A Minstrel in France Part 28

"How came you to be hurt, lad?" I asked.

"Well, sir," he said, "we were attacking one morning. I went over the parapet with the rest, and got to the German trench all right. I wasn't hurt. And I went down, thirty feet deep, into one of their dugouts. You wouldn't think men could live so--but, of course, they're not men--they're animals! There was a lighted candle on a shelf, and beside it a fountain pen. It was just an ordinary-looking pen, and it was fair loot--I thought some chap had meant to write a letter, and forgotten his pen when our attack came. So I slipped it in my pocket.

"Two days later I was going to write a few lines to my mother and tell her I was all right, so I thought I'd try my new pen. And when I unscrewed the cap it exploded--and, well, you see me, Harry! It blew half of my face away!"

The Hun knows no mercy.

I was glad to see Boulogne again--the white buildings on the white hills, and the harbor beyond. Here the itinerary of the Reverend Harry Lauder, M.P., Tour, came to its formal end. But, since there were many new arrivals in the hospitals--the population of a base shifts quickly--we were asked to give a couple more concerts in the hospitals where we had first appeared on French soil.

A good many thousand Canadians had just come in, so I sang at Base Hospital No. 1, and then gave another and farewell concert at the great convalescent camp on the hill. And then we said good-by to Captain G.o.dfrey, and the chauffeurs, and to Johnson, my accompanist, ready to go back to his regiment now. I told them all I hoped that when I came to France again to sing we could rea.s.semble all the original cast, and I pray that we may!

On Monday we took boat again for Folkestone. The boat was crowded with men going home on leave, and I wandered among them. I heard many a tale of heroism and courage, of splendid sacrifice and suffering n.o.bly borne. Destroyers, as before, circled about us, and there was no hint of trouble from a Hun submarine.

On our boat was Lord Dalmeny, a King's Messenger, carrying dispatches from the front. He asked me how I had liked the "show." It is so that nearly all British soldiers refer to the war.

They had earned their rest, those laddies who were going home to Britain. But some of them were half sorry to be going! I talked to one of them.

"I don't know, Harry," he said. "I was looking forward to this leave for a long time. I've been oot twa years. My heart jumped with joy at first at the thought of seeing my mother and the auld hame. But now that I'm started, and in a fair way to get there, I'm no so happy.

You see--every young fellow frae my toon is awa'. I'm the only one going back. Many are dead. It won't be the same. I've a mind just to stay on London till my leave is up, and then go back. If I went home my mother would but burst out greetin', an' I think I could no stand that."

But, as for me, I was glad, though I was sorry, too, to be going home. I wanted to go back again. But I wanted to hurry to my wife, and tell her what I had seen at our boy's grave. And so I did, so soon as I landed on British ground once more.

I felt that I was bearing a message to her. A message from our boy. I felt--and I still feel--that I could tell her that all was well with him, and with all the other soldiers of Britain, who sleep, like him, in the land of the bleeding lily. They died for humanity, and G.o.d will not forget.

And I think there is something for me to say to all those who are to know a grief such as I knew. Every mother and father who loves a son in this war must have a strong, unbreakable faith in the future life, in the world beyond, where you will see your son again. Do not give way to grief. Instead, keep your gaze and your faith firmly fixed on the world beyond, and regard your boy's absence as though he were but on a journey. By keeping your faith you will help to win this war.

For if you lose it, the war and your personal self are lost.

My whole perspective was changed by my visit to the front. Never again shall I know those moments of black despair that used to come to me. In my thoughts I shall never be far away from the little cemetery hard by the Bapaume road. And life would not be worth the living for me did I not believe that each day brings me nearer to seeing him again.

I found a belief among the soldiers in France that was almost universal. I found it among all cla.s.ses of men at the front; among men who had, before the war, been regularly religious, along well-ordered lines, and among men who had lived just according to their own lights. Before the war, before the Hun went mad, the young men of Britain thought little of death or what might come after death.

They were gay and careless, living for to-day. Then war came, and with it death, astride of every minute, every hour. And the young men began to think of spiritual things and of G.o.d.

Their faces, their deportments, may not have shown the change. But it was in their hearts. They would not show it. Not they! But I have talked with hundreds of men along the front. And it is my conviction that they believe, one and all, that if they fall in battle they only pa.s.s on to another. And what a comforting belief that is!

"It is that belief that makes us indifferent to danger and to death,"

a soldier said to me. "We fight in a righteous cause and a holy war.

G.o.d is not going to let everything end for us just because the mortal life quits the sh.e.l.l we call the body. You may be sure of that."

And I am sure of it, indeed!