Your Boys | Page 8

I was born in Michigan."
"Well, what are you doing, fighting under the British flag?"
"I guess it's my fight too, sir. This," he said, "is not a fight for England, France, or Belgium, but a fight for the race, and I wouldn't have been a man if I had kept out."
I told that story to one of our Generals who died last September.
"Ah!" he said, "that boy got to the bottom of the business. It's for the race. It's for the race."
"Are you a Christian?" I asked.
"No," he answered; "but I should like to be one. I wasn't brought up. I grew up, and I grew up my own way, and my own way was the wrong way. I go to church occasionally--if a friend is getting married. I know the story of the Christian faith a little, but it has never really meant anything to me."
Then he continued slowly, "On the Somme, a few hours before I was badly wounded"--he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a little crucifix--"I picked up that little crucifix and I put it in my pack, and when I got to hospital I found that little crucifix on my table. One of the nurses or the orderlies had put it there, thinking I was a Catholic. But I know I'm not, sir. I am nothing. I have been looking at this little crucifix so often since I was wounded, and I look at it till my eyes fill with tears, because it reminds me of what He did for me--not this little bit of metal, but what it means."
I said, "Have you ever prayed?"
He replied, "No, sir. I've wept over this little crucifix--is that prayer?"
"That's prayer of the best sort," I said. "Every tear contained volumes you could not utter, and God read every word. He knows all about it."
I pulled out a little khaki Testament. "Would you like it?" I said. "Would you read it?"
He answered, "Yes," and signed the decision in the cover.
When I shook hands with him there was a light in his eyes. Have you ever seen the light break over the cliff-tops of some high mountain peak? Have you ever watched the sun kiss a landscape into beauty? Have you ever seen the earth dance with gladness as the sun bathed it with radiance and warmth? Oh, it's a great sight; but there's no sight like seeing the light from Calvary kiss a human face as it fills the heart with the assurance of Divine forgiveness.
* * * * *
One hundred and fifty-two thousand cups of tea and coffee are given away monthly at one railway-station. I once happened to be at a railway-station on the main lines of communication. There are women working there, women of position and means, working at their own expense. I have seen rough fellows go up to a British woman behind a counter--the first time they have seen a British woman for months--and I have heard them say, "Madam, will you shake hands with me?" I saw an Australian do that. He got her hand--and his was like a leg of mutton--and he thought of his mother and his home-folk. He forgot his tea. It was a benediction to have that woman there.
Well, on this occasion two of these ladies said to me, "Gipsy, we're having a relief train pass through to-morrow, and one comes through up and one comes through down."
"I'll be there," I said.
The train that was coming from the front we could hear before we could see it. And it wasn't the engine that we heard, because that came so slowly, but I could hear 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