Origin of the Hymn

Whit-Monday is a great day for school fes­tiv­als in York­shire. One Whit-Mon­day, thir­ty years ago, it was ar­ranged that our school should join forc­es with that of a neigh­bor­ing vil­lage. I want­ed the child­ren to sing when march­ing from one vil­lage to an­oth­er, but couldn’t think of any­thing quite suit­able; so I sat up at night, re­solved that I would write some­thing my­self. On­ward, Chris­tian Sol­diers was the re­sult. It was writ­ten in great haste, and I am afraid some of the rhymes are faulty. Cer­tain­ly noth­ing has sur­prised me more than its po­pu­la­ri­ty. I don’t re­mem­ber how it got print­ed first, but I know that ve­ry soon it found its way into sev­er­al Col­lect­ions. I have writ­ten a few other hymns since then, but on­ly two or three have be­come at all well-known.

This hymn was played in 1941 for Am­eri­can Pre­si­dent Frank­lin Roo­se­velt at the re­quest of Brit­ish lead­er Win­ston Church­ill, when the two met on board the HMS Prince of Wales to cre­ate the At­lan­tic Char­ter.

In the 1939 film Stan­ley and Liv­ing­stone, there is a scene where Dr. Liv­ing­stone (played by Ced­ric Hard­wicke) leads Af­ri­can na­tives in sing­ing this hymn. It was al­so sung at the end of the 1942 Aca­de­my Aw­ard-winn­ing mo­vie Mrs. Mi­ni­ver, and at the fun­er­al of Ame­ri­can pre­si­dent Dwight Eis­en­how­er at the Na­tion­al Ca­thed­ral, Was­hing­ton, DC, March 1969.