I have had your boys say to me, “Gipsy, does it mean Blighty, or does it mean West?” I have had to say to some of them, “It doesn’t mean Blighty.”
A sister took me to see one dear fellow. He was blown up by a mine, both his legs and his arm were broken.
“I was lying out there, after the mine blew up, for twenty-four hours, and I was half buried,” he told me.
Fancy lying out there in No Man’s Land for twenty-four hours with both legs broken and an arm!
I said, “Sonny, you have had a rough time.”
And this was his reply: “They copped me, worse luck, before I had a pot at them.”
You can’t beat these boys of yours, the nation’s boys, the best boys of our homes, the flower of our manhood, the noblest and the dearest that God ever gave to a people. These boys, they are worth everything in the world, and there is nothing you and I can do will ever repay them for what they are doing for you and for me.
When the great end of the day comes, the greatest joy of all will be the joy of knowing you have tried to make somebody else’s life happy. It is the flowers that you have made grow in unlikely places that will tell—not how much money you have made, not how big a house you have lived in, not how popular you were in the world of letters, of science, of finance, but—how many burdens have you lifted? How many dark hearts have you lightened? You can’t do too much for your boys. Remember what they are doing for you. Remember the lives that are being laid down for you.