CHAPTER IX

FOR CROSS AND CROWN

DEATH IN ACTION OF FATHER FINN OF THE DUBLINS AND FATHER GWYNN OF THE
IRISH GUARDS

In which mood do soldiers generally go into battle--devotional or
profane? An observer of authority, Mr. J.H. Morgan, professor of
constitutional history at University College, London, who had a long
stay at the Front, in France and Flanders on Government duty, commits
himself to the curious statement that most men go into action, not
ejaculating prayers, but swearing out aloud. However that may be as
regards the non-religious soldier, it certainly is not true of the
Catholic Irish soldier. By temperament and training the average Irish
soldier, like most of his race, is profoundly religious at all times,
and the experiences of the chaplains to the Catholic Irish regiments
show that at no time is the Irish soldier more under a constant and
reverent sense of the nearness of the unseen Powers, and his absolute
dependence upon them, than at the awful moment when, in the plenitude
of his youth and physical strength, he is confronted by the prospect
of sudden death or bodily mutilation.

Of course, if a soldier does swear on the battlefield, that
circumstance must not necessarily be accepted as proof either that he
is destitute of religious feelings and principles, or that there is any
thought of impiety in his mind. Most likely the swearing is done quite
unconsciously. At a time when the mental faculties are distraught and
the tension on the central nervous system reaches almost to the
breaking-point, it is probable that men no more know what they say than
they do when they are under an anaesthetic; and that, in the one state
as in the other, incongruous expressions--wholly inconsistent with the
character of the patient--come to the lips from the deeps of
subconsciousness. There is nothing like constant nearness to death to
make men generally turn their thoughts to things serious and solemn.
The experiences of Catholic chaplains tell how widely the sense of
religion--the vanity of earthly concerns, the importance of eternity,
the wish to be at peace with God--has been stirred by the war even in
breasts that probably had not harboured in the years of peace a thought
that there was any other world but this. Ah, the eagerness of the Irish
Catholic soldiers to have sin washed away by confession and the
absolving words of the priest!

The Irish are the most religious soldiers in the British Army; and