Page:Our Girls.pdf/141

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THE DAY OF PEACE
121

priests and the hanging up of the torn but triumphant flags of the Somme by the side of the tattered banners that are the emblems of British history through a thousand years. And I see, too, that more moving than all the pomp of scene and ceremony is the sense which everyone has of the presence in the grey old Cathedral of another congregation that has not been called, and yet is there—the congregation of the armies of the dead. They died in the day of struggle, often in the night of defeat, but if there is victory now it is theirs also, and if there is rejoicing it is for them to share it. Therefore they are there with the armies of the living, above and about and within them, not lying out yonder in acres on acres and miles on miles of uncounted graves in France, under lines of wooden crosses. That is what seems to be pealing through the thunder of the organ and thrilling through the jubilation of the choir—the voice of the invisible hosts who died in the war.