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\yiTH OUR SOLDIERS 
 ^ IN FRANCE 
 
 Sherwood Eddy 
 
 Author of "Suffering and Ihe War," "The Students of Asia," etc. 
 
 ASSOCIATION PRESS 
 
 New York: 114 East i8th Stwit 
 1917 
 

 COPTBIGHT, 1917, BT 
 
 The International Committee or 
 Young RIen's Christian As30Ciation8 
 
 .♦. ; 
 
 
 / *" 
 
 
 NOV -15 1917 
 
 
 0^?!.A47g 
 
 089 
 
 *Vi.^ 
 
 /- 
 
To M. H. E. 
 
 AND THE Real Heroes of the War 
 
 THE Mothers Who Have Given Their Sons 
 
 AND the Wives Who Have Given Their Husbands 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAOa 
 
 Foreword ix 
 
 I. At the Front 1 
 
 n. With General Pershing's Force in 
 
 France 21 
 
 III. A Day in the "Bull Ring" 43 
 
 IV. With the British Army 57 
 
 V. Life in a Base Camp 87 
 
 VI. The Camp of the Prodigals Ill 
 
 VII. Religion at the Front 127 
 
 VIII. The World at War 169 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The world is at war. Already more than a 
 score of uations, representing a population of 
 over a thousand millions, or two-thirds of the 
 entire human race, are engaged in a life-and- 
 death struggle on the bloody battlefields of 
 Europe, Asia, and Africa. No man can stand 
 in the mouth of that volcano on a battle front, 
 or meet the trains pouring in with their weary 
 freight of wounded after a battle, or stand by the 
 operating tables and the long rows of cots in the 
 hospitals, or share in sympathy the hardship and 
 suffering of the men who are fighting for us, and 
 remain unmoved. The man must be dead of soul 
 to whom the war does not present a mighty moral 
 challenge. It arraigns our past manner of life 
 and our ver}* civilization. It gives us a new angle 
 of observation, a new point of view, a new test 
 of values. It furnishes a possible moral judg- 
 ment by which we can weigh our life in the 
 balance and see where we have been found want- 
 ing. 
 
 These brief sketches are only fragmentary and 
 have of necessity been hastily written. The writer 
 has been asked to state his imjjression of the 
 work among the men in France. lie did not go 
 there to write but to work. He has tried simply 
 
 ix 
 
X FOREWORD 
 
 to state what he saw and to leave the reader to 
 draw his own conclusions. A mere statement of 
 the grim facts at the front, if they are not sugar- 
 coated or glossed over, may not be pleasant read- 
 ing, but it is unfair to those at home that they 
 should not know the hard truth of the reality of 
 things as they are. 
 
 Before the war broke out, it was the writer's 
 privilege to make an extended tour for work 
 among students in Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, 
 Serbia, and Greece, and to visit Germany. Since 
 the declaration of war, he has visited France, 
 Italy, and Egypt, and has observed the effect of 
 the war throughout Asia, in tours extending over 
 nearly the whole of China and India. Last year 
 he was in the British camps among the soldiers 
 of England, Scotland, and Wales. Since Amer- 
 ica declared war he has been working with the 
 various divisions of the British and American 
 armies in France, from the great base camps, 
 where hundreds of thousands of men are in train- 
 ing, up to the front with the men in the trenches. 
 
 For the sake of those who will follow with 
 deep interest the boys who are already in France, 
 or who will shortly be there, brief accounts are 
 given of the various phases of a soldier's life in 
 the base camps, the training school of the "Bull 
 Ring," at the front, and in the hospitals. 
 
AT THE FRONT 
 
CHAPTER I 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 In the midst of our work at a base camp, there 
 came a sudden call to go "up the line" to the 
 great battle front. Leaving the railway, we took 
 a motor and pressed on over the solidly paved 
 roads of France, which are now pulsing arteries 
 of trattic, crowded with trains of motor transports 
 pouring in their steady stream of supplies for the 
 men and munitions for the guns. Now we turn out 
 for the rumbling tank-like caterpillai'S, which 
 slowly ci-eep forward, drawing the big guns up 
 to the front ; then we pass a light field-battery. 
 Next comes a battalion of Tommies swinging down 
 the road, loaded like Christmas trees with their 
 cumbrous kits, sweating, singing, whistling, as 
 they march by with dogged cheer toward the 
 trenches. 
 
 We have crossed the Somme with its memories 
 of blood, on across northei*n France, and now we 
 have passed the Belgian frontier and are in the 
 historic fields of Flanders, where the creaking 
 windmills are still grinding the peasants' corn, 
 and the little church s})ires stand guard over the 
 sleeping villages. A turn of the road brings us 
 close within sound of the guns, which by night are 
 heard far across France and along the coasts of 
 
 3 
 
4 WITH OUK SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 England. Soon we enter villages, which lie within 
 range of the enemy's ''heavies," with their shat- 
 tered window glass, torn roofs, ruined houses, 
 tottering churches, and deep shell holes in the 
 streets. Now we are in the danger zone and have 
 to put on our shrapnel-proof steel helmets, and 
 box respirators, to be ready for a possible attack 
 of poison gas. 
 
 Another turn in the road, and the great battle 
 field rises in grim reality before us. Far to the 
 left stands the terrible Ypres salient, so long 
 swept by the tide of war, and away to the right 
 are the blasted woods of "Plug Street." Right 
 before us rises the historic ridge of Messines, won 
 at such cost during the summer. We are stand- 
 ing now at the foot of the low ridge where the 
 British trenches were so long held under the 
 merciless fire of the enemy. From here to the 
 top of the ridge the ground has been fought over, 
 inch by inch and foot by foot. It is blasted and 
 blackened, deep seamed by shot and shell. The 
 trees stand on the bare ridge, stiff and stark, 
 charred and leafless, like lonely sentinels of the 
 dead. The ground, without a blade of grass left, 
 is torn and tossed as by earthquake and volcano. 
 Trenches have been blown into shapeless heaps 
 of debris. Deep shell holes and mine craters mark 
 the advance of death. Small villages are left 
 without one stone or brick upon another, mere 
 formless heaps, ground almost to dust. Deserted 
 in wild confusion, half buried in the churned mud, 
 
AT THE FRONT 5 
 
 on eveiy hand are heaps of unused aminunitiou, 
 bombs, {xas shells, and inl'ei'nal machines wrecked 
 or hurriedly left iu the enemy's llight. 
 
 Ilere on June 7th, at three o'clock in the morn- 
 iug, following the heavy bombardment which had 
 been going on for days, the great attack began. 
 In one division alone the heavy guns had fired 
 40,000 shells and the field artillery 180,000 more. 
 The sound of the tiring was heard across France, 
 throughout Belgium and Holland, and over the 
 Surrey downs of England, 130 miles away. 
 
 The Messines ridge is a long, low hill, only 
 about 300 feet iu height, but it commands the 
 countryside for miles around, and had become the 
 heavily fortified barrier to bar the Allied advance 
 between Ypres and Armentiers. Since December, 
 11)14, the Germans had seamed the western slopes 
 with trenches, a network of tunnels ^tind of con- 
 crete redoubts. Behind the ridge lay the German 
 batteries. For months this ridge had been mined 
 and countermined by both sides, until the English 
 had placed 500 tons of high explosive, that is 
 approximately 1,000,000 pounds of ammiuol, be- 
 neath nineteen strategic points which were to be 
 taken. At the foot of the ridge, along a front of nine 
 miles, the British had concentrated their batterie.s, 
 heavy gun.s, and vast supplies of ammunition. 
 Day and night for a week before the battle began, 
 the German positions had bcM?n shelled. At times 
 the hurricane of fire died down, but it never 
 
6 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 ceased. By day and by night the German trenches 
 were raided and explored. A large fleet of tanks 
 was ready for the advance. Hundreds of aviators 
 cleared the air and dropped bombs upon the 
 enemy, assailing his ammunition dumps, aero- 
 dromes, and bases of supplies. The battle had to 
 be fought simultaneously by all the forces on the 
 land, in the air, and in the mines underground. 
 All the horrors of the cyclone and the earthquake 
 were harnessed for the conflict. 
 
 In the early morning, a short, deathly silence 
 followed the week's terrific bombardment. At 
 2:50 a. m. the ground opened from beneath, as 
 nineteen great mines were exploded one by one, 
 and fountains of fire and earth like huge vol- 
 canoes leaped into the air. Hill 60, which had 
 dealt such deadly damage to the British, was 
 rent asunder and collapsed. It was probably the 
 greatest explosion man ever heard on earth up 
 to that time. Then the guns began anew to pre- 
 pare for the attack and a carefully planned bar- 
 rage dropped just in front of the English bat- 
 talions as they advanced. As the men came for- 
 ward, the barrage was lifted step by step and 
 dropped just ahead of them, to pulverize the 
 enemy and protect the British troops. By five 
 o'clock Messines itself was captured by the fear- 
 less Australians. There was a most desperate 
 struggle just here where we were standing at 
 Wytschaete. All morning the battle raged along 
 this line, but by midday it was in the hands of 
 
AT THE FRONT 7 
 
 the dashing Irish division. Seven thousand pris- 
 oners were taken, while the British casualties, 
 owing to the effective protection of their terrific 
 barrage, were far less than the German and only 
 one-fifth of what they had calculated as necessary 
 to take this strategic position. 
 
 We make our way up to the crest of the Mes- 
 sines ridge where we can look back on the con- 
 quered territory and forward to the new lines. 
 The great guns are in action all about us. They 
 are again wearing down the enemy in preparation 
 for the next advance. For the moment we feel 
 only the grand and awful throb of vast titanic 
 forces in terrible conflict. Day and night, in the 
 air, on the earth, and beneath it, the war is slowly 
 or swiftly being waged. The fire of battle smol- 
 ders or leaps into flames or vast explosions, but 
 never goes out. 
 
 Above us the very air is full of conflict. Hang- 
 ing several hundred feet high are half a dozen 
 huge fixed kite-balloons, with their occupants 
 busily observing, sketching, mapping, or report- 
 ing the enemj^'s movements. Each of these is a 
 target for the attacking aeroplanes and the occu- 
 pants must be ready, at a moment's notice, to leap 
 into a parachute when they are shot down. High 
 above these balloons a score of British planes are 
 darting about or dashing over the enemy's lines, 
 acting as the eyes of the huge guns hidden away 
 behind us. We are looking at one far up seem- 
 
8 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 ingly soaring in peace like a graceful bird poised 
 in the air, when suddenly we see it surrounded by 
 a dozen little white patches of smoke which show 
 that it has come within range of the enemy's anti- 
 aircraft guns and the clouds of shrapnel are burst- 
 ing about it. Most of them break wide of the 
 mark and it sails on unscathed over the enemy's 
 lines. Just above us is hanging a German tauhe, 
 obviously watching us and the automobile which 
 we had left below in the road, while the British 
 huge anti-aircraft guns near by are feeling for 
 it, shot after shot. 
 
 We duck into our little Y M C A dugout, just 
 under the crest of the ridge. It is an old, deserted 
 German pit for deadly gas shells, which even now 
 are lying about uncomfortably near, in heaps still 
 unexploded. Here the men going to and from the 
 trenches, come in for hot tea or coffee and re- 
 freshments night and day. A significant sign 
 forbids more than thirty men to congregate at 
 once in this exposed spot, as sometimes these 
 Y M C A dugouts are blown to atoms by a shell. 
 The one down below in 'Tlug Street" has been 
 blown to bits, and the man in the one just up the 
 line has been under such fire for several days that 
 he will have to abandon his dugout. 
 
 Just in front of us over the ridge is the first 
 line of the present British front. There is no 
 time to build trenches now or to dig themselves 
 in. They just hold the broken line of unconnected 
 shell holes, or swarm in the great craters which 
 
AT THE FRONT 9 
 
 are held by rapid fire machine guns. The men 
 go out bj night to relieve those who have been 
 holding the ground during the previous day. It 
 is harder for the enemy's artillery to locate and 
 destroy men scattered in these irregular holes 
 and craters than if they were in a clear line of 
 trenches. Tlic British front faces down the slope 
 toward the bristling German lines, dotted with 
 hidden snipei*s and studded with sputtering 
 machine gims. As the evening falls the batteries 
 behind and all about us open fire. Flash after 
 flash of spurting flame leaps out from the great 
 guns. Boom upon boom, deep voiced and varied, 
 follows from the many calibred guns in the dark- 
 ness, till the night is lurid and the ground be- 
 neath us quivers with the earthquake of bombard- 
 ment. 
 
 High above we hear the piercing shriek of the 
 shells speeding to their fatal mark, and below 
 the crash of the exploding shells of the enemy, 
 which toss the earth in dark waves into the air 
 in the black surf of war. Gun after gun now 
 joins the great chorus, swelling and falling in a 
 hideous symphony of discordant sounds. The 
 whole horizon is lit up and aflame. The sky 
 quivers and reflects the flash of the great guns, 
 as with the constant vibration of heat lightning. 
 Flares and Verey lights of greenish yellow and 
 white turn the night into ghastly day, and like 
 the lurid flames of an inferno light up the battle- 
 field, while the rifles crackle in the glare. Here a 
 
10 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 parachute-light like a great star hangs suspended 
 almost motionless above us, lighting up the whole 
 battlefield, and now a burning farmhouse or ex- 
 ploding ammunition dump illuminates the sky as 
 from some vast subterranean furnace flung open 
 upon the heavens. All the long sullen night the 
 earth is rocked by slow intermittent rumbling, 
 till with the silent dawn the birds wake and the 
 war-giants sink for a few hours in troubled sleep. 
 Then the new day breaks and the war-planes 
 climb in the clear morning air to begin the battle 
 afresh. 
 
 But let us turn from the hard-won ground of 
 Messines to some of the men who fought over it 
 and survived. Here is a young American, Fred 
 
 R , a graduate of Johns Hopkins, who fought 
 
 in this battle with the Canadians, and who told 
 us in his own words the story of those brief hours. 
 
 "Our opening barrage lasted about twenty 
 minutes, but in that short time some two million 
 shells were dropped on the enemy from about nine 
 thousand of our guns. We could hear no distinct 
 reports, just one steady roar of continuous ex- 
 plosion. The ground shook beneath us and frag- 
 ments from the trenches and dugouts caved in 
 about us from the shock. The air was oppressive 
 and you felt difficulty in breathing, as if you were 
 in a vacuum. 
 
 About three o'clock in the morning the order 
 came to 'Stand to!' and shortly after the word 
 rang out 'Up and over! Over the top boys, and 
 the best of luck !' With one foot on the fire step 
 we climbed out of the deep trench and with our 
 
AT THE FRONT 11 
 
 rifles we started forward at a walk, behind our 
 advaiu'iiif; banaf^e. I was tense now an<l all of 
 a tit'iiiblc. At a time like this every man is <lriven 
 to bis <li'('i»('st (iiouj^lits. It is not fear exactly, 
 but apjireiilieiisioii iiiid di-ead of the unknown. 
 
 As we started forward, one yo\nig l)(»y fell at 
 my si<le. I heard him call, '(), Mother I' as he fell. 
 Another cried, 'O, (Jod !' and sank down on the 
 other side. Then my partner, a boy of eij^hteen, 
 fell, both lejjs blown away above the knee. I 
 bound uj> his wounds and carrier! him on my back 
 to the nearest dressing station. 'Fred,' he said, 
 'would you mind kissing me just once? So long!' 
 and with that he was gone. Then T got mad and 
 began to see red. In the first trench I ran amuck 
 and with rifle, bayonet, and bombs I suppose I 
 accounted for twenty men in the hour that fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 I've been gassed three times, twice with the 
 old gas and once with the new, and I've had my 
 .share. Would I like to go home now? Say, I'd 
 rather be a lamp-post at the foot of Michigan 
 Boulevard in Chicago than the whole electric 
 light system in all the rest of the universe!" 
 
 We turned from this young American to Sapper 
 
 W , of Western Canada, who had just been 
 
 through the same battle underground, and asked 
 him to tell us his own story. 
 
 "Well, sir, long before the battle we were dig- 
 ging under Ilill Number GO. A chance shell ex- 
 ploded on the surface above us and buried us 
 all underground. Three of us were killeti and 
 the other two left alive. I had one man across 
 my chest and another across my legs, one dead 
 and the other wounded. We could not move hand 
 
12 WITH OUE SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 or foot. We were buried in there for seven hours 
 and they finally dug us out unconscious. 
 
 Then we started another sap to lay a mine. 
 My pal was listening, with an iron rod driven in 
 the ground and two copper wires leading from 
 it to a head piece, such as a wireless operator 
 uses, so that we could hear the approach of the 
 enemy's sappers, who were countermining against 
 us. My pal asked me to come and listen. But 
 I had hardly got the headpiece on when I said, 
 'O Lord, they're on us !' and before I could get 
 fie thing off my ears the end of our sap fell 
 through and the Germans were at us. There was 
 only room to use revolvers and bayonets in that 
 dark hole and the Germans seemed to get nervous 
 and could not shoot straight in the panic. We 
 lost only one of our men, but we killed seven and 
 took the rest of the twenty prisoners. Then, be- 
 fore they found out what had happened, we 
 crawled through to the German end of the tunnel 
 and blew up their sap. 
 
 You say was I a Christian? Not me! I was 
 wild and going to the devil. But one night I 
 was wounded and lay in a deserted shell hole, shot 
 through the thigh, and unable to move for fifteen 
 hours. I was feeling for a cigarette in my pocket 
 to ease the pain a bit, but all I could find was a 
 little pocket testament which someone had given 
 me, but which I had never read. I managed to 
 get it out and, thinking it might be my last hour, 
 and that I might never be found, I started to read 
 to try and forget my wound. I read the twenty- 
 seventh chapter of Matthew, and sir, that little 
 book changed my life. I have read a chapter 
 every day since then. I was picked up by the 
 infantry and carried to a hospital. One night 
 when I could not sleep for the pain, the nurse 
 
AT THE FRONT 13 
 
 asked nic if slic cduld do anytliiiij^ for ine, and I 
 asked her lo read tlu; Hihie fo nic She said she 
 had never read it in her life, and I said it was 
 about time she bej^an, if that was so. After she 
 read it, slie said it helped her too. Yes, I say 
 my prayers on my knees in the tent now. Another 
 boy has joined me this week; and the lanfjna^e 
 in the tent is gettiiif; better. I'm otT to the front 
 tomorrow to take my tui-n ajjain. But I'm no 
 longer alone up there in the trenches. It's dif- 
 ferent now." 
 
 We have heard the story of one in the infantry 
 and of a sapper underground. Here is the ex- 
 perience of a young Canadian student from Mc- 
 Gill University in the artillery: 
 
 "The past weeks have been ten thousand hells. 
 It is nothing but death, noise, blood, and mud. 
 There are only two of our sergeants left now 
 and we have to keep up our spirits. You often 
 feel as if your brain would burst. I couldn't 
 begin to describe the inferno human beings pass 
 through every day. 'Happy' was shot to pieces 
 with a shell a few nights ago while in bed, both 
 arms and one leg otf. I carried him for over 
 four hours to the nearest dressing station and 
 then stayed and watched him die. He never 
 whimpered. Though in terrible agony, he died 
 game, as he always was. That is about the hard- 
 est knock I have ever had in my life. He is only 
 one of my many friends that have gone. Believe 
 me, war is Hell.'' 
 
 Here is the account of a simple Australian boy 
 
 in the front trench : 
 
 "Fritz had a machine gun to nearly every ten 
 
14 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 yards. I don't know what became of my friends 
 Hugh and Bill. They were just beside me, but 
 when I looked around both were gone. A shell 
 landed just at the side of me, and I think Hugh 
 and Bill were blown to pieces. I got my wound 
 in the chest and the fragment came out through 
 my back. I thought my last day had come. I 
 dropped into a hole, and no sooner had I got in, 
 than Mack got it through the face. He was able 
 to go back, but I was simply helpless, as my legs 
 refused to move. Anyhow, I pulled the shovel 
 off my back and dug a little ridge in the side of 
 the trench. No sooner had I done this than Fritz 
 started to bombard. One shell fell in the hole 
 in which I was, but exploded in the opposite 
 direction. Then another came and landed just 
 above my head, but it failed to go off. Had it 
 gone off I never would have been here now. I 
 had prayed hard to my God to deliver me from 
 my enemies and when those things happened I 
 felt my prayer was heard and that I was going 
 to come through. I was there in that hole all 
 day and the next night before anyone came near 
 me. At last one of the 19th Battalion chaps came 
 along and went for a stretcher for me." 
 
 Such are the varying impressions which a battle 
 makes upon various men. It is no romance, but 
 a grim reality of life and death. Far into the 
 night we lie awake and ask ourselves, what is the 
 meaning of it all? 
 
 At first on the field of battle one thrills at the 
 sound of mighty and unearthly forces loosed, but 
 in the din we suddenly realize that boys are 
 dying all about us, and that these guns bear swift 
 
AT THE FRONT 16 
 
 death aii<l niangliiiij to siitrering men. Between 
 us and the enemy are just a few deep shell holes 
 and a thin red lino of flesh and blood, as a human 
 rampart, foi-med of men who hold their lives in 
 their hands, ready to make the great sacrifice. 
 Behind us are the hidden guns and the siipport 
 trenches in the narrow strip of hard-won terri- 
 tory. Behind these are the moving columns on 
 the long roads, the pulsing arteries of traffic, and 
 the moving troop trains on the rails. Behind 
 these in turn are the plying ships, the millions 
 of toiling workers, and the suffering hearts of the 
 uatit)ns in arms. Whole nations — yes, almost the 
 whole of humanity — are organized for war and 
 dragged into deadly conflict as by some devil's 
 behest, instead of being organized for brother- 
 hood and the building of a better world. Oh, not 
 for this devil's work were men made. Surely 
 mankiml must come to its own in these birth 
 pangs of a new era. Never, never again must a 
 whole humanity of the free-born sons of God be 
 <lragged into the hell of war to sate the pride or 
 pomp of kings, or to glut the ambition of schem- 
 ing secret groups who have taught men that they 
 are created as obedient slaves. 
 
 Far behind us, marking the slow advance up 
 this ridge of death, are the sheltered cemeteries 
 of white crosses that tell the ])rice that has al- 
 ready been paid. There are five thousand crowded 
 graves in yonder acre alone. fJreat is the price, 
 awful in its .solid weight of agony. This is no 
 
16 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 longer a war between two peoples, but between 
 two principles ; it is as much to free the German 
 people as to protect ourselves. It is not for this 
 narrow strip of hard-won soil, but for every foot 
 of a world that from henceforth must be free. 
 The men who are fighting on grounds of moral 
 principle would rather pay any price than lie at 
 ease under the false shadow of militarism, ma- 
 terialism, and grasping greed. These men are 
 fighting, and many of them know that they are 
 fighting, for a new world. Not only military op- 
 pression, but industrial oppression, must go. Not 
 only German militarism, and Russian autocracy, 
 and Turkish cruelty must be done away; but 
 American materialism must be purged in the 
 fiery furnace of this war. Its purposes will reach 
 far beyond our ken, and though man's sin alone 
 has caused the war, its issues are in the hands 
 of God. The whole war has been a demonstration 
 of the result of leaving God out of His world. 
 The world with God left out leaves war; and life 
 with God left out leaves hell. 
 
 There must be a turning to God in our own 
 national life. We speak of the menace of Ger- 
 man militarism, but what is militarism but armed 
 and aggressive materialism, the deeper principle 
 which lies behind it? And what is materialism 
 but organized selfishness? Materialism and self- 
 ishness are the dangers of our own land as well 
 as of Germany. And the war is a call to set our 
 own house in order. 
 
AT THE FRONT 17 
 
 America ?an no longer live to herself alone. 
 She is fighting for the fi-eedoni of humanity. 
 Here on the very Held of battle, at the throbbing 
 heart of the conflict, we ask ourselves, What is 
 the real issue of the war? What are they fighting 
 for? 
 
 Away there in Austria a young crown prince, 
 Francis Ferdinand, was murdered. It was the 
 spark which set oil' the i)owder mine of Europe. 
 But not for him are they fighting. Behind him 
 stood the two contending forces of the growing 
 nationalism of Serbia and the expanding com- 
 mercialism of Austria. These two forces clashed 
 in conflict, but not for them are they fighting. 
 Behind these stood two greater powers, those of 
 pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism, a growing Ger- 
 many and a rising Russia, which like a vast 
 glacier for a thousand years had sought the open 
 sea. The ambitions of these two powers clashed 
 in conflict at Constantinople and elsewhere. But 
 not for them are they fighting. 
 
 On the western front there were two deeper 
 principles in conflict, those of autocracy and 
 democracy, the question whether one man and a 
 sinister, hidden group of plotting militarists 
 could drag the whole world into war and cru.sh 
 its liberties and its laws beneath the iron heel 
 of despotism, or whether man as man should stand 
 erect in his God-given right of freedom and work 
 out his own destiny in friendly brotherhood. 
 
 But behind even the great conflict between 
 
18 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 autocracy and democracy lay a yet deeper issue. 
 In the last analysis the final question in human 
 life is between a material and a spiritual inter- 
 pretation of the universe, whether might makes 
 right and the strong are to rule, or whether right 
 makes might and the moral order is supreme. 
 There is a material and a spiritual side of life. 
 On this side is the brute struggle for life ; on that, 
 the struggle for the life of others ; on the one hand, 
 the fight for the survival of the fittest, and on 
 the other, the fight to make men fit to survive. 
 On the left hand is selfishness and on the right 
 service ; on the one side are the red battlefields of 
 the enemy, and on the other is a cross red in 
 sacrifice of a life laid down in the serving and 
 saving of men. There is a final issue in the world 
 between passion and principle, between wrong 
 and right, between darkness and light, between 
 mammon and God, between self and Christ. 
 
 This ultimate issue must be faced by individ- 
 uals and by nations. It is the challenge which 
 confronts men in this war.. Seventy years ago 
 a crushed Europe faced the issue in the prophetic 
 words of Mazzini, written in the hour of darkness 
 and defeat: 
 
 "Our victory is certain; I declare it with the 
 profoundest conviction, here in exile, and pre- 
 cisely when monarchical reaction appears most 
 insolently secure. What matters the triumph of 
 an hour? What matters it that by concentrating 
 all your means of action, availing yourselves of 
 every artifice, turning to your account those preju- 
 
AT THE FRONT 19 
 
 dices and jealousies of race wliich yel for a while 
 endure, and sjjreadinjj: dislniHt, egotism, and cor- 
 ruption, you have rcj)ulscd our forces and restored 
 the former onler of things? Can you restore men's 
 faith in it, or think you can lonpj maintain it by 
 brute force alone, now that all faith in it is 
 extinct? Threatened and undermined on every 
 side, can you hold all Euroxie forever in a stage 
 of siege ?"^ 
 
 Pasteur sees the same issue looming even in his 
 day and states it in burning words at the close 
 of his life: 
 
 *'Two contrary laws seem to be wrestling with 
 each other nowadays, the one a law of blood and 
 of death, ever seeking new means of destruction 
 and forcing nations to be constantly ready for 
 the battletield ; the other a law of peace, work, 
 and health, ever evolving new means of delivering 
 man from the scourges which beset him. The 
 first seeks violent conquests, the other the relief 
 of humanity. The latter places one human life 
 above any victory, while the former would sacri- 
 fice hundreds and thousands of lives to the ambi- 
 tion of one. Which of these two laws will ulti- 
 mately prevail God only knows. We will have 
 tried, by obeying the laws of humanity, to extend 
 the frontiers of Life."^ 
 
 Lincoln faced the same issue in the midst of 
 the war weariness of our own great conflict with 
 words which come back to the nation now with 
 a prophetic call : 
 
 "The world will little note, nor long remember 
 
 1 Life and WritinKS of Maaxini, vol. v, pp. 269-271. 
 'Life of Pasteur, p. 271. 
 
20 WITH OUE SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 what we say here, but it can never forget what 
 they did here. It is for us the living, rather, 
 to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
 they who fought here have thus far so nobly ad- 
 vanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
 to the great task remaining before us — that from 
 these honored dead we take increased devotion 
 to that cause for which they gave the last full 
 measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve 
 that these dead shall not have died in vain — that 
 this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of 
 freedom, and that government of the people, by 
 the people, for the people shall not perish from 
 the earth." 
 
WITH GENERAL TERSHING'S FORCE IN 
 FRANCE 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WITH GENERAL PERSHING'S FORCE IN 
 FRANCE 
 
 We are in the midst of an American army en- 
 campment in a French village. For miles away 
 over the rolling country the golden harvests of 
 France are ripening in the sun, broken by patches 
 of green field, forest, and stream. The reapers 
 are gathering in the grain. Only old men, women, 
 and children are left to do the work, for the sons 
 of France are away at the battle front. The coun- 
 trj'side is more beautiful than the finest parts 
 of New York or Pennsylvania. In almost every 
 valley sleeps a little French hamlet, with its red 
 tiled roofs and its neat stone cottages, clustered 
 about the village church tower. It is a picture of 
 calm and i)eace and plenty under the summer sun. 
 But the sound of distant guns on the neighboring 
 drill grounds, a bugle call down the village 
 street, the sight of the broad cowboy hats and the 
 khaki uniforms of the American soldiers, arouse 
 us to the realization of a world at war and the 
 fact that our boys are here, fighting for the soil 
 of France and the world's freedom. 
 
 We are in a typical French farming village of 
 a thousand people, and here a thousand American 
 soldiers are quartered. A sergeant and a score 
 23 
 
24 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 of men are in each shed or stable or barn loft. 
 The Americans are stationed in a long string of 
 villages down this railway line. Indeed it is 
 hard to tell for the moment whether we are in 
 France or in the States. Here are Uncle Sam's 
 uniforms, brown army tents, and new wooden 
 barracks. The roads are filled with American 
 trucks, wagons, motors, and whizzing motor- 
 cycles, American mules, ammunition wagons, 
 machine guns, provisions, and supplies, and 
 American sentinels down every street. 
 
 These are the men of the First Division, scat- 
 tered along behind the French lines, being drilled 
 as rapidly as possible to take their place in the 
 trenches for the relief of the hard-pressed French. 
 The nucleus is made up of the men of the old 
 army, who have seen service in Cuba, Porto Rico, 
 the Philippines, Texas, or along the Mexican 
 border. And with them are young boys of nine- 
 teen, twenty, or twenty-one, with clear faces, 
 fresh from their homes, chiefly from the Middle 
 West — from Illinois to Texas. 
 
 The first thing that strikes us as we look at 
 these men is their superb kit and outfit. From 
 the broad cowboy hat, the neat uniform close 
 fitting at the waist, down to their American 
 shoes; from the saddles, bits, and bridles to the 
 nose bags of the horses; from the guns, motors, 
 and trucks down to the last shoe lace, the equip- 
 ment is incomparably the best and most expensive 
 of all that we have seen at the front. The boys 
 
WITH PFJtSHING'8 FORCE 25 
 
 themselves are live, clean, strong, and intelligent 
 fellows, probably the best raw material of any 
 of (ho fighting forces in Europe. The ofTicers tell 
 us dial the American troops are natural marks- 
 men and there are no better riflemen in the war 
 zone. The frequoncy of the sharpshooters' medals, 
 among both the olliccrs and the men, sliows that 
 many of them already excel in musketry. 
 
 The second impression that strikes us is the 
 crudeness of the new men, and the lack of finish 
 in their drill, as compared with the veteran troops 
 of Britain and France. The progress they have 
 made, however, in the past few weeks under their 
 experienced American officers of the regular army 
 has been truly remarkable. 
 
 The next impression we receive is the enormous 
 moral danger to which these men are exposed in 
 this far-away foreign land. During the whole 
 war it is tlie Overseas Forces, the men farthest 
 from home influences, who have no hope of leave 
 or furlough, who are far removed from all good 
 women and the steadying intluence of their own 
 reputations, that have fared the worst in the war. 
 The Americans not only share this danger with 
 the Colonials and other Overseas Forces, but they 
 have an additional danger in their high pay. 
 Here are enlisted men who tell us that they are 
 paid from |35 to §5)0 a month, from the lowest 
 private to the best paid sergeants. When you 
 remember that the Russian private is allowed 
 only one cent a day, that the Belgian soldier re- 
 
26 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 ceives only four cents a day, the French private 
 five cents, the German six cents, and the English 
 soldier twenty-five cents a day, most of which has 
 to go for supplementary food to make up for the 
 scantiness of the rations supplied, you realize 
 what it means for the American soldier to be paid 
 from one to three dollars a day, in addition to 
 clothing, expenses, and the best rations of any 
 army in Europe.^ 
 
 Some of these men tell us that they have just 
 received from two to three months' back pay in 
 cash. Here they are with several hundred francs 
 in their hands, buried in a French village, with 
 absolutely no attraction or amusement save drink 
 and immorality. In this little village the only 
 prosperous trade in evidence is that in wines and 
 liquors. The only large wholesale house is the 
 center of the liquor trade and the only freight 
 piled up on the platform of the station consists 
 of wines and champagnes, pouring in to meet the 
 demand of the American soldiers. There are a 
 score of drinking places in this little hamlet. 
 Our boys are unaccustomed to the simple and 
 moderate drinking of the French peasants, and 
 they are plunged into these estaminets with their 
 pockets full of money. Others under the influence 
 of drink have torn up the money or tossed it 
 recklessly away. Prices have doubled and trebled 
 
 'According to the War Bulletin of the National Geographic Society, 
 issued in Washington in September 1917, a first dass American private 
 drawing $36.60 a month receives more than a Russian colonel or a German 
 or Austrian lieutenant. An American Ueutenant receives more than a 
 British lieutenant colonel, a French colonel, or a Russian general. 
 
WITH PERSHING'S FORCE 27 
 
 in the village in a few weeks, and the peasants 
 have tome to the conclusion that every American 
 soldier must be a millionaire; as the boys have 
 sometimes told them that the pile of notes, which 
 represents several months' pay, is the amount 
 they receive every month. Compare this with the 
 fl.80 a month, in addition to a small allowance 
 for his family, which the French private gets, 
 and you will readily see how this false impression 
 is formed. 
 
 Temptation and solicitation in Europe have 
 been in almost exact proportion to the pay that 
 the soldier receives. The harpies flock around 
 the men who have the most money. As our Ameri- 
 can boys are the best paid, and perhaps the most 
 generous and open-hearted and reckless of all the 
 troops, they have proved an easy mark in Paris 
 and the port cities. As soon as they were paid 
 sereral months' back salary, some of them took 
 "French leave," went on a spree, and did not 
 come back until they were penniless. The officers, 
 fully alive to the danger, are now doing their 
 utmost to cope with the situation; they are seek- 
 ing to reduce the cash payments to the men and 
 are endeavoring to persuade them to send more 
 of their money home. Court martial and strict 
 punishment have been imposed for drunkenness, 
 in the effort to grapple with this evil. 
 
 Will the friends of our American boys away in 
 France try to realize just the situation that con- 
 fronts them? Imagine a thousand healthy, happy, 
 
28 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 reckless, irrepressible American youths put down 
 in a French village, without a single place of 
 amusement but a drinking hall, and no social 
 life save such as they can find with the French 
 girls standing in the doorways and on the street 
 corners. Think of all these men shut up, month 
 after month, through the long winter, with noth- 
 ing to do to occupy their evenings. Then you will 
 begin to realize the seriousness of the situation 
 which the Young Men's Christian Association is 
 trying to meet. 
 
 Here on the village green stands a big tent, 
 with the sign "The American Y M C A," and the 
 red triangle, which is already placed upon more 
 than seven hundred British, French, and Ameri- 
 can Association centers in France. Inside the 
 tent, as the evening falls, scores of boys are sit- 
 ting at the tables, writing their letters home on 
 note paper provided for them. Here are men 
 playing checkers, dominoes, and other games. 
 Other groups are standing around the folding 
 billiard tables. A hundred men have taken out 
 books from the circulating library, while others 
 are scanning the home papers and the latest news 
 from the front. 
 
 Our secretaries have been on the ground for a 
 week, working daily from five o'clock in the morn- 
 ing until midnight. They have unpacked their 
 goods and are doing a driving trade over the 
 counter, to the value of some |200 a day. In cer- 
 tain cases goods are sold at a loss, as it is very 
 
WITH PERSHING'S FORCE 29 
 
 hard iiulcod to pet supplies under i»reseiit war 
 conditions. Tlu' steainei' "Kansan" was tor- 
 pedoed, and sank \vi(li the whole first shipment 
 of supplies and equipment for the YMCA huts 
 in France. 
 
 Outside a baseball game is exciting rivalry be- 
 tween two companies; while near the door of the 
 tent a ring is formed and tlie men are cheering 
 pair after pair as they put on the boxing gloves 
 and with good humor are learning to take some 
 rather heavy slugging. Poor boys, they will have to 
 stand much worse punishment than this before the 
 winter is over. Just beside the present tent there 
 is being rushed into position a big Y M C A hut 
 which will accommodate temporarily a thousand 
 men, before it is taken to pieces and shipped to 
 some new center. The Association has ordered 
 from Paris a number of permanent pine huts, 
 GO by 120 feet, which will accommodate 2,000 
 soldiers each, and keep them wami and well occu- 
 pied during the long cold winter evenings tliat 
 are to come. On the railway siding at the mo- 
 ment are nine temporary huts, packed in sections 
 for immediate construction, and a score of per- 
 manent buildings have been ordered to be erected 
 as fast as the locations for the camps are selected 
 by the military authorities. Indeed, the aim is to 
 have them on the ground and ready before the 
 boys arrive and take the first plunge in the wrong 
 direction. 
 
 What is the life that our boys are living here 
 
30 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 at the front? Let us go through a day with the 
 battalion quartered in this village. At five 
 o'clock in the morning the first bugle sounds. 
 The boys are quickly on their feet, dressing, wash- 
 ing, getting ready for the day's drill. In half 
 an hour they are tucking away a generous break- 
 fast provided by Uncle Sam, of hot bacon, fried 
 potatoes and coffee, good home made bread, and 
 as much of it as a man can eat. They get meat 
 twice a day, and we have found no soldiers in 
 Europe who receive rations that compare with 
 the food that our boys receive. 
 
 By 6 : 40 a. m. the men have reached the drill 
 ground on the open fields above the village and 
 are ready to begin the eight or nine hours of hard 
 work and exercise that is before them. Half of 
 each day is spent with the French troops, learning 
 more quickly with an object lesson before them, 
 and the remaining half day is spent in training 
 by themselves. The French squad goes through 
 the drill or movement; then the American bat- 
 talion, after watching them, is put through the 
 same practice. They are trained in bayonet work 
 and charges, in musketry and machine gun prac- 
 tice, in the handling of grenades, and the throw- 
 ing of bombs. There is evidence of speeding up 
 and an apparent pressure to get them quickly 
 into shape, in order to take their place in the 
 trenches before the winter sets in. A few weeks 
 at the front with the French troops will soon 
 give them experience, and after a winter in the 
 
WITH PERSHING'S FOHCE 31 
 
 treiu'hes, the nieii of these fii-st (livisioiis will 
 doubtless form the nucleu.s for a large American 
 army, and provide tlie drill masters quickly to 
 train the men for the spring oU'ensive. 
 
 On the day we were there, after a hard morn- 
 ing's drill, the ("olcMiel assendded three battalions 
 and put them through the first regimental forma- 
 tion and the first regimental review since landing 
 in France. The men of the First, Second, and 
 Third battalions marched by, and one could 
 quickly contrast the disciplined movements of the 
 veterans or old soldiers with the crude drill of 
 the new recruits, some of whom could not keep 
 step or smoothly execute the movements. 
 
 At the noon hour, after the men had taken their 
 midday meal and had rested for a few minutes, 
 the Colonel asked us if we would address the 
 troops. Some two thousand men were niarchcil 
 in close formation around the large military 
 wagon on which we were to stand. The mules 
 were unhitched ami the men seated themselves on 
 the grass, while the band played several pieces. 
 A great hunger of heart possesses any man with 
 half a soul as he looks into the faces of these boys, 
 beset by tierce temptations and facing a terrible 
 viinter in the trenches. At the beginning we re- 
 minded them of the words of Lord Kitchener to 
 his troops before they left for France : "You are 
 ordered abroad as a soldier. . . Kemember that 
 the honor of the Army dep<Mids upon yonr individ- 
 ual conduct. . . Your duty cannot be done unless 
 
32 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 your health is sound. So keep constantly on your 
 guard against any excesses. In this new experi- 
 ence you may find temptations both in wine and 
 women. You must entirely resist both tempta- 
 tions, . . treating all women with perfect cour- 
 tesy."2 Kitchener's words furnish a text for the 
 two-fold danger which confronts these men. Here 
 for an unhurried hour, with the generous backing 
 of the oflBcers, we plead with the men on military, 
 medical, and moral grounds, for the sake of their 
 own homes and families, for the sake of conscience 
 and country, on the grounds of duty both to God 
 and to man, to hold to the high ideals and the 
 best traditions of the homeland. Here, with no 
 church save the great dome of God's blue heaven 
 above us, seated on the green grass, under the 
 warm summer sun, we have the priceless privilege 
 of trying to safeguard the life of these men in 
 the grave danger of wartime. 
 
 We were encouraged alike by the splendid sup- 
 port of the officers and the warm-hearted and 
 eager response of the men as they broke into 
 prolonged applause. The General in command 
 attended one meeting and pledged us his support 
 for our whole program for the men. He had 
 already cooperated with us most generously on 
 the Canal Zone, in the Philippines, and in 
 Mexico. Three colonels presided at three suc- 
 cessive meetings, and gave the work their strong 
 moral support. Three bands were furnished in 
 
 2 See Appendix IV. 
 
WITH PEHSniNG'S FORCE 33 
 
 two (lays. The official backing of \hv. aiillioritie.s 
 placed the stamp of approval on the wliolc moral 
 eflfort for the welfare of the men. In no otlicr 
 army in lMiroi)e that we have .seen have the ofli- 
 cers taken such a keen interest in tli<! liighest 
 welfare of the troops, or offered such constant 
 and cnicieut cooperation with every etfort to sur- 
 round the men with the best moral influences. 
 
 After the meeting, the regimental parade and 
 the strenuous physical drill of the morning, the 
 Colonel called for a short break, and the men 
 gathered to learn some popular songs. Major 
 Roosevelt assembled his battalion, and Archie 
 Roosevelt enthusiastically led the men in singing 
 Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Re- 
 public" and the modern soldier songs of the war. 
 
 After nine hours of hard drill, the men swung 
 cheerfully down the hillside into the village 
 street. Now they have lined up, and with raven- 
 ous appetites are waiting for the evening meal. 
 We are almost as hungry as they, and are glad 
 to share the meal with them. Here on the table 
 are huge piles of good home-made bread. It is 
 almost the first white bread we have seen after 
 months of brown war bread in England and 
 France. Here are heaping plates of good pork 
 and beans, tinned salmon, plenty of frie<l pota- 
 toes, and pil)iiig hot coffee. This is followed by 
 a delicious pudding, as good as the men would 
 have had in their own homes. Well fed, well 
 clothed, well equipped, sleeping under Uncle 
 
34 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 Sam's warm blankets, on comfortable "Gold 
 Medal" cots, our boys are well cared for. 
 
 In another village, at the close of the day, the 
 Colonel commanding two battalions of the infan- 
 try called the men together in the open square 
 of the market place, and after a band concert 
 invited us to address the troops on the moral 
 issues of the war. The next day almost the same 
 program was repeated, and at noon in an open 
 field on a grassy hillside the Major of another 
 battalion marched out his men for a similar lec- 
 ture. Every commanding officer seemed eager to 
 arrange for meetings, to summon the men, and 
 to back up the messages given to them. Not only 
 have General Pershing, General Sibert, and the 
 Colonels commanding the various regiments, met 
 us half way in every plan for the welfare of the 
 troops; but they have taken the initiative in in- 
 sisting that every provision should be made for 
 the physical, mental, and moral occupation and 
 safeguarding of the men. 
 
 Probably more men are led astray in the war 
 zone w'hen they go on leave than at any other 
 time, in reaction from the deadly monotony of 
 camp life, or the inferno of the trenches. London 
 and Paris are the chief centers of danger. In 
 London, just before sailing for the States, we 
 visited the finely equipped American "Eagle" Hut 
 in the Strand. It would be difficult to devise a 
 more homelike or attractive place for soldiers. 
 In addition to sleeping accommodations for sev- 
 
WITH IMOKSHING'S FOKCE 35 
 
 eral huiulred iiieii, llie lounge and recreation 
 rooms, the big fireplaces and comfortable chairs 
 suggested the equipment of an up-to-date club, in 
 marked contrast to the surroundings of a cheer- 
 less soldiers' barracks. 
 
 In Paris, in addition to the permanent head- 
 quarters at 31 Avenue Montaigne, we are hoping 
 to provide hotels and hostels and guides for super- 
 vised parties to see the chief points of interest, 
 and to plan such healthy occupation for the sol- 
 diers that the evils of the city may be counter- 
 acted. Better still we are planning resorts in the 
 French Alps, where summer and winter sports, 
 athletics, mountain climbing, and physical and 
 mental recreation will obviate altogether the 
 necessity of leave to Paris for many of the sol- 
 diers of the United States and Canada. In the 
 first resort we are arranging for special rates and 
 moderate charges at the hotels and have the 
 pledge of the civil authorities to keep the place 
 wholesome and absolutely to prevent the incom- 
 ing of camp followers. The Association is plan- 
 ning to take over the best hotel, which can be 
 made into an attractive social center for the 
 entire camp. A score of American and as many 
 Canadian ladies will help to provide social recrea- 
 tion and amusement for the men, which will prove 
 a greater attraction than the dangerous leave in 
 Paris. 
 
 A glance at one or two typical meetings held 
 in various camps will show how we are trying to 
 
36 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 help our boys face the pressing problems of a 
 soldier's life. 
 
 We enter a large hut filled with a thousand 
 soldiers. Here are many men who have been 
 driven toward God and who are face to face with 
 the great realities of life, death, and the future 
 as never before in their lives, eager for any mes- 
 sage which may help them. But here are several 
 hundred others who have fallen victims to evil 
 habits and who are determined you shall not force 
 religion down their throats. How are we to cap- 
 ture the attention of this mass of men and hold 
 them? Will they bolt or stand fire? The time 
 has come to begin the meeting and we plunge in. 
 "Come on, boys, let's have a sing-song; gather 
 round the piano and let's sing some of the old 
 camp songs." Out come the little camp song 
 books, and we start in on a few favorite choruses. 
 A dozen voices call for "John Brown's Body," 
 "Tennessee," "Kentucky Home," "A Long, Long 
 Trail," etc. Soon we have several hundred men 
 seated around the piano and the chorus gathers 
 in volume. Now we call for local talent. A boy 
 with blue eyes and a clear tenor voice sings of 
 home. A red-headed humorist climbs on the 
 table; and at his impersonations, his acting, and 
 comic songs, the crowd shouts with glee. 
 
 Our heart sinks within us as we look over this 
 sea of faces and wonder how we are going to hold 
 this crowd that this man seems to have in the 
 hollow of his hand. Somehow these men must 
 
WITH PERSHING'S FORCE 37 
 
 be gripped and held to the last. "Boys, what was 
 the greatest battle of the war?" we ask. "Was 
 it the brave stand of little Belgium at Liege? 
 Was it the splendid retreat of the little British 
 army from Mons? Was it the battle of the Marne, 
 when the French and British struck their first 
 offensive blow? Was it the great stand at Ypres, 
 or the defense of Verdun, or the drive on the 
 Somnie? What is your hardest battle? Is it not 
 within, in the fight with passion? Now is the 
 time to challenge every sin that weakens a man 
 or the nation. How about drink? Is it a friend 
 or foe? How about gambling? How about im- 
 purity?" Here we mass our guns on the greatest 
 danger of the war. In five minutes the room is 
 quiet, in ten minutes we have the ear of every 
 man in the hut, the last man has stopped talking, 
 and now the battle is on. They are grip])ed on 
 the moral question ; how can we get them to the 
 religious issue? These men have the root of 
 religion in their souls, but they do not know it. 
 They believe in strength, in purity, in generosity. 
 We show that they are often falling before temp- 
 tation, but the very things that they most admire 
 are all found in their fulness in Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now we make use of a simple illustration. We 
 hold up a gold coin hidden in our hand and offer 
 it as a gift. "Who will take me at my word and 
 ask for this gift?" At last a man rises in the 
 back of the hall, there is a little scene, and then 
 a burst of applause as he receives it and goes to 
 
38 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 his seat. "Now why didn't you come? Some of 
 you didn't believe me, some were ashamed to come 
 up before everybody and ask for it, some were 
 just waiting; and so all lost your chance. Once 
 again I ofifer a gift. Here is something more valu- 
 able than all the gold on earth — heaven to be 
 had for the asking ; the free gift of God is eternal 
 life. Why don't you come? For the same three 
 reasons. Some of you don't believe, some are 
 afraid to show their colors, some are just waiting. 
 You will soon start for the front to take your 
 place in the trenches. Are you ready for life or 
 death? What will you do with Jesus Christ?" 
 
 We have had them forty minutes now and many 
 a man is listening as for his life. We hold up 
 the pledge card of the war roll. "How many of 
 you are willing to take your stand against drink, 
 gambling, and impurity, to break away from sin, 
 and to sign the war roll, which says: 'I pledge 
 my allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ as my 
 Saviour and King, by God's help to fight His 
 battles and bring victory to His Kingdom' ? Who 
 will take his stand for Christ and sign tonight?" 
 Here and there all over the house men begin to 
 rise. A hundred come forward to get cards and 
 sign them. Then every head is bowed and in the 
 stillness we pray for these boys; for they are 
 mere lads, with ruddy cheeks, fresh from the 
 farm or the city. 
 
 Now the meeting breaks up and we move down 
 into the crowd. Men come up and ask for private 
 
WITH PERSHING'S FORCE 30 
 
 talks, some to confess their sins and others to 
 re(jm'sf prayer. Here is a boy who is frien<lle8s 
 and lionieless and in need; the next man has just 
 lost his wife, his Iiome, and his money, but here 
 in the war he has been driven to prayer and has 
 found God. He has lost everything, but he tells 
 us with a brave smile that he has gained all, and 
 now wishes to prepare for the ministry to i)reach 
 the Gospel. Next is a young atheist, an illegiti- 
 mate child, a circus actor, who has now found 
 God and wants to know how to relate his life 
 to Christ. The next man is a jockey, who in the 
 midst of his sins enlisted in order that he might 
 die for others and try to atone for his past life. 
 
 Later, we were holding evangelistic meetings 
 among the boys of another regiment. One Sun- 
 day evening we were in a big hut where the meet- 
 ing was about to begin. Many of the men were 
 writing to the old folks at home. Captain "Peg" 
 of Canada, who was with us to lead the singing, 
 stepped on the platform and announced a hymn. 
 Immetliately several hundred men flocked to the 
 seats and began singing the Christian hymns they 
 knew at home. Eyes lit up and faces were aglow 
 as they sang "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "Lead, 
 Kindly Light," and "Fight the Good Fight." 
 Gradually the numbers increased until a thou- 
 sand men were singing. Then we began the ad- 
 dress. Here were open-hearted boys some of whom 
 had gone down before the temptations of the port 
 cities and who now have to face the dangers of 
 
40 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 a camp in France. We began on moral themes. 
 Within half an hour it seemed as if the better 
 nature of every man was with us. The Chris- 
 tian ideals of home, of the Church, and of their 
 own best selves surged up again, until we had 
 seated and standing nearly twelve hundred men, 
 many of whom were ready to make the fight for 
 purity with the help of Jesus Christ. One can 
 never forget that closing hymn as the men rose 
 to sing "God Be With You Till We Meet Again." 
 We saw tear-stained faces before us as nearly the 
 whole company joined in the song "Tell Mother 
 I'll Be There." 
 
 Here was one poor fellow who felt he could not 
 sign the decision card. He sent up this little 
 note: "I am the worst man in the tent — a man 
 who robbed his old father of his life's savings. 
 How can I hope to be any good again without 
 any prospect of ever being able to repay this 
 money?" But before he left he had accepted 
 God's forgiveness, and the dawn of a new eternity 
 breaks upon his happy face. There was another 
 man, the worst character in the regiment. Finally, 
 touched by the secretary's kindness, he had read 
 his little pocket Testament in prison, had yielded 
 his life to Christ, and was now witnessing among 
 the soldiers in the camp. Another, broken down, 
 came up to say he had wronged a girl at home, 
 and to ask if there was any hope for him. The 
 
 last man. Bob A , serving at present with a 
 
 British regiment, tells us he was a Christian in 
 
WITH TERSHING'S FORCE 41 
 
 Cleveland, Ohio, before tlic war. He lay all last 
 iilpht <lruiik in Iho fields, l»u(, convictcMl of his 
 in'ollijjalc life, he ropeiited and turned back aj^ain 
 lo (}()d. There was another boy who stopped to 
 tell us that ever since a previous nieotiiif? he had 
 knelt in prayer every night before all the men. 
 
 At the close of the meeting another man stepped 
 up and handed in a letter, saying: "Thank you 
 for that message tonight, sir, I will be true to 
 the little girl I left at home. Here is a letter I 
 had just written to a bad woman. God helping 
 me I will not go. I have signed the War Roll 
 tonight and I am going to be true to it." Hun- 
 dreds of men filed past and shook hands in grati- 
 tude. 
 
 We were facing an average of some five hundred 
 men everj' night in the week and a thousand or 
 more on Sunday. One humble private who had 
 been a pilot out at sea, handed us a poem which 
 he had just written, the last lines of which are 
 typical of the verses many of the men are writing 
 these days : 
 
 "And if I fall, Lord, take an erring mortal 
 
 Into those realms of peace and joy above; 
 And, by-aud-by, at Thy fair mansion's portal, 
 Let me find there the little girl I love." 
 
 In all our meetings our aim has been to enable 
 men to find themselves by coming into a personal 
 and vital relation with God as Father, through 
 Jesus Christ. Our purpose is to evangelize, but 
 
42 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 not to proselytize. We aim to make each man 
 more loyal to his own church. During the three 
 years of the war, we have never known of a man 
 changing his church or being asked to do so. Our 
 aim is not to change any man's ecclesiastical posi- 
 tion, but to make him a truer and stronger man 
 in the church where he is. The great outstand- 
 ing issue in war time is not between creed and 
 creed, between sect and sect, but between God 
 and mammon, between right and wrong, purity 
 and impurity. We have no contention concern- 
 ing the questions that divide us; we are fighting 
 for the great fundamentals upon which we are 
 all united, for God and moral manhood. 
 
A DAY IN THE "BULL RING" 
 
CHAPTER III 
 A DAY IN THE ''BULL RING" 
 
 Just before going into the trenches the British, 
 French, and American troops take a final course 
 for a few weeks in a training school, where the 
 expert drill masters put them through a rigorous 
 discipline, and the finishing touches are given 
 to each regiment. At the moment of writing our 
 American boys are going through such a course, 
 "somewhere in France." The men commonly call 
 this training school, or specially prepared final 
 drill ground, the ''Bull Eing." It is a thrilling 
 spectacle to see many thousands of men across 
 a vast plain going through the various maneuvers 
 of actual warfare as it is practiced today at the 
 front. Perhaps a brief description of such a drill 
 ground may be of interest to those who are fol- 
 lowing the fortunes of our soldiers. 
 
 At six the bugle sounds and the whole camp 
 is astir. Outside there is the clatter of feet as 
 the men fall in after a hasty breakfast. The 
 shrapnel-proof steel helmets are donned, the 
 heavy seventy-pound kits and rifles are swung to 
 the broad backs, the band strikes up 'Tack Up 
 Your Troubles," and our battalion is on the 
 march for the "Bull King.'' 
 46 
 
46 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 First comes the ceremonial parade. A whole 
 brigade swings into line and must prove that it 
 can move as one man, as a perfect machine, with- 
 out flaw or friction. One master mind directs 
 every motion, and at the word of command thou- 
 sands of feet are moving in exact time, wheeling, 
 marching, maneuvering with a precision that 
 proves the long months of patient practice. This 
 finish of discipline and perfection of unity have 
 their part to play in the winning of the battle 
 raging at this moment up the line. 
 
 Next the men must pass through the deadly 
 gas chambers, to be ready to meet the attack of 
 the enemy fully prepared. More fatal than the 
 prussic acid which the Prussian has occasionally 
 employed, is the deadly mixture of chlorine and 
 phosgene, which has been most commonly used. 
 In a gentle favoring wind it is put over invisible 
 in the darkness, and if it catches the foe unpre- 
 pared, can kill from ten to fifteen miles behind 
 the lines. The mixture is squirted as a liquid 
 from metal generators. It quickly forms a dense 
 greenish yellow cloud of poison vapor, which 
 floats away in the darkness. Its success must 
 depend on the element of surprise, taking the 
 enemy unprepared and choking him, awake or 
 asleep, in the first few moments before the horns, 
 gongs, and whistles send the alarm for miles be- 
 hind the trenches. 
 
 Recently a new so-called "mustard gas" has 
 been used by the enemy with deadly effect, owing 
 
A DAY IN THE "BULL RING" 47 
 
 to the fact that it is both invisible and odorless. 
 It is sent over in exploding shells, and sinks in 
 a heavy invisible vapor abont the sleeping men, 
 creeping into their dugonts and trenches or en- 
 veloping them around the guns or in the shell 
 holes. The etTects do not manifest themselves 
 for several honrs. With stinging pain the man's 
 eyes begin to close, and for a time he may go 
 almost blind. He is then taken violently sick. 
 The snrface of the lungs and the entire body, 
 especially where it is moist with perspiration, is 
 burned. The skin may blister and come otf. Many 
 cases have proved fatal and many more sutler 
 cruelly for weeks in hospital. With the men 
 we attended a lecture on the nature of the vari- 
 ous gases used by the enemy and the proper 
 methods of meeting them. The lecture through- 
 out was unconsciously couched almost in theo- 
 logical language. The instructor first disposed 
 of what he called superstitious "heresies" con- 
 cerning the gas, in order to prevent the men from 
 having ])anic and "getting the wind u])." There 
 is a foolish rumor which says, "One breath and 
 you are ruptured for life, or you fall dead the 
 next morning," etc., etc., but he warns the men 
 of its deadly nature and tells them they are to 
 be .saved from its fatal effects by knowing the 
 truth. 
 
 The instructor explains that if they take four 
 deep breaths it will prove fatal: "One breath and 
 you catch the tirst spasm, two and you are mad, 
 
48 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 three and you are unconscious, four and you are 
 dead. If you keep your presence of mind and 
 hold your breath you will have six seconds to 
 get on your gas helmet or respirator," The at- 
 tack, remember, is a surprise in the dark; brain- 
 splitting gas shells are dropping on all sides, and 
 it is hard to keep cool and hold one's breath in 
 the moment of sudden surprise and panic. We 
 are told that there are fifteen mistakes which are 
 easily possible in getting on this complicated 
 helmet, or if there is one big blunder in the sud- 
 den surprise the man is done for. 
 
 Before going through the death chamber, hel- 
 mets are inspected, to see that they are sound and 
 unpunctured, and the men are drilled in the open 
 to practice putting them on quickly. Suddenly 
 the warning whistle of an imaginary gas attack 
 sounds. One backward fling of the head and the 
 steel helmet falls off, for there is no time to lift 
 it off. A dive into the bag carried on the chest 
 and the respirator is grasped and with one skilful 
 swoop it is drawn over the face. Your nose is 
 pinched shut by a clamp, your teeth grip the 
 rubber mouthpiece, and, like a diver, you must 
 now get your one safe stream of pure air through 
 the respirator. You draw in the air from a tube 
 which rises from a tin of chemical on your chest. 
 Then you can breathe in the dense, deadly, green- 
 ish chlorine vapor, for as it passes through the 
 respirator filled with chemicals, it is absorbed, 
 neutralized, oxidized, and purified into a stream 
 
A DAY IN THE ''BULL RING" 49 
 
 of pure air. All about you may be choking fumes 
 of death which would kill you in four seconds, 
 yet you will be comijletely iniimiiie, breathing a 
 purified atmosphere. 
 
 The soldiers are now marched up to this cham- 
 ber of horrors to walk through the poison gas. 
 Many have "the wind up" (i. e., they are afraid 
 inside, but are ashamed to show it). Reliance 
 on the guide, the expert who has been through 
 it all, and the sense of companionship, the 
 stronger ones unconsciously strengthening the 
 weak, have a steadying effect upon all the men. 
 The soldiers have had four hours' drill to prepare 
 them, but the "padre" and I, who are now per- 
 mitted to go through, have had but four minutes. 
 1 am trying to remember a number of things all 
 at once. Above all I must keep cool and assure 
 myself that there is no danger if only I trust and 
 obey what the expert has said. I Hing on the 
 helmet and we start into the death chamber, but 
 suddenly a string is loo.se — will the respirator 
 work? There seems to be something the matter 
 with my nosepiece which should be clamped shut. 
 1 would like to ask the instructor just one ques- 
 tion to make sure, but I can no more talk than 
 a diver beneath the sea. It is too late, we are 
 moving, I can only hope and trust the helmet 
 will hold. We have left the sunlight and are in 
 a long dark covered chamber, like a trench, grop- 
 ing forward, and looking at a distant point of 
 light through the dim goggles. We are alone in 
 
50 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 these deadly fumes, the instructor is not here, 
 there is a tense silence, and all about us is the 
 poison of death. Oh, what was that fourth point 
 that I was to remember? Why has the guide 
 turned back? I thought we were to go out at 
 the further end, where last week the poor fellow 
 fell who lifted his helmet a moment too soon after 
 he got out and caught one whiff which sent him 
 to the hospital, but instead we seem to be turning 
 around and going back. But there is no time 
 for explanations or questions now; we just plod 
 on through the darkness and soon we are out in 
 the sunlight again — safe ! — in God's pure air. Oh, 
 why did man ever want to pollute it and poison 
 his brother with these deadly fumes of hell ! 
 
 As a special favor, the instructor allows us, 
 without a mask, to take one swift look into the 
 fumes as we hold our breath. That yellow green 
 chlorine will corrode the lungs and fill them with 
 pus and blood. The phosgene is much more 
 deadly and will strike the man down with sudden 
 failure of the heart. 
 
 We were also sent through a chamber of the 
 invisible "tear gas," without a mask. The object 
 of this is to take away the fear of the gas from 
 the men. This particular gas has no effect upon 
 the lungs, but sends a stinging pain through the 
 eyes, so that one weeps blindly for some minutes 
 and could not possibly see to shoot or to defend 
 himself. 
 
 We are now ready to return to another lecture 
 
A DAY IN THE "BULL RING" 51 
 
 with more understanding. No wonder these tired 
 boys under the heavy, hot steel helmets, which 
 absorb the heat of the scorching sun, are listening 
 with all their ears, yet one or two fall asleep fur 
 very weariness and may again be caught na])ping 
 by the enemy's poison gas up the line. The in- 
 structor is in dead earnest, for the life of every 
 man during the coming conflict may depend upon 
 his message. His words are still in my ears, 
 for they were strangely like a sermon : 
 
 "Men, I am going to tell you the truth about 
 this deadly gas and you must believe it, for your 
 life will depend upon it. It can kill and no doubt 
 about it. But for every poison of the enemy 
 there's an antidote and we have found it. Your 
 helmet is perfect and you simply must believe in 
 it, you must trust to it. We have made full pro- 
 vision for your safety. If you go under it will 
 be your own fault from one of four causes — un- 
 belief, disobedience, carelessness, or fear. If you 
 carelessly go without your helmet it means death. 
 During an attack, after putting on the respirator, 
 just stand and wait. There is nothing you can 
 do for yourself except to keep your helmet on. 
 Your skill, your strength are nothing. Now if 
 you are caught in an attack unawares remember 
 if you're still alive at all, there's hope. Don't 
 lose courage. If your confidence goes, you lose 
 ninety per cent of your defense, for the sole hope 
 of the enemy in gas is surprise and panic. If you 
 are gassed, don't move. Keep still, keep warm, 
 
52 WITH OUR SOLDIEES IN FEANCE 
 
 don't worry, and wait. To move or try to save 
 yourself will be fatal. 
 
 "The enemy will put over three or four waves 
 with a break between. The gas may come for 
 some hours. To remove your helmet before the 
 attack is over will be fatal. Within a quarter 
 of an hour after the gas has ceased, the charge 
 of the enemy will come and you must never let 
 him get past your barbed wired entanglements. 
 After exposure to gas, all food, water, and wells 
 are poisonous. The heavy gas must be expelled 
 from the trenches by fans before the charge 
 comes. Only remember, you must believe what 
 I say, keep your helmet on in time of danger and 
 you are perfectly safe." 
 
 There is a vast difference between the warning 
 and the preparatory exposure to the gas by your 
 guide and the deadly surprise of the enemy. The 
 former is a trial to prepare you, the latter is an 
 effort to destroy you. The whole experience was 
 so obviously parallel to the deadly moral dangers 
 which surround the soldier in war time that it 
 needs no comment. The one and only safety in 
 the time of temptation is to put on the whole 
 armor of God, especially the "helmet of salva- 
 tion," then to trust and obey and stand fast. 
 
 The writer has just come from a ward in the 
 hospital filled with patients suffering from the 
 new gas which the enemy has lately put over. It 
 is, as we have said, invisible and odorless, so 
 the men receive no warning, and consequently do 
 
A DAY IN THE "BULL RING" 53 
 
 not put on their masks. They do not know that 
 they are l)eiM<^ <j;ass(Ml until hours afterwards, 
 w^hen they tind tliey are burned from head to foot. 
 Here are twenty men lying in this tent, sutferiug 
 from this new torture. This first boy, with a 
 wan smile that goes right to your heart, can only 
 whisper from his bumt-out lungs and cannot tell 
 us Ijis story. The next man was taken witli vomit- 
 ing live hours after the gas shells exploded. Seven 
 of his fourteen companions sleeping in the dugout 
 were killed outright, the others were gassed. He 
 does not know where they are. He lay uncon- 
 scious for several days, and now his eyes and skin 
 are burned as though he had i)assed through a 
 fire. The next boy is badly burned in his eyes 
 and chest. Half the men of his battery were killed 
 by gas while asleep at night. On the next cot is 
 a boy who has been sutl'ering for seventeen days; 
 the burns on his body have been improving, his 
 lungs also are better, but he is still blind and 
 fears he may lose his sight. He asks me to write 
 a letter for him to his mother. "Only," he says, 
 "don't tell her about my eyes." Together we make 
 up a cheerful letter, and the boy rests back on 
 his cot to pray for his returning eyesight. The 
 next two beds are empty. Both the men <lied in 
 the night, falling an easy prey to pneumonia in 
 their weakened condition. The next boy is from 
 the infantry. Out of his squad nine were killed 
 by the explosion of the shell, eight wounded, and 
 the rest badly burned. The neck, chest, arms, and 
 
54 WITH OUR SOLDIEES IN FRANCE 
 
 legs of this boy are burned and blistered. The 
 deadly gas fumes have burned right through his 
 clothing. 
 
 Such is the effect of this new and latest 
 triumph of modern science, which will shatter the 
 hopes and happiness of thousands of homes. 
 
 After passing through the gas chambers, we 
 visited the bombing section of the training school. 
 Here each man has to throw one or more live 
 bombs and receive his final coaching. The bomb 
 is about the size of a lemon, and is made to break 
 into small fragments. It contains enough of the 
 high explosive to kill a whole group of men. The 
 boy advances and grasps the bomb ; he draws out 
 the pin and holds down the lever. Once this 
 is released, it explodes in just five seconds. 
 The man heaves his bomb over a parapet at a 
 dummy dressed in German uniform. The whistle 
 blows and we all duck. There is a terrific explo- 
 sion like a small cannon and you hear the pieces 
 whizzing through the air. Every man is holding 
 in his hand and wielding a terrible power. 
 Wrongly used, it is death to himseK and his com- 
 rades. The other day a boy's hand was moist 
 with perspiration and the bomb slipped, killing 
 the group. Another prematurely exploded as it 
 was being thrown, carrying away the man's own 
 hand and killing the instructor. So it is a dan- 
 gerous business. During the morning there were 
 only four "duds," or bombs that would not go off. 
 
 After the bombing section, we pass with the 
 
A DAY IN TBE ''BILL RING" 55 
 
 men to the trenches. Bayonets are drawn .iiul 
 rifles loaded. After firing several rounds, comes 
 the connnaiul, "Advance." At a bound they are 
 "over the top" and olF, heads down; they run 
 very .slowly and keep together. A breathless man 
 who outruns his comrades is useless ajul is soon 
 killed by the enemy. The drill sergeant shouts 
 to the men "Keep together, keep together, men, 
 one man can't take a trench," and my friend the 
 "padre" notes his words to tell to his congrega- 
 tion when he goes home, where the minister can't 
 do all the work. When they are near the enemy's 
 trench, the tinal word ^'Charge" is shouted, the 
 whole line leaps forward with a wild yell, and 
 the bayonets are driven into the stufifed sacks 
 which are suspended as dummies to serve in the 
 place of men. 
 
 For miles across the great plain the "Bull 
 Ring" is alive with men. Here in one section 
 they are doing physical drill and learning to go 
 over all kinds of obstacles — trenches, fences, 
 barbed wire, shell holes, and ditches. There they 
 are practicing musketry and advancing under 
 cover. In one place the artiller\' is in full swing, 
 and in another you hear the sputter of the ma- 
 chine guns. In one section they are taught to 
 dig trenches and in another to take them. 
 
 Before a great advance where a system of 
 trenches is to be taken, a "rehearsal'' often takes 
 place. From a height of thousands of feet above 
 the lines the aircraft with powerful telescopic 
 
56 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 cameras photograph every foot of the battlefield 
 covered by the enemy's lines. These photographs 
 are developed and studied and diagrams drawn 
 from them of the enemy's system of trenches. 
 These diagrams are reproduced far behind the 
 front in elaborately prepared earthwork and 
 trenches which are an exact replica of the enemy's 
 lines. The divisions which are to take part in 
 the attack are sent back to rehearse their exact 
 duties at just the point corresponding to that 
 which they will have to take. Each officer knows 
 every nook and crevice, each bay and angle of 
 the trenches he will have to capture. When all 
 is ready the men are placed in their exact posi- 
 tions and they execute in reality what they have 
 rehearsed in theory behind the lines. The lesson 
 of preparedness and organization is studied and 
 mastered with infinite care. 
 
WITH THE BRITISH ARMY 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 WITH THE BRITISH AKMY 
 
 In sheltered America we cannot realize what 
 war means, but when we entered the warring 
 countries of Europe, in an instant we were in a 
 diflFerent atmosphere. We landed in England 
 upon a darkened coast, we entered a darkened 
 train, where every blind was drawn lest it fur- 
 nish a guide to London for invading Zeppelins or 
 aeroplanes. We passed through gloomy towns 
 and villages, where not a single light was show- 
 ing from a window, where every street lamp and 
 railway station was darkened or hidden. Auto- 
 mobiles with a dim spark of light groped through 
 the black streets of the metropolis. 
 
 In London we saw a great Zeppelin brought 
 down in flames. It was a sight never to be for- 
 gotten. At half-past two in the morning we 
 were awakened by the roar of the anti-aircraft 
 guns in and around the city. After traveling all 
 night from Germany, one Zeppelin had arrived 
 over London and a whole fleet of them was scat- 
 tered over the coasts and counties of England. 
 
 We sprang to the window and found the sky 
 swept by a score of seanhliglits with their great 
 shafts of piercing light, shooting from the dark 
 59 
 
60 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 depths of the city high into the sky, where they all 
 converged on a single bright object that hung 
 nine thousand feet above us. Long, and shining 
 like silver with its flashing aluminum, the Zep- 
 pelin seemed held as if blinded by the fierce light. 
 Bombs were dropping from it and explosions fol- 
 lowed in rapid succession in the city beneath. 
 
 It was a battle to the death, high in the air 
 with all London looking on. The guns were in 
 full play and the shell and shrapnel were burst- 
 ing all about the Zeppelin. Sometimes you could 
 trace the whole trajectory of a projectile, as a 
 spark of light swept through the sky toward the 
 Zeppelin and" then burst to the right or left, above 
 or below it. Most of the shots seemed to go wide 
 of the mark. More than a score of aeroplanes 
 had been sent up to attack it, with one plane to 
 guide the rest and signal to the guns below by 
 wireless or lights. The battle finally developed 
 into a duel to the death between the machine guns 
 of the Zeppelin and Lieutenant Robinson of the 
 Flying Corps, who was up for two hours in his 
 aeroplane after the enemy — one man fighting for 
 a city of five millions. He attacked from below 
 and bombs were thrown at his plane; then he 
 attacked from the side as he circled about the 
 monster, but he was driven off by their machine 
 guns. At last, mounting high in the sky, he at- 
 tacked from above. The guide-plane flashed down 
 the signal for the guns to cease firing and give 
 him a chance. 
 
WITH THE BRITISH ARMY 01 
 
 For a few inoments all was silent; the battle 
 seemed to be over. The great airsliip, wliicli lind 
 swung sharply to the left, was triumphantly lenv- 
 ing for home. Then it was that Robinson dropped 
 his ineendiary bomb. Suddenly there was an 
 explosion. A flame of burning gas leaped into 
 the sky. London was lit up for ten miles round- 
 about. Our r(M)m was instantly as bright as 
 though a searchlight had flashed into the window. 
 Far above us was the Zeppelin in flames. Now 
 it began to sink — first it was in a blaze of white 
 light, then its cmtline turned to a dull red, finally 
 it crumpled to a glowing cinder, sank from sight, 
 and fell crashing to the earth. Then all was 
 dark again. Death had fallen suddenly upon the 
 men in the Zeppelin and upon some in the sleep- 
 ing city below. 
 
 As we drove through London we passed the 
 draper's shop, near St. Paul's Cathedral, where 
 George Williams and a group of twelve young 
 men met in a little upper room on June 6, 
 1844, to organize the first Young Men's Chris- 
 tian Association. A dozen young men with 
 little wealth, influence, or education might 
 not seem a very formidable force, but twelve men 
 have upset the world and changed the course of 
 history before now. They had only thirteen shill- 
 ings, or 13.25, in the treasury, and were too poor 
 even to print and send out a circular announcing 
 their little organization. But George Williams 
 brought his fist down on the table, with the con- 
 
62 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 fident words, "If this movement is of God, the 
 money will come." 
 
 It has come. The twelve men have been mul- 
 tiplied now to a million and a half, scattered in 
 forty lands. Girded with new strength and with, 
 the dauntless optimism of youth, the movement 
 has risen up to minister not only to the millions 
 of British and American soldiers and munition 
 workers, but also to the men in the camps, hos- 
 pitals, or prisons in most of the nations now at 
 war. The thirteen shillings have been multiplied 
 until now the permanent Y M A buildings are 
 worth over a hundred million dollars. An average 
 of two new huts or centers have been erected 
 and opened by the British or American Associa- 
 tions every day since war was declared; while 
 two permanent buildings in brick or stone rise 
 each week in some part of the world. 
 
 Wars are the birth-pangs of new eras. A 
 new day dawned for the Young Men's Chris- 
 tian Association with the present war. At 
 midnight on August 4, 1914, the British As- 
 sociation as it had been for seventy years was 
 buried and forgotten, and a new movement arose 
 on the ruins of the old. Ninety per cent of its 
 former workers left to join the colors, but a new 
 army of over thirty thousand men and women 
 was mustered and trained within its huts for the 
 service of the British soldiers. The Y M C A had 
 suddenly to "think imperially," and to minister 
 to a world at war. 
 
WITH THI'] BRITISH ARMY G.>. 
 
 Seventy years ago George Williams was lln' 
 man of the hour, but a leader of the British war 
 work of the Y M C A was found in the present 
 crisis in the jierson of Mr. A. K. Yapj), General 
 Secretary of the National ('ouncil of Great 
 Britain, who has recently been knighted by virtue 
 of his distinguished service for the nation. He 
 had si)eut Sunday, August second, in deep search- 
 ing of heart and had caught a vision of what the 
 war would mean, and the opi)ortnnity that would 
 be presented to an organization that was inter- 
 denominational, international, readily mobile, 
 and adaptable enough instantly to meet a great 
 national crisis. 
 
 Within a fortnight the British army and the 
 whole British navy were mobilized for war. Dur- 
 ing that time the Y M C A was represented in four- 
 fifths of the camps of the territorial forces and 
 250 centers were opened. In six months 500 cen- 
 ters were occupied ; at the end of the fii'st year 
 there were 1,000, and after two years of the war 
 1,500 such centers were in full swing. The area 
 of operations includes the British Isles, Egypt, 
 the Dardanelles, Malta, the Mediterranean ports, 
 India, Me.^^opotamia, East and South Africa, 
 Canada, Australia, and out to the last limits of 
 Britain's far Hung battle line. 
 
 The Y M (' A has a strong homing instinct, aim- 
 ing to provide "a home away from home." In the 
 dugouts behin«l the ti-enches, in the de.serts of 
 lOgypt, or in the jungles of Africa, it has been 
 
64 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 forced to make a home in every kind of shelter. 
 It was significant that its first three successive 
 dwelling places seventy years ago were a little 
 bedroom, a coffee house, and a room in a tavern. 
 During the present war, one may see Associations 
 in actual operation along the fighting line in 
 France, in a cowshed, a pigsty, a stable, a hop- 
 house, dugouts under the earth; in battered and 
 ruined buildings in Flanders; in tents in the 
 Sahara and on the ancient Peninsula of Mt. Sinai ; 
 at the bases of the big battle fleets; in the rest 
 houses of the flying corps ; on the Bourse in Cairo ; 
 in hotels taken over in Switzerland and France, 
 and in the great Crystal Palace of London. In 
 four centers it has used and transformed a 
 brewery, a saloon, a theater, and a museum. Its 
 dwellings stretch away from the tents of "Caesar's 
 Camp," where the Roman Julius landed in 55 
 B. C, on the southern shores of Britain, to the 
 far north, in the new naval institute at Inver- 
 gordon, erected for the sailors of the Grand Fleet 
 at a cost of more than |20,000. They range from 
 the battered dugouts at the front in France to the 
 Shakespeare hut in London, costing more than 
 $30,000. They stretch from the rest huts of the 
 great metropolis, with sleeping and feeding ac- 
 commodations for some ten thousand men a day 
 during the dangerous period of leave in London, 
 away to the hut in "Plug Street" Woods, recently 
 blown to atoms by a shell, where the secretary 
 escaped by a few seconds and returned to find 
 
WITH THK BKITISFT ATtMY (;."» 
 
 literally nothing left save the rims ol' his spec- 
 tacles and two coins melted and fused together by 
 the terrific heat of the exj>losion. Several of the 
 secretaries and workers have been killed by shell 
 fire, or in transit by torpedoes from submarines, 
 while other Association men have received the 
 Victoria Cross for heroism in action. 
 
 Let us visit a typical hut to grasp the signifi- 
 cance of its work, in order that we may realize 
 what is going on in the fifteen hundred similar 
 centers. We are on the great Salisbury Plain, in 
 the midst of thirty miles square of weltering mud 
 during the long winter months. To realize what 
 a hut means to the men in such a place, we must 
 understaiul the unnatural situation created by the 
 conditions of war. Ilere are multitudes of men 
 far from home, shut out from the society of all 
 good women, taken away from their church and 
 its surroundings, weary and wet with marching 
 and drilling, often lonely and dejected, in an 
 atmosphere of profanity and obscenity in the 
 cheerless barrack rooms, and tempted by the ani- 
 mal passions which are always loosed in war- 
 time. The men need all the help we can give 
 them now, and need it desperately. 
 
 Now can you measure just what a big warm 
 hut means to these men as a home, far away from 
 home? The red triangle at the entrance gleams 
 across the whole camp and stands for the three 
 things the soldier most needs. 
 
 It stands, in the first place, as a pledge for 
 
66 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 supplying the physical need of these hungry, 
 lonely, and fiercely tempted men. A dry shelter, 
 a warm fire, a cheerfully lighted room, the bursts 
 of song, and the hum of conversation make the 
 men forget the wind and rain and mud outside. 
 Supper and a hot cup of coffee satisfy their 
 hunger. On the notice-board is the announcement 
 of the outdoor sports, football tournaments, and 
 the games, where the thirty thousand men of the 
 division will compete in open contest on the com- 
 ing Saturday, under the direction of the Y M C A. 
 Whatever the soldier needs for his physical life, 
 whether it is to eat or to sleep, a bed in London, 
 a cool drink in the thirsty desert, or hot coffee 
 in the trenches, it is furnished for him by the 
 Association. 
 
 The hut also provides for the soldier's intel- 
 lectual and social needs. The piano and the 
 phonograph, the billiard tables, draughts and 
 chess boards, tables for games, library, and read- 
 ing room keep him busy ; and the concerts, stimu- 
 lating lectures, moving pictures, educational 
 classes, and debating societies provide him with 
 recreational and mental employment. 
 
 The far deejjer moral and spiritual needs of the 
 soldier are also met. As the evening draws to 
 a close, one sees the secretary in his military uni- 
 form stand up on the table ; hats are off and heads 
 are bowed at the call for evening prayers, which 
 are held here every night. On Sunday the parade 
 services of the different denominations take place 
 
WITH THE BRITISH AKMY 07 
 
 in turn in (he Association lint. Weekly volun- 
 tary religious meetings are also held. At one 
 end of the building is the ''quiet room," where 
 grouj>s of (Mu'istian soldiers can meet for Bible 
 das.ses or for prayer. At regular intervals evan- 
 gelistic meetings are held. On our last night at 
 this hut, on a Sunday evening, twelve hundred 
 men gathered to listen to the Christian mes- 
 sage. 
 
 Of the three bars of the triangle, it is this which 
 stands at the top, which unites the other two and 
 which is the dominating factor of the whole. And 
 yet nowhere is religion forced down the throats 
 of the men. Kather it is the aim to make it the 
 unconscious atmosphere of the whole hut. It is 
 a striking fact, to which every soldier will testify, 
 that while the language of the barrack room and 
 beer canteen is often reeking with the profane and 
 the obscene, the whole tone of the Association 
 hut is entirely different. As one soldier says: 
 "You don't realize the enormous ditfereuce of 
 atmosjthere between this and any other place 
 where .'<oldiers congregate. A man simply does 
 not talk bad language and tilth here; he learns 
 to control him.self." Thus the threefold work of 
 the Association stands for the whole man and for 
 the whole manhood of the nation. 
 
 In many ways the YMCA hut seeks to meet 
 the soldier's every need. 
 
 1. It is his club, where he meets his comrades 
 and in the freedom and friendship of the place 
 
68 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 forgets the irksome drill, the endless restraints, 
 and the stern discipline of military life. 
 
 2. As we have already seen, it is his home, the 
 place where he writes his letters and keeps in 
 touch with his family and distant friends. Nearly 
 twenty million pieces of stationery are sent out 
 free for the soldiers each month from the London 
 central office, and the sign of the red triangle 
 on the letter head brings weekly joy and cheer 
 to the broken circle in the distant home. It is 
 here that the lad is helped to "keep the home fires 
 burning" in his heart and to hold true to those 
 high ideals. One little girl when visiting the 
 Crystal Palace, upon seeing the sign of the red 
 triangle, said: "My daddy always makes that 
 mark on his letters when he writes to us at home." 
 
 3. It is his church, for out on the desert, or in 
 the jungle, or at the front, there is usually no 
 other church building for religious services. The 
 following is taken from a typical Sunday program 
 in one of the huts : "6 :80 a. m., Roman Catholic 
 Mass ; 7 :30 Nonconformist service ; 9 :00 Anglican 
 service ; 2-3 p. m., Bible class ; 6 :45-8 United Song 
 Service." Thus each denomination is allowed to 
 have its own service in its own way on Sunday 
 morning, while the evening meeting is interde- 
 nominational and open to all. 
 
 In one place where the young Hebrews were 
 being sadly neglected and were falling away from 
 their former moral standards, the secretary ar- 
 ranged with the Jewish rabbi to have a weekly 
 
WITH THE BHITISH AKMY GD 
 
 service in the YMCA tent for liis iiicii. It lias 
 been held ever since. The Jews of the neif^hboring 
 city were so grateful that they started a campaign 
 to raise a fund of :j;i(),(K)() for Y M C A huts. The 
 Rev. Michael Adler, the head Jewish rabbi with 
 the forces in France, has time and again expressed 
 his cordial appreciation of the help rendered to 
 the men of his faith. The doors of the Association 
 will always remain open for men of all creeds. 
 As wide as the needs of men, as broad as democ- 
 racy, as unifie<l as humanity, and as tolerant as 
 its Lord and Master, the movement will ever aim 
 to be. 
 
 4. The Association hut is the soldier's school. 
 Here his classes are held. A program taken at 
 random from a single hut will show the scope of 
 a week's work: "Bible classes; religious services; 
 lecture on The Town Where We Are; lecture on 
 South America; lantern lecture on Kussia ; de- 
 bating society; impromptu speeches; histor}' 
 class.'' 
 
 5. The Association hut is also his place of rest, 
 and the shop where he buys his supplies. Here 
 he can procure almost anything he needs that 
 is decent, and read anything that is wholesome. 
 Usually this hut is the only clean place of recrea- 
 tion in the camp, and without it he is left to 
 choose between the cheerless tent and the beer 
 canteen. 
 
 0. The Y M C A is the center of his recreation 
 and his entertainment bureau. Under the leader- 
 
70 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 ship of Miss Lena Ash well and scores of others, 
 concerts and entertainment parties have been 
 organized and have toured continuously in 
 France, Great Britain, Egypt, and the more dis- 
 tant camps. The six artists of each party are 
 received with tremendous enthusiasm and become 
 the fast friends of Tommy Atkins. One writes: 
 "Last time the party came here the press of men 
 waiting on the verandah to go into the second per- 
 formance was so great that our brand new 
 verandah collapsed with the sound of a bomb ex- 
 plosion! Luckily the mass was so tightly packed 
 that they fell through in a solid heap; no one 
 was hurt, and all were able to enjoy the concert 
 thoroughly." 
 
 7. It is the soldier's bank, and his postoffice. 
 We were in one hut alone where more than fif- 
 teen thousand dollars were on deposit in the sav- 
 ings bank. The sale of stamps in this hut amounts 
 to fifteen hundred dollars a month, and of postal 
 orders for the remittance of money home to more 
 than four thousand dollars. Every week an 
 average of 28,000 letters are written and posted 
 in this one room, while thousands more are re- 
 ceived and handed to the men, 
 
 8. The Association is the soldier's friend and 
 tourist guide, while he is visiting London, Paris, 
 or the other great cities. In some places one 
 table is set apart where a chaplain or secretary 
 is always on duty to help the soldiers make their 
 wills, find out their trains to London, answer their 
 
WITH TIIIC BRITISH AKMY 71 
 
 questions, or i^ive Hhmd the friendly liclp llu'y 
 need. 
 
 The YMCA stands by the soldier to the last 
 and even after he falls. Afler the boy has fon^ht 
 his last ti<;hl an<l lies wonnded or erii»i)led or 
 ilyin^ in the hospital in France, it meets his 
 I)arents an<l i-elalives and provides for theii- entire 
 stay in the eonntry. Eiich i-elative of Wut wonnded 
 proceeding to France receives printed instruc- 
 tions from the War OfTKC that the Y M C A will 
 meet all the boats and provide transportation and 
 accommodations for all who need it while at the 
 front. Our friend, Mr. Geddes, broke down as 
 he ti'icd to tell us how he and his wife had been 
 met on the lonely shores of France by the YMCA 
 secretary and motored quickly to the bedside of 
 their dying son, only to find that they were just 
 too late. The funeral was arranged, even to the 
 providing of flowers. The last ministry was per- 
 forme<l for the young man away from home and 
 for the loved ones left behind, under the triangle 
 that will forevermoi-e be red. 
 
 Tims the Association is at once the soldier's 
 clnl), ills home, his clinrch, his school, his j)lace 
 of rest, his entertainment bureau, his bank and 
 postoffice, his tonrisl guide, and the friend that 
 stands by him and his bereaved parents at the 
 last. Fifteen hundred just such huts and centers 
 stretch away from Scotlaml to Ivist Africa, from 
 France to Me.sopotamia, from Egypt to India. 
 Tould anv other single organization have met 
 
72 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 all these needs of the men under arms, mobilized 
 so quickly, united all denominations, entered all 
 lands, and embraced all forms of work secular and 
 religious ? 
 
 We conducted meetings for several months 
 throughout the camps in the British Isles. At our 
 last parade service with the brigade out in the 
 open field there were several thousand seated on 
 the grass, with their eight bands drawn up in 
 front. In every service the battle was on between 
 good and evil, between God and mammon, between 
 sacrifice and sin. 
 
 One night we visited the sailors' training camp. 
 It was a great meeting, with two thousand of the 
 sailor boys crowded in a big theater. The con- 
 cert was going on when we arrived and the jeers 
 and yells of the crowd drowned some of the voices 
 of the performers; it was evident that we were 
 going to have a hard time to hold the audience. 
 Captain 'Teg" stepped to the stage and soon had 
 them singing, "We'll Never Let the Old Flag 
 Fall." Roars of applause followed and they 
 clamored for more. Out in the glare of the foot- 
 lights and looking into that sea of faces, we be- 
 gan to fight for that audience. There were two 
 thousand tempted men whom we should never 
 see again. In five minutes the whole theater was 
 hushed — you could hear a pin drop. After half an 
 hour the meeting was interrupted by the noise of 
 the band outside. Surely the men will bolt and 
 leave the meeting. We said to them: "Boys, 
 
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 ^^''^1 
 
 
 '*M 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 ( 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 'H 
 
 1 
 
 'v^^^U^^K^^r' 
 
 f. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^'^ul^ 
 
 
 # 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 1^ 
 
 i'^mB 
 
 Hi 
 
 A 
 
 1 '^a^y 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
 — U 
 
 
 < o 
 
WITH THE BRITISH ARMY 7^ 
 
 there is the band. Let everybody go now who 
 wants to go I We arc going on. Every man thai 
 wants to make the tight for charac-ter, the fight 
 for purity with the help of Jesus Christ, stay with 
 us here." Tlicro was a shout from the audience, 
 and not a man left the theater. Tlie l)and thun- 
 dered on, hut tlie crowd was witli us now, and 
 the liopes of liuiidreds of liearts for the things 
 that are eternal surged to tlie surface. Several 
 hundred men signed the War Roll, pledging their 
 allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. One sailor 
 boy came up to thank us, saying that he had all 
 but fallen the week before ; and simply for the lack 
 of a sixpence he had been saved from sin. With 
 God's help he would now live for Christ. An- 
 other came up who had been drinking heavily and 
 had quarreled with his wife. He did not have 
 the price of a postage stamp to write to her. He 
 wanted to know how he could be saved from drink. 
 Man after man came forward, hungry for human 
 help and longing for a better life. 
 
 On another occasion we were with the army 
 of Australian and New Zealand troops, as they 
 were marching by the King at their last review 
 before going to the front. Fortunately, we had 
 secured standing room near the King's side, where 
 we could watch every smile and action as he 
 saluted each passing battalion, and we could even 
 hear him sj)eak a kind word now and then to some 
 otficer. There were generals to the right of us 
 and to the left of us, colonels, majors, captains, 
 
74 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 officers of every rank, and prominent civilians; 
 but the greatest man on that field was the soldier 
 himself. With what a swing those clean-cut young 
 Australian boys marched past; every man was a 
 volunteer and part of that great first army of 
 over four millions of men who came forward for 
 the defense of the Empire without conscription. 
 
 Hundreds were playing in the massed bands, 
 as the long file of men marched by. But time and 
 again the firm columns seemed to fade before us, 
 and we could not see them for tears, as we realized 
 that many of these brave boys were going for- 
 ward to die for us. Above, a great aeroplane was 
 looping the loop and warplanes were darting to 
 and fro. 
 
 Away on the horizon stood the great boulders 
 of Stonehenge, erected long before the time of 
 the Saxons, the Britons, or even the ancient 
 Druids, by the sun-worshippers, who offered their 
 human sacrifices on the ancient altar there nearly 
 forty centuries before. We looked at those stones, 
 where through a mistaken conception of God and 
 an inadequate conception of man, human sacri- 
 fices were offered long ago. Suddenly we heard 
 the crack of the rifles of a body of troops at prac- 
 tice, moving forward in open line of battle. To- 
 day, through a mistaken conception of God and 
 a low conception of man, over 5,000,000 of men 
 have already been killed, offered in human sacri- 
 fice; while many millions in lands devastated 
 are homeless, starving, or ruined in body or soul 
 
WITH THE BKITISn AKMY 75 
 
 — these are part of llic olVcrin;]:, forced iipoii liu- 
 manity by a godless iiiatorialisin, while a divided 
 
 Christian Clnircli stands hv inii)otenl. 
 
 II 
 
 Let us now visit Egypt where we shall witness 
 very different scenes. Away on the distant 
 horizon are the two triangular points, which grow 
 as we approach into the outlines of the great 
 pyramids. Beyond are the fifty-eight centers 
 which have risen along the banks of the Nile, in 
 the metropolis of Cairo, and in the harbors of 
 Port Said and Alexandria, and which line the 
 Suez Canal and dot the desert even out into the 
 peninsula of Mt. Sinai. The sun is setting as we 
 climb the great pyramid, which stands a silent 
 witness to forty centuries of history which have 
 ebbed and flowed at its base, but surely no 
 stranger sight has it ever seen than these armed 
 camps about it, engaged in this titanic struggle 
 of the world. Away to the south towards far 
 Khartoum, like a green ribbon in the yellow 
 desert, stretches the irrigated basin of the Nile. 
 Beyond it is the bottomless burning sand of the 
 Sahara. 
 
 Here on the site of Napoleon's ancient battle- 
 field is the largest concentration camp in Eg}pt. 
 The white tents of the Australasians shelter a 
 population as numerous as many a city, with three 
 Association buildings for the men. From out the 
 great pyramid there is a constant stream of 
 
76 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 soldiers passing to and fro. And there under tlie 
 shadow of the Sphinx are two more Y M C A huts. 
 Jessop, the former secretary at Washington, has 
 been in charge here, with a large staff of secre- 
 taries from Australia and New Zealand. General 
 Sir Archibald Murray, in command of the Egyp- 
 tian Expeditionary Forces, says : "First of all, the 
 men must have mess huts; then we want the 
 
 Y M C A." 
 
 Cairo is the throbbing center of Egypt's life, 
 where vice does not lurk in secret, but flaunts 
 itself in open effrontery. Our secretaries have 
 been at work there in the long lines of men that 
 stand outside the places of vice, handing them 
 Testaments and urging them to come away. The 
 
 Y M C A has taken over a large amusement center 
 in the Ezbekieh Gardens in the very heart of 
 Cairo; and in spite of the public saloon nearby, 
 with its attraction of music and wine, from two 
 hundred to two thousand men are constantly 
 thronging the Association rooms. The attractive 
 equipment of a garden, an open-air theater, a 
 skating rink, baths, supper counters, and a meet- 
 ing place, but most of all the personal touch of 
 the two earnest secretaries, make the whole work 
 effective. The Association has also rented the 
 spacious Bourse, where it houses several hundred 
 men who are in the city on short leave, while 
 its lobby is used for concerts and entertainments. 
 During the last action five of the Y M C A huts on 
 the Canal Zone were under fire. But there is no 
 
WITH THE BRITISH AKMY 77 
 
 day passes but that the men under canvas in this 
 hot land of Egypt are under fire from temptations 
 more <lendly than Turkish bullets. 
 
 Leavinj^ I'^gypt, we passed over the hot and sti- 
 fling Ked Sea, across the Indian Ocean, toward 
 the sunny plains of India. Away from the snowy 
 ridge of the Himalayas, down across the bare 
 plains of the north and the rice fields and cocoa- 
 nut palms of the tropic south, India lies like a 
 vast continent, embracing oue-tifth of the human 
 race. It was held before the war by some 75,000 
 British and twice as manj' Indian troops. The 
 numbers are completely altered now. Almost the 
 whole regular force, both Indian and British, are 
 away fighting in Mesopotamia, East Africa, 
 France, and Egypt, while a new territorial force 
 of Kitchener's army of London clerks and Eng- 
 lish civilians has taken its place. 
 
 One hundred and fifty secretaries in India were 
 ready upon the outbreak of the war. All across 
 India the YMC A has opened huts, buildings, or 
 tents for the territorial and other forces.^ A 
 writer in the Journal of the Royal Sussex Regi- 
 ment, at Bangalore, said: ''Somehow the very 
 letters, Y M C A have gathered to themselves an 
 implication of comfort, pleasure, and welcome; 
 we instinctively feel among friends." 
 
 I In addition to the existing work at Baniralore, Maymyo, and Poona, 
 Aasocdation privile«ee havp bcvn provided for soldiort) in Lahore, Delhi, 
 Multan, Ferozcporo, Jhanai, Lucknow, Mho», Trinuilfhorry, Jubbulpore, 
 Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Ahmcdnacar, Ilangoon, Palhousic, Nairn Tal, 
 Karachi, Allahabad, and JutoKh. 
 
78 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 We visited one night the great tent generously 
 given by the Viceroy for the work of the terri- 
 torials in Delhi. General Sir Percy Lake took 
 the chair and the men gathered in the large 
 marquee for the meeting. Sherwood Day, of Yale, 
 had been in charge of this work during the winter, 
 providing a home for the men of the territorials 
 in this ancient Indian capital. A series of lec- 
 tures by leading Indians served to interpret In- 
 dian life and thought to these soldiers, who were 
 seeing at once the needs and greatness of the 
 Indian Empire at first hand, while leading Indian 
 Christians of the type of Mr. K. T. Paul, Dr. 
 Datta, and Bishop Azariah told them the fascinat- 
 ing story of Indian missions and the history of 
 Christianity in Asia. A new sense of race brother- 
 hood is taking the place of the old antagonism 
 and prejudice, and Indian secretaries stationed 
 with English Tommies have become exceedingly 
 popular with them. 
 
 From India as a base, the Association has gone 
 forward with the advancing columns into Meso- 
 potamia and East Africa. As we cross the 
 Persian Gulf and follow the winding courses of 
 the Tigris and the Euphrates up into the heart 
 of Mesopotamia, we find a group of Princeton 
 men and some sixty secretaries stationed here 
 with the troops, under Leonard Dixon of Canada. 
 The men affectionately call him the "padre" ; any- 
 one who has ever boxed with Dixon and felt the 
 force of his right, knows that he is a man who 
 
WITH THE BRlTfSH AKMY 79 
 
 has both drive and "i)iiii(h." The troops in Mgmo- 
 potamia have been fijjhting often under terrible 
 conditions, niarcliing thr()ii<i;h ooze and slime, 
 drinkinp the yellow nnliltcred water, decimated 
 by the attacks both of sickness and of the enemy. 
 In summer the alkali <lust lies four inches deep 
 on the floors of their tents, and the thermometer 
 stands at 120° in the sultry shade. Dixon racked 
 his brain to provide recreation and helpful enter- 
 tainment for these hard fighting men. A bioscope, 
 comi)etitive concerts, a Christmas tree, a New 
 Year's treat, football and hockey tournaments, and 
 entertainments of various kinds have been im- 
 provised to make the men forget the awful hard- 
 ship of the march and of the battle. On Sunday 
 the writing tables are full from dawn till dark 
 and tons of stationery have been used to keep 
 these men in touch with their distant homes. 
 
 The secretaries have been kept busy handling 
 the big convoys of wounded as they come down 
 the rivers in the boats from the tighting at the 
 front. One colonel got up from his sick bed to 
 give his testimony unasked as to what the work 
 of the Association had meant to these wounded 
 men. He said that it was not only the big kettles 
 of hot coffee and the caldrons of soup which the 
 secretaries brought aboard the boats, not only 
 the warm blankets, beef tea, and other comforts 
 which had helped the men so much, but the fact 
 that when those men entered that barge with its 
 weight of human suffering and misery, it seemed 
 
80 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 that the touch of Another hand unseen was rest- 
 ing on the hot brow and feverish pulse of those 
 wounded soldiers. 
 
 Bovia McLain, an American secretary, gives 
 us a glimpse of a night on a hospital barge, with 
 a cold wind and rain-storm sweeping down the 
 river. The canvas tarpaulin began to leak like 
 a sieve and most of the wounded were cold and 
 drenched to the skin. Soon the men were lying 
 not only under wet blankets, but actually in two 
 or three inches of water on the undrained decks. 
 They were packed in like sardines, without pil- 
 lows or comforts. "The whole thing was ghastly 
 and terrible. Men wanted to change their posi- 
 tion or have a broken limb slightly moved, and 
 a dozen other wants seemed to demand attention 
 all at once. At times I felt the strain so that it 
 seemed to me I could not control myself longer, 
 but must break down and weep, it was so appall- 
 ing." After the men had been made comfortable, 
 the workers were ready in the morning with 
 supplies of chocolate and tobacco and other luxu- 
 ries. It is no wonder that up at the front when 
 the secretary invites the men to remain for eve- 
 ning prayers sometimes nearly the whole bat- 
 talion stays, and one can understand the new 
 interpretation given by some soldiers to the letters 
 Y. M. C. A. — "You Make Christianity Attractive." 
 
 When the war broke out the Association was 
 ready to enter Africa also. With the first con- 
 tingent of 60,000 South African troops a number 
 
WITH THE BRITISH ARMY 81 
 
 of Y M C A secretaries were seut. They erected 
 large marquees in local training camps, and there 
 prepared the way for the even greater opportunity 
 which was to follow in the lOast African cam- 
 paign under the Northern Army. The military 
 authorities cabled the Association headquarters 
 at Calcutta, offering to hand over the army can- 
 teens of East Africa to the Y M C A and to cut out 
 liquor if the Association would take them over 
 and be responsible for the welfare work among 
 the troops, looking after their physical, social, 
 and moral needs. Instantly, Mr. E, C. Carter, 
 the National Secretary of India, cabled back 
 accepting the offer. 
 
 The first score of men were sent over to open 
 up nineteen centers with the advancing column 
 in the jungles of Africa. The 20,000 troops were 
 then occupying Swakopnumd, a desolate little 
 town surroimded by a sea of burning sand. There 
 were no trees, not a blade of grass, nor even the 
 song of a solitarj- bird to relieve the monotony. 
 The men called it "the land of sin, sand, sorrow, 
 and sore eyes." Soon, however, the large hall of 
 the Faber Hotel was procured, with accommwla- 
 tions for a thousand men. It became the social 
 center of the whole camp. So popular was the 
 place that the men fairly fought and stniggled 
 to get into the building. Every night at 7:.'?0 
 the war telegrams were read, and as it was the 
 only way to hear the news from the front, each 
 tent appointed one man to be at the Y M C A at 
 
82 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 that hour. On the occasion of the opening of the 
 work, one man wrote home: "Two great events 
 have happened today — the Y M C A has com- 
 menced and I have had a bath." The story will 
 never be written as to what the Association meant 
 in the hearts of those men who laid down their 
 lives fighting in East Africa. On the cross at the 
 head of every grave in one section of the dark 
 continent is the sentence : *'Tell England, ye that 
 pass by, that we who lie here, rest content." Thus, 
 from Cairo in the north, from Swakopmund in 
 the east, clear to Cape Town in the south, the 
 red triangle has followed the army to its last out- 
 posts. Space will not permit us to describe the 
 huts which have been opened at Salonica, the 
 twelve centers at Malta, and others dotted along 
 the ports of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Ill 
 
 A new development has now been undertaken 
 by the Association among the thousands in the 
 munition works in Great Britain. With the whole 
 nation organized for war, there are millions of 
 workers busily engaged on ten and twelve hour 
 shifts, turning out that steady stream of muni- 
 tions which must ever flow up to the guns at the 
 front, to supply the army fighting there. Here 
 are men and women without the excitement and 
 the adventure of the front, toiling all day under 
 a strain, far removed from home, congested in 
 unattractive surroundings, and it is of the utmost 
 
WITH THE BRITISH AHMY S3 
 
 importance that these workers be kept healthful 
 and haitpy. 
 
 We motored down one afternoou to see the 
 work that is going on in the great arsenal at 
 Woolwich. Outside, where a year aj;o were 
 orchards and pastures, are long rows of perma- 
 nent buildings which have sprung up on every 
 side. To meet this situation the Y M C A has with- 
 in recent montlis erected more than a hundred 
 huts in the different munition centers, which can 
 provide meals for thousands of tired workers. 
 These huts have already placed the Association 
 in touch with half a million workers. In the first 
 hut we visited, three thousand of them were seated 
 at meals in two relays, while two thousand sol- 
 diers were accommodated in the hut during the 
 afternoon and evening. A platform at one end 
 had been put up for musical concerts and enter- 
 tainments. The price of meals varies from twelve 
 to twenty-five cents. Lady Henry Grosvenor and 
 other leaders have marshalled a force of fifteen 
 hundred voluntary workers in this group of huts. 
 
 So appreciative has the government been of 
 this new development, that in addition to provid- 
 ing their own government welfare workers to 
 look after the women and girls, they are per- 
 mitting the munitions manufacturers to build 
 new Y M C A huts at government expense for the 
 accommodation of the men. We i)assed down long 
 rows of dormitories, erected almost in a night, 
 where thousands of weary workers were sleeping 
 
84 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 during the day, preparing for their night shift. 
 It was almost a sad sight to see whole huts filled 
 with hundreds of boys from fourteen to sixteen 
 years of age, all sound asleep at midday. The 
 secretaries look after these boys in their rest 
 and play and provide healthful surroundings, a 
 clean moral atmosphere, and attractive religious 
 influences. 
 
 The Young Women's Christian Association has 
 entered the open door for work among the women. 
 In one place where a young girl from the country 
 had been led astray by the temptations of this 
 new and monotonous life and had committed 
 suicide, the Young Women's Christian Associa- 
 tion has erected a large hut to provide for the 
 moral welfare of thousands of other girls faced 
 by the same temptations. Oh, the dreary drudgery 
 that faces these tired women! 
 
 "Rattle and clatter and clank and whirr, 
 And thousands of wheels a-spinning — 
 Oh, it's dreary work and it's weary work, 
 But none of us all will fail or shirk; 
 Not women's work — that should make, not mar, 
 But the Devil drives when the world's at war; 
 And it's long and long the day is." 
 
 The Y W C A has adopted the sign of the blue 
 triangle, to distinguish it from the red triangle 
 of the Y M C A. The huts bore the touch of deft 
 women's hands in the decorations, flowers, and 
 signs of cheer and comfort which the ladies have 
 provided for these hard worked girls. Before 
 
WITH THE BRITISH ARMY 85 
 
 the huts were erected some girls liad to sleep in 
 the streets all night in the unsanitary communi- 
 ties about the works. 
 
 Both the government authorities and the Asso- 
 ciation workers have seen a large open door for 
 social service among these millions of munition 
 workers. For the work here is permanent. Tliese 
 great buildings will remain as manuiacturiug 
 centers of some kind after the war. The huts 
 will still be occupied. Already a new and grow- 
 ing body of legislation is being introduced to im- 
 prove the conditions of the toilers of old England. 
 
 It is little wonder that the whole nation has 
 responded to this work so boldly undertaken on 
 such a large scale. From the first gifts have been 
 pouring in unsolicited. His Majesty the King, 
 patron of the Young Men's Christian Association 
 in Britain, has inspected many of the buildings, 
 and sent in his contribution, with the following 
 note: "His Majesty congratulates the Association 
 on the successful results of its War work, which 
 has done everything conducive to the comfort and 
 well-being of the armies, supplying the special 
 and peculiar needs of men drawn from countries 
 so different and so distant. It has worked in a 
 practical, economical, and unostentatious man- 
 ner, with consummate knowledge of those with 
 whom it has to deal. At the same time the As- 
 sociation by its spirit of discipline, has earned 
 the re.spect and approbation of the Military Au- 
 thorities." 
 
86 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 The Queen Mother donated the Alexandra Hut 
 in London, which makes provision for the accom- 
 modation of soldiers on leave in the city. She 
 was seen recently serving tea behind the counter 
 in the Association hut to the happy Tommies who 
 had come back strained and tired from the front 
 to ''Blighty" once more. The Princess Victoria 
 has been most tireless in opening Y M C A huts, 
 and has given unsparingly of her time and effort 
 for the men. 
 
 No one has been more appreciative than the 
 military authorities themselves. Lord Roberts, 
 four days before his death, wrote expressing his 
 appreciation of the work being accomplished. 
 His secretary adds : "He hears on all sides noth- 
 ing but praise for what the Y M C A is doing at 
 the camps." Lord Kitchener, who had inspected 
 the huts of the Association in England, France, 
 and Egypt, wrote : "From the first the Y M C A 
 gained my confidence, and now I find they have 
 earned my admiration and gratitude." Mr. 
 Asquith, when Prime Minister, after visiting the 
 Association huts and attending the religious meet- 
 ings said : "The Y M C A is the greatest thing in 
 Europe." Lloyd George, the present Premier, said 
 recently : "I congratulate the Y M C A. Wherever 
 I go I hear nothing but good of the work they are 
 doing throughout the country, and we owe them 
 a very deep debt of gratitude." 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 
 
CHAPTER V 
 LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 
 
 The man who inaugurated YMCA army work 
 in France was Joseph Callan. In 1903 he became 
 a secretary of the International Committee in 
 AHahabad, North India, and later in Colombo. 
 Ten years ago in Bangalore he began his wonder- 
 ful work for soldiers, which, in time, was to set 
 the i)ace and furnish the standard for the Asso- 
 ciation work of the present war. 
 
 When the British troops were out in camp, 
 Callan opened his big Y M C A tent and beat the 
 army canteen in open competition, so that at the 
 end of the maneuvers the contractors had to 
 haul back much of the liquor unsold. While the 
 canteen was being drained of men, Callan was 
 running a full show almost every evening. He 
 had powerful arc lights placed over the athletic 
 field, and night after night tournaments were 
 played off, company against company', regiment 
 against regiment, until the closing hour of the 
 canteen had passed. Lectures, moving pictures, 
 and concerts were followed by straight religious 
 meetings, with lasting results. The cooperation 
 of the Bishop, clerg}-. and chaplains, helped to 
 relate permanently these results to the Church. 
 89 
 
90 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 As soon as the commanding officers saw the 
 value of this work, they began to cooperate and 
 insisted upon its being carried on in every camp. 
 In the great maneuvers at Dacca, Callan was in- 
 vited to Bengal to run the institutional work for 
 the troops at the expense of the government, 
 which he did with striking results. Each success 
 made the work known to a widening circle of 
 officers and men. 
 
 When the war broke out, Callan and Carter 
 approached the Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief 
 to ask if they could serve the Indian Army as it 
 was to start as an expeditionary force to France. 
 Since the Mutiny of 1857, with its religious super- 
 stition and prejudice about the greased cart- 
 ridges, etc., no Christian work had been per- 
 mitted in the Indian Army. Finally, however, 
 permission was given to the Association to begin 
 work with the troops before embarkation. Upon 
 arrival in Bombay, our secretaries called upon 
 the Commanding Officer, who had wired to the 
 General at Headquarters to know what he could 
 do to hold his discontented troops together in 
 the flooded and crowded quarters about the docks. 
 The general had just wired, "Consult the Y M C A 
 and ask them to send for their army department." 
 He had known of Callan's work at Bangalore, 
 Dacca, and other centers, and believed it would 
 supply just the missing link with the dissatisfied 
 men. When our secretaries called, the Colonel 
 had just received the telegram and was prepared 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 91 
 
 to give thcin a chaiK-e to see what ihey could do 
 for the troops. 
 
 Within twciity-foiir hours a work was orpin- 
 ized which kept the sepoys occujjied for all their 
 leisure time. Football and hockey and outdoor 
 athletics, excursions down the harbor, sea bath- 
 ing, lectures, and entertainments were soon in 
 full swing. This was the first work of the kind 
 ever done for the Indian Army. So instantlj' and 
 obviously invaluable did it become that the Com- 
 manding Officer insisted that the secretaries 
 should accompany the troops on the long and 
 much dreaded trip to France, which was a bold 
 and untried venture for Indian soldiers. 
 
 It was a historic event when that great tleet 
 of some seventy-five ships, the largest assembled 
 since the Spanish Armada, freighted with about 
 25,000 troops bound for France, East Africa, and 
 Persia, weighed anchor, and sailed out of Bombay 
 harbor with the first twelve Y M C A secretaries 
 on board. Arrived in France, permission was 
 finally obtained from the Commander-in-Chief to 
 land and begin work on French soil. 
 
 Here the moral problem made the work of the 
 Association a crying necessity. Soon there were 
 some 25,000 Indian troops concentrated around 
 Marseilles. These men could neither .<<afely be 
 let out of bounds nor kept contented within 
 bounds. A cordon of troops around the camp 
 could not keep vice out. The Y M <^ A was nee<led 
 as a counter attraction. Upon an outbreak of 
 
92 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 drinking and immorality on the part of a group 
 of Sikh soldiers, the whole garrison was called 
 out to witness these men stripped and flogged in 
 exemplary punishment. The Sikhs felt this to 
 be such a public disgrace that they asked for the 
 use of the Y M C A hut in which to hold a council 
 meeting. They finally decided to ask one of the 
 secretaries to address the whole body of Sikhs 
 on the subject of intemperance and impurity, 
 for the Association was already tacitly recog- 
 nized by all as the dominant moral force in the 
 camp. 
 
 One of the Indian secretaries, Mr. Roy, ad- 
 dressed the soldiers at their own request for an 
 hour and a half, and a remarkable scene of re- 
 pentance was witnessed. Men arose on all hands, 
 confessing their sins in respect to these two 
 special failings and requested that penalties be 
 imposed upon them by their own priest in accord- 
 ance with the custom of their religion, as a pun- 
 ishment for the past and as a guarantee for the 
 future. For nearly two hours the men filed by 
 their priest receiving penalties. Later on they held 
 a service of their own in the Y M C A hut on 
 Christmas day and took up a large collection of 
 copper coins as a thank-ofifering to the Associa- 
 tion. They felt that it had been their one friend 
 in a strange land. 
 
 It should be clearly understood, however, that 
 of necessity, in the very nature of the case, the 
 Government of India imposed upon the secre- 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 03 
 
 taries the strict obligation of silence regarding 
 the propagation of Ohristianity. They entered 
 the work on the understanding tliat the men 
 could live out the si)irit of Christ and express it 
 in silent ministry under the motive of Christian 
 love. 
 
 It was striking to see how much real Chris- 
 tianity could be packed into life when speech was 
 forbidden. The pent-up prayer and love and 
 sympathy of the workers was forced into the 
 single channel of silent service. It reminded one 
 of those thirty years in our Lord's life, in simple 
 secular toil, which could only minister to the 
 needs of men over a carpenter's bench. 
 
 It is no small task to undertake to occupy all 
 the leisure time of 25,000 men far from home, 
 shut up in irk.some camps, easily aroused by 
 rumor or superstition. The numbers increased 
 until there were finally some 50,000 men to be 
 cared for. Athletic fields were secured and games 
 were started. Football and hockey were more 
 played by the Indians than by the British troops. 
 Badminton and volley ball, races and track 
 events, were also useful. Indoor games, the 
 gramophone, cinemas and concerts, and especially 
 Indian dramas, were popular in the evening. Lec- 
 tures on geography, history, and moral subjects 
 were well attended, and French classes were of 
 practical benefit. 
 
 An incalculable service has also been rendered 
 in writing letters for the irreat mass of ignorant 
 
94 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 soldiers to their families in the far-off Indian 
 villages, miles away from a railway. Illiteracy, 
 superstition, and false rumors existed at both 
 ends of the line. Here is a man who has had no 
 word from home since he left a year or more 
 ago. He hears a baseless rumor or heeds some 
 inborn fear that his child is sick, or his wife un- 
 faithful, or that he has been cheated out of his 
 property. Hundreds of homesick men whose whole 
 lives have been bound up in the family circle pour 
 in upon the secretaries, begging that they will 
 write letters home for them. Here you may see six 
 or eight secretaries writing for hours each day, as 
 fast as the men can dictate their messages and 
 tell their stories. 
 
 Then there arose the problem of how to keep 
 these men in touch with their households in 
 isolated and illiterate villages in India. Mr. 
 Hume, one of the secretaries in Lahore, devised 
 a far-reaching plan whereby every letter was for- 
 warded through missionaries or Christian work- 
 ers or officials to the distant home of the soldier. 
 The whole community gathers to hear the news 
 from the Indian regiment on the other side of the 
 world, and a shout goes up from the village street 
 when they learn that their brave Sepoy is not 
 dead, as rumor had whispered. A message is sent 
 back in eager gratitude from the wife, children, 
 and neighbors, and from the united heart of the 
 little village to the distant soldier and his fight- 
 ing comrades. The Red Triangle has spanned tie 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 95 
 
 gulf from the winter cold and the dreary trenches 
 in France to the little village on the i)lain.s of 
 sunny India, and the grateful hearts at both ends 
 somehow dimly know that all this silent ministry 
 is in the name of the White Comrade who is the 
 Friend of man. 
 
 Here in France the hut must stand as the 
 friendly home that gathers up all the best tradi- 
 tions of Indian life. It takes the place of the 
 banyan tree in the heat of the day, the village 
 well, and the meeting place for the men in the 
 cool of the evening. Even beyond all hopes it 
 hais proved a potent factor for unity, harmony, 
 and peace in a time of unrest. It draws the 
 British ofl3cers and the Indian men closer to- 
 gether, and the Indian secretaries have served 
 time and again as the mediators between the two, 
 who could so easily have misunderstood each 
 other. It j)rovides a common meeting place be- 
 tween the caste-ridden and divided Indians them- 
 selves, who had no other ground of unity. 
 
 Here are men of different languages and races 
 and traditions, from the Gurklias, the brave little 
 liill men, to the stalwart Patlians, who come as 
 lighting men from far beyond the borders of India 
 for the sheer joy of battle. The chances for sup- 
 posed loot in the fabled wealth of the West and 
 the accumulation of merit by slaying the "unbe- 
 lievers" of the enemy, i)r()ve an addwl attraction 
 to men born and bred in border warfare. Here 
 also are men of three .separate creeds, who have 
 
96 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 often fought with one another over the issues of 
 their faiths — the big bearded Sikhs, with a sol- 
 dier's religion, the warlike Mohammedans, who 
 fight according to their Koran, and the caste-rid- 
 den Hindus. 
 
 As you walk among the tents the smoke of the 
 fires hangs heavy over the camp; there is the 
 familiar sound of the bubbling rice pots, the smell 
 of pungent curry, the babel of many oriental 
 tongues, and you seem to be back in the very 
 heart of India itself. We gather with the reverent 
 Sikhs for their religious worship. They meet 
 morning and evening for their prayer service, and 
 turn out almost in a body for the weekly Sunday 
 meeting. The service consists principally of sing- 
 ing and the reading of their sacred scripture, the 
 Granth. Seated on the ground, the men show 
 deep reverence, and seem to have a sense of the 
 presence of God in their midst. Their religion 
 has a real restraining influence and there is at 
 present little immorality amongst them. 
 
 A little further on in the camp one comes upon 
 an improvised Mohammedan mosque. Five times 
 a day a devout soldier calls the faithful to prayer, 
 and on Friday about three-fourths of them come 
 out to their voluntary service. The Hindus, on 
 the other hand, dependent upon ceremonial rites, 
 without their temple or priest and with no or- 
 ganized public worship, have not a religion which 
 holds them in such a vital grip in this distant 
 land. 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 97 
 
 As you f>ass down the camp, tlic band in playing 
 for the draft that is inarching oil" to tal<e its place 
 in the trenches. The last good-bys are being said 
 and little groups are round the secretaries. The 
 stalwart Sil<hs are wringing tlieir hands or kneel- 
 ing down to wipe the dust from their shoes, or 
 thanking them with tears of gratitude. They are 
 great cliild-like men, simple of heart, affectionate, 
 but lonely and homesick in a distant land. Here 
 is a man wlio was once a hard drinker, living an 
 immoral life, but today he is keejiing straight. 
 Here is another who has resolved to go back to 
 India to lead a different life. There were tears 
 in the eyes of the secretaries themselves as they 
 came back after bidding good-by to the draft, and 
 there was compensation after long months of serv- 
 ice in the gratitude of the men and in that inner 
 voice which says, '*I was a stranger and ye took 
 me in." 
 
 After Callan had launched the work among the 
 Indian troops, he was called upon to open up the 
 work at a large British base camp behind the 
 lines in France. Here, beside the vast drill 
 ground where Napoleon used to niarshal his 
 troops, is a white city of tents, and between 100,- 
 000 and 200,000 men are always encamped there 
 for training. 
 
 Life in the trenches for the moment drives men 
 to God, Init the life in a base camj) is one of fierce 
 and insidinns icmiiiat inn. To hold the men in 
 tlie faie of such temptations. Callan has erected 
 
98 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 his buildings in the thirty principal centers of 
 this base. Here is a typical hut before us, built of 
 plain pine boards, 120 feet long and 60 feet broad. 
 It accommodates from 2,000 to 3,000 men a day 
 and is used by three-fourths of the men in the 
 camp, by practically all, in fact, except those who 
 are confined to their hospital beds. These thirty 
 huts will be filled all winter with an average 
 of 60,000 men a day. Each night at least 15,000 
 men will be gathered in meetings, lectures, and 
 healthy entertainments. Twice each week there 
 are 12,000 men in attendance at religious meet- 
 ings, and not a week passes without hundreds 
 of decisions being made for the Christian life. 
 In the course of the year a million men will pass 
 through these camps, or one-sixth of the manhood 
 of the nation now marshalled under arms. These 
 are the men who are to be made or marred by 
 life in the army, and who will go back to build 
 the new empire in the great era of reconstruction 
 that is to follow the war. 
 
 To minister to these 60,000 men who daily 
 crowd these thirty huts, there are 167 workers 
 sent over from England, 100 of them men and 67 
 of them women. The latter are nearly all self- 
 supporting and not only receive no salary but 
 pay all their own expenses. The self-sacrificing 
 toil of these helpers, who form part of a vast 
 army of 30,000 heroic women who are voluntarily 
 serving without compensation in the Associations 
 of England and France, is beyond all praise. 
 
\\'nul.t.>UME AND KNTtRTAINlNG 
 
 I C^Ww,.^ t ('•^••Md 
 
 Home Refreshments in London 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 99 
 
 Their very presence in tlie camps is the greatest 
 single moral factor for the creation of that in- 
 definable atmosphere which pervades every hut. 
 Even rude and coarse men never think of swear- 
 ing or speaking an indecent word within these 
 walls. Nor do they forget to be grateful for the 
 tireless service of these women, who stand for 
 hours day and night serving them and providing 
 for their physical necessities. The women work- 
 ers are under the direction of Lady Rodney, who 
 has had four sons fighting at the front, one of 
 whom has already fallen in action. The men have 
 been thrilled and moved to the depths as Lady 
 Rodney has addressed them on "What Are 
 We Fighting For?'' and by her message to the 
 men from the women at home. Several hundred 
 of the choicest women of America will be needed 
 for service among our own troops. They should 
 be women who can stand for the whole principle 
 of the red triangle. They must be ready for tire- 
 less and exhausting physical service, able to work 
 with others without friction, prepared to meet 
 the social needs of the men and to give a sympa- 
 thetic hearing to the tales that will be poured into 
 their ears, but above all they must be able to give 
 a definite Christian message to men fiercely 
 tempted and beset by doubts and ditliculties. 
 The soldier cannot live by bread alone, nor by 
 the tea and cofi'ee of a Y M C A counter; he needs 
 God, and the friendship of good women, and the 
 spirit of home which they carry with them. 
 
100 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 The hundred men who are working in these 
 thirty British huts are worthy of note. A score 
 of them are clergymen, who have resigned their 
 churches for the period of the war. Many others 
 are well-known ministers, laymen, or professors 
 who have come over for a period of several 
 months of service. The list of the men who have 
 been serving here contains many distinguished 
 names. There is Professor Burkett, the New 
 Testament scholar of Cambridge, in charge of 
 one of the huts; Professor Bateson, the great 
 biologist of Cambridge, who has been lecturing 
 on his subject, and who was swept off his feet 
 by the response which he received from the troops. 
 He stated that he was able to learn more from 
 these men than in months of research in his 
 laboratory, where he had been shut up for most 
 of his life. Professor Holland Rose, also of 
 Cambridge, has been lecturing to the troops on 
 European history, interpreting the war to the 
 soldier. Professor Oman, of the same university, 
 has been dealing in his lectures with the historical 
 problems of the war. Rev. E. A. Burroughs, of 
 Oxford, has been giving religious lectures. Prin- 
 cipal D. S. Cairns, of Aberdeen, has had crowded 
 meetings night after night for his apologetic 
 lectures, and the questions raised in the open dis- 
 cussions would make one think he was in a theo- 
 logical seminary. Principal Ritchie, of Notting- 
 ham, has been lecturing on European history and 
 the Balkan situation. Bishop Knight is giving 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 101 
 
 his time seven days a week to looking after the 
 spiritual and ecclesiastical needs of tlie men, as 
 many seek confirnuition and partake of the Holy 
 Communion before going up to the front. Here 
 are Scotch ministers, Anglican clergymen, and 
 laymen, working side by side in a great ministry 
 of service. 
 
 A series of missionary lectures has helped to 
 give the men a new world view of Christianity. 
 It has lifted the simple villager, and the man who 
 has never known anything save the narrow ruts 
 of his own denomination, above the petty interests 
 and divisions of his former life to face world 
 problems and the wide extension of the Kingdom 
 of God. Four lecturers have followed each other 
 to present a great world view to the men in these 
 thirty huts: Butcher of New Guinea showed the 
 effect of the impact of the Gospel upon primitive 
 native races; Farquhar of India showed the 
 power of Christianity over the great ethnic reli- 
 gions of India; Lord Wm. Gascoyne Cecil came 
 next on the transformation of China, and was 
 followed by Dennis of Madagascar and Dr. Datta, 
 a living witness of the power of Christianity in 
 the great Indian empire. John McNeill and 
 Gipsy Smith, the well-known evangelists, have 
 •spoken to thousands and have brought the chal- 
 lenge of the Christian Gospel to the men, calling 
 upon them for decisions and a change of life in 
 harmony with the teachings of Christ. 
 
 Here are some of the linest spirits of England, 
 
102 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 some of its intellectual and spiritual leaders, 
 brought into daily contact with the manhood of 
 the nation in this formative period and epoch- 
 making crisis. Before us hangs the program for 
 the week. It looks like the schedule of classes 
 and lectures for some great university. It is 
 drawn up- in seven columns for the seven days 
 of the week, and includes a score of centers, with 
 an average of three events for each hut per day. 
 It would cover several closely printed pages. 
 Here are some of the events scheduled for a single 
 night : 
 
 Hut No. 1, lecture on "The Meaning of Chris- 
 tianity," by Mr. A. D. Mann; choir rehearsal; 
 devotional meeting. No. 2, Rev. Butcher of New 
 Guinea, lecture on "The Failure of Civilization"; 
 French class; Clean Talk League. No. 3, lecture 
 by Lord Wm. Cecil on China ; French class ; hobby 
 class. No. 4, cavalry band orchestra; Com- 
 munion Service; evening prayers. No. 5, Lena 
 Ashwell Concert Party from London. No. 6, Rev. 
 N. H. M. Aitken, Bible lecture and discussion; 
 orchestral band. No. 7, concert party; general 
 hospital show. No. 8, lecture on Napoleon by 
 Mr. Perkins; Mrs. Luard's concert party. No. 
 9, concert given by the men of the auxiliary park 
 camp; draughts tournament. No. 10, religious 
 discussion class; Lord Wm. Cecil; service con- 
 ducted by Chaplain Berry. No. 11, Professor 
 Thos. Welsh's Bible class; mid-week rally. No. 
 12, fretwork and carpentry class; games; letter 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 103 
 
 writing. No. 13, mid-week service; Bible clasH; 
 letter writing. No. 14, cinema «how; indoor 
 games. No. 15, lantern lecture on "India in the 
 Trenches." No. 10, ladies' concert party; Hindi 
 and Urdu classes; letter writing; games. All 
 of this covers only the program for half of the 
 huts on a single night! 
 
 Principal Fraser, of Ceylon and Uganda, but 
 equally conversant with present-day problems in 
 Britain, has been conducting a weekly parliament 
 in dirt'orent cami)s on the great questions of recon- 
 struction after the war. For here are men away 
 from home, lifted above the toil and narrow 
 drudgery of their former cramped lives, and they 
 have learned to think. 
 
 There is evidence of wide industrial and social 
 unrest. The men are conscious not only of world 
 wrongs which threaten their country from with- 
 out, but of wrongs within as well, and they are 
 going to demand that these wrongs shall be 
 righted. A deep tide of feeling runs through the 
 audience, as these men, blunt of speech but clear 
 of brain, openly and frankly discuss the future, 
 and they hang eagerly upon the words of Prin- 
 cipal Fraser as he guides their thought to higher 
 ideals for the period of reconstructioti that is to 
 follow. 
 
 One night they are discussing the present social 
 order, and what is wrong with it ; the}' are deal- 
 ing with bad housing, employment, low wages, 
 the cleavage between the rich and the poor, in- 
 
104 WITH OUR SOLDIEES IN FRANCE 
 
 dustrial oppression, and social injustice. The 
 next night they consider the dangers of demobili- 
 zation. What will be the effect upon hundreds 
 of thousands of women workers? Here are more 
 than five million soldiers in the army, and a large 
 number of men and women, boys and girls, work- 
 ing on government orders. What steps must be 
 taken to minimize the dislocation of industry 
 and to prevent unemployment? On the night 
 following, they discuss the question of industrial 
 reorganization. They resolve that ''the time has 
 come, as the only means of averting social dis- 
 aster, to grant a constitution to the factory, and 
 quite frankly to recognize and insist that the 
 conditions of employment are not matters to be 
 settled by the employer alone, any more than 
 by the workmen alone, but in joint conference 
 between them; and not even for each establish- 
 ment alone, but subject to the National Common 
 Rules arrived at for the whole industry by the 
 organized employers and employed, in consulta- 
 tion with the representatives of the community 
 as a whole." 
 
 At the next parliament they discuss the future 
 of education in England. What should be its 
 aim, how far should it be technical, and how far 
 should it aim at the development of personality? 
 Should the school-leaving age be raised to fifteen, 
 or half-time education be given up to the age of 
 eighteen? One night in the parliament they dis- 
 cuss the problem of drink and the war; on an- 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 105 
 
 other night, gamMiii^; niid on aii(»llicr, the social 
 evil. The men who attend tlie lectures and parlia- 
 ments of those camps will almost get a lilxTal 
 ediH'ation during the tliive years. 
 
 We have spoken of the vast work going on in 
 the thirty huts conducted by 1(57 workers in this 
 single base camp. Let us now jtass into a typical 
 center and observe the work a little more in de- 
 tail. For our first illustration, let ns take the 
 Y M C A hut in the Convalescent Camp. We select 
 this because it is the model of the new huts for 
 the American army which are now being con- 
 structed. It is a moving sight simply to step in- 
 side its doors. Here are two parallel structures 
 of simple pine boards, each 120 by 30 feet. They 
 may be used separately, in eight different depart- 
 ments, including the lecture hall which will seat 
 500, or with the partitions raised they may be 
 thrown into one large audience hall, holding 
 1,200 men. 
 
 A glance at the crowd within, or at the great 
 city of white tents without, shows that even this 
 building is utterly inade.iuate for this convales- 
 cent camp holding 4.000 men. It is a center for 
 a dozen surrounding liospitals, each containing 
 from 1.000 to 4,000 patients. As the men are 
 cured in these hosi)itals they are sent up to the 
 Convalescent Camp to be made tit to return to 
 till' trenches. It is worth remembering that every 
 one of these 4,000 patients is a wounded man, all 
 of whom have seen service and sullering. 
 
106 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 Let us enter first of all the large social hall. 
 Several hundred men are seated at the tables, 
 playing games or chatting over a cup of tea. At 
 one end is the counter, where three women and 
 five men take their turn serving during the day 
 and evening. Two or three thousand of these men 
 will pour in every day this winter. They will 
 stand in a long queue filing by the counter for 
 more than two hours. Here are large urns, each 
 holding ten gallons of tea. Cup after cup is 
 rapidly pushed across the counter without turn- 
 ing ofif the tap; as 160 men are served in ten 
 minutes, and there is no stop save to place a fresh 
 urn full of tea. As fast as the workers can move, 
 not only hot tea and coffee, but bread and bis- 
 cuits, cake and chocolate, tobacco, matches, 
 candles, soap, bachelor buttons are furnished, and 
 every other need of the soldier is supplied. The 
 aim is to meet his every demand, so that he will 
 not have to go into the city to places of tempta- 
 tion and evil resorts. 
 
 While these men are being served or are seated 
 in the social room, meetings and lectures are con- 
 ducted at the same time on the other side of the 
 partition in the audience hall, which is occupied 
 several times a day, and is used for social pur- 
 poses between the meetings. We now pass into 
 the lounge, which is filled with men, busy at their 
 games. Next is the Quiet Room, where no talking 
 or writing is allowed. Men come into this room 
 for quiet meetings or private prayer, and here 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 107 
 
 small fjroup prayor riUHilings and Bible classes 
 are hel<i. 
 
 Just outside the hut is a wide wooden platform 
 which accommodates several huudred men. There 
 nearly a dozen ditferent games are in full swing, 
 all at the same time. Each one is designed to 
 help the patient recover his health. Here are bad- 
 minton, tennis, volley ball, indoor baseball, quoits, 
 deck billiards, bagatelle, ping-pong, and other 
 games. The front of this platform forms a grand- 
 stand for the cricket field beyond. 
 
 Here for three nights we conducted meetings, 
 with five or six hundred men in attendance. More 
 than a hundred men signed the decision cards 
 each night, and when asked it was found that 
 one-third of them had made the decision for the 
 first time, about one-third of them were back- 
 sliders who had been living as Christians before 
 the war but who had gone down before tempta- 
 tion, while the remaining third had been maintain- 
 ing a consistent Christian life during the war. 
 
 In a second after-meeting in the Quiet Room 
 one night, men from almost every quarter of the 
 globe spoke and gave testimony. Here was one 
 poor fellow who had come over after several 
 years in the States. He had had delirium tremens 
 three times, and showed the effects of it on his 
 face. He had formerly been the center of the 
 foul talk and vulgar language of his tent. He 
 had now come straight out for Christ and had 
 boldly witnessed for Him before the men. The 
 
108 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 second boy, the son of a prominent officer in 
 South Africa, arose under deep emotion. He had 
 been living a wild and reckless life and was 
 known as the "Red Light King," After his con- 
 version, he went out and brought in another com- 
 rade who openly decided for Christ. There were 
 boys from Canada, Australia, and England who 
 followed, many of them with tragedies in their 
 past lives. 
 
 It is impossible to calculate the vast influences 
 for good that have been flowing from this hut 
 to the thousands of men who pass through it. 
 The aim of the young Scotch minister who is the 
 leader has been to make it for all the men "a 
 home away from home." The life in the army, 
 with its irksome toil, daily drill, cold and wet and 
 mud, the horror of battle and the pain of wounds, 
 is all for the moment forgotten as the men enter 
 the place. 
 
 We tell the leader that we are taking this build- 
 ing as the model for our new American camps. 
 He says: "Large as this hut is, it is not large 
 enough or good enough for the men. Daily we 
 have need for better equipment. This hut as it 
 stands will serve from two thousand to three 
 thousand men in a day, but nothing is too good 
 for these boys who are coming here to suffer 
 and die in this faraway land. You will send 
 your sons over from America to spend this cold 
 winter on the bleak plains of France in open bell 
 tents. They will b6 fed on canned goods and 
 
LIFE IN A BASE CAMP 109 
 
 corned beef, and they will bo lionsed in the most 
 unattractive towns of France, where there i.s abso- 
 lutely no interest or diversion apart from drink 
 and women. You can hardly realize what it 
 means to sit down in a homelike place, to get a 
 hot cup of tea served on a white tablecloth. This 
 is the only home these boys will see in France, 
 and they will either come here or go to the red 
 light resorts. I wish I could tell the men of 
 America what their boys will face here, what 
 they will suffer, what temptations will assail 
 them. The best equipment you can give them is 
 not good enough, for the people at home little 
 realize to what a life their boys are coming, and 
 what hardships will face them here in France." 
 
THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS 
 
 ' We are in a natural amphitheater of the forest, 
 near a big base hospital, about seventy miles be- 
 hind the lines in France. Always in the stillness 
 of the woods, even at this distance, one can hear 
 the intermittent boom of the big guns at the front, 
 and the air is vibrant on this summer evening. 
 Beyond the wood lies the old drill ground of 
 Napoleon, which is used today as a field for final 
 training for the reenforcements for the front line. 
 In this wide open space in the woods at sun- 
 down the patients of the hospital in their blue 
 uniforms are gathering for the meeting. It is a 
 picturesque sight to see about eight hundred of 
 them seated on the grass, while an orchestra com- 
 posed of their own men is playing before the 
 opening of the meeting. Who are these men be- 
 fore us? They are not the wounded who have 
 fallen on the field of honor, but the sick, and, 
 quite frankly, they all have venereal disease. The 
 war has dragged this moral menace so into the 
 light of day that the times of prudish silence and 
 of falal iguoraiKO should have i)assed for all 
 who are truly concerned for the welfare of the 
 soldier and who want to know his actual condi- 
 113 
 
114 WITH OUE SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 tions. We shall, therefore, in this chapter call a 
 spade a spade. 
 
 The eight hundred men gathered here are a 
 small part of some thousands of similar cases in 
 France. The London Daily Mail of April 25th, 
 1917, referring to the report of the military au- 
 thorities to the House of Commons, stated that 
 there had been some two hundred thousand cases 
 of venereal disease in the British Army in France 
 alone. This does not include England or the men 
 on the other fronts. The British Army is not 
 worse than others. Professor Finger, at a meet- 
 ing of the Medical Society in Vienna early in the 
 war, estimated that over 700,000, or some ten per 
 cent of the Austrian troops, had contracted 
 venereal disease. More ominous still is the fact 
 that in almost every place yet investigated the 
 majority of the men were confessedly living in 
 immorality amid the temptations of the base 
 camps in France. 
 
 As we visit the hospitals in France, we are 
 saddened by the fact that for one of the two 
 venereal diseases no cure has yet been found, that 
 a large proportion of these cases suffer a relapse, 
 and that over seventy per cent will develop com- 
 plications. As one Commanding Medical OflScer 
 said, "There is enough venereal disease in these 
 military camps now to curse Europe for three 
 generations to come." 
 
 One young major said : "Every day I am losing 
 my boys. I've lost more men through these forces 
 
THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS lir, 
 
 of iiiimoi'iility tli;iii through the eueiny's Hhol and 
 shell." The recent report of the Koyal Commis- 
 sion shows the grave menace of the <lisease to 
 IJritain, where twenty per cent of the nrban popu- 
 lation has been infected. Flexner's terrible in- 
 dictment in his ''Prostitution in Europe" proves 
 how particularly dangerous and pernicious is the 
 system of inspection and regulation which legal- 
 izes and standardizes vice as a ''necessary evil" 
 and spreads disease through the false sense of 
 security which it vainly promises. According to 
 Flexner's statements, our men are fighting in the 
 land which of all others is perhai)s the most 
 dangerous in Europe for their moral welfare. 
 Even if the inspection and regulation of vice were 
 physically perfectly successful, it might still lead 
 to national degeneration, but instead of being a 
 success it has proved, especially in France, a 
 miserable failure. 
 
 Among the men in the venereal hospitals of 
 France are musicians, artists, teachers, educated 
 aiul refined boys from some of the best homes, 
 and in another camp we find several hundred 
 officers and several members of the nobility. 
 What was the cause of their downfall? A ques- 
 tionnaire replied to by several hundred of them 
 revealed the fact that six per cent attributed their 
 downfall to curiosity, ten per cent to ignorance, 
 claiming that they had never been adequately 
 warned by the medical authorities, thirteen per 
 cent to loss of home iulluences and lack of leave, 
 
116 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 thirty-three per cent to drink and the loss of self- 
 control due to intoxication, while the largest num- 
 ber of all, or thirty-eight per cent, attributed it 
 to uncontrolled passion when they were uncon- 
 verted or had no higher power in their lives to 
 enable them to withstand temptation. But per- 
 haps the chief cause of the spread of immorality 
 is the unnatural conditions under which the men 
 are compelled to live in a foreign land in war 
 time. 
 
 Donald Hankey, the brilliant young author of 
 "A Student in Arms," who fell at the front, 
 speaks thus of the moral problem in the soldier's 
 life: 
 
 "Let us be frank about this. What a doctor 
 might call the 'appetites' and a padre the 'lusts' 
 of the body, hold dominion over the average man, 
 whether civilian or soldier, unless they are coun- 
 teracted by a stronger power. The only men who 
 are pure are those who are absorbed in some 
 pursuit, or possessed by a great love; be it the 
 love of clean, wholesome life which is religion, or 
 the love of a noble man which is hero-worship, or 
 the love of a true woman. These are the four 
 powers which are stronger than 'the flesh' — the 
 zest of a quest, religion, hero-worship, and the love 
 of a good woman. If a man is not possessed by 
 one of these he will be immoral. . . . Fifteen 
 months ago I was a private quartered in a camp 
 
 near A . . . . The tent was damp, gloomy, 
 
 and cold. The Y M C A tent and the Canteen tent 
 were crowded. One wandered off to the town. 
 . . . And if a fellow ran up against 'a bit of 
 skirt' he was generally just in the mood to fol- 
 
THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS 117 
 
 low it wherever it might lead. The moral of this 
 is, (louhlo your !sul)S(ri|)ti()ns to the Y M C A, 
 Church huts, soldit'rs' clubs, or whatever organi- 
 zatiou Vdu fancy! You will ho helping to combat 
 vice in the only sensible way." 
 
 We agree with Donald Ilaukey that the ap- 
 petites hold dominion over the average man, 
 whether civilian or soldier. We do not wish to 
 make any sweeping generalizations or accusa- 
 tions. We have no means of knowing how many 
 men are immoral in peace time, as we have in 
 war time. We only know that conditions of 
 ordinary times are intensified, aggravated, and 
 niultij)lied ; and they are revealed in war time as 
 never before, and thrown upon the screen of the 
 public gaze. The writer also desires to guard 
 against any possible impression that the British 
 army is worse than our own or any other. It is 
 too early to know what record our men will make, 
 but we find it ditlicult to believe that they could 
 have maintained a higher standard if placed in 
 equal numbers in the same circumstances. 
 
 But to return to our meeting. Everj' one of 
 these eight hundred men in this audience has a 
 history. Tired or hardened or haggard faces are 
 relaxed as they join in singing the hymns on this 
 Sunday evening, ^'Nearer, My God, to Thee," 
 ''Lead, Kindly Light," "Tell Me the Old, Old 
 Story," and ''Where is my Wandenng Boy To- 
 night?" There is a tragedy in every heart, and 
 each man has experienced the bitterness of sin 
 
118 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 and bears its scars branded in his body. Look 
 into the faces of some of these men. Here in 
 front, this very first one, is an American cowboy 
 
 from Texas, Frank B . As a "broncho-buster" 
 
 he became the star rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild 
 West Show and was finally adopted as his son. 
 At the age of fifteen he started to go wrong in New 
 Orleans. At an early age he joined the American 
 army, and later, at the outbreak of the war, he 
 served in the Flying Corps of the British army. 
 Here he broke a leg and was smashed up in action. 
 After that he joined an infantry division. In one 
 of the meetings this week he accepted Christ. He 
 has since been standing firm and goes out tomor- 
 row to begin a new life. Near him is a young theo- 
 logical student with a sad look on his face, who 
 has learned here in bitterness the deepest lesson 
 of his life. Next to him is a heartbroken married 
 man with a wife and children at home. 
 
 After the crowd has assembled, we speak to 
 them of Christ as the Maker of Men. We tell 
 them of the transformation of others like them- 
 selves, of Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Loyola 
 and the saints of old, of John B. Gough, Jerry 
 McAuley, Hadley, and the men of Water Street 
 whom God raised out of the depths, and of men 
 right in their midst who have come out for Christ 
 in the meetings this week. After speaking for 
 an hour, we go into the Y M C A for an after- 
 meeting. 
 
 We had a wonderful time with them here one 
 
THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS 119 
 
 Saturuay night. PMve hundred of them crowded 
 Ihc hall and listened for an hour as we Hpoke on 
 (he good news of Ihe free oiler of life. When the 
 invitation was given, over two hundred stayed to 
 the after-nieeling as desiring to follow Christ. 
 After we had spoken one of the men came forward 
 and asked if he could say a word. He had been 
 an earnest Christian before the war, and as he 
 began to speak of his fall and of his trusting wife 
 and children at home, the poor fellow broke down 
 in utter wretchedness. It seemed to strike a 
 responsive chord in the hearts of the married men 
 all over the room. Many a one buried his head 
 in his hands and wept bitterly. A second after- 
 meeting was held and God seemed to be moving 
 in the heart of every man present. Man after 
 man rose to tell of his fall, or of his repentance, 
 or of his new acceptance of Christ. The feeling 
 was deep but controlled. It was one of the sad- 
 dest and yet one of the gladdest meetings I have 
 ever attended. One minister present said he had 
 seen nothing like it all through the Welsh re- 
 vival. 
 
 During their stay in this hospital great changes 
 have taken place in many of these men. Here is 
 Dan, a young chauffeur, a strong-willed, self- 
 suflScient young fellow who thought he needed no 
 help and no religion. He has a Christian wife 
 at home to whom he has been untrue, for the temp- 
 tations of the war swept him off his feet like a 
 flood. In the meetings this week he turned to 
 
120 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 Christ and has been working right and left bring- 
 ing in others ever since. Beside him is a poor 
 fellow whom he has just brought to the meetings. 
 He went on leave to England, only to find his 
 three children deserted by his wife, who had run 
 away, untrue to him. At last he found her, and 
 brought her home. On his return to the army, 
 he finds that now he has to bear here in the hos- 
 pital the vicarious result of her fall. He came 
 to me as a non-Christian struggling with the prob- 
 lem of forgiveness. Could he forgive her all this 
 and his broken home? At last in Christ he found 
 the power to forgive and took up his heavy cross. 
 He knelt at the altar of the little chapel and 
 yielded up his life to God. Tomorrow he leaves 
 the hospital to begin a new life. 
 
 Here is a young Australian who was untrue to 
 his wife. When we first saw him he was hardened 
 by sin. That night he yielded to Christ. The 
 next Sunday we knelt beside him at the Lord's 
 Supper. He was a new man; his very face was 
 changed. He said, "I have read of miracles in the 
 past, but there was never a greater miracle than 
 the change which has taken place in my heart 
 and life. I am a new man. I can look any one 
 in the face today !" 
 
 Beside him at that communion table knelt a 
 young gunner, "Joe," of the Royal Field Artillery. 
 He was a strong, red-cheeked six-footer, winsome 
 and good to look upon, the most popular man in 
 his battery. Away from home among bad com- 
 
THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS 121 
 
 panions he was swept otX his feet and fell. He 
 has found Christ here among the prodigals in a 
 far country. Before leaving he came np to bid 
 us good-by, saying, "I'm going out to warn other 
 men and to witness for Christ to the end of my 
 days." 
 
 Here is M , a young sergeant, who came up 
 
 after the meeting, with tears in his eyes. "Sir," 
 he said, *'I was never drunk but once in my life, 
 when my pals were home on leave, and that once, 
 under the influence of drink, I fell. Here I am 
 in the hospital, yet I am engaged to a little girl 
 at home who is as white as snow. What is my 
 duty in the matter?" He has accepted Christ 
 and is a changed man. 
 
 Oh, it is a wonderful sight to see men trans- 
 formed by this inward moral miracle, wrought 
 by the touch of the living God. Here in the very 
 center of this venereal camp stands the Y M C A, 
 endeavoring to meet their every need, and even 
 here the red triangle shines with the hope of a 
 new manhood for body, mind, and spirit. Every 
 day at the hour of opening there is a scurry of 
 feet as the men rush in to the one center in the 
 whole camp where they can congregate. Martin 
 Harvey has just been here to cheer them up, and 
 they were enthusiastic over a fine lecture and 
 recital last night on Chopin. The Colonel in com- 
 mand takes particular pride in the Y M C A for 
 his men, and states that crime among them has 
 been reduced ninety per cent since it started. 
 
122 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 But eveu greater than the privilege which the 
 Association has in ministering to the fallen, is 
 its work of prevention in the other camps. Just 
 up the road is a swearing old major in command 
 of a unit which has always had the worst record 
 for immorality and disease of any camp on the 
 plain. He finally came in and demanded a Y M C A 
 hut for his men. A few weeks later he came to the 
 Association headquarters and said, in punc- 
 tuated language which could not be printed, "For 
 a year and a half my camp has led all the rest 
 as the worst in venereal disease, with some twenty- 
 five fresh cases every week. The first week after 
 the Y M C A was opened we had only ten cases, 
 the next week six, the third week only two, and 
 it has not risen above that since. Your Associa- 
 tion is the best cure for this evil." 
 
 Nothing less than reaching the whole man can 
 meet this gigantic problem. You must take physi- 
 cal precautions and build up a strong, clean, 
 athletic body. Better than all repressive rules 
 and regulations, you must provide healthy and 
 happy occupation for the minds of the men. But 
 beyond the reach of medical and military re- 
 strictions you have got to grip and strengthen 
 their spiritual and moral nature. Otherwise, in 
 the artificial and unnatural conditions consequent 
 upon a vast concentration of men in a foreign 
 land, away from all home influences, and in the 
 poisonous atmosphere of a land of "regulated" 
 immorality, where the government is in league 
 
THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS 123 
 
 with it as a "necessary evil," you must «ee your 
 men fall in ranks before the machine guns of 
 commercialized vice, coiitrollod by the vested in- 
 terests, or fall a i)rey to (be barpies who walk the 
 streets. In the face of all this we must lay bold 
 claim to tbe whole of manhood for God and for 
 the high ends for wbicb it was created. 
 
 The writer recently walked through a French 
 street of licensed vice, where strong young fellows 
 were tossing away their birthright for a mess of 
 pottage. He passed on the main street of the city 
 two young Americans from a medical unit who 
 were reeling along in tbe i)ossession of two har- 
 pies. They were shouting to all the passers by, 
 trying to hold up the carriages, and widely adver- 
 tising their uniform and their nation. We recog- 
 nize the difficulty of maintaining a high moral 
 standard in a foreign land in war time, but we 
 believe it can be done. A plan has recently been 
 suggested by the Association for dealing with this 
 menace. 
 
 First of all, it is proposed to conduct a cam- 
 paign of education on the highest moral grounds 
 by a select group of lecturers, capable of present- 
 ing wisel}' the danger of immorality from both 
 the medical and moral standpoints. This will in- 
 volve the preparation of lectures, charts, lantern 
 slides, tilms, and everytbing neetled for tbe etfec- 
 tive presentation both to the ear and eye. It is 
 hopeil that these lecturers will be able to in- 
 struct cbai»lains, Y M C A secretaries, and all who 
 
124 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 are responsible for the moral leadership of the 
 troops, in order that they may be better able to 
 cope with the situation. It is proposed that these 
 lecturers conduct meetings for three days in each 
 center, with a parade lecture for each battalion 
 and voluntary meetings in the evening, which 
 will include addresses on hygiene, lantern lec- 
 tures, and moral talks. Healthy literature will 
 be prepared and distributed to the men, and 
 similar campaigns will be conducted in the camps 
 in the United States and on shipboard before the 
 troops reach France. 
 
 Second, a positive program for the occupation 
 and amusement of the men will be provided. 
 Athletic sports, games, tournaments, track meets, 
 and other events will offer adequate physical facil- 
 ities. Amusements, entertainments, concerts, 
 classes, and lectures will be arranged for the 
 mental occupation of the men. Meetings, per- 
 sonal interviews, and services will be planned to 
 keep before them the moral and spiritual chal- 
 lenge and the call for clean living. Special cam- 
 paigns will be carried on in all Y M C A huts from 
 time to time. 
 
 Third, we would favor strict regulations and 
 penalties to cope with immorality. We are glad 
 that the selection of camp sites for the American 
 troops in France is being made at places as far 
 removed from the temptations of the cities as 
 possible, where the men will be kept under closer 
 supervision than could be done if the troops were 
 
THE CAMP OF THE PK0DIGAL8 125 
 
 located near large centers of population. Other 
 means are being provided which cannot here be 
 mentioned. 
 
 In the fourth place, we favor adequate medical 
 provisions, coupled with the highest moral re- 
 straints. We will take our stand against any 
 league with vice, against anj recognition of im- 
 morality as a "necessary evil." We will stand 
 against all notices, lectures, or medical talks 
 such as are given in some quarters, which prac- 
 tically serve as an invitation or solicitation to 
 immorality. We would oppose any provision on 
 the x)art of the authorities to provide in advance 
 for immorality, to standardize it, accept it, and 
 attempt to render it safe, and we would oppose 
 any mention of it which tends to advertise and 
 increase the evil. We would strenuously oppose 
 the running of supervised houses of prostitution 
 by our own military authorities, as was done by 
 some of them on the Mexican border. Conceiv- 
 ably a system of inspected government houses and 
 of prophylactic measures might be devised which" 
 would eliminate disease altogether, and yet de- 
 moralize the young manhood of our nation by 
 a cynical scientific materialism such as we are 
 fighting against in the powers that dragged the 
 world into this war. We are more opposed to 
 iniiuoralit}' than to disease, which is its penalty. 
 We fear not only the impairment of the physical 
 fitness of the men as a fighting force, but much 
 more the menace of the moral degradation of the 
 
126 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 manhood of the nation, under the unnatural con- 
 ditions of wartime. 
 
 We believe that the hearty cooperation of the 
 medical and moral agencies and of the military 
 and voluntary forces which have to do with the 
 men, can greatly reduce both immorality and 
 disease. We feel sure, moreover, that the solid 
 backing of public opinion in America will support 
 every effort to surround our camps with a zone 
 of safety and to keep the men clean and strong 
 in the multiplied dangers of a foreign land, as 
 well as in the military camps of our own country. 
 It is reassuring to know that our military au- 
 thorities abroad have taken a strong stand and 
 that in no army in Europe are drunkenness and 
 the contraction of venereal disease more instantly 
 court-martialled or more severely punished. 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 RELIGION AT THE FRONT 
 
 The war, like a great searchlight thrown across 
 our individual and national lives, has revealed 
 men and nations to themselves. It has shown us 
 the nation's manhood suddenly stripped of the 
 conventionalities, the restraints, and the outward 
 respectability of civil life, subjected to the trial 
 and testing of a prodigious strain. It has shown 
 us the real stuff of which men are made. It is 
 like the X-ray photographs now constantly used 
 in all the military hospitals, and placed in the 
 windows of the operating rooms, to guide the sur- 
 geon in discovering the hidden pieces of shrapnel 
 or .shattered bones which must be removed in 
 order to save the patient. 
 
 The war has been a great revelation of things 
 both good and bad. In the light of this terrible 
 conflict, we may well ask what it shows us of the 
 present virtues and vices of the men, and of our 
 past failure or success in dealing with them, and 
 to what future course of action it should summon 
 us? In other words, what lessons has the war to 
 teach us? Large numbers of young clergymen 
 and laymen of the churches of England and Scot- 
 land have gone to the war zone with the men as 
 chaplains, Y M C A workers, or in the army itself, 
 129 
 
130 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 and have learned to know men as they never knew 
 them before. We would covet this opportunity 
 for every young minister or Christian worker in 
 America. Mr. Moody once stated that the Civil 
 War was his university. It was there he learned 
 to understand the human heart and to know and 
 win men. 
 
 During the summer of 1917 a questionnaire 
 was sent out to representative religious workers 
 throughout the armies in France and Great Bri- 
 tain by a committee under the chairmanship of 
 the Bishop of Winchester and Professor D. S. 
 Cairns, with Mr. E. C. Carter of the Y M C A, and 
 the Rev. Tissington Tatlow of the Student Chris- 
 tian Movement, as secretaries. Although the re- 
 sults and findings of this committee are not yet 
 published, the writer has before him the reports 
 of numbers of workers in France. In the base 
 camp where he was last working, the questions 
 were taken up by more than a hundred of the 
 workers and discussed in conferences with groups 
 of the soldiers ^nd officers of the various regi- 
 ments. These were summarized in findings and 
 the reports were compared with the returns made 
 from other centers. The writer has had the privi- 
 lege of talking with hundreds of the soldiers 
 regarding their own religious lives and difficul- 
 ties. In this chapter he will try to form a com- 
 posite photograph of all these impressions and 
 to state impartially the results of his own ex- 
 perience and those of others. 
 
RELIGION AT THE FKONT 131 
 
 We shall confine ourselves to three outstanding 
 questions: I. What are the moral standards and 
 actions of llie men in war lime? II. What is 
 their attitude to reliy;ion and what is their reli- 
 gious life at the front? III. What is their atti- 
 tude to the chnrilies, and what lessons may the 
 Church learn from the men at the front? 
 
 The questionnaire has been answered mainly 
 by men of tlie British army, but the writer could 
 observe no radical ditlerence between the British 
 and American forces as regards their religious 
 life. As in other things connected with the war, 
 we in America may learn much from the experi- 
 ence of Britain and other nations. 
 
 What are the moral standards and actions of 
 the men in icar time? At the very beginning, we 
 must recognize the difficulty and danger of gen- 
 eralizations. No two men in the army are pre- 
 cisely alike. All sweeping generalizations are 
 likely to be misleading. Kegiments differ from 
 one another and workers receive diflfering impres- 
 sions of the front. Most of all we must dis- 
 tinguish between the ditferent classes in the army. 
 
 It has been repeatedly affirmed that not more 
 than 20 per cent of the men now under arms 
 among the British troops were connected with 
 the churches in any vital way before the war, or 
 were regular in attendance at their services. Of 
 this minority perhaps a half — those who were 
 
132 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 weak or nominal Christians before the war or 
 have lost the higher standards of peace time or 
 have hidden whatever religion they may have 
 had — would not now be classed as definitely 
 Christian men. But the remaining half, or one- 
 tenth of the total number in the army, would 
 probably be out-and-out Christians, strengthened 
 by the severe discipline of the war and living 
 under distinctly Christian standards. 
 
 At the other or lower extreme, there are per- 
 haps one-tenth who are so-called "rotters," the 
 men who set the evil standards of the camp and 
 whose conduct is almost altogether selfish and 
 materialistic. Between these two extremes are 
 the great majority, or four-fifths, whom it is so 
 diflQcult to classify. It is our conviction that 
 these men "are not saved, but are salvable." 
 
 What are the moral standards of this majority? 
 They are not definitely Christian. Rather, they 
 have a military, material standard of the type 
 of a somewhat primitive social group. Their ex- 
 pressions unconsciously reveal their judgments. 
 Their constant demand of one another is "to play 
 the game," that is, to play fair and to do one's 
 part in order to win the game for the good of 
 all. Anything which harms, hinders, or endan- 
 gers another, which brings suffering to one's fel- 
 lows or defeat to one's side, is not playing the 
 game. They condemn unmanly actions which 
 bring defeat, and praise the practical and virile 
 virtues. As one chaplain writes : "I believe nearly 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 133 
 
 all live partly by faith in a good God, I have 
 never found men afraid to die, even thougli they 
 were afraid before battle. As to the standards 
 by which they live, I should say they are the 
 sanctions of <^roui» morality. They have very lax 
 ideas about <lrunkenues8 and sexual irregulaiity, 
 but they have very strict ideas about the sacred- 
 ness of social obligations within the groups to 
 which they belong. 1 would mention sheer fear 
 of public opinion as one of the great weaknesses 
 of the men. They would rather be in the fashion 
 than be right. And most of them have been hard- 
 ened — though not necessarily in a bad sense." 
 
 As we ask ourselves what are the virtues which 
 the majority admire in others and practice them- 
 selves to a greater or lesser degree, we would say 
 that they are chiefly five: 
 
 1. Courage or bravery, the first virtue of the 
 ancients and always at a natural premium in war 
 time, is admired by all. In countless instances 
 in the camps or ou the battlefield this rises to 
 heroism or self-sacrifice. Cowardice is scathingly 
 condemncnl, and the man who starts to run away 
 on the battlefield is unhesitatingly shot down by 
 his comrades to preserve the morale of the fight- 
 ing body. 
 
 2. Brothcrlincss, or comradeship, shows itself 
 in unselfish service and coo])eration with others. 
 
 3. Generosity and tender-heartedness show 
 themselves in the men's willingness to help a 
 comrade, to share their last rations, and to insist 
 
134 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 that others be attended to on the battlefield be- 
 fore themselves when they lie wounded. These 
 are among the most beautiful virtues which the 
 war has revealed. 
 
 4. Straightforwardness and genuine honesty 
 are demanded; and all cant, hypocrisy, double 
 dealing, shirking, and unreality are scathingly 
 condemned. 
 
 5. Persistent cheerfulness in the midst of mo- 
 notony, drudgery, sufifering, danger, or death, is 
 admired and maintained by the majority. This 
 is not incompatible with the "grousing" or 
 grumbling which the Englishman regards as his 
 prerogative. This good cheer shows itself in the 
 inveterate singing and whistling of the men on 
 the march. 1 
 
 Commenting upon the virtues of the soldiers, 
 especially the wounded, a hospital nurse writes: 
 "I was struck by the amount of real goodness 
 among the men — their generosity, kindness, chiv- 
 alry, patience, and self-sacrifice. The sins which 
 they dislike are those sins of the spirit which 
 Christ denounced most bitterly — hypocrisy, pride. 
 
 'The songs of the men which are most popular in war time bear evi- 
 dence of this unconscious virtue. They fall into three classes. There are 
 the songs of cheer so popular in the camps today: "Pack Up Your Trou- 
 bles in Your Own Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile," "Are We Down- 
 hearted, No," "Though Your Heart May Ache Awhile Never Mind," etc. 
 Then there are the songs of home: "Keep the Home Fires Burning," 
 "Tipperary," "Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty," "Put Me on the Train 
 to London Town," "Back Home in Tennessee," "In My Old Kentucky 
 Home," "There's a Long, Long Trail Awinding," "Give Me Your Smile," 
 "If You Were the Only Girl in the World," "Mother McCrae," etc. Then 
 there are the songs of nationality: The "Marseillaise," "John Brown's 
 Body," "When Irish Eyes are Smiling," "Come Back to Erin," "Annie 
 Laurie," etc. 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 135 
 
 meanness. They love giviiif?, they bear pMiii 
 l)ationtly, they honor true womanhood, they 
 reverence goodness." 
 
 Probably no one in the present war has given 
 a better (U'sci'ij)tion of the unconscious virtues 
 of the soldiers than has Donald Hankey, in his 
 chapter on "Th6 Religion of the Inarticulate," 
 frngnionts of which we here quote: 
 
 "We never got a chance to sit down and think 
 things out. Praying was almost an impossibility. 
 . . . Above all, we were not going to turn reli- 
 gious at the last minute because we were afraid. 
 . . . The soldier, and in this case the soldier 
 means the workingman, does not in the least 
 connect the things that he really believes in with 
 Christianity. . . . Here were men who believed 
 absolutely in the Christian virtues of unselfish- 
 ness, generosity, charity, and humility, without 
 ever connecting them in their minds with Christ ; 
 and at the same time what they did associate 
 with Christianity was just on a par with the 
 formalism and smug self-righteousness which 
 Christ spent His whole life in trying to destroy. 
 . . . The men really had deep-seated beliefs in 
 goodness. . . . They never connected the good- 
 ness in which they believed with the God in Whom 
 the chaplains said they ought to believe. . . . 
 They have a dim sort of idea that He is misrepre- 
 sented by Christianity. ... If the chaplain wants 
 to be understood and to win their sympathy he 
 must begin by showing them that Christianity 
 
136 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 is the explanation and the justification and the 
 triumph of all that they do now really believe in. 
 He must start by making their religion articulate 
 in a way which they will recognize." 
 
 As we turn from the virtues to the vices or 
 moral weaknesses of the soldier in war time, we 
 find that they also fall chiefly under five head- 
 ings: 
 
 1. Impurity must certainly take the first place. 
 Investigation seemed to show that the majority 
 of these men were immoral in peace time, but the 
 war has intensified this evil. This would be ac- 
 counted for to a large extent by the unnatural 
 conditions under which the men are forced to live, 
 and the policy of the military authorities, who 
 are often concerned merely with the fighting fit- 
 ness of the men, rather than with the moral 
 issues. However this may be, in nearly every 
 camp or battalion or regiment or body of men 
 questioned, whether among officers or men, the 
 majority were confessedly living in immorality. 
 This in itself is a staggering fact. It could be 
 supported here by numerous statements or au- 
 thorities and by much evidence. 
 
 2. Obscene and profane language is sweeping 
 like an epidemic through the camps. It is infec- 
 tious, and the worst men, who are the loudest 
 talkers, tend to set the standard, so that evil is 
 rapidly and unconsciously propagated until the 
 very atmosphere becomes saturated. It is some 
 comfort to know that frequently words are used 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 137 
 
 unthinkingly and without u lull i-calization of 
 tbeir original meaning. It is also comforting to 
 be assured that there is not much deliberate tell- 
 ing of obseene stories. As one man puts it, 
 "There are few essentially rotten minds." When, 
 however, the name of our Lord is used not only 
 profanely, but dragged into the most obscene and 
 horrible connections, unheard of in peace times, 
 no possible excuse can be offered and the habit 
 cannot but prove deadening and baneful in its 
 inllueuce. Men who never before thought of 
 swearing find themselves driven to strong lan- 
 guage and to reckless, heightened, or intensified 
 expression in the trying and persistent strain of 
 war time. 
 
 3. Drunkenness has always proved the danger 
 of the soldier. The discipline of the army has 
 lessened this evil within the camps. Certainly it 
 is being sternly suppressed and severely punished 
 by the authorities among the newly arrived 
 American troops. The rum which is given to the 
 soldiers of the British army before a charge, or 
 in the extreme cold of the trenches, has taught 
 some men to drink who had not contracted the 
 habit before. It is also a fact that the drink bill 
 of England has increased during the war. Lloyd 
 George said: ''We are fighting against Germany, 
 Austria, and Drink; but the gi-eatest of these 
 three deadly foes is Drink." The drink trade of 
 England is maintaincfl on the one hand by the 
 powerful vested interests and the respectable 
 
138 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 moderate drinkers at the top of society, who are 
 not willing to sacrifice their selfish comfort for 
 the weaker brother, and on the other hand by the 
 demand of the laboring classes who will have 
 their beer, and whom the government does not 
 dare oppose in the present crisis. Drink has been 
 a curse to Britain during the war. 
 
 4. Oambling is a danger to the soldier. It is 
 strictly forbidden in most of its forms by the mili- 
 tary authorities. The game of "House" is toler- 
 ated as a mild form of gambling, where the men 
 play for hours for very small stakes in order to 
 kill time. The game of "Crown and Anchor" is 
 also popular. 
 
 5. A lack of moral courage, of independence, 
 and of individual initiative are particular evils 
 of the present. All the men have to act together. 
 They are taught to obey under rigid discipline. 
 Individual initiative is crushed or left unde- 
 veloped. The sense of personal responsibility and 
 of personal ownership is often weakened. This 
 lack of the sense of private property may partly 
 account for the pilfering which goes on. The men 
 find it exceedingly diflScult to take an open stand 
 on moral or religious questions before their com- 
 rades. A soldier will ordinarily hide his religion 
 and is afraid to be seen praying or doing anything 
 that makes him peculiar, although the most im- 
 moral and obscene man is not ashamed of his 
 actions. 
 
 A lieutenant of the Royal Irish Rifles says: 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 139 
 
 "Taken singly they are afraid to face public 
 opposition, anxious to avoid bother and exertion, 
 slack, and easily overcome by tenij)tatioiis. There 
 is a fairly general chaotic unrest, but little or no 
 serious thought. There is a greater tolerance 
 towards vice. Many more men practice sexual 
 vice than before and most refuse to condemn it. 
 It might be said that the men are more open to 
 religion, but less religious. They are also more 
 open on the question of sacrifice, the need for liv- 
 ing or dying for others." 
 
 An army chaplain who himself served in the 
 ranks writes of the soldier : "He lives an animal 
 life in which the thinking is done for him. In- 
 deed his relative comfort dei)ends upon the extent 
 to which he can abstain from thinking. In France 
 the number who take drink increases greatly. It 
 is wicked, damnably wicked that our lads through 
 ignorance should be allowed to slip into sins 
 which in themselves are deadly, but which also 
 open the door to deadlier sins. . . . There are 
 many indications that when the Army returns 
 there will be a great social upheaval. Men feel 
 that they are out to fight Prussianism, but they 
 are becoming growingly conscious of Prussianism 
 in our own national life. They are very conscious 
 of it in military life." 
 
 If we were to sum up our impressions we would 
 be compelled to say that there has been an in- 
 crease of immorality, drinking, and bad language 
 during the period of the war. 
 
140 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 II 
 
 Let us now ask, What is the attitude of the men 
 to religion, and what are the characteristics of 
 their religious life in war time? The war seems 
 to have intensified all the tendencies of peace 
 time. It makes a man a greater sinner or a 
 greater saint. He is either driven to God or 
 away from Him. It would be impossible for any 
 single human mind adequately to sum up the 
 good and evil of war, and strike a balance between 
 the two. Most Christians cannot believe that war 
 is in itself good. To those who have seen its 
 hideous reality it is unquestionably a dire evil. 
 Even the best results of war might have been 
 better attained by other means. The good is 
 often revealed rather than caused by it. A moral 
 equivalent for war might have been found. Cer- 
 tainly no Christian could defend war save as a 
 last resort, forced upon a nation in defense of its 
 life or for the lives of others, when all more ra- 
 tional or judicial methods had failed. 
 
 Among the obvious evil results of war we would 
 be compelled to name at least ten : The wanton 
 destruction of human life; the maiming and suf- 
 fering inflicted upon the wounded; the breaking 
 up of homes and the terrible suffering caused to 
 women and children ; the loss of wealth and prop- 
 erty, with the subsequent hardship for the poor 
 which it entails, and the destruction of art, archi- 
 tecture, and the higher material accomplishments 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 141 
 
 of civilization; tlie oulbreak of iiiimorality and 
 (Irunkennoss, which nlwayss aci()iiipaiii<'s war; the 
 hardening of the finer sen.sibililies of men 
 through the cruelty and barbarity of modern war- 
 fare; the increase of hatred and susi)icion; the 
 dividing of humanity and the destruction of its 
 sense of unity, brotherhood, and cooperation ; the 
 break<lown of international law and respect for 
 law and order; and the loss of reverence for 
 human life and the sense of its priceless value. 
 
 An equal nund)er of possible good ejects may 
 be mentioned which war may at times call out: 
 The development of courage and heroism ; the 
 call to sacrifice in the sinking of selfish individual 
 interests for the sake of a cause; the discipline 
 of obedience and the development of corporate 
 action ; the bringing of men out of selfish and 
 careless lives to the facing of the great realities 
 of God, life, death, and immortality; the awful 
 object lesson of the results of sin, both personal 
 and national, and the teaching of the terrible 
 lesson that "the wages of sin is death" ; the widen- 
 ing of men's horizons, the breaking of old molds, 
 ruts, and restrictions and the opening of men's 
 minds to new ideas; the chastening and mellow- 
 ing influence of suffering, with its possible de- 
 velopment of sympathy, tenderness, and unselfish- 
 ness; the deepening of the sense of brotherhood 
 within a single nation with the sinking of the 
 false or artificial social distinctions of peace time; 
 the strengthening of religious unity by the strip- 
 
U2 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 ping off of nonessentials and the laying bare of 
 the great simple fundamentals; and the new con- 
 tact with the practical ministry of religion in 
 hours of deepest need in camps, in hospitals, and 
 on the battlefields, with the resultant strengthen- 
 ing hold on the great verities of the love of God, 
 the cross of Christ, and the service of men. 
 
 It will depend upon the individual and his 
 theories of life how he will strike the balance 
 between these two sides of the good and evil of 
 war. While the good effects of a war are seen 
 more clearly after it is over, certainly during the 
 war the vast majority of men at the front would 
 almost unanimously agree that the preponderat- 
 ing influence and effect for the time being is evil. 
 
 At the beginning of the war in 1914 there was 
 talk of a religious revival in the various countries. 
 The churches for a time were filled. The opening 
 of the war drove men to God. With the passing 
 months, which have now dragged into years, 
 many of the high ideals have gradually been 
 lowered or lost. Men are certainly ready to listen 
 to a living message and are probably more open 
 than ever before in their lives to religious influ- 
 ences, because of their desperate need. They are 
 between the nether and upper millstones of sin 
 and death. On the one hand they meet the pres- 
 sure of terrible temptations, and on the other 
 they have to face the awful fact of death, unready 
 and unprepared. But although the men are open 
 to a religious message and to the Christian chal- 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 143 
 
 lenge presented by one who has a real message, 
 it could hardly be iiiainljiined by anyone that 
 there is a revival of religion at the front today. 
 Rather the opposite is true. 
 
 A friend of the present writer, a chaplain in 
 charge of the religious work in one of the five 
 armies at the front, well says: 
 
 "On the whole, I venture to say, there is not a 
 great revival of the Christian religion at the front. 
 Deep in their hearts is a great trust and faith 
 in (lod. It is an inarticulate faith expressed in 
 deeds. The top levels, as it were, of their con- 
 sciousness, are nnuh tilled with grumbling and 
 foul language and i)hysical occupations; but be- 
 neath lie deep spiritual springs, whence issue 
 their cheerfulness, stubbornness, patience, gen- 
 erosity, humility, and willingness to suffer and to 
 die. There is religion about; only, very often it 
 is not the Christian religion. Kather it is natural 
 religion. It is the expression of a craving for 
 security. Literally it is a looking for salvation." 
 
 It may be asked, To what extent are the men 
 thinking of religion and discussing its problems? 
 One friend of the writer, a young Anglican chap- 
 lain, says: "The men are not thinking at all. 
 They are 'carrying on.' They spend hours in play- 
 ing a game like House because it requires no 
 thought." However, it would i)robably be fairer 
 to say that at times all of them think about reli- 
 gion, although they do not talk very much about 
 it. It is not, however, consistent thought leading 
 to action. Rather they have moments of deep 
 
144 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 impressions, vague longings, intuitions, and hun- 
 ger of heart. But the minute anyone starts a 
 discussion or begins to attack religion, men show 
 that they have been thinking, or that they have 
 ideas of their own in private. 
 
 Most of them believe in God, although they do 
 not know Him in a personal way. They believe 
 in religion, but have not made it vital and domi- 
 nant in their lives. They have a vague sense or 
 intuition that there is a God and that He is a 
 good God, round about and above them. He is 
 looked upon, however, not as One whom they are 
 to seek first, but rather as a last resort; not as 
 a present Father and constant Friend, but as One 
 to whom they can turn in time of need. They 
 have a vague feeling of unworthiness, although 
 no clear sense of sin. Yet they also have an in- 
 articulate belief or intuition that they have tried, 
 however brokenly or unsuccessfully, to live up 
 to such light as they had or to some standard 
 of their own. They feel that somehow, though 
 they have often failed, at bottom they are not 
 so very bad, and that God is very, very good. 
 Their vague feeling would probably find its most 
 accurate expression in Faber's hymn, "There's 
 a wideness in God's mercy, like the wideness of 
 the sea." 
 
 They revere God from afar oflf and in one com- 
 partment of their being, but they have never 
 opened their lives to Him. They have a reverence 
 for Him in the face of death, in the hour of 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 145 
 
 need, niul in the great crises of life. Most of 
 tliem like 1<» siii^ the riii'lsliiui liynins dii Sun- 
 day evening and have tlionglils of home and of 
 loved ones that are sacre<l. They do not feel 
 that they have come into close personal relations 
 with God, but neither do they consciously feel 
 that they are out of relation with Him. They 
 do not think they are altogether right with Him, 
 but neither do they feel in the bottom of their 
 hearts that they are wholly wrong with Him. 
 The vast majority of them in the hour of death 
 do not feel that they have either consciously 
 accepted or rejected Him. They have not loved 
 darkness rather than light, nor have they wholly 
 chosen the light and rejected the darkness. 
 
 It will depend upon the individual how he 
 classifies these men. Some will believe that the 
 great love of the Good Shepherd, who laid down 
 His life for the sheep, will somehow in the end 
 not be thwarted in His seeking to save the lost. 
 Not only will men differ in their judgment, but 
 it is exceedingly difficult to pass judgment upon 
 an individual soldier. He seems to be a dififetent 
 man under different circumstances. In the 
 temptations at the base camp, he would perhaps 
 appear to be utterly irreligious and profane. He 
 can hardly be recognized as the same man as he 
 prays in the hour of battle, or as he lies wounded, 
 chastened, and sobered, in the hospital. Which 
 situation reveals the true man? 
 
 Before us as we write lies the photograph of a 
 
146 WITH OUK SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 young sergeant. Before the war he was an 
 atheist, an illegitimate child, a member of the 
 criminal class. But in the trenches he found God. 
 Blown up by a mine, for sixteen days he lost the 
 power of speech and of memory. He returned 
 from the front with a deep sense of God, but with 
 no personal, vital relationship to Christ. He 
 eagerly welcomed the first real message that went 
 straight to his heart, and the personal word of 
 loving sympathy which led him to relate his deep 
 experience of the trenches to the presence of 
 the living Christ. All this man needed was some- 
 one to interpret to him his own experience, and 
 bring him into the relationship with God which 
 his own heart craved and longed for. 
 
 Beside this photograph is the card of a strong- 
 willed, self-righteous young Pharisee, who had 
 no use for religion in peace time, but who was 
 driven to God by his awful conflict with sin in 
 this war. Next comes the card of a young man 
 who formerly had lived a proper conventional 
 life without bad habits. The war taught him to 
 drink and he finally became a drunkard, but in 
 his extremity he found Christ as a personal 
 Saviour. Next comes the card of a man who had 
 been in a public house for thirty-two years — 
 twenty-seven years as a bar tender and five years 
 as a saloon keeper. He said, "I have sent men 
 to hell with drink. I have seen women who 
 would sell the clothes ofif the backs of their chil- 
 dren or pawn their husband's clothing to get 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 147 
 
 drink," Yet this man has been brought to God 
 durinf? the war. Many a man has found God oti 
 llie lield of battle, or like the thief has turned 
 to him in the hour of death.^ 
 
 One young soldier thus describes his experience 
 which is typical of many another: There had been 
 a charge, a hopeless affair from the start. He 
 lay in the long grass between the lines, unable 
 to move, and with an unceasing throbbing pain 
 in his left leg and arm. A whizz-bang had caught 
 him in both places. He just lay there, feeling 
 strangely peaceful. Above him he could see the 
 stars. All this bloodshed — what was the good 
 of it? He suddenly felt terribly small and lonely, 
 and he was so very, very weak. "God!" he whis- 
 pered softly. "God everywhere!" Then into his 
 tired brain came a new phrase — "Underneath are 
 the everlasting arms." He sighed contentedly, as 
 a tired child. They fetched him in at last. He 
 will never again be sound of limb ; but there is 
 in his memory and in his heart that which may 
 make him a staunch fighter in other fields. He 
 has learned a new way of prayer, and the courage 
 that is born of faith well-founded. 
 
 The idea has been widely preached by many 
 British chaplains that <leath in battle saves. This 
 may be good Mohaniniedanism, but it is surely not 
 the Christian message that is given to Christ's 
 ministers to preach. The verse most often quoted 
 
 'S«c Appendix III for a typical exprcflsion of a soldier's new experi- 
 ence of religion at the front. 
 
148 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 in support of this theory is : "Greater love hath no 
 man than this, that a man lay down his life for 
 his friends." But such a passage cannot be taken 
 out of its context either in Christ's teaching or 
 in the man's own life. Our Lord had said that 
 we were to love even as He loved, that is, out of 
 a pure and surrendered heart to lay down our 
 life for our friends; and He added, "Ye are my 
 friends if ye do the things which I command 
 you." It is going far beyond the province of 
 the Christian minister to offer any hope other 
 than that which is offered by our Lord Himself. 
 It is not death or a bullet or battle that saves. 
 Christ only saves, and there is no other name 
 given under heaven. This offer is made to all 
 men and at all times. 
 
 But although one may not preach so dangerous 
 and misleading a doctrine, it is nevertheless pos- 
 sible to realize that many a man is unconsciously 
 more of a Christian than he knows, and that in 
 the last day he may say with surprise: "When 
 saw I Thee an hungered and fed Thee?" 
 
 We may turn to "A Student in Arms" for his 
 interpretation of the feeling of the common sol- 
 dier in this crisis: 
 
 "Then at last we 'got out.' We were confronted 
 with dearth, danger, and death. . . . They, who 
 had formerly been our despair, were now our 
 glory. Their spirits effervesced. Their wit 
 sparkled. Hunger and thirst could not depress 
 them. Rain could not damp them. Cold could 
 not chill them. Every hardship became a joke. 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 149 
 
 . . . Never was such a ti'iinnpli of sjjirit over 
 matter. ... If it was anotlicr fellow that was 
 hit, it was an occasion for tendcnicss and grief. 
 But if one of them was hit, O Death, where is thy 
 sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? . . .Life? 
 They did not value life! They had never been 
 able to make jnuch of a list of it. But if they lived 
 amiss they <licd gloriously, with a smile for the 
 pain and the <lread of it. What else had they 
 been born for? It was their chance. With a 
 gay heart they gave their greatest gift, and with 
 a smile to think that after all they had anything 
 to give which was of value. One by one Death 
 challenged them. One by one they smiled in his 
 grim visage, and refused to be dismayed. They 
 had been lost, but they had found the path that 
 led them home; and when at last they laid their 
 lives at the feet of the Good Shepherd, what could 
 they do but smile?" 
 
 It has been well said that there is much natural 
 religion in the trenches, but that much of this 
 religion is not Christian. What is the attitude 
 of the men to Christ Himself? Most of them 
 associate Him with all that is highest and noblest 
 in life. They link Him with God in their thought, 
 and with themselves in their time of deepest need. 
 Although His name with that of God is sometimes 
 taken on their lips in profanity, there is often a 
 deep reverence for Him. Thousands have seen 
 the cross of Christ standing among the ruins in 
 the villages of Belgium and Northern France, 
 when all about seems to be battered and wrecked. 
 The old skeptical theories and captious criticisms 
 
150 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 of pre-war days are little heard during this awful 
 time. Generally speaking, the facts of the gospel 
 narrative are not disputed. They believe in 
 Christ as the revelation of God. They have no 
 difficulty with the doctrine of the divinity of 
 Christ and do not doubt that He is a living reality 
 and has power to save. Their only difficulty is 
 with their own sin. They do not know how to 
 break from it or are unwilling to give it up. 
 
 The great need of the hour is for interpretation. 
 On the one hand, men have had in their hours of 
 great need a deep experience of God which they 
 do not understand; yet on the other hand, they 
 are gripped by the power of temptation which 
 alone they cannot overcome. They admire the 
 virtues of courage, generosity, and purity, but for 
 the most part they see no connection between 
 these and the presentation of Christ in the lives 
 and words of those about them who profess to 
 be Christians. What is needed is personally to 
 relate the man to the God and Father of Jesus 
 Christ, with Whom he has been brought face to 
 face at the battle front. There is urgent and 
 imperative need of the giving of that message, 
 both in public presentation and in the channels 
 of personal friendship. 
 
 One chaplain says of the men: "I am sure the 
 soldier has got religion : I am sure he has got 
 Christianity; but he does not know he has got 
 Christianity. I am convinced that of the hun- 
 dreds of men who go into action the majority 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 151 
 
 come out affected towards jijood rather tliaii 
 coarsened. They come out reali/.inj; that there 
 are times when they cannot get on witliout God; 
 they are not frightened of Him, they flee to Him 
 with their simple cries for strength." 
 
 While another, a student who laid down his 
 life at the front, makes this valuable suggestion 
 as to the presentation of Christ : *'VVhen I was 
 talking to them at these .services, I always used 
 to try to make them feel that Christ was the 
 fulfilment of all the best things that they ad- 
 mired, that He was their natural hero. I would 
 tell them some story of heroism and meanness 
 contrasted, of courage and cowardice, of noble 
 forgiveness and vile cruelty, and so get them on 
 the side of the angels. Then I would try and 
 spring it upon them that Christ was the Lord of 
 the heroes and the brave men and the noble men, 
 and that He was lighting against all that was 
 mean and cruel and cowardly, and that it was 
 up to them to take their stand by His side if they 
 wanted to make the world a little better instead 
 of a little worse." 
 
 Ill 
 
 The third question discussed with the men was, 
 What is the attitude of the soldier to the ehurehcs, 
 and what lesson has the Church to learn from the 
 present irarf Let it be said at the very outset 
 that the writer speaks as a member of the Church 
 and in deep sympathy with it. As the divinely 
 
152 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 constituted organization which stands for the 
 highest human ideals, and for the establishment 
 of the Kingdom of God on earth, we all are, or 
 ought to be, members of the Church. "With 
 charity for all and with malice toward none," 
 we see no ground for self-complacence on the part 
 of any branch of the Church, and no part of it 
 which deserves sweeping condemnation from the 
 rest. Doubtless it will seem to many that it is 
 unwise to confess our faults, but the men at the 
 front are not silent, however much we may de- 
 sire to be. We would do well to face the facts 
 which this war is forcing upon our attention, 
 however much we may dislike the searching glare 
 of the present conflict. Obviously something is 
 wrong. Had the Church fulfilled her divine mis- 
 sion, the present war between so-called "Chris- 
 tian" nations would have been impossible. 
 
 As was stated in the preceding chapter, accord- 
 ing to the opinion of the majority, less than 20 
 per cent or one-fifth of the men are vitally related 
 to any of the Christian communions. A series of 
 conferences held with individuals and carefully 
 selected groups of men and officers brought out 
 by a general consensus of opinion the following 
 points as representing the attitude of the men 
 toward the churches: 
 
 1. Indifference to the Church. As one typical 
 young sergeant, a member of the student move- 
 ment, puts it : "The men simply have no time for 
 it. They do not care for the Church because it 
 
RELrOION AT TIIF. FKOXT 15.'} 
 
 did not care for them." There is a general feeling 
 that the churches do not understand them or 
 sympathize with the social and industrial dis- 
 abilities of the men. They feel that (he i<leals 
 of life for which the Church stands are dull, dim, 
 and altogether unnatural ; its standard of comfort 
 and complacent respectability makes no appeal to 
 them and they have no part or lot in it. They 
 feel that this respectability of the Church is quite 
 in keeping with llagrant selfishness in social and 
 industrial relationships, that the Church is largely 
 in tlie possession of the privileged classes, who 
 monopolize it, and who have neither sought nor 
 welcomed them within its doors. 
 
 As one representative chaplain in a most in- 
 fluential position in France says: ''There is the 
 plain fact that the great mass of men are out 
 with the Christian Church, and do not look to it 
 as being in any vital relation to life as they know 
 it, either in peace or war. There is the deeper 
 and sadder fact that to a very large proportion 
 of them God Himself means little or nothing, or 
 means something that is very unchristian. Where 
 there is a living presentation of religion men are 
 responsive — extraordinarily so. Put it how you 
 will, men must be summoned to a new thought, 
 a new outlook on life, a new attitude towards the 
 unseen and eternal." 
 
 2. An attitude of separation and alienation 
 from the Church. For the most part the men 
 are largelv ignorant of what the Church reallv 
 
154 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 is, and for this the churches are largely responsi- 
 ble. They believe that its message and presenta- 
 tion of truth are often too feminine and imprac- 
 tical and that its fellowship is too cold and ex- 
 clusive. They do not understand the vocabulary 
 and tone adopted frequently by preachers in 
 speaking of religious things, and they feel that 
 the churches are almost complete strangers to the 
 real facts of life with which they have to deal. 
 
 It is true that the practical work of the churches 
 in their helpful ministry through the various 
 organizations working in the camps has brought 
 many of the men into vital contact with religion 
 for the first time. But the war has revealed the 
 lack of the churches' hold upon the men in pre- 
 war times. 
 
 3. Criticism of its worldUness. The men have 
 an unuttered belief in God, and they reverence 
 Jesus Christ as the friend and brother and com- 
 rade of man, as the embodiment of the highest 
 ideal they can conceive. But they feel that some- 
 how the churches do not adequately represent 
 Christ, that they have become merely the adjunct 
 of the State to second its schemes and aims. Many 
 feel that the Church has lowered its colors in the 
 present war, that in some countries it has been 
 little more than a recruiting station for enlist- 
 ment and that its message cannot be reconciled 
 with the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 One sergeant thus states his convictions: "Per- 
 haps it would be well if we out here could get up 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 155 
 
 a committee of inquiry on 'Civilians and Religion' 
 and arrive at some decision as to what is the 
 matter with you at home. Are we to return home 
 where the spiritual fires have been kept burning 
 brightly, or to the blackened ashes of those great 
 ideals of the early days of August, 1914, which 
 have burned themselves out? Are we to return 
 to a country in which, in spite of all the com- 
 munity of suffering and sorrow, the Christian 
 churches have still their differences simmering 
 instead of being regiments in one common Army?" 
 
 Another soldier writes : ''What could not the 
 churches do for the world if they could only con- 
 nect the symbols Christ gave us with the knowl- 
 edge that is within the hearts of men? There 
 must be more known about suffering and sacrifice 
 now in the hearts of men than at any past time. 
 I thought once, on the Somme, that the two races 
 facing each other in such agony were as the two 
 thieves on their crosses reviling each other, and 
 that somewhere between us, if we could but see 
 Him, was Christ on His Cross." 
 
 4. The men are bewildered and repelled iy the 
 Churclis divisions. There is a widespread feeling 
 among them that there is something wrong here, 
 that instead of representing Christ or losing them- 
 selves in the wide interests of His Kingdom, in- 
 stead of concern for the winning of the world and 
 humanity as a whole, the aims of many of the 
 churches are petty, narrow, exclusive, and sec- 
 tarian. There is a feeling among the men that 
 
156 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 far too many Christians are working for them- 
 selves or for their own particular branch of the 
 Church, or are, as one of them puts it, "out for 
 their own show." 
 
 In the last hospital we visited, the young Amer- 
 ican Episcopal chaplain working with one of our 
 own units asked the writer to accompany him one 
 morning to help him in cheering up the patients, 
 giving them Testaments, meeting their needs, and 
 answering their doubts and difficulties. While 
 we were proceeding through one of the wards, 
 the Nonconformist chaplain came by. The writer 
 was speaking to a poor boy who was dying. The 
 chaplain seemed shocked and surprised that we 
 were speaking to one of his patients without his 
 permission. The young Episcopal chaplain ex- 
 plained that he felt sure that the chaplain would 
 not mind if we tried to help the men. Although 
 he followed him out of the ward and tried his 
 best to make his peace with him, the chaplain 
 reported the matter, and we were prevented from 
 doing personal Christian work in neighboring hos- 
 pitals. 
 
 The Roman Catholic chaplain in the next hos- 
 pital, a most consecrated and earnest man, has 
 managed to get a military rule passed that no 
 services can be held in any ward of the hospital 
 unless every Roman Catholic patient is bodily 
 carried out. This has successfully prevented the 
 holding of any Christian services whatsoever. 
 Catholic or Protestant. Throughout the entire 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 157 
 
 war we have never known of a single instance 
 of any man trving to proselytize or to divert a 
 soldier from ;ill('}i;ianfe to his own church. We 
 have known of men leaving the churches altogether 
 during the war, hut not one instance of a man's 
 changing his church or heing asked to do so. Yet 
 the jealousy and suspicion of the bare possibility 
 of men's doing so has blocked and excluded much 
 genuine Christian work. 
 
 To give another instance — a personal friend of 
 the writer, a young Anglican clergyman, a widely 
 known college principal, was serving in one of 
 the huts of a Convalescent Camp. He had made 
 the acquaintance of the patients in some twelve 
 wards and was going the rounds every morning 
 telling the war news, giving oranges to the 
 fevered, and cheering up the depressed. The 
 ConiuKUulant came with apologies and told him 
 that although he was doing the best Christian 
 work in the hospital it must be discontinued, as 
 the chaplain objected. Our friend, who was a 
 clergj'man of the same communion as the chap- 
 lain, called upon him and asked if he had any 
 objection to the distribution of fruit. He replied 
 that if our friend did this it would give an unfair 
 advantage to his work as his particular organi- 
 zation would get the credit, and that he, as the 
 chaplain, must "push his own show.'' To con- 
 tinue in the words of our friend : ''Then T asked 
 him if I could send the fruit through the lady 
 workers or the hut orderlies, or the 'Tommies' 
 
158 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 who were friends of the wounded. But he refused 
 all. So I asked him if he would distribute them 
 if I gave them. This he agreed to, and I have sent 
 them to him since then. But he is too busy." 
 The oranges were not distributed, and our friend 
 concludes: "I am out against the whole principle 
 on which he acts. I don't think he is much to 
 be blamed. He is one of the best; a keen, hard- 
 working, pleasant man, zealous for his 'own show,' 
 and in its interests doing much for the men. 
 And in his principle of action he is not an excep- 
 tion, but a common type of the Anglican padre 
 as I have met them in many lands. They are 
 trained and encouraged to 'push their own show.' 
 But this keenness on one's 'own show' rather than 
 on men, is the very essence of the sin of schism, 
 and the very root of Pharisaism. Now, as a rule, 
 all the sects stand for their 'own show' first, and 
 men know it. I am ashamed to be a parson today. 
 Men were not made for any Church, but the 
 Church for them." Here again, which of us is 
 without sin, and who can throw the first stone 
 at his brother, or at other branches of the sadly 
 divided Church of Christ? 
 
 Facing the vast common need in war time with 
 four thousand wounded patients, whom no one 
 chaplain could visit, the whole story is obviously 
 pathetic and sad. The writer also recalls visiting 
 a Y M C A hut of another nationality, where the 
 secretary was so obviously "out for his own show," 
 and had become so engrossed in the counter of 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 159 
 
 his dry canteen and his work as a money-changer, 
 that he had forgotten all the higher interests of 
 the men, and the high purpose for which he was 
 there. He had become a mere secularized ma- 
 chine, a kind of automatic cash register, mis- 
 taking in his work tiie means for the end. He 
 was just as much "out for his own show" as the 
 three mentioned above, and it was an infinitely 
 smaller "show." 
 
 Here we have four instances of men, each con- 
 scientious, well meaning, and earnest; each zeal- 
 ous for his own work and his own organization; 
 yet each earning the pity or contempt of the 
 great body of men outside the churches today who 
 are out of sympathy with sectarian zeal. The 
 saddest religious spectacle the writer ever wit- 
 nessed was in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
 in Jerusalem, where five chapels divide that sacred 
 spot where our Lord is supposed to have been 
 crucifietl, occupied by five bodies, each claim- 
 ing to be the church. The blood of their fellow 
 Christians has been shed by the followers of these 
 churches on this very spot, and it is a humiliating 
 sight to see them kept apart even to this day by 
 the Turkish bayonet alone. How many of us are 
 working for "our own show," rather than for the 
 Kingdom of God? 
 
 The war work of the Y M C A in America, in 
 England, in France, and elsewhere has been made 
 IK)ssil)le only by churchmen sacriticing their in- 
 dividual interests and losing themselves in service 
 
160 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 for the Kingdom. The Association represents the 
 churches at work on behalf of the suffering men 
 in the war zone. If it should claim the credit for 
 itself as though it were a wholly independent or- 
 ganization, rather than the united work of the 
 churches which have sunk their own differences to 
 make possible this common work, this would be 
 only a manifestation of the same spirit and more 
 inexcusable. But such a claim it could never 
 truly make. As a matter of fact, this united work 
 has proved how truly Christians of various bodies 
 can get together on a great practical issue. If, 
 as at present, all can unite in a great lay organi- 
 zation, what may not the churches themselves do 
 in the future? 
 
 Should we not in this war repent, in bitterness 
 and deep humiliation, for our unhappj^ divisions 
 and each resolve that he will work for nothing less 
 than the whole Kjngdom of God, and that no mem- 
 ber of that Kingdom, even one of these least, shall 
 be excluded from the love and fellowship which 
 make us one in Him? One of the chaplains in 
 France who has himself been in the ranks says: 
 "I feel that in the past churches have been more 
 anxious to get men into the Kingdom of the 
 Church than into the Kingdom of God, with the 
 result that very many are Pillars of the Church 
 who are not near to the Kingdom. Out of the 
 two battalions which I have known as a private 
 soldier, I should say that not more than five per 
 cent were vitally related to any of the Christian 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 101 
 
 communions. It is useless making plans for the 
 time when the boys come home, unless the (Miurcli 
 rediscovers her Lord and Master. The Spirit 
 filled Church is more necessary than any modifica- 
 tions of or<;ani/ation." 
 
 Is not the whole war a call to deep humiliation 
 to the Church of Christ and should we not all 
 stand convicted of sin before it? So far as our 
 saving the world is concerned and our bringing 
 in the Kingdom of love and peace, which Christ 
 came to establish, does not the war write in 
 flaming judgment against us, "Thou art weighed 
 in the balances and found wanting"? Are we not 
 all, like the Pharisees of old, too ready to throw 
 the first stone at someone else who we may think 
 caused the war, instead of admitting our own 
 guilt? 
 
 As Arnold Freeman, in his lectures at Sheffield 
 University, says: 
 
 "We persuade one another that it was the 
 Kaiser, through his lust for self-glorification, who 
 made this war. Would it be possible for one man 
 to transform all Europe into a slaughter-house 
 unless that same Kaiser-spirit found its res{)onse 
 in human nature in every corner of this conti- 
 nent? It is the 'Kaiser' in each one of us that 
 makes wars possible. It is because we have in 
 every nation, and in every class, multitudes of 
 men and women who neglect the service of their 
 fellow-creatures in a desire for self-indulgence 
 and self-aggrandizement, that this catastrophe 
 has fallen upon us all. It is a case of <levil-pos- 
 session, and our only hope is to exorcise ourselves 
 
162 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 of the evil spirit. Our avowed intention is to cast 
 out 'Kaiserism' in Germany by brute force. We 
 must be no less resolute to cast it out of this 
 country." 
 
 The Bishop of Carlisle has well said that if we 
 were really Christians this war would not have 
 happened. If the defense of its citizens is the 
 work of the State, and the redemption of the 
 world is the task of the Church, no one can deny 
 that the State has done its work far better than 
 the Church. In the face of this, the most pathetic 
 spectacle that the Christian world ever witnessed, 
 must we not wring our hands with shame and cry, 
 "Why could we not cast it out?" The divisions, 
 the impotence, the worldliness, the coldness, the 
 sin and failure of the Church stand revealed in 
 the lurid light of this war. 
 
 What a self-righteous spirit the war has bred 
 in many of us, and what a hatred of our enemies ! 
 One has but to read the secular and religious 
 press on both sides of the present conflict to see 
 our sin writ large before us. Since we have such 
 a keen vision for the mote in our brother's eye and 
 such an eager perception of every flaw in our 
 enemy, we can recognize this spirit most readily 
 if we look for it first in Germany, but in doing 
 so let us clearly recognize that every quotation 
 can be paralleled by the press both secular and 
 religious on our own side of the conflict. In all 
 fairness let us state that a large proportion of 
 the sermons which have been preached in the 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 16^ 
 
 churches of Oermany, England, and America have 
 had a recognition of the sins of their own people. 
 But there have been many jtreachers on both 
 sides who have praised their own nation to the 
 skies with IMiarisaic self-righteousness, and have 
 seen the enemy only with the distorted eyes of 
 prejudice and hate. 
 
 It will not be necessary to quote here the 
 notorious "Hymn of Hate," by Ernst LisKauer, 
 which was distributed by the Crown Prince of 
 Bavaria to his army. Rather let us quote from 
 some of the sermons and poems of German pastors 
 and the religious press. In a collection of poems 
 published by a German pastor, Konsistorialrat 
 Dietrich Vorwerk, there occurred the following 
 paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer: "Though the 
 warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily 
 death and tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive 
 in merciful long-suffering each bullet and each 
 blow which misses its mark ! Lead us not into the 
 temptation of letting our wrath be too tame in 
 carrying out Thy divine judgment! Deliver us 
 and our Ally from the infernal Enemy and his 
 servants on earth. Thine is the kingdom, the 
 German land; may we, by aid of Thy steel-clad 
 hand, achieve the j)ower and the glory." For- 
 tunately, this was deleted in the later editions of 
 this book. 
 
 The published sermons of Pastor H. Francke 
 are also typical : 
 
 "As Jesus was treated, so iilso have the German 
 
164 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 people been treated. From the East the Russian 
 threatens us. Injustice and bloody deeds of vio- 
 lence are his life-element, agreements and consti- 
 tutions, solemnly sworn to, have no significance 
 for him ; he is stained with blood from top to toe. 
 Germany is precisely — who would venture to deny 
 it? — the representative of the highest morality, 
 of the purest humanity, of the most chastened 
 Christianity. They envy us our freedom, our 
 power to do our work in peace. To heal the world 
 by the German nature is to become a blessing to 
 the people of the earth. Wherever the German 
 spirit obtains supremacy, there freedom prevails. 
 Here we come upon the old intimate kinship be- 
 tween the essence of Christianity and of Ger- 
 manism. Because of their close spiritual relation- 
 ship, therefore, Christianity must find its fairest 
 flower in the German mind. Therefore we have a 
 right to say : 'Our German Christianity — the most 
 perfect, the most pure.' Thus the Germans are the 
 very nearest to the Lord. Is He the God of those 
 others? No, they serve at best Satan, the father 
 of lies." 
 
 The Rev. J. Rump writes in the same strain : 
 
 "Against us stands the world's greatest sham 
 of a nation, the 'English cousin,' the Judas among 
 the nations, who betrays Germanism for thirty 
 pieces of silver. Against us stands sensual 
 France, the harlot amongst the peoples. Against 
 us stands Russia, inwardly rotten, mouldering, 
 masking its disease under outbursts of brutality. 
 Germany shall be the Israel of the future. The 
 Germans are guiltless, and from all sides testi- 
 monies are flowing in as to the noble manner in 
 which our troops conduct the war. We fight — 
 thanks and praise be to God — for the cause of 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT lOr, 
 
 Jesus within mankind. Verily tlie Bible is our 
 book. It was jj^ivcn and assij^ned to us, which 
 proclaims to mankind salvation or disaster — ac- 
 cordinj:; as we will it.''^ 
 
 Suili ([notations could bo multiplied not only 
 from Gorman war sermons, but from some that 
 have been preached in England and America as 
 well."* The Archbishop of Cantorbuiy says: "I get 
 letters in which 1 am urged to see to it that we 
 insist upon 'reprisals, swift, bloody and unrelent- 
 ing. Let gutters run with German blood. Let us 
 smash to pulp the German old men, women and 
 children,' and so on."^ 
 
 Here is Henri de Regnier's song of hate from 
 France: 
 
 "I swear to cherish in my heart this hate 
 Till my last heart-throb wanes; 
 So may the sacred venom of my blood 
 Mingle and charge my veins! 
 
 May there pass never from my darkened brow 
 
 The fuT'i'ows hate has worn! 
 May tlioy plough deeper in my flesh, to mark 
 The outrage I have borne! 
 
 By towns in flames, by my fair fields laid waste, 
 
 By hostages undone. 
 By cries of niunlorod women aiul of babes, 
 
 Bv each dead warrior son, . . . 
 
 •Quoted in "Hurrah and Hallelujah," pp. llG-119. 
 
 * It is interestinK tn note in this connection some words o{ Immanuel 
 Kant. Sec Appendix I. 
 
 * London Timta. June 22. 1917. 
 
166 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 I take my oath of hatred and of wrath 
 
 Before God, and before 
 The holy waters of the Marne and Aisne, 
 
 Still ruddy with French gore ; 
 
 And fix my eyes upon immortal Rheims, 
 
 Burning from nave to porch, 
 Lest I forget, lest I forget who lit 
 
 The sacrilegious torch!" 
 
 A poem recently written by an "Unbeliever" 
 represents all the churches. Catholic and Protes- 
 tant, Lutheran and Reformed, of the enemy and 
 of the Allies, at last united in one message, which 
 furnishes the recurring refrain of the poem, "In 
 Jesus' Name go forth and slay." 
 
 With two-thirds of the world, representing more 
 than twenty nations, already dragged into the 
 widening vortex of the present war; with more 
 than five millions of the finest youth of Europe 
 already slaughtered on the battlefield, with 
 twenty millions who have already been wounded, 
 nearly forty millions under arms, and whole 
 nations organized for war and the manufacture 
 of munitions ; with the flood tide of impurity and 
 immorality which war has brought in its train; 
 with the barbarism and cruelty, poison gas, flam- 
 ing oil, and organized destruction used at present 
 on the battlefields of Europe, is it not time for 
 the Church to set her own house in order, to 
 humble herself with shame in the very dust for 
 her criminal impotence and worldliness and sin, 
 and to return to her crucified Lord and Master? 
 
RELIGION AT THE FRONT 107 
 
 Is it not time that we seek a new vision of His 
 face, to renew our consecration before Him, and 
 to seek a vital and life-giving message first for 
 ourselves and then for the world about us? Not 
 for "our country right or wrong," not for a 
 Pharisaic self-righteousness, but for (Jhrist and 
 His sutl'eriug world, for a whole Kingdom, and 
 a whole Church, must we reconsecrate ourselves. 
 
 As Fosdick says, ''The issue was drawn : Chris- 
 tianity icould be a failure if it did not stop 
 idavcry. And from the day that this issue was 
 drawn, the result was assured. It was not Chris- 
 tianity that failed, it was slavery. . . . This, too, 
 is a climactic day in history. For so long time 
 the Gospel and war have lived together in ignoble 
 amity! If at last disharmony between the spirit 
 of Jesus and the spirit of war is becoming evident, 
 then a great hope has dawned for the race. . . . 
 The main is.sue is clear. Christianity will indeed 
 have failed if it does not stop icar."^ 
 
 Is it not time that we turn to God in humilia- 
 tion and praj-er for an outpouring of His spirit 
 and a deeply needed revival of religion? In the 
 words of A<lmiral Sir David Beatty, the Com- 
 mander of the British Fleet, "England still re- 
 mains to be taken out of her stupor of self-satis- 
 faction and comj)lacency and until she be stirred 
 out of this condition, until religious revival takes 
 place at home, just so long will the war continue." 
 
 If at the call of nationalism the manhood of 
 
 * "The Challenge of the Prcaent Crbds," Aaaodation Preas. 
 
168 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 the nation has poured forth in boundless heroism 
 and self-sacrifice, at the call of Christ cannot His 
 Church rise again to its high vocation? If half 
 of the zeal and passion, half of the outpouring 
 of life and treasure, of organization and efficiency, 
 that the State has put into this war could be 
 thrown into the cause of the Kingdom and of 
 the eternal verities, the world would soon be won. 
 If Christians would but follow Christ, war, as 
 an unbelievably brutal and barbarous anachron- 
 ism, like its former savage contemporaries of 
 slavery, the burning of witches, and the torture 
 of the Inquisition, would be forever done away. 
 The message with which our Lord challenges the 
 whole Church today is that with which He began 
 His ministry when He faced His apostate nation, 
 "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE WORLD AT WAR 
 
 Let us try to grasp the colossal facts of the 
 present war. Since the beginning of the conflict 
 there has been a daily attrition of more thaii 
 25,000 in killed, wounded, or prisoners every 
 twenty-four hours. At the opening of the fourth 
 year of the war the number killed was over 
 5,000,000. This does not include those who have 
 perished in the devastated nations. Not less than 
 6,000,000 men are now in the military prisons of 
 Europe, some of whom have undergone great 
 suffering, both physical and mental. More than 
 5,000,000 lie wounded today in the militar}- hos- 
 pitals, not to speak of several times that number 
 who have been patched up and sent back into 
 the line to face death again, or have been rejected 
 as unfit for further service, often left crippled or 
 mainie<l, blinded, or deformed for life. 
 
 Mere numbers or statistics cannot measure the 
 sacrifice and suffering of these lives. If we could 
 know the infinite value of the unit of personality, 
 or compute the preciousness and poteutialitj' of 
 a single life destroyed, we might then hope to 
 multiply it by the million. If human scales could 
 weigh the sorrow of a widow's heart, could com- 
 pute the anguish of a mother's loss, could 
 171 
 
172 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 prophesy the deprivation of an orphan's lot, or 
 know the good which might have been done by 
 even one man who has now been killed, we would 
 then be in a position to begin to estimate the 
 casualty list. 
 
 There are today nearly 40,000,000 men with 
 the colors. If we add to these the 5,000,000 
 already killed, the 6,000,000 prisoners and the 
 large number discharged as unfit for further serv- 
 ice, we have a total of far more than 50,000,000 
 who have been with the colors in the first three 
 years of the war. We can better realize the sig- 
 nificance of this statement if we remember that 
 in no previous war have more than 3,000,000 men 
 faced each other in conflict. According to Gibbon, 
 Rome's great standing army was not over 400,000 
 men. Napoleon's grand army did not exceed 
 700,000, and in the Battle of Waterloo less than 
 200,000 men were engaged. In the American 
 Civil War less than 3,000,000, and in the Russo- 
 Japanese War only 2,500,000 men were employed. 
 Indeed, if we sum up the twenty greatest wars 
 of the last one hundred and twenty-five years, 
 from the Napoleonic Wars to the present time, 
 less than 20,000,000 men were engaged, while in 
 this war nearly twice that number are now under 
 arms. Britain alone has enrolled over 5,000,000 
 for the army, with 1,000,000 more from the over- 
 seas dominions, and about 500,000 for the navy. 
 Germany has called some 12,000,000 and Russia 
 more than 12,000,000 to the colors. 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 173 
 
 By the end of 1917 nearly (;,f)()(),()00 men will 
 have been killed. Less tlian 5,500,000 were killed 
 in the twenty greatest wars of the last century 
 and a quarter, all combined. In the Battle of 
 Gettysburg only 3,000 were killed. England's 
 casualty list during a vigorous offensive averages 
 over 3,000 every day. In the first ten days alone 
 of the battle of the Somme, the British lost 200,- 
 000 in killed or wounded. France as a whole 
 has lost even more heavily, while Germany's 
 casualty list during the great battles of the 
 Somme and in Flanders has averaged 200,000 a 
 month. When our own relatives are at the front, 
 and our own boys are in the line, we realize what 
 these statistics mean. In Germany alone the 
 number of men killed now totals far over 1,000,- 
 000. Think of the many millions of mothers and 
 wives in the nations of Europe scanning that 
 crowded page of the newspaper, with several thou- 
 sand names on the casualty list every day, each 
 looking to see if her boy's name is there. 
 
 During that fateful day of July 1st when the 
 great drive on the Somme began, when the Eng- 
 lish along a front of twenty-five miles and the 
 French on a front of ten miles leaped out of the 
 trenches and sprang forward in that terrible 
 charge, men were mowed down like ripened grain. 
 Regiments on both sides were cut to pieces. The 
 writer's brother-in-law, a young colonel, went in 
 with 1,100 men of his battalion — only 130 came 
 out. Only one oflBcer was unscathed and he has 
 
174 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 since been killed. The young colonel was shot 
 within an inch of the heart and fell into a shell- 
 hole. Two of his men fell dead on top of him. 
 There he lay under a terrible fire for sixteen 
 hours, and finally at midnight gained strength 
 to struggle from under the two bodies that lay 
 upon him, and crawled on his hands and knees 
 for over a mile back to the nearest dressing sta- 
 tion. In the first year of the war he lost nearly 
 half his men with trench foot, the men's feet being 
 frost-bitten or frozen in the muddy trenches. In 
 the second year he was wounded in seven places 
 by shrapnel, and later, after recovery, was almost 
 killed. He has now again returned to the service. 
 
 Another red-cheeked boy told the writer that 
 his battalion had gone in with 960 men and had 
 come out with only eighty. In another battalion 
 all the oflScers were killed or wounded and the 
 remaining handful was left with a lance-corporal 
 in command: the colonel, the majors, captains, 
 lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals had all been 
 killed or wounded. At Bradford the writer was 
 told that their favorite sons in the "Bradford 
 Pals" had to be sacrificed, and every man that 
 went into action in this battalion was either 
 killed or wounded within a few hours. An un- 
 usual proportion of British officers have fallen. 
 The university students and the flower of the land 
 who have gone into the officers' training corps 
 have oftentimes been among the first to fall. 
 
 Let us now turn from the numbers of killed, 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 17.- 
 
 wounded, and prisoners aud estimate if we can 
 the cost of the conflict. The present war, more 
 than any in previous history, has been a warfare 
 of attrition, that is, by the killing and maiming 
 of men and the destruction of resources to at- 
 tempt to wear out the enemy. 
 
 Already the cost of the war has mounted to 
 over $130,000,000 a day, or more than |100,000 
 every minute of the twelve hours that the sun 
 shines upon us. Contrast, for instance, the total 
 cost, the lives lost, and the numbers of men called 
 to the colors in the twenty principal wars during 
 the last century and a quarter, from the Napole- 
 onic Wars of 170:^, with the figures for the pres- 
 ent war to August 4, 1917, at the end of the third 
 year of the conflict.^ 
 
 Twenty previous wars Present War 
 
 Total cost 126,123.546,240 ?75,000,000,000 
 
 Total killed 5,498,097 5,000,000 
 
 Called to the colors 18,552,200 40,000,000 
 
 We have said that the cost of the war has now 
 risen to the almost unbelievable total of over 
 $180,000,000 a day.^ That is more than the total 
 cost of the whole war between Russia and Turkey 
 
 'See World Almanac 1915, p. 488. 
 
 'The co«t of the war has been calculated by various vk-ritere on both aides 
 of the Atlantic. Mr. Win. Rossitor writes on "The SUitistical Side of the 
 Economic Coet.sof the War," in the .-ImfricoH Economit Review for March, 
 1916. Mt. Kdmund Crammond's pnner in The Journal of the Royal Sta- 
 tistical Socieiu, Sir Cieorge Paish in Ine various ijwucs of the London Sta- 
 tist, and others, hjivc (riven careful (.stimates of ilic direct coet of the war 
 to nations and individuals. DurinK the firtit and cheapest year, according 
 to Mr. Rossiter, the total cont of the war, not including the economic value 
 of the lives lout, ruse to forty billion dollars. That is equal to all the na- 
 tional debts of the world. 
 
176 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 in 1828. In a single great day in the battles on 
 the Somme, or in Belgium, the British have used 
 as much ammunition as they were able to manu- 
 facture in the entire first ten months of the war 
 in 1914. 
 
 Even before the end of 1915 the five great 
 powers had more than doubled their national 
 debts. When will these debts be paid? Great 
 Britain, the wealthiest of the nations of Europe, 
 after one hundred years of peace still owes much 
 of the debt incurred in the American Revolution 
 and all of the debt incurred in the Napoleonic 
 Wars. The whole cost of the American Civil War 
 was only |5,000,000,000, and of the Napoleonic 
 Wars 16,000,000,000, while this war will cost over 
 six times the amount of either during this single 
 year. 
 
 Great Britain's war debt at the end of the third 
 year has reached the enormous total of more than 
 $20,000,000,000, or twenty times the national debt 
 of the United States at the beginning of the war, 
 yet even this does not begin to exhaust her re- 
 sources. At the close of the Napoleonic Wars 
 Great Britain's debt was one-third of her national 
 resources. She can almost double her present 
 enormous war debt before utilizing a third of her 
 wealth. 
 
 We have not in this calculation reckoned on 
 the economic value of the lives destroyed. That 
 would average about |3,000 for each man. Five 
 million men killed means an economic loss to the 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 177 
 
 countries concerned of |1 5,000,000,000. But tho 
 economic value of the lives destroyed represents 
 onl.v a small fraction of their potentiality — so- 
 cially, morally, and sj)iritually. No human brain 
 can calculate, no heart can fathom the cost or 
 loss of this terrible conflict. 
 
 The cost of less than one month of the present 
 war would equal that of the entire Franco-Prus- 
 sian War of 1870. Another month would pay for 
 the whole Kusso-Japane.se War; twelve days would 
 pay for the Boer War, while the cost for three 
 days would dig the Panama Canal. At the be- 
 ginning of 1018 the war debts of the warring coun- 
 tries will exceed :i;90,000,000,000, or more than 
 one-fifth the wealth of all the warring nations of 
 Eurojie. The daily cost of the war is equal to 
 half the earning power of these European nations, 
 and the interest on their war debts will be equal 
 to one-half their budgets as they stood at the be- 
 ginning of the war. The wealth of more than 
 twenty nations is being rapidly drained, and the 
 world's financial reserves are being consumed in 
 this vicious and sinful struggle which an auto- 
 cratic militarism has forced upon the world. 
 
 Although late in entering the war, America's 
 e.Kpenditure has been out of all proportion to that 
 of any other nation, l^pon arrival in this country 
 the writer finds the statement in our press that 
 the nation will have spent or sanctioned before 
 the end of 1017. the enormous total of |19,000,- 
 000,000. That is more than twenty per cent of 
 
178 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 the entire cost of the war to date for all the Euro- 
 pean nations. That sum is as great as Germany 
 spent on land and sea for the conduct of the first 
 three years of the war. It represents more than 
 twice our total wealth in 1850, and one-twelfth 
 of our present national wealth of $228,000,000,000. 
 In order to estimate further the cost and 
 realize the suffering of the war, let us turn for 
 a moment to the nations devastated in Europe. 
 In Belgium and Northern France 9,500,000 were 
 being fed by the Commission for Relief in Belgium 
 until Germany forbade it. Of 7,000,000 inhabit- 
 ants of Belgium, 3,000,000 were early left desti- 
 tute by the war and were drawing daily one meal 
 consisting of the equivalent of three thick slices 
 of bread and a pint of soup. Mr. F. C. Wolcott 
 writes : 
 
 "I have seen thousands of people lined up in 
 snow or rain, soaked and chilly, waiting for bread 
 and soup. I have returned to the distributing 
 stations at the end of the day and have found 
 men, women, and children sometimes still stand- 
 ing in line, but later compelled to go back to their 
 pitiful homes, cold, wet, and miserable. It was 
 not until eighteen weary hours afterward that 
 they got the meal they missed. The need will 
 continue to be great for many months after peace 
 is declared. Factories have been stripped of their 
 machinery. There is a complete stagnation of 
 industry. It will take months to rehabilitate 
 these industries and to start the wheels again." 
 
 In Serbia more than 4,000,000 people were de- 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 179 
 
 prived of their living by the war. In I'oland the 
 ^^utlering has been more terrible than in either 
 Belgium or Serbia. The population fleeing be- 
 hind the retreating Rus.sian.s were not able to 
 keep up because of the women and children, the 
 aged and the sick. They were overtaken by the 
 German army and left in the charred remains of 
 their burned dwellings. Some 200 cities and 
 15,000 towns and villages were destroyed in 
 Poland. Already 2,000,000 have died of starva- 
 tion there. In some districts all the children 
 under six years of age have perished. 
 
 Armenia has suffered relatively more than any 
 of the other nations. Mr. Henry Morgenthau, 
 the American Ambassador to Turkey, said : ''One 
 million of these people have either been massacred 
 or deported and unless succor reaches them 
 shortly, those remaining will be lost." In all 
 history there is no record more sad than that of 
 the persecution and extermination of the Arme- 
 nians. University professors educated in the 
 United States have had their hair and nails torn 
 out by the roots and have been slowly tortured to 
 death. Women and girls were outraged and 
 brutally killed. Little children perished of hun- 
 ger. It is said that probably 1,000,000 of the 
 2,000.000 Armenians in Turkey have been slain, 
 or have been driven into the country to starve, 
 or have been forced to accept Islam. 
 
 The American Committee for Armenian and 
 Syrian Relief reports : 
 
180 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 "Men in the army were the first to be brutally 
 put to death. These and civilians, after being 
 subjected to horrible tortures, were shot. Even 
 priests were made victims of brutal murder. 
 Women, children, the sick and aged, were forced 
 at a moment's notice to start on foot on a journey 
 of exile. Mothers, torn from their children, were 
 compelled to leave the little ones behind. Women 
 giving birth to children on the road were forbid- 
 den to delay, but, under the whiplash, were made 
 to continue their march until they dropped from 
 exhaustion to die. A United States Consul re- 
 ported that he saw helpless people brained with 
 clubs, while children were killed by beating their 
 brains out against the rocks. Other children were 
 thrown into rivers and those who could swim 
 were shot down as they struggled in the water. 
 Crimes that have been, and are being, practiced 
 upon Armenian women are too cruel and horrible 
 for words. The mutilated corpses of hundreds 
 bear testimony to this inhuman reign ."^ 
 
 Who was responsible for these outrages, and 
 how long will the world permit them to continue? 
 
 Whichever way we turn, whether we survey the 
 number of killed, wounded, or prisoners, the cost 
 of the conflict, or the suffering of the devastated 
 nations, we realize that tJie war means sacrifice. 
 It is diflScult for us at home in America to appre- 
 ciate the spirit in which the men in this great 
 struggle in Europe are fighting, and the sacrifices 
 they are making. In all these months in many 
 lands, the writer has not heard from the lips of 
 
 » See Appendix II on "The Treatment of Armenians," by Viscount Biyce. 
 
THE WOULD AT WAR 181 
 
 a single soldier who had actually seen service at 
 the front, words of hatred or of boasting. Quietly 
 and often with sadness most of these men are 
 going forward to face death. 
 
 llere is a letter from a young ollicer who fell 
 on that fatal lirst day of July on the Sonune. 
 
 "I never felt more confident or cheerful in my 
 life before, and would not miss the attack for 
 anything on earth. lOvery otlicer and man is more 
 hapi)y and cheerful than I have ever seen them. 
 My idea in writing this letter is in case I am one 
 of the 'costs' and get killed. I have been looking 
 at the stars, and thinking what an immense dis- 
 tance the}' are away. What an insignificant thing 
 the loss of, say, forty years of life is compared 
 with them! It seems scarcely worth talking 
 about. Well, good-bye, you darlings. Try not 
 to worry about it, and remember that we shall 
 meet again really quite soon. This letter is go- 
 ing to be poste<l if . . ." 
 
 A friend of the writer, a young chaplain whom 
 he met recently at the front, went out to find "his 
 brother's mangled body on the battlefield. The 
 boy who fell was the son of the Bishop of Win- 
 chester, and one of the finest spirits in Oxford. 
 Canon Scott Holland writes: 
 
 "The attack had failed. There was never any 
 hope of its succeeding, for the machine guns of 
 the (icrnians were still in full play, with their fire 
 nninii)airc<l. Tlie body had to lie where it had 
 fallen. Only, his brother could not endure to let 
 it lie nnhonoure<l. He found some shattered Som- 
 ersets, who begged him to go no further. But he 
 
182 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 heard a voice within him bidding him risk it, 
 and the call of the blood drove him on. Creep- 
 ing out of the far end of the trench, as dusk fell, 
 he crawled through the grass on hands and knees, 
 in spite of shells and snipers, dropping flat on 
 the ground as the flares shot up from the German 
 trenches. At last he found what he sought. He 
 could stroke with his hand the fair young head 
 that he knew so well ; he could feel for the pocket- 
 book and prayer-book, the badge and the whistle. 
 He could breathe a prayer of benediction and 
 then crawl back on his perilous way in the night." 
 
 The writer has just come from visiting a group 
 of a dozen British and American military hos- 
 pitals in one French town, with from one to four 
 thousand patients in each, where at this moment 
 the trains are arriving in almost a steady stream, 
 bearing the wounded from the front in the great 
 drive in Flanders. He has stood by the operating 
 tables and passed down those long, unending 
 rows of cots. Some of these tragic hospital wards 
 are filled with men, every one of whom is blinded 
 for life by poison gas or shrapnel. They, like 
 all the other wounded, are brave and cheerful, 
 but it will take great courage to maintain this 
 cheer, groping a long lifetime in the dark. One 
 man counted 151 trains of twenty cars each, or 
 3,000 carriages, filled with German wounded pass- 
 ing back in a steady stream through Belgium. 
 Behind all the active fronts these train loads of 
 wounded are daily bearing their burden of suffer- 
 ing humanity. The cities and towns of Europe 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 18;i 
 
 are filled with limping or crippled or wounded 
 men today. 
 
 Opposite the writer at the ship's table .sat a 
 yoniiji; man with \\\v lower [tart of his face carried 
 away, lli.s chin and jaw were gone, yet he must 
 live on for a lifetime deformed. Another young 
 fellow had spent seven long weary months in 
 training. The moment his regiment reached the 
 front it was ordered immediately into action. He 
 sprang to the top of the trench, but never got 
 over it. He fell back wounded. Within three 
 days he was back in England again, but with only 
 one leg. Seven months of training, five minutes 
 in action, then crippled for life ! The writer saw 
 one young fellow whose face was left contorted 
 by shrapnel, which had carried away one eye and 
 the bridge of his nose. He was a quiet, earnest 
 Christian. He said, "Of course, they cannot send 
 me back again into the line or compel me to go 
 with only one eye, but 1 am going just the same. 
 I am going to give all that I have left to the 
 country and the cause."* 
 
 Hear that young soldier of France, Alfred 
 Casalis, a brilliant student of philosophy and 
 theologj', a Student Volunteer for the African 
 mission field, as he writes home to his father and 
 mother at the age of nineteen: "1 volunteered of 
 course. 1 know with an unalterable knowledge 
 
 ♦Publishers' Not*: The whole problem of the meanins of suflrring and 
 its relation to the present war, espcciiilly for thoec who nave suflered be- 
 reavcmcDt, is dealt with by the author in his book, "Suffering and the 
 War." 
 
184 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 and with an unconquerable confidence that the 
 foundation of my faith is unshakeable, it rests 
 upon the Rock. I shall fight with a good con- 
 science and without fear (I hope), certainly with- 
 out hate. I feel myself filled with an illimitable 
 hope. You can have no idea of the peace in which 
 I live. On the march I sing inwardly. I listen 
 to the music that is slumbering inside me. The 
 Master's call is always ringing loudly in my ears. 
 I am not afraid of death. I have made the sacri- 
 fice of my life. I know that to die is to begin 
 to live." And the last sentence of the unfinished 
 letter written before the charge in which he fell, 
 "The attack cannot but succeed. There will be 
 some wounded, some killed, but we shall go for- 
 ward and far — " In the other pocket of his coat, 
 at the end of his will were the words, " 'I have 
 fought the good fight, I have finished my course, 
 I have kept the faith.' And I would that all my 
 friends, all those who are every moment with me, 
 and whose hearts beat with mine, should repeat 
 the word of our hope, 'Because I live, ye shall live 
 also.' "5 
 
 Professor Gilbert Murray, of Oxford, writes 
 thus of the sacrifice of the men for us: "As for 
 me personally, there is one thought that is always 
 with me — the thought that other men are dying 
 for me, better men, younger, with more hope in 
 their lives, many of whom I have taught and 
 
 6 "For France and the Faith," Letters of Alfred EugSne Casalia, Associa- 
 tion Press. 
 
THE WOKLl) AT WAR 185 
 
 loved. The ortliodox Christian will be familiar 
 with the thought of One who loved you dying for 
 you, I would like to say that now I seem to be 
 familiar with (he feeling that something innocent, 
 something great, something that loved me, is 
 dying, and is dying daily for me. That is the sort 
 of community we now are — a community in which 
 one man dies for his brother." 
 
 Yes, these boys are making the great sacrifice 
 for us. Witli r),()()(),()00 who have already been 
 killed, with 10,000,000 of our own sons enrolled 
 as subject to their call to the colors when needed, 
 with hundrcHls of American army camps at home 
 and in France already crowded with men, what 
 sacrifice can we make for them? How can we 
 surround their lives with the best influences of 
 home, that they may come back to us even better 
 men than when they went away? 
 
 We have seen the terrible ordeal to which they 
 will be subjected at the front, the temptations to 
 which they are exposed in France, in the training 
 schools, and the base camps ; we have seen some- 
 thing of the havoc which demoralizing forces have 
 already wrought in other armies in the camps 
 of the prodigals, and we have seen the deadly 
 dangers and peril.s, both physical and moral, 
 which the soldier must face. We have spoken of 
 the enormous sums voted to carry on a grejit war 
 of destruction. Is there not a yet more urgent 
 need that we should supply the great construc- 
 tive forces for fortifying the physical and moral 
 
186 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 manhood of our nation ? Two organizations have 
 been recognized by our own and the other allied 
 governments in the war zone — the one bearing 
 the symbol of the red cross for the wounded, and 
 the other the red triangle for the fighting men. 
 
 The nation has already generously responded 
 to the needs of the wounded even before the first 
 battle was fought, giving more in one week than 
 any other nation in a year for the same purpose. 
 And not a dollar too much has been given for this 
 great cause. But we shall soon have several 
 millions of fighting men under arms. What are 
 we to do for these men? We have already seen 
 that they present a threefold need. There is the 
 physical need of these millions who will soon be 
 training, fighting, and suffering. Only the men 
 at the front know what it really is. There are 
 the mental and social requirements of men who 
 must have recreation, healthy amusement and 
 occupation. There is also the moral and spiritual 
 need of men who will face the greatest tempta- 
 tions of their lives, when they will be farthest 
 from the help of home and friends, while old 
 standards seem to be submerged or swept away 
 "for the period of the war." 
 
 We have already seen that the building that 
 bears the red triangle of the Y M C A at the front 
 is at once the soldier's club, his home, his church 
 where his own denomination holds its services, 
 his school, his place of rest, his recreation center, 
 his bank and postoffice where he writes his letters, 
 
THE WORLD AT WAR 187 
 
 his friend in need that stands by him at the last 
 
 and meets his relatives wlio are called to his bed- 
 side in the hospital. If there is anything which 
 safeguards the physical, social, and moral health 
 of the men who are dying for us, can we do less 
 than provide it for them? While billions are 
 being spent for destruction, must we not at least 
 invest an intinitesimal fraction of one per cent 
 of our expenditure, in construction, in that which 
 is the gi'eatest asset of any nation — its moral 
 manhood? Can we not provide a home away 
 from home for our own sons and the other boys 
 with them whose parents may be too poor to 
 do so? 
 
 Here is a unique contribution which America 
 can also make to her hard pressed allies who have 
 l>een exhausted by three terrible years of fighting. 
 Britain has already set us a wonderful example 
 and will not need our help. But there is France 
 to which we owe so much and whose war weary 
 soldiers sorely need just such centers for recrea- 
 tion and rebuilding. General Petain, the Com- 
 mander in Chief, and the French authorities have 
 asked for the help of our Movement in their 
 camps. General I'ershing, after surveying the 
 tield, has declared that the greatest service which 
 America can immediately render France, even 
 before our own men can reach the trenches in 
 large numbers, is to extend the welfare work of 
 the YMCA to the entire French Army. Can we 
 do less than this for the nation that gave all that 
 
188 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 Washington asked in our own hour of crisis? 
 Then there is Italy, with all her deep need and 
 great possibilities. What can we do to minister 
 to the wants of her great army ? 
 
 But let us turn to Russia, which represents the 
 deepest need of all — the nation which has under- 
 gone the greatest suffering, both within and with- 
 out its borders, of any of the belligerents. Think 
 of its vast area, greater than all North America, 
 or one seventh of the land area of the entire globe. 
 Think of its population, almost twice our own, 
 and more than one tenth of the entire world. 
 Think of these people, who have the greatest 
 capacity for suffering of any nation on earth, 
 suddenly released, like their own prisoners, with 
 steps unsteady and eyes unaccustomed to the 
 blinding light of freedom. Think of what such 
 a movement of hope and cheer and re-creation 
 may mean to troops hard pressed or demoralized, 
 facing another winter in the trenches. 
 
 Add to all these the suffering prisoners of war, 
 and we have over 24,000,000 men who deeply need 
 the ministry of this Movement, and need it now. 
 Here are millions who have already suffered or 
 who are going forward ready to make the great 
 sacrifice for us. What sacrifice shall we make 
 for them? 
 
APPENDIX I 
 EXTRACTS FROM "ETERNAL PEACE" 
 
 BY 
 
 IMMANUEL KANT 
 
 "No conclusion of peace shall be held to be 
 valid as such when it has been made with the 
 secret reservation of the material for a future 
 war. No State having an existence by itself — 
 whether it be small or large — shall be acquired 
 by another State through inheritance, exchange, 
 purchase, or donation. A State is not to be re- 
 garded as property or patrimony, like the soil 
 on which it may be settled. Standing armies shall 
 be entirely' abolished in the course of time. For 
 they threaten other States incessantly with war 
 by their appearing to be always equipped to enter 
 upon it. No State shall intermeddle by force with 
 the constitution or government of another State. 
 
 "No State at war with another shall adopt such 
 modes of hostility as would necessarily render 
 mutual confidence impossible in a future peace — 
 such as the employment of assassins or poisonei*s, 
 the violation of a capitulation, the instigation of 
 treason, and such like. These are <lishon()rable 
 stratagems. For there must be some trust in the 
 habit and <lisposition even of an enemy in war. 
 
 "The civil constitution in every State shall be 
 
 republican. The law of nations shall be founded 
 
 on a federation of free States. People or nations 
 
 regarded as States may be judged like individual 
 
 189 
 
190 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 men. If it is a duty to realize a state of public 
 law, and if at the same time there is a well- 
 grounded hope of its being realized — although it 
 may be only by approximation to it that advances 
 ad infinitum — then perpetual peace is a fact that 
 is destined historically to follow the falsely so- 
 called treaties of peace which have been but ces- 
 sations of hostilities. Perpetual peace is, there- 
 fore, no empty idea, but a practical thing which, 
 through its gradual solution, is coming always 
 nearer its final realization; and it may well be 
 hoped that progress toward it will be made at 
 more rapid rates of advance in the times to 
 come."i 
 
 'English Edition— Pages 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 81, 127. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM "THE TREATMENT OF 
 ARMENIANS" 
 
 BY 
 
 VISCOUNT BRYCE 
 
 From Four Members of the German Missions 
 Staff in Tiirkej' to the Imperial German Ministry 
 of Foreign Affairs at Berlin: ''Out of 2,000 to 
 3,000 peasant women from the Armenian Plateau 
 who were brought here in good health, only fort^' 
 or fifty skeletons are left. The prettier ones are 
 the victims of their gaolers' lust; the plain ones 
 succumb to blows, hunger, and thirst. Every day 
 more than a hundred corpses are carried out of 
 Aleppo. All this happened under the eyes of high 
 Turkish otticials. The German scutcheon is in 
 danger of being smirched for ever in the memory 
 of the Near Eastern peoples.'' 
 
 Events in Armenia, published in the Sonnen- 
 aiifgatuj, and in the AUfjcmeine MissionsZcit- 
 schrift, November, 1915: "Twelve hundred of the 
 most i)roininent Armenians and other Christians 
 were arrested; ()74 of them were end)arked on 
 thirteen Tigris barges, the prisoners were striitped 
 of all their money and then of their clothes; after 
 that they were thrown into the river. Five or 
 six priests were stripped naked one day. smearetl 
 with tar, and dragged through the streets. For 
 a whole month corjises were observetl floating 
 down the River ICuphrates, hideously mutilated. 
 
 191 
 
192 WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE 
 
 The prisons at Biredjik are filled regularly every 
 day and emptied every night — into the Eu- 
 phrates." . . . 
 
 From a German eye-witness: "In Moush there 
 are 25,000 Armenians; in the neighborhood there 
 are 300 villages, each containing about 500 houses. 
 In all these not a single male Armenian is now 
 to be seen, and hardly a woman. Every officer 
 boasted of the number he had personally mas- 
 sacred. In Harpout the people have had to en- 
 dure terrible tortures. They have had their eye- 
 brows plucked out, their breasts cut off, their 
 nails torn off. Their torturers hew ofif their feet 
 or else hammer nails into them just as they do in 
 shoeing horses. When they die, the soldiers cry : 
 'Now let your Christ help you.' " 
 
 Memorandum forwarded by a foreign resident 
 at H.: "On the 1st of June, 3,000 people (mostly 
 women, girls, and children) left H. accompanied 
 by seventy policemen. The policemen many times 
 violated the women openly. Another convoy of 
 exiles joined the party, 18,000 in all. The journey 
 began, and on the way the pretty girls were car- 
 ried off one by one, while the stragglers from the 
 convoy were invariably killed. On the fortieth 
 day the convoy came in sight of the Euphrates. 
 Here they saw the bodies of more than 200 men 
 floating in the river. Here the Kurds took from 
 them everything they had, so that for five days 
 the whole convoy marched completely naked 
 under the scorching sun. For another five days 
 they did not have a morsel of bread, nor even 
 a drop of water. They were scorched to death 
 by thirst. Hundreds upon hundreds fell dead on 
 the way, their tongues were turned to charcoal, 
 and when, at the end of five days, they reached 
 a fountain, the whole convoy naturally rushed 
 
APPENDIX II 19;i 
 
 towards it. But here the policemen barred the 
 way and forbade them to take a single drop of 
 water. At another place where there were wells, 
 some women threw themselves into them, as there 
 was no rope or pail to draw up the water. These 
 women were drowned, the <lead bodies still re- 
 mainin}; there stinking in the water, and yet the 
 rest of the people later drank from that well. On 
 the sixty-fourth day, they feathered together all 
 the men and sick Avomen and children and burne<l 
 and killed them all. On the seventieth day, when 
 they reached Aleppo, there were left 150 women 
 and children altogether out of the whole convoy 
 of 18,000." 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 LINES WRITTEN BY A SOLDIER IN THE 
 ENGLISH ARMY ABOUT MARCH, 1916. 
 
 Christ in Flanders 
 
 "We had forgotten You or very nearly, 
 You did not seem to touch us very nearly. 
 
 Of course we thought about You now and then 
 Especially in any time of trouble, 
 We know that You were good in time of trouble 
 
 But we are very ordinary men. 
 
 And there were always other things to think of, 
 There's lots of things a man has got to think of, 
 
 His work, his home, his pleasure and his wife 
 And so we only thought of You on Sunday ; 
 Sometimes perhaps not even on a Sunday 
 
 Because there's always lots to fill one's life. 
 
 And all the while, in street or lane or byway 
 In country lane in city street or byway 
 
 You walked among us, and we did not see. 
 Your feet were bleeding, as You walked our pave- 
 ments 
 How did we miss Your foot-prints on our pave- 
 ments ; 
 Can there be other folk as blind as we? 
 194 
 
APPENDIX III 195 
 
 Now we rcnieniber over here in Flanders 
 (It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders) 
 This hideous warfare seems to make things 
 clear, 
 We never thought about You much in l']ngland 
 But now that we are far away from England 
 We have no doubts — we knoio that You are 
 here. 
 
 Y'ou helped us pass the jest along the trenches 
 Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches, 
 
 Y'ou touched its ribaldry and made it fine. 
 You stood beside us in our pain and weakness. 
 We're glad to think I'ou understand our weak- 
 ness. 
 
 Somehow it seems to help us not to whine. 
 
 We think about You kneeling in the Garden 
 Ah ! God, the agony of that dread Garden ; 
 
 We know you prayed for us upon the Cross. 
 If anything could make us glad to bear it 
 'Twould be the knowledge, that Y''ou willed to 
 bear it 
 
 Pain, death, the uttermost of human loss. 
 
 Tho' we forgot You, Y'ou will not forget us. 
 We feel so sure that Y'ou will not forget us. 
 
 But stay with us until this dream is past — 
 And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon, 
 Especially I think, we ask for pardon, 
 
 And that Y'ou'll stand beside us to the last." 
 
APPENDIX IV 
 
 LETTER FROM LORD KITCHENER TO HIS 
 MEN 
 
 "You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the 
 King to help our French comrades against the 
 invasion of a common enemy. You have to per- 
 form a task which will need your courage, your 
 energy, your patience. Remember that the honor 
 of the British Army depends upon your individ- 
 ual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set 
 an example of discipline and perfect steadiness 
 under fire, but also to maintain the most friendly 
 relations with those whom you are helping in this 
 struggle. The operations in which you are en- 
 gaged will, for the most part, take place in a 
 friendly country, and you can do your own coun- 
 try no better service than in showing yourself, 
 in France and Belgium, in the true character of 
 a British soldier. 
 
 Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. 
 Never do anything likely to injure or destroy 
 property, and always look upon looting as a dis- 
 graceful act. You are sure to meet with a wel- 
 come and to be trusted; and your conduct must 
 justify that welcome and that trust. Your duty 
 cannot be done unless your health is sound. So 
 keep constantly on your guard against any ex- 
 cesses. In this new experience you may find 
 temptations both in wine and women. You must 
 entirely resist both temptations, and while treat- 
 196 
 
ArrENDIX IV 197 
 
 ing all womon with perfect courtesy, you should 
 av()i<l any inliinacy. 
 Do your duty bravely. 
 Fear God. 
 Honor the King." 
 
 Kitchener, 
 
 Field-Marshal. 
 
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