In pomp and luxury, in lust of gold, In selfish ease, in pleasures manifold, "Evil is good, good evil", we were told. Yet here, where nightly the great flare-lights gleam, And murder stalks triumphant in their beam, The world has wakened from its empty dream. At last, O Christ, in this strange, darkened land, Where ruined homes lie round on every hand, Life's deeper truths men come to understand. For lonely graves along the countryside, Where sleep those brave hearts who for others died, Tell of life's union with the Crucified. And new light kindles in the mourner's eyes, Like day-dawn breaking through the rifted skies, For Life is born through life's self-sacrifice. FREDERICK GEORGE SCOTT _From "In the Battle Silences"--By permission of the Author and The Musson Book Company, Limited, Toronto_ EXTRACT FROM "FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART" (_February, 1916_) The English navy was mobilized with a rapidity and efficiency as great as that of the German army. It has driven every warship except an occasional submarine, and every merchant ship of Germany off the seas, and has kept the ocean as a highway of life not only for England, but for France, and largely also for Russia. In all history there has been no such gigantic and successful naval feat accomplished as that which the seamen and shipwrights of England have to their credit during the last eighteen months. It was not originally expected that England would have much to do on the continent; and although her wisest sons emphatically desired that she should be ready to do more, yet this desire represented only a recognition of the duty owed by England to herself. To her Allies she has more than kept the promise she has made. She has given Russia the financial assistance that none but she could give; her money effort has been unparalleled in all previous history. Eighteen months ago no Frenchman would have expected that in the event of war England would do more than put a couple of hundred thousand men in France. She has already put in a million, and is training and arming more than double that number. Her soldiers have done their duty fearlessly and well; they have won high honour on the fields of horror and glory; they have shown the same gallantry and stubborn valour that have been so evident in the armies of France and Russia. Her women are working with all the steadfast courage and self-sacrifice that the women of France have shown. Her men from every class have thronged into the army. Her fisher folk, and her seafarers generally, have come forward in such numbers that her fleet is nearly double as strong as it was at the outset of the war. Her mines and war factories have steadily enlarged their output, and it is now enormous, although many of the