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.