soldiers preparing to go up into the trenches, or has ridden past the acres of supplies, guns, ammunition, and horses. He must stand beside the road and watch the long line of traffic that goes on all night without cessation-the ceaseless columns of soldiers in khaki with their steel helmets on their heads, their gas-masks and kits slung across their backs, and their rifles on their shoulders, swinging by with grave, set faces; the huge guns ponderously lumbering over the roughly paved street; the trains of clattering ammunitionwagons; the great fleets of lorries loaded with unending supplies; the soupkitchens; the empty ambulances-a great and endless stream of life surging forward to meet ruin and agony and death; and on the other side of the road, moving in the opposite direction, another endless stream of the broken and crushed, returning from the trenchesgreat trains of red-crossed motor-ambulances, carrying hundreds and hundreds of limp forms, wrapped in dirty, bloodsoaked blankets; marching soldiers, dirty, disheveled, and dog-tired, returning from the trenches; disabled guns; empty lorries; broken wagons; and all that is worth bringing back after the touch of war. Or he must stand just back of the line at night and see the sky alight with the flashes of the great guns, not in one or two or three places, but the whole horizon aflame with that weird light as far as eye can reach; and he must feel the tremble of the very earth as the great guns hurl their tons of projectiles miles away into the enemy lines. It is vastness on a scale which the world never imagined before-vastness such as multiplies a hundredfold the difficulties of any organization which undertakes to play a real part in the lives of those endless lines of soldiers, and to make its influence profoundly felt throughout that stupendous and gigantic array.

Furthermore, the problem changes in its aspects with every movement of the soldiers. The methods of meeting the needs of troops in home training-camps will not suffice when the soldiers are in transport. Still other methods must be followed when the soldiers reach the great base camps in France, or as they move on "up the line" in railway transit,

or dwell in quarters under shell - fire in the shattered towns, or take their places places on the firing-line. At each stage the problem requires a different solution.

Never in all history has there been such an assemblage of the manhood of the world as that met on the plains of France to-day. In one of the great English base camps are gathered countless thousands of men in khaki from every county of England; hordes of dark-skinned East-Indians in picturesque turbans and native uniforms of khaki; men with tanned faces from the wind-swept plains of far-away Australia; Scotch Highlanders in their khaki kilts and gray tam-o'-shanters; New-Zealanders in their broad-brimmed felt hats; Canadians; West-Indians; South-Africans-men from every corner of the far-flung British Empire; gallant Belgians; Frenchmen in their blue uniforms; swarthy Arabs from northern Africa in their red fezzes; Chinese coolies from the Far East; German prisoners in their faded gray-green-men from every reach and quarter of the world. There has been nothing like it since the days of the old Crusades; since the time of Peter the Hermit there has been never such an opportunity to minister to the congregation of the world. In a vast tented city, covering the French plain for miles, this motley throng dwells for two or three weeks, receiving the last word of instruction in bombing, in the use of gas-masks, on where and how most effectively to thrust the bayonet home. It is easy to imagine the thoughts of these men who are, most of them, thousands of miles from home in a strange land, and stripped of all the comforts of life, and who are preparing themselves to enter the most horrible experiences that this world can offer. Little wonder that they are thinking as they have never thought before, and wondering, amid the tragedy and the ruin all around, what, after all, in life and death is worth while and fundamental. Was there ever such an opportunity for a creative, healing work for the bodies and minds and souls of men?

Into such a field the Y. M. C. A. has been privileged to enter. In the center of each group of tents is erected a huge

wooden structure, known as a "hut," marked at each end with a bright-red triangle. The hut usually contains a "canteen-room," a large lecture-hall, and a number of smaller rooms for classes and group meetings. In this building and on the athletic field close by centers the camp life of the troops. The canteen-room, a large loungingplace, fitted up with board benches and tables, decorated with gay bunting or bright pictures of home life, or possibly with wall-paintings done by some soldier decorator, is usually thronged with troops at every hour of the day when soldiers can be found off duty; for it is generally the only place in camp where soldiers can gather for recreational or social purposes. At one end, by the canteen counter, lined up to get their hot coffee, their buns, crackers, sweet chocolate, sandwiches, or the like, are crowds of soldiers; others are sitting at the tables, writing letters home on the stationery furnished them; still others are at the other end of the room, gathered around the piano or victrola, playing the tunes they used to play at home; many are reading the home newspapers and magazines which are given out at the counter, or selecting books from the library, or matching their wits in friendly games of checkers. Outside on the athletic field, during such afternoons as they are not on duty, crowds of soldiers. are delighting in games of baseball, handball, or volley ball, or watching a lively boxing or wrestling match, or taking part in intercompany field contests. The silent psychological influence of the few Y. M. C. A. secretaries upon these masses of troops is a striking and interesting phenomenon. Because of their presence, there seems to prevail all unconsciously, a finer spirit, an atmosphere of good-fellowship, of clean sportsmanship, of manliness at its best, that is no small factor in making up the tone and morale of the camp. În another part of the hut is a large lecture-room with a stage at one end; here are given in the evenings educational lectures, soldier minstrel shows, musical entertainments, cinema shows, patriotic addresses, and religious talks; and here, too, are generally held the Sunday religious services and meetings. Scarcely

an evening goes by that does not see these halls packed to the doors. I have seen them so crowded, on the occasion of some stirring religious talk, that after the benches were all filled and the standing room taken, soldiers kept crowding in through the windows to sit on the floor of the platform, and others remained standing outside to listen to the speaker through the windows. Surging in and out of the thirty huts in one of these base camps there pass daily actually sixty thousand men of every race and creed; every night between ten and fifteen thousand men are listening to educational lectures and entertainments; on two nights every week a like number are crowding in to hear religious talks. That is why the Y. M. C. A. feels called upon to secure the best talent in the country for this work, the most accomplished singers and musicians, the most gifted lecturers, the ablest and most winning religious leaders. The briefness of the soldiers' stay at the base camps necessitates peculiarly intensive programs of educational and religious work; besides the large meetings and lectures, small Bible study classes and informal discussion groups are carried on. So effective has this work proved that literally hundreds of men have gone "up the line" and faced death with smiles upon their faces, because, at last just before the end they had found what death cannot take away-they had come to know Jesus Christ.

Closer to the firing-line all large buildings become impossible. Not only would they be seen by the enemy aeroplanes and shelled to bits, but it would be unsafe, from a military viewpoint, to mass so many troops where they could be seen and shelled together. The "huts" becoming impossible, and, large meetings being unsafe, the Y. M. C. A. must devise smaller units, and, in company with the soldiers whom it seeks to serve, go underground. If the conditions under which it must work in the great base camps are unusual, they are infinitely more so in the desolated towns under enemy shellfire.

We are walking through the streets of one of these ruined cities some two or three miles behind the front-line trenches. Only a short time ago it was

streets are lined with tattered walls and shattered masonry; here a great corner is torn out of a building, leaving the roof hanging; there the whole side of a house is completely gone. As we pass, we can see into the deserted rooms. Some of them are mere masses of debris; others remain just as they were left that wild night when the occupants fled in their terror before the oncoming Huns. In some rooms we can see the pictures still hanging on the walls, and books lying on the tables. In others, lace curtains are hanging by broken windowframes, and bureau drawers are halfdrawn out as though to allow the hasty snatching of a few belongings; in one room is a little cradle with the coverlet still thrown across. Tragedy everywhere, and desolation.

We walk down to the central square; gaunt ruins are all that is left of what were once magnificent old public build

VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 813.-46

ings. A machine-gun emplacement commands the square, and barbed-wire entanglements are in evidence for use in case the Germans should attack. We walk past the cathedral; it is now a ruin with tremendous walls and naked arches standing out stark against the sky, what was once its nave now a huge pile of fallen masonry. We pass on and turn a corner; on the wall of what was formerly a French home of the well-todo class we see painted a large red triangle. As we reach the door, several Y. M. C. A. secretaries welcome us and take us inside. Here they have lived through all the furious shelling of the preceding months, serving hot coffee and caring for the needs of thousands of soldiers; soldiers; and, strangely enough, this house, the ground-floor rooms of which have been crowded with troops night after night, is the only one in the vicinity which has not been partially wrecked by German shells. The upper stories, scarred with shrapnel and flying shell fragments, are not in use; the secretaries are sleeping underground in what was once a wine-cellar, with the floor above them sandbagged and bomb-proofed. They tell us, to our surprise, that the seemingly deserted city is filled with troops; we learn that under the city is a vast network of labyrinthine cellars.

and connecting passages, and in these underground mazes, with the rats and vermin, the soldiers are living. No wonder that that little friendly Y. M. C. A. building is thronged with troops night after night. We hear that in some way, I know not how, the secretaries managed to secure last week 15,000 fresh eggs which they supplied to the troops going

certain famous ridge which we came to one evening about sunset. We were crossing a battle-field but freshly taken from the enemy; it was like a nightmare of desolation. The trees had been mostly shot away; only a few dead trunks and twisted limbs remained. Picking our way past great shell craters, many of them twenty feet in diameter and twelve

up to the trenches; they are giving out ninety gallons of hot coffee every night. We ask what chance for rest they have, and are told that a few days before one of them spent his time unloading boxes of supplies from five in the afternoon until three the next morning, and turned in at last, only to be called out a few moments later by the arrival of fresh troops, whom he spent the rest of the morning serving. we watch them at their work we begin to understand that a cup of hot coffee and a bit of cheery atmosphere may sometimes preach the most eloquent of

sermons.

As

Still nearer the firing-line, often only a few hundred yards back of the frontline trenches, are the little Y. M. C. A. dugouts for serving the troops as they enter and leave the trenches. I think of a typical dugout near the crest of a

feet deep, we came finally to what was left of the old English frontline trenches. There they still were, damaged and broken by shell - fire, but plainly visible, where poor human beings had lived for months. We start across into what was No Man's Land; there is not a yard of earth here that has not received a direct hit; the ground is as tossed and broken as the surface of a storm-beaten ocean. The stench of the dead is still in the air; the horror is indescribable. We pass the remains of a body; a can of beef and a clip of shells is still beside it. The ground, plowed and churned by titanic forces, is a terrible mass of twisted barbed-wire entanglements, steel shell fragments, timbers and bits of concrete emplacements, pieces of clothing, shrapnel, broken rifles, unexploded bombs, rifle-shells, human blood and bones-all shattered and ghastly and horrible. We are in front of the English batteries and can hear the English projectiles go whining and hurtling over our heads. The German shells come screaming back, seeking out the English batteries, and throwing high into the air great columns of earth and smoke. Farther and farther we make our way up toward the present front line; the atmosphere grows so unhealthy with flying shrapnel and bursting shells that we are not sorry to reach the little red-triangle sign beside the entrance to a dugout; we dive into the dugout, feeling our way down the steep steps. At first we can