When He had a
world to manage, it seemed best not to interrupt Him with frivolous
petitions, but to put my prayers into my work. That's how we all feel
out there.
God as we see Him! I couldn't have told you how I saw Him before I
went to France. It's funny--you go away to the most damnable
undertaking ever invented, and you come back cleaner in spirit. The
one thing that redeems the horror is that it does make a man
momentarily big enough to be in sympathy with his Creator--he gets
such glimpses of Him in his fellows.
There was a time when I thought it was rather up to God to explain
Himself to the creatures He had fashioned--since then I've acquired
the point of view of a soldier. I've learnt discipline and my own
total unimportance. In the Army discipline gets possession of your
soul; you learn to suppress yourself, to obey implicitly, to think of
others before yourself. You learn to jump at an order, to forsake your
own convenience at any hour of the day or night, to go forward on the
most lonely and dangerous errands without complaining. You learn to
feel that there is only one thing that counts in life and only one
thing you can make out of it--the spirit you have developed in
encountering its difficulties. Your body is nothing; it can be smashed
in a minute. How frail it is you never realise until you have seen men
smashed. So you learn to tolerate the body, to despise Death and to
place all your reliance on courage--which when it is found at its best
is the power to endure for the sake of others.
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