‘We Will Remember Them’

 

The school’s War Memorial volume of 1921 contains a comprehensive record of all those OSBs, some 940 of them, who answered their country’s call. Of this number, 920 were former pupils of whom some 180 were killed, along with four of the fourteen Masters who served. The book includes the Address which was delivered in June 1919 by the Rev. Canon H.A.P. Sawyer, who had been Headmaster of the school from 1903 to 1916, its ‘Golden Age’, to a packed Priory at a special Memorial Service for those who fell in the Great War. The following are some extracts from his memorable speech on that occasion.

‘It is inevitable that at a notable gathering of Old St Beghians like this, the predominant note should be a note of sadness. My one object in speaking is to turn, if I can, that note of sadness into a note of joy, and pride, and thanksgiving – into a shout of victory. The difficulty of speaking is not so much the sadness, as the obviousness of it all. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.” There is so little to add to that. And yet we want to bring those deaths into the house of God, and into the presence of Christ. There we shall find the reason why those deaths speak with such simple eloquence … simply because such deaths make those who died something like Christ Himself. … He gave his life as the best thing He had to give. And they – they could not give spotless lives, like His, but they gave their best. They gave lives full of youth and health and promise … lives which they enjoyed, lives full of enthusiasm and gaiety and laughter.

This brings us still nearer to the cross of Christ. For what did they die? They died, as Christ died, for truth: they died, as Christ died, for others. They died … for the eternal principle that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a lie is a lie, call it by whatever name you like; and that an agreement between man and man, or nation and nation, is something more than a ‘scrap of paper’ – it is a sacred obligation to which God as well as man is a witness, and that no stress of circumstance, no military necessity, no difference of race or climate can justify its violation. Again, they died for others – for us, that we might have in abundance and security the life they loved so well and sacrificed … But especially they died for the weak: that no nation, no matter how insignificant, and no human being, however humble, should be bullied by the stronger.

And we who remain, what are we going to do for them? … Surely, that we should live and sacrifice ourselves for those principles for which they died. …  If we fight simply for justice and integrity … we are fighting side by side with our brothers who have died for the truth … and ‘whose bodies were broken for you.’

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ proves that those twin principles of love and duty, carried to the point of sacrifice, have won – must win.’

 

 

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The St Beghian Society    
St Bees School,    St Bees,    Cumbria,    CA27 0DS.

         Tel: (01946) 828093      Email: osb@stbeesschool.co.uk      Web: www.st-beghian-society.co.uk