World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Young Men's Christian Associations
Opposite the writer at the ship's table sat a young man with the lower
part of his face carried away. His chin and jaw were gone, yet he must
live on for a lifetime deformed. Another young fellow had spent seven
long weary months in training. The moment his regiment reached the
front it was ordered immediately into action. He sprang to the top of
the trench, but never got over it. He fell back wounded. Within three
days he was back in England again, but with only one leg. Seven months
of training, five minutes in action, then crippled for life! The
writer saw one young fellow whose face was left contorted by shrapnel,
which had carried away one eye and the bridge of his nose. He was a
quiet, earnest Christian. He said, "Of course, they cannot send me
back again into the line or compel me to go with only one eye, but I am
going just the same. I am going to give all that I have left to the
country and the cause." [4]
Hear that young soldier of France, Alfred Casalis, a brilliant student
of philosophy and theology, a Student Volunteer for the African mission
field, as he writes home to his father and mother at the age of
nineteen: "I volunteered of course. I know with an unalterable
knowledge and with an unconquerable confidence that the foundation of
my faith is unshakeable, it rests upon the Rock. I shall fight with a
good conscience and without fear (I hope), certainly without hate. I
feel myself filled with an illimitable hope. You can have no idea of
the peace in which I live. On the march I sing inwardly. I listen to
the music that is slumbering inside me. The Master's call is always
ringing loudly in my ears. I am not afraid of death. I have made the
sacrifice of my life. I know that to die is to begin to live." And
the last sentence of the unfinished letter written before the charge in
which he fell, "The attack cannot but succeed. There will be some
wounded, some killed, but we shall _go forward_ and far--" In the
other pocket of his coat, at the end of his will were the words, "'I
have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith.' And I would that all my friends, all those who are every
moment with me, and whose hearts beat with mine, should repeat the word
of our hope, 'Because I live, ye shall live also.'" [5]
Professor Gilbert Murray, of Oxford, writes thus of the sacrifice of
the men for us: "As for me personally, there is one thought that is
always with me--the thought that other men are dying for me, better
men, younger, with more hope in their lives, many of whom I have taught
and loved. The orthodox Christian will be familiar with the thought of
One who loved you dying for you. I would like to say that now I seem
to be familiar with the feeling that something innocent, something
great, something that loved me, is dying, and is dying daily for me.
That is the sort of community we now are--a community in which one man
dies for his brother."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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