'Well, do we depend on God for victory?' I asked. 'If God is not with us we are lost!' he said solemnly. 'And that's our trouble. I've read a good many of our English papers, our leading daily papers, and one might think from reading them that either there was no God, or that He didn't count. "How are we to win this war, and crush Germanism?" is the cry, and the answer of the British Government and of the British press is, "Big guns, mountains of munitions, conscription, national service, big battalions, and still more big battalions!"' 'Well, isn't that the only way to win? What can we do without these things?' I asked. 'Big guns by all means. Mountains of munitions certainly, and all the other things; but they are not enough. If we forget God, we are lost. And because we do not seek the help of God, we lose a great part of our driving power.' He was in deadly earnest. To him Christianity, religion was not some formal thing, it was a great vital reality. He could not understand faith in God, without seeking Him and depending on Him. 'We have chaplains,' I urged. 'We are supposed to be a Christian people.' 'Yes, but do we depend on God? Do we seek Him humbly? When Tommy goes into battle, does he go into it like Cromwell's soldiers determined to fight in God's strength? Oh, yes, Tommy is a grand fellow, take him as a whole, and there are tens of thousands of fine Christians in the Army. But in the main Tommy is a fatalist; he does not pray, he does not depend on God. I tell you, if this battle of the Somme were fought in the strength of God, the Germans would have fled like sheep.' 'That's all nonsense,' I laughed. 'We can destroy brute force only by brute force.' 'That's the German creed,' he cried, 'and that creed will be their damnation.' 'No,' I said, more for the sake of argument than because I believed it, 'we shall beat them because we are better men, and because we shall be able to "stick it" longer.' 'Have you been to Ypres?' he asked quickly. 'No,' I replied. 'I have. I was there for months. I read the accounts of the Ypres battles while I was there, and I was able to study the _terrain_, the conditions. And Germany ought to have won. Germany _would_ have won too, if force was the deciding power. Why, think, they had four men to our one, and a greater proportion of big guns and munitions. Humanly speaking, the battle was theirs and then Calais was theirs and they could dominate the Channel. But it is "Not by might, nor by power; but by My Spirit, said the Lord of Hosts." I tell you, Sir, no one can read the inwardness of the battles of Ypres without believing in Almighty God. By the way, did you ever read Victor Hugo's _Les Miserables_?' 'Years ago. What has that to do with it?'