On This Day, 1 August 1916

Birmingham Daily Post

Tuesday 1 August 1916

WAR’S SECOND ANNIVERSARY

SERVICE OF INTERCESSION IN BIRMINGHAM

The second anniversary of the declaration of war was made the occasion of a United Free Church Intercession service at Carr’s Lane Church, Birmingham, last night. A number of ministers participated in the service, which commenced with the singing of the National Anthem. This was followed by prayer by the Rev. Heath Lemon, Scripture reading by the Rev. Arthur Jones, a litany by the Rev. R. H. Coats, the singing of Kipling’s Recessional by the congregation, prayer by Professor W. W. Holdsworth, and the rendering of Elgar’s “Spirit of England” by Mr. Appleby Matthews’s and Carr’s Lane Choirs.
A short address was delivered by the Rev. S. M. Berry, who said their thoughts went back to those sullen days of two years ago, when the storm broke and the issue had to be faced and the decision made. Those two years had been filled with all the emergencies of a whole lifetime. Sorrow was with us, born of the terrible cost, but pride took that sorrow away, and weaved it into a crown to wear rather than a load to carry. The two years had been hard years, years of increasing demand upon faith and patience, but the storm that threatened to submerge us had been held back. It was a wave of idealism that carried us into the war. The challenge was flung down to the honour of civilisation, and the nation was impelled by something to accept that challenge. The fact that those who had fallen had not died in vain should sustain the nation. They died to keep the soul of the world alive, and the only adequate way in which we could remember that was to take upon ourselves the resolve that everything we possessed, everything we were in ourselves, should be at the service of that for which our men had died.