True to our first light, first teaching, and first practices, we have
always put ourselves close beside the man irrespective of whether his
condition is fair or foul; whether his surroundings are peaceful or
perilous; whether his prospects are promising or threatening. As a people
we have felt that to be of true service to others we must be close enough
to them to lift part of their load and thus carry out that grand
injunction of the Apostle Paul, "Bear ye one another's burdens and so
fulfill the law of Christ."

The Salvation Army upon the battlefields of France has but worked along
the same lines as in the great cities of the nations. We are, with our
every gift to serve, close up to those in need; and so, as Lieut.-Colonel
Roosevelt put it, "Whatever the lot of the men, the Salvation Army is
found with them."

We never permit any superiority of position, or breeding, or even grace to
make a gap between us and any who may be less fortunate. To help another,
you must be near enough to catch the heart-beat. And so a large measure of
our success in the war is accounted for by the fact that we have been with
them. With a hundred thousand Salvationists on all fronts, and tens and
tens of thousands of Salvationists at their ministering posts in the
homelands as well as overseas, from the time that each of the Allied
countries entered the war the Salvation Army has been with the fighting-
men.

With them in the thatched cottage on the hillside, and in the humble
dwelling in the great towns of the homelands, when they faced the great
ordeal of wishing good-bye to mothers and fathers and wives and children.

With them in the blood-soaked furrows of old fields; with them in the