I have just come back from your boys. I have been living among them and
talking to them for six months. I have been under shell fire for a
month, night and day. I have preached the Gospel within forty yards of
the Germans. I have tried to sleep at night in a cellar, and it was so
cold that my moustache froze to my blanket and my boots froze to the
floor. The meal which comforted me most was a little sour French bread
and some Swiss milk and hot water, and a pinch of sugar when I could get
it.
There are Y.M.C.A. marquees close to the roads down which come the
walking wounded from the trenches. In three of these marquees last
summer in three days over ten thousand cases were provided with hot
drinks and refreshment—free. And that I call Christian work. You and I
have been too much concerned about the preaching and too little about
the doing of things.
A friend of mine was in one of those marquees at the time, and he told
me a beautiful story. Some of the men sat and stood there two and three
hours waiting their turn, and the workers were nearly run off their
feet. They were at it for three nights and three days. There was one
fellow, a handsome chap, sitting huddled up and looking so haggard and
cold, that my friend said to him,
“I am sorry you have had to wait so long, old chap. We’re doing our
best. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”
“Never mind me,” said the man; “carry on!”
As the sun came out he unbuttoned his coat, and when the coat was thrown
back my friend saw that he was wearing a colonel’s uniform.
“I am sorry, sir,” said my friend. “I did not know. I oughtn’t to have
spoken to you in that familiar way.”
“You have earned the right to say anything you like to me,” said the
Colonel. “Go right on.”
And then my friend said, “Well, come with me, sir, to the back, and I
will get you a cup of coffee.”
“No, not a minute before the boys. I’ll take my turn with them.”
That’s the spirit. Your boys, I say, are great stuff. They have their
follies. They can go to the devil if they want to, but tens of thousands
of them don’t want to, and hundreds of thousands are living straight in
spite of their surroundings. They are the bravest, dearest boys that God
ever gave to the world, and you and I ought to be proud of them. If the
people at home were a tenth as grateful as they ought to be they would
crowd into our churches, if it were for nothing else but to pray for and
give thanks for the boys.
They are just great, your boys. They saved your homes. I was recently in
a city in France which had before the war a population of 55,000 people.
When I was there, there were not 500 people in that city—54,500 were
homeless refugees, if they weren’t killed. I walked about that city for
a month, searching for a house that wasn’t damaged, a window that wasn’t
broken, and I never found one. The whole of that city will have to be
rebuilt. A glorious cathedral, a magnificent pile of municipal
buildings, all in ruins; the Grande Place, a meeting-place for the
crowned heads of Europe, gone! “Thou hast made of a city a heap”—a heap
of rubbish. _Your_ city would have been like that but for the boys in
khaki.
I was saying my prayers in a corner of an old broken chateau, the
Y.M.C.A. headquarters for that centre, with my trench-coat buttoned
tight and my big muffler round my ears. Presently I heard some one
say—one of the workers—“A gentleman wants to see you, sir,” and when I
got downstairs there was a General, a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Star of
India man—a glorious man, a beautiful character. He was there with his
Staff-captain, and he said,
“I’ve come to invite you to dinner to-morrow night, Mr. Smith. I want
you to come to the officers’ mess.”
“What time, sir?” I asked. “I cannot miss my meeting at half-past six
with the boys.”
“Well, the mess will be at half-past seven. We will arrange that.”
“Before you go, sir, I should like to ask why you are interested in me.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, if you wish,” he said. “Men are writing home to
their wives, mothers, sweethearts, and they are talking about a new
power in their lives. ‘We have got something that is helping us to go
straight and play the game,’ they write. And so,” said the General, “we
should like to have a chat with you.”
I went the next night, and for an hour and a half I preached the Gospel
to those officers. It was a great chance; and it was the result of the
note-paper which I have sometimes given out for an hour and a half at a
time to your boys.
There are lots of people think you are not doing any spiritual work
unless you are singing, “Come to Jesus.” Put more Jesus in every bit of
the day’s business. Jesus ought to be as real in the city as in the
temple. If I read my New Testament aright, and if I know God, and if I
know humanity, and if I know Nature, then that is God’s programme. God’s
programme is that the whole of life should be permeated with Christ.
God bless the women who have gone out to help your boys. Women of title,
of wealth and position, serving God and humanity behind tea-tables.
In one of our huts I saw a lady standing beside two urns—coffee and tea.
She was pouring out, and there were 150 or 200 men standing round that
hut waiting to get served. The fellows at the end were not pushing and
crowding to get first, but waiting their turn. They are more
good-natured than a religious crowd waiting to get in to hear a popular
preacher. I have seen these people jostle at the doors.
But your boys don’t do that. They just sing, “Pack up your troubles,”
and wait their turn.
Well, these boys, wet and cold, were waiting for a cup of coffee, and
one of those red-hot gospellers came along, and he said, “Sister, stop a
minute and put a word in for Jesus. This is a great opportunity.”
“But,” she replied, “they are wet and tired; let me give them something
hot as soon as I can.”
“Oh! but let’s put a word in for Jesus,” urged this chap.
Then a bright-faced soldier lad called out, “Guv’nor, she puts Jesus in
the coffee.” That is what I mean when I say you have got to put Jesus
into every bit of the day’s work.
* * * * *
I have never once been asked by your boys to what Church I belonged.
They don’t stop to ask that if they believe in you. They want the living
Christ and the living Message. It isn’t creed; it’s need. And don’t you
get the notion that the boys can’t be reached, and don’t you think that
the boys are hostile to Christianity. They are not. I won’t hear it
without protest. The best things that the old Book talks about are the
things the boys love in one another. They don’t always think of the
Book, but they love the fruits of the Spirit in one another. They love
truth, honour, courage, humility, friendship, loyalty. And where do you
get those things? Why, they have their roots in the Cross—they grow on
that Tree.
* * * * *
I had a dear friend who won the M.C.—a young Cambridge graduate. He was
all-round brilliant. He could write an essay, preach a sermon, sit down
to the piano and compose an operetta. The boys delighted in him. He
would always be at the front. He would always be where there was danger.
I was talking about him one day in one of the convalescent camps, and
two of the boys said to me afterwards,
“You have been talking about our padre. We loved him. We were with him
when he was killed, for the shell that killed him wounded us. Every man
in the battalion would have laid down his life for him.”
This old world’s dying for the want of love. There are more people die
for the want of a bit of it than with overmuch of it. Don’t stifle
it—let it out.
* * * * *
“I am afraid,” said a padre to me once, “the boys are sceptical.”
“Come with me to-morrow,” I answered. “I’ll prove to you they are _not_
sceptical.”
We were half an hour ahead of time and the hut was crowded with eight
hundred men. They were singing when I got in—something about “an old
rooster—as you used to.”
Do you suppose I had no better sense than to go in and say, “Stop this
ungodly music?” You can catch more flies with treacle than with vinegar.