We agree with Donald Hankey that the appetites hold dominion over the average man, whether civilian or soldier.  We do not wish to make any sweeping generalizations or accusations.  We have no means of knowing how many men are immoral in peace time, as we have in war time.  We only know that conditions of ordinary times are intensified, aggravated, and multiplied; and they are revealed in war time as never before, and thrown upon the screen of the public gaze.  The writer also desires to guard against any possible impression that the British army is worse than our own or any other.  It is too early to know what record our men will make, but we find it difficult to believe that they could have maintained a higher standard if placed in equal numbers in the same circumstances.

But to return to our meeting.  Every one of these eight hundred men in this audience has a history.  Tired or hardened or haggard faces are relaxed as they join in singing the hymns on this Sunday evening, “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” “Lead, Kindly Light,” “Tell Me the Old, Old Story,” and “Where is my Wandering Boy Tonight?” There is a tragedy in every heart, and each man has experienced the bitterness of sin and bears its scars branded in his body.  Look into the faces of some of these men.  Here in front, this very first one, is an American cowboy from Texas, Frank B——.  As a “broncho-buster” he became the star rider in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and was finally adopted as his son.  At the age of fifteen he started to go wrong in New Orleans.  At an early age he joined the American army, and later, at the outbreak of the war, he served in the Flying Corps of the British army.  Here he broke a leg and was smashed up in action.  After that he joined an infantry division.  In one of the meetings this week he accepted Christ.  He has since been standing firm and goes out tomorrow to begin a new life.  Near him is a young theological student with a sad look on his face, who has learned here in bitterness the deepest lesson of his life.  Next to him is a heartbroken married man with a wife and children at home.

After the crowd has assembled, we speak to them of Christ as the Maker of Men.  We tell them of the transformation of others like themselves, of Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Loyola and the saints of old, of John B. Gough, Jerry McAuley, Hadley, and the men of Water Street whom God raised out of the depths, and of men right in their midst who have come out for Christ in the meetings this week.  After speaking for an hour, we go into the Y M C A for an after-meeting.