"To reverence the King, as if He were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, To speak no slander, no nor listen to it, To honour his own word as if his God’s, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her." Who, if not soldiers, should be the inheritors and transmitters of these noble traditions? The highest meaning of a soldier’s vocation has many points of contact with this Knightly ideal; and some of the greatest soldiers of our history have been men who were also Knights of the Cross. Knights are held to higher ideals and charged with harder tasks than lesser men. And for you who serve our English King and are not unmindful of your allegiance to the King of Kings, I would fain try and draw a picture of what Christian Knighthood may mean. I think I see, at the least, four qualities, or virtues, which must needs distinguish a Christian Knight. These qualities are Courage, Chivalry, Purity, Loyalty. *COURAGE* He who would valiant be ’Gainst all disaster, Let him in constancy Follow the Master. There’s no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first avowed intent To be a pilgrim. Who so beset him round With dismal stories, Do but themselves confound-- His strength the more is. No foes shall stay his might, Though he with giants fight: He will make good his right To be a pilgrim. Since, Lord, Thou dost defend Us with Thy Spirit, We know we at the end Shall life inherit. Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say, I’ll labour night and day To be a pilgrim. JOHN BUNYAN. *II* *COURAGE* A wounded Highlander was describing one day to his ward Sister, in a burst of confidence, the circumstances in which he was hit. "We were advancing a wee bit through a cornfield and the corn was bonny, thick and tall. Then they turned their machine-guns on us, and I saw the corn cut and flicker, and the men fall and fall! God forgive me! I couldn’t face it! ... I turned aside, mem, and I _hid_ on my face in the uncut corn." There was a pause. He moistened his lips with his tongue and went on: "Well, I lay there and lay I there, and I could hear the bullets going swish, swish through the corn. Then something said to me ’Jock! will ye lie here to be shot like a rabbit in the harvest? Get up, and take your dose like a man!’ So I got up, mem, and I got it right enough!"[1] [1] _Time and Talents_, July, 1916, p. 81.