Having found Constance her half-seat with Lady Tate, I stood beside one of the gangways below the platform, which lead to the dressing-rooms and other offices. Beside me was a table for Press representatives. There, with their pencils, I noted Campbell, of the Daily Gazette, and other men I knew, including Carew, for the Standard, who had an assistant with him. He told me that somewhere in the hall his paper had a special descriptive writer as well.
Looking up and down that vast building, from dome to amphitheatre, I experienced, as it were vicariously, something of the nervousness of stage fright. Londoners were not simple prairie folk, I thought. How should my friend George Stairs hold that multitude? Two plain men from Western Canada, accustomed to minister to farmers and miners, what could they say to engage and hold these serried thousands of Londoners, the most blasé people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers speak in public, but—I looked out over that assemblage, and I was horribly afraid for my friends. A Church of England clergyman and a Nonconformist minister from Canada, and I told myself they had never had so much as an elocution lesson between them!
And then the Bishop of London appeared on the crowded platform, followed by George Stairs and Arthur Reynolds; and a dead silence descended upon the hall. In the forefront of the platform was a plain table with a chair at either end of it, and a larger one in the middle. Here the Bishop and the two preachers placed themselves. Then the Bishop rose with right hand uplifted, and said solemnly:
"May God bless to us all the Message which His two servants have brought us from oversea; for Christ's sake, Amen."
George Stairs remained kneeling at his end of the table. But as the Bishop resumed his seat Arthur Reynolds stepped forward, and, pitching his voice well, said:
"My friends, let us sing the British Anthem."
And at that the great organ spoke, and the choir of sailors, soldiers, and nurses led the singing of the National Anthem. The first bar was sung by the choir alone, but by the time the third bar was reached thousands among the standing congregation were singing with them, and the volume of sound was most impressive. I think that a good many people besides myself found this solemn singing of the Anthem, from its first line to its last, something of a revelation. It made "God Save the King" a real prayer instead of a musical intimation that hats might be felt for and carriages ordered. It struck a note which the Canadian preachers desired to strike. They began with a National Hymn which was a prayer for King and Country. The people were at first startled, and then pleased, and then stirred by a departure from all customs known to them. And that this should be so was, I apprehend, the deliberate intention of the Canadian preachers.
Still George Stairs knelt at his end of the bare table.
As the last note of the organ accompaniment died away, Arthur Reynolds stepped to the front.
"Will you all pray, please?" he said. He closed his eyes and extended one hand.