'After all, it's nothing that one can talk much about,' he continued. 'I've become a Christian, that's all. But it's changed everything, everything!'

'How?'

'I find it difficult to tell you, sir; but after I'd got back from the Y.M.C.A. meeting I got hold of a New Testament, and for days I did nothing but read it. You see it was a new book to me.'

He hesitated a few seconds and then went on. 'Loss of memory is a curious thing, isn't it? I suppose I must have read it as a boy, just as nearly all other English boys have, but it was a strange book to me. I had not forgotten how to read, but I had forgotten what I had read. I seemed to remember having heard of some one called Jesus Christ, but He meant nothing to me. That was why the reading of the New Testament was such a revelation.'

'Well, go on,' I said when he stopped.

'Presently I began to pray,' and his voice quivered as he spoke. 'It was something new to me, but I did it almost unconsciously. You see, when I left the Y.M.C.A. hut, I had a consciousness that there was a God, but after I'd read the New Testament——; no I can't explain, I can't find words! But I prayed, and I felt that God was listening to me, and presently something new came into my life! It seemed to me as though some part of my nature which had been lying dormant leapt into life. I looked at things from a new standpoint. I saw new meanings in everything. I knew that I was no longer an orphan in the world, but that an Almighty, All-pervading God was my Father. That He cared for me, that nothing was outside the realm of His love. I saw what God was like, too. As I read that story of Jesus, and opened my life to Him, my whole being was flooded with the consciousness that He cared for me, that He watched me, and protected me. I saw, too, that there was no death to the man in whom Christ lived. That the death of the body was nothing because the man, the essential man lived on,—where I did not know, did not care, because God was.'

He looked across the sunlit sea as he spoke, and I think he had almost forgotten me.

'I had an awful time though,' he went on.

'How? In what way?'

'It was when I read the Sermon on the Mount. I could not for a time see how a Christian could be a soldier. The whole idea of killing men seemed a violation of Christianity.'

'It is,' I said.

'Yes, in a way you are right, and when I read those words of the Lord telling us that we must love our enemies, and bless them that cursed us, I was staggered. Where could there be any Christianity in great guns hurling men by the thousand into eternity?'

'There isn't,' I persisted.

'That's what I believed at first, but I got deeper presently. I saw that I had only been looking at the surface of things.'

'How?' I asked. I was curious to see how this man who had forgotten his past would look at things.

'I found after a daily study of this great Magna Charta of Jesus
Christ, that He meant us to live by the law of love.'

'There's not much living by the law of love over yonder,' I said, nodding in the direction of the Somme.

'Yes there is,' he cried. 'Oh, I realize the apparent anomaly of it all, but don't you see? It wouldn't be living by the law of love to allow Germany to master the world by brute force! This was the situation. Prussianism wanted to dominate the world. The Germans wanted to dethrone mercy, pity, kindness, love, and to set up a god who spoke only by big guns. They wanted to rule the world by brute force, devilry. Now then, what ought Christians to do? It would be poor Christianity, it would be poor love to the world, to allow the devil to reign.

'You see,' he went on, 'Christ's law is, not only that we must love our enemies, but we must love our neighbours too. We must live for the overthrow of wrong and the setting up of His Kingdom of truth, and mercy, and love. But how? Here were Germany's rulers who were bent on forcing war. They were moral madmen. They believed only in force. For forty years they had been feeding on the poison of the thought that might was right, and that it was right to do the thing you could do.'

'And what is war but accepting that idea. It is simply overcoming force by force. Where does Christianity come in?'

'You don't argue with a mad dog,' he said. 'You kill it. It's best for the dog, and it's essential for the good of the community. Germany's a mad dog, and this virus of war must be overcome, destroyed. Oh, I've thought it all out. I believe in prayer. But it's no use praying for good health while you live over foul drains, and it's just as little praying for the destruction of such a system while you do nothing. God won't do for us what we can do for ourselves. That's why this is a holy war! That's why we must fight until Prussianism is overthrown. We are paying a ghastly price, but it has to be paid. All the same, we are fighting this war in the wrong way.'

'How?' I asked.

'Because we've forgotten God. Because, to a large extent, we regard Him too much as a negligible quantity; because we have become too much poisoned with the German virus.'

'I don't follow,' I said.

'I will try to make my meaning plain. In this war we have the greatest, the holiest cause man ever fought for. We are struggling for the liberty, the well-being of the world. We are fighting God's cause; but we are not fighting it in God's way. We are fighting as if there were no God.'

'How?'

'We started wrongly. Were our soldiers made to realize when they joined the Army that they were going to fight for God? Did the country, the Government ever tell them so? Oh, don't mistake me. I am a private soldier, and I've lived with the Tommies for a long time, and I know what kind of chaps they are. A finer lot of fellows never lived. Braver than lions, and as tender as women many of them; but does God count with the great bulk of them? Is Tommy filled with a passion for God? Is he made to feel the necessity of God? Does Tommy depend primarily on God for victory?'

'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?'

'He describes the battle of Waterloo. He says that Napoleon by every
human law ought to have won it. But Hugo says this: "Napoleon lost
Waterloo because God was against him." That's why Germany didn't take
Ypres, and rush through to Calais. That's why they'll lose this war.'

'And yet the Germans are always saying that God is on their side. They go to battle singing—

"A safe stronghold our God is still."'

'Yes, they are like the men in the time of Christ who said "Lord, Lord," and did not the things he said. I tell you, sir, if we had fought in God's strength, and obeyed God's commands, the war would have been over by now. German militarism would have been crushed and the world would be at peace.'

'Nonsense,' I replied with a laugh.

'It's not nonsense. This, as it seems to me, is the case: We are fighting God's cause, but God counts but very little. We are not laying hold of His Omnipotence; we are trusting entirely in big guns, while God is forgotten. That is why the war drags on. I tell you,' and his voice quivered with passion, 'what I am afraid of is this. This ghastly carnage will drag on, with all its horrors; homes will be decimated, lives will be sacrificed all because we believe more in material things than in spiritual things. More in the devil than in God. I think sometimes that God will not allow us to win because we are not worthy.'

'Come now,' I said, 'it is very easy to speak in generalities about such a question; but tell me how, in a practical way, faith in God, and religious enthusiasm would help us to win this war?'

'How?' he cried. 'Don't you see that in addition to what I will call the spiritual power which would come through faith in, and obedience to the will of God, you add a practical, human force? Let there be this faith, this enthusiasm, and the people, the soldiers, would be ready for anything. Our workpeople would cease going on strike, employers and tradespeople would no longer be profiteers, grumbling and disunity would cease. We should all unitedly throw ourselves, heart and soul into this great struggle, and nothing could withstand us.'

'But tell me why we are not worthy of victory, now,' I urged.