s gone. Then he used the other one. Then he did
a magnificent piece of service for which his name shall go down forever
in the memory of those lads. Forever shall he hold their affections in
the hollow of his hands. He proved to those boys that his sense of
service was greater than his prejudices. He kept three cigarettes
going for two days and two nights on the canteen beside him, smoking
them himself in order that that crowd of boys, coming and going into
the battle, in and out of the underground dugout, might have a light
for the cigarettes during the few moments of respite that they had from
the fight.

What a thrill went down the line when that news got to the boys out
there in the woods fighting. One boy told me that a fellow he told
wept when he heard it. Another said: "Good old ----! I knew he had
the guts!" Another said: "I'll say he's a man!" Another came in one
evening and said: "I'm going to quit cigarettes from now. If you're
that much of a man, you're worth listening to!" Another said: "If I
get out of this it's me for the church forever if it has that kind of
men in it!"

Is it any wonder that they brought their last letters to him before
they went into the trenches? Is it any wonder that they asked him for
a little prayer service one night before they went into the trenches?
Is it any wonder that they love him and swear by him?

Is it any wonder that when one of them was asked how they liked their
secretary, the boy said: "Great! He's a man!"

Is it any wonder that when another boy was asked if their secretary was
very religious, responded in his own language: "Yes, he's as religious
as hell, but he's a good guy anyhow!"

That kind of service will win anybody, and that is exactly the kind of
service that the boys of the American army, your boys, are getting all
over France from big, heroic, unprejudiced, fatherly, brotherly men,
who are willing to die for their boys as well as to live for them and
with them down where the shells are thickest and the dangers are
constant.

More than a hundred Y. M. C. A. men gassed and wounded to date, and
more than six killed. One friend of mine stepped down into his cellar
one morning, got a full breath of gas, and was dead in two minutes.
There had been a gas-raid the day before, and the gas had remained in
the cellar. Another I know stayed in his hut and served his men even
though six shell fragments came through the hut while he was doing it.