"Possibly, however, it is for our good that we should have these difficulties. These difficulties and trials are perhaps a tonic for our spiritual life. And after all we learn what every campaign has to teach us, and what I was first taught in South Africa, that often the truest worship can be offered in most uncongenial surroundings; and I have been myself strengthened and helped, and I have marked the reverence and devotion of officers and men at some service beneath the sombre skies of Flanders, or it may be in some comfortless or even squalid building.
"Out here one realises more what things really matter, and how to distinguish the essential from the unessential. One has so much to be thankful for and so much to help, strengthen, and inspire."
Hitherto I have given Mr. Tuckey's statement in his own words. Nearly all the rest does not concern the public, but ere he closes he acknowledges gratefully the kindness of the Archbishop of Rouen in allowing him the use of two churches or chapels, and speaks most appreciatively of the hospitality of some of the curés. We may hope and pray that he may be long spared to do such glorious work as his statement indicates.
Our next report is from the pen of the Rev. E.L. Watson.
Mr. Watson is the senior chaplain at the front representing the United Army and Navy Board. This Board, recently formed, comprises the Baptist and Congregational Unions, and the Conferences of the Primitive Methodist and United Methodist denominations. Until the outbreak of the war, Mr. Watson was minister of the Baptist Church at West End, Hammersmith. His report has been written at the request of the Rev. J.H. Shakespeare, M.A., Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland. I omit from it a few sentences covering ground already dealt with.
"The task that Great Britain has in hand is of such magnitude that the demand for fighting men is without parallel. Proud we are of the fact that every individual man now in the greatest army that Great Britain has ever raised is serving of his own free choice, and happy indeed to be of service to his King and country in the hour of need.
"This great body of men is necessarily composed of many types, drawn as it is from all quarters of the British Empire, and representing every political opinion and all religious denominations, but co-operating in perfect unity.
A FIGHT IN THE AIR.
Drawn by Christopher Clark.[ToList]