Part 18

"I never heard a finer benediction than that, old man," I replied with feeling.

And the silhouette of that one Y. M. C. A. secretary holding a religious service with a lone sentry of a Sunday evening, bringing back to the lad's memory sacred things of home and church and the Christ, giving him a new hold on the bigger, better things, bringing the Christ out to him there on that road, that silhouette is mine to keep forever close to my heart. I shall see that and shall smile in my soul over it when eternity calls, and shall thank God for its sweetening influence in my life.

And so this comfort may come to the mothers and fathers of America, that through the various agencies of the American army, through General Pershing's intense interest in righteous things, through that Lincoln-like Christian leader of the chaplains, Bishop Brent, through the Y. M. C. A., and the Salvation Army, and the Knights of Columbus, your boy has his chance, whatever creed, or race, or church, to worship his God as he wishes; and not one misses this opportunity, even the lonely sentinel on the road. And the glorious thing about it is that boys who never before thought of going to church at home, crowd the huts on Sundays and for the good-night prayers on week-days.

Just before the battle of Chateau-Thierry, "Doc," of whom I have spoken in this chapter before, said: "Boys, do you want a communion service?"

"Yes," they shouted.

Knowing that there were Catholics and Jews and Protestants and non-believers there, he said: "Now, anybody who doesn't want to take communion may leave."

Not a single man left. Out of one hundred or more men only two did not kneel to take of the sacred bread and wine. Two Jews knelt with the others, several Roman Catholics, and men of all Protestant denominations. Half of them were dead before another sunrise came around, but they had had their service.

Every man has his opportunity to worship God in his own way and as nearly as possible at his own altars in France. There was the story of "The Rosary."

It was Hospital Hut Number ----, and half a thousand boys from the front, wounded in every conceivable way, were sitting there in the hut in a Sunday-evening service. Many of them had crutches beside them; others canes. Some of them, had their heads bandaged; others of them carried their arms in slings. Some of them had lost legs, and some of them had no arms left. Their eager faces were lighted with a strange light, such as is not seen on land or sea, and on most of those faces, unashamed, ran over pale cheeks the tears of homesickness as the young corporal whom I had taken with me from another town sang "The Rosary." I have never heard it sung with more tenderness, nor have I heard it sung in more beautiful voice. That young lad was singing his heart out to those other boys. He had not been up front himself as yet, for he was in a base port attending to his duties, which were just as important as those up front, but it was hard for him to see it that way. So he loved and respected these other lads who had, to his way of thinking, been more fortunate than he, because they had seen actual fighting. He respected them because of their wounds, and he wanted to help them. So he lifted that rich, sweet, sympathetic tenor voice until the great hut rang with the old, old song, and hearts were melted everywhere. I saw, back in the audience, a group of nurses with bowed heads. They knew what the rosary meant to those who suffer and die in the Catholic faith. They, too, had memories of that beautiful song. A group of officers, including a major, all wounded, listened with heads bowed.

As I sat on the crude stage and saw the effects of his magical voice on this crowd I got to thinking of what this war is meaning to that fine understanding of those who count the beads of the rosary and those who do not. I had seen so many examples of fine fraternal fellowship between Catholic and Protestant that I felt that I ought to put it down in some permanent form.

There is a true story of one of our Y. M. C. A. secretaries who was called to the bedside of a dying Catholic boy. There was no priest available, and the boy wanted a rosary so badly. In his half-delirium he begged for a rosary. This young Protestant Y. M. C. A. secretary started out for a French village, five miles away, on foot, to try to find a rosary for this sick Catholic boy, and after several hours' search he found a peasant woman whom he made understand the emergency of the situation, and he got the loan of the rosary and took it back through five miles of mud to the bedside of that Catholic lad, and comforted him with the feel of it in his fevered hands and the hope of it in his fevered soul. When I heard this story it stirred me to the very fountain depths, but I have seen so much of this fine spirit of service in the Y. M. C. A. since then that I have come to know that as far as the Y. M. C. A. is concerned all barriers of church narrowness are entirely swept away.

I have had most delightful comradeship since I have been in France in one great area as religious director with two Knights of Columbus secretaries and one father--Chaplain Davis--all of whom say freely and eagerly: "We have never had anything but the finest spirit of co-operation and friendship from the Y. M. C. A."

"Why," added Chaplain Davis, a Catholic priest, "why, the first Sunday I was here, when I had no place to take my boys for mass, a secretary came to me and offered me the hut. It has always been that way."

The story of the French priest who confessed a dying Catholic boy through a Y. M. C. A. Protestant secretary interpreter, in a Y. M. C. A. hut, has been told far and wide, but it is only illustrative of the broadening lines of Catholicism and the wider fraternal relations of all professed Christians.

The marvellous story that my friend, the French chaplain, tells of being marooned in a shell-hole at Verdun for several days with a Catholic priest, and of their discussion of religion and life there under shell-fire, and the tenderness with which the Catholic priest kissed the hand of the Protestant French chaplain when the two had agreed that, after all, there was one common God for a common, suffering nation of people, and that this war would break all church barriers down, and that out of it would come a new spirit in the Catholic church, a new brotherhood for all. That was an impressive indication of the thing that is sweeping France to-day in church circles, and that will sweep America after the war.

Then there is that other story of the Catholic priest who had been in the same regiment with a French Protestant chaplain, each of whom deeply respected the other because of the unflinching bravery that each had displayed under intense shell-fire, and of the great love that each had seen the other show in two years of constant warfare in the same regiment. Then came that terrible morning at Verdun, when the French Protestant chaplain, the friend of the Catholic priest, had been killed while trying to bring in a wounded Catholic boy from No Man's Land. On the day of this Protestant chaplain's funeral the Catholic priest stood in God's Acre with bared head, and spoke as tender and as sincere a eulogy as ever a man spoke over the grave of a dear friend, spoke with the tears in his eyes most of the time. Church lines were forgotten here. It was a prophetic scene, this, where a Catholic priest spoke at the funeral of a Protestant chaplain. It was prophetic of that new church brotherhood that is to come after the war is over.

SKY SILHOUETTES

They are the lights, the lights of war. Sometimes they are just the stars shining out that makes the wounded soldier out in No Man's Land look up, in spite of shell-fire and thunder, in spite of wounds and death, in spite of loneliness and heartache, in spite of mud and rain, to exclaim, as Donald Hankey tells us in a most wonderful chapter of "A Student in Arms": "God! God everywhere, and underneath are the everlasting arms!"

Sometimes the Sky Silhouettes number among their own just a moonlight night with a crescent moon sailing quietly and serenely over the horizon in the east, while great guns belch fire in the west, a fire that seems to shame the timid moon itself.

Sometimes they are search-lights cleaving the sky over a great city like Paris, or along the front lines, or gleaming from an air-ship.

Sometimes they are signal-lights flashing out of the darkness from a patrolling plane overhead, or a blazing trail of fire as a patrol falls to its death in a battle by night.

Sometimes they are signal-lights flashing from an observation balloon anchored in the darkness over the trenches to guard the troops from dangers in the air.

Sometimes they are the flashes, the fleet, swallow-like flashes, of an enemy plane caught in the burning, blazing path of a search-light, and then hounded by it to its death.

Sometimes they are signals flashed from the top of a cruiser on the high seas across the storm-tossed waters to a little destroyer, which flashes back its answer, and then in turn flashes a message of light to one of the convoying planes overhead in the dim dusk of early evening.

Sometimes these Sky Silhouettes are the range-finders that poise in the air for a few seconds, guiding the air patrols home, and sometimes they are just the varied, interesting, gleaming, flashing "Lights of War."

XII

THE LIGHTS OF WAR

One's introduction into the war zone and into war-zone cities and villages, and one's visits "down the line" to the front by night, will always be filled with the thrill of the unusual because of the Lights of War. Where lights used to be, there are no lights now, and where they were not seen before the war, they are radiant and rampant now.