Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/220

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kneeling or making the sign of the Cross; you find no one like that now."

"The cannon," says another, "is a good converter." "Nothing gives you the feeling of absolute dependence on God so well as twenty-four hours in the trenches." "If my friends saw me now," runs the confession of a Parisian, "they would certainly not recognize me, me the mocker who believed in nothing. I am transformed." The chief anxiety of those who have strayed, and come back, is to let their people at home know that they died in the faith of Christ. "Tell my wife, father, to teach the little one her prayers. That is the best of all!" runs a typical last message.

"I do not fear death," writes a fatally wounded boy of twenty-two. "I have seen it and see it too close this moment: there is nothing horrid about it, for it leads to happiness."

The Abbé Morette, who served in 1870, is, in this war, an army chaplain. He gives graphic and touching pictures of the re-awakening.

"When we are fortunate enough to be able to set up our field chapel, or to celebrate Mass and Benediction in some church half-destroyed by the enemy, it is a curious spectacle to see the officers mingled indifferently with their men 'waiting their turn.' No favour is shown to the commissioned ranks—one chaplain hears the confession, the other gives Holy Communion. Sometimes when danger is reported too near one gives Communion that