The Soul of the Soldier - Sketches from the Western Battle-Front

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Title: The Soul of the Soldier - Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
Author: Tiplady, Thomas
Language: English
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[Illustration: Cover art]

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

The Soul _of_ The Soldier

_Sketches from the Western
Battle-Front_

THOMAS TIPLADY

_Chaplain to the Forces_

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

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

TO THE MEMORY OF THE MANY "WHITE MEN"

I have known and loved in the London Territorials, who, being dedicate
to their Country and the cause of Liberty, went over the parapet and did
not return.

"These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth: gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
That men call age; and those who would have been
Their sons they gave--their immortality."

*THE MOTHER’S ANSWER*

God gave my son in trust to me.
Christ died for him. He should be
A man for Christ. He is his own
And God’s and man’s, not mine alone.
He was not mine to give. He gave
Himself, that he might help to save
All that a Christian should revere
All that enlightened men hold dear.

"To feed the guns." Ah! torpid soul,
Awake, and see life as a whole.
When freedom, honor, justice, right,
Were threatened by the despot’s might,
He bravely went for God, to fight
Against base savages, whose pride
The laws of God and man defied;
Who slew the mother and the child;
Who maidens, pure and sweet, defiled;
He did not go to feed the guns,
He went to save from ruthless Huns
His home and country, and to be
A guardian of democracy.

"What if he does not come?" you say;
Well, then, my sky will be more gray,
But through the clouds the sun will shine
And vital memories be mine.
God’s test of manhood is, I know
Not, will he come--_but did he go_?

JAMES L. HUGHES.

*PREFACE*

The sketches in this book and in my previous one, "The Cross at the
Front," are attempts to show the soul of the soldier serving in France
as I have seen it during the year and a half that I have been with him.
It is a padre’s privilege and duty to be the voice with which, in public
worship, the soldiers speak to God; and through which their last
thoughts are borne to their friends at home. He is their voice both
when they are sick or wounded, and when they lie silent in the grave.
He speaks of their hopes and fears, hardships and heroisms, laughter and
tears. As best he may he tries to tell, to those who have a right and a
longing to know, how they thought, and how they bore themselves in the
great day of trial when all risked their lives and many laid them down.

Soldiers, as a rule, are either inarticulate or do not care to speak of
themselves; and the padre has to be their spokesman if ever their deeper
thoughts and finer actions are to be known to their friends. To do this
he may have to bring himself into the picture, or even illustrate a
common thing in their lives by a personal experience of his own. To
reveal life and thought at the Front in the third person, and without
sacrificing truth and vividness, requires a degree of literary power and
art which cannot be expected of a padre to whom writing is but a
by-product, and not his main work.

I have written but little of military operations--these things are not
in my province. Moreover, they are not the things which are most
revealing. The presence of Spring is first and most surely revealed by
the flowers in our gardens and lanes; and the soldier is most clearly
seen in the little things that happen on the march--in his billet or in
the Dressing Station. Some things are not seen at all. They are only
felt, and my opinion about them must be taken for what it is worth. One
knows what the men are by their influence on one’s own mind and life. I
do not judge the morality and spirituality of our soldiers entirely by
their habits and speech, for these are but outward and clumsy
expressions of the inner life and are largely conventional. There is
something else to put in the reckoning, and to find out what the
soldiers are worth to us we must somehow get behind their words and
actions and find out what they are worth to God, whose terrible wheel of
war is shaping their characters.

I appraise them mostly by the total effect of the impact of their souls
on mine. I know their thoughts and feelings by the thoughts and
feelings they inspire in me. "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of
thistles?" There are certain thoughts and emotions that only come to me
strongly when I am with the soldiers or when I am living again with them
in memory, and so, I take these as their gift to me and judge the men by
their influence on my character. Character is, in its influence, subtle
as Spring. Words and actions by themselves are too coarse and
conventional to do anything but mislead us in judging the quality of our
men. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Not by their leaves. Fruit
is _seed_. In the seed the tree reproduces itself. And reproduction,
whether in physical, moral or spiritual life, is the test of vitality.

I have not unduly loaded my pages with ghastly details of war, because
their effect on the mind of the reader who has not been at the Front
would be false and distorting. The reader would be more horrified in
imagining them than our soldiers are in seeing them. I have tried
rather to show life at the Front, with its mingling of red and gold,
horror and happiness, as it affects the soldier; so that his friends at
home may see it as he sees it, and with his sense of proportion. If I
could only do it, as well as I intend it, my pictures would create a
truer sympathy between the home and the trench. Some would find comfort
for their hearts, and others would awake to a new and noble seriousness.
Soldiers have suffered much through imperfect sympathies. They have
been pitied for the wrong things, and left to freeze when they needed
warmth. Only when we realize their dignity and greatness and the true
nature of their experiences can we be their comrades and helpers. Life
at the Front is brutal and terrifying, and yet our soldiers are neither
brutalized nor terrorized, for there is something great and noble at the
Front which keeps life pure and sweet and the men gentle and chivalrous.
When "the boys" come home their friends will, in almost every case, find
them just as bright, affectionate and good as when they went out. The
only change will be a subtle one--a deepening in character and manly
quality, a broadening in mind and creed, and an impatience with cant and
make-believe whether in politics or business, Christianity or
Rationalism. There will be an air of indefinable greatness about them as
of men who have been at grips with the realities of life and death.

In a footnote to one of his songs, Edward Teschemacher says that the
gypsies, as they wander through the country, leave a sprinkling of grass
or wild flowers at the cross-roads to indicate, to those who come after
them, the road they have taken. These flowers are known as the
"Patterain."

These essays are my Patterain--wild flowers plucked in France, and left
to mark the red path trod during the months I have been with my comrades
at the Front.

I would the flowers were worthier, but such as I have, I give; and they
are taken out of my heart.

"Where my caravan has rested
Flowers I leave you on the grass;
All the flowers of love and memory;
You will find them when you pass."

THOMAS TIPLADY.

BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, FRANCE.

*CONTENTS*

CHAP.

I. The Swan at Ypres
II. The Roadmakers
III. The Glamour of the Front
IV. A White Handkerchief
V. The Songs Our Soldiers Sing
VI. Easter Sunday
VII. "Now the Day is Over"
VIII. Sons of the Motherland
IX. The Terror by Night
X. "Eton Boys Never Duck!"
XI. "Missing"
XII. "It Must be Sunday"
XIII. Our Tommies Never Fail Us
XIV. The Cross at Neuve Chapelle
XV. The Children of Our Dead
XVI. A Funeral under Fire
XVII. A Soldier’s Calvary
XVIII. The Hospital Train
XIX. After Winter, Spring

*I*

*THE SWAN AT YPRES*

For three years the storm center of the British battle front has been at
Ypres. Every day and night it has been the standing target of thousands
of guns. Yet, amid all the havoc and thunder of the artillery, the
graceful white form of a swan had been seen gliding over the water of
the moat. It never lacked food, and was always welcome to a share of
Tommy’s rations. In the Battle of Messines--I had the story first-hand
from a lieutenant of artillery whose battery was hidden close by, and
who was an eye-witness of the incident--a shell burst near the swan, and
it was mortally wounded. For three long years it had spread its white
wings as gallantly as the white sails of Drake’s flagship when he sailed
out of Plymouth Sound to pluck the beard of the Spaniard. But now its
adventurous voyaging was over. Another beautiful and innocent thing had
been destroyed by the war and had passed beyond recall. There was no
dying swan-song heard on the waters, but all who saw its passing felt
that the war had taken on a deeper shade of tragedy.

Many a "white man" had been slain near the spot but somehow the swan
seemed a mystical being, and invulnerable. It was a relic of the days
of peace, and a sign of the survival of purity and grace amid the
horrors and cruelties of war. It spoke of the sacred things that yet
remain--the beautiful things of the soul upon which war can lay no
defiling finger. Now it had gone from the water and Ypres seems more
charred than ever, and the war more terrible. The death of the swan
revealed against its white wings the peculiar inhumanity of the present
war. It is a war in which the enemy spares nothing and no one. He is
more blind and merciless than the Angel of Death which swept over Egypt,
for the angel had regard to the blood which the Israelites had sprinkled
over the lintels of their doors and he passed by in mercy. To the
German Eagle every living creature is legitimate prey. No blood upon
the lintel can save the inmate; not even the cross of blood on the
hospital tent or ship. Wounded or whole, combatant or non-combatant,
its beak and talons tear the tender flesh of all and its lust is not
sated.

In Belgium and Serbia it is believed that more women and children
perished than men. Things too hideous for words were done publicly in
the market-squares. Neither age nor sex escaped fire and sword. The
innocent babe was left to suck the breast of its dead mother or was
dandled on the point of the bayonet. What resistance can the Belgian
swan make to the German eagle? It needs must lie torn and bleeding
beneath its talons. The German Emperor has waded deeper in blood than
Macbeth, and has slain the innocent in their sleep. Even the sea is
full of the women, children, and non-combatant men he has drowned. His
crown is cemented together with innocent blood and its jewels are the
eyes of murdered men and women. The wretched man has made rivers of
blood to flow yet not a drop in them is from his own veins or the veins
of his many sons. Napoleon risked his life with his men in every battle
but this man never once. While sending millions to their death he yet
consents to live, and protects his life with the anxious care a miser
bestows on his gold. Alone among large families in Germany his
household is without a casualty. Though a nation be white and innocent
as the Belgian swan it will not escape his sword, and he will swoop upon
it the more readily because it is unarmed. The swan cannot live where
the eagle flies, and one or the other must die.

But the stricken swan of Ypres is not merely the symbol of Belgium and
her fate. There are other innocents who have perished or been sorely
wounded. The whole creation is groaning and travailing in pain. The
neutral nations are suffering with the belligerent, and the lower
creatures are suffering with mankind.

Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at the front, I think the
saddest sight is that of dying horses and mules. Last winter they had
to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter blasts. It was
impossible to keep them clean or dry, for the roads were churned into
liquid mud and both mules and drivers were plastered with it from head
to foot. To make things worse there was a shortage of fodder; and
horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding. Before the fine weather had
given them a chance to recover weight and strength, the Battle of Arras
began, and every living beast of burden, as well as every motor-engine,
was strained to its utmost. The mule is magnificent for war, and our
battles have been won as much by mules as men. Haig could rely on one
as much as on the other. The mule will eat anything, endure anything,
and, when understood and humored by its driver, will do anything. It
works until it falls dead by the roadside. In the spring, hundreds died
in harness. In fact, few die except in harness. They die facing the
foe, dragging rations along shell-swept roads to the men in the
trenches.

On two miles of road I have counted a dozen dead mules; and burial
parties are sent out to put them out of sight. One night, alone, I got
three dying mules shot. The road was crowded with traffic, yet it was
difficult to find either an officer with a revolver or a
transport-driver with a rifle. I had to approach scores before I could
find a man who had the means to put a mule out of its misery; and we
were within two miles of our Front. So rigid is our line of defense
that those behind it do not trouble to take arms. Even when I found a
rifleman he hesitated to shoot a mule. There is a rule that no horse or
mule must be shot without proper authority, and when you consider the
enormous cost of one the necessity for the rule is obvious. I had
therefore to assure a rifleman that I would take full responsibility for
his action. He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the mule’s
forehead and pulled the trigger. A tremor passed through the poor
thing’s body and its troubles were over. It had come all the way from
South America to wear itself out carrying food to fighting men, and it
died by the road when its last ounce of strength was spent.

The mule knows neither love nor offspring. Apart from a few gambols in
the field, or while tethered to the horse-lines, it knows nothing but
work. It is the supreme type of the drudge. It is one of the greatest
factors in the war, and yet it receives scarcely any recognition and
more of whipping than of praise. Only too often I have seen their poor
shell-mangled bodies lying by the roadside waiting till the battle
allowed time for their burial. Yet what could be more innocent of any
responsibility for the war? They are as innocent as the swan on the
moat at Ypres.

Yet the greatest suffering among innocents is not found at the Front at
all. It is found at home. At the Front there is suffering of body and
mind, but at home there is the suffering of the heart. Every soldier
knows that his mother and wife suffer more than he does, and he pities
them from his soul. War is a cross on which Woman is crucified. The
soldier dies of his wounds in the morning of life, but his wife lingers
on in pain through the long garish day until the evening shadows fall.
There is no laughter at home such as you hear at the Front, or even in
the hospitals. One finds a gayety among the regiments in France such as
is unknown among the people left at home. It is the sunshine of the
street as compared with the light in a shaded room. There is a youth
and buoyancy at the Front that one misses sadly in the homeland.

To a true woman with a son or husband at the Front, life becomes a
nightmare. To her distorted imagination the most important man in the
country is not the Prime Minister but the postman. She cannot get on
with her breakfast for listening for his footsteps. There is no need
for him to knock at the door, she has heard him open the gate and walk
up the gravel path. Her heart is tossed like a bubble on the winds of
hope and fear. She finds herself behind the door without knowing how
she got there, and her hand trembles as she picks up the letter to see
if the address is in "his" handwriting or an official’s. The words, "On
His Majesty’s Service," she dreads like a witch’s incantation. They may
be innocent enough, and cover nothing more than belated Commission
Papers, but she trembles lest they should be but the fair face of a
dark-hearted messenger, who is to blot out the light of her life
forever. If she goes out shopping and sees a telegraph-boy go in the
direction of her home she forgets her purchases and hurries back to see
if he is going to knock at her door. The rosy-faced messenger has
become a sinister figure, an imp from the nether world. He may be
bringing news of her loved one’s arrival "on leave," but so many evil
faces of fear and doubt peer through the windows of her heart that she
cannot believe in the innocence and good-will of the whistling boy. Her
whole world is wrapped up in his little orange-colored envelope.

The boys at the Front know of the anxiety and suspense that darken their
homes, and they do all they can to lighten them. There were times on
the Somme when the men were utterly exhausted with fighting and long
vigils in the trenches. Water was scarce, and a mild dysentery came
into evidence. No fire could be lighted to cook food or make hot tea.
The ranks had been thinned, and only two officers were left to each
company. The weather was bad and the captured trench uncomfortable. Any
moment word might come for another attack. The campaign was near its
close, and the work must be completed despite the prevalent exhaustion.
The officers were too tired, depressed and preoccupied to censor
hundreds of letters. In front of him each could see a gaping grave.
The sun was rapidly "going west" and leaving them to the cold and dark.
Nothing seemed to matter in comparison with _that_. To hold services
were impossible and I felt that the best I could do was to walk through
the trench, chat with the officers and men, gather up the men’s letters
and take them back and censor in my tent. This gave the officers times
to write their own, and an opportunity to post them.

But note, I pray you, the nobility of these gallant fellows. All of
them were exhausted and depressed. The shadows of death were thick
about them, yet when I opened their letters, I found myself--with two
exceptions out of three or four hundred--in an entirely different
atmosphere. It was a sunny atmosphere in which birds were singing. The
men said nothing of their suffering, their depression, their fears for
the future. The black wings of death cast no shadow over their pages.
They said they were "all right," "merry and bright" and "soon going back
for a long rest." They told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to
send, and gave them details how to make up the next parcel. They talked
as if death were out of sight--a sinister fellow with whom they had
nothing to do.

The officers, of course, censor their own letters, so I did not see how
they wrote. But I know. They wrote as the men wrote, and probably with
a still lighter touch. Their homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet
not by any word of theirs would the shadows be deepened. They could not
shield themselves from war’s horrors but they would do their best to
shield their white swans at home. They could not keep their women folk
out of the war, but they would deliver them from its worst horrors. Not
till they had fallen would they let the shafts pass them to their
mothers and wives; rather would they gather them in their own breasts.
In the hour of the world’s supreme tragedy there was a woman standing by
the cross, and the august Sufferer, with dying breath, bade His closest
friend take her, when the last beam faded, to his own home and be in His
place, a son to her. I know no scene that better represents the
feelings of our soldiers towards their loved ones at home.

Their women gave them inspiration and joy in the days of peace, and they
still float before their vision amid the blackened ruins of war, as
beautiful and stainless in their purity as the white swan on the moat of
Ypres.

*II*

*THE ROADMAKERS*

We had just marched from one part of the Front to another and by a
round-about way. Each morning the Quartermaster and "the billeting
party" went on before, and each evening we slept in a village that was
strange to us. Each of the men carried on his back a pack and equipment
weighing about eighty or ninety pounds. Through sleet and blizzard and,
for the most part, through open, exposed country, we continued our march
without a day of rest. By the fifth evening we reached the village
where we were to have three or four weeks of rest and training before
entering the trenches for the spring offensive. We had unpacked and
were sitting at dinner when a telegram came announcing that all previous
plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must take to the road again.
Something unexpected had happened, good or ill, we knew not which, and
we had to enter the line in front of Arras. For three days more we
marched. Daily the sound of the guns came nearer, and the men were
tired and footsore. They were also deeply disappointed of the long rest
to which they had been looking forward after a winter in the trenches at
Neuve Chapelle. Yet they marched cheerily enough. "It’s the War!" they
said one to another and, true to their own philosophy, "packed up their
troubles in their old kit bags and smiled." When any man faltered a
bit, as if about to fall out by the way, the others cheered him on by
singing "Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the old Sunday school
hymn, "Kind words can never die." Sometimes an officer would shoulder a
man’s rifle to the end of the march, or until he felt better. In eight
unbroken days of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and finally
arrived at a camp of huts within a day’s march of the trenches we are to
occupy. Here, where our huts stand like islands in a sea of mud, we
are, unless suddenly needed, to take a few days’ rest.

On the ninety-eight miles of road over which we tramped, we passed
company after company of British roadmakers. In some parts they were
widening the road, in other parts repairing it. The roads of
Northeastern France are handed over to our care as completely as if they
were in England. Our road-makers are everywhere, and as we pass they
stand, pick or shovel in hand, to salute the colonel and shout some
humorous remark to the laughing riflemen--only to get back as much as
they give.

This morning I visited the neighboring village to arrange for a Sunday
service. The roads are hopeless for bicycles at this time of the year,
so I fell back on Adam’s method of getting about. The road to the
village was torn and broken, and "thaw precautions" were being observed.
Everywhere it was ankle-deep in mud and, in the holes, knee-deep.
Innumerable motor-wagons had crushed it beneath their ponderous weight,
and my feet had need of my eyes to guide them. In skirting the holes
and rough places, I added quite a mile to the journey.

It was annoying to get along so slowly, and I called the road "rotten"
and blamed the War for its destructive work. Then I saw that I had been
unjust in judgment. The War had constructed more than it had destroyed.
The road had been a little muddy country lane, but the soldiers had made
it wide as Fleet Street, and it was bearing a mightier traffic than that
famous thoroughfare night and day. The little road with its mean
perfections and imperfections had gone, and the large road with big
faults and big virtues had come. This soldiers’ road has faults the
farmers’ road knew not, but then it has burdens and duties unknown
before, and it has had no time to prepare for them. Like our
boy-officers who are bearing grown men’s burdens of responsibility and
bearing them well, the road has had no time to harden. To strengthen
itself for its duties, it eats up stones as a giant eats up food. I had
no right to look for the smoothness of Oxford Street or the Strand.
Such avenues represent the work of centuries, this of days. They have
grown with their burdens, but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it
suddenly, and while it was immature. Oxford Street and Fleet Street are
the roads of peace, and laden with wealth and luxury, law and
literature--things that can wait. But on this road of the soldiers’
making, nothing is allowed except it be concerned with matters of life
and death. It is the road of war, and there is a terrible urgency about
it. Over it pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the soldiers in the
trenches, ambulances bearing back the wounded to the hospital. Whatever
its conditions the work must be done, and there is no room for a halting
prudence or the pride of appearance. Rough though it is and muddy, over
it is passing, for all who have eyes to see, a new and better
civilization and a wider liberty. I had grumbled at the worn-out road
when I ought to have praised it. I was as an ingrate who finds fault
with his father’s hands because they are rough and horny.

It was a group of soldier-roadmakers who brought me to my senses. They
were making a new road through the fields, and it branched off from the
one I was on. I saw its crude beginning and considered the burdens it
would soon have to bear. As I stood watching these English roadmakers
my mind wandered down the avenues of time, and I saw the Roman soldiers
building their immortal roads through England. They were joining town
to town and country to country. They were introducing the people of the
North to those of the South, and bringing the East into fellowship with
the West. I saw come along their roads the union of all England
followed at, some distance, by that of England, Scotland and Wales; and
I regretted that there was no foundation on which they could build a
road to Ireland. I saw on those soldier-built roads, also, Christianity
and Civilization marching, and in the villages and towns by the wayside
they found a home whence they have sent out missionaries and teachers to
the ends of the earth.

"The captains and the kings depart." The Roman Empire is no more, but
the Roman roads remain. They direct our modern life and business with
an inevitability the Roman soldiers never exercised. In two thousand
years the Empire may have fallen apart and become a thing of the past;
but the roads her sons have built in France, these two-and-a-half years,
will abide forever and be a perpetual blessing; for, of things made by
hands, there is, after the church and the home, nothing more sacred than
the road. The roadmaker does more for the brotherhood of man and the
federation of the world than the most eloquent orator. The roadmaker
has his dreams and visions as well as the poet, and he expresses them in
broken stones. He uses stones as artists use colors, and orators words.
He touches them--transient as they are--with immortality. A little of
his soul sticks to each stone he uses, and though the stone perishes the
road remains. His body may perish more quickly than the stones and be
laid in some quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul will never
utterly forsake the road he helped to make. In man’s nature, and in all
his works, there is a strange blending of the temporal and the eternal,
and in nothing is it more marked than in the roads he builds.

The roadmaker is the pioneer among men and without him there would be
neither artist nor orator. He goes before civilization as John the
Baptist went before Christ, and he is as rough and elemental. Hard as
his own stones, without him mankind would have remained savage and
suspicious as beasts of prey; and art, science and literature would have
had no beginning. His road may begin in war, but it ends in peace.

The pioneers I saw roadmaking were, for the greater part, over military
age, and such as I had often seen leaning heavily on the bar of some
miserable beer-house. In those days they seemed of the earth, earthy,
and the stars that lure to high thoughts and noble endeavors seemed to
shine on them in vain. But one never knows what is passing in the heart
of another. Of all things human nature is the most mysterious and
deceptive. God seems to play at hide-and-seek with men. He hides
pearls in oysters lying in the ooze of the sea; and gold under the
everlasting snows of the Arctic regions. Diamonds he buries deep down
in the dirt beneath the African veldt. He places Christ in a
carpenter’s shop, Joan of Arc in a peasant’s dwelling, Lincoln in a
settler’s cabin, and Burns in a crude cottage built by his father’s own
hands. He hides generous impulses and heroic traits in types of men
that in our mean imaginations we can only associate with the saw-dust
sprinkled bar-room. Only when war or pestilence have kindled their
fierce and lurid flames do we find the hidden nobility that God has
stored away in strange places--places often as foul and unlikely as
those where a miser stores his gold.

When Diogenes went about with a candle in search of an honest man did he
think to look in the taverns and slums? I fancy not. Not Diogenes’
candle but the "Light of the World" was needed to reveal the treasure
God has hidden in men. Christ alone knew where His Father had hidden
His wealth and could guide us to it. In this time of peril when every
man with any nobility in him is needed to stand in the deadly breach,
and with body and soul hold back the brutality and tyranny that would
enslave the world we have, like the woman in the parable, lit a candle
and searched every corner of our kingdom diligently. In the dust of
unswept corners we have found many a coin of value that, but for our
exceeding need, would have remained hidden. To me, the wealth and wonder
of the war have been found in its sweepings. Time and again we have
found those who were lost, and a new happiness has come into life. To
the end of my days I shall walk the earth with reverent feet. I did not
know men were so great. I have looked at life without seeing the gold
through the dust, and have been no better than a Kaffir child playing
marbles with diamonds, unaware of their value. I have gone among my
fellows with proud step where I ought to have walked humbly, and have
rushed in where angels feared to tread.

Life at the Front has made me feel mean among mankind. My comrades have
been so great. In days long past, I have trodden on the hem of Christ’s
garment without knowing it. I have not seen its jewels because I, and
others, have so often trodden it in the mire. Yet, through the mire of
slum and tavern, the jewels have emerged pearl-white and ruby-red. And I
feel that I owe to a large part of mankind an apology for having been
before the war so blind, callous and superficial. But for the agony and
bloody sweat in which I have seen my fellows, I should never have known
them for what they are, and the darkness of death would have covered me
before I had realized what made the death of Christ and the sufferings
of all the martyrs well worth while. Now there is a new light upon my
path and I shall see the features of an angel through the dirt on a
slum-child’s face. Words of Christ that once lay in the shadow now
stand out clearly, for whenever we get below the surface of life we come
to _Him_. He is there before us, and awaiting our coming.

I also understand, now, something of the meaning of the words which the
Unemployed scrawled upon their banner before the war--"Damn your
charity. Give us work." It was a deep and true saying, and taught them
by a stern teacher. When the war came we _did_ "damn our charity" and
gave them "work." Many a man got his first chance of doing "a man’s
job," and rose to the full height of his manhood. Many hitherto idle
and drunken, were touched in their finer parts. They saw their
country’s need, and though their country had done little to merit their
gratitude, they responded to her call before some of the more prudent
and sober. Those who were young went out to fight, and every officer
can tell stories about their behavior in the hours of danger and
suffering which bring tears to the eyes and penitence to the heart.
Those above military age went out to make roads over which their younger
brothers and sons could march, and get food, ammunition, or an ambulance
according to their needs. Among the group of middle-aged roadmakers
that I saw there were, I doubt not, some who had been counted wastrels
and who had made but a poor show of life. Now they had got work that
made them feel that they were men and not mendicants, and they were
"making good."

While I watched them a lark rose from a neighboring field and sang over
them a song of the coming spring. It was the first lark I had heard
this year, and I was glad it mingled its notes with the sounds of the
roadmakers’ shovels. Nature is not so indifferent to human struggles as
it sometimes seems. The man who stands steadfastly by the right and
true and bids tyranny and wrong give place will find, at last, that he
is in league with the stones of the field and the birds of the air, and
that the stars in their courses fight for him. The roadmaker and the
lark are born friends. Both are heralds of coming gladness, and while
one works, the other sings. True work and pure song are never far
apart. They are both born of hope and seek to body forth the immortal.
A man works while he has faith. Would he sow if he did not believe the
promise, made under the rainbow, that seed-time and harvest shall never
fail? Or could he sing with despair choking his heart? Yet he can sing
with death choking it. In the very act of dying Wesley sang the hymn,
"I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath." He sang because of the hope
of immortality. He was not turning his face to the blank wall of death
and oblivion but to the opening gate of a fuller life. He was soaring
sunwards like the lark, and soaring sang,

"And when my voice is lost in death
Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
My days of praise shall ne’er be past."

Joy can sing and Sorrow can sing, but Despair is dumb. It has not even
a cry, for a cry is a call for help as every mother knows, and Despair
knows no helper. Even the saddest song has hope in it, as the dreariest
desert has a well. The loved one is dead but Love lives on and whispers
of a trysting place beyond this bourne of time, where loved and lover
meet again. The patriot’s life may be pouring from a dozen wounds on
the muddy field of battle, but his fast-emptying heart is singing with
each heavy beat, "Who dies, if my country live?"

Roadmakers have prepared the way for missionaries in every land.
Trail-blazers are not always religious men--often they are wild,
reckless fellows whom few would allow a place in the Kingdom of God--but
is not their work religious in its final upshot? Do they not, however
unconsciously, "prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert
a highway for our God?" Close on their heels go the missionaries, urged
on faster by the pure love of souls than the trader by love of lucre.
The greatest among the roadmakers was a missionary himself--David
Livingstone. And for such an one the name Living-stone is perfect. It
has the touch of destiny. Through swamp and forest he went where white
feet had never trod, and blazed a trail for the messengers of Christ,
until, worn out with fever and hardship, he fell asleep at his prayers,
to wake no more to toil and suffering.

But while the roadmaker bestows benefits on us he also lays obligations,
for there can be no enlargement of privilege without a corresponding
increase of responsibility. The roads the men are making here in France
will be good for trade. They will open up the country as did the
military roads of Caesar and Napoleon; and along them soldiers are
marching who, at tremendous cost to themselves, are buying for posterity
great benefits, and laying upon posterity great obligations. Posterity
must hold and enlarge the liberties won for them, and prove worthy of
their citizenship by resisting tyranny "even unto blood." We are here
because our fathers were heroes and lovers of liberty. Had they been
cowards and slaves there would have been no war for us. As we follow
our fathers our sons must be ready to follow us. The present springs
out of the past, and the future will spring out of the present.
Inheritance implies defense on the part of the inheritors.

The very names they give to their roads show that our soldiers have
grasped this fact. The cold canvas hut in which I am writing is
officially described as No. 1 Hut, _Oxford Street_. A little farther
off, and running parallel with it, is _Cambridge_ Road. There is also
an _Eton_ Road, _Harrow_ Road, and _Marlborough_ Road. Students of the
universities and schools after which these roads are named are out here
to defend what these institutions have stood for through the hoary
centuries. They are out to preserve the true conception of Liberty and
Fair-play, and to build roads along which all peoples who desire it can
travel unmolested by attacks from either tyrants or anarchists.

Right from the beginning of the war, the idea of a Road has taken hold
of the imagination of our soldiers. The first divisions came out
singing, "It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right
there." Nowadays the popular song is "There’s a long, long trail
awinding into the Land of my dreams."

They are making a Road of Liberty along which all nations may pass to
universal peace and brotherhood, and where the weak will be as safe from
oppression as the strong. "It’s a long, long way to go," but they have
seen their goal on the horizon, and will either reach it or die on the
way to it. They have made up their minds that never again shall the
shadow of the Kaiser’s mailed fist, or that any other tyrant fall across
their path. These men never sing of war. They hate war. It is a
brutal necessity forced on them by the ambition of a tyrant. Their
songs are all of peace and none of war. Of the future and not the
present they sing:

"Tiddley-iddley-ighty,
Hurry me home to Blighty;
Blighty is the place for me."

Whether they sing with levity or seriousness (and levity of manner often
veils their seriousness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and
goodwill they sing. To them the war is a hard road leading to a better
life for mankind. It is to them what the desert was to the Israelites,
when they left the bondage of Egypt for the liberty of the Land of
Promise. Therefore they must tread it without faltering even as Christ
trod the way of the Cross. "There’s a long, long trail awinding into the
Land of their dreams" and they will not lose faith in their dreams
however wearisome the way. Elderly navvies and laborers have come to
smooth the roads for them, and nurses are tending those who have fallen
broken by the way; while across the sundering sea are mothers and wives
whose prayers make flowers spring up at their feet and blossoms break
out on every tree that fringes the side of the road.

*III*

*THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT*

There is an undoubted glamour about the Front, which when at home, in
England, cannot be explained. In the army or out of it, the wine of
life is white and still, but at the Front it runs red and sparkling. One
day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and sat on a box by the side of one of
the servants of the officer’s mess at the Aerodrome near by. He was
going into Doullens, a market town, to buy food and some little
luxuries. Captain Ball, V.C., the prince of English flyers, was, up to
the time of his death in the air, a member of the mess, and the servant
was telling me how comfortable all the officers make their quarters. In
a phrase he defined the glamour of the Front.

"One day," he said, "when we were helping him to make his room
comfortable, Captain Ball burst out into a merry laugh and chuckled, ’We
haven’t long to live, but we live well while we do live.’"

There you have it. Life is concentrated. Death is near--just round the
corner--so the men make the most of their time and "live well." It has
the same quality as "leave" at home. Leave is short and uncertain, so
we "live well." Our friends know it may be the last sight of us, and we
know it may be our last sight of them. They are kind and generous to
us, as we are to them; and so, the ten days of "leave" are just
glorious. Ruskin says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts but a
second, and that Turner went out early in the evening and watched with
rapt attention for that one second of supreme splendor and delight. He
lived for sunsets and while others were balancing their accounts, or
taking tea, he went out to see the daily miracle. The one second in
which he saw God pass by in the glory of the sunset was to him worth all
the twenty-four hours. For one second in each day he caught the glamour
of earth and heaven, and went back to his untidy studios blind to all
but the splendor he had seen.

That second each day was life, indeed, and the glamour of the Front is
like unto it. It is the place where life sets, and the darkness of
death draws on. The commonest soldier feels it and with true instinct,
not less true because unconscious, he describes death at the Front as
"going West." It is the presence of death that gives the Front its
glamour, and life its concentrated joy and fascination. Captain Ball
saw it with the intuition of genius when he said: "We haven’t long to
live, but we live well while we _do_ live."

The immediate presence of death at the Front gives tone to every
expression of life, and makes it the kindest place in the world. No one
feels he can do too much for you, and there is nothing you would not do
for another. Whether you are an officer or a private, you can get a lift
on any road, in any vehicle, that has an inch of room in it. How often
have I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up the back of an empty
motor-lorry which has stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in. It is
one of the merriest sights of the war and redounds to the credit of
human nature. Cigarettes are passed round by those who have, to those
who have not, with a generosity that reminds one of nothing so much as
that of the early Christians who "had all things common; and sold their
possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had
need." You need never go hungry while others have food. Officers are
welcome at every mess they go near, and privates will get food in the
servants’ kitchen or may go shares with the men in any billet. It may
be a man’s own fault that he took no food on the march, and his comrades
may tell him so in plain strong language, but they will compel him to
share what they have just the same.

One wet night on the Somme I got lost in "Happy Valley" and could not
find my regiment. Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it. It was a
pioneers’ tent, but they invited me to come in out of the storm and stay
the night. They were at supper and had only a small supply of
bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea; but they insisted on me sharing
what they had. I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one of their
blankets. One of them gave me a box to sleep on, while he shared his
chum’s. Some lost privates came in later wet to the skin, and the
pioneers gave them all the eatables left over from supper, and shared
out their blankets and clothes. It was pure Christianity--whatever
creeds they may think they believe. And it is the glamour of the Front.
England feels cold and dull after it. Kindness and comradeship pervade
the air in France. You feel that everyone is a friend and brother. It
will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back to their churches. They
have been spoiled by too much kindness. How can they go back to the
cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow judgments which prevail in so
many churches--that is, unless the war has brought changes there also?
And after preaching to dying men who listen as it their destiny depended
upon their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits where large numbers
in the congregations regard their messages as of less importance than
dinner, and as merely supplying material for an exercise in more or less
kindly criticism during the discussion of that meal?

The glamour of the services at the Front! How the scenes are
photographed on my heart! As a congregation sits in a church at home
how stolid its features often are--how dull its eyes! One glance around
and the preacher’s heart sinks within him and his inspiration flies
away. Nothing is expected of him, and nothing particularly desired.
People have come by force of habit, and not of need. But how the eyes of
the soldiers in France glow and burn; how their features speak, and make
the preacher speak in reply! Who could help being eloquent there! Such
faces would make the dumb speak. One can see the effect of his words as
plainly in their expressions as he can see the effect of wind on a
cornfield. Every emotion from humor to concern leaps from the heart to
the face as the subject touches them at, first this point of their life,
then at that. The men’s eyes are unforgettable. Months afterwards they
come vividly to mind, and one is back again answering the questions they
silently ask, and seeing the look of content or gratitude that takes the
place of the perplexed or troubled expression. Eyes are said to be the
windows of the soul, and as I have spoken I have seen men’s souls
looking out. At home the windows are darkened and there seemed to be no
souls behind the panes. The dwellers within the houses are busy with
other matters, and will not come to the windows. The preacher feels
like an organ-grinder in the street--those who hear do not heed nor come
to the windows of the soul. In France there is a soul looking out at
every window; and the preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to
his listeners of the love of God and of the love of women and children
which make sweet this vale of tears and light man on his lone way beyond
the grave.

One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the singing of a hymn in the ward
below, a young officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said: "Why
doesn’t the chaplain hold a service for us? Why does he only hold them
for the Tommies? We need them and want them, just as much as the
Tommies. We are officers but we are also men." I passed the word to
the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when in the evening he gave us a
service and the officers of the next ward asked the orderlies to carry
them in.

There is the same naturalness and spirit of fellowship between members
of various churches. Many lasting friendships have been formed between
chaplains of differing communions. There has been no change of creed
but something greater, a change of spirit. They have been touched by the
common spirit, and have lived and worked in free and happy fellowship.
On my last Sunday in a hospital in France, the chaplain, a canon of the
Church of England, invited me to read the lesson at the morning parade
service, and to administer the wine at Holy Communion. This I did; and
a colonel who was present stayed behind to express to us both the
pleasure which had been given to him by the sight of Anglican and
Methodist churchmen serving together at the Lord’s Table.

To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of the Front is found in this
warm fellowship between men of differing creeds and varying religious
communions. We have not knocked down our garden walls but we have taken
off the cut glass that had been cemented on them by our fathers; and now
we can lean over and talk to our neighbors. We have already found that
our neighbors are human beings, and quite normal. The chief difference
between us seems to be that while one has an obsession for roses the
other has an obsession for dahlias. On pansies, sweet peas and
chrysanthemums we seem equally keen and exchange plants. A Roman
Catholic officer who had been appointed to the Ulster Division told me
that though he was received coldly at first, he had not been with the
Division more than a few weeks when every officer in his regiment, and
every soldier in his company, accepted him as cordially as if he were a
Protestant. He was from Dublin and they from Belfast, but they did not
allow it to make any difference, and feelings of the warmest loyalty and
friendship sprang up. His Tommies would fight to the death by his side,
as readily as around any Ulsterman; and he was just as popular in the
officers’ mess. When, he said, it passed the Irish Guards or any other
Roman Catholic regiment, his regiment would sing some provoking song
about "hanging the Pope with a good strong rope," and the Dublin
regiment would reply with some song equally obnoxious and defiant; but
whereas, in peace time, the songs would have caused a free fight to the
accompaniment of bloodshed, now it caused nothing worse than laughter.
The songs were just a bit of teasing such as every regiment likes to
regale another with--perhaps, too, a common memory of the dear country
they have left behind. The men of Belfast and the men of Dublin have
learned to respect and value one another. They know that in a scrap
with the enemy they can count on one another to the last drop of blood,
for, whether from North or South, the Irish are "bonnie fighters." Of
such are the miracles at the Front.

Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the Front is found in the nobility
to which common men rise. An artillery officer told me that he had in
his battery a soldier who seemed utterly worthless. He was dirty in all
his ways, and unreliable in character. In despair they made him
sanitary orderly, that is, the scavenger whose duty it was to remove all
refuse. One night the officer wanted a man to go on a perilous errand
and there were few men available. Instantly this lad volunteered. The
officer looked at him in amazement, and with a reverence born on the
instant. "No," he thought, "I will not let him go and get killed. I’ll
go myself." He told the lad so, and disappointment was plainly written
on his features.

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

"Why should two risk their lives," asked the officer, "when one can do
the job?"

"But you might get wounded, sir," was the quick response; and they went
together.

An Irish officer told me of one man who seemed bad from top to toe. All
the others had some redeeming feature but this man appeared not to
possess any. He used the filthiest language and was dirty in his habits
and dress. He was drunken and stole the officers’ whisky out of the
mess. He was unchaste and had been in the hospital with venereal
disease; and neither as man nor soldier was there anything good to say
of him. The regiment was sent to France, and in due time took its place
in the trenches; and then appeared in this man something that had never
risen to the surface before. Wherever there were wounded and dying men
he proved himself to be the noblest man in the regiment. When a man
fell in No Man’s Land, he was over the parapet in the twinkling of an
eye to bring him in. No barrage could keep him away from the wounded.
It was a sort of passion with him that nothing could restrain. To save
others he risked his life scores of times. In rest-billets he would
revert to some of his evil ways, but in the trenches he was the
Greatheart of the regiment and, though he did not receive it, he earned
the Victoria Cross over and over again. There is a glamour at the Front
that holds the heart with an irresistible grip. In the light of War’s
deathly fires the hearts of men are revealed and the black sheep often
get their chance. Life is intense and deep and men are drawn together
by a common peril. They find the things that unite and forget the things
that separate.

"We haven’t long to live," said Captain Ball joyfully, "but we live well
while we _do_ live," and in those words he expressed the glamour of the
Front. Ball found, as thousands of his comrades-in-arms had found, that

"One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."

*IV*

*A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF*

In his _History of the Somme Campaign_ John Buchan quotes, from an
official report, an incident which, though I have tried, I cannot get my
imagination to believe. Probably the incident is a true one but,
unfortunately for me, my mind will not let it in. I cannot visualize it
and the report is turned from the door as an impostor. The report
states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes fired on the Germans in
their trenches and that the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token of
surrender. Without the slightest difficulty I can imagine all except
the white handkerchiefs. Where did they get them to wave? Men in the
firing trenches don’t carry anything so conspicuous as white
handkerchiefs. To draw one out in a thoughtless moment might bring a
sniper’s bullet, and there are risks enough without inviting more. I
doubt if in any English regiment two white handkerchiefs could be found:
and I have little expectation that more could be found among the enemy.
Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage of the war, if a white
handkerchief would be regarded as a sign, of surrender. It might be
taken as a taunt.

There is nothing more remarkable in the war than the psychological
change that has been wrought in white. A white feather used to be the
badge of cowardice and a white flag the token of surrender. It is not
so now. White has taken on a peculiar sacredness. If a new medal were
to be struck of the same high value as the Victoria Cross it would
probably be given a white ribbon, as the other has a red or (for the
navy) blue. This change in the moral significance of white was brought
home to me by an incident in a billet. I had gone to a barn to give the
men some shirts and socks that had been sent to me. I stood on the
steps, and like an auctioneer, offered my goods for acceptance. "Who
wants a shirt? Who a scarf? Who wants this pair of mittens? Who a
pair of socks?" Hands shot up at each question, and the fun grew fast
and furious. Then I drew out and held up a white handkerchief. "A-ah!
A-ah!" they cried wistfully in chorus. For a moment they stood gazing
at it and forgot to raise their hands towards it; then, with a single
movement, every hand shot up. Unwittingly I had stirred them to the
depths; and I felt sorry for them.

The Magic Carpet of Baghdad is not a fiction after all. In the
twinkling of an eye my white handkerchief had carried every boy and man
to his home, and placed him by the fireside. I saw it in their eyes and
heard it in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices as they
ejaculated "A-ah!" They had not seen a white handkerchief for months.
The last they saw was at home. A vision of home flashed before their
minds and they were back in the dear old days of peace when they used
white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were unknown to them. If in battle
they were to see Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think it would
make them savage and unwilling to give quarter. They would think the
enemy was taunting them with all they had lost. And they would be
maddened by the thought that here were the very men who, by their
war-lust, had caused them to lose it. For a German to wave a white
handkerchief before a British soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting
a red flag before a bull. It would bring death rather than pity.
Anything of pure white is rare at the front, and it has gradually taken
on a meaning it never held before. About the only white thing we have
is the paper we write home on, and that use of the color helps to
sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.

In the army it is a term of supreme praise to call a man _white_. When
you say a comrade is a "_white man_" there is no more to be said. It is
worth more than the Victoria Cross with its red ribbon, for it includes
gallantry, and adds to it goodness. A man must be brave to be called
white and he must be generous, noble and good. To reach whiteness is a
great achievement. To be dubbed white is, in the army, like being
dubbed knight at King Arthur’s Court or canonized saint in the Church.
He stands out among a soldier’s comrades distinct as a white
handkerchief among khaki ones.

I don’t know where the term came from, but, wherever it may have tarried
on the way, I think its footprints could be traced back to the Book of
Revelation for its starting place. In the first chapter we have a
picture of Christ as the first "White Man"--"His Head and His Hairs were
white like wool, as white as snow." In the second chapter His faithful
followers are given "a white stone, and in the stone a new name
written." Is not the new name "White man"? In the third chapter we
read of "a few names even in Sardis which have _not defiled their
garments_; and they shall _walk with Me in white_; for they are worthy."
There, too, the Laodiceans are counseled to buy "white raiment." In the
fourth chapter we see the four and twenty elders, sitting around the
throne under the rainbow arch, "clothed in white raiment." In the sixth
chapter we have the crowned King going "forth conquering, and to
conquer" and He is sitting on "a white horse," that is, He uses "white"
instruments to carry out His conquests. Death, in the same chapter,
rides on a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one. Under the altar were
the souls of the martyrs, "And white robes were given unto every one of
them." And surely the climax is reached when we read in the seventh
chapter that "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all
nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the throne,
and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes." So striking was the
scene that one of the elders asked, "What are these which are arrayed in
white robes? and whence came they?" And the answer is given, "These are
they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes,
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before
the throne of God." In the army white has come back to its ancient
significance. The brave and noble martyrs of the early Church were
given "white robes" and in the army to-day the brave and pure wear
"white robes" in the eyes of their comrades. When Clifford Reed was
killed by a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel wrote of him
that he was the "whitest man" he had ever known. He had done more than
wear "the white flower of a _blameless_ life." His virtues were
positive, not merely negative. He wore a "white _robe_"; not a mere
speck of white such as a white flower in a buttonhole would appear.
White is a positive color, not a negative. Reed was more than
"blameless," he was "white and all white." To our soldiers a white
handkerchief speaks of home, and a "white man" speaks of honor and
heroism and heaven.

*V*

*THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING*

The necessity for poetry and song is fully and officially recognized by
the military authorities at the Front. Every Division has its own
concert party. These men are chosen out of the ranks because they can
sing, and their one task is to furnish nightly concerts for the men.
They are provided with a good hall, or tent, or open-air position; and
they are given enough money to buy stage scenery and appropriate dress.
Everybody attends the concerts from the general to the private; and
while the entertainments last, the war is forgotten. A charge is made
at the door but the balance sheet is published for all ranks to see; and
the profits are distributed among the Divisional charities.

Among the many Divisional Concert Parties may be named "The Bow Bells,"
"The Duds," "The Follies," "The Whizz-bangs," "The Fancies" and, "The
Giddigoats." But, after all, the singing in the concert rooms is but a
small fraction of the singing one hears in the Army. On every march, in
every billet and mess, there is the sound of singing. Nor must the
singing at our religious services and in the Y.M.C.A. huts be forgotten.
Song seems to be the great renewer of hope and courage. It is the joy
bringer. Moreover, it is an expression of emotions that can find no
other voice.

There is no real difference between the songs sung by the officers, and
those sung by the men. All attend the concerts and all sing on the
march. The same songs do for both commanders and commanded, and I have
heard the same songs in the men’s billets as in the officers’
mess-rooms. How real these songs are to the soldiers is indicated by
one striking omission. There are no patriotic songs at the Front.
Except the National Anthem rendered on formal occasions, I have never,
in eighteen months, heard a single patriotic song. The reason is not
far to seek. The soldiers’ patriotism calls for no expression in song.
They are expressing it night and day in the endurance of hardship and
wounds--in the risking of their lives. Their hearts are satisfied with
their deeds, and songs of such a character become superfluous. In
peace-time they sing their love of the homeland, but in war-time they
suffer for her and are content. They would never think of singing a
patriotic song as they march into battle. It would be painting the lily
and gilding refined gold. Are not their deathless deeds, songs for
which they make a foil by singing some inconsequential and evanescent
song such as, "There’s something in the sea-side air."

On analysis I should say that there are five subjects on which our
soldiers sing. First, there are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it,
songs of soldier-philosophy. They know that no theory will explain the
war; it is too big a thing for any sheet of philosophy to cover. It has
burst in on our little hum-drum life like a colliding planet. The thing
to do is not to evolve a theory as to how the planet got astray but to
clear up the mess it has made. Our soldiers show this sense of the
vastness of war-happenings, by singing of things having no real
importance at all, and keeping steadily at their duties. The path of
duty is, they find, the only path of sanity. The would-be war
philosopher they put on one side. The war is too big for him. Let him
leave his explanation of the war and lend a hand to bring it to an end.
So they sing, with laughing irony,

"We’re here because we’re here, because
We’re here, because we’re here."

Or,

"While you’ve got a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that’s the style.
What’s the use of worrying?
It never was worth while,
So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag
And smile, smile, smile."

Another favorite is,

"Oh, there was a little hen and she had a wooden leg,
The best little hen that ever laid an egg,
And she laid more eggs than any hen on the farm,
And another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm."

I have seen them dancing round some old piano singing,

"Oh, that fascinating Bow Bells’ glide,
It’s a captivating Bow Bells’ slide.
There’s a rumor that the puma does it now,
Monkeys have taken to it,
Leopards and lions do it.
All the elephants wear dancing shoes,
They keep hopping with the kangaroos;
Hear them chatter, it’s a matter for some talk;
Now the Jungle’s got the Bow Bells’ walk."

The second class of song is the Love Song, of a more or less serious
character. The Tommies came out of England singing "Tipperary," but
they dropped it in France, and the only one on whose lips I have heard
it was a little French boy sitting on the tail of a cart. The chorus
alone gave it popularity for it was the expression, ready to hand, of a
long farewell; and with its "long long way to go" showed that, like
Kitchener, the soldiers were not deceived by hopes of an early peace.

Now another song with verses more expressive of their sentiments has
taken its place. The chorus runs:

"There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams;
There’s a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true;
Till the day when I’ll be going down
That long, long trail with you."

Then the mood changes, and we hear the lads piping out,

"Taffy’s got his Jennie in Glamorgan,
Sandy’s got his Maggie in Dundee,
While Michael O’Leary thinks of his dearie
Far across the Irish Sea.
Billy’s got his Lily up in London,
So the boys march on with smiles;
For every Tommy’s got a girl somewhere
In the dear old British Isles."

Again the mood veers round, and we hear,

"Every little while I feel so lonely,
Every little while I feel so blue,
I’m always dreaming, I’m always scheming,
Because I want you, and only you.
Every little while my heart is aching,
Every little while I miss your smile,
And all the time I seem to miss you;
I want to, want to kiss you,
Every, every, every little while."

Here is part of a song I have heard sung, many and many a time, by young
officers and men whose voices are now silent in death:

"If you were the only girl in the world,
And I were the only boy,
Nothing else would matter in the world to-day,
We could go on loving in the same old way;
A Garden of Eden just made for two,
With nothing to mar our joy;
I would say such wonderful things to you,
There would be such wonderful things to do,
If you were the only girl in the world,
And I were the only boy."

Sometimes the imagination will wander into the days that are to be--for
some--and they sing,

"We don’t want a lot of flags flying,
We don’t want your big brass bands;
We don’t want a lot of speechifying,
And we don’t want a lot of waving hands;
We don’t want a lot of interfering,
When we’ve safely crossed the foam;
But we _do_ want to find the girls we left behind,
When we all come marching home."

Will the girls remember! The words are not without tragedy. How deeply
some of the men love may perhaps never be realized by those at home.
The longing of their hearts is, at times, almost unbearable. A captain,
past middle life, took my arm one day and led me aside. He was, he
said, a little anxious about himself, for he was getting into the habit
of taking more drink than he was wont to take. He had been taking it
when he felt lonely and depressed to ease the longing of his heart.

"I never touch it at home," he said, "the society of my dear little wife
is all the stimulant I need. I would give the world to be with her
now--just to sit in my chair and watch her at her sewing or knitting.
The separation is too much for me and, you know, it has lasted nearly
three years now."

I have caught this yearning in more than one of the songs our soldiers
sing, but especially in the following, which is called "Absent":

"Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass,
The little truant waves of sunlight pass;
My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while
Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile.

"And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart,
The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart;
From my fond lips the eager answers fall,
Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call."

The men’s thoughts pass easily from the sweetheart to the mother who
bore them, and we have a third class, the Home Song. I have been
awakened in the night by men, going up to the line, singing "Keep the
Home Fires Burning." It is very thrilling to hear in the dead of night,
when every singer is within range of the enemy’s guns.

Another great favorite is,

"They built a little garden for the rose,
And they called it Dixie-land;
They built a summer breeze to keep the snows
Far away from Dixie-land;
They built the finest place I’ve known,
When they built my home sweet home;
Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton,
From the clover to the honey-comb,
And then they took an angel from the skies
And they gave her heart to me.
She had a bit of heaven in her eyes
Just as blue as blue can be;
They put some fine spring chickens in the land,
And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan.
They made it twice as nice as paradise,
And they called it Dixie-land."

Being Londoners, the following song called "Leave" never fails in its
appeal to our Division:

"I’m so delighted, I’m so excited,
With my folks I’m going to be united.
The train’s departing, ’twill soon be starting;
I’ll see my mother, my dad and my baby brother.
My! How I’ll meet them, My! how I’ll greet them.
What a happy happy day.
Just see that bustle, I’d better hustle,
Good-bye--so long--can’t stay--

Chorus

"I’m on my way back to dear old Shepherd’s Bush,
That’s the spot where I was born,
Can’t you hear the porter calling,
Queen’s Road, Piccadilly, Marble Arch and Bond Street?
Oh, I’ll not hesitate, I’ll reach the gate;
Through the crowd I mean to push,
Find me a seat anywhere--please anywhere,
Tram, train, tube, ’bus I don’t care--
For mother and daddy are waiting there--
In dear old Shepherd’s Bush."

On the eve of one big battle, a soldier handed me a letter in which he
gave me the addresses of his father and his sweetheart, so that I could
write to them if he fell.

"In the last battle," he said, "one of my brothers was killed and
another wounded. If I fall I shall die without regrets and with a heart
content; but it will go hard with those at home; and I want you to break
the news gently. These are terrible times for those at home." "These
are terrible times _for those at home_." That is their constant
refrain, and it finds an echo in a song often sung by them.

"It’s a long long way to my home in Kentucky,
Where the blue-bells grow ’round the old cabin door;
It’s a long, long way and I’ll be mighty lucky
When I see my dear old mammy once more.
So weep no more, my lady,
Just brush those tears away;
It’s a long long way to my home in Kentucky,
But I’m bound to get there some day."

But the chief favorite of all Home Songs is, I think, the following:

"There’s an old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned street;
In a quaint little old-fashioned town;
There’s a street where the cobble stones harass the feet,
As it straggles up hill and then down;
And, though to and fro through the world I must go,
My heart while it beats in my breast,
Where e’er I may roam, to that old-fashioned home
Will fly like a bird to its nest.

"In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned street,
Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair;
I can see their two faces so tender and sweet,
And I love every wrinkle that’s there.
I love ev’ry mouse in that old-fashioned house
In the street that runs up hill and down;
Each stone and each stick, ev’ry cobble and brick,
In that quaint little old-fashioned town."

The charm of the Army is its comradeship. Our soldiers have left their
homes and friends but they have found new friends, and some of the
friendships have become very precious. Men slept side by side in barn
and trench, cooked their rations at the same little wood fire, and stood
together in the hour of danger and imminent death. Many of them owe
their lives to their comrades. There are few songs that express this
wonderful comradeship, but there is one that is known and sung through
the army. It represents the Songs of Comradeship:

"When you come to the end of a perfect day,
And you sit alone with your thought,
While the chimes ring out with a carol gay,
For the joy that the day has brought;
Do you think what the end of a perfect day
Can mean to a tired heart,
When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,
And the dear friends have to part?

"Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
Near the end of a journey too;
But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
With a wish that is kind and true.
For mem’ry has painted this perfect day
With colors that never fade;
And we find at the end of a perfect day
_The soul of a friend we’ve made_."

The fifth class of song is that of the inner life. It is the Religious
Hymn. The soldiers are extremely fond of hymns in their services. You
cannot give them too many. "Rock of Ages," "Jesus lover of my soul,"
"Fight the good fight," "There is a green hill," "At even ere the sun
was set," "O God our help in ages past," and "Eternal Father strong to
save" cannot be chosen too often. But there are two hymns which have
stood out above all others; they are "Abide with me," and "When I survey
the wondrous Cross."

There is nothing written by the hand of man which can compete with these
two in the blessing and strength which they have brought to our
soldiers, especially during an offensive when death has cast his shadow
over the hearts of all. During the bitterest weeks in the Somme
fighting there was scarcely a service in which we did not sing "When I
survey the wondrous Cross." With its assurance of redemption it gave
comfort in the face of death. It also gave, for an example, the Supreme
Sacrifice.

Some of the songs I have quoted look bare and ungainly as trees in
winter, but when the musician has clothed them with music and the singer
added to them a touch of his own personality they are fair as trees in
summer. Still the fact remains that none of these songs will live on
their own merits. They are not born to immortality. Like the daisies
they have their day and pass away to make room for others. It is best
so. There is not room in the world for everything to be immortal, and
the transient has a work of its own to do. The charm and rare beauty of
the English countryside are due to the transience of its flowers and
foliage and little of the evergreen is enough. We tire of the eternal.
The transient songs I have quoted here have been meat and drink to our
soldiers in the most terrible war ever waged. They may be poor stuff in
comparison with our classic songs but a good appetite can get
nourishment out of plain food and grow strong on it. For the purpose in
hand these songs have been better than the classics; otherwise they
would not have been chosen. There is a time and place for all things.
The robin may not be compared with the nightingale but it is not the
less welcome, for it sings when the nightingale is silent. Our
soldiers’ songs will die, some are already dead, but they have done
their work and justified their existence. They have given pleasure and
strength to men as they went out to do immortal deeds. No wounded
soldier, or parched traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water because
it perished in the using; and so it is with the songs our soldiers sing.

*VI*

*EASTER SUNDAY*

Night and day for a week, the fearful bombardment continued. Our guns
were everywhere, and belching forth without intermission. Dumps of
shells were almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field, and processions
of ammunition-wagons piled the shells up faster than the gorging guns
could take them. The noise was something beyond imagination. It was as
though all the devils in hell had come out to demoniacally celebrate the
end of the world. We were living--two transport officers and I--in an
empty farm-house that, some time before we came in, had been a target
for direct hits. One shell had gone through the roof, and another
through the gable wall. The windows had been shattered, and the garden
and fields were pitted with shell-holes. Our first care had been to
look at the cellar, but we had decided, if things became too hot, to
make for the open fields. We all slept in the same room, and were at
times wakened up by "an arrival" and passed an opinion as to its
distance. If, for a time, none came nearer, we turned over and went to
sleep again, for a man must sleep even though it be on the edge of a
volcano.

One morning the servants found a shell nose-cap beneath the window--just
that, and nothing more. The week was wearing on. Another morning some
of the 7th Middlesex Regiment were in the baths in the village over the
way, and a company of the London Scottish was passing by. Two shells
fell in the road. The bathers scampered out of the bath and ran naked,
here and there, for shelter; the Scottish "scattered"; but some
forty-five soldiers, mostly kilted, lay in the road dead or wounded. In
the dead of night a party of machine gunners, just returned from the
firing-trench, stood outside their billet in our village square debating
if they should make a cup of tea before turning in to sleep. A shell
decided the matter, and, next morning, I laid two of them to rest in the
little cemetery, and the others stood by as mourners.

The week of terror reached its crisis on the Sunday--an Easter Sunday
never to be forgotten. The infantry of the Brigade had been away to a
camp, beyond range, for a week’s rest. They had now returned ready for
the battle. Three of the regiments had taken up their positions in the
reserve trenches, but my own regiment was quartered in the fatal
village. The day dawned bright and fair, but its smiles were the smiles
of a deceiver. The Germans had decided on the destruction of the
village, a sort of devil’s "hail-and-farewell" before being driven back
at the points of bayonets. We were awakened by the firing of
machine-guns over our heads, and rushed to the door to see a fight in
the air. High up in the blue, two aeroplanes circled about for
positions of vantage, and then rushed at one another like hawks in
mortal combat. A silence followed. Then one rose and made off towards
the battle-line but fell to a shot of our gunners before it could reach
safety. The other, with its petrol-tank on fire, was planing down to
earth. Down and down an invisible spiral staircase it seemed to rush,
while the golden fire burnt at its vitals, and a trailing cloud of smoke
marked its path of doom. Breathlessly we watched its descent. It was
under perfect control, but its path to the ground was too long and
spiral, and the faster it rushed through the air the greater the draught
became and the more madly the flames leapt up. Every second was precious
and the certainty of its doom made us sick. We saw the body of the
observer fall out, and still the flaming machine pursued its course.
Then the wings fell away and twirled to the ground like feathers, while
the engine and the pilot dropped like a stone. When the bodies were
picked up, it was found that the observer had been shot through the
head, and that the pilot, with his dead comrade behind him, had worked
the wheel until the furious encroaching flame had swept over him, and
robbed him of mortal life.

Shells were now dropping in the village every few minutes. Our
farm-house was on the right wing, and we stood watching the bombardment.
With each burst there rose a cloud of black smoke and red brick-dust,
and we knew that another cottage has been destroyed. Then the shells
began to creep round to the right as if the enemy was feeling for the
bridge over which the ammunition wagons were passing. On one side of
the little bridge was a white bell-tent, and we watched the shells
dropping within a few feet of it without destroying it. Between the
tent and our street lay a stagnant pool, and we saw about a dozen shells
fall in its water. The range was lengthening and it seemed as if some
invisible octopus were stretching out its feelers towards us. A shell
smashed against the farm-house at the bottom of our street. The deadly
thing was coming nearer. Some of our sergeants were in a farm-house a
few doors away, and, hearing a shell fall in the field between them and
the pool, they came to the decision that the moment had come "to
scatter," but they were too late. It would have been better had they
stayed indoors. As they rushed out a shell burst over the yard three of
them fell to the ground dead, and three more were blown back into the
house by the force of the explosion. The coping stone of the outhouse
where the shell burst was blown away and three ragged seams were scored
on the green doorway of the yard outside which the three lads lay dead.
One of them had, ten days before, shown me to my billet thirty yards
farther up. He acted as interpreter to the regiment and as he had not
to go into the line, we thought that he was one of those who would see
the end of the war. Yet there he lay.

But the worst calamity of the day was yet to befall. Some fifteen or
sixteen ammunition wagons, unable to get through the village, had halted
in the Square--"Wipers Square" it had been named. Each wagon was loaded
with nine-point-two shells. An enemy-shot fell on a wagon and set it on
fire; then the village became like unto Sodom and Gomorrah on their day
of doom. One or two drivers bravely stuck to their wagons, and got them
out but the rest of the wagons were lost. The scene that followed was
indescribable. Doré could never have pictured such horrors. The wagons
all caught fire and their loads of shells began to explode. We stood
out in the fields and watched the conflagration, while all the time the
Germans continued to shell the village. The large village-hall and the
houses on each side of the square were utterly destroyed. Great
explosions sent fragments of wagons and houses sky-high, and showers of
missiles fell even where we stood. The fore part of one wagon was blown
on to the roof of a house. Houses caught fire and blazed all afternoon.
Some machine-gunners joined us and told how, when choking smoke began to
penetrate into their cellar they had to rush through the square and its
bursting shells to preserve their lives. A German shell burst in a
billet where a platoon of our men were sheltering in the cellar, and
those who were not killed by the shell were crushed to death by the fall
of the house. Another shell hit the roof of the house in the cellar of
which was our Advanced Dressing Station for the morrow’s battle. Two
orderlies who happened to be in the street were killed, and the colonel
was knocked down. In the cellars of almost every house were soldiers or
civilians, and all day the ammunition wagons continued burning; shell
after shell getting red hot and exploding.

All day the German bombardment continued and, amid a terrific din, our
own gunners returned a score or more for every one received. By the
bridge another long line of loaded ammunition wagons stood for two
hours, and though shells were bursting close by, not one hit the wagons.
The drivers stood by them and, as soon as the road was cleared, got them
away to the guns. Yet, while the Square was burning and the German
shells falling, hundreds of men from the London regiments entered the
village from the right, and crossed the bridge to stack their packs so
as to be ready for the coming battle. They walked in single file and
with wide gaps between, but not a man ran or quickened his pace. My
blood tingled with pride at their courage and anger at their
carelessness. What _would_ make a British soldier run? An officer was
walking near the pool. A shell fell near enough for fragments to kill
him, but he merely looked round, stopped to light a cigarette and walked
leisurely on as if nothing had happened. Three men stood with their
backs against a small building near the bridge as if sheltering from the
rain. Several shells fell uncomfortably near, so, concluding that the
rain had changed its direction, they moved round the corner. And it was
not till more shells had fallen near them that they condescended to move
away altogether.

Yet this was not bravado for, so far as they knew, no one was watching
them. It was due to a certain dignity peculiar to our fighting man. He
is too proud to acknowledge defeat. He is a man, and whether any one is
watching or not, he is not going to run away from a shell. Hundreds of
lives must have been lost through this stubborn pride but, on the other
hand, thousands of lives must have been saved by it, for it makes the
Army absolutely proof against panic, than which, nothing is so fatal in
war. In eighteen months on the Front I have never seen or heard of a
single case of panic either with many or few. Our soldiers are always
masters of themselves. They have the coolness to judge what is the
wisest thing to do in the circumstances, and they have the nerve to
carry it out. They run unnecessary risks through pride but never
through panic. All that day on the bridge, a military policeman stood at
his post of duty. Like Vesuvius of old the exploding shells in the
Square sent up their deadly eruption, and like the Roman sentry at
Pompeii, he stood at his post. As he stood there I saw a young French
woman leave her house and pass him on the bridge. She was leaving the
village for a safer place but she seemed quite composed and carried a
basket on her left arm.

While our village was being destroyed we were startled by a tremendous
explosion a few miles away; and looking to our left we saw a huge tongue
of flame leap up to the sky, followed by a wonderful pillar of smoke
which stood rigid for some moments like a monster tower of Babel
reaching up to the heavens. Evidently a dump of cordite had been fired
by an enemy shell. Farther off still, another dump was on fire. Time
and again, bright flames leapt from the ground only to be smothered
again by dense curling masses of smoke. It seemed as if our whole front
was on fire, and news came to us that our main road of communication had
been heavily shelled, and was now strewn with dead horses and men.
Before the battle of the Somme there were no signs and portents so
terrible as these: It was evident that the enemy knew what was in store
for him on the morrow, and was preparing against it, but if the prelude
was so magnificent in its terror, what would the battle be? Imagination
staggered under the contemplation. By four o’clock the bombardment was
almost at an end, and nearly all the shells in the Square had exploded.
The soldiers began to creep out of the cellars. On passing through the
Square we were amazed at the sight. In fact the Transport Officer
passed through at my side without recognizing the place. At the
entrance was a team of six dead mules lying prone on the ground and
terribly torn. Two rows of houses had disappeared, leaving mere heaps
of stones in their places. The pavement was torn up, and the wrecks of
the ammunition wagons lay scattered about. Two houses were still
burning. Our colonel and adjutant we found by the side of the stream.
They had been in a cellar near the Square all day but, fortunately, they
were little the worse for the experience. They were giving orders for
the assembling of the scattered regiment.

By this time, civilians were leaving the cellars, and with armfuls of
household goods hastening from the village. To them it seemed the end
of all things--the day of doom. Some of them had slight wounds and as
they passed us they cried mournfully, "Finis, Messieurs, Finis." All
was lost. This exodus of the despairing civilians was the saddest sight
of the day. By sunset the regiment had been gathered together--all
except the wounded who had been sent to the Main Dressing Station and
the dead who had been placed side by side and covered with blankets.
Most of our officers and men had lost all their belongings, but in the
twilight they marched out of the village and took their places in the
reserve trenches near the other battalions. These had suffered no
losses. They had been saved the long day’s agony. Early in the morning
the battle was to begin but the Westminsters knew that no worse
experience could await them than that through which they had already
passed.

Next morning I buried, near the ruined church, the bodies of the
sergeants who had been killed a few doors from us; and on the following
day I laid to rest, side by side, in one long grave, two drivers who had
died at their posts in the Square, together with an officer and twenty
men belonging to the 1st Queen’s Westminster Rifles.

*VII*

*"NOW THE DAY IS OVER"*

Achicourt is a little village about a mile out of Arras. It has two
churches, one Roman Catholic, the other, Lutheran. The former church
has been utterly destroyed by German shells, and will have to be rebuilt
from the foundations. The Lutheran church was less prominently placed,
and its four walls are still standing. Its humility has saved it, but,
as by fire. All its windows are gone, and its walls are torn and
scarred by fragments of shells. Most of its slates have been destroyed
and the rain pours through the roof. But, on dry days, and until the
Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little place for services. It stood,
however, at a corner of the village Square, and the Square was destroyed
by hundreds of exploding shells on Easter Sunday. As I passed it in the
afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered, my heart grew sad
within me.

Often it had sheltered us at worship, and many of our most sacred
memories will, for ever, cling like ivy to its walls. The door was
smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as by lightning. The pews
were strewn on the floor with their backs broken; even the frames of the
windows had been blown out. There was a little portable organ that we
had used with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the floor like a
slaughtered child. The floor was white with plaster, as when a sharp
frost has brought low the cherry blossom. Never again, I thought,
should I gather my men for worship within its humble, hospitable walls.
One more of the beautiful and sacred things of life had perished in this
all-devouring war. Only the fields remained, and there all my future
services must be held.

But "fears may be liars" and so mine proved. I had reckoned without the
man in khaki--that master of fate whose head "beneath the bludgeonings
of chance, is bloody but unbowed." In a week he had cleared the Square
of its dead--mules and men--filled in its craters, and cleared away the
debris that blocked the roads. He was even removing the fallen houses
in order to mend the roads with their bricks and stones; and he had
thrown together all the scraps of iron for salvage. There I found, lying
side by side, the burned tin-soldiers of the children; officers’
revolvers which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat; bayonets and
rifle-barrels of the men; broken sewing machines of the women. He had
taken in hand, too, the little church. Sacking was spread across the
windows; the remnants of the little organ were carefully placed under
the pulpit where they lay like the body of a saint beneath an altar; the
floor was swept of its fallen plaster. The pews were repaired and
placed in order again, and a new door was made. Even timber was brought
for a new vestibule. The wood was rough and unpainted--Tommy had to use
what he could get--but it served. The twisted railings were drawn away
from the entrance, and, on the following Sunday, we were back in our old
sanctuary. We felt that it was more sacred than ever. These are the
deeds of our fighting-man that make us love him so much, and these are
the acts of kindness and common sense that make us admire our
commanders. Both officers and men have the heart of a lion in the hour
of battle, the gentleness of a lamb when it is over. Whatever their
circumstances, they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget the fathers
that begat them.

Let him who doubts the future of England come hither. He will see the
past through the present, and the future through both. Tommy’s eyes are
the crystal gazing-glasses in which he will discern the future. Tommy
is living history and the prophecy of the future made flesh. The
pessimists have not seen Tommy here, and that is why they are what they
are. "Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his infinite freshness and
resource. He is a sword that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the
might of an enemy break, and he will be found flashing wherever there
are wrongs to right and weak to be defended. On Easter Sunday he was
calmly enduring the horror of the German bombardment and the explosions
of his own dump of shells. On Easter Monday he was driving the Germans
at the point of his bayonet, or accepting their surrender at the doors
of their dug-outs! On Easter Tuesday and Wednesday he was repairing a
little French chapel for worship. Take him which day you will, and you
will find him mighty hard to match. To me he is the king of men, and
his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness beyond the range of
explanations.

After some weeks of fighting we had come to our last Sunday in
Achicourt, and were gathered for the evening service. The chapel was
jammed with officers and men, but not all my flock was there. There was
Rifleman Gibson absent. He was carrying his beloved Lewis gun in an
attack when a bullet struck him, and he died, as his comrades report,
with a smile upon his face. Before going into the battle he had given
me his father’s address and thanked me for the spiritual help he had
received at the services. It was his farewell to me, and his father now
has the penciled words. And Rifleman Stone was absent, too. He was but
a boy, and beautiful with youth and goodness. His comrades loved him as
David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the love of women. Every day,
they told me in their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his prayers
and to read his Bible. One night after praying he laid him down and
slept. He had often sung the evening hymn:

"Jesus protects; my fears, be gone!
What can the Rock of Ages move?
Safe in Thy arm I lay me down,
Thy everlasting arms of love.

"While Thou art intimately nigh,
Who, then, shall violate my rest?
Sin, earth, and hell I now defy;
I lean upon my Saviour’s breast.

"Me for Thine own Thou lov’st to take,
In time and in eternity,
Thou never, never wilt forsake
A helpless soul that trusts in Thee."

And as he slept, God took him from the misery of this world--took him
without waking him. His broken-hearted comrades gathered together his
broken body, and a friend, a Congregational preacher, who, though over
military age, was serving in the ranks, read the burial service over
him. Lance-corporal Gilbert James was missing, too--he whom I had known
to lose his breakfast to attend a service in a cold, dirty, old barn.
And many others were absent whose departure to the Land beyond our
mortal reach was to us like the putting out of stars.

We were leaving the Arras front and we sang a hymn for those who had
taken our places:

"O Lord of Hosts, Whose mighty arm
In safety keeps ’mid war’s alarm,
Protect our comrades at the Front
Who bear of war the bitter brunt.
And in the hour of danger spread
Thy sheltering wings above each head,

"In battle’s harsh and dreadful hour,
Make bare Thine arm of sovereign power,
And fight for them who fight for Thee,
And give to justice, victory.
O in the hour of danger spread
Thy sheltering wings above each head.

"If by the way they wounded lie,
O listen to their plaintive cry;
And rest them on Thy loving breast,
O Thou on Whom the cross was pressed;
And in the hour of danger shed
Thy glorious radiance o’er each head.

"When pestilence at noonday wastes,
And death in triumph onward hastes,
O Saviour Christ, remember Nain,
And give us our beloved again.
In every ward of sickness tread,
And lay Thy hand upon each head.

"O Friend and Comforter divine,
Who makest light at midnight shine,
Give consolation to the sad
Who in the days of peace were glad.
And in the hour of sorrow spread
Thy wings above each drooping head.
Amen."

I had to find a new voice to start it, for our little organ had been
destroyed by a shell, and our precentor was lying in a grave beside his
Medical Aid Post at Guemappe. When, on Good Friday, we had sung the
hymn before, the regiment returned from rest billets to the line, he had
started the tune. His love for music was second only to that of risking
his life for the wounded. In one of his letters given me to censor, he
had written, "How nice it will be to be back in my old place in the
choir." But he was destined not to go back. His path was onward and
upward, and his place was in the heavenly choir. I had seen it in his
large, tender blue eyes. There was in them an expression as if he had
seen "the land that is very far off." I felt that he was chosen as a
sacrifice--that the seal of God was on his forehead.

Still, we had to sing, though his voice was silent. So we sang--several
tunes, for hymns seemed all our spirits needed. What need was there for
a sermon when we had hymns? We left the rag-time type of hymn and sang
the real deep things that come from men’s hearts, and ever after are
taken up by their fellows to express their deepest aspirations and
experiences. The ruined chapel vibrated with music, and men, I am told,
stood in the street to listen while "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," "Rock of
Ages," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and "The Sands of Time are
Sinking" told of the faith and love that lift up the heart. We also
sang "Abide with Me." After hearing us sing it one night, a Roman
Catholic officer in the regiment, a Canadian and one of the bravest,
most beloved men that ever walked, told me that he was a great-grandson
of the author. He is in hospital now with severe wounds, but his men
were present.

"Couldn’t we take up a collection for the repair of the chapel when
peace comes?" whispered a rifleman; "it would be a sort of thanksgiving
for the good times we have had in it, and for the kindness of the
congregation in giving us the use of it so freely."

I put the suggestion to the men and they voted for it with enthusiasm.
Two of them went round with their caps and out of their shallow purses
the big-hearted fellows gave over 100 francs. In the name of the men I
presented the full caps to a lady of the congregation who was present,
and she was moved to tears. The time was quickly passing, so I mounted
the pulpit and told them of words spoken after the earth’s first great
trouble, when the black wings of death had cast their shadow over every
home: "And God said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a
token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to
pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
the cloud."

"God," I said, "has made a covenant with man, for man is His neighbor
and subject; and there must be an understanding between them, if there
is to be peace and happiness. Man must know God’s will or he will
grieve Him and there will be discord and pain. Also, man must know
God’s intentions concerning him, and something of His ways, or else he
will live in fear and dread of the Almighty One in whose power he lies.
There were no books and parchment in the first days, so God took the sky
for His parchment, and dipping His fingers in the most lovely of colors,
wrote out His covenant with man. He spread it out between earth and
heaven so that man might look up and see it without obstruction, and so
that He Himself might look down on it and remember His agreement. ’The
bow,’ He said, ’shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I
may remember the everlasting covenant.’"

"When you draw up a covenant with a neighbor, you look well at it and
then give it to your attorney, who puts it away in the darkness of the
safe. But it is taken out at intervals for fresh examination. And the
rainbow-covenant was put away behind the clouds, to be brought out again
from time to time to bring comfort and strength to man by its
appearance. The rainbow is only half seen by man. The lower half of its
circle is lost in the earth. It exists, but unseen. And the full
circle of God’s beautiful covenant with man has never appeared to our
eyes. A full half is lost in the unapprehending darkness of man’s mind.
The full purpose of God is not realized. His plans are too vast and
glorious for the intellect or imagination to span; but half the rainbow
is seen and it is enough. Seeing half we can take the rest on trust. In
the covenant we are assured that we shall never be given darkness
without light, winter without summer, seedtime without harvest, death
without birth, sorrow without joy, or a thick cloud without a rainbow.
He binds Himself not to give evil without good, or to bring tears
without laughter. "I do set My bow in the cloud; and it shall come to
pass when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in
the cloud."

"A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine and life is woven of the same
stuff--tears and laughter. The most glorious sunshine is incapable of a
rainbow without the co-operation of the dark trailing clouds; and it is
impossible for the human character to reach its ripest maturity and
beauty on joy alone. Sorrow is as beneficent and necessary as joy.
There are untutored natives who dread the rainbow. They believe that it
is a serpent that rises out of the pools to devour men; and there are
unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread adversity no less. They do
not believe that _God_ ’brings the cloud.’ The rainbow is their
refutation and it is written across the sky for all to see. On the
other hand, there are unbelieving men who see only the cloud and are
blind to the sunshine. To them life is one long tragedy. It is an
immense futility. They regard man as a mere cork in the sea, thrown
about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural forces void of purpose;
active indeed but ungoverned. Human life to them is a black cloud
driven through immensity by the winds of unintelligent fate. It has no
meaning and its darkness is the deeper because they cannot call a halt
and disperse it into nothingness. Like Job’s wife they would say ’Curse
God and die,’ yet they cannot die. But Job, as he sits on the dunghill,
looks up at the rainbow and finds a truer philosophy. ’What?’ says he,
’shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive
evil?’ Under the rainbow’s arch there are fruitful fields and beautiful
gardens for where the rainbow hangs in air there is sunshine and there
is rain--the parents of fruitfulness. And to whom God gives in equal
measure joy and sorrow there is beauty and fruitfulness of heart and
life. His promise to ’every living creature’ is that He will never send
the cloud without the sunshine and, what is not less gracious, He will
never send the sunshine without the cloud. When by day the Israelites
tramped the fiery desert He led them by a pillar of cloud, and they
marched in its shade; and in the blackness of night He threw in the sky
a pillar of sunshine; and they walked through the gloom in its light.

"In these terrible days of war when our hearts begin to fail us and dark
doubts cloud the mind, let us look at the Covenant God has made with us.
He has set it in rainbow colors across the sky, that ’he who runs may
read’ and ’the wayfaring man though a fool may not err.’ God has flung
his rainbow over the trench and the grave; over the Garden of
Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary. It is over the tomb in the
Arimathean’s Garden; and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven. We
are born under the rainbow, live under it, die under it. At the last we
shall find it over the throne of Judgment. Water and blood flowed from
Christ’s side; and life and death, joy and pain, light and darkness,
summer and winter, peace and war come forth from God.

"Let us take life as it comes with obedient wills and grateful hearts.
The bee finds honey in the thistle as well as in the rose, and ’where
the bee sucks there suck I,’ for He who guides the bee guides me. Only
in loving obedience to God shall we find true wisdom. It is not so much
what we are given as how we take it that matters. To be humble nothing
may be so sweet as sorrow; and to the proud nothing may be so bitter as
pleasure. Let us leave God to mix the ingredients of our life, for ’all
things work together for good to them that love God.’ It is all in the
covenant written by God’s fingers in the colors of the rainbow, and
whenever He brings it from beyond the clouds, let us look at it with
reverent eyes, and ponder its promise. Then shall we be able to say,
with Wordsworth,

’My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.’"

After I had finished speaking we sang, at the request of one of the
sergeants, the hymn commencing

"The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest."

And beautiful indeed was the singing of it.

The Benediction followed. Just as I was ending it an impulse came to
me, and I yielded to its importunity. "Before we part and before we
leave Achicourt which has meant so much to us of joy and sorrow," I
said, "let us sing a kiddies’ hymn. We still shelter in our hearts a
little child. Though we have grown moustaches and some of us gray
hairs, the child that we once were, never quite dies. Let us have a
hymn for the boy within us who never grows up and never dies." Then I
read out verse by verse, for it was not in their books:

"Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh,
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky.

"Jesus, give the weary
Calm and sweet repose;
With Thy tenderest blessing
May their eyelids close.

"Grant to little children
Visions bright of Thee;
Guarding the sailors tossing
On the angry sea.

"Comfort every sufferer
Watching late in pain;
Those who plan some evil
From their sin restrain.

"When the morning wakens,
Then may I arise
Pure and fresh, and sinless
In Thy holy eyes."

I have witnessed many moving sights in my time and heard much deep and
thrilling music; but I have never been so deeply moved by anything as by
the rich, deep voices of these gallant men and boys who, after winning
the Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined church and were singing
this beautiful kiddies’ hymn as their last farewell.

The collection the boys had taken up had been so heavy that we carried
it to the French lady’s house for her. As we entered her home she said
in her simple way, as her eyes grew radiant with gratitude, "I like the
English soldiers." It was the voice of France. And she was worthy to
speak for France. For two-and-a-half years her house had stood within a
mile of the German trenches, and but a few hundred yards from our own
firing line. Yet she and her mother had never left it. She introduced
me to her mother, who had lived in London, and spoke English. Then she
brought in coffee. I had noticed a most remarkable thing about the
house. There was not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of war on the
walls. It was the only house I have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras,
upon which the war has not laid its monstrous and bloody finger. "How
is it," I asked the mother, "that your house has not been touched?" Her
eyes shone and a sweet smile lit up her face. "It is the will of God,"
she said simply. "Shells have fallen a little short of us and a little
beyond us. They have passed within a yard of the house, and we have
heard the rushing of the wind as they passed, but they have not touched
us. When the village has been bombarded we have gone down into the
cellar as was but discretion and duty, but we have had the conviction
all along that we should be spared, and we refused to leave the house.
We do not know God’s purpose but we believe that it is God’s will to
spare us." I leave the fact to speak for itself and offer no
explanation. Skeptics will say the house was spared by accident; but
they would not have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting to such
an accident. These two women, without a man in the house, stayed on the
very confines of hell with its hourly suspense and danger for nearly
three years, because they believed it was God’s will and that, though
they walked through the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than it
was wont to be heated, He would not allow so much as a hair of their
heads to be singed. And not a hair was singed. They were women in whom
faith burned like a bright pillar of fire. One caught its light, and
felt its heat. I have met patriots and heroes and know their quality
when I see them and come near them. These were "the real thing." Faith
in God and faith in their country were interwoven in their spirits like
sun and shower in a rainbow. They were of the same breed as the Maid of
France, and like her, with their white banner bearing the device of the
Cross, they withstood and defied the might and terror of the invader.
They believed it was God’s will they should stay, to "Be still and know
that I am God." Their experience was expressed by the Psalmist
centuries ago: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in
trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and
though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the
waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the
swellings thereof ... Come behold the works of the Lord, what
desolations He hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the
end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
He burneth the chariot in the fire.... The Lord of Hosts is with us; the
God of Jacob is our refuge."

Such was the faith of these two women, and their courage few men have
approached. It is a practical matter, and after comparing it with the
skeptic’s theory of accident and coincidence and remembering his
probable haste in seeking a place not so liable to untoward accidents, I
accept the explanation of the women. Their house was spared and not a
hair of their heads injured because "it was God’s will." If it is not
the correct theory, it ought to be. Otherwise falsehood is more
sustaining than truth, and inspires nobler conduct.

The day was now over. A new chapter of life had been written, and in
the morning, we left behind us this village of precious memories, and
marched out again into the unknown.

*VIII*

*SONS OF THE MOTHERLAND*

It is said that the eel is born in the deepest part of the ocean,
thousands of miles from any country, and that, urged by an overpowering
instinct it begins almost at once to rise towards the light and to head
for the land. After slowly swimming thousands of miles it reaches our
rivers, and pushes its way up to their sources, and even crawls through
the grass out of one stream into another. Here, if uncaught by man, it
lives for years gorging an appetite which only developed on reaching the
fresh water. Then, the overmastering instinct that brought it out,
takes it back. It returns through the illimitable waters until it finds
the place where it was born. There the female lays her eggs and there
male and female die. The eggs hatch, and the young do as their parents
did before them.

I do not think I could kill or eat an eel. I have too much reverence for
it now that I have learned its story. When in the fish market I see an
eel struggling, I feel that I want to take it and drop it into the sea
that it may go to its long home "far from the madding crowd’s ignoble
strife." How passionate and wild must be its desire to get back to its
own ocean depths where it may perpetuate its kind and die in peace. Its
appetite is voracious, but then, what but the mightiest and most
elemental instincts and appetites could carry it through achievements so
sublime and tragic. Picture it on its lone way through the deep, urged
on by it knows not what. Scientists say that man has evolved from a
tiny form of life that passed through the fish stage. If so, it
explains a lot and I, for one, shall not be ashamed to acknowledge
relationship to a fish with a life story as sublime as that of the eel.
I know that Genesis speaks truly when it says that God made us out of
the dust of the earth and breathed into our souls the breath of His own
being thus animating dust with divinity. And if from the other inspired
book, the book of Nature, scientists can teach how God mixed the clay
when He fashioned man I will accept the teaching with gratitude, for it
will help me to understand things that are dark in me and in my fellows.
It will throw light on the wild longings, and instincts immature, that
baffle the mind, and come into the clear shallow streams of life like
eels out of the dark unfathomable depths of the ocean.

Since I went to France I have been amazed at the homing instinct as
revealed in the coming together of the sons of the British Motherland.
People at home do not quite realize what has happened. Britain’s sons
have come back to her--have come back to die that their race may be
saved and perpetuated. The British are a roving race. A large number
of them yield to an overpowering desire to go out into the world. The
South Pole and the North Pole have known the tread of their feet. Their
ships have anchored in every creek of every sea. There is no town or
country however remote where their voices have not been heard. Even
Mecca could not keep the Briton out. He must look upon its Black Stone.
All lands call him to come, and see, and conquer. He colonizes and
absorbs but cannot be absorbed. He is a Briton still. A friend of mine
told me that when visiting Australia strangers who had never seen
England, except in and through their fathers, would come to him in
railway carriage or ’bus, and ask "How is everything at _Home_?" And
Dr. Fitchett, Australia’s splendid author, confesses that when he first
saw the land of his fathers he knelt down and kissed its shore.

Loving the homeland with a passion stronger than death the Briton leaves
it, for he hears the call of the world borne on the winds and waves from
afar, and cannot refuse it. In foreign lands he lives and labors. He
roams their fields and swims in their streams, but always with an ear
listening for the voice of the Motherland; for he is hers, and at her
service if she calls.

The Declaration of War on Aug. 4, 1914, was the Mother’s call to her
children. Swifter than lightning it passed through the waves and on the
wings of the wind. The settler left his lonely cabin, the gold-digger
his shovel, the prospector his surveying instruments, the rancher his
herds, the missionary his church, the teacher his school, the clerk his
office, and all made for the nearest port. Within a month there was not
a ship on the wide seas but was bearing loyal sons back to their
Motherland’s defense. I have met, in France, British soldiers from
every country under heaven. I bent over a dying soldier near Arras who
was a clerk in Riga, Russia, when the call came. And one night on the
Somme a fine young fellow from Africa entered my tent, and slept by my
side. He was one of the most charming and handsome men I have ever met,
and had come from Durban. He had fought with Botha in Southwest Africa,
and at the conclusion of that campaign had shipped for home. Next day I
took him to Delville Wood for he wanted to see the place where his
brother had died. I found that he was of my own communion and we talked
about some of my college friends who had gone out to Natal. Two days
later, he died of wounds in a dressing station. Most of the transport
officers in our Division have come home from abroad, and have been given
their posts because they are accustomed to horses. One was prospecting
in Nigeria, another salmon-canning in Siberia, a third on a plantation
in South America.

In addition to Canadians, South Africans, Australians, and New
Zealanders, who have come by the hundred thousand at the call of the
Motherland, there are hundreds of thousands who have come singly, or in
small parties, from remote corners of the earth. For five weeks I was a
patient in a Canadian hospital in France. The entire staff was
Canadian. Some were Canadian born; others had gone out to that country
years ago. All were of British blood. The colonel was a magnificent
specimen of manhood from London, Ontario, in which city he had been
born. He would sit on the bed and tell us tales of the great snow-land.
Sometimes he would scold us for being so blind to the greatness of the
Empire and tell us what Canada thought of the Motherland. One of the
night orderlies would, on occasion, recite to us some poem such as "Jim
Bludso," before the lights went out. Then he would come to my locker
and take "Palgrave’s Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" with which to regale
his soul during the long watches of the night. He was of the full
stature of men and straight as a pine. He had gone out from Ireland as
a boy, and settled on a cattle ranch in the United States. One day
there was trouble and one of the other cowboys sent a bullet clean
through his chest. The moment war was declared he left his roving herds
of cattle, crossed the frontier into Canada and traveled hundreds of
miles to Winnipeg to enlist. The doctor looked at him. "What is this
scar on your chest?" he asked. "Oh," replied the cowboy, "I fell off a
wagon and knocked the skin off." The doctor turned him round and put
his finger in the scar on his back where the bullet had passed out.
"And what is this scar at the back? Did you fall off another wagon?"
And the two men understood one another and laughed. The doctor could
not find it in his heart to send the cowboy back to his ranch, so he was
passed into the Canadian contingent.

One of the nurses we called "the Little Mother." She had gone to Canada
five years before, but the war had brought her back, and well was it for
us that it had. Among the patients was a doctor in the American A.M.C.
His ancestors had left England generations ago and settled in New
England, but he had come back at the call of war--a grandson of the
Motherland. Then there was a lieutenant of British stock who had been
born and brought up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were destroying
his native city he took ship to enlist in the British army. "Anzac"
was, as his nickname denotes, an Australian. He was in the Flying
Corps. He had heard the call at school and had come "home" to the land
of his fathers.

In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who had been born in China.
But, out there in Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Motherland they
had never seen, and came post haste to her help. Sitting near me as I
write, is an officer back from the Argentine, and already, on his arm,
is a gold wound-stripe. Another in the mess had been pearl-fishing in
Australia, but stored his boats to come and fight. Another at our table
was born in Australia. He was with Captain Falcon Scott on his last
expedition, and saw him go out to the South Pole and death. He has
already been wounded. When the war broke out its tumult seemed to wake
our fathers and we felt them stir in our blood; for ancestors are not
put into graves but are buried alive in their sons. We felt the call to
defend our race as our fathers did in their day. It was a master
instinct, and the millions of men who voluntarily left home and business
to fight show how deeply nationality is rooted in human nature.
Returning from a far land to die--if needs be--that their kind may live,
the scattered sons of our Motherland have come by all the seas to defend
her, in her hour of need.

"They came as the winds come
When forests are rended;
They came as the waves come
When navies are stranded."

*IX*

*THE TERROR BY NIGHT*

June was a flaming month on the high ground we had captured beyond
Arras. The Quartermaster and Transport Officer with whom I was messing
were both "on leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the camp, a
Baptist padre, whose regiment was near, came to live with me. I had a
little brown tent five feet wide and six feet long which a rifleman had
lent to me because the bell-tent I was expecting had not arrived. The
rifleman did not need his tent, for he and his chums had built
themselves a little dug-out. Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the
other padre took possession of it, while I held on to the little brown
shelter. Next to it was the kitchen where the servants slept and
cooked. It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood, corrugated iron
and ground-sheets. The Baptist chaplain’s tent was round, my shelter
oblong, but what shape the kitchen was, would pass the wit of man to
say. It was a shape never seen on earth before. It had no ancestor and
it could have no descendant. Such a design could not occur twice.
Beyond the kitchen were the horse-lines of the regiment and close by
them the regimental stores. It was so hot that we all wore our lightest
clothing; and when the servants got lemons from Arras, the lemonade they
made lasted about five minutes only, for what was left by us was quickly
drunk up by the servants with the assistance of those who like to
frequent such happy places as mess kitchens.

All our meals were served out of doors, under the blue sky. We had
guests most days, for officers coming out from the homeland stayed with
us for a night or a day before going up with the rations to join the
regiment in the trench. Other officers had come down to stay with us on
their way to a course at some military school; and one, at least, came
to wait for the day on which he was to take his "leave." We were,
therefore, a very merry party. It was almost like camping on the
Yorkshire moors, for we had an uninterrupted view of many miles. To
those who love vast stretches of wild barren country as I do, the scene
under the flaming June sun was exceedingly impressive. There were no
houses, streams, hedges, or trees, but the whole area was scored with
trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing clearly at great
distances. The ground, with but short spaces between, was covered with
encampments. These consisted of the stores and horse-lines of the
regiments and batteries in the line. The circle of the horizon was
bounded by the charred ruins of French villages--Beaurains, Neuville,
Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy and Tilloy. We could see the flashing of our
own guns, and the black bursts of shells from those of the enemy.

All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes, and many were too high to be
seen except through strong field glasses. We watched a German aeroplane
circling over Arras and directing the fire of the long guns. Soon the
streets were strewn with dead and wounded, for the town was full of
troops. The firing only lasted a few minutes, however. One of our
aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to single combat; and we soon
saw the German machine falling from an immense height, wing over wing
and head over tail, utterly out of control.

Dinner, in the cool of the evening, was a most pleasant meal. As we
drank our coffee we watched the aeroplanes returning from the line like
birds to their nests. Sometimes we counted as many as twenty, all
heading for home at the same time. The sun set in red and golden
splendor, and we wondered what darkness would bring. On the night
before our arrival, the regiment which made way for us had one of its
storemen killed by a shell; and on most nights a few shells fell in some
part or other of the vast camp. One evening shells fell a little beyond
us and the transport-sergeant moved his horse-lines. After that, he
moved them every evening at dark, so that the ground where the enemy had
observed the horses in the day-time was left vacant when he opened fire
at night. It was a game of chess with horses and men for pawns, and
life and death for the stakes.

On the evening before, our guest--a young lieutenant--was to go on
leave, he got very uneasy. As gulls scent the approach of stormy
weather and come inland, or blackbirds and larks feel the approach of
winter and migrate to summer lands, so men can sometimes scent danger
and coming death. He had with him a bottle of whisky, and he kept it on
the table outside my tent--a safe place for it.

"I don’t mind telling you, Padre," he said, as he poured out a glass,
"I’ve got the ’wind-up’ badly to-night. I don’t like the feel of
things. I would rather be in the trenches than here, because I know
what is likely to happen there, but here in the open I feel strange and
unprotected. I shall be glad when it is morning."

His feeling was quite natural. We always feel another man’s dangers
more than our own because they are new to us and we don’t know what to
expect or how to meet them. A man will choose a big danger that he is
used to, sooner than a lesser danger that is new to him. Besides, the
lieutenant had his "leave-warrant" in his breast pocket and that will
sap any man’s courage. He has a feeling that the shells are after his
"leave-warrant" and that the gunners know where it is. He suspects that
fate is malignant and takes a special delight in killing a man when he
is on the way to "Blighty." Many a man has been killed with a
"leave-warrant" in his pocket, or "commission papers" in it which were
taking him home.

Our doctor told me how one night he and the chaplain who preceded me
were riding on the front of an ambulance car when a shell burst and with
a fragment killed the chaplain. In the padre’s pocket was his warrant,
and he was taking his last ride before going home; but instead of going
home in "Blighty" he went to his _long_ home, and the warrant lies in
the grave with him. A man feels particularly vulnerable when the
long-looked-for "leave-warrant" is in his pocket. He does not fear
death after "leave," but he does on the eve of "leave." He wants one
more look at his home and loved ones before going on the long and lone
journey which, despite all the comfort which the Christian religion
gives, still retains much of its terror to the human spirit. There have
been few better Christians than Samuel Johnson and John Bunyan, but
neither of them could contemplate fording the river of death without
misgivings. When they came to it they found it much less formidable
than they had expected. Had they been at the Front with
"leave-warrants" in their pockets to "Fleet Street, London," or "Elstow,
Bedford," I fancy neither of them would have taken undue risks.

I could sympathize with the young lieutenant for, a few months before, a
"leave-warrant" had made a bit of a coward of myself. I was in two
minds whether or not to go up to the firing line to see the men again
before shipping for home. The "leave-warrant" was in my pocket, and I
was to go next morning; but the doctor’s story of my predecessor came to
my mind, and the "leave-warrant" spread itself out before the eyes of my
imagination. I saw the faces of my wife, and mother, and dog, and the
faces of my friends. The old home and the green fields stretched out
before me; and I decided to see them first and the "boys" after. I had
just been with my men, but it was a long time since I had been with
those at home. If there was a shell with my name and address on it, I
thought I would make the Hun wait till I had been home, before I let him
deliver it into my hands. I think a "leave-warrant" would make a coward
of any man. At any rate, the feeling is quite understood and recognized
by everyone at the Front; and this young officer had been sent down from
the trenches to us, three days before his train was due to start, so
that he might have a better chance of using his "warrant," and at the
same time, feel more at ease in mind.

I undressed and got into bed, and lay reading by the light of a candle
when the lieutenant came to the tent door again. "It’s no use, Padre,"
he said, "I can’t go to bed yet. I feel too uneasy. I wish I were on
the train." He went back to the bell-tent he was sharing with the other
chaplain, and I put out my light.

There was the silence of a summer evening broken only by the distant
bursting of shells. Then, suddenly, there was a crash about seventy
yards from our tents, and two more near the horse-lines. "To run or not
run?" that was the question; and my answer was in the negative. If I
ran, it was just as likely that I should run into a shell, as out of the
way of one. On Easter Sunday I had seen three of our non-commissioned
officers killed in that way. Besides, I like my bed, once I have taken
the trouble to get into it. I therefore put on my steel helmet which I
had placed by the bed-side, and waited to see what would happen. (A
steel helmet is a wonderful comfort when men are under fire. We may not
have much in our heads but we feel more anxious about them than about
all the rest of the body. The helmets are heavy and uncomfortable and
we don’t like wearing them, but, nevertheless, may blessings ever rest
on the head of the man who invented them. I have seen scores of lives
saved by them, and they have given infinite comfort and assurance in
trying moments.)

A long silence elapsed, then the lieutenant appeared at the door of the
tent again.

"You haven’t been here all the time, have you?" he asked. "We went down
to the old trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is rather cold and
wearisome there, and I think the worst is over now. I’m just going to
take another sip of the ’Scotch wine’ and then turn in for the night;
but I’m not going to undress."

Ten minutes later there was a tremendous crash as if a star had fallen
on top of us. There came a blinding flash of light, a strong smell of
powder, and a spluttering of bullets on the ground. That was enough to
get the laziest man living out of bed, and to answer the question, "to
run or not to run?" in the affirmative. I slipped on my boots without
fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade my little tent a fond
farewell. There were some old German gun-pits close by, and I sought
refuge there. "Come in here, sir," cried a voice, and I found myself by
the side of a sergeant. Then the cook ran in bare-foot and laughing.
No one seemed to have been hit, and all had now sought shelter. We
waited for some time and nothing further happened. The night was cold
and I began to shiver in my pajamas. So I started to look about for a
place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement had grown up between me
and the little brown tent. There was a path across a shallow bit of
trench, and underneath it I found the barber, lying comfortably on his
bed. He invited me in, and said that I could have the bed, and he would
sleep at the side of it on his ground-sheet. He could, he said, sleep
as soundly on the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking. I therefore
returned to my tent to get blankets. The time-fuse of a shell had gone
through the kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my servant, but
without doing him any injury and he proposed sleeping there for the
night. He only agreed to move to some safer place, when I ordered him
to do so. There was no one in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants
were quite safe somewhere. On striking a light to get my blankets, I
noticed three small holes in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel
bullets had missed me only by inches. It had been a close shave and it
was not inappropriate that I was now going to be the guest of a barber.

The psychological effect was not one I should have expected. The
incident caused no shell-shock, and but little immediate excitement; so
I was soon asleep. All the others were in a like case. The excitement
came with the morning when we examined the tents and the ground. In the
bell-tent there were ten shrapnel bullet holes. One had gone through
the piece of wood on which the officers’ clothing had been hung, and
must have passed immediately over the body of the Baptist chaplain as he
lay in bed. Others must have passed equally near the lieutenant who was
not in bed, but, standing up at the time, fully dressed. In my own
little tent I found eleven holes and they were in all parts of the
canvas. Some of the bullets must have gone in at one side and out at
the other, for only five were found embedded in the hard, chalky ground.
A sixth had passed through the box at the bed-head and entered deeply
into the book I had been reading. Outside the kitchen, the servants
picked up a lump of shell a foot long and three or four inches wide.
Well was it for them that the fragment fell outside the kitchen and not
inside. The ground around the tents was sprinkled with shrapnel bullets
and bits of shell. The shells which fell near the horses had burst on
touching the ground, and not like ours, in the air. They had dug deep
holes in the earth, and as the horses were within a few yards of them,
it seemed miraculous that none was hurt. The transport had just
returned from taking up the rations, and, as one of the drivers leapt
off his horse, a bullet hit the saddle where his leg had been a second
before. Not a man or horse received a scratch, although the shells had
made a direct hit on our camp. On other occasions one shell has laid out
scores of men and horses.

They say that sailors don’t like padres on board ship, because they
think the latter bring them bad luck. And most people are a little
afraid of the figure thirteen, but though it was the thirteenth of June
and there were two padres in the tents, we had the best of what is
called "luck." So I think we may say it was one up for the padres.
After breakfast we gathered together some of the fragments lying around
the tents, and found the nose-cap of a shell which had burst seventy
yards away. With these, and the time-fuse which hit my servant, the
other chaplain and I went to a battery and asked the officers to tell us
something about the gun, just as one might take a bone of some extinct
creature to a scientist, and ask him to draw an outline of the whole
animal. They told us that the gun was a long-range, high-velocity,
naval gun with a possible range of fifteen miles. They knew where it
was, but could not hit it. The shot was a large high-explosive,
shrapnel shell, and the time-fuse indicated that it had come to us from
about eleven miles away.

On our return we built ourselves dug-outs for the nights, and only lived
in the tents by day. Sometimes we were shelled in the day-time, but by
taking cover took no hurt, though a lad in the transport next to us was
seriously wounded. When they were shelling us by day, we could
distinctly hear the report of the gun, a second or two later, see the
shell burst in the air; and a second later still, we could hear it. We
saw the burst before we heard it.

I have given this personal incident not, I hope, out of any impulse of
egotism, but because it furnishes those who have not been at the Front
with an idea of the terror which assails our men by night, both in the
trenches and in the "back areas." There can be but few who, having been
any length of time at the Front, have not had similar experiences and
equally narrow escapes. They are so common that men get used to them
and do not take nearly enough care to protect themselves. Loss by such
stray shells is expected, and the soldiers regard it much as a tradesman
regards the deterioration of his stock. One gets used to the frequent
occurrence of death as he does to anything else. At home there are
thousands of preventable deaths--deaths through street accidents,
diseases and underfeeding. The number could be enormously reduced if
the nation would rouse itself. And human nature is much the same at the
Front. Men prefer ease and comfort to safety. Also, men grow
fatalistic. They have seen men sought out by shells after they have
taken every precaution to escape them; and they have seen others go
untouched when they seemed to be inviting shells to destroy them. Men
are conscious of a Power that is not themselves directing their lives.
They feel that in life which the Greek tragedians called Fate. They do
not know quite what to call it. Most of them would call it Providence
if they spoke frankly and gave it a name at all. One of the finest
Christian officers I know told me that he believed that God’s finger had
already written what his fate should be. If he had to die nothing could
save him, and if he had to live, nothing could kill him. All he was
concerned with was to be able to do his duty, and take whatever God sent
him. This, he said, was the only suitable working philosophy for a man
at the Front.

There is a widespread fatalism at the Front, but it is the fatalism of
Christ rather than of old Omar Khayyam: "Take no thought for your life
... for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things, but seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof." And this works. It enables men to "put a cheerful courage
on" and do their duty. There is none of the paralysis of will and
cessation of effort which follows the fatalistic philosophy of the East.
All that Omar Khayyam’s fatalism leaves a man to strive after is "Red,
Red Wine," in which he drowns memory, honor and reputation and
character. When he has passed from among his peers, there is nothing
left to remember him by but a "turned-down empty glass." The Christian
fatalism at the Front destroys no man’s initiative, but keeps him merry
and bright, and helps him to "do his bit." When he shall pass from the
banqueting-house of life, into the Great Unexplored, he will leave as
his memorial, not a turned-down glass, but a world redeemed from tyranny
and wrong.

*X*

*"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK!"*

An army is more courageous than the individuals who compose it. The
coward finds sufficient courage for his job while doing it with his
regiment, and the brave is at his bravest. He has a courage which is
not his own but which, somehow, he puts on with his uniform. He does
deeds of daring he could not have done as a civilian. The army has a
corporate courage and each soldier receives a portion of it just as he
receives a ration of the army’s food. It is added to what he has of his
own.

The badge of the army is courage. When a recruit joins the army he
knows that he is putting away the civilian standard of courage with his
derby hat, and is putting on the soldier’s standard of courage with his
uniform. His great fear is that he will not be able to live up to it.
He wonders if he is made of the stuff that produces heroes. He is a
mystery to himself and has a haunting fear that there may be a strain of
the coward in his make-up. He wishes it were possible to have a
rehearsal for he would rather die than fail on the appointed day.

The chaplain fears that he will faint and become a hindrance instead of
a help when he first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing station;
and the recruit is afraid of being afraid in the hour of battle and of
bringing dishonor and weakness upon his regiment. He will be glad when
the trial is over--when he knows the stuff of which nature has made him.
A friend of mine told me one day that he was walking over a heavily
shelled field with a young aristocrat of a highly strung temperament.
The man was afraid, but would not yield to his fear. His lips twitched
and his face became drawn and white. His movements were jerky but he
made no other sign. He talked about paltry things in which, at the
moment, he had not the slightest interest, and passed jocular or
sardonic remarks about the things that were happening around them. My
friend ducked his head when a shell burst near as we all have done often
enough, but the young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff as if
he were being crowned. He held it up defiantly; was it not filled with
the bluest blood of England? The shells might blow it off if they
liked. That was their concern, not his, but they should never make him
bow. His fathers had fought on British battlefields for centuries, and
had never bowed their heads to a foe, and he would not break the great
tradition. Shells might break his neck but they should never bend it.
He would face the enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a neck
as ever his fathers did. He knew his personal weakness and reinforced
his strength with that of his fathers’. He was not afraid of death. He
was afraid of being afraid.

My friend was a coachman’s son who by courage and capacity of the
highest order had won a commission. He had no traditions either to
haunt or help him, and he had often been tried in the fire and knew his
strength. He was not afraid of being afraid. It was natural to duck
when a shell burst near and it did him no harm and made no difference to
the performance of his duties; so he ducked as he felt inclined, and
then laughed at his nerves for the tricks they were allowing the shells
to play on them. But, knowing his companion’s more sensitive nature and
temperamental weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff neck and
proudly erect head. He showed a self-control which only centuries of
breeding could give. Here was a hero indeed. The shells he was defying
were as nothing to the fears which haunted his imaginative nature and
which, with his back to the wall of his family traditions, he was
fighting and keeping at bay. My friend could not refrain from
complimenting him on resisting the natural tendency to duck the head
when a shell screamed above them.

"Eton boys never duck," replied the young aristocrat.

He was an Eton boy and would die rather than fall short of the Eton
standard. In this war hundreds of them have died rather than save
themselves by something which did not measure up to the Eton standard.
The ranks of young British aristocrats have been terribly thinned in
this war and I have heard their deeds spoken of with a reverence such as
is only given to legendary heroes. They have gone sauntering over the
crater-fields to their deaths with the same self-mastery and outward
calm which the French aristocracy manifested as they mounted the steps
of the guillotine in the Reign of Terror. To their own personal courage
was added the courage of their race, and the accumulation of the
centuries.

We speak of our new armies. There can be no "new" armies of Britons.
The tradition of our newest army goes back to Boadicea. Its forerunners,
without shields or armor, and almost without weapons, dared the
Romans--the proud conquerors of the world--to battle; and gave them the
longest odds warriors ever gave. They knew they could not win but they
knew they could die. Dead warriors they might become but never living
slaves. They ran up Boadicea’s proud banner because they knew that
while the Romans might soak it in British blood, no power on earth could
drag it through the mire.

Our forefathers crossed swords with Cæsar and his Roman legions, and our
newest army goes into battle with the prestige born of two thousand
years of war. They have a morale that belongs to the race in addition
to the morale they possess as individuals. It is said that "the British
do not know when they are beaten." How should they know? They have had
no teachers. All they know is that if they have not gained the victory
the battle is not ended and must go on until they pitch their tents on
the undisputed field. The German Emperor spreads out his War Map but it
is as undecipherable as the mountains in the moon to our soldiers.
Tyrants have never found them apt scholars at geography. They prefer to
make their own maps even though they have no paint to color them with
except the red blood in their veins. The Kaiser may roll up his War Map
of Europe; our soldiers have no use for it, and will not commit to
memory its new boundaries. They feel in their souls the capacity to
make a new one more in line with their ideas of fair play.

"Eton boys never duck." If the muscles of their necks show a tendency
to relax they call to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood in
bygone days, and their necks become stiff and taut once more.
Wellington said that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. It
is still true that "Eton boys never duck" to the foe; nor do the
soldiers they lead.

*XI*

*"MISSING"*

The word "Missing" has come to exercise an even more terrible power over
the human heart than the word "Death." The latter kills the heart’s joy
and hope with a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy stroke from
the executioner’s axe. In a few cases the wounded victim is spared and
allowed to recover, but in the majority of cases there is no reprieve
and a second blow is struck after a period of suspense and suffering. A
chaplain dreads the word. As he opens his correspondence after a
battle, it fixes him as the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner
fastened the wedding guest. It leaps from the page at him with the
malignant suddenness of a serpent. Wounds and death he can explain to
relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation. No one who has not been
at the Front can conceive how a lad can disappear and no one see what
becomes him. A man may read graphic accounts of conditions of life in
the battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to visualize it with
any real approach to truth.

After the first day of the Somme Campaign we had hundreds of casualties
and most of them were classed as "Missing." The soldiers went "over the
top" and did not return, and no one knew why. They were simply
"missing." Why did no one know their fate? It came about in this way.
The men scrambled over the parapet and, forming in line, charged across
No Man’s Land in extended order. Some fell immediately. The wounded
among them got back to the dressing station, and the bodies of the dead
were found within a few days, at least. So far, there are no "Missing."
The rest of the men press on, some falling at every step; the line
thins, and the men get separated. When a man falls his neighbor cannot
stay with him. He must press on to the objective, otherwise, if the
unwounded stayed to succor the wounded, there would be none to continue
the attack; and under the hail of shells and bullets sweeping the open
ground, everyone would perish. The only way to succor the wounded is to
press on, capture the enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine-gun
fire. Consequently, the man who presses on does not, as a rule, know
whether his comrade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took cover in a
shell hole. And even though he were to know, he may be killed himself
later, and his knowledge die with him.

If the attack succeeds, and the German trench is held by us, No Man’s
Land can be searched. The wounded and dead are found, and but few are
reported "missing." But if the attack fail, and the regiment has to
retire to its own line, it becomes impossible for us to search that part
of No Man’s Land, adjoining the German trench (for there is rarely any
truce after a battle in this war), and so, it is impossible to find out
whether those who have failed to return were killed, wounded, or taken
prisoners. The comrades who saw them fall are probably killed, for the
return is as fatal as the attack. If they come back wounded they are
taken straight to the hospitals and so have no chance of reporting to
their officers the fate of those whom they saw fall. Only the unwounded
return to the regiment and, in a lost battle, these are few and know but
little of what happened to those around them. They were excited and
were fighting for their lives. They had no leisure to observe the fate
of others.

On one occasion our men took some German trenches opposite them and held
them for some hours by desperate fighting, but before dusk had to
retire. Many were left dead or wounded in the captured trenches, and
many fell on the return journey. The few who got back to us unwounded
could give very little information about individuals who were missing.
They had been separated one from another and fighting hour after hour
with desperation. All therefore who did not return to the regiment or
dressing station, and whose bodies were not recovered, were reported as
"Missing" unless declared dead by reliable eye-witnesses. The evidence
of eye-witnesses must be carefully examined before a regiment dare
report a soldier dead on the strength of it. During an attack a man is
in an abnormal state of excitement and the observations of his senses
are not entirely reliable. Men imagine they see things, and frequently
make mistakes in identity. I have known many cases in which a man has
sworn that he saw another being carried to the dressing station, yet the
missing man’s body has afterwards been found near the German lines. The
eye-witness simply mistook one man for another. No end of pain to
relatives has been caused by these mistakes and a regiment rightly
declines on such evidence to report a soldier as killed.

Some weeks after the attack just referred to, we received letters from
some of the officers and men who had been taken prisoners; information
about others came through The Geneva Red Cross Society. Those of whom
we heard nothing for six months we knew to be, in all probability, dead.
Nine months later, the Germans retired from the position, and many of
our dead were found still lying out in No Man’s Land. Some were
identified. Others could not be, their discs having perished by reason
of the long exposure. Many of the dead had been left in the German
trenches. These had been buried by the enemy and he had left no crosses
to mark the graves. After more than a year there is no direct evidence
of the death of many who fought on that day. They are "Missing," and we
can only conclude that they were killed.

In other cases, men are reported missing for several weeks, and then
reported dead. A typical case may be cited to show how it comes about.
We attacked one morning at dawn. The enemy were on the run, and in a
state of exhaustion. An immediate attack would, it was believed, carry
the position without much loss of life, even though our big guns had not
had time to come up in support. Unfortunately the Germans were, unknown
to us, reinforced during the night. Their new troops met our men with a
hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, and the regiment was ordered to
retire. Several failed to return. We knew that some of the men had been
forced to surrender, especially the wounded. Others had been killed.
Those who returned unwounded were not able, however, to give us the
names of those who had been killed or of those who had been taken
prisoners. The attack had been made in the half-light of dawn so that
our men could not be seen distinctly. They had also advanced in
extended order so as to avoid making themselves an easy target. The
half-light and the distance of one man from another made it difficult,
therefore, for anyone to see either who fell or why they fell. Most of
those who were killed or taken prisoners were therefore reported as
"missing."

A few days later the whole Division was moved to another part of the
Front. A fresh regiment took our place, and, a few weeks later, with
adequate artillery support, carried the German trenches. After the
battle, burial parties were sent out by the regiment to bury both its
own dead and ours who had been left in the German half of No Man’s Land.
Each grave was marked with the soldier’s name, and his disc and paybook
were sent to our regiment as proof of his death. The War Office was
then informed that such and such a man "previously reported missing, is
now reported killed."

There are, however, cases of missing men which cannot be explained. The
facts never come to light, and we can only guess what happened. They
may have been buried by the enemy, or they may have been buried in the
dark by some regimental burial party which could not find their discs.
They may even have been buried by a shell or blown to fragments by a
direct hit. We have no evidence.

After the attack on Gommécourt a youth I knew had his wound dressed at
the Regimental Aid post and was seen, by more than one of his chums,
passing down the communication trench to the Advanced Dressing Station
where I happened to be. Yet he never arrived, slight though his wound
was. It was impossible for him to have got lost. His brother and I
made every possible enquiry about him, but nothing ever came to light,
and we both came to the conclusion that on his way down the trench he
had been buried by a shell. In another case an officer was wounded and
four stretcher bearers went out to bring him in. None were ever seen
again, and later, when we came into possession of the ground, the body
of none of them were found. It was scarcely possible for them to have
been taken prisoners, and they were never reported as having been
captured. We concluded, therefore, that a shell had both killed and
buried them.

One day a rifleman reported sick to the Doctor and was sent down the
line to the Dressing Station whence he would be sent on to a Rest Camp.
He was not seriously ill, and needed no escort. It was impossible for
him to have wandered into the German lines, yet he never reported at the
Dressing Station or anywhere else. Loss of memory is very rare, but
even if that had happened to him, he could not have wandered about
behind our lines without being found and arrested. No report of his
burial ever reached us and we were led to the conclusion that he was
killed by a shell on the way down, and in such a way that all means of
identification were lost. In another case a private, wounded in the
arm, was sent down the line in company with a party of stretcher bearers
who were carrying a "lying case." Evidently he got separated from them
in the dark, and was hit by a shell, for he never reached any dressing
station, and his fate was never known.

Conditions at the front are such that these mysterious disappearances
must inevitably occur. Every possible arrangement which circumstances
will allow is made to prevent them; but they cannot be altogether
eliminated. People at home may sometimes think that more might have been
done, but it is because they have no conception of the amazing
conditions under which the war is carried on. Every officer and private
knows that he may disappear without leaving a trace. That being so,
they, if only from common prudence and the instinct of
self-preservation, combine to reduce the danger to its lowest limits;
but, when all has been done, war is war; and nothing can rob it of its
horrors.

Every day, officers and men die in trying to save their comrades, and
nothing could be more unjust than to blame those who survive for not
having done more to prevent others from being lost; for those who are
surviving, to-day, may become missing to-morrow, and leave no trace
behind. Officers have sometimes shown me letters from poor distracted
relatives which could never have been written if they could have
imagined the deadly peril in which the officers stood and the manifold
distractions that wore them down. Sometimes an officer’s letter is
short and business-like in reply to an enquiry, but it must be
remembered that his first duty is to the living. He must hold the line
and save his men; and he has, despite the tragedy of his position, to
answer not one enquiry but scores. And before he has finished answering
all the enquiries, his own parents, perhaps, will be making enquiries
about his own fate. Our officers are the bravest and kindest-hearted
men that ever had the lives of others in their keeping; and when the
chaplain asks them for details about any missing or slain soldier, they
will go to endless trouble for him. They know what their own death will
mean to their parents; and the knowledge makes their hearts go out in
sympathy to the parents of their men, and it makes them do all that is
possible to prevent lives being lost.

When Moses died no man knew the place of his burial. It has not been
found to this day. We know nothing of his last thoughts or of the
manner of his death. His end is a perfect mystery. But we know that he
died in the presence of God; that God strengthened him in the dread
hour; and that with His own fingers He closed the lids over the
prophet’s brave, tender eyes. God buried Moses in a grave dug by His
own hands and He will know where to find the poor worn-out body of the
great patriot at the resurrection of the just. And God was with every
one of our missing lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed in
which each lies sleeping. The grave may have no cross above it, but it
will often know the tread of an angel’s feet as he comes to plant
poppies, primroses and daffodils above the resting-place of the brave.

*XII*

*"IT MUST BE SUNDAY"*

The Psalmist of Israel tells us that God has "ordained" the moon and the
stars. These "flaming fires" are "ministers of His that do His
pleasure." Nor are they the only ones chosen from Nature. Mungo Park,
having laid down in the desert to die, notices beside him a tiny flower,
and it awakens hope in him. The winter of his despair is ended. He
rises again, and pushes on until he finds a human habitation where he is
cared for by native women as though he were their brother. The little
flower had been "ordained" to minister hope to a lost and despairing
traveler.

At the Front such ministering by Nature is of common occurrence. No
Man’s Land is desolate enough to look upon, but there is life there, and
music. Larks have chosen it for their nests, and amid its desolation
they rear their young. Even the pheasants have taken to some parts of
it. If we could but know the thoughts of the wounded who have lain out
there waiting for death, we should find that the moon and the stars, the
birds and the field mice, had not allowed them die without some
comforting of the spirit.

One Sunday our regiment was resting in reserve trenches after a period
in the firing line. It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun sank
westward I administered the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The day was
far spent but, as the bread was broken, there came to us a vision of the
Face which the two disciples saw on another such evening in the far-off
village of Emmaus. On the way back to my billet I met a platoon of
Royal Engineers returning from the baths. One of them had been a member
of my church in London, and he dropped out to talk with me. Those who
have not been in the Expeditionary Force can hardly understand the
pleasure a man feels when he meets someone he knew in the days of peace,
or even someone who knows the street or town out of which he came. He
was full of talk, and as I listened his excitement and pleasure bubbled
over like a spring.

"Last night," he said, "was the night of my life. I never expected to
see daylight again. Talk about a ’tight corner,’ there was never one to
match it, and as you know, my chums and I have been in many. The Huns
simply plastered us with shells. The bombardment was terrific. It was
like being in a hailstorm and we expected every moment to be our last.

"You know the trench which the infantry took yesterday? Well, we were
there. We went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of it ready for
the counter-attack. We were out in No Man’s Land for about two hours,
working as swiftly and silently as we could. Whenever the enemy sent his
lights up, we laid down, and so far we had escaped notice and were
congratulating ourselves that the work was nearly done, and that our
skins were still whole. Then, somehow, the Germans spotted us, and let
fly. It was like hell let loose. We ran to the trench for shelter, but
it seemed as if nothing could save us from such a deluge of shells. It
was just like being naked in a driving snow-storm. We felt as if there
was no trench at all, and as if the gunners could see us in the dark.
After that experience I can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after it.
But we just sat tight with such cover as we had and made the best of it.
There was nothing else to do. If we were to be killed, we should be
killed. Nothing that we could do would have made any difference. Yet,
though there didn’t seem shelter for even a mouse, only one of us was
hit, and that was the sergeant. He was rather badly ’done in,’ and we
could only save his life by getting him quickly to the dressing station.

[Illustration: "HE WAS RATHER BADLY DONE IN"
_Drawn by F. Matahia for The Sphere, London_]

"I am one of the taller and stronger men of my platoon so, of course, I
volunteered as a stretcher-bearer. There was no communication trench,
so we had no choice but to lift him up and make a dash across the open.
They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare not delay because, if we
were overtaken by daylight, it would be impossible to get him away till
the next night, and by that time he would be dead. So we decided to try
our luck. We had just lifted him up when a shell burst right on top of
us, and knocked us all down. For a minute or two I was unconscious, and
when I came round I thought I must surely be wounded, so I ran my
fingers over my body but found neither blood nor a rent in my clothes.
I was covered with chalk but that didn’t matter. Except for a touch of
concussion in the brain I was none the worse, and soon pulled myself
together. The sergeant was a sight! He was half-buried, and we could
scarce see him for chalk; but we dug him out and got him on the
stretcher again. After that we sat down in the bottom of the trench till
the effect of the shock had worn off a bit, for we all felt like rats
that had been shaken by a terrier.

"Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shelling stopped. The calm
that followed was wonderful. I never felt anything so restful before.
It was like the delicious restfulness that, sometimes, immediately
follows hours of fever. Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out
of No Man’s Land and began to sing. The effect on us was magical. It
was the sweetest music I have ever heard, and I shall remember it to my
dying day. The countryside was dark and silent, and, as I listened to
the lark, old days came back to mind. You remember that Saturday
midnight in the June before the war when you took us into Epping Forest
to see the dawn break over it? Well, as I listened to the lark, I was
back there in the forest. Then some impulse seized me and, hardly
knowing what I did, I cried aloud, ’Why bless me, it must be Sunday,’
and so it was, although I had forgotten.

"Then we jumped up for we saw that the dawn was breaking and, lifting
the sergeant out of the trench, we rushed across the open ground in the
direction of the dressing station. Talk about ’feeling protected!’ Why,
I felt that God was all around us--that no harm could touch us. A great
calm stole over me, and I felt utterly devoid of fear. We had, as you
know, to bring the sergeant some two miles to the dressing station, just
down the road there, but we got him safely in, and I think he will get
better."

While we were talking, a shell burst near the trench where my men had
been taking of the Sacrament, and another burst by the roadside close to
the Engineers. With a laugh and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands,
saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades. The shells were part of the
game. In London we had been in the same football team. He had kept
goal and I had played full back, and he regarded the shells that had
fallen as bad shots at goal made by the opposing team. They might have
been serious but, as it happened, the ball had each time gone out of
play.

I waited a minute or two in the hope of getting a lift. A motor car
came along; I stopped it and got in; for at the Front everything is
Government property and more or less at one’s service. I found myself
sitting by the side of a private, who had been wounded in the face and
right hand by the shell that had just fallen near the platoon of
Engineers.

He had left his horse with a comrade, and was being driven to the
Advanced Dressing Station by a driver who, happening to pass at the
moment, had kindly offered him a lift. After a little wait at the
Dressing Station I got on the front of an ambulance car. There were
only two cases inside, and they were being taken to the Main Dressing
Station in Arras. One of them had his feet and arms tied to the
stretcher, for he was suffering from shell-shock; and three orderlies
were in charge of him. The poor fellow laughed and cried alternately
and struggled to break loose. "I’m a British soldier," he cried, "and I
will not be tied up. I’ve done my bit, and this is the way you pay me
out. I’ll not have it." And time and again he struggled desperately to
break away.

The orderlies in charge of him were wise and tactful as women. They
asked him questions about the fight, and he fought his battle over
again. They praised his regiment and told him it had done
magnificently, and he laughed and chuckled like a young mother, dandling
her first baby on her knee. And so, without mishap, we reached the
ruined town of Arras where nightly the shells fall among the forsaken
houses in which our soldiers are billeted. The wounded private was
carried into the hospital, and I walked away to my room in an adjoining
street.

So ended the day which, in the hour of dawn, the dark had told the young
engineer "must be Sunday."

*XIII*

*OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US*

On Easter Monday, in the Battle of Arras, I saw two sights such as I
shall never forget. One revealed the kind and forgiving spirit of our
men, the other their unflinching courage. After burying three
non-commissioned officers who had been killed the day before, I reached
the Advanced Dressing Station near which our regiment was "standing to"
in a support trench. Other regiments of our Division were carrying out
the attack and, with small loss, had taken the enemy lines. The German
trenches had been blotted out by our shells but their deep dug-outs,
with machine-guns at their mouths, remained untouched, and it was almost
impossible for our soldiers to discover them until they got within a few
yards of the entrances.

The German commander’s idea was to keep his men in the shelter of the
dug-outs until our barrage lifted. They were then to rush out with
machine-guns and rifles to destroy our men who were following it up. If
the idea had been carried out, the German line would have been
impregnable for our men would have been mown down like corn before the
reaper. It failed because German human nature could not rise to the
occasion. The German soldiers had been demoralized by the safety of the
dug-outs and by the thunder of our shells above them. They cowered in
the dug-outs when they should have rushed out. The critical moment
passed, and with its passing our soldiers leapt to the entrances and
threw down hand grenades. There was a wild cry of pain and fear from
below. Arms went up and the cry of "Kamerad." The surrender was
accepted and the beaten soldiers crawled out. From some dug-outs as
many as two hundred prisoners were taken. In other parts of the line
there was a stiff fight, but, on the whole, our casualties were very
light. From my own observation I should say that we took more prisoners
than we suffered casualties. Some companies could boast a prisoner for
each man engaged in the attack.

The Advanced Dressing Station was at the corner of Cross Roads and the
sight around it was wonderful to behold. A crowd of prisoners was
assembling ready to be marched to the cages, and wounded officers and
men, British and German, were being bandaged. The prisoners were hungry.
For some days our artillery had cut off their rations. A platoon of our
soldiers came marching by, and, to save time, eating their breakfasts as
they passed along. The prisoners looked at them with hungry eyes. Our
men saw the look and stopped. Breaking rank for a moment they passed in
and out among the prisoners and shared out their rations. "Here,
Fritzy, old boy, take this," I heard all around me, and Fritz did not
need asking twice. He took the biscuits and cheese gratefully and
eagerly. The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and he felt that he
had found friends where he had only expected to find enemies. He began
to hope for kindness in his captivity. The scene was one of pure
goodwill.

Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy. Our Tommies laughed and
cracked jokes which no German could understand, but I heard not a single
taunt or bitter word. In fact, Fritz was treated more like a pet than a
prisoner. One who had worked in London, and who spoke English, asked me
for a cup of tea for a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I got one
in the dressing station. The platoon of Tommies re-formed and marched
away to the battle and the prisoners were led off to the cages. There
were still large numbers of prisoners on the road, and they were moving
about without guards. Many of them were being used as stretcher-bearers
and they seemed to do their work out of goodwill and not of constraint.

Their assistance was of great help to the wounded. The battle was going
well with us. Everyone felt in good heart and kindly disposed. An
officer who lay seriously wounded and waiting for a car told me of the
splendid work which his regiment had done. His eyes shone with
suppressed excitement and pride as he told the story. While he was
speaking two soldiers came limping down the road and their appearance
was greeted with a burst of laughter. One was English, the other
German. Tommy had his arm round the German’s neck and was leaning on him
while Fritz, with his arm round the lad’s waist, helped him along. They
came along very slowly for both were wounded, but they laughed and
talked together like long-lost brothers. Yet neither could understand a
word the other said.

I passed down the road towards the line. Gunners of the Territorials
were hurriedly hitching their guns to the horses ready to advance to new
positions. In the ruined village a party of engineers was already
unloading a wagon of rails with which to build a light railway. I
continued along the road towards the next village. It had just fallen
into our hands and not one stone was left on another. There were scores
of wounded men hobbling back from it and I gave my arm to such as needed
it most. A badly wounded Tommy was being brought along on a wheeler by
two orderlies and as I helped them through the traffic we heard the
heavy rumble of the advancing field-guns.

The road was cleared with the quickness of lightning. Out of the
village the batteries burst at a mad gallop and down the road they came
at break-neck speed. With the swiftness of a fire engine in a city
street the rocking guns swept past. The gunners clung to the ammunition
limbers with both hands and the drivers whipped and spurred the excited
foam-flecked horses as though they were fiery beings leaping through the
air and incapable of fatigue or weakness. Suddenly the drivers raised
their whips as a sign to those behind, and the trembling horses and
bounding guns came to a dead halt. The leading gun had overturned at a
nasty place where the road dipped down into the hollow. The rest of the
batteries stood exposed on the crest of the ridge. Before retiring the
Germans had felled all the trees that grew by the roadside so that
nothing might obstruct their line of vision. Such a catastrophe as this
was what the enemy had been hoping for. The sun shone brilliantly, and
our batteries were a direct target for the German gunners such as seldom
occurs. Our boys were caught like rats in a trap. By the side of the
road ran a shallow trench and near us two broad steps into it. We laid
the wounded lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down by his side.
Shells were falling all around and fountains of dirt and debris rose
into the air and, on five or six occasions, covered us with their spray.

I covered the lad’s face. He was barely conscious and uttered no word.
It seemed as if nothing could live in such a bombardment. A shell burst
near, and the cry of dying horses rent the air. The traces were cut and
the horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road. Every second I expected
to see the horses and drivers in front of me blown into the air and I
watched them with fascinated eyes. Not a man stirred. They sat on
their horses and gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze.
Not a man sought the trench and not a man relieved the tension by going
forward to see what was wrong or to lend a hand. Each knew his place,
and if death sought him it would know where to find him. The horses
felt that they had brave men on their backs and, in that mysterious way
peculiar to horses, caught the spirit of their riders. Every shell
covered men and horses with chalk and soil, but they remained an
immobile as statuary. It was magnificent and it was war. A driver in
the battery beside us got wounded in the leg and hand. He jumped off
his horse and came to us to be bandaged. Then he leapt back into the
saddle. It seemed an age, but I suppose it was only a few minutes,
before the obstruction was removed. The whips flashed in the air and
the horses sprang forward. The guns rocked and swayed as they swept
past us and within a few minutes they were in their new positions under
the hill upon which lay the ruins of Neuville Vitasse.

The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had started and we lifted out our
wounded soldier and went in the direction of the dressing station. Some
distance up the road my attention was called to one of the drivers whom
the artillery had left in the care of some privates. He was living, but
his skull was broken, and he would never wake again to consciousness. He
was fast "going West." His day was over and his work was done. I got
him lifted on to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station so that
he might die in peace and be buried in the little soldiers’ cemetery
behind it.

When I returned in the evening to our billet I told the transport
officer of the magnificent bravery of the artillery drivers.

"Any other drivers would behave just as well, if caught in the same
trap," he replied.

He spoke the simple truth. They would. Such supreme courage and
devotion to duty are common to the army. Their presence among all ranks
and in all sections of the army makes the fact the more wonderful. Both
officers and men love life, but they love duty more, and commanders in
drawing up their plans know that they can rely on their soldiers to
carry them out. Our Tommies never fail us whether in France,
Mesopotamia, or Palestine. Devotion to duty is inwoven with the fibers
of their hearts. They are men who, either in kindness to captives or
courage amid disaster and destruction, never fail us.

*XIV*

*THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE*

The war on the Western Front has been fought in a Roman Catholic country
where crucifixes are erected at all the chief cross-roads to remind us
that, in every moment of doubt as to the way of life, and on whichever
road we finally decide to walk, whether rough or smooth, we shall need
the Saviour and His redeeming love. We have seen a cross so often when
on the march, or when passing down some trench, that it has become
inextricably mixed up with the war. When we think of the great struggle
the vision of the cross rises before us, and when we see the cross, we
think of processions of wounded men who have been broken to save the
world. Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to rest, we have placed
over him, as the comment on his death, a simple white cross bearing his
name. We never paint any tribute on it. None is needed, for nothing
else could speak so eloquently as a cross--a white cross. White is the
sacred color in the army of to-day, and the cross is the sacred form.
In after years there will never be any doubt as to where the line of
liberty ran that held back the flood and force of German tyranny. From
the English Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all time with the
crosses on the graves of the British and French soldiers. Whatever may
be our views about the erection of crucifixes by the wayside and at the
cross-roads, no one can deny that they have had an immense influence for
good on our men during the war in France.

The experience of many a gallant soldier is expressed in the following
Belgian poem:

"I came to a halt at the bend of the road;
I reached for my ration, and loosened my load;
I came to a halt at the bend of the road.

"O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee,
My spirit is faint--lone, comfortless me;
O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee.

"And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,
I drank, as thou drinkest, of agony’s cup;
And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up.

"For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave,
Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save;
For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave.

"Then I cried, ’I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.’
And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed.
Then I cried, ’I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.’

"Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?
Be it said--for the dear sake of country he fell.
Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?"

The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier and has provided him with
the only acceptable philosophy of the war. It has taught boys just
entering upon life’s experience that, out-topping all history and
standing out against the background of all human life, is a Cross on
which died the Son of God. It has made the hill of Calvary stand out
above all other hills in history. Hannibal, Cæsar, Napoleon--these may
stand at the foot of the hill, as did the Roman soldiers, but they are
made to look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises above them,
showing forth the figure of the Son of Man. Against the sky-line of
human history the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in shadow. The
wayside crosses at the Front and the flashes of roaring guns may not
have taught our soldiers much history, but they have taught them the
central fact of history; and all else will have to accommodate itself to
that, or be disbelieved. The Cross of Christ is the center of the
picture for evermore, and the grouping of all other figures must be
round it.

To the soldiers it can never again be made a detail in some other
picture. Seen also in the light of their personal experience it has
taught them that as a cross lies at the basis of the world’s life and
shows bare at every crisis of national and international life so, at the
root of all individual life, is a cross. They have been taught to look
for it at every parting of the ways. Suffering to redeem others and
make others happy will now be seen as the true aim of life and not the
grasping of personal pleasure or profit. They have stood where high
explosive shells thresh out the corn from the chaff--the true from the
false. They have seen facts in a light that lays things stark and bare;
and the cant talked by skeptical armchair-philosophers will move them as
little as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops. For three long
years our front-line trenches have run through what was once a village
called Neuve Chapelle. There is nothing left of it now. But there is
something there which is tremendously impressive. It is a crucifix. It
stands out above everything, for the land is quite flat around it. The
cross is immediately behind our firing trench, and within two or three
hundred yards of the German front trench. The figure of Christ is
looking across the waste of No Man’s Land. Under His right arm and
under His left, are British soldiers holding the line. Two dud shells
lie at the the foot. One is even touching the wood, but though hundreds
of shells must have swept by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it
remains undamaged. Trenches form a labyrinth all round it. When our
men awake and "stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is the cross;
and when at night they lie down in the side of the trench, or turn into
their dug-outs, their last sight is the cross. It stands clear in the
noon-day sun; and in the moonlight it takes on a solemn grandeur.

I first saw it on a November afternoon when the sun was sinking under
heavy banks of cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene as it must
have been on the first Good Friday, when the sun died with its dying
Lord, and darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and covered Him with its
funeral pall to hide His dying agonies from the curious eyes of
unbelieving men. I had had tea in a dug-out, and it was dark when I
left. Machine-guns were sweeping No Man’s Land to brush back enemies
that might be creeping towards us through the long grass; and the air
was filled with a million clear, cracking sounds. Star-shells rose and
fell and their brilliant lights lit up the silent form on the cross.

For three years, night and day, Christ has been standing there in the
midst of our soldiers, with arms outstretched in blessing. They have
looked up at Him through the clear starlight of a frosty night; and they
have seen His pale face by the silver rays of the moon as she has sailed
her course through the heavens. In the gloom of a stormy night they
have seen the dark outline, and caught a passing glimpse of Christ’s
effigy by the flare of the star-shells. What must have been the
thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts as all night long they
have gazed at the cross; or of the officers as they have passed down the
trench to see that all was well; or of some private sleeping in the
trench and, being awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to restore
blood-circulation? Deep thoughts, I imagine, much too deep for words of
theirs or mine.

And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was raging and the wounded, whose
blood was turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what thoughts must
have been theirs then? Did they not feel that He was their big Brother
and remember that blood had flowed from Him as from them; that pain had
racked Him as it racked them; and that He thought of His mother and of
Nazareth as they thought of their mother and the little cottage they
were never to see again? When their throats became parched and their
lips swollen with thirst did they not remember how He, too, had cried
for a drink; and, most of all, did they not call to mind the fact that
He might have saved Himself, as they might, if He had cared more for His
own happiness than for the world’s? As their spirits passed out through
the wounds in their bodies would they not ask Him to remember them as
their now homeless souls knocked at the gate of His Kingdom? He had
stood by them all through the long and bloody battle while hurricanes of
shells swept over and around Him. I do not wonder that the men at the
Front flock to the Lord’s Supper to commemorate His death. They will
not go without it. If the Sacrament be not provided, they ask for it.
At home there was never such a demand for it as exists at the Front.
There is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the Cross, between the
soldier and his Saviour.

And yet, to those who willed the war and drank to the day of its coming,
even the Cross has no sacredness. It is to them but a tool of war. An
officer told me that during the German retreat from the Somme they
noticed a peculiar accuracy in the enemy’s firing. The shells followed
an easily distinguishable course. So many casualties occurred from this
accurate shelling that the officers set themselves to discover the
cause. They found that the circle of shells had for its center the
cross-roads, and that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood up
clearly as a land-mark. Evidently the crosses were being used to guide
the gunners, and was causing the death of our men. But a more
remarkable thing came to light. The cross stood close to the road, and
when the Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the cross-roads to
delay our advance. Everything near had been blown to bits by the
explosion except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it. And yet it
could not have escaped, except by a miracle. They therefore set
themselves to examine the seeming miracle and came across one of the
most astounding cases of fiendish cunning. They found that the Germans
had made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that they could take it
out or put it in at pleasure. Before blowing up the cross-roads they had
taken the cross out of its socket and removed it to a safe distance,
then, when the mine had exploded, they put the cross back so that it
might be a landmark to direct their shooting. And now they were using
Christ’s instrument of redemption as an instrument for men’s
destruction.

But our young officers resolved to restore the cross to its work of
saving men. They waited till night fell, and then removed the cross to
a point a hundred or two yards to the left. When in the morning the
German gunners fired their shells their observers found that the shells
fell too far wide of the cross and they could make nothing of the
mystery. It looked as if someone had been tampering with their guns in
the night. To put matters right they altered the position of their guns
so that once more the shells made a circle round the cross. And
henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the shells fell harmlessly into
the outlying fields. Nor was this the only time during their retreat
that the Germans put the cross to this base use and were foiled in their
knavery.

When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ and turns it into a tool to
gain an advantage over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to ask who
began the war, and folly to close our eyes to the horrors and
depravities which are being reached in the waging of it.

There is a new judgment of the nations now proceeding and who shall
predict what shall be? The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and our
attitude towards it decides our fate. I have seen the attitude of our
soldiers towards the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards that for which
it stands; and I find more comfort in their reverence for Christ and
Christianity than in all their guns and impediments of war.

The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks of time, and the nations
will survive that stand beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of
righteousness, liberty and truth.

*XV*

*THE CHILDREN OF OUR DEAD*

There are times when we get away from the Front for a rest. We hear no
more the sound of the guns, but give ourselves up to the silence and
charm of the country. Before going into the Somme fighting we were
billeted for ten days in the neighboring village to Cressy; and as the
anniversary of the battle came that week the colonel chose the day for a
march to the battlefield. The owner of the field, when the old windmill
stood, from which King Edward III directed his army, came to meet us and
describe the battle. When the war is over he is going to erect a
monument on the spot to the memory of the French and British troops who
in comradeship have died fighting against the common foe.

They were happy days that we spent around Cressy. The last that some
were destined to know this side of the Great Divide. The bedroom next
to mine was occupied by two fine young officers of utterly different
type. One was a Greek whose father had taken out naturalization papers
and loved the country of his adoption with a worshiping passion that
would shame many native born. The other was a charming, argumentative,
systematic, theological student of Scots parentage. The night before we
left, the Greek accidentally broke his mirror and was much upset. It
was, he said, a token that Death was about to claim him. The Scot
laughed heartily, for he had not a trace of the superstitious in him;
or, if he had--which was more than likely--it was kept under by his
strong reasoning faculties.

"If you are to be killed," he replied, "I am to be killed too, for I
also have broken my mirror."

He spoke the words in jest, or with hardly a discernible undercurrent of
seriousness; but they were true words nevertheless. The two bed-mates
were killed in the same battle a week or two later. I had tea with them
in their dug-out on the eve of the fight. They were to take up their
positions in an hour, but the student could not resist having just one
more argument. He directed the conversation to the New Theology, and to
German philosophers and Biblical scholars. He simply talked me off my
feet, for he possessed the most brilliant intellect in the regiment,
combined with self-reliance and perfect modesty. Then the conversation
turned to the question of taking a tot of rum before going over the
parapet. He was a rigid teetotaler, "for," said he, "drink is the ruin
of my country." He was opposed to the idea of taking rum to help one’s
courage or allay his fears. He would not, he said, go under with his
eyes bandaged. He would take a good look at Death and dare him to do
his worst. He was superb, and Death never felled a manlier man.
Browning would have loved him as his own soul for he had Browning’s
attitude to life exactly, and could have sung with him,

"Fear death? ...
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns best to the brave,
The black minute’s at end,
And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light...
And with God be the rest!"

He was found with his "body against the wall where the forts of folly
fall." His brave, intelligent face was completely blown away. His Greek
friend was wounded, and while being dressed in a shell-hole by his
servant, was hit again and killed.

Some weeks later all that remained of the regiment was drawn out to a
little village some miles from Amiens, and very similar to the one we
had occupied near Cressy. We were taken to it in motor-’buses for the
men were too exhausted to march, and the days spent there were days of
great delight. We had a glorious, crowded-out service on the Sunday. It
was both a thanksgiving and a memorial service, and I spoke to the men
on "The Passing of the Angels."

"When the music ceased," I said, "and the herald-angels departed, the
sky became very empty, cold and gray to the Shepherds; and they said one
to another, ’let us now go even unto Bethlehem.’ And they went and
found out Jesus. If the angels had stayed the shepherds would have
stayed with them. The angels had to come to point them to Jesus but,
that done, they had to go away to make the shepherds desire Jesus and
seek Him. ’When the half-gods go the gods arrive.’ The angels had to
make room for Jesus and the second best had to yield place to the best.
When John the Baptist was killed his disciples went in their sorrow to
Jesus; and having lost our noble comrades, we must go to Him also. The
best in our friends came from Jesus as the sweet light of the moon comes
from the sun; and we must go to the Source. If we find and keep to
Jesus, sooner or later we shall find our lost friends again, for ’them
also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him!’"

In some such words I tried to comfort those who had left their comrades
behind in the graves on the Somme; for I know how deeply they felt the
loss. During the week we had dinner parties, and all kinds of jolly
social intercourse. It was amusing to see the delight everyone felt at
having a bed to sleep in. "Look Padre, at these white sheets," an
officer cried as I passed his window. He was as merry over them as if a
rich maiden aunt had remembered him in her will. Some got "leave" home,
and were so frankly joyful about it that it made the rest of us both
glad and envious. We made up for it somewhat by getting leave to spend
an occasional day in Amiens. There I went into the glorious cathedral.
Almost the whole of the front was sandbagged, but even thus, it was a
"thing of beauty" and has become for me a "joy forever."

Except Rouen Cathedral I have seen nothing to equal it. Notre Dame,
with its invisible yet clinging tapestry of history, is more deeply
moving. But it is sadder--more sombre. Something of the ugliness and
tragedy of by-gone days peep out in it; but Amiens Cathedral is a thing
of pure joy and beauty. It suggests fairies, while Notre Dame suggests
goblins.

While I was looking at its glorious rose-windows which were casting
their rich colors on the pillars, a father and his two children came in.
The man and son dipped their fingers in the shell of holy water, crossed
their foreheads and breasts with the water, and were passing on; but the
little girl who was too short to reach the shell, took hold of her
father’s arm and pulled him back. She, too, wished to dip her fingers
in holy water, and make the sign of the cross over her mind and heart.
The father yielded to her importunity and touched her hand with his wet
fingers. She made the sacred sign and was satisfied. The father and son
had remembered their own needs but forgotten the child’s.

After all the tragic happenings on the Somme why should this little
incident linger in my memory like a primrose in a crater? Did it not
linger _because_ of the tragedy of the preceding weeks? I had been
living weeks together without seeing a child and after the slaughter of
youth which I had witnessed the sight of a child in a cathedral was
inexpressibly beautiful. The father’s neglect of its finer needs gave
me pain. We have lost so many young men, that every child and youth
left to us ought to be cared for as the apple of our eye. We have lost
more than our young men. We have lost those who would have been their
children. The little ones who might have been, have gone to their
graves with their fathers.

The old recruiting cry, "the young and single first" was necessary from
a military standpoint but, from a merely human point of view, I could
never see much justice in it. The young had no responsibility, direct
or indirect, for the war. They were given life and yet before they
could taste it, they were called upon to die in our behalf. We who are
older have tasted of life and love; the residue of our years will be
much the same as those that have gone before; there will be little of
surprise or newness of experience. Perhaps, too, we have living
memorials of ourselves, so that if we die, our personality and name will
still live on. Our death will only be partial. While William Pitt lived
could it be said that Lord Chatham had died? His body was dead, truly,
but his spirit found utterance in the British House of Commons every
time his son spoke, and Napoleon felt the strength of his arm as truly
did Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham. I should not have mourned the
loss of the young Scot and the Greek so much, had they left to the world
some image and likeness of themselves. In dying, they gave more than
themselves to death;

"Those who would have been
Their sons they gave--their immortality."

After a summer on the Somme, I have come to understand something of how
fear of the devouring maw of Time became almost an obsession with
Shakespeare. Death had taken from him some of the dearest intimates of
his heart, and taken them young. And so, like the sound of a
funeral-bell echoing down the lane where lovers walk, there is heard
through all his sonnets and poems of love the approaching footsteps of
death. Sometimes the footsteps sound faintly, but they are seldom
absent. How then would he have felt in a war like this, in which the
"young and single" have gone out by the hundred thousand to prematurely
die?

Others, however, who have given their lives were married men, and they
have left images of themselves in trust to the nation. We know the last
thoughts of a dying father. Captain Falcon Scott as he lay dying at the
South Pole has expressed them for all time. "Take care of the boy," he
said, "there should be good stuff in him." He found comfort in the
reflection that he would, though he died, live on in his son; but he was
saddened by the thought that the son would have to face the battle of
life without a father to back him up. The boy would therefore need
special "care."

On the evening of the first battle of the Somme I spoke to a young
officer as he lay in a bed at the Field Ambulance. He had lost his
right arm and he told me how it had happened. He was charging across No
Man’s Land when a shell cut it off near the shoulder, and flung it
several yards away. As he saw it fall to the ground the sight so
overcame him that he cried aloud in distress, "Oh my arm! My beautiful
arm." He was still mourning its loss, so, to comfort him, I told him
that Nelson lost _his_ right arm and won the Battle of Trafalgar after
he had lost it. Like Nelson, I told him, he would learn to write with
his left hand and still do a man’s job. He would not be useless in life
as he feared. When the children of our dead soldiers charge across No
Man’s Land in the battle of life they will think of their lost fathers,
and the agonizing cry of the young wounded soldier will rise to their
lips, "Oh my arm, my beautiful arm." The State is providing artificial
arms for our wounded soldiers. Will it be a right arm to the children
of its dead? Will it be a father to the fatherless and a husband to the
widow? Unless it is ready for this sacred task, it had no right to ask
for and accept the lives of these men.

The State, with the help of the Church, must resolve that no child shall
suffer because its father was a hero and patriot. The State must help
the child to the shell of holy water without the little one having to
pull at its arm to remind it of its duties. If the children of our dead
soldiers lack education, food, moral and spiritual guidance, or a proper
start in life, no words will be condemnatory enough to adequately
describe the nation’s crime and ingratitude. They are the sons and
daughters of heroes and there "should be good stuff" in them. It is the
nation’s privilege, as well as its duty, to take the place of their
fathers.

A few days later I walked into Arras from the neighboring village.
There were guns all along the road, and there was not a house but bore
the mark of shells. Some of the civilians had remained, but these were
mostly old people who could not settle elsewhere, and who preferred to
die at home rather than live in a strange place. One house impressed me
greatly. It had been badly damaged but, its garden was untouched and in
it were half a dozen rose-trees. It was the beginning of spring, and
each tree was covered over with sacking to preserve it from the cold and
fragments of shells. The owner did not care sufficiently for his own
life to move away, but he cared for the life of his roses. And so, when
the summer came there were roses in at least one garden in Arras.

The noise of the guns was terrific and the old man had to live in the
cellar, but he found leisure of soul to cultivate his roses. His action
was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in the entire war. The
children of our homes are more beautiful than Arras roses, and more
difficult to rear. May we trust our country not to neglect them? Will
she save them from the mark of the shell, and help them to grow up to a
full and perfect loveliness? Our dying soldiers have trusted her to do
it. From their graves they plead,

"If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
In Flanders fields."

*XVI*

*A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE*

It was in a ruined village behind the trenches. A fatigue party had
just come out of the line, and was on its way to rest-billets in the
next village. The men were tired so they sat down to rest in the
deserted street. Suddenly, a scream, as from a disembodied spirit,
pierced the air. There was a crash, a cloud of smoke, and five men lay
dead on the pavement, and twelve wounded. Next morning I was asked to
bury one of the dead. Under a glorious July sky a Roman Catholic
chaplain and I cycled between desolate fields into the village. A
rifleman guided us down a communication-trench till we came to the
cemetery. It was a little field fenced with trees. There we found a
Church of England chaplain. He and the Catholic chaplain had two men
each to bury.

A burial party was at work on the five graves. It was the fatigue party
of the evening before, and the men were preparing the last resting place
of those who had died at their side. They worked rapidly, for all the
morning the village had been under a bombardment which had not as yet
ceased. Before they had finished they were startled by the familiar but
fatal scream of a shell and threw themselves on the ground. It burst a
short distance away without doing harm, and the soldiers went on with
their work, as if nothing had happened. When the graves were ready, two
of the bodies were brought out and lowered with ropes. The Church of
England chaplain read the burial service over them, and we all stood
round as mourners. Two more bodies were brought out and we formed a
circle round them while the Roman Catholic chaplain read the burial
service of his Church--chiefly, in Latin. There now remained but one,
and he, in turn, was quietly lowered into his grave. He was still
wearing his boots and uniform and was wrapped around with his blanket.

"No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him."

All his comrades who had been with him in the dread hour of death were
mourning by his grave, and standing with them were his officer and two
chaplains. I read the full service as it is given in our Prayer Book.
It was all that one could do for him. The Catholic chaplain had
sprinkled consecrated water on the bodies and I sprinkled consecrated
soil. Was it not in truth holy soil? Behind me was one long, common
grave in which lay buried a hundred and ten French soldiers; "110
Braves" was the inscription the cross bore. In front of me were three
rows of graves in which were lying British soldiers. French and British
soldiers were mingling their dust. In death, as in life, they were not
divided.

I felt led to offer no prayer for the lad at my feet, nor for his dead
comrades. He needed no prayer of mine; rather did I need his. He was
safe home in port. The storm had spent itself and neither rock, nor
fog, nor fire would trouble him again. His living comrades and I were
still out in the storm, battling towards the land. He had no need of
us, but his parents and comrades had need of him. We were there to pay
a tribute to his life and death, to pray for his loved ones, and to
learn how frail we are and how dependent upon Him who is beyond the
reach of the chances and changes of this mortal life.

I was half way through the recital of the last prayer--"We bless Thy
Holy Name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and
fear"--when that fatal, well-known scream, as of a vulture darting down
on its prey, again tore the air. The men, as they had been taught,
dropped to the ground like stones. My office demanded that I should
continue the prayer, and leave with God the decision as to how it should
end. There was a crash, and the branches of the trees overhead trembled
as some fragments of shell smote them. But there was nothing more. The
men rose as quickly as they had fallen, and all were reverently standing
to attention before the last words of the prayer found utterance. The
graves were filled in and we went our several ways. Next day white
crosses were placed over the five mounds, and we bade them a long and
last farewell.

*XVII*

*A SOLDIER’S CALVARY*

There is one afternoon on the Somme that stands out in my memory like a
dark hill when the sun has sunk below the verge and left a lingering bar
of red across the sky. It was a Calvary thick with the bodies of our
men. I was looking for the Westminsters and they were difficult to
find. I passed over one trench and reached another. There I asked the
men if they knew where the Westminsters were, and they expressed the
opinion that the regiment was in the trench ahead. There was no
communication trench so I followed a fatigue-party for some distance
which was marching in single file, and carrying hand-grenades to the
firing line. They turned to the right and I kept straight on. Every few
yards I passed rifles reversed and fastened in the ground by their
bayonets. They marked the graves of the dead. A few soldiers, but
newly killed, were still lying out.

At last I reached a trench and found in it a number of Westminsters.
They were signalers on special duty, and they told me that I had already
passed the regiment on my left. The poor fellows were in a sad plight.
The weather was cold and they were without shelter. There were German
dug-outs but they were partly blown in and full of German dead. The
stench that rose from these, and from the shallow graves around, was
almost unbearable. Yet there amid falling shells, the lads had to remain
day and night. Their rations were brought to them, but as every ounce
of food and drop of water, in addition to the letters from home, had to
be brought on pack mules through seven or eight miles of field tracks in
which the mules struggled on up to the knees in sticky mud and sometimes
up to the belly, it was impossible for the regiment to receive anything
beyond water and "iron rations," i.e., hard biscuits. Water was so
precious that not a drop could be spared to wash faces or clean teeth
with, and I always took my own water-bottle and food, to avoid sharing
the scanty supplies of the officers. After a little time spent with the
signalers I moved up the trench and looked in at the little dug-out of
the Colonel commanding. All the officers present, bearded almost beyond
recognition, were sitting on the floor. The enemy had left a small red
electric light, which added an almost absurd touch of luxury to the
miserable place. Farther up the trench I found the Brigade Staff
Captain in a similar dug-out and after making inquiries as to the
position of the Queen’s Westminster Regiment which was my objective, I
left to find it; for the sun was already setting. The path was across
the open fields, and the saddest I have ever trod. I was alone and had
but little idea of location, but it was impossible to miss the path. On
the right and left, it was marked at every few steps with dead men.
Most of them were still grasping their rifles. They had fallen forward
as they rushed over the ground, and their faces--their poor, blackened,
lipless faces--were towards the foe. There had, as yet, been no
opportunity to bury them for the ground was still being shelled and the
burial parties had been all too busily engaged in other parts of the
field. I longed to search for their identity discs that I might know
who they were and make a note of the names; but I had to leave it to the
burial party. I was already feeling sick with the foul smells in the
trench and the sights on the way, and lacked the strength to look for
the discs around the wrists and necks of the poor, decomposed bodies.
It had to be left to men of the burial party whose nerves were somewhat
more hardened to the task by other experiences of the kind. It was a
new Calvary on which I was standing. These poor bodies miles from home
and with no woman’s hands to perform the last offices of affection were
lying there as the price of the world’s freedom.

Would that all who talk glibly of freedom and justice might have seen
what I saw on that dreary journey, that they might the better realize
the spiritual depths of liberty and righteousness, and the high cost at
which they are won for the race. It is fatally easy to persuade
ourselves that there is no need for us to tread the bitter path of
suffering and death--that we can achieve freedom and justice by being
charitable, and by talking amiably to our enemies. We try to believe
that they are as anxious to achieve liberty for the world as we are,
that they are striving to bind mankind in fetters of iron, only through
lack of knowledge as to our intentions. Their hearts and intentions are
good but they are misled, and after a little talk with them around a
table they would put off their "shining armor" and become angels of
light carrying palm branches in place of swords and fetters.

This is a mighty pleasant theory, only it is not true; and we cannot get
rid of evil by ignoring it, nor of the devil by buying him a new suit.
There are men willing to die to destroy liberty, just as there are
others willing to die in its defense. It is not that they do not
understand liberty. They _do_, and that is why they wish to destroy it.
It is the enemy of their ideal. Whether liberty will survive or not,
depends upon whether there are more men inspired to die in defending
liberty, than there are willing to die in opposing it. A thing lives
while men love it sufficiently well to die for it. We get what we
deserve; and readiness to die for it is the price God has put on
liberty.

Words are things too cheap to buy it. When someone suggested
establishing a new religion to supersede Christianity, Voltaire is
reported to have asked if the founder were willing to be crucified for
it? Otherwise, it would stand no chance of success. It was a deep
criticism, and showed that Voltaire was no fool. Blood is the test, not
words. A nation can only achieve liberty when it is determined to be
free or die. "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it."
"Never man spake" as Christ spake, but He did not save the world by
talking to it, but by dying for it. Outpoured blood, not outpoured
words, is the proof of moral convictions and the means of their
propaganda; our soldiers may not be learned in some things, but they
have learned _that_. They know the cause will win which has most moral
power, and that the cause with most moral strength will prove itself to
be the one with most martyrs. And the side with most men ready to be
martyrs will outstay the other. The spirit of martyrdom, not
negotiation, is the path to liberty and peace. You cannot negotiate
with a tiger. The dispute is too simple for negotiation. You have to
kill the tiger, or yourself be killed.

While I was on leave, a man told me that he had asked some soldiers from
the Front why they were fighting, and they could not tell him.
Probably. All the deepest things are of life beyond telling. No true
man can tell why he loves his wife or children. This trust in words, in
being able to "tell why," is truly pathetic. I would not trust a wife’s
love if she could tell her husband exactly _why_ she loved him; nor
would I trust our soldiers not to turn tail in battle if they could
_tell_ just why they are fighting. They cannot _tell_, but with their
poor lipless faces turned defiantly against the foe they can _show_ why
they are fighting. Let those who want to know the soldiers’ reason _why_
they fight go and see them there on the blasted field of battle, not ask
them when they come home on leave. The lips of a soldier perish
_first_, as his dead body lies exposed on the battlefield; his rifle he
clutches to the last; and it is a lesson terrible enough for even the
densest talker to understand.

The dead lads lying out in the open with their rifles pointing towards
the enemy voice their reason why loud enough for the deaf to hear and
the world to heed. Ideals must be died for if they are to be realized
on earth, for they have bitter enemies who stick at nothing. And we
have to defend our ideal with our lives or be cravens and let it perish.

History, with unimportant variations, is constantly repeating itself;
and in nothing is it so consistent as in the price it puts on liberty.
The lease of liberty runs out; the lease has to be renewed, and it is
renewed by suffering and martyrdom. The dear dead lads whom I saw on
that terrible afternoon were renewing the lease. With their bodies they
had marked out a highway over which the peoples of the earth may march
to freedom and to justice.

The view, all too common, that our soldiers regard the war as a kind of
picnic, and an attack as a sort of rush for the goal in a game of
football, is false--false as sin. It is a view blind to the whole
psychology of the war, and misses the meaning of our soldiers’ gayety as
much as it ignores their fear and sorrow. The trenches are a Gethsemane
to them and their prayer is, "Our Father, all things are possible unto
Thee: take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what
Thou wilt."

One day, when I went into a mess-room in which letters were being
censored, an officer said to me, "Read this, Padre, there’s a reference
to you, and a candid expression of a man’s attitude towards religion."

I took the letter and it read: "Our chaplain isn’t far out when he says,
in his book, that though we may speak lightly of the church we don’t
think or speak lightly of Christ. However careless we may be when we are
out of the trenches, when we are in we all pray. There is nothing else
we can do."

I have been eighteen months with a fighting regiment on the Front, and I
have never spoken to any officer who did not regard it as a mathematical
certainty that, unless he happened to fall sick or be
transferred--neither of which he expected--he would be either killed or
wounded. And I agreed with him without saying it. He does not even
hope to escape wounds. They are inevitable if he stays long enough; for
one battle follows another and his time comes. He only hopes to escape
death and the more ghastly wounds. He hopes the wound when it comes
will be a "cushy one." The men take the same view. The period before
going into the trenches, or into battle, is to them like the Garden of
Gethsemane was to Christ; they are "exceeding sorrowful" and in their
presence I have often felt as one who stood "as it were, a stone’s
throw" from them. They are going out with the expectation of meeting
death.

On the 1st of July, 1916, twenty officers in our regiment went over the
top. Nineteen were killed or wounded and the one who returned to the
regiment was suffering from shell-shock and had to be sent home.
Although our losses are much lower now, the officers and men experience
the agony and bloody sweat of Gethsemane rather than the pleasure of a
picnic in Epping Forest. This explains, too, their gayety. It is the
happiness of men who know that they are doing their bit for the world’s
good, and playing the man, not the cad. The rise of happiness into
gayety is the natural reaction from the sorrow and alarm which have been
clouding their hearts. In peace time they will never know either the
intensity of joy or sorrow they know now. A man never feels so truly
humorous as when he is sad. Humor is a kind of inverted sadness. The
most exquisite sadness produces the most exquisite humor as the deepest
wells give the sweetest, purest and coldest water.

Tears and laughter are never far from one another,
The heart overflows on one side, and then on the other.

Our soldiers’ minds are not filled with thoughts of Germans, but with
thoughts of the friends they have left behind them. Nor do they often
think of killing Germans. They neither think so much of the Germans nor
so bitterly of them as do the people at home. The Germans have not the
same prominence in the picture. Deeds relieve their emotions in regard
to the Germans and leave their hearts open for the things and folk they
love.

It is commonly supposed (and this idea is fostered by some war
correspondents), that when our men go over the top they are possessed
with a mad lust to kill Germans. The ultimate aim of a general planning
a battle is to kill Germans no doubt, for that is the only way to
achieve victory; and if the Germans do not want to be killed they know
what to do. Let them surrender or retire. The private agrees with the
general in the necessity for killing Germans, but that is not what he is
thinking of when he goes over the top; nor is it what we should be
thinking of in his place. He is thinking of the Germans killing him.
Life is sweet at nineteen or one-and-twenty. It pleads to be spared a
little longer. A lad does not want to die; and as he goes over the
parapet he is thinking less of taking German lives than of losing his
own. He knows that German heads will not fit English shoulders, and
that, however many enemy lives he may take, none of them will restore
his own if he loses it, as he is quite likely to do. He is going out to
be mutilated or to die. That is his standpoint whatever may be the
general’s or the war-correspondent’s. He goes for his country’s sake
and the right. It is his duty, and there is an end of it.

Most of the killing in modern war is done by the artillery and
machine-guns. Comparatively few men have seen the face of an enemy they
know themselves to have killed. A regiment goes out to be shot at,
rather than to shoot. Unless this simple fact be grasped, the mentality
of the soldier cannot be understood. The lust for killing Germans would
never take a man out of his dug-out; but the love of his country and the
resolve to do his duty will take him out and lead him over the top. It
is what he volunteered for, but it goes hard when the time comes for all
that.

The unburied men I saw had, but a short while ago, no idea of becoming
soldiers. They were the light of a home and the stay of a business.
With that they were content. But the challenge came; and they went out
to defend the right against the wrong--the true against the false. They
toiled up a new Calvary "with the cross that turns not back," and now
they lie buried in a strange land. They have lost all for themselves,
but they have gained all for us and for those who will come after us.
Yet although they saved others, themselves they could not save.

*XVIII*

*THE HOSPITAL TRAIN*

We were carried from our regiments to the hospital in ambulance cars.
I, and several others, had trench fever. Some were suffering from gas
poisoning. One lovely boy--for he was nothing more--was near to death
with "mustard" gas. The doctor at the Dressing Station had opened a
vein and bled him of a pint of blood. It was the only hope of saving
him. But as the car bumped over the rough roads and the gas in his
lungs grew more suffocating he almost despaired of reaching the hospital
alive. Others were wounded; and one had appendicitis. After a period
in hospital, during which we were honored with a visit by General Byng,
it was decided that we should go to the Base. We lay down on
stretchers, and orderlies carried us to the waiting cars. At the
station we were lifted into the hospital train. The racks had been
taken down and stretchers put in their places. These were reserved for
the "lying cases." The "sitting cases" occupied the seats--one to each
corner. It was afternoon and as soon as the train began to move tea was
served. The train sped on and, about sun-set, a most excellent dinner
was provided by the orderlies on board.

It was the time of the new moon. "Keep the window open," said one, "it
is unlucky to see the new moon through glass, and we need all the good
luck we can get," and he avoided looking through the glass until he had
seen the moon through the open window. We chatted, read our magazines,
or slept--just as we felt inclined. The night wore on and at about two
o’clock we reached Rouen. Cars rushed us to one of the Red Cross
hospitals. A doctor slipped out of bed, examined our cards, decided in
which wards we should be put, and orderlies led or carried us thither.
A nurse showed each of us to his room. We were got to bed and another
nurse brought some tea. Next morning we were examined and put down for
removal across the Channel.

The nurses are radiant as sunshine, and diffuse a spirit of merriment
throughout the hospital. It was a pure joy to be under their care. At
three o’clock the following morning, without previous warning, a nurse
came and awakened us. We had half an hour to dress. Another nurse then
came round with a dainty breakfast. We were then put into cars and
taken to the hospital train. It left as dawn was breaking, and we were
on our way to "Blighty." We had a comfortable journey and reached Havre
about nine. Orderlies carried us on board ship and we were taken to our
cots. Breakfast was served immediately. We felt a huge content; and
hoped to be across by night. But the ship remained by the quay all day.
In the evening it moved out of the harbor and lay near its mouth.
Towards midnight it slipped its anchor and headed for home.

All had received life-belts and a card directing us which boat to make
for, should the ship be torpedoed. Mine was "Boat 5, Starboard." My
neighbor on the right had been on a torpedoed boat once and had no
desire to be on another. The lights of the ship were obscured or put
out, and we silently stole over the waters towards the much desired
haven. There was no sound but the steady thump of the engines, and we
were soon asleep. Shortly after dawn we awoke to find ourselves in
Southampton Water. A water-plane drew near, settled like a gull on the
water, and then plowed its way through the waves with the speed of a
motor-boat.

About nine o’clock we were carried off the boat to the station. Women
workers supplied us with telegraph forms, confectionery and cigarettes;
orderlies brought us tea. We were then taken to the train. It was even
more comfortable than the hospital trains in France; and we had women
nurses. On each side of the train, for its full length, were
comfortable beds and we were able to sit up or recline at our pleasure.
Lunch was served on board, and of a character to tempt the most ailing
man. No shortage of food is allowed to obtain on the hospital train.
It has the first claim on the food supply and it has the first claim to
the railroad. It stops at no station except for its own convenience.
Even the King’s train stops to let the hospital train pass.

We were under the care of a nurse who had reached middle life. She had
been on a torpedoed hospital ship! on one that struck a mine without
bursting it; and on another that collided with a destroyer in the dark.
She was greatly disappointed at the decision which had removed nurses
from the hospital ships because of the danger from submarines. She
fully appreciated the chivalry of the men who would not let their women
be drowned; but it had robbed the women of a chance of proving their
devotion, and she could not see why the men should do all the dying.
The women were ready to meet death with the men and as their mates and
equals. Their place was with the wounded whatever might befall, and
they were ready.

Hospital trains have run daily for three years now, and human nature can
get used to anything. We thought, therefore, that the people would have
become used to the hospital train. But greater surprise never gladdened
a man’s heart than the one which awaited us as we steamed out of
Southampton. All the women and children by the side of the railway were
at their windows or in their gardens, waving their hands to us. And all
the way to Manchester the waving of welcoming hands never ceased. At
every station the porters doffed their caps to the hospital train as it
sped past. There was not a station large or small that did not greet us
with a group of proud smiling faces. Our eyes were glued to the windows
all the way. For one day in our lives, at least, we were kings, and our
procession through "England’s green and pleasant land" was a royal one.
We passed through quiet country districts but at every wall or fence
there were happy faces. We wondered where they all came from, and how
they knew of our coming. There were tiny children sitting on all the
railway fences waving hands to us. One little girl of four or five was
sitting on the fence by a country station and waving her little hand.
We had not seen English children for months and Pope Gregory spoke the
truth ages ago when he said that they are "not Angles but Angels." The
sight of them after so long an absence was as refreshing to the spirit
as the sight of violets and primroses after a long and bitter winter.

At Birmingham the train made its only stop. Men and women of the St.
John Ambulance Association boarded the train and supplied us with tea;
and, as the train moved out, stood at attention on the platform. At
Manchester we received a warm welcome that told us we were in
Lancashire. Men and women helped us to the waiting cars and handed cups
of tea to us. It was raining of course--being Manchester--but as we
passed near a railway arch a waiting crowd rushed out into the rain and
startled us with a cry of welcome which was also a cry of pain. Most of
the men in the cars were Lancashire lads and in the welcome given them
there were tears as well as smiles. Lancashire has a great heart as well
as a long head. It suffers with those who suffer and the cry of the
heart was heard in the welcome of its voice. There was a welcome too,
at the door of the hospital and at the door of each ward. Water was
brought to our bedside, and then a tray bearing a well-cooked dinner.

We had reached home.

*XIX*

*AFTER WINTER, SPRING*

A man’s heart must be dead within him if, under the summer sun, he can
look on the desolated ground of the Western battle-front without feeling
emotions of joy and hope. In the winter-time the clumps of blasted
trees looked like groups of forsaken cripples. Their broken branches
stood out against the gray sky in utter nakedness, as if appealing to
heaven against the inhumanity of man. In a way, it was more depressing
to pass a ruined wood than a destroyed village. Some of the trees had
all their limbs shattered; others, thicker than a man’s body, were cut
clean through the middle; others, again, were torn clean up by the roots
and lay sprawling on the ground. It seemed impossible that spring could
ever again clothe them in her garments of gladdening green. We imagined
the trees would appear amid the sunshine of the summer black, gaunt and
irreconcilable; pointing their mangled stumps towards those who had done
them such irreparable wrong and, as the wind whistled through them,
calling on all decent men to rise up and avenge them of their enemies.

But, suddenly, we found that the reconciling spring was back in the
woods exercising all her oldtime witchery. Each broken limb was covered
with fresh foliage and each scarred stump put out sprouts of green. The
broken but blossoming woods grew into a picture of Hope, infinitely more
sublime and touching than the one to which Watts gave the name. It was a
picture drawn and colored by the finger of God, and it made the fairest
of man’s handiwork look weak and incomplete. Uprooted trees lay on the
ground in full blossom, and shell-lopped branches again took on the form
of beauty. The transformation was wonderful to behold.

And it all happened in a week. When our men went into the trenches the
trees were black, bare and bruised, but when they came out of the front
line into the support-trenches the wood behind them was a tender green
and had grown curved and symmetrical. It seemed as if the fairies of
our childhood had returned to the earth and were dwelling in the wood.
Although two long-range naval guns lay hidden behind it, which, with
deep imprecations opened their terrible mouths to hurl fiery
thunderbolts at the enemy, the fairies seemed unafraid and daily
continued to weave for the trees beautiful garments of leaf and blossom.
I have seen nothing that brought such gladness to both officers and men.
A new spirit seemed abroad. We were in a new atmosphere and a new world.
The war seemed already won, and the work of renewal and reconstruction
begun.

And now the summer had done for the ground what the spring did for the
trees. One Sunday, I was to hold a service on ground that was, in the
springtime, No Man’s Land. Having ample time I left the dusty road and
walked across the broken fields through which our front-line trenches
had run. There were innumerable shell holes and I had to pick my way
with care through the long grass and lingering barbed wire. I had been
over the ground on the day following the advance. Then it was a sea of
mud, with vast breakwaters of rusty barbed wire. Now, however, Nature’s
healing hand was at work. Slowly but surely the trenches were falling
in, and the shell-holes filling up. The lips of the craters and
trenches were red as a maiden’s--red with the poppies which come to
them. Here and there were large patches of gold and white where unseen
hands had sown the mud with dog-daisies. There were other patches all
ablaze with the red fire of the poppies, and as the slender plants
swayed in the wind, the fire leaped up or died down.

When the war broke out I was in "Poppyland" near Cromer, in East Anglia.
There I first heard the tramp of armed men on the way to France, and
there first caught the strain of "Tipperary"--the farewell song of the
First Seven Divisions--a strain I can never hear now without having to
stifle back my tears. As I passed by these patches of blood-red poppies
I thought of those old and stirring days at Cromer when we watched a
regiment of the original Expeditionary Force singing "Tipperary" as it
marched swingingly through the narrow streets. The declaration of war
was hourly expected and the pier and some of the Sunday-school rooms
were given to the soldiers for billets. By morning every soldier had
vanished and we could only guess where, but a remark made by one of them
to another lingers still. They were standing apart, and watching the
fuss the people were making over the regiment.

"Yes," he said to his comrade, "they think a great deal of the soldiers
in time of war, but they don’t think much of us in days of peace."

The remark was so true that it cut like a knife and the wound rankles
yet. I have often wondered what became of the lad that went out to
France to the horrors of war, with such memories of our attitude towards
him in the times of peace. I hope he lived long enough to see our
repentance. His memory haunted me among the poppies of Beaurains. In
the English Poppyland there was nothing to compare with the red-coated
army of poppies now occupying our old front line. In these trenches our
gallant men had for nearly three years fought and bled, and it seemed as
if every drop of blood poured out by them had turned into a glorious and
triumphant poppy.

The spring and summer have taught me afresh that there is in our lives a
Power that is not ourselves. It is imminent in us and in all things,
yet transcends all. "Change and decay in all around we see," and still
there is One who changes not; He "_from_ everlasting _to_ everlasting is
God." He is the fountain of eternal life that no drought can touch. He
heals the broken tree and the broken heart. He clothes the desolate
fields of war with the golden corn of peace, and in the trenches that
war has scored across the souls of men, he plants the rich poppies of
memory. He drives away the icy oppression of winter with the breath or
spring, and in His mercy assuages "the grief that saps the mind for
those that here we see no more."

He who turns rain-mists into rainbows and brings out of mud scarlet
poppies and white-petaled daisies without a speck of dirt upon them, is
at work in human life. Out of mud He has formed the poppy and out of
the dust the body of man. Who then can set Him limits when He works in
the finer material of man’s soul? Eye hath not seen nor heart conceived
the beauty that will come forth when His workmanship is complete. "If
God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is
cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little
faith" who were made for immortality? His ways are past finding out,
but they are good. He puts out the sun but brings forth millions of
stars in its stead. At His call they come flocking forth as doves to
their windows. He blinds Milton but brings into his soul a flood of
light such as never shone on sea or land, and in its rays he sees
Paradise, lost and regained. He shuts Bunyan in a noisome prison, and
closes against him the door to his beloved Bedford, but He opens to him
a magic window that looks on heaven, and the years pass swiftly as he
watches the progress of the pilgrims towards the Celestial City. In the
mud that has been stained and even saturated with the life-blood of our
soldiers, He has made poppies to spring to loveliness. It is a parable
He is speaking to us, that the heart of man may feel and believe that
which it is beyond the power of the mind to grasp, or the tongue to
explain.

The wounds of France are deep and deadly but they are not self-inflicted
and they will heal. She will blossom again with a glory greater and
purer than all her former glories. She is even now finding her soul,
and revealing a moral beauty and endurance such as few, even of her
dearest friends, could have foreseen or foretold. For ashes, God has
given her beauty, and it is worth all her suffering. Not Voltaire, but
Joan of Arc is her pride to-day. When I was in Rouen I saw the fresh
flowers which the people daily place on the spot where she died. France
knows where her strength lies. Over Napoleon she has built a magnificent
tomb of marble, but in it, she has not placed a single flower. As I
walked through it, some time ago, I felt depressed. It made me shiver.
It is magnificent, but dead. One of Joan of Arc’s living flowers would
be worth the whole pile. It is the most tremendous sermon ever preached
on the vanity of military glory and the emptiness of genius when
uninspired by moral and spiritual worth. France knows. She gives Joan
of Arc a flower, but Napoleon a stone. France was never so great as
now, and never of such supreme importance to the world. We could not do
without her. On her coins she represents herself as a Sower that goes
forth sowing. It is a noble ideal, and truly, where she scatters her
seeds of thought the fair flowers of liberty, equality and fraternity
spring up as poppies spring, where the blood of our soldiers has watered
her fields. France is the fair Sower among the nations, and it will be
our eternal glory that when she was suddenly and murderously attacked in
her fields by her brutal and envious neighbor--who shamelessly stamps a
bird of prey on his coins for _his_ symbol, and a skull and cross-bones
on his soldiers’ headgear as the expression of his ambition--England
came to her rescue, and not in vain. The German sword has gone deeply
into the heart of France, but it will leave not a festering wound but a
well of water at which mankind will drink and be refreshed. Wound the
earth, and there springs forth water; wound France and there springs
forth inspiration. Trample France in the mud, and she comes forth pure
again, passionate and free as a poppy blown by the summer wind.

_Printed in the United States of America_

* * * * * * * *

_*By CHAPLAIN THOMAS TIPLADY*_

_*FIFTH EDITION*_

*The Cross at the Front*

Fragments from the Trenches.

12mo. Cloth. _Net $1.00_.

"’Vivid’ is too dim a word to express the living pictures which this
chaplain has seen in France. Some of the chapters are among the finest
pieces of pathos we have read anywhere. Read the book and you will be a
better man for all your tasks."--_Chicago Standard_.

*The Soul of the Soldier*

Echoes from the Western Front.

12mo. Cloth. _Net $1.25_.

An astonishing story Chaplain Tiplady here has to tell--one in which the
very foundations of existence seem temporarily uprooted, and the world
turned upside-down. Yet never, in the telling, does he lose the
unswerving faith and cheering optimism which formed the prevailing note
of THE CROSS AT THE FRONT, nor for a moment relaxes his belief that the
cause of justice, truth and righteousness is that for which the Allied
armies are now fighting.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Soul of the Soldier - Sketches from the Western Battle-Front" ***

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