Rev. R. J. Campbeil on Christmas at the Front.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 158, 24 March 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

Rev. R. J. Campbeil on Christmas at the Front.

V'THE WOKLJ WAS A WORSE WORLD, A MORE SELFISH AND SORDID WORLD, BEFORE THE \ > WAR BEGAN THAN IT IS TO=DAY. k \ "THERE IS AN IMMENSE SPIRITUAL FERMENT GOING ON EVERYWHERE, k BREAKING DOWN> \ OF OLD BARRIERS OF PREJUDICE AND CANT, A LOOSENING FROM DELUSIONS AND< I DECEITS, \ ✓ "THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRiST CHILD WHO WAS BORN IN A STABLE AND CRADLED IN A MAN-3 X GER WILL YET SHOW ITSELF STRONGER THAN KAISERISM AND ALL ITS WORKS." J > "Illustrated Sunday Herald."!

My friend the Corporal was m « talkative mood tne oilier morning. U e Hero sheltering together under tne flap oi a Hospital tern, oiiC oi tnose lug elaborate erections originally constructed tor the Coronation Durbar ;it Delhi (,so 1 am told), and now very sensibly made use of at the seat of war for the housing of our wounded. The rain was coming down in sheets, and everywhere around us the camp surface was like a muddy lake bubbling and seething with the violence of the deluge. When the rain stopped—if it ever did stop —the surface flood would clear off -and the good old mud would appear again, seven pounds to each boot as we splashed and floundered through it. THE CORPORAL'S REMINISCENCE. Rain! I have never met such rain outside the tropics, and it seemed tireless. Day after day it went on almost without intermission, but on the present occasion it excelled itsef and 1 was wondering somewhat ruefully how I should get to my own quarters without being thoroughly drenched for the second time that morning. "Nice cheerful weather, ain't it?'' remarked the Corporal serenely. Nothing ever puts tiie Corporal out of countenance, 1 may observe. "Rcg'lar Christmas weather this,'' he went on without waiting for any reply. "The only kind of Christmas weather we ever sec nowadays, blowed if it ain't. But if they ever t.ell me again that old England is the only plate where we get it I'll tell them they're deluded. We've took a little trip abroad a-pur-pose to find out, and we know sure-ly. ''Reminds me of last Christmas," he continued in a reminiscent tone. "I was up at B- then, and we had the Saxons opposite to us, not much more than fifty yards away. They didn't like the rain no more than wo did, you bet; and they stuck as closeto their dug-outs as they could; so did we except for necessary look-out duty. "On Christmas Eve we started singing a few Christmas ditties. There was a big Yorkshireman in my company with a voice it was a treat to 'oar, and . he sung 'Once in royal David's City,' •Christians Awake,' '0 come all ye faithful,' and things like that, and the rest of us joined in as well as we could. "And then—would you believe it? — we heard the same tunes coming from the German trenches. They were singing 'em, too, by all that's good. Th«y knew them tunes, every one of 'em—not the words, of course; they had efferent words, words of their own that sounded like a mixture of Welsh and Aberdeen, but the tunes were all right. THE SAXONS' VISIT. "After a bit, during a pause in the double performance, one of 'em gets tip on their parapet and shouts: 'You English! Oh, you English! Speak, you English W e are coming over. We weren't having any for. a long time, and stood at the ready for tear of treachery. But they kept on with their funny cry, 'You English !' And at last our sergeant says. 'Well,' he Bays, 'what d'ye want? 'Christmas!' they shouts. 'Let's have it together, and no fighting.' "As soon a.s wo found they meant i* we caught on. and we had a bully time. They were a groat lot for singing, that lot were. We visited them and they visited us: and w 0 shared up the provender as friendly as you please. "One of our chaps gut plugged in the leg by a sniper whjle he wa.s taking a 'am across to their side to exchange for something they'd got. They rushed out and picked him up and carried him back to our lines and apo'ogised, saying the sniper didn't know about die truce. Then they went oil' at 'im—the sniper 1 mean—and brought 'im in, too, to explain and shake 'amis with the man he'd plugged. And we got more and more friendly after that, and mixed up anyhow, till at last orders came from the officers on both sides that the Christmas festivities had gone on long enough and were to stop, for we were getting into the new year, you see, and were making peace all on our own, so to speak, without waiting for the war to finish. DIDN'T WANT .0 FIGHT. "But the Saxon fellow- took a lot of stopping. They didn't want to light, not they. In the end to get rid of em we had to tf.rry em one by one, a leg and a wing, back to their own trenches and dump them in. And they weren't all drunk either ■ "No sooner had the diinip'ng party got back to our lines than a German officer jumps up and sits down on the parapet of theirs with his back towards us. 'Get down," wo shouted, but he took no notice. We kept on idling him to get down or we'd have to shoot, but still he took no notice. "Afater a while we tired over his 'ead to l'nghtcn 'im. But, bless yo.i he didn't go then, and what do you think hi-did? E turn- 'is 'ead over 'is shoulder without shifting his -y<-><i ' n. and 'e says, smiling like, 'Oh, you Eni'-li-di, you think to fr'ghti n me. Rut I know I .;n sal- r with my back t" y.»:i than if 1 tinned mv face.' "What could we do? We co.iidr. t kill the man, -o we ji.st had to let ]-<n> be. "Th" Saxons wore moved -non aftcthat, but before they went they told ii- tha! if Prussians win- coming in

their plate they would signal to let us kno'j. And they met. iney put .» board up, and ail it -aid on it was "Look out.' And wo understood, 'liie i'rustiians didn t try any of the brotherly love business. But amt it wonder lul what Christmas will do " "A POTENT FACT." It is wonderful, indeed. The birthday of tho Prince of Peace is being celebrated this year as last amid ill ■ terrors of a world-war. but it is still a potent tact, nevertheless. All that is tender and gracious in human feelings seems to cluster round it and to become indissolubly associated with it. The spirit of the, Christ-Child who was born in a stable and cradled in j a manger will yet show itself strong. ev than Kaiserism and all its work* Air. Roosevelt is reported as saying that morality civilisation has gained nothing since th e Napoleonic wars. We are as predatory as ever and as ruthless. Tho law of the jungle is still stronger than the Golden Rule in the relations of states unci individual to all appearance. Well, it may be so. It would be difficult to prove either way. What wo have gained in one direction we may have lost in another, and vice lersa. But my own experience is—and everything 1 have seen in the war zone only goes to confirm it—that the mightiest force m human affairs to-day rs that which the Christina- festival celebrates. If, on the one hand, we are shocked and startled at tho savage depravity of German military methods, we can but stand amazed, on the other, at the wealth of simple kindness that abounds, conjoined to the most heroic self-sacrifice. For what a kindly creature Tommy is, with not a trace of vindietivencss iii his composition. And he is a good deal of a sentimentalist too, one- is surprised to find. Again and again I have been struck by the fact that in camp concerts the song that strikes the human note, the note of simple homely joys, 1 of heart's affection and loyalty, is the one most rapturously received. : AT THE FRONT THIS CHRISTMAS. I He is not particular as a rule to | what church you belong, or whether ; you belong to any church at all, bill i you must not make light of the name of ! Christ. "Hark the Herald Angels 1 Sing" will be sung with a will at many a point on the firing-line tins Christ- ' mas, and Tommy will bo conscious of | no incongruity in the strange conjunction of experiences. He will be thinkI ing of home and bright eyes and I Christmas cheer, and in his mind these ■ realities will be bound up somehow \ with the greatest miracle of all the : ages, the birth of Mary's child whose i fuller advent by and by is to put an I end to war for ever, j Among the patients \ visited in 1 hospital this week was a rubicund ! young chap who had come in with i "trench feet" as they arc only too ;:c----i curately called. Imagine what it must ! be to light up to your wajst in water, ! especially if the water freezes in your \ boots! 1 have seen some ugly results j from this, but we will not discuss them. This boy of mine had got the com- ; plaint badly and must have been in j much pain, but, as usual, he was ready to make the best of it. "I never saw ! my beot- for three month-," he reI marked with pardonable exagger- | at ion. "They were never out of the ; mud, I quite forgot I had any feet, and was surprised when they turned up again yesterday." Brave, light-hearted lad! He h-ij no prospects of going home for Christ mas, but was eagerly looking forward to tiie Christmas jollities that were be ing prepared on the spot. They are to have a Christmas tree there, 1 understand, with a thousand gilts on it. What a Christmas tree! Kind friends at home sent me out packages which went ,i long way towards furnishing it, but I shall not be able to stay to see it up as 1 should dearly like to do. They are to have Holy Communion in the ward on Christmas morning, and then there is to lie a day of such brightness and delight as generous hearts in England and equally generous hearts here can furnish. A French military band is coming in to play to them to p'ay their own Christina' hymns if you please—and a great deal more besides. God bless the chaplains, 'doctors, nurses, and all others who are contributing in any way to make up to these heroes for what they lose at Christmastime through having to be absent from home, fighting our battles in a foreign land. AN INCIDENT AT LOOS. And a line tiling t!ii~ boy with the trench feet has just told me. The Germans made desperate counter-attacks at Loos to t'-y to regain the trenches our men had won from them. . coy failed, but the struggle was terrible while it lasted. Again and again they were thrown back with appalling loss, and, said my young informant, "one oi our sergeants started the song, and j every t'me we hurled the enemy off we , sang with all our might, 'Keep the ! home iiiis burning.' " It brings a lump to one'- throat to , hear testimon' like this. Mr. Boose- I volt i- a healthv-minded man if there

lie one on this planet, and he knows that humanity's real gains are never to b e measured by immunity from catastrophe, neither is its good c'.estroyed by the impact of disaster in outward things. It simply is not true to say, a s is often done just now, that the war has either thrown us back morally oi shown that any previous advance under Christian influences was oulj illusory. Th o world W as a woim world, a more selfish and sordid world, het'oie the war began than i! is to-day. This is not to praise the ivnr. One does not praise the fever that reveals the filthiness a man had in his blood when he thought he was well. When i you are tempted to sigh over the Lillure of the promise associated with the advent of the Prince of Peace nearly two millenniums ago, forbear. It is no failure, but a probation. Is it Mr. Chesterton who sing.— The day is ours till sunset, Holly, and fire, find snow. And the name of our dead brother Who loved us long ago? The sentiment is receiving strange exemplification in the war zone at tins advent season. One hears weird and moving stories which all point to the same thing, namely, that tho veil between the seen and unseen is getting j thinner and the thought of the (,'hristchild more intense. Men are believing in the mystic significance of Yuletide who never paid much heed to it before frave in the matter of bacchanalian riot. What is it they whisper to each other about tho White Comrade who is seen passing over the field of battle and where He treads is peace and easing oi agony to the stricken!-' It may lie fancy, and it may not. Heaven is but a thoimht awav even from the depths oi hell.' .Men l'ii-,h from the trenches tell me "f the miraculous preservation of sacred emblems under shell-fire. A church will be shattered to pieces and the life-size Christtis over the high altar left standing intact. The very glass and wire protection outside the'shrine of the Virgin Mother and her liabo will i»e shivered into dust and the divine figure sustain no injury. Even an altar will be torn to fragments and the Blessed Sacrament left inviolate. Are these tales true o r the product of excited imagination? I know not, but they come from many quarters. Why should marble forms and features of painted wood be miraculously preserved when flesh and bone are rent and crushed? Again, I. know not; May it be as a testimony that the tornado of human passion has no power to imperil aught that pertains to eternity? THE BLAZING CHURCH. A group of soldiers, the so'e survivors of a regiment, tell me they sawnot long ago a church ablaze during a fierce engagement in the middle of the night. In the graveyard adjoining was. ) a gigantic crucifix, and as the flames [ leaped up from the burning edifice it seemed to the awestricken watchers as though the white body upon the cross came to life and pointed with majestic hand away beyond the hell of man's mak'ng to where the gentle dawn wa.s pressing through the eastern sky. It was a quasi-supernatural reminder that the ruin wrought by earthly evil reaches not so very far. "Ah, m'sieu,'" said a Walloon peas- | ant, "you see not the wonder of the , Child-God here. You are too busy, m'sieu, and too safe, n'est pas? No one sees that wonder till he is prepared to die like the crucified, and then he knows assuredly that nothing holv can be killed, and" that the royal Babe reigns even in the midst of strife and Trouble, see you. Our good cure saw Him after midnight mass hist Clirislmao Eve, vrajment. There was no church, m'sieu, no church left. The Bodies had burnt it, and there were only blackened walls: and the altar—-helas!-—the swine had made a table of it, and ate and drank and profaned tin- name of the Bon Dion. "But the good father he said his mas- for the living and the dead out yonder in the snow just the same. And then he saw Him—oh. believe me. yes —he saw- Hjm on H's throne above where the altar stood, and a shining crown upon His head, and His 1 ,t!e hand uplift to ble<s; an'! before Him knelt all the dead of our village, m'sieu —mv brothers Jean. Pierre, and my uncle the sacr'stan whom they had 'tabbed in the doorway, yes. And the good sister too was there whom they had desecrated and then murdered, tinsister who was the bride of Christ. And she smiled with gladness, and they looked, oh, so happy. But you do not believe m'sie'u, for you are English and a heretic. But no?" It is all true, every word of it, whatever be the symbolism in which ; I truth find- utterance. It reminds ov.i of the vision of Sir Galahad at th--.acring of the miss in hi- quest for the. Holy Grail:— ' saw tiie lit ry face as of a child That smote itself into the bread and I went. But this was he. tho pure of I. irr, j who had also heard the summons: 0 Galahr.d. and 0 Galahad, follow me. '