as they had some time, they started having a wash—the first since they
left Blighty. The footboard of the train was the washstand, the
shaving-table, and the dressing-table. But they didn’t sing.

I saw in a corner of that little canteen a pile of postcards, and I said,
“Who says a postcard for wife or mother?”

Somebody asked, “Who’s going to see them posted?”

I said, “I am. You leave them to me.”

They said, “All right,” and I began to give out the postcards.

I started at one end of the train and went on to the other end. In the
middle I found two carriages full of officers.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “will you please censor these postcards as I collect
them, and that will relieve the pressure on the local staff, for I don’t
want to put any extra work on them?”

“Oh, certainly,” they answered, and I sent a dozen or twenty up at a time
to them, and in fifteen minutes that train was steaming out of the station
and the boys were singing, “Should auld acquaintance.”

When they had gone I collected the postcards that had been written and
censored—and there were 575. To keep the boys in touch with home is
religion; to keep in their lives the finest, the most beautiful
home-sentiment that God ever gives to the world is a bit of religion—pure
and undefiled.