happens if you begin to tug at the line the first time you get a bite. When you hook a fish, if he happens to be a Munster, you have got to keep your head and play him, let him have the line, let him go, keep steady, no excitement, give him play. I gave him a bit of line, that young Munster. I thanked him for his compliment and then walked away—with my eyes over my shoulder, for if he hadn't come after me I should have been after him.

Presently he pulled my tunic and said, “Won't you give me a minute, sir?”

“What's the trouble?” I said.

“Sir,” he said, with a little catch in his voice that I can hear now, “you've got something I haven't.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“It's like the singing of a little song, and it gets into my heart. I want it. Won't you tell me how to get it? I want it.”

“Sonny,” I said, “it's for you. You can have it at the same price I paid for it.”

[pg 27]

“Begorra,” says he, “you will tell me to give up my religion, you will!”

I said, “If God has put anything in your life that helps you to be a better and a nobler and a braver man, He doesn't want you to give it up.”

“He doesn't?” he asked. “What am I to give up, then?”

And I replied, “Your sin.”

The boy said again, “You're a gentleman.”

If I had said one word about his religion or his creed, my line would have snapped and I would have lost my fish.

That night, when all the boys had gone, we got into a corner and we knelt down, and when he went he said, “I've got it, sir. I've got the little song—and it's singing.”

At one of my meetings the boys were four thousand strong and the Commandant of the camp was to preside. As they say in the Army, he had got the wind up. He did not know me. When he saw the crowd there he began to wonder what was going to happen. He called one of the officers to him, and said,

“I don't know what he's going to do. I hope [pg 28]he's not going to give us a revival meeting or something of that sort. I hope he knows that one-third of these fellows are Roman Catholics.”

Well, of course I knew, and I was laying my plans accordingly. What right have you or I when we have got a mixed crowd like that to try to cram our preconceived programme down everybody's throat? The officer, who was one of my friends, said to the Colonel, “I don't think you need trouble, sir. He's all right, and knows his job.”

When we were ready, I went to the Colonel, and said, “We are quite ready to begin, sir.”

The Colonel rose and announced, “Officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, I now introduce to you Gipsy Smith, who will perform.”

Now, the first thing I wanted to do was to disarm all prejudice in the mind of both officers and men. So I said, “Are you ready, boys?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, we'll have our opening hymn, 'Keep the home fires burning.'”

And didn't those boys sing that! Some of them were smoking, and I wasn't going to tell [pg 29]them not to smoke. That would have put their backs up. They were British boys and they knew what to do when the right moment came. And so I said, “Boys, you sang that very well, but you were not all singing. Now, if we have another, will you all sing?” And they answered, “Yes.” I knew if they sang they couldn't smoke. So we had “Pack up your troubles,” and this time every smoke was out and every boy was singing. “We'll have another,” said I, when they had finished; “we'll have—

I knew if I got them round their mothers' knees I should be all right.

“Now, boys,” I said, “what am I to talk to you about?” I let them choose their subject very often.

“Tell us the story of the gipsy tent,” they called out.

And there I was at home, and it was all right, and for an hour I told them the story of how grace came to that gipsy tent—the old romance of love.

[pg 30]

“Now, boys, I'm through,” I said when I had spoken for an hour—and they gave me an encore. When I had finished my encore, the dear old Colonel got up to thank the “performer”—and he couldn't do it; there was a lump in his throat and big tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Boys, I can't say what I want to, but,” said he, “we have all got to be better men.”

The Gospel was preached in that hut in a different way from what we have it preached at home, but we got it in, and the thing is to get it in.

I was talking behind the lines to some of your boys. Every boy in front of me was going up to the trenches that night. There were five or six hundred of them. They had got their equipment—they were going on parade as soon as they left me. It wasn't easy to talk. All I said was accompanied by the roar of the guns and the crack of rifles and the rattle of the machine guns, and once in a while our faces were lit up by the flashes. It was a weird sight. I looked at those boys. I couldn't preach to them in the ordinary way. I knew and they [pg 31]knew that for many it was the last service they would attend on earth. I said,

“Boys, you are going up to the trenches. Anything may happen there. I wish I could go with you. God knows I do. I would if they would let me, and if any of you fall I would like to hold your hand and say something to you for mother, for wife, and for lover, and for little child. I'd like to be a link between you and home just for that moment—God's messenger for you. They won't let me go, but there is Somebody Who will go with you. You know Who that is.”

You should have heard the boys all over that hut whisper, “Yes, sir—Jesus.”

“Well,” I said, “I want every man that is anxious to take Jesus with him into the trench to stand.”

Instantly and quietly every man in that hut stood up. And we prayed as men can pray only under those conditions. We sang together, “For ever with the Lord.” I shall never sing that hymn again without a lump in my throat. My mind will always go back to those dear boys.

We shook hands and I watched them go, [pg 32]and then on my way to the little cottage where I was billeted I heard feet coming behind me, and presently felt a hand laid upon my shoulder. Two grand handsome fellows stood beside me. One of them said,

“We didn't manage to get into the hut, but we stood at the window to your right. We heard all you said. We want you to pray for us. We are going into the trenches, too. We can't go until it is settled.”

We prayed together, and then I shook hands with them and bade them good-bye. They did not come back. Some of their comrades came—those two, with others, were left behind. But they had settled it—they had settled it.

Two or three days after that I was in a hospital when one was brought in who was at that service. I thought he was unconscious, and I said to the Sister beside me, “Sister, how battered and bruised his poor head is!”

He looked up and said, “Yes, it is battered and bruised; but it will be all right, Gipsy, when I get the crown!”

One night I had got about fifty boys round me in a dug-out, with the walls blown out and [pg 33]bits of the roof off. I had taken some hymn-sheets, for I love to hear them sing. I never choose a hymn for them—I always let them choose their own hymns. There is wisdom in that. If they have asked for something and don't sing it, I can come down on them. Among the great hymns they choose are these:

“Jesu, Lover of my soul,”

and I have heard them sing,

“Cover my defenceless head,”

with the shells falling close to them. I have heard them sing,

“I fear no foe ...”

with every seat and every bit of building round us rocking with the concussion of things. And then they will choose:

[pg 34]

and the one they love, I think, most of all is,

“When I survey the wondrous Cross.”

Those are the hymns they sing, the great hymns of the Church—the hymns that all Christian people sing, about which there is no quarrelling. It's beautiful to hear the boys.

That night I said, “I have brought some hymn-sheets. I thought we might have some singing, but I'm afraid it's too dark.”

Instantly one of the boys brought out of his tunic about two inches of candle and struck a match, and in three minutes we had about twenty pieces of candle burning. It was a weird scene.

After the hymns I began to talk, and the candles burnt lower, and some of them flickered out, and I could see a boy here and there twitch a bit of candle as it was going out.

I said, “Put the candles out, boys. I can talk in the dark.”

It was a wonderful service, and here and there you could hear the boys sighing and crying as they thought of home and father and mother. It isn't difficult to talk to boys like that.

[pg 35]

There is no hymn of hate in your boys'