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day later I had the opportunity to be present in
Lübeck at a service in the Swedish sailor’s church. This
church had been a center for Swedish Red Cross
activities during the last days of the war, and I
therefore wanted to express to the Swedish Minister the
gratitude of the Red Cross for the extraordinary help
he had given us in our efforts to assist in the
repatriation of a number of Swedes before the end of the
war. I will never forget that moment in the Swedish _
sailor’s church in Lübeck. I had been delayed on my
way, and when I entered the small, dark place of
worship, much damaged by the war, an evening
service was in progress. They were celebrating a
thanksgiving day, and when I entered the church the entire
congregation was singing the old and beautiful psalm
”Now Thank the Lord All Ye Peoples”. I went to
the first pew, deeply moved that these Swedes and
Swedish born people, who, for the most part, had lost
all their wordly possessions, could take part in this
singing with such devotion and piety. I turned around
and looked at the tired faces, pale and wan in the
twilight. When I saw the expressions on the faces of
these people I understood that the words of the psalm
were not only empty phrases, but that they felt a real
gratitude to God who had preserved them during all
their difficulties. Seldom have I felt so small and so
unimportant as when, at that moment, I reflected
that I, whose family and home were wholly intact,
and who had so much to be thankful for, perhaps had
not felt the same gratitude toward the Almighty as
these Swedes who had only their lives left and to
whom the future must have seemed very dark and
uncertain. This was a lesson which I will never forget
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