If I had my way I’d take all the best preachers in Britain and I’d put them down in France. And if the church and chapel goers grumbled, I’d say, “You’re overfed. You can do without a preacher for a little.” And if they were to ask, “How do you know?” I should reply, “Because it’s hard work to get you to one meal a week. You only come once on a Sunday and often not that. That’s how I know you are not enjoying your food.”
I love talking to the Scottish boys—the kilties. Oh! they are great boys—the kilties. When the French first saw them they didn’t know what they were, whether they were men or women.
“Don’t you know what they are?” said a bright-faced English boy. “They are what we call the Middlesex.”
You can’t beat a British boy, he’s on the spot all the time—“the Middlesex!” Some of you haven’t seen the joke yet.
I once went to a hut just behind the line, within the sound of the guns. Buildings all round us had been blown to pieces. The leader of this hut was a clergyman of the Church of England, but he wasn’t an ecclesiastic there, he was a man amongst men, and we loved him.
“Gipsy Smith,” he said, “I don’t know what you will do; the boys in the billets this week are the Munsters—Irish Roman Catholics. You would have got on all right last week; we had the York and Lancasters.”
“Do you think they will come to the meetings?”
“I don’t know,” he replied; “they come for everything else! They come for their smokes, candles, soap, buttons—bachelor’s buttons—postcards, and everything else they want. But whether they will come for the religious part, I don’t know.”
“Well,” I said, “we can but try.”