LETTERS from the Front inform us that on Christmas Day there was
a veritable Truce of God. Towards midnight on Christmas Eve,
suddenly and by a common impulse, those who were enemies a moment
before were sending each other Christmas greetings across the space
between the lines of Germans and English.
All through Christmas Day, hostilities were suspended, and
Germans and English walked up and down together, talking and
exchanging gifts as though they were the best of friends. For one
short period, they helped each other to give decent burial to the
slain.
In one instance, the English Chaplain and German Commanding
Officer were seen each taking something out of his cap and giving
it to the other. The chaplain's souvenir was a copy of "The
Soldier's Prayer", and the commander's was a photograph.
He had, it appears, come across a dying English officer who was
vainly struggling to take something from his pocket. The German
kindly helped him, and what he found was the photograph of the
Englishman's wife. This he held before the dying man's eyes until
his last breath. Thanks to his goodness and the happy meeting on
Christmas Day, the picture is now in the hands of the dead man's
friends.
A humorous incident was added in several instances where men
recognised among their German enemy-friends former daily
fellow-travellers by train from Finsbury Park and elsewhere. It is
pitiful that, on the stroke of midnight, they had to resume their
bloody work, but we can be thankful to have seen even this small
touch of that human kindness that makes the whole world kind.
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