Editorial Page The Daily MIrror 22 October 1914 courtesy The British Newspaper Archive

The Reverend William Tovani was rather taken with today’s editorial and cartoon in The Daily Mirror and wondered if he could get away with turning them into a sermon with only the most minimal editing. After all, if there could be a sermon in stones, why indeed should there not be a sermon in one’s daily newspaper?

It was rather fascinating, in a grim sort of way, the degree to which the war seemed to be having an infantilising effect on his congregation. Normally both robust and level-headed, many of them seemed to be rushing to him with every little metaphorical scratch and asking him, in effect, to ‘kiss it better’, as he promised his children. Their moods were all over the place, one minute elated and the next in the depth of despair as they reacted and over-reacted to the news from the battle front.

He was in little doubt in his own mind that the war would last for many months, if not years, and the only sensible choice, to use another metaphor – this time from the tennis court – was to stay on the base line and concentrate on returning every ball, steadily but firmly.

Yes that should do quite well – now all he had to do was to find a biblical text in justification…