Armistice day

THE eleventh of November might well be called 'All Soul's Day.' For the thoughts of millions are directed towards their dead on that fateful morning&emdash;the dead who went from earth in their splendid youth&emdash;who seemed to those left behind, to have been deprived of the fullness of life, deprived of beauty, love, and experience; of all the joys that come to man in his prime, of those serenities that may be his when the enfolding years gather him into the quiet of age.

But human beings err in their belief that a generation has gone into silence unfulfilled, denied their heritage, their birthright. The young men who perished in the Great War passed from a world of turmoil and of pain into a Kingdom that, in its essential peace, its comparative freedom from the discipline of suffering and disillusionment, offers fulfilment, harmony and beauty that cannot be measured in earthly terms, that may not be credited by the human imagination.

I speak, of course, of the flower of the race, of those splendid young men who gave their lives in the spirit of sacrifice for each nation. I do not allude to those who were of a different and lower calibre, to the thousands of crude, unformed souls who perished in that time. These were fated to follow the war pattern that has been weaving through the ages. But the young, unsullied souls who seemed to have been flung so ruthlessly out of earthly life, have, through their early passing, lost nothing but gained immeasurably.

ARMISTICE DAY

They are glad when Armistice Day returns for the thoughts of those who love them renew the old intimacies, and draw them, not back but into what the Church has named the Communion of Saints.

The word "saint" in the ancient days, did not mean a legendary figure embellished by a halo, nor did it merely indicate a man of great holiness and purity. It was applied to those human beings of integrity who belonged to the crowd and lived as decently and humanly as was possible according to their lights.

On the Great Day of the Living, on the eleventh of November, the souls of human beings go out to meet their kinsfolk and renew the ties of love and tenderness with those husbands, brothers and sons who died in the Great War. I call it "the day of the living," because it is the only one set apart in the year by both Church and State in our country for the recollection of the so-called dead. And, because in that time the thoughts of human beings are massed, are collective, they reach into the heights and into the depths of the world beyond death, and there is rejoicing among the ever-living, that they, temporarily anyway, are not dead to those they loved and left behind on earth.

Only in forgetfulness, in the fading of love, is there negation of life. So long as men and women, during one day in the year, live again in the memory of the departed, so long will that day be, to us discarnate beings, a crown of life. We live then in the renewal of love, in the renewal of the pledge that love is stronger than death.

This festival of life on the eleventh of November should be held in every town, and every land through all the coming years. For it recalls to the mind of each member of the unthinking crowd, the fact that he is a mere traveller on the earth, passing from darkness into a lighted room and passing so soon into the Unknown again.

If, for two minutes in the year, the man in the street

BEYOND HUMAN PERSONALITY

faces this fact, he is all the better for it. If, for two minutes in the year, the many millions of the European and English speaking races are compelled, in that Silence, to think of the so-called dead, then the barriers fall for discarnate beings, and they, in uniting thus with their kindred once more, are sensible of the immortality of love.

Lastly, the Great Day of the Living in its two minutes silence, is a pledge of peace, and should be a reminder to the younger generation, of the vile, brute horror of the Great War. Whatever changes are made&emdash;and change comes swiftly in your restless world&emdash;let the celebration on the eleventh of November remain above change for only through it do all the generations keep faith with the heroic dead.

But if this faith is to be truly served, all those who have observed the Silence, should pronounce at its close the earnestly uttered declaration that they will, in the coming year, to the best of their ability, work for the peace of the world. If the thought of peace accompanies the spoken word, and if it accompanies the speaker through the day, then will there be, indeed, some certainty that world war is not known again in your generation.

Men and women have become pessimistic. They even feel that no useful purpose is served by the two minutes silence observed on Armistice Day. These words of mine are intended to light up the imagination, to show to man that, in this heritage from the war years, he possesses a great symbolic moment which should express his sense of immortality and above all, his earnest determination that peace shall be maintained on earth.

Chapter VIII

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