EDGECUMBE'S MADNESS
'After all, it's nothing that one can talk much about,' he continued.
'I've become a Christian, that's all. But it's changed everything,
_everything_!'
'How?'
'I find it difficult to tell you, sir; but after I'd got back from the
Y.M.C.A. meeting I got hold of a New Testament, and for days I did
nothing but read it. You see it was a new book to me.'
He hesitated a few seconds and then went on. 'Loss of memory is a
curious thing, isn't it? I suppose I must have read it as a boy, just
as nearly all other English boys have, but it was a strange book to me.
I had not forgotten how to read, but I had forgotten what I had read.
I seemed to remember having heard of some one called Jesus Christ, but
He meant nothing to me. That was why the reading of the New Testament
was such a revelation.'
'Well, go on,' I said when he stopped.
'Presently I began to pray,' and his voice quivered as he spoke. 'It
was something new to me, but I did it almost unconsciously. You see,
when I left the Y.M.C.A. hut, I had a consciousness that there was a
God, but after I'd read the New Testament----; no I can't explain, I
can't find words! But I prayed, and I felt that God was listening to
me, and presently something new came into my life! It seemed to me as
though some part of my nature which had been lying dormant leapt into
life. I looked at things from a new standpoint. I saw new meanings in
everything. I knew that I was no longer an orphan in the world, but
that an Almighty, All-pervading God was my Father. That He cared for
me, that nothing was outside the realm of His love. I saw what God was
like, too. As I read that story of Jesus, and opened my life to Him,
my whole being was flooded with the consciousness that He cared for me,
that He watched me, and protected me. I saw, too, that there was no
death to the man in whom Christ lived. That the death of the body was
nothing because the man, the essential man lived on,--where I did not
know, did not care, because God was.'
He looked across the sunlit sea as he spoke, and I think he had almost
forgotten me.
'I had an awful time though,' he went on.
'How? In what way?'
'It was when I read the Sermon on the Mount. I could not for a time
see how a Christian could be a soldier. The whole idea of killing men
seemed a violation of Christianity.'
'It is,' I said.
'Yes, in a way you are right, and when I read those words of the Lord
telling us that we must love our enemies, and bless them that cursed
us, I was staggered. Where could there be any Christianity in great
guns hurling men by the thousand into eternity?'
'There isn't,' I persisted.
'That's what I believed at first, but I got deeper presently. I saw
that I had only been looking at the surface of things.'
'How?' I asked. I was curious to see how this man who had forgotten
his past would look at things.
'I found after a daily study of this great Magna Charta of Jesus
Christ, that He meant us to live by the law of love.'
'There's not much living by the law of love over yonder,' I said,
nodding in the direction of the Somme.
'Yes there is,' he cried. 'Oh, I realize the apparent anomaly of it
all, but don't you see? _It wouldn't be living by the law of love to
allow Germany to master the world by brute force_! This was the
situation. Prussianism wanted to dominate the world. The Germans
wanted to dethrone mercy, pity, kindness, love, and to set up a god who
spoke only by big guns. They wanted to rule the world by brute force,
devilry. Now then, what ought Christians to do? It would be poor
Christianity, it would be poor love to the world, to allow the devil to
reign.
'You see,' he went on, 'Christ's law is, not only that we must love our
enemies, but we must love our neighbours too. We must live for the
overthrow of wrong and the setting up of His Kingdom of truth, and
mercy, and love. But how? Here were Germany's rulers who were bent on
forcing war. They were moral madmen. They believed only in force.
For forty years they had been feeding on the poison of the thought that
might was right, and that it was right to do the thing you _could_ do.'
'And what is war but accepting that idea. It is simply overcoming
force by force. Where does Christianity come in?'
'You don't argue with a mad dog,' he said. 'You kill it. It's best
for the dog, and it's essential for the good of the community.
Germany's a mad dog, and this virus of war must be overcome, destroyed.
Oh, I've thought it all out. I believe in prayer. But it's no use
praying for good health while you live over foul drains, and it's just
as little praying for the destruction of such a system while you do
nothing. God won't do for us what we can do for ourselves. That's why
this is a holy war! That's why we must fight until Prussianism is
overthrown. We are paying a ghastly price, but it has to be paid. All
the same, we are fighting this war in the wrong way.'
'How?' I asked.
'Because we've forgotten God. Because, to a large extent, we regard
Him too much as a negligible quantity; because we have become too much
poisoned with the German virus.'
'I don't follow,' I said.
'I will try to make my meaning plain. In this war we have the
greatest, the holiest cause man ever fought for. We are struggling for
the liberty, the well-being of the world. We are fighting God's cause;
but we are not fighting it in God's way. We are fighting as if there
were no God.'
'How?'
'We started wrongly. Were our soldiers made to realize when they
joined the Army that they were going to fight for God? Did the
country, the Government ever tell them so? Oh, don't mistake me. I am
a private soldier, and I've lived with the Tommies for a long time, and
I know what kind of chaps they are. A finer lot of fellows never
lived. Braver than lions, and as tender as women many of them; but
does God count with the great bulk of them? Is Tommy filled with a
passion for God? Is he made to feel the necessity of God? Does Tommy
depend primarily on God for victory?'
'Well, do we depend on God for victory?' I asked.
'If God is not with us we are lost!' he said solemnly. 'And that's our
trouble. I've read a good many of our English papers, our leading
daily papers, and one might think from reading them that either there
was no God, or that He didn't count. "How are we to win this war, and
crush Germanism?" is the cry, and the answer of the British Government
and of the British press is, "Big guns, mountains of munitions,
conscription, national service, big battalions, and still more big
battalions!"'
'Well, isn't that the only way to win? What can we do without these
things?' I asked.
'Big guns by all means. Mountains of munitions certainly, and all the
other things; but they are not enough. If we forget God, we are lost.
And because we do not seek the help of God, we lose a great part of our
driving power.'
He was in deadly earnest. To him Christianity, religion was not some
formal thing, it was a great vital reality. He could not understand
faith in God, without seeking Him and depending on Him.
'We have chaplains,' I urged. 'We are supposed to be a Christian
people.'
'Yes, but do we depend on God? Do we seek Him humbly? When Tommy goes
into battle, does he go into it like Cromwell's soldiers determined to
fight in God's strength? Oh, yes, Tommy is a grand fellow, take him as
a whole, and there are tens of thousands of fine Christians in the
Army. But in the main Tommy is a fatalist; he does not pray, he does
not depend on God. I tell you, if this battle of the Somme were fought
in the strength of God, the Germans would have fled like sheep.'
'That's all nonsense,' I laughed. 'We can destroy brute force only by
brute force.'
'That's the German creed,' he cried, 'and that creed will be their
damnation.'
'No,' I said, more for the sake of argument than because I believed it,
'we shall beat them because we are better men, and because we shall be
able to "stick it" longer.'
'Have you been to Ypres?' he asked quickly.
'No,' I replied.
'I have. I was there for months. I read the accounts of the Ypres
battles while I was there, and I was able to study the _terrain_, the
conditions. And Germany ought to have won. Germany _would_ have won
too, if force was the deciding power. Why, think, they had four men to
our one, and a greater proportion of big guns and munitions. Humanly
speaking, the battle was theirs and then Calais was theirs and they
could dominate the Channel. But it is "Not by might, nor by power; but
by My Spirit, said the Lord of Hosts." I tell you, Sir, no one can
read the inwardness of the battles of Ypres without believing in
Almighty God. By the way, did you ever read Victor Hugo's _Les
Miserables_?'
'Years ago. What has that to do with it?'
'He describes the battle of Waterloo. He says that Napoleon by every
human law ought to have won it. But Hugo says this: "Napoleon lost
Waterloo because God was against him." That's why Germany didn't take
Ypres, and rush through to Calais. That's why they'll lose this war.'
'And yet the Germans are always saying that God is on their side. They
go to battle singing--
"A safe stronghold our God is still."'
'Yes, they are like the men in the time of Christ who said "Lord,
Lord," and did not the things he said. I tell you, sir, if we had
fought in God's strength, and obeyed God's commands, _the war would
have been over by now_. German militarism would have been crushed and
the world would be at peace.'
'Nonsense,' I replied with a laugh.
'It's not nonsense. This, as it seems to me, is the case: We are
fighting God's cause, but God counts but very little. We are not
laying hold of His Omnipotence; we are trusting entirely in big guns,
while God is forgotten. That is why the war drags on. I tell you,'
and his voice quivered with passion, 'what I am afraid of is this.
This ghastly carnage will drag on, with all its horrors; homes will be
decimated, lives will be sacrificed all because we believe more in
material things than in spiritual things. More in the devil than in
God. I think sometimes that God will not allow us to win because we
are not worthy.'
'Come now,' I said, 'it is very easy to speak in generalities about
such a question; but tell me how, in a practical way, faith in God, and
religious enthusiasm would help us to win this war?'
'How?' he cried. 'Don't you see that in addition to what I will call
the spiritual power which would come through faith in, and obedience to
the will of God, you add a practical, human force? Let there be this
faith, this enthusiasm, and the people, the soldiers, would be ready
for anything. Our workpeople would cease going on strike, employers
and tradespeople would no longer be profiteers, grumbling and disunity
would cease. We should all _unitedly_ throw ourselves, heart and soul
into this great struggle, and nothing could withstand us.'
'But tell me why we are not worthy of victory, now,' I urged.