Trumpeters of the 9^th Lancers sounded the Last Post, and the 66^th paraphrase being sung, the trumpeters blew the Reveille, and the unveiling ceremony concluded.

Memorial to late Pastor.

Right Hon. E. M. Archdale, P.C., M.P., here entered the pulpit, and unveiled the memorial tablet to the late Rev. S. C. Mitchel and said he felt very grateful to have the unexpected honour of unveiling a memorial to an old friend of his own, who was what they had all known him to be-a Christian gentlemen.

The singing of the hymn ‘For all the Saints who from their labours rest,’ followed.

Rev. Doctor Simms’ address.

The preacher was the Right Rev. Major-General Simms, C.B., C.M.G., D.D., LL.D., K.H.C. He took as his text Hebrews, II, verse 13, ‘These all die in Faith,’ and before dealing with the subject, he said he would like to thank all the friends who had come there to assist them. It would be out of place to see anything about Mr. Archdale in their presence. The name Archdale was as familiar to him as Fermanagh.

Then to Sir James Craig they were under a deep debt of gratitude, who had come a long journey to serve them. So James Craig had made a great sacrifice. He had laid down high office, and had cut himself off from the work he loved and the pleasures of life in the metropolis, to make his home with them. He had put his hand to the plough and it was a hard furrow, they all knew, he had to cut through, but they wished him God speed in his work. If there be one message that would come to them all that morning, it was the words that Isaiah uttered when he called out during the dark days of his life ‘Watchman what of the night,’ and the reply came ‘The night cometh and also the morning.’ That was their hope, the darkest hours came before the dawn-and with dawn came the morning light.

Dealing with his subject, Dr. Simms reminded his audience that those who gave their lives in the war were in no way different to those who returned to them who were now by their side listening to him. It was only by the immutable mercy of God that some of their names were not among those which were counted worthy to be held in everlasting honour. They too had heard the beating of the wings of the Angel of Death, and today they paid their tribute and affection to their comrades who had fallen because they understood the meaning and the fruitfulness of their sacrifices they had brought victory and peace, and there ?????? inviolate and homes intact were purchased by those men who laid down their lives.

Breaking away momentarily from his subject, Dr. Simms referred to the great coal strike. The conduct today of the miners, he said, was beneath contempt. If those miners with think of what was done in France and Flanders, by the men who were to- day walking the country starving begging for a job; if they realised their duty as men, the word strike would be banished from the British dictionary for many years to come. There would be no talk of restricted output. It would be for them to put every ounce of strength they had to heal the bleeding wounds left by the war, and to fill the barn long empty after the strain of years of conflict. But for their soldiers and sailors these strikers of today would be the galley slaves of the cruel Hun, working for him and not for the wages they were getting now.

Speaking as one who went to France with the first British troops that landed in 1914, the ‘Old Contemptibles’ Dr. Simms dealt with the history of the war from the point of view of his text. He traced the vicissitudes of the campaign, its horrors, its setbacks, the disasters that overcame our men. How the conscripts caught the contagion of the heroic spirit of the men that it gone before them, how unconsciously they were lifted above themselves by the very atmosphere of chivalry which was everywhere around them. And it was the conscript army which in the end won the fight for them. They were not as trained or as well disciplined as the men of 1914, but they made up for that by their stubborn valour and their magnificent contempt either danger or death.

Before the war military writers declared modern scientific warfare would be so instant that the period of conflict must be short-six months at the most. The war was infinitely more intense than any soul yet conceived, yet it lasted four years, and the terrible strain never for one moment slackened, but increased right onto the end. Death rained down from the skies, death leaped up from under their feet, it mowed them down in the front trenches, it played havoc with their organisation in the rear, death crept into their billets and poison them as they slept. And as they buried their dead they passed rows of graves prepared for the living, and many a man as he passed would wonder if one of those lairs would be his resting place ere night fall. He had known a battalion to spend 36 days on end in a water-logged trench in the middle of winter, and men half frozen, would slip off the fire step exhausted and be drowned in the mud, and never missed till the officer going his rounds would tread on the dead body in the mud. How did their men endure these horrors? It was their faith, and as a nation they would never know how much they owed to God who brought them to the supreme test in their history in defence of a righteous cause. Shakespeare said ‘Thrice is he armed that has his quarrel just.’ They had proved the truth of that up to the hilt in this Great War.

The arrangements for the unveiling had been perfectly carried out by Mr. T Harvey, and the musical portion of the service was conducted by Miss H. Johnston at the organ.

The Fermanagh Times, April 14, 1921.