at their antiquity. Their clean-cut hatchet faces, sun--baked, tanned
by rain and wind, their simple blue-gray eyes, the fine, strong grace of
their bodies, as they stood at ease in this place of history, struck me
as being wonderfully like all that one imagines of those English knights
and squires--Norman-English--who rode through France with the Black
Prince. It is as though Australia had bred back to the old strain. Our
own English soldiers were less arresting to the eye, more dapper and
neat, not such evident children of nature. Gravely they walked up the
aisles, standing in groups where a service was in progress, watching
the movements of the priests, listening to the choir and organ with
reverent, dreamy eyes. Some of them--country lads--thought back, I
fancy, to some village church in England where they had sung hymns with
mother and sisters in the days before the war. England and that little
church were a long way off now, perhaps all eternity away. I saw one boy
standing quite motionless, with wet eyes, without self-consciousness.
This music, this place of thoughtfulness, had made something break in
his heart... Some of our young officers, but not many, knelt on the cane
chairs and prayed, face in hands. French officers crossed themselves
and their medals tinkled as they walked up the aisles. Always there were
women in black weeds kneeling before the side--altars, praying to the
Virgin for husbands and sons, dead or alive, lighting candles below holy
pictures and statues. Our men tiptoed past them, holding steel hats or
field--caps, and putting their packs against the pillars. On the steps
of the cathedral I heard two officers talking one day.

"How can one reconcile all this with the war?"

"Why not?... I suppose we're fighting for justice and all that. That's
what The Daily Mail tells us."

"Seriously, old man. Where does Christ come in?"

"He wasn't against righteous force. He chased the money-changers out of
the Temple."

"Yes, but His whole teaching was love and forgiveness. 'Thou shalt not
kill.' 'Little children, love one another!' 'Turn the other cheek.'. ..
Is it all sheer tosh? If so, why go on pretending?... Take chaplains in
khaki--these lieutenant-colonels with black crosses. They make me sick.
It's either one thing or the other. Brute force or Christianity. I am
harking back to the brute--force theory. But I'm not going to say 'God
is love' one day and then prod a man in the stomach the next.