Your boys

'"^^^^

4 o

'^o^

^ ""^^^v^* .^^^^^^ '*^!l^*' ^^^\.

'v-o^

,' .^•^°-

^<j> ♦.;.» ,«*

.' „o

>P-%.

><.

.' -rK

> ♦.

•. x.^* .'

'Cp-i-

'* y '%''<r^^''y ^o.^r^^*\.o> *.

4-"'-<K

Try A <. 'f. .* .0^

^^^

v./ /^ii^\ %..♦* --^va', v./ /^i^\ ^^

•.*'

*

YOUR BOYS

GIPSY SMITH

YOUR BOYS

fi BY

GIPSY SMITH

WITH A FOREWORD

BY The Bishop of London

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

y

>«>'

COPYRIGHT, 1918.
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

E^FR 13 iSiS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

©GU494573

FOREWORD

I AM writing this during an air raid at 12.30 at
night, and I have just finished a Foreword for
the Bishop of Zanzibar's new and tender little book.
He has been a water-carrier for the British force in
German East Africa, and Gipsy Smith has just come
from the trenches in France.

You would not expect the two books to be similar,
but they are: they are both about "Jesus." This devo-
tion to "Jesus" birds all time Christians together,
and one day will bring us all more visibly together
than we are now. I love this breezy little book of
Gipsy Smith's; it is not only full of the love of
"Jesus," but love of our "our boys." They are
splendid. I spent the first two months of the war
as their visiting chaplain — went out to give them
their Easter Communion the first year of the war at
the Front. Gipsy Smith and I made friends to-
gether, speaking for them at the London Opera
House on the great day of Intercession and Thanks-
giving we had for them when the King himself called
us all together.

Then I like the common sense of it! You must
have robust common sense if you are going to win

V

vi Foreword

"our boys." Anything unreal, merely sentimerftal,
washy, they detect in a moment. You must draw
them ^*with the cords of a man and the bonds of
love," and those who read this book will find many a
hint as to how to do it,

A. F. London.

YOUR BOYS

YOUR BOYS

I HAVE just come back from your boys.
I have been living among them and talk-
ing to them for six months. I have been under
shell fire for a month, night and day. I have
preached the Gospel within forty yards of the
Germans. I have tried to sleep at night in a
cellar, and it was so cold that my moustache
froze to my blanket and my boots froze to
the floor. The meal which comforted me most
was a little sour French bread and some Swiss
milk and hot water, and a pinch of sugar when
I could get it.

There are Y.M.C.A. marquees close to the
roads down which come the walking wounded
from the trenches. In three of these marquees
last summer in three days over ten thousand
cases were provided with hot drinks and re-
freshment— free. And that I call Christian
work. You and I have been too much con-
cerned about the preaching and too little about
the doing of things.

10 Your Boys

A friend of mine was in one of those mar-
quees at the time, and he told me a beautiful
story. Some of the men sat and stood there
two and three hours waiting their turn, and
the workers were nearly run off their feet.
They were at it for three nights and three
days. There was one fellow, a handsome chap,
sitting huddled up and looking so haggard and
cold, that my friend said to him,

"I am sorry you have had to wait so long,
old chap. We're doing our best. We'll get to
you as soon as we can."

"Never mind me," said the man; "carry on!"

As the sun came out he unbuttoned his coat,
and when the coat was thrown back my friend
saw that he was wearing a colonel's uniform.

"I am sorry, sir," said my friend. "I did
not know. I oughtn't to have spoken to you
in that familiar way."

"You have earned the right to say anything
you like to me," said the Colonel. "Go right
on."

And then my friend said, "Well, come with
me, sir, to the back, and I will get you a cup
of coffee."

They are Great ii

"No, not a minute before the boys. I'll take
my turn with them."

That's the spirit. Your boys, I say, are
great stuff. They have their follies. They
can go to the devil if they want to, but tens
of thousands of them don't want to, and hun-
dreds of thousands are living straight in spite
of their surroundings. They are the bravest,
dearest boys that God ever gave to the world,
and you and I ought to be proud of them. If
the people at home were a tenth as grateful as
they ought to be they would crowd into our
churches, if it were for nothing else but to pray
for and give thanks for the boys.

They are just great, your boys. They saved
your homes. I was recently in a city in France
which had before the war a population of
55,000 people. When I was there, there were
not 500 people in that city — 54,500 were home-
less refugees, if they weren't killed. I walked
about that city for a month, searching for a
house that wasn't damaged, a window that
wasn't broken, and I never found one. The
whole of that city will have to be rebuilt. A
glorious cathedral, a magnificent pile of mu-
nicipal buildings, all in ruins; the Grande

12 Your Boys

Place, a meeting-place for the crowned heads
of Europe, gone! "Thou hast made of a city
a heap" — a heap of rubbish. Your city would
have been like that but for the boys in khaki.

I was saying my prayers in a corner of an
old broken chateau, the Y.M.C.A. headquar-
ters for that centre, with my trench-coat but-
toned tight and my big muffler round my ears.
Presently I heard some one say — one of the
workers — "A gentleman wants to see you, sir,"
and when I got downstairs there was a General,
a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Star of India man —
a glorious man, a beautiful character. He was
there with his Staff-captain, and he said,

''IVe come to invite you to dinner to-morrow
night, Mr. Smith. I want you to come to the
officers' mess."

"What time, sir?" I asked. "I cannot miss
my meeting at half -past six with the boys."

".Well, the mess will be at half -past seven.
We will arrange that."

"Before you go, sir, I should like to ask why
you are interested in me."

"Well, I'll tell you, if you wish," he said.
"Men are writing home to their wives, moth-
ers, sweethearts, and they are talking about a

A New Power 13

new power in their lives. *We have got some-
thing that is helping us to go straight and play
the game,' they write. And so," said the Gen-
eral, "we should like to have a chat with you."

I went the next night, and for an hour and
a half I preached the Gospel to those officers.
It was a great chance; and it was the result
of the note-paper which I have sometimes given
out for an hour and a half at a time to your
boys.

There are lots of people think you are not
doing any spiritual work unless you are sing-
ing, "Come to Jesus." Put more Jesus in
every bit of the day's business. Jesus ought to
be as real in the city as in the temple. If I
read my New Testament aright, and if I know
God, and if I know humanity, and if I know
Nature, then that is God's programme. God's
programme is that the whole of life should be
permeated with Christ.

God bless the women who have gone out to
help your boys. Women of title, of wealth and
position, serving God and humanity behind
tea-tables.

In one of our huts I saw a lady standing
beside two urns — coffee and tea. She was

14 Your Boys

pouring out, and there were 150 or 200 men
standing round that hut waiting to get served.
The fellows at the end were not pushing and
crowding to get first, but waiting their turn.
They are more good-natured than a religious
crowd waiting to get in to hear a popular
preacher. I have seen these people jostle at
the doors.

But your boys don't do that. They just sing,
"Pack up your troubles," and wait their turn.

Well, these boys, wet and cold, were wait-
ing for a cup of coffee, and one of those red-
hot gospellers came along, and he said, "Sister,
stop a minute and put a word in for Jesus.
This is a great opportunity."

"But," she replied, "they are wet and tired;
let me give them something hot as soon as I
can."

"Oh! but let's put a word in for Jesus,"
urged this chap.

Then a bright-faced soldier lad called out,
"Guv'nor, she puts Jesus in the coffee." That
is what I mean when I say you have got to
put Jesus into every bit of the day's work.

Fruits of the Spirit 15

I have never once been asked by your boys
to what Church I belonged. They don't stop
to ask that if they believe in you. They want
the living Christ and the living Message. It
isn't creed; it's need. And don't you get the
notion that the boys can't be reached, and don't
you think that the boys are hostile to Chris-
tianity. They are not. I won't hear it with-
out protest. The best things that the old Book
talks about are the things the boys love in
one another. They don't always think of the
Book, but they love the fruits of the Spirit in
one another. They love truth, honour, cour-
age, humility, friendship, loyalty. And where
do you get those things? Why, they have
their roots in the Cross — they grow on that

Tree.

• •••••

I had a dear friend who won the M.C. — a
young Cambridge graduate. He was all-round
brilliant. He could write an essay, preach a
sermon, sit down to the piano and compose
an operetta. The boys delighted in him. He
would always be at the front. He would al-
ways be where there was danger. I was talk-
ing about him one day in one of the convales-

i6 Your Boys

cent camps, and two of the boys said to Tne
afterwards,

"You have been talking about our padre.
We loved him. We were with him when he
was killed, for the shell that killed him wounded
us. Every man in the battalion would have
laid down his life for him."

This old world's dying for the want of love.

There are more people die for the want of

a bit of it than with overmuch of it. Don't

stifle it — let it out.

• •••••

"I am afraid," said a padre to me once, "the
boys are sceptical."

"Come with me to-morrow," I answered.
"I'll prove to you they are not sceptical."

We were half an hour ahead of time and
the hut was crowded with eight hundred men.
They were singing when I got in — something
about "an old rooster — as you used to."

Do you suppose I had no better sense than
to go in and say, "Stop this ungodly music?"
You can catch more flies with treacle than with

vmegar.

I looked at the boys and said, "That's great,
sing it again."

''Sing it Again" 17

And I turned to the padre and asked, *'Isn't
that splendid? Isn't that fine?"

While we were waiting to begin the meet-
ing, I said, "Boys, we must have another."

*'One of the same sort?" they shouted.

"Of course," was my reply. And they sang
"Who's your lady friend?" and when they had
sung that, I called out, "Boys, we will have
one more. What shall it be?"

"One of yours, sir."

I had not trusted them in vain.

I said, "Very well, you choose your hymn."

"When I survey the wondrous Cross" — that
was the song they chose.

And they sang it all the better because I
had sung their songs with them. Before we
had got to the end of the last verse some of
those boys were in tears, and it wasn't hard
to pray. It isn't far from rag-time to "When
I survey the wondrous Cross."

When they had finished the hymn I said,
"Boys, I am going to tell you the story of my
father's conversion." For I had to convince
my padre friend that they were not sceptical.
I took them to the gipsy tent and told them
of my father and five motherless children, and

i8 Your Boys

of how Jesus came to that tent, saving the
father and the five children and making preach-
ers of them all.

I said, ''Did my father make a mistake when
he brought Christ to those five motherless chil-
dren?" And the eight hundred boys shouted,
"No, sir."

"Did he do the right thing?"

"Yes, sir."

"What ought you to do?"

"The same, sir."

"Do you want Jesus in your lives?" and
every man of the eight hundred jumped to his
feet.

You say they are sceptical where Jesus is
concerned. I'll tell you when they are scep-
tical— when they see the caricature of Jesus

in you and me.

• •••••

I was, as I have said, under shell fire for a
month in one place — night and day for a
month — and never allowed out without a gas-
bag round my neck. I slept in a cellar there
at night when I did sleep — only 700 yards from
the Germans — and, as I have said before, it
was cold.

Up Against It 19

When the thaw set in, I put a couple of
bricks down and put a box-lid on top, so that
I could stand in a dry place. We had two
picks and two shovels in that cellar in case
anything happened overnight. I have been
up against it. Whenever I talked to the boys
there they sat with their gas-bags round their
necks, and one held mine while I talked. It
was quite a common thing to have something
fall quite close to us while we were singing.

Imagine singing "Cover my defenceless
head," just as a piece of the roof is falling in.

^^~ In death's dark vale I fear no ill

With Thee, dear Lord, beside me —

then another crash! That makes things real.
Every word was accompanied by the roar of
guns — the rattle of the machine gun and the
crack of the rifle. We never knew what it
was to be quiet.

A shell once came and burst just the other
side of the wall against which I was standing
and blew part of it over my head. I have suf-
fered as your boys have, and I have preached
the Gospel to your boys in the front line. I
long for the privilege of doing it again.

20 Your Boys

If I had my way I'd take all the hest preach-
ers in Britain and I'd put them down in
France. And if the church and chapel goers
grimibled, I'd say, "You're overfed. You
can do without a preacher for a little." And
if they were to ask, ''How do you know?" I
should reply, "Because it's hard work to get
you to one meal a week. You only come once
on a Sunday and often not that. That's how
I know you are not enjoying your food."

I love talking to the Scottish boys — the kil-
ties. Oh! they are great boys — the kilties.
When the French first saw them they didn't
know what they were, whether they were men
or women.

"Don't you know what they are?" said a
bright-faced English boy. "They are what
we call the Middlesex."

You can't beat a British boy, he's on the

spot all the time — "the Middlesex!" Some of

you haven't seen the joke yet.

• •••••

I once went to a hut just behind the line,
within the sound of the guns. Buildings all
round us had been blown to pieces. The leader
of this hut was a clergyman of the Church of

Fetching the Munsters 21

England, but he wasn't an ecclesiastic there,
he was a man amongst men, and we loved him.

"Gipsy Smith," he said, ''I don't know what
you will do; the boys in the billets this week
are the Munsters — Irish Roman Catholics.
You would have got on all right last week;
we had the York and Lancaster s."

"Do you think they will come to the meet-
ings?"

"I don't know," he replied; "they come for
everything else ! They come for their smokes,
candles, soap, buttons — bachelor's buttons —
postcards, and everything else they want. But
whether they will come for the religious part,
I don't know."

"Well," I said, "we can but try."

It was about midday when we were talk-
ing, and the meeting was to be at 6.30.

"Have you got a boy who could write a bill
for me?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "I've got a boy who could
do that all right."

"Print it on green paper," said I.

Why not ? They were the Munsters. Why
shouldn't we use our heads? People think

22 Your Boys

mighty hard in business, why shouldn't we
think in the religious world?

"Just say this and nothing more," I said.

'' 'Gripsy Smith will give a talk in the Hut to-
night at 6.30. Subject — Gipsy Life,' "

I knew that would fetch them.
At half-past six the hut was crowded with
eight hundred Munsters. If you are an old
angler, indeed if you know anything at all
about angling, you know that you have got to
consider two or three things if you are to stand
any chance of a catch. You have got to study
your tackle, you have got to study your bait,
you have got to study the habits of your fish.
When the time came to begin that meeting,
one of the workers said,

"Shall I bring the box of hymn-books out?"
"No, no," I replied; "that's the wrong bait."
Those Munster boys knew nothing about
hymn-books. We preachers have got to come
off our pedestals and not give our hearers what
we want, but the thing that will catch them.
If a pretty, catchy Sankey hymn will attract
a crowd, why shouldn't we use it instead of

"Are we Down-hearted?'' 23

an anthem? If a brass band will catch them,
why shouldn't we play it instead of an organ?

"Keep back those hymn-books," I said.
"They know nothing about hymn-books." I
had a pretty good idea of what would have
happened if those hymn-books had been pro-
duced at the start.

I got on that platform, and I looked at those
eight hundred Munsters and said, "Boys, are
we down-hearted?"

''No" they shouted.

You can imagine what eight hundred Mun-
sters shouting "No" sounds like. They were
all attention instantly. I wonder what would
happen if the Vicar went into church next
Sunday morning and asked the question, "Are
we down-hearted?" I knew it would cause a
sensation, but I'd rather have a sensation than
a stagnation.

Those boys sat up. I said, "We are going
to talk about gipsy life." I talked to them
about the origin of my people. There's not
a man living in the world who knows the origin
of my people. I can trace my people back to
India, but they didn't come from India. We
are one of the oldest races in the world, so old

24 Your Boys

that nobody knows how old. I talked to them
about the origin of the gipsies, and I don't
know it, but I knew more about it than they
did. I talked to them about our language,
and I gave them specimens of it, and there I
was on sure ground. It is a beautiful lan-
guage, full of poetry and music. Then I
talked about the way the gipsies get their liv-
ing— and other people's; and for thirty min-
utes those Munsters hardly knew if they were
on the chairs or on the floor — and I purposely
made them laugh. They had just come out
of the hell of the trenches. They had that
haunted, weary, hungry look, and if only I
could make them laugh and forget the hell
out of which they had just climbed it was re-
ligion, and I wasn't wasting time.

When I had been talking for thirty minutes,
I stopped, and said, "Boys, there's a lot more
to this story. Would you like some more?"

"Yes," they shouted.

"Come back to-morrow," I said.

I was fishing in unlikely waters, and if you
leave off when fish are hungry they will come
back for more. For six nights I told those
boys gipsy stories. I took them out into the

God in Nature 25

woods. We went out amongst the rabbits. I
told the boys the rabbits got very fond of me —
so fond that they used to go home with me!
I took them through the clover-fields on a
June day and made them smell the perfume.
I took them among the buttercups. I told
them it was the Finger of Love and the Smile
of Infinite Wisdom that put the spots upon
the pansy and the deep blue in the violet. And
then we went out among the birds and we saw
God taking songs from the lips of a seraph and
wrapping them round with feathers.

And the boys saw Jesus in every butter-
cup and every primrose, and every little daisy,
and in every dewdrop, and heard something
of the song of the angels in the notes of the
nightingale and the skylark. Oh! Jesus was
there, and they felt Him, and they saw Him.
I took them amongst the gipsy tents, amongst
the woodlands and dells of the old camping-
grounds. They walked with Him and they
talked with Him. I didn't use the usual
Church language, but I used the language of
God in Nature and the boys heard Him.

Towards the end of the week one of those
Munster boys came and touched me and said.

26 Your Boys

"Your Riverence! Your Riverence!" he says.
"You're a gentleman."

I knew I had got that boy.

Now, if you are an old angler you know
what happens if you begin to tug at the line
the first time you get a bite. When you hook
a fish, if he happens to be a Munster, you have
got to keep your head and play him, let him
have the line, let him go, keep steady, no ex-
citement, give him play. I gave him a bit of
line, that young Munster. I thanked him for
his compliment and then walked away- — with
my eyes over my shoulder, for if he hadn't
come after me I should have been after him.

Presently he pulled my tunic and said,
"Won't you give me a minute, sir?"

"What's the trouble?" I said.

"Sir," he said, with a little catch in his voice
that I can hear now, "you've got something I
haven't."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"It's like the singing of a little song, and
it gets into my heart. I want it. Won't you
tell me how to get it? I want it."

"Sonny," I said, "it's for you. You can
have it at the same price I paid for it."

A New Song 27

*'Begorra," says he, "you will tell me to give
up my religion, you will!"

I said, "If God has put ami:hing in your
life that helps you to be a better and a nobler
and a braver man, He doesn't want you to give
it up."

"He doesn't?" he asked. "^^Tiat am I to
give up, then?"

And I replied, ''Your sin."

The boy said again, "You're a gentleman."

If I had said one word about his religion or
his creed, my line would have snapped and I
would have lost my fish.

That night, when all the boys had gone, we
got into a corner and we knelt down, and when
he went he said, "I've got it, sir. I've got the
little song — and it's singing."

At one of my meetings the boys were four
thousand strong and the Commandant of the
camp was to preside. As they say in the Army,
he had got the wind up. He did not know me.
When he saw the crowd there he began to won-
der what was going to happen. He called one
of the officers to him, and said,

"I don't know what he's going to do. I hope

28 Your Boys

he's not going to give us a revival meeting or
something of that sort. I hope he knows that
one-third of these fellows are Roman Catho-
lics."

Well, of course I knew, and I was laying
my plans accordingly. What right have you
or I when we have got a mixed crowd like that
to try to cram our preconceived programme
down everybody's throat? The officer, who
was one of my friends, said to the Colonel, "I
don't think you need trouble, sir. He's all
right, and knows his job."

When we were ready, I went to the Colonel,
and said, "We are quite ready to begin, sir."

The Colonel rose and announced, "Officers,
non-commissioned officers, and men, I now in-
troduce to you Gipsy Smith, who will per-
form."

Now, the first thing I wanted to do was to
disarm all prejudice in the mind of both officers
and men. So I said, "Are you ready, boys?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we'll have our opening hymn, 'Keep
the home fires burning.' "

And didn't those boys sing that! Some of
them were smoking, and I wasn't going to tell

Round Mother's Knee 29

them not to smoke. That would have put their
backs up. They were British boys and they
knew what to do when the right moment came.
And so I said, "Boys, you sang that very well,
but you were not all singing. Now, if we have
another, will you all sing?" And they an-
swered, "Yes." I knew if they sang they
couldn't smoke. So we had "Pack up your
troubles," and this time every smoke was out
and every boy was singing. "We'll have an-
other," said I, when they had finished; "we'll
have —

'Way down in Tennessee

Just try to think of me

Right on my mother's knee.' "

I knew if I got them round their mothers'
knees I should be all right.

"Now, boys," I said, "what am I to talk to
you about?" I let them choose their subject
very often.

"Tell us the story of the gipsy tent," they
called out.

And there I was at home, and it was all
right, and for an hour I told them the story
of how grace came to that gipsy tent — the old
romance of love.

30 Your Boys

"Now, boys, I'm through," I said when I
had spoken for an hour — and they gave me an
encore. When I had finished my encore, the
dear old Colonel got up to thank the "per-
former"— and he couldn't do it; there was a
lump in his throat and big tears were rolling
down his cheeks.

"Boys, I can't say what I want to, but," said
he, "we have all got to be better men."

The Gospel was preached in that hut in a

different way from what we have it preached

at home, but we got it in, and the thing is to

get it in.

• •••••

I was talking behind the lines to some of
your boys. Every boy in front of me was go-
ing up to the trenches that night. There were
five or six hundred of them. They had got
their equipment — they were going on parade
as soon as they left me. It wasn't easy to talk.
All I said was accompanied by the roar of the
guns and the crack of rifles and the rattle of
the machine guns, and once in a while our faces
were lit up by the flashes. It was a weird sight.
I looked at those boys. I couldn't preach to
them in the ordinary way. I knew and they

Singing the New Song 31

knew that for many it was the last service they
would attend on earth. I said,

"Boys, you are going up to the trenches.
Anything may happen there. I wish I could
go with you. God knows I do. I would if
they would let me, and if any of you fall I
would like to hold your hand and say some-
thing to you for mother, for wife, and for lover,
and for little child. I'd like to be a link be-
tween you and home just for that moment —
God's messenger for you. They won't let me
go, but there is Somebody Who will go with
you. You know Who that is."

You should have heard the boys all over
that hut whisper, "Yes, sir — Jesus."

"Well," I said, "I want every man that is
anxious to take Jesus with him into the trench
to stand."

Instantly and quietly every man in that hut
stood up. And we prayed as men can pray
only under those conditions. We sang to-
gether, "For ever with the Lord." I shall
never sing that hymn again without a lump in
my throat. ]\Iy mind will always go back to
those dear boys.

We shook hands and I watched them go,

32 Your Boys

and then on my way to the little cottage where
I was billeted I heard feet coming behind me,
and presently felt a hand laid upon my shoul-
der. Two grand handsome fellows stood be-
side me. One of them said,

**We didn't manage to get into the hut, but
we stood at the window to your right. We
heard all you said. We want you to pray for
us. We are going into the trenches, too. We
can't go until it is settled."

We praye4 together, and then I shook hands

with them and bade them good-bye. They

did not come back. Some of their comrades

came — those two, with others, were left behind.

But they had settled it — they had settled it,
• . . • . •

Two or three days after that I was in a hos-
pital when one was brought in who was at that
service. I thought he was unconscious, and I
said to the Sister beside me, "Sister, how bat-
tered and bruised his poor head is !"

He looked up and said, "Yes, it is battered
and bruised; but it will be all right, Gipsy,
when I get the crown!"

One night I had got about fifty boys round
me in a dug-out, with the walls blown out and

Getting the Crown 33

bits of the roof off. I had taken some hyinn-
sheets, for I love to hear them sing. I never
choose a hymn for them — I always let them
choose their own hymns. There is wisdom in
that. If they have asked for something and
don't sing it, I can come down on them.
Among the great hymns they choose are these :

"Jesu, Lover of my soul,"

and I have heard them sing,

''Cover my defenceless head,"

with the shells falling close to them. I have
heard them sing,

"I fear no foe . . ."

with every seat and every bit of building round
us rocking with the concussion of things. And
then they will choose :

**The King of Love my Shepherd is,"
"The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want,"
"Abide with me,"
"There is a green hill far away,"
"Rock of ages, cleft for me,"

34 Your Boys

and the oue they love, I think, most of all is,
'*When I survey the wondrous Cross."

Thrjse are the h\TTjns they sing, the great
hymns of the Church — the hymns that all
Christian perjpJe sing, alx^ut which there is no
quarrelling. It's beautiful to hear the b^-A'S.

7'hat night I said, "I have brought .v;rne
hymn-sheets. I thought we might have s^-^rne
singing, but I'm afraid it's trx> dark*"

Instantly one of the bws brought out of his
tunic about two inches of candle and struck a
match, and in three minutes we had about
twenty pieces of candle burrjing. It was a
weird .sr:ene.

After the hymns I began to talk, and the
candles burnt lower, and some of them flick-
ered out, and I could see a boy here and there
twitch a bit of candle as it was going out.

I said, ''Put the candles out, boys. I can
talk in the dark."

It was a wonderful service, and here and there
you could hear the boys sighing and cr\'ing as
they thought of home and father and mother.
It isn't difficult to talk to boys like that.

In the Quiet Room 35

There is no hymn of hate in your boys'
hearts. 1 have known them take a German
prisoner even after he has played the cruel
thing; but there! he looked hungry and
wretched, and in a \'iiw minutes they have
shared their rations and cigarettes with him.
I call that a bit of religion l)reaking out in an
tjnlikely place. The leaven's in the lump,
thank God!

I was speaking at a convalescent camp.
YjWqtY one of the hoys had been l^adly mauled
and mangled on the Somme. This particular
day I had about seven or eight hundred listen-
ers. It was evening, and when 1 had talked to
the boys, I said,

*'l wonder if any of you would like to meet
me for a little prayer?"

And from all over the camp came the an-
swer, "Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir."

There was a big room there — we called it a
quiet room — and so J asked all the boys who
would like to see me, just to leave their seats
and go into this room. J went to them and
said,

*'Yoii fiave elected to come here to pray, so

36 Your Boys

we will just kneel down at once. I am not go-
ing to do anything more than guide you. I
want you to tell God what you feel you need
in your own language."

The prayers of those hoys would have made
a hook. There were no old-fashioned phrases.
You know what I mean — people hegin at a
certain place and there is no stopping them
till they get to another certain place. One of
these boys began, "Please God, You know I've
been a rotter." That's the way to pray. That
boy was talking to God and the Lord was very

glad to listen.

• •••••

I was talking to one boy — an American; he
was a little premature, he was in the fight be-
fore his country.

"Sonny," I said, "you're an American?"
"Yes, sir. I was born in Michigan."
"Well, what are you doing, fighting under
the British flag?"

"I guess it's my fight too, sir. This," he
said, "is not a fight for England, France, or
Belgium, but a fight for the race, and I
wouldn't have been a man if I had kept out."

A Fight for the Race 37

I told that story to one of our Generals who
died last September.

**Ah!" he said, "that f)oy got to the bottom
of the business. It's for the raee. It's fol* the
race."

"Are you a Christian?" I asked.

"No," he answered; **but I should like to be
one. I wasn't brought up. I grew uj), and I
grew up my own way, and my own way was
the wrong way. I go to church occasionally — if
a friend is getting married. I know the story
of the Christian faith a little, but it has never
really meant anything to me."

Then he contimicd slowly, "On the Somme,
a few hours before 1 was l)adly wounded" — he
j)ut his hand in his pocket and drew out a little
crucifix — "1 picked up that little crucifix and
I put it in my pack, and when I got to hos-
pital 1 found that little crucifix on my table.
One of the nurses or the orderlies had imt it
there, thinking I was a Catholic. But I know
I'm not, sir. 1 am nothinc/. I have been look-
ing at this little crucifix so often since I was
wounded, and I look at it till my eyes fill with
tears, because it reminds me of what He did

38 Your Boys

for me — not this little bit of metal, but what
it means."

I said, "Have you ever prayed?"

He replied, "No, sir. I've wept over this
little crucifix — is that prayer?"

"That's prayer of the best sort," I said.
"Every tear contained volumes you could not
utter, and God read every word. He knows
all about it."

I pulled out a little khaki Testament.
"Would you like it?" I said. "Would you
read it?"

He answered, "Yes," and signed the decision
in the cover.

When I shook hands with him there was a
light in his eyes. Have you ever seen the light
break over the cliff -tops of some high moun-
tain peak ? Have you ever watched the sun kiss
a landscape into beauty? Have you ever seen
the earth dance with gladness as the sun bathed
it with radiance and warmth? Oh, it's a great
sight ; but there's no sight like seeing the light
from Calvary kiss a human face as it fills the
heart with the assurance of Divine forgiveness.

Bound for Blighty 39

One hundred and fifty-two thousand cups of
tea and coffee are given away monthly at one
railway-station. I once happened to be at a
railway-station on the main lines of communi-
cation. There are women working there,
women of position and means, working at their
own expense. I have seen rough fellows go
up to a British woman behind a counter — the
first time they have seen a British woman for
months — and I have heard them say, "Madam,
will you shake hands with me?'* I saw an Aus-
tralian do that. He got her hand — and his
was like a leg of mutton — and he thought of
his mother and his home-folk. He forgot his
tea. It was a benediction to have that woman
there.

Well, on this occasion two of these ladies
said to me, "Gipsy, we're having a relief train
pass through to-morrow, and one comes
through up and one comes through down."

"I'll be there," I said.

The train that was coming from the front
we could hear before we could see it. And it
wasn't the engine that we heard, because that
came so slowly, but I could hear the boys sing-
ing as they came round the curve,

40 Your Boys

"Blighty, Blighty is the place for me."
We served them with tea and coffee, French
bread a yard long, and candles and matches
and "Woodbines," and then we got that crowd
off— still singing "Blighty."

They had been gone about five minutes when
the other train from Blighty came in. We
couldn't hear them singing. They were quiet
and subdued. We served them with coffee and
tea, candles, bootlaces, and smokes, and then,
as they had some time, they started having a
wash — the first since they left Blighty. The
footboard of the train was the washstand, the
shaving-table, and the dressing-table. But
they didn't sing.

I saw in a corner of that little canteen a pile
of postcards, and I said, "Who says a postcard
for wife or mother?"

Somebody asked, "Who's going to see them
posted?"

I said, "I am. You leave them to me."

They said, "All right," and I began to give
out the postcards.

I started at one end of the train and went
on to the other end. In the middle I found
two carriages full of officers.

Postcards for Home 41

"Gentlemen," I said, '*will you please censor
these postcards as I collect them, and that will
relieve the pressure on the local staff, for I
don't want to put any extra work on them?"

"Oh, certainly," they answered, and I sent
a dozen or twenty up at a time to them, and
in fifteen minutes that train was steaming out
of the station and the boys were singing,
"Should auld acquaintance."

When they had gone I collected the post-
cards that had been written and censored — and
there were 575. To keep the boys in touch
with home is religion; to keep in their lives
the finest, the most beautiful home-sentiment
that God ever gives to the world is a bit of re-
ligion— pure and undefiled.

How gloriously brave are the French women
and Belgian women ! I was talking to one in
London — a young girl not more than eighteen
or nineteen. She was serving me in a restau-
rant, and I saw she was wiping her eyes, so
I called her to me and said, "What^s the mat-
ter, my child?"

She answered, "Sir, I came over on the
boat from Belgium early in the war, and my

42 Your Boys

mother and sisters got scattered, and I have
never seen or heard of them since."

And the Madame of the restaurant came to
me a little while afterwards, and said, "We
dare not tell her, but they were all killed."

Many people at home don't realise what is
going on. Some are in mourning, some have
lost boys, some have lost husbands, brothers,
but we have not suffered as others have suf-
fered. I was riding in a French train a few
weeks ago. Beside me sat a lady draped in
mourning. I could not see her face, it was
so thickly veiled with crape. Beside her was
a nurse, and the lady wept, oh, so bitterly! I
cannot bear to see anybody weeping. If I see
a little child crying in the street I want to com-
fort it. If I see a woman crying in the street
I want to comfort her. God has given me a
quick ear where grief is concerned — and I am
thankful. I wouldn't have it otherwise —
though I have to pay for it.

That woman's tears went through me.
Every little while she was counting in French,
''Un, deuoc, trots, quatre, cinq" — then she
would weep again and then she would count.

I said to the nurse, "Nurse, what's the trou-

Counting Her Boys 43

ble?" and she said, "Sir, her mind has given
way. Before the war she had five handsome
sons, and one by one they have been killed,
and now she spends her time counting over
her boys and weeping."

And all that is for you and for me! What
sort of people ought we to be, do you suppose?
Are we really worth — that?

• •••••

I was talking to some Canadians one night —
and the Canadians are fine boys. I was put-
ting my foot on the platform, just about to
begin, when a bright young Canadian touched
me and said, *'Say, boss, can you shoot quick?"
and I replied,

*'Yes, and straight."

"Well," he said, "you'll do."

I had a great time with those fellows. Hun-
dreds of those Canadian boys stood up to say,
"God helping me, I am going to lead a better
life!" — hundreds of them. And then I put
another test to them. "I want you all to prom-
ise," I said, "that you'll kneel down and say
your prayers to-night in the billet, and those
of you who will promise to do that come up

44 Your Boys

and shake hands with me as you go out." I
was kept one half -hour shaking hands.

Now, there were nine fellows sleeping in
one billet and not one knew the other eight had
been to the meeting. They all got mixed up,
but all the nine came up to shake hands, and
the one that got back to billets first told the
story afterwards. This one had made up his
mind he would kneel down and say his pray-
ers, but when he returned he found there was
no one there. Somehow he felt different then
— ^he felt he couldn't do it. He was more
afraid of nobody than he would have been of
somebody. Then just suppose the others came
back and found him kneeling there !

"I funked it," he said. "I got under the
blanket, and tried to say my prayers under the
blanket, but it wouldn't work. Then I heard
one man come into the room, then two, three,
four, five, six, seven, and eight. And the eighth
man was the champion swearer of the com-
pany."

"Boys," said this man, "did you hear him?"
"Yes," they said, "we heard him."
And the little chap under the blanket said
"Yes" too.

The Champion Swearer 45

"Well, I shook hands with that man, and
I promised him for my mother's sake that I'd
kneel down and say my prayers to-night.'*

And the little chap under the blanket
jumped up, blanket and all, and said, ''So did
I. I'm with you."

And the others said, "So did we."

"Well," the last comer said, "the best thing
we can do is to kneel down now and say a little
prayer."

So they all knelt down, and they each said
a little prayer — I wish I had a record of those
prayers — and they finished up with "Our
Father."

Then the champion swearer said, "Boys, I've
cut it all out: no more drink — not another
drop."

And they said, "All right, we are with you.
We'll cut it out."

Then he said, "I've cut something else out.
No more swearing."

Eighty-five times out of every hundred that
the boys in France use a swear- word they mean
no more than I do when I say, "Great Scott."

"Do you, boys?" I ask them.

"No, sir," they invariably reply.

46 Your Boys

"Well, then, why do you use these swear-
words?"

And then I've got them and, out of their
own mouths, they are condemned. I tell them
it is bad form, and I say, ''Cut it out."

These boys made a solemn compact that
night that the first man who swore should clean
all nine guns, and before the week was out my
champion was cleaning nine guns.

But those eight boys didn't go back on him.
They were sporty.

I have seen a little bird's nest all broken
with the wind and torn with the storm, and two
or three little eggs, with a few wet leaves over
them, addled and cold and forsaken, and my
little gipsy heart cried over those poor little
motherless things, for I was motherless too.
And up in a tree I have heard a thrush singing
the song of a seraph and I have said, as I
looked at the eggs, "You would have been
singers too, but you were forsaken."

These boys — they did not forsake their
chum. They said, "Buck up, old boy. We'll
help you."

"No," he said. "This is my job."

So they stood by him and cheered him on.

Cheering Him On 47

People, I say again, don't die of overmuch

love, but for the want of a bit of it. These

boys stood by my champion swearer, and when

he was putting the polishing touches on the

last gun he stood up, his face radiant, like a

man that has fought a battle and won : "Boys,

this is the last gun I shall clean for anybody

under these conditions, because, God helping

me, I'm going to see this thing through."

And he is seeing it through.

• •••••

I was at a home for limbless men the other
day — there are over one hundred and eighty of
them in that home. I held my hand out to
shake hands with the first two men I met, and
they laughed at me. I looked down for their
hands — they hadn't got one between them! I
took the face of one of those dear boys and I
patted it. I wanted to kiss it with gratitude.
I wonder how you feel!

I walked round amongst those boys — one
hundred and eighty limbless! I found one
boy without legs and without an arm. He was
just a trunk, and his comrades, those who
could, were carrying him around. He was
the sunshine in the whole place — not a grouse.

48 Your Boys

They are doing no grousing — your boys there.
When they see you they just say, "Cheerio."

A friend of mine, a minister, went to see one
of these boys, and he was wondering what he
could say to him; he thought he had got to
cheer him up. The boy looked at the padre
and said,

"Guv'nor, don't get down-hearted. I am go-
ing to make money out of this j ob. Why, I shall
only want a pair of trousers with one leg, and I
shall only want a coat with one sleeve, and I
shall only want a pair of boots with one boot."

It reminds me of the question I once asked :
"Sonny, what struck you most when you got
in the trenches?" and the reply came sharp,

"A bit of shrapnel."

Another of your boys, just picked up in the
trenches by those tender fellows, the stretcher-
bearers, those men with the hands of a woman
and with the heart of a mother — God bless
them ! — called out as they came to him, "Home,
John*' And when he was passing the officer
and they were carrying him into the Red Cross
train, he cried, ''Season." He had two gold
stripes already. That's the spirit of your boys.

Not Afraid to Die 49

There was a dear old Scotchman from Aber-
deen. A telegram had come to that granite
city to say that his boy was badly wounded,
and he ran all the way to the station and
jumped into a train without stopping to put
on a collar. You don't think of collars when
your boys are dying. I saw him when he
landed. It was my job to help him. The dear
old fellow was just in time to see his boy die —
and afterwards he came and laid his head on
my shoulder and he sobbed. And I wept too.
He was seventy.

Presently he said, "It will be hard to go
home and tell mother that her only boy has
gone, but I've got a message for her. 'Father/
my boy said, 'tell mother I am not afraid to
die. I have found Jesus. Tell mother that.' "

There are some people who think you are
not doing Christian work unless you have a
hymn-book in one hand and a Bible in the other
and are singing, "Come to Jesus." I am glad
I haven't to live with that kind of people. I
call them the Lord's Awkward Squad.

If you take "firstly," "secondly," "thirdly,"
out to the front with you, by the time you get
to thirdly the boys will be in the trenches. I

50 Your Boys

never take an old sermon out with me to
France. I write my prescription after IVe
seen my patients.

I was talking to a thousand boys one day.
"Boys," I said, "how many of you have writ-
ten to your mother this week?"

Now, that's a proper question. I wonder
what would happen if the preacher stopped in
his sermon next Sunday morning and said,
"Have you paid your debts this week?" "In
what sort of a temper did you come down to
breakfast this mornrug?"

If a man's religion does not get into every
detail of his life he may profess to be a saint,
but he's a fraud. Religion ought to permeate
life and make it beautiful — as lovely as a breath
of perfume from the garden of the Lord.

The boys have given me the privilege of talk-
ing straight to them. "If you don't write, you
know what you'll get," I said, and I began to
give out the note-paper. I can give boys writ-
ing-paper and envelopes and sell them a cup of
coffee or a packet of cigarettes with as much
religion as I can stand in a pulpit and talk
about them. Why, my Master washed peo-

A Letter to Mother 51

pie's feet and cooked a breakfast for hungry
fishermen. He kindled the foe with the hands
that were nailed to a tree for humanity. There
are no secular things if you are in the spirit of
the Master — they are all Divine.

I went on dealing the note-paper out, and
presently a clergyman came to me and said,
"Gipsy Smith, a man in my room wants to
see you.'*

When I got there, I saw he was crying,
sobbing.

"I am not a kid," he said ; "I am a man. I'm
forty-one. You told me to write to my mother.
Read that," he said, throwing down a letter;
and this is what I read:

"My dear Mother,

"It's seven years since I wrote you last.
I've done my best to break your heart and to
turn your hair grey. I've lived a bad life, but
it's come to an end. I have given my heart to
God. I won't ask you to believe me, or to for-
give me. I deserve neither. But I ask for a
bit of time that I may prove my sincerity.
"Your boy still,

"Jack."

52 Your Boys

"Shall I put a bit at the bottom for a post-
script?" I asked. "But first of all, let us pray.''

We got on our knees, and I said, "You be-
gin.

"I'm not used to it," he replied.

"Begin; never mind how. Did you ever
pray?"

"Yes," he said; "I prayed as a child."

"Start with that, then — He loves cradle
faith."

It took him some time, but presently he be-
gan with his mother's prayer, "Jesus, tender
Shepherd, hear me." When he got to the third
line there was a big lump in his throat and one
in mine, and then he gave me a dig with his
elbow and said, "You'll have to finish" — and
I finished.

I put my postscript to that letter. "God
has saved him," I wrote. "Believe him. Write
and tell him you forgive him."

And when that mother got that she knew
that giving out note-paper was religion.

I was in a cemetery just behind the lines,
walking among the graves of our dear lads
who have fallen, and weeping for those at home

Somebody Cares 53

who weep over graves that they will never see.
There I found an old soldier who had been to
the woods and had cut a big bundle of box
trimmings. He was setting a little border of
box round the graves.

"But," I said to him, "they won't strike.
It's not the right time of year — and the
ground's too dry."

"I know, sir," he said, "but it will look as
if somebody cares."

God's jewels lie deep, and if you will dig
deep enough you will find them — so I took the
trouble to dig a little deeper. I said, "Nobody
will see them here."

"Yes, sir, the angels will. You taught me

to think like this in one of the meetings in the

huts, and since I can't do any more in the

fight" — for he was disabled — "I am putting

in my time caring for the boys' graves, and if

the wives and mothers don't see them — well" —

and his face lit up with a radiance that I can't

put into words — "the angels will, sir."
• ••«••

I have had your boys say to me, "Gipsy, does
it mean Blighty, or does it mean West?" I

54 Your Boys

have had to say to some of them, "It doesn't
mean Blighty.''

A sister took me to see one dear fellow. He
was blown up by a mine, both his legs and his
arm were broken.

"I was lying out there, after the mine blew
up, for twenty-four hours, and I was half
buried," he told me.

Fancy lying out there in No Man's Land
for twenty-four hours with both legs broken
and an arm!

I said, "Sonny, you have had a rough time."

And this was his reply: "They copped me,
worse luck, before I had a pot at them."

You can't beat these boys of yours, the na-
tion's boys, the best boys of our homes, the
flower of our manhood, the noblest and the
dearest that God ever gave to a people. These
boys, they are worth everything in the world,
and there is nothing you and I can do will
ever repay them for what they are doing for
you and for me.

• •••••

When the great end of the day comes, the
greatest joy of all will be the joy of knowing
you have tried to make somebody else's life

The Greatest Joy of All 55

happy. It is the flowers that you have made
grow in unlikely places that will tell — not how
much money you have made, not how big a
house you have lived in, not how popular you
were in the world of letters, of science, of
finance, but — how many burdens have you
lifted ? How many dark hearts have you light-
ened? You can't do too much for your boys.
Remember what they are doing for you. Re-
member the lives that are being laid down for
you.

I shook hands with a boy a little while ago
in Scarborough, and he said, "I believe I hold
the record for having lost most in the war. I
have lost five brothers, my sister was killed in
the war, and my mother died of a broken heart
through grief, but," he said, ''I'll give my next
week's pay, sir, towards this new hut."

Another boy, when I was making my ap-
peal, said, "I've been wounded and I am dis-
charged. I'll give my next week's pay," and
up jumped a war-widow and she said, "I'll
give my next week's pension."

I was talking in Doncaster, and I had a
batch of wounded men from one of the local
hospitals — a batch of twenty dressed in blue —

56 Your Boys

and every one of them gave something; and
when I looked round and said, "Boys, why are
you giving?" one said, "Well, sir, we're grate-
ful for what it did for us when we were there."

People say, "What are you going to do with
the huts after the war?" We want to pick
them up, and bring them back to this country
and put one do^vn in every parish in the land,
so that when the boys do come back they will
still have the Y. M. C. A. hut to go into, so
that they can still keep up the spirit of unity.

Woe be to the man who goes into the hut and
tries to preach sectarianism. The Y. M. C. A.
is creating a spirit of unity amongst the boys,
and that is going on all the time. I want the
limitations to vanish at home. I want the ec-
clesiastical barriers to go. When you get to
Heaven the Lord will have to give Gabriel a
job to introduce many Christians to one an-
other. You should see your boys, how they
mix up. They come in — the Roman Catholics,
the Church of England, and the Nonconform-
ists and Plymouth Brethren and Salvation
Army, and all sorts — you don't know who's
who. We are not quarrelling over religions at

What the Y. M. C. A. Stands For 57

the front — ^we are fighting and dying for the
folks who are doing that at home.

Let's stop our religious nonsense. Re-
ligion's too big to be confined within our four
little walls. If our Church rules are so rigid
that they won't let us come together, then our
Church rules are wrong. God never made
rules which divide men — all God's laws unite.
Christ died that we might be one, and it is time
we got together. Your boys are bigger than
your Churches. You and I have got to rise to
the opportunity. God help us to do it !

Somebody asks, "Why does the Y. M. C. A.
always want more new huts? Why not move
the old ones?" What will the boys do who
take the places of those who have gone for-
ward ? When the line goes forward, it does not
come back — not in these days; it abides — and
the boys who come up as a support, they take
the huts the other boys leave.

The Y. M. C. A. stands for everything to
your boys. It is their club, their church, their
recreation-room. It is their canteen — dry can-
teen, you may be sure — it is their reading-
room, it is their smoking-room, and why should

58 Your Boys

not the Church of Jesus Christ provide places
of recreation for its own people? Why should
it leave the public-house and the theatre to do
it all ? We have lost lots of people because we
have been so slow — we have lost them, you and
I, but we are learning sense in these days, and
the Y. M. C. A. has come to the help of the
Churches, to be the communication-trench be-
tween the Churches and the people.

It is doing magnificent work.

As I write these lines I think of one dear
boy, a young sergeant, a Public- School boy. I
had watched him grow up. I knew his home,
and as he leaned against me he said, "Gipsy,
I'm homesick; I want my mother," and then,
with a sob, he said, "Tell me more about
Jesus."

I was able to talk to him about his mother
because I had lost mine, and just because I
love Jesus I was able to talk to him about the
blessed Jesus Who comes into a man's heart
when he is sad, lonely, and homesick, and helps
him.

He was lying on a stretcher, and it was my
privilege to hold his hand and to kiss him for
his mother.

Dying for Freedom 59

"Gipsy," he said, "does it mean West?"

I said, "Sonny, it means West."

As I held his hand it flickered for a moment

and he said, "I am not afraid to go. I know

Christ. I found Him in your meetings, and —

it's great to die, for freedom."

And it was a great thing for me to be with

your boy then.

I thank my God upon every remembrance
of your hoys.

THE END

92
S

'*">/'*^''*A«*

V P

• «•

.^^

..-?-

^

^ •».

,0 -o *-T7r»' j\ ^

Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process.

C* 0 DeacioiTiea using uiw duuivvcok*'' k- -"-

, -i* Vd' * Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide

o ^^<f> /J Treatment Date: j^j^ ZOOl

^oV"

o » •