I said to the nurse, “Nurse, what’s the trouble?” and she said, “Sir,
her mind has given way. Before the war she had five handsome sons, and
one by one they have been killed, and now she spends her time counting
over her boys and weeping.”
And all that is for you and for me! What sort of people ought we to be,
do you suppose? Are we really worth—_that_?
* * * * *
I was talking to some Canadians one night—and the Canadians are fine
boys. I was putting my foot on the platform, just about to begin, when a
bright young Canadian touched me and said, “Say, boss, can _you_ shoot
quick?” and I replied,
“Yes, and straight.”
“Well,” he said, “you’ll do.”
I had a great time with those fellows. Hundreds of those Canadian boys
stood up to say, “God helping me, I am going to lead a better
life!”—hundreds of them. And then I put another test to them. “I
want you all to promise,” I said, “that you’ll kneel down and say your
prayers to-night in the billet, and those of you who will promise to do
that come up and shake hands with me as you go out.” I was kept one
half-hour shaking hands.
Now, there were nine fellows sleeping in one billet and not one knew the
other eight had been to the meeting. They all got mixed up, but all the
nine came up to shake hands, and the one that got back to billets first
told the story afterwards. This one had made up his mind he would kneel
down and say his prayers, but when he returned he found there was no one
there. Somehow he felt different then—he felt he couldn’t do it. He was
more afraid of nobody than he would have been of somebody. Then just
suppose the others came back and found him kneeling there!
“I funked it,” he said. “I got under the blanket, and tried to say my
prayers under the blanket, but it wouldn’t work. Then I heard one man
come into the room, then two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.
And the eighth man was the champion swearer of the company.”
“Boys,” said this man, “did you hear him?”
“Yes,” they said, “we heard him.”
And the little chap under the blanket said “Yes” too.
“Well, I shook hands with that man, and I promised him for my mother’s
sake that I’d kneel down and say my prayers to-night.”
And the little chap under the blanket jumped up, blanket and all, and
said, “So did I. I’m with you.”
And the others said, “So did we.”
“Well,” the last comer said, “the best thing we can do is to kneel down
now and say a little prayer.”
So they all knelt down, and they each said a little prayer—I wish I had
a record of those prayers—and they finished up with “Our Father.”
Then the champion swearer said, “Boys, I’ve cut it all out: no more
drink—not another drop.”
And they said, “All right, we are with you. We’ll cut it out.”
Then he said, “I’ve cut something else out. No more swearing.”
Eighty-five times out of every hundred that the boys in France use a
swear-word they mean no more than I do when I say, “Great Scott.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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