II
'Do you think that sort of thing matters now?'
A clearing station is just what its name denotes. It clears the wounded from a large number of field ambulances, each of which is split into several advanced dressing stations. Each of these in turn draws from several aid-posts. All the wounded, and all the sick who get beyond the ambulances, must pass through the station. There they are put in trim for the journey to the base, or are sent to a convalescent depot if a week or two will see them fit for duty again.
The Church of England chaplain was as friendly and accommodating as I was anxious to be. We made sure that one of us saw every man to speak to when he was brought in, and noted to which ward he was taken. For the distribution of writing-paper, newspapers, and magazines, tobacco and cigarettes, we divided the work, so that in one day each took half the number of wards, on the next day reversing the half. In the case of serious illness or trouble we kept more closely to our own men. We both had our store of Testaments. Of all editions supplied to the troops that of the National Bible Society of Scotland is the best. It is the most attractive, in its bright red binding—one gets so tired of khaki—and it contains the Psalms, so priceless and unfailing in time of war. I think it a pity that they are in the metrical rather than the prose form. On the other hand, an officer once told me he found it impossible to settle to read the Bible. His experience was that a booklet of familiar hymns was of most spiritual value to him. He would pull it out in his dug-out and read a verse, and then put it back again. On Sundays we held our morning services separately, in the reception room at different hours. If it was possible there might be one or two quiet services in the wards as well. Religion and science are sometimes supposed to be hostile to one another. I must say this, and say it gratefully—I always found doctors sympathetic, helpful, and considerate, no men more so, in fact, none could have been more entirely friendly. They are not lovers of creeds, but they are devoted servants of humanity, and singularly responsive to any practical desire to be of help. In the evening we held a united service. When the Presbyterian gave the address the service was Anglican, and next Sunday the service would be Presbyterian and the Church of England chaplain spoke. We took our funerals to that so quickly growing cemetery with its six hundred little wooden crosses, separately, though up the road those from the other clearing station were taken by each chaplain on alternate days, irrespective of denomination. We dispensed the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to our own people, using the beautiful little Communion set issued by the War Office, and having as Table a stretcher covered with a white cloth and set on trestles.
The drawing power of nationality is immense in the field. It is far more emphatic and real than the sense of particular church connection. Even men very loyal to their own branch of the Presbyterian Church, for example, lay little emphasis on that in their minds. They delight in meeting a Scots doctor or Scots padre. He understands all the twined fibres of tradition and training that go to make up their character. Every man, too, likes to worship according to the forms that he is familiar with. But Church of Scotland, or United Free Church of Scotland, and so on, is all very much the same to him. I am speaking of Christian men, of men quite aware of the historical situation. There grows upon a man in the field a deeper love for his brother Scot, so profound a sense of essential oneness in tradition, in history, in character, in faith, that he comes to look forward eagerly, passionately, to a blessed day of complete reconciliation.
'Do you think that sort of thing matters now, Padre?' whispered a boy who was desperately wounded, his skeleton hand picking restlessly at the counterpane—a fine time for all our sound arguments! 'That sort of thing' does matter, of course, but then what could matter save to rest wearily in the Everlasting Arms. I cannot believe that any one who has knelt beside life after life passing forth in weariness and pain, cut short so untimely, far from mothers' hands that would have ministered love to them as they lay, and who has listened to the broken words of trust, will ever allow his vision of the fundamental union of those who are resting in the Eternal Love of God in Christ to be overshadowed by lesser truths.