VISIONS AND 
 VIGNETTES OF WAR 
 
 MAURICE PONSONBY
 
 n. H. Hl.ACKUELI., 
 
 Bookseller, 
 
 50 A SI. Hro.ul Si.. Oxford.
 
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 CLI\^DEN LIBRARY 
 
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 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES OF WAR
 
 VISIONS AND 
 VIGNETTES OF WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE PONSONBY 
 
 CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES DEC. I9I4— OCT. I917 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 I9I7
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The title of this book is its own explana- 
 tion. 
 
 During a period of two years spent 
 almost entirely with the fighting troops in 
 France, and a further nine months in 
 hospital, one has visions : certain aspects 
 of truth grip the mind. These I have 
 written down. But they are not clear-cut 
 pictures, they are only vignettes. They 
 will not appeal to him who wants his 
 religion in a nutshell ; I hold religion to 
 be a much bigger thing than that : neither 
 will he who wishes for a cast-iron certainty 
 have much use for them ; I do not myself 
 believe that the spiritual can ever become 
 so tangible : neither will they satisfy one 
 who wants his thinking done for him and 
 theories worked out to their logical con- 
 clusion, for in these days of desolation I 
 doubt whether any such thing is possible 
 or even desirable. 
 
 vii
 
 viii VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 They simply represent flashes of Hght 
 which have from time to time leaped into 
 the mind of one who has suffered and 
 rejoiced, despaired and hoped again amid 
 the horrors of war and the painful monotony 
 of wounds and disease. 
 
 Some of my friends who have read them 
 tell me that they will be of use to those 
 who to-day are groping in the darkness and 
 longing for some point of view which will 
 satisfy the soul. 
 
 I have no greater hope than that this 
 may be true. 
 
 M. P. 
 
 September^ igiy.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGF 
 I 
 
 On Getting a Commission .... 
 
 The Battle of Festubert .... 6 
 
 A Stretcher-Be arer and a Moral . . 13 
 
 On the Cloth Hall at Ypres and other Ruins 19 
 
 Fear ........ 28 
 
 Christianity the Religion of Cowards ? . 35 
 
 Is God Almighty ? ..... 41 
 
 Thoughts in a Garden ..... 48 
 
 Concerning Charms ..... 54 
 
 The Angels of Mons and other Myths . 60 
 
 The Battle of Loos ..... 70 
 
 Of a Service I Overheard and Thoughts 
 
 Arising Therefrom ..... 78 
 
 Concerning our Unhappy Divisions . . 85 
 
 Harvest on the Somme — and Elsewhere . 91 
 
 On Discipline ...... 98 
 
 On Compulsory Rationing, Physical and 
 
 Spiritual ...... 105 
 
 A New Heaven and a New Earth . . .111 
 
 IX
 
 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES OF WAR
 
 ON GETTING A COMMISSION 
 
 November, 1914. 
 
 I AM to get my chance in this great war 
 after all. I have just been to see the 
 Chaplain-General. He is a wonderfully 
 fine-looking old man. He had some very 
 searching questions to ask, most of which 
 could only be answered by writing a book. 
 
 "Why did I want a Commission ? " I 
 really didn't know ; it is hard to know the 
 reasons of one's likes and dislikes, one's 
 cravings and shrinkings, but thinking it 
 over in the train afterwards I found them 
 to be many and varied, some even shameful. 
 The human being is a curious mixture of 
 animal, human and divine. His impulses 
 are partakers of his mixed origin. 
 
 Why, then, did I want to take part in 
 the war ? I found the following among 
 the reasons : — 
 
 I don't like being thought a shirker ; I 
 might even get a white feather on my
 
 2 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 black coat. I don't like to think myself a 
 shirker. I don't like being out of it in 
 anything ; I am fond of excitement. It is 
 a fine chance of studying human nature. 
 I should like to know more of myself, how 
 I should behave when I am " up against 
 it." It seems dreadful to be living in ease, 
 safety and comfort when others are suffer- 
 ing so much. I should like to try to ease 
 some of the sufferers. I should like to try 
 to cheer the men on in their struggle by 
 some message from God, and so perhaps 
 do some service for my Master. 
 
 I could not be certain which was the 
 master motive. Self-knowledge is a science, 
 in the pursuit of which the more you 
 learn the more you doubt. The most dan- 
 gerous liar is not the man who deceives 
 other people but the man who deceives 
 himself. 
 
 Another question he asked me was 
 whether I had been successful in my work 
 with men. How should I know ? What is 
 success in the spiritual sphere ? Was 
 Jesus Christ a success or a failure ? He 
 told the story of a most successful farmer 
 who had made a fortune ; but he had un- 
 made himself, he had lost his soul. ** As a
 
 ON GETTING A COMMISSION 3 
 
 man thinks so is he." My thoughts make 
 me. " I think, therefore I am." This man 
 was no longer man, he was barns, corn, 
 comfort, ease. He had unmade himself- 
 Had I been successful with men ? What 
 did he mean ? Had I conducted huge 
 Bible classes, had I presented large numbers 
 of candidates for confirmation ? These 
 might be just the measure of my failure. 
 Had I led men to a greater sense of God 
 and love of their fellows ? This cannot 
 be computed. God knows — only God. 
 
 Another conundrum set me was — " What 
 should I do if I came across a man who 
 had only five minutes to live ? " How 
 should I know unless the Spirit gave me 
 utterance ? Quite undoubtedly the reason 
 why professional comforters make such 
 awful mistakes and so only irritate is that 
 they start with some theory, some plan of 
 campaign. Job's friends sat down near 
 him in silence for three days, but even so 
 the only effect of their efforts was to pro- 
 duce in the poor sufferer a condition of 
 argumentative mental agony — an offence 
 against God and man. They all had a 
 theory, a cast-iron solution. They hurt. 
 A dying man is in a peculiar condition.
 
 4 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 He may be so shocked by the wound, or 
 full of morphia, that he can be conscious 
 of nothing ; his mind may be far away 
 among the angels and his eyes beholding 
 the beatific vision — a state not uncommon 
 just at the end — that to interrupt him 
 with mere words is a kind of sacrilege. 
 
 No, every case — you must remember 
 that a case is not really a case but a human 
 being — differs so entirely from every other 
 that unless you can be certain that the 
 Spirit will give you utterance you must 
 despair. 
 
 In this very materialistic age we have 
 ceased to really believe in the Spirit. Even 
 some leaders of the English Church pin 
 their faith in the guidance of the Spirit for 
 the first five centuries, as if He ceased to 
 exist or to act after that. These days of 
 machinery and mechanism have made 
 them afraid of letting themselves go on the 
 stream of life, they have become crus- 
 taceans, they have got into their shell of 
 custom and tradition in their timidity : 
 they feel safe because they are in their 
 shell, but without breaking the shell they 
 can never answer to the " poussee de la 
 vie," without a break up of the customs
 
 ON GETTING A COxMMISSION 5 
 
 and traditions and methods of the past, 
 and a real trust in the guidance of the 
 Divine Spirit, there can be no progress, no 
 real life at all. 
 
 Well, ten minutes with the Chaplain- 
 General have raised some thoughts and 
 some questionings, but anyhow I am for 
 it, I am going to have the chance of seeing 
 something of life and death : perhaps this 
 will raise more problems and perhaps, too, 
 suggest some answers.
 
 THE BATTLE OF FESTUBERT 
 
 May, 1915. 
 Whatever a man may forget in after-life, 
 certain scenes of his first battle will for 
 ever remain indelibly imprinted on his 
 mind. There is something so shocking 
 about it. It produces a state of complete 
 mental paralysis. 
 
 The powers that be thought that I should 
 not be much use at an advanced Dressing 
 Station, and also seemed to have an alto- 
 gether exaggerated view of the sanctity of 
 the Padre's life, so I was ordered to the 
 Field Ambulance at Vieille Chapelle. 
 
 It was very awe-inspiring passing along 
 the road in the dark the night before the 
 attack. Troops were quietly marching up, 
 there was a feeling of great things in the 
 air. We expected to be in Lille in a couple 
 of days, the Huns in full retreat. I was 
 wondering at what cost the victory would be 
 won. It seemed wretched not to remain 
 with the men one had learnt to know and 
 love, 
 
 6
 
 THE BATTLE OF FESTUBERT 7 
 
 So I thought as I crawled along on my 
 motor-cycle, but my dreams were abruptly 
 stopped by a rencontre with another motor- 
 cyclist coming in the opposite direction — 
 also without lights. . . . The ditch was 
 luckily not a deep one, and fairly dry, 
 and neither of us was any the worse. So I 
 hastened back to bed to get a good sleep 
 before the work began. 
 
 The men were to go " over the top " at 
 dawn, and we expected the first casualties 
 soon afterwards, so I went out to see 
 " Granny " shoot, to pass away the time. 
 She was a 15-inch naval gun. Each shell 
 weighed 1500 lb., and in its flight — for 
 one could see it quite easily — reminded 
 one of a beautifully driven cricket ball. 
 One imagined that the effect at the other 
 end must be startling. There was a very 
 nice little farm about 150 yards in front of 
 the gun. By some miracle it had escaped 
 all damage from the Huns as they passed 
 through, and from us as we pushed them 
 back. However, Granny was too much 
 for it. The first blast rattled the tiles, the 
 last shook down the ceihngs. The owners 
 were naturally aggrieved — mats c'est la 
 guerre !
 
 8 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 The hospital was the village school, just 
 like a school at home with the play-ground 
 in front. War is no play-ground. The 
 cases began to roll up thick and fast from 
 the A.D.S., and soon the rooms were full 
 and the play-ground began to be covered 
 with the stretchers, while the mob of walk- 
 ing cases loafed around. Such a sight it 
 was — humanity hidden beneath mud, blood 
 and bandages. But the Divine peeped 
 out. It seems as if the best can never be 
 truly revealed except by torture. The 
 Master was never so Divine to our eyes as 
 He was on the Cross. 
 
 My task was to go around among them 
 to cheer them with God's peace, write their 
 letters, give them soup, in fact do any ser- 
 vice for them which was possible. I there- 
 fore had plenty of opportunity to see behind 
 the scenes of life. 
 
 The language of the Army is not all 
 found in the dictionary, but I never heard 
 a man blaspheme. No one complained or 
 bemoaned his fate. One officer whom I 
 knew, quietly remarked, " My number's up, 
 Padre, I have got it in the stomach." It 
 was just accepted. Their unselfishness, 
 too, was amazing : hungry and thirsty, men
 
 THE BATTLE OF FESTUBERT 9 
 
 refused soup or drank but little till 3^ou told 
 them that there was plenty for all ; shiver- 
 ing or wet, they said they were all right till 
 you told them that there was no shortage 
 of blankets ; they always seemed to think 
 that their pal by their side was in more 
 need than they of immediate attention by 
 the doctor. 
 
 One young officer, pretty badly knocked 
 about, called me to him and asked me to 
 write a letter to his colonel. I wrote at 
 his dictation : ** I wish to recommend 
 
 Pte. , No. , ' A ' Co., for bravery. 
 
 When I was lying wounded he stretched 
 himself over my body under heavy fire to 
 protect me from the shrapnel." Nice of 
 him, I thought, to remember just then. A 
 fine act, too. 
 
 So the hours passed by. The tramp, 
 tramp of the stretcher-bearers became a 
 sort of nightmare. We tried to get every- 
 one under cover, and just as we thought it 
 would be done, tramp, tramp — in came 
 some more. The scheme was that one set 
 of cars brought the wounded from St. 
 Vaast Post to Vieille Chapelle, another 
 took them on after they had been dressed 
 to the Casualty Clearing Station, but the
 
 10 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 latter took much longer on their journey 
 than the former, hence the congestion of 
 wounded. 
 
 As the night wore on they began to die. 
 It is evidently a wonderfully easy thing to 
 do — just like going off to sleep. But it was 
 fairly heart-rending, as some of them were 
 such children and all of them so good. 
 One boy aged seventeen had come out full 
 of boyish enthusiasm and patriotism saying 
 that his age was nineteen, and Festubert 
 was his first battle. He had a bullet in 
 the stomach. As the night wore on he got 
 weaker, and as I came to moisten his lips, 
 he said, " I don't think I shall live very 
 long now, do you, sir ? " " No," I said, 
 " I think very soon all your pain will be 
 over and you will be in the happy land of 
 peace and sunshine." He was quiet for a 
 time and then he began fumbling in his 
 pocket and out came a dirty envelope — a 
 letter to his mother. " Shall I send her 
 any message ? " I asked him. " Tell my 
 mother," he said, *' that anyhow her boy 
 did not die a coward." 
 
 It seems a wonderfully easy thing to die, 
 but of course you do not really die. It 
 ought not to be hard to pass into the
 
 THE BATTLE OF FESTUBERT ii 
 
 Father's House with its many mansions. 
 Some too are so wonderfully comforted on 
 their way by a vision of angels. 
 
 There was a Scottish lad in the Seaforths 
 who was so badly smashed that knowing 
 that he could not live we put him into a 
 little bell-tent so that he would not be 
 disturbed. I kept going to him off and on, 
 and once I found him looking up and smiling 
 with every sign of the deepest enjoyment. 
 " Why is it you are so happy ? " I said. 
 Pointing with his finger all around, he said, 
 " There are martyrs, martyrs everywhere." 
 There is no death — only the body. 
 
 The dawn came with the passing of 
 night. I had to search the dead bodies for 
 their little possessions. The doctor and I 
 were amazed to find that nearly every man 
 had a Bible or a cross on him. " They do 
 seem religious," he said, "these boys; I 
 should never have thought they would 
 have such things." Perhaps they carried 
 them as a charm — a sort of magic, perhaps 
 because they felt more than they knew 
 that ** such things " contained the secret 
 of life and death and immortality, perhaps
 
 12 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 because they had a deep love for them. 
 None can say. 
 
 We hear on all sides that the battle has 
 been a complete failure — on our part in- 
 sufficiency of artillery — no troops can 
 advance against modern machinery over 
 the open. 
 
 > • « • • 
 
 The old 52nd Light Infantry are march- 
 ing down the road. They went in full 
 strength in front of Richebourg. They are 
 marching out 150 strong. They gained 
 their objective. They are undefeated. 
 They hold their heads high. They are 
 whistling their Regimental March. This is 
 the spirit of the Old Country at its best — 
 unquenchable. It is the spirit divine.
 
 A STRETCHER-BEARER 
 AND A MORAL 
 
 Bethune, 
 June, 1915. 
 I FEEL to-night as if I had been looking 
 into Hell — a sort of crushed feeling — of 
 mental paralysis — as if I had seen an awful 
 reality in its horror. 
 
 War is a great revealer of realities. 
 
 I was down in the trenches during the 
 afternoon talking to the men, when one of 
 them remarked, " You remember, sir, that 
 stretcher-bearer we were talking about the 
 other day ? " I remembered him well, for 
 often had the men spoken to me of his 
 courage in bringing in the wounded. It 
 was his special pride, the doing of this work, 
 to get out of the trench and fetch in some 
 poor fellow who was lying out. He never 
 seemed to care for the risks. " Why 
 should I be afraid ? " he used to say. " The 
 Lord Almighty will never let me be hit 
 doing work like this." 
 
 " What has he been doing now ? " I 
 
 13
 
 14 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 asked. " He's dead, sir, died last week in 
 Bethune when we were out resting — died 
 drunk I'm sorry to say, sir. It seems a 
 pity, sir, doesn't it ? And they say he had a 
 girl at home. He tried to get home to put 
 her straight. Seems sad, sir, doesn't it ? " 
 
 War certainly is a revealer, and nothing 
 has it displayed to this generation so clearly 
 as the horror of sin. We had got very 
 optimistic about it. " The healthy-hiinded 
 man of to-day does not consider his sins," 
 we said, " his task is to be up and doing." 
 We had such a simple child-like faith in 
 progress as a necessary law of life that we 
 never seriously considered the question, 
 what if he can't be up and doing ? 
 
 " Sin is only the yelp of the beast," we 
 said, " we must not forget man's animal 
 ancestry." Quite so, but we must also 
 remember that to know the history of a 
 thing does not diminish its horror. What 
 if the beast has not only yelped but also 
 devoured the man ? What if the man has 
 become assimilated in the beast ? 
 
 " Sin is just missing the mark," we said ; 
 " you are shooting at a target, aiming at 
 an ideal ; you cannot expect to hit each 
 time." Quite so, but what if you not only
 
 A STRETCHER-BEARER 15 
 
 miss the mark but wound the marker ? 
 What if you not only miss the bull's-eye 
 but break someone's heart ? 
 
 " You must try again," we said ; " a man 
 learns by his failures." Yes, but what if in 
 missing the mark he has lost his nerve and 
 become more and more likely to fail ? 
 There is no danger so great as the loss of 
 morale. 
 
 This the obstinate old Church has said 
 all along. It has been hopelessly out of 
 date in the face of modern optimism ; it 
 has officially clung to a behef in Hell in the 
 face of the modern mind. Now everyone 
 understands Hell and its cause, for war is 
 a great revealer. War is Hell : selfishness 
 is the cause. 
 
 Germany's ideal of Empire was world- 
 power. For fifty years her policy was 
 dictated by this motive. " Crush Austria, 
 crush Denmark, crush France, the way will 
 then be paved for the fall of Britain. In 
 the struggle for existence might is right, a 
 great war justifies any cause ; be cruel, 
 terrorize mankind, so will you get power, 
 a place under the sun, markets for your 
 merchants, riches for your people." 
 
 The tragedy of this war is that you can
 
 i6 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 see the finished product of the sinful mind. 
 The process has been gradual, but the 
 beast has not only yelped in its cruel, 
 selfish lust, it has devoured, almost assimi- 
 lated, the quiet home-loving Germany, the 
 Germany of music and thought. No longer 
 does she aim at the mark, the prize of her 
 high calling, she has run amok and is 
 shooting at the spectators. 
 
 The British nation has always been one 
 which refused to think at all, refused to 
 have any policy. It might almost be said 
 that Germany worked by the way of reason, 
 England by that of intuition. We have 
 reluctantly built up an Empire without the 
 smallest idea of what we were doing or 
 what was the good of it, we have even tried 
 to slough it off, but it has become one, as 
 if it had to. Now we are beginning to 
 rationalize it. Let us pray that we don't 
 get German rationalism. It is insidious 
 in its growth ; it is none the less soul- 
 destroying. 
 
 But no one nation in the West can really 
 throw stones with a clear conscience at the 
 German ideal. It is the Western ideal 
 brought to its logical conclusion and re- 
 vealed in its nakedness.
 
 <( 
 
 A STRETCHER-BEARER 17 
 
 It is impossible to be honest in busi- 
 ness." This is said by quite decent people 
 in justification of deceiving the public in 
 the struggle for existence. What is it but 
 the German dictum, " The end justifies the 
 means " ? " Get on or get out " — what is 
 this but the German world-policy applied 
 to the industrial world ? We have shud- 
 dered at the German baby-killers in the 
 world war, we have ourselves murdered 
 them at the rate of 100,000 a year in the 
 industrial war. 
 
 War is Hell — Selfishness is the cause. 
 
 But the Church is not really pessimistic : 
 in her education of the child as revealed 
 in the little-known catechism she reveals 
 herself an optimist. " WTiat are you ? " 
 she asks, and the child is told to answer 
 not John the son of the old man with 
 his bad habits, but John the son of God. 
 He is a son of the Highest, he is heir of the 
 best, the life that animates his body is the 
 life of the Ideal. Does he believe it ? Yes, 
 he believes in his Father God, his Redeemer 
 God, and his Guiding God. Well, then, he 
 has got duties. Oh ! if only all heirs of 
 great possessions were so well taught their 
 duties as the Christian to his Father God
 
 i8 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 and his fellow-men ! Not a word is breathed 
 to him about sin or his animal ancestry. 
 " Look up, live up to the best traditions of 
 your Family," we tell him. It is only when 
 he gets older that he is to be taught about 
 sin and forgiveness when he learns about 
 the Sacraments. What a pity Mr. Holmes 
 never learnt the catechism ! What a pity a 
 great many Puritanically-minded Christian 
 teachers did not imbibe its spirit — the 
 Divine optimism of the Church ! 
 
 But my mind to-night strays back to 
 that magnificent stretcher-bearer — dead 
 drunk, his girl heart-broken and ashamed, 
 with nothing to comfort her. 
 
 How shocking a thing has war, the great 
 revealer, shown sin to be !
 
 ON THE CLOTH HALL AT 
 YPRES AND OTHER RULNS 
 
 Ypres, 
 March, 1916. 
 There is a feeling of irreparable disaster 
 about it. There is nothing to be done. It 
 is ruined beyond repair. It is as if some- 
 one had thrown vitriol in the face of a 
 beautiful woman. For centuries it has 
 stood there, representing the soul of a 
 merchant people, proud of their weaving 
 and their city, a home of liberty. They had 
 built it under the shadow of their church, 
 which was destined to become when allied 
 with politics the destroyer of their liberty. 
 But that is past history. The present fact 
 is the vision of the catastrophe, a priceless 
 treasure broken in pieces. It is beyond repair. 
 A similar feeling has possessed the minds 
 of most of the great spiritual men and 
 women all down the ages when they 
 thought of sin. How can a man get 
 straight when once he has got off the high- 
 way ? How can he be forgiven ? Nature 
 
 19
 
 20 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 herself seems so hard. A man perhaps from 
 ignorance commits a crime against her, and 
 all through his life he has to bear the marks 
 of her resentment in an enfeebled body. 
 Is God hke that ? 
 
 Yet everyone craves for the wiping out 
 of the past. How can sin be forgiven ? 
 Can the broken Image of God be mended ? 
 
 Clearly there are two problems involved 
 in this : the recovery, first, of the individual 
 and, secondly, of a lost relationship. 
 
 The solution of the first is attempted 
 by what one may call Buddhism. To the 
 Buddhist all created things are illusion 
 (Maya). Sin consists in the desire for these 
 things, salvation in escape from desire. 
 How, then, is a man to escape ? It cannot 
 be done in a short three-score years and 
 ten. After the death of the body the self 
 is emancipated in the spirit world, cleansed, 
 and taught, and when this process is com- 
 plete it is reincarnated in a new body with 
 its new experience. Its happiness or other- 
 wise in its new life will be its " Karma," the 
 fate which it has earned in the previous 
 existence. Ultimately when desire ceases 
 the soul will return to the Infinite, it will 
 abide in the Nirvana.
 
 CLOTH HALL AT YPRES 21 
 
 Here we have an attempt in one system 
 to show the justice of the world and the 
 way of salvation. A man gets whatever he 
 deserves. Salvation comes through illu- 
 mination. 
 
 The Christian attempts to deal with 
 both problems together. To him the 
 Universe is personal, sin is an act of 
 rebellion against God. It is not as with the 
 Jew so much an insult to the Great King, 
 it is rather a blow at the heart of a Father, 
 
 It is this Christian conception of the 
 world that makes the solution so logically 
 difficult. 
 
 If I had a little daughter, the apple of 
 my eye, and daily watched her growth in 
 beauty and goodness — my joy and my 
 pride : if one day some blackguard ruined 
 her life and brought her down in sorrow 
 and shame to the grave, could I ever for- 
 give him ? I could, if I were bad, if I had 
 no love ; but the greater my love, the 
 deeper my goodness, the more mad and 
 bitter I should feel, the more forgiveness 
 would be a moral miracle. 
 
 This is what the Cross means, a moral 
 miracle that only God can perform. 
 
 In the teaching of Christ there is no
 
 22 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 logic, no legalism, no requirements of 
 abstract justice, simply love. A perfect 
 father will always be looking and longing 
 for the return home of the son, he will 
 forgive until seventy times seven. The 
 supplies of his love are inexhaustible. 
 What a mystery ! O the depth of the 
 wisdom of the knowledge of God ! What 
 words can one find with which to express 
 the love of Christ which passeth know- 
 ledge ? The language of logic cannot 
 approach it : the truth can only glimmer 
 through metaphor. 
 
 '' What does it mean to you ? " one 
 would ask of his friend. " I feel," he 
 would say, " like a slave set free. For 
 years I have been struggling in bondage, 
 longing for liberty from the slavery of 
 habit, and in despair as I felt the fetters 
 binding me more securely ; I could not 
 save enough to pay for my release and I 
 came to Jesus. In a moment I knew that 
 I was free, the ransom was paid." 
 
 " What does it mean to you ? " he would 
 ask of another. " I felt," he would reply, 
 " like a criminal under the sentence of death 
 — I knew that I deserved it but that did 
 not make me any happier. The judge had
 
 CLOTH HALL AT YPRES 23 
 
 pronounced his verdict — I could do nothing. 
 Then Jesus came. In a moment I felt the 
 dread sentence removed — I was pardoned. 
 He was the mediator." 
 
 Another would reply — " I was the 
 prisoner standing in the dock, the evidence 
 was heaped up against me — I was speech- 
 less under the eye of the judge. Then 
 Jesus stood by my side, He became my 
 advocate, the prisoners' friend, He had 
 something to say," 
 
 Oh ! the wonderful variety of the Chris- 
 tian experience. It was life itself. It was 
 life expressed in metaphor. 
 
 Then came the schoolmen, the logicians, 
 and murdered it. They wanted to know to 
 whom the ransom was paid, what right the 
 creditor had to demand it ; they imagined 
 a debt to abstract Justice accumulating 
 ever greater and greater from the days of 
 Adam and laid to the charge of each child 
 of Adam. How could the just judge for- 
 give that ? 
 
 Then the lovers of magic took over the 
 corpse. They taught that owing to the 
 voluntary suffering of punishment by a 
 perfectly just individual who summed up 
 in himself all mankind, the judge was
 
 24 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 pacified, he changed his mind towards us, 
 he was satisfied. Thus in the early days 
 men postponed baptism till they were 
 dying, in order that they might not sin 
 after the washing away had been done for 
 them, and many to-day are deeply anxious 
 for sacramental absolution at the hour of 
 death for the same cause. 
 
 Some even believe that unbaptized 
 people and unbelievers are in danger of 
 damnation — complete exclusion from The 
 Presence. This perversion of the teaching 
 of the Master was caused by using spiritual 
 metaphors as if they were scientific state- 
 ments. 
 
 Another disaster was due to a heathenish 
 misunderstanding of the whole idea of 
 the Jewish sacrifice. 
 
 The Jew had a wonderful idea that 
 nothing except the full offering of a man 
 at his best was of any avail. This he tried 
 to symbolize in the sin offering. The 
 ritual was as follows. The sinner brought 
 his victim to the sanctuary door, where he 
 was received by the priest. Here he con- 
 fessed his sin, laying his hand on the head 
 of the animal, the idea being that so the 
 victim became the sinner himself. He then
 
 CLOTH HALL AT YPRES 25 
 
 cut its throat and collected the blood in a 
 basin, which the priest offered on the altar. 
 The whole point was that to the Jew the 
 blood offered was the life, and the life not 
 of the lamb but of the offerer, and it was not 
 the death or pain of the victim but the life of 
 the sinner offered to God in symbol which 
 was acceptable to God. It was not the 
 pain or the death of the Master which was 
 acceptable to God, but the perfect life 
 given up to His service. 
 
 The materialism of logicians accustomed 
 to the injustice of medieval monarchs took 
 this beautiful idea, and through misunder- 
 standing of the metaphors, imagined that 
 our pardon was bought by the agony of 
 Jesus, by whom only the Judge could be 
 appeased. 
 
 Anything further from the mind of 
 Christ one cannot imagine. You cannot 
 tell what love can do, you only know that 
 it can work a moral miracle. You cannot 
 argue about it, you cannot prove it ; it is 
 like the ether in the material world ; it is 
 above all, through all, and in all. 
 
 The verdict of Christian experience is 
 that the crooked can be made straight even 
 in this life : its belief is that the Infinite
 
 26 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 Being, in whom all things consist, is also 
 the Father of us all, just like Jesus of the 
 Gospels, and that even when the prodigal 
 is away among the swine. He is for ever 
 whispering in his ear, " Come home " : that 
 He is with him every step of the way, and 
 that when he comes the victim to be 
 slaughtered is no propitiation but the 
 emblem, the sign of the joy in the Home, 
 the forgiveness of Jesus. 
 
 This, then, is the Christian solution : the 
 problem that it does not attempt to solve is 
 whether the sinner will ever forgive him- 
 self. 
 
 The prodigal son must have felt most 
 uncomfortable in his home for many 
 months after his return, and the kindness 
 of his Father must have but increased his 
 shame. But suppose he had taken his 
 sister away and left her among the harlots, 
 and she had not come back, what then ? 
 If away in that far country there were some 
 poor family ruined by him, some boy 
 among the swine, some child diseased. 
 Will he ever forgive himself ? His only 
 solace will be, not the best robe and the 
 ring, but work for his Father. 
 
 In the life beyond this, when our eyes
 
 CLOTH HALL AT YPRES 27 
 
 are opened, I cannot but think that our 
 first feehng will be one of hopeless, shrink- 
 ing, self-annihilating horror, when we see 
 the ravages of our neglect. Gradually, 
 under the gentle healing of the Divine 
 Physician, we may rise up with an un- 
 quenchable thirst to repair the damage : 
 we may be honoured with His trust again, 
 so that toiling unceasingly with eternal 
 hope shining ever more and more unto the 
 perfect day we may enter into a peace and 
 joy that passes understanding.
 
 FEAR 
 
 If there is any one virtue which holds the 
 admiration of men and women universally 
 it is courage. I suppose that the reason is 
 that everyone has a knowledge that he is 
 himself a coward at heart, and dreads that 
 some day his will-power may fail and he 
 will show it — perhaps he remembers some 
 ugly incident with shame. Some kinds of 
 fear are quite irrational and almost seem 
 to be a throw-back to a former age. Some 
 women are terrified of mice and not of 
 rats. Some men shudder at a cat, some 
 cannot walk across a bridge or along the 
 edge of a precipice, some have a dread of 
 water, some cannot face ridicule, some 
 criticism, some unpopularity. Some are 
 terrified of shells and don't mind bullets, 
 some are careless under shell-fire but duck 
 every time a bullet " zipps " by. Some 
 cannot stand either. This is why the 
 Victoria Cross is valued more highly than 
 any decoration that an Englishman can earn. 
 But without doubt there are daily deeds 
 
 28
 
 FEAR 29 
 
 of magnificent bravery done — but never 
 recognized— by men at whose hearts terror 
 has clutched, but whose steadfast will holds 
 them firm and keeps them quiet and cheery 
 when they feel every instinct urging them 
 to run away. This war has made one 
 very charitable in one's judgments. One 
 never now calls a man a coward, one says, 
 " Poor So-and-so has got the wind up 
 badly." 
 
 The delicate organization of man's 
 nervous system was never intended for the 
 strain which it has to bear. Consider the 
 shells ; there is not only the awful crash 
 of the explosion, the horrible violence of 
 the thing, there are the sights, the pieces 
 of your friend picked up here and there for 
 burial, the smell of the trenches, and last, 
 but not least, the anticipation. They have 
 located your position, you can hear the 
 bigger shells coming, coming, coming, the 
 gentle purring crescendoing to a frightful 
 scream — some you can hear for five or ten 
 seconds, you hold your breath as you 
 wonder if it is coming near you. There is 
 also the minenwerfer, the huge trench 
 mortar, which comes swerving at you ; 
 there is the sniper ever on the look out ;
 
 30 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 night after night there may be a raid in the 
 darkness, or gas may come your way and 
 wipe out half your company before the gas 
 helmets can be put on ; you may be living 
 over a mine and at any moment be put up 
 " among the little birds." No ! You 
 daren't even sneer in your heart at a man 
 whose nerve gradually wears away, or at 
 one in whose brain something has suddenly 
 snapped, making him totally incapable of 
 any self-control. You know that it might 
 happen to you. You dread it in yourself. 
 Fear makes men cruel — this terror makes 
 you kind. 
 
 Never shall I forget the first day I got a 
 real shelling. 
 
 It was a beautiful April day and every- 
 thing seemed peaceful. I was sitting talk- 
 ing with some of the officers when it began. 
 The Huns had got set on the part of the 
 line where I was, and not only were firing 
 directly at the trench, but had a gun right 
 away on the left and were enfilading us. 
 They made excellent practice and went on 
 for perhaps three-quarters of an hour. I 
 was able to notice the behaviour of those 
 near me. One man was trembhng all over, 
 another almost crying, the teeth of another
 
 FEAR 31 
 
 were chattering, another cursed the Boches, 
 some did not seem to care. I myself was 
 terrified, but they told me afterwards that 
 I showed no sign of it. I believe it was 
 Leibnitz who held that every cell of the 
 body has a conscious life of its own, with 
 its own wishes, desires, pains and joys. 
 That day I felt that the theory must be 
 true, that every cell in my body was a 
 little person, and that each little person 
 was trying to get down to the ground. It 
 made my body ache, and the sensation did 
 not wear off for several hours. " Fear hath 
 torment." One never realized before how 
 profoundly true that old saying was. 
 
 In view of this ever-surrounding fear of 
 the Boche, or fear of death, or fear of the 
 unknown, or fear of fear, which almost 
 everyone has from time to time, it is 
 natural that certain methods should be 
 consciously or unconsciously adopted to 
 counteract it. Those noticeable in war are 
 as old as the hills. 
 
 The first is that of calling a terrible 
 thing by a pleasant or comic name. The 
 ancient Greeks, terrified of the storms in 
 the Black Sea, called it " The Euxine," or 
 the " Friendly One." The early mariners
 
 32 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 round the Horn called that turbulent ocean 
 " The Pacific." 
 
 Our soldiers call the Prussian " Fritz," 
 and wonder how many waiters there are 
 opposite them ; the small shell is a " pip- 
 squeak " or " whiz-bang," the heavy a 
 " coal-box " or " Jack Johnson " ; if a man 
 is killed he " gets it in the neck," " goes 
 West," or is " nah pooed " (derived from 
 the French il n'y a plus). Merriment is 
 one of the gifts of the gods. St. Paul puts 
 it as a virtue between love and peace. 
 
 Secondly comes the method of making 
 yourself appear quite unconcerned. This 
 method of play-acting is very sound psy- 
 chology. You make your body, your face 
 or your eye act the virtue or sensation you 
 wish to acquire. Matter acts on spirit as 
 well as spirit on matter. 
 
 I remember one afternoon very well in 
 the reserve trenches in front of Cambrin. 
 The Huns put up a mine, and then started 
 rapid fire. The men near me were standing 
 on the fire-step and getting very excited, 
 when the Company Commander came out 
 of his dug-out in his shirt-sleeves and said 
 in a drawly voice, " Well, well, someone's 
 got the wind up this afternoon." The
 
 FEAR 33 
 
 effect was quite electrical ; everyone 
 became perfectly calm and collected. The 
 callous indifference of the public-school 
 manner has its values in war. 
 
 Thirdly comes philosophy. The philo- 
 sophy of the trenches is fatalism. " What 
 is to be will be : if a shell or a bullet comes 
 your way with your name on it, it's yours, 
 so it's no use dodging. It is all a matter 
 of fate, blind irrational fate, undirected 
 chance." The ways of shells and bullets 
 are so queer and they perform such miracles 
 in the pursuit of some people, that the 
 prima facie answer to the question why 
 " one is taken and the other left " seems to 
 be found either in the awful inevitableness 
 of fate or the unreasoning stupidity of luck. 
 In any case it is no good worrying. 
 
 Fourthly I must mention alcohol. What 
 a wonderful stuff it is ! You are shivering 
 with cold, a tot of rum makes you glow 
 with warmth. You are depressed, it makes 
 you laugh ; tired, it renews your strength ; 
 frightened, it fills you with courage. But 
 dramming is the beginning of the end. It 
 is only a question of time and then with 
 body and will enfeebled the crash comes. 
 Merriment is the gift of the gods, but
 
 34 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 what is to happen when the thing passes a 
 joke and you can laugh no more ? Studied 
 indifference of manner is invaluable, but 
 what if you can control your body no more ? 
 Fatalism is a rehef for a time, but what if 
 the blind hopelessness of it crushes your 
 spirit ? Wine " maketh glad the heart of 
 man," but what if the inevitable reaction 
 — increased fatigue, depression and nervi- 
 ness — demands ever-increasing stimulant ? 
 
 " And now, Lord, what is my hope ? 
 Truly my hope is even in Thee." 
 
 The best and bravest men and women 
 all down the ages have been those whose 
 hves were founded on a great faith and 
 whose actions were inspired by a deep 
 rehgious enthusiasm. The one remedy for 
 fear is the possession of a deep soul- 
 possessing divine belief.
 
 CHRISTIANITY THE 
 RELIGION OF COWARDS? 
 
 One of the most disquieting of the popular 
 views of Christianity to-day is that it is 
 the religion of fear. 
 
 The reason of this is not far to seek. We 
 have allowed religion to become a sort of 
 emergency affair — a last resort. A man 
 who has not prayed for years kneels 
 sobbing by the bedside of his child who is 
 sick ; a drunken blasphemous soldier, a 
 scoffer at religion, starts praying under 
 heavy shell fire, and when the danger is 
 past, he returns to his old ways. A mission 
 preacher draws awful pictures of Hell, and 
 urges his audience to repentance in order 
 that they may escape. This sort of atmo- 
 sphere surrounding popular religion dis- 
 gusts the real man. " I call it cowardice," 
 he says. He is right. But what he does 
 not realize is that what he hates is what 
 Christ would hate, what he despises is 
 what Christ would despise. This emergency 
 religion, which treats God as a sort of extra 
 
 35
 
 36 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 to be brought to bear when all else has 
 failed, is simply magic, simply heathenism, 
 a reversion to the dark ages. 
 
 From the beginning to the end of the Bible 
 the commands, " Fear not," " Be not 
 afraid," " Be of good cheer," " Be strong," 
 are given again and again, and the prophet 
 cringing on the ground is told to stand 
 upon his feet like a man, before God will 
 speak to him. When we come to the Man 
 who was the fulfilment of the old Jewish 
 scriptures, the Founder of Christianity, 
 we have a picture of complete moral and 
 physical courage. The sense of duty, the 
 pursuit of His Ideal without wavering, 
 dominated His life. Neither ridicule nor 
 fear of death could move Him ; in times 
 of danger the most difficult dilemmas were 
 faced with quiet calm, questions which were 
 designed to destroy him were answered with 
 child-like directness, and the pains of death 
 borne unflinchingly on the Cross. He would 
 not even allow himself to be drugged. He 
 was Courage. 
 
 So He taught His disciples — " Why are 
 you so fearful ? " — " Be not afraid of them 
 that kill the body." And this, not because 
 they could appeal to Him in an emergency
 
 RELIGION OF COWARDS ? 37 
 
 to save them, but because God was all and 
 in all, He was a Father to them, He cared 
 and knew, and therefore there was nothing 
 to be afraid of except dirtiness of soul. 
 
 St. Paul, imbued with this spirit, writing 
 to cheer his fellow-Christians in Rome, told 
 them that he was confident that even 
 death could not separate them from the 
 Love of God which was in Christ Jesus. 
 
 The things which have driven the most 
 adventurous spirits away from visible 
 Christianity have been magical prayers 
 for the avoidance of trouble. But this is 
 not Christianity. The religion of Christ 
 means not only the worship of the Absolute 
 Infinite, it means also the presence of a 
 Friend always at hand. Prayer, then, is 
 not cadging but companionship. The real 
 value of a friend is not that he stands you 
 a good dinner when you are broke, but that 
 he has a fine character which by contact 
 with him you absorb. 
 
 Communion with God does not save us 
 trouble, does not give us wealth, does not 
 make us lazy, does not ward off danger ; 
 it does give us His Life, His Character, to 
 make us strong, full of energy and courage 
 to face all material loss when it comes.
 
 38 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 Now the building of Character is an art, 
 it needs practice, and the formation of 
 friendship takes time. How is this to be 
 managed by men and women hving in a 
 busy world ? How is the soldier to do it 
 when he is never alone and hardly ever 
 quiet ? How are they to meditate, to give 
 their minds to the Divine Friend and His 
 things ? When they are tired they cannot 
 meditate, sleep overcomes them ; when 
 worried, anxious, afraid or sad these things 
 so possess their minds, the troubles to be 
 cured so often drag down the soul that 
 they exclude the only Cure. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 One day I was visiting round the gun 
 positions of a battery, when, looking into 
 a dug-out, I saw a lad, white-faced and 
 shivering all over. I thought that he must 
 be ill, but on my asking him what was the 
 matter he confessed that he was terrified. 
 There was no danger at the moment, but 
 the day before a shell had fallen among 
 some men of the battery and knocked out 
 three of them. His nerve had gone. He 
 seemed quite astonished when I asked him 
 ii he beUeved in God, for this did not seem 
 to him to have any connexion with his state
 
 RELIGION OF COWARDS ? 39 
 
 of mind, but he told me that he was a 
 communicant and in a church choir at 
 home. " Well," I said, " if you beheve all 
 that, you have no right to be afraid." I 
 then told him what to do, and a day or two 
 afterwards found him proud and delighted. 
 A shell, he told me, had burst in his billet 
 the night before and he was as steady as a 
 rock. 
 
 What I told him was as old as the hills : 
 it is found in the Praying Wheel of Thibet, 
 in the Rosary of Christianity ; " new " 
 thought in America has discovered it quite 
 lately, and science calls it auto-suggestion. 
 
 The stupid thing is that the Thibetan 
 with his Wheel, and the Roman Catholic 
 in the common use of his Rosary, think 
 that God is pleased by the number of 
 times the sacred words are said — a sort of 
 magic ; the value, however, is not to be 
 found in what the repetition will do for 
 God, hut in what the companionship of a 
 great thought will do for you. 
 
 Think if you are worried what it would 
 be to know that " your Heavenly Father 
 knoweth " : if you are frightened, to 
 saturate your mind with the thought, 
 " There shall no evil happen unto thee,"
 
 40 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 or " There is no death." So you take some 
 quite short, it need not be a complete 
 sentence, full of a great idea, to combat the 
 disease in your mind. If you try to 
 meditate upon it your mind wanders. 
 You therefore set yourself a task ; to 
 repeat it two, three hundred times. The 
 counting is quite easy either with beads or 
 on your fingers, saying the sentence five 
 times for each finger. After a little practice 
 it can be done as you walk along the road 
 or as you lie in bed. It gives comfort and 
 ease to the body, it releases the strain 
 when the nerves are at full stretch, it 
 drives away fear, it conquers sin, it leads 
 to God. 
 
 Such is the value of the Companionship 
 of a great thought. The Christian Life is 
 the companionship of the Great Thinker. 
 If only by the companionship with the 
 Master we could absorb His courage, we 
 should root away the reproach of cowardice 
 which is cast at us. 
 
 But we must give up cadging, for cadging 
 and cowardice are close allies, cadging and 
 comradeship deadly foes.
 
 IS GOD ALMIGHTY? 
 
 Almost every soldier that I have ever met 
 beheves in God. Perhaps grudgingly he 
 calls Him " The Supreme Being," but I 
 often hear him say, " If He were almighty 
 He could stop this war ; if He were good He 
 would want to ; why does He allow it ? " 
 It pains his kindly simple heart to think of 
 an Almighty Good Person witnessing this 
 horror and yet not using His Power to 
 stop it, for " does not Almighty mean that 
 He can do everything ? " What a dilemma ! 
 Now most intellectual impasses are due 
 to ambiguous language. Many problems are 
 solved by defining the meaning of the 
 terms employed. Goodness, what does 
 that mean ? Obviously not careless kind- 
 ness. He is a bad father who spoils his 
 children ; a good doctor often has to inflict 
 pain. Goodness must mean that which 
 is designed to produce the highest good. 
 Almighty — plainly this cannot mean that 
 God can do everything ; He cannot make 
 two and two make five, He cannot do any- 
 
 41
 
 42 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 thing evil, He cannot do anything un- 
 reasonable, " He cannot deny Himself." 
 He cannot deny Himself. This, perhaps, is 
 a clue. I think of the universe as revealing 
 the Mind of God to us. I find it acting in a 
 rational way, that is, that certain causes 
 under similar circumstances always produce 
 certain effects ; so that I can prophesy 
 what the universe will do, when the seasons 
 will vary, when a comet will appear, when 
 the rainy season will commence. I have 
 the mind of God, I am made in His Image. 
 " He hath given them a Law which shall 
 not be broken." Whether the universe 
 acts so from a power outside it like a 
 machine, or from a power within like my 
 body, I shall never know. But it makes no 
 difference. God cannot deal with these 
 laws of causation in an arbitrary manner, 
 not because he has not the physical power, 
 but because these laws or methods of 
 operation represent His Mind. He cannot 
 deny Himself. In this lies the difference 
 between ancient and modern thinkers. In 
 older days they thought that the holding 
 up of the sun and the moon, the banking 
 of a river or sea, as an exhibition of 
 Almightiness added to the Glory of God.
 
 IS GOD ALMIGHTY ? 43 
 
 I to-day am disinclined to believe in these 
 miracles, not because I do not believe in 
 God Almighty, but because I cannot believe 
 in a God who has recourse to makeshifts, 
 who tries first one thing and then another, 
 or favours some people at the expense of 
 others. The rain drops, the sun shines on 
 the evil and the good ; the innocent child 
 is burnt by the fire. The laws of nature, 
 the way, that is, by which God works, are 
 perhaps the only possible ways for Him, 
 because there is only one best way. He 
 cannot think anything but what is best. 
 Nothing in the material world is impossible 
 to God because of the difficulty or bigness of 
 the task ; many things are impossible to 
 Him because He cannot deny Himself. 
 His limitation is a moral self -limitation. 
 His impotence is a moral impotence. 
 
 There are not only material laws by 
 which I can prophesy material events and 
 make plans for the future, there are also 
 moral laws, by knowledge of which I can 
 prophesy that a certain condition of mind 
 will inevitably produce a certain effect. 
 It is this truth that the Old Testament 
 writers were groping for. To them God 
 was Outside, the Lawgiver and the Judge.
 
 44 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 Those who hate His Laws must be wiped 
 out ; victory did not He with '* big bat- 
 taHons," but with those who kept the Divine 
 Law. To-day the scientific historian, 
 writing of the same events, would probably 
 say, " The story of the Jewish people is an 
 illustration of what seems to be a natural 
 law, that the nation which gives way to 
 luxury, immorality, drunkenness and love 
 of pleasure and ease, will have small chance 
 of survival in the struggle for existence ; 
 that which sacrifices itself in the pursuit 
 of a great ideal is indestructible." 
 
 In view of such a thought consider the 
 state of the world before the war. No one 
 can deny that it was a world of selfishness. 
 Never before had the rich been so rich and at 
 the same time so many on the borderland of 
 starvation. The nations were at daggers 
 drawn, each trying to cut out the others in 
 the great trade war, and to impede their 
 development. It is a moral law that 
 Selfishness makes Hell, and national selfish- 
 ness makes war. It is often said that this 
 war would have been avoided had England 
 heaped up more armaments. But the 
 moral law cannot so be escaped. The only 
 result would have been that Germany
 
 IS GOD ALMIGHTY ? 45 
 
 would not have gambled in England's non- 
 intervention. The Moral Law demanded 
 war. It was only a question of time. 
 Germany could hardly have chosen a time 
 more helpful to us. 
 
 God cannot deny Himself. The world 
 will not have peace till the nations have 
 been converted. 
 
 In the international sphere the problems 
 which arise must be treated in the spirit of 
 co-operation rather than in that of com- 
 petition. If, for instance, within the 
 Empire a system of tariffs is organized for 
 the development of natural resources and 
 industries, or for the protection of labour 
 against unfair competition, well and good, 
 but if it is designed to further cripple 
 Germany it will be a breach of the moral 
 law. A bitter trade war will be but a 
 prelude to another world-devastating cam- 
 paign, for Selfishness makes Hell. 
 
 If we seriously wish this war to end war, 
 we must be converted, we must have a 
 change of heart, we must abandon our 
 exclusive nationalism, we must obey the 
 moral law of sacrifice, for national selfish- 
 ness leads to war as certainly as by the law 
 of gravitation the stone falls to the ground.
 
 46 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 The same principle applies to the indus- 
 trial world. People sometimes speak as if 
 the relations of employers and employed were 
 bound to be improved because of the dangers 
 and hardships shared in the trenches. This 
 is a reasonable expectation. But if after the 
 war the employers are still unconverted and 
 try to cut wages, and the men, in a similar 
 frame of mind, to reduce output, the moral 
 law will demand its penalty, " for whoso- 
 ever shall fall upon this stone shall be 
 broken to pieces, but upon whomsoever it 
 shall fall it will grind him to powder." 
 
 But herein is hope. In the moral sphere 
 the disasters which befall the law-breaker 
 contain the gift of healing for those who 
 can receive it. 
 
 The agony of war has called out all the 
 world over a new spirit, the spirit of 
 service. Millions of men and women who 
 three years ago thought of little except of 
 themselves and what they would get, now 
 only think of what they can give ; children 
 are drinking in the spirit of sacrifice with 
 their mother's milk. The Jesuit's saying 
 is : " Give me the child for three years and 
 it is always mine . ' ' The children of England 
 have been given to the spirit of sacrifice
 
 IS GOD ALMIGHTY ? 47 
 
 and service for over three years. We may 
 well pray to God for them, " May they be 
 Thine for ever." 
 
 Then our brothers will not have died in 
 vain.
 
 THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN 
 
 Ypres, 
 April, 1916. 
 I HAVE found a delightful garden. As you 
 go out of the Menin Gate on the way to 
 Potigze, it is on the left about 200 yards 
 up the road. From it you get the most 
 beautiful view of Ypres. Around me as I 
 sit the flowers are coming out, the primula, 
 the tulip, and the lily of the valley. Further 
 is the great wall built by the Archbishop in 
 the days of the fierce rivalry between his 
 city and Ghent, and beyond again that 
 living spiritual masterpiece, wonderful even 
 in its ruin, the cathedral and the Cloth 
 Hall. As I sit and think the shadows 
 lengthen and the Hun begins his evening 
 hate with quite peculiar intensity, and the 
 shells whistle over and fall with a crash 
 in someone's house. Our guns begin bark- 
 ing in reply. It becomes a sort of pande- 
 monium — that means all devils. But not 
 all, for beauty is not to be denied. Out of 
 some bush near by a nightingale begins to 
 
 48
 
 THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN 49 
 
 sing. It was like the still small voice Elijah 
 heard when the thunder and lightning 
 had passed by. It seemed to say, " You 
 can loose Hell, but you cannot kill 
 beauty." 
 
 There were some very curious thinkers 
 of last century — some even survive to this 
 day — who called themselves Utilitarians. 
 They thought that nothing existed in the 
 world except what was useful. " The 
 whole world is a great battlefield," they 
 said, " in which only the fittest survive. 
 It is a law of nature that like breeds like, 
 but always with slight variations. Those 
 variations which are of advantage in the 
 struggle for existence are handed on to the 
 next generation, and those which have 
 them not go under. Thus gradually nature 
 is perfected and the amazing varieties of 
 life come to be. This solves the apparent 
 mystery of the peacock's tail feather and 
 the song of the bird. It is a question of 
 value or utility in attracting the female." 
 Certainly, I grant it, but the problem left 
 quite unsolved is the origin of the love of 
 Beauty. It has a thousand disadvantages 
 on the world-battleiield — as if a guardsman 
 were to fight in the Salient in his red and
 
 50 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 gold. The love of beauty and love of good- 
 ness are twin mysteries, I feel them to be a 
 gift from Perfect Beauty, Perfect Goodness, 
 the Lover of all — God. 
 
 But the struggle for existence is still 
 there, and struggle means pain. More- 
 over, the capacity to suffer is the crown of 
 thorns given as a mark of honour in in- 
 creasing intensity as things possessing life 
 ascend the ladder of evolution. We have 
 no evidence that flowers suffer pain, al- 
 though we know of the sensitive plant. 
 The crustaceans, the snails, the crabs seem 
 almost insensible even to loss of limbs. 
 Savage men can bear, without any apparent 
 effort, operations which no civilized human 
 being could endure. But there are worse 
 pains than those of the body — those of the 
 mind. The sense of sin will so play on the 
 mind that even a murderer will sometimes 
 willingly go to his death rather than con- 
 tinue in such torment. There is also the 
 sense of God-forsakenness which rends the 
 soul and drew from the Saviour of the world 
 so terrible a cry. 
 
 Pain, then, is a mark of our high calling. 
 A man may be so degraded that he suffers 
 no pain at sin, he may have so forsaken
 
 THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN 51 
 
 God that he doesn't feel forsaken. His 
 failure to suffer is a mark of his baseness. 
 
 If this is so, then God must be not only 
 Perfect Goodness and Perfect Beauty, He 
 must be Perfect Suffering. This is certainly 
 what the Cross means to the Christian ; 
 not indeed that God came to this earth and 
 suffered and then returned to Heaven, just 
 as a Member of Parliament or Labour Leader 
 comes to the Front and spends an after- 
 noon in the trenches, and then goes home 
 again to tell people what it is like, but that 
 He came to reveal an Eternal Fact, that 
 from the foundation of the world God is 
 Perfect Suffering. 
 
 So He came into Time, into this world, to 
 throw Himself on our mercy, to show us 
 that He needed our help. This is our glory, 
 that we are His sons. When we fail Him 
 the Perfect Sufferer suffers, when we help 
 Him there is "joy in heaven." So He 
 loves His children just as a perfect father 
 or mother. When we harm them, lead them 
 from Him, or cause them pain, the Perfect 
 Sufferer suffers because " for as much as 
 we do it to one of the least of these His 
 little ones we do it unto Him." 
 
 So the Cross has its place in the centre
 
 52 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 of the Christian faith — not the common 
 bloody Cross, but the Cross glorified as 
 Jesus glorified it. Every Christian in so 
 far as he is a follower of the Master must 
 also have it central in his life. 
 
 Therefore in the midst of our pain and 
 suffering we may be comforted by the 
 thought that this and this only makes us 
 members of Christ, sharers in His life, 
 that this is a mark of our high calling. 
 We may even thank God that we are not 
 too degraded to feel, that we are counted 
 worthy to suffer. 
 
 But the greatest comfort of all is to 
 know that we are not just steps in the 
 evolutionary ladder, mere ''output" from 
 the mechanism of the universe, but living 
 souls for whom our Father cares. 
 
 But someone may say, " If all this is 
 true God must be a very sad person, and 
 Heaven a most miserable place." 
 
 I have in my mind the picture of a woman 
 who has suffered blow upon blow from the 
 sorrows of life. As if this were not sufficient, 
 men and women of all kinds go to her and 
 pour out their sorrows and their sitis,
 
 THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN 53 
 
 She bears their griefs and carries their 
 sorrows. She never gives one the impression 
 of sadness, neither is she always cheerful 
 or optimistic. But there radiates from her 
 a sense of Power and Peace. 
 
 Perhaps Heaven is like that, full of the 
 Peace of God which passeth all under- 
 standing.
 
 CONCERNING CHARMS 
 
 Ypres, 
 
 March, 1916. 
 I HAD not, so far as I can recollect, spoken 
 to him of religion before, indeed as CO. of 
 a battery he had seemed singularly reluc- 
 tant in helping me to arrange any services 
 for his men ; but one evening as we sat 
 and talked he suddenly drew out from under 
 his shirt a small silver medal hung on a 
 piece of ribbon and showed it to me. It 
 was stamped with the image of the Blessed 
 Virgin. 
 
 *' I am not a Catholic," he said, " but I 
 believe that as long as I wear this I shall 
 be quite safe." " Well," I said, " I am glad 
 you have found something in this un- 
 healthy spot to keep your nerve firm and 
 your mind at ease." 
 
 And presently we talked of something 
 else. 
 
 But as I walked home the medal came 
 back into my mind, and my judgment was 
 that it was an extraordinary bit of super- 
 
 54
 
 CONCERNING CHARMS 55 
 
 stition for an educated man, and that the 
 httle image was extremely unUkely to 
 direct the course of a 59 shell. But 
 presently I saw that it raised a far larger 
 problem. The words of the Master came 
 back into my mind — " Whatsoever ye shall 
 ask the Father in My name ye shall receive ; 
 whatsoever ye shall ask in faith believing 
 ye shall receive." Here was a man praying 
 for safety — it was the great unuttered wish 
 of his heart ; he was full of faith. The 
 mere fact that his faith was connected with 
 a piece of stamped silver did not really 
 alter the fact that he was praying in faith. 
 Of course he did not believe that the medal 
 would alter the course of a 5-9, but the 
 feel of it against his chest made him realize 
 the presence of the higher powers. He 
 believed that his prayer was answered. 
 The problem of the charm was really the 
 problem of prayer in disguise. 
 
 Is it right or useful, or in the highest 
 sense Christian, to pray for such a thing as 
 personal safety ? \Vliat would Christ Him- 
 self do or teach ? The answer seems quite 
 plain. Certainly He never taught His dis- 
 ciples in any way to expect miraculous 
 deliverances from danger. We might have
 
 56 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 expected to find that some such promises 
 had crept in as a result of some of the 
 experiences of St. Paul and the other apostles 
 on their journeys. But, no ! Dead straight 
 out He teUs them what to expect — " Ye 
 shall be betrayed by parents and friends, 
 and some of you shall they cause to be put to 
 death, and ye shall be hated of all men for 
 My name's sake." For His name's sake 
 and because of Him the}' were to expect 
 pain : unless they suffered by bearing the 
 Cross they could not be His Disciples. The 
 foUowng of Him was not to lead to personal 
 safety. Indeed as He taught them to pray 
 He put last the petitions, " lead us not into 
 trial but deliver us from e\dl," as if the 
 least important things to be prayed for 
 were escape and avoidance of trouble. 
 
 But in the agony of the struggle in the 
 Garden of Gethsemane we get the revela- 
 tion of the character of the Master Himself 
 in face of death. We can understand a 
 man's principles far better from what he 
 does than from what he says. 
 
 Prayer was to Him, as it should be to 
 us, a life. It was a hfe in a home. He 
 spoke to His Father, it was a perfectly 
 natural thing for a son to do, and doing so
 
 CONCERNING CHARMS 57 
 
 to say exactly what was in his mind. His 
 prevision of the horror of it all staggered 
 Him. The abuse, the calumny, the dis- 
 grace, His mother, the insults, the scourging, 
 the hanging naked on the cross in the 
 sight of man hour after hour, the pain, the 
 cold, blood-stained corpse — we can imagine 
 how such visions surged through His mind. 
 "0 My Father," He cries, "if it be 
 possible let this cup pass away from Me. 
 Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be 
 done." This was the mainspring of His 
 life — not personal safety, but the Will of 
 God. " I must be about my Father's 
 business," said the Boy. " I came not to 
 do Mine own will, but the will of Him that 
 sent Me," said the Man. I shall starve if I 
 do not do it, " for My meat is " to do that 
 will. And so over and over again as He 
 kneels in the Garden He says the same 
 words, " Not My will, but Thine be done." 
 When the time comes He is quite calm and 
 filled with so awe-inspiring a Kingliness 
 that His foes can scarcely face Him. The 
 awful ordeal, the shame, and the pain are 
 faced with a courage and a beauty un- 
 surpassed. 
 
 No ! true Christianity does not prumise
 
 58 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 any back-door escape from danger. It 
 does make a man of you. " As many as 
 received Him to them gave He power to 
 become like Him, sons of God." Power, 
 courage, manliness to face whatever may 
 come — these are the gifts of Christ, gifts that 
 a brave man may covet — the fruits of run- 
 ning away, never. 
 
 St. Paul was full of the Master's spirit 
 when he wrote to Timothy, " I am ready to 
 be offered, and the time of my departure 
 is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I 
 have finished my course, I have kept the 
 faith." Here is real Christianity. The 
 agony of crucifixion has no terrors for this 
 man. He does not cringe and beg for 
 escape. " I am ready," he says. This is 
 true manliness. This is the real. Christian 
 spirit. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 But is it of any use to pray for safety ? 
 Our Lord certainly says that it is in His 
 case. " Thinkest thou that I cannot now 
 pray to My Father, and He shall presently 
 give Me more than twelve legions of 
 Angels." He might have prayed, He 
 might have escaped. He might have hidden 
 away. He might have enjoyed long life in
 
 CONCERNING CHARMS 59 
 
 some quiet village — unknown ; but He 
 would never have been the Divine Saviour. 
 The beggar cringing beside you gets his 
 penny because he is a beggar and begs ; 
 but his begging not only reveals an inferior 
 spirit, it produces an inferior spirit. A 
 man may be a successful beggar with God, 
 but he will not be a son : he may by begging 
 for safety save his skin and so lose his self, 
 he may gain success and lose his soul. 
 
 As long as breath is in the body there 
 will be human shrinking from danger, 
 human craving for the material. The ideal 
 of prayer is to transform these, to make 
 them Divine.
 
 THE ANGELS OF MONS AND 
 OTHER MYTHS 
 
 So there were no angels at Mons after all ! 
 It seems almost incredible. There were so 
 many lines of evidence, they seemed to 
 combine into a veritable chain, unbreak- 
 able, but there were no angels at Mons. 
 It was a Myth. 
 
 Neither were there any Russians in 
 England. So many people had seen these 
 hardy men of Eastern Europe passing 
 through our land on their way to the war. 
 I myself know a first-hand witness. There 
 was evidence from the Navy, some one had 
 a friend in the know ; from the Army, a 
 staff officer in the War Office had revealed 
 the secret in the strictest confidence. But 
 no Russian troops landed in England. It 
 was a Myth. 
 
 Was Jesus also a Myth ? 
 
 There are quite a large number of 
 scholars to-day who take this line about 
 the life of the Divine Master, and the odd 
 thing is that they are for the most part 
 
 60
 
 THE ANGELS OF MONS 6r 
 
 not the opponents of Christianity Hke 
 Renan or Haeckel, but men of high spiritual 
 life who think that so they are doing a great 
 service to religion. They tell us that the 
 story of Jesus of the Gospels was either 
 altogether or in the main mythical ; they 
 sweep the earthly Jesus away in order 
 that the Spiritual Christ may be all in 
 all. 
 
 This " Mythical " school may be divided 
 into three classes. 
 
 First, there are those who think that 
 Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Chris- 
 tianity. He was brought up, they say, a 
 Pharisee in a Greek centre and had long 
 believed in a celestial Being, the Ideal 
 Man. Obtaining a post under the Sanhe- 
 drin in Jerusalem, he was sent out to 
 exterminate a new sect of men who all 
 but worshipped a fanatic who had been 
 executed but who was believed by some 
 to be alive from the grave. While engaged 
 in this task he had his vision of the bright 
 celestial figure of his dreams on the 
 Damascus road, and consequently put a 
 hyphen between Jesus the man of Nazareth 
 and Christ. In his preaching, however, he 
 ^oes not know or care at all about Jesus,
 
 62 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 but only for the indwelling Christ. He 
 deified the fanatical Carpenter of Nazareth. 
 
 Next there are the upholders of the idea 
 that Jesus of the Gospels never existed at 
 all. These are out-and-out materialists. 
 They have found the Mythologies of 
 Mithra or Babylon, which contain many 
 stories and ideas similar to those of the 
 Gospels. Christianity, they say, was in its 
 origin only one of many mystery religions 
 existing in those days. There never was a 
 Jesus of Nazareth. He is a Myth. 
 
 Lastly come the Eschatologists. These 
 are the most popular to-day. They hold 
 that Jesus of Nazareth was a teacher of 
 extraordinary power who believed that the 
 last days (eschata, Greek) were coming, the 
 days of the Lord ; that he was the Messiah, 
 the Christ (or if he did not, he certainly 
 allowed his followers to think it), and that 
 he would after his death come again in the 
 clouds of heaven to judge the wicked, 
 reward the righteous, and to usher in the 
 new age — the rule of God. In this he was 
 altogether misguided, and suffered for his 
 folly. His body decayed by the ordinary 
 processes in a Syrian grave. But these 
 teachers are Christians. They worship the
 
 THE ANGELS OF MONS 63 
 
 " Logos," how they get there I never 
 can imagine — the ideal man, the God- 
 man. One can only think that they have 
 got their reason and their faith in two 
 water-tight compartments. On the one 
 hand their honesty seems to tell them that 
 the residuum of the Gospel- Jesus, after that 
 criticism has done its work, is the deluded 
 fanatic ; on the other hand their faith tells 
 them that the ideal picture therein dis- 
 played is The Person who has appeared to 
 them and is King in their hearts. 
 
 The mythical conclusions do not seem to 
 account for the facts ; it is like laying the 
 foundation of your house on a cloud. 
 
 Now if you take the bare writings of the 
 New Testament just as they are it is fairly 
 easy to make out a case for each of the 
 above classes of the " Mythical " school. 
 But you cannot take them alone, apart from 
 the Society which produced them. 
 
 There is a story in point from the great 
 French hospital for neurasthenics at La 
 Salpetriere. Two doctors were discussing 
 Joan of Arc and her powers. As they 
 entered the hospital one remarked, " I can 
 show you plenty like her here." "Yes,' 
 said the other, " but none of them have
 
 64 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 saved France." You cannot explain every- 
 thing by saying the magic word " Hysteria." 
 
 There have also been plenty of deluded 
 fanatics who have died for their ideals, but 
 only one Christ. 
 
 I cannot bring myself to believe that the 
 four Gospels as a literary product are mere 
 fiction. 
 
 I cannot believe that Paul, *' the founder 
 of Christianity," would have bothered to 
 entangle his teaching with the encumbrance 
 of an earthly fanatic who was murdered. 
 
 I cannot believe that that *' poor mis- 
 guided victim " could ever have become 
 the ideal for the best of mankind, the 
 Personal Friend of millions of men and 
 women all down the ages. My reason 
 demands some better theory to account 
 for all the facts. 
 
 I picture it all to myself somehow like 
 this. 
 
 Into a world of singular political, social 
 and religious unrest there came a Man. 
 He was of lowly birth and of no education, 
 but He walked with God. The flowers, the 
 birds, the children spoke to Him of His 
 Father and the Angels ; the seller of 
 sparrows throwing in the extra one for two
 
 THE ANGELS OF MONS 65 
 
 farthings reminded Him of His Father's 
 care for all ; the sower in the field, the 
 merchant in the shop, the shepherd on the 
 hill-side, the fisherman by the seashore, all 
 these things were but patterns of a great 
 spiritual reality — God. He loved society 
 and ate and drank the ordinary things with 
 men and women of all classes. The very 
 basis of His being was the Love of God ; by 
 this criterion He judged every question. 
 The problem of sabbath-keeping was no 
 problem to Him, the difficulties of social 
 conduct simply did not exist ; He merely 
 asked, " What would a loving man do ? " 
 The dark questionings as to the future life 
 were lit up and dispelled by his knowledge 
 of the Love of the Lover of All. As He 
 preached so He lived. Everything that He 
 said of His Father He did Himself. His 
 life became a Vision of God on earth. This 
 Life of His, too, made Him quite fearless 
 both in His positive teaching and in His 
 attacks upon the abuses of His time. 
 
 His contemporaries could not make Him 
 out. When He spoke of Jerusalem and the 
 coming disasters they said He was a 
 Jeremiah. His power. His eloquence, 
 His courage recalled Elijah or John the
 
 66 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 Baptist. Some said He was too worldly 
 and cared too much for food and wine. 
 Some thought He was mad. But His 
 immediate friends were convinced that He 
 was the Hope of Israel, and they pictured 
 to themselves a glorious kingdom, of which 
 their master was to be ruler. He puzzled 
 them, sometimes filling them with the 
 highest hopes, sometimes telling them of 
 His death. But puzzled, confused, hoping, 
 doubting, despairing, wondering, they loved 
 Him with their whole souls, they worshipped 
 the very ground He stood on. He was the 
 whole world to them. Then He was 
 murdered. . . . 
 
 After His death His followers were left 
 with a most perplexing but vivid impres- 
 sion of His life, and one can well imagine 
 how they would love to tell over and over 
 again the stories of the things " that Jesus 
 began to do and teach until the time that 
 He was taken up," and how, as they did 
 so, all kinds of exaggerations would creep 
 in and some would ask, " Was it really 
 true that He did this and that ? " 
 
 Perhaps these stories and sayings were 
 written down by authority in various
 
 THE ANGELS OF MONS 67 
 
 ** churches," in order that they might be 
 read at the gatherings of Christians scat- 
 tered abroad, and especially at the 
 Eucharist. The first editor of these stories 
 known to us produced St. Mark's Gospel. 
 This was taken and edited by St. Matthew 
 and St. Luke, who added to it a good 
 deal which they gained from another 
 source common to them both (known as 
 Q by the critics), and also some original 
 matter. 
 
 It was in the editing of these stories and 
 sayings that the views of the writers became 
 reflected upon the teaching of the Master. 
 
 He had taught them of the horrible 
 disasters, of the judgment upon Jerusalem 
 and the wars and rumours of wars. They 
 took this, and in their perplexity about His 
 death, combined with the general Jewish 
 belief that these catastrophes were signs 
 of the end of the world and the coming of 
 the Messiah in clouds to judge the world, 
 they turned His teaching as to God's moral 
 judgments which happen every day into 
 a promise of a world catastrophe. The 
 marvel is that in so doing, although they 
 misinterpreted their Master, — how often 
 He was astonished at their slowness to
 
 68 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 understand ! — they have given us the ideal 
 spiritual picture true to life of the Son of 
 God teaching by His life what the hfe of the 
 practical sons of God in this world should 
 be. 
 
 After the manner of the East He laid 
 down, in astonishing paradoxes, short pithy 
 sentences which would stick in men's minds 
 and make them think, the ideals for which 
 He lived. 
 
 When He told them to take no thought 
 for the morrow, it was neither because there 
 was to be no morrow nor because saving 
 money was wrong, it was because they were 
 living in a Father's world and therefore 
 anxiety was a stupid sin. When He said 
 that they were to give to those that asked 
 of them, turn the other cheek, it was not 
 because the end of the world was coming 
 and therefore it did not matter, it was 
 because He knew meanness to be a soul- 
 destroying vice, and that it is not always 
 a sign of greatness to want to get your own 
 back. 
 
 Because He did not directly deal with the 
 problems of sex, of labour, of wages, of 
 property, it in no way follows that He was 
 only interested in the short period before
 
 THE ANGELS OF MONS 69 
 
 the final catastrophe, it was simply because 
 He felt that if His great spiritual ideal 
 possessed mankind these problems would 
 hardly arise. 
 
 Was it a Myth ? Is this amazing living 
 portrait of a Man only an example of the 
 inventive genius of Jewish artists ? Could 
 such power come forth from a mere 
 hallucination ? The verdict of human 
 experience is No ! 
 
 " Finding, following, keeping, struggling, 
 Is he sure to bless ? 
 Angels, Martyrs, Prophets, \'irgins. 
 Answer ' Yes.' " 
 
 And who is He ? Not the philosophic 
 "Logos"; not "the Ideal" of Plato; 
 but the warm, living, tender, loving Jesus 
 of the Gospels, who lived in Palestine 1900 
 years ago ; the Christ to whom all Scrip- 
 ture points, who was dead and is alive for 
 evermore, our Lord and our God.
 
 THE BATTLE OF LOOS 
 
 September, 1915. 
 A REMARKABLE human document, and one 
 of the greatest interest to the psychologist, 
 would be produced if a thousand or so men 
 were asked to state what they felt like as 
 they went up to an attack, and what com- 
 forted them. 
 
 I heard of a major telling how, as he 
 went along the road into Loos with his 
 battery amid the horrible sights of the 
 debris of waggons, horses and men, he 
 began to feel sick and fearful, till he heard 
 one of his men, a country boy who had 
 never seen a battle before, saying to his 
 pal — " Look, Bill, that bloke has copped 
 it, had his napper knocked off." Then all 
 his discomfort disappeared. 
 
 I myself began to feel the unpleasant 
 sinking within me as the noise of the guns 
 grew louder, but as we came into Vermelles 
 I saw a crowd standing round a field and a 
 football match going on between some of 
 the troops waiting to go up. In a moment 
 
 70
 
 THE BATTLE OF LOOS 71 
 
 I felt light as air, as if a great load had 
 dropped off my back. 
 
 . • • • • 
 
 Brigade Headquarters and also the Ad- 
 vanced Dressing Station were at Le 
 Routoire Farm, the remains of what must 
 have been a very prosperous homestead 
 in the days before the war. Here we 
 arrived just as it was growing dark. The 
 air was full of the roar and flash of many 
 guns, and every now and then there would 
 be a scream and a crash as a German shell 
 came over. The road to the farm was a 
 mass of ammunition waggons and ration 
 carts. Lying around in all sorts of places 
 and attitudes, some on stretchers, some on 
 the ground, were the wounded. Every 
 now and then a car would turn up and 
 take away some of them. It was chilly 
 and the rain began to come down. There 
 was no cover for the wounded. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 The man who has not taken part in a 
 battle can never imagine the number of 
 contretemps that occur. Someone came 
 to me in the morning and asked me about 
 the burial of the dead ; there were many
 
 72 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 lying out near the wire. Where would I 
 Uke them collected and the grave dug ? I 
 only knew of one central place easily 
 recognizable, so I chose the Lone Tree as 
 the site. The unfortunate part was that 
 everyone in the brigade who had to fix a 
 rendezvous chose the same spot. 
 
 The picture of that Lone Tree that 
 September morning beggars all descrip- 
 tion. If an artist had wished to paint the 
 desolation of Hell he could not have found 
 a better subject. A month before it had 
 been a fairy vision of heavenly loveliness ; 
 a queer-shaped old tree standing by itself 
 on a carpet of wondrous beauty, poppies, 
 daisies and cornflowers, a miracle of colour. 
 Now everything is dead, the tree is dead, 
 the carpet is brown, upon it lie many 
 khaki-covered forms, a month ago in the 
 full beauty of EngHsh manhood, now 
 broken, muddy, cold, gory, horrible. Among 
 them, for the doctors had chosen the same 
 place as I had, lie the wounded, grey-faced, 
 shivering — some of them had been out for 
 nights and days : standing around is a fatigue 
 party — they also had come to the same spot 
 — carrying bombs and ammunition. In the 
 foreground of the picture, towards the
 
 THE BATTLE OF LOOS 73 
 
 enemy, there is the same brown carpet; 
 beyond, the ruins of the barbed-wire 
 entanglements, and beyond again, the 
 white chalk line — the old German front 
 trench. Such was the picture. 
 
 I started to work getting the remains of 
 the gallant men put into the graves, laying 
 them side by side in the great hole that we 
 had dug. The Huns, however, had spotted 
 the crowd and the digging, and started shell- 
 ing the tree, so we put the wounded into the 
 grave and there we lay, living and dead 
 side by side till it was all over. Luckily 
 they had not a very accurate gun, as they 
 were first fifty yards short and then fifty 
 yards over, but never split the difference. 
 There were few casualties, but one poor 
 fellow who had been brought in after lying 
 out for three days and nights was killed. 
 " Seems 'ard lines after all that," said one 
 of the bearers. 
 
 In the Hell of such horrors the glory of 
 war comes to birth. Out of the pain and 
 peril of child-birth sons of God are born. 
 From the horror of Calvary the Christian 
 faith comes to be. 
 
 Down near Neuve Chapelle there grew a 
 daffodil of extraordinary size and beauty ;
 
 74 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 it was watched and tended with great care 
 by the regiment that held the Hne. Pres- 
 ently some sappers came along and started 
 digging. The owners of the daffodil begged 
 for mercy on their flower. " Sorry, sir, our 
 orders is to dig a trench just 'ere." They 
 dug and found that the daffodil was rooted 
 in the foot of a dead Indian. 
 
 No one quite suspected the heroism and 
 gallantry of the average man, it was like a 
 seed lying dormant. Planted in the dung- 
 heap of war it brought forth abundantly. 
 Many a man who because of his shyness 
 and reserve was looked down upon by his 
 acquaintances, or despised himself in times 
 of peace, has found a new life in the midst 
 of death. 
 
 Some also found the soil too rich and 
 rotted away. 
 
 • • • * * 
 
 Throughout the day we journeyed to and 
 fro carrying the wounded from the Tree 
 down to the Routoire Farm, where the 
 doctors attended to their wounds. The 
 Germans evidently had had a real fright 
 early in the battle and taken their guns 
 away. They were soon beginning to bring 
 them back and make things most un-
 
 THE BATTLE OF LOOS 75 
 
 pleasant round our farm. I defy anyone 
 to get into a situation where he feels more 
 awkward than when, half-way up into an 
 ambulance lifting a stretcher case, he hears 
 a big shell coming and knows it is coming 
 pretty near. We had no cars smashed, but 
 once a big fragment came through the roof 
 with a crash, but fell between the stretchers 
 on the floor. 
 
 It is hard for the civilian at home to 
 realize the difficulties of getting the wounded 
 out of a battle. It generally means a carry 
 of, say, two miles. It takes four men to a 
 stretcher. If there are fifty cases a distance 
 of, say, 100 miles loaded and 100 miles 
 empty has to be covered before all are 
 brought in. To carry a dead weight over 
 rough ground for two miles is real work. 
 By nightfall we were all done up and ready 
 for a rest, but just as we were congratulating 
 ourselves that our work was finished there 
 came an urgent message that there were a 
 lot more wounded waiting for us. Carry 
 any more we could not. There was only 
 one alternative, to take up the big Red 
 Cross waggon. None of our party will, I 
 think, forget the anxieties of the trip. It 
 was dark and rainy. There was a good
 
 76 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 deal of shelling, and every now and then a 
 bullet would " phut " past. We had to 
 cross three lines of trenches which had been 
 bridged by the sappers with temporary 
 wooden bridges, the surfaces of which were 
 so slippery that the horses could scarcely 
 get a footing, so narrow that there was 
 never more than an inch to spare : once or 
 twice I shut my eyes and waited for the 
 crash. It was a very fine bit of driving 
 that we managed the journey twice without 
 an accident, and everyone must have said 
 " Thank God " from his heart as we arrived 
 safely without casualties at the ruins of the 
 farm at 2 a.m. The sleep of the labouring 
 man is sweet. 
 
 • • a • • 
 
 One hears on all sides stories of gallant 
 deeds, of sacrifice and heroism. Let us 
 pray that the Hell in the other life may 
 bring out unsuspected good from the 
 sufferers there. The Hell of this war 
 certainly reveals the divinity of man. 
 
 But is war a necessity ? Must the finest 
 virtues decay in the times of peace ? Does 
 the Author of all good plan war and its 
 sufferings for the perfecting of the race ? 
 Were the Germans and Nietzsche right
 
 THE BATTLE OF LOOS 77 
 
 after all about the glory of war ? Is it 
 not rather through our blindness that 
 we fail to find, through our slackness that 
 we do not seize, through our cowardice 
 that we do not face real opportunities of 
 glorious service in that sphere where there 
 are no medals to be earned but only the 
 approval of Him " that seeth in secret " ?
 
 OF A SERVICE I OVERHEARD 
 
 AND THOUGHTS ARISING 
 
 THEREFROM 
 
 POPERINGHE, 
 
 Ascensiontide, 1916. 
 
 I HAD a very fine battalion service under 
 the trees on Ascension Sunday, some six or 
 seven hundred men and nearly all the 
 officers being present. I seemed to strike a 
 chord of sympathy in their hearts when I 
 told them that they must think of the 
 Master not as far away — as if Heaven was 
 somewhere " up there " — but as always 
 present, their great Captain, by their side, 
 to make them brave and strong like Him if 
 they would have Him, and that " up there " 
 meant that they must live high and think 
 high in His Service. As I was preaching I 
 overheard the congregation of some seventy 
 Nonconformists, who had been paraded in 
 another field, singing the hymn we had just 
 sung, and I heard afterwards that their 
 Chaplain had preached to them on the 
 
 78
 
 OF A SERVICE I OVERHEARD 79 
 
 Continual Presence of Christ in the heart 
 of every man and of how they must Hve 
 and die, if need be, for Him. I suppose 
 that, as I had done, he also had prayed for 
 all sharing and suffering in the war and for 
 those at home. Here then was a pheno- 
 menon — seventy men marched away from 
 their fellows to take part in an almost 
 exactly similar service — a Minister of 
 similar education to mine hurrying round 
 all day and taking perhaps ten services a 
 few hundred yards away from me, teaching 
 much the same things, singing many of the 
 same hymns, and praying for similar 
 objects. Why in the world were we doing 
 this ? It was because of our unhappy 
 divisions. He was a Wesley an, I was 
 Church of England. What a problem it is ! 
 I am certain that we need a Visible Church ; 
 the Master talked of building it on a 
 foundation. He did not sow His message 
 broadcast. He most carefully trained a 
 small body of men to be the first nucleus. 
 He knew what was in man. Why, even we, 
 when we want to interest people in kind- 
 ness to children, have to have a Society, 
 the S.P.C.C, with meetings : how much 
 more in the training of men, women and
 
 8o VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 children in their approach to God, in the 
 building of them up in the faith. And 
 unity means strength, the whole Church is 
 weakened by these divisions ; I daren't be 
 disloyal, I cannot act as if divisions didn't 
 matter, but I am sure that the problem is 
 urgent. How can we regain unity ? 
 
 If you have lost your way and cannot get 
 home, your best hope is to go back to the 
 cross-roads and think again. When we go 
 back to the historical cross-roads we find 
 that the great schisms affecting English 
 Christianity have been due to a desire for 
 liberty. 
 
 The Reformation was a struggle partly 
 for freedom of thought and partly for 
 freedom for each nation to govern its own 
 affairs without interference from a foreigner. 
 
 Presbyterianism was based on the desire 
 to have the chief Presbyter elected by the 
 church year by year. It was a democratic 
 movement intended to abolish the auto- 
 cracy of the Bishop. 
 
 The Wesleyan movement demanded 
 liberty for a man so moved to preach and 
 pray in his own words, and, wherever he 
 could gain an audience, to give his witness 
 to the Love of the Master.
 
 OF A SERVICE I OVERHEARD 8i 
 
 The result has been a vast number of 
 sub-divisions ; a source of dismay to those 
 who love Christ, and of derision and scorn 
 to those who do not. 
 
 History seems to justify the existence 
 of Bishops as making for unity, and the 
 problem is whether episcopacy is incom- 
 patible with the principles of self-govern- 
 ment, whether our present method of using 
 episcopacy is unalterable because the best. 
 
 The ideal of the Bishop plainly is that he 
 should be a man of spiritual genius and 
 power, living in closest touch with the 
 Divine, travelling around his diocese to be 
 " overseer " of the spiritual work and to 
 confirm the churches. 
 
 In practice in the Church of England he 
 may be all this, but he is also responsible 
 for the finances and organization of the 
 diocese ; to him come difficult questions 
 of every kind for decision, he has to make 
 the majority of the appointments, he often 
 has a seat in the Upper House, and he 
 has to entertain the leading people of 
 the Church. 
 
 The main results of this policy are that 
 we have killed with overwork some of our 
 great scholars and spoilt their work, we have
 
 82 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 burdened the souls of our saints with 
 details and anxieties of finance and organ- 
 ization, and last and most disastrous of all, 
 we have drawn the distinction between the 
 Bishop and the prophet. The ideal for the 
 Bishop has been that he should be popular 
 with all classes, that he should keep peace 
 in all his borders : that of the prophet is 
 that he should live close to God and catch 
 a message from Him, and, having caught 
 it, deliver it like Christ, regardless of all 
 consequences. Surely this uncompromising 
 courage is what we should expect from our 
 Bishops, for the Cross of Christ does not 
 mican popularity and safety, it stands not 
 for compromise but crisis. But we have 
 no right to expect it from men so over- 
 burdened with anxieties and labours and 
 responsibilities. 
 
 I sometimes catch a vision of the New 
 Church of England. I see a large gathering 
 of men and also of women of every class and 
 walk of life : they are the elected repre- 
 sentatives of the Church, come together in 
 synod for the election of their bishop. They 
 have all received the Holy Communion
 
 OF A SERVICE I OVERHEARD 83 
 
 together and prayed for the guidance of 
 God in this great matter. No one is 
 scheming to gain the position, because the 
 bishop is not to be a Prince of the Church, 
 he is to be the Servant. There is no elec- 
 tioneering of the parties High or Low, 
 because he will not have the power of 
 appointment to livings ; that is done by an 
 elected board in consultation with the 
 parishioners concerned ; they need not 
 consider whether he is a great scholar, 
 because those problems of scholarship will 
 be dealt with by an elected committee ; he 
 need not have been a great organizer, for 
 the elected finance board will see to that ; 
 but that gathering of the Synod is longing 
 to find a real man of God who may travel 
 round among them simply as a man of 
 God with a message given him by God. 
 The powers of the new bishop will be 
 enormous, not those of the autocrat, but of 
 a Father full of the Power of the Spirit. 
 
 " The Palace " will always be full of 
 guests, not only the leading laymen of the 
 diocese, but any man or woman, rich or 
 poor, who needs rest for soul and body will 
 invite himself and come. 
 
 Moreover I seem to see in all the churches
 
 84 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 one set service, the Supper of the Lord, 
 fixed at some time of day when all can 
 come, for this is the common meal, the 
 Communion of God and man, the Great 
 Thanksgiving, the Sacrament of Unity. 
 Otherwise there seems a curious laxity ; at 
 the great cathedrals there is gorgeous music 
 and colour, everything to fill the soul with 
 awe ; in other churches the minister seems 
 to have clung to the old Matins and Even- 
 song, only he chooses most carefully lessons 
 and psalms which deal with human life 
 to-day — sometimes he even says extempore 
 prayers, the people seem to be helped by 
 this ; in many places I seem to see no set 
 order or arrangement, only a sort of family 
 prayers in such simple language, with old 
 familiar hymns, and a message to the souls 
 of the people. 
 
 Sometimes information is laid against 
 innovators, and the Synod is called upon 
 to judge, but they never seem to ask whether 
 it was so done in the first five centuries or 
 the time of Elizabeth, but whether men and 
 women are so led to Christ. 
 
 This is my dream. " A mere dream ! " 
 you will say. But sometimes dreams come 
 true.
 
 CONCERNING OUR UNHAPPY 
 DIVISIONS 
 
 POPERINGHE, 
 
 Whitsuntide, 191 6. 
 
 Any fool can be an agnostic. I can't think 
 why they pretend to be so clever. But it is 
 a perplexing thing to be a Christian. It is 
 more perplexing to be a Churchman. It is 
 most perplexing to be a Chaplain uprooted 
 from your old surroundings and habits and 
 planted out in the midst of a great war. 
 One seems to get a new angle of vision for 
 the most familiar texts and beliefs of the 
 Bible. It is most perplexing. 
 
 I have been thinking and preaching about 
 the great vision of the last days by the 
 Prophet Joel, where he foretells the out- 
 pouring of the Spirit of God upon all flesh, 
 and have explained it to mean that before 
 the coming of the Master it was thought 
 that only the great leaders and thinkers 
 could be inspired by the Divine Spirit, but 
 that now He was to be the Guide and 
 
 8s
 
 86 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 Counsellor and Friend of every man and 
 every woman, black or white, slave or free : 
 that now not only every General but every 
 private soldier who was intent on doing 
 God's will could be certain of this Com- 
 panion. 
 
 This at once raises the problem of the 
 Church. What is the limitation to this 
 great promise ? 
 
 I have been taught that the pledged 
 channel of grace, i.e. of the power of the 
 Spirit, is through the Catholic Church, a 
 heritage direct from the Apostles through 
 the unbroken succession of Bishops : that 
 only sacraments administered by episco- 
 pally ordained men are " valid." Now 
 this word '' vahd " is evidently a Latin 
 legal word. The implication of its use is 
 that an agreement between two parties 
 only " holds good " when both keep the 
 conditions. The Catholic idea undoubtedly 
 is that unless we use outward and visible 
 signs in a specially God-appointed way we 
 have no right to expect health for our 
 souls. 
 
 There is much in nature to make us think 
 this view to be right. God has ordained in 
 this world that if we want certain results
 
 OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS 87 
 
 we must employ certain methods, that we 
 cannot say that anything will do, because 
 the best results can only be obtained by 
 the strictest obedience to His Laws as 
 revealed in the natural world. There is 
 the Way and the Truth — only one — and 
 the way is narrow. But my mind immedi- 
 ately has misgivings, I cannot think the 
 logic quite sound. For, first, it is extremely 
 dangerous to take an argument from 
 material processes and apply it in the 
 spiritual sphere. Secondly, even granting 
 that episcopacy is essential for the develop- 
 ment of the true life, so also are all the 
 complex virtues of the Christian life, and it 
 would be ridiculous to maintain that a 
 church whose ministry was apostolic but 
 whose members were superstitious, ignorant 
 and uncharitable, was more in union with 
 God than one with no ministry at all, but 
 whose members were as a whole full of the 
 fruits of the Spirit. Thirdly, we must judge 
 by results. A priori we may think that 
 the episcopal ministry is the only " valid " 
 one, that is, the only one which can be sure 
 of God's Spirit working with it. But when 
 we face the facts we know that beyond all 
 question God has displayed His approval
 
 88 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 of many " irregular " churches. He has 
 blessed their work. 
 
 This means that we cannot claim 
 episcopacy as essential to the church, 
 however much we may feel sure that it is 
 for its benefit. 
 
 We seem to be placed in exactly the 
 same position as were the apostles of the 
 early church. They were Jews in religion 
 who thought that they only differed from the 
 Chief Priests in that they believed that the 
 crucified Jesus was The Christ raised from 
 the dead to be the fulfilment of all their 
 scriptures. As Jews they thought that the 
 Jewish Law which demanded circumcision 
 was divine and therefore eternal. They 
 could not imagine anyone being admitted 
 to the church unless he became subject to 
 the Divine law. Then came the case of 
 Cornelius, which was made a test case. 
 Peter and his witnesses were perfectly 
 certain that he and his family had received 
 the Holy Ghost. After hearing the story 
 the Church Assembly at once agreed that 
 the case was settled ; that is to say, in 
 view of the fact that the Spirit of God was 
 not denied to the uncircumcised they 
 agreed that the keeping of the Law which
 
 OUR UNHAPPY DIVISIONS 89 
 
 they had thought divine and eternal was 
 not essential for the Christian. This was 
 the beginning of real Catholicism. 
 
 Every earnest Christian longs for unity. 
 Is there not here some possibility not of 
 compromise but of comprehensiveness ? 
 Must not the Catholic, in view of the facts, 
 abandon his belief that episcopacy is the 
 very essence of the church ? Could not the 
 Presbyterian, also in view of the fact that 
 the absence of episcopacy makes for dis- 
 union, agree that episcopacy is beneficial 
 for the church, and therefore in accordance 
 with the Divine will ? Would he not sub- 
 mit to ordination, not as a matter of 
 principle, because he doubted his own 
 position, but as a sacrifice to his yearning 
 for unity ? The Catholic in ordaining him 
 would not deny the " vahdity " of his 
 previous orders, that he would say was 
 proved by the blessing of God on his 
 work. 
 
 But before these things could come to 
 pass there would have to be a revolution 
 in the Church of England. No " free " 
 churchmen would tolerate either the 
 anachronism of State establishment or the 
 sale of advowsons or the parson's freehold
 
 90 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 or the inequalities of stipends or the auto- 
 cracy of Bishops, which means the denial 
 of the priesthood of the laity in the govern- 
 ment of their church. 
 
 This would be a great adventure, but 
 Christ wants adventurers. 
 
 Many things which before the war were 
 thought impossible are accepted without 
 comment to-day. Is it too much to hope 
 that the Church may have the courage to 
 shake off the shackles of the past and use 
 them as stepping-stones in her forward 
 march in the Life of the Spirit ?
 
 HARVEST ON THE SOMME— 
 AND ELSEWHERE 
 
 September, 1916. 
 September on the Somme ! There are 
 few things more lovely than harvest-time 
 in Picardy. You can stand on the hills 
 round Amiens and for miles and miles 
 before your eyes there is spread out a 
 panorama of gold — ^the golden corn : some 
 of it is cut, it is lying in sheaves in regular 
 lines, just as the machine mowed it down : 
 a few months ago it was just bare grain, 
 it may chance of wheat or some other 
 grain ; it was cast into the muddy earth 
 in the toil and hardship of the spring and 
 winter. Now it has increased beyond 
 measure : the joy of harvest is here. 
 
 Come with me for a walk only a few 
 miles, and I will show you the other 
 Picardy in September. You will have to 
 come carefully and for a while in a trench 
 or you will be shot at. There is a war 
 on. After a time you may look over the 
 
 91
 
 92 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 trench, but only for a moment. The sun 
 of September is shining — September in 
 Picardy ; the keen air of autumn kisses 
 your face, but you will see no corn, only 
 brown sheaves lying in regular order as 
 the machine-gun mowed them down — the 
 gallant men of Britain, lying face down 
 towards the foe in a medley of broken wire 
 and ruined land. Here indeed is the har- 
 vest of sorrows. 
 
 How the Master loved the doings on the 
 farm. Never once does He mention His 
 carpentry, the toiling indoors at the saw 
 and the plane — perhaps He never did it — 
 but nature, the growth of things, the mys- 
 tery, the beauty, the variety of life — what 
 a place these had in His mind. It was to 
 Him the open book of God. He had a 
 great idea about the harvest which perhaps 
 may comfort you when you pop back into 
 the trench with your eyes full of the sad- 
 ness of the sight. The Greeks who had 
 come up to the feast had been brought to 
 Him by Philip ; the sight of them brings 
 to His mind the vision of the Glorious 
 Kingdom at hand ; " Now is the Son of
 
 HARVEST ON THE SOMME 93 
 
 Man glorified/' He said. But how was it 
 to be brought about, how was He to serve 
 His nation best ? The answer He gives is 
 shocking in its originahty. He will die for 
 it. The grain must be buried before it can 
 grow : " except a corn of wheat fall into 
 the ground and die it abideth alone, but if 
 it die it bringeth forth much fruit." The 
 idea horrifies Him as much as the sight over 
 the trench does you. " Now is My soul 
 troubled and what shall I say ? " Shall I 
 say, " Father, save Me from this hour " ? 
 No ; "for this cause came I unto this 
 hour. Father, glorify Thy name." He was 
 right — we should have thought that He 
 would have best served His land by preach- 
 ing, teaching and healing, we know now 
 that it was the lifting up from the earth 
 which drew men to Him. This was one of 
 the greatest discoveries in the world's 
 history, that a man may serve his country 
 and his cause better by dying for it than 
 by living for it. How impossible it seems ! 
 But the most extraordinary thing about 
 this world is that nearly all your first 
 thoughts about it are wrong. You think 
 that the sun goes round the earth, on whose 
 flat surface you are standing. Not at all ;
 
 94 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 you arc hanging on by your feet to a huge 
 ball hurrying through space. You listen to 
 a pianist at his art and you think that the 
 music is in the notes ; you are wrong. The 
 music is in your head ; mere waves in the 
 ether, some long, some short, set up by the 
 vibrating of the wire, they are caught by 
 the mechanism of your ear and carried to 
 your brain to give you the sensation of 
 sound. You walk in your garden, you 
 look at a rose. " What a beautiful colour 
 it has," you say. Wrong again : it merely 
 reflects rays of light from the sun which 
 irritate your optic nerves and give you the 
 impression of colour, but the colour is not 
 in the rose, it is in your head. You sit down 
 in a chair. *' I like something solid to sit 
 on," you say. '' Solid ! " says the scientist, 
 " not at all ; your chair is better described 
 as a collection of miniature solar systems. 
 There are myriads of particles of matter 
 vibrating one with the other : it is the 
 rapidity of their movements which makes 
 you think your chair solid. Your sense 
 impression was quite wrong." 
 
 Now Christ seems to say that your first 
 ideas about life are almost certain to be 
 wrong. You might have an intuitive
 
 HARVEST ON THE SOMME 95 
 
 genius for Life as Beethoven had for music, 
 so that at the age of four he could play the 
 piano and compose — but you would be one 
 in a million. As an ordinary child you would 
 admire mere size and bodily strength ; 
 unless you were taught otherwise you would 
 grab all you could get ; growing up you 
 would think athletic prowess or popularity 
 the be-all and end-all of life. Then you 
 might think that life consisted in large 
 possessions or high position. It is the ob- 
 vious thing to think so. Your disillusion- 
 ment would cause you much agony of mind 
 if delayed till the summit of your ambition 
 were reached. The very thing which you 
 expected to give you the fulness of joy might 
 become only as a bitter fruit in your mouth. 
 No, to really en]oy life, to really live, you 
 have got to be converted, to change your 
 point of view, you have got to see that the 
 life of getting is mere savagery, that he that 
 seeketh to gain his life shall lose it. The 
 politician, the preacher, the musician, the 
 painter who has his eye on the immediate 
 reward of money, position or popularity, 
 will probably get what he wants, but he 
 will lose his real life, he will have laboured 
 for the meat which perisheth and the
 
 96 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 product of his toil will bear the hallmark. 
 Cast your mind back over the great names 
 of the past, names written in the book of 
 life. How many can you think of who 
 were born and lived in comfort and ease ? 
 With most of them it was a story of 
 struggle and poverty, of hatred and mis- 
 understanding. Many were martyred for 
 their beliefs ; their death was considered 
 to mark the ruin of their cause, but that 
 very way of going did more for that which 
 they held dear than all the efforts of their 
 lives. It was the supreme thing. This is 
 what St. Paul meant by his phrase " the 
 foolishness of God." It was the maddest 
 thing ever done to be crucified. But it was 
 Divine Wisdom. 
 
 Now look up again over the edge of the 
 trench : look at those brown bundles, see 
 that mangled mass, watch that crow peck- 
 ing — don't blink, face it all out. If you 
 think that it is only the harvest of the 
 selfish will-to-get which for a hundred 
 years has enslaved the minds of the people 
 of the West, you will go back along the 
 trench and out into the open rolling 
 country amid the loveliness of the harvest 
 fields broken-hearted with curses on your
 
 HARVEST ON THE SOMME 97 
 
 lips and tears in your eyes. But you will 
 be a fool. This is not only the harvest. It 
 is the spring-time. The seeds of sacrifice 
 are being sown, they are fertilized by the 
 blood of the martyrs. We sow in tears 
 but some day we shall reap in joy. 
 
 H
 
 ON DISCIPLINE 
 
 We are now in the midst of a gigantic social 
 experiment — the experiment of discipHne. 
 For many years experts have been deplor- 
 ing the lack of it among our people. The 
 trade -union leader, the bishop, the 
 county squire, the employer of labour, 
 each in his own department has noted that 
 the gaining of liberty by the people has not 
 been an unmixed blessing. 
 
 What an experiment this is. Five or six 
 millions of extreme liberty-loving, go-as- 
 you-please, anti-militarist Englishmen are 
 under the iron discipline of the Army. 
 There are some simple folk with a pious 
 faith in the power of mechanism who think 
 that this is bound to have an immense 
 influence for good on the lives of those who 
 have had the experience. They picture a 
 mob of men and boys streaming out from 
 factory, workshop, or football ground, 
 dirty, ragged, slouching : they see them a 
 few months later in khaki, smart, keen, 
 orderly, marching with their heads erect — 
 
 98
 
 ON DISCIPLINE 99 
 
 disciplined. Surely this is permanent, they 
 say, the England after the war will be a 
 different place ! 
 
 The great mistake of these visionaries is 
 that they forget that there are two kinds 
 of discipline, that from without and that 
 from within. 
 
 The Army discipline, which is from with- 
 out only, is wholly bad. A lad joins a regi- 
 ment for one reason or another ; he finds 
 the hand of the Sergeant-Ma j or heavy upon 
 him. For all kinds of, to him, purely 
 imaginary offences he is put on extra drills, 
 extra fatigues. It is the discipline of fear. 
 He gradually becomes clever at devising 
 ways and means of escaping attention. He 
 learns to do just enough to avoid punish- 
 ment. He becomes an " old soldier." 
 When a new doctor is appointed he will 
 turn up at sick parade, and if his reception 
 is sympathetic he will on every possible 
 occasion be there. It is for him that the 
 penalty for desertion has to be so severe. 
 When on the march the sight of the ambu- 
 lance waggon or car close behind ensures 
 his falling out. When his Company goes 
 ** over the top " he will trip and
 
 TOO VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 fall almost at once into the nearest shell 
 hole and remain there till the danger is 
 over. 
 
 Moreover, in a much deeper way the 
 demorahzation of " slave " discipHne is 
 evident. There are three certain marks of 
 a civilized human being. He must have, 
 first, a language which adequately ex- 
 presses his thoughts ; secondly, a respect 
 for the rights of property ; and, thirdly, a 
 feeling akin to worship for the honour of 
 women. 
 
 Viewed in this light it seems as if the iron 
 discipline of a regiment, which in some 
 ways does so much, and without which no 
 regiment can exist, leaves the character 
 less controlled, an easier prey to the forces 
 of barbarism, the " call of the savage " in 
 those departments of life in which it is not 
 exercised. 
 
 There are many who never get beyond 
 the discipline which is from without. They 
 will be a real danger to society after the 
 war. 
 
 There is the discipline from within, which 
 makes the ideal soldier perhaps the finest 
 and most lovable of all men. He starts
 
 ON DISCIPLINE loi 
 
 simply doing all that he can in the regiment 
 from sheer fear of " getting his name in the 
 book," but gradually the spirit of " the 
 regiment " begins to take hold of him ; 
 " the regiment " makes his pulse beat fast, 
 he begins to be smart, keen and alert, not to 
 avoid punishment, but for the sake of 
 " the regiment." He loves it. This is 
 the " perfect love which casteth out fear." 
 His only fear is to dishonour '' the regi- 
 ment." 
 
 I myself have known men when really ill 
 refuse to go sick because they wanted to 
 keep up the regimental record for health ; 
 I have known them fall flat down in a half- 
 faint when halted after a long march, 
 having doggedly tottered on under their 
 huge load, rather than fall out and be passed 
 on the roadside by men of another bat- 
 talion. 
 
 The men who are not possessed by this 
 spirit of love have no escape from the fate 
 of becoming " old soldiers." Of these there 
 will undoubtedly be a great many when the 
 war is over, but the real problem will be 
 how to provide the ideal soldier with some 
 real object of devotion which may replace 
 his love for " the regiment " when he
 
 102 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 returns to civil life. There will be thou- 
 sands of these men, " the salt of the earth," 
 who, having lost themselves in their loyalty 
 to " the regiment," have found what life 
 really is. When they return to the indus- 
 trial war of individualism they will find a 
 terrible gap in their lives. What is likely 
 to be their way of escape ? 
 
 First, there is the Trade Union to which a 
 man may attach himself as to an army, in 
 order that he may help the weaker mem- 
 bers of his trade to earn a living wage, and 
 the individual to receive justice against an 
 extortionate employer. He will subscribe 
 his hardly earned money, he will go out 
 on strike and so lose money, in order to 
 obtain for wage earners a greater liberty of 
 
 life. 
 
 Secondly, there is the ideal employer. 
 He will devote much thought to making 
 the hves of his people healthy and happy. 
 He will devote excess profits to giving 
 them a share in the prosperity of the 
 Company ; he will, as a good Commanding 
 Officer does, manage to let them know that 
 he really cares for them and their families. 
 A feehng of loyalty and pride in the 
 concern, a sense of being " at home "
 
 ON DISCIPLINE 103 
 
 might so arise to relieve the monotony of 
 the toil. 
 
 Thirdly, there is — dare I say it ? — ^the 
 Church of Christ. An ideal Christian has 
 
 exactly the same spirit in his life as the 
 ideal soldier. 
 
 There is, of course, the " old soldier " of 
 Christ, the man who is always respectable, 
 who never is discovered doing anything 
 wrong, but who is hated and despised by all 
 real men because his life is not based on 
 love for the Master. He does as much 
 harm to the religion of Christ as the regi- 
 mental " old soldier " to the reputation of 
 the Service. But the real Christian is quite 
 different. His life is not one of fear, but 
 one of love. He does not avoid sin for fear 
 of punishment, but because he is in mortal 
 terror of hurting his Master, letting his 
 Captain down in the great war, damaging 
 some brother or sister for whom his Friend 
 died. His is the staggering fear of the 
 lover. 
 
 We have had too much of the " old 
 soldier " Christianity. What we want is 
 the ideal young soldier, full of enthusiasm, 
 to come in and take the old Church by 
 storm and to it devote his energies and his
 
 104 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 love, for in the Master he will find a Cap- 
 tain of whom he may be proud, and in His 
 Service satisfaction for the deepest longings 
 of his soul.
 
 ON COMPULSORY RATIONING, 
 PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 This outcry for compulsion of every kind is 
 instructive. It marks a lower stage of life — 
 the demand of the human mind for some 
 authoritative statement as to the minimum 
 required for the satisfaction of conscience. 
 The labouring man has said again and again 
 with regard to enlisting : "I will come 
 willingly when I am fetched." The ordinary 
 civilian has begged for food tickets and 
 compulsory rationing all round. The real 
 patriot has said : " I do not care who goes 
 or who stays behind, I will not be left out ; 
 I refuse to be denied the privilege of doing 
 my part for the land I love in this great 
 struggle ; I do not care who saves or who 
 does not, my country will be short of food ; 
 if I am the only one who cuts down his 
 meals I shall not hesitate to make the sacri- 
 fice." This is the right spirit. 
 
 The compulsionist says in his heart : 
 " I do not want to fight, to give up my com- 
 fortable job and see the other man getting 
 H 2 105
 
 io6 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 it. I am not going to deny myself in food 
 while my neighbour is having a good time. 
 I want to have an easy conscience that I 
 am fulfilling the official requirement, I do 
 not wish to do more than I need." 
 
 It is exactly this spirit that infects religion 
 in every age. The average man does not 
 really love God, but he believes in Him, 
 and in his heart of hearts fears Him ; he 
 wants to be told authoritatively what he 
 must do to be on the safe side. 
 
 This was the fault of the old Pharisee. 
 He believed that all of a sudden the pro- 
 phecy of Malachi would be fulfilled and the 
 Messiah would come. In order to be ready 
 for that day and safe he felt that he must 
 keep the Law. This he did with immense 
 pains and sacrifice, with the result that 
 when Christ came he was blinded by his 
 system. He had strangled his soul with 
 red tape. 
 
 The first battle which the early Church 
 of Christ had to fight was exactly this — were 
 the new-born Christians to have the tram- 
 mels of the old Law about them ? St. Paul 
 with his wonderful spiritual experience 
 says No. Unless you have got the light of 
 the presence of God and a love for it within
 
 ON COMPULSORY RATIONING 107 
 
 you — which is what he meant by faith — 
 all your righteousness is as filthy rags, 
 nothing is any good at all. Once you have 
 got that free spirit and have thrown away 
 the haggling spirit of " salvation by con- 
 tract," you are saved. 
 
 The great victory was won, but had to be 
 fought for again and again. 
 
 In the seventh century parts of the 
 Church had sunk into the depths of im- 
 morality and superstition. Then arose 
 the great figure of Mahomet. A religious 
 reformer, fired with the vision of the 
 majesty and justice of God, he swept away 
 the immorality and heathenish polytheism 
 of the decadent church, but he reintro- 
 duced " salvation by contract " — a certain 
 minimum code of morality and worship 
 which ensured the faithful a place in the 
 Valhalla. The danger of these minimum 
 codes is that they tend to become the 
 maximum. Such is the indolence of human 
 nature. Therefore the religion and morality 
 of the Prophet is the same to-day as it was 
 twelve hundred years ago. 
 
 The next epoch of importance was the 
 Reformation. Throughout the Middle Ages 
 the Roman Church had developed this
 
 io8 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 system of " salvation by contract " to a 
 most remarkable extent. The rules made 
 were in themselves excellent — in their re- 
 sults disastrous. The Church held the key 
 of Heaven. It was a golden key. It is a 
 good plan to fine yourself when you sin, to 
 resolve that every time you commit an 
 offence you will pay a certain sum of 
 money to a charity. But this easily de- 
 generated into a purchase of indulgences 
 or permission of sin, of absolution or for- 
 giveness of sin ; it even pursued the mortal 
 into the realms of immortality, so that 
 money paid for masses on earth was believed 
 to ease the soul of the departed in the place 
 of purgatory. 
 
 The Reformation was the struggle of 
 Christian people to tear off the red tape of 
 priestcraft which was strangling the life, 
 to abolish the soul-destroying system of 
 " salvation by contract," to enter upon 
 the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
 
 This playing for safety, making the best 
 of both worlds, is the great danger of all 
 life. 
 
 M. Bergson has an instructive illustration 
 of this in his Creative Evolution. He seems 
 to imagine the material world as the revela-
 
 ON COMPULSORY RATIONING 109 
 
 tion of life thrusting out in every possible 
 direction and taking to itself form. Thus 
 the various species come to be. He then 
 thinks of each species as thinking to itself, 
 " What shall I do to be saved ; how shall 
 I be safe in this struggle for life ? " This 
 was the cry of the invertebrates, the jelly- 
 fish, the worms. The first answer was, 
 " I will grow a shell." The result was the 
 crustaceans, the crabs, the molluscs, the 
 snails. But this safety was purchased at 
 the price of stagnation. You cannot ex- 
 pand if you are in a shell. You may be 
 safe, but you are degraded. Real life is for 
 him who will leave the safe slavery of 
 Egypt and venture into the desert unknown 
 in search of the promised land. In the 
 history of species progress was for those 
 who became mobile and dared bravely ; in 
 the life story of the individual it is for him 
 who leaves the safety of the ship and braves 
 the waters to go to Jesus. 
 
 So long as a man's conduct is motived by 
 fear of suffering, whether in this world or 
 the next, he will tend to play for safety, 
 and the religions of authority will satisfy 
 him completely. They will give him " salva- 
 tion by contract." He will be satisfied by
 
 no VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 a minimum code. But the moment the Hght 
 of the knowledge of the glory of God in the 
 face of Jesus Christ has shined in his heart, 
 he will indeed go to the religions of authority, 
 for they will show him the way the saints 
 have trod, and ever on along The Way he 
 will pursue his course through darkness 
 and mist up the mountain side, unsatisfied : 
 unceasingly as the migratory bird his heart 
 will beat for that other country, till at last 
 in the Everlasting Arms of the True Lover 
 he will find his home.
 
 A NEW HEAVEN AND 
 A NEW EARTH 
 
 Shades of my ancestors ! What a wonder- 
 ful world we live in. The aeroplane flying 
 overhead has become so common that we 
 cease to marvel at it ; the 12-inch naval 
 gun, which throws over a thousand pounds 
 of metal to a distance of twenty-eight miles, 
 excites no wonder ; the wireless outside 
 our dug-out amazes us no more than the 
 daily postman. Our ancestors of a century 
 ago would not know this earth. Steam 
 and electricity have revolutionized every- 
 thing. It is a new earth. The kettle-lid 
 had moved piston-wise for countless cen- 
 turies before Watt thought of utihzing the 
 power of steam ; electricity seems to be 
 one of the attributes of matter. It was dis- 
 covery, revelation, which brought into play 
 unknown forces and made a new earth. 
 
 It was so with the coming of Christ. 
 There are still people to-day who think 
 of God as a God of makeshifts, who fails at 
 this and tries something else, who is most 
 
 III
 
 112 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 like God, most glorious, if he stops the 
 movement of a planet. The Angels singing 
 over the Babe at Bethlehem declared Him 
 most glorious when He lay among us help- 
 less as a babe, needing our help, our service, 
 working for us, loving us, suffering with us, 
 dying for us — this is all that we can under- 
 stand of the great mystery of mysteries — 
 the God of Love. 
 
 I do not myself think that this Divine 
 event essentially altered human nature, 
 it was discovery, it was revelation, which 
 brought into play forces unknown and 
 made a new earth. That amazing Life, 
 revealed by the few snapshots of the things 
 that Jesus did and taught, was like a light 
 shining in a dark place. Now we all know 
 what life is. It is Jesus. The knowledge 
 of God " in the face of Jesus Christ " ; how 
 this alters everything. If God is as like 
 Jesus as any picture we can get of Him on 
 this earth, how lovely life is, there is no 
 room for fear or anxiety. It is a new 
 earth. 
 
 Friend Milton, among others, led us into 
 the disastrous error of thinking that before 
 the coming of the Master, God was angry 
 with us all and demanded punishment, that
 
 A NEW HEAVEN 113 
 
 He was only " satisfied " after the sinless 
 victim had suffered agonies. Perish the 
 thought in every form ! God is Love. 
 That is the revelation, that is the discovery 
 that liberates great forces. It makes a new 
 heaven and a new earth. 
 
 So it must be with the Sacraments. 
 
 People used to think that the ultimate 
 fate of a child dying unbaptized was a 
 problem. The weight of the great entail of 
 sin since the days of Adam had been heaped 
 up. It could only be broken by baptism. 
 Such a horrid notion only shows how great 
 is the danger of Logic and Legalism in the 
 Life of the Spirit. God is Love. When the 
 child is brought to baptism it is a great 
 revelation of the eternal fact that God is 
 stretching out his arms to every human 
 soul even when unconscious, that there 
 never can be a moment when the Divine is 
 not there, for we are all His sons. 
 
 Similarly with the Sacraments of laying 
 on of hands — Confirmation and Ordination. 
 There is no magic about it, it does not mean 
 that God withholds His Spirit from some 
 and gives Him to others. It is rather the 
 reaffirmation of a great pledge, the revela- 
 tion of a great plan which liberates forces
 
 114 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 unknown. For in the moment of crisis the 
 boy or man is told by the authority of the 
 Church of Christ in a manner to be heard, 
 seen, and felt, that everyone who gives his 
 heart to the service of the Master may be 
 sure of the Spirit of the Master, for God is 
 everywhere and God is Love. 
 
 It is the clinging of the human mind to 
 magic that causes all our divisions. 
 
 Fancy arguing whether when a mouse 
 eats the consecrated Bread it eats the Body 
 of Christ. 
 
 How nearly the Romans are right about 
 transubstantiation. Yet how disastrously 
 wrong. The substance of everything, the 
 underlying reahty, the something hidden 
 in all created things is God ; only by no 
 magical words or ceremonies can you 
 change that. " Nearer is he than breath- 
 ing, closer than hands or feet. What 
 can I think of which brings me closer to 
 Him than the process of digestion ? I eat 
 and drink the consecrated Bread and Wine, 
 it becomes part of my body, it enables me 
 to express my thoughts, it is myself. What 
 can I think of which means my brotherhood 
 with all mankind more than eating together 
 from the same loaf and drinking from the
 
 A NEW HEAVEN 115 
 
 same cup ? As the branches of the vine, so 
 we are all one in the Unity of God. " 
 
 There is no magic here. It is the revela- 
 tion of an Eternal Fact, which, for those 
 who receive it in the Spirit of the Master, 
 liberates new forces, makes a new heaven 
 and a new earth. 
 
 A new heaven and a new earth. For this 
 do the stricken lands of the West cry out. 
 And there are giant forces at work. The 
 dying of our brothers has revealed once 
 again two essential elements in human life : 
 the need for God and the glory of sacrifice. 
 These are the prerequisites of the new Eng- 
 land that is to be. 
 
 " He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, 
 what of the night ? Watchman, what of 
 the night ? The watchman answered, The 
 morning cometh, and also the night." 
 
 Sometimes I catch a vision of a land to 
 the welfare of which men and women devote 
 themselves as to the main object of life, 
 where every boy and girl has a chance of 
 full development of mind, soul, and body, 
 where employers are proud of their men
 
 ii6 VISIONS AND VIGNETTES 
 
 and their homes, and the employed of their 
 masters, where the wealth of a nation is 
 known to consist in the happiness and 
 welfare of all its people, where strenuous, 
 active, and full-blooded charity abounds. 
 
 A new heaven and a new earth. 
 
 Sometimes the vision fails and I see revo- 
 lution and civil strife. I hear the rattle of 
 the machine-gun and the cries of the 
 wounded in our streets. 
 
 The choice is for the men and women of 
 this generation. 
 
 It is chaos or Christ. 
 
 WILLIAM BRKNDON ANIJ SON, LTD 
 I'LYMOUTH, ENGLAND
 
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