with
nothing but his bayonet and rifle. They had surrounded his captain,
and were rushing him back as a prisoner. They evidently had orders to
take the officers alive as prisoners. That big top-sergeant sailed
into them, and after killing two of them, knocking two more down, and
giving his captain a chance to escape, the last German shot him through
the head. He gave his life for the captain. That has changed me. I
shall never be the same again after seeing that happen. There's
something come into my heart. I'm going back home a Christian man."

Yes, America must learn to see beyond the darkness, beyond the
disfigured face, to the soul of the boy. And America will do it.
America is like that. And so back of these shaking bodies and these
stuttering tongues of the shell-shocked boys I saw their wonderful
souls. And after spending that two hours with them I can never be the
same man again.

I could, as Donald Hankey says, "get down on my knees and shine their
boots for them any day," and thank God for the privilege. I think that
this is the spirit of any non-combatant in France who has any immediate
contact with our men on the battle-front or in the hospitals. They are
so brave and so true.

"How do the Americans stand dressing their wounds and the suffering in
the hospitals?" a friend of mine asked a prominent surgeon.

"They bear their suffering like Frenchmen. That is the highest
compliment I can pay them," he replied.

And so back of their wounds are their immortal, undying, unflinching
souls. And back of the tremblings of these boys that night, thank God,
I had the glory of seeing their immortal souls, and to me the soul of
an American boy under fire and pain is the biggest, finest, most
tremendous thing on earth. I bow before it in humility. It dazzled
mine eyes. All I could think of as I saw it was:

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

That night I said, just before I left: "Boys, it's Sunday evening, and
they wouldn't let you come to my meeting! Would you like for me to
have a little prayer with you?"

"Yes! Sure! That's just what we want!" were the stammered words that
followed.

"All right; we'll just stand, if it's easier for you."

Then I prayed the prayer that had been burning in my heart every minute
as we stood there in that dimly lit ward, talking of home and battle
and the folks we all loved across the seas. All that time there had
been hover