The "Eagle Hut" in London.[Illustration: The "Eagle Hut" in London.]
The "Eagle Hut" in London.[Illustration: The "Eagle Hut" in London.]
In Paris, in addition to the permanent headquarters at 31 Avenue Montaigne, we are hoping to provide hotels and hostels and guides for supervised parties to see the chief points of interest, and to plan such healthy occupation for the soldiers that the evils of the city may be counteracted. Better still we are planning resorts in the French Alps, where summer and winter sports, athletics, mountain climbing, and physical and mental recreation will obviate altogether the necessity of leave to Paris for many of the soldiers of the United States and Canada. In the first resort we are arranging for special rates and moderate charges at the hotels and have the pledge of the civil authorities to keep the place wholesome and absolutely to prevent the incoming of camp followers. The Association is planning to take over the best hotel, which can be made into an attractive social center for the entire camp. A score of American and as many Canadian ladies will help to provide social recreation and amusement for the men, which will prove a greater attraction than the dangerous leave in Paris.
A glance at one or two typical meetings held in various camps will show how we are trying to help our boys face the pressing problems of a soldier's life.
We enter a large hut filled with a thousand soldiers. Here are many men who have been driven toward God and who are face to face with the great realities of life, death, and the future as never before in their lives, eager for any message which may help them. But here are several hundred others who have fallen victims to evil habits and who are determined you shall not force religion down their throats. How are we to capture the attention of this mass of men and hold them? Will they bolt or stand fire? The time has come to begin the meeting and we plunge in. "Come on, boys, let's have a sing-song; gather round the piano and let's sing some of the old camp songs." Out come the little camp song books, and we start in on a few favorite choruses. A dozen voices call for "John Brown's Body," "Tennessee," "Kentucky Home," "A Long, Long Trail," etc. Soon we have several hundred men seated around the piano and the chorus gathers in volume. Now we call for local talent. A boy with blue eyes and a clear tenor voice sings of home. A red-headed humorist climbs on the table; and at his impersonations, his acting, and comic songs, the crowd shouts with glee.
Our heart sinks within us as we look over this sea of faces and wonder how we are going to hold this crowd that this man seems to have in the hollow of his hand. Somehow these men must be gripped and held to the last. "Boys, what was the greatest battle of the war?" we ask. "Was it the brave stand of little Belgium at Liege? Was it the splendid retreat of the little British army from Mons? Was it the battle of the Marne, when the French and British struck their first offensive blow? Was it the great stand at Ypres, or the defense of Verdun, or the drive on the Somme? What isyourhardest battle? Is it not within, in the fight with passion? Now is the time to challenge every sin that weakens a man or the nation. How about drink? Is it a friend or foe? How about gambling? How about impurity?" Here we mass our guns on the greatest danger of the war. In five minutes the room is quiet, in ten minutes we have the ear of every man in the hut, the last man has stopped talking, and now the battle is on. They are gripped on the moral question; how can we get them to the religious issue? These men have the root of religion in their souls, but they do not know it. They believe in strength, in purity, in generosity. We show that they are often falling before temptation, but the very things that they most admire are all found in their fulness in Jesus Christ.
Now we make use of a simple illustration. We hold up a gold coin hidden in our hand and offer it as a gift. "Who will take me at my word and ask for this gift?" At last a man rises in the back of the hall, there is a little scene, and then a burst of applause as he receives it and goes to his seat. "Now why didn'tyoucome? Some of you didn't believe me, some were ashamed to come up before everybody and ask for it, some were just waiting; and so all lost your chance. Once again I offer a gift. Here is something more valuable than all the gold on earth—heaven to be had for the asking; the free gift of God is eternal life. Why don't you come? For the same three reasons. Some of you don't believe, some are afraid to show their colors, some are just waiting. You will soon start for the front to take your place in the trenches. Are you ready for life or death? What will you do with Jesus Christ?"
We have had them forty minutes now and many a man is listening as for his life. We hold up the pledge card of the war roll. "How many of you are willing to take your stand against drink, gambling, and impurity, to break away from sin, and to sign the war roll, which says: 'I pledge my allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour and King, by God's help to fight His battles and bring victory to His Kingdom'? Who will take his stand for Christ and sign tonight?" Here and there all over the house men begin to rise. A hundred come forward to get cards and sign them. Then every head is bowed and in the stillness we pray for these boys; for they are mere lads, with ruddy checks, fresh from the farm or the city.
Now the meeting breaks up and we move down into the crowd. Men come up and ask for private talks, some to confess their sins and others to request prayer. Here is a boy who is friendless and homeless and in need; the next man has just lost his wife, his home, and his money, but here in the war he has been driven to prayer and has found God. He has lost everything, but he tells us with a brave smile that he has gained all, and now wishes to prepare for the ministry to preach the Gospel. Next is a young atheist, an illegitimate child, a circus actor, who has now found God and wants to know how to relate his life to Christ. The next man is a jockey, who in the midst of his sins enlisted in order that he might die for others and try to atone for his past life.
Later, we were holding evangelistic meetings among the boys of another regiment. One Sunday evening we were in a big hut where the meeting was about to begin. Many of the men were writing to the old folks at home. Captain "Peg" of Canada, who was with us to lead the singing, stepped on the platform and announced a hymn. Immediately several hundred men flocked to the seats and began singing the Christian hymns they knew at home. Eyes lit up and faces were aglow as they sang "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "Lead, Kindly Light," and "Fight the Good Fight." Gradually the numbers increased until a thousand men were singing. Then we began the address. Here were open-hearted boys some of whom had gone down before the temptations of the port cities and who now have to face the dangers of a camp in France. We began on moral themes. Within half an hour it seemed as if the better nature of every man was with us. The Christian ideals of home, of the Church, and of their own best selves surged up again, until we had seated and standing nearly twelve hundred men, many of whom were ready to make the fight for purity with the help of Jesus Christ. One can never forget that closing hymn as the men rose to sing "God Be With You Till We Meet Again." We saw tear-stained faces before us as nearly the whole company joined in the song "Tell Mother I'll Be There."
Here was one poor fellow who felt he could not sign the decision card. He sent up this little note: "I am the worst man in the tent—a man who robbed his old father of his life's savings. How can I hope to be any good again without any prospect of ever being able to repay this money?" But before he left he had accepted God's forgiveness, and the dawn of a new eternity breaks upon his happy face. There was another man, the worst character in the regiment. Finally, touched by the secretary's kindness, he had read his little pocket Testament in prison, had yielded his life to Christ, and was now witnessing among the soldiers in the camp. Another, broken down, came up to say he had wronged a girl at home, and to ask if there was any hope for him. The last man, Bob A——, serving at present with a British regiment, tells us he was a Christian in Cleveland, Ohio, before the war. He lay all last night drunk in the fields, but, convicted of his profligate life, he repented and turned back again to God. There was another boy who stopped to tell us that ever since a previous meeting he had knelt in prayer every night before all the men.
At the close of the meeting another man stepped up and handed in a letter, saying: "Thank you for that message tonight, sir. I will be true to the little girl I left at home. Here is a letter I had just written to a bad woman. God helping me I will not go. I have signed the War Roll tonight and I am going to be true to it." Hundreds of men filed past and shook hands in gratitude.
We were facing an average of some five hundred men every night in the week and a thousand or more on Sunday. One humble private who had been a pilot out at sea, handed us a poem which he had just written, the last lines of which are typical of the verses many of the men are writing these days:
"And if I fall, Lord, take an erring mortalInto those realms of peace and joy above;And, by-and-by, at Thy fair mansion's portal,Let me find there the little girl I love."
In all our meetings our aim has been to enable men to find themselves by coming into a personal and vital relation with God as Father, through Jesus Christ. Our purpose is to evangelize, but not to proselytize. We aim to make each man more loyal to his own church. During the three years of the war, we have never known of a man changing his church or being asked to do so. Our aim is not to change any man's ecclesiastical position, but to make him a truer and stronger man in the church where he is. The great outstanding issue in war time is not between creed and creed, between sect and sect, but between God and mammon, between right and wrong, purity and impurity. We have no contention concerning the questions that divide us; we are fighting for the great fundamentals upon which we are all united, for God and moral manhood.
[1] According to the War Bulletin of the National Geographic Society, issued in Washington in September 1917, a first class American private drawing $26.60 a month receives more than a Russian colonel or a German or Austrian lieutenant. An American lieutenant receives more than a British lieutenant colonel, a French colonel, or a Russian general.
[2] See Appendix IV.
Just before going into the trenches the British, French, and American troops take a final course for a few weeks in a training school, where the expert drill masters put them through a rigorous discipline, and the finishing touches are given to each regiment. At the moment of writing our American boys are going through such a course, "somewhere in France." The men commonly call this training school, or specially prepared final drill ground, the "Bull Ring." It is a thrilling spectacle to see many thousands of men across a vast plain going through the various maneuvers of actual warfare as it is practiced today at the front. Perhaps a brief description of such a drill ground may be of interest to those who are following the fortunes of our soldiers.
At six the bugle sounds and the whole camp is astir. Outside there is the clatter of feet as the men fall in after a hasty breakfast. The shrapnel-proof steel helmets are donned, the heavy seventy-pound kits and rifles are swung to the broad backs, the band strikes up "Pack Up Your Troubles," and our battalion is on the march for the "Bull Ring."
First comes the ceremonial parade. A whole brigade swings into line and must prove that it can move as one man, as a perfect machine, without flaw or friction. One master mind directs every motion, and at the word of command thousands of feet are moving in exact time, wheeling, marching, maneuvering with a precision that proves the long months of patient practice. This finish of discipline and perfection of unity have their part to play in the winning of the battle raging at this moment up the line.
Next the men must pass through the deadly gas chambers, to be ready to meet the attack of the enemy fully prepared. More fatal than the prussic acid which the Prussian has occasionally employed, is the deadly mixture of chlorine and phosgene, which has been most commonly used. In a gentle favoring wind it is put over invisible in the darkness, and if it catches the foe unprepared, can kill from ten to fifteen miles behind the lines. The mixture is squirted as a liquid from metal generators. It quickly forms a dense greenish yellow cloud of poison vapor, which floats away in the darkness. Its success must depend on the element of surprise, taking the enemy unprepared and choking him, awake or asleep, in the first few moments before the horns, gongs, and whistles send the alarm for miles behind the trenches.
Recently a new so-called "mustard gas" has been used by the enemy with deadly effect, owing to the fact that it is both invisible and odorless. It is sent over in exploding shells, and sinks in a heavy invisible vapor about the sleeping men, creeping into their dugouts and trenches or enveloping them around the guns or in the shell holes. The effects do not manifest themselves for several hours. With stinging pain the man's eyes begin to close, and for a time he may go almost blind. He is then taken violently sick. The surface of the lungs and the entire body, especially where it is moist with perspiration, is burned. The skin may blister and come off. Many cases have proved fatal and many more suffer cruelly for weeks in hospital. With the men we attended a lecture on the nature of the various gases used by the enemy and the proper methods of meeting them. The lecture throughout was unconsciously couched almost in theological language. The instructor first disposed of what he called superstitious "heresies" concerning the gas, in order to prevent the men from having panic and "getting the wind up." There is a foolish rumor which says, "One breath and you are ruptured for life, or you fall dead the next morning," etc., etc., but he warns the men of its deadly nature and tells them they are to be saved from its fatal effects by knowing the truth.
The instructor explains that if they take four deep breaths it will prove fatal: "One breath and you catch the first spasm, two and you are mad, three and you are unconscious, four and you are dead. If you keep your presence of mind and hold your breath you will have six seconds to get on your gas helmet or respirator." The attack, remember, is a surprise in the dark; brain-splitting gas shells are dropping on all sides, and it is hard to keep cool and hold one's breath in the moment of sudden surprise and panic. We are told that there are fifteen mistakes which are easily possible in getting on this complicated helmet, or if there is one big blunder in the sudden surprise the man is done for.
Before going through the death chamber, helmets are inspected, to see that they are sound and unpunctured, and the men are drilled in the open to practice putting them on quickly. Suddenly the warning whistle of an imaginary gas attack sounds. One backward fling of the head and the steel helmet falls off, for there is no time to lift it off. A dive into the bag carried on the chest and the respirator is grasped and with one skilful swoop it is drawn over the face. Your nose is pinched shut by a clamp, your teeth grip the rubber mouthpiece, and, like a diver, you must now get your one safe stream of pure air through the respirator. You draw in the air from a tube which rises from a tin of chemical on your chest. Then you can breathe in the dense, deadly, greenish chlorine vapor, for as it passes through the respirator filled with chemicals, it is absorbed, neutralized, oxidized, and purified into a stream of pure air. All about you may be choking fumes of death which would kill you in four seconds, yet you will be completely immune, breathing a purified atmosphere.
The soldiers are now marched up to this chamber of horrors to walk through the poison gas. Many have "the wind up" (i. e., they are afraid inside, but are ashamed to show it). Reliance on the guide, the expert who has been through it all, and the sense of companionship, the stronger ones unconsciously strengthening the weak, have a steadying effect upon all the men. The soldiers have had four hours' drill to prepare them, but the "padre" and I, who are now permitted to go through, have had but four minutes. I am trying to remember a number of things all at once. Above all I must keep cool and assure myself that there is no danger if only I trust and obey what the expert has said. I fling on the helmet and we start into the death chamber, but suddenly a string is loose—will the respirator work? There seems to be something the matter with my nosepiece which should be clamped shut. I would like to ask the instructor just one question to make sure, but I can no more talk than a diver beneath the sea. It is too late, we are moving, I can only hope and trust the helmet will hold. We have left the sunlight and are in a long dark covered chamber, like a trench, groping forward, and looking at a distant point of light through the dim goggles. We are alone in these deadly fumes, the instructor is not here, there is a tense silence, and all about us is the poison of death. Oh, what was that fourth point that I was to remember? Why has the guide turned back? I thought we were to go out at the further end, where last week the poor fellow fell who lifted his helmet a moment too soon after he got out and caught one whiff which sent him to the hospital, but instead we seem to be turning around and going back. But there is no time for explanations or questions now; we just plod on through the darkness and soon we are out in the sunlight again—safe!—in God's pure air. Oh, why did man ever want to pollute it and poison his brother with these deadly fumes of hell!
As a special favor, the instructor allows us, without a mask, to take one swift look into the fumes as we hold our breath. That yellow green chlorine will corrode the lungs and fill them with pus and blood. The phosgene is much more deadly and will strike the man down with sudden failure of the heart.
We were also sent through a chamber of the invisible "tear gas," without a mask. The object of this is to take away the fear of the gas from the men. This particular gas has no effect upon the lungs, but sends a stinging pain through the eyes, so that one weeps blindly for some minutes and could not possibly see to shoot or to defend himself.
We are now ready to return to another lecture with more understanding. No wonder these tired boys under the heavy, hot steel helmets, which absorb the heat of the scorching sun, are listening with all their ears, yet one or two fall asleep for very weariness and may again be caught napping by the enemy's poison gas up the line. The instructor is in dead earnest, for the life of every man during the coming conflict may depend upon his message. His words are still in my ears, for they were strangely like a sermon:
"Men, I am going to tell you the truth about this deadly gas and you must believe it, for your life will depend upon it. It can kill and no doubt about it. But for every poison of the enemy there's an antidote and we have found it. Your helmet is perfect and you simply must believe in it, you must trust to it. We have made full provision for your safety. If you go under it will be your own fault from one of four causes—unbelief, disobedience, carelessness, or fear. If you carelessly go without your helmet it means death. During an attack, after putting on the respirator, just stand and wait. There is nothing you can do for yourself except to keep your helmet on. Your skill, your strength are nothing. Now if you are caught in an attack unawares remember if you're still alive at all, there's hope. Don't lose courage. If your confidence goes, you lose ninety per cent of your defense, for the sole hope of the enemy in gas is surprise and panic. If you are gassed, don't move. Keep still, keep warm, don't worry, and wait. To move or try to save yourself will be fatal.
"The enemy will put over three or four waves with a break between. The gas may come for some hours. To remove your helmet before the attack is over will be fatal. Within a quarter of an hour after the gas has ceased, the charge of the enemy will come and you must never let him get past your barbed wired entanglements. After exposure to gas, all food, water, and wells are poisonous. The heavy gas must be expelled from the trenches by fans before the charge comes. Only remember, you must believe what I say, keep your helmet on in time of danger and you are perfectly safe."
There is a vast difference between the warning and the preparatory exposure to the gas by your guide and the deadly surprise of the enemy. The former is a trial to prepare you, the latter is an effort to destroy you. The whole experience was so obviously parallel to the deadly moral dangers which surround the soldier in war time that it needs no comment. The one and only safety in the time of temptation is to put on the whole armor of God, especially the "helmet of salvation," then to trust and obey and stand fast.
The writer has just come from a ward in the hospital filled with patients suffering from the new gas which the enemy has lately put over. It is, as we have said, invisible and odorless, so the men receive no warning, and consequently do not put on their masks. They do not know that they are being gassed until hours afterwards, when they find they are burned from head to foot. Here are twenty men lying in this tent, suffering from this new torture. This first boy, with a wan smile that goes right to your heart, can only whisper from his burnt-out lungs and cannot tell us his story. The next man was taken with vomiting five hours after the gas shells exploded. Seven of his fourteen companions sleeping in the dugout were killed outright, the others were gassed. He does not know where they are. He lay unconscious for several days, and now his eyes and skin are burned as though he had passed through a fire. The next boy is badly burned in his eyes and chest. Half the men of his battery were killed by gas while asleep at night. On the next cot is a boy who has been suffering for seventeen days; the burns on his body have been improving, his lungs also are better, but he is still blind and fears he may lose his sight. He asks me to write a letter for him to his mother. "Only," he says, "don't tell her about my eyes." Together we make up a cheerful letter, and the boy rests back on his cot to pray for his returning eyesight. The next two beds are empty. Both the men died in the night, falling an easy prey to pneumonia in their weakened condition. The next boy is from the infantry. Out of his squad nine were killed by the explosion of the shell, eight wounded, and the rest badly burned. The neck, chest, arms, and legs of this boy are burned and blistered. The deadly gas fumes have burned right through his clothing.
Such is the effect of this new and latest triumph of modern science, which will shatter the hopes and happiness of thousands of homes.
After passing through the gas chambers, we visited the bombing section of the training school. Here each man has to throw one or more live bombs and receive his final coaching. The bomb is about the size of a lemon, and is made to break into small fragments. It contains enough of the high explosive to kill a whole group of men. The boy advances and grasps the bomb; he draws out the pin and holds down the lever. Once this is released, it explodes in just five seconds. The man heaves his bomb over a parapet at a dummy dressed in German uniform. The whistle blows and we all duck. There is a terrific explosion like a small cannon and you hear the pieces whizzing through the air. Every man is holding in his hand and wielding a terrible power. Wrongly used, it is death to himself and his comrades. The other day a boy's hand was moist with perspiration and the bomb slipped, killing the group. Another prematurely exploded as it was being thrown, carrying away the man's own hand and killing the instructor. So it is a dangerous business. During the morning there were only four "duds," or bombs that would not go off.
After the bombing section, we pass with the men to the trenches. Bayonets are drawn and rifles loaded. After firing several rounds, comes the command, "Advance." At a bound they are "over the top" and off, heads down; they run very slowly and keep together. A breathless man who outruns his comrades is useless and is soon killed by the enemy. The drill sergeant shouts to the men "Keep together, keep together, men, one man can't take a trench," and my friend the "padre" notes his words to tell to his congregation when he goes home, where the minister can't do all the work. When they are near the enemy's trench, the final word "Charge" is shouted, the whole line leaps forward with a wild yell, and the bayonets are driven into the stuffed sacks which are suspended as dummies to serve in the place of men.
For miles across the great plain the "Bull Ring" is alive with men. Here in one section they are doing physical drill and learning to go over all kinds of obstacles—trenches, fences, barbed wire, shell holes, and ditches. There they are practicing musketry and advancing under cover. In one place the artillery is in full swing, and in another you hear the sputter of the machine guns. In one section they are taught to dig trenches and in another to take them.
Before a great advance where a system of trenches is to be taken, a "rehearsal" often takes place. From a height of thousands of feet above the lines the aircraft with powerful telescopic cameras photograph every foot of the battlefield covered by the enemy's lines. These photographs are developed and studied and diagrams drawn from them of the enemy's system of trenches. These diagrams are reproduced far behind the front in elaborately prepared earthwork and trenches which are an exact replica of the enemy's lines. The divisions which are to take part in the attack are sent back to rehearse their exact duties at just the point corresponding to that which they will have to take. Each officer knows every nook and crevice, each bay and angle of the trenches he will have to capture. When all is ready the men are placed in their exact positions and they execute in reality what they have rehearsed in theory behind the lines. The lesson of preparedness and organization is studied and mastered with infinite care.
I
I
I
In sheltered America we cannot realize what war means, but when we entered the warring countries of Europe, in an instant we were in a different atmosphere. We landed in England upon a darkened coast, we entered a darkened train, where every blind was drawn lest it furnish a guide to London for invading Zeppelins or aeroplanes. We passed through gloomy towns and villages, where not a single light was showing from a window, where every street lamp and railway station was darkened or hidden. Automobiles with a dim spark of light groped through the black streets of the metropolis.
In London we saw a great Zeppelin brought down in flames. It was a sight never to be forgotten. At half-past two in the morning we were awakened by the roar of the anti-aircraft guns in and around the city. After traveling all night from Germany, one Zeppelin had arrived over London and a whole fleet of them was scattered over the coasts and counties of England.
We sprang to the window and found the sky swept by a score of searchlights with their great shafts of piercing light, shooting from the dark depths of the city high into the sky, where they all converged on a single bright object that hung nine thousand feet above us. Long, and shining like silver with its flashing aluminum, the Zeppelin seemed held as if blinded by the fierce light. Bombs were dropping from it and explosions followed in rapid succession in the city beneath.
It was a battle to the death, high in the air with all London looking on. The guns were in full play and the shell and shrapnel were bursting all about the Zeppelin. Sometimes you could trace the whole trajectory of a projectile, as a spark of light swept through the sky toward the Zeppelin and then burst to the right or left, above or below it. Most of the shots seemed to go wide of the mark. More than a score of aeroplanes had been sent up to attack it, with one plane to guide the rest and signal to the guns below by wireless or lights. The battle finally developed into a duel to the death between the machine guns of the Zeppelin and Lieutenant Robinson of the Flying Corps, who was up for two hours in his aeroplane after the enemy—one man fighting for a city of five millions. He attacked from below and bombs were thrown at his plane; then he attacked from the side as he circled about the monster, but he was driven off by their machine guns. At last, mounting high in the sky, he attacked from above. The guide-plane flashed down the signal for the guns to cease firing and give him a chance.
For a few moments all was silent; the battle seemed to be over. The great airship, which had swung sharply to the left, was triumphantly leaving for home. Then it was that Robinson dropped his incendiary bomb. Suddenly there was an explosion. A flame of burning gas leaped into the sky. London was lit up for ten miles round-about. Our room was instantly as bright as though a searchlight had flashed into the window. Far above us was the Zeppelin in flames. Now it began to sink—first it was in a blaze of white light, then its outline turned to a dull red, finally it crumpled to a glowing cinder, sank from sight, and fell crashing to the earth. Then all was dark again. Death had fallen suddenly upon the men in the Zeppelin and upon some in the sleeping city below.
As we drove through London we passed the draper's shop, near St. Paul's Cathedral, where George Williams and a group of twelve young men met in a little upper room on June 6, 1844, to organize the first Young Men's Christian Association. A dozen young men with little wealth, influence, or education might not seem a very formidable force, but twelve men have upset the world and changed the course of history before now. They had only thirteen shillings, or $3.25, in the treasury, and were too poor even to print and send out a circular announcing their little organization. But George Williams brought his fist down on the table, with the confident words, "If this movement is of God, the money will come."
It has come. The twelve men have been multiplied now to a million and a half, scattered in forty lands. Girded with new strength and with the dauntless optimism of youth, the movement has risen up to minister not only to the millions of British and American soldiers and munition workers, but also to the men in the camps, hospitals, or prisons in most of the nations now at war. The thirteen shillings have been multiplied until now the permanent Y M C A buildings are worth over a hundred million dollars. An average of two new huts or centers have been erected and opened by the British or American Associations every day since war was declared; while two permanent buildings in brick or stone rise each week in some part of the world.
Wars are the birth-pangs of new eras. A new day dawned for the Young Men's Christian Association with the present war. At midnight on August 4, 1914, the British Association as it had been for seventy years was buried and forgotten, and a new movement arose on the ruins of the old. Ninety per cent of its former workers left to join the colors, but a new army of over thirty thousand men and women was mustered and trained within its huts for the service of the British soldiers. The Y M C A had suddenly to "think imperially," and to minister to a world at war.
Seventy years ago George Williams was the man of the hour, but a leader of the British war work of the Y M C A was found in the present crisis in the person of Mr. A. K. Yapp, General Secretary of the National Council of Great Britain, who has recently been knighted by virtue of his distinguished service for the nation. He had spent Sunday, August second, in deep searching of heart and had caught a vision of what the war would mean, and the opportunity that would be presented to an organization that was interdenominational, international, readily mobile, and adaptable enough instantly to meet a great national crisis.
Within a fortnight the British army and the whole British navy were mobilized for war. During that time the Y M C A was represented in four-fifths of the camps of the territorial forces and 250 centers were opened. In six months 500 centers were occupied; at the end of the first year there were 1,000, and after two years of the war 1,500 such centers were in full swing. The area of operations includes the British Isles, Egypt, the Dardanelles, Malta, the Mediterranean ports, India, Mesopotamia, East and South Africa, Canada, Australia, and out to the last limits of Britain's far flung battle line.
The Y M C A has a strong homing instinct, aiming to provide "a home away from home." In the dugouts behind the trenches, in the deserts of Egypt, or in the jungles of Africa, it has been forced to make a home in every kind of shelter. It was significant that its first three successive dwelling places seventy years ago were a little bedroom, a coffee house, and a room in a tavern. During the present war, one may see Associations in actual operation along the fighting line in France, in a cowshed, a pigsty, a stable, a hop-house, dugouts under the earth; in battered and ruined buildings in Flanders; in tents in the Sahara and on the ancient Peninsula of Mt. Sinai; at the bases of the big battle fleets; in the rest houses of the flying corps; on the Bourse in Cairo; in hotels taken over in Switzerland and France, and in the great Crystal Palace of London. In four centers it has used and transformed a brewery, a saloon, a theater, and a museum. Its dwellings stretch away from the tents of "Caesar's Camp," where the Roman Julius lauded in 55 B. C., on the southern shores of Britain, to the far north, in the new naval institute at Invergordon, erected for the sailors of the Grand Fleet at a cost of more than $20,000. They range from the battered dugouts at the front in France to the Shakespeare hut in London, costing more than $30,000. They stretch from the rest huts of the great metropolis, with sleeping and feeding accommodations for some ten thousand men a day during the dangerous period of leave in London, away to the hut in "Plug Street" Woods, recently blown to atoms by a shell, where the secretary escaped by a few seconds and returned to find literally nothing left save the rims of his spectacles and two coins melted and fused together by the terrific heat of the explosion. Several of the secretaries and workers have been killed by shell fire, or in transit by torpedoes from submarines, while other Association men have received the Victoria Cross for heroism in action.
Let us visit a typical hut to grasp the significance of its work, in order that we may realize what is going on in the fifteen hundred similar centers. We are on the great Salisbury Plain, in the midst of thirty miles square of weltering mud during the long winter months. To realize what a hut means to the men in such a place, we must understand the unnatural situation created by the conditions of war. Here are multitudes of men far from home, shut out from the society of all good women, taken away from their church and its surroundings, weary and wet with marching and drilling, often lonely and dejected, in an atmosphere of profanity and obscenity in the cheerless barrack rooms, and tempted by the animal passions which are always loosed in war-time. The men need all the help we can give them now, and need it desperately.
Now can you measure just what a big warm hut means to these men as a home, far away from home? The red triangle at the entrance gleams across the whole camp and stands for the three things the soldier most needs.
It stands, in the first place, as a pledge for supplying thephysical needof these hungry, lonely, and fiercely tempted men. A dry shelter, a warm fire, a cheerfully lighted room, the bursts of song, and the hum of conversation make the men forget the wind and rain and mud outside. Supper and a hot cup of coffee satisfy their hunger. On the notice-board is the announcement of the outdoor sports, football tournaments, and the games, where the thirty thousand men of the division will compete in open contest on the coming Saturday, under the direction of the Y M C A. Whatever the soldier needs for his physical life, whether it is to eat or to sleep, a bed in London, a cool drink in the thirsty desert, or hot coffee in the trenches, it is furnished for him by the Association.
The hut also provides for the soldier'sintellectualand social needs. The piano and the phonograph, the billiard tables, draughts and chess boards, tables for games, library, and reading room keep him busy; and the concerts, stimulating lectures, moving pictures, educational classes, and debating societies provide him with recreational and mental employment.
The far deepermoral and spiritual needsof the soldier are also met. As the evening draws to a close, one sees the secretary in his military uniform stand up on the table; hats are off and heads are bowed at the call for evening prayers, which are held here every night. On Sunday the parade services of the different denominations take place in turn in the Association hut. Weekly voluntary religious meetings are also held. At one end of the building is the "quiet room," where groups of Christian soldiers can meet for Bible classes or for prayer. At regular intervals evangelistic meetings are held. On our last night at this hut, on a Sunday evening, twelve hundred men gathered to listen to the Christian message.
Of the three bars of the triangle, it is this which stands at the top, which unites the other two and which is the dominating factor of the whole. And yet nowhere is religion forced down the throats of the men. Rather it is the aim to make it the unconscious atmosphere of the whole hut. It is a striking fact, to which every soldier will testify, that while the language of the barrack room and beer canteen is often reeking with the profane and the obscene, the whole tone of the Association hut is entirely different. As one soldier says: "You don't realize the enormous difference of atmosphere between this and any other place where soldiers congregate. A man simply does not talk bad language and filth here; he learns to control himself." Thus the threefold work of the Association stands for the whole man and for the whole manhood of the nation.
In many ways the Y M C A hut seeks to meet the soldier's every need.
1. It is hisclub, where he meets his comrades and in the freedom and friendship of the place forgets the irksome drill, the endless restraints, and the stern discipline of military life.
2. As we have already seen, it is hishome, the place where he writes his letters and keeps in touch with his family and distant friends. Nearly twenty million pieces of stationery are sent out free for the soldiers each month from the London central office, and the sign of the red triangle on the letter head brings weekly joy and cheer to the broken circle in the distant home. It is here that the lad is helped to "keep the home fires burning" in his heart and to hold true to those high ideals. One little girl when visiting the Crystal Palace, upon seeing the sign of the red triangle, said: "My daddy always makes that mark on his letters when he writes to us at home."
3. It is hischurch, for out on the desert, or in the jungle, or at the front, there is usually no other church building for religious services. The following is taken from a typical Sunday program in one of the huts: "6:30 a. m., Roman Catholic Mass; 7:30 Nonconformist service; 9:00 Anglican service; 2-3 p. m., Bible class; 6:4:5-8 United Song Service." Thus each denomination is allowed to have its own service in its own way on Sunday morning, while the evening meeting is interdenominational and open to all.
In one place where the young Hebrews were being sadly neglected and were falling away from their former moral standards, the secretary arranged with the Jewish rabbi to have a weekly service in the Y M C A tent for his men. It has been held ever since. The Jews of the neighboring city were so grateful that they started a campaign to raise a fund of $10,000 for Y M C A huts. The Rev. Michael Adler, the head Jewish rabbi with the forces in France, has time and again expressed his cordial appreciation of the help rendered to the men of his faith. The doors of the Association will always remain open for men of all creeds. As wide as the needs of men, as broad as democracy, as unified as humanity, and as tolerant as its Lord and Master, the movement will ever aim to be.
4. The Association hut is the soldier'sschool. Here his classes are held. A program taken at random from a single hut will show the scope of a week's work: "Bible classes; religious services; lecture on The Town Where We Are; lecture on South America; lantern lecture on Russia; debating society; impromptu speeches; history class."
5. The Association hut is also his place ofrest, and the shop where he buys his supplies. Here he can procure almost anything he needs that is decent, and read anything that is wholesome. Usually this hut is the only clean place of recreation in the camp, and without it he is left to choose between the cheerless tent and the beer canteen.
6. The Y M C A is the center of hisrecreation, and his entertainment bureau. Under the leadership of Miss Lena Ashwell and scores of others, concerts and entertainment parties have been organized and have toured continuously in France, Great Britain, Egypt, and the more distant camps. The six artists of each party are received with tremendous enthusiasm and become the fast friends of Tommy Atkins. One writes: "Last time the party came here the press of men waiting on the verandah to go into the second performance was so great that our brand new verandah collapsed with the sound of a bomb explosion! Luckily the mass was so tightly packed that they fell through in a solid heap; no one was hurt, and all were able to enjoy the concert thoroughly."
7. It is the soldier'sbank, and hispostoffice. We were in one hut alone where more than fifteen thousand dollars were on deposit in the savings bank. The sale of stamps in this hut amounts to fifteen hundred dollars a month, and of postal orders for the remittance of money home to more than four thousand dollars. Every week an average of 28,000 letters are written and posted in this one room, while thousands more are received and handed to the men.
8. The Association is the soldier'sfriendand tourist guide, while he is visiting London, Paris, or the other great cities. In some places one table is set apart where a chaplain or secretary is always on duty to help the soldiers make their wills, find out their trains to London, answer their questions, or give them the friendly help they need.
The Y M C A stands by the soldier to the last and even after he falls. After the boy has fought his last fight and lies wounded or crippled or dying in the hospital in France, it meets his parents and relatives and provides for their entire stay in the country. Each relative of the wounded proceeding to France receives printed instructions from the War Office that the Y M C A will meet all the boats and provide transportation and accommodations for all who need it while at the front. Our friend, Mr. Geddes, broke down as he tried to tell us how he and his wife had been met on the lonely shores of France by the Y M C A secretary and motored quickly to the bedside of their dying son, only to find that they were just too late. The funeral was arranged, even to the providing of flowers. The last ministry was performed for the young man away from home and for the loved ones left behind, under the triangle that will forevermore be red.
Thus the Association is at once the soldier's club, his home, his church, his school, his place of rest, his entertainment bureau, his bank and postoffice, his tourist guide, and the friend that stands by him and his bereaved parents at the last. Fifteen hundred just such huts and centers stretch away from Scotland to East Africa, from France to Mesopotamia, from Egypt to India. Could any other single organization have met all these needs of the men under arms, mobilized so quickly, united all denominations, entered all lands, and embraced all forms of work secular and religious?
We conducted meetings for several months throughout the camps in the British Isles. At our last parade service with the brigade out in the open field there were several thousand seated on the grass, with their eight bands drawn up in front. In every service the battle was on between good and evil, between God and mammon, between sacrifice and sin.
One night we visited the sailors' training camp. It was a great meeting, with two thousand of the sailor boys crowded in a big theater. The concert was going on when we arrived and the jeers and yells of the crowd drowned some of the voices of the performers; it was evident that we were going to have a hard time to hold the audience. Captain "Peg" stepped to the stage and soon had them singing, "We'll Never Let the Old Flag Fall." Roars of applause followed and they clamored for more. Out in the glare of the footlights and looking into that sea of faces, we began to fight for that audience. There were two thousand tempted men whom we should never see again. In five minutes the whole theater was hushed—you could hear a pin drop. After half an hour the meeting was interrupted by the noise of the band outside. Surely the men will bolt and leave the meeting. We said to them: "Boys, there is the band. Let everybody go now who wants to go! We are going on. Every man that wants to make the fight for character, the fight for purity with the help of Jesus Christ, stay with us here." There was a shout from the audience, and not a man left the theater. The band thundered on, but the crowd was with us now, and the hopes of hundreds of hearts for the things that are eternal surged to the surface. Several hundred men signed the War Roll, pledging their allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. One sailor boy came up to thank us, saying that he had all but fallen the week before; and simply for the lack of a sixpence he had been saved from sin. With God's help he would now live for Christ. Another came up who had been drinking heavily and had quarreled with his wife. He did not have the price of a postage stamp to write to her. He wanted to know how he could be saved from drink. Man after man came forward, hungry for human help and longing for a better life.