In Memory of Our Canadians

The Weekly Machen

The following article is reminiscent of Arthur Machen’s treatment of Edith Cavell’s execution and funeral, which we presented earlier this year. It boasts a crescendo of emotions from tragic mourning to hot anger. And among the the beautiful swells of the writer’s poetic language, the reader may detect shriller notes, for Machen was not above employing propagandistic rhetoric in his work during the war years. Occasionally, this aspect also enters into the fiction he produced for the Evening News, sometimes for the worst. For example, “Karl Heinz’s Diary” is nearly unreadable and stands out as one of Machen’s poorest efforts. Regardless, Machen often effectively captured much of the feeling of the British public during the Great War, and in the current piece, he distilled the sense of great anger and loss, not only of his countrymen, but of those across the Atlantic.

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In Memory of Our Canadians:
A Great St. Paul’s Service Last Night
by
Arthur Machen
May 11, 1915

“Are ye here? . . . Are ye here? . . . Are ye here?”

Thus the bugle cried last night through the hollow spaces of the holy house. It rang, clamant, against the vast vault of the dome, it went piercing and shrilling down all the shadowy aisles; its voice went up to the altar and to the image of the Crucified. And I can well imagine that echoes of that summons went down into the dark places of the crypt and sang there among the graves to noble ears.

“Are ye here?” That clear, reiterated voice that shrilled up even to the cross above the dome must surely have descended and compelled the ears of the glorious dead. Nelson heard those notes, and Wellington also, and Roberts. And the Canadians whose bodies lie in Flanders heard the bugles calling to them. For it was at St. Paul’s Cathedral; and the buglers were playing the Last Post at the memorial service for the Canadian soldiers who have fallen in the war.

Early in the evening a vast dark mass of people filled the church from the choir gates to the western doors. The dusk and the twilight gathered slowly, mournfully; the piers and arches glimmered in the growing shadows. But high in the hollow of the dome the last glory of the setting sun shone on the statue of a white, triumphant saint. So a dying sun may have shone on the waste levels of Flanders when, the smoke of the battle and the poison-clouds had passed away, and the Canadians looked on one another; and looked on their dead.

Cardinal Mercier, uttering an authentic message, has nobly said that he who dies on the battlefield fighting against hell’s legionaries, thereby blots out all his sins and receives the joys of paradise. And so the sun shone on the Flanders field and on the dead heroes who lay there as it shone on the white, victorious saint who looks down from the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

I saw the Canadians more than six months ago on Salisbury Plain. There were thirty thousand of them, a greater army than the British force which fought at Waterloo, and yet on that vast wild place one had to search for their camps. The billows of the Plain roll far and wide; Stonehenge, which is still on the plain, was away beyond the horizon; the tents of the thirty thousand were but a few white dots here and there. The Canadians, I think were amazed by many things, and yet they felt at home on the Plain. One of them told me that he could well imagine that Calgary was “just beyond, over there.”

And now the trumpets of the Coldstream Guards are proclaiming the glory of those men under the dome, in the heart of London. And the drums are beating for them, and great brazen throats laud and magnify them, and the music swells into a storm of praise, so that the golden pipes of the organ awake at last, and are opened and fill all of the church with the sound of their triumph.

Two great flags are hung on each side of the entrance to the choir. One is the Union Jack, the other is the Canadian flag, a banner with a scarlet field.

O most just blazon, most wise heraldic prophecy! If it had not first been so, it must now have been tinctured so. For that was a scarlet field indeed on which the men of the West fought by Ypres town away in Flanders; and it was Canadian blood that made it scarlet.

We have all read the story of how the Abominable, having failed with musket and bayonet, with small arms and great cannon, let loose hell’s stenches and poisons against our leaguer. Against all laws, all faith, all honour certainly; but to the German people and their rulers and their soldiers these words have no meaning.

So they drove their torturing deadly cloud against us and our Allies, and the Canadians found themselves surrounded, or all but surrounded: death and destruction on every side of them. They endured to the end. They saved our battle. They staved the rising flood of the foul enemy.

So now they are singing for the souls of their dead in St. Paul’s Cathedral:—

   Out of the deep have I called unto
Thee, O Lord: hear my voice. . . .
   O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the
Lord there is mercy: and with Him
is plenteous redemption.
   And He shall redeem Israel from all his sins.

The night had now come down, and the high windows in the dome were darkened. But now and again they shone with a sudden flickering and darting of blue light, as if it had been summer lightning. This was caused by the playing of the searchlights, while the Bishop of London’s voice ran out from the pulpit, as he praised the valiant dead. I was far away down in the nave, but I think that he made an ancient sign upon his breast and uttered ancient words as he closed his sermon:

Rest eternal grant them, O Lord.
And let light perpetual shine upon them.

The Bishop went up to the altar and knelt before it; his scarlet hood vivid against the black altar-cloth. He blessed the people, and all stood up; and there was a moment’s silence.

Then the air was troubled. There was no sound nor tone, but a sense of torment, as if high in the dome vast invisible wings were beating. And this trouble of the air grew and increased till the wings ought have been of iron, and then, heavy as irrevocable doom, there fell the beat of the great drum.

Thus the musicians entered on the lamentation of the Dead March, with its wailing and crying of sorrowful voices. But a great trumpet rang out sonorous, and these wailing voices were transmuted into the thunders of triumph. Still beneath the chorus of victory one heard the beating of those mighty wings, but soon these were silenced and subdued by the proclamation of the final glory.

The Last Post was now sounding. “Are ye here? . . . Are ye here?” it cried to the valiant dead, summoning them to the last array. All through the cathedral the bugles rang and soared and implored in long, lingering, reiterated voices. And at last, a loud cry shrilled upward, piercing to the stars.

And there the great dead heard, and answered the summons.

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