Your Boys Part 5
"Do you, boys?" I ask them.
"No, sir," they invariably reply.
"Well, then, why do you use these swear-words?"
And then I've got them and, out of their own mouths, they are condemned. I tell them it is bad form, and I say, "Cut it out."
These boys made a solemn compact that night that the first man who swore should clean all nine guns, and before the week was out my champion was cleaning nine guns.
But those eight boys didn't go back on him. They were sporty.
I have seen a little bird's nest all broken with the wind and torn with the storm, and two or three little eggs, with a few wet leaves over them, addled and cold and forsaken, and my little gipsy heart cried over those poor little motherless things, for I was motherless too. And up in a tree I have heard a thrush singing the song of a seraph and I have said, as I looked at the eggs, "You would have been singers too, but you were forsaken."
These boys-they did not forsake their chum. They said, "Buck up, old boy.
We'll help you."
"No," he said. "This is my job."
So they stood by him and cheered him on. People, I say again, don't die of overmuch love, but for the want of a bit of it. These boys stood by my champion swearer, and when he was putting the polishing touches on the last gun he stood up, his face radiant, like a man that has fought a battle and won: "Boys, this is the last gun I shall clean for anybody under these conditions, because, G.o.d helping me, I'm going to see this thing through."
And he _is_ seeing it through.
I was at a home for limbless men the other day-there are over one hundred and eighty of them in that home. I held my hand out to shake hands with the first two men I met, and they laughed at me. I looked down for their hands-they hadn't got one between them! I took the face of one of those dear boys and I patted it. I wanted to kiss it with grat.i.tude. I wonder how you feel!
I walked round amongst those boys-one hundred and eighty limbless! I found one boy without legs and without an arm. He was just a trunk, and his comrades, those who could, were carrying him around. He was the sunshine in the whole place-not a grouse. They are doing no grousing-your boys there. When they see you they just say, "Cheerio."
A friend of mine, a minister, went to see one of these boys, and he was wondering what he could say to him; he thought he had got to cheer him up.
The boy looked at the padre and said,
"Guv'nor, don't get down-hearted. I am going to make money out of this job. Why, I shall only want a pair of trousers with one leg, and I shall only want a coat with one sleeve, and I shall only want a pair of boots with one boot."
It reminds me of the question I once asked: "Sonny, what struck you most when you got in the trenches?" and the reply came sharp,
"A bit of shrapnel."
Another of your boys, just picked up in the trenches by those tender fellows, the stretcher-bearers, those men with the hands of a woman and with the heart of a mother-G.o.d bless them!-called out as they came to him, "_Home, John_." And when he was pa.s.sing the officer and they were carrying him into the Red Cross train, he cried, "_Season_." He had two gold stripes already. That's the spirit of your boys.
There was a dear old Scotchman from Aberdeen. A telegram had come to that granite city to say that his boy was badly wounded, and he ran all the way to the station and jumped into a train without stopping to put on a collar. You don't think of collars when your boys are dying. I saw him when he landed. It was my job to help him. The dear old fellow was just in time to see his boy die-and afterwards he came and laid his head on my shoulder and he sobbed. And I wept too. He was seventy.
Presently he said, "It will be hard to go home and tell mother that her only boy has gone, but I've got a message for her. 'Father,' my boy said, 'tell mother I am not afraid to die. I have found Jesus. Tell mother that.'"
There are some people who think you are not doing Christian work unless you have a hymn-book in one hand and a Bible in the other and are singing, "Come to Jesus." I am glad I haven't to live with that kind of people. I call them the Lord's Awkward Squad.
If you take "firstly," "secondly," "thirdly," out to the front with you, by the time you get to thirdly the boys will be in the trenches. I never take an old sermon out with me to France. I write my prescription after I've seen my patients.
I was talking to a thousand boys one day. "Boys," I said, "how many of you have written to your mother this week?"
Now, that's a proper question. I wonder what would happen if the preacher stopped in his sermon next Sunday morning and said, "Have you paid your debts this week?" "In what sort of a temper did you come down to breakfast this morning?"
If a man's religion does not get into every detail of his life he may profess to be a saint, but he's a fraud. Religion ought to permeate life and make it beautiful-as lovely as a breath of perfume from the garden of the Lord.
The boys have given me the privilege of talking straight to them. "If you don't write, you know what you'll get," I said, and I began to give out the note-paper. I can give boys writing-paper and envelopes and sell them a cup of coffee or a packet of cigarettes with as much religion as I can stand in a pulpit and talk about them. Why, my Master washed people's feet and cooked a breakfast for hungry fishermen. He kindled the fire with the hands that were nailed to a tree for humanity. There are no secular things if you are in the spirit of the Master-they are all Divine.
I went on dealing the note-paper out, and presently a clergyman came to me and said, "Gipsy Smith, a man in my room wants to see you."
When I got there, I saw he was crying, sobbing.
"I am not a kid," he said; "I am a man. I'm forty-one. You told me to write to my mother. Read that," he said, throwing down a letter; and this is what I read:
"MY DEAR MOTHER, "It's seven years since I wrote you last. I've done my best to break your heart and to turn your hair grey. I've lived a bad life, but it's come to an end. I have given my heart to G.o.d. I won't ask you to believe me, or to forgive me. I deserve neither. But I ask for a bit of time that I may prove my sincerity.
"Your boy still, "JACK."
"Shall I put a bit at the bottom for a postscript?" I asked. "But first of all, let us pray."
We got on our knees, and I said, "You begin."
"I'm not used to it," he replied.
"Begin; never mind how. Did you ever pray?"
"Yes," he said; "I prayed as a child."
"Start with that, then-He loves cradle faith."
It took him some time, but presently he began with his mother's prayer, "Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me." When he got to the third line there was a big lump in his throat and one in mine, and then he gave me a dig with his elbow and said, "You'll have to finish"-and I finished.
I put my postscript to that letter. "G.o.d has saved him," I wrote. "Believe him. Write and tell him you forgive him."
And when that mother got that she knew that giving out note-paper was religion.
I was in a cemetery just behind the lines, walking among the graves of our dear lads who have fallen, and weeping for those at home who weep over graves that they will never see. There I found an old soldier who had been to the woods and had cut a big bundle of box tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. He was setting a little border of box round the graves.
"But," I said to him, "they won't strike. It's not the right time of year-and the ground's too dry."
"I know, sir," he said, "but it will look as if somebody cares."
G.o.d's jewels lie deep, and if you will dig deep enough you will find them-so I took the trouble to dig a little deeper. I said, "n.o.body will see them here."
"Yes, sir, the angels will. You taught me to think like this in one of the meetings in the huts, and since I can't do any more in the fight"-for he was disabled-"I am putting in my time caring for the boys' graves, and if the wives and mothers don't see them-well"-and his face lit up with a radiance that I can't put into words-"the angels will, sir."