Then for three days in the midst of the Chateau-Thierry fighting the matches played out.  Not a match was to be had for three days.  The boys were frantic for their smokes, for the nervous strain was greater than anything they had suffered in their lives.  The shelling was awful.  The noise never ceased.  Machine-gun fire and bombing by planes at night kept up every hour.  They saw lifelong friends fall by their sides every hour of the day and night.  They needed the solace of their smokes.

Their secretary found two matches in his bag.  He lit a cigarette for a boy, and the match was gone.  Then he used the other one.  Then he did a magnificent piece of service for which his name shall go down forever in the memory of those lads.  Forever shall he hold their affections in the hollow of his hands.  He proved to those boys that his sense of service was greater than his prejudices.  He kept three cigarettes going for two days and two nights on the canteen beside him, smoking them himself in order that that crowd of boys, coming and going into the battle, in and out of the underground dugout, might have a light for the cigarettes during the few moments of respite that they had from the fight.

What a thrill went down the line when that news got to the boys out there in the woods fighting.  One boy told me that a fellow he told wept when he heard it.  Another said:  “Good old ——!  I knew he had the guts!” Another said:  “I’ll say he’s a man!” Another came in one evening and said:  “I’m going to quit cigarettes from now.  If you’re that much of a man, you’re worth listening to!” Another said:  “If I get out of this it’s me for the church forever if it has that kind of men in it!”

Is it any wonder that they brought their last letters to him before they went into the trenches?  Is it any wonder that they asked him for a little prayer service one night before they went into the trenches?  Is it any wonder that they love him and swear by him?

Is it any wonder that when one of them was asked how they liked their secretary, the boy said:  “Great!  He’s a man!”

Is it any wonder that when another boy was asked if their secretary was very religious, responded in his own language:  “Yes, he’s as religious as hell, but he’s a good guy anyhow!”

That kind of service will win anybody, and that is exactly the kind of service that the boys of the American army, your boys, are getting all over France from big, heroic, unprejudiced, fatherly, brotherly men, who are willing to die for their boys as well as to live for them and with them down where the shells are thickest and the dangers are constant.