ds of men
filed past and shook hands in gratitude.

We were facing an average of some five hundred men every night in the
week and a thousand or more on Sunday. One humble private who had been
a pilot out at sea, handed us a poem which he had just written, the
last lines of which are typical of the verses many of the men are
writing these days:

"And if I fall, Lord, take an erring mortal
Into those realms of peace and joy above;
And, by-and-by, at Thy fair mansion's portal,
Let me find there the little girl I love."

In all our meetings our aim has been to enable men to find themselves
by coming into a personal and vital relation with God as Father,
through Jesus Christ. Our purpose is to evangelize, but not to
proselytize. We aim to make each man more loyal to his own church.
During the three years of the war, we have never known of a man
changing his church or being asked to do so. Our aim is not to change
any man's ecclesiastical position, but to make him a truer and stronger
man in the church where he is. The great outstanding issue in war time
is not between creed and creed, between sect and sect, but between God
and mammon, between right and wrong, purity and impurity. We have no
contention concerning the questions that divide us; we are fighting for
the great fundamentals upon which we are all united, for God and moral
manhood.

[1] According to the War Bulletin of the National Geographic Society,
issued in Washington in September 1917, a first class American private
drawing $26.60 a month receives more than a Russian colonel or a German
or Austrian lieutenant. An American lieutenant receives more than a
British lieutenant colonel, a French colonel, or a Russian general.

[2] See Appendix IV.

CHAPTER III

A DAY IN THE "BULL RING"

Just before going into the trenches the British, French, and American
troops take a final course for a few weeks in a training school, where
the expert drill masters put them through a rigorous discipline, and
the finishing touches are given to each regiment. At the moment of
writing our American boys are going through such a course, "somewhere
in France." The men commonly call this training school, or specially
prepared final drill ground, the "Bull Ring." It is a thrilling
spectacle to see many thousands of men across a vast plain going
through the various maneuvers of actual warfare as it is practiced
today at the front. Perhaps a brief