We visited one night the great tent generously given by the Viceroy for the work of the territorials in Delhi.  General Sir Percy Lake took the chair and the men gathered in the large marquee for the meeting.  Sherwood Day, of Yale, had been in charge of this work during the winter, providing a home for the men of the territorials in this ancient Indian capital.  A series of lectures by leading Indians served to interpret Indian life and thought to these soldiers, who were seeing at once the needs and greatness of the Indian Empire at first hand, while leading Indian Christians of the type of Mr. K. T. Paul, Dr. Datta, and Bishop Azariah told them the fascinating story of Indian missions and the history of Christianity in Asia.  A new sense of race brotherhood is taking the place of the old antagonism and prejudice, and Indian secretaries stationed with English Tommies have become exceedingly popular with them.

From India as a base, the Association has gone forward with the advancing columns into Mesopotamia and East Africa.  As we cross the Persian Gulf and follow the winding courses of the Tigris and the Euphrates up into the heart of Mesopotamia, we find a group of Princeton men and some sixty secretaries stationed here with the troops, under Leonard Dixon of Canada.  The men affectionately call him the “padre”; anyone who has ever boxed with Dixon and felt the force of his right, knows that he is a man who has both drive and “punch.”  The troops in Mesopotamia have been fighting often under terrible conditions, marching through ooze and slime, drinking the yellow unfiltered water, decimated by the attacks both of sickness and of the enemy.  In summer the alkali dust lies four inches deep on the floors of their tents, and the thermometer stands at 120 degrees in the sultry shade.  Dixon racked his brain to provide recreation and helpful entertainment for these hard fighting men.  A bioscope, competitive concerts, a Christmas tree, a New Year’s treat, football and hockey tournaments, and entertainments of various kinds have been improvised to make the men forget the awful hardship of the march and of the battle.  On Sunday the writing tables are full from dawn till dark and tons of stationery have been used to keep these men in touch with their distant homes.

The secretaries have been kept busy handling the big convoys of wounded as they come down the rivers in the boats from the fighting at the front.  One colonel got up from his sick bed to give his testimony unasked as to what the work of the Association had meant to these wounded men.  He said that it was not only the big kettles of hot coffee and the caldrons of soup which the secretaries brought aboard the boats, not only the warm blankets, beef tea, and other comforts which had helped the men so much, but the fact that when those men entered that barge with its weight of human suffering and misery, it seemed that the touch of Another hand unseen was resting on the hot brow and feverish pulse of those wounded soldiers.