Part 9

“Yes, and straight.”

“Well,” he said, “you’ll do.”

I had a great time with those fellows. Hundreds of those Canadian boys stood up to say, “God helping me, I am going to lead a better life!”—hundreds of them. And then I put another test to them. “I want you all to promise,” I said, “that you’ll kneel down and say your prayers to-night in the billet, and those of you who will promise to do that come up and shake hands with me as you go out.” I was kept one half-hour shaking hands.

Now, there were nine fellows sleeping in one billet and not one knew the other eight had been to the meeting. They all got mixed up, but all the nine came up to shake hands, and the one that got back to billets first told the story afterwards. This one had made up his mind he would kneel down and say his prayers, but when he returned he found there was no one there. Somehow he felt different then—he felt he couldn’t do it. He was more afraid of nobody than he would have been of somebody. Then just suppose the others came back and found him kneeling there!

“I funked it,” he said. “I got under the blanket, and tried to say my prayers under the blanket, but it wouldn’t work. Then I heard one man come into the room, then two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. And the eighth man was the champion swearer of the company.”

“Boys,” said this man, “did you hear him?”

“Yes,” they said, “we heard him.”

And the little chap under the blanket said “Yes” too.

“Well, I shook hands with that man, and I promised him for my mother’s sake that I’d kneel down and say my prayers to-night.”

And the little chap under the blanket jumped up, blanket and all, and said, “So did I. I’m with you.”

And the others said, “So did we.”

“Well,” the last comer said, “the best thing we can do is to kneel down now and say a little prayer.”

So they all knelt down, and they each said a little prayer—I wish I had a record of those prayers—and they finished up with “Our Father.”

Then the champion swearer said, “Boys, I’ve cut it all out: no more drink—not another drop.”

And they said, “All right, we are with you. We’ll cut it out.”

Then he said, “I’ve cut something else out. No more swearing.”

Eighty-five times out of every hundred that the boys in France use a swear-word they mean no more than I do when I say, “Great Scott.”

“Do you, boys?” I ask them.

“No, sir,” they invariably reply.

“Well, then, why do you use these swear-words?”

And then I’ve got them and, out of their own mouths, they are condemned. I tell them it is bad form, and I say, “Cut it out.”

These boys made a solemn compact that night that the first man who swore should clean all nine guns, and before the week was out my champion was cleaning nine guns.

But those eight boys didn’t go back on him. They were sporty.

I have seen a little bird’s nest all broken with the wind and torn with the storm, and two or three little eggs, with a few wet leaves over them, addled and cold and forsaken, and my little gipsy heart cried over those poor little motherless things, for I was motherless too. And up in a tree I have heard a thrush singing the song of a seraph and I have said, as I looked at the eggs, “You would have been singers too, but you were forsaken.”

These boys—they did not forsake their chum. They said, “Buck up, old boy. We’ll help you.”

“No,” he said. “This is my job.”

So they stood by him and cheered him on. People, I say again, don’t die of overmuch love, but for the want of a bit of it. These boys stood by my champion swearer, and when he was putting the polishing touches on the last gun he stood up, his face radiant, like a man that has fought a battle and won: “Boys, this is the last gun I shall clean for anybody under these conditions, because, God helping me, I’m going to see this thing through.”

And he is seeing it through.