Your Boys | Page 9

the boys singing as they came round the
curve,
"Blighty, Blighty is the place for me."
We served them with tea and coffee, French bread a yard long, and
candles and matches and "Woodbines," and then we got that crowd
off--still singing "Blighty."
They had been gone about five minutes when the other train from
Blighty came in. We couldn't hear them singing. They were quiet and
subdued. We served them with coffee and tea, candles, bootlaces, and
smokes, and then, as they had some time, they started having a
wash--the first since they left Blighty. The footboard of the train was

the washstand, the shaving-table, and the dressing-table. But they didn't
sing.
I saw in a corner of that little canteen a pile of postcards, and I said,
"Who says a postcard for wife or mother?"
Somebody asked, "Who's going to see them posted?"
I said, "I am. You leave them to me."
They said, "All right," and I began to give out the postcards.
I started at one end of the train and went on to the other end. In the
middle I found two carriages full of officers.
"Gentlemen," I said, "will you please censor these postcards as I collect
them, and that will relieve the pressure on the local staff, for I don't
want to put any extra work on them?"
"Oh, certainly," they answered, and I sent a dozen or twenty up at a
time to them, and in fifteen minutes that train was steaming out of the
station and the boys were singing, "Should auld acquaintance."
When they had gone I collected the postcards that had been written and
censored--and there were 575. To keep the boys in touch with home is
religion; to keep in their lives the finest, the most beautiful
home-sentiment that God ever gives to the world is a bit of
religion--pure and undefiled.
* * * * *
How gloriously brave are the French women and Belgian women! I
was talking to one in London--a young girl not more than eighteen or
nineteen. She was serving me in a restaurant, and I saw she was wiping
her eyes, so I called her to me and said, "What's the matter, my child?"
She answered, "Sir, I came over on the boat from Belgium early in the
war, and my mother and sisters got scattered, and I have never seen or
heard of them since."

And the Madame of the restaurant came to me a little while afterwards,
and said, "We dare not tell her, but they were all killed."
Many people at home don't realise what is going on. Some are in
mourning, some have lost boys, some have lost husbands, brothers, but
we have not suffered as others have suffered. I was riding in a French
train a few weeks ago. Beside me sat a lady draped in mourning. I
could not see her face, it was so thickly veiled with crape. Beside her
was a nurse, and the lady wept, oh, so bitterly! I cannot bear to see
anybody weeping. If I see a little child crying in the street I want to
comfort it. If I see a woman crying in the street I want to comfort her.
God has given me a quick ear where grief is concerned--and I am
thankful. I wouldn't have it otherwise--though I have to pay for it.
That woman's tears went through me. Every little while she was
counting in French, "_Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq,_"--then she would
weep again and then she would count.
I said to the nurse, "Nurse, what's the trouble?" and she said, "Sir, her
mind has given way. Before the war she had five handsome sons, and
one by one they have been killed, and now she spends her time
counting over her boys and weeping."
And all that is for you and for me! What sort of people ought we to be,
do you suppose? Are we really worth--_that_?
* * * * *
I was talking to some Canadians one night--and the Canadians are fine
boys. I was putting my foot on the platform, just about to begin, when a
bright young Canadian touched me and said, "Say, boss, can you shoot
quick?" and I replied,
"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