CAPTAIN MAC.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1693, 31 March 1917, Page 4

CAPTAIN MAC.

A FAMOUS AUSTRALIAN SALVATIONIST. (By Harold Begbie). Of all the ministers on the battlefield, here, I think, is the strangest and the most romantic. He is neither meek nor mild. He is neither tender nor gentle. And as for theology, I’m inclined to think that you could knock him head over heels with the first pamphlet of the Rational Press Association which happens to some into your hands. But, as you value your life, don’t try to knock him over with your fist —for, believe me, Captain Mac. is a fighting man.

Theologian, no: saint, in the old meaning of the term) certainly not; but fighting man —well —

It is one of the mysteries of the character’ of Jesus that he attracts all sorts and conditions of men — a mystic like St. Francis, a scholar like Newman, an unimaginative Englishman like Dr. Johnson, and a great hearty fight-loving Australian like Captain Mac. V\hat a mysterv is the attraction of Jesus!

This Captain Mac. is a big, solid person, with a brown Australian skin, black hair, black eyes, a black moustache, and a voice that would fill the Crystal Palace. Ilis eyes shine and burn and twinkle with an animation so excessive that you cannot imagine how he doesn’t explode, or how he manages to sit still for two minutes together. And his smile is of the kind that makes everybody else smile, and that gives energy (o the feeblest, and bestows good spirits on the saddest. A groat, big, hearty man, overflowing with the joy of existence, bursting with energy, and longing, always longing, for a fight. “They gave you the Military Cross?" I asked him. “What was that for?”

“Ah! I lull's telling,” ho replied, and shook his head. “Bui surely you eau tell me?” “But surely I won’t.” Again lie shook his head, smiling, and looking away from me. “Bet’s talk of something else. Bor instance . . ’ “I’ve heard rumours about Gallipoli,” I persisted. “A lot of stories have gathered round that!”

“But, tell me.” “All right, I will.” He squares his shoulders, ready to make a clean breast of it.

“It was like this. They were giving Military Crosses to a lot of our Australians one day, and at the end of the ceremony there was one over. 1 happened to he passing at the lime, so they gave it to me!”

You should have heard his laughter. It shook the tea things.

Captain MaeKen/.ie was horn in Scotland, full in every vein of lighting blood. “1 wanted to enlist, in the Seaforth Highlanders,” he told me. “My Highland blood sang for it; but it wasn’t to be. I was taken as a child to Australia, and there I soon began to push fortunes.” All the pietv of his Scottish ancestry was forgotten. He thought only of one thing—the main chance. But one day he came up against the Salvation Army. It seemed to him, all of a sudden, that here was a chance for a tight and the grandest tight in the world. First of all (for he was a wild, strong man) with his own soul.

“What a religion!” he cries. “Why, it. wns the real artiele! It meant giving up things drink, tobacco, and much else —and facing .-.corn and derision. It meant going down to the mud and the slime, it meant living with the lowest and the worst, it meant lighting with the devil himself for the souls of men. Lor it snatched me clean out of myself, it hit me, like a blow. It w<is so real, so honest. I said to myself, ‘Here’s the true religion for a fighting man,’ and off I went to he converted and to sign on. ’ You can imagine that to such a man as this the war came as a trumpet blast. He signed on as a chaplain. He is by rigid,s ChaplainColonel MacKenzie, hut the Anzacs have dubbed him “Captain Mac,” and Captain Mac he’ll stay in their hearts till the end of the chapter. Scores of those gallant fellows have slipped into the next world out of lus arms, his voice the last earthly voices to reach (hem in the darkness of death, a kind, confident, masculine voice—good old Captain Mac! One can believe that if an angel challenged any of those Australian souls on the other side, they must have answered. “Captain Mac sent me,” The men love him —for he is as valorous as the best of them, and tender, too, when it comes to comforting the dying. He came into their hearts in this way: When the Australians were waiting for order's in Egypt, creeping sons of the devil got among them with whispers of certain secret things to be seen for a little silver. I cannot even give you ft hint of these things. It is enough for you to know that on this earth nothing more hideously and loathsomely vile can be seen by eyes of man. Some of the Australians slipped away to see these shows. Dx’ink of a poisonous kind got hold of them. They were hoys in a strange land. It was not difficult for a wily and insidous devil to lead them away

from the camp, to drag them down, before they knew it, to the abyss of iniquity. Well, into those vile places strode Captain Mac, scattering confusion and pulling out the boys. “What ud your mother say to see you in such a hell of a place?” “Boy, how will you look your sister in the eyes again?” And not only this. He went to Authority. What! is this the reception prepared for pure and healthy boys going to face death for the Mother Country? —is this the glory of the British Empire?— is this the best that England can do for her sons ? It was explained to him that England’s power is not sovran over all Egypt, that there have been “concessions ’ to other nationalities, that —this, that, and the other thing. But the end? Captain Mac got his way. Those concessions, do you remember? were abolished. The iniquity was wiped out. Well done, Captain Mac, and well done, Colonel Unsworth, also of the Salvation Army. (The cleansing of Egypt will one day be a story well worthy to be read). A TALE HALF TOLD. And then Captain Mac, with his gallant Australians, went to the Dardanelles. Those Australians who faced death with a courage so sublime and an intelligence so incomparable that they have made an epic of imperishable glory out of that tragic, failure, saw how their chaplain could face death as well as the devil. He was with them always. Nothing could hold him back. He was with the. dying, but he was also with the fighting. Once, when the Turks came thrusting up to the trenches, he seized a ...

But I really do not know the rest of the storv.

The Australians got to love this big brother. They came to his services. They sang his hymns. They said “Our Father” after him. Ami when (hey were dying they snuggled themselves into his breast. His tunic has been wet with their tears and their sweat.

He was with them through the thick of it, and with them when they had to give up the heights they had won, and return to the ships in the bay. lie was with them on their way to France. He has tasted viclory, he has lasted bitterness. “Australians,’’ he says’ “have a good conceit of themselves. They don’t want anyone else to blow their trumpet for them. It’s part of their creed to feel themselves great fellows. And so you won’t mind if I say that never were there any soldiers in the world to compare with our Australians. “Ten thousand more of the same stuff would have swept the Turks out of Europe.

“You see, llwy use their brains. They’re not merely strong men; they’re thoughtful men. They slouch about when there’s nothing doing, they go slack and look as it there’s nothing in them when it’s a case, of stand easy; but give them a Job, (ell them off for something that wants what we call the three G’s —grit, guts, and gumption — and then, they're princes, they’re men!”

It was not for a long lime that I could break through this line bracing talk and get at other things. He came to it unwillingly, I think, for there’s no doubt his heart is in the lighting. “Ah, the tragedy of it all!” he exclaimed, heaving a sigh. “I shall never forget as long as I live a splendid sergeant coming back from the trenches on the Somme, and throwing himself on my chest, and sobbing there like a child, just like a little child. ‘Charlie’s dead! Charlie’s dead! —oh, Mac, whatever shall 1 say to mothcY?’ He had seen his own brother killed at his side. And this man is well over six feet, strong as iron, brave as an Australian, and dour as a Scot. But he cried like a child. Ah, it’s a tragedy! The Jlower of our manhood ! Beautiful boys at the threshold of life! And look how some of them die.

“The other day I was watching a regiment ploughing back from the trendies through mud up to their waists. This mud is like porridge—it’s thick, it’s sticky. .And it takes strength to get through it. Well, someone told me that a couple of boys further back were in trouble, and I went along to help them. I found them both. They were dead. Just dead of exhaustion.

“And that’s why we go out to meet the chaps coming back front the lighting line, and give them a song home. Wo sing to them, play to them, joke to them. The great thing is to make them forgot as soon as possible the hell they’ve come from. I’ve organised no end of sing-songs just to help men to forget.. And it will take hours, days sometimes, before a man shakes off the memory of the fightingline. Don’t make a mistake, It’s fine to be there; I’d rather be there than any place on the earth; but —it’s hell. And out there, living in that hell, you get to know the meaning of Clod’s love for men. Who could help loving such men? Courage?—there’s no courage like it. Why the mere courage of living such a life —leaving out the shells altogether—is like a miracle. And through it all, through all the mud and the slime, and the rain and the

snow, and the cold and the wretchedness, these men are not only patient, they’re cheerful. Yes, cheerful! To live among such fellows is to be exalted. There’s nothing man is not ht for. You feel that men like these are, indeed, Sons of God. They’re worth dying for. And when you get them all round you, singing our rousinghymns, praying our big prayers, and see the light in their eyes, and hear the ring in their voices, Lor’ I tell you, it shakes you up. Love’s a strong word, but I just love those fellows —everyone of them.”