TO FRANCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17206, 28 June 1916, Page 9

TO FRANCE.

THE MOVING OF ANZAC.

A PADRE WHO SAID THE RIGHT THING.

(From O. E. W. BEAN, Official Correspondent with Australian Forces.)

(Copyright.) #

(Rights specially secured by “ Lyttelton Times.”)

British Headquarters, France, April 8.

The sun glared from a Mediterranean sky and from the surface of tho Mediterranean Sea. The liner heaved easily to a slow swell. In the waist of the ship a densely packed crowd of sunburnt faces upturned towards aspeaker who leaned over tho rail of tho promenade deck above. Beside tho speaker was a slight figure with three long rows of ribbons across tho left breast. Every man in the A.I.F. is as proud of those ribbons as tho leader who wears them so modestly.

Australian ships had been moving through those waters for days. Ltigu over one’s head, as one listened to that speaker, there sawed tins wireless aerial, backwarus and forwards across the silver sky. Only yesterday that aerial had intercepted a stammering signal from far, fair away over the brim of the world. S.O.S. ” it ran, “ 5.0.5.” There followed half articulate fragments of a latitude. That evening about sundown we ran into the shreds of somo ocean conversation about boats’ crews and about someone who was still absent. Just that broken fragment in tho buzz of the wireless conversation that runs around the world. Days afterwards wo heard that sho had not been an Australian or any other transport. Somewhere in those dazzling seas there was an eye twitching for us though, just above tho water, and always waiting, waiting, waiting-—it would have been a rich harvest, that crowded deck below one. If the monster struck just there he could not fail to kill many with the mere explosion. But 1 don’t believe a man in the crowd gave it a thought. The strong, tanned, clean-shaven faces under tho old slouch, hats were ull gazing up in rapt attention at the speaker. For he was telling them the right thing. THE RIGHT THING. Ho was not a regular chaplain. There was no regular padre in that ship and it. seemed that thero would bo no church parade until there was discovered amongst the reinforcement officers ono little officer who was a padre in Tasmania but who was going to tho front as a fighting man. One had heard other padres speak to troops on the evo of their plunging into a. groat enterprise, when the sermon bad made one wish that ono only had the power and gift to seize that wonderful opportunity as it might be seized and have done with texts and doctrines and speak to tlio moil as men. Every man there had his ideals —lie was go - ing his life, as like as not, because however crude the exterior there .uas an eyo within which saw truly and surely through the mists. _ And now when they stood on the brmx ot tlio last great sacrifice, could not he seize upon those truthsP . , Rut this time one simply stood ami wondered. Fot that slio of a figure in khaki, high up there with one hand on the stanchion and the other tapping tho rail, was telling them a thousand times better than one could over have pub it oneself exactly tlio things one would have longed to sayWHY WE ARE HERE. Ho Jo Id them first, his voico firm with conviction, that God had not populated this world with saints hut with ordinary human men; and that thev need not fear that because thej might not have been churchgoers c. lived what the world called religious lives, therefore God would desert them in the danger and trials and perhaps the death to which they went. u 1 thought that God wished any man to be tortured eternally, he sal( ' ! , , be tortured for all time and non to have anv hope of heaven, thou I would down to hell cheerfully with a sim o on mv lips rather than worship such bcincr. 1 1 don’t know whether a man puts it bevond the power of God to help him. But I know this, that whether you aie bad or good, or religious or not religious, God is with you all the time. trying to help you. ■ . ■ “ And what have we got to feai now,” ho went on, raising 1m eyes tor a moment from the puckered, interested brown foreheads below lnni am Looking out over tH6 shimmering distant silver of the horizon, as if awa> over there, over the edge oi the world, he could read what tlio next few months had in store for them. Me know what we have come tor and wo .-Mon that, it is right. We have all read ot the tli in os that have happened in Franco. We know that the Germans invaded a peaceful country and brought these hor-r-u-s into it; we know how they tore up treaties like so much paper; how they sank the Lusitania and showered thenbombs on harmless women and children in London and in the villages of England We came of our own irec wills—we came to say that this sort of thing shall not happen in the world so long as wo are.in it. ' MVc know that vre aie doing right, and T tell you that on tins mission on which we have conic, so long as cverv man plays the game and plays ; t clcaulv, lie need not fear about ms religion, 'for what else is his religion than that. Play the game and God will be with you, never fear. AND WHAT IF WE DIE. “ And what if some of us do pass over before this struggle is ended, what is there in that? If it wore not for the dear ones whom lie leaves behind him, might not a man almost- .pray for a death like that. The newspapers too often call us heroes, but we know we are not heroes for having come, and wo do not want to he called heroes.- We should have been less, than men it wo had not.” . 1 . Tlio rant, unconscious approval in all those* weather-scarred upturned faces made it quite obvious that they were with him in every jvord. In those simple sentences this mart was speaking the whole soul of Australia. He looked ui> for a second to tho side sky as clear* as his own conscience, and then looked down at them again. “Isn’t it the most wonderful thing that could ever have happened,” he went oil. “Didn’t everyone of us as a boy long to go about the world ns they did in tho days of Drake and Raleigh, and didn’t it seem almost beyond hope that that adventure would ever come to us. And isn’t that the very thing that lias happened and we are' on that great enterprise, going out across the world and with no thought of gain or conquest, but to helrv to right a great wroug. What else'do we wish except to sro straight forward at the enemy. With our dear ones there behind us aud God abovo us aud our friends on each side of us. and only the enemy in front of us. what more do we wish than that?” There were tears iu many men’s eyes whon lie finished, and that does not often hapnen with Australians. But it happened* this time, far out there on a distant sea. And that was because be had put liis finger, just for ono moment, straight on the heart of the nation.