Father, do Thou guide me!
Guide me to victory—guide me to death!
Lord, I confess Thy command.
Lord, as Thou willest, so guide me!
God, I confess Thee.
Then the old popular song of the Thirty Years’ War:—
No happier death on earth can be
Than one good stroke from mortal foe,
On fresh green turf, in breezes free—
No woman’s tears, no cries of woe:
No grim deathbed, whence, lone and slow,
From life’s gay scene your soul must go.
Like swathes of grass, in lusty row,
’Mid shouting friends, Death lays you low.
And then the song by Lenau of the war-loving armourer:—
Peace steals on, and, mining slowly,
Saps our vigour, dims our story.
While she boasts her “influence holy,”
Cobwebs gather o’er our glory.
Hark! then sounds War’s joyous rattle.
Wounds may yawn, blood flow, in battle!
We need yawn in sloth no longer,
War’s pruning makes mankind the stronger.
And, to conclude, the saying of Luther:—
“When I look at war as a thing that protects wife, child, house, land, goods, and honour—and in doing so gains peace and secures it—in that view war is a right precious thing”.
“Oh, yes; if I look at the panther as a dove, in that case the panther is a very gentle beast,” I remarked unheard.
The military chaplain did not allow himself to be disturbed in his flow of eloquence; and, when he ended and took leave, I found myself with two convictions: that war from the Christian point of view is a justifiable, and in and by itself is a precious, thing. It was visibly a very agreeable thing to him to have, by means of this rhetorical victory, both fulfilled the duty of his profession, and in doing so rendered a considerable service to the foreign colonel; for, as he rose to go, and we expressed to him our thanks for the trouble he had been so good as to undertake, he deprecatingly rejoined:—
“It is for me to thank you for having given me an opportunity of chasing away your doubts through my feeble word (whose entire efficacy is to be ascribed to the Word of God, which I have so often quoted), doubts which are of such a nature as to bring nothing but pain to a person who is not only a Christian but a soldier’s wife. Peace be with you.”