The Blot on the Kaiser's 'ScutcheonHillis, Newell Dwight
History
The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon
Hillis, Newell Dwight
World War, 1914-1918 -- Sermons
To which the captain answered: "But you must remember that England has
never been invaded. Look at my company! Their equipment is right from
helmet to shoe, so perfectly drilled are they that the swing of their
right legs is like the swing of one pendulum. I will put my British
company against the world. Still I must confess this, that, so far as I
know, no English division of fifteen thousand men ever came home at
night with more than five thousand prisoners.
"But look at the French boys at Verdun! As for clothes, one had a
helmet, another a hat, or a cap, or was bareheaded. One had red
trousers, one had gray trousers and one had fought until he had only
rags left. When they got within ten rods of the German trench they were
so anxious to reach the Boche that they forgot to shoot and lifted up
their big bayonets, while they shouted, 'For God and France!'
"That night when that French division came back ten thousand strong they
brought more than ten thousand German prisoners with them to spend the
night inside of barbed wire fences.
"The reason is this: These Frenchmen fought for home and fireside. They
fought against an invader who had murdered their daughters and mothers.
The Huns will never defeat France. Before that could be done," exclaimed
the English captain, "there would not be a man left in France to explain
the reason for his defeat."
3. "I Am Only His Wife"
Human life holds many wonderful hours. Love, marriage, suffering,
trouble, are crises full of romance and destiny, but I question whether
any man ever passed through an experience more thrilling than the hour
in which he stands at the Charing Cross or Waterloo Station in London or
in the great station in Paris and watches the hospital trains come in,
loaded with wounded soldiers brought in after a great battle.
Often fifty thousand men and women line the streets for blocks, waiting
for the trains. Slowly the wounded boys are lifted from the car to the
cot. Slowly the cot is carried to the ambulance. The nurses speak only
in whispers. The surgeons lift the hand directing them. You can hear the
wings of the Angel of Death rustling in the air.
When the automobile carrying two wounded boys moves down the street, the
men and women all uncover while you hear whispered words, "God bless
you!" from some father or mother who see their own son in that boy.
Now and then some young girl with streaming eyes timidly drops a flower
into the front of the ambulance--pansies for remembrance and love--upon
a boy whom she does not know, while she thinks of a boy whom she knows
and loves who is somewhere in the trenches of France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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