* * * * *

I have never once been asked by your boys to what Church I belonged. They
don’t stop to ask that if they believe in you. They want the living Christ
and the living Message. It isn’t creed; it’s need. And don’t you get the
notion that the boys can’t be reached, and don’t you think that the boys
are hostile to Christianity. They are not. I won’t hear it without
protest. The best things that the old Book talks about are the things the
boys love in one another. They don’t always think of the Book, but they
love the fruits of the Spirit in one another. They love truth, honour,
courage, humility, friendship, loyalty. And where do you get those things?
Why, they have their roots in the Cross—they grow on that Tree.

* * * * *

I had a dear friend who won the M.C.—a young Cambridge graduate. He was
all-round brilliant. He could write an essay, preach a sermon, sit down to
the piano and compose an operetta. The boys delighted in him. He would
always be at the front. He would always be where there was danger. I was
talking about him one day in one of the convalescent camps, and two of the
boys said to me afterwards,

“You have been talking about our padre. We loved him. We were with him
when he was killed, for the shell that killed him wounded us. Every man in
the battalion would have laid down his life for him.”

This old world’s dying for the want of love. There are more people die for
the want of a bit of it than with overmuch of it. Don’t stifle it—let it
out.