Now the meeting breaks up and we move down into the crowd.  Men come up and ask for private talks, some to confess their sins and others to request prayer.  Here is a boy who is friendless and homeless and in need; the next man has just lost his wife, his home, and his money, but here in the war he has been driven to prayer and has found God.  He has lost everything, but he tells us with a brave smile that he has gained all, and now wishes to prepare for the ministry to preach the Gospel.  Next is a young atheist, an illegitimate child, a circus actor, who has now found God and wants to know how to relate his life to Christ.  The next man is a jockey, who in the midst of his sins enlisted in order that he might die for others and try to atone for his past life.

Later, we were holding evangelistic meetings among the boys of another regiment.  One Sunday evening we were in a big hut where the meeting was about to begin.  Many of the men were writing to the old folks at home.  Captain “Peg” of Canada, who was with us to lead the singing, stepped on the platform and announced a hymn.  Immediately several hundred men flocked to the seats and began singing the Christian hymns they knew at home.  Eyes lit up and faces were aglow as they sang “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” “Lead, Kindly Light,” and “Fight the Good Fight.”  Gradually the numbers increased until a thousand men were singing.  Then we began the address.  Here were open-hearted boys some of whom had gone down before the temptations of the port cities and who now have to face the dangers of a camp in France.  We began on moral themes.  Within half an hour it seemed as if the better nature of every man was with us.  The Christian ideals of home, of the Church, and of their own best selves surged up again, until we had seated and standing nearly twelve hundred men, many of whom were ready to make the fight for purity with the help of Jesus Christ.  One can never forget that closing hymn as the men rose to sing “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.”  We saw tear-stained faces before us as nearly the whole company joined in the song “Tell Mother I’ll Be There.”

Here was one poor fellow who felt he could not sign the decision card.  He sent up this little note:  “I am the worst man in the tent—­a man who robbed his old father of his life’s savings.  How can I hope to be any good again without any prospect of ever being able to repay this money?” But before he left he had accepted God’s forgiveness, and the dawn of a new eternity breaks upon his happy face.  There was another man, the worst character in the regiment.  Finally, touched by the secretary’s kindness, he had read his little pocket Testament in prison, had yielded his life to Christ, and was now witnessing among the soldiers in the camp.  Another, broken down, came up to say he had wronged a girl at home, and to ask if there was any hope for him.  The last man, Bob A——­, serving at present with a British regiment, tells us he was a Christian in Cleveland, Ohio, before the war.  He lay all last night drunk in the fields, but, convicted of his profligate life, he repented and turned back again to God.  There was another boy who stopped to tell us that ever since a previous meeting he had knelt in prayer every night before all the men.