Chapter 5

XVTHE CHILDREN OF OUR DEADThere 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 peersThe heroes of old,Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrearsOf 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 lingerbecauseof 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 beenTheir 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 losthisright 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 blowIn Flanders fields."XVIA FUNERAL UNDER FIREIt 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 restWith 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.XVIIA SOLDIER'S CALVARYThere 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. Theydo, 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 learnedthat. 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 exactlywhyshe loved him; nor would I trust our soldiers not to turn tail in battle if they couldtelljust why they are fighting. They cannottell, but with their poor lipless faces turned defiantly against the foe they canshowwhy they are fighting. Let those who want to know the soldiers' reasonwhythey 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 perishfirst, 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.XVIIITHE HOSPITAL TRAINWe 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.XIXAFTER WINTER, SPRINGA 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 "fromeverlastingtoeverlasting 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 forhissymbol, 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.

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 peersThe heroes of old,Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrearsOf 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!"

"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!"

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 lingerbecauseof 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 beenTheir sons they gave--their immortality."

"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 losthisright 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 blowIn Flanders fields."

"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 restWith his martial cloak around him."

"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. Theydo, 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 learnedthat. 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 exactlywhyshe loved him; nor would I trust our soldiers not to turn tail in battle if they couldtelljust why they are fighting. They cannottell, but with their poor lipless faces turned defiantly against the foe they canshowwhy they are fighting. Let those who want to know the soldiers' reasonwhythey 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 perishfirst, 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.

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 "fromeverlastingtoeverlasting 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 forhissymbol, 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.

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