Here is M——­, a young sergeant, who came up after the meeting, with tears in his eyes.  “Sir,” he said, “I was never drunk but once in my life, when my pals were home on leave, and that once, under the influence of drink, I fell.  Here I am in the hospital, yet I am engaged to a little girl at home who is as white as snow.  What is my duty in the matter?” He has accepted Christ and is a changed man.

Oh, it is a wonderful sight to see men transformed by this inward moral miracle, wrought by the touch of the living God.  Here in the very center of this venereal camp stands the Y M C A, endeavoring to meet their every need, and even here the red triangle shines with the hope of a new manhood for body, mind, and spirit.  Every day at the hour of opening there is a scurry of feet as the men rush in to the one center in the whole camp where they can congregate.  Martin Harvey has just been here to cheer them up, and they were enthusiastic over a fine lecture and recital last night on Chopin.  The Colonel in command takes particular pride in the Y M C A for his men, and states that crime among them has been reduced ninety per cent since it started.

But even greater than the privilege which the Association has in ministering to the fallen, is its work of prevention in the other camps.  Just up the road is a swearing old major in command of a unit which has always had the worst record for immorality and disease of any camp on the plain.  He finally came in and demanded a Y M C A hut for his men.  A few weeks later he came to the Association headquarters and said, in punctuated language which could not be printed, “For a year and a half my camp has led all the rest as the worst in venereal disease, with some twenty-five fresh cases every week.  The first week after the Y M C A was opened we had only ten cases, the next week six, the third week only two, and it has not risen above that since.  Your Association is the ——­ best cure for this evil.”

Nothing less than reaching the whole man can meet this gigantic problem.  You must take physical precautions and build up a strong, clean, athletic body.  Better than all repressive rules and regulations, you must provide healthy and happy occupation for the minds of the men.  But beyond the reach of medical and military restrictions you have got to grip and strengthen their spiritual and moral nature.  Otherwise, in the artificial and unnatural conditions consequent upon a vast concentration of men in a foreign land, away from all home influences, and in the poisonous atmosphere of a land of “regulated” immorality, where the government still regards it as a “necessary evil,” you must see your men fall in ranks before the machine guns of commercialized vice, controlled by the vested interests, or fall a prey to the harpies who walk the streets.  In the face of all this we must lay bold claim to the whole of manhood for God and for the high ends for which it was created.