Part 4 (2/2)
Within twenty-four hours a work was organized which kept the sepoys occupied for all their leisure time. Football and hockey and outdoor athletics, excursions down the harbor, sea bathing, lectures, and entertainments were soon in full swing. This was the first work of the kind ever done for the Indian Army. So instantly and obviously invaluable did it become that the Commanding Officer insisted that the secretaries should accompany the troops on the long and much dreaded trip to France, which was a bold and untried venture for Indian soldiers.
It was a historic event when that great fleet of some seventy-five s.h.i.+ps, the largest a.s.sembled since the Spanish Armada, freighted with about 25,000 troops bound for France, East Africa, and Persia, weighed anchor, and sailed out of Bombay harbor with the first twelve Y M C A secretaries on board. Arrived in France, permission was finally obtained from the Commander-in-Chief to land and begin work on French soil.
Here the moral problem made the work of the a.s.sociation a crying necessity. Soon there were some 25,000 Indian troops concentrated around Ma.r.s.eilles. These men could neither safely be let out of bounds nor kept contented within bounds. A cordon of troops around the camp could not keep vice out. The Y M C A was needed as a counter attraction. Upon an outbreak of drinking and immorality on the part of a group of Sikh soldiers, the whole garrison was called out to witness these men stripped and flogged in exemplary punishment. The Sikhs felt this to be such a public disgrace that they asked for the use of the Y M C A hut in which to hold a council meeting. They finally decided to ask one of the secretaries to address the whole body of Sikhs on the subject of intemperance and impurity, for the a.s.sociation was already tacitly recognized by all as the dominant moral force in the camp.
One of the Indian secretaries, Mr. Roy, addressed the soldiers at their own request for an hour and a half, and a remarkable scene of repentance was witnessed. Men arose on all hands, confessing their sins in respect to these two special failings and requested that penalties be imposed upon them by their own priest in accordance with the custom of their religion, as a punishment for the past and as a guarantee for the future. For nearly two hours the men filed by their priest receiving penalties. Later on they held a service of their own in the Y M C A hut on Christmas day and took up a large collection of copper coins as a thank-offering to the a.s.sociation. They felt that it had been their one friend in a strange land.
It should be clearly understood, however, that of necessity, in the very nature of the case, the Government of India imposed upon the secretaries the strict obligation of silence regarding the propagation of Christianity. They entered the work on the understanding that the men could live out the spirit of Christ and express it in silent ministry under the motive of Christian love.
It was striking to see how much real Christianity could be packed into _life_ when speech was forbidden. The pent-up prayer and love and sympathy of the workers was forced into the single channel of silent service. It reminded one of those thirty years in our Lord's life, in simple secular toil, which could only minister to the needs of men over a carpenter's bench.
It is no small task to undertake to occupy all the leisure time of 25,000 men far from home, shut up in irksome camps, easily aroused by rumor or superst.i.tion. The numbers increased until there were finally some 50,000 men to be cared for. Athletic fields were secured and games were started. Football and hockey were more played by the Indians than by the British troops. Badminton and volley ball, races and track events, were also useful. Indoor games, the gramophone, cinemas and concerts, and especially Indian dramas, were popular in the evening. Lectures on geography, history, and moral subjects were well attended, and French cla.s.ses were of practical benefit.
An incalculable service has also been rendered in writing letters for the great ma.s.s of ignorant soldiers to their families in the far-off Indian villages, miles away from a railway. Illiteracy, superst.i.tion, and false rumors existed at both ends of the line. Here is a man who has had no word from home since he left a year or more ago. He hears a baseless rumor or heeds some inborn fear that his child is sick, or his wife unfaithful, or that he has been cheated out of his property.
Hundreds of homesick men whose whole lives have been bound up in the family circle pour in upon the secretaries, begging that they will write letters home for them. Here you may see six or eight secretaries writing for hours each day, as fast as the men can dictate their messages and tell their stories.
Then there arose the problem of how to keep these men in touch with their households in isolated and illiterate villages in India. Mr.
Hume, one of the secretaries in Lah.o.r.e, devised a far-reaching plan whereby every letter was forwarded through missionaries or Christian workers or officials to the distant home of the soldier. The whole community gathers to hear the news from the Indian regiment on the other side of the world, and a shout goes up from the village street when they learn that their brave Sepoy is not dead, as rumor had whispered. A message is sent back in eager grat.i.tude from the wife, children, and neighbors, and from the united heart of the little village to the distant soldier and his fighting comrades. The Red Triangle has spanned the gulf from the winter cold and the dreary trenches in France to the little village on the plains of sunny India, and the grateful hearts at both ends somehow dimly know that all this silent ministry is in the name of the White Comrade who is the Friend of man.
Here in France the hut must stand as the friendly home that gathers up all the best traditions of Indian life. It takes the place of the banyan tree in the heat of the day, the village well, and the meeting place for the men in the cool of the evening. Even beyond all hopes it has proved a potent factor for unity, harmony, and peace in a time of unrest. It draws the British officers and the Indian men closer together, and the Indian secretaries have served time and again as the mediators between the two, who could so easily have misunderstood each other. It provides a common meeting place between the caste-ridden and divided Indians themselves, who had no other ground of unity.
Here are men of different languages and races and traditions, from the Gurkhas, the brave little hill men, to the stalwart Pathans, who come as fighting men from far beyond the borders of India for the sheer joy of battle. The chances for supposed loot in the fabled wealth of the West and the acc.u.mulation of merit by slaying the ”unbelievers” of the enemy, prove an added attraction to men born and bred in border warfare. Here also are men of three separate creeds, who have often fought with one another over the issues of their faiths--the big bearded Sikhs, with a soldier's religion, the warlike Mohammedans, who fight according to their Koran, and the caste-ridden Hindus.
As you walk among the tents the smoke of the fires hangs heavy over the camp; there is the familiar sound of the bubbling rice pots, the smell of pungent curry, the babel of many oriental tongues, and you seem to be back in the very heart of India itself. We gather with the reverent Sikhs for their religious wors.h.i.+p. They meet morning and evening for their prayer service, and turn out almost in a body for the weekly Sunday meeting. The service consists princ.i.p.ally of singing and the reading of their sacred scripture, the Granth. Seated on the ground, the men show deep reverence, and seem to have a sense of the presence of G.o.d in their midst. Their religion has a real restraining influence and there is at present little immorality amongst them.
A little further on in the camp one comes upon an improvised Mohammedan mosque. Five times a day a devout soldier calls the faithful to prayer, and on Friday about three-fourths of them come out to their voluntary service. The Hindus, on the other hand, dependent upon ceremonial rites, without their temple or priest and with no organized public wors.h.i.+p, have not a religion which holds them in such a vital grip in this distant land.
As you pa.s.s down the camp, the band is playing for the draft that is marching off to take its place in the trenches. The last good-bys are being said and little groups are round the secretaries. The stalwart Sikhs are wringing their hands or kneeling down to wipe the dust from their shoes, or thanking them with tears of grat.i.tude. They are great child-like men, simple of heart, affectionate, but lonely and homesick in a distant land. Here is a man who was once a hard drinker, living an immoral life, but today he is keeping straight. Here is another who has resolved to go back to India to lead a different life. There were tears in the eyes of the secretaries themselves as they came back after bidding good-by to the draft, and there was compensation after long months of service in the grat.i.tude of the men and in that inner voice which says, ”I was a stranger and ye took me in.”
After Callan had launched the work among the Indian troops, he was called upon to open up the work at a large British base camp behind the lines in France. Here, beside the vast drill ground where Napoleon used to marshal his troops, is a white city of tents, and between 100,000 and 200,000 men are always encamped there for training.
Life in the trenches for the moment drives men to G.o.d, but the life in a base camp is one of fierce and insidious temptation. To hold the men in the face of such temptations, Callan has erected his buildings in the thirty princ.i.p.al centers of this base. Here is a typical hut before us, built of plain pine boards, 120 feet long and 60 feet broad.
It accommodates from 2,000 to 3,000 men a day and is used by three-fourths of the men in the camp, by practically all, in fact, except those who are confined to their hospital beds. These thirty huts will be filled all winter with an average of 60,000 men a day.
Each night at least 15,000 men will be gathered in meetings, lectures, and healthy entertainments. Twice each week there are 12,000 men in attendance at religious meetings, and not a week pa.s.ses without hundreds of decisions being made for the Christian life. In the course of the year a million men will pa.s.s through these camps, or one-sixth of the manhood of the nation now marshalled under arms. These are the men who are to be made or marred by life in the army, and who will go back to build the new empire in the great era of reconstruction that is to follow the war.
[Ill.u.s.trations: Wholesome and Entertaining; Home Refreshments in London.]
To minister to these 60,000 men who daily crowd these thirty huts, there are 167 workers sent over from England, 100 of them men and 67 of them women. The latter are nearly all self-supporting and not only receive no salary but pay all their own expenses. The self-sacrificing toil of these helpers, who form part of a vast army of 30,000 heroic women who are voluntarily serving without compensation in the a.s.sociations of England and France, is beyond all praise. Their very presence in the camps is the greatest single moral factor for the creation of that indefinable atmosphere which pervades every hut. Even rude and coa.r.s.e men never think of swearing or speaking an indecent word within these walls. Nor do they forget to be grateful for the tireless service of these women, who stand for hours day and night serving them and providing for their physical necessities. The women workers are under the direction of Lady Rodney, who has had four sons fighting at the front, one of whom has already fallen in action. The men have been thrilled and moved to the depths as Lady Rodney has addressed them on ”What Are We Fighting For?” and by her message to the men from the women at home. Several hundred of the choicest women of America will be needed for service among our own troops. They should be women who can stand for the whole principle of the red triangle.
They must be ready for tireless and exhausting physical service, able to work with others without friction, prepared to meet the social needs of the men and to give a sympathetic hearing to the tales that will be poured into their ears, but above all they must be able to give a definite Christian message to men fiercely tempted and beset by doubts and difficulties. The soldier cannot live by bread alone, nor by the tea and coffee of a Y M C A counter; he needs G.o.d, and the friends.h.i.+p of good women, and the spirit of home which they carry with them.
The hundred men who are working in these thirty British huts are worthy of note. A score of them are clergymen, who have resigned their churches for the period of the war. Many others are well-known ministers, laymen, or professors who have come over for a period of several months of service. The list of the men who have been serving here contains many distinguished names. There is Professor Burkett, the New Testament scholar of Cambridge, in charge of one of the huts; Professor Bateson, the great biologist of Cambridge, who has been lecturing on his subject, and who was swept off his feet by the response which he received from the troops. He stated that he was able to learn more from these men than in months of research in his laboratory, where he had been shut up for most of his life. Professor Holland Rose, also of Cambridge, has been lecturing to the troops on European history, interpreting the war to the soldier. Professor Oman, of the same university, has been dealing in his lectures with the historical problems of the war. Rev. E. A. Burroughs, of Oxford, has been giving religious lectures. Princ.i.p.al D. S. Cairns, of Aberdeen, has had crowded meetings night after night for his apologetic lectures, and the questions raised in the open discussions would make one think he was in a theological seminary. Princ.i.p.al Kitchie, of Nottingham, has been lecturing on European history and the Balkan situation.
Bishop Knight is giving his time seven days a week to looking after the spiritual and ecclesiastical needs of the men, as many seek confirmation and partake of the Holy Communion before going up to the front. Here are Scotch ministers, Anglican clergymen, and laymen, working side by side in a great ministry of service.
A series of missionary lectures has helped to give the men a new world view of Christianity. It has lifted the simple villager, and the man who has never known anything save the narrow ruts of his own denomination, above the petty interests and divisions of his former life to face world problems and the wide extension of the Kingdom of G.o.d. Four lecturers have followed each other to present a great world view to the men in these thirty huts: Butcher of New Guinea showed the effect of the impact of the Gospel upon primitive native races; Farquhar of India showed the power of Christianity over the great ethnic religions of India; Lord Wm. Gascoyne Cecil came next on the transformation of China, and was followed by Dennis of Madagascar and Dr. Datta, a living witness of the power of Christianity in the great Indian empire. John McNeill and Gipsy Smith, the well-known evangelists, have spoken to thousands and have brought the challenge of the Christian Gospel to the men, calling upon them for decisions and a change of life in harmony with the teachings of Christ.
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