What was the difference? He had gotten a letter.[Illustration: What was the difference? He had gotten a letter.]
What was the difference? He had gotten a letter.[Illustration: What was the difference? He had gotten a letter.]
Then there is the Silhouette of Physical Suffering. Hundreds of these sombre silhouettes stand out against a lurid background of fire and blood. One only I quote because it has a fringe of hope.
The boy's back was broken. It had been broken by a shell concussion. There were no visible signs of a wound on his body anywhere, the doctors told me in the hospital. He did not know it as yet. He thought it was his leg that was hurt. They asked me to tell him, as gently as I could. It was a hard task to give a man.
He was lying on a raised bed so that, when I went up to it, it came up to my neck almost, and when I talked with the lad I could look straight into his eyes. Those eyes I shall never forget, they were so fearless, so brave, and yet so full of weariness and suffering.
I took his hand and said: "Boy, I am a preacher." For once I didn't say anything about being a secretary. I just told him I was a preacher.
He said: "I am so glad you have come. I just wanted to see a real, honest-to-goodness preacher." He forced a smile to accompany this sentence.
"Well, I'm all of that, and proud of it," I replied, smiling back into his brave eyes.
"I'm so tired. I try to be brave, but I've been lying here for three months now, and my leg doesn't seem to get any better. It pains all the time until I think I'll die with the agony of it. I never sleep only when they give me something. But I try hard to be brave."
"You are brave!" I said to him. "They all tell me that, the doctors and nurses."
"They are so good to me." he said in low tones so that I had to bend to hear them. "But my leg; they don't seem to be able to help me."
Then I told him as gently as I could that it was not his leg, that it was his back, and that he would likely not get well. Then I tried to tell him of the room in his Father's house that was ready for him when he was ready to accept it, and of what a glorious welcome there was there.
He reached out for my hand in the semi-darkness of that evening. I can feel his hand-clasp yet. I didn't know what to say, but a phrase that had lingered in my mind from an old story came to the rescue.
"Don't you want the Christ to help you bear your pain?" I asked him.
"That is just what I do want," he said simply. "That was why I was so glad you came—an honest-to-goodness preacher," and he smiled again, so bravely, in spite of his suffering, and in spite of the news that I had just broken to him.
Then we prayed. I stood beside his bed holding his hand and praying. The room was full of other wounded boys, but in the twilight I doubt if a lad there knew what we were doing. I spoke low, just so he could hear, and the Master knew what was in my heart without hearing.
When I was through I felt a pressure of his hand, and he said: "Now I feel stronger. He is helping me bear my burden. Thank you for coming, and"—then he paused for words "and—thank you for bringing Him."
Yes, there is suffering in France, suffering among our soldiers, too, but suffering that is glorified by courage.
One night down near the front lines as we drove the great truck slowly over the icy roads, on the top of a little knoll stood a lone sentinel against a background of snow, and that is a silhouette that I shall never forget.
Another night there was a beautiful afterglow, and being a lover of the beautiful as well as a driver of a truck, I was lost in the wonder of the crimson flush against the western hills.
"Makes me homesick," said the big man beside me, whose home is in the West. "Looks for all the world like one of our Arizona afterglows."
"It is beautiful," I replied, and then we were both lost in silent appreciation of the scene before us, when suddenly we were startled witless.
"Halt!" rang out through the semi-darkness. "Who goes there?"
"Y. M. C. A." we shot back as quick as lightning, for we had learned that it doesn't pay to waste time in answering a sentinel's challenge down within sound of the German guns.
"Pass on, friends," was the grinning reply. That rascal of a sentry had caught us unawares, lost in the afterglow, and he was tickled over having startled us into astonishment.
But even though he did give us a scare, I am sure that the picture of him standing there in the middle of that French road, with his gun raised against the afterglow, will be one of the outstanding silhouettes of the memories of France.
Then there was the old Scotch dominie down at Château-Thierry, with the marines. The boys called him "Doc," and loved him, for he had been with them for eight months.
One night, in the midst of the hottest fighting in June, the old secretary thought he would go out in the night and see how the boys were getting along. He walked cautiously along the edge of the woods when suddenly the word "Halt!" shot out in low but distinct tones.
"Who goes there?"
"A friend," the secretary replied.
"Oh, it's you, is it, Doc? Gee, I'm glad to see you! This is a darned weird place to-night. Every time the wind blows I think it's a Boche."
There was a slight noise out in No Man's Land. "What's that, Doc, a Boche?"
"I think not."
"You can't tell, Doc; they're everywhere. If I've seen one, I've seen ten thousand to-night on this watch."
That old gray-haired secretary will never forget that night when he walked among the men in the trenches with his little gifts and his word of cheer, that memorable night before the Americans made themselves heroes forever in the Bois du Belleau. He will never forget the sound of that boy sentry's voice when he said, "Gee, Doc, I'm glad it's you"; nor will he forget the looks of the boy as he stood there in the darkness, the guardian of America's hopes and homes, nor will he forget the firm, warm clasp of the lad's hands as he walked away to greet others of his comrades.
These are Soldier Silhouettes that remain vivid until time dies, until the "springs of the seas run dust," as Markham says:
"Forget it not 'til the crowns are crumbled;'Til the swords of the Kings are rent with rust;Forget it not 'til the hills lie humbled;And the springs of the seas run dust."
No, we do not forget scenes and moments like these in our lives.
Then there is the silhouette of the profile of the captain of a certain American machine-gun company who, in March, marched with his men into the Somme line. He was an old football-player back in the States, and we were having a last dinner together in Paris, a group of college men. After dinner, when we had finished discussing the dangers of the coming weeks, and he had told us that his major had said to him, "If fifteen per cent of us come out alive, I shall be glad," and after we had drifted back to the old college days, and home and babies, and after he had shown us a picture of his wife and his kiddies, it became strangely quiet in the room, and suddenly he turned his face from us, with just the profile showing against the light of the window, and exclaimed: "My God, fellows, for a half-hour you have made me forget that there is a war, and I have been back on the old campus again playing football, and back with my babies."
Then his jaw set, and I shall never forget the profile of his face as that set look came back and once again he became the captain of a machine-gun company.
Then there was the lone church service that my friend Clarke held one evening at a crossroads of France. He had held seven services that Sunday, one in a machine-gun company's dugout, with six men; another with a group of a dozen men in a front-line trench; another with several officers in an officers' dugout; another with a battery outfit who were "On Call," expecting orders to send over a few shells; another with several men out in No Man's Land, on the sunny side of an old upturned mass of tree roots; one in a listening-post, and finally this service with a lone sentry at a crossroads.
"But how did you do it?" I asked.
"I just saw him there," Clarke replied, "and he looked lonely, and I walked up and said: 'How'd you like to have me read a little out of the Book?'
"'Fine!' he said.
"Then I prayed with him, standing there at the crossroads, and I asked him if he didn't want to pray. He was a church boy back home, and he prayed as fine a prayer as ever I heard. Then we sang a hymn together. It was 'Jesus, Lover of My Soul,' and neither of us can sing much, but as I look back on it, it was the sweetest music that I ever had a part in making. The only thing I didn't do was take up a collection. Outside of that, it was just as if we had gone through a regular church service at home. I even preached a little to him. No, not just preached, but talked to him about the Master."
"Did you even go so far with your lone one-man congregation as to have a benediction?" I asked him.
"No, I just said what was in my heart when we were through, 'God bless and keep you, boy,' and went on."
"I never heard a finer benediction than that, old man," I replied with feeling.
And the silhouette of that one Y. M. C. A. secretary holding a religious service with a lone sentry of a Sunday evening, bringing back to the lad's memory sacred things of home and church and the Christ, giving him a new hold on the bigger, better things, bringing the Christ out to him there on that road, that silhouette is mine to keep forever close to my heart. I shall see that and shall smile in my soul over it when eternity calls, and shall thank God for its sweetening influence in my life.
And so this comfort may come to the mothers and fathers of America, that through the various agencies of the American army, through General Pershing's intense interest in righteous things, through that Lincoln-like Christian leader of the chaplains, Bishop Brent, through the Y. M. C. A., and the Salvation Army, and the Knights of Columbus, your boy has his chance, whatever creed, or race, or church, to worship his God as he wishes; and not one misses this opportunity, even the lonely sentinel on the road. And the glorious thing about it is that boys who never before thought of going to church at home, crowd the huts on Sundays and for the good-night prayers on week-days.
Just before the battle of Château-Thierry, "Doc," of whom I have spoken in this chapter before, said: "Boys, do you want a communion service?"
"Yes," they shouted.
Knowing that there were Catholics and Jews and Protestants and non-believers there, he said: "Now, anybody who doesn't want to take communion may leave."
Not a single man left. Out of one hundred or more men only two did not kneel to take of the sacred bread and wine. Two Jews knelt with the others, several Roman Catholics, and men of all Protestant denominations. Half of them were dead before another sunrise came around, but they had had their service.
Every man has his opportunity to worship God in his own way and as nearly as possible at his own altars in France. There was the story of "The Rosary."
It was Hospital Hut Number ——, and half a thousand boys from the front, wounded in every conceivable way, were sitting there in the hut in a Sunday-evening service. Many of them had crutches beside them; others canes. Some of them, had their heads bandaged; others of them carried their arms in slings. Some of them had lost legs, and some of them had no arms left. Their eager faces were lighted with a strange light, such as is not seen on land or sea, and on most of those faces, unashamed, ran over pale cheeks the tears of homesickness as the young corporal whom I had taken with me from another town sang "The Rosary." I have never heard it sung with more tenderness, nor have I heard it sung in more beautiful voice. That young lad was singing his heart out to those other boys. He had not been up front himself as yet, for he was in a base port attending to his duties, which were just as important as those up front, but it was hard for him to see it that way. So he loved and respected these other lads who had, to his way of thinking, been more fortunate than he, because they had seen actual fighting. He respected them because of their wounds, and he wanted to help them. So he lifted that rich, sweet, sympathetic tenor voice until the great hut rang with the old, old song, and hearts were melted everywhere. I saw, back in the audience, a group of nurses with bowed heads. They knew what the rosary meant to those who suffer and die in the Catholic faith. They, too, had memories of that beautiful song. A group of officers, including a major, all wounded, listened with heads bowed.
As I sat on the crude stage and saw the effects of his magical voice on this crowd I got to thinking of what this war is meaning to that fine understanding of those who count the beads of the rosary and those who do not. I had seen so many examples of fine fraternal fellowship between Catholic and Protestant that I felt that I ought to put it down in some permanent form.
There is a true story of one of our Y. M. C. A. secretaries who was called to the bedside of a dying Catholic boy. There was no priest available, and the boy wanted a rosary so badly. In his half-delirium he begged for a rosary. This young Protestant Y. M. C. A. secretary started out for a French village, five miles away, on foot, to try to find a rosary for this sick Catholic boy, and after several hours' search he found a peasant woman whom he made understand the emergency of the situation, and he got the loan of the rosary and took it back through five miles of mud to the bedside of that Catholic lad, and comforted him with the feel of it in his fevered hands and the hope of it in his fevered soul. When I heard this story it stirred me to the very fountain depths, but I have seen so much of this fine spirit of service in the Y. M. C. A. since then that I have come to know that as far as the Y. M. C. A. is concerned all barriers of church narrowness are entirely swept away.
I have had most delightful comradeship since I have been in France in one great area as religious director with two Knights of Columbus secretaries and one father—Chaplain Davis—all of whom say freely and eagerly: "We have never had anything but the finest spirit of co-operation and friendship from the Y. M. C. A."
"Why," added Chaplain Davis, a Catholic priest, "why, the first Sunday I was here, when I had no place to take my boys for mass, a secretary came to me and offered me the hut. It has always been that way."
The story of the French priest who confessed a dying Catholic boy through a Y. M. C. A. Protestant secretary interpreter, in a Y. M. C. A. hut, has been told far and wide, but it is only illustrative of the broadening lines of Catholicism and the wider fraternal relations of all professed Christians.
The marvellous story that my friend, the French chaplain, tells of being marooned in a shell-hole at Verdun for several days with a Catholic priest, and of their discussion of religion and life there under shell-fire, and the tenderness with which the Catholic priest kissed the hand of the Protestant French chaplain when the two had agreed that, after all, there was one common God for a common, suffering nation of people, and that this war would break all church barriers down, and that out of it would come a new spirit in the Catholic church, a new brotherhood for all. That was an impressive indication of the thing that is sweeping France to-day in church circles, and that will sweep America after the war.
Then there is that other story of the Catholic priest who had been in the same regiment with a French Protestant chaplain, each of whom deeply respected the other because of the unflinching bravery that each had displayed under intense shell-fire, and of the great love that each had seen the other show in two years of constant warfare in the same regiment. Then came that terrible morning at Verdun, when the French Protestant chaplain, the friend of the Catholic priest, had been killed while trying to bring in a wounded Catholic boy from No Man's Land. On the day of this Protestant chaplain's funeral the Catholic priest stood in God's Acre with bared head, and spoke as tender and as sincere a eulogy as ever a man spoke over the grave of a dear friend, spoke with the tears in his eyes most of the time. Church lines were forgotten here. It was a prophetic scene, this, where a Catholic priest spoke at the funeral of a Protestant chaplain. It was prophetic of that new church brotherhood that is to come after the war is over.
They are the lights, the lights of war. Sometimes they are just the stars shining out that makes the wounded soldier out in No Man's Land look up, in spite of shell-fire and thunder, in spite of wounds and death, in spite of loneliness and heartache, in spite of mud and rain, to exclaim, as Donald Hankey tells us in a most wonderful chapter of "A Student in Arms": "God! God everywhere, and underneath are the everlasting arms!"
Sometimes the Sky Silhouettes number among their own just a moonlight night with a crescent moon sailing quietly and serenely over the horizon in the east, while great guns belch fire in the west, a fire that seems to shame the timid moon itself.
Sometimes they are search-lights cleaving the sky over a great city like Paris, or along the front lines, or gleaming from an air-ship.
Sometimes they are signal-lights flashing out of the darkness from a patrolling plane overhead, or a blazing trail of fire as a patrol falls to its death in a battle by night.
Sometimes they are signal-lights flashing from an observation balloon anchored in the darkness over the trenches to guard the troops from dangers in the air.
Sometimes they are the flashes, the fleet, swallow-like flashes, of an enemy plane caught in the burning, blazing path of a search-light, and then hounded by it to its death.
Sometimes they are signals flashed from the top of a cruiser on the high seas across the storm-tossed waters to a little destroyer, which flashes back its answer, and then in turn flashes a message of light to one of the convoying planes overhead in the dim dusk of early evening.
Sometimes these Sky Silhouettes are the range-finders that poise in the air for a few seconds, guiding the air patrols home, and sometimes they are just the varied, interesting, gleaming, flashing "Lights of War."
One's introduction into the war zone and into war-zone cities and villages, and one's visits "down the line" to the front by night, will always be filled with the thrill of the unusual because of the Lights of War. Where lights used to be, there are no lights now, and where they were not seen before the war, they are radiant and rampant now.
The first place that an American traveller notices this absence of lights is on the boat crossing over the Atlantic. From the first night out of New York the boats travel without a single light showing. Every light inside of the boat is covered with a heavy black crape, and the port-holes and windows are so scrupulously and carefully chained down that the average open-air fiend from California or elsewhere feels that he will suffocate before morning comes, and even in the bitterest of winter weather I have known some fresh-air fiends to prefer the deck of the ship, with all of its bitter winds and cold, to the inside of a cabin with no windows open. I stood on the deck of an ocean liner "Somewhere on the Atlantic" a few months ago as the great ship was ploughing its zigzag course through the black waters, dodging submarines. There was not a star in the sky. There was not a light on the boat. Absolutely the only lights that one saw was when he leaned over the railing and saw the splash of innumerable phosphorescent organisms breaking against the boat. I have seen the like of it only once before, and this was on the Pacific down at Asilomar one evening, when the waves were running fire with phosphorescence. It was a beautiful sight there and on the Atlantic too.
IT WAS MIDNIGHT
On this particular night, as far as one could see, this brilliant organic light illuminated the sea like the hands of my luminous wrist-watch were made brilliant by phosphorescence. I noticed this and looked down at my watch to see what time it was. It was midnight.
As I looked, my friend, who was standing beside me on the deck, said: "The last order is that no wrist-watches that are luminous may be exposed on the decks at night. That order came along with the order forbidding smoking on the decks at night. The Germans can sight the light of a cigar a long distance through their periscopes."
I smiled to myself, for it was my first introduction to the romantic part that lights and the lack o' lights is playing in this great World War. Then my friend continued his observations as we stood there on the aft deck watching the white waves break, glorious with phosphorescence. He said: "What a topsyturvy world it is. Three years ago if a great ship like this had dared to cross the Atlantic without a single light showing, it would have horrified the entire world, and that ship captain would have been called to trial by every country that sails the seas. He would have been adjudged insane. But now every ship sails the seas with no navigation-lights showing."
IN WAR COUNTRY
But when one gets his real introduction into the lights o' war is when he gets into the war country. It is eight o'clock in a great French city. This French city has been known the world over for its brilliant lights. It has been known for its gayly lighted boulevards, and indeed this might apply to one of three or four French cities. Light was the one scintillating characteristic of this great city. The first night that one finds himself here he feels as though he were wandering about in a country village at home. No arc-lights shine. The window-lights are all extinguished. The few lights on the great boulevards are so dimmed that their luminosity is about that of a healthy firefly in June back home. One gropes his way about, feeling ahead of him and navigating cautiously, even the main boulevards.
The first time I walked down the streets of this great city at night I had the same feeling that I had on the Atlantic. I was sailing without lights, on an unknown course, and I felt every minute that I would bump into some unseen human craft, as indeed I did, both a feminine craft and a male craft. I also had the feeling that in this particular city, in the darkness I might be submarined by a city human U-boat, which would slip up behind me. After having my second trip here I still have that feeling as I walk the streets; the unlighted streets of this city, and especially the side-streets, by night.
FRENCH CITY DURING RAID
But the one time when you catch the very heart and soul of the lights o' war is when you happen to drop into a French city while the Boches are making a raid overhead. I have had this experience in towns and villages and cities. At the signal of the siren the lights of the entire city suddenly snuff out, and the city or town or village is in total darkness. Candles may be lighted and are lighted, but on the whole one either walks the dark streets flashing his electric "Ever Ready," or huddled up in a subway or in a cellar, or in a hallway listening to the barrage of defense guns and to the bombs dropping, watches and listens and waits in total darkness, and while he waits he isn't certain half the time whether the noise he hears is the dropping of German bombs or the beating of his own heart. Both make entirely too much noise for peace and comfort.
As one approaches the front-line cities and towns he learns something more about the lights o' war. It is dark. He is in a little town and must go to another town nearer the front lines. He is standing at the depot (gare). No lights are visible save here and there an absolutely necessary red or green light, which is veiled dimly. His train pulls silently in. There is not a single light on it from one end to the other. It creeps in like a great snake. There is nobody to tell you whether this is your train or not, but you take a chance and climb into a compartment which is pitch-dark.
HEARS AMERICAN VOICE
You have a ticket that calls for first-class military compartment, but you climbed into the first open door you saw, and didn't know and didn't care whether it was first, second, third, or tenth class just so you got on your way. Your eyes soon became accustomed to the darkness and you discerned two or three forms in the seat opposite you. You wondered if they were French, Italians, Belgians, English, Australians, Canadians, Moroccans, Algerians, or Americans. It was too dark to see, but suddenly you heard a familiar voice saying, "Gosh, I wish I was back in little ole New York," and you made a grab in the darkness for that lad's hand.
All during your trip no trainman appears. You are left to your own sweet will at nights in the war zone when you are on a train. No stations are announced. You are supposed to have sense enough to know where you are going, and to have gumption enough to get off without either being assisted or told to do so. The assumption, I suppose, is that anybody who travels in the war zone knows where he is going. Personally, I felt like the American phrase, "I don't know where I'm going but I'm on the way," and I tried to jump off at two or three towns before I got to my own destination, but the American soldiers had been that way before on their way to the trenches, and wouldn't let me off at the wrong place. I thought surely that somebody would come along to take my ticket, but nobody appeared. I soon found that night trains "on the line" pay little attention to such minor matters as tickets, and I have a pocketful that have never been taken up. Time after time I have piled into a train at night, after buying a ticket to my destination; have journeyed to my destination, have gone through the depot and to my hotel without ever seeing a trainman to take the ticket. I was let severely alone. And even if a conductor had come along through the train it would have been too dark for him to have seen me, and I am sure I could have dodged him had I so desired. Maybe that's the reason they don't take the tickets up. Anyhow, I have given you a picture of a great train in the war zone, winding its way toward the front, in complete darkness.
FLASH-LIGHTS
Flash-lights have come into their own in this war. One would as soon think of living without a flash-light as he would think of travelling without clothes in Greenland. It simply cannot be done. In any city, from Paris to the smallest towns on the front, one must have his flash-light. The streets of the cities and towns of France are a hundred times more crooked than those of Boston. If Boston's streets followed the cow-paths, the streets of the cities of France followed cows with the St. Vitus dance. Around these streets one had to find his way by night with a flash-light, especially during an air-raid. One must have a flash, too, for the houses and hotels when an air-raid is on, and one must have it when one is driving a big truck or an automobile down along the front lines, for no lights are permitted on any machines, official or otherwise, after a certain point is reached. One of the favorite outdoor sports of this preacher for a month was to lie on his stomach on the front mud-guard of a big Pierce-Arrow through the war-zone roads, bumping over shell-holes, with a little pocket flash-light playing on the ground, searching out the shell-holes, and trying to help the driver keep in the road. It is a delightful occupation about two o'clock in the morning, with a blizzard blowing, and knowing that the big truck is rumbling along within sight and sound of the German big guns. Trucks make more noise on such occasions than a Twentieth Century Limited. "No lights beyond divisional headquarters" was the order, and night after night we travelled along these roads with only an occasional flash of the Ever Ready to guide. And so it is that the flash-light has come to its own, and every private soldier, officer, and citizen in France is equipped with one. He would be like a swordfish without its sword if he didn't have it.
LADDER OF LIGHT
Then suddenly you see a strange finger of light reaching into the sky. Or you may liken it to a ladder of light climbing the sky. Or you may liken it to a lance of light piercing the darkness. Or you may just call it a good, old-fashioned search-light, which it is. It is watching for Hun planes, and it plays all night long from north to south, from east to west, restlessly, eagerly, quickly, like a "hound of the heavens" guarding the earth. First it sweeps the horizon, and then it suddenly shoots straight up into the zenith like another sun, and it seems to flood the very skies. No German plane can cut through that path of light without being seen, and one night I had the rare privilege of seeing a plane caught by the search-light on its ever-vigilant patrol. It was a thrilling sight. One minute later the anti-aircraft guns were thundering away and the shrapnel was breaking in tiny patches around this plane while the search-lights played on both the plane and the shrapnel patches of smoke against the sky, making a wonderful picture. Military writers say that the enemy planes are more afraid of these search-lights than of the guns.
One night I had the privilege of seeing a plane caught by the search-light.[Illustration: One night I had the privilegeof seeing a plane caught by the search-light.]
One night I had the privilege of seeing a plane caught by the search-light.[Illustration: One night I had the privilegeof seeing a plane caught by the search-light.]
But perhaps the most thrilling sight of all is that dark night when one sees for the first time the star-shells along the horizon. At first you may see them ten miles away making luminous the earth. Then as you drive nearer and nearer, that far-off heat-lightning effect disappears and you can actually see the curve of the star-shells as they mount toward the skies over No Man's Land and fall again as gracefully as a fountain of water. Sometimes you will see them for miles along the front, making night day and lighting up the fields and surrounding hills as though for a great celebration.
BURSTING BOMBS
The light of bursting shells as they fall, or of bursting bombs from an aeroplane, is a short, sharp, quick light like an electric flash when a wire falls or a flash of sharp lightning, but the light of the great guns along the line as they thunder their missiles of death can be seen for miles when a bombardment is on. One forgets the thunder of these belching monsters, and one forgets the death they carry, in the glory of the flame of noonday light that they make in the night.
Then there are the range-finders. These suddenly shoot up in the night, steady and clear, and remain for several minutes burning brightly before they go out. I used to see these frequently driving home from the front. They were sent up from the hangars to guide the French and American planes to a safe landing by night.
Then there is the moonlight. Moonlight nights in towns along the war front are dreaded, for it invariably means a Boche raid. Clear moonlight nights with a full moon are fine for lovers in a country that is at peace, but it may mean death for lovers in a country that is at war. But moonlight nights are beautiful even in war countries, with dim old cathedrals looming in the background, and the white villages of France, a huge château here and there against the hillside or crowning its summit; and the white roads and white fields of France swinging by. One forgets there is war then, until he hears the unmistakable beat of the Hun plane overhead and sees the flash of one, two, three, four, five, six, ten, twelve, fifteen bombs break in a single field a few hundred yards away, and the driver remarks: "I knew we'd have a raid tonight. It's a great night for the Boche!"
STARLIGHT AT FRONT
Then there is the starlight on No Man's Land, for the starlight is a part of the lights o' war just as are the moonlight and the star-shells and the little flash-lights and the range-finders and the bursting shells and bombs. But there are other more significant lights o' war.
There is the "Light that Lies in the Soldiers' Eyes," of which my friend Lynn Harold Hough has written so beautifully and understandingly. Only over here it is a different light. It is the light of a great loneliness for home, hidden back of a light that we see in the eyes of the three soldiers in the painting "The Spirit of Seventy-Six." It is there. It is here. One sees it in the eyes of the lads who have come in out of the trenches after they have had their baptism of fire. I have seen them come in after successfully repulsing a German raid and I have seen their eyes fairly luminous with victory, and that light says, as said the spirit of France, not only "They shall not pass," but it says something else. It says: "We'll go get 'em! We'll go get 'em!" That's the light o' war that lies in the soldiers' eyes back of the light of home. I verily believe that the two are close akin. The American lad knows that the sooner we lick the Hun the sooner he'll get back home, where he wants to be more than he wants anything else on earth.
Y. M. C. A.'s LIGHT
Then there's the light in the Y. M. C. A. hut, and from General Pershing down to the lowest private the army knows that this is the warmest, friendliest, most home-like, most welcome light that shines out through the darkness of war. It not only shines literally by night, but it shines by day. I have seen some huts back of the front lines lighted by the most brilliant electricity. Some of it is obtained from local power-plants, and some of it is made by the Y. M. C. A. Then I have seen some huts up near the lines that were lighted by old-fashioned oil-lamps. Then I have been in Y. M. C. A. dugouts and cellars and holes in the ground, up so close to the German lines that they were shelled every day, and these have been lighted by tallow candles stuck in a bottle or in their own melted grease. I have seen huts back of the lines away from danger of air-raids that could have their windows wide open, and I have seen the light pouring in a flood out of these windows, a constant invitation to thousands of American boys. And again I have seen our huts in places so near the lines that the secretaries had not only to use candles but to screen their windows with a double layer of black cloth, so that not a single ray of that tiny candle might throw its beams to the watching German on the hill beyond. I never knew before what Shakespeare meant when he said: "How far a tiny candle throws its beams." But whether it has been in the more protected huts back of the lines or in the dangerous huts close to the lines, the lights in the huts are usually the only lights available for the boys, and to these lights they flock every night. It is a Rembrandt picture that they make in the dim light of the candles sitting around the tables writing letters by candle-light. It is their one warm, bright spot, for a great stove nearly always blazes away in the Y. M. C. A. hut, and it is the only warmth the lad knows. Few of the billets or tents in France boast of a stove.
Two things I shall never forget. One was the sight of a Y. M. C. A. hut that I saw in a town far back of the trenches. It was in the town where General Pershing's headquarters are located. On the very tip of the hill above me was the hut. Its every window was a blaze of light. It was the one dominating, scintillating building of the town, a big double hut. When I climbed the hill to this hut I found it crowded to its limits with men from everywhere. The rest of the town was dark and there was little life, but here was the pulse of social life and comradeship, and here was the one blaze and glory of light.
The other sight that I shall not forget was up within a few hundred yards of the German lines. It was night. We were returning from our furtherest hut "down the line." We met a crowd of American soldiers tramping through the snow and mud and cold. They were shivering even as they walked. We stopped the machine and gave them a lift. I asked one of the lads where he was going. He said: "Down to the 'Y' hut in ——." I said: "Where is your camp?" He replied: "Up at ——." I said: "Why, boy, that's four miles away from the hut." "We don't care. We walk it every night. It's the only warm place in reach and the only place where we can be where there are lights at night and where we can get to see the fellows and write a letter. We stay there for an hour or two and tramp back through this —— (censored) mud to our billets."
And of all the lights o' war one must know that the lights of the Y. M. C. A. huts cast their beams not only into the hearts of these lads but across the world, and sometimes I think across the eternities, for in these huts innumerable lads are seeing the light that never was on land or sea, and are finding the light that lights the way to Home. And these are the lights o' war.
There is laughter and song and sunshine among our boys in France. Let every mother and father be sure of that. Your boys are always lonely for home and for you, but they are not depressed, and they are there to stay until the job is done. There are times of unutterable loneliness, but usually they are a buoyant, happy, human crowd of American boys.
Those of us who have lived with them, slept with them, eaten with them, come back with no sense of gloom or depression. I say to you that the most buoyant, happy, hopeful, confident crowd of men in the wide world is the American army in France. If you could see them back of the lines, even within sound of the guns, playing a game of ball; if you could see them putting on a minstrel show in a Y. M. C. A. hotel in Paris; if you could see a team of white boys playing a team of negro boys; if you could see a whole regiment go in swimming; if you could see them in a track meet, you would know that, in spite of war, they are living normal lives, with just about the same proportion of sunshine and sorrow as they find at home, with the sunshine dominant.
Some Silhouettes of Sunshine gleam against the background of war like scintillating diamonds and
"Send a thrill of laughter through the framework of your heart;And warm your inner being 'til the tear drops want to start."
There was that watch-trading incident on the Toul line.
The Americans had only been there a week, but it hadn't taken them long to get acquainted with the French soldiers. About all the two watch-trading Americans knew of French was "Oui! Oui!" and they used this every minute.
The American soldiers had a four-dollar Ingersoll watch, and this illuminated time-piece had caught the eye of the French soldier. He, in turn, had an expensive, jewelled, Swiss-movement pocket-watch. The American knew its value and wanted it.
They stood and argued. Several times during the interesting transaction the American shrugged his shoulders and walked away as if to say: "Oh, I don't want your old watch. It isn't worth anything."
Then they would get together again, and the gesticulating would begin all over; the machine-gun staccato of "Oui Oui's" would rattle again, and the argument would continue, without either one of the contracting parties knowing a word of the other's language.
At last I saw the American soldier unstrap his Ingersoll and hand it over to the Frenchman, who, in turn, pulled out the good Swiss-movement watch, and both parties to the transaction went off happy, for each had gotten what he wanted.
One of the funniest things that happened in France while I was there was told me by a wounded boy one Sunday afternoon back of the Notre Dame cathedral. He was invalided from the Château-Thierry scrap in which the American marines had played such a heroic part. He was a member of the marines, and was slightly wounded. He saw that I was a secretary, and thought to play a good joke on me. He pulled out of his breast-pocket a small black thing that looked and was bound just like a Bible. Its corner was dented, and it was plain to be seen that a bullet had hit it, and that that book had stopped its death-dealing course.
I should have been warned by a gleam that I saw in his eyes, but was not. I said: "So you see that it's a good thing to be carrying a Bible around in your pocket?"
"Yes, that saved my life last week," he said impressively. Then he showed me the hole in his blouse where it had hit. The hole was still torn and ragged. In the meantime I was opening what I thought was his Bible.
It was a deck of cards.
I can hear that fine American lad's laughter yet. It rang like the bells of the old cathedral itself, in the shadow of which we stood. His laughter startled the group of old men playing checkers on a park bench into forgetting their game and joining in the fun. Everybody stopped to see what the fun was about. That lad had a good one on the secretary, and he was enjoying it as much as the secretary himself.
Then he said: "Now I'll tell you a good story to make up for fooling you."
"You had better," I said with a sheepish grin.
Then he began:
"There was a fellow named Rosenbaum brought in with me last week to the Paris hospital, wounded in three places. They put me beside him and he told me his story.
"It was at Belleau Wood and the Americans were plunging through to the other side driving the Boche before them. This Jewish boy is from New York City, and one of the favorites of the whole marine outfit. He had gotten separated from his friends. Suddenly he was confronted by a German captain with a belching automatic revolver. The Hun got him in the shoulder with the first shot. Then the American made a lunge with his bayonet, and ran the captain through the neck, but not before the captain shot him twice through the left leg. The two fell together. When the boy from New York came to consciousness he reached out and there was the dead German officer lying beside him.
"The boy took off the captain's helmet first, and pulled it over to himself. Then he took his revolver and his cartridge-belt and piled them all in a little pile. Then he took off his shoes and his trousers and every stitch of clothes that the officer had on, and painfully strapped them around himself under his own blouse. After he had done this he strapped the officer's belt on himself. When the stretcher-bearers got to him and had taken him to a first-aid and the nurses took his clothes off, they found the officer's outfit.
"'Say, boy, are you a walking pawnshop?' the good-natured doctor said, and proceeded to take the souvenirs away.
"This was the military procedure, but the New York boy cried and said: 'I'll die on your hands if you take them away.'
"He was a serious case, and so they humored him and let him keep his souvenirs, and when I saw them take him out to a base hospital this morning, he still had them strapped to him, with a grin on his face like a darky eating watermelon."
"What did you say his name was?" I asked.
"Rosenbaum," the boy replied. "Rosenbaum from New York."
"Say, if they'd only recruit a regiment like that from America, we'd send the whole German army back to Berlin naked," added another soldier who was standing near.
Then we all had another good laugh, which in its turn disturbed the old men playing checkers on the bench under the trees back of Notre Dame. But the soldier who told me the story added thoughtfully a truth that every one in France knows.
"At that, I'm tellin' you, boy, there aren't any braver soldiers in the American army than them Jewish boys from New York. I got 'o hand it to them."
"Yes, we all do," I replied.
This good-natured raillery goes on all over the army, for it is a cosmopolitan crowd, such as never before wore the uniform of the United States, and each group, the negro group, the Italian group, the Jewish group, the Slav group, the Western group, the Southern group, the Eastern group, all have their little fun at the expense of the others, and out of it all comes much sunshine and laughter, and no bitterness.
The Jewish boy loves to repeat a good joke on his own kind as well as the others. I myself saw the letter that a Jewish boy was writing to his uncle in New York, eulogizing the Y. M. C. A. He was not an educated lad, but he was a wonderfully sincere boy, and he pleaded his cause well. He had been treated so well by the "Y" that he wanted his uncle to give all his spare cash to that great organization. This is the letter: