SHRINES AND MIRACLES

New Zealand Tablet, 11 January 1917, Page 29

SHRINES AND MIRACLES

SOME SOLDIER BELIEFS. -7 FIRST AND MOST LASTING IMPRESSIONS: - Among the first and most lasting of all the impressions which crowd on-'Tommy when he goes to France is the religion of the French nation visualised before him, writes ' G.C. ' in the London Daily Mad. As the troopship goes slowly up the river to Rouen a French priest stands on the bank and with uplifted hands blesses the men as they pass. ' Often little children hang round his cassock, and woe betide the gamin who keeps his cap on his head while the cure prays, for he will most inevitably have it knocked off and his ears cuffed for his irreverence. And the very firs. letters home tell of the incident. -» After that the Protestant and Nonconformist British soldier, and also he who thought himself an unbeliever, gradually absorbs some of the temperamental feeling of the more emotional religion of the Roman Catholic country in which" he finds himself. The impossible, the unbelievable in all material things has come to pass in these two years;of war. All life is upside down. Why, then, should not the impossible and unbelievable in spiritual things also come to pass ? The man who in days past found such refuge in 'lt stands to sense,' now shakes his head wisely and says, ' Funny thing, but ' All-people when they come under stern discipline and are obliged to practise obedience are as children again, and that is why soldiers and sailors always show a peculiar and charming simplicity of heart, why there is a pathos about them that appeals to all who stop at home, to women, and which makes.them loved of children. And so the ground is ready made for new religious feeling, for belief in the miraculous, for the desire for something tangible, for some comfort to hold to in times of trouble, and above all for hope. It was the desire for hope and comfort that made the whole French nation turn to Joan of Arc during the first days of the Hun invasion. Their firm belief in the guardian angel powers of ' the Maid ' helped them through many bad days. She appeared above Nancy, she led the troops in their successful attacks in Alsace, ) she stood between the advancing Germans and the retreating Allies, and the stories of her protection of the . martyred towns, of which -Gerbeviller is the best known, vhave been accepted by bishops as absolutely authentic. Then came the miracle of the preservation of her statue outside Rheinis Cathedral. While shells destroyed all around, the gilded figure on the horse remained untouched, and the French struck the tricolour on her outstretched sword. Marvellous Stories. Who first started the belief that the fall of the statue of the Virgin and Child «from the Cathedral at Albert would come about on the day when peace was proclaimed nobody in France cares, but all France believes, and so the recent threatened premature fall has been prevented by artificial devices. Most significant of all signs from the British soldier's point of view is the preservation of the wayside crosses and crucifixes. Praying places on the roads were before this war looked upon as wholly Catholic, and as likely as not to prove dangerous snares for the souls of earnest protesters. - Now they have become part of the universal religion apart from all political and artificial divisions. The Allied soldiers laugh at the power of the ' good old v German god,' and as proof of the folly of the Kaiser £>•,-. in quoting his powers point to the continued existence of their own shrines, to upstanding crosses, or to figures of Christ though torn from their surroundings still left intact or recognisable. . ■ And marvellous stories are told of the preservation of women and children and wounded soldiers who have gone to the shrines for sanctuary. And it is primarily and wholly because of the repetition of these stories in soldiers' letters home and their half-shy suggestions , ?phen home on leave that v it would not be half a had

thing to see one .hereabouts, so that you could find a bit of comfort thinking of us,' that has led to the erection -of shrines in the streets of London- and . all over England. The support given by the readers of the London Evening News to its scheme of erecting war shrines m the metropolis is' evidence of the' remarkable spreading of this movement. It is the men on the, battlefields of France who have sent the' comfort of religion streets of England. - V " Other things have come too., ° Women when they receive the effects of their sons and husbands have found * little crosses, a rosary, or perhaps / a saintly relic, the gift of some sympathetic French peasant or Red Cross nurse; little bits of religion which have been held to as mascots and having helped some, soldier through many bad hours have now come to his relation with the message of some spiritual life, of some belief in a world where all is hot destruction. Men who have seen their comrades with such relics have written home asking for rosaries to be sent to them, and three or four weeks ago two sympathetic civilians, sent out ten thousand of these little beaded chains, blessed before they went on their mission. , Faith-Healing. A doctor working at a base hospital told me the" other day that he personally had great belief in the miracles of faith-healing due to the possession of some treasured mascot. He had several instances to quote when wounded, men had said: 'A sister in a French hospital gave me this : it's a mascot : give it to me in my hand,' and when belief-in the treasures had given just that stimulus to the mind which was necessary for recovery. J Clergy of the Church of England say that men from their parishes come to them to confession during the time when they are home on leave, and say that they have previously made confessions to padres by the wayside and in trenches before going into action. As a very tough specimen of a regular 'professional' soldier said to mo the other day: ' It makes you want to do your duty, just to put yourself right, you know in;; am.' The outstanding point about all this revival of religious feeling is that it has come about through no planned mission, through no scheme of proselytising, Man has gone back to the primitive, and while this is the time of the greatest material destruction, it seems also the time of the. most extraordinary mental construction. ' I heard the opinion of two women about it all the other day. One, a Sister of Mercy working in » poor London district, said: 'The men are so 'shy about their better feelings: they are so sensitive to ridicule, it rests with those who stay at home to see that they are not laughed out of their aspirations to • lead freer and better lives. No, don't call it conversion, call it a resurrection.' The second woman was the lady superintendent at a great munition factory, and she said to her girls:' ' The men are learning very much while they are soldiering : they will come back and expect great things of you; you can't go on in the old way. See that? you don't disappoint them.'