Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 251, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1918 — HAS TIME TO PRAY [ARTICLE]

HAS TIME TO PRAY

YANK SOLDIER WITNESSED ALLIED COMMANDER AT DEVOTIONS ON BATTLE FIELDA California boy—Evans by Hama —with the American forces in France, has recently written a letter to hi* parents at San Bernardino, in which he tells of meeting General Foch at close range, says the Los Angeles, Cal., Times. Evans had gone into an old church to have a look at it and as he stood there with bared head to satisfy hie respectful curiosity, a gray haired man, with the eagles of a general on the collar of his shabby uniform, also entered the church. 'Only one orderly accompanied the quiet gray man. No glittering staff of officers, no entourage of gold laced aids were with him; nobody but just the orderly. Evans paid small attention at first to the gray man,!but was curious to see him kneel in the church, praying. The minutes passed until full threequarters of aU hour had gone by before the gray haired man arose from his knees. Then Evans followed him down the street and was surprised to see soldiers salute tins man in great excitement, and women and children stopping in their tracks with awe struck faces as he passed. It was Foch. And now Evans, of San Bernardino, counts the experience as the greatest in has life. During that three-quarters of an hour that the generalissimo of all the allied armies was on Us knees Id humble supplication in that quiet church ten thousand guns were roaring at his word on a hundred hills that rocked with death. Millions of men crouched in the trenches or rushed across Moodstained earth at his command. Generals and field marshals, artillery, cavalry, engineers, tanks, fought and wrought across the map of Europe absolutely as he commanded them, and in no other manner, as he went into that little church to pray. Nor was it an unusual thing for General Foch to do. There is no day that he does not do the same tiling if there be a church that he can reach. He never fails to spend an hour on his knees every morning that he awakes from sleep, and every night it 5e the same. Moreover, it is not a new thing with him. He has done it all his life.