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Preface
The authentic records
gathered and preserved in this volume show the part which the Covenanter
Church took in the great war of 1914-1918 to defend Christian liberty
and democracy against the long-premeditated and gigantically
prepared-for attack of Germany and her allies, Austria-Hungary, Turkey,
and Bulgaria, in an effort to dominate the world by a brutal and immoral
military despotism.
These records establish
the fact that the Covenanter’s attitude toward civil government does
affect his loyalty to his country but that it affects it by emphasizing
it, and they show that 7^4 per cent of the entire membership of the
American Covenanter Church were enrolled in the various departments of
military service, a percentage probably greater than that of any other
denomination.
People who do not
understand, marvel that a Covenanter will give his life for his country
but withholds his vote at election time. A Covenanter will give his life
because of his loyalty to his country, and withholds his vote at
election time because of his loyalty to Christ. To become a soldier he
is required to swear loyalty to his country, and that he is always eager
to do; but to vote at art election he is required to swear to a
Constitution of Civil Government that does not recognize the existence
of God, the authority of Christ over the nation, nor any obligation to
obey His moral law; and that his conception of loyalty to Christ will
not permit him to do.
This volume is published to show the true character of the Covenanter,
and to aid in securing for him his rightful place in history.
The Scotch are proverbially prompt, thorough and fearless in
performance, but loth to talk of their achievements; and in their war
work, herein recorded, all Covenanters show their Scotch ancestry. More
than six hundred, American Covenanters were in the war, above two
hundred of whom went overseas, and many of. these were with Pershing
fighting their way to the Rhine. The secretary of the Church’s
Win-the-War Committee told how all but impossible it was to get any of
our ministers, so many of whom rendered splendid service and a great
deal of it, here at home, to report their work. And the boys in the
flaming battle lines, like their pastors, are true sons of their heroic
forbears. Scores of others than Covenanter soldiers published whole
books of their adventures in trenches, going over the top, and in
NoMan’s Land, and thrilled audiences with their stories. But Covenanter
soldiers wrote never a line to their own Church weekly, and their home
letters from the front line trenches, or from “Somewhere in France
enroute to the Rhine,” at least those letters of which we have learned,
almost invariably concluded with a warning not to allow the Editor of
their Church paper to have them.
Prof. Wm. M. Sloane, author of The Century Co:’s “Life of Napoleon,” of
“The Balkan States,” and other standard histories, in an article written
for the Christian Nation, spoke of the high place accorded to
Covenanters by great historians after the Reformation, but only the most
widely read and unprejudiced students of both political and Church
history understand why they merit such distinguished praise. The
Covenanters themselves have not written history. They have merely made
it. And so, the author of this volume, himself denied the privilege of
companionship with his young friends in the camps or on the
battlefields, is endeavoring to do for them that which they would not
even assist in doing for themselves, relate their share in
history-making during the period of the war, enshrine their deeds, and
perpetuate the memory of their valor and their loyalty to Christ and
their country.
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