"The Digger."

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 41, 24 December 1920, Page 8

"The Digger."

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 24. 1920. CHRISTMAS 1920. Once more, with the near approach of the time of peace and goodwill, we would take the opportunity of extending to our readers and Diggers everywhere, the warmest greetings and good wishes for this Christmas season. Another year has passed us by, "Borne from us on the wirTgs of time to the dim realm of the past." We find ourselves again on the eve of Christmas — the third we have now spent apart from the more harrowing associations of war — the droning of hostile 'planes — the howl of 5.9's, and the deepvoiced thunder of guns uplifted in the grim anthem of hate. We have, in the interval, passed through the transition period of reverting from. things military to things civil and

social, and we cannot but feel that it is a matter for The heartiest congratulations that the thousands whose stamna was so severely tested on active service, have so quietly and industriously ta-ken their places once more in civilian community life. In the strenuous days of 1914-18 we took pride in the manner in which "our boys" responded to the challenge, and, forsaking the fields of peace, became in the face of a great necessity a fighting foi"ce of the first order in the fields of war. In many ways we felt it to be a matter for ever greater pride, that, with so few exceptions the same men have so sp,eedily and so whoieheartedly returned to steady labour and the quiet life. •Christmas is ever the season of memories, and especially will this be so for the men who have came back from over seas. To the quiet fireside of many a retumed man, memories will at this time corue crowding from the other scenes of past battles on the various fronts. The stinging frost, the driving rain and sleet, the eternal mud of Flandei'S, the slippei'y duck-walks, the shell-sprayed road over which the rations had to be brought up, the pitiful attempts to rernember Christmas peace and cheer, while Fritz was pitching the tune and raising Cain with high explosive and poison gas. Some padre's honest hut oftim,es hopeless effort' to prove to fellows "fed up" beyond words that it wasn't God's fault that men had lifted the lid and let Hell loose on the earth. Memories o'i straffes and raids, of dugouts and billets in a hundred different places will paint their pictures in the fire for many a returned man this Christmas. Those "other Christmases" will speak to him again out of the past. From the fu-st to the last of "the piece" he will have them all in mind — those in France or elsewhere and that one that found us at length on German soil — keeping out watch on the Rhine — the time when we had to drop at last the well used : "Je ne vous comprends pas" of France, and learn to express the same thought, and difficulty in the less elegant ; "Ich verstehe sie nicht," of Ger. many. But the most sacred memories of all must ever be the memories of the "mates" we left hehind, — the undying dead. These have a place among the things that remain. Already "out here" the shell holes are being obliterated and overgrown with grass and flowers. War battered cities — -Phoenix like are rising from the ashes of their former beauty. Barbed wire entanglements- — those cunningly spread spider webs of the devil, are being rolled away from miles of quiet countryside. All is being changed ! It xs well that it should be so ! But the memory of these comrades of ours does not change ; it remains! We can scarcely think of them as dead, the men we knew. We see them still as they marched with us over the cobbles of France. We hear their voices as they called their laughing thanks to Madarne as she wished them "Bon chance" from her open door as they passed. We see them in the summer-time resting on some green bank at a wayside shrine as they "moved up" towards the line. We see them coming .back from a swim swinging their towels and singing at the top of their voices. They did not r,eturn : but in some mysterious way we feel that we are one with them still. And perhaps it is just becajxse of Christmas that this thought comes home to us all the more strongly. The message of Christmas is a message of hope. We have just come through hell and have not yet recover,ed from the scorching, but the smoke is beginning to rise around us — we begin to see more clearly. We are coming again to understand what trnest wisdom has ever known, — that back of all the madness of men — behind the smoke of battle and the clash of arms, one still remains who though He permits such things as men in their blind folly comxnit — never wills them. One who is still God though clouds and darkness are round ahout Hira ; and if the whole of Revelation is not a li,e and if Christmas means anything at all that One came to earth to share man's burden — born in a manger nineteen hundred years ago, in Bethlehem on the world's first Christmas morning. Ihe Prince of Peace they named Him. We cannot understand it yet, but in spite of the difficulty the world shall see at last and be glad, for the things that perplex us are but of to-day — He remains and tornorrow is bright with hope. Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, And thou, O Lord art more than they.