Chapter 1

YOUR BOYS

By Gipsy Smith

With a Foreword by The Bishop of London

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1918,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Foreword

I am writing this during an air raid at 12.30 at night, and I have just finished a Foreword for the Bishop of Zanzibar’s new and tender little book. He has been a water-carrier for the British force in German East Africa, and Gipsy Smith has just come from the trenches in France.

You would not expect the two books to be similar, but they are: they are both about “Jesus.” This devotion to “Jesus” binds all time Christians together, and one day will bring us all more visibly together than we are now. I love this breezy little book of Gipsy Smith’s; it is not only full of the love of “Jesus,” but love of our “our boys.” They _are_ splendid. I spent the first two months of the war as their visiting chaplain—went out to give them their Easter Communion the first year of the war at the Front. Gipsy Smith and I made friends together, speaking for them at the London Opera House on the great day of Intercession and Thanksgiving we had for them when the King himself called us all together.

Then I like the common sense of it! You must have robust common sense if you are going to win “our boys.” Anything unreal, merely sentimental, washy, they detect in a moment. You must draw them “with the cords of a man and the bonds of love,” and those who read this book will find many a hint as to how to do it.

A.F. London.

YOUR BOYS

I have just come back from your boys. I have been living among them and talking to them for six months. I have been under shell fire for a month, night and day. I have preached the Gospel within forty yards of the Germans. I have tried to sleep at night in a cellar, and it was so cold that my moustache froze to my blanket and my boots froze to the floor. The meal which comforted me most was a little sour French bread and some Swiss milk and hot water, and a pinch of sugar when I could get it.

There are Y.M.C.A. marquees close to the roads down which come the walking wounded from the trenches. In three of these marquees last summer in three days over ten thousand cases were provided with hot drinks and refreshment—free. And that I call Christian work. You and I have been too much concerned about the preaching and too little about the doing of things.

A friend of mine was in one of those marquees at the time, and he told me a beautiful story. Some of the men sat and stood there two and three hours waiting their turn, and the workers were nearly run off their feet. They were at it for three nights and three days. There was one fellow, a handsome chap, sitting huddled up and looking so haggard and cold, that my friend said to him,

“I am sorry you have had to wait so long, old chap. We’re doing our best. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”

“Never mind me,” said the man; “carry on!”

As the sun came out he unbuttoned his coat, and when the coat was thrown back my friend saw that he was wearing a colonel’s uniform.

“I am sorry, sir,” said my friend. “I did not know. I oughtn’t to have spoken to you in that familiar way.”

“You have earned the right to say anything you like to me,” said the Colonel. “Go right on.”

And then my friend said, “Well, come with me, sir, to the back, and I will get you a cup of coffee.”

“No, not a minute before the boys. I’ll take my turn with them.”

That’s the spirit. Your boys, I say, are great stuff. They have their follies. They can go to the devil if they want to, but tens of thousands of them don’t want to, and hundreds of thousands are living straight in spite of their surroundings. They are the bravest, dearest boys that God ever gave to the world, and you and I ought to be proud of them. If the people at home were a tenth as grateful as they ought to be they would crowd into our churches, if it were for nothing else but to pray for and give thanks for the boys.

They are just great, your boys. They saved your homes. I was recently in a city in France which had before the war a population of 55,000 people. When I was there, there were not 500 people in that city—54,500 were homeless refugees, if they weren’t killed. I walked about that city for a month, searching for a house that wasn’t damaged, a window that wasn’t broken, and I never found one. The whole of that city will have to be rebuilt. A glorious cathedral, a magnificent pile of municipal buildings, all in ruins; the Grande Place, a meeting-place for the crowned heads of Europe, gone! “Thou hast made of a city a heap”—a heap of rubbish. _Your_ city would have been like that but for the boys in khaki.

I was saying my prayers in a corner of an old broken chateau, the Y.M.C.A. headquarters for that centre, with my trench-coat buttoned tight and my big muffler round my ears. Presently I heard some one say—one of the workers—“A gentleman wants to see you, sir,” and when I got downstairs there was a General, a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Star of India man—a glorious man, a beautiful character. He was there with his Staff-captain, and he said,

“I’ve come to invite you to dinner to-morrow night, Mr. Smith. I want you to come to the officers’ mess.”

“What time, sir?” I asked. “I cannot miss my meeting at half-past six with the boys.”

“Well, the mess will be at half-past seven. We will arrange that.”

“Before you go, sir, I should like to ask why you are interested in me.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, if you wish,” he said. “Men are writing home to their wives, mothers, sweethearts, and they are talking about a new power in their lives. ‘We have got something that is helping us to go straight and play the game,’ they write. And so,” said the General, “we should like to have a chat with you.”

I went the next night, and for an hour and a half I preached the Gospel to those officers. It was a great chance; and it was the result of the note-paper which I have sometimes given out for an hour and a half at a time to your boys.

There are lots of people think you are not doing any spiritual work unless you are singing, “Come to Jesus.” Put more Jesus in every bit of the day’s business. Jesus ought to be as real in the city as in the temple. If I read my New Testament aright, and if I know God, and if I know humanity, and if I know Nature, then that is God’s programme. God’s programme is that the whole of life should be permeated with Christ.

God bless the women who have gone out to help your boys. Women of title, of wealth and position, serving God and humanity behind tea-tables.

In one of our huts I saw a lady standing beside two urns—coffee and tea. She was pouring out, and there were 150 or 200 men standing round that hut waiting to get served. The fellows at the end were not pushing and crowding to get first, but waiting their turn. They are more good-natured than a religious crowd waiting to get in to hear a popular preacher. I have seen these people jostle at the doors.

But your boys don’t do that. They just sing, “Pack up your troubles,” and wait their turn.

Well, these boys, wet and cold, were waiting for a cup of coffee, and one of those red-hot gospellers came along, and he said, “Sister, stop a minute and put a word in for Jesus. This is a great opportunity.”

“But,” she replied, “they are wet and tired; let me give them something hot as soon as I can.”

“Oh! but let’s put a word in for Jesus,” urged this chap.

Then a bright-faced soldier lad called out, “Guv’nor, she puts Jesus in the coffee.” That is what I mean when I say you have got to put Jesus into every bit of the day’s work.

* * * * *

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.

* * * * *

“I am afraid,” said a padre to me once, “the boys are sceptical.”

“Come with me to-morrow,” I answered. “I’ll prove to you they are _not_ sceptical.”

We were half an hour ahead of time and the hut was crowded with eight hundred men. They were singing when I got in—something about “an old rooster—as you used to.”

Do you suppose I had no better sense than to go in and say, “Stop this ungodly music?” You can catch more flies with treacle than with vinegar.

I looked at the boys and said, “That’s great, sing it again.”

And I turned to the padre and asked, “Isn’t that splendid? Isn’t that fine?”

While we were waiting to begin the meeting, I said, “Boys, we must have another.”

“One of the same sort?” they shouted.

“Of course,” was my reply. And they sang “Who’s your lady friend?” and when they had sung that, I called out, “Boys, we will have one more. What shall it be?”

“One of yours, sir.”

I had not trusted them in vain.

I said, “Very well, you choose your hymn.”

“When I survey the wondrous Cross”—that was the song they chose.

And they sang it all the better because I had sung their songs with them. Before we had got to the end of the last verse some of those boys were in tears, and it wasn’t hard to pray. It isn’t far from rag-time to “When I survey the wondrous Cross.”

When they had finished the hymn I said, “Boys, I am going to tell you the story of my father’s conversion.” For I had to convince my padre friend that they were not sceptical. I took them to the gipsy tent and told them of my father and five motherless children, and of how Jesus came to that tent, saving the father and the five children and making preachers of them all.

I said, “Did my father make a mistake when he brought Christ to those five motherless children?” And the eight hundred boys shouted, “No, sir.”

“Did he do the right thing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What ought you to do?”

“The same, sir.”

“Do you want Jesus in your lives?” and every man of the eight hundred jumped to his feet.

You say they are sceptical where Jesus is concerned. I’ll tell you when they are sceptical—when they see the caricature of Jesus in you and me.

* * * * *

I was, as I have said, under shell fire for a month in one place—night and day for a month—and never allowed out without a gasbag round my neck. I slept in a cellar there at night when I did sleep—only 700 yards from the Germans—and, as I have said before, it _was_ cold.

When the thaw set in, I put a couple of bricks down and put a box-lid on top, so that I could stand in a dry place. We had two picks and two shovels in that cellar in case anything happened overnight. I have been up against it. Whenever I talked to the boys there they sat with their gas-bags round their necks, and one held mine while I talked. It was quite a common thing to have something fall quite close to us while we were singing.

Imagine singing “Cover my defenceless head,” just as a piece of the roof is falling in. Or—

In death’s dark vale I fear no ill With Thee, dear Lord, beside me—

then another crash! That makes things real. Every word was accompanied by the roar of guns—the rattle of the machine gun and the crack of the rifle. We never knew what it was to be quiet.

A shell once came and burst just the other side of the wall against which I was standing and blew part of it over my head. I have suffered as your boys have, and I have preached the Gospel to your boys in the front line. I long for the privilege of doing it again.

* * * * *

If I had my way I’d take all the best preachers in Britain and I’d put them down in France. And if the church and chapel goers grumbled, I’d say, “You’re overfed. You can do without a preacher for a little.” And if they were to ask, “How do you know?” I should reply, “Because it’s hard work to get you to one meal a week. You only come once on a Sunday and often not that. That’s how I know you are not enjoying your food.”

I love talking to the Scottish boys—the kilties. Oh! they are great boys—the kilties. When the French first saw them they didn’t know what they were, whether they were men or women.

“Don’t you know what they are?” said a bright-faced English boy. “They are what we call the Middlesex.”

You can’t beat a British boy, he’s on the spot all the time—“the Middlesex!” Some of you haven’t seen the joke yet.

* * * * *

I once went to a hut just behind the line, within the sound of the guns. Buildings all round us had been blown to pieces. The leader of this hut was a clergyman of the Church of England, but he wasn’t an ecclesiastic there, he was a man amongst men, and we loved him.

“Gipsy Smith,” he said, “I don’t know what you will do; the boys in the billets this week are the Munsters—Irish Roman Catholics. You would have got on all right last week; we had the York and Lancasters.”

“Do you think they will come to the meetings?”

“I don’t know,” he replied; “they come for everything else! They come for their smokes, candles, soap, buttons—bachelor’s buttons—postcards, and everything else they want. But whether they will come for the religious part, I don’t know.”

“Well,” I said, “we can but try.”

It was about midday when we were talking, and the meeting was to be at 6.30.

“Have you got a boy who could write a bill for me?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve got a boy who could do that all right.”

“Print it on green paper,” said I.

Why not? They were the Munsters. Why shouldn’t we use our heads? People think mighty hard in business, why shouldn’t we think in the religious world?

“Just say this and nothing more,” I said.

“‘Gipsy Smith will give a talk in the Hut to-night at 6.30. Subject—Gipsy Life.’”

I knew that would fetch them.

At half-past six the hut was crowded with eight hundred Munsters. If you are an old angler, indeed if you know anything at all about angling, you know that you have got to consider two or three things if you are to stand any chance of a catch. You have got to study your tackle, you have got to study your bait, you have got to study the habits of your fish. When the time came to begin that meeting, one of the workers said,

“Shall I bring the box of hymn-books out?”

“No, no,” I replied; “that’s the wrong bait.”

Those Munster boys knew nothing about hymn-books. We preachers have got to come off our pedestals and not give our hearers what we want, but the thing that will catch them. If a pretty, catchy Sankey hymn will attract a crowd, why shouldn’t we use it instead of an anthem? If a brass band will catch them, why shouldn’t we play it instead of an organ?

“Keep back those hymn-books,” I said. “They know nothing about hymn-books.” I had a pretty good idea of what would have happened if those hymn-books had been produced at the start.

I got on that platform, and I looked at those eight hundred Munsters and said, “Boys, are we down-hearted?”

“_No_,” they shouted.

You can imagine what eight hundred Munsters shouting “No” sounds like. They were all attention instantly. I wonder what would happen if the Vicar went into church next Sunday morning and asked the question, “Are we down-hearted?” I knew it would cause a sensation, but I’d rather have a sensation than a stagnation.

Those boys sat up. I said, “We are going to talk about gipsy life.” I talked to them about the origin of my people. There’s not a man living in the world who knows the origin of my people. I can trace my people back to India, but they didn’t come from India. We are one of the oldest races in the world, so old that nobody knows how old. I talked to them about the origin of the gipsies, and I don’t know it, but I knew more about it than they did. I talked to them about our language, and I gave them specimens of it, and there I was on sure ground. It is a beautiful language, full of poetry and music. Then I talked about the way the gipsies get their living—and other people’s; and for thirty minutes those Munsters hardly knew if they were on the chairs or on the floor—and I purposely made them laugh. They had just come out of the hell of the trenches. They had that haunted, weary, hungry look, and if only I could make them laugh and forget the hell out of which they had just climbed it was religion, and I wasn’t wasting time.

When I had been talking for thirty minutes, I stopped, and said, “Boys, there’s a lot more to this story. Would you like some more?”

“Yes,” they shouted.

“Come back to-morrow,” I said.

I was fishing in unlikely waters, and if you leave off when fish are hungry they will come back for more. For six nights I told those boys gipsy stories. I took them out into the woods. We went out amongst the rabbits. I told the boys the rabbits got very fond of me—so fond that they used to go home with me! I took them through the clover-fields on a June day and made them smell the perfume. I took them among the buttercups. I told them it was the Finger of Love and the Smile of Infinite Wisdom that put the spots upon the pansy and the deep blue in the violet. And then we went out among the birds and we saw God taking songs from the lips of a seraph and wrapping them round with feathers.

And the boys saw Jesus in every buttercup and every primrose, and every little daisy, and in every dewdrop, and heard something of the song of the angels in the notes of the nightingale and the skylark. Oh! Jesus was there, and they felt Him, and they saw Him. I took them amongst the gipsy tents, amongst the woodlands and dells of the old camping-grounds. They walked with Him and they talked with Him. I didn’t use the usual Church language, but I used the language of God in Nature and the boys heard Him.

Towards the end of the week one of those Munster boys came and touched me and said, “Your Riverence! Your Riverence!” he says. “You’re a gentleman.”

I _knew_ I had got that boy.

Now, if you are an old angler you know what happens if you begin to tug at the line the first time you get a bite. When you hook a fish, if he happens to be a Munster, you have got to keep your head and play him, let him have the line, let him go, keep steady, no excitement, give him play. I gave him a bit of line, that young Munster. I thanked him for his compliment and then walked away—with my eyes over my shoulder, for if he hadn’t come after me I should have been after him.

Presently he pulled my tunic and said, “Won’t you give me a minute, sir?”

“What’s the trouble?” I said.

“Sir,” he said, with a little catch in his voice that I can hear now, “you’ve got something I haven’t.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“It’s like the singing of a little song, and it gets into my heart. I want it. Won’t you tell me how to get it? I want it.”

“Sonny,” I said, “it’s for you. You can have it at the same price I paid for it.”

“Begorra,” says he, “you will tell me to give up my religion, you will!”

I said, “If God has put anything in your life that helps you to be a better and a nobler and a braver man, He doesn’t want you to give it up.”

“He doesn’t?” he asked. “What am I to give up, then?”

And I replied, “Your sin.”

The boy said again, “You’re a gentleman.”

If I had said one word about his religion or his creed, my line would have snapped and I would have lost my fish.

That night, when all the boys had gone, we got into a corner and we knelt down, and when he went he said, “I’ve got it, sir. I’ve got the little song—_and it’s singing_.”

* * * * *

At one of my meetings the boys were four thousand strong and the Commandant of the camp was to preside. As they say in the Army, he had got the wind up. He did not know me. When he saw the crowd there he began to wonder what was going to happen. He called one of the officers to him, and said,

“I don’t know what he’s going to do. I hope he’s not going to give us a revival meeting or something of that sort. I hope he knows that one-third of these fellows are Roman Catholics.”

Well, of course I knew, and I was laying my plans accordingly. What right have you or I when we have got a mixed crowd like that to try to cram our preconceived programme down everybody’s throat? The officer, who was one of my friends, said to the Colonel, “I don’t think you need trouble, sir. He’s all right, and knows his job.”

When we were ready, I went to the Colonel, and said, “We are quite ready to begin, sir.”

The Colonel rose and announced, “Officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, I now introduce to you Gipsy Smith, who will perform.”

Now, the first thing I wanted to do was to disarm all prejudice in the mind of both officers and men. So I said, “Are you ready, boys?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, we’ll have our opening hymn, ‘Keep the home fires burning.’”

And didn’t those boys sing that! Some of them were smoking, and I wasn’t going to tell them not to smoke. That would have put their backs up. They were British boys and they knew what to do when the right moment came. And so I said, “Boys, you sang that very well, but you were not _all_ singing. Now, if we have another, will you all sing?” And they answered, “Yes.” I knew if they sang they couldn’t smoke. So we had “Pack up your troubles,” and this time every smoke was out and every boy was singing. “We’ll have another,” said I, when they had finished; “we’ll have—

‘Way down in Tennessee Just try to think of me Right on my mother’s knee.’”

I knew if I got them round their mothers’ knees I should be all right.

“Now, boys,” I said, “what am I to talk to you about?” I let them choose their subject very often.

“Tell us the story of the gipsy tent,” they called out.

And there I was at home, and it was all right, and for an hour I told them the story of how grace came to that gipsy tent—the old romance of love.

“Now, boys, I’m through,” I said when I had spoken for an hour—and they gave me an encore. When I had finished my encore, the dear old Colonel got up to thank the “performer”—and he couldn’t do it; there was a lump in his throat and big tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Boys, I can’t say what I want to, but,” said he, “we have all got to be better men.”

The Gospel was preached in that hut in a different way from what we have it preached at home, but we got it in, and the thing is to get it in.

* * * * *