LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
THE eECHS IN ENGLAND.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR•"I
Sin,—The historic old city of Winchester, now swarming with our Allies, lately had enacted within its borders one of the most intensely astounding historic incidents that even Winchester, with its thousand years of life, has been able to imagine. All the inhabitants, both cleric and lay, agreed that this incident was remarkable and deeply interesting, but they did not grasp the strange depth and wondrous meaning of the incident. Some said the Serbian troops had passed through their midst; others said they were Croatian troops; but few, even until to-day, knew that the thousands of men in strange uniform, with war-worn banners, who passed in slow step, singing in wondrous harmony, down into the great Cathedral, were Bohemians, Nobs. Keen men, with sad, earnest faces, they filled the nave of the Cathedral. They had asked permission to attend the Service and also to sing. When the Anthem was ended the Cathedral clergy paused in the service, and then in splendid accord, with strange delicacy of light and shade, the tech. sang, in their own tongue, a rendering of our National Anthem; and then their own National Hymn, " Where Is My Home? " On this occasion, the Precentor of the Cathedral stated, they only sang two things, in a fashion that impressed him greatly with their musical expression. But they came again, and then they sang other compositions, powerful, forceful; but none in Winchester knew what they sang. They bore their banners with them, and they were strange, a black banner with a red Chalice upon it. After singing they went over the Cathedral, and the Precentor was greatly struck with their intense reverence, especially their carefully avoiding walking on tombs, so many of which are on the floor of the Cathedral; and when they left the building, they departed silently and reveren- tially. Even they, as the people of Winchester, knew not *hat a strange historical incident they were enacting. The chants they sang with their fierce expressive rendering were the war songs of the Hussites (Wiclifites as they called. themselves). They bore the Chalice on their banners, and each man bore that same Chalice on his shoulder-straps. The Chalice, the right their ancestors fought for to take the Cup in the Holy Communion, as well as the Bread.
In this glorious old Cathedral lying in state is Cardinal Henry Beaufort of Winchester in his Cardinal's robes, and red broad hat, in his Chantry, over the tomb where his body is buried—that fighting Cardinal, the son of John of Gaunt, who was made Papal Legate to organize a Crusade with Germany against these very &ha, these Hussites, whose mighty warriors in their chained wagons were defeating the Germans up to the door of Berlin, and up to the Baltic. Five hundred years ago, in the year 1427, they had so paralysed the Germans by their fierce fighting, and the clinking of their chains, and their war songs of triumph, that Cardinal Henry, in the midst of his Crusaders, had to rush out of his tent, raise the Papal banner, and urge the flying Germans to be men. He did rally them, but in vain; he too had to fly, and barely escaped with his life. And now, five hundred years after, these Bohemians fill the nave of his Cathedral, bearing the old emblem of the Chalice with them, and they sing the old chant of
" Ye who are God's warriors, Fighting at His bidding " in this new Crusade against the Germans, when all humanity is with them, and is agreed that the brutal power of the German shall be crushed for ever.—I am, Sir, &c., . JAN88 BARER, F.R.Hist.S.
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