The War Romance of the Salvation Army — John Shaqi
The War Romance of the Salvation ArmyHill, Grace Livingston
History
The War Romance of the Salvation Army
Hill, Grace Livingston
World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Salvation Army
It has only been this same Christ, _this Christ in deeds_, when our
women have washed the blood from the faces of the wounded, and taken
the caked mud from their feet; when under fire, through the hours of
the night, they have made the doughnuts; when instead of sleeping they
have written the letters home to soldiers’ loved ones, when they have
lifted the heavy pails of water and struggled with them over the
shell-wrecked roads that the dying soldiers might drink; when they have
sewn the torn uniforms; when they have strewn with the first spring
flowers the graves of those who died for liberty. Only _Christ in
deeds_ when our men went unarmed into the horrors of the Argonne Forest
to gather the dying boys in their arms and to comfort them with love,
human and divine.
That valiant champion of justice and truth; that faithful, able and
brilliant defender of American standards, the late Honorable Theodore
Roosevelt, told me personally a few days before he went into the
hospital that his son wrote him of how our officer, fifty-three years
of age, despite his orders, went unarmed over the top, in the
whirl-wind of the charge, amidst the shriek of shell and tear of
shrapnel, and picked up the American boy left for dead in No Man’s
Land, carrying him on hie back over the shell-torn fields to safety.
It is this _Christ in deeds_ that has made the doughnut to take the
place of the “cup of cold water” given in His name. It is this _Christ
in deeds_ that has brought from our humble ranks the modern Florence
Nightingales and taken to the gory horrors of the battlefields the
white, uplifting influences of pure womanhood. It is this _Christ in
deeds_ that made Sir Arthur Stanley say, when thanking our General for
$10,000 donated for more ambulances: “I thank you for the money, but
much more for the men; they are quite the best in our service.”
It is this Christ who has given to our humblest service a
sheen-something of a glory-which the troops have caught, and which will
make these simple deeds to hold tenaciously to history, and to outlive
the effacing fingers of time-even to defy the very dissolution of
death.
As Premier Clemenceau said: “We must love. We must believe. This is the
secret of life. If we fail to learn this lesson, we exist without
living: we die in ignorance of the reality of life.”
A senator, after several months spent in France, stated: “It is my
opinion that the secret of the success of this organization is their
complete abandonment to their cause, _the service of the man_.”
Of the many beautiful tributes paid to us by a most gracious public,
and by the noblest-hearted and most kindly and gallant army that ever
stood up in uniform, perhaps the most correct is this: _Complete
abandonment to the service of the man_.
This, in large measure, is the cause of our success all over the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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