A little further on in the camp one comes upon an improvised Mohammedan mosque.  Five times a day a devout soldier calls the faithful to prayer, and on Friday about three-fourths of them come out to their voluntary service.  The Hindus, on the other hand, dependent upon ceremonial rites, without their temple or priest and with no organized public worship, have not a religion which holds them in such a vital grip in this distant land.

As you pass down the camp, the band is playing for the draft that is marching off to take its place in the trenches.  The last good-bys are being said and little groups are round the secretaries.  The stalwart Sikhs are wringing their hands or kneeling down to wipe the dust from their shoes, or thanking them with tears of gratitude.  They are great child-like men, simple of heart, affectionate, but lonely and homesick in a distant land.  Here is a man who was once a hard drinker, living an immoral life, but today he is keeping straight.  Here is another who has resolved to go back to India to lead a different life.  There were tears in the eyes of the secretaries themselves as they came back after bidding good-by to the draft, and there was compensation after long months of service in the gratitude of the men and in that inner voice which says, “I was a stranger and ye took me in.”

After Callan had launched the work among the Indian troops, he was called upon to open up the work at a large British base camp behind the lines in France.  Here, beside the vast drill ground where Napoleon used to marshal his troops, is a white city of tents, and between 100,000 and 200,000 men are always encamped there for training.

Life in the trenches for the moment drives men to God, but the life in a base camp is one of fierce and insidious temptation.  To hold the men in the face of such temptations, Callan has erected his buildings in the thirty principal centers of this base.  Here is a typical hut before us, built of plain pine boards, 120 feet long and 60 feet broad.  It accommodates from 2,000 to 3,000 men a day and is used by three-fourths of the men in the camp, by practically all, in fact, except those who are confined to their hospital beds.  These thirty huts will be filled all winter with an average of 60,000 men a day.  Each night at least 15,000 men will be gathered in meetings, lectures, and healthy entertainments.  Twice each week there are 12,000 men in attendance at religious meetings, and not a week passes without hundreds of decisions being made for the Christian life.  In the course of the year a million men will pass through these camps, or one-sixth of the manhood of the nation now marshalled under arms.  These are the men who are to be made or marred by life in the army, and who will go back to build the new empire in the great era of reconstruction that is to follow the war.

[Illustrations:  Wholesome and Entertaining; Home Refreshments in London.]