And this was his reply: “They copped me, worse luck, before I had a pot
at them.”
You can’t beat these boys of yours, the nation’s boys, the best boys of
our homes, the flower of our manhood, the noblest and the dearest that
God ever gave to a people. These boys, they are worth everything in the
world, and there is _nothing_ you and I can do will ever repay them for
what they are doing for you and for me.
* * * * *
When the great end of the day comes, the greatest joy of all will be the
joy of knowing you have tried to make somebody else’s life happy. It is
the flowers that you have made grow in unlikely places that will
tell—not how much money you have made, not how big a house you have
lived in, not how popular you were in the world of letters, of science,
of finance, but—how many burdens have you lifted? How many dark hearts
have you lightened? You can’t do too much for your boys. Remember what
they are doing for you. Remember the lives that are being laid down for
you.
I shook hands with a boy a little while ago in Scarborough, and he said,
“I believe I hold the record for having lost most in the war. I have
lost five brothers, my sister was killed in the war, and my mother died
of a broken heart through grief, but,” he said, “I’ll give my next
week’s pay, sir, towards this new hut.”
Another boy, when I was making my appeal, said, “I’ve been wounded and I
am discharged. I’ll give my next week’s pay,” and up jumped a war-widow
and she said, “I’ll give my next week’s pension.”
I was talking in Doncaster, and I had a batch of wounded men from one of
the local hospitals—a batch of twenty dressed in blue—and every one of
them gave something; and when I looked round and said, “Boys, why are
you giving?” one said, “Well, sir, we’re grateful for what it did for us
when we were there.”
People say, “What are you going to do with the huts after the war?” We
want to pick them up, and bring them back to this country and put one
down in every parish in the land, so that when the boys do come back
they will still have the Y.M.C.A. hut to go into, so that they can still
keep up the spirit of unity.
Woe be to the man who goes into the hut and tries to preach
sectarianism. The Y.M.C.A. is creating a spirit of unity amongst the
boys, and that is going on all the time. I want the limitations to
vanish at home. I want the ecclesiastical barriers to go. When you get
to Heaven the Lord will have to give Gabriel a job to introduce many
Christians to one another. You should see your boys, how they mix up.
They come in—the Roman Catholics, the Church of England, and the
Nonconformists and Plymouth Brethren and Salvation Army, and all
sorts—you don’t know who’s who. We are not quarrelling over religions
at the front—we are fighting and dying for the folks who are doing that
at home.
Let’s stop our religious nonsense. Religion’s too big to be confined
within our four little walls. If our Church rules are so rigid that they
won’t let us come together, then our Church rules are wrong. God never
made rules which divide men—all God’s laws unite. Christ died that we
might be one, and it is time we got together. Your boys are bigger than
your Churches. You and I have got to rise to the opportunity. God help
us to do it!
* * * * *
Somebody asks, “Why does the Y.M.C.A. always want more new huts? Why not
move the old ones?” What will the boys do who take the places of those
who have gone forward? When the line goes forward, it does not come
back—not in these days; it abides—and the boys who come up as a
support, they take the huts the other boys leave.
The Y.M.C.A. stands for everything to your boys. It is their club, their
church, their recreation-room. It is their canteen—dry canteen, you may
be sure—it is their reading-room, it is their smoking-room, and why
should not the Church of Jesus Christ provide places of recreation for
its own people? Why should it leave the public-house and the theatre to
do it all? We have lost lots of people because we have been so slow—we
have lost them, you and I, but we are learning sense in these days, and
the Y.M.C.A. has come to the help of the Churches, to be the
communication-trench between the Churches and the people.
It is doing magnificent work.
As I write these lines I think of one dear boy, a young sergeant, a
Public-School boy. I had watched him grow up. I knew his home, and as he
leaned against me he said, “Gipsy, I’m homesick; I want my mother,” and
then, with a sob, he said, “Tell me more about Jesus.”
I was able to talk to him about his mother because I had lost mine, and
just because I love Jesus I was able to talk to him about the blessed
Jesus Who comes into a man’s heart when he is sad, lonely, and homesick,
and helps him.
He was lying on a stretcher, and it was my privilege to hold his hand
and to kiss him for his mother.
“Gipsy,” he said, “does it mean West?”