I was walking to and fro on the great floor of the factory and had just
paused to ask a rather white, sad-faced girl what was worrying her, when
suddenly the lights went out. We knew what that meant, all of us, and
it really was one of the most awful moments I have ever experienced. As
we listened through a silence that could be felt, the machinery having
stopped as if by magic, we could hear the sinister grinding of the
Zeppelin engine overhead. We all knew that if a bomb crashed through
the frail roof very few of the four thousand would see another dawn.
Presently nerves began to break a little; a sob sounded here and there,
and once there was a little scream. Then some angel in a far corner,
guided from above, no doubt, began to sing low and softly, "Jesus lover
of my soul."
I have heard many lovely heart-breaking things, Cornelia, but never
anything that thrilled like that. It reminded me a little of your
Jubilee singers who came over with Moody, the Evangelist, so long ago
from your country. When they sang "Steal away to Jesus," it had the
same grip and thrill as it came stealing across the vast arena, taken up
by almost every voice. The effect was instantaneous; it fell like Balm
of Gilead on our terrified hearts.
We suddenly felt that God was over all, and that unless He permitted,
nothing could happen. Nothing did happen. After a time the menace
passed, lights went up again and work was quite quickly and cheerfully
resumed. We did not speak about it at all afterwards. It is just part
of the day’s work.
I saw something quite as fine when I went to Gretna for a five-day visit
to the workers there. You know Gretna Green? Every good American does.
It is one of the shrines at which you worship. The sweet old world
village has been swept away, or rather become quite unrecognisable. A
great new city like those to which you are so accustomed "out West" has
sprung up. When I saw all the signs and symbols of organised industry
on a gigantic scale, I looked away across the shifting Solway sands and
wondered whether the ghost of Ravenswood, riding to his doom, ever comes
back to marvel at the thing that has happened.
Great crowds of women and girls are employed there and the welfare
superintendents have their hands full. The problems and grave menace to
youth segregated in such numbers far away from home influences are big
enough to keep some of us awake at nights. We are fully alive to them
and tackle them with all the wisdom and foresight we can muster for the
gigantic task.
The spirit is fine—patriotism is a holy fire indeed which can purge the
human heart clean of the dross itself.
I spoke a big incontrovertible truth in answer to a woman who was
condoling rather profusely on the loss of our dear home. "You can get
another house, but there is only _one_ country."
There are several rows of danger shops at Gretna, where the most
inflammable of all the high explosives is handled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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