well
quickly and going back to his regiment.

I was let down rather badly once or twice by men who were anxious to
play for the service, but turned out to be capable of no more than
three or four hymns, played by ear, sometimes in impossible keys. I
became cautious and used to question volunteers carefully beforehand.
One man who offered himself seemed particularly diffident and
doubtful about his ability to play what I wanted. I asked him at last
whether he had ever played any instrument, organ or harmonium, at a
Church of England service.

"Oh yes, sir, often," he said. "Before the war I was assistant
organist at ----."

He named a great English cathedral, one justly famous for its music.
The next Sunday and for several Sundays afterwards our music was a
joy. My friend was one of those rare people who play in such a way
that every one present feels compelled to sing.

Looking back over the time I spent in France, it seems as if a long
procession of interesting and splendid men passed by me. They came
from every rank of society, from many processions and trades.

There were rich men among them, a few, and very many poor men. I have
witnessed the signature of a private in a north of England regiment
to papers concerned with the transfer of several thousand pounds from
one security to another. I have helped to cash cheques for men with
large bank balances. I have bought crumpled and very dirty penny
stamps from men who otherwise would not have been able to pay for the
cup of cocoa or the bun they wanted.

There were men in trouble who came to me with letters in their hands
containing news from home which brought tears to their eyes and mine.
There were men--wonderfully few of them--with grievances, genuine
enough very often, but impossible to remove.

There were men with all sorts of religious difficulties, with simple
questions on their lips about the problems which most of us have
given up as insoluble on this side of the grave. We met. There was a
swiftly formed friendship, a brief intimacy, and then they passed
from that camp, their temporary resting-place, and were caught again
into the intricate working of the vast machine of war.

We were "ships that pass in the night and speak one another in
passing." The quotation is hackneyed almost beyond enduring, but it
is impossible to express the feeling better. Efforts to carry on a
correspondence afterwards generally ended in failure. A letter or two
was writ