15. Immediacy Of War
15.
IMMEDIACY OF WAR
In October 1938, Amy had said of a dream, “Is it imagination, Lord, or Thine own word to me, that I shall come to Thee in sleep—no rending good-byes—no distress to anyone?…However it be, I ask that it may be the easiest way for my beloveds.”1 Her pampered queen-bee existence gave her guilt. One month later she prayed, “Lord Jesus, Thou hast made my prison so beautiful and my bonds so light that I greatly fear I do not ‘suffer with’ Thee.”2
Amy fought hard to subdue, even bury the self. On October 24, 1939, the eighth anniversary of the accident, she scolded the Fellowship:
For eight years many of you have daily prayed for me, not the ordinary costless prayer…but something more vital.…From the depths of my heart I thank you.…I thought then that the bars would be broken. Every day I thought, “It will be tomorrow.” The answer has come otherwise…[But] the world is so full of the tremendous and prayer-compelling, that I don’t want you to spend one minute on me.…3
But even dwelling on self in this vein made her feel guilty. To remind herself how fortunate she was, Amy had only to remember faithful Irene Streeter, who had recently died in a plane crash. In 1939, Amy wrote to Olive Gibson, Irene’s replacement as representative of the Fellowship in England:
Go gently. Don’t do as I know I did, for truly I had to do it. Don’t work each day till you are unable to do one minute more. Don’t. Leave a margin. It doesn’t matter that I did it, for there are all these [the Webb-Peploe brothers and May Powell] ready to take over…[but] there is no one as yet preparing to [replace you].…4
Amy was at her best when mothering others. On December 7, 1939, she admonished some of the little ones:
AMY WAS AT HER BEST WHEN MOTHERING OTHERS.
Oh my children, if only you would make up your minds never to doubt the love of another sister or brother in Christ, but always think the best, to take the best for granted, and never admit an unkind thought in your heart, how happy, how heavenly life would be. I could not endure it if for one minute I doubted any one of you. It would be like the sting of a wasp in my soul. Why do you endure it? Why do some of you even encourage that wasp to sting? I beseech you to have done with this. Refuse it. Hate it. It may seem a trifle, but it is of hell.…5
The sprawling Dohnavur grounds had long been in-accessible to Amy by walking. Only in her memory could she walk off her verandah to the nearby guest cottages, then beyond to the buildings that housed the weaving shed, the girls’ dormitories, the medical dispensary, the girls’ school, the milk kitchen, the many nurseries, the workrooms, and the House of Prayer. Certainly she would never ever make it to the hospital, the swimming pool, the playing fields, or the various boys’ compounds. From north to south the complex stretched six hundred yards, from east to west even farther because the Place of Heavenly Healing was across the irrigation channel. The buildings must have covered one hundred acres. To think that she had watched it all spring up over thirty years.
“Flowers from God, prayed for and received.”
Since the accident in 1931, Amy claimed to have had only eight nights of real sleep. Right after the accident she hardly slept at all and often read. For the first time she had tried a novel, something she previously dismissed as far too trivial. To her delight she found a novelist in harmony with her own thoughts: John Buchan. Buchan was a contemporary, a Scot. One of his sentences, “He asked of him the ultimate service, as a friend should,”6 struck Amy as absolutely true. That was exactly what she had asked of Handley Bird, as well as others. A novel so true to real life, she decided, was not a waste of time but akin to reading poetry.
The events of late 1939 threatened even that tiny indulgence. Europe seemed headed toward another great war—not drifting but wildly careening. India’s turmoil continued, too. Gandhi, who had hoped to “retire” into his spiritual pursuits, was forced into the fray again. He fasted in protest over a British agreement with the maharajah of Rajkot. The British acquiesced, proving the old man still had more influence than any native leader in India. But this squabble soon paled next to world events. Germany—led by a dictator so demonic he seemed the Antichrist—began conquering Europe. Gandhi and the National Congress demanded that Britain state its war aims to the Indians. When Britain ignored the demand, the Hindu leaders insisted that this was one war in which Indians would not participate. But to further divide India, the Muslims declared their support for the British war effort.
“Looks rather grim,” said the Webb-Peploes.
Britain plunged headlong into war against Germany. Three young men of the Fellowship went into the British army. Several of the Tamil youths went into the Indian armed forces. Murray suggested a Spiritual Civic Guard on the home front. Amy had mixed emotions:
Can you even begin to imagine what it means to me that while I lie here like a slug on a cabbage leaf…you are strong and doing exploits?…You have the glorious double message to give—the certainty of the triumph of righteousness, whatever the sacrifice be, and the fact that all this turmoil is perhaps the last herald of the Coming of the King…[but] I mustn’t get too hot over Spiritual Civics—it’s just the heritage of my Scottish-Northern Irish blood.…7
Great strength was needed. How frustrated Amy became:
In the last war [World War I], I could go about among you…like a mother bear whose cubs are threatened. I felt strong to fight for you. Now [during World War II] there is no strength at all…And thoughts piled up as they do at night.…What if? And the burden was heavy. And then it was if a voice said almost aloud, “Leave it to Me, child, leave it to Me.”8
So she tended her flock. To one she wrote, “Sometimes I have been anxious about you because you have said, ‘If you leave us I can’t bear to go on.’ That is all wrong, my darling.…You won’t give way and fail. That would be utter defeat. I did not train you for anything so ignoble as defeat.…”9
“I DID NOT TRAIN YOU FOR ANYTHING SO IGNOBLE AS DEFEAT.”
In 1940, a pact among Germany, Italy, and Japan caused more fear in Asia. Japan, so near India, was very powerful militarily. On December 7, 1941, Japanese dive-bombers devastated the American naval fleet in the Pacific Ocean. This would keep Americans from helping any victims in Asia for a long while. The Japanese began aggression in earnest. They struck the Chinese in force. Later they attacked Burma, too, pushing the British out. Burma was India’s neighbor.
On April 6, 1942, the Japanese bombed Madras!
“It seems India is in this war whether the ‘Mahatma’ likes it or not,” commented some.
Dohnavur sensed the immediacy of the war. Evacuation plans were developed. If the Japanese invaded, everyone in the Fellowship under the age of thirty-five, now numbering more than three hundred, would proceed immediately to the Gray Jungle. But the Japanese attack on Madras was only a probe. The first great manifestation of the war was a famine in the area around Calcutta. But why? The immense paddy lands of the Bengal had not failed the Indians in recent memory. Hundreds of thousands of fields were scattered along immense rivers. The rice was delivered to the millions in the cities in thousands of boats. But now country people flocked into Calcutta, carrying everything they owned in one basket or a box. “Where is the rice?” they cried.
Soon the tragedy was known. All boats had been requisitioned by the British for the war effort. But what of the Indian people? The catastrophe of 1943 seemed to prove that the British didn’t care if Indians lived or died. Everywhere in Bengal people starved. Mothers’ milk dried up. Babies died. The numbers of dead mounted. Ten thousand. One hundred thousand. Finally, one million. Two million! More. Mountains of smoke plumed into the air as Hindu dead were burned in pyres along the rivers. Gandhi was imprisoned, silenced. No one spoke for the Indians. It was some consolation to Amy to learn a recent estimate placed the number of Christian Indians at seven million, an increase of four million in the last thirty years.
“Someday the British will be gone from India, but Christ will remain,” she prayed.
Amy labored the only way she could. She continued to counsel, inform, scold, shepherd, and perform a dozen other duties by writing. By 1943 she had once again updated the history of the Dohnavur Fellowship, this time in a book titled Though the Mountains Shake. So this book, Things As They Are, Gold Cord, and Windows chronicled the more than forty years of the Dohnavur effort. Though the Mountains Shake also included the wrenching account of Arulai’s death.
SHE CONTINUED TO COUNSEL, INFORM, SCOLD, SHEPHERD, AND PERFORM A DOZEN OTHER DUTIES BY WRITING.
The disaster in India worsened on December 5, 1943. Explosions shattered the silence in Calcutta. Yet the bombing of Calcutta was just another probe by the Japanese, followed by nothing. After that bombing raid, life actually began to improve for the Indians. Britain was more sensitive to their needs. Although the boats were needed in the war effort, they nevertheless delivered rice again. One of the greatest famines in the history of the world ended, seemingly no more than a footnote in the worst war in the history of the world.