Your Boys Part 6

I have had your boys say to me, "Gipsy, does it mean Blighty, or does it mean West?" I 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 nation's boys, the best boys of our homes, the flower of our manhood, the n.o.blest and the dearest that G.o.d 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 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 lightened? You can't do too much for your boys. Remember what they are doing for you. Remember 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 appeal, said, "I've been wounded and I am discharged. 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-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 grateful 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 down 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 ecclesiastical barriers to go. When you get to Heaven the Lord will have to give Gabriel a job to introduce many Christians to one another.

You should see your boys, how they mix up. They come in-the Roman Catholics, the Church of England, and the Nonconformists and Plymouth Brethren and Salvation Army, and all sorts-you don't know who's who. We are not quarrelling over religions at the front-we are fighting and dying for the folks who are doing that at home.

Let's stop our religious nonsense. Religion'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. G.o.d never made rules which divide men-all G.o.d'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. G.o.d 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 forward? 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 canteen, you may be sure-it is their reading-room, it is their smoking-room, and why should 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 between 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.

"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 G.o.d upon every remembrance of your boys._

THE END