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August 23, 1914! A date which will be imprinted
on the heart, and on the tablets of memory,
of every Englishman and Englishwoman of our
generation. To the majority of thinking folk, that
was the last Sunday we any of us spent in the old,
prosperous, happy, confiding England -- the England
who considered that might as a matter of course follows
right -- the England whose grand old motto was
"Victory as Usual," and to whom the word defeat
was without significance.
Almost the whole population of Witanbury seemed
to have felt a common impulse to attend the evening
service in the cathedral. They streamed in until the
stately black-gowned vergers were quite worried to
find seats for the late comers. In that great congregation
there was already a certain leaven of anxious
hearts -- not over-anxious, you understand, but naturally
uneasy because those near and dear to them had
gone away to a foreign country, to fight an unknown
foe.
It was known that the minor canon who was on the
rota to preach this evening had gracefully yielded the
privilege to the Dean, and this accounted, in part at
least, for the crowds who filled the great building.
When Dr. Haworth mounted the pulpit and prepared
to begin his sermon, which he had striven to make
worthy of the occasion, he felt a thrill of satisfaction
as his eyes suddenly lighted on the man whom he still
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