MARCHING AWAY A BOOK OF CONSOLATION FOR WAR SORROW J. H. YOXALL Price 6 D< net MARCHING AWAY A BOOK OF CONSOLATION FOR WAR SORROW BY J. H. YOXALL LONDON HORACE MARSHALL & SON 125 FLEET STREET, E.C. v. h- 7 Printed in Great Brita;;; by Turnbull Cs* Spears , Edinbu THE WRITER'S APOLOGY Here are five articles which, when at intervals they appeared in the Daily Neivs, brought the writer letters so numerous, and so many requests for republication of those articles in more permanent form, that this small book is issued accordingly, though it can never justify publication in itself. Some letters of argument, and even of reproach, have come, because passages in the last two articles have been thought un- orthodox ; but part of the writer's apology is that correspondence so poignant reached him, after the first article, that he almost had to write the others, and has written what he feels, and somehow seems to know. - J. H. Y. 3 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/marchingawaybookOOyoxa CONTENTS PAGE Marching Away ... 7 " Tell Me the Worst ! " . .15 Forbidden Banns . . .23 "Red Wine through the Helmet " . .30 The Green Lamp . . 57 5 MARCHING AWAY There is a beauty of manliness about them, as blithely they stride away on the vast adventure beyond sea. I admire, I envy ; but what I am thinking of now is what can be said to comfort the sore hearts left behind. Without rattle of drum or clam- our of bagpipes those young cru- saders go, but their lips are fifes and their blood beats gallant time. We cannot sing and cheer, however, for the sturdy tread that seems to take possession of the earth passes over our hearts. How shall I put into words the wistful pride, the sad exaltation, the dread.the faint hope, the lump in the throat which we feel who are left behind ? There would be eye-pleasure in the march if our eyes were not so misty, if those tawny files glinting with burnished brass were not ours — sons of ours. The jaunty slant 7 MARCHING AWAY of the rifle, the gay gleam from the half-turned face, the rhythm of the ribbed puttees, the noble music of the song, and the determined tread are splendid as they march, march away ; but these are our sons, and they march to what ? We wonder what words of comfort we may be able to find for fathers — fathers of sons who will never march back ; perhaps for ourselves. For fathers, I say ; one hardly dares think of trying to console the mothers. Rachel will not be com- forted ; the wisest words the most tenderly uttered only increase her wrath at the sin and stupidity of war. If gaspingly she has had to tear open that long-dreaded tele- gram from the War Office, and has read the worst, the long-over- shadowing worst, it is no good to say to her, no matter how gently, that so it is, unhappily — that we did not seek the War, but it has to go on — that England had to fight, or be shamed and endangered — 8 MARCHING AWAY that so it is, alas, and so it must be, more's the pity — and that since it is so . . . What she cries out spears all that through ; she cries out that it ought not to be so ! And we practical men must not dare undervalue the mother's way of thinking, for she feels more truly than we reason ; her very way of arguing shows how close a good woman keeps to Him whom she worships, and how much nearer than we to the throne and altar of heavenly law. Perhaps she cries out against Heaven, that God did not strike down the Kaiser and the others who deliberately began the War ; but we men have to recog- nise facts, we then say — we have to do the best we can with facts. Mothers more recognise eternal rights than transient facts, how- ever, and they feel unappeasable anger against wrong. We can approach a man, a friend, with a black band on his sleeve, and " The honour of his dying ! " we can say, " I should think you 9 MARCHING AWAY are very proud ! To die like that is nobler than gaining the V.C. Greater honour hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for the righteousness that exalteth." But the glory and the meed are only crumbs of comfort for a father, even; he would so willingly re- nounce his terrible cause for pride if but his son could return. Yes, his son was gallant, no doubt— no' Absalom to flee from battle— but even had he been a craven was still his son. He had his faults, perhaps, but— he was alive, and is now dead : « O Absalom, my son, my son ! " What else can be said to the father and mother? The heart knoweth its own bitterness, words are weak comfort, but surely there is the height of some great argu- ment that compassionate love can attain? Dare we hint that since the son's way of dying has made them proud, his way of living can never now make them ashamed? He MARCHING AWAY might have died in due course but ignobly, he might have lived on into disgrace, even he. Certainly he would have lived on into weari- some days, and perhaps into evil days, into years of disappointment, non-success in life, or actual and ob- vious disaster. He, even he, might have lived on into dishonour — one never knows. Call no man wise or happy till he is dead — he might ! But he has escaped all that ; he has escaped even the risk of all that ; fighting a good fight briefly and intensely, he has avoided the dangerous struggles of long life. At the top of the morning hill he has fallen, not on the downward slope ; nor, better still, in the last desperate trench — the valley of the shadow so often clouded by remorse as well as pain. May we say to the father and mother that the loss is not his ? That it is theirs only, and that they need not sorrow vicari- ously, for he has no sorrow? It has been harder for them to live, at home, than it was for him to die. 1 1 MARCHING AWAY To them, too, he is now always " the loved, the lost "; he can never now become the quarrelled-with and the renounced, as sometimes sons do who live on. His soul is now like a star ; though it dwells apart it is theirs undimmed, unsullied ; fixed in their memories at his best, it is a star that cannot set ; he can never decline into cause for a mother's grief or a father's despair. " Yes, but think what he has missed, poor lad ! " they cry out. His horoscope had seemed so plainly drawn — School triumphs, earned apace in work and play ; Friendships at will; then love's delight- ful dawn And mellowing day. Home fostering hope ; some service to the State ; Benignant age ; then the long tryst to keep Where, in the yew-tree shadow con- gregate, His fathers sleep. I 2 MARCHING AWAY Yet he enjoyed the better part of all that, don't you think ? Boy- hood, youth, young manhood, the ethereal best of love, too — home, hope — often the one way to spoil a hope is to realise it ; and surely he has rendered " some service to the State " ? Most people who live long soon leave the better parts of life behind them ; sickness, anguish, decrepitude, and then death, are no great boons after all. He has missed all those. Not his, and never now, the life of care Which we have borne, and still must bear. He chose the better part and avoided the cumbering ; it was his own will to march away. O stricken heart, remember, O remember How of human days he lived the better part : April came to bloom, and never dim December Breathed its killing chills upon the head or heart. Worn-out, rusted-out old folk sit shivering by the fire on a hot Sun- 13 MARCHING AWAY day evening while the chant from the church near by comes in, faintly heard : " O God, make speed to save us ! O Lord, make haste to help us!" Slowly, faintly, tediously trickles the sand in the glass. Their active-service years are gone, even their years of serenity and " benig- nant age " are gone, so now in the poor half-pay of life they doze, Death's pensioners. He marched away from all that. We are all of us marching to- wards some great bivouac or billet; he has marched ahead, in the van. Is not death a kind of birth, too, into something better than what we call life ? Maybe the dead are the only true living, and the not yet dead the not yet born ? " Twilight and evening bell " ? — nay, sunrise and daystar. Some day some seer and musician of genius will com- pose a Joyful Requiem, a glad Dead March away. 14 1 "TELL ME THE WORST!" List after list is posted; each day unseals new sources of tears, and the woe of the war lengthens into a litany of sorrow. " That it may please Thee to defend and provide for the fatherless children and widows and all that are deso- late, we beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord." We stand in purpose firm, to the end ; but many myriads of mothers and fathers are waiting meanwhile— waiting in greyinsula*r weather, for the worst ; and those who know the worst already had also to know the long anxiety of dread. Perhaps the dread is al- most as bad to bear as the worst when it comes, if come it does ; yet the worst also is listened for! " Tell me the worst ! " is such a natural cry of the heart ; " Lighten '5 B " TELL ME THE WORST!" our darkness, we beseech Thee ! " — even with the terrible truth. Proverbs, those comforts in ordi- nary times, are now crutches that break. " No news " is not " good news " now. A crushing certainty has this much of good in it, that it stills the long racking of the dread. When the worst is known there is no longer a faint, fair hope left struggling, with fears that assail it each sleepless hour, and doubts that worry it all day. Is " the worst " the worst indeed ? It is a sharp and burning blade, on a sudden ; but the pain of it blessedly lessens thereafter. It brings with it its own merciful anodyne, too ; it stuns, so that the pangs are not entirely conscient — the blow is partly anaesthetic. And tears come to soften the impact, the good tears that relieve. " Men must work and women must weep " is another saying which breaks down now ; men too should let the war-tears come, not strive against their pain dry-eyed. 16 "TELL ME THE WORST!" Give sorrow words, unpack the loaded heart with speech. Do not only think of him; shut away alone, with the worst as your relentless, silent companion, you hinder your own healing. Seek rather the presence of friends at your hearth, and talk with them of your loss, and of the lost as he used to be— of what he was what he nobly did, and what is his exceeding great reward. Listen, as people speak to you of his bravery and devotion in a great Cause; accept and believe ^that whoso wars against the evil spirit, thisMephistophelesthathasentered into the German Faust, is indeed a Crusader. Remind each other, beside the hearth which he died to defend against evil, of what he was there, at his best— all else that he was can be forgotten now, the natural human dross of that has been refined away in the flame of his transfiguration. Think of him as being caught up from the trenches to the heights. *7 "TELL ME THE WORST!" " But it is so sudden ! " is a woman's natural cry. " I don't even know where he died ! " Yet you know how he lived, and for what. And as to his resting- place, it was burial in splendour for him, not in city fashion, borne to some city of tombstones, within the rusty trappings of a hearse. It was somewhere in Flanders or France that he died, or in a Balkan valley, or on a slope in Gallipoli, or upon the sands of Mesopotamia ; or in the hale and hearty sea, upon the mighty floor that has been strewn with the bones of the British for ages. No matter where — a grave is only a doorway ; and wherever he died, he died well. " But I can't find out how it happened ! The bad news is so brief." No record of his service comes to hand, Save in a soldier's curt and simple phrase. " / regret to have to acquaint you that he died in action " — that is all. Yet in everything splendid there is 18 " TELL ME THE WORST!" something vague, a mystical halo. And, however or wherever it was, he died manly, on a field of honour, which was also a field of duty. In a great hour he died, and the laurel is everlasting for him, though — yes, I know, I know ! — you long to lay flowers on the mound. But he lies in State, royal with his duty done to Heaven and to humanity : following the great Exemplar, he saved others from death, though himself he could not save. The suddenness and acuteness of the worst will pass, moreover ; for time does. The awful moment does not last. Time ticks again only slowly at first, but minute by minute it slowly carries some of your worst woe away. The touch of time is medicating, too, it is a gentle, spiritual massage; the pain is still there, still there at the heart and in the memory, but it burns and throbs a little less intolerably each new day. You even blame 19 " TELL ME THE WORST!" yourself presently, because the first poignancy of the worst does not continue with you, but that, too, is natural ; not continuous was the first rapture of your bygone joys. Nothingcontinues,not even death perhaps ; so why should you expect your sorrow to last on unlessened ? It is not your heartlessness if after a while the pulse of your life begins to revive. Sorrow is like a tide, it cannot always be flowing up and moaning on the beach ; an ebb must come, even for woe. Some- one has said that we ought always to be lifting ourselves up and on towards one consummate hour, but there is none, not even in grief ; the lines of life and death are curves ; time bends over us, gentle and emollient, and it helpfully offers us distractions. Bad and sad, then not so sad and bad, and then be- ginning to be almost a little glad, the hours keep coming up to us ; some pouncing, with the worst, others approaching with the mate- 20 « TELL ME THE WORST!" rial consequences of the worst, and then some bringing the healing dulness that gives sorrow sleep. And the hours bring up to us so many matters to deal with — small things, perhaps, toys or tools with which we must divert our thoughts from what might else become a cankering sorrow. There is dig- nity in a deep grief, yet small things can well assuage great sorrows. Life has to go on with us, even in our bereavement ; apparently life lives on by recommencing and re- peating, and it must repeat other things, as well as death and sorrow. So that death itself can be no end to life, and life for the loved and the still loving, together again, somewhere and somehow — there is no need to theologise — may be hoped for. It is noble to hope for that ; at any rate it is wise to be- lieve it ; and it is dutiful to become resigned to separation for a while. Also it is healing to take up one's work again ; the talismans which 2 I "TELL ME THE WORST!" best conjure sorrow away are Hope, Resignation, and Work. One tries to say words of com- fort, but the words of another can console only weakly, if at all. Silent we have to stand in presence of a mother's grief. " Flesh of my flesh, little son that nestled so closely, were you born for this young death?" She weeps her baby, for she sees him small and helpless again. Yet he needs help no longer : All that life contains of torture, toil, or treason, Shame, dishonour, death, to him are but a name : Here, a boy, he dwelt through all the singing season, And, ere the day of sorrow, departed as he came. FORBIDDEN BANNS Letters come, almost daily, and among them is a letter in which the writer says : " Mothers are not the only ones. What comfort is there for me ? This was to have been my wedding month, but — " The call of the bugle (that won- derful music, plaintive, yet more enticing than the notes of the Pied Piper) sounded insistently. " I knew he must go," she writes, "but I hoped." Now her hope is dead, too. The bugle forbade the banns of mar- riage. There has been no wedding- raiment ; instead there has been " confused noise, and garments rolled in blood," and " What com- fort is there for me ? " the letter cries. And I, who have no canon- ical authority to utter consolation, what can I say ? " You had the marriage of true minds " shall I answer ? " You had the ethereal 23 FORBIDDEN BANNS she might never have played him false, but even peace-time is full of difficult circumstances, and some- thing might have forbidden the banns, even if both lovers had lived on. Dare I say that I hope that — after a while — she will wed some- one else ? For the race must be carried on. The lands and seas beneath the Union Jack — the flag of the red cross for sacrifice and the white crosses for good faith — must still be manned. There must still be human nests, and chirping young in them ; the race will especially need to multiply again, now that so many of it have died in war. But she will never meet anybody she could marry, now, she thinks, and there is his sister in like case ; to both of them has come the spin- ster's call. And there seems nothing bugle-like, nothing gallant and in- spiring, about the call to spinster- hood ; it is a grey vista to gaze into the future of what is called an old maid. 26 FORBIDDEN BANNS Yet where are there sweeter women than those whose lovers died ? " Old maid " is a false title when used in jest or satire, but it can be a most honourable name when beautifully worn. Old maids can be the lay nuns and votaries of bereavement — sisters of mercy in the wounding battle of civil life. They are daughters and sisters still, if never now to be happy wives and proud mothers ; they will have missed much of the full meaning of life, but they can help much, too. A heart that has been touched to the fine issues of unselfish giving; a spirit that has been hallowed by the refining fire of sorrow; strength spent in ministry of service to others ; a life become a well and fountain-head of goodness, that streams with blessings; a mind that brims with tender thoughts, hands full of the almsgiving of gentleness and good deeds ; an ageing face that is beautiful with kindness to the end — is this a mere " old maid " ? Nay, she may lay up 27 FORBIDDEN BANNS she might never have played him false, but even peace-time is full of difficult circumstances, and some- thing might have forbidden the banns, even if both lovers had lived on. Dare I say that I hope that after a while— she will wed some- one else ? F or the race must be carried on. The lands and seas beneath the Union Jack — the flag of the red cross for sacrifice and the white crosses for good faith — must still be manned. There must still be human nests, and chirping young in them ; the race will especially need to multiply again, now that so many of it have died in war. But she will never meet anybody she could marry, now, she thinks, and there is his sister in like case ; to both of them has come the spin- ster's call. And there seems nothing bugle-like, nothing gallant and in- spiring, about the call to spinster- hood ; it is a grey vista to gaze into the future of what is called an old maid. 26 FORBIDDEN BANNS Yet where are there sweeter women than those whose lovers died ? " Old maid " is a false title when used in jest or satire, but it can be a most honourable name when beautifully worn. Old maids can be the lay nuns and votaries of bereavement — sisters of mercy in the wounding battle of civil life. They are daughters and sisters still, if never now to be happy wives and proud mothers ; they will have missed much of the full meaning of life, but they can help much, too. A heart that has been touched to the fine issues of unselfish giving; a spirit that has been hallowed by the refining fire of sorrow; strength spent in ministry of service to others ; a life become a well and fountain-head of goodness, that streams with blessings ; a mind that brims with tender thoughts, hands full of the almsgiving of gentleness and good deeds ; an ageing face that is beautiful with kindness to the end — is this a mere " old maid"? Nay, she may lay up 27 FORBIDDEN BANNS treasure in heaven by being the salt of the earth. But all her plans are gone to the winds of this sudden, unjust adversity. It is so gratuitously cruel, it never need have happened, if the Kaiser had not been mad with ambition and then with panic, if — if — but life in peace-time is also a bundle of " ifs." There were towers in Siloam that fell upon the just and the unjust alike ; there are accidents in the street, and mala- dies that leap upon the civilian ; the store of garments lovingly made ready, and the table-linen with the monogram daintily worked, might have had to remain unused in any case, perhaps ; one never knows. Now she may knit, now she may toil and spin for others, outshining the lilies of the field. Now she may be the wise virgin, a lamp always lit with fragrant service to others ; ready as the Lady of the Lamp was, who died an " old maid." There can be heroism in a long 28 FORBIDDEN BANNS single life, as well as in the death of an Edith Cavell. Sisters and sweethearts lonely, the worst pang past, may finish a good course in sacrifice, as did the men who marched away to the sudden glory of death. 29 "RED WINE THROUGH THE HELMET " " The bread was ration bread, and the wine the ordinary red wine of the country. The communion table was a wash-stand, and the vessels were kitchen bowls. We sang the second Paraphrase, and ' My broken body thus I give.' " A Scots army chaplain wrote that home, and as I read it I blinked as one does at a wonderful sunset ; and then a vivid colour seemed to bespot the page. The scene was the interior of a granary, standing— still standing then— betwixt the mud and the flood. "Through the open door came the sound of distant rifle fire, while occasionally the building shook with the booming of our own heavy guns." Thus the letter went on. "There in the presence of their comrades, with the noises of 30 "RED WINE" the battle in their ears, one officer and seventy-three men professed their faith, and their desire to follow the Prince of Peace." " Oh, second chrism, unction ex- treme ! " I thought as I read. Vow, invocation, salutation by those per- haps about to die — to die for a cause that hallows the bullet and sanctions the blade. I, being a Southron, do not know what hymn or anthem the second Paraphrase may be, but I can guess how per- sonal a meaning may have been sung into " My broken body thus I give " that day. Many of the worshippers there had given up to the dire chances of active service all immediate thoughts of ambition, position, and the warmer human joys, and were now to give up their bodies to be " broken in the wars." Let those of us who cannot emulate them stand with right hand at the salute, as we watch them join in that religious loving-cup, that vin d'honneur of double devotion — not without inner tears. " RED WINE THROUGH Those of us who must stay at home, the veterans of peace, left over from long years of political battle and military calm into these new days of universal slogan ; we the surviving unfittest, who cannot aim well, who could not march well, who could not drag the bayonet out of a dying German body well ; we whom any regimental medico would reject instanter ; we the broken in civilian strife, must surely bow the head before the dignity and poig- nancy of that holy convocation to which the Sunday bugle called. The head must be bowed if only to hide that wetness of eye which the race we belong to prefers to conceal. " Ration bread " for the bread of life, and in the crockery chalice " the ordinary red wine of the country." The Knights of Brank- some " drank the red wine through the helmet barred," but that would be the liquor of Burgundy or Bor- deaux. Clutching the leather bottle with mailed fist (as ready for war as the German army was, down to 3 2 THE HELMET" the least rivet), the Knights 01 Branksome took draughts as long and heady as those which the Prussians swigged in Champagne. But these other men-at-arms, these knights of ours in soiled orange- tawny — " men of the Buffs " every one of them, whatever their regi- ments might be — were most of them unready for any foray when the war-trumpets first blew. The sea was their Border, these were no rievers with a keep or a peel to defend against a raid. There could be no mail to guard their bodies, no helmets nor visors to shield their heads : England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales had no instant Kriegmobil ready to put in practice, no detestable and crafty swiftness of array. Yet the four small insular countries and the Empire have sent out volunteers in such number and with such glad giving of themselves as the world never saw before. " Ye gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," right hand to the forehead — salute ! 33 "RED WINE THROUGH " The ordinary red wine of the country " — I hardly understood the chaplain in that, for the peasantry of Flanders do not press the grape ; further to the south runs the line where the wheatfields merge into the vineyards. So what would it be that reddened in the kitchen chalice ? Perhaps a rough red wine from Beziers or Bayonne, thinned down and commercially treated before sale in northern France. The abstainer from alcohol need not wince to think of that sacra- mentally — there would be much water in it, and quite a lot of log- wood dye. But at any rate the wine which the granary looked upon when it was red was doubly em- blematic; for also it symbolised the rich juice and noble sap poured out from so many broken bodies upon the trenched mud. The metaphor is commonplace, I know, but it is good to cling to something commonplace now and then in these abnormal days. A 34 THE HELMET" splendid pigment is dyeing our gar- ments purple now, for proud and Imperial mourning ; let us hope that a new world may be " born in the purple " in this way. There are many signs of that. We in these islands have been touched to finer issues. Dr Chalmers, a divine no doubt revered by the chaplain of the 8th Royal Scots, set down in his " Daily Readings " that " It is well to be conversantwith great ele- ments — life and death, reason and madness," and we confront the latter as well as the first. For Germany shows us an awful ex- ample to avoid, the spectacle of a whole people demented with rage and dread. As for life and death, our own flesh and blood are fight- ing yonder, or have been, or soon will be, and vicariously we quiver to the shock and the pang. Yes, the great things, the great elements, are around us, vast shapes of hope and of gloom. Our country is becoming greater in the world and history than ever, and our 35 "RED WINE" Empire wider and more famous, because of this sacrificial trans- fusion of blood. It would be mon- strous if we who must stay at home grow no better, no nobler for the watching of that even while we mourn ; they yonder do, at any rate — and nobler they grew who clasped the horns of the altar for us, they who through the visor took the viaticum, they who answered a dread rogation with a cheerful " I will ! " and quaffed the mystic wine of death " through the helmet barred." 3- THE GREEN LAMP ONE bright June Sunday, a little more than a century ago, the psalm for the day in church was the ninety-first, and a thrill ran through each congregation at the words " A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee." Nearly everybody knew that a battle must be taking place just then, for that bright Sunday was the " loud sabbath " of Waterloo. One who lived through a battle in Flanders in June, 191 5, says that when with pumping heart he rushed at the enemy's defences, he shouted that verse, with a strange sense of elation and safety. " A thousand shall fall at thy side — ten thousand at thy right hand — but not thee ! " Then came the re- vulsion. " Why shouldn't I ? " he cried, as he neared the German 37 THE GREEN LAMP trenches. " How beastly unfair if I don't!" That is what many bereft par- ents are saying. " This is unfair ! Why should it be my lad, and not the next to him, who fell ? " Is a " casualty " casual indeed, mere haphazard ? Is this war a chance-medley, a dark lottery ? Are the survivors the fortunately fated, or are those who die for all that earth holds dear a chosen and shin- ing company, the very elect of Heaven ? And what of the dread- fully mutilated, those who think they have bitter reasons to regret that they did not totally die ? Who wills all this ? Who allots the event to the whole, the wounded and the slain ? And why ? Who can say ? I only know That as he turned to go And waved his hand, In his young eyes a sudden glory shone. These things are a great mystery, and how shall any weak and erring 38 THE GREEN LAMP layman, not anointed, dare to try to explain ? Impenetrably it hangs, that veil of Isis, and none can lift it, even at one corner. But if any- one feels the eternal hope in spite of all this, let him utter it now. Shame upon him if he is not help- ful now, a cup of consolation in a dire thirst. I should think that hope is the chief witness to faith. Even belief is only a part of hope. " The great- est of these is charity," but charity is a form of hope for others. Though we cannot lift the veil, let us wave the green lamp. Railway signals used to be of three colours, and a jingle explained that " white is right, red is wrong, green is gently move along." Nowadays the colours are two — red, the hue of risk, and green, the colour of hope. O sud- denly changing star at the end of the platform, I take thy omen ! Aloft the green light shines, and into the mysterious darkness the train sets out, green stars beckon- ing it on and on to the next haven ; 39 THE GREEN LAMP for down has gone the red, the hot crude threat of Hell. There, it is out ! That is the cruel anxiety which some who write to me feel. The lad's laughter is remembered, and his carelessness about religion, then. " Did my lad believe, at the last? Can I hope to meet him up yonder ? " the be- reft now ask themselves, and the hearts of many good women sink, lest the answer should bar to their dead the gate of Heaven. As if any mortal answer could do that ! Hope answers best. How and for what did he die is an answer to the question, maybe. When souls in a vigil are listening they hear the supernal speech ; to men on the eve of battle come premonitions and the desire to prepare. And if to walk humbly before God is a main part of religion, how could they help but do that, in such a place and time ? War burns away much theo- logical dross ; Churches and tenets 40 THE GREEN LAMP that seem to be exclusive and op- posed in peace time are seen to be little else than one and the same just now. If they are not, they must all be meaningless, surely ! For Italian priests consecrate Al- pinists to attack Jagers whom Austrian priests have blessed, and English ministers pray for victory over men to whom Lutheran pastors have promised Divine help. Formulas which are phases or re- flections of the one great piteous human faith should have their stiff boundaries broken down in a time like this. Instantaneously comes the viaticum to the soldier who falls, maybe — perhaps the missile carries it ? Let us think of those who fell as still marching on, — with feet innumerable that go To some high end we in the end shall know. Fifteen months ago a Rabbi in a field hospital saw a dying French soldier mutely ask for the last 41 THE GREEN LAMP marching order. No priest of the Roman Church was there at the moment ; what could the Rabbi do ? What he did was to take up a crucifix, which till then must have seemed a false and odious symbol to him ; yet he held up the cross before those glazing eyes. Surely that was the true Judaism, as well as true Chris- tianity? And the Baptist chap- lain at Harfleur, who suddenly found a French infantryman kneel- ing before him in the street and lifted two fingers in the gesture of the blessing asked for, showed true Protestantism none the less. Shall our creeds at home be narrow still ? In that shrieking valley of the shadow, a bombardment before battle, a consciousness until then vague, and a sense of need of the Divine until then silent, maybe, must surely have been present with the men we mourn for, and that I should think is the true passport on high? Is not the feeling of need for it the best human evi- 42 THE GREEN LAMP dence of religion, and does that not come to all in moments of emer- gency and during solemn hours ? In a day when there still was power and virtue in American liter- ature, as well as in American policy, an American wrote in a dialect poem that Christ ain't a-going to be too hard On a man what died for men. Our soldiers die for mankind, to preserve the relative calm and honesty of the world for others ; they make their sacrifice For all things clean, for all things brave, For peace, for spiritual light ; To keep love's body whole, to save The hills of intellectual sight. Shall any be eternally cut off, do you think, who die in the act of that noble scavenging ? Yet the letters come, and " Do you suppose I shall meet him again ? " mothers ask, in tremulous writing. I would rather dare say "Yes" than "No." Does the 43 THE GREEN LAMP efficacy of faith as a passport re- side in the formula of it? If I dared answer I would say that sorrowers may joyfully rest their anxieties upon trust in the justice of a discerning Power that knows all. Let them exult, not weep, I would say, let them think of their dead as enrolled in a shining company, made up of every service, battalion and rank, that departs in sure and certain hope. For thee, soul of the dust and ashes graved in France or Turkey, or swayed within the wide and wandering waters, I, at any rate, will believe in a great recompense for sacrifice — acceptance into unimaginable repose, the gate gleaming open like a smile of welcome, and entrance into peace which no tenet nor sob of ours can reach to disturb. Surely she who bare thee can believe no less than that ?