The Royal Christmas Message--A Christmas Communion--Services Held Anywhere--Carol Singing--The Soldiers' Christmas Day--Christmas in the Trenches--The Unofficial Trace--They did not want to Fight--Strangest Story of All--The Strangest Service. Christmas 1914 will ever be remembered in this country. The message of peace and goodwill spoken from our pulpits, and yet half the world at war! Christmas carols, Christmas dinners, Christmas presents, and yet our sons out there in the trenches, and our fleet keeping constant watch at sea! It was indeed a strange Christmas, and yet we could not forgo it, for the Christmas message was needed more than ever before, and the poor and needy and the little children must not be forgotten. For weeks before Christmas we had been considering what we could do for our sailors and soldiers on Christmas Day. Our King and Queen had been busy sending out Christmas cards to their troops, bearing a Christmas greeting, and the message, reproduced in facsimile from the King's handwriting, "May God protect you, and bring you home safe." All sorts of organisations had arranged for presents--they were sent from the ends of the earth. The newspapers made appeals to their readers, and arranged for the despatch of Christmas hampers and parcels. Nearly every church remembered its own men at the front, and sent kindly greetings and appropriate gifts. We were all thinking of those who were fighting our battles, and we strove to give them a bit of Christmas in the midst of the war. Not that we took any credit to ourselves for this--it was the very least that we could do. They were _of_ us, and they had gone out _from_ us. They were our very own, our best and noblest, and they were doing all that men could do. They were laying down their lives for their country--and for us, that we in peace and plenty might quietly spend our Christmas as of yore, "none daring to make us afraid." And they? What of them? Well, our presents reached them. Not a ship bearing our gifts was lost. They had our presents on Christmas Day. In the trenches, in the rear of the firing line, in hospital and in camp there was the Christmas distribution, and the men looked up and thanked God that they were not forgotten on Christmas Day. My purpose in this chapter is to tell how that strange Christmas at the front was spent. Let us first hear our chaplains' stories, and then listen to the men. Bishop Gwynne of Khartoum is again serving as a Church of England chaplain with our troops. He shall tell, first of all, how he spent his Christmas. "When I woke early on Christmas Day," says he, "the tiny window in my small room at the farm-house was frosted over, and the rattle of the ammunition waggon on the road sounded like trolleys over an iron way.