y for a
month, searching for a house that wasn't damaged, a window that wasn't
broken, and I never found one. The whole of that city will have to be
rebuilt. A glorious cathedral, a magnificent pile of municipal buildings,
all in ruins; the Grande Place, a meeting-place for the crowned heads of
Europe, gone! "Thou hast made of a city a heap"--a heap of rubbish. _Your_
city would have been like that but for the boys in khaki.

I was saying my prayers in a corner of an old broken chateau, the Y.M.C.A.
headquarters for that centre, with my trench-coat buttoned tight and my
big muffler round my ears. Presently I heard some one say--one of the
workers--"A gentleman wants to see you, sir," and when I got downstairs
there was a General, a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Star of India man--a glorious
man, a beautiful character. He was there with his Staff-captain, and he
said,

"I've come to invite you to dinner to-morrow night, Mr. Smith. I want you
to come to the officers' mess."

"What time, sir?" I asked. "I cannot miss my meeting at half-past six with
the boys."

"Well, the mess will be at half-past seven. We will arrange that."

"Before you go, sir, I should like to ask why you are interested in me."

"Well, I'll tell you, if you wish," he said. "Men are writing home to
their wives, mothers, sweethearts, and they are talking about a new power
in their lives. 'We have got something that is helping us to go straight
and play the game,' they write. And so," said the General, "we should like
to have a chat with you."

I went the next night, and for an hour and a half I preached the Gospel to
those officers. It was a great chance; and it was the result of the
note-paper which I have sometimes given out for an hour and a half at a
time to your boys.

There are lots of people think you are not doing any spiritual work unless
you are singing, "Come to Jesus." Put more Jesus in every bit of the day's
business. Jesus ought to be as real in the city as in the temple. If I
read my New Testament aright, and if I know God, and if I know humanity,
and if I know Nature, then that is God's programme. God's programme is
that the whole of life should be permeated with Christ.

God bless the women who have gone out to help your boys. Women of title,
of wealth and position, serving God and humanity behind tea-tables.

In one of our huts I saw a lady standing beside two urns--coffee and tea.
She was pouring out, and there were 150 or 200 men