GYPSY SMITH_GENTLEMAN

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 20 September 1917, Page 3

GYPSY SMITH_GENTLEMAN

AN EVANGELIST'S EXPERIENCES

AT THE FRONT.

" NEVER in my life," writes Gypsy Smith, the famous evangelist, after an extended visit to the Western front, " have I found men more ready for a sane presentation of the Gospel. There is no panic; they are as cool about their religion as they are about the war.

The criticisms of those who say that while the V.M.C.A. is doing a great social work it is doing very little spiritual, is not fair. Wherever I went I had the right of way. The workers everywhere were most sympathetic and keen. They were constantly engaged in spiritual work, as eveiything they are doing is a means to an end. Indeed, the Association has accomplished a far bigger spirital work than we dreamed.

To begin with, the men have confidence in the Red Triangle. They don't stop to ask what you are. They don't know what 1 am, whether Church of England, Eoman Catholic, Baptist or Methodist. If a man has a message they are ready to listen to him. For a week I had been speaking to a regiment made up mostly of Roman Catholic men. I did not attack their denomination. At the end one of them came to me and said: " Sure, yir riv'rence, ye're a gintleman." " How do you know ?" said I. " I feel it here," said he. "Well," I answered, " you can have it all at the same price as I had it." " But, begorra," said he, " yell be asking me to give up my religion." '" Do you think I should be such a fool?" said 1. "Whatever you have that is good, keep." " Well," said he, " what have I to give up ?" "Nothing at all," said I, "but your sin." "Sure," he said, "ye're a gintleman." Of course I kept to essentials and kept off everything that would look like or sound like dividing lines. The chaplains are a fine lot. They all work together, and the churches all come together in the Association " hut." I found other work to do than preaching—and that was the best preaching I did. One night at a wayside railroad station where there was an Association buffet for the cold, tired men in the train, I had been speaking to the men for half-an-hour, and I saw what a rush there was at the counter, so I put in a couple of hours serving bread and butter. Soon they were saying, " Hello, look at that. See who is serving us." So I said to them, " Why not this end as well as the other?" I sold them twist, candles, matches, tobacco —all was to sell I sold, and why not ? It put me in touch with them.

Every night for three weeks I spoke to the men close up to the front, in a dilapidated room seating perhaps 200. I never spoke there without hearing the crash of the shells and the falling of the shrapnel, while frequently bits of wreckage were shaken down upon us by the vibration of the firing. It was so cold there that ray moustache ifroze to the blanket in which J slept, The price I paid, however, was a small one for the privilege of serving, and I am going out again for another year.