they admired, that He was their natural hero. I would tell them some
story of heroism and meanness contrasted, of courage and cowardice, of
noble forgiveness and vile cruelty, and so get them on the side of the
angels. Then I would try and spring it upon them that Christ was the
Lord of the heroes and the brave men and the noble men, and that He
was fighting against all that was mean and cruel and cowardly, and
that it was up to them to take their stand by His side if they wanted
to make the world a little better instead of a little worse, and I
would try to show them how in little practical ways in their homes and
at their work and in the club they could do a bit for Christ.

Well, they listened pretty well, and I think that they agreed in
a general sort of way, only 'they knew that I was a richish man in
comparison with them, and that I didn't have their difficulties to
contend with, and that all tended to undo the effect of what I had
said. And then accident gave me a sort of clue to the way to get them
to take one seriously. For some idiotic reason--I really couldn't say
just what it was--I dressed up as a tramp one day, and spent a night
in a casual ward. I didn't do it for any very worthy motive, and I
didn't mean any one to know about it; but it got round, and I suddenly
found that it had caught the imaginations of some of the fellows, and
I realized that if one was to have any power over them one must do
symbolic things to show them that one meant what one said about love
being really better than money, and all that sort of thing. So in
rather a half-hearted way I did try to do things which would show
them that I was in earnest. I took a couple of rooms in a little
cottage in a funny little bug-ridden court, instead of living at the
mission-house. I went out to Australia steerage to see why emigration
of London boys was not a success, and when war broke out I enlisted,
although I had previously held a commission. And all these little