tely among the men of the new armies in
the autumn and winter of 1914 that the invasion of Belgium was the one
shocking stroke that rallied the country as one man, and that nothing
else in the situation, as it was known, would have done this. The people
as a whole did not grasp the imminence of the German menace. Of the
torturing pressure on the thin khaki line that barred the pass to the
sea we knew nothing. Day by day and night by night we were regaled with
stories of 'heavy German losses' and futile tales of the deaths of
German princes; neither our manhood nor our imagination was fully
captured, for of the almost unbelievable heroism of our brothers we were
never told. Perhaps the silence was justified; the enemy might have
learned how near they were to victory, and with a supreme effort have
broken through. At all events, unavoidably or not, the youth of the
country as a whole was never, throughout this winter, really roused to
its best. All the more honour to the first hundred thousand!

III

_Ubique_

After this war is over no soldier can ask 'What does the Christian
Church do for me?' The members of the Church, acting through its
organisation, or more frequently through other organisations of which
its members were the moving spirits, rose to the occasion nobly all over
the country. Glasgow was no exception. It did the Churches, too, much
good, teaching them to work together. Here is an example. The men were
lodged all over the city, two or three hundred in one hall, more than
that in another. In every instance arrangements were made for their
recreation and comfort. In a given district one congregation gave its
hall as a recreation room, another paid all expenses, a third supplied
a church officer for daily cleaning, the members joined in giving
magazines and papers, and in providing tea and coffee; the missionary of
one congregation held services, and all united in giving concerts. The
Y.M.C.A., which does not accept workers unless they are members of the
Christian Church, came on the scene and built a hut, through the
generosity of Mrs. Hunter Craig, in the barrack square.

On this, in the early months of 1915, there followed a revival of
religion among the Maryhill Barracks men, whose centre was the Y.M.C.A.
hut. This revival had the marks in it which we younger men had been told
were the marks of a true revival, but from which many had shrunk because
they were associated in our days with flaming adver