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CHAPTER XX
DUNKIRK: FROM MY JOURNAL
I wakened early this morning and went to church--a great empty place,
very cold but with the red light of the sanctuary lamp burning before
a shrine. There were perhaps a dozen people there when I went in.
Before the Mater Dolorosa two women in black were praying with
upturned eyes. At the foot of the Cross crouched the tragic figure of
the Mother, with her dead Son in her arms. Before her were these other
mothers, praying in the light of the thin burning candles. Far away,
near the altar, seven women of the Society of the Holy Rosary were
conducting a private service. They were market women, elderly, plain,
raising to the altar faces full of faith and devotion, as they prayed
for France and for their soldier-children.
Here and there was a soldier or a sailor on his knees on a low
prie-dieu, his cap dangling loose in his hands. Unlike the women, the
lips of these men seldom moved in prayer; they apparently gazed in
wordless adoration at the shrine. Great and swelling thoughts were
theirs, no doubt, kindled by that tiny red flame: thoughts too big for
utterance or even for form. To go out and fight for France, to drive
back the invaders, and, please God, to come back again--that was what
their faces said.
Other people came in, mostly women, who gathered silently around the
Mater Dolorosa.
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