view this delay was opportune; as it offered
opportunity of passing down the line, to hear confessions and extend to
all the boys divine aid.

Surely that halt was a God-send! The prayer of many a mother, far
overseas, had moved the Good Master to give her soldier boy this last
chance to pause for a prayer on the threshold of death!

This was pre-eminently the Chaplain's hour! Above all others were his
every ministration and word and glance prized and respected.

There were no infidels, no religious scoffers, among those soldiers
seriously awaiting the zero hour. In the rear areas and rest billets,
the profane and irreligious word might often have been heard; but face
to face with Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell, the skeptic was silenced.
Boys who might have been hitherto negligent in approaching the
Sacraments were now the first to call to me, "Father, I want to go to
Confession."

In a time so uncertain, momentarily awaiting orders "Over the Top," to
hear each one individually was physically impossible. For just this
emergency, the far-seeing, merciful Church of the All Merciful God has
provided a means.

It is the General Absolution, so beautifully administered by Chaplain
McDonald of the Leviathan, and which our Faculties provided. When a
person in such emergency could not actually confess, he made an act of
Perfect Contrition, being sorry for his sins because by them he had
offended the Good God, and with the intention of going to Confession as
soon as he could. While confession was always desirable, sorrow was
ever, indispensable.

In our case the priest was morally and physically present and he gave
Sacramental Absolution to all, using the plural, "Ego vos absolvo a
peccatis vestris."

Whether on the battlefield or in hospital wards filled with men dying of
disease or wounds, the priest has a divine message to deliver and a
sacramental duty to perform from which no manner or danger of death can
deter him. "Is any man sick amongst you," says St. James in the 24th
Chapter of his Epistle (Douay or King James version) "let him call in
the priests of the Church, and they shall anoint him with oil in the
Name of the Lord." It was in the fulfillment of this Divinely imposed
duty that 1600 priests of America voluntarily turned aside from their
parochial work, and, reconsecrating their hearts to the Greater Love,
entered the National service as Chaplains during the war.

Seriously the boys studied the hill. On i