One day I went to visit a North of Ireland man who had been repatriated. He was not much more than skin and bone, for his cheerful spirit and indomitable good humor had brought him a considerable amount of punishment from his captors. He was lying with half-opened eyes, although really asleep. Thinking he was awake, I spoke his name. Instantly he started and sat up, shrinking back as he carried his hand to his forehead in salute. When he saw who it was he gave a great sigh of relief and lay down again, but the perspiration was showing on his face, and he could ·not speak for some time. He thought he was back in Germany.
“Is It True That Peace is Coming?”
A few weeks ago I went into a ward where some forty returned prisoners ·were sitting beside their beds awaiting the visit of a doctor. The moment I entered every man sprang to attention, some of them supporting themselves on their crutches, and saluted while maintaining a rigid posture. I was not in uniform, so there was no need for the men to be so painfully on the alert. There was something sharper than British discipline behind their action. It was the merciless cruelty of an iron system of discipline which had scant mercy upon the broken man, and they feared the most inoffensive-looking stranger. For weeks the poor fellows who have had the hardest treatment can only lie quietly in bed or sit pensively beside it. They soon tire of reading, and do not want to talk all they ask is to be let alone. War, suffering, captivity, and brutality have knocked all the strength and nearly all the spirit out of them. It is not easy to reach them with the comfort of the Gospel. They emerge slowly from their crushed condition, but one feels with sadness that something has been shattered which may never be restored.
Rev. Dr. Carter.