For the Dead
The Sunday after the signing of the Armistice a score of us attended morning service. We had seats in one of the galleries facing the pulpit, so that we could participate without being too conspicuously present. As it was, the congregation evinced no undue curiosity, though the three or four choir boys in the organ loft seemed to accept us gratefully as something of a spectacle for the enlivening of a dull day.
The congregation was very sparse, and consisted mostly of elderly women, sombre, sorrowful, almost emblematic figures; sad-faced, black clad, lonely. The vast white interior seemed cold—was cold, so that the organist, in his high latitudes, kept on his coat, with the collar upturned, and during the sermon made excursion among the architecture of the instrument. The pastor looked ill and depressed, and, with obviously a sad heart, he commenced his discourse, “This has been a heavy week for the Fatherland.”
On the following Sunday was held the yearly service for the dead. There were six or seven hundred people present, again mostly women, and again all in black. Many of them wept silently throughout the service, others gave way now and again to audible outbursts of grief. I could only see one living German soldier, but who shall say the spirits of how many dead were there?
SERVICE FOR THE DEAD