“ In these terrible days of war when our hearts begin to fail us and dark doubts cloud the mind, let us look at the Covenant God has made with us. He has set it in rainbow colors across the sky, that 'he who runs may read' and 'the wayfaring man though a fool may not err.' God has flung his rainbow over the trench and the grave; over the Garden of Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary. It is over the tomb in the Arimathean's Garden; and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven. We are born under the rainbow, live under it, die under it. ”

“ For one second in each day he caught the glamour of earth and heaven, and went back to his untidy studios blind to all but the splendor he had seen.
That second each day was life, indeed, and the glamour of the Front is like unto it. It is the place where life sets, and the darkness of death draws on. The commonest soldier feels it and with true instinct, not less true because unconscious, he describes death at the Front as "going West." It is the presence of death that gives the Front its glamour, and life its concentrated joy and fascination. ”

“ It seemed as if nothing could live in such a bombardment. A shell burst near, and the cry of dying horses rent the air. The traces were cut and the horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road. Every second I expected to see the horses and drivers in front of me blown into the air and I watched them with fascinated eyes. Not a man stirred. They sat on their horses and gun-carriages as though they were figures in bronze. Not a man sought the trench and not a man relieved the tension by going forward to see what was wrong or to lend a hand. ”

“ War is a cross on which Woman is crucified. The soldier dies of his wounds in the morning of life, but his wife lingers on in pain through the long garish day until the evening shadows fall. There is no laughter at home such as you hear at the Front, or even in the hospitals. One finds a gayety among the regiments in France such as is unknown among the people left at home. It is the sunshine of the street as compared with the light in a shaded room. There is a youth and buoyancy at the Front that one misses sadly in the homeland. ”

“ He uses stones as artists use colors, and orators words. He touches them--transient as they are--with immortality. A little of his soul sticks to each stone he uses, and though the stone perishes the road remains. His body may perish more quickly than the stones and be laid in some quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul will never utterly forsake the road he helped to make. In man's nature, and in all his works, there is a strange blending of the temporal and the eternal, and in nothing is it more marked than in the roads he builds. ”

“ A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine and life is woven of the same stuff--tears and laughter. The most glorious sunshine is incapable of a rainbow without the co-operation of the dark trailing clouds; and it is impossible for the human character to reach its ripest maturity and beauty on joy alone. Sorrow is as beneficent and necessary as joy. There are untutored natives who dread the rainbow. They believe that it is a serpent that rises out of the pools to devour men; and there are unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread adversity no less. ”

“ I would not trust a wife's love if she could tell her husband exactly why she loved him; nor would I trust our soldiers not to turn tail in battle if they could tell just why they are fighting. They cannot tell, but with their poor lipless faces turned defiantly against the foe they can show why they are fighting. Let those who want to know the soldiers' reason why they fight go and see them there on the blasted field of battle, not ask them when they come home on leave. The lips of a soldier perish first, as his dead body lies exposed on the battlefield; his rifle he clutches to the last ”

“ First, there are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it, songs of soldier-philosophy. They know that no theory will explain the war; it is too big a thing for any sheet of philosophy to cover. It has burst in on our little hum-drum life like a colliding planet. The thing to do is not to evolve a theory as to how the planet got astray but to clear up the mess it has made. Our soldiers show this sense of the vastness of war-happenings, by singing of things having no real importance at all, and keeping steadily at their duties. The path of duty is, they find, the only path of sanity. ”

“ They do not believe that God 'brings the cloud.' The rainbow is their refutation and it is written across the sky for all to see. On the other hand, there are unbelieving men who see only the cloud and are blind to the sunshine. To them life is one long tragedy. It is an immense futility. They regard man as a mere cork in the sea, thrown about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural forces void of purpose; active indeed but ungoverned. Human life to them is a black cloud driven through immensity by the winds of unintelligent fate. ”

“ But on this road of the soldiers' making, nothing is allowed except it be concerned with matters of life and death. It is the road of war, and there is a terrible urgency about it. Over it pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the soldiers in the trenches, ambulances bearing back the wounded to the hospital. Whatever its conditions the work must be done, and there is no room for a halting prudence or the pride of appearance. Rough though it is and muddy, over it is passing, for all who have eyes to see, a new and better civilization and a wider liberty. ”

“ Blood is the test, not words. A nation can only achieve liberty when it is determined to be free or die. "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it." "Never man spake" as Christ spake, but He did not save the world by talking to it, but by dying for it. Outpoured blood, not outpoured words, is the proof of moral convictions and the means of their propaganda; our soldiers may not be learned in some things, but they have learned that. They know the cause will win which has most moral power, and that the cause with most moral strength will prove itself to be the one with most martyrs. ”

“ When you say a comrade is a "white man" there is no more to be said. It is worth more than the Victoria Cross with its red ribbon, for it includes gallantry, and adds to it goodness. A man must be brave to be called white and he must be generous, noble and good. To reach whiteness is a great achievement. To be dubbed white is, in the army, like being dubbed knight at King Arthur's Court or canonized saint in the Church. He stands out among a soldier's comrades distinct as a white handkerchief among khaki ones. ”

“ France knows. She gives Joan of Arc a flower, but Napoleon a stone. France was never so great as now, and never of such supreme importance to the world. We could not do without her. On her coins she represents herself as a Sower that goes forth sowing. It is a noble ideal, and truly, where she scatters her seeds of thought the fair flowers of liberty, equality and fraternity spring up as poppies spring, where the blood of our soldiers has watered her fields. ”

“ I had had tea in a dug-out, and it was dark when I left. Machine-guns were sweeping No Man's Land to brush back enemies that might be creeping towards us through the long grass; and the air was filled with a million clear, cracking sounds. Star-shells rose and fell and their brilliant lights lit up the silent form on the cross.
For three years, night and day, Christ has been standing there in the midst of our soldiers, with arms outstretched in blessing. ”

“ God buried Moses in a grave dug by His own hands and He will know where to find the poor worn-out body of the great patriot at the resurrection of the just. And God was with every one of our missing lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed in which each lies sleeping. The grave may have no cross above it, but it will often know the tread of an angel's feet as he comes to plant poppies, primroses and daffodils above the resting-place of the brave. ”

“ In France there is a soul looking out at every window; and the preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to his listeners of the love of God and of the love of women and children which make sweet this vale of tears and light man on his lone way beyond the grave.
One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the singing of a hymn in the ward below, a young officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said: "Why doesn't the chaplain hold a service for us? Why does he only hold them for the Tommies? We need them and want them, just as much as the Tommies. We are officers but we are also men." ”

“ Who then can set Him limits when He works in the finer material of man's soul? Eye hath not seen nor heart conceived the beauty that will come forth when His workmanship is complete. "If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith" who were made for immortality? His ways are past finding out, but they are good. He puts out the sun but brings forth millions of stars in its stead. At His call they come flocking forth as doves to their windows. ”

“ And they would be maddened by the thought that here were the very men who, by their war-lust, had caused them to lose it. For a German to wave a white handkerchief before a British soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting a red flag before a bull. It would bring death rather than pity. Anything of pure white is rare at the front, and it has gradually taken on a meaning it never held before. About the only white thing we have is the paper we write home on, and that use of the color helps to sanctify it in the shrine of the heart.
In the army it is a term of supreme praise to call a man white. ”