m the winter cold and the dreary
trenches in France to the little village on the plains of sunny India,
and the grateful hearts at both ends somehow dimly know that all this
silent ministry is in the name of the White Comrade who is the Friend
of man.

Here in France the hut must stand as the friendly home that gathers up
all the best traditions of Indian life. It takes the place of the
banyan tree in the heat of the day, the village well, and the meeting
place for the men in the cool of the evening. Even beyond all hopes it
has proved a potent factor for unity, harmony, and peace in a time of
unrest. It draws the British officers and the Indian men closer
together, and the Indian secretaries have served time and again as the
mediators between the two, who could so easily have misunderstood each
other. It provides a common meeting place between the caste-ridden and
divided Indians themselves, who had no other ground of unity.

Here are men of different languages and races and traditions, from the
Gurkhas, the brave little hill men, to the stalwart Pathans, who come
as fighting men from far beyond the borders of India for the sheer joy
of battle. The chances for supposed loot in the fabled wealth of the
West and the accumulation of merit by slaying the "unbelievers" of the
enemy, prove an added attraction to men born and bred in border
warfare. Here also are men of three separate creeds, who have often
fought with one another over the issues of their faiths--the big
bearded Sikhs, with a soldier's religion, the warlike Mohammedans, who
fight according to their Koran, and the caste-ridden Hindus.

As you walk among the tents the smoke of the fires hangs heavy over the
camp; there is the familiar sound of the bubbling rice pots, the smell
of pungent curry, the babel of many oriental tongues, and you seem to
be back in the very heart of India itself. We gather with the reverent
Sikhs for their religious worship. They meet morning and evening for
their prayer service, and turn out almost in a body for the weekly
Sunday meeting. The service consists principally of singing and the
reading of their sacred scripture, the Granth. Seated on the ground,
the men show deep reverence, and seem to have a sense of the presence
of God in their midst. Their religion has a real restraining influence
and there is at present little immorality amongst them.

A little further on in the camp one comes upon an improvised Mohammedan