It was a wonderful service, and here and there you could hear the boys
sighing and crying as they thought of home and father and mother. It
isn’t difficult to talk to boys like that.
* * * * *
There is no hymn of hate in your boys’ hearts. I have known them take a
German prisoner even after he has played the cruel thing; but there! he
looked hungry and wretched, and in a few minutes they have shared their
rations and cigarettes with him. I call that a bit of religion breaking
out in an unlikely place. The leaven’s in the lump, thank God!
* * * * *
I was speaking at a convalescent camp. Every one of the boys had been
badly mauled and mangled on the Somme. This particular day I had about
seven or eight hundred listeners. It was evening, and when I had talked
to the boys, I said,
“I wonder if any of you would like to meet me for a little prayer?”
And from all over the camp came the answer, “Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes,
sir.”
There was a big room there—we called it a quiet room—and so I asked all
the boys who would like to see me, just to leave their seats and go into
this room. I went to them and said,
“You have elected to come here to pray, so we will just kneel down at
once. I am not going to do anything more than guide you. I want you to
tell God what you feel you need in your own language.”
The prayers of those boys would have made a book. There were no
old-fashioned phrases. You know what I mean—people begin at a certain
place and there is no stopping them till they get to another certain
place. One of these boys began, “Please God, You know I’ve been a
rotter.” That’s the way to pray. That boy was talking to God and the
Lord was very glad to listen.
* * * * *
I was talking to one boy—an American; he was a little premature, he was
in the fight before his country.
“Sonny,” I said, “you’re an American?”
“Yes, sir. I was born in Michigan.”
“Well, what are you doing, fighting under the British flag?”
“I guess it’s my fight too, sir. This,” he said, “is not a fight for
England, France, or Belgium, but a fight for the race, and I wouldn’t
have been a man if I had kept out.”