The landlady was quite well to do, and was a woman well thought of in the village. She both paid calls upon her neighbours and received callers in her rooms. Sometimes I used to be invited in to join these social gatherings and frequently she would bring me in a nice bowl of soup for dinner. Philo, too, made himself quite at home, and carefully inspected all visitors on their admission to the mansion. In front of the house, there was a pleasant view of the valley through which the road passed up towards Mont des Cats. Our Headquarters were down in the village in a large building which was part of the convent. General Currie and his staff lived in a charming chateau in pleasant grounds, on the hillside. The chateau, although a modern one, was reputed to be haunted, which gave it a more or less romantic interest in the eyes of our men, though as far as I could hear no apparitions disturbed the slumbers of the G.S.O. or the A.A. & Q.M.G.
The road past my house, which was a favourite walk of mine, went over the hill, and at the top a large windmill in a field commanded a fine view of the country for several miles. My garden was very pleasant, and in it was a summer house at the end of a moss-grown walk. One plant which gave me great delight was a large bush of rosemary. The smell of it always carried my mind back to peaceful times. It was like the odour of the middle ages, with that elusive suggestion of incense which reminded me of Gothic fanes and picturesque processions. Many elm trees fringed the fields, and made a welcome shade along the sides of the road. A little stream ran through the village and added its touch of beauty to the landscape. We were only a mile and a half from Bailleul, so we could easily get up to the town either for a concert or for dinner at the hotel. The Camp Commandant allotted me the school house, which I fitted up as a chapel. It was very small, and not particularly clean, but it served its purpose very well.
My only objection to St. Jans Cappel was that it was situated such a long way from our men, for we still held the same front line near Ploegsteert. It was now a ride of twelve miles to Hill 63 whither I frequently had to go to take burial services, the round trip making a journey of nearly twenty-four miles. The Bailleul road, which was my best route, was a pavé road, and was hard on a horse. I did not want poor willing Dandy to suffer from overwork, so I begged the loan of another mount from Headquarters. It was a young horse, but big and heavily built, and had no life in it. I was trotting down the road with him one day when he tumbled down, and I injured my knee, causing me to be laid up with water on the knee for about six weeks. The men used to chaff me about falling off my horse, but I told them that I could sit on a horse as long as he stood up, but I could not sit on the air when the horse lay down. I was very much afraid that the A.D.M.S. would send me off to a hospital, but I got private treatment from a doctor friend, who was acting A.D.C. to General Currie. Luckily for me, things were pretty quiet at the front at that time, and my being confined to the house did not really make much difference. I had a supper in my billet one night for a number of Bishop's College men. Of those who attended, the majority have since made the supreme sacrifice, but it was an evening which brought back many pleasant memories of our Alma Mater.
The roads round St. Jans Cappel were very pretty, and I had many a pleasant ride in our staff cars, which I, as Senior Chaplain, was permitted to use. It was always a great delight to me to pick up men on the road and give them a ride. I used to pile them in and give them as good a joy ride as the chauffeur, acting under orders, would allow. One day, in a heavy snowstorm, I picked up two nuns, whose garments were blowing about in the blizzard in a hopeless condition. The sisters were glad of the chance of a ride to Bailleul, whither they were going on foot through the snow. It was against orders to drive ladies in our staff cars, but I thought the circumstances of the case and the evident respectability of my guests would be a sufficient excuse for a breach of the rule. The sisters chatted in French very pleasantly, and I took them to their convent headquarters in Bailleul. I could see, as I passed through the village, how amused our men were at my use of the car. When I arrived at the convent door at Bailleul, the good ladies alighted and then asked me to give them my blessing. How could I refuse, or enter upon a discussion of the validity of Anglican Orders? The nuns with their hands crossed on their bosoms leaned forward, and I stood up and blessed them from the car, and departed leaving them both grateful and gratified.
The village of St. Jans Cappel had been captured by the Germans in their advance in 1914, and we heard some unpleasant tales of the rudeness of the German officers who took up their quarters in the convent and compelled the nuns to wait upon them at the table. In 1918, when the Germans made their big push round Mont Kemmel, St. Jans Cappel, along with Bailleul and Meteren, was captured once more by the enemy, and the village is now in ruins and its inhabitants scattered.
I do not look back with much pleasure to the cold rides which I always used to have on my return from the line. In frosty weather the pavé roads were very slippery, and I had to walk Dandy most of the distance, while I got colder and colder, and beguiled the time by composing poems or limericks on places at the front. Arriving at my billet in the small hours of the morning, I would find my friend Ross not always in the best of humors at being kept up so late. The ride back from Wulverghem or Dranoutre, owing to the narrowness of the road and the amount of transport and lorries upon it, was rather dangerous. It was a matter of ten miles to come back from Wulverghem, and the roads were very dark. One night in particular I had a narrow escape. I had mounted Dandy at the back of a farmhouse, but for some reason or other I seemed to have lost control over him and he was unusually lively. Luckily for me a man offered to lead him out into the road, and just before he let him go discovered that the bit was not in his mouth.
The Alberta Dragoons had billets in a side road that led to Bailleul. It was a quiet and peaceful neighbourhood, and they had good barns for their horses. In the fields they had splendid opportunities for training and exercise. I often took service for them. One Sunday afternoon I had been speaking of the necessity of purifying the commercial life of Canada on our return, and I said something uncomplimentary about land speculators. I was told afterwards that I had caused much amusement in all ranks, for every man in the troop from the officers downwards, or upwards, was a land speculator, and had town lots to sell in the West. In conversations with privates and non-coms., I often found they had left good positions in Canada and not infrequently were men of means. I have given mud-splashed soldiers a ride in the car, and they have talked about their own cars at home. It was quite pathetic to see how much men thought of some little courtesy or act of kindness. A young fellow was brought in on a stretcher to the Red Château dressing station one Sunday afternoon at Courcelette. He was terribly wounded and gave me his father's address in Canada so that I might write to him. He was carried away and I heard afterwards he died. Some months later I had a letter from his father, a Presbyterian minister in Ontario, thanking me for writing and telling me how pleased his son had been by my giving him a ride one day in a Headquarters car. I mention this so that people will realize how much the men had given up when they considered such a trifling thing worth mentioning.
The position of a chaplain as the war went on became very different from what it had been at the beginning. The experience through which the army had passed had showed to the military authorities that there was something more subtle, more supernatural behind the life of the men, than one might gather from the King's Regulations. Our chaplains had done splendid work, and I think I may say that, with one or two exceptions, they were idolized by their units. I could tell of one of our chaplains who lived continually at the advanced dressing station in great hardship and discomfort, sharing the danger and privation of his men. The curious thing about a chaplain's popularity was that the men never praised a chaplain whom they knew without adding "It is a pity that all chaplains are not like him". On one occasion when I was going through the Division, I was told by the men of one unit that their chaplain was a prince, and it was a pity that all chaplains were not like him. I went to another unit, and there again I was told that their chaplain was a prince, and it was a pity that all chaplains were not like him. It seems to be a deeply rooted principle in a soldier's mind to beware of praising religion overmuch. But it amused me in a general survey to find that ignorance of the work of other chaplains led to their condemnation. I fancy the same spirit still manifests itself in the British Army and in Canada. I find officers and men eager enough to praise those who were their own chaplains but always adding to it a condemnation of those who were not. An officer said to me one day that the war had enabled chaplains to get to know men. I told him that the war also had enabled men to get to know chaplains. Large numbers of men in ordinary life are very seldom brought into contact with religion. They have the crude notion of it which they carried away as unfledged boys from Sunday School, and a sort of formal bowing acquaintance through the conventions of later life. In the war, when their minds and affections were put to a severe strain, it was a revelation to them to find that there were principles and relationships of divine origin which enabled the ordinary human will easily to surmount difficulties moral and physical, and which gave a quiet strength that nothing merely earthly could supply. Certainly the war gave chaplains a splendid opportunity of bearing witness to the power of Christ. A great deal has been written about the religion of the men at the front. Some have spoken of it in terms of exaggerated optimism, as though by the miracle of the war men had become beings of angelic outlook and temper. Others have taken a despairing attitude, and thought that religion has lost its real power over the world. The truth is, I think, that there was a revelation to most men, in a broad way, of a mysterious soul life within, and of a huge responsibility to an infinite and eternal Being above. There was a revelation also, wide and deep, to many individual men, of the living force and example of Him who is both God and Brother-man. Where the associations of church and home had been clean and helpful, men under the batterings of war felt consciously the power of religion. In the life at the front, no doubt there was much evil thinking, evil talking and evil doing, but there was, underlying all this, the splendid manifestation in human nature of that image of God in which man was made. As one looks back upon it, the surface things of that life have drifted away, and the great things that one remembers are the self-sacrifice, the living comradeship, and the unquestioning faith in the eternal rightness of right and duty which characterized those who were striving to the death for the salvation of the world. This glorious vision of the nobility of human nature sustained the chaplain through many discouragements and difficulties. I have often sat on my horse on rainy nights near Hill 63, and watched the battalions going up to the line. With wet rubber sheets hanging over their huge packs and with rifles on their shoulders, the men marched up through the mud and cold and darkness, to face wounds and death. At such times, the sordid life has been transfigured before me. The hill was no longer Hill 63, but it was the hill of Calvary. The burden laid upon the men was no longer the heavy soldier's pack, but it was the cross of Christ, and, as the weary tramp of the men splashed in the mud, I said to myself "Each one has fulfilled the law of life, and has taken up his cross and is following Christ."
I told the men this one day on church parade; and a corporal sometime afterwards said that, when next their battalion was moving up into the line, a young fellow beside him was swearing very hard over the amount of stuff he had to carry. My friend went over to him and said, "Don't you know that Canon Scott told us that this really isn't a pack, but it's the Cross of Christ?" The lad stopped swearing at once, and took up his burden without a word.