Other men said: “We wouldn’t mind a holiday. We’re fed up to the neck with all this muck.”

The war did not stop, although it was Christmas Eve, and the only carol I heard in the trenches was the loud, deep chant of the guns on both sides, and the shrill soprano of whistling shells, and the rattle on the keyboards of machine-guns. The enemy was putting more shells into a bit of trench in revenge for a raid. To the left some shrapnel shells were bursting, and behind the lines our “heavies” were busily at work firing at long range.

“On earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

The message was spoken at many a little service on both sides of that long line where great armies were entrenched with their death-machines, and the riddle of life and faith was rung out by the Christmas bells which came clashing on the rain-swept wind, with the reverberation of great guns.