With Our Soldiers in France Part 3

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 s.h.i.+ning like silver with its flas.h.i.+ng 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 sh.e.l.l 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 airs.h.i.+p, 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociation. 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 s.h.i.+llings, 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 G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociation with the present war. At midnight on August 4, 1914, the British a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociations 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 sh.o.r.es of Britain, to the far north, in the new naval inst.i.tute 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 sh.e.l.l fire, or in transit by torpedoes from submarines, while other a.s.sociation 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 mult.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sions 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 the _physical need_ of 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 a.s.sociation.

The hut also provides for the soldier's _intellectual_ and 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 cla.s.ses, and debating societies provide him with recreational and mental employment.

The far deeper _moral and spiritual needs_ of 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 a.s.sociation 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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 his _club_, where he meets his comrades and in the freedom and friends.h.i.+p 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 his _home_, 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 his _church_, 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 Ma.s.s; 7:30 Nonconformist service; 9:00 Anglican service; 2-3 p. m., Bible cla.s.s; 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation hut is the soldier's _school_. Here his cla.s.ses are held. A program taken at random from a single hut will show the scope of a week's work: "Bible cla.s.ses; religious services; lecture on The Town Where We Are; lecture on South America; lantern lecture on Russia; debating society; impromptu speeches; history cla.s.s."

5. The a.s.sociation hut is also his place of _rest_, 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 his _recreation_, and his entertainment bureau. Under the leaders.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.s 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's _bank_, and his _postoffice_. 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 a.s.sociation is the soldier's _friend_ and 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 sh.o.r.es 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 a.s.sociation 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 gra.s.s, with their eight bands drawn up in front. In every service the battle was on between good and evil, between G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Harry Lauder Singing at a Y. M. C. A. Meeting. The Officer seated at the extreme right is Captain "Peg."]

On another occasion we were with the army of Australian and New Zealand troops, as they were marching by the King at their last review before going to the front. Fortunately, we had secured standing room near the King's side, where we could watch every smile and action as he saluted each pa.s.sing battalion, and we could even hear him speak a kind word now and then to some officer. There were generals to the right of us and to the left of us, colonels, majors, captains, officers of every rank, and prominent civilians; but the greatest man on that field was the soldier himself. With what a swing those clean-cut young Australian boys marched past; every man was a volunteer and part of that great first army of over four millions of men who came forward for the defense of the Empire without conscription.

Hundreds were playing in the ma.s.sed bands, as the long file of men marched by. But time and again the firm columns seemed to fade before us, and we could not see them for tears, as we realized that many of these brave boys were going forward to die for us. Above, a great aeroplane was looping the loop and warplanes were darting to and fro.

Away on the horizon stood the great boulders of Stonehenge, erected long before the time of the Saxons, the Britons, or even the ancient Druids, by the sun-wors.h.i.+ppers, who offered their human sacrifices on the ancient altar there nearly forty centuries before. We looked at those stones, where through a mistaken conception of G.o.d and an inadequate conception of man, human sacrifices were offered long ago.

Suddenly we heard the crack of the rifles of a body of troops at practice, moving forward in open line of battle. Today, through a mistaken conception of G.o.d and a low conception of man, over 5,000,000 of men have already been killed, offered in human sacrifice; while many millions in lands devastated are homeless, starving, or ruined in body or soul--these are part of the offering, forced upon humanity by a G.o.dless materialism, while a divided Christian Church stands by impotent.

II

Let us now visit Egypt where we shall witness very different scenes.

Away on the distant horizon are the two triangular points, which grow as we approach into the outlines of the great pyramids. Beyond are the fifty-eight centers which have risen along the banks of the Nile, in the metropolis of Cairo, and in the harbors of Port Said and Alexandria, and which line the Suez Ca.n.a.l and dot the desert even out into the peninsula of Mt. Sinai. The sun is setting as we climb the great pyramid, which stands a silent witness to forty centuries of history which have ebbed and flowed at its base, but surely no stranger sight has it ever seen than these armed camps about it, engaged in this t.i.tanic struggle of the world. Away to the south towards far Khartoum, like a green ribbon in the yellow desert, stretches the irrigated basin of the Nile. Beyond it is the bottomless burning sand of the Sahara.

Here on the site of Napoleon's ancient battlefield is the largest concentration camp in Egypt. The white tents of the Australasians shelter a population as numerous as many a city, with three a.s.sociation buildings for the men. From out the great pyramid there is a constant stream of soldiers pa.s.sing to and fro. And there under the shadow of the Sphinx are two more Y M C A huts. Jessop, the former secretary at Was.h.i.+ngton, has been in charge here, with a large staff of secretaries from Australia and New Zealand. General Sir Archibald Murray, in command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces, says: "First of all, the men must have mess huts; then we want the Y M C A."

Cairo is the throbbing center of Egypt's life, where vice does not lurk in secret, but flaunts itself in open effrontery. Our secretaries have been at work there in the long lines of men that stand outside the places of vice, handing them Testaments and urging them to come away.

The Y M C A has taken over a large amus.e.m.e.nt center in the Ezbekieh Gardens in the very heart of Cairo; and in spite of the public saloon nearby, with its attraction of music and wine, from two hundred to two thousand men are constantly thronging the a.s.sociation rooms. The attractive equipment of a garden, an open-air theater, a skating rink, baths, supper counters, and a meeting place, but most of all the personal touch of the two earnest secretaries, make the whole work effective. The a.s.sociation has also rented the s.p.a.cious Bourse, where it houses several hundred men who are in the city on short leave, while its lobby is used for concerts and entertainments. During the last action five of the Y M C A huts on the Ca.n.a.l Zone were under fire. But there is no day pa.s.ses but that the men under canvas in this hot land of Egypt are under fire from temptations more deadly than Turkish bullets.

Leaving Egypt, we pa.s.sed over the hot and stifling Red Sea, across the Indian Ocean, toward the sunny plains of India. Away from the snowy ridge of the Himalayas, down across the bare plains of the north and the rice fields and cocoa-nut palms of the tropic south, India lies like a vast continent, embracing one-fifth of the human race. It was held before the war by some 75,000 British and twice as many Indian troops. The numbers are completely altered now. Almost the whole regular force, both Indian and British, are away fighting in Mesopotamia, East Africa, France, and Egypt, while a new territorial force of Kitchener's army of London clerks and English civilians has taken its place.

One hundred and fifty secretaries in India were ready upon the outbreak of the war. All across India the Y M C A has opened huts, buildings, or tents for the territorial and other forces.[1] A writer in the Journal of the Royal Suss.e.x Regiment, at Bangalore, said: "Somehow the very letters, Y M C A have gathered to themselves an implication of comfort, pleasure, and welcome; we instinctively feel among friends."

We visited one night the great tent generously given by the Viceroy for the work of the territorials in Delhi. General Sir Percy Lake took the chair and the men gathered in the large marquee for the meeting.

Sherwood Day, of Yale, had been in charge of this work during the winter, providing a home for the men of the territorials in this ancient Indian capital. A series of lectures by leading Indians served to interpret Indian life and thought to these soldiers, who were seeing at once the needs and greatness of the Indian Empire at first hand, while leading Indian Christians of the type of Mr. K. T. Paul, Dr.

Datta, and Bishop Azariah told them the fascinating story of Indian missions and the history of Christianity in Asia. A new sense of race brotherhood is taking the place of the old antagonism and prejudice, and Indian secretaries stationed with English Tommies have become exceedingly popular with them.

From India as a base, the a.s.sociation has gone forward with the advancing columns into Mesopotamia and East Africa. As we cross the Persian Gulf and follow the winding courses of the Tigris and the Euphrates up into the heart of Mesopotamia, we find a group of Princeton men and some sixty secretaries stationed here with the troops, under Leonard Dixon of Canada. The men affectionately call him the "padre"; anyone who has ever boxed with Dixon and felt the force of his right, knows that he is a man who has both drive and "punch." The troops in Mesopotamia have been fighting often under terrible conditions, marching through ooze and slime, drinking the yellow unfiltered water, decimated by the attacks both of sickness and of the enemy. In summer the alkali dust lies four inches deep on the floors of their tents, and the thermometer stands at 120 degrees in the sultry shade. Dixon racked his brain to provide recreation and helpful entertainment for these hard fighting men. A bioscope, compet.i.tive concerts, a Christmas tree, a New Year's treat, football and hockey tournaments, and entertainments of various kinds have been improvised to make the men forget the awful hards.h.i.+p of the march and of the battle. On Sunday the writing tables are full from dawn till dark and tons of stationery have been used to keep these men in touch with their distant homes.