At the close of the meeting another man stepped up and handed in a letter, saying:  “Thank you for that message tonight, sir.  I will be true to the little girl I left at home.  Here is a letter I had just written to a bad woman.  God helping me I will not go.  I have signed the War Roll tonight and I am going to be true to it.”  Hundreds of men filed past and shook hands in gratitude.

We were facing an average of some five hundred men every night in the week and a thousand or more on Sunday.  One humble private who had been a pilot out at sea, handed us a poem which he had just written, the last lines of which are typical of the verses many of the men are writing these days: 

  “And if I fall, Lord, take an erring mortal
    Into those realms of peace and joy above;
  And, by-and-by, at Thy fair mansion’s portal,
    Let me find there the little girl I love.”

In all our meetings our aim has been to enable men to find themselves by coming into a personal and vital relation with God as Father, through Jesus Christ.  Our purpose is to evangelize, but not to proselytize.  We aim to make each man more loyal to his own church.  During the three years of the war, we have never known of a man changing his church or being asked to do so.  Our aim is not to change any man’s ecclesiastical position, but to make him a truer and stronger man in the church where he is.  The great outstanding issue in war time is not between creed and creed, between sect and sect, but between God and mammon, between right and wrong, purity and impurity.  We have no contention concerning the questions that divide us; we are fighting for the great fundamentals upon which we are all united, for God and moral manhood.

[1] According to the War Bulletin of the National Geographic Society, issued in Washington in September 1917, a first class American private drawing $26.60 a month receives more than a Russian colonel or a German or Austrian lieutenant.  An American lieutenant receives more than a British lieutenant colonel, a French colonel, or a Russian general.

[2] See Appendix IV.

CHAPTER III

A day in the “Bull ring”

Just before going into the trenches the British, French, and American troops take a final course for a few weeks in a training school, where the expert drill masters put them through a rigorous discipline, and the finishing touches are given to each regiment.  At the moment of writing our American boys are going through such a course, “somewhere in France.”  The men commonly call this training school, or specially prepared final drill ground, the “Bull Ring.”  It is a thrilling spectacle to see many thousands of men across a vast plain going through the various maneuvers of actual warfare as it is practiced today at the front.  Perhaps a brief description of such a drill ground may be of interest to those who are following the fortunes of our soldiers.