might be one, and it is time we got together. Your boys are bigger than
your Churches. You and I have got to rise to the opportunity. God help us
to do it!

* * * * *

Somebody asks, “Why does the Y.M.C.A. always want more new huts? Why not
move the old ones?” What will the boys do who take the places of those who
have gone forward? When the line goes forward, it does not come back—not
in these days; it abides—and the boys who come up as a support, they take
the huts the other boys leave.

The Y.M.C.A. stands for everything to your boys. It is their club, their
church, their recreation-room. It is their canteen—dry canteen, you may be
sure—it is their reading-room, it is their smoking-room, and why should
not the Church of Jesus Christ provide places of recreation for its own
people? Why should it leave the public-house and the theatre to do it all?
We have lost lots of people because we have been so slow—we have lost
them, you and I, but we are learning sense in these days, and the Y.M.C.A.
has come to the help of the Churches, to be the communication-trench
between the Churches and the people.

It is doing magnificent work.

As I write these lines I think of one dear boy, a young sergeant, a
Public-School boy. I had watched him grow up. I knew his home, and as he
leaned against me he said, “Gipsy, I’m homesick; I want my mother,” and
then, with a sob, he said, “Tell me more about Jesus.”

I was able to talk to him about his mother because I had lost mine, and