PRIVATE LOGAN'S VISION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17076, 1 September 1917, Page 7

PRIVATE LOGAN'S VISION.

THE PREACHER AND THE RUM RATION.

By A CADET.

Private Ernest Logan, home on leave from the western front, sat back in th^ family pev and listened attentively to what the preacher had to say. It was not a very enthralling sermon, but the preacher had a deal to say on the subject of rum. He denounced rum. Rum, he said —and he banged the pulpit ledge as he said it—is strong drink, and strong drink is a curse. It was horrible, he said, to think that this Christian country was actually providing strong drink to the soldiers in the trenches, and he called on the Government to withdraw the rum issue. The V.M.C.A., he said, had offered to provide hot coffee and take it up to the men in the trenches. It was at this point of the sermon that Private Ernest Logan smiled; and as he smiled he had avision of the last rum issue he had received in France, and this is what he saw.

IN THE ICE,

His wedge of mud formed a salient. On one side of it the Somme ran muddily by. Beyond the Somme were the Germans. On the other side of it there was a canal, and beyond thp canal were < more Germans. There was a wrecked church that gave some sort of cover to the British troops, but mostly there was mud— deep, cold mud into which men saiik up to their waists and sometimes to their necks.

But it was not of mud that Private Ernest Logan was thinking as he lay back in that pew and looked on the valley of the Somme, that easilychurned marsh that has tried the spirit of soldiers in many wars. He was thinking then of ice. He saw himself lying on ice—not just frost, but ice—at a twenty-four hours' stretch, with a watchful enemy so close at hand that he dared not strike a match in the dark; and even in that warm church he could still feel the cold, striking into his spine, into his blood, into his heart, until at last he seemed petrified and incapable of feeling anything but abject, abysmal misery.

It was not possible to, get coffeehot coffee—but it was possible to get rum; and while the preacher filled the rafters of his church with the echoes of- his anger with the Government that permitted the issue of strong drink to the troops, Private Ernest Logan could see himself stretched on the ice in the valley of the Somme, and could feel the warm glow in his blood as the rum went into his body. ■

"NOBBY'S" FATE

Then the scene of his vision changed. He was still in France, but be was no longer on that wedge of frozen mud. He was back in a barn resting. ""Chestnuts" was lying asleep on one side of him, and "Nobby," his little Cockney pal, was lying on the other side. Whilst they slept an orderly corporal came into the barn and woke... Private Ernest Logan, au: told him that he was for Blighty. Logan-in his joy, turned to "Chestnuts" and slapped, him until he awoke. "I'm for Blighty, old man!" lie shouted; "I'm for Blighty!" And when "Chestnuts" was awake Private Ernest Logan turned to his little Cockney pal and raised his hand to slap him, too. But he did not slap him. There was a queer, set, stiff look on "Nobby's" face—a marble look ...

"Exposure!" they said. Even the Yum issue could not save "Nobby.' **• * "

Then the vision faded away, and Private Ernest 'Logan, leaning back in his pew, saw the preacher lift his hand and bang it down on the ledge o^ the pulpit. "It is the duty of every Christian man and woman," he said, ." to demand that the Government shall cease to issue this accursed stuff to our brave soldiers."

When Private Ernest Logan heard that he smiled. '