THE SPIRIT OF OUR MEN

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2711, 4 March 1916, Page 14

THE SPIRIT OF OUR MEN

A COURAGEOUS CHAPLAIN. To some extent because wo want to find it, and yet again bccauso no doubt there is more of it to be found, presumptive evidence accumulates of the enemy's deep unhappiness, weakening his strong resistance with a. growing sense of the futilityof it (writes Mr. H. 11. Tomlinson, in the "Daily News"). Porbaps our junior officers are not given 'to critical examination; but when one of them happens to be an unemotional lawyer out of Scotland, who has survived many opportunities for close oxanimation of the German case on the front, and ho admits, after a pause for thought, that it is now much easier to "put the wind up" in the opposition trenches, then the evidence may be accepted. Concerning the spirit of our own fellows, the proof of it is obvious and everywhere. You may test our* men anywhere at the front, a division just out, or one which has been through fire many times, and there is the same Tosult. A few days since in a most uninviting village I was taken into the officers' mess-room of a Highland company -of the new army. These men had been resting and repairing. Thoy were going into the trenches again on the morrow. They knew what to expect in the place where they were going. They had had it there before. It need not be said they would sooner they had been coming home with the job finished; but as it wasn't finished, and because it wasn't, thoy were glad to get back into the trenches. 'I hey wanted to make progress. One of them wore tile Military Cross for having captured a whole company of Germans. All were in the September fighting. They told me of _ their chaplain, quite casually, but with some pride, who went wherever they went. It appears that after the terrific upheaval 011 the line of last October, this clergyman heard that a friend of his, the colonel of a neighbouring battalion, was lying dead under the Gernian trenches. He waited till there was a foggy day, got over the parapet, and losti himself-in the fog to everybody's knowledge for some hours. He searched among the bodies iii the fog, within touch of the German barbed wire, till be found his friend, and then carried him in to burial. The chap, lain came into the room of that modest cottage, his head near the rafters, at that moment. What interested him most, he told ,ua, in the recent advance, was one of their fellows who got out his mouth-organ, as .soon as lie was over the parapet, and began the tune, "Robert E. Lee," an exhilarating American air. The man kept it up. He kept it up; and his mouth-organ played them into Loos when the pipers were dead. "Wo were waiting in a trench that was a ditch that morning," said an offi, cei'. "Couldn't do anything. Had to wait. We wero waiting for hours, and that is worse than the fight. The men splashed about uneasily, ,but thoy didn't say anything. Then one of 'em called out. pretending he was in tears: 'Why don't they widen this bloomin' canal, and i bring up' the fleet?'"