Part 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*XVI*

*A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE*

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

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

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

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

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

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

*XVII*

*A SOLDIER'S CALVARY*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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