With Our Soldiers in France

by Sherwood Eddy

We have had them forty minutes now and many a man is listening as for his life. We hold up the pledge card of the war roll. "How many of you are willing to take your stand against drink, gambling, and impurity, to break away from sin, and to sign the war roll, which says: 'I pledge my allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour and King, by God's help to fight His battles and bring victory to His Kingdom'? Who will take his stand for Christ and sign tonight?" Here and there all over the house men begin to rise. A hundred come forward to get cards and sign them. Then every head is bowed and in the stillness we pray for these boys; for they are mere lads, with ruddy checks, fresh from the farm or the city.

Now the meeting breaks up and we move down into the crowd. Men come up and ask for private talks, some to confess their sins and others to request prayer. Here is a boy who is friendless and homeless and in need; the next man has just lost his wife, his home, and his money, but here in the war he has been driven to prayer and has found God. He has lost everything, but he tells us with a brave smile that he has gained all, and now wishes to prepare for the ministry to preach the Gospel. Next is a young atheist, an illegitimate child, a circus actor, who has now found God and wants to know how to relate his life to Christ. The next man is a jockey, who in the midst of his sins enlisted in order that he might die for others and try to atone for his past life.

Later, we were holding evangelistic meetings among the boys of another regiment. One Sunday evening we were in a big hut where the meeting was about to begin. Many of the men were writing to the old folks at home. Captain "Peg" of Canada, who was with us to lead the singing, stepped on the platform and announced a hymn. Immediately several hundred men flocked to the seats and began singing the Christian hymns they knew at home. Eyes lit up and faces were aglow as they sang "Nearer, My God, to Thee," "Lead, Kindly Light," and "Fight the Good Fight." Gradually the numbers increased until a thousand men were singing. Then we began the address. Here were open-hearted boys some of whom had gone down before the temptations of the port cities and who now have to face the dangers of a camp in France. We began on moral themes. Within half an hour it seemed as if the better nature of every man was with us. The Christian ideals of home, of the Church, and of their own best selves surged up again, until we had seated and standing nearly twelve hundred men, many of whom were ready to make the fight for purity with the help of Jesus Christ. One can never forget that closing hymn as the men rose to sing "God Be With You Till We Meet Again." We saw tear-stained faces before us as nearly the whole company joined in the song "Tell Mother I'll Be There."

Here was one poor fellow who felt he could not sign the decision card. He sent up this little note: "I am the worst man in the tent—a man who robbed his old father of his life's savings. How can I hope to be any good again without any prospect of ever being able to repay this money?" But before he left he had accepted God's forgiveness, and the dawn of a new eternity breaks upon his happy face. There was another man, the worst character in the regiment. Finally, touched by the secretary's kindness, he had read his little pocket Testament in prison, had yielded his life to Christ, and was now witnessing among the soldiers in the camp. Another, broken down, came up to say he had wronged a girl at home, and to ask if there was any hope for him. The last man, Bob A——, serving at present with a British regiment, tells us he was a Christian in Cleveland, Ohio, before the war. He lay all last night drunk in the fields, but, convicted of his profligate life, he repented and turned back again to God. There was another boy who stopped to tell us that ever since a previous meeting he had knelt in prayer every night before all the men.

At the close of the meeting another man stepped up and handed in a letter, saying: "Thank you for that message tonight, sir. I will be true to the little girl I left at home. Here is a letter I had just written to a bad woman. God helping me I will not go. I have signed the War Roll tonight and I am going to be true to it." Hundreds of men filed past and shook hands in gratitude.

We were facing an average of some five hundred men every night in the week and a thousand or more on Sunday. One humble private who had been a pilot out at sea, handed us a poem which he had just written, the last lines of which are typical of the verses many of the men are writing these days:

"And if I fall, Lord, take an erring mortal
Into those realms of peace and joy above;
And, by-and-by, at Thy fair mansion's portal,
Let me find there the little girl I love."

In all our meetings our aim has been to enable men to find themselves by coming into a personal and vital relation with God as Father, through Jesus Christ. Our purpose is to evangelize, but not to proselytize. We aim to make each man more loyal to his own church. During the three years of the war, we have never known of a man changing his church or being asked to do so. Our aim is not to change any man's ecclesiastical position, but to make him a truer and stronger man in the church where he is. The great outstanding issue in war time is not between creed and creed, between sect and sect, but between God and mammon, between right and wrong, purity and impurity. We have no contention concerning the questions that divide us; we are fighting for the great fundamentals upon which we are all united, for God and moral manhood.

[1] According to the War Bulletin of the National Geographic Society, issued in Washington in September 1917, a first class American private drawing $26.60 a month receives more than a Russian colonel or a German or Austrian lieutenant. An American lieutenant receives more than a British lieutenant colonel, a French colonel, or a Russian general.

[2] See Appendix IV.