OUR FALLEN WARRIOR BOYS

New Zealand Tablet, 31 July 1919, Page 33

OUR FALLEN WARRIOR BOYS

Sermon Preached by Father B. J. Gondringer, S.M., in St. Joseph's Church, Buckle Street, Wellington, ; July ;7, 1919. . -

"The souls of the just are in the hands of .God. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die ; their departure was taken for misery, and their going away from us for utter 'destruction. But "they are in peace, and, though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality." (Wisdom iii. 1-4.)

Yesterday, at the invitation of the Supreme Ruler of our Empire, and not unmindful of the words of Holy Writ'—"Come ye, and behold the works of the Lord ! What wonders He has done upon earth, making wars to cease even to the ends of the earth"—we met in a solemn thanksgiving service to record our gratitude as a nation to Almighty God for the long-yearned-for blessing of peace. For well-nigh five weary years our feet had trodden the winepress of wrath : the Angel of Death had brought his message to thousands of our homes : and the sad dirge of the funeral march was the music best known in the land. For five weary years had wo asked with the prophet of old: "Watchman! Watchman, what of the night?" And now at last the .golden dawn lias come ; the darkness of the night has passed away ; the cries of rage and anguish rend the air no more. And so wo met, as a grateful people, to tender cur heartfelt thanks to Him Who holds the nations of the earth in the hollow of His hands. Our Noble Dead. This morning, prompted by the immemorial traditions of our forefathers in the faith, we Catholics meet to commemorate our holy, our noble-dead ; to pray for the souls of the young and generous, the sacrifice of whose lives God has accepted as the price of peace restored and security assured to a war-weary world. Our hearts and thoughts go out to-day to those desolate but glorious fields, where their bodies lie mouldering; where they lived their young lives in one tremendous hour, and died with their songs unspoken and their deeds unlived. They are scattered all over the globe: Some lie on the hillsides of Gallipoli, or ueath the burning sand of the desert; others in ancient Greece, or in the shadow of''the Pyramids; thousands of them in France and Flanders: some, too few alas! in their own, their native, soil : and some, finally, deep 'neath the restless bosom of the ocean, waiting for the day when the sea shall give up her dead. But wherever they lie, awaiting the last trumpet of the Archangel, our hearts go out to them in sorrow and grief, and our prayers ascend to God's throne on their behalf. A Catholic Victory. And is it not eminently fitting that, we Catholics should undertake this task? The victory, for which we thanked God yesterday, we may, in a real sense of the word, claim to have been a Catholic victory. Was not Catholic blood spilt in rich abundance, nay lavishly, to win that victory? On the Western Front, where the war was won, and where that ribbon of scarred earth, winding across Europe from the North to the Adriatic Sea, forms the largest cemetery ever built by the human race, are not the majority of graves Catholic graves ? And is this not a clear call to us, as Catholics, to send our prayers forth, in one unceasing stream, up to Our Merciful Father in heaven, that our dead may rest in the peace of God ? The Tocsin of War. It is, however, for our New Zealand boys that we pray more especially this morning. Five years we go back in our history, which has not yet recorded its first centenary. Our country was at peace, the land was basking in the sunshine of continually increasing prosperity. War was but a name, of which the present generation had no understanding. Then, without warn-

ing, the tocsin of war sounded in Europe, the call went forth from the Mother Country to the uttermost parts of the Empire. How quickly, how nobly that call, was heeded ! How eagerly did our brave boys offer themselves, in thousands, and tens of thousands! How cheerfully they set out on that long and perilous journey, from which so many were never to return ! Why Did They Go-? Why did they go? Their hearths and homes were safe. Their women and children were not in danger. They need not fear that their fields would be laid waste, their towns destroyed, their dearest treasures buried beneath the ruins. But out of the past voices called to them! Dim, far-off memories stirred in their hearts : the traditions of their forefathers, Irish, English, and Scotch. The martial spirit, that had so often led them in combat with one another now welded them into a nation, determined on conquering the common foe. Why did they go? Because they realised that, when in the pride and insolence of human power one human creature desires to tyrannise over others, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty. They read that Belgium lay waste and weeping, that her children were exiles and eating the bread of strangers, that the barriers, which guarded our Christian civilisation', were broken—and they asked no further question. Out of mart, and mill, and meadow they came, from city homes and from country homesteads, no warriors by profession, but peace-loving,' peace-keeping citizens, roused by their country's call to offer themselves, to suffer, to die if need be, so that justice should prevail and fright fulness should not possess the earth. Land of Beauty Beyond Compare. It was hard to go! Who does.not know how the New Zealander loves his native hills and plains? Have we not here one of the most wonderful countries on earth ? A land of beauty beyond compare, a land of majestic mountains and fertile plains, a land of teeming flocks and golden harvests, a land blessed with sun and rain—a land blessed, too, in the past, with wise men who in thought and action led humanity along the ascending path of social liberty and progress.* The White-robed Figure of Justice. Yes, it was hard to go! But they had registered a vow that they would cross the seas, ready to lay down their young, ardent lives in the sacred cause of human liberty. We read in Holy Writ of the Jews who went forth to battle under Judas Macchabaeus : "And when they were going forth together with a willing mind, there appeared a horseman going before them, in white clothing, with golden armor, shaking a spear." So, too, our boys went forth, led by an invisible presence. The angels of Mons may well be a fiction; but there ever went before them the white-robed figure of Justice, and, like true Knights of the Holy Grail, they followed the quest, whithersoever it led, to suffering, to torment, aye. even to death! .. The Mother of Our Souls. But in the case of your boys, O Catholic fathers and mothers, a greater and holier figure arose to guide their wandering steps: a divine presence, in whose touch lay healing, and infinite peace. They had gone from you. But She received them, She, the Mother of our souls ! With what infinite tenderness did she fold her arms of comfort around them! With what, unspeakable beauty, placid and constant, as of ah eternal dream, did she greet these, her errant children, who came to her, in line upon line of ships, from the uttermost isles of the sea! With what eager love did she clasp them to her bosom, love stronger than the love of man and woman, deep as the love of mother and ohild +~,\,™.~1,i no a 1 J-- „ x__i„ '_• dim VIUIU | uiniiuijjiijug a, UUIIUICU lU.IIICO UV CI , IAU OllT© and death ! With what infinite pity did she bend over them in their untold sufferings! Night after night, day after day, careless of the peril of death, her representatives were there, the priests" of God, your

priests," our priests, watching over your boys. Her churches were ever open to them; her sacraments followed them" to the most dangerous fields. And when death came, be it suddenly or after long suffering, it found them utterly fearless and uncowed, because, through the ministry of her priests, they had already found the peace of God. Of those angels of mercy, two, Fathers McMenamin and Dore, gladly, willingly, cheerfully laid down their lives for your boys, and I trust they "will be specially remembered in your prayers to-day. For was it not due to them, and their confreres, that our boys died such consoling deaths ? With their beads were they found, twined around fingers twitching with pain; with the crucifix pressed to their dying lips, and through their pain they smiled at death. For them it held no terror. Through their torn and mangled bodies their exultant souls shone forth, their duty nobly done, and their consciences at peace. Buried in Consecrated Ground. And they were buried, if I might say so, in consecrated ground. They sleepmost of themin the bosom of her who was rightly called "the Eldest Daughter of the Church." France can boast of many noble heroes that lie buried in her soil. But never was her lovely bosom opened to receive such a tragic and varied harvest as during this war. "There in that rich earth was a richer dust concealed"—the best and bravest of many lands sleep beneath her sun-kissed soil. In this place and on this day the oft-repeated scene seems strangely present to us: the small cortege, the drooping volleys, the lingering sounds of the "Last Post" : we can see the poor French peasants, bareheaded in the silence, their eyes full of pity, and we can almost hear the voice of the Angel of Death : "Pass, soldier of New Zealand !"' as the gates of eternity open on our dearest. Yet to most of them even this scant ritual was denied ; they were, perforce, buried as they fell. And so the khaki uniform, so strangely symbolic, by its very hue, of the thought of death—"dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return" —became the shroud in which they were buried. h The Roses and Lilies of France. But wherever they fell, and however they were buried, to you who mourn for them I can safely promise that their graves will be tended with all the care that love and gratitude can summon up. The French people have adopted your dead, who died for them as well as for you. The roses and lilies of France will bloom above their graves, typifying the purity of their purpose, and the noble ardor of their gallant young souls. But above all else, thousands of prayers will rise to Heaven from French hearts for those noble sons of a far-off race, who traversed .12,000 miles of ocean to stand by France in her hour of need. The Greatest Sufferers. For these we mourn—for the dead who will never more return. But not for these alone. As we saw them go forth, clean-limbed, exquisite in their pride of life, for many of us the sting of parting was forgotten in the enthusiasm evoked by that gallant youth marching forth to fight for justice. We covered them with flowers, and acclaimed them as worthy sons of a gallant race. But beyond the pageantry and the show there were those who saw the fields of death and the shattered bodies of men, made hideous with pain. By their sides walked their mothers and sisters, bravely smiling, bravely stifling their tears. But to them the flowers Ave had offered their soldier boys seemed like funeral wreaths offered to men who were doomed to die—seemed like the garlands of death. And when the pageantry was over, and the long line of ships, crossing the bar of the outer searchlights, had glided into darkness ; when night had cast her kindly mantle over the scene, oh ! it was then that the proud heads drooped, as the women cried in the bitterness of their hearts for the men who had gone far from them ! They had given more than their lives : they had given the lives of those who were their all, of sons, of brothers, of husbands, of lovers. Theirs is the heaviest of the many heavy burdens of these five fateful years. For them, too, would I be-

speak your prayers this morning. ;■: To • them I would say in the words of Abraham. Lincoln, spoken in circumstances not unlike our own: ' 'We pray that Our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a % sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." .."""'. "Take Up Our Quarrel With the Foe."V,,'-'-Shall all these sacrifices be in vain ? The sacrifice of those who died, and the greater sacrifice of those for whom life now holds hope no longer ? Surely not But if we are to profit by them, we must walk in the footsteps of the-brave men who died. From Flanders fields their voices call on us to take up the burden, which they carried so bravely : ''We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn,. saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now Ave lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe." That is the call that comes to us. A new battle has to be fought, now. The evils that brought forth this war have not ended with it. The evil of greed, the curse of unrestrained ambition, the deadly blight of rank materialism ; in short, the pagan outlook of today—there is your enemy ! And that enemy is within your own citadel. Yesterday you were fighting a foe outside the gates of your Empire: now is it yours to fight a deadlier foe on your" own hearthstones! A Twofold Lesson. To overcome that foe, the first lesson taught us by the dead is that of unity. Let us have peace here, now at last, as they have peace in their foreign graves! "Their blood flowed in the same stream, in the same deep pit their bodies lie cold and stark together." By their union, in danger and in death they created us a nation. But four score years ago, and this country was a remote little island, lying within the confines of an unknown sea. To-day we are a nation, as such recognised and honored at the greatest gatherings of nations held in human history. The story of the colonial time is now behind us, and the story of the great war is behind us, and Time waits with uplifted pen before the white scroll of the unwritten page of the future. What will stand on that new page? Will it be a story of honor— of dishonor? Of honor, surely; else we were unworthy of the price of our redemption ! But of honor on one condition only: that we learn the twofold lesson the dead have taught us, brotherly charity and justice for all. Fail to heed that lesson, and your shame will ring down the everlasting ages ! Fail to heed that lesson, and you break faith. with your dead, and their sacrifice will have been in vain ! "To you from failing hands Ave throw The torch ; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies blow En Flanders fields." Tried in a Furnace of Fire. Who could have foretold five years ago, when, as a nation, we Ave yet in our infancy, and had scarcely attained a sure foothold in the world, that such a great crisis would suddenly arise and not overwhelm us? But it came, and it was nobly faced. We have been tried in the furnace in our youth, and, as a result, we stand now, a small but honored unit in the comity of nations. Your name and your fame are household words, far beyond the confines of our Empire. With scarce 1,000,000 peoplenot the population of many a : city in Europe and America—New Zealand can sadly claim that her children are buried all over the earth. The traveller of the future will find in 10 separate nationslittle crosses bearing this inscription: "Here lies a gallant New Zealand soldier." What sad memories they will evoke! But what a glow of pride, as he bends down to read the mouldering inscription! "';

~ . . Their Memory Shall Never Die. These, however, will vanish. . Time and Nature overwhelm everything. The little crosses will fall and mingle with the dust of the brave; the little mounds will be made even with Mother Earth even the stately monuments we may rear to them will some day crumble to dust. But their memory shall never die! As the Jews still remember Judas Macchabaeus, as the Greek of to-day still thrills at the thought of Thermopylae, and Leonides and his three hundred, so New Zealanders for many years to come will speak of Malone and his brave Wellingtons, who stormed the heights of Chunuk Bair, of Brown and Johnston, and countless other noble warriors, on the Somme, in the Ypres salient, at Passchendaele. . Their names will sound like an inspiringmusic in the ears of our children for generations to come. For, no matter what gallant heroes the future may produce, I feel sure that New Zealanders, through many long years, will look for encouragement in labor, and fortitude in adversity, with steadfast hope and unwavering faith, to the pure, the splendid, the dauntless figures of our fallen warrior boys. May their souls and all the souls of the gallant dead rest in the peace of God.