Part 11

“Start with that, then—He loves cradle faith.”

It took him some time, but presently he began with his mother’s prayer, “Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me.” When he got to the third line there was a big lump in his throat and one in mine, and then he gave me a dig with his elbow and said, “You’ll have to finish”—and I finished.

I put my postscript to that letter. “God has saved him,” I wrote. “Believe him. Write and tell him you forgive him.”

And when that mother got that she knew that giving out note-paper was religion.

* * * * *

I was in a cemetery just behind the lines, walking among the graves of our dear lads who have fallen, and weeping for those at home who weep over graves that they will never see. There I found an old soldier who had been to the woods and had cut a big bundle of box trimmings. He was setting a little border of box round the graves.

“But,” I said to him, “they won’t strike. It’s not the right time of year—and the ground’s too dry.”

“I know, sir,” he said, “but it will look as if somebody cares.”

God’s jewels lie deep, and if you will dig deep enough you will find them—so I took the trouble to dig a little deeper. I said, “Nobody will see them here.”

“Yes, sir, the angels will. You taught me to think like this in one of the meetings in the huts, and since I can’t do any more in the fight”—for he was disabled—“I am putting in my time caring for the boys’ graves, and if the wives and mothers don’t see them—well”—and his face lit up with a radiance that I can’t put into words—“the angels will, sir.”

* * * * *

I have had your boys say to me, “Gipsy, does it mean Blighty, or does it mean West?” I have had to say to some of them, “It doesn’t mean Blighty.”

A sister took me to see one dear fellow. He was blown up by a mine, both his legs and his arm were broken.

“I was lying out there, after the mine blew up, for twenty-four hours, and I was half buried,” he told me.

Fancy lying out there in No Man’s Land for twenty-four hours with both legs broken and an arm!

I said, “Sonny, you have had a rough time.”

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.