E-text prepared by Al Haines Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 18325-h.htm or 18325-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/3/2/18325/18325-h/18325-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/3/2/18325/18325-h.zip) WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE by SHERWOOD EDDY Author of "Suffering and the War," "The Students of Asia," etc. [Frontispiece: The American Y.M.C.A. Headquarters in Paris.] Association Press New York: 124 East 28Th Street 1917 Copyright, 1917, by The International Committee of Young Men's Christian Association To M. H. E. AND THE REAL HEROES OF THE WAR THE MOTHERS WHO HAVE GIVEN THEIR SONS AND THE WIVES WHO HAVE GIVEN THEIR HUSBANDS CONTENTS CHAPTER FOREWORD I. AT THE FRONT II. WITH GENERAL PERSHING'S FORCE IN FRANCE III. A DAY IN THE "BULL RING" IV. WITH THE BRITISH ARMY V. LIFE IN A BASE CAMP VI. THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS VII. RELIGION AT THE FRONT VIII. THE WORLD AT WAR ILLUSTRATIONS The American Y.M.C.A. Headquarters in Paris . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ The "Eagle Hut" in London Harry Lauder Singing at a Y.M.C.A. Meeting. The officer seated at the extreme right is Captain "Peg" Wholesome and Entertaining, Home Refreshments in London Three Thousand Soldiers in the Crowded Hut FOREWORD The world is at war. Already more than a score of nations, representing a population of over a thousand millions, or two-thirds of the entire human race, are engaged in a life-and-death struggle on the bloody battlefields of Europe, Asia, and Africa. No man can stand in the mouth of that volcano on a battle front, or meet the trains pouring in with their weary freight of wounded after a battle, or stand by the operating tables and the long rows of cots in the hospitals, or share in sympathy the hardship and suffering of the men who are fighting for us, and remain unmoved. The man must be dead of soul to whom the war does not present a mighty moral challenge. It arraigns our past manner of life and our very civilization. It gives us a new angle of observation, a new point of view, a new test of values. It furnishes a possible moral judgment by which we can weigh our life in the balance and see where we have been found wanting. These brief sketches are only fragmentary and have of necessity been hastily written. The writer has been asked to state his impression of the work among the men in France. He did not go there to write but to work. He has tried simply to state what he saw and to leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. A mere statement of the grim facts at the front, if they are not sugar-coated or glossed over, may not be pleasant reading, but it is unfair to those at home that they should not know the hard truth of the reality of things as they are.