers' songs will die, some are already dead, but they have done
+their work and justified their existence.  They have given pleasure and
+strength to men as they went out to do immortal deeds.  No wounded
+soldier, or parched traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water because
+it perished in the using; and so it is with the songs our soldiers sing.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *VI*
+
+                            *EASTER SUNDAY*
+
+
+Night and day for a week, the fearful bombardment continued.  Our guns
+were everywhere, and belching forth without intermission.  Dumps of
+shells were almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field, and processions
+of ammunition-wagons piled the shells up faster than the gorging guns
+could take them.  The noise was something beyond imagination.  It was as
+though all the devils in hell had come out to demoniacally celebrate the
+end of the world.  We were living--two transport officers and I--in an
+empty farm-house that, some time before we came in, had been a target
+for direct hits.  One shell had gone through the roof, and another
+through the gable wall.  The windows had been shattered, and the garden
+and fields were pitted with shell-holes.  Our first care had been to
+look at the cellar, but we had decided, if things became too hot, to
+make for the open fields.  We all slept in the same room, and were at
+times wakened up by "an arrival" and passed an opinion as to its
+distance.  If, for a time, none came nearer, we turned over and went to
+sleep again, for a man must sleep even though it be on the edge of a
+volcano.
+
+One morning the servants found a shell nose-cap beneath the window--just
+that, and nothing more.  The week was wearing on. Another morning some
+of the 7th Middlesex Regiment were in the baths in the village over the
+way, and a company of the London Scottish was passing by.  Two shells
+fell in the road.  The bathers scampered out of the bath and ran naked,
+here and there, for shelter; the Scottish "scattered"; but some
+forty-five soldiers, mostly kilted, lay in the road dead or wounded.  In
+the dead of night a party of machine gunners, just returned from the
+firing-trench, stood outside their billet in our village square debating
+if they should make a cup of tea before turning in to sleep.  A shell
+decided the matter, and, next morning, I laid two of them to rest in the
+little cemetery, and the others stood by as mourners.
+
+The week of terror reached its crisis on the Sunday--an Easter Sunday
+never to be forgotten.  The infantry of the Brigade had been away to a
+camp, beyond range, for a week's rest.  They had now returned ready for
+the battle.  Three of the regiments had taken up their positions in the
+reserve trenches, but my own regiment was quartered in the fatal
+village.  The day dawned bright and fair, but its smiles were the smiles
+of a deceiver.  The Germans had decided on the destruction of the
+village, a sort of devil's "hail-and-farewell" before being driven back
+at the points of bayonets.  We were awakened by the firing of
+machine-guns over our heads, and rushed to the door to see a fight in
+the air.  High up in the blue, two aeroplanes circled about for
+positions of vantage, and then rushed at one another like hawks in
+mortal combat.  A silence followed.  Then one rose and made off towards
+the battle-line but fell to a shot of our gunners before it could reach
+safety.  The other, with its petrol-tank on fire, was planing down to
+earth.  Down and down an invisible spiral staircase it seemed to rush,
+while the golden fire burnt at its vitals, and a trailing cloud of smoke
+marked its path of doom.  Breathlessly we watched its descent.  It was
+under perfect control, but its path to the ground was too long and
+spiral, and the faster it rushed through the air the greater the draught
+became and the more madly the flames leapt up. Every second was precious
+and the certainty of its doom made us sick.  We saw the body of the
+observer fall out, and still the flaming machine pursued its course.
+Then the wings fell away and twirled to the ground like feathers, while
+the engine and the pilot dropped like a stone.  When the bodies were
+picked up, it was found that the observer had been shot through the
+head, and that the pilot, with his dead comrade behind him, had worked
+the wheel until the furious encroaching flame had swept over him, and
+robbed him of mortal life.
+
+Shells were now dropping in the village every few minutes.  Our
+farm-house was on the right wing, and we stood watching the bombardment.
+With each burst there rose a cloud of black smoke and red brick-dust,
+and we knew that another cottage has been destroyed. Then the shells
+began to creep round to the right as if the enemy was feeling for the
+bridge over which the ammunition wagons were passing.  On one side of
+the little bridge was a white bell-tent, and we watched the shells
+dropping within a few feet of it without destroying it.  Between the
+tent and our street lay a stagnant pool, and we saw about a dozen shells
+fall in its water.  The range was lengthening and it seemed as if some
+invisible octopus were stretching out its feelers towards us.  A shell
+smashed against the farm-house at the bottom of our street.  The deadly
+thing was coming nearer.  Some of our sergeants were in a farm-house a
+few doors away, and, hearing a shell fall in the field between them and
+the pool, they came to the decision that the moment had come "to
+scatter," but they were too late.  It would have been better had they
+stayed indoors.  As they rushed out a shell burst over the yard three of
+them fell to the ground dead, and three more were blown back into the
+house by the force of the explosion.  The coping stone of the outhouse
+where the shell burst was blown away and three ragged seams were scored
+on the green doorway of the yard outside which the three lads lay dead.
+One of them had, ten days before, shown me to my billet thirty yards
+farther up.  He acted as interpreter to the regiment and as he had not
+to go into the line, we thought that he was one of those who would see
+the end of the war.  Yet there he lay.
+
+But the worst calamity of the day was yet to befall.  Some fifteen or
+sixteen ammunition wagons, unable to get through the village, had halted
+in the Square--"Wipers Square" it had been named.  Each wagon was loaded
+with nine-point-two shells.  An enemy-shot fell on a wagon and set it on
+fire; then the village became like unto Sodom and Gomorrah on their day
+of doom.  One or two drivers bravely stuck to their wagons, and got them
+out but the rest of the wagons were lost.  The scene that followed was
+indescribable.  Dore could never have pictured such horrors.  The wagons
+all caught fire and their loads of shells began to explode.  We stood
+out in the fields and watched the conflagration, while all the time the
+Germans continued to shell the village. The large village-hall and the
+houses on each side of the square were utterly destroyed. Great
+explosions sent fragments of wagons and houses sky-high, and showers of
+missiles fell even where we stood.  The fore part of one wagon was blown
+on to the roof of a house. Houses caught fire and blazed all afternoon.
+Some machine-gunners joined us and told how, when choking smoke began to
+penetrate into their cellar they had to rush through the square and its
+bursting shells to preserve their lives. A German shell burst in a
+billet where a platoon of our men were sheltering in the cellar, and
+those who were not killed by the shell were crushed to death by the fall
+of the house. Another shell hit the roof of the house in the cellar of
+which was our Advanced Dressing Station for the morrow's battle.  Two
+orderlies who happened to be in the street were killed, and the colonel
+was knocked down.  In the cellars of almost every house were soldiers or
+civilians, and all day the ammunition wagons continued burning; shell
+after shell getting red hot and exploding.
+
+All day the German bombardment continued and, amid a terrific din, our
+own gunners returned a score or more for every one received. By the
+bridge another long line of loaded ammunition wagons stood for two
+hours, and though shells were bursting close by, not one hit the wagons.
+The drivers stood by them and, as soon as the road was cleared, got them
+away to the guns.  Yet, while the Square was burning and the German
+shells falling, hundreds of men from the London regiments entered the
+village from the right, and crossed the bridge to stack their packs so
+as to be ready for the coming battle.  They walked in single file and
+with wide gaps between, but not a man ran or quickened his pace.  My
+blood tingled with pride at their courage and anger at their
+carelessness.  What _would_ make a British soldier run?  An officer was
+walking near the pool.  A shell fell near enough for fragments to kill
+him, but he merely looked round, stopped to light a cigarette and walked
+leisurely on as if nothing had happened. Three men stood with their
+backs against a small building near the bridge as if sheltering from the
+rain.  Several shells fell uncomfortably near, so, concluding that the
+rain had changed its direction, they moved round the corner.  And it was
+not till more shells had fallen near them that they condescended to move
+away altogether.
+
+Yet this was not bravado for, so far as they knew, no one was watching
+them.  It was due to a certain dignity peculiar to our fighting man.  He
+is too proud to acknowledge defeat. He is a man, and whether any one is
+watching or not, he is not going to run away from a shell.  Hundreds of
+lives must have been lost through this stubborn pride but, on the other
+hand, thousands of lives must have been saved by it, for it makes the
+Army absolutely proof against panic, than which, nothing is so fatal in
+war.  In eighteen months on the Front I have never seen or heard of a
+single case of panic either with many or few.  Our soldiers are always
+masters of themselves.  They have the coolness to judge what is the
+wisest thing to do in the circumstances, and they have the nerve to
+carry it out.  They run unnecessary risks through pride but never
+through panic. All that day on the bridge, a military policeman stood at
+his post of duty.  Like Vesuvius of old the exploding shells in the
+Square sent up their deadly eruption, and like the Roman sentry at
+Pompeii, he stood at his post.  As he stood there I saw a young French
+woman leave her house and pass him on the bridge. She was leaving the
+village for a safer place but she seemed quite composed and carried a
+basket on her left arm.
+
+While our village was being destroyed we were startled by a tremendous
+explosion a few miles away; and looking to our left we saw a huge tongue
+of flame leap up to the sky, followed by a wonderful pillar of smoke
+which stood rigid for some moments like a monster tower of Babel
+reaching up to the heavens. Evidently a dump of cordite had been fired
+by an enemy shell.  Farther off still, another dump was on fire.  Time
+and again, bright flames leapt from the ground only to be smothered
+again by dense curling masses of smoke. It seemed as if our whole front
+was on fire, and news came to us that our main road of communication had
+been heavily shelled, and was now strewn with dead horses and men.
+Before the battle of the Somme there were no signs and portents so
+terrible as these: It was evident that the enemy knew what was in store
+for him on the morrow, and was preparing against it, but if the prelude
+was so magnificent in its terror, what would the battle be? Imagination
+staggered under the contemplation.  By four o'clock the bombardment was
+almost at an end, and nearly all the shells in the Square had exploded.
+The soldiers began to creep out of the cellars.  On passing through the
+Square we were amazed at the sight.  In fact the Transport Officer
+passed through at my side without recognizing the place.  At the
+entrance was a team of six dead mules lying prone on the ground and
+terribly torn.  Two rows of houses had disappeared, leaving mere heaps
+of stones in their places.  The pavement was torn up, and the wrecks of
+the ammunition wagons lay scattered about.  Two houses were still
+burning.  Our colonel and adjutant we found by the side of the stream.
+They had been in a cellar near the Square all day but, fortunately, they
+were little the worse for the experience. They were giving orders for
+the assembling of the scattered regiment.
+
+By this time, civilians were leaving the cellars, and with armfuls of
+household goods hastening from the village.  To them it seemed the end
+of all things--the day of doom.  Some of them had slight wounds and as
+they passed us they cried mournfully, "Finis, Messieurs, Finis."  All
+was lost.  This exodus of the despairing civilians was the saddest sight
+of the day.  By sunset the regiment had been gathered together--all
+except the wounded who had been sent to the Main Dressing Station and
+the dead who had been placed side by side and covered with blankets.
+Most of our officers and men had lost all their belongings, but in the
+twilight they marched out of the village and took their places in the
+reserve trenches near the other battalions.  These had suffered no
+losses.  They had been saved the long day's agony.  Early in the morning
+the battle was to begin but the Westminsters knew that no worse
+experience could await them than that through which they had already
+passed.
+
+Next morning I buried, near the ruined church, the bodies of the
+sergeants who had been killed a few doors from us; and on the following
+day I laid to rest, side by side, in one long grave, two drivers who had
+died at their posts in the Square, together with an officer and twenty
+men belonging to the 1st Queen's Westminster Rifles.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *VII*
+
+                        *"NOW THE DAY IS OVER"*
+
+
+Achicourt is a little village about a mile out of Arras.  It has two
+churches, one Roman Catholic, the other, Lutheran.  The former church
+has been utterly destroyed by German shells, and will have to be rebuilt
+from the foundations.  The Lutheran church was less prominently placed,
+and its four walls are still standing.  Its humility has saved it, but,
+as by fire.  All its windows are gone, and its walls are torn and
+scarred by fragments of shells.  Most of its slates have been destroyed
+and the rain pours through the roof.  But, on dry days, and until the
+Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little place for services.  It stood,
+however, at a corner of the village Square, and the Square was destroyed
+by hundreds of exploding shells on Easter Sunday.  As I passed it in the
+afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered, my heart grew sad
+within me.
+
+Often it had sheltered us at worship, and many of our most sacred
+memories will, for ever, cling like ivy to its walls.  The door was
+smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as by lightning.  The pews
+were strewn on the floor with their backs broken; even the frames of the
+windows had been blown out.  There was a little portable organ that we
+had used with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the floor like a
+slaughtered child.  The floor was white with plaster, as when a sharp
+frost has brought low the cherry blossom.  Never again, I thought,
+should I gather my men for worship within its humble, hospitable walls.
+One more of the beautiful and sacred things of life had perished in this
+all-devouring war.  Only the fields remained, and there all my future
+services must be held.
+
+But "fears may be liars" and so mine proved. I had reckoned without the
+man in khaki--that master of fate whose head "beneath the bludgeonings
+of chance, is bloody but unbowed."  In a week he had cleared the Square
+of its dead--mules and men--filled in its craters, and cleared away the
+debris that blocked the roads.  He was even removing the fallen houses
+in order to mend the roads with their bricks and stones; and he had
+thrown together all the scraps of iron for salvage. There I found, lying
+side by side, the burned tin-soldiers of the children; officers'
+revolvers which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat; bayonets and
+rifle-barrels of the men; broken sewing machines of the women.  He had
+taken in hand, too, the little church.  Sacking was spread across the
+windows; the remnants of the little organ were carefully placed under
+the pulpit where they lay like the body of a saint beneath an altar; the
+floor was swept of its fallen plaster.  The pews were repaired and
+placed in order again, and a new door was made.  Even timber was brought
+for a new vestibule.  The wood was rough and unpainted--Tommy had to use
+what he could get--but it served.  The twisted railings were drawn away
+from the entrance, and, on the following Sunday, we were back in our old
+sanctuary.  We felt that it was more sacred than ever.  These are the
+deeds of our fighting-man that make us love him so much, and these are
+the acts of kindness and common sense that make us admire our
+commanders. Both officers and men have the heart of a lion in the hour
+of battle, the gentleness of a lamb when it is over.  Whatever their
+circumstances, they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget the fathers
+that begat them.
+
+Let him who doubts the future of England come hither.  He will see the
+past through the present, and the future through both.  Tommy's eyes are
+the crystal gazing-glasses in which he will discern the future.  Tommy
+is living history and the prophecy of the future made flesh.  The
+pessimists have not seen Tommy here, and that is why they are what they
+are. "Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his infinite freshness and
+resource.  He is a sword that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the
+might of an enemy break, and he will be found flashing wherever there
+are wrongs to right and weak to be defended.  On Easter Sunday he was
+calmly enduring the horror of the German bombardment and the explosions
+of his own dump of shells.  On Easter Monday he was driving the Germans
+at the point of his bayonet, or accepting their surrender at the doors
+of their dug-outs!  On Easter Tuesday and Wednesday he was repairing a
+little French chapel for worship.  Take him which day you will, and you
+will find him mighty hard to match.  To me he is the king of men, and
+his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness beyond the range of
+explanations.
+
+After some weeks of fighting we had come to our last Sunday in
+Achicourt, and were gathered for the evening service.  The chapel was
+jammed with officers and men, but not all my flock was there.  There was
+Rifleman Gibson absent.  He was carrying his beloved Lewis gun in an
+attack when a bullet struck him, and he died, as his comrades report,
+with a smile upon his face.  Before going into the battle he had given
+me his father's address and thanked me for the spiritual help he had
+received at the services.  It was his farewell to me, and his father now
+has the penciled words.  And Rifleman Stone was absent, too. He was but
+a boy, and beautiful with youth and goodness.  His comrades loved him as
+David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the love of women.  Every day,
+they told me in their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his prayers
+and to read his Bible.  One night after praying he laid him down and
+slept.  He had often sung the evening hymn:
+
+    "Jesus protects; my fears, be gone!
+      What can the Rock of Ages move?
+    Safe in Thy arm I lay me down,
+      Thy everlasting arms of love.
+
+    "While Thou art intimately nigh,
+      Who, then, shall violate my rest?
+    Sin, earth, and hell I now defy;
+      I lean upon my Saviour's breast.
+
+    "Me for Thine own Thou lov'st to take,
+      In time and in eternity,
+    Thou never, never wilt forsake
+      A helpless soul that trusts in Thee."
+
+And as he slept, God took him from the misery of this world--took him
+without waking him.  His broken-hearted comrades gathered together his
+broken body, and a friend, a Congregational preacher, who, though over
+military age, was serving in the ranks, read the burial service over
+him.  Lance-corporal Gilbert James was missing, too--he whom I had known
+to lose his breakfast to attend a service in a cold, dirty, old barn.
+And many others were absent whose departure to the Land beyond our
+mortal reach was to us like the putting out of stars.
+
+We were leaving the Arras front and we sang a hymn for those who had
+taken our places:
+
+    "O Lord of Hosts, Whose mighty arm
+    In safety keeps 'mid war's alarm,
+    Protect our comrades at the Front
+    Who bear of war the bitter brunt.
+      And in the hour of danger spread
+      Thy sheltering wings above each head,
+
+    "In battle's harsh and dreadful hour,
+    Make bare Thine arm of sovereign power,
+    And fight for them who fight for Thee,
+    And give to justice, victory.
+      O in the hour of danger spread
+      Thy sheltering wings above each head.
+
+    "If by the way they wounded lie,
+    O listen to their plaintive cry;
+    And rest them on Thy loving breast,
+    O Thou on Whom the cross was pressed;
+      And in the hour of danger shed
+      Thy glorious radiance o'er each head.
+
+    "When pestilence at noonday wastes,
+    And death in triumph onward hastes,
+    O Saviour Christ, remember Nain,
+    And give us our beloved again.
+      In every ward of sickness tread,
+      And lay Thy hand upon each head.
+
+    "O Friend and Comforter divine,
+    Who makest light at midnight shine,
+    Give consolation to the sad
+    Who in the days of peace were glad.
+      And in the hour of sorrow spread
+      Thy wings above each drooping head.
+        Amen."
+
+I had to find a new voice to start it, for our little organ had been
+destroyed by a shell, and our precentor was lying in a grave beside his
+Medical Aid Post at Guemappe.  When, on Good Friday, we had sung the
+hymn before, the regiment returned from rest billets to the line, he had
+started the tune.  His love for music was second only to that of risking
+his life for the wounded.  In one of his letters given me to censor, he
+had written, "How nice it will be to be back in my old place in the
+choir."  But he was destined not to go back. His path was onward and
+upward, and his place was in the heavenly choir.  I had seen it in his
+large, tender blue eyes.  There was in them an expression as if he had
+seen "the land that is very far off."  I felt that he was chosen as a
+sacrifice--that the seal of God was on his forehead.
+
+Still, we had to sing, though his voice was silent.  So we sang--several
+tunes, for hymns seemed all our spirits needed.  What need was there for
+a sermon when we had hymns? We left the rag-time type of hymn and sang
+the real deep things that come from men's hearts, and ever after are
+taken up by their fellows to express their deepest aspirations and
+experiences.  The ruined chapel vibrated with music, and men, I am told,
+stood in the street to listen while "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," "Rock of
+Ages," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and "The Sands of Time are
+Sinking" told of the faith and love that lift up the heart.  We also
+sang "Abide with Me."  After hearing us sing it one night, a Roman
+Catholic officer in the regiment, a Canadian and one of the bravest,
+most beloved men that ever walked, told me that he was a great-grandson
+of the author.  He is in hospital now with severe wounds, but his men
+were present.
+
+"Couldn't we take up a collection for the repair of the chapel when
+peace comes?" whispered a rifleman; "it would be a sort of thanksgiving
+for the good times we have had in it, and for the kindness of the
+congregation in giving us the use of it so freely."
+
+I put the suggestion to the men and they voted for it with enthusiasm.
+Two of them went round with their caps and out of their shallow purses
+the big-hearted fellows gave over 100 francs.  In the name of the men I
+presented the full caps to a lady of the congregation who was present,
+and she was moved to tears.  The time was quickly passing, so I mounted
+the pulpit and told them of words spoken after the earth's first great
+trouble, when the black wings of death had cast their shadow over every
+home: "And God said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a
+token of a covenant between me and the earth.  And it shall come to
+pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
+the cloud."
+
+"God," I said, "has made a covenant with man, for man is His neighbor
+and subject; and there must be an understanding between them, if there
+is to be peace and happiness.  Man must know God's will or he will
+grieve Him and there will be discord and pain.  Also, man must know
+God's intentions concerning him, and something of His ways, or else he
+will live in fear and dread of the Almighty One in whose power he lies.
+There were no books and parchment in the first days, so God took the sky
+for His parchment, and dipping His fingers in the most lovely of colors,
+wrote out His covenant with man.  He spread it out between earth and
+heaven so that man might look up and see it without obstruction, and so
+that He Himself might look down on it and remember His agreement.  'The
+bow,' He said, 'shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I
+may remember the everlasting covenant.'"
+
+"When you draw up a covenant with a neighbor, you look well at it and
+then give it to your attorney, who puts it away in the darkness of the
+safe.  But it is taken out at intervals for fresh examination.  And the
+rainbow-covenant was put away behind the clouds, to be brought out again
+from time to time to bring comfort and strength to man by its
+appearance. The rainbow is only half seen by man. The lower half of its
+circle is lost in the earth.  It exists, but unseen.  And the full
+circle of God's beautiful covenant with man has never appeared to our
+eyes.  A full half is lost in the unapprehending darkness of man's mind.
+The full purpose of God is not realized.  His plans are too vast and
+glorious for the intellect or imagination to span; but half the rainbow
+is seen and it is enough. Seeing half we can take the rest on trust.  In
+the covenant we are assured that we shall never be given darkness
+without light, winter without summer, seedtime without harvest, death
+without birth, sorrow without joy, or a thick cloud without a rainbow.
+He binds Himself not to give evil without good, or to bring tears
+without laughter.  "I do set My bow in the cloud; and it shall come to
+pass when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
+the cloud."
+
+"A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine and life is woven of the same
+stuff--tears and laughter.  The most glorious sunshine is incapable of a
+rainbow without the co-operation of the dark trailing clouds; and it is
+impossible for the human character to reach its ripest maturity and
+beauty on joy alone.  Sorrow is as beneficent and necessary as joy.
+There are untutored natives who dread the rainbow. They believe that it
+is a serpent that rises out of the pools to devour men; and there are
+unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread adversity no less.  They do
+not believe that _God_ 'brings the cloud.'  The rainbow is their
+refutation and it is written across the sky for all to see.  On the
+other hand, there are unbelieving men who see only the cloud and are
+blind to the sunshine.  To them life is one long tragedy.  It is an
+immense futility.  They regard man as a mere cork in the sea, thrown
+about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural forces void of purpose;
+active indeed but ungoverned.  Human life to them is a black cloud
+driven through immensity by the winds of unintelligent fate.  It has no
+meaning and its darkness is the deeper because they cannot call a halt
+and disperse it into nothingness. Like Job's wife they would say 'Curse
+God and die,' yet they cannot die.  But Job, as he sits on the dunghill,
+looks up at the rainbow and finds a truer philosophy.  'What?' says he,
+'shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive
+evil?'  Under the rainbow's arch there are fruitful fields and beautiful
+gardens for where the rainbow hangs in air there is sunshine and there
+is rain--the parents of fruitfulness.  And to whom God gives in equal
+measure joy and sorrow there is beauty and fruitfulness of heart and
+life.  His promise to 'every living creature' is that He will never send
+the cloud without the sunshine and, what is not less gracious, He will
+never send the sunshine without the cloud.  When by day the Israelites
+tramped the fiery desert He led them by a pillar of cloud, and they
+marched in its shade; and in the blackness of night He threw in the sky
+a pillar of sunshine; and they walked through the gloom in its light.
+
+"In these terrible days of war when our hearts begin to fail us and dark
+doubts cloud the mind, let us look at the Covenant God has made with us.
+He has set it in rainbow colors across the sky, that 'he who runs may
+read' and 'the wayfaring man though a fool may not err.'  God has flung
+his rainbow over the trench and the grave; over the Garden of
+Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary.  It is over the tomb in the
+Arimathean's Garden; and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven. We
+are born under the rainbow, live under it, die under it.  At the last we
+shall find it over the throne of Judgment.  Water and blood flowed from
+Christ's side; and life and death, joy and pain, light and darkness,
+summer and winter, peace and war come forth from God.
+
+"Let us take life as it comes with obedient wills and grateful hearts.
+The bee finds honey in the thistle as well as in the rose, and 'where
+the bee sucks there suck I,' for He who guides the bee guides me.  Only
+in loving obedience to God shall we find true wisdom.  It is not so much
+what we are given as how we take it that matters.  To be humble nothing
+may be so sweet as sorrow; and to the proud nothing may be so bitter as
+pleasure.  Let us leave God to mix the ingredients of our life, for 'all
+things work together for good to them that love God.'  It is all in the
+covenant written by God's fingers in the colors of the rainbow, and
+whenever He brings it from beyond the clouds, let us look at it with
+reverent eyes, and ponder its promise.  Then shall we be able to say,
+with Wordsworth,
+
+    'My heart leaps up when I behold
+    A rainbow in the sky.'"
+
+
+After I had finished speaking we sang, at the request of one of the
+sergeants, the hymn commencing
+
+    "The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended,
+    The darkness falls at Thy behest."
+
+And beautiful indeed was the singing of it.
+
+The Benediction followed.  Just as I was ending it an impulse came to
+me, and I yielded to its importunity.  "Before we part and before we
+leave Achicourt which has meant so much to us of joy and sorrow," I
+said, "let us sing a kiddies' hymn.  We still shelter in our hearts a
+little child.  Though we have grown moustaches and some of us gray
+hairs, the child that we once were, never quite dies.  Let us have a
+hymn for the boy within us who never grows up and never dies."  Then I
+read out verse by verse, for it was not in their books:
+
+    "Now the day is over,
+    Night is drawing nigh,
+    Shadows of the evening
+    Steal across the sky.
+
+    "Jesus, give the weary
+    Calm and sweet repose;
+    With Thy tenderest blessing
+    May their eyelids close.
+
+    "Grant to little children
+    Visions bright of Thee;
+    Guarding the sailors tossing
+    On the angry sea.
+
+    "Comfort every sufferer
+    Watching late in pain;
+    Those who plan some evil
+    From their sin restrain.
+
+    "When the morning wakens,
+    Then may I arise
+    Pure and fresh, and sinless
+    In Thy holy eyes."
+
+I have witnessed many moving sights in my time and heard much deep and
+thrilling music; but I have never been so deeply moved by anything as by
+the rich, deep voices of these gallant men and boys who, after winning
+the Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined church and were singing
+this beautiful kiddies' hymn as their last farewell.
+
+The collection the boys had taken up had been so heavy that we carried
+it to the French lady's house for her.  As we entered her home she said
+in her simple way, as her eyes grew radiant with gratitude, "I like the
+English soldiers."  It was the voice of France.  And she was worthy to
+speak for France.  For two-and-a-half years her house had stood within a
+mile of the German trenches, and but a few hundred yards from our own
+firing line. Yet she and her mother had never left it.  She introduced
+me to her mother, who had lived in London, and spoke English.  Then she
+brought in coffee.  I had noticed a most remarkable thing about the
+house.  There was not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of war on the
+walls.  It was the only house I have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras,
+upon which the war has not laid its monstrous and bloody finger.  "How
+is it," I asked the mother, "that your house has not been touched?"  Her
+eyes shone and a sweet smile lit up her face.  "It is the will of God,"
+she said simply.  "Shells have fallen a little short of us and a little
+beyond us.  They have passed within a yard of the house, and we have
+heard the rushing of the wind as they passed, but they have not touched
+us.  When the village has been bombarded we have gone down into the
+cellar as was but discretion and duty, but we have had the conviction
+all along that we should be spared, and we refused to leave the house.
+We do not know God's purpose but we believe that it is God's will to
+spare us."  I leave the fact to speak for itself and offer no
+explanation.  Skeptics will say the house was spared by accident; but
+they would not have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting to such
+an accident.  These two women, without a man in the house, stayed on the
+very confines of hell with its hourly suspense and danger for nearly
+three years, because they believed it was God's will and that, though
+they walked through the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than it
+was wont to be heated, He would not allow so much as a hair of their
+heads to be singed.  And not a hair was singed. They were women in whom
+faith burned like a bright pillar of fire.  One caught its light, and
+felt its heat.  I have met patriots and heroes and know their quality
+when I see them and come near them.  These were "the real thing."  Faith
+in God and faith in their country were interwoven in their spirits like
+sun and shower in a rainbow.  They were of the same breed as the Maid of
+France, and like her, with their white banner bearing the device of the
+Cross, they withstood and defied the might and terror of the invader.
+They believed it was God's will they should stay, to "Be still and know
+that I am God."  Their experience was expressed by the Psalmist
+centuries ago: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in
+trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and
+though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.  Though the
+waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the
+swellings thereof ... Come behold the works of the Lord, what
+desolations He hath made in the earth.  He maketh wars to cease unto the
+end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
+He burneth the chariot in the fire.... The Lord of Hosts is with us; the
+God of Jacob is our refuge."
+
+Such was the faith of these two women, and their courage few men have
+approached.  It is a practical matter, and after comparing it with the
+skeptic's theory of accident and coincidence and remembering his
+probable haste in seeking a place not so liable to untoward accidents, I
+accept the explanation of the women. Their house was spared and not a
+hair of their heads injured because "it was God's will."  If it is not
+the correct theory, it ought to be. Otherwise falsehood is more
+sustaining than truth, and inspires nobler conduct.
+
+The day was now over.  A new chapter of life had been written, and in
+the morning, we left behind us this village of precious memories, and
+marched out again into the unknown.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *VIII*
+
+                        *SONS OF THE MOTHERLAND*
+
+
+It is said that the eel is born in the deepest part of the ocean,
+thousands of miles from any country, and that, urged by an overpowering
+instinct it begins almost at once to rise towards the light and to head
+for the land.  After slowly swimming thousands of miles it reaches our
+rivers, and pushes its way up to their sources, and even crawls through
+the grass out of one stream into another.  Here, if uncaught by man, it
+lives for years gorging an appetite which only developed on reaching the
+fresh water.  Then, the overmastering instinct that brought it out,
+takes it back.  It returns through the illimitable waters until it finds
+the place where it was born.  There the female lays her eggs and there
+male and female die.  The eggs hatch, and the young do as their parents
+did before them.
+
+I do not think I could kill or eat an eel. I have too much reverence for
+it now that I have learned its story.  When in the fish market I see an
+eel struggling, I feel that I want to take it and drop it into the sea
+that it may go to its long home "far from the madding crowd's ignoble
+strife."  How passionate and wild must be its desire to get back to its
+own ocean depths where it may perpetuate its kind and die in peace. Its
+appetite is voracious, but then, what but the mightiest and most
+elemental instincts and appetites could carry it through achievements so
+sublime and tragic.  Picture it on its lone way through the deep, urged
+on by it knows not what.  Scientists say that man has evolved from a
+tiny form of life that passed through the fish stage.  If so, it
+explains a lot and I, for one, shall not be ashamed to acknowledge
+relationship to a fish with a life story as sublime as that of the eel.
+I know that Genesis speaks truly when it says that God made us out of
+the dust of the earth and breathed into our souls the breath of His own
+being thus animating dust with divinity.  And if from the other inspired
+book, the book of Nature, scientists can teach how God mixed the clay
+when He fashioned man I will accept the teaching with gratitude, for it
+will help me to understand things that are dark in me and in my fellows.
+It will throw light on the wild longings, and instincts immature, that
+baffle the mind, and come into the clear shallow streams of life like
+eels out of the dark unfathomable depths of the ocean.
+
+Since I went to France I have been amazed at the homing instinct as
+revealed in the coming together of the sons of the British Motherland.
+People at home do not quite realize what has happened.  Britain's sons
+have come back to her--have come back to die that their race may be
+saved and perpetuated.  The British are a roving race.  A large number
+of them yield to an overpowering desire to go out into the world.  The
+South Pole and the North Pole have known the tread of their feet. Their
+ships have anchored in every creek of every sea.  There is no town or
+country however remote where their voices have not been heard.  Even
+Mecca could not keep the Briton out.  He must look upon its Black Stone.
+All lands call him to come, and see, and conquer. He colonizes and
+absorbs but cannot be absorbed.  He is a Briton still.  A friend of mine
+told me that when visiting Australia strangers who had never seen
+England, except in and through their fathers, would come to him in
+railway carriage or 'bus, and ask "How is everything at _Home_?"  And
+Dr. Fitchett, Australia's splendid author, confesses that when he first
+saw the land of his fathers he knelt down and kissed its shore.
+
+Loving the homeland with a passion stronger than death the Briton leaves
+it, for he hears the call of the world borne on the winds and waves from
+afar, and cannot refuse it.  In foreign lands he lives and labors.  He
+roams their fields and swims in their streams, but always with an ear
+listening for the voice of the Motherland; for he is hers, and at her
+service if she calls.
+
+The Declaration of War on Aug. 4, 1914, was the Mother's call to her
+children.  Swifter than lightning it passed through the waves and on the
+wings of the wind.  The settler left his lonely cabin, the gold-digger
+his shovel, the prospector his surveying instruments, the rancher his
+herds, the missionary his church, the teacher his school, the clerk his
+office, and all made for the nearest port.  Within a month there was not
+a ship on the wide seas but was bearing loyal sons back to their
+Motherland's defense.  I have met, in France, British soldiers from
+every country under heaven.  I bent over a dying soldier near Arras who
+was a clerk in Riga, Russia, when the call came. And one night on the
+Somme a fine young fellow from Africa entered my tent, and slept by my
+side.  He was one of the most charming and handsome men I have ever met,
+and had come from Durban.  He had fought with Botha in Southwest Africa,
+and at the conclusion of that campaign had shipped for home. Next day I
+took him to Delville Wood for he wanted to see the place where his
+brother had died.  I found that he was of my own communion and we talked
+about some of my college friends who had gone out to Natal.  Two days
+later, he died of wounds in a dressing station.  Most of the transport
+officers in our Division have come home from abroad, and have been given
+their posts because they are accustomed to horses.  One was prospecting
+in Nigeria, another salmon-canning in Siberia, a third on a plantation
+in South America.
+
+In addition to Canadians, South Africans, Australians, and New
+Zealanders, who have come by the hundred thousand at the call of the
+Motherland, there are hundreds of thousands who have come singly, or in
+small parties, from remote corners of the earth.  For five weeks I was a
+patient in a Canadian hospital in France.  The entire staff was
+Canadian. Some were Canadian born; others had gone out to that country
+years ago.  All were of British blood.  The colonel was a magnificent
+specimen of manhood from London, Ontario, in which city he had been
+born.  He would sit on the bed and tell us tales of the great snow-land.
+Sometimes he would scold us for being so blind to the greatness of the
+Empire and tell us what Canada thought of the Motherland. One of the
+night orderlies would, on occasion, recite to us some poem such as "Jim
+Bludso," before the lights went out.  Then he would come to my locker
+and take "Palgrave's Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" with which to regale
+his soul during the long watches of the night.  He was of the full
+stature of men and straight as a pine.  He had gone out from Ireland as
+a boy, and settled on a cattle ranch in the United States.  One day
+there was trouble and one of the other cowboys sent a bullet clean
+through his chest.  The moment war was declared he left his roving herds
+of cattle, crossed the frontier into Canada and traveled hundreds of
+miles to Winnipeg to enlist.  The doctor looked at him.  "What is this
+scar on your chest?" he asked.  "Oh," replied the cowboy, "I fell off a
+wagon and knocked the skin off."  The doctor turned him round and put
+his finger in the scar on his back where the bullet had passed out.
+"And what is this scar at the back?  Did you fall off another wagon?"
+And the two men understood one another and laughed.  The doctor could
+not find it in his heart to send the cowboy back to his ranch, so he was
+passed into the Canadian contingent.
+
+One of the nurses we called "the Little Mother."  She had gone to Canada
+five years before, but the war had brought her back, and well was it for
+us that it had.  Among the patients was a doctor in the American A.M.C.
+His ancestors had left England generations ago and settled in New
+England, but he had come back at the call of war--a grandson of the
+Motherland.  Then there was a lieutenant of British stock who had been
+born and brought up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were destroying
+his native city he took ship to enlist in the British army.  "Anzac"
+was, as his nickname denotes, an Australian.  He was in the Flying
+Corps.  He had heard the call at school and had come "home" to the land
+of his fathers.
+
+In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who had been born in China.
+But, out there in Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Motherland they
+had never seen, and came post haste to her help.  Sitting near me as I
+write, is an officer back from the Argentine, and already, on his arm,
+is a gold wound-stripe.  Another in the mess had been pearl-fishing in
+Australia, but stored his boats to come and fight.  Another at our table
+was born in Australia.  He was with Captain Falcon Scott on his last
+expedition, and saw him go out to the South Pole and death.  He has
+already been wounded. When the war broke out its tumult seemed to wake
+our fathers and we felt them stir in our blood; for ancestors are not
+put into graves but are buried alive in their sons.  We felt the call to
+defend our race as our fathers did in their day.  It was a master
+instinct, and the millions of men who voluntarily left home and business
+to fight show how deeply nationality is rooted in human nature.
+Returning from a far land to die--if needs be--that their kind may live,
+the scattered sons of our Motherland have come by all the seas to defend
+her, in her hour of need.
+
+    "They came as the winds come
+      When forests are rended;
+    They came as the waves come
+      When navies are stranded."
+
+
+
+
+                                  *IX*
+
+                         *THE TERROR BY NIGHT*
+
+
+June was a flaming month on the high ground we had captured beyond
+Arras. The Quartermaster and Transport Officer with whom I was messing
+were both "on leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the camp, a
+Baptist padre, whose regiment was near, came to live with me.  I had a
+little brown tent five feet wide and six feet long which a rifleman had
+lent to me because the bell-tent I was expecting had not arrived.  The
+rifleman did not need his tent, for he and his chums had built
+themselves a little dug-out. Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the
+other padre took possession of it, while I held on to the little brown
+shelter.  Next to it was the kitchen where the servants slept and
+cooked. It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood, corrugated iron
+and ground-sheets.  The Baptist chaplain's tent was round, my shelter
+oblong, but what shape the kitchen was, would pass the wit of man to
+say.  It was a shape never seen on earth before.  It had no ancestor and
+it could have no descendant.  Such a design could not occur twice.
+Beyond the kitchen were the horse-lines of the regiment and close by
+them the regimental stores.  It was so hot that we all wore our lightest
+clothing; and when the servants got lemons from Arras, the lemonade they
+made lasted about five minutes only, for what was left by us was quickly
+drunk up by the servants with the assistance of those who like to
+frequent such happy places as mess kitchens.
+
+All our meals were served out of doors, under the blue sky.  We had
+guests most days, for officers coming out from the homeland stayed with
+us for a night or a day before going up with the rations to join the
+regiment in the trench.  Other officers had come down to stay with us on
+their way to a course at some military school; and one, at least, came
+to wait for the day on which he was to take his "leave."  We were,
+therefore, a very merry party.  It was almost like camping on the
+Yorkshire moors, for we had an uninterrupted view of many miles.  To
+those who love vast stretches of wild barren country as I do, the scene
+under the flaming June sun was exceedingly impressive. There were no
+houses, streams, hedges, or trees, but the whole area was scored with
+trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing clearly at great
+distances.  The ground, with but short spaces between, was covered with
+encampments.  These consisted of the stores and horse-lines of the
+regiments and batteries in the line.  The circle of the horizon was
+bounded by the charred ruins of French villages--Beaurains, Neuville,
+Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy and Tilloy.  We could see the flashing of our
+own guns, and the black bursts of shells from those of the enemy.
+
+All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes, and many were too high to be
+seen except through strong field glasses.  We watched a German aeroplane
+circling over Arras and directing the fire of the long guns.  Soon the
+streets were strewn with dead and wounded, for the town was full of
+troops.  The firing only lasted a few minutes, however.  One of our
+aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to single combat; and we soon
+saw the German machine falling from an immense height, wing over wing
+and head over tail, utterly out of control.
+
+Dinner, in the cool of the evening, was a most pleasant meal.  As we
+drank our coffee we watched the aeroplanes returning from the line like
+birds to their nests.  Sometimes we counted as many as twenty, all
+heading for home at the same time.  The sun set in red and golden
+splendor, and we wondered what darkness would bring.  On the night
+before our arrival, the regiment which made way for us had one of its
+storemen killed by a shell; and on most nights a few shells fell in some
+part or other of the vast camp.  One evening shells fell a little beyond
+us and the transport-sergeant moved his horse-lines.  After that, he
+moved them every evening at dark, so that the ground where the enemy had
+observed the horses in the day-time was left vacant when he opened fire
+at night.  It was a game of chess with horses and men for pawns, and
+life and death for the stakes.
+
+On the evening before, our guest--a young lieutenant--was to go on
+leave, he got very uneasy.  As gulls scent the approach of stormy
+weather and come inland, or blackbirds and larks feel the approach of
+winter and migrate to summer lands, so men can sometimes scent danger
+and coming death.  He had with him a bottle of whisky, and he kept it on
+the table outside my tent--a safe place for it.
+
+"I don't mind telling you, Padre," he said, as he poured out a glass,
+"I've got the 'wind-up' badly to-night.  I don't like the feel of
+things.  I would rather be in the trenches than here, because I know
+what is likely to happen there, but here in the open I feel strange and
+unprotected.  I shall be glad when it is morning."
+
+His feeling was quite natural.  We always feel another man's dangers
+more than our own because they are new to us and we don't know what to
+expect or how to meet them.  A man will choose a big danger that he is
+used to, sooner than a lesser danger that is new to him.  Besides, the
+lieutenant had his "leave-warrant" in his breast pocket and that will
+sap any man's courage.  He has a feeling that the shells are after his
+"leave-warrant" and that the gunners know where it is.  He suspects that
+fate is malignant and takes a special delight in killing a man when he
+is on the way to "Blighty."  Many a man has been killed with a
+"leave-warrant" in his pocket, or "commission papers" in it which were
+taking him home.
+
+Our doctor told me how one night he and the chaplain who preceded me
+were riding on the front of an ambulance car when a shell burst and with
+a fragment killed the chaplain. In the padre's pocket was his warrant,
+and he was taking his last ride before going home; but instead of going
+home in "Blighty" he went to his _long_ home, and the warrant lies in
+the grave with him.  A man feels particularly vulnerable when the
+long-looked-for "leave-warrant" is in his pocket.  He does not fear
+death after "leave," but he does on the eve of "leave."  He wants one
+more look at his home and loved ones before going on the long and lone
+journey which, despite all the comfort which the Christian religion
+gives, still retains much of its terror to the human spirit.  There have
+been few better Christians than Samuel Johnson and John Bunyan, but
+neither of them could contemplate fording the river of death without
+misgivings.  When they came to it they found it much less formidable
+than they had expected.  Had they been at the Front with
+"leave-warrants" in their pockets to "Fleet Street, London," or "Elstow,
+Bedford," I fancy neither of them would have taken undue risks.
+
+I could sympathize with the young lieutenant for, a few months before, a
+"leave-warrant" had made a bit of a coward of myself.  I was in two
+minds whether or not to go up to the firing line to see the men again
+before shipping for home.  The "leave-warrant" was in my pocket, and I
+was to go next morning; but the doctor's story of my predecessor came to
+my mind, and the "leave-warrant" spread itself out before the eyes of my
+imagination.  I saw the faces of my wife, and mother, and dog, and the
+faces of my friends.  The old home and the green fields stretched out
+before me; and I decided to see them first and the "boys" after. I had
+just been with my men, but it was a long time since I had been with
+those at home.  If there was a shell with my name and address on it, I
+thought I would make the Hun wait till I had been home, before I let him
+deliver it into my hands.  I think a "leave-warrant" would make a coward
+of any man.  At any rate, the feeling is quite understood and recognized
+by everyone at the Front; and this young officer had been sent down from
+the trenches to us, three days before his train was due to start, so
+that he might have a better chance of using his "warrant," and at the
+same time, feel more at ease in mind.
+
+I undressed and got into bed, and lay reading by the light of a candle
+when the lieutenant came to the tent door again.  "It's no use, Padre,"
+he said, "I can't go to bed yet.  I feel too uneasy.  I wish I were on
+the train."  He went back to the bell-tent he was sharing with the other
+chaplain, and I put out my light.
+
+There was the silence of a summer evening broken only by the distant
+bursting of shells. Then, suddenly, there was a crash about seventy
+yards from our tents, and two more near the horse-lines.  "To run or not
+run?" that was the question; and my answer was in the negative.  If I
+ran, it was just as likely that I should run into a shell, as out of the
+way of one.  On Easter Sunday I had seen three of our non-commissioned
+officers killed in that way.  Besides, I like my bed, once I have taken
+the trouble to get into it.  I therefore put on my steel helmet which I
+had placed by the bed-side, and waited to see what would happen. (A
+steel helmet is a wonderful comfort when men are under fire.  We may not
+have much in our heads but we feel more anxious about them than about
+all the rest of the body.  The helmets are heavy and uncomfortable and
+we don't like wearing them, but, nevertheless, may blessings ever rest
+on the head of the man who invented them.  I have seen scores of lives
+saved by them, and they have given infinite comfort and assurance in
+trying moments.)
+
+A long silence elapsed, then the lieutenant appeared at the door of the
+tent again.
+
+"You haven't been here all the time, have you?" he asked.  "We went down
+to the old trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is rather cold and
+wearisome there, and I think the worst is over now.  I'm just going to
+take another sip of the 'Scotch wine' and then turn in for the night;
+but I'm not going to undress."
+
+Ten minutes later there was a tremendous crash as if a star had fallen
+on top of us. There came a blinding flash of light, a strong smell of
+powder, and a spluttering of bullets on the ground.  That was enough to
+get the laziest man living out of bed, and to answer the question, "to
+run or not to run?" in the affirmative.  I slipped on my boots without
+fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade my little tent a fond
+farewell.  There were some old German gun-pits close by, and I sought
+refuge there.  "Come in here, sir," cried a voice, and I found myself by
+the side of a sergeant.  Then the cook ran in bare-foot and laughing.
+No one seemed to have been hit, and all had now sought shelter.  We
+waited for some time and nothing further happened.  The night was cold
+and I began to shiver in my pajamas.  So I started to look about for a
+place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement had grown up between me
+and the little brown tent.  There was a path across a shallow bit of
+trench, and underneath it I found the barber, lying comfortably on his
+bed.  He invited me in, and said that I could have the bed, and he would
+sleep at the side of it on his ground-sheet.  He could, he said, sleep
+as soundly on the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking. I therefore
+returned to my tent to get blankets. The time-fuse of a shell had gone
+through the kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my servant, but
+without doing him any injury and he proposed sleeping there for the
+night.  He only agreed to move to some safer place, when I ordered him
+to do so.  There was no one in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants
+were quite safe somewhere.  On striking a light to get my blankets, I
+noticed three small holes in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel
+bullets had missed me only by inches.  It had been a close shave and it
+was not inappropriate that I was now going to be the guest of a barber.
+
+The psychological effect was not one I should have expected.  The
+incident caused no shell-shock, and but little immediate excitement; so
+I was soon asleep.  All the others were in a like case.  The excitement
+came with the morning when we examined the tents and the ground.  In the
+bell-tent there were ten shrapnel bullet holes.  One had gone through
+the piece of wood on which the officers' clothing had been hung, and
+must have passed immediately over the body of the Baptist chaplain as he
+lay in bed.  Others must have passed equally near the lieutenant who was
+not in bed, but, standing up at the time, fully dressed.  In my own
+little tent I found eleven holes and they were in all parts of the
+canvas.  Some of the bullets must have gone in at one side and out at
+the other, for only five were found embedded in the hard, chalky ground.
+A sixth had passed through the box at the bed-head and entered deeply
+into the book I had been reading.  Outside the kitchen, the servants
+picked up a lump of shell a foot long and three or four inches wide.
+Well was it for them that the fragment fell outside the kitchen and not
+inside.  The ground around the tents was sprinkled with shrapnel bullets
+and bits of shell.  The shells which fell near the horses had burst on
+touching the ground, and not like ours, in the air.  They had dug deep
+holes in the earth, and as the horses were within a few yards of them,
+it seemed miraculous that none was hurt.  The transport had just
+returned from taking up the rations, and, as one of the drivers leapt
+off his horse, a bullet hit the saddle where his leg had been a second
+before. Not a man or horse received a scratch, although the shells had
+made a direct hit on our camp. On other occasions one shell has laid out
+scores of men and horses.
+
+They say that sailors don't like padres on board ship, because they
+think the latter bring them bad luck.  And most people are a little
+afraid of the figure thirteen, but though it was the thirteenth of June
+and there were two padres in the tents, we had the best of what is
+called "luck."  So I think we may say it was one up for the padres.
+After breakfast we gathered together some of the fragments lying around
+the tents, and found the nose-cap of a shell which had burst seventy
+yards away. With these, and the time-fuse which hit my servant, the
+other chaplain and I went to a battery and asked the officers to tell us
+something about the gun, just as one might take a bone of some extinct
+creature to a scientist, and ask him to draw an outline of the whole
+animal.  They told us that the gun was a long-range, high-velocity,
+naval gun with a possible range of fifteen miles.  They knew where it
+was, but could not hit it.  The shot was a large high-explosive,
+shrapnel shell, and the time-fuse indicated that it had come to us from
+about eleven miles away.
+
+On our return we built ourselves dug-outs for the nights, and only lived
+in the tents by day.  Sometimes we were shelled in the day-time, but by
+taking cover took no hurt, though a lad in the transport next to us was
+seriously wounded.  When they were shelling us by day, we could
+distinctly hear the report of the gun, a second or two later, see the
+shell burst in the air; and a second later still, we could hear it.  We
+saw the burst before we heard it.
+
+I have given this personal incident not, I hope, out of any impulse of
+egotism, but because it furnishes those who have not been at the Front
+with an idea of the terror which assails our men by night, both in the
+trenches and in the "back areas."  There can be but few who, having been
+any length of time at the Front, have not had similar experiences and
+equally narrow escapes.  They are so common that men get used to them
+and do not take nearly enough care to protect themselves. Loss by such
+stray shells is expected, and the soldiers regard it much as a tradesman
+regards the deterioration of his stock.  One gets used to the frequent
+occurrence of death as he does to anything else.  At home there are
+thousands of preventable deaths--deaths through street accidents,
+diseases and underfeeding.  The number could be enormously reduced if
+the nation would rouse itself.  And human nature is much the same at the
+Front.  Men prefer ease and comfort to safety.  Also, men grow
+fatalistic.  They have seen men sought out by shells after they have
+taken every precaution to escape them; and they have seen others go
+untouched when they seemed to be inviting shells to destroy them.  Men
+are conscious of a Power that is not themselves directing their lives.
+They feel that in life which the Greek tragedians called Fate.  They do
+not know quite what to call it.  Most of them would call it Providence
+if they spoke frankly and gave it a name at all.  One of the finest
+Christian officers I know told me that he believed that God's finger had
+already written what his fate should be.  If he had to die nothing could
+save him, and if he had to live, nothing could kill him.  All he was
+concerned with was to be able to do his duty, and take whatever God sent
+him.  This, he said, was the only suitable working philosophy for a man
+at the Front.
+
+There is a widespread fatalism at the Front, but it is the fatalism of
+Christ rather than of old Omar Khayyam: "Take no thought for your life
+... for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
+things, but seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.
+Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take
+thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil
+thereof."  And this works.  It enables men to "put a cheerful courage
+on" and do their duty.  There is none of the paralysis of will and
+cessation of effort which follows the fatalistic philosophy of the East.
+All that Omar Khayyam's fatalism leaves a man to strive after is "Red,
+Red Wine," in which he drowns memory, honor and reputation and
+character.  When he has passed from among his peers, there is nothing
+left to remember him by but a "turned-down empty glass."  The Christian
+fatalism at the Front destroys no man's initiative, but keeps him merry
+and bright, and helps him to "do his bit."  When he shall pass from the
+banqueting-house of life, into the Great Unexplored, he will leave as
+his memorial, not a turned-down glass, but a world redeemed from tyranny
+and wrong.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *X*
+
+                       *"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"*
+
+
+An army is more courageous than the individuals who compose it.  The
+coward finds sufficient courage for his job while doing it with his
+regiment, and the brave is at his bravest.  He has a courage which is
+not his own but which, somehow, he puts on with his uniform.  He does
+deeds of daring he could not have done as a civilian.  The army has a
+corporate courage and each soldier receives a portion of it just as he
+receives a ration of the army's food.  It is added to what he has of his
+own.
+
+The badge of the army is courage.  When a recruit joins the army he
+knows that he is putting away the civilian standard of courage with his
+derby hat, and is putting on the soldier's standard of courage with his
+uniform. His great fear is that he will not be able to live up to it.
+He wonders if he is made of the stuff that produces heroes.  He is a
+mystery to himself and has a haunting fear that there may be a strain of
+the coward in his make-up. He wishes it were possible to have a
+rehearsal for he would rather die than fail on the appointed day.
+
+The chaplain fears that he will faint and become a hindrance instead of
+a help when he first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing station;
+and the recruit is afraid of being afraid in the hour of battle and of
+bringing dishonor and weakness upon his regiment.  He will be glad when
+the trial is over--when he knows the stuff of which nature has made him.
+A friend of mine told me one day that he was walking over a heavily
+shelled field with a young aristocrat of a highly strung temperament.
+The man was afraid, but would not yield to his fear.  His lips twitched
+and his face became drawn and white.  His movements were jerky but he
+made no other sign.  He talked about paltry things in which, at the
+moment, he had not the slightest interest, and passed jocular or
+sardonic remarks about the things that were happening around them.  My
+friend ducked his head when a shell burst near as we all have done often
+enough, but the young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff as if
+he were being crowned.  He held it up defiantly; was it not filled with
+the bluest blood of England?  The shells might blow it off if they
+liked.  That was their concern, not his, but they should never make him
+bow.  His fathers had fought on British battlefields for centuries, and
+had never bowed their heads to a foe, and he would not break the great
+tradition.  Shells might break his neck but they should never bend it.
+He would face the enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a neck
+as ever his fathers did.  He knew his personal weakness and reinforced
+his strength with that of his fathers'.  He was not afraid of death.  He
+was afraid of being afraid.
+
+My friend was a coachman's son who by courage and capacity of the
+highest order had won a commission.  He had no traditions either to
+haunt or help him, and he had often been tried in the fire and knew his
+strength.  He was not afraid of being afraid.  It was natural to duck
+when a shell burst near and it did him no harm and made no difference to
+the performance of his duties; so he ducked as he felt inclined, and
+then laughed at his nerves for the tricks they were allowing the shells
+to play on them.  But, knowing his companion's more sensitive nature and
+temperamental weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff neck and
+proudly erect head.  He showed a self-control which only centuries of
+breeding could give.  Here was a hero indeed.  The shells he was defying
+were as nothing to the fears which haunted his imaginative nature and
+which, with his back to the wall of his family traditions, he was
+fighting and keeping at bay. My friend could not refrain from
+complimenting him on resisting the natural tendency to duck the head
+when a shell screamed above them.
+
+"Eton boys never duck," replied the young aristocrat.
+
+He was an Eton boy and would die rather than fall short of the Eton
+standard.  In this war hundreds of them have died rather than save
+themselves by something which did not measure up to the Eton standard.
+The ranks of young British aristocrats have been terribly thinned in
+this war and I have heard their deeds spoken of with a reverence such as
+is only given to legendary heroes.  They have gone sauntering over the
+crater-fields to their deaths with the same self-mastery and outward
+calm which the French aristocracy manifested as they mounted the steps
+of the guillotine in the Reign of Terror.  To their own personal courage
+was added the courage of their race, and the accumulation of the
+centuries.
+
+We speak of our new armies.  There can be no "new" armies of Britons.
+The tradition of our newest army goes back to Boadicea. Its forerunners,
+without shields or armor, and almost without weapons, dared the
+Romans--the proud conquerors of the world--to battle; and gave them the
+longest odds warriors ever gave.  They knew they could not win but they
+knew they could die.  Dead warriors they might become but never living
+slaves.  They ran up Boadicea's proud banner because they knew that
+while the Romans might soak it in British blood, no power on earth could
+drag it through the mire.
+
+Our forefathers crossed swords with Caesar and his Roman legions, and
+our newest army goes into battle with the prestige born of two thousand
+years of war.  They have a morale that belongs to the race in addition
+to the morale they possess as individuals.  It is said that "the British
+do not know when they are beaten."  How should they know?  They have had
+no teachers.  All they know is that if they have not gained the victory
+the battle is not ended and must go on until they pitch their tents on
+the undisputed field.  The German Emperor spreads out his War Map but it
+is as undecipherable as the mountains in the moon to our soldiers.
+Tyrants have never found them apt scholars at geography.  They prefer to
+make their own maps even though they have no paint to color them with
+except the red blood in their veins.  The Kaiser may roll up his War Map
+of Europe; our soldiers have no use for it, and will not commit to
+memory its new boundaries.  They feel in their souls the capacity to
+make a new one more in line with their ideas of fair play.
+
+"Eton boys never duck."  If the muscles of their necks show a tendency
+to relax they call to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood in
+bygone days, and their necks become stiff and taut once more.
+Wellington said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.  It
+is still true that "Eton boys never duck" to the foe; nor do the
+soldiers they lead.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *XI*
+
+                              *"MISSING"*
+
+
+The word "Missing" has come to exercise an even more terrible power over
+the human heart than the word "Death."  The latter kills the heart's joy
+and hope with a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy stroke from
+the executioner's axe.  In a few cases the wounded victim is spared and
+allowed to recover, but in the majority of cases there is no reprieve
+and a second blow is struck after a period of suspense and suffering.  A
+chaplain dreads the word.  As he opens his correspondence after a
+battle, it fixes him as the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner
+fastened the wedding guest.  It leaps from the page at him with the
+malignant suddenness of a serpent.  Wounds and death he can explain to
+relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation. No one who has not been
+at the Front can conceive how a lad can disappear and no one see what
+becomes him.  A man may read graphic accounts of conditions of life in
+the battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to visualize it with
+any real approach to truth.
+
+After the first day of the Somme Campaign we had hundreds of casualties
+and most of them were classed as "Missing."  The soldiers went "over the
+top" and did not return, and no one knew why.  They were simply
+"missing."  Why did no one know their fate?  It came about in this way.
+The men scrambled over the parapet and, forming in line, charged across
+No Man's Land in extended order. Some fell immediately.  The wounded
+among them got back to the dressing station, and the bodies of the dead
+were found within a few days, at least.  So far, there are no "Missing."
+The rest of the men press on, some falling at every step; the line
+thins, and the men get separated.  When a man falls his neighbor cannot
+stay with him.  He must press on to the objective, otherwise, if the
+unwounded stayed to succor the wounded, there would be none to continue
+the attack; and under the hail of shells and bullets sweeping the open
+ground, everyone would perish.  The only way to succor the wounded is to
+press on, capture the enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine-gun
+fire.  Consequently, the man who presses on does not, as a rule, know
+whether his comrade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took cover in a
+shell hole.  And even though he were to know, he may be killed himself
+later, and his knowledge die with him.
+
+If the attack succeeds, and the German trench is held by us, No Man's
+Land can be searched.  The wounded and dead are found, and but few are
+reported "missing."  But if the attack fail, and the regiment has to
+retire to its own line, it becomes impossible for us to search that part
+of No Man's Land, adjoining the German trench (for there is rarely any
+truce after a battle in this war), and so, it is impossible to find out
+whether those who have failed to return were killed, wounded, or taken
+prisoners.  The comrades who saw them fall are probably killed, for the
+return is as fatal as the attack.  If they come back wounded they are
+taken straight to the hospitals and so have no chance of reporting to
+their officers the fate of those whom they saw fall.  Only the unwounded
+return to the regiment and, in a lost battle, these are few and know but
+little of what happened to those around them.  They were excited and
+were fighting for their lives. They had no leisure to observe the fate
+of others.
+
+On one occasion our men took some German trenches opposite them and held
+them for some hours by desperate fighting, but before dusk had to
+retire.  Many were left dead or wounded in the captured trenches, and
+many fell on the return journey.  The few who got back to us unwounded
+could give very little information about individuals who were missing.
+They had been separated one from another and fighting hour after hour
+with desperation.  All therefore who did not return to the regiment or
+dressing station, and whose bodies were not recovered, were reported as
+"Missing" unless declared dead by reliable eye-witnesses.  The evidence
+of eye-witnesses must be carefully examined before a regiment dare
+report a soldier dead on the strength of it.  During an attack a man is
+in an abnormal state of excitement and the observations of his senses
+are not entirely reliable.  Men imagine they see things, and frequently
+make mistakes in identity.  I have known many cases in which a man has
+sworn that he saw another being carried to the dressing station, yet the
+missing man's body has afterwards been found near the German lines.  The
+eye-witness simply mistook one man for another.  No end of pain to
+relatives has been caused by these mistakes and a regiment rightly
+declines on such evidence to report a soldier as killed.
+
+Some weeks after the attack just referred to, we received letters from
+some of the officers and men who had been taken prisoners; information
+about others came through The Geneva Red Cross Society.  Those of whom
+we heard nothing for six months we knew to be, in all probability, dead.
+Nine months later, the Germans retired from the position, and many of
+our dead were found still lying out in No Man's Land.  Some were
+identified. Others could not be, their discs having perished by reason
+of the long exposure.  Many of the dead had been left in the German
+trenches.  These had been buried by the enemy and he had left no crosses
+to mark the graves. After more than a year there is no direct evidence
+of the death of many who fought on that day.  They are "Missing," and we
+can only conclude that they were killed.
+
+In other cases, men are reported missing for several weeks, and then
+reported dead.  A typical case may be cited to show how it comes about.
+We attacked one morning at dawn. The enemy were on the run, and in a
+state of exhaustion.  An immediate attack would, it was believed, carry
+the position without much loss of life, even though our big guns had not
+had time to come up in support.  Unfortunately the Germans were, unknown
+to us, reinforced during the night.  Their new troops met our men with a
+hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, and the regiment was ordered to
+retire. Several failed to return.  We knew that some of the men had been
+forced to surrender, especially the wounded.  Others had been killed.
+Those who returned unwounded were not able, however, to give us the
+names of those who had been killed or of those who had been taken
+prisoners.  The attack had been made in the half-light of dawn so that
+our men could not be seen distinctly.  They had also advanced in
+extended order so as to avoid making themselves an easy target.  The
+half-light and the distance of one man from another made it difficult,
+therefore, for anyone to see either who fell or why they fell.  Most of
+those who were killed or taken prisoners were therefore reported as
+"missing."
+
+A few days later the whole Division was moved to another part of the
+Front.  A fresh regiment took our place, and, a few weeks later, with
+adequate artillery support, carried the German trenches.  After the
+battle, burial parties were sent out by the regiment to bury both its
+own dead and ours who had been left in the German half of No Man's Land.
+Each grave was marked with the soldier's name, and his disc and paybook
+were sent to our regiment as proof of his death.  The War Office was
+then informed that such and such a man "previously reported missing, is
+now reported killed."
+
+There are, however, cases of missing men which cannot be explained.  The
+facts never come to light, and we can only guess what happened.  They
+may have been buried by the enemy, or they may have been buried in the
+dark by some regimental burial party which could not find their discs.
+They may even have been buried by a shell or blown to fragments by a
+direct hit.  We have no evidence.
+
+After the attack on Gommecourt a youth I knew had his wound dressed at
+the Regimental Aid post and was seen, by more than one of his chums,
+passing down the communication trench to the Advanced Dressing Station
+where I happened to be.  Yet he never arrived, slight though his wound
+was.  It was impossible for him to have got lost.  His brother and I
+made every possible enquiry about him, but nothing ever came to light,
+and we both came to the conclusion that on his way down the trench he
+had been buried by a shell.  In another case an officer was wounded and
+four stretcher bearers went out to bring him in.  None were ever seen
+again, and later, when we came into possession of the ground, the body
+of none of them were found.  It was scarcely possible for them to have
+been taken prisoners, and they were never reported as having been
+captured.  We concluded, therefore, that a shell had both killed and
+buried them.
+
+One day a rifleman reported sick to the Doctor and was sent down the
+line to the Dressing Station whence he would be sent on to a Rest Camp.
+He was not seriously ill, and needed no escort.  It was impossible for
+him to have wandered into the German lines, yet he never reported at the
+Dressing Station or anywhere else.  Loss of memory is very rare, but
+even if that had happened to him, he could not have wandered about
+behind our lines without being found and arrested.  No report of his
+burial ever reached us and we were led to the conclusion that he was
+killed by a shell on the way down, and in such a way that all means of
+identification were lost.  In another case a private, wounded in the
+arm, was sent down the line in company with a party of stretcher bearers
+who were carrying a "lying case."  Evidently he got separated from them
+in the dark, and was hit by a shell, for he never reached any dressing
+station, and his fate was never known.
+
+Conditions at the front are such that these mysterious disappearances
+must inevitably occur.  Every possible arrangement which circumstances
+will allow is made to prevent them; but they cannot be altogether
+eliminated. People at home may sometimes think that more might have been
+done, but it is because they have no conception of the amazing
+conditions under which the war is carried on.  Every officer and private
+knows that he may disappear without leaving a trace.  That being so,
+they, if only from common prudence and the instinct of
+self-preservation, combine to reduce the danger to its lowest limits;
+but, when all has been done, war is war; and nothing can rob it of its
+horrors.
+
+Every day, officers and men die in trying to save their comrades, and
+nothing could be more unjust than to blame those who survive for not
+having done more to prevent others from being lost; for those who are
+surviving, to-day, may become missing to-morrow, and leave no trace
+behind.  Officers have sometimes shown me letters from poor distracted
+relatives which could never have been written if they could have
+imagined the deadly peril in which the officers stood and the manifold
+distractions that wore them down.  Sometimes an officer's letter is
+short and business-like in reply to an enquiry, but it must be
+remembered that his first duty is to the living.  He must hold the line
+and save his men; and he has, despite the tragedy of his position, to
+answer not one enquiry but scores.  And before he has finished answering
+all the enquiries, his own parents, perhaps, will be making enquiries
+about his own fate.  Our officers are the bravest and kindest-hearted
+men that ever had the lives of others in their keeping; and when the
+chaplain asks them for details about any missing or slain soldier, they
+will go to endless trouble for him. They know what their own death will
+mean to their parents; and the knowledge makes their hearts go out in
+sympathy to the parents of their men, and it makes them do all that is
+possible to prevent lives being lost.
+
+When Moses died no man knew the place of his burial.  It has not been
+found to this day.  We know nothing of his last thoughts or of the
+manner of his death.  His end is a perfect mystery.  But we know that he
+died in the presence of God; that God strengthened him in the dread
+hour; and that with His own fingers He closed the lids over the
+prophet's brave, tender eyes.  God buried Moses in a grave dug by His
+own hands and He will know where to find the poor worn-out body of the
+great patriot at the resurrection of the just. And God was with every
+one of our missing lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed in
+which each lies sleeping.  The grave may have no cross above it, but it
+will often know the tread of an angel's feet as he comes to plant
+poppies, primroses and daffodils above the resting-place of the brave.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XII*
+
+                         *"IT MUST BE SUNDAY"*
+
+
+The Psalmist of Israel tells us that God has "ordained" the moon and the
+stars. These "flaming fires" are "ministers of His that do His
+pleasure."  Nor are they the only ones chosen from Nature.  Mungo Park,
+having laid down in the desert to die, notices beside him a tiny flower,
+and it awakens hope in him.  The winter of his despair is ended.  He
+rises again, and pushes on until he finds a human habitation where he is
+cared for by native women as though he were their brother.  The little
+flower had been "ordained" to minister hope to a lost and despairing
+traveler.
+
+At the Front such ministering by Nature is of common occurrence.  No
+Man's Land is desolate enough to look upon, but there is life there, and
+music.  Larks have chosen it for their nests, and amid its desolation
+they rear their young.  Even the pheasants have taken to some parts of
+it.  If we could but know the thoughts of the wounded who have lain out
+there waiting for death, we should find that the moon and the stars, the
+birds and the field mice, had not allowed them die without some
+comforting of the spirit.
+
+One Sunday our regiment was resting in reserve trenches after a period
+in the firing line. It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun sank
+westward I administered the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.  The day was
+far spent but, as the bread was broken, there came to us a vision of the
+Face which the two disciples saw on another such evening in the far-off
+village of Emmaus.  On the way back to my billet I met a platoon of
+Royal Engineers returning from the baths.  One of them had been a member
+of my church in London, and he dropped out to talk with me.  Those who
+have not been in the Expeditionary Force can hardly understand the
+pleasure a man feels when he meets someone he knew in the days of peace,
+or even someone who knows the street or town out of which he came.  He
+was full of talk, and as I listened his excitement and pleasure bubbled
+over like a spring.
+
+"Last night," he said, "was the night of my life.  I never expected to
+see daylight again.  Talk about a 'tight corner,' there was never one to
+match it, and as you know, my chums and I have been in many.  The Huns
+simply plastered us with shells.  The bombardment was terrific.  It was
+like being in a hailstorm and we expected every moment to be our last.
+
+"You know the trench which the infantry took yesterday?  Well, we were
+there.  We went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of it ready for
+the counter-attack.  We were out in No Man's Land for about two hours,
+working as swiftly and silently as we could. Whenever the enemy sent his
+lights up, we laid down, and so far we had escaped notice and were
+congratulating ourselves that the work was nearly done, and that our
+skins were still whole.  Then, somehow, the Germans spotted us, and let
+fly.  It was like hell let loose.  We ran to the trench for shelter, but
+it seemed as if nothing could save us from such a deluge of shells.  It
+was just like being naked in a driving snow-storm.  We felt as if there
+was no trench at all, and as if the gunners could see us in the dark.
+After that experience I can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after it.
+But we just sat tight with such cover as we had and made the best of it.
+There was nothing else to do.  If we were to be killed, we should be
+killed.  Nothing that we could do would have made any difference.  Yet,
+though there didn't seem shelter for even a mouse, only one of us was
+hit, and that was the sergeant.  He was rather badly 'done in,' and we
+could only save his life by getting him quickly to the dressing station.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN"
+_Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London_]
+
+"I am one of the taller and stronger men of my platoon so, of course, I
+volunteered as a stretcher-bearer.  There was no communication trench,
+so we had no choice but to lift him up and make a dash across the open.
+They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare not delay because, if we
+were overtaken by daylight, it would be impossible to get him away till
+the next night, and by that time he would be dead.  So we decided to try
+our luck. We had just lifted him up when a shell burst right on top of
+us, and knocked us all down. For a minute or two I was unconscious, and
+when I came round I thought I must surely be wounded, so I ran my
+fingers over my body but found neither blood nor a rent in my clothes.
+I was covered with chalk but that didn't matter.  Except for a touch of
+concussion in the brain I was none the worse, and soon pulled myself
+together.  The sergeant was a sight!  He was half-buried, and we could
+scarce see him for chalk; but we dug him out and got him on the
+stretcher again. After that we sat down in the bottom of the trench till
+the effect of the shock had worn off a bit, for we all felt like rats
+that had been shaken by a terrier.
+
+"Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shelling stopped.  The calm
+that followed was wonderful.  I never felt anything so restful before.
+It was like the delicious restfulness that, sometimes, immediately
+follows hours of fever. Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out
+of No Man's Land and began to sing.  The effect on us was magical.  It
+was the sweetest music I have ever heard, and I shall remember it to my
+dying day.  The countryside was dark and silent, and, as I listened to
+the lark, old days came back to mind.  You remember that Saturday
+midnight in the June before the war when you took us into Epping Forest
+to see the dawn break over it?  Well, as I listened to the lark, I was
+back there in the forest. Then some impulse seized me and, hardly
+knowing what I did, I cried aloud, 'Why bless me, it must be Sunday,'
+and so it was, although I had forgotten.
+
+"Then we jumped up for we saw that the dawn was breaking and, lifting
+the sergeant out of the trench, we rushed across the open ground in the
+direction of the dressing station. Talk about 'feeling protected!'  Why,
+I felt that God was all around us--that no harm could touch us.  A great
+calm stole over me, and I felt utterly devoid of fear.  We had, as you
+know, to bring the sergeant some two miles to the dressing station, just
+down the road there, but we got him safely in, and I think he will get
+better."
+
+While we were talking, a shell burst near the trench where my men had
+been taking of the Sacrament, and another burst by the roadside close to
+the Engineers.  With a laugh and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands,
+saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades. The shells were part of the
+game.  In London we had been in the same football team.  He had kept
+goal and I had played full back, and he regarded the shells that had
+fallen as bad shots at goal made by the opposing team. They might have
+been serious but, as it happened, the ball had each time gone out of
+play.
+
+I waited a minute or two in the hope of getting a lift.  A motor car
+came along; I stopped it and got in; for at the Front everything is
+Government property and more or less at one's service.  I found myself
+sitting by the side of a private, who had been wounded in the face and
+right hand by the shell that had just fallen near the platoon of
+Engineers.
+
+He had left his horse with a comrade, and was being driven to the
+Advanced Dressing Station by a driver who, happening to pass at the
+moment, had kindly offered him a lift. After a little wait at the
+Dressing Station I got on the front of an ambulance car.  There were
+only two cases inside, and they were being taken to the Main Dressing
+Station in Arras. One of them had his feet and arms tied to the
+stretcher, for he was suffering from shell-shock; and three orderlies
+were in charge of him.  The poor fellow laughed and cried alternately
+and struggled to break loose.  "I'm a British soldier," he cried, "and I
+will not be tied up.  I've done my bit, and this is the way you pay me
+out.  I'll not have it."  And time and again he struggled desperately to
+break away.
+
+The orderlies in charge of him were wise and tactful as women.  They
+asked him questions about the fight, and he fought his battle over
+again.  They praised his regiment and told him it had done
+magnificently, and he laughed and chuckled like a young mother, dandling
+her first baby on her knee.  And so, without mishap, we reached the
+ruined town of Arras where nightly the shells fall among the forsaken
+houses in which our soldiers are billeted. The wounded private was
+carried into the hospital, and I walked away to my room in an adjoining
+street.
+
+So ended the day which, in the hour of dawn, the dark had told the young
+engineer "must be Sunday."
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIII*
+
+                      *OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US*
+
+
+On Easter Monday, in the Battle of Arras, I saw two sights such as I
+shall never forget.  One revealed the kind and forgiving spirit of our
+men, the other their unflinching courage.  After burying three
+non-commissioned officers who had been killed the day before, I reached
+the Advanced Dressing Station near which our regiment was "standing to"
+in a support trench.  Other regiments of our Division were carrying out
+the attack and, with small loss, had taken the enemy lines. The German
+trenches had been blotted out by our shells but their deep dug-outs,
+with machine-guns at their mouths, remained untouched, and it was almost
+impossible for our soldiers to discover them until they got within a few
+yards of the entrances.
+
+The German commander's idea was to keep his men in the shelter of the
+dug-outs until our barrage lifted.  They were then to rush out with
+machine-guns and rifles to destroy our men who were following it up.  If
+the idea had been carried out, the German line would have been
+impregnable for our men would have been mown down like corn before the
+reaper.  It failed because German human nature could not rise to the
+occasion.  The German soldiers had been demoralized by the safety of the
+dug-outs and by the thunder of our shells above them.  They cowered in
+the dug-outs when they should have rushed out. The critical moment
+passed, and with its passing our soldiers leapt to the entrances and
+threw down hand grenades.  There was a wild cry of pain and fear from
+below.  Arms went up and the cry of "Kamerad."  The surrender was
+accepted and the beaten soldiers crawled out.  From some dug-outs as
+many as two hundred prisoners were taken.  In other parts of the line
+there was a stiff fight, but, on the whole, our casualties were very
+light. From my own observation I should say that we took more prisoners
+than we suffered casualties.  Some companies could boast a prisoner for
+each man engaged in the attack.
+
+The Advanced Dressing Station was at the corner of Cross Roads and the
+sight around it was wonderful to behold.  A crowd of prisoners was
+assembling ready to be marched to the cages, and wounded officers and
+men, British and German, were being bandaged. The prisoners were hungry.
+For some days our artillery had cut off their rations.  A platoon of our
+soldiers came marching by, and, to save time, eating their breakfasts as
+they passed along.  The prisoners looked at them with hungry eyes.  Our
+men saw the look and stopped.  Breaking rank for a moment they passed in
+and out among the prisoners and shared out their rations.  "Here,
+Fritzy, old boy, take this," I heard all around me, and Fritz did not
+need asking twice.  He took the biscuits and cheese gratefully and
+eagerly. The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and he felt that he
+had found friends where he had only expected to find enemies.  He began
+to hope for kindness in his captivity.  The scene was one of pure
+goodwill.
+
+Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy. Our Tommies laughed and
+cracked jokes which no German could understand, but I heard not a single
+taunt or bitter word.  In fact, Fritz was treated more like a pet than a
+prisoner. One who had worked in London, and who spoke English, asked me
+for a cup of tea for a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I got one
+in the dressing station.  The platoon of Tommies re-formed and marched
+away to the battle and the prisoners were led off to the cages.  There
+were still large numbers of prisoners on the road, and they were moving
+about without guards.  Many of them were being used as stretcher-bearers
+and they seemed to do their work out of goodwill and not of constraint.
+
+Their assistance was of great help to the wounded.  The battle was going
+well with us. Everyone felt in good heart and kindly disposed.  An
+officer who lay seriously wounded and waiting for a car told me of the
+splendid work which his regiment had done.  His eyes shone with
+suppressed excitement and pride as he told the story.  While he was
+speaking two soldiers came limping down the road and their appearance
+was greeted with a burst of laughter.  One was English, the other
+German. Tommy had his arm round the German's neck and was leaning on him
+while Fritz, with his arm round the lad's waist, helped him along. They
+came along very slowly for both were wounded, but they laughed and
+talked together like long-lost brothers.  Yet neither could understand a
+word the other said.
+
+I passed down the road towards the line. Gunners of the Territorials
+were hurriedly hitching their guns to the horses ready to advance to new
+positions.  In the ruined village a party of engineers was already
+unloading a wagon of rails with which to build a light railway.  I
+continued along the road towards the next village.  It had just fallen
+into our hands and not one stone was left on another.  There were scores
+of wounded men hobbling back from it and I gave my arm to such as needed
+it most.  A badly wounded Tommy was being brought along on a wheeler by
+two orderlies and as I helped them through the traffic we heard the
+heavy rumble of the advancing field-guns.
+
+The road was cleared with the quickness of lightning.  Out of the
+village the batteries burst at a mad gallop and down the road they came
+at break-neck speed.  With the swiftness of a fire engine in a city
+street the rocking guns swept past.  The gunners clung to the ammunition
+limbers with both hands and the drivers whipped and spurred the excited
+foam-flecked horses as though they were fiery beings leaping through the
+air and incapable of fatigue or weakness.  Suddenly the drivers raised
+their whips as a sign to those behind, and the trembling horses and
+bounding guns came to a dead halt.  The leading gun had overturned at a
+nasty place where the road dipped down into the hollow.  The rest of the
+batteries stood exposed on the crest of the ridge.  Before retiring the
+Germans had felled all the trees that grew by the roadside so that
+nothing might obstruct their line of vision.  Such a catastrophe as this
+was what the enemy had been hoping for.  The sun shone brilliantly, and
+our batteries were a direct target for the German gunners such as seldom
+occurs.  Our boys were caught like rats in a trap.  By the side of the
+road ran a shallow trench and near us two broad steps into it.  We laid
+the wounded lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down by his side.
+Shells were falling all around and fountains of dirt and debris rose
+into the air and, on five or six occasions, covered us with their spray.
+
+I covered the lad's face.  He was barely conscious and uttered no word.
+It seemed as if nothing could live in such a bombardment.  A shell burst
+near, and the cry of dying horses rent the air.  The traces were cut and
+the horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road. Every second I expected
+to see the horses and drivers in front of me blown into the air and I
+watched them with fascinated eyes.  Not a man stirred.  They sat on
+their horses and gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze.
+Not a man sought the trench and not a man relieved the tension by going
+forward to see what was wrong or to lend a hand.  Each knew his place,
+and if death sought him it would know where to find him.  The horses
+felt that they had brave men on their backs and, in that mysterious way
+peculiar to horses, caught the spirit of their riders.  Every shell
+covered men and horses with chalk and soil, but they remained an
+immobile as statuary.  It was magnificent and it was war.  A driver in
+the battery beside us got wounded in the leg and hand.  He jumped off
+his horse and came to us to be bandaged.  Then he leapt back into the
+saddle.  It seemed an age, but I suppose it was only a few minutes,
+before the obstruction was removed.  The whips flashed in the air and
+the horses sprang forward.  The guns rocked and swayed as they swept
+past us and within a few minutes they were in their new positions under
+the hill upon which lay the ruins of Neuville Vitasse.
+
+The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had started and we lifted out our
+wounded soldier and went in the direction of the dressing station.  Some
+distance up the road my attention was called to one of the drivers whom
+the artillery had left in the care of some privates. He was living, but
+his skull was broken, and he would never wake again to consciousness. He
+was fast "going West."  His day was over and his work was done.  I got
+him lifted on to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station so that
+he might die in peace and be buried in the little soldiers' cemetery
+behind it.
+
+When I returned in the evening to our billet I told the transport
+officer of the magnificent bravery of the artillery drivers.
+
+"Any other drivers would behave just as well, if caught in the same
+trap," he replied.
+
+He spoke the simple truth.  They would. Such supreme courage and
+devotion to duty are common to the army.  Their presence among all ranks
+and in all sections of the army makes the fact the more wonderful.  Both
+officers and men love life, but they love duty more, and commanders in
+drawing up their plans know that they can rely on their soldiers to
+carry them out.  Our Tommies never fail us whether in France,
+Mesopotamia, or Palestine.  Devotion to duty is inwoven with the fibers
+of their hearts.  They are men who, either in kindness to captives or
+courage amid disaster and destruction, never fail us.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIV*
+
+                     *THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE*
+
+
+The war on the Western Front has been fought in a Roman Catholic country
+where crucifixes are erected at all the chief cross-roads to remind us
+that, in every moment of doubt as to the way of life, and on whichever
+road we finally decide to walk, whether rough or smooth, we shall need
+the Saviour and His redeeming love.  We have seen a cross so often when
+on the march, or when passing down some trench, that it has become
+inextricably mixed up with the war. When we think of the great struggle
+the vision of the cross rises before us, and when we see the cross, we
+think of processions of wounded men who have been broken to save the
+world. Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to rest, we have placed
+over him, as the comment on his death, a simple white cross bearing his
+name.  We never paint any tribute on it. None is needed, for nothing
+else could speak so eloquently as a cross--a white cross.  White is the
+sacred color in the army of to-day, and the cross is the sacred form.
+In after years there will never be any doubt as to where the line of
+liberty ran that held back the flood and force of German tyranny.  From
+the English Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all time with the
+crosses on the graves of the British and French soldiers.  Whatever may
+be our views about the erection of crucifixes by the wayside and at the
+cross-roads, no one can deny that they have had an immense influence for
+good on our men during the war in France.
+
+The experience of many a gallant soldier is expressed in the following
+Belgian poem:
+
+    "I came to a halt at the bend of the road;
+    I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;
+    I came to a halt at the bend of the road.
+
+    "O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,
+    My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;
+    O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee.
+
+    "And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,
+    I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup;
+    And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up.
+
+    "For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,
+    Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;
+    For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave.
+
+    "Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'
+    And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.
+    Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.'
+
+    "Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?
+    Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.
+    Fulfilled is the sacrifice.  Lord, is it well?"
+
+
+The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier and has provided him with
+the only acceptable philosophy of the war.  It has taught boys just
+entering upon life's experience that, out-topping all history and
+standing out against the background of all human life, is a Cross on
+which died the Son of God.  It has made the hill of Calvary stand out
+above all other hills in history.  Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon--these may
+stand at the foot of the hill, as did the Roman soldiers, but they are
+made to look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises above them,
+showing forth the figure of the Son of Man.  Against the sky-line of
+human history the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in shadow.  The
+wayside crosses at the Front and the flashes of roaring guns may not
+have taught our soldiers much history, but they have taught them the
+central fact of history; and all else will have to accommodate itself to
+that, or be disbelieved.  The Cross of Christ is the center of the
+picture for evermore, and the grouping of all other figures must be
+round it.
+
+To the soldiers it can never again be made a detail in some other
+picture.  Seen also in the light of their personal experience it has
+taught them that as a cross lies at the basis of the world's life and
+shows bare at every crisis of national and international life so, at the
+root of all individual life, is a cross.  They have been taught to look
+for it at every parting of the ways.  Suffering to redeem others and
+make others happy will now be seen as the true aim of life and not the
+grasping of personal pleasure or profit.  They have stood where high
+explosive shells thresh out the corn from the chaff--the true from the
+false.  They have seen facts in a light that lays things stark and bare;
+and the cant talked by skeptical armchair-philosophers will move them as
+little as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops. For three long
+years our front-line trenches have run through what was once a village
+called Neuve Chapelle.  There is nothing left of it now.  But there is
+something there which is tremendously impressive.  It is a crucifix. It
+stands out above everything, for the land is quite flat around it.  The
+cross is immediately behind our firing trench, and within two or three
+hundred yards of the German front trench.  The figure of Christ is
+looking across the waste of No Man's Land.  Under His right arm and
+under His left, are British soldiers holding the line.  Two dud shells
+lie at the the foot.  One is even touching the wood, but though hundreds
+of shells must have swept by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it
+remains undamaged.  Trenches form a labyrinth all round it.  When our
+men awake and "stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is the cross;
+and when at night they lie down in the side of the trench, or turn into
+their dug-outs, their last sight is the cross.  It stands clear in the
+noon-day sun; and in the moonlight it takes on a solemn grandeur.
+
+I first saw it on a November afternoon when the sun was sinking under
+heavy banks of cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene as it must
+have been on the first Good Friday, when the sun died with its dying
+Lord, and darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and covered Him with its
+funeral pall to hide His dying agonies from the curious eyes of
+unbelieving men.  I had had tea in a dug-out, and it was dark when I
+left.  Machine-guns were sweeping No Man's Land to brush back enemies
+that might be creeping towards us through the long grass; and the air
+was filled with a million clear, cracking sounds.  Star-shells rose and
+fell and their brilliant lights lit up the silent form on the cross.
+
+For three years, night and day, Christ has been standing there in the
+midst of our soldiers, with arms outstretched in blessing.  They have
+looked up at Him through the clear starlight of a frosty night; and they
+have seen His pale face by the silver rays of the moon as she has sailed
+her course through the heavens.  In the gloom of a stormy night they
+have seen the dark outline, and caught a passing glimpse of Christ's
+effigy by the flare of the star-shells.  What must have been the
+thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts as all night long they
+have gazed at the cross; or of the officers as they have passed down the
+trench to see that all was well; or of some private sleeping in the
+trench and, being awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to restore
+blood-circulation?  Deep thoughts, I imagine, much too deep for words of
+theirs or mine.
+
+And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was raging and the wounded, whose
+blood was turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what thoughts must
+have been theirs then?  Did they not feel that He was their big Brother
+and remember that blood had flowed from Him as from them; that pain had
+racked Him as it racked them; and that He thought of His mother and of
+Nazareth as they thought of their mother and the little cottage they
+were never to see again?  When their throats became parched and their
+lips swollen with thirst did they not remember how He, too, had cried
+for a drink; and, most of all, did they not call to mind the fact that
+He might have saved Himself, as they might, if He had cared more for His
+own happiness than for the world's? As their spirits passed out through
+the wounds in their bodies would they not ask Him to remember them as
+their now homeless souls knocked at the gate of His Kingdom?  He had
+stood by them all through the long and bloody battle while hurricanes of
+shells swept over and around Him.  I do not wonder that the men at the
+Front flock to the Lord's Supper to commemorate His death.  They will
+not go without it.  If the Sacrament be not provided, they ask for it.
+At home there was never such a demand for it as exists at the Front.
+There is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the Cross, between the
+soldier and his Saviour.
+
+And yet, to those who willed the war and drank to the day of its coming,
+even the Cross has no sacredness.  It is to them but a tool of war.  An
+officer told me that during the German retreat from the Somme they
+noticed a peculiar accuracy in the enemy's firing.  The shells followed
+an easily distinguishable course. So many casualties occurred from this
+accurate shelling that the officers set themselves to discover the
+cause.  They found that the circle of shells had for its center the
+cross-roads, and that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood up
+clearly as a land-mark.  Evidently the crosses were being used to guide
+the gunners, and was causing the death of our men.  But a more
+remarkable thing came to light.  The cross stood close to the road, and
+when the Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the cross-roads to
+delay our advance.  Everything near had been blown to bits by the
+explosion except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it. And yet it
+could not have escaped, except by a miracle.  They therefore set
+themselves to examine the seeming miracle and came across one of the
+most astounding cases of fiendish cunning.  They found that the Germans
+had made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that they could take it
+out or put it in at pleasure. Before blowing up the cross-roads they had
+taken the cross out of its socket and removed it to a safe distance,
+then, when the mine had exploded, they put the cross back so that it
+might be a landmark to direct their shooting. And now they were using
+Christ's instrument of redemption as an instrument for men's
+destruction.
+
+But our young officers resolved to restore the cross to its work of
+saving men.  They waited till night fell, and then removed the cross to
+a point a hundred or two yards to the left. When in the morning the
+German gunners fired their shells their observers found that the shells
+fell too far wide of the cross and they could make nothing of the
+mystery.  It looked as if someone had been tampering with their guns in
+the night.  To put matters right they altered the position of their guns
+so that once more the shells made a circle round the cross. And
+henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the shells fell harmlessly into
+the outlying fields. Nor was this the only time during their retreat
+that the Germans put the cross to this base use and were foiled in their
+knavery.
+
+When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ and turns it into a tool to
+gain an advantage over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to ask who
+began the war, and folly to close our eyes to the horrors and
+depravities which are being reached in the waging of it.
+
+There is a new judgment of the nations now proceeding and who shall
+predict what shall be?  The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and our
+attitude towards it decides our fate.  I have seen the attitude of our
+soldiers towards the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards that for which
+it stands; and I find more comfort in their reverence for Christ and
+Christianity than in all their guns and impediments of war.
+
+The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks of time, and the nations
+will survive that stand beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of
+righteousness, liberty and truth.
+
+
+
+
+                                  *XV*
+
+                       *THE CHILDREN OF OUR DEAD*
+
+
+There are times when we get away from the Front for a rest.  We hear no
+more the sound of the guns, but give ourselves up to the silence and
+charm of the country.  Before going into the Somme fighting we were
+billeted for ten days in the neighboring village to Cressy; and as the
+anniversary of the battle came that week the colonel chose the day for a
+march to the battlefield.  The owner of the field, when the old windmill
+stood, from which King Edward III directed his army, came to meet us and
+describe the battle.  When the war is over he is going to erect a
+monument on the spot to the memory of the French and British troops who
+in comradeship have died fighting against the common foe.
+
+They were happy days that we spent around Cressy.  The last that some
+were destined to know this side of the Great Divide.  The bedroom next
+to mine was occupied by two fine young officers of utterly different
+type.  One was a Greek whose father had taken out naturalization papers
+and loved the country of his adoption with a worshiping passion that
+would shame many native born.  The other was a charming, argumentative,
+systematic, theological student of Scots parentage.  The night before we
+left, the Greek accidentally broke his mirror and was much upset.  It
+was, he said, a token that Death was about to claim him.  The Scot
+laughed heartily, for he had not a trace of the superstitious in him;
+or, if he had--which was more than likely--it was kept under by his
+strong reasoning faculties.
+
+"If you are to be killed," he replied, "I am to be killed too, for I
+also have broken my mirror."
+
+He spoke the words in jest, or with hardly a discernible undercurrent of
+seriousness; but they were true words nevertheless.  The two bed-mates
+were killed in the same battle a week or two later.  I had tea with them
+in their dug-out on the eve of the fight.  They were to take up their
+positions in an hour, but the student could not resist having just one
+more argument.  He directed the conversation to the New Theology, and to
+German philosophers and Biblical scholars.  He simply talked me off my
+feet, for he possessed the most brilliant intellect in the regiment,
+combined with self-reliance and perfect modesty.  Then the conversation
+turned to the question of taking a tot of rum before going over the
+parapet.  He was a rigid teetotaler, "for," said he, "drink is the ruin
+of my country."  He was opposed to the idea of taking rum to help one's
+courage or allay his fears.  He would not, he said, go under with his
+eyes bandaged.  He would take a good look at Death and dare him to do
+his worst.  He was superb, and Death never felled a manlier man.
+Browning would have loved him as his own soul for he had Browning's
+attitude to life exactly, and could have sung with him,
+
+      "Fear death? ...
+    I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
+      The best and the last!
+    I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
+      And bade me creep past.
+    No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
+      The heroes of old,
+    Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
+      Of pain, darkness and cold.
+    For sudden the worst turns best to the brave,
+      The black minute's at end,
+    And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
+      Shall dwindle, shall blend,
+    Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
+      Then a light...
+      And with God be the rest!"
+
+
+He was found with his "body against the wall where the forts of folly
+fall."  His brave, intelligent face was completely blown away. His Greek
+friend was wounded, and while being dressed in a shell-hole by his
+servant, was hit again and killed.
+
+Some weeks later all that remained of the regiment was drawn out to a
+little village some miles from Amiens, and very similar to the one we
+had occupied near Cressy.  We were taken to it in motor-'buses for the
+men were too exhausted to march, and the days spent there were days of
+great delight.  We had a glorious, crowded-out service on the Sunday. It
+was both a thanksgiving and a memorial service, and I spoke to the men
+on "The Passing of the Angels."
+
+"When the music ceased," I said, "and the herald-angels departed, the
+sky became very empty, cold and gray to the Shepherds; and they said one
+to another, 'let us now go even unto Bethlehem.'  And they went and
+found out Jesus.  If the angels had stayed the shepherds would have
+stayed with them.  The angels had to come to point them to Jesus but,
+that done, they had to go away to make the shepherds desire Jesus and
+seek Him.  'When the half-gods go the gods arrive.'  The angels had to
+make room for Jesus and the second best had to yield place to the best.
+When John the Baptist was killed his disciples went in their sorrow to
+Jesus; and having lost our noble comrades, we must go to Him also.  The
+best in our friends came from Jesus as the sweet light of the moon comes
+from the sun; and we must go to the Source.  If we find and keep to
+Jesus, sooner or later we shall find our lost friends again, for 'them
+also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him!'"
+
+In some such words I tried to comfort those who had left their comrades
+behind in the graves on the Somme; for I know how deeply they felt the
+loss.  During the week we had dinner parties, and all kinds of jolly
+social intercourse.  It was amusing to see the delight everyone felt at
+having a bed to sleep in. "Look Padre, at these white sheets," an
+officer cried as I passed his window.  He was as merry over them as if a
+rich maiden aunt had remembered him in her will.  Some got "leave" home,
+and were so frankly joyful about it that it made the rest of us both
+glad and envious. We made up for it somewhat by getting leave to spend
+an occasional day in Amiens.  There I went into the glorious cathedral.
+Almost the whole of the front was sandbagged, but even thus, it was a
+"thing of beauty" and has become for me a "joy forever."
+
+Except Rouen Cathedral I have seen nothing to equal it.  Notre Dame,
+with its invisible yet clinging tapestry of history, is more deeply
+moving.  But it is sadder--more sombre. Something of the ugliness and
+tragedy of by-gone days peep out in it; but Amiens Cathedral is a thing
+of pure joy and beauty.  It suggests fairies, while Notre Dame suggests
+goblins.
+
+While I was looking at its glorious rose-windows which were casting
+their rich colors on the pillars, a father and his two children came in.
+The man and son dipped their fingers in the shell of holy water, crossed
+their foreheads and breasts with the water, and were passing on; but the
+little girl who was too short to reach the shell, took hold of her
+father's arm and pulled him back.  She, too, wished to dip her fingers
+in holy water, and make the sign of the cross over her mind and heart.
+The father yielded to her importunity and touched her hand with his wet
+fingers. She made the sacred sign and was satisfied. The father and son
+had remembered their own needs but forgotten the child's.
+
+After all the tragic happenings on the Somme why should this little
+incident linger in my memory like a primrose in a crater?  Did it not
+linger _because_ of the tragedy of the preceding weeks?  I had been
+living weeks together without seeing a child and after the slaughter of
+youth which I had witnessed the sight of a child in a cathedral was
+inexpressibly beautiful.  The father's neglect of its finer needs gave
+me pain.  We have lost so many young men, that every child and youth
+left to us ought to be cared for as the apple of our eye.  We have lost
+more than our young men. We have lost those who would have been their
+children.  The little ones who might have been, have gone to their
+graves with their fathers.
+
+The old recruiting cry, "the young and single first" was necessary from
+a military standpoint but, from a merely human point of view, I could
+never see much justice in it.  The young had no responsibility, direct
+or indirect, for the war.  They were given life and yet before they
+could taste it, they were called upon to die in our behalf.  We who are
+older have tasted of life and love; the residue of our years will be
+much the same as those that have gone before; there will be little of
+surprise or newness of experience.  Perhaps, too, we have living
+memorials of ourselves, so that if we die, our personality and name will
+still live on. Our death will only be partial.  While William Pitt lived
+could it be said that Lord Chatham had died?  His body was dead, truly,
+but his spirit found utterance in the British House of Commons every
+time his son spoke, and Napoleon felt the strength of his arm as truly
+did Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham.  I should not have mourned the
+loss of the young Scot and the Greek so much, had they left to the world
+some image and likeness of themselves.  In dying, they gave more than
+themselves to death;
+
+    "Those who would have been
+    Their sons they gave--their immortality."
+
+
+After a summer on the Somme, I have come to understand something of how
+fear of the devouring maw of Time became almost an obsession with
+Shakespeare.  Death had taken from him some of the dearest intimates of
+his heart, and taken them young.  And so, like the sound of a
+funeral-bell echoing down the lane where lovers walk, there is heard
+through all his sonnets and poems of love the approaching footsteps of
+death.  Sometimes the footsteps sound faintly, but they are seldom
+absent. How then would he have felt in a war like this, in which the
+"young and single" have gone out by the hundred thousand to prematurely
+die?
+
+Others, however, who have given their lives were married men, and they
+have left images of themselves in trust to the nation.  We know the last
+thoughts of a dying father.  Captain Falcon Scott as he lay dying at the
+South Pole has expressed them for all time.  "Take care of the boy," he
+said, "there should be good stuff in him."  He found comfort in the
+reflection that he would, though he died, live on in his son; but he was
+saddened by the thought that the son would have to face the battle of
+life without a father to back him up.  The boy would therefore need
+special "care."
+
+On the evening of the first battle of the Somme I spoke to a young
+officer as he lay in a bed at the Field Ambulance.  He had lost his
+right arm and he told me how it had happened.  He was charging across No
+Man's Land when a shell cut it off near the shoulder, and flung it
+several yards away.  As he saw it fall to the ground the sight so
+overcame him that he cried aloud in distress, "Oh my arm! My beautiful
+arm."  He was still mourning its loss, so, to comfort him, I told him
+that Nelson lost _his_ right arm and won the Battle of Trafalgar after
+he had lost it.  Like Nelson, I told him, he would learn to write with
+his left hand and still do a man's job.  He would not be useless in life
+as he feared. When the children of our dead soldiers charge across No
+Man's Land in the battle of life they will think of their lost fathers,
+and the agonizing cry of the young wounded soldier will rise to their
+lips, "Oh my arm, my beautiful arm."  The State is providing artificial
+arms for our wounded soldiers.  Will it be a right arm to the children
+of its dead?  Will it be a father to the fatherless and a husband to the
+widow?  Unless it is ready for this sacred task, it had no right to ask
+for and accept the lives of these men.
+
+The State, with the help of the Church, must resolve that no child shall
+suffer because its father was a hero and patriot.  The State must help
+the child to the shell of holy water without the little one having to
+pull at its arm to remind it of its duties.  If the children of our dead
+soldiers lack education, food, moral and spiritual guidance, or a proper
+start in life, no words will be condemnatory enough to adequately
+describe the nation's crime and ingratitude.  They are the sons and
+daughters of heroes and there "should be good stuff" in them.  It is the
+nation's privilege, as well as its duty, to take the place of their
+fathers.
+
+A few days later I walked into Arras from the neighboring village.
+There were guns all along the road, and there was not a house but bore
+the mark of shells.  Some of the civilians had remained, but these were
+mostly old people who could not settle elsewhere, and who preferred to
+die at home rather than live in a strange place.  One house impressed me
+greatly.  It had been badly damaged but, its garden was untouched and in
+it were half a dozen rose-trees.  It was the beginning of spring, and
+each tree was covered over with sacking to preserve it from the cold and
+fragments of shells.  The owner did not care sufficiently for his own
+life to move away, but he cared for the life of his roses.  And so, when
+the summer came there were roses in at least one garden in Arras.
+
+The noise of the guns was terrific and the old man had to live in the
+cellar, but he found leisure of soul to cultivate his roses.  His action
+was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in the entire war.  The
+children of our homes are more beautiful than Arras roses, and more
+difficult to rear.  May we trust our country not to neglect them?  Will
+she save them from the mark of the shell, and help them to grow up to a
+full and perfect loveliness? Our dying soldiers have trusted her to do
+it. From their graves they plead,
+
+    "If ye break faith with us who die,
+    We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
+    In Flanders fields."
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XVI*
+
+                         *A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE*
+
+
+It was in a ruined village behind the trenches.  A fatigue party had
+just come out of the line, and was on its way to rest-billets in the
+next village.  The men were tired so they sat down to rest in the
+deserted street.  Suddenly, a scream, as from a disembodied spirit,
+pierced the air.  There was a crash, a cloud of smoke, and five men lay
+dead on the pavement, and twelve wounded. Next morning I was asked to
+bury one of the dead.  Under a glorious July sky a Roman Catholic
+chaplain and I cycled between desolate fields into the village.  A
+rifleman guided us down a communication-trench till we came to the
+cemetery.  It was a little field fenced with trees.  There we found a
+Church of England chaplain.  He and the Catholic chaplain had two men
+each to bury.
+
+A burial party was at work on the five graves. It was the fatigue party
+of the evening before, and the men were preparing the last resting place
+of those who had died at their side. They worked rapidly, for all the
+morning the village had been under a bombardment which had not as yet
+ceased.  Before they had finished they were startled by the familiar but
+fatal scream of a shell and threw themselves on the ground.  It burst a
+short distance away without doing harm, and the soldiers went on with
+their work, as if nothing had happened. When the graves were ready, two
+of the bodies were brought out and lowered with ropes. The Church of
+England chaplain read the burial service over them, and we all stood
+round as mourners.  Two more bodies were brought out and we formed a
+circle round them while the Roman Catholic chaplain read the burial
+service of his Church--chiefly, in Latin.  There now remained but one,
+and he, in turn, was quietly lowered into his grave.  He was still
+wearing his boots and uniform and was wrapped around with his blanket.
+
+    "No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
+    Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
+    But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
+    With his martial cloak around him."
+
+
+All his comrades who had been with him in the dread hour of death were
+mourning by his grave, and standing with them were his officer and two
+chaplains.  I read the full service as it is given in our Prayer Book.
+It was all that one could do for him.  The Catholic chaplain had
+sprinkled consecrated water on the bodies and I sprinkled consecrated
+soil.  Was it not in truth holy soil?  Behind me was one long, common
+grave in which lay buried a hundred and ten French soldiers; "110
+Braves" was the inscription the cross bore.  In front of me were three
+rows of graves in which were lying British soldiers.  French and British
+soldiers were mingling their dust.  In death, as in life, they were not
+divided.
+
+I felt led to offer no prayer for the lad at my feet, nor for his dead
+comrades.  He needed no prayer of mine; rather did I need his.  He was
+safe home in port.  The storm had spent itself and neither rock, nor
+fog, nor fire would trouble him again.  His living comrades and I were
+still out in the storm, battling towards the land.  He had no need of
+us, but his parents and comrades had need of him.  We were there to pay
+a tribute to his life and death, to pray for his loved ones, and to
+learn how frail we are and how dependent upon Him who is beyond the
+reach of the chances and changes of this mortal life.
+
+I was half way through the recital of the last prayer--"We bless Thy
+Holy Name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and
+fear"--when that fatal, well-known scream, as of a vulture darting down
+on its prey, again tore the air.  The men, as they had been taught,
+dropped to the ground like stones.  My office demanded that I should
+continue the prayer, and leave with God the decision as to how it should
+end.  There was a crash, and the branches of the trees overhead trembled
+as some fragments of shell smote them.  But there was nothing more.  The
+men rose as quickly as they had fallen, and all were reverently standing
+to attention before the last words of the prayer found utterance.  The
+graves were filled in and we went our several ways.  Next day white
+crosses were placed over the five mounds, and we bade them a long and
+last farewell.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XVII*
+
+                         *A SOLDIER'S CALVARY*
+
+
+There is one afternoon on the Somme that stands out in my memory like a
+dark hill when the sun has sunk below the verge and left a lingering bar
+of red across the sky.  It was a Calvary thick with the bodies of our
+men.  I was looking for the Westminsters and they were difficult to
+find.  I passed over one trench and reached another. There I asked the
+men if they knew where the Westminsters were, and they expressed the
+opinion that the regiment was in the trench ahead.  There was no
+communication trench so I followed a fatigue-party for some distance
+which was marching in single file, and carrying hand-grenades to the
+firing line.  They turned to the right and I kept straight on. Every few
+yards I passed rifles reversed and fastened in the ground by their
+bayonets.  They marked the graves of the dead.  A few soldiers, but
+newly killed, were still lying out.
+
+At last I reached a trench and found in it a number of Westminsters.
+They were signalers on special duty, and they told me that I had already
+passed the regiment on my left. The poor fellows were in a sad plight.
+The weather was cold and they were without shelter.  There were German
+dug-outs but they were partly blown in and full of German dead. The
+stench that rose from these, and from the shallow graves around, was
+almost unbearable. Yet there amid falling shells, the lads had to remain
+day and night.  Their rations were brought to them, but as every ounce
+of food and drop of water, in addition to the letters from home, had to
+be brought on pack mules through seven or eight miles of field tracks in
+which the mules struggled on up to the knees in sticky mud and sometimes
+up to the belly, it was impossible for the regiment to receive anything
+beyond water and "iron rations," i.e., hard biscuits.  Water was so
+precious that not a drop could be spared to wash faces or clean teeth
+with, and I always took my own water-bottle and food, to avoid sharing
+the scanty supplies of the officers.  After a little time spent with the
+signalers I moved up the trench and looked in at the little dug-out of
+the Colonel commanding.  All the officers present, bearded almost beyond
+recognition, were sitting on the floor.  The enemy had left a small red
+electric light, which added an almost absurd touch of luxury to the
+miserable place.  Farther up the trench I found the Brigade Staff
+Captain in a similar dug-out and after making inquiries as to the
+position of the Queen's Westminster Regiment which was my objective, I
+left to find it; for the sun was already setting. The path was across
+the open fields, and the saddest I have ever trod.  I was alone and had
+but little idea of location, but it was impossible to miss the path.  On
+the right and left, it was marked at every few steps with dead men.
+Most of them were still grasping their rifles.  They had fallen forward
+as they rushed over the ground, and their faces--their poor, blackened,
+lipless faces--were towards the foe.  There had, as yet, been no
+opportunity to bury them for the ground was still being shelled and the
+burial parties had been all too busily engaged in other parts of the
+field.  I longed to search for their identity discs that I might know
+who they were and make a note of the names; but I had to leave it to the
+burial party.  I was already feeling sick with the foul smells in the
+trench and the sights on the way, and lacked the strength to look for
+the discs around the wrists and necks of the poor, decomposed bodies.
+It had to be left to men of the burial party whose nerves were somewhat
+more hardened to the task by other experiences of the kind.  It was a
+new Calvary on which I was standing.  These poor bodies miles from home
+and with no woman's hands to perform the last offices of affection were
+lying there as the price of the world's freedom.
+
+Would that all who talk glibly of freedom and justice might have seen
+what I saw on that dreary journey, that they might the better realize
+the spiritual depths of liberty and righteousness, and the high cost at
+which they are won for the race.  It is fatally easy to persuade
+ourselves that there is no need for us to tread the bitter path of
+suffering and death--that we can achieve freedom and justice by being
+charitable, and by talking amiably to our enemies.  We try to believe
+that they are as anxious to achieve liberty for the world as we are,
+that they are striving to bind mankind in fetters of iron, only through
+lack of knowledge as to our intentions.  Their hearts and intentions are
+good but they are misled, and after a little talk with them around a
+table they would put off their "shining armor" and become angels of
+light carrying palm branches in place of swords and fetters.
+
+This is a mighty pleasant theory, only it is not true; and we cannot get
+rid of evil by ignoring it, nor of the devil by buying him a new suit.
+There are men willing to die to destroy liberty, just as there are
+others willing to die in its defense.  It is not that they do not
+understand liberty.  They _do_, and that is why they wish to destroy it.
+It is the enemy of their ideal.  Whether liberty will survive or not,
+depends upon whether there are more men inspired to die in defending
+liberty, than there are willing to die in opposing it.  A thing lives
+while men love it sufficiently well to die for it. We get what we
+deserve; and readiness to die for it is the price God has put on
+liberty.
+
+Words are things too cheap to buy it.  When someone suggested
+establishing a new religion to supersede Christianity, Voltaire is
+reported to have asked if the founder were willing to be crucified for
+it?  Otherwise, it would stand no chance of success.  It was a deep
+criticism, and showed that Voltaire was no fool.  Blood is the test, not
+words.  A nation can only achieve liberty when it is determined to be
+free or die. "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it."
+"Never man spake" as Christ spake, but He did not save the world by
+talking to it, but by dying for it.  Outpoured blood, not outpoured
+words, is the proof of moral convictions and the means of their
+propaganda; our soldiers may not be learned in some things, but they
+have learned _that_.  They know the cause will win which has most moral
+power, and that the cause with most moral strength will prove itself to
+be the one with most martyrs. And the side with most men ready to be
+martyrs will outstay the other.  The spirit of martyrdom, not
+negotiation, is the path to liberty and peace.  You cannot negotiate
+with a tiger.  The dispute is too simple for negotiation. You have to
+kill the tiger, or yourself be killed.
+
+While I was on leave, a man told me that he had asked some soldiers from
+the Front why they were fighting, and they could not tell him.
+Probably.  All the deepest things are of life beyond telling.  No true
+man can tell why he loves his wife or children.  This trust in words, in
+being able to "tell why," is truly pathetic.  I would not trust a wife's
+love if she could tell her husband exactly _why_ she loved him; nor
+would I trust our soldiers not to turn tail in battle if they could
+_tell_ just why they are fighting.  They cannot _tell_, but with their
+poor lipless faces turned defiantly against the foe they can _show_ why
+they are fighting. Let those who want to know the soldiers' reason _why_
+they fight go and see them there on the blasted field of battle, not ask
+them when they come home on leave.  The lips of a soldier perish
+_first_, as his dead body lies exposed on the battlefield; his rifle he
+clutches to the last; and it is a lesson terrible enough for even the
+densest talker to understand.
+
+The dead lads lying out in the open with their rifles pointing towards
+the enemy voice their reason why loud enough for the deaf to hear and
+the world to heed.  Ideals must be died for if they are to be realized
+on earth, for they have bitter enemies who stick at nothing.  And we
+have to defend our ideal with our lives or be cravens and let it perish.
+
+History, with unimportant variations, is constantly repeating itself;
+and in nothing is it so consistent as in the price it puts on liberty.
+The lease of liberty runs out; the lease has to be renewed, and it is
+renewed by suffering and martyrdom.  The dear dead lads whom I saw on
+that terrible afternoon were renewing the lease.  With their bodies they
+had marked out a highway over which the peoples of the earth may march
+to freedom and to justice.
+
+The view, all too common, that our soldiers regard the war as a kind of
+picnic, and an attack as a sort of rush for the goal in a game of
+football, is false--false as sin.  It is a view blind to the whole
+psychology of the war, and misses the meaning of our soldiers' gayety as
+much as it ignores their fear and sorrow.  The trenches are a Gethsemane
+to them and their prayer is, "Our Father, all things are possible unto
+Thee: take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what
+Thou wilt."
+
+One day, when I went into a mess-room in which letters were being
+censored, an officer said to me, "Read this, Padre, there's a reference
+to you, and a candid expression of a man's attitude towards religion."
+
+I took the letter and it read: "Our chaplain isn't far out when he says,
+in his book, that though we may speak lightly of the church we don't
+think or speak lightly of Christ. However careless we may be when we are
+out of the trenches, when we are in we all pray. There is nothing else
+we can do."
+
+I have been eighteen months with a fighting regiment on the Front, and I
+have never spoken to any officer who did not regard it as a mathematical
+certainty that, unless he happened to fall sick or be
+transferred--neither of which he expected--he would be either killed or
+wounded.  And I agreed with him without saying it.  He does not even
+hope to escape wounds.  They are inevitable if he stays long enough; for
+one battle follows another and his time comes.  He only hopes to escape
+death and the more ghastly wounds.  He hopes the wound when it comes
+will be a "cushy one."  The men take the same view.  The period before
+going into the trenches, or into battle, is to them like the Garden of
+Gethsemane was to Christ; they are "exceeding sorrowful" and in their
+presence I have often felt as one who stood "as it were, a stone's
+throw" from them. They are going out with the expectation of meeting
+death.
+
+On the 1st of July, 1916, twenty officers in our regiment went over the
+top.  Nineteen were killed or wounded and the one who returned to the
+regiment was suffering from shell-shock and had to be sent home.
+Although our losses are much lower now, the officers and men experience
+the agony and bloody sweat of Gethsemane rather than the pleasure of a
+picnic in Epping Forest.  This explains, too, their gayety.  It is the
+happiness of men who know that they are doing their bit for the world's
+good, and playing the man, not the cad.  The rise of happiness into
+gayety is the natural reaction from the sorrow and alarm which have been
+clouding their hearts.  In peace time they will never know either the
+intensity of joy or sorrow they know now.  A man never feels so truly
+humorous as when he is sad.  Humor is a kind of inverted sadness. The
+most exquisite sadness produces the most exquisite humor as the deepest
+wells give the sweetest, purest and coldest water.
+
+    Tears and laughter are never far from one another,
+    The heart overflows on one side, and then on the other.
+
+
+Our soldiers' minds are not filled with thoughts of Germans, but with
+thoughts of the friends they have left behind them.  Nor do they often
+think of killing Germans.  They neither think so much of the Germans nor
+so bitterly of them as do the people at home. The Germans have not the
+same prominence in the picture.  Deeds relieve their emotions in regard
+to the Germans and leave their hearts open for the things and folk they
+love.
+
+It is commonly supposed (and this idea is fostered by some war
+correspondents), that when our men go over the top they are possessed
+with a mad lust to kill Germans.  The ultimate aim of a general planning
+a battle is to kill Germans no doubt, for that is the only way to
+achieve victory; and if the Germans do not want to be killed they know
+what to do. Let them surrender or retire.  The private agrees with the
+general in the necessity for killing Germans, but that is not what he is
+thinking of when he goes over the top; nor is it what we should be
+thinking of in his place. He is thinking of the Germans killing him.
+Life is sweet at nineteen or one-and-twenty.  It pleads to be spared a
+little longer.  A lad does not want to die; and as he goes over the
+parapet he is thinking less of taking German lives than of losing his
+own.  He knows that German heads will not fit English shoulders, and
+that, however many enemy lives he may take, none of them will restore
+his own if he loses it, as he is quite likely to do.  He is going out to
+be mutilated or to die.  That is his standpoint whatever may be the
+general's or the war-correspondent's.  He goes for his country's sake
+and the right.  It is his duty, and there is an end of it.
+
+Most of the killing in modern war is done by the artillery and
+machine-guns.  Comparatively few men have seen the face of an enemy they
+know themselves to have killed.  A regiment goes out to be shot at,
+rather than to shoot.  Unless this simple fact be grasped, the mentality
+of the soldier cannot be understood. The lust for killing Germans would
+never take a man out of his dug-out; but the love of his country and the
+resolve to do his duty will take him out and lead him over the top.  It
+is what he volunteered for, but it goes hard when the time comes for all
+that.
+
+The unburied men I saw had, but a short while ago, no idea of becoming
+soldiers.  They were the light of a home and the stay of a business.
+With that they were content.  But the challenge came; and they went out
+to defend the right against the wrong--the true against the false.  They
+toiled up a new Calvary "with the cross that turns not back," and now
+they lie buried in a strange land.  They have lost all for themselves,
+but they have gained all for us and for those who will come after us.
+Yet although they saved others, themselves they could not save.
+
+
+
+
+                                *XVIII*
+
+                          *THE HOSPITAL TRAIN*
+
+
+We were carried from our regiments to the hospital in ambulance cars.
+I, and several others, had trench fever. Some were suffering from gas
+poisoning.  One lovely boy--for he was nothing more--was near to death
+with "mustard" gas.  The doctor at the Dressing Station had opened a
+vein and bled him of a pint of blood.  It was the only hope of saving
+him.  But as the car bumped over the rough roads and the gas in his
+lungs grew more suffocating he almost despaired of reaching the hospital
+alive.  Others were wounded; and one had appendicitis.  After a period
+in hospital, during which we were honored with a visit by General Byng,
+it was decided that we should go to the Base.  We lay down on
+stretchers, and orderlies carried us to the waiting cars.  At the
+station we were lifted into the hospital train.  The racks had been
+taken down and stretchers put in their places. These were reserved for
+the "lying cases."  The "sitting cases" occupied the seats--one to each
+corner.  It was afternoon and as soon as the train began to move tea was
+served.  The train sped on and, about sun-set, a most excellent dinner
+was provided by the orderlies on board.
+
+It was the time of the new moon.  "Keep the window open," said one, "it
+is unlucky to see the new moon through glass, and we need all the good
+luck we can get," and he avoided looking through the glass until he had
+seen the moon through the open window.  We chatted, read our magazines,
+or slept--just as we felt inclined.  The night wore on and at about two
+o'clock we reached Rouen.  Cars rushed us to one of the Red Cross
+hospitals.  A doctor slipped out of bed, examined our cards, decided in
+which wards we should be put, and orderlies led or carried us thither.
+A nurse showed each of us to his room.  We were got to bed and another
+nurse brought some tea.  Next morning we were examined and put down for
+removal across the Channel.
+
+The nurses are radiant as sunshine, and diffuse a spirit of merriment
+throughout the hospital.  It was a pure joy to be under their care.  At
+three o'clock the following morning, without previous warning, a nurse
+came and awakened us.  We had half an hour to dress. Another nurse then
+came round with a dainty breakfast.  We were then put into cars and
+taken to the hospital train.  It left as dawn was breaking, and we were
+on our way to "Blighty."  We had a comfortable journey and reached Havre
+about nine.  Orderlies carried us on board ship and we were taken to our
+cots.  Breakfast was served immediately.  We felt a huge content; and
+hoped to be across by night.  But the ship remained by the quay all day.
+In the evening it moved out of the harbor and lay near its mouth.
+Towards midnight it slipped its anchor and headed for home.
+
+All had received life-belts and a card directing us which boat to make
+for, should the ship be torpedoed.  Mine was "Boat 5, Starboard."  My
+neighbor on the right had been on a torpedoed boat once and had no
+desire to be on another.  The lights of the ship were obscured or put
+out, and we silently stole over the waters towards the much desired
+haven.  There was no sound but the steady thump of the engines, and we
+were soon asleep.  Shortly after dawn we awoke to find ourselves in
+Southampton Water.  A water-plane drew near, settled like a gull on the
+water, and then plowed its way through the waves with the speed of a
+motor-boat.
+
+About nine o'clock we were carried off the boat to the station.  Women
+workers supplied us with telegraph forms, confectionery and cigarettes;
+orderlies brought us tea.  We were then taken to the train.  It was even
+more comfortable than the hospital trains in France; and we had women
+nurses.  On each side of the train, for its full length, were
+comfortable beds and we were able to sit up or recline at our pleasure.
+Lunch was served on board, and of a character to tempt the most ailing
+man.  No shortage of food is allowed to obtain on the hospital train.
+It has the first claim on the food supply and it has the first claim to
+the railroad.  It stops at no station except for its own convenience.
+Even the King's train stops to let the hospital train pass.
+
+We were under the care of a nurse who had reached middle life.  She had
+been on a torpedoed hospital ship! on one that struck a mine without
+bursting it; and on another that collided with a destroyer in the dark.
+She was greatly disappointed at the decision which had removed nurses
+from the hospital ships because of the danger from submarines.  She
+fully appreciated the chivalry of the men who would not let their women
+be drowned; but it had robbed the women of a chance of proving their
+devotion, and she could not see why the men should do all the dying.
+The women were ready to meet death with the men and as their mates and
+equals.  Their place was with the wounded whatever might befall, and
+they were ready.
+
+Hospital trains have run daily for three years now, and human nature can
+get used to anything.  We thought, therefore, that the people would have
+become used to the hospital train.  But greater surprise never gladdened
+a man's heart than the one which awaited us as we steamed out of
+Southampton.  All the women and children by the side of the railway were
+at their windows or in their gardens, waving their hands to us.  And all
+the way to Manchester the waving of welcoming hands never ceased.  At
+every station the porters doffed their caps to the hospital train as it
+sped past.  There was not a station large or small that did not greet us
+with a group of proud smiling faces.  Our eyes were glued to the windows
+all the way.  For one day in our lives, at least, we were kings, and our
+procession through "England's green and pleasant land" was a royal one.
+We passed through quiet country districts but at every wall or fence
+there were happy faces.  We wondered where they all came from, and how
+they knew of our coming.  There were tiny children sitting on all the
+railway fences waving hands to us. One little girl of four or five was
+sitting on the fence by a country station and waving her little hand.
+We had not seen English children for months and Pope Gregory spoke the
+truth ages ago when he said that they are "not Angles but Angels."  The
+sight of them after so long an absence was as refreshing to the spirit
+as the sight of violets and primroses after a long and bitter winter.
+
+At Birmingham the train made its only stop. Men and women of the St.
+John Ambulance Association boarded the train and supplied us with tea;
+and, as the train moved out, stood at attention on the platform.  At
+Manchester we received a warm welcome that told us we were in
+Lancashire.  Men and women helped us to the waiting cars and handed cups
+of tea to us.  It was raining of course--being Manchester--but as we
+passed near a railway arch a waiting crowd rushed out into the rain and
+startled us with a cry of welcome which was also a cry of pain.  Most of
+the men in the cars were Lancashire lads and in the welcome given them
+there were tears as well as smiles. Lancashire has a great heart as well
+as a long head. It suffers with those who suffer and the cry of the
+heart was heard in the welcome of its voice.  There was a welcome too,
+at the door of the hospital and at the door of each ward. Water was
+brought to our bedside, and then a tray bearing a well-cooked dinner.
+
+We had reached home.
+
+
+
+
+                                 *XIX*
+
+                         *AFTER WINTER, SPRING*
+
+
+A man's heart must be dead within him if, under the summer sun, he can
+look on the desolated ground of the Western battle-front without feeling
+emotions of joy and hope.  In the winter-time the clumps of blasted
+trees looked like groups of forsaken cripples.  Their broken branches
+stood out against the gray sky in utter nakedness, as if appealing to
+heaven against the inhumanity of man.  In a way, it was more depressing
+to pass a ruined wood than a destroyed village. Some of the trees had
+all their limbs shattered; others, thicker than a man's body, were cut
+clean through the middle; others, again, were torn clean up by the roots
+and lay sprawling on the ground.  It seemed impossible that spring could
+ever again clothe them in her garments of gladdening green.  We imagined
+the trees would appear amid the sunshine of the summer black, gaunt and
+irreconcilable; pointing their mangled stumps towards those who had done
+them such irreparable wrong and, as the wind whistled through them,
+calling on all decent men to rise up and avenge them of their enemies.
+
+But, suddenly, we found that the reconciling spring was back in the
+woods exercising all her oldtime witchery.  Each broken limb was covered
+with fresh foliage and each scarred stump put out sprouts of green.  The
+broken but blossoming woods grew into a picture of Hope, infinitely more
+sublime and touching than the one to which Watts gave the name. It was a
+picture drawn and colored by the finger of God, and it made the fairest
+of man's handiwork look weak and incomplete.  Uprooted trees lay on the
+ground in full blossom, and shell-lopped branches again took on the form
+of beauty.  The transformation was wonderful to behold.
+
+And it all happened in a week.  When our men went into the trenches the
+trees were black, bare and bruised, but when they came out of the front
+line into the support-trenches the wood behind them was a tender green
+and had grown curved and symmetrical.  It seemed as if the fairies of
+our childhood had returned to the earth and were dwelling in the wood.
+Although two long-range naval guns lay hidden behind it, which, with
+deep imprecations opened their terrible mouths to hurl fiery
+thunderbolts at the enemy, the fairies seemed unafraid and daily
+continued to weave for the trees beautiful garments of leaf and blossom.
+I have seen nothing that brought such gladness to both officers and men.
+A new spirit seemed abroad. We were in a new atmosphere and a new world.
+The war seemed already won, and the work of renewal and reconstruction
+begun.
+
+And now the summer had done for the ground what the spring did for the
+trees.  One Sunday, I was to hold a service on ground that was, in the
+springtime, No Man's Land. Having ample time I left the dusty road and
+walked across the broken fields through which our front-line trenches
+had run.  There were innumerable shell holes and I had to pick my way
+with care through the long grass and lingering barbed wire.  I had been
+over the ground on the day following the advance. Then it was a sea of
+mud, with vast breakwaters of rusty barbed wire.  Now, however, Nature's
+healing hand was at work.  Slowly but surely the trenches were falling
+in, and the shell-holes filling up.  The lips of the craters and
+trenches were red as a maiden's--red with the poppies which come to
+them.  Here and there were large patches of gold and white where unseen
+hands had sown the mud with dog-daisies.  There were other patches all
+ablaze with the red fire of the poppies, and as the slender plants
+swayed in the wind, the fire leaped up or died down.
+
+When the war broke out I was in "Poppyland" near Cromer, in East Anglia.
+There I first heard the tramp of armed men on the way to France, and
+there first caught the strain of "Tipperary"--the farewell song of the
+First Seven Divisions--a strain I can never hear now without having to
+stifle back my tears. As I passed by these patches of blood-red poppies
+I thought of those old and stirring days at Cromer when we watched a
+regiment of the original Expeditionary Force singing "Tipperary" as it
+marched swingingly through the narrow streets.  The declaration of war
+was hourly expected and the pier and some of the Sunday-school rooms
+were given to the soldiers for billets.  By morning every soldier had
+vanished and we could only guess where, but a remark made by one of them
+to another lingers still.  They were standing apart, and watching the
+fuss the people were making over the regiment.
+
+"Yes," he said to his comrade, "they think a great deal of the soldiers
+in time of war, but they don't think much of us in days of peace."
+
+The remark was so true that it cut like a knife and the wound rankles
+yet.  I have often wondered what became of the lad that went out to
+France to the horrors of war, with such memories of our attitude towards
+him in the times of peace.  I hope he lived long enough to see our
+repentance.  His memory haunted me among the poppies of Beaurains.  In
+the English Poppyland there was nothing to compare with the red-coated
+army of poppies now occupying our old front line.  In these trenches our
+gallant men had for nearly three years fought and bled, and it seemed as
+if every drop of blood poured out by them had turned into a glorious and
+triumphant poppy.
+
+The spring and summer have taught me afresh that there is in our lives a
+Power that is not ourselves.  It is imminent in us and in all things,
+yet transcends all.  "Change and decay in all around we see," and still
+there is One who changes not; He "_from_ everlasting _to_ everlasting is
+God."  He is the fountain of eternal life that no drought can touch.  He
+heals the broken tree and the broken heart. He clothes the desolate
+fields of war with the golden corn of peace, and in the trenches that
+war has scored across the souls of men, he plants the rich poppies of
+memory.  He drives away the icy oppression of winter with the breath or
+spring, and in His mercy assuages "the grief that saps the mind for
+those that here we see no more."
+
+He who turns rain-mists into rainbows and brings out of mud scarlet
+poppies and white-petaled daisies without a speck of dirt upon them, is
+at work in human life.  Out of mud He has formed the poppy and out of
+the dust the body of man.  Who then can set Him limits when He works in
+the finer material of man's soul?  Eye hath not seen nor heart conceived
+the beauty that will come forth when His workmanship is complete.  "If
+God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is
+cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little
+faith" who were made for immortality?  His ways are past finding out,
+but they are good.  He puts out the sun but brings forth millions of
+stars in its stead.  At His call they come flocking forth as doves to
+their windows.  He blinds Milton but brings into his soul a flood of
+light such as never shone on sea or land, and in its rays he sees
+Paradise, lost and regained.  He shuts Bunyan in a noisome prison, and
+closes against him the door to his beloved Bedford, but He opens to him
+a magic window that looks on heaven, and the years pass swiftly as he
+watches the progress of the pilgrims towards the Celestial City.  In the
+mud that has been stained and even saturated with the life-blood of our
+soldiers, He has made poppies to spring to loveliness.  It is a parable
+He is speaking to us, that the heart of man may feel and believe that
+which it is beyond the power of the mind to grasp, or the tongue to
+explain.
+
+The wounds of France are deep and deadly but they are not self-inflicted
+and they will heal. She will blossom again with a glory greater and
+purer than all her former glories.  She is even now finding her soul,
+and revealing a moral beauty and endurance such as few, even of her
+dearest friends, could have foreseen or foretold.  For ashes, God has
+given her beauty, and it is worth all her suffering.  Not Voltaire, but
+Joan of Arc is her pride to-day.  When I was in Rouen I saw the fresh
+flowers which the people daily place on the spot where she died.  France
+knows where her strength lies. Over Napoleon she has built a magnificent
+tomb of marble, but in it, she has not placed a single flower.  As I
+walked through it, some time ago, I felt depressed.  It made me shiver.
+It is magnificent, but dead.  One of Joan of Arc's living flowers would
+be worth the whole pile.  It is the most tremendous sermon ever preached
+on the vanity of military glory and the emptiness of genius when
+uninspired by moral and spiritual worth.  France knows. She gives Joan
+of Arc a flower, but Napoleon a stone.  France was never so great as
+now, and never of such supreme importance to the world.  We could not do
+without her.  On her coins she represents herself as a Sower that goes
+forth sowing.  It is a noble ideal, and truly, where she scatters her
+seeds of thought the fair flowers of liberty, equality and fraternity
+spring up as poppies spring, where the blood of our soldiers has watered
+her fields. France is the fair Sower among the nations, and it will be
+our eternal glory that when she was suddenly and murderously attacked in
+her fields by her brutal and envious neighbor--who shamelessly stamps a
+bird of prey on his coins for _his_ symbol, and a skull and cross-bones
+on his soldiers' headgear as the expression of his ambition--England
+came to her rescue, and not in vain.  The German sword has gone deeply
+into the heart of France, but it will leave not a festering wound but a
+well of water at which mankind will drink and be refreshed. Wound the
+earth, and there springs forth water; wound France and there springs
+forth inspiration.  Trample France in the mud, and she comes forth pure
+again, passionate and free as a poppy blown by the summer wind.
+
+
+
+               _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+                     _*By CHAPLAIN THOMAS TIPLADY*_
+
+                           _*FIFTH EDITION*_
+
+
+                        *The Cross at the Front*
+
+                      Fragments from the Trenches.
+
+                      12mo.  Cloth.  _Net $1.00_.
+
+"'Vivid' is too dim a word to express the living pictures which this
+chaplain has seen in France.  Some of the chapters are among the finest
+pieces of pathos we have read anywhere.  Read the book and you will be a
+better man for all your tasks."--_Chicago Standard_.
+
+
+
+                       *The Soul of the Soldier*
+
+                     Echoes from the Western Front.
+
+                      12mo.  Cloth.  _Net $1.25_.
+
+An astonishing story Chaplain Tiplady here has to tell--one in which the
+very foundations of existence seem temporarily uprooted, and the world
+turned upside-down. Yet never, in the telling, does he lose the
+unswerving faith and cheering optimism which formed the prevailing note
+of THE CROSS AT THE FRONT, nor for a moment relaxes his belief that the
+cause of justice, truth and righteousness is that for which the Allied
+armies are now fighting.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER ***
+
+
+
+
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