SIDELIGHTS ON THE WAR

New Zealand Tablet, 19 October 1916, Page 15

SIDELIGHTS ON THE WAR

GENERAL. Beaumont is well represented in our fighting services, and has a long roll of honor. From the latest issue of the Beaumont Review we learn that the total number of her old students serving with the Colors is 509, of whom 47 are in the Navy and 462 in the Army. The roll of honor is made up as follows: —Killed, 58; missing, 5 : prisoners, 2: wounded, 74. War honors have been distributed as follow:—C.B., 3: C.M.G., 4; R.V.0., 1; D. 5.0., 9; D.S. Cross, 1 ; Military Cross, 14 Territorial Decoration, 1 ; Distinguished Conduct Medal, 1; Legion of Honor, 4; Croix de Guerre, 1 : Ordre de la Couronne, 1 ; Order of the Rising Sun, 1 : and Mentions in Dispatches, 94.

Mlle. Emilienne Moreau, the eighteen-year-old heroine of Loos, was decorated by Lord Bertie a few weeks ago at the British Embassy, Paris, with the British Military Medal, and the silver medal of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Miss Moreau, a pathetic figure in black—her father and brother have fallen in the war —after thanking Lord Bertie, drew from her pocket the French Cross, which she pinned beside the recently received decorations. The ceremony was touchingly simple. We welcome the names of two Catholic chaplains i'l the War Honors published this week (says the London Tahiti of August 26). Both are recipients of the Military Cross. Father William Fitzmaurice, S.J., attd. Royal Irish Regt. (Beaumont and Stonyhurst), is decorated under the following circumstances : —' For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He assisted the medical officer in tending the wounded under heavy fire regardless of his own safety. He remained for 24 hours after the battalion had been withdrawn, and assisted to rescue the wounded who were lying out.' The Rev. Ambrose Madden, Canadian C.F., attached Canadian Headquarters Staff, has the Military Cross ' For conspicuous bravery under heavy fire. He assisted to dress wounds and conducted men who had been blinded to dressing stations. He did much to cheer up the men, and undoubtedly saved lives by digging men out of buried trenches.' OUR LADY'S TRENCH CHAPEL. In Champagne, France, close to the firing line, some French soldiers have constructed an underground chapel in honor of Our Lady of the Trenches. These men have done the work entirely themselves, and it was completed in eleven days. One man, a corporal sapper, undertook the making of the door; another corporal—a carpenter by trade— carpentry and the belfry; a mechanic, the bells, with the assistance of a musician; a decorator the painting of the walls a

joiner, the Tabernacle, which is a real work of art; an engraver, the sanctuary lamp, cut out-of the socket of a shell; a gardener arranged the ground outside in pretty flower beds. The soldiers were desirous of ha vine a nice church, and they have succeeded. It was blessed on Passion Sunday, when the chaplain explained that this church, dedicated to Our Lady of the Trenches, was a Christian and patriotic act, and offered entirely by the men themselves. Since then there is Mass every morning at five o'clock. Confessions are heard in the sacristy, and there have been many conversions. On Easter morning the church was full, and large numbers of Communicants. The pious soldiers who constructed the little chapel are very pleased to know that they have the Blessed Sacrament so close to them. THE BISHOP OF VERDUN'S CONFIDENCE. In a letter to the Abbe Teissier, a friend and former professor, who had suggested that Providence had chosen the right man for the trial through which the city is passing, Mgr. Ginisty, Bishop of Verdun, writes in a strain of high confidence:—'Alas! Providence has but too truly flung me into the furnace, and you are good enough to think that I may be counted on to get over my difficulties. I hope you will help me to do so by your prayers. All is ruins and horrors. "Germany over all" is on the way to becoming "Germany under all." We are more and more confident in regard to Verdun. I should not like to see this old ruined city for any consideration befouled by the presence of the barbarians. I admit that I cannot share I lie blessed resignation of those who say that the capture of Verdun would henceforth be of no importance. Its capture by the Bodies would go down in history as the "defeat of Verdun," whilst its resistance is already and will be "the great victory of Verdun." And I should like a few years hence to become again, dear Father Superior, your pupil, in order to hear you deliver from your chair of history at Gabriel's the impassioned description of it. Meanwhile, you will come to see the battlefield, and I shall have the happiness to welcome you in a Bishop's house of planks built among the ruins of Sion.' A SOLDIER'S DEATH-BED. A young French priest, who was ordained on October 31 last year and is now working as a hospital orderly and chaplain, writing to a friend, thus describes the death at Autun of his brother, whom he attended after a mortal wound received at Verdun at the end of February:—'l had the consolation of giving him Communion every day and of assisting him to die. I did not weep, for he died a victim; he was conscious to the end, in spite of his awful sufferings, and made the sacrifice of his life for Catholic France. One day, when suffering acutely, he said: "My God, it is Thy passion that I undergo ; the- shell in my head is Thy crown of thorns ; my paralysed arm and leg are Thy hands and feet nailed to the cross. Thy will be done!" Another time he slowly repeated the words of Christ on the cross. A few hours before he died he repeated in my presence the "Suscipiat" of the Mass, and in his last moments he said the Hail Mary many times, and died with its words on his lips. Since his death I have learned from a letter which has fallen into my hands that he had prayed that he rather than I should die on the field of battle, so that there might be a priest the more for the service of religion. Tell me all about you and yours, and of all whom you know who have fallen. What- a splendid generation ours is, and what a time to be living in !' THE SOMME. The River Somme, along the banks of Avhich much history is at present being made, is the classical Samara that played an important part in earliest recorded annals of old Gaul. It gave the ancient name of Samarobriva to modern Amiens, where Caesar held a meeting of the Gaulish tribes in the autumn of B.C. 54, and where he made his. headquarters during the fol-

lowing winter. It was from the estuary of the Somme, according to a plausible theory, that Caesar started on his second invasion of Britain. Peronne, the important railway junction towards which the French are pressing, has a very long history, and was once the seat of a celebrated monastery founded by the Irish monk, St. Fusy, in the 7th century. Charles the Bold of Burgundy captured the town in 1465, and when Louis XI. of France came thither to treat with him, he imprisoned that monarch for two days in the castle, and forced him to sign so disadvantageous an agreement that the tame jays and magpies, we are told, were taught to cry 'Peronne' and ' Perette,' in derision of the King's weakness. The crafty Louis, however, bided his time, and retook Peronne in 1477. THE POPE AND ITALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR Statements have again been put in circulation to the effect thai the Pope has not interested himself sufficiently in the case of the Italian prisoners of war. The truth of the statement, may be judged from lie following letter signed by twelve members of a group of Italian prisoners in Turkey (says the London Tablet of August 26): — 'To his Holiness the Pope. For our miraculous liberation, obtained through your paternal interest and in homage to your august dignity by means of the high influence of his Excellency the Apostolic Delegate to Constantinople, we, deeply moved by such goodness, lay at the foot of your august throne our humble sentiments of profound gratitude, together with our affectionate protestations of filial unalterable devotion. And while we assure your Holiness that we have always been treated with the greatest courtesy by the local authorities, we implore for ourselves and our families the Apostolic Benediction.' THE WORK OF THE CHAPLAINS. Part 100 of the Time* Histori/ and E n cyclopedia of the. War is devoted to an account, under the title of 'The Churches and the Armies,' of the organisation of the Army Chaplains Department, and of the services rendered by the Army chaplains in the field (says the London (' //irrrxe). Ample space and full recognition is given to the work of the Catholic chaplains. This part of the monumental work issued by the Times is a striking record of the self-sacrificing devotion and heroic zeal which have characterised the work of the chaplains of all denominations. All alike, Catholic and non-Catholic, have been fearless in doing their duty to the soldiers ; many have won high places in the honors lists, while some have died heroic deaths in ministering to the wounded and the dying. a perusal of the record leaves the impression that the Christian charity, fellowship, and comradeship which have prevailed among the chaplains, whatever the form of their religious belief, will not suddenly terminate with the war. It is impossible to estimate the effect of these unifying influences upon the future of the Churches. Some of us may hope and expect too much from the mutual good feeling and respect which a common work carried out in the face of a common danger has produced among so many representatives of varying creeds. But it is all to the good. HOHENZOLLERN ENMITY TO TTtv. CHURCH. Little as their unhappy Austrian ally may realise it, facts are continually multiplying which illustrate what we have known for long enough, that the spirit which dominates our enemy is profoundly. anti-Chris-tian, and therefore anti-Catholic (says the Glasgow Observer). Prussia maintains as yet a nominal State religion; but the moribund and utterly materialistic German Lutheranism makes no demand on either faith or practice. The other day the German Emperor addressed a gathering of his army chaplains (presumably Catholic as well as Lutheran), and in an extraordinary speech, which might almost be called a sermon, made lavish use of that quasi-pious language at which he is an adept. But, as invariably, there was a total abfiance of Christian expression, It" is always the aid of

a tribal God that he invokes—at least, that is the impression given to the rest of the world. The best one can say of Wilhelm's pietistic utterances is, that even paganism under Old Testament forms of speech is preferable to the blank agnosticism of the usual. Prussian mind. Two recent incidents have shown up in lurid colors this anti-Christian sentiment which is nothing less than hatred of the Faith on which rests the whole fabric of European civilisation. One is the wanton destruction of the Cathedral at Verdun by German shells. No soldier could pretend that any military purpose was served by such savagery. The Kaiser and his generals were, of course, incensed at the magnificent courage and success of the French defenders of Verdun, and wreaked a pitiful revenge on the House of God. It was only one more act of defiance against the traditions and the worship of Christendom. The other fact is the intimation, reported in the Times, made by the Kaiser to certain members of the aristocracy whose names appear in the widely signed address of sympathy sent by Spanish Catholics to Belgium, that unless they withdraw their signatures their ancestral estates in Belgium will be confiscated. Spain has maintained the most correct attitude of neutrality throughout the war, and this address is simply the expression of her intense Christian sympathy with the terrible sufferings of the land which, with herself and Ireland, shares the nroud distinction of the most Christian countries of Europe. The Imperial threat adds, with childish and contemptible rage, that the furniture of these Spaniards' mansions will be ' defiled and destroyed by the roughest soldiers in the German army.' We and our Allies would be mad indeed if we sheathed the sword and let the guns be silent until the supremacy of this spirit of hate be made impossible of practical expression for all time to come. IRISH GUARDS' ACT OF REPARATION. A remarkable story of the superb devotion and self-sacrifice of a little party of Irish Guards who, led by their maimed chaplain (Rev. Father Gwynn) laid down their lives as an act of reparation for German sacrilege, has been related to a Press representative by an officer of that regiment: Some time ago a certain little church was grossly desecrated by enemy soldiers, following an intense bombardment. Not content with wrecking the structure with shells the enemy even went to the length of smashing the tabernacle, and evidently in mockery scattered the Sacred Host into fragments. The crucifix and statues, together with several holy pictures, were equally violated in the accepted Hun method of sacrilege. The Brave Men's Prayer. On a Sunday morning a party of Irish Guards arrived at the Church. The first to enter the ruins was their gallant chaplain. He stood aghast at the spectacle of the outraged Blessed Sacrament. ' Come, lads, and look,' he said, addressing the soldiers. The men saw and were shocked. This desecration made a profound impression on them, and their Irish blood yearned for an opportunity of avenging the dastardly conduct of the Germans. ' Father,' said an emotional young non-com of the Guards, ' we will wipe it out with our blood.' Thereupon the men kneeling before their chaplain recited the following prayer: ' We, the non-commissioned officers and men of the Irish Guards, as an act of reparation for the awful sacrilege which has been committed in this church, desire to offer our lives to 'God here and now—that is if such an act of reparation would be acceptable to Him.' The Great Charge. The prayer was then written out and attached to a pillar of the church, having been signed individually by the chaplain and each of the Guards. A few days later there was a terrible sequel. The British artillery had poured a ferocious fire on the enemy trenches in preparation for an infantry attack. The Irish Guards I were to lead the charge, and one can imagine the fury

and courage with which they attacked so unworthy a foe. The officer pave the word, and instantly the Guards, fired by the presence of their chaplain, who called to them to 'remember that little prayer,' were up and over the parapet. ' Like a flash,' says an eye-witness of the charge, ' the Irish penetrated the German trenches. It was a glorious sight to watch such a charge. Right, left, and centre they cut the Germans up and advanced to such an extent that.it meant certain annihilation by the enemy reserves. No Survivor. But the Guards would not flinch from their task until the Germans had paid the price of their wanton sacrilege. Although enormously outnumbered, the Guards fought to the last man. The German machine guns spat death, and one by one the gallant Irish dropped. Words of encouragement were shouted to the few remaining Guards by their chaplain, until finally the German shells and bullets wiped every man from the scene.' After the battle there were many corpses, but for every gallant Guardsman that fell an Irish bayonet had claimed at least a couple of Germans. When the dead were counted the heroic chaplain was found still clutching his crucifix in an attitude which suggested that he was engaged in giving absolution to a dying soldier when a shell fragment sealed his fate. Thus the chaplain and his devoted followers have completed the sacrifice of their lives, which they had so gladly offered in reparation for the foul German outrage.