LIFE IN A BASE CAMP
The man who inaugurated Y M C A army work in France was Joseph Callan.
In 1903 he became a secretary of the International Committee in
Allahabad, North India, and later in Colombo. Ten years ago in
Bangalore he began his wonderful work for soldiers, which, in time, was
to set the pace and furnish the standard for the Association 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, clergy, and chaplains, helped
to relate permanently these results to the Church.
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 invited 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 superstition and prejudice about the greased
cartridges, etc., no Christian work had been permitted 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 to
give them a chance to see what they could do for the troops.
Within twenty-four hours a work was organized which kept the sepoys
occupied for all their leisure time. Football and hockey and outdoor
athletics, excursions down the harbor, sea bathing, lectures, and
entertainments were soon in full swing. This was the first work of the
kind ever done for the Indian Army. So instantly and obviously
invaluable did it become that the Commanding 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 fleet 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 safely 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 C A was needed as a counter
attraction. Upon an outbreak of 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 recognized by all as the dominant moral force in the camp.
One of the Indian secretaries, Mr. Roy, addressed the soldiers at their
own request for an hour and a half, and a remarkable scene of
repentance 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 accordance with
the custom of their religion, as a punishment 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-offering to the Association. 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
secretaries the strict obligation of silence regarding the propagation
of Christianity. They entered the work on the understanding that the
men could live out the spirit of Christ and express it in silent
ministry under the motive of Christian love.
It was striking to see how much real Christianity 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 irksome 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. Lectures 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 great mass of ignorant 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 unfaithful, 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 forwarded through missionaries or Christian
workers 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 fighting comrades. The Red
Triangle has spanned the gulf from the winter cold and the dreary
trenches in France to the little village on the plains 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 traditions 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
has proved a potent factor for unity, harmony, and peace in a time of
unrest. It draws the British officers and the Indian men closer
together, and the Indian secretaries have served time and again as the
mediators between the two, who could so easily have misunderstood each
other. It provides a common meeting place between the caste-ridden and
divided Indians themselves, who had no other ground of unity.
Here are men of different languages and races and traditions, from the
Gurkhas, the brave little hill men, to the stalwart Pathans, who come
as fighting men from far beyond the borders of India for the sheer joy
of battle. The chances for supposed loot in the fabled wealth of the
West and the accumulation of merit by slaying the "unbelievers" of the
enemy, prove an added attraction to men born and bred in border
warfare. Here also are men of three separate creeds, who have often
fought with one another over the issues of their faiths--the big
bearded Sikhs, with a soldier's religion, the warlike Mohammedans, who
fight according to their Koran, and the caste-ridden 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 singing 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 organized
public worship, have not a religion which holds them in such a vital
grip in this distant land.
As you pass down the camp, the band is playing for the draft that is
marching off to take its place in the trenches. The last good-bys are
being said and little groups are round the secretaries. The stalwart
Sikhs are wringing their hands or kneeling down to wipe the dust from
their shoes, or thanking them with tears of gratitude. They are great
child-like men, simple of heart, affectionate, but lonely and homesick
in a distant land. Here is a man who was once a hard drinker, living
an immoral life, but today he is keeping 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 service 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 marshal 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, but the life in
a base camp is one of fierce and insidious temptation. To hold the men
in the face of such temptations, Callan has erected 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 meetings, 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.
[Illustrations: Wholesome and Entertaining; Home Refreshments in
London.]
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. Their very
presence in the camps is the greatest single moral factor for the
creation of that indefinable atmosphere which pervades every hut. Even
rude and coarse men never think of swearing 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
workers 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 tireless and exhausting physical service, able
to work with others without friction, prepared to meet the social needs
of the men and to give a sympathetic 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 difficulties. The soldier cannot live by bread alone, nor by the
tea and coffee 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.
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. Principal D. S. Cairns, of Aberdeen,
has had crowded meetings night after night for his apologetic lectures,
and the questions raised in the open discussions would make one think
he was in a theological seminary. Principal Kitchie, of Nottingham,
has been lecturing on European history and the Balkan situation.
Bishop Knight is giving his time seven days a week to looking after the
spiritual and ecclesiastical needs of the men, as many seek
confirmation 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 religions 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 challenge 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 finest spirits of England, 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 Christianity," 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; Communion 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 conducted by Chaplain Berry.
No. 11, Professor Thos. Welsh's Bible class; mid-week rally. No. 12,
fretwork and carpentry class; games; letter writing. No. 13, mid-week
service; Bible class; letter writing. No. 14, cinema show; indoor
games. No. 15, lantern lecture on "India in the Trenches." No. 16,
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 different camps on the great questions of reconstruction
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
without, 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 Principal Fraser as he guides their thought to higher ideals
for the period of reconstruction that is to follow.
One night they are discussing the present social order, and what is
wrong with it; they are dealing with bad housing, employment, low
wages, the cleavage between the rich and the poor, industrial
oppression, and social injustice. The next night they consider the
dangers of demobilization. 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,
working 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 disaster, 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 establishment alone, but subject to the National Common Rules
arrived at for the whole industry by the organized employers and
employed, in consultation 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
discuss the problem of drink and the war; on another night, gambling;
and on another, the social evil. The men who attend the lectures and
parliaments of these camps will almost get a liberal education during
the three years.
We have spoken of the vast work going on in the thirty huts conducted
by 167 workers in this single base camp. Let us now pass into a
typical center and observe the work a little more in detail. For our
first illustration, let us 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 constructed. It is a moving sight
simply to step inside its doors. Here are two parallel structures of
simple pine boards, each 120 by 30 feet. They may be used separately,
in eight different departments, 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 inadequate for this
convalescent camp holding 4,000 men. It is a center for a dozen
surrounding hospitals, each containing from 1,000 to 4,000 patients.
As the men are cured in these hospitals they are sent up to the
Convalescent Camp to be made fit to return to the trenches. It is
worth remembering that every one of these 4,000 patients is a wounded
man, all of whom have seen service and suffering.
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 turning off 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 biscuits, 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 temptation and evil
resorts.
While these men are being served or are seated in the social room,
meetings and lectures are conducted 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 purposes 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
small group prayer meetings and Bible classes are held.
Just outside the hut is a wide wooden platform which accommodates
several hundred men. There nearly a dozen different games are in full
swing, all at the same time. Each one is designed to help the patient
recover his health. Here are badminton, tennis, volley ball, indoor
baseball, quoits, deck billiards, bagatelle, ping-pong, and other
games. The front of this platform forms a grandstand 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 temptation, while the remaining third had been
maintaining 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 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 conversion, he went out and brought in another
comrade 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 building 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 be fed on canned goods and corned
beef, and they will be housed in the most unattractive towns of France,
where there is absolutely 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."