forms of pious faith.

This was the true Glory of the Trenches. They were the Calvaries of a
new redemption being wrought out for men by soiled unconscious
Christs. And, as from that ancient Calvary, with all its agony of
shame, torture and dereliction, there flowed a flood of light which
made a new dawn for the world, so from these obscure crucifixions
there would come to men a new revelation of the splendour of the human
soul, the true divinity that dwells in man, the God made manifest in
the flesh by acts of valour, heroism, and self-sacrifice which
transcend the instincts and promptings of the flesh, and bear witness
to the indestructible life of the spirit.

It is to express these thoughts and convictions that this book was
written. It is a record of things deeply felt, seen and
experienced--this, first of all and chiefly. The lesson of what is
recorded is incidental and implicit. It is left to the discovery of
the reader, and yet is so plainly indicated that he cannot fail to
discover it. We shall all see this war quite wrongly, and shall
interpret it by imperfect and base equivalents, if we see it only as a
human struggle for human ends. We shall err yet more miserably if all
our thoughts and sensations about it are drawn from its physical
horror, "the deformations of our common manhood" on the battlefield,
the hopeless waste and havoc of it all. We shall only view it in its
real perspective when we recognise the spiritual impulses which direct
it, and the strange spiritual efficacy that is in it to burn out the
deep-fibred cancer of doubt and decadence which has long threatened
civilisation with a slow corrupt death. Seventy-five years ago Mrs.
Browning, writing on _The Greek Christian Poets_, used a striking
sentence to which the condition of human thought to-day lends a new