“How will you answer that bairn’s question?” So I asked the young men.  And then I answered for them:  “I don’t know how old I am, but I am so old that I can remember the great war.”

“And then”—­I told them, the young men who were wavering—­“and then will come the question that you will always have to dread—­when you have won through to the old age that may be yours in safety if you shirk now!  For the bairn will ask you, straightaway:  ’Did you fight in the great war, Grandpa?  What did you do?’

“God help the man,” I told them, “who cannot hand it down as a heritage to his children and his children’s children that he fought in the great war!”

I must have impressed many a brave lad who wanted only a bit of resolution to make him do his duty.  They tell me that I and my band together influenced more than twelve thousand men to join the colors; they give me credit for that many, in one way and another.  I am proud of that.  But I am prouder still of the way the boys who enlisted upon my urging feel.  Never a one has upbraided me; never a one has told me he was sorry he had heard me and been led to go.

It is far otherwise.  The laddies who went because of me called me their godfather, many of them!  Many’s the letter I have had from them; many the one who has greeted me, as I was passing through a hospital, or, long afterward, when I made my first tour in France, behind the front line trenches.  Many letters, did I say?  I have had hundreds—­thousands!  And not so much as a word of regret in any one of them.

It was not only in Britain that I influenced enlistments.  I preached the cause of the Empire in Canada, later.  And here is a bit of verse that a Canadian sergeant sent to me.  He dedicated it to me, indeed, and I am proud and glad that he did.

     “ONE OF THE BOYS WHO WENT”

     Say, here now, Mate,
     Don’t you figure it’s great
       To think when this war is all over;
     When we’re through with this mud,
     And spilling o’ blood,
     And we’re shipped back again to old Dover. 
     When they’ve paid us our tin,
     And we’ve blown the lot in,
       And our last penny is spent;
     We’ll still have a thought—­
     If it’s all that we’ve got—­
       I’m one of the boys who went! 
     And perhaps later on
     When your wild days are gone,
       You’ll be settling down for life,
     You’ve a girl in your eye
     You’ll ask bye and bye
       To share up with you as your wife. 
     When a few years have flown,
     And you’ve kids of your own,
       And you’re feeling quite snug and content;
     It’ll make your heart glad
     When they boast of their dad
       As one of the boys who went!

There was much work for me to do beside my share in the campaign to increase enlistments.  Every day now the wards of the hospitals were filling up.  Men suffering from frightful wounds came back to be mended and made as near whole as might be.  And among them there was work for me, if ever the world held work for any man.