I shall not say much of the Y.M.C.A. They need no encomium of mine,
but I am prepared to stand by them to the last ditch. They were doing,
not talking, and were wise enough to use even those agents whom they
knew to be imperfect, as God Himself does when He uses us. The folly
of judging for all cases by one standard is common and human, but it
is not God's way. This conviction was brought home to me in a very odd
manner. I had gone to lecture at an English Y.M.C.A. hut at the
invitation of the efficient director, who knew me only for a "medical
missionary." On my arrival he most hospitably took me to the cupboard
which he called "his rooms." It was a raw, cold night, and among other
efforts to show his gratitude for my help, to my amazement he offered
me "a drop of Scotch." Astonishment so outran good-breeding that I
unwittingly let him perceive it. "I am not a regular 'Y' man, Major,"
he explained. "I'm an Australian, and was living on my little pile
when the war began. They turned me down each place I volunteered on
account of my age. But I was crazy to do my bit, and I offered to work
with the Y.M.C.A. as a stopgap. The War Office has commandeered so
many of their men that they had to take me to 'carry on.' I'm afraid
I'm a poor apology, but I'm doing my best."
The freedom from convention lent another peculiar charm to the life in
France. The mess sergeant of a headquarters where I was dining one
night, close behind the lines, presented the colonel with a
beautifully illustrated monograph on a certain unmentionable and
unwelcome member of war camps and trench life. The beautiful work and
the evidences of scientific training led me to ask who the mess
sergeant might have been in civil life. "Professor of Biology at the
University of ----," was the reply.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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