Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/588



(1712-1786)

If my soldiers were to begin to reflect, not one of them would remain in the ranks.

Our Father Which Art in Heaven

(From "The Human Slaughter-House")

(A novel by a Hamburg school-teacher, published in 1913. Although banned by the authorities in some places, over 100,000 copies were sold in Germany in a few weeks)

We rejoined the Colors on Friday. On Monday we are to move out. Today, being Sunday, is full-dress Church Parade.

I slept badly last night, and am feeling uneasy and limp.

And now we are sitting close-packed in church.

The organ is playing a voluntary.

I am leaning back and straining my ears for the sounds in the dim twilight of the building. Childhood's days rise before my eyes again. I am watching a little solemn-faced boy sitting crouched in a corner and listening to the divine service. The priest is standing in front of the altar, and is intoning the Exhortation devoutly. The choir in the gallery is chanting the responses. The organ thunders out and floods through the building majestically. I am rapt in an ecstasy of sweet terror, for the Lord God is coming down upon us. He is standing before me and touching my body, so that I have to close my eyes in a terror of shuddering ecstasy