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There is yet a deeper aspect of this character with which we are concerned; but I shrink from making the exposition, fearing lest with my heavy literary tread I might destroy more than I should discover. When one stands by the holy place wherein dwells a dead friend’s soul–the word would slip out at last–it becomes him to take off the shoes from off his feet. But fortunately the dilemma does not arise. The task has already been performed by one who by God has been endowed with the religious sense, and by nature enriched with the gift of expression; one who in his high calling has long been acquainted with the grief of others, and is now himself a man of sorrow, having seen with understanding eyes,

These great days range like tides,
And leave our dead on every shore.

On February 14th, 1918, a Memorial Service was held in the Royal Victoria College. Principal Sir William Peterson presided. John Macnaughton gave the address in his own lovely and inimitable words, to commemorate one whom he lamented, “so young and strong, in the prime of life, in the full ripeness of his fine powers, his season of fruit and flower bearing. He never lost the simple faith of his childhood. He was so sure about the main things, the vast things, the indispensable things, of which all formulated faiths are but a more or less stammering expression, that he was content with the rough embodiment in which his ancestors had laboured to bring those great realities to bear as beneficent and propulsive forces upon their own and their children’s minds and consciences. His instinctive faith sufficed him.”

To his own students John McCrae once quoted the legend from a picture, to him “the most suggestive picture in the world”: What I spent I had: what I saved I lost: what I gave I have;–and he added: “It will be in your power every day to store up for yourselves treasures that will come back to you in the consciousness of duty well done, of kind acts performed, things that having given away freely you yet possess. It has often seemed to me that when in the Judgement those surprised faces look up and say, Lord, when saw we Thee an’ hungered and fed Thee; or thirsty and gave Thee drink; a stranger, and took Thee in; naked and clothed Thee; and there meets them that warrant-royal of all charity, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me, there will be amongst those awed ones many a practitioner of medicine.”

And finally I shall conclude this task to which I have set a worn but willing hand, by using again the words which once I used before: Beyond all consideration of his intellectual attainments John McCrae was the well beloved of his friends. He will be missed in his place; and wherever his companions assemble there will be for them a new poignancy in the Miltonic phrase,

But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!

London,

11th November, 1918.