“To hear them sing,” says Principal R —, speaking of the British soldier, “is an inspiration. Their choice of hymns is swift and sure, for they care only for those that matter... those that are melodious with faith and hope and victory in. Christ. They are up against realities and need nothing short of a Holy Father and a triumphant Saviour gloriously hymned... Never shall I forget that hut crowded with men singing, ‘Peace, perfect peace,’ while the guns boomed, and the machine guns rattled, and the song swelled triumphantly amid the short pauses of the guns. When the stanza,
‘Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours,’
was reached, I could only look through an open window to see striding up and round the corner of the hill in the gray dusk, a working party of silent, steel-helmeted men, armed, with shovel and pick-axe, mining tools, and wire tools, or with rifle, on their way to ‘No Man’s Land,’ to repair breaches and dig trenches. This is at all times nerve-straining and-perilous work; but as, with fine stride, they swept over the top of the hill, the strain that followed them was a full-throated and triumphant,
‘Jesus hath vanquished death and all its powers.’”
Said another soldier, “There will be new faces in heaven tonight, for a number here have been paraded for a raiding party, and we never all come back. Let us sing ‘Forever with the Lord,’ and they sang it and meant it.”