Printed Book: Copyright 1919 By Pentecostal Publishing Company
DEDICATION
To my wife who with great bravery bore my going to war, and with a beautiful spirit carried all the responsibilities of home and family during my absence.
To the Officers and Men of the 38th Regiment with whom I was associated when they "wrote one of the most brilliant pages of military history" in the Battle of July 15.
Numerous war books have been published. To venture another upon this somewhat overcrowded sea might appear a trifle presumptuous, but I have ventured because of the unusually generous reception my writings in the Christian Witness, The Pentecostal Herald, The Christian Herald and the Christian Advocate have received.
Some things which have appeared in some of the above papers I have thought it worth while to reproduce in the book.
I have named this book: "The Cross and the Flag -- Experiences in the Great World War," because of what the ,Cross means to me as a Christian, and what the Flag means to me as an American.
Since the war, these words have a new significance for me:
"In the Cross of Christ I glory, Towering o'er the wrecks of time; All the light of sacred story Gathers round its head sublime."
In one of the French villages which the Germans had destroyed by their artillery, one thing remained untouched and unhurt through all -- the Wayside Cross. Homes had been wiped out, business places ruined, schoolhouse and church laid in ruins, but the Cross stood intact. So with the wreckage of this old world and the tumbling of thrones and crowns, the Cross of Christ remains as ever -- the hope of the world and its only means of salvation.
Then the Flag! Glorious old Flag! Its stars broke upon the darkened skies of Europe and gave out light and hope. When it was flung to the breeze in France a new day dawned for the Allies. The coming of our Flag brought rescue and victory!
The Flag is coming back home again and we hail it with new affection and new thrills of patriotism. During the war someone wrote of the Flag thus:
"Here's to the blue of the wind-swept North, As we meet on the fields of France. May the spirit of Grant be over them all, As the sons of the North advance. And here's to the gray of the sun-kissed South, As we meet on the fields of France. May the spirit of Lee be over them all, As the sons of the South advance. And here's to the blue and the gray as one, As we meet on the fields of France. May the spirit of God be over us all, As the sons of the Flag advance."
Now that it comes back from Foreign shores we say as thankful patriots:
"Your flag and my flag; and oh! how much it holds: Your land and my land, secure beneath its folds. Rose-red and blood-red, its stripes forever gleam; Snow-white and soul-white, the good forefather's dream Sky-blue and true-blue, with stars to gleam aright -The gloried guidon of the day, the shelter of the night."
