The Bishop's War Story

North Canterbury Gazette, Volume 8, Issue 36, 1 September 1938, Page 6

The Bishop's War Story

"I am often nowadays reminded of a ludicrous incident which happened during the Great War," writes the Bishop of Bristol in the "Pathfinder." "Two 11.A.M.C. officers, stationed at a Casualty Clearing Station behind l the Somme front, had been given a day's leave, and had spent it in Amiens, which was within riding distance of their hospital. On the way back, in the dusk of a summer's evening, they came upon a 5.9 howitzer sitting by itself in the middle of the road. "It was unattended, twenty miles and more from the front line, and facing the enemy. The officers got off their horses, had a good look at the gun, and, deciding there was nothing they coud do about it, remounted and pursued their homeward way. About a mile further on they found a great caterpillar tractor halted by the roadside. The driver and his mate were standing by it, scratching their heads and clearly much perturbed. "As the officers came alongside, one of them called to the men; "What's the matter, my men? Have you lost anything?' 'Yes, sir,' answered the driver, 'we lost our gun.' 'Your gun?' said the officer, oh, you'll find that waiting for you in the road about a mile back.' 'Thank 'ee very much, sir,' replied the gunner, 'I thought we was travelling a bit light.' They had' left behind them the only thing that mattered ; their tractor, by itself, wouldn't help to win the war; they were travelling light. "That is just what the world has been doing all these years during which it has been trying to remake itself after the horrors of the war. It has been travelling light; it has left out the one Person who really matters; it has attempted to do its work without the help of God. "The result is plain enough and terrifying enough to make pessimists of every- one of us. When men think themselves clever enough and strong enough to run the world, or even to organise their own lives without rereference to the will and purpose of Him who made the world, they are pretty sure to end in disaster, or something like it.

"That is just what is happening today. Mankind in almost every nation has thought itself wiser than God, and' where is its worldly wisdom leading it ? No wonder the young, who have got to* live out their lives in the world which the cleverness of man has made, are pessimists."