GassJi^_X_ 10 COPYRIGHT DEFGSJcT; THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY The Religion of the Tommy War Essays and Addresses By H. P. ALMON ABBOTT, M.A, D.D. Dean of Trinity Cathedral Cleveland Morehouse Publishing Co. Milwaukee 1918 COPYRIGHT BY THE MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 1918 NOV -6 1918 \<" ©CI.A5U8073 INDEX The Religion of the Tommy 1 The Call op Europe 13 Faith and the War ......... 22 Combatant and Non-Combatant 40 The Church and the Reconstruction Period . 53 The Cloud of the War, and the Silver Lining 64 Easter and the War 69 Women and the War 79 A Woman War Worker 84 Great Britain's Effort . 88 A Visit to F . . 98 A Visit to S Camp 105 A Visit to W Camp 119 A Visit to A . . Camp . . - . . . • 129 A Visit to Oxford 140 TO The Cherished Memory of My Mother In Deepest Gratitude and Abiding Love I Dedicate This Book THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY THERE could be no more important matter of discussion for the Christian Church at the present time than the Religion of the Tommy. Somehow or other the Church must adapt herself to the religious outlook of the men who are actively engaged in this war, in order that when this war is over the Church may have a message and a programme, a vital message and an attractive programme, for the manhood of the nations. The Reconstruction Period lies before us, either in the immediate or the less immediate future, and the Church, together with all the departmentalized activi- ties of society in general, must walk with firin step and seeing eyes into the maze of assured uncertainties. The Constructor, or the Reconstructor, whether individual or organizational, must have some plan in mind, some more or less defined propaganda in view, if he would expect to accomplish results at all commensurate with the opportunities at his disposal. Atmospheric intention — praiseworthy as such atmospheric 2 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY intention may happen to be in its spirit — is not enough. It is essential that there should be a measure of definiteness in expectation, and so in procedure. The Religion of the Tommy ! It is a difficult subject; it abounds in seeming paradox and in apparent contradiction; but it is a subject which must be considered, and even unfounded conclusions are better than no conclusions at all — as indicative of awakening interest, and as provocative of searching interrogation. The Religion of the Tommy is, of course, the Religion of the average man ; for Tommy is not a professionalized soldier — he is neither more nor less than the civilian in khaki. He is the ordinary man in the throes of a temporary "job" ; a "job" which he is engaged in for the moment because he considers it to be the bounden and the necessary thing to do; but a "job" which he fully intends to lay aside, and to lay aside for all time, so soon as the cir- cumstances of world politics permit of such relinquishment. It is necessary to bear this fact in mind, for its realization enlarges the discussion so far as the Church is concerned to the circumferences of the entire male constituency, or possible male constituency, of the Church, rather than to the soldier in particular. The Religion of the Tommy is, then, the Religion of the average man. To formulate THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY 3 the one is to formulate the other, and if the Church proves herself wise enough to scheme the reception of the former she will also, at the same time, scheme the reception of the latter. What, then, is the Religion of the Tommy? In a sense, and that the accredited conventional sense, the Tommy has no Religion at all. That is to say — and one would avoid misconception in this connection — the Tommy is not a be- liever in Institutionalized Religion. He is alto- gether undoctrinal in his Religion, and he has no patience with, and less appreciation of, Theology — as we understand that all inclusive term. In Tommy's estimation the Church is sus- pect. The Church is suspect for many reasons — among them the following : Tommy has no admiration for the man who is playing safe. He is not playing for safety himself — far from it, for he is risking his health and his life at every turn — and he has no regard for the man who is playing for safety in matters eternal ; who is preeminently interested in the salvation of his own individual soul. It seems to Tommy that the Church is literally thronged with people who are running for shelter from the barrage of Satan, and who are desirous above all else of saving their spiritual skins from unpleasing perforations. Tommy is, of course, less than right here. 4 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY As a matter of fact, organized Christianity has been largely diluted of its individualism in recent years, and the social note has begun to be emphasized in no uncertain tones. The truth is, however, that Tommy is laboring under the impression that most people go to Church, and associate themselves with the Church's life, because they are afraid that otherwise they might not be assured of their safe passage to the Eternal Blighty. I have seen soldiers come into a Hut Canteen during the progress of a religious service, walk stolidly over to the newspapers hanging upon the customary screen, and stand there brazenly reading, with hats on and the inevitable ciga- rette in their mouths, throughout the course of the entire proceedings. I admired them for it. They had their convictions, and they were honest enough to live up to them. At the bottom of their behavior there was the per- meating thought, "These fellows may be scared about the welfare of their souls ; but I am not scared about the welfare of mine. Let me do my piece of work, and salvation will take care of itself." Then, Tommy has been through an experi- ence which has changed his ideas as to the relative merits of the professing and the non- professing Christian. He has found it im- possible to distinguish between the ordinarily religious man and the ordinarily unreligious THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY 5 man in the hour of crisis. As an illustration of what I mean, in one platoon there was a cosmopolitanism of membership which would do justice to the proportioned cosmopolitan- ism of an American city. There were — amongst the totaled number — two professional thieves, a bank clerk, a lawyer, a saloon keeper, and a divinity student. One day three vol- unteers were called for to undertake a piece of work fraught with exceptional danger. Who responded? Why, the two thieves and the saloon keeper! I do not suggest for a moment that the bank clerk, the lawyer, and the divinity student would not have responded as well — I like bank clerks and lawyers and divinity students — but the fact remains that they did not respond quickly enough. The thieves and the saloon keeper got ahead of them ! Now, such things as this, and they are happening every day, make Tommy think. He is far! from being sure that Church affiliation, or even a reputation for morality, differentiate his brothers in the quality of inherent manli- ness. He finds that when put to the test, "A man's a man for a' that." In this connection Tommy is rather under the impression that the Church turns out the goody-goody young man, and the prig. In other words that the atmosphere of the Church is harmful to the production of robust charac- ter. He may be wrong, and I believe that he 6 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY is wrong; but Tommy is a crass person, an unconscious pragmatist in every sense of the word ; he judges men as he finds them ; and he has come to the conclusion that the man who is forever talking about his soul, and his brother's soul, and the life of the world to come, is not altogether to be trusted. He has sensed the fact, and through flagrant illustration, that these men do not always fortify their profession by their deeds, and he is illogical enough to be logically prejudiced against an Institution which harbors hypocrites within its fold. Yes, rightly or wrongly, the Church is sus- pect in Tommy's eyes, and so his Religion is — whatever it may be — of a different brand from the conventional and conventionalized Religion of the Church. It follows from this — and I have already hinted at the fact — that there is no Theology in Tommy's Religion. He is, for example, strong on works, his acts are often times religious to a pronounced de- gree ; but he has no conception of Justification by Faith. He repudiates, and with a fervor of masculine honesty, the suggestion that the sufferings of Christ were a substitution for His own sinfulness. He tells you, and with a courage of selfhood which wins your latent admiration, that he does not want anyone, God or man, to stand between him and the conse- quences of his misdeeds. He is man enough to take his own punishment when punishment THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY 7 is due, and he would consider it an im- poverishment of his self-respect to permit anyone else to pay the price for him. As to his conception of the Person of Christ — well — he has, I believe, no intelligent concep- tion in the matter ; but of this much he is fully persuaded: that Christ was not a man in the sense in which Tommy Atkins is a man ; that He did not have to face life with the limited kit with which he has to face life ; and that for all occasions calling for extraordinary self- control Christ had something "up His sleeve." This is, of course, an unconscious testimony to the Deity of the Master; but it removes Christ from the similitude of a militant ex- ample, or pattern, of conduct. No, Tommy has — in common parlance — "no use" for The- ology; for the niceties of theological distinc- tions; and if he must have the Gospel at all, then, let it be the Gospel untrammelled with the denned speculations of the schools. What, then, is Tommy's Religion? It is a vague Religion; in a large measure, an un- conscious Religion; an inarticulated code of feeling and behavior which leads him to think and to do noble things without fully under*- standing the why and the wherefore of his thoughts and deeds. It seems, however, to center about the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you" — a hopelessly incomplete formula of behavior 8 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY so far as God is concerned, and yet, when all is said and done, not a bad formula to follow out, in all its inferences and applications, in daily life. Tommy is living for his comrade, aye, and dying for his comrade — and without the slight- est display in the matter— every day. He is forever sacrificing himself for the other fellow, and, of course, he is gloriously surrendering his happiness and his mortal being for the comfort of his own country, and for the security of the world at large. The truth seems to be that Tommy is doing his bit in and for the moment. He is ener- getically forwarding the task at his feet, and he has little interest in, and less understanding of, the apparently minor matters of the soul. This world, and the things of this world, oc- cupy his whole concern, and in his leisure moments, which are few and far between, he has other things to think of than the "love- wooed dreams of the Land that is afar off." Such, then, negatively and affirmatively, is the Religion of the Tommy — of the English, aye, the American soldier of to-day; the Re- ligion of the civilian in khaki ; the Credo of the average man. :|c $ $ if. 3fC $ It may be that the foregoing seems un- satisfactory to the stay-at-home, who has been fondling the presumption that there is a mar- THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY 9 vellous Religious Revival being wrought through the agency of this present war, and that such revival was reaching its climax of ecstatic proportions among the rank and file of our fighting forces. If such be the case — two things must be borne in mind, and with emphasis unqualified. The first thing is this : The Church dare not say anything derogatory to the character, or the religious outlook, of the soldiers of to-day. These men are fighting our battles. These men are standing between us and the greatest disaster that has ever faced humanity in the history of the world. These men are playing the Twentieth Century Christos — laying down their lives that we may live — and through their vicarious sufferings we are freed, freed to carry on our avocations, and to die, in peace. Any hint of patronage on the part of the Church towards these men should be repudiated, and with withering scorn, by all right thinking people. The other thing is this. These men are — for the most part — young men. The clamor- ous blood of youth is shouting in their veins. They are engaged in a great adventure — the consummation of which possesses their minds to the relative insignificance of all else. Their faults — if any — are the faults of immaturity, and of absorbing occupation. Their virtues — 10 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY and they are many — are the virtues of the doer, and not of the thinker, in every age. How may the Church in the Period of Re- construction, in the Peace Robed Years which lie before us, expect to enlist such men in her support, and to enroll them as professed fol- lowers of the King of kings? Candidly— I do not know. These men are for the most part so whole-souledly out of sympathy with the Church, as the Church is constituted at the present time, that an effective reconciliation between the Church and the average man would seem to partake of the stuff of which dreams are made. One would almost suggest a scrapping of the Church as the Church exists to-day; but such procedure would be faithlessness to the Deposit of Truth, and, at the same time, altogether beyond the boundaries of practical politics. All that one may do is to advocate certain changes of attitude which might, in practice and in time, induce the average man to throw in his lot with the Religion of the Church. (i) The Church must be as manly, and as masculine, as the man to whom she caters. She must permit a human latitude of behavior even whilst she adheres to a divine longitude of character. Little sins must not be magnified THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY 11 into big sins, and piety must be saturated with the breath of reason. (2) The Church must be honest. She has not always been honest in the past — either in her system, or in minor matters of procedure. She has inveigled men into her membership, and into attendance at her services, through means which have almost amounted to trickery. There has been a string attached to association with almost every Church society — from the Sunday school upwards. Men have looked on and seen these things, and they have thought "unutterables" which have caused them for- ever after to "pass by on the other side". (3) The Minister must be unworldly, and the Church constituency must "perform in their lives that which they profess with their lips." We must, all of us, "walk in wisdom — that is in sincerity — toward them that are without." Hypocrisy must — despite the human nature of us all — be reduced to the minimum. We must produce a character which is obviously better than characters produced elsewhere. (4) We must be real. This, it seems to me, is the prime necessity. If we are real — genuine in speech and deed— we shall ultimately appeal to the average man. Sincerity always "wins out" in the long run. Truthfulness is, by its very nature, irresistible. Finally — We must deprecate Theology, and magnify Religion. There must be definition 12 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY in all things ; but let us see to it that we do not over-define the Gospel of Good News, nor play the Pettifogger with the Person of Jesus Christ. The average man is tired of formularies of Faith, and would find rest and peace for his soul in the profound simplicities. The day for Theology is past, and the day for Religion has come. The Church must be abreast of the times. Manliness — honesty — consistency of life — reality, and simplicity. There you have the recipe, and in broadest outline and ingredient, for the Church's appeal to the average man of the Post War Days of the future. THE CALL OF EUROPE I HAVE but recently returned from England, where I had the privilege of traveling some- what extensively, and of coming into contact with the military outlook; and I am able to assure you, from my own observation and from views expressed to me by authoritative people, that the advent of the United States into the War is heralded as the salvation of civilization, and as the surety of ultimate victory for the Allied Cause. This realization is so pro- nounced that it would be altogether impossible to overemphasize the esteem in which America, and the American executive, are held in England to-day. The attitude is that of a beleaguered city, hard pressed by the encom- passing hosts of its enemies, accepting the information that an unconquerable army is marching to its relief with the keenest ex- pressions of delight, and every outward evi- dence of unrestrained joy. England — and I restrict myself primarily to England, that I may speak whereof I know — has lost the first flush of her enthusiasm, the 14 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY original idealism of the great undertaking on behalf of humanity, and has settled down to the prosecution of the War as a beastly business which must be seen through, with clenched hand and gritted teeth, at all costs. There are three stages in any protracted War — the onset, the grip, and the drag. England is involved in the drag; in the long continued pull with an adversary of seemingly unlimited resource ; and the knowledge that the greatest republic in the world has entered as a fresh young Giant into the arena of hostilities has fostered a hearten- ment in the struggle which, altogether inex- pressible in words, has permeated the very fibre of the national life. The armies on the various Fronts, the navy in its ceaseless task of heroic vigilance, and the population in the Home- land, have taken, as it were, a deep breath of invigorating healthfulness, and, with cour- age refreshed, have rededicated themselves to the thorn-crowned service of liberty and democracy. This has been, so far, and apart from financial assistance, the greatest and the most imme- diate effect of America's participation in the conflict. I saw it illustrated, and in small focus which prepared the way for a larger realization, on shipboard. In crossing over to England we had with us in the first cabin two hundred and fifty American officers of all ranks, and one solitary British officer, a major, who had been THE CALL OF EUROPE 15 through the War from the historic battle of the Marne, and who, shell shocked and physically disorganized, was returning to his unit after a trip abroad for his health. The American offi- cers were, taken as a whole, the most magnifi- cent body of men that I have ever been priv- ileged to meet — university graduates who had just finished their intensive training in southern and northern camps ; sound of wind and limb ; heart whole and soul proof; and possessed of a spiritualized conception of the crusade in which they were shortly to be engaged. They were young knights, and modest-minded young knights at that, sworn to the relief of the op- pressed, and to the emancipation of humanity from the throes of a threatened slavery. The British officer, on the other hand, was a war- hardened man. His eyes were literally haunted with the untoward sights which he had wit- nessed during the past few years, and his speech — when he could be induced to speak, for these War veterans are the most silent of mortals — ■ was the speech of a man who has lost the pro- portionated vision through attention to the details of the immediate task. He was at war because his Country was at war ; he was fight- ing because his countrymen were fighting; and beyond the recognition that the Germans must be defeated, whether in long time or in short time, and whatever the cost in blood or treas- ure, there was no apocalyptic incentive of a 16 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. He was in the drag of war's experience whilst his shipmates were in the enamored and the enamoring glow of the onset of war's alarm. It was enlightening as the days went on to see how the enthusiasm and the idealism of the Americans gradually awakened the Englishman to newness of life; how the memory of the muddiness and the bloodiness and the sordidness of active service was all shot through with a rain-bowed hope of better things, of lastingly better things, for Europe and the world. The man was new born to a belief in the innate worthwhileness of human nature; his brooding cynicism of soul was stilled ; and his spirit, his entire higher nature, was regenerated to God. This, it seems to me, even more than material assistance, even more than the mere count in aeroplanes, or in men; even more than the financing of the War in generous billions by the most generous of all peoples, is America's mission, at any rate at the present time, to her allies Over Seas. She must keep alive, in the minds and hearts of men, the supreme purposes of the conflict which is rocking the hemis- pheres. She must be altruistic in her impulses, and God-endowed, self-consciously God-en- dowed, in her endeavors. She must fight, and with all the forces of sentiment at her com- mand, against a mechanistic view of War. She THE CALL OF EUROPE 17 must bear aloft the Torch of Faith into the smoke and grime of contending armies, and shout aloud, so that Humanity may give heed and hear, the Battle Cry of God. The appeal of England to-day is "Come over and help us." "We are engulfed in the action and reaction of abnormal conditions. We are possessed of a dogged courage ; we are ready to walk through the uttermost reaches of this out- wardly imposed Inferno ; but we need, we need with a heart hunger which there is no gain- saying, your beautiful ideas, your sweet confi- dences, your intoxicating ideals, your unswerv- ing conviction that in the long run all things work together for good to them that love, and seek to pursue, the right. Assist us in quantity — both of equipment and men ; but, above and beyond all else, assist us in quality ; in degree, rather than in extent. Let your men be young Galahads, and see to it that your propaganda is fired with a passionate insistency of ethical pronouncement." Now, how may we expect to meet the re- quirements of the Call of Europe in this con- nection ? How may we play the role of spirit- ual helpmeet to our Allies who through the bearing of the burden and the heat of the day have almost reached the limits of spiritual ex- haustion? How may we keep alive the funda- mental principles of righteousness which have 18 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY ushered the most humane of the nations of the earth into the blood-saturated maelstrom of man's unparalleled inhumanity to man ? We must, of course, do our uttermost to equip our young men who are about to go Over Seas with "the whole Armor of God" — the Girdle of Truth ; the Breastplate of Righteous- ness ; the Shield of Faith ; the Helmet of Hope ; and the Sword of the Spirit. This is to be done in America — not on the battlefields of Europe. It is, in a sense, an impertinence to preach religion to men on the firing line — especially when the preacher is a noncombatant and not worthy to unloose the shoes' latchets of the men whom he has the temerity to address. When the men "go over the top" they know more about God than the average preacher knows in a lifetime This spiritual equipping of our men is to be done in the churches and train- ing camps of the homeland, and it is to be so thoroughly accomplished that the indenture will endure the effacing of the graduated dis- illusionment which lies ahead. The reasons for America's entrance into the War ; the unselfish- ness of America's intentions; the achievement of the World Goal to which the horror of the War is only the means to an end ; the opposing principles of life which are responsible for the sight and experience of a World in Arms ; these things, ethical and humanitarian, all caught up into the religious motive of the conflict, with THE CALL OF EUROPE 19 Jesus Christ as the alluring Champion of the whole, must be proclaimed in season and out of season until our brave lads are inoculated with the virus of the justice of the cause for which they fight. Then, we must do our uttermost to provide our young men with the opportunities of healthful recreation in France, or wherever their warring lot may happen to be cast. The distinguishing feature of the soldier's life in Europe to-day is monotony, a soul-benumbing and heart-deadening monotony, a monotony which literally floods the horizon of thought and activity to the verge of criminality, and beyond. The force of temptation to the man who for months on end has been subjected to the routi- nized horror of warfare, and who suddenly finds himself within the circle of polite civilization — adrift in a center of population far from home and restraining influences — is altogether be- yond the comprehension of the individual who is leading a more or less normal, and a sheltered, life. The point is, however, that we must sacrifice ourselves at home to provide for the safeguarding of the morals of the men who are fighting our battles Over Seas. As Amer- icans who are desirious of answering the Call of Europe for idealism we must see to it that our soldiers are so protected in the unusual circum- stances in which they find themselves placed 20 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY that they may be able to preserve the vision of the Pure in Heart who see God, and to pass on that vision to their comrades of the Allied Nations. We must so surround our men with good inducements that evil inducements will lose their urgency of appeal, and that they will be sane enough to appreciate the fact that even if life is calculably short and death looms near it is the part of manliness and wisdom to play the game of decency until the game of decency is well played out. If we would have our young men, those boys of whom we are all so im- measurably proud, those youths with the light of self-sacrifice shining in their eyes, an inspira- tion, and an uplifting influence, to the soldiers of England and France and Italy, and all the rest; if we would delegate them as the repre- sentatives of America to carry the message of American consecration to the shores of Europe ; then we must envelope them with the tangible evidences of our ameliorative love, and support to the best of our ability such agencies as the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation, and kindred organizations, which have the specialized ability to cater to the needs of the soldier on active service. Religion in the Home Land, and Social Ser- vice, with a modicum of religion, outside the Home Land — these are the common sense means to be employed in the formulation of THE CALL OF EUROPE 21 America's sustained reply to the Cry of Europe, "Come over and help us." Whilst we are so praiseworthily engaged in the promotion of material assistance — assist- ance which is absolutely essential to the achievement of ultimate victory — assistance which the United States and the United States alone may give — do not let us forget the spiri- tual aspect of the matter, and withhold that assistance of thought and idea and ideal which is the fundamental requirement of the business in hand, and which ranks as the animating soul within the body of our sanctified exertions. Only so may we maintain that morale, that dauntless enthusiasm, that certainty of the eventual conquest of might by right, which the other nations associated with us in Arma- geddon have almost lost through their long- time contact with the hideousness of war. FAITH AND THE WAR THERE are those who in the face of the untoward conditions and the wholesale slaughter of the past four years have given up their belief in God — in God's existence, and in the benevolent attitude of God towards Man. There are those who, in accordance with their lights, have a right to deny God's existence and God's partiality on account of this War, and there are those who have no right to deny God's existence and God's partiality. There are those who are entitled to their disbelief, and there are those who are not entitled to their disbelief. Those who have a right to deny God's ex- istence and God's partiality are they who have really thought the matter through ; who have conscientiously weighed the pros and cons ; and have come to the deliberate conclusion, sadly and broken-heartedly, that this War disproves the fact of God and the truth of God's kindly interference in the affairs of mankind. Those who have a right to deny God's existence and God's partiality are they who throughout the FAITH AND THE WAR 23 days of peace have lived close to God, and have followed, to the best of their ability, the ex- ample and the precepts of God's revelation of Himself in the person of His Son. Those who have no right to deny God's ex- istence and God's partiality are they who have disregarded the clarion importunities of the religious life during the years of peace; who have endeavored to effect in their own persons the irreconcilable compromise be- tween God and Mammon; and who have shown themselves to be unprofitable servants in the transaction of righteousness. Those who have no right to deny God's existence and God's partiality on account of this War are they who have not really thought the matter through; who have not con- scientiously weighed the pros and cons; and who have arrived at a snap judgment fostered by their preferences rather than by their persuasions. A friend of mine, the Rev. J. B. C. Murphy, one of the most eloquent chaplains in the British service, killed a few years ago by a fall from his horse, was once engaged in a religious controversy over the mess table in an East Indian barracks. The authenticity of portions of the Old Testament scriptures was in ribald dispute. One young subaltern in particular was vehement in his denunciation of the veracity of the account of Creation as contained in the first two 24 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY chapters of the Book of Genesis, and ridi- culed, in florid phraseology, the truthfulness, either in the letter or the spirit of the narrative, of the marine epic of Jonah and the Whale. Mr. Murphy interrupted the torrential outburst of abuse, and, pointing his finger at the young man, said, amid a hush of silence which could be felt as well as heard, "Where were you, sir, last night?" The chaplain knew his man. The self-con- stituted higher critic was in the habit of break- ing the seventh commandment — "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The argumentation came to an abrupt conclusion, and the subaltern left the dinner table with an expression upon his face which must have been written upon the countenances of those Jews of olden time who, in response to the directive statement, "Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone," left the presence of the Master and the sinful woman, "beginning at the oldest even unto the least." Those who have no right to deny God's ex- istence and God's partiality through this War are they who are morally unsound; who have something consciously "up their sleeve"; and who are not possessed of "the vision of the pure in heart". Now to those who have a right to deny God's existence and God's partiality because of this War — who have thought the matter through; FAITH AND THE WAR 25 who have arrived at a conscientious conclu- sion; and who have really and practically be- lieved in God's existence and in God's benev- olent attitude towards His creation during the peaceful years prior to August 1914, — I would tender, and in no attitude of pharisaical superi- ority, my profoundest sympathy. A French writer has said, "Whenever I meet a man who has given up his belief in God I take off my hat to him, as to a man who has suffered an irreparable loss." Whenever I meet a man who has reached the conviction that "The Great Companion is dead", I take off my hat to him, even as I take off my hat to the hearse that passes me upon the street. The atmos- phere is an atmosphere of death. To live in this world believing that all things are hap- hazard; that there is no vital and consecutive significance in affairs both small and great; and that there is no "far-off divine event towards which the whole creation moves" — why, personally, I could not endure to exist for a day under such circumstances! To those who have a right to deny God's ex- istence and God's partiality through the crim- soned conditions of the present time I would say: "My friends, live up to the light which you possess; do the honest thing within the limits of your horizon though the heavens fall ; live in the association of those who do believe in the great fundamentals of life ; and keep an 26 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY open mind until you may see this crisis of humanity in perspective — in relation to much that is to happen afterwards, as well as in relation to all that has gone before." Now, what as Christians and as Churchmen is our apologetic in the face of this War? What have we to say to the legitimate and the conscientious objector? I would speak phil- osophically rather than theologically, and base what I have to say upon common sense and my own conception of God and of God's rela- tion to Man rather than upon the letter or the tenor of Holy Scripture. (i) God is self -limited in respect of Man: This self-limitation of God does not for a moment, nor to any degree, vitiate the omnipo- tence of God. God's omnipotence is absolute; but it is voluntarily restricted relatively — in relation to Man. "God made man in His own Image" — "God breathed in Man the breath of life, and Man became a LIVING soul." Whether we believe in Man as instantly created, or as the crowning product of the evolutionary process, Man is a Sovereign Individual, possessed of Free Will, and re- sponsible for his own actions. The whole truth of the Christian Religion is based upon this fact. The Incarnation means nothing — less than nothing — unless such is the case. The Church is a farce, and the Sacramental System of the Church is an anachronism, if Man is FAITH AND THE WAR 27 neither more nor less than a puppet at a ven- triloquist's show — bound to dance and sing at the ventriloquist's fancy. We recognize the reality of the exercise of Free Will in ordinary affairs. When I lie — do I blame God? When I lust — do I blame God? When I maliciously take away my neighbor's reputation — do I blame God? Surely not. I know that of myself I lie ; that of myself I lust; that of myself I bear false witness. When we walk through the slums of some great city, and mourn over the un- fortunate condition of the poor — do we accuse God? No. We speak of "man's inhumanity to man." When I live over an open sewer, and contract typhoid fever, do I blame God? No. I blame the drains, and either remedy matters, or remove my habitation. Governed by reason and sanity I take steps to prevent a recurrence of the disaster. When my neighbor has ten thousand dollars a year and a motor car, and I possess neither — do I blame God? No. I either blame the unfair priv- ileges of human society, or I deplore my own lack of acquisitive ability. When a villain rapes a girl — do we blame God? No. We anathematize the villain. Now — is God responsible for this War, and for all the blood-shot beastliness in connection therewith? Is God responsible for the fact that for some forty years the German nation 28 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY has prepared for war? Surely not. The Kaiser, and the so-called Potsdam Gang, and the governing class of Germany, and the German philosophers, are responsible for the opening of the flood gates of Hell upon an unsuspecting universe. Is God responsible for this War? Surely not. The Allied Nations, to a lesser degree than the Nations of the Central Powers, are responsible for this War. We were material rather than spiritual; We were worldly in our behavior rather than other-worldly ; we followed the dictates of our own free will rather than the dictates of the Will of God. We failed — generally speaking — to base our conduct upon God's standard of conduct in the Person of His Son, the Prince of Peace, and we walked the broad road of pleasurable dalliance rather than the straight and narrow path of righteousness that leadeth into Life — individual, national, and interna- tional. Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Bul- garia are responsible for this War. Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Servia, Rou- mania, Portugal, Russia, and the United States of America are responsible for this War. Man, in the exercise of his free will, immediate and prolonged, is responsible for this War. If we accept individual responsibility, why should we not accept collective responsibility? Murder is the same in the many as in the few. If one man murders one man that man is a FAITH AND THE WAR 29 murderer. He is recognized as such. If many men murder many men those men are mur- derers. If one man rapes a girl that man is a villain. If hundreds of men rape hundreds of girls — then, we have hundreds of villains. The single and the multiple come under the same category. Quantity does not repudiate the fact of quality either in virtue, or in vice. Man, then, is a responsible party. Our whole system of jurisprudence is founded and built upon that recognition; our business and professional and national and international affairs are run upon that hypothesis. For God to have prevented this War, or for God to step down and interrupt this War before it is fought out to a logical and permanent conclusion, would have been, and would be, for God to falsify all human estimate and prognosis in all things, both great and small. What Science calls "the uniformity of nature", Faith calls "the fidelity of God." God must be faithful to the trust which He has voluntarily imposed in Man. Only when men deliberately and con- sciously subject their wills to God's will may God work through men for the accomplishment of His heart's desire and the attainment of all that tells in the longest count for men's para- mount peace. The dignity of our life is based upon the intrinsic democracy of our life. God is not an Autocrat. God is not a Despot. There is nothing of the Kaiser about God. 30 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY God is the Loving Father, and, as His children, we may either please, or displease, His Father's heart. God, in the highest sense, must make the world safe for democracy. Think on these things, elaborate them at length, and see whether or no you may logically conclude that God is responsible for this War; see whether or no this War is immeasurably more repug- nant to God than it is to us. (2) This War is an episode — Life is a con- tinuous performance: The record of the past four years must be considered in relation to the record of the centuries. An incident, how- ever prolonged, cannot eradicate a fact, or a series of facts. This War has not falsified the Argument from Design. There is still the Universe to be accounted for — in its existence, in its continuance, and in its adaptation of means to end. Despite the War the twenty million blazing suns are maintained in their progress through the heavens. Despite the War 1 the seasons of the year succeed one another in their orderly habit. Despite the War the earth is swinging around the sun at the rate of twenty miles a second, and we are mysteriously prevented from devasting collis- ion with planets, both great and small. This War has not falsified the historical truth of the Life of Jesus Christ. The word of Tacitus still stands: "J esus Christ was put to death when Pontius Pilate was Procurator of Judaea." FAITH AND THE WAR 31 There is still the record of the Gospel story to be accounted for. There is still the Resurrec- tion to be explained — the Resurrection, which such an expert in legal evidence as Blackstone declared to be better authenticated than any other fact of history. This War has not an- nihilated conscience. On the contrary it seems to have quickened and enlivened conscience. The Categorical Imperative of Kant still thunders in our breasts. Conscience still makes us do those things which are contrary to our predilections, and even to our worldly prosperity. This War has not expunged the hungering for immortality. The reverse, as a matter of necessity, is the case. The words of the poet still hold true : "There is no death! What seems so is transition. This life of mortal breath Is but the suburb of the Life Elysian, Whose portal we call death." This War has not contradicted the historical facts of our historical Faith, nor has it stifled the religious instincts of man. The evidence that we seem to be leading ourselves at the present time — although the reality of our sole self-leadership at the present time is a question for discussion — does not wipe from the slate of the unending past the picture of God's leadership when, and so often as, we placed 32 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY our hand in His Hand, and sought His far- seeing guidance ! If God was still with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and upon the Cross of Calvary; if neither of these experiences rejected the truth of God's Presence with Jesus throughout His previous Life; surely the presumption is that God is still with humanity as humanity sweats in the Garden, and as humanity agonizes upon the Cross. To hear some people speak at the present time you would think that there had never been a yesterday, and that there was never to be a to-morrow — that everything was contained within the blood-rimmed com- pass of to-day! Now, what as Christians and as Churchmen have we to say to the people — and there are many such people ; their speculations surcharge the atmosphere on every hand — who, through this War, have come to disbelieve in God's benevolent attitude towards man? There are several things to be said, several things to be remembered and to be emphasized in their remembrance, in this connection. (i) There is Immortality — the cardinal doc- trine of our Religion : If this life is all ; if ex- istence is confined to birth and the grave; then, death is an awful thing, and wholesale death is altogether appalling. This World's delight is, indeed, "lightning that mocks the FAITH AND THE WAR 33 night." But, if this life is not everything ; if it is but the beginning of things ; if it is the pre- face to the Book, the prelude to the opera; if existence stretches out from birth through the grave, and into all eternity ; then, death is not necessarily awful, and wholesale death is not unrelievedly appalling. If God "has prepared for those who unfeignedly love Him such good things as pass man's understanding", if "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to con- ceive" the experience of the never-ending future, then, it is not the journey thither that we have to consider, neither is it the means of release from the lesser to the greater; it is the destination; it is the attainment of the objective ; it is the realization of the goal. The pain of a bayonet thrust, or the anguish of a bursting bomb, or the choking sensation of a gaseous vapor, is a minor matter, in continuance and in degree, as com- pared with the awakening "in Christ's own likeness, satisfied." The wholesale death of the past four years is only the focussing con- centration of the recognized and universal truth that all men must, sooner or later, die, and die in order that they may live in unprecedented abundance of life. (2) There is our Cause : What are we fight- ing for? Is our Cause worthy, worthy of the uttermost self-sacrifice involved, or is it not? 34 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY Christ died for humanity. Is it too much to say that the Allied Nations are dying for humanity? Christ's death was justified under the circumstances. Is it too much to suggest that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men are justified under the circumstances? Christ died for the redemption of mankind. Is it too much to say that we are dying for the redemption of generations as yet unborn? Christ was a vicarious Sacrifice. May it not be that the soldiers and sailors and aviators of the United States, and her Allies, are vicarious sacrifices for the stability and future well-being of men throughout the ages? Christ came to "do the work of Him that sent Him." May it not be that through us God is accomplishing the greatest and the most enduring good for the greatest number ? Christ was "sent" of God — willingly "sent", it is true ; there was no an- tagonism between the Father and the Son in the matter; commissioned of God to live a suffering life and to die a suffering death "for us men, and for our salvation." May it not be that we of this generation are consecrated of God to perform a like service of effective salva- tion for the peoples who are to inhabit this universe until "the consummation of the days"? It is at least possible, personally I deem it to be most probable, that an extraor- dinary ministry has been entrusted to the men and women of this second decade of the FAITH AND THE WAR 35 Twentieth Century, and that the fulfillment of our dignity depends upon the performance of our ministry — not upon an evasion of our responsibility, nor the attempt to escape from under the hands of our Consecrator. Our at- titude should be this: Things being as they are, and as they have been for some time, through man's wayward wandering from the ways of God, War was inevitable; but now it is the privilege and prerogative of all decent- minded men, of all men who believe in the ultimate supremacy of the Christian ethic, of all men who believe that in the long run "right is might," to fight for the establishment of things as they ought to be, as they ought to be in relation to the productive association of society at large, and as we have a reason to suppose that God would have them be. The strain is tremendous. The test is heart-split- ting. The demand reaches to the deepest fibres of the soul. But, the duty of redemption, the task of salvation, are imposed upon us, indi- rectly by human living in the past, directly by God's consecration in the present, and rather than let the cup pass from us, we shall drain the crimsoned wine to the very dregs. (3) There is evidence to the effect that God is with us: One hesitates to make such an assertion as this ; because the Kaiser is, appar- ently, assured that God is with him. The point is however, that the Kaiser is not infallible, 36 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY and may be suffering under a delusion. It is at least possible that God is "on our side", and the facts of the case would seem to indicate that such is the case. The "German God", the God created by the German imagination, a mere figment of the mind, and in his thinking related to the German process of reasoning, is, undoubtedly, on the German side. The God of Christ, however, the Father who loves His children, and "would not even the death of a sinner"; the God who abhors cruelty and atrocity ; the God who would not that the Ser- mon on the Mount should be treated as "a scrap of paper", is with the Allied Nations — and there is evidence to that effect. Is it short of miraculous that at the Battle of the Marne the German hordes should have been rolled back, and rolled back ignominiously, from the coveted Paris of their dreams? Ask any man who participated in the Retreat of Mons, and who was present at the battle which proved to be the crucial turning point in the contest between Civilization and Barbarism, and he will tell you that on that occasion at least God was not "on the side of the stronger Battal- ions." Is it short of miraculous that during the first twelve months of the War, the British line in Flanders should have held when the Germans were firing twelve shells to the British one? Ask the men of Neuve Chapelle, and Givenchy, and Ypres, and they will tell FAITH AND THE WAR 37 you that almost any moment during the initial year of the conflict the Germans might, if they would, have broken through their unsupported resistence even as the storm-wooed breakers of the ocean break through an extemporized dyke in hasty process of construction. Is it short of miraculous that peace-loving nations, unsuspecting through their confidence in human nature, should have been able, up to the present time, to stem the Teutonic tide, and to create a preparedness, a technical preparedness, in four years equal to the German prepared- ness of forty years? Surely these things testify to God's interest upon the side of righteousness — and to the uttermost limits of His self-imposed self-limitation in respect of Man! (4) There are the Mourners: Has God proved Himself to be "a very present help in time of trouble"? There are thousands upon thousands of sorrowing ones, mothers and fathers and wives and brothers and sisters and children and relatives and friends of those who have "fallen in battle", who will rise up, with tear-dried eyes, and recon- structed lives, and say, "He has." The Holy Ghost, the Comforter, carrying on invisibly and unseen the very presence, position, and ministry of the Incarnate Christ, has been occupied in season and out of season during the past four years with the Mourner. He has 38 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY bound up the broken-hearted; He has soothed the distressed; He has consoled the sad; He has strengthened the weak; and on an inten- sive and extensive scale unprecedented in history. He has bestowed "the peace that passeth all human understanding/' and over countless darkened lives, lives engloomed with the shadow of death, He has shed "the light that never was on land or sea." In the United States of America, up to the present time, we have not really realized this fact; but it is a fact, and a fact affirmed whole-heartedly by those who have had their loved ones go down into the silences only to discover that the silences are most eloquent with speech. Verily, it was expedient for Christ that He should go away, that the Comforter might come. Since August, 1914, the Comforter has come — and with healing in His wings ! *r "* * *P Sf' T There is something to be said, then, despite this War, about the existence and the benevo- lence of God. There is a Christian apologetic capable of almost endless elaboration. There are reasons why men should accept God in times of storm as well as in days of sunshine, and bear the burdens as well as enjoy the gaieties of life. The Passion of our God is just as real, and just as applicable to human experience, as the Power and the Kindness of our 1 God. Men and women, honest men and FAITH AND THE WAR 39 women, clean living men and women, men and women who have nothing to gain and every- thing to lose through unbelief, should think on these things, and discover, so far as they in- dividually are concerned, the "balance of probability" on the one side or the other. They owe it to themselves; they owe it to their fellows ; and they owe it to their God — if there be a God. The way of the War has been longer than we dreamed. Some of us have been walking for four years the crimsoned path. We have been in the deep gorges of humiliation and dis- appointment. We have passed — those of us with friends and relatives at the front — we have passed again and again through the valley of the shadow of death. And, the end is not yet! But let us see to it — those of us who may conscientiously do so — that our Faith does not fail us in the time of crisis, and that, caught in the eddy of a maelstrom that seems to know no pity, we conduct ourselves as men, foursquare to all the winds that blow. Then, perchance, we shall be worthy to be numbered among the copartners of God in the ultimate reversal of War for Peace — when there shall be "a new Heaven and a new Earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." COMBATANT AND NON-COMBATANT PAUL and Silas, on one occasion, had been cast into prison — into the inmost ward. Such an environment, however, could not dampen the ardor of their spirits. The Peace of God resident within their hearts was alto- gether impervious to the squalor of their sur- roundings. "Stone walls did not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Their internal joy found outward expression. "At midnight they sang hymns, and the prisoners heard them." Tradition tells us that some of the prisoners, rough men and suffering the just penalties of their misdoings, were so impressed with the attitude of the disciples, with their unconven- tional treatment of accredited misfortune, that they became Christians. Be that as it may, Paul and Silas must necessarily have contrib- uted to the enheartenment of their fellow- inmates, and awakened a new-found hope in the breasts of those who were saturated with des- pair. Singing for mere singing's sake, burst- ing into spontaneous song because of the COMBATANT AND NON-COMBATANT 41 realized presence of the Christ within their lives, they performed, unwittingly but realisti- cally, a ministry, an influential ministry, of cheer and comfort to those who were in the self-same condemnation with themselves. "At midnight Paul and Silas sang hymns, and the prisoners heard them." And, hearing them the prisoners were better men and saner men, some of them forever ! Men by the hundreds of thousands, nay, by the millions, in our own country and through- out the Allied lands, have recently, during the course of the past four years, been thrown into prison. They have been removed, either vol- untarily, or by legal enactment, from their regular vocations, from the absorbing interests of the present and the rainbowed promises of the future, from their homes and loved ones, from all that life would normally hold most dear, and plunged into the outermost or the innermost ward of war's alarms. They have been called upon, either in theory or in actuality, to make the supreme sacrifice, to place their lives in jeopardy, or to surrender their lives with willing gladness, that right may triumph over wrong, and that humanity throughout the ensuing ages may be permitted to achieve its lawful destiny. The imprison- ment is real, in figure if not in fact, and the environment, stretching from improvised cities 42 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY of primitive habitations to the blood-wetted trenches of the battle field, is all that could be well devised to test beyond the breaking point the stamina of men accustomed to the surroundings of luxury and of ease. "And at midnight'' — the midnight of the world, and the midnight of their own experience — "and at midnight" these modern Pauls and Silases "sing hymns"! Sensible of the presence of their God; conscious of the losing of their lives for their brethren's sakes and for the salvation of the generations yet unborn ; forti- fied by the recognition that they have gained the commendation of their fellows, and that they have attained the coronation of their self- respect ; these men, these noble men, these men who in their attitude partake less of the human than of the divine, are filling the Universe with joyous gladness, and ringing the earth, the sky, and sea with tumultuous acclaim. Men and women by the hundreds of thou- sands, nay by the millions, in our own country and throughout the Allied lands, have recently, during the past four years, been thrown into prison. Condemned to the "daily round, the common task", through circumstances beyond their legitimate control, they have had to re- main at home, pursuing the well-trodden path of familiar duty, whilst their comrades have answered the Call to Arms, and the hemi- spheres have rocked as in the titanic embrace COMBATANT AND NON-COMBATANT 43 of lust-wooed giants. For them, aye, for us, there has been none of the glory of the battle field, and none of the peril. There has been little excitement, and less romance. The sounds of conflict have issued from afar, and the clash of the contending forces has been de- picted in the newspapers, rather than visual- ized in fact. The sense, the awful sense, of waste, of talent and mediocrity thrown into the crucible of destruction regardless of salvage or distinction, of the loss, the irremediable loss, to civilization through the unexpected inroads of recurrent barbarism, have besieged our im- aginations to the verge of madness, and be- yond. We have seen the structure of society, laboriously erected through centuries of patient toil, overturned from foundation to coping stone, and our hearts have been sick within us, our souls exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death. It has been hard, suprisingly hard, to do the same old things in the same old way, and to attend to our newly accumulated obli- gations with an enthusiasm commensurate with the need. In disappointment over the wreckage of the past, in distress over the un- settlement of the present; and in dismay over the possibilities of the future, we have played our parts with grim determination, but in a world of darkened shadows, with the night winds moaning along the reaches of the valley of death. 44 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY Yes ! Humanity, in a very real sense, is in prison. Combatant and non-combatant hu- manity is incarcerated within the confines of an untoward suffering and discipline, and the free- dom of life, the unrestricted liberty of thought and movement, has, for the time being, passed away — beyond the bounds of expedient recall. The soldiers and sailors and aviators of the United States and her Allies — whether at "the front", or in the cantonments of the Homeland ; the home populations of America, and France, and England, and all the rest, destined to the road of the commonplace, rather than to the path of glory, are committed to a dwelling- place of barred windows, and sunless courts, and cheerless cells — to the inmost ward of the heart's captivity, and the soul's enshacklement. Moreover, it is midnight — deep, brooding, and impenetrable midnight. The glimmer of the twilight has faded in the west ; the evanes- cent radiances that follow sunset have been succeeded by the ever-thickening gloom; and the first grey streaks of early dawn have not as yet shed their effulgence over land and sea. Things are at their worst, at their unbelievable worst, and the stillness of disaster, the silence of seeming failure, charge the prison house from end to end, filling the prisoners with nameless apprehensions, and foreboding fears. It is now, however, that we hear the sounds of singing in the night. From the banks of COMBATANT AND NON-COMBATANT 45 the Tigris, from the jungles of Africa, from the sandy wastes of Mesopotamia, from the rock-ribbed slopes of the Holy Land, from the mountain heights of Italy, from the shell-shot fields of Flanders, from the training camps of England and America, there arises a song of revelry, as holy as it is profane, as spontaneous as it is prolonged — the resurgent anthem of joy-infested men, keeping watch over the des- tinies of their fellow-men, and eradicating the weeds in the Garden of Mankind that the Flower of Peace may thrive and grow. It is the music of youth ; of youth vibrant and hope- ful ; of youth untarnished and undefiled by the compromises and equivocations of the world; and it has in it the promise of "a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteous- ness". It is the most glorious hymn that has ever been sung this side of Heaven's gate, and it fills our hearts with throbbings, our eyes with tears, with tears of prideful love, too deep for words. It is the spirit, it is the very spirit, of the Christ, who "set His face steadfastly to go up to Jerusalem," and who "for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame." "And at midnight they sang hymns — and the prisoners heard them." These men at the Front, and these men who are preparing for the Front, these khaki clad knights who are en- gaged in a wondrous quest, the relief of the 46 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY oppressed and the emancipation of humanity from the throes of a threatened slavery, are giving us an example which it were well for us to follow, and the unconscious ministry of their soulful singing should make us better men and women, and saner men and women — some of us forever. * "And at midnight Paul and Silas sang hymns — and the prisoners heard them." What does this modern singing mean? And what is the response that we, the prisoners of home defence, should make? (i) The song is a song of sacrifice; it arises from the deeps of unselfish hearts. Ask any man on active service, "Whence springs your obvious contentment with your lot? You have renounced for the time being and, the chances are, for the period of your earthly life, your home, your friends, and the pursuit of your career; you are engaged in a venture which entails privation and suffering and hard- ship unprecedented in all your previous ex- perience ; and yet there is that about you which tells me, in the shining of your eye, in the sprightliness of your step, and in the clearness of your mind, that you are happier, far happier, than you have ever been before. What is the secret of your joy; what the recipe of your sunlit laughter ; what the power that has over- COMBATANT AND NON-COMBATANT 47 shadowed thee, and brought to pass a new thing in the world?" Ask any man on active service that question, and the answer, articulate or inarticulate, ex- pressed in halting sentences or phrased in choicest language, will resolve itself into this: "I have learned to live for others." This has been up to the present hour, and I believe that it will so prove to be in the per- manent issue of things, the most stupendous discovery of this War. Men who formerly lived for themselves, and for themselves alone, have mastered the paramount lesson of the Christ, that "it is more blessed to give than to receive", and that the first and the last step in the saving of personality is the deliberate obla- tion of self. Should nothing else come out of this Gethsemane of the nations, this, at least, would be well worth while, worthy of the agony and the bloody sweat, that men who have here- tofore valued life for the opportunity of getting should have come to appreciate life for its privileges of giving ; and that they should con- sider no sacrifice too great for the welfare of humanity, no surrender too expensive for the salvation of a friend. This is the burden of the Song at Midnight — of Tipperary, and Over There, and the other tuneful lilts which, though not hymns for Christian Worship, still, like the wound of Mercutio, will serve — which you and I, prison- 48 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY ers of home defence, have heard, and shall not the hearing awaken responsive echoes in our hearts? Shall we not dedicate our days and talents to the service of our fellows rather than to the service of ourselves, and lose the smallness of our interests that we may find the greatness of our interests in the prosecution of a world-wide cause ? Verily, this much is expected of us, and to fall short of the expectation is to do despite to the honor of the men who are fighting the battles of civilization, and who are holding the intervening spaces between us and a destruc- tion worse than death. That there is a spirit of selflessness abroad in the land, a spirit that is inspiring men and women to the prosecution of humanitarian tasks and patriotic endeavors, and on a scale in league with the compass of the situation, no thoughtful, observant, and hopeful participant, or onlooker, may gainsay ; but is there not, in many cases, a selfhood in the business which robs the business of its beauty, and bespeaks the motive of personal recognition rather than the desire to perform without applause that which the necessities of the occasion would imply? When men are dying for us, and dying gladly ; when men, in full view of all the consequences involved, have made the initial decision which engenders con- tinued renunciation; surely it is a miserable thing that in the societies organized for the COMBATANT AND NON-COMBATANT 49 relief of suffering, and the amelioration of the ravages of War, there should be personal jeal- ousies, and petty spites, and minor differences of opinion, leading to major interruptions of operation, and that people should so forget themselves as to remember themselves in the wretched commendation which is their legal due! We must remember that the wounding of our feelings at a time when men are dying of their wounds is altogether beyond the logic of the situation — for we have no feelings to be wounded when the universe is trembling in the balance, and when the scales of freedom and slavery are so finely weighted on either side. "And the prisoners heard them." Let us dis- cover at least this portent within the song: That to be thinking of self at a time like this is the unpardonable sin — to be forgiven by neither God nor men ; and the one inexcusable offence against manners and good taste, in- capable of redemption either in this world, or in the next. (2) The song is a religious song. It is a hymn which has its genesis in the seriousness of men and things, of life and death. It is a well-known fact that men on leave from the trenches of Flanders and Northern France have been shocked at the apparent frivolity of London, and Paris, and the other centers of population, where they have gone to spend their well-earned rest. Exposed for 50 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY days and weeks on end to the hail of shrapnel and the fumes of choking gas; arriving from scenes of carnage and death, where blood has flowed like water, and where the heavens have been redolent with the lurid flames of destiny ; it has seemed an incredible and a monstrous thing that people should seemingly be engaged in the even tenor of their customary pursuits, and find their happiness as of yore in the fleet- ing pleasures of the passing moment. In some cases this recognition has been so poignant, and so overwhelming, so filled with heart- break and an all pervading sense of gross in- justice, that the soldier has returned to the field of battle before his specified holiday has run its course — determined to cancel all opportuni- ties of relaxation in the future, and to remain grimly at his post of danger until the victory is won. At midnight the soldier sings, and the sailor too; songs of homeland, and songs of love; songs of bathos, and songs of mirthful merri- ment ; but these songs are not what they seem. Their flippancy is born of a soberness beyond the reach of speech, and the surface lightness covers a solemnity that laughs in the face of death — because to weep in the face of death would be both unmanly and unsound. At mid- night the soldier sings, and the sailor too ; but the soldier is no fool, and the sailor has his COMBATANT AND NON-COMBATANT 51 expectations. We, the prisoners who hear, must take heed what we hear. There is only one thing worth thinking about at the present time — and that is this War. There is only one thing worth doing at the present time — and that is, in small measure or in large measure, in proportion with our oppor- tunities, to assist in the winning of this War. There is only one dream worth dreaming at the present time, and that must be a dream of action rather than a dream of passive contem- plation — and that is the apocalypse of a lasting Peace, when the swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and when, the lion lying down with the lamb, a little child shall lead the vanguard of humanity. Everything must be subordinated to these occupations, these occu- pations which are in reality one absorbing occupation ; all other preferences must be cast aside — whether the accumulation of individual wealth, or the achievement of individual suc- cess, or the experience of personal pleasure; all other considerations, normal, perhaps, with- in themselves, but abnormal in relation to the exigencies of the present hour, must go by the board, and be tabooed by honest-hearted men and women; for the crucial struggle of the ageless ages is upon us, and strong men pant and reel, fall and rise again, in the remorseless, uncompromising embrace of Right with Might. To be true to ourselves; to be true to our 52 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY neighbors; to be true to our God; and to be true to the noble warriors who are fighting our part in the conflict; we must conform our aspirations and our practices to the similitude of untoward circumstances, and match our behavior with the behavior of the men on active service. There must be no disparity in essence be- tween the life of the cities of the Allied lands, the cities situated outside the zone of danger, and the life of the man in the first line trenches who is bearing the burden and heat of the freighted day, that Democracy may throw off the reins of Tyranny, and that Liberty, Equal- ity, and Fraternity may dwell and prosper, un- hampered and unrestricted, forever upon the Earth. "And the prisoners heard them." "He that hath ears to hear — let him hear." THE CHURCH AND THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD HOW are we ministers and people of the Church to make the Church ready for the reception of the men who have fought our bat- tles, and the battles of Civilization, and whose shoe latchets, perchance, we are not worthy to unloose ? It is a pertinent interrogation — espe- cially in view of the inherent difficulties in- volved. We are to fascinate men, many of them the same men whom we have not fasci- nated before, and all of them men who have added extraordinarily to their stature by the untoward experiences through which they have passed. The Reconstruction Period lies before us. How may the Stay-At-Home members of the Church begin, even in anticipation, to recon- struct the Church? There are some things that the soldiers Over Seas have learned — things that our own men will learn before this War is over, and on the blood-soaked fields of France. In the face of imminent death these men have, consciously or 54 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY unconsciously, discovered the realization that Christianity counts for much, and that De- nominationalism in Christianity counts for less than nothing. They have seen their comrades die as Christians ; but they have not seen their comrades die as Presbyterian, or Methodist, or Roman Catholic, or Episcopalian Christians. General Byng, the hero of the November drive on the Western Front, said recently in the course of conversation with a friend of mine, a conversation which was repeated to me verbatim two weeks after its occurrence : "Give me Christian young men. They endure the monotony better than non-Christian men, and their valor is unequalled in the hour of crisis. This prevalent idea that the dare-devil and the harum-scarum men make the best fighters is all wrong. The decent living man is the decent fighting man." "General," re- plied my friend, "I am glad to hear you say that. As a parson it does my soul good. It is a comfort to know that when put to the test the work of the Churches has stood the strain. I should like, however, to ask just this : Could you, through your experience, differentiate be- tween the Christians? Are the members of any one religious body, taken in the aggregate, better soldiers than the members of any other religious body ?" "No," answered the doughty Commander, "there is no distinction of sect. THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 55 Irish, Scotch, English, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand Christians all fight like hell !" I had the privilege a short time ago of spend- ing several mornings in the London office of the Canadian Director of Chaplains' Service, and of coming into intimate contact with the commissioned officers of the executive staff. The Director of Chaplains' Service is an An- glican priest; his secretary is a Methodist minister; and his two chief assistants are, respectively, a Presbyterian professor and a Franciscan monk! These men, two colonels, and two majors, live in the same suite of rooms, their desks almost touching one another, and in utmost good comradeship, in mutual affec- tion, in perfect harmony and understanding, and exercising jurisdiction over some two hun- dred and eighty chaplains of all denominations on active service in the fields of France and Macedonia. What a sight for angels and men, and, above all, what a sight for partisan Christians at home! Now our men are beginning, even in the training camps of the Homeland, to achieve this atmosphere of religious oneness, and more and more as their experience increases in the arena of hostilities they will appreciate the fact that a padre, be he a Congregationalist or otherwise, is a padre for all that. When they come home again they will bring this spirit of 56 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY unqualified tolerance along with them, and repudiate as they would repudiate the Devil all tangible evidences of narrowmindedness. The chaplains when they return — and by the very nature of the case they will win a following and exert an influence in proportion to the dramatic part which they have played in this season of World Upheaval — the chaplains when they return will, if needs be, uncover the roof, and break up within their respective spheres, all obstacles that would hinder the unhampered intercourse of Christians of what- ever stripe with one another. It is essential, then — before this War is over and the men return from the Front — that there should be a most real rapprochement between all the organ- ized religious forces in the United States of America. There is a spirit of tolerance abroad, and for this we should be devoutedly thankful, it is a wonderful advance over the pharisaical insularism of the past; but this spirit of toler- ance, altogether nebulous and indefinable, is not enough. There must be an unqualified appreciation of our mutual sincerities, such as shall dissipate all semblance of self-conscious superiority, either in attitude or in act. There is no need for anyone to do despite to his con- victions — as a matter of fact, the deeper the conviction the greater the meed of Christian charity — but there is every need that everyone should do active honor to the diverse conclu- THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 57 sions of differentiated temperaments. We must even be prepared to go upon the assump- tion that our fellows are possessed of six senses, whereas we are only possessed of five, and that whilst with our endowment of thought and feeling a certain point of view is the only point of view, it is at least conceivable that to the distinctive endowments of other people "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" should be apprehended in another fashion and in contrasted degree. The time has come when the platitude that "the Church was made for man, and not man for the Church, and that if the individual can- not find God in one Branch of the Christian Society he may still find God in another Branch of the Christian Society," should be realized, and in a practical manner, in our midst. Another thing which our men will have learned before they discard their khaki uni- forms of civilian attire is this : "The boundaries of reality/' "How did you feel the first time you ever went over the top?" I asked a private in a Canadian battalion who, conspicuous for his bravery, was wearing the Distinguished Conduct Medal. "How did I feel? Why, I felt as though I had been asleep all my life, and had just waked up. I was real; the Germans were real; God was real ; and afterward, shortly afterward, my wound was real, most real." 58 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY This, so far as I have been able to gather from somewhat extensive intercourse with the men on active service, is the paramount and underlying realization of Warfare — the over- powering reality of life and death, of self and God; the rushing to the surface of thought and feeling which have seemingly been in- hibited since birth. All the pent up sensi- bilities of conscious existence are released ; all the smothered desires of personality are set free, and, in the vortex of a quickened aware- ness, compromise and convention and super- ficiality are buried deep — beyond the reach of all possible resurrection. This is undoubtedly the explanation of the fact — for it is a fact, and beyond the touch of reasonable dispute — that in this War theology has failed, and failed miserably, to stand the test imposed upon it; whereas religion has passed through the crucible unscathed, and come into its everlasting own. Theology is of man — it partakes of the imperfections of human speculation concerning the Truth ; but Religion is of God — it is possessed of the perfection of Divine Revelation of the truth. Theology is less than real, Religion is most real. I tell you candidly, and I am quite ready to be frowned upon as a heretic, or spurned as an ignoramus, or pitied as an ecclesiastical demagogue — I tell you candidly that in my opinion the day has come, or is shortly to THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 59 arrive, when we must adapt our logically constructed system of Christianity to men, rather than continue to expect men to become adapted to our preconceived ideas. The theology of the study, running in orderly fashion from premises to conclusion and in- vulnerable against the envenomed darts of dialectical assault, does not "pan out" in the street, it fails of convincingness in the shop, and it is impotent in the wooing of men to citizenship in the kingdom of God. Reality — whole-souled, and red-blooded, reality — in our preaching and in our living and in the whole paraphernalia of our Church ad- ministration ; this will be demanded of us by the men who return from the trenches ; by the men who have pierced through the crust of life into the heart of life ; and who have looked, unafraid but disillusioned, into the greedy eyes of avaricious death. Another thing which the Church must do to win the men of the future — and I restrict my- self to this: The Church in her atmosphere, an atmosphere created and fostered by clergy and people, must bespeak a broader charity of behavior than is to be met with in the outside world. There is an impression, a seemingly in- eradicable impression, in the minds of many men — I met with it over and over again in the minds of the men across the water — that 60 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY Church people are, taken in the average, a somewhat cantankerous and faultfinding set. There is, of course, small excuse for such an impression ; but who would suggest that there is no excuse for such an allegation? In what ought to be the Abode of Love there is often to be discovered much else save love. In what ought to be the greatest Brotherhood of all brotherhoods there is frequently to be found a patent lack of the first essentials of all brotherliness. Men look on and see — What do they see? Why; they see that clergymen who ought to be the most magnanimous of men are not, as a class, celebrated for their appreciation of one another's worth. They see that there is such a thing as parochialism — congregations pitted one against another in unholy competition. They see instances of ministers turned out of their charges by unchristlike people, and at a time of life when they could not reasonably expect to procure new employment. They see societies in the same Church, and individ- uals in those societies, quarreling with one another. They see men and women kneeling at the sanctuary rail, partaking of the Sacra- ment of Love, and then in the outside world refusing to recognize or to have anything to do with one another. Men look on and see these things, and seeing them they think thoughts THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 61 unutterable which cause them forever after- ward to "pass by on the other side." At S Camp, in England, and this condition is symptomatic of conditions which prevail in the religious sphere in all the train- ing and rest camps in England, and in more marked degree at the Front in France — at S Camp the average attendance of officers at a mass service in any of the Y. M. C. A. Huts is five, and that out of a total average attendance of some five hundred men. One reason for this is, of course, the caste sys- tem in the Army ; for any Army, the American Army included, is the most undemocratic or- ganization under the sun, and necessarily so. But there is another reason, a reason which was stated to me by the best living and most influential officer in his battalion. "Why do you not come to any of our services?" I asked this man. "Oh," was the reply, "I am never to be discovered where Christians are congre- gated together." I sought an explanation, and the explanation was this : "I have a reputation to maintain. I cannot afford to have my char- acter torn to shreds." What do you think of that? Incredible, but, sad to relate, possessed of a modicum of the truth, and, moreover, the ipse dixit of a man who is a prince among his fellows. We must learn to love one another in the Church of the Living God. Clergy and clergy ; 62 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY clergy and people ; people and people. We must learn to love one another. We must learn to look for the best, and to believe in the best, in our fellow-men. We must go upon the pre- sumption that a man is innocent until he is proved guilty, and when he is proved guilty we must love the sinner even whilst we loathe the sin. We must be "kind one to another; tender hearted ; forgiving one another ; even as God, for Christ's sake has forgiven us." These, then, it seems to me, are some of the things, among many other things, that we clergy and laity are called upon to do, either in the immediate present or in the imminent future, if we would make the Church attractive, and more than attractive, alluring, to the returned heroes of post war days. We must be Christians, Christians pure and simple, before we are Episcopalian Christians. Denominationalism is almost dead, and the energies of a resurrected world are to be employed in other directions. We must discard convention and super- ficiality; adopting an attitude of realism in all things. The occasion for platitude has passed, and the occasion for living fact has come. And, we must magnify, in our intercourse with one another and in our association with the stranger within our gate, love, bejewelled THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 63 love, greater than faith, more majestic than hope — the lodestar of Christian fellowship. Only from such a sowing may we expect a right glorious reaping. Prepare ye, O prepare ye, the Way of the Lord; make His paths straight. THE CLOUD OF THE WAR, AND THE SILVER LINING WE are all depressed at the present time. We are moving about enfolded in a dark- some cloud. Life is out of gear; civilization is apparently knocked on the head; the world is suffering from nervous prostration. The universality of death ; the catholicity of self- sacrifice; the far spread uncertainty of the im- mediate future ; have weighted our spirits to the ground. The War is on our minds and in our hearts. We are brave in the face of untoward facts J we are filled with a high-handed pretense of courage in the presence of unprecedented ex- perience ; we are obviously doing the same old things in the same old way; but, beneath the surface of appearances there is an anguish that besets our every movement, and a living agony that banishes the accustomed measure of sleep from our staring eyes. We need, we need with a pathos and an ur- gency which there is no gainsaying, a message of comfort to help us throughout the days, and THE CLOUD AND ITS SILVER LINING 65 an interpretation of prevalent facts which will enable us to perceive a rainbowed promise in the midst of storm. We demand salvation, salvation in the vortex of seeming damnation, salvation through hope. ^ ^ # * * * What is there in this present War that should make us "strong and of a good courage"? Every cloud has its silver lining ; where is that silver lining to be discovered to-day? ( i ) Through this War Loyalty has acquired an immense accession of power as a working force in human life. Many people who were not loyal before August 1914 are loyal to-day, and loyalty has deepened its roots in the hearts of those who were already loyal. One of the great weaknesses of our American life has been lack of loyalty. We have been deficient in team-work in our governmental, industrial, commercial, and professional en- deavors. A rampant individualism, born of the freedom of our environment and in keeping with the spacial vastness of the land in which we live, has played the mischief with and militated against our corporate opportunities. "Each man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost" has been, unconsciously, perhaps, but truthfully, our working policy. Our loyalty is being forged afresh in the circumstances of this World War. At this moment the growth of loyalty, not only in the 66 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY United States, but among the Allied nations and the nations of the Central Powers, is the most promising thing in human society. It contains the seed of a thousand spontaneous generations and reformations. We have more to hope from it that from all the plans of Re- construction Propagandists, and all the dis- quisitions of Philosophers. Loyalty is growing; loyalty is growing by leaps and bounds; and permeating the entire social fabric from foundation to coping stone it gives abundant promise of a general resur- rection in the better tendencies of human nature. From loyalty to country and to ideals we are going to become imbued with loyalty to God ; with loyalty to superiors ; with loyalty to friends; and with loyalty to self. The ex- pediency of loyalty ; the good-manneredness of loyalty; is to saturate our every thought, re- lationship, and act. The present distress is a small price to pay for such a permanent and superlative boon ! (2) Through this War appreciation of and sympathy with our fellow-men has assumed an unprecedented reality in the affairs of life. Two leagues of Nations have come into ex- istence, each on a greater scale than is dupli- cated in the past history of the world, and in these leagues of nations we behold a breaking down of the barriers which have heretofore divided man from man. These leagues have THE CLOUD AND ITS SILVER LINING 67 been formed for the purpose of fighting one another it is true; but they represent an asso- ciation of mankind more complete, closer in texture, and wider in compass, than the boldest prognosticator would have deemed credible a few years ago. Just think of it — Americans, British, French, Italians, Serbians, Rouma- nians, and Japanese banded together in a com- mon purpose and learning to trust, and even to love, one another. Why, it is a stupendous phenomenon. It gives promise of the "Great Community" of the future! This advance in thought and practice is not vitiated by the fact, already stated, that the Central Powers and the Allies are pitted the one against the other. We have every reason to believe — and this is not a popular doctrine — we have every reason to believe that great re- vulsions of feeling will take place in the oppos- ing camps at the conclusion of hostilities. It may take some time; but the revulsion is bound to come. What you and I feel against the Germans to-day is not necessarily what you and I shall feel against the Germans fifteen years from now; nor is it what our children will feel in the succeeding generation. As a matter of fact, the stronger our feeling the stronger will be our ultimate revulsion of sentiment. When we think of the economic burden which must be borne after the restoration of 68 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY peace, a burden so enormous that it must be shouldered internationally rather than nation- ally, this assurance of a revulsion of feeling between the two belligerent groups of peoples would seem to be emphasised. Exhausted credit ; depleted resources ; reduced man power ; shortage of food ; communities disorganized ; cities devastated ; fertile regions transformed into barren deserts; paucity of cargo-carrying ships — these things will bring us together on the side of expediency alone. These things can be borne only if a United World unites in the bearing of them. Economic ruin or Co- operation — these will be the vital alternatives. For our stomach's sake — and although man does not live by bread alone he does live by bread — we shall have to bridge over the seem- ingly impassable gulf between the present antagonistic halves of the world. The advance of the two sets of nations over the erstwhile many nations will have to develop into "a Federation of Nations — a Parliament of Man." Loyalty and Cooperation ! Twin lodestars ! These are two of the avatars that give shine through the darkness of the night. The worst is not all bad. Out of blackest evil there cometh forth, perchance — for God hath set the one thing over against the other — a lasting Good. At any rate — we are saved by hope ! EASTER AND THE WAR EASTER has come to possess a new sig- nificance during the past few years. It is one thing to contemplate the certainty of Im- mortality in ordinary times when the death rate of Humanity is maintained upon an aver- age scale, and it is quite another thing, so far as the urgency of the situation and the necessity of the conviction are concerned, to contemplate the certainty of Immortality in extraordinary times, when Mankind is envolved in the whirl- wind of death's triumphant holocaust. The recognition of the fact is proportioned to the need. There are several things to be said in this connection, and by way of elaboration : (i) The certainty of Immortality has be- come a certainty among many of the partici- pants in this War. Here is the story of a young man in active conflict which is illustrative of the change which has taken place in the hearts of the unbelieving soldiers of all nations since August, 1914. 70 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY This young man was a member of a Yale contingent that went overseas under the auspices of the American Ambulance. On board ship he was celebrated for his atheistical conception of life. So far as he had arrived at any conclusions at all, for he had never given the subject exhaustive consideration, and his opinions, as a matter of fact, were in a state of flux, he was fully persuaded of the soullessness of life, and held to the idea that time contains its own eternity — that existence is limited by birth and the grave. With this pessimistic philosophy he combined, as a logical consequent, a recklessness of attitude toward circumstances which branded him as a thorough going materialist of the most ap- proved nineteenth century type. Lest there should appear to be any inconsistency between his professed creed and his actual practice, for he was a member of a corps which had to do with the amelioration of human suffering, he was careful to assert that he was going to the scene of hostilities in order that he might gratify his thirst for excitement at the fountain head. Such, in brief, was the mental outlook of this young man on the voyage across the ocean, and for some time after his arrival in France. With the course of time, however, there occurred, and altogether without predis- posing anticipation of mind, something which rocked the youth's superficiality of attitude to EASTER AND THE WAR 71 its foundation stones. There shone about him a light brighter than the brightness of the sun at noonday, and he experienced a revolution of sentiment which amounted to neither more nor less than religious conversion. One day he was detailed to the bringing in of the wounded in No Man's Land after a heavy engagement which had strewn the spaces be- tween the intervening trenches with prostrate forms of the suffering and the dead. He went to his task courageously, and with an en- thusiasm which paid tribute to the dictates of his heart rather than to the precepts of his mind. He had almost completed his work, and was about to bring in his last man, when, as he covered the ground between his stationary ambulance and the squirming object of his solicitude, an enemy aeroplane overhead began to drop bombs, and to drop bombs fast and furiously. A bomb fell to right of him ; the young man stopped, almost dazed by the proximity of the concussion. Plucking up courage, he moved forward again. A bomb fell to left of him ; again the young man stopped. The realization that he was in the thick of appreciable danger swept over him in a tidal wave of feeling. Gathering himself together with the resolution born of self-respect, he pressed onwards once more. Two bombs fell, one in front of him and one behind him, churn- ing up the already well-churned soil in heaping 72 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY clouds of gritty indignation. The young man halted irresolutely. What was he to do in this tornado of peril ? To walk in any direction, or to stand still, was equally to invite disaster. He cried out for help; but there was no re- sponse — there was nobody within helping dis- tance. Human assistance, even if available, would have been useless, worse than useless. An awful sense of utter loneliness engulfed him. He was beyond all earthly succor. The safe- guardings of social intercourse, so real behind the lines, and most active outside the zone of war, had no place or existence within this death-rimmed pit of hell. He stood alone, un- shackled of all intercourse with his fellows, altogether alone — alone with his duty. Before him there lay the tattered body of a pain- wracked soldier, turning and twisting in its prolonged agony, and it was his duty, his bounden duty, to lay hands upon that body, and to carry it through the rain of fire to the ambulance close at hand. Alone, desperately alone, cut off from all fellowship with his fellows, divorced from all succor of human agency, as much alone to all intents and pur- poses as though he and the inarticulate figure close at hand were the sole inhabitants of the universe, he stood haphazardly — an isolated individual face to face with death, and in the presence of his immediate duty ! It was then that, in his own words, "I lifted up my heart EASTER AND THE WAR 73 to the God whom I had despised. I called upon Him to give me the fortitude to 'play the man/ and to bestow the strength which would enable me in the vortex of danger to perform my task. Suddenly, and devoid of all expectation, for my prayer had been a prayer of desperation rather than of faith, a sense of wondrous com- panionship engulfed me. I felt no longer that I stood alone. I was aware, gloriously aware, of a Presence that stood with me, of a Presence that supported me as with an angel's touch, of a Presence the reality of which was all suffusing and all comforting. God stood beside me upon the field of death. God companied with me upon the wilderness of fear. I was nerved in every fibre of my being, and, oblivious of all peril, deaf to the detonations of the falling weapons of destruction, I walked through that seething hail of flame as a man without cowardice and without reproach. I did my duty unhesitat- ingly, and, rescuing my fallen brother, I left the scene of chaos for the regions of peace and safety. Since that day, nay, since that hour, I have never doubted the existence of God, and, in that God lives, I have never questioned the dignity of human life, nor the assurance of further life beyond the confines of this present life." This realization of Immortality, this con- fidence of the Easter Hope, has come to count- less thousands of the soldiers who are fighting 74 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY in this present War. Confronted with the King of Terrors, the King has lost his terror through the experience of his closeness, and through the sight of the expression of unex- pected benevolence upon his age-seamed face. Death has lost its sting, and the grave has been shorn, palpably shorn, of its victory. Men have seen life steadily, and they have seen it whole. The details have been lost in the panorama; a panorama which includes to-day and the everlasting to-morrow within its scope. Death has become an episode, merely the bridging between one set of experiences and another set of experiences, and men have learned the humor which is able to laugh in the presence of death and to treat it as the heartfelt jest of the everliving soul. (2) The certainty of Immortality has be- come a certainty among the home populations of all the warring lands : The conversions of the Battle Field are not, in point of numbers, to be mentioned in the same breath with the conversions of the relatives and friends of those who have fallen in this bloody War. They are counted in the hundreds of thousands, and they constitute, in their significance, a well-nigh universal Pentecost of Humanity. To the American people, who are, as yet, but entering the War, and to whom the weekly casualty list running into the tens of thousands is unknown, this increase of faith in the funda- EASTER AND THE WAR 75 mental doctrine of the Christian Religion is relatively unappreciated. It is a fact which has to be experienced to be realized. Even obser- vation is powerless to produce the requisite impression of its truth. People do not mourn in public; they mourn in private. People do not wear their griefs upon their sleeves; they conceal their griefs within the inner- most recesses of their hearts. There is a delicacy, there is a refinement, there is a jealous safe-guarding, about bereavement which forbids all vulgar ostentation, and which precludes the advertisement which comes of shoutings upon the house tops. The mourners of France and of the British Empire and of Italy and of all the Allied countries and the countries of the Central Powers are weeping in secret, in the quietness of unhampered and invulnerable seclusion — even whilst they front the world with brave faces from which all traces of tears have been wiped away. The fact of the matter, however, is this : In the hearts of the prepondering majority of those who have lost their dear ones in this War — and this is a recognition experienced by those who have passed through the waters of affliction, and, also, by those who have been privileged to enter into another's grief — there is an assurance of Immortality based upon the very necessities of the case, and founded upon the self-conscious possession of a peace that 76 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY passeth all understanding. The stricken mother, the desolated wife, the fatherless child, and the saddened friend, have faced, under the spur of demand, the age-long question, "If a man die, shall he live again"? and they have reached a ground of conviction as compared with which their previous certainty was as evanescent predilection. No longer do they hope, or suppose, or prefer — they know, know beyond peradventure, know beyond the possi- bility of mistake. Their whole philosophy of conduct, their whole courage in the presence of unending calamity, is based upon the per- sonal testimony, "I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." Henceforth, for them, Life temporal leads on to Life eternal, and Earth is but the vestibule of Heaven, and those who are asleep in Christ are alive with Christ, and hereafter He and they shall be associated together forever in the Father's Presence. "The War and Easter." Why, who could endure to contemplate the War without Easter? An Easterless War! A War such as this, with its slain running into the millions, with barely a family untouched with sorrow in those lands whose peoples have been en- gaged in conflict for four years, without the historical fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead! A War, the fields EASTER AND THE WAR 77 of which are strewn with buried and un- buried carcasses — stretching two in a row and touching one another all the way from New York to San Francisco — with no hope beyond the visible, and with no expecta- tion outside of the tangible and concrete ! A War which has peopled the vasty deeps of the seas and oceans of the world with bleached and inanimate, with floating and sunken bodies, until the legitimate inhabitants of the waters are swimmingly amazed at the persistent in- vasion of the unfamiliar dead of the human species, without the Alleluias of those who have "washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of The Lamb !" A War which uses men as fodder for the cannons, blasting them into infinitesimal fragments of disorgan- ized atoms, until the graves of the air are as numerous as, if not more numerous than, the burial places of the land, without the verifiable fact that one Man burst aside the impediments of the grave as a giant would toss aside the playthings of a child, and that that one Man is the Lord of the Earth, the Sea, and the Sky! What an overwhelming thought; what a devastating conception ; what an all exceeding calamity; too appaling, too searchingly and harrowingly awful, for the restrained insanity of the mind of man to visualize. ****** "The War, and Easter." That makes a 78 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY world of difference. That makes all the dif- ference. In such a Faith we may believe that Heaven is full of youthful life, growing eter- nally young in the Presence of the Giver of all life, and that the atmosphere of Heaven is vibrant with the triumph songs of those who, "having fought a good fight, now rest from their labors." WOMEN AND THE WAR I WANT to speak to the women of to-day and I want to speak to them upon some phases of Women's Duty in connection with the War. (i) You must be patriotic Americans. I understand some of the difficulties inherent in the conception of Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Some of us have come to regard ourselves as members of the human race rather than as citizens of a particular country ; to look upon the men of all nations as the fellow- children of a common God. Internationalism, however, has not, as yet, arrived, and until it does arrive I believe that in striking the note of patriotism I am striking the note of God. The love of country ought to come naturally to an American. The Jew said, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." But the Jew had less to go upon than has the American. Palestine was a beautiful land ; but the United States, in its ex- pansive variety, is far more beautiful ; taken all in all it is the most beautiful country in the 80 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY world. But, more than this : America is the home of Freedom. Equality and Fraternity are our watchwords ; proclaimed in the sacrifice of our forefathers, and actualized in the practice of our modern life. In this country the individ- ual is borne and nurtured in liberty, and in this country the foreigner from the four quarters of the earth may achieve a personal destiny qualified only by his personal capacity. Still more than this : For the first time since the Civil War, America is in peril. Make no mistake about that. We stand in the tightest corner that we have stood in since the War of Independence. If we win this War, we gain peace, in all likelihood, for at least one hundred years. If we lose this War, America, to all intents and purposes, will be a German prov- ince. The purity of our homes will be in- vaded ; what happened to Belgium women and children may happen to us; and life will not be worth the living. For the beauty of America, for the Freedom of America, and for the safety of America, American women must be patriotic. (2) Through your patriotism you must be self-sacrificing Americans. You must stir up and encourage the noble instinct of your hus- bands, sons, and brothers. That instinct which makes them want to go out and stand up for their country in this day of need. Some women have encouraged their menfolk to answer the WOMEN AND THE WAR 81 call to arms, and some women have not! I have heard of one woman who told her husband that if he went to the War she would have nothing more to do with him — that he would not find her on his return ! Some mothers are, surreptitiously or openly, holding their boys back, Some wives are, speciously or plainly, deterring their husbands from their obvious duty. The draft law, with its age and family requirements, is sometimes a splendid fence to hide behind. I do not suggest for a moment that each case is not to be decided upon in accordance with its individual merits ; nor that enrollment in the fighting forces of the nation is the only, nor necessarily the best, manner in which a man may assist his country in the hour of need. But, I do imply that a woman, whatever the sacrifice involved, should clear, so far as pos- sible, the road along which a man would walk in doing his patriotic and humanitarian duty. You must be brave enough, self-sacrificing enough, to brace yourself cheerfully, and say, "Go ; go, Beloved, if go you must ; and my love and pride go with you." (3) Through your Patriotism and your self- sacrifice you must learn to love your enemies. This is not popular doctrine ; but it is the right sort of doctrine for a minister of Christ to preach ! However much I abhor the methods of the Germans I am not going to let the 82 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY Germans cause me to break away from my religion. We must remember that the average German person has only his own "White Book" to read. That White Book leaves out several important letters and telegrams which the rest of the civilized world has read. The average German person is convinced that Russia started the War. He believes beyond preadventure that Russia forced this War upon Germany. The ordinary German mother, therefore, sends out her boy with the same love and pride with which an American mother sends out her boy. She tells him to fight, as in God's sight, for the Fatherland. When you think over these things — appre- ciating the fact that this cataclysm is too big a thing to end in indelible hate — remember One who forgave His enemies, aye, and tried to help them ! It is one of the hardest things we have to do, to preach this forgiveness of the Hun, and to live out the preaching in daily life. As Christians, however, this must be our attitude, and nothing else. (4) Through your Patriotism, your self- sacrifice, and your effort to forgive your en- emies, you must keep alive the religious spirit during wartime. You must attend as many of the services of the Church as possible. You must by your example (and example is ever WOMEN AND THE WAR 83 better than word) encourage people to turn to God in this Gethsemane of the world. It is simply astounding, when you really come to think about it, that people should ap- parently need God less amid the thunder of 1918 than they did in the seeming sunshine of the months prior to August, 1914! The de- mand for comfort is unprecedented in the his- tory of the world, and yet the Comforter is not enthroned in the hearts of men ! The request for Light amid the darkness is altogether un- paralleled since the Cry of Christ on Calvary, and yet the radiant illumination of Him who is the Light of the World is not overwhelmingly sought ! The causes are manifold. Doubt has beset the strongholds of faith, and, preeminently, work has ousted worship. Now, you women, you Christian women, must be sane. You must seek inspiration for your service in prayer ; dynamic for your public duties in public worship. In working for man you must seek the help of God, and in striving after the salvation of the world you must pay systematical homage to the world's King. Let us, then, follow after Patriotism ; Self- sacrifice ; Forgiveness ; and Religion ; that through the love of Country, the love of Humanity, the love of our Enemies, and the love of God, we may rise to the level of our opportunities in this Day of the Lord. A WOMAN WAR WORKER THE women workers of England to-day- compose an army ; both in numbers and in their sense of patriotic duty. As Railway Porters, as Buss Conductors, as Motor Chauf- feurs, as Lorrie Drivers, as Military Nurses, and as a hundred and one other things — they are to be met with everywhere. Their looks, their ages, and their uniforms are differ- entiated; but they are united in a common determination to assist the manhood of the country in the winning of the war. If it is the merest platitude to assert that the Salvation Army, the Young Men's Christian Association, and similar organizations, have reaped a golden harvest of usefulness in the face of the extraordinary opportunities of present-day affairs — adapting their inherent geniuses to the enlarging necessities of un- toward crisis — it is equally true to say that woman has measured up to the uttermost re- quirements of the past four blood-tinged years, and that she has come into her everlasting "own"; a factor, appreciated and approved, A WOMAN WAR WORKER 85 in the business of society, never again to be discredited. 3j* 5jC 3JC 5p 3jC 3JC Here is a concrete account of what one woman is doing in the accomplishment of her "bit" — suggestive of the self-sacrificing efforts of thousands of her sisters : Whilst sitting one day in a Y. M. C. A. Hut in one of the Canadian camps in England word was brought to me that a woman wished to speak to me. As I was unaware of a woman acquaintance in the district I was, to say the least, astonished at the tidings. I went out- side the building fully convinced that some error, or misjudgment, was responsible for the unlooked-for tidings. Imagine my amaze- ment to discover seated upon the high perched driving board of a heavy army motor truck, correctly booted and coated, a long lost female cousin ! She had heard indirectly of my presence in the camp, and, as we had not met for many years — as a matter of fact since she was a small girl in pinafores, and I a blushing bridegroom of tender years — she had deter- mined to seek me out. "Jump in," said the khakied paragon of war, "mother and I live not far from here, and you are coming home to dine with us, and to spend the night." Being a "mere man," and a junior officer at that, I obeyed the command with an alacrity 86 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY which spoke well for my sense of discipline, and, indirectly, for my appreciation of good fortune at the unexpected meeting. I clambered up to the alpine heights of her isolated presence, and, with an inward thank- fulness for an insurance premium both due and paid, trusted my precious person, and the ecstatic happiness of my parishioners across the seas, to her lorried skill. "Who are you," I said, "looking so serried bold at one score years ; and what is this armor plated vehicle which, in defiance of the laws of decency and sex, you so deftly manipulate ?" "I, sir," she coyly answered, "I, sir, am your humble cousin to obey ; Motor Driver Number 31 ; a salaried servant of His Gracious Majesty the King; and this gigantic beast, steel proof and tire hardened, upon whose throttle rests my maiden hand, is the Wash Van of W Camp." It was altogether true! My esteemed and girlish cousin, delicate of form and fair of face, the animated and advanced recollection of my boyhood's dreams, a daughter of luxury and a sensitized lady to her finger tips, was engaged in the supposedly menial task of gathering in and returning the daily wash of the soldiers of an English military camp ! The significant fact was that this remarkable thing which she was doing was not at all re- markable to her, was accepted as a matter of A WOMAN WAR WORKER 87 course, as quite unworthy of exceptional com- ment, as, indeed, in the nature of a glorious privilege, and that it was being done by gently nurtured women throughout the length and breadth of England ! Will the women of America arise to a height of sacrifice such as this, and, forging their vanity afresh in the furnace of their country's necessity, play the unself-consciously conse- crated part which the exigencies of this history freighted hour so clamorously demand ? To ask the question — an impertinence in it- self — is to answer it. What women have done, and are doing, anywhere, women may accom- plish everywhere. For womanhood is indig- enous to itself ; of the same innate quality, and instinctive fibre, beneath the far-warming rays of the expansive sun. GREAT BRITAIN'S EFFORT WE worked for peace," declared Sir Edward Grey on August 3, 1914, in the House of Commons, "up to the last moment ; and beyond the last moment, we worked for Peace." Any reader of the British White Book, and any student of British unpreparedness, will ap- preciate, beyond peradventure, the unqualified truth of this statement. The rejection of these peace efforts by Germany, combined with the moral issue of the invasion of Belgium, brought into the War the full passion and weight of the British Empire. The patent evidence of these peace efforts, disputed in their integrity by no unbiased observer, won the general confidence of the neutral peoples of the World in the honesty of Britain's purpose. By a colossal paradox the far flung population of England and her Colonies as they read Sir Edward Grey's words were at once stunned and re- lieved beyond measure. They stood to lose the whole world — but not their soul ! Immediately the ranks of the country closed. The Civil War that threatened Ireland was GREAT BRITAIN'S EFFORT 89 stilled ; the Suffrage party turned their energies into national war organizations; and Capital and Labor joined hands in a glowing concen- tration against the Bully of mankind. Without hysteria, and devoid of all manifestations of riotous joy, silently, and with a quietness that perturbed friend and foe alike, a United Empire dedicated itself to the cause of humanity — to the last man and the last penny. The British fleet steamed to its stations ; mobilization was ordered; Lord Kitchener was appointed min- ister of war; and some 90,000 men and four hundred guns — "England's Contemptible Army" — were despatched to France. When the British Expeditionary Force landed in Europe, Belgium and France had been fighting Germany for ten days. The German Legions were trying to "hack their way through". To attempt to recall the story of the Teutonic doings in Belgium would be to chronicle the incredible, and, at the same time, to overreach the bounds of the purpose I have in mind. It is enough to suggest that every- thing that we deemed secure among civilized men was defiled and destroyed — fidelity to pledged word, reverence for age, the sanctity of womanhood, standards of honor, of justice, and clean fighting. A deliberate policy of "fright- fulness" was carried out to inspire a terror that would paralyze resistance. The Germans lacked elementary brain power in ultimate 90 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY things, and proved that they had left out of count the soul of the world. The immediate sequel is, perhaps, the greatest miracle of modern times. The heroic Belgians hampered the giant's stride across their small-sized king- dom, and left the Gideon's band of the British Expeditionary Force to fend the blow of five German army corps. The English soldiers, fighting with unsurpassable gallantry, and un- supported and outnumbered, withdrew to the south and the west until the historic line-up be- tween the Marne and Paris was an accom- plished fact. At that hour the universe stood upon the tip toe of suspense, and held its breath. The French took the Germans on the flank and won the battle of Grand Couronne. Von Kluck swerved to the centre, and the Allies were locked in a deadly wrestle with the German hordes. The decisive hour of the ages had struck, and God stepped into the fray to save the cause of righteousness and civilization. The Teutonic grip relaxed, and the armies of the Central Powers turned their backs upon the Paris which lay so near at hand, and yet alto- gether beyond their reach. The supernatural had its innings, and Providence saved the Day. The Allied advance began. The Entente had fought for and secured time. It remained to use that time to the full compass of the event. We come now to the transformation of GREAT BRITAIN'S EFFORT 91 Britain. Behind the thin line of tested steel in Flanders and France, and behind the protection of her navy, Great Britain began that adapta- tion of her life which stands without parallel in history. The truth of her unpreparedness, greater in degree than any other nation in- volved in the War, necessitated a social, in- dustrial, and political revolution that went to the very roots of her national being. There was the personal dedication of life. Over five million men voluntarily enlisted for service before conscription came into force. This has been the greatest religious act in Brit- ish history. The universities emptied them- selves, as it were, over-night. Students who lived for the increase of knowledge went out to endure fatigues, to command men, and to rattle the dice with death. The unanimity of self-sacrifice was not limited to any class or type. Laboring men, business men, profes- sional men poured in in their thousands, and hundreds of thousands, until the enlistments of a single day surpassed the pre- War enroll- ment of a year. The flood of men literally overwhelmed the military machinery of the country. When the news from Flanders was at its worst enlistment was at its best. Less conspicuous than the self-offering of the men, although as striking and complete, was the self-offering of the women. Women from every walk of life, rich and poor, aristocratic 92 The religion of the tommy and plebeian, exchanged the domesticities and the dainties of existence for the farm, the factory, the shop, and the mine. They manned the railway trains, the munition plants, the motor cars, the street conveyances, the dock- yards, and the hospitals. They began a work which they have continued in ever increasing output — the providing of their armies Over Seas with guns, and shells, and cartridges, and food; without which their armies would cease to be operative within a week. It is not too much to say that the women of the mother- land and the colonies have been responsible for the production of the sinews of war, and so for the laudable perpetuation of the crucial conflict up to the present hour. Next to the personal dedication of life there has been the transformation in the mechanical and industrial element — the reconstruction that has made of Britain one vast armament factory. At the beginning of the War there were three ammunition plants, and a few private auxiliary firms. In the spring of 1917 the capacity for producing high explosives was twenty-eight times as great as in the spring of 191 5. At the moment of speaking it is al- most forty times as great ! The supply of aero- planes has been doubled every six months! The annual output of British steel has risen from seven million tons to ten million, and is still increasing ! These guns and this ammuni- GREAT BRITAIN'S EFFORT 93 tion roar, and these aeroplanes fly, over the Italian and the French fronts, in the Balkans and in Palestine, on the banks of the Tigris and in the jungles of Africa! It is a story of achievement which in detail baffles the imagi- nation of man. In technical preparedness Britain has accomplished about as much in four years as Germany accomplished in forty years ! We sometimes hear the question asked, "What is Britain doing in the War?" The answer is "What is she not doing?" Her navy, with its personnel increased from 136,000 to 400,000, has swept the seas free of the enemy on the surface, and is at incessant war upon the enemy beneath the sea. Her fleet has kept open the channels of communication between the hemispheres, and safeguarded the trans- portation of supplies without which Germany would have triumphed in a few months. Her armies hold the enemy in three continents, and on five fronts, and are cooperating with the Allies on two others. Her women have uncom- plainingly flung aside the happy preoccupations of peace, and have given themselves without stint to successful labor. Her whole industrial life has been revolu- tionized, and she has poured out her wealth for the Allied effort to the extent of thousands of millions of pounds sterling. She has cast into the breach for the freedom of the world her heart, her head, her hands, 94 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY and her soul. Verily ! what has she not done ; what is she not doing ; what is she not yet pre- pared to do? Mrs. Humphrey Ward, two years ago, or more, wrote a book, "England's Effort." The book was excellent; but the title was a mis- nomer; for the Service of England has been the Service of the Empire. "Can you think of the British Empire," cried Burke, "without a Sursum Corda?" If Burke felt like that in his day, how must we lift up our hearts at the thought of the British Empire in this time in which we live! Since 1914 there has been the flaming response of a world-wide hegemony of nations to the need of the Mother Country. The men from the Dominions, the Crown Colonies, and the Dependency of India, have proved themselves to be sons, not sub- jects, of the home-land. There were those who said before this War, preeminently the Germanic peoples, that the tie of Empire was loose; that the strands were strands of silk, and that they would snap in the day of strain. The opposite has been dis- covered to be the case. The strands have proved to be stronger than the iron bands of Germany. "The hammer of Thor", it has been aptly said, "in the hands of the Teuton has welded the Empire's noble metal into a single sword of tempered steel." GREAT BRITAIN'S EFFORT 95 The call of the great adventure for the de- fence of the Empire, for the freedom of small nations, had no sooner sounded than every province of the Empire sprang to arms. Eng- lish and Boers, Scots and Canadians, Irish and Indians, Australians and New Zealanders, men of Newfoundland and Africa, and the peoples of the Islands of the seas, offered, willingly and lovingly offered, their possessions and their lives. Within eight weeks of the declaration of War Canada had concentrated, equipped, and embarked a voluntary Army of 33,000 men — the largest force that had ever crossed the Atlantic at one time. These were the men who bore the brunt of the first diabolical gas attack ; the men whom Lord French praised in his official dispatch as having averted disaster through their magnificent display of bravery. That original force has been raised to approx- imately 500,000 men ! Neuve Chapelle, Ypres, Festubert, Givenchy, Vimy Ridge, and other battles, testify to Canada's part in the conflict. The same story, in different words and in varying totals, may be written of Newfound- land, whose regiment won its hill top nearer Constantinople than any other regiment in the tragic experiment of Gallipoli; of Australia, which has contributed an army almost as large as the whole army of Great Britain during the South African War; of New Zealand, whose heroic troops, together with the troops of the % THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY neighboring Commonwealth, created and bap- tized in blood a new name that stands for the most glorious heroism of the War, the name "Anzac", which shall be mentioned with kind- ling eye so long as history lasts; of South Africa, whose army of some 60,000 men con- quered an area of territory comprising a third of a million square miles, and then garrisoned the country; of India whose reciprocity reads like an Arabian Night's romance, and whose native rulers offered their services with oriental lavishness; and of the Island outposts of the oceans of the world which gave, and gave abundantly, in proportion to their means. It is all a superb epic of spontaneous loyalty which has caused the acrimonious critics of England's colonizing policies to falsify their past impressions, and to grudgingly acknowl- edge that the Empire of Great Britain is an actuality in fact and not a figment of the imagi- nation. Such in brief, in briefest brief, is, and has been, Great Britain's effort in this War. To include in detail within the panorama, to fill in the names and places upon the outline map, to attempt to paint the picture rather than to sketch the sketch, would be to expand a chapter into a book, and to multiply the book into almost endless volumes. The truth is, and this is an assertion that no thinking and un- GREAT BRITAIN'S EFFORT 97 prejudiced person may gainsay, that Britain's resistance to the oppressor, her military and naval and financial and moral resistance, has so far saved humanity from a virtual slavery, a slavery worse than death, and prevented that "damned thing which is in the saddle in Ger- many from riding mankind with bit, and bridle, and bloody spurs." France has been wonder- ful; Italy has been splendid; Serbia and Rou- mania have done their share; Russia, so long as she retained her corporate entity, has been a source of strength ; Japan has, so far as per- mitted, played a self-sacrificing part ; the record of the United States is and will be a glorious record ; but without the stamina, and the back- bone, and the bulldog tenacity, and the indom- itable courage of Great Britain, the War would have been over a long time since, and the sun of freedom have been eclipsed forever in the Heavens. A VISIT TO F THE Canadian Chaplains' Service has done an extraordinarily effective work since the beginning of the War — so effective, in fact, that it takes rank with the remarkable per- formances of the Canadian Army as a whole. When the story of Canada's contribution to the Empire is written at the conclusion of hostili- ties, the record of the achievement of the Chaplains' Service will take its place with a corporate military attainment which has aston- ished no class of people more than it has aston- ished Canadians themselves. It was my good fortune to be a friend of some years' standing of Colonel Almond, C. M. G., the Director of the Canadian Chaplains' Service, and through such an instrumentality to be superficially initiated into the scope of the work accomplished by his department. It was also my good fortune to know many of the chaplains individually, and so to be able to sub- stantiate the account of their splendid and heroic usefulness in time of War by my A VISIT TO F 99 knowledge of their unusual qualifications in time of peace. I called upon Colonel Almond in London, and, as always, found his personality most attractive and inspiring. He is a man of un- usual "force" ; of great ability as an organizer and administrator; most thorough in plan and execution; and an unflinching exponent of Common Sense Christianity from the view point of "the man in the street." He has done a fine piece of creative work in his present position ; organizing order out of chaos ; which, together with his record in France, should make him a revered figure for all time in the Canadian Church. Colonel Almond has considerably more than two hundred chaplains under his direction and control, in England, in France, and in Mace- donia; and, as guiding force, he is ministering to the spiritual welfare of from four to five hundred thousand soldiers. He has associated with him the cream of the denominational Canadian ministry; such as Canons Shatford and Scott, and Major MacGreer; and by his justice, finally tempered with mercy, has won the hearty respect of his temporary sub- ordinates. I spent a never-to-be-forgotten day with Colonel Almond, and I should like to tell my readers something about it. 100 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY We set out from London in the middle of a bright September morning, in a Government car, with a competent woman chauffeur. Our journey lay through the fascinating lanes and hamlets of Kent — with highlands on one side of us, and the neighboring farmlands, stretching down to the sparkling waters of the Channel, on the other side of us. The sun, resplendent in the heavens, cast shadow and light upon well-kept hedge, miniature mountain, and shallow dell. We raced along, with all the superiority in demeanor of the privileged, at the rate of forty miles an hour. Motor lorries, groups of soldiers, tented encampments by the wayside, and hurtling aeroplanes over our heads, together with passing staff cars, carried the sense of the unusual into the rural wonderland of our hastening progress. Before reaching F , our destination, we skirted along the shores of the English Channel, in full sight of the shimmering cliffs of France in the pellucid distances, and here and there caught a glimpse of observation craft poised in mid air, and waiting for the smallest indication of mauraudirig submarine. There are, as every one has experienced, days which seem to gather up all days, past and future, into their focussed circumference, and to shed their recollection over the vista of the years — red letter days upon the calendar A VISIT TO F 101 of the black letter days of human life; days when merely to be alive is sufficient price to pay for the recurrent monotonies of existence. Such a day was this ; in its beauty and novelty a day to be remembered when other and lesser days have vanished into the limbo of forgotten things. Mood and scenery, glorious weather and the atmosphere of war, all combined to canonize this day — to me at any rate — as a day of days, a day tabulated and within recall forever. At S Camp we saw the canvassed abiding place of some twenty-five thousand Canadian troops; the majority of the men in final preparation for the fields of France; the individual tents smeared with color to mislead the eyes of offending German aircraft; and hurried past the ranks of several brigades upon the march. We went directly to the offices of the senior chaplain, Major Wilson, and were soon, myself as onlooker and my companion as principal participant, immersed in "affairs of state !" It was a conference especially war-time in its peculiar circumstances; a conference be- tween a man who in "real life" is a High Church Anglican and a man who in normal times is a Methodist minister! It was a con- ference carried on in the best and most mutually understanding spirit imaginable — the Methodist appreciating the authority and 102 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY executive wisdom of his military superior, and the Anglican deferring time and again to the opinion of his strictly pious confrere! It was a juxtaposition interesting to a degree — as sug- gestive of the true catholicity of atmosphere which may, perhaps, be wrought out in this season of crisis to bless the Church of Christ for all seasons to come. It was indicative of the harmonious eclecticism of the Chaplains' Service at large — for ministers of every Church and Denomination, Roman Catholics, Presby- terians, Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, and all the rest are working in love and without friction in the same organization, and under the same control. Surely, Church Unity is becoming something more than a dream, and is descending, or ascending, into the realm of practical politics; a tangible something to be dealt with to the best interests of all concerned when once more "the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and a little child shall lead" the forces of humanity. If men are able to do this sort of thing under the stress of unusual demand, in days of war, and to do it in brotherly affec- tion for the Master's sake, shall they not be able to do it, with equal forbearance and rating of one another's worth, in days of peace, when the demand, although less spectacular in sem- blance, is intrinsically one and the same ? The practical hope for such a Godsend is to be dis- covered here — that these chaplains, representa- A VISIT TO F 103 tive men of their Churches in Canada, and their spheres of work stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are some day to return home again, and to carry back with them the vision of what has been done within their own ex- perience. Will they rest satisfied with the partisanship — with what one might call the the picayunism — of the past, and be perma- nently content with the smallness of thought which finds residence within home sectarian- ism ? Surely not ! They have learned a lesson which they will never forget — a Christlike lesson — and they will translate their instruc- tion into the "lengthening of the cords and the strengthening of the stakes" of their home constituencies. Then — behold the day of great things ! I must confess that in this interview I had an insight into the necessary soullessness of the "job" of a spiritual executive — how men must be promoted or demoted not in accord- ance with their desire, but in league with their approved capacity — which made me grateful for the fact that no man is able to make a man a Bishop against his will and determina- tion ! The man — so naturally important to himself, and so manifestly a subject for special treatment on grounds of sentiment — has, in the Church as elsewhere, to be regarded as a mere cog in a tremendous machine, and to be moved where, and only where, his individual services 104 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY are best calculated to effect beneficially the success of the movement as a whole. Ledg- ered Christianity, with its debit and its credit side, alone weighs in the nicely freighted balances of the passionless Director of Chap- lain's Service. And, it is right that such should be the case. I thought on this thing as the twilight gathered, when the time came to return, and when the darkened streets of London burst once more apologetically upon our view, and I came to the conclusion that, when all is said and done, efficiency is a cold-blooded German, and with armor over his stony heart! The world would be a much pleasanter place were there a royal road to preferment, were each man to be taken at his own valuation, and were Tipperary not quite so far away. Which things are an allegory — and for the reader to translate. A VISIT TO S CAMP I SPENT some days at the Headquarters of the Y. M. C. A. for the S area in F In the same house with me were the supervisor of the work in this district, his executive assistant, and a fellow-evangelist, Captain W. R. Cameron, of Toronto, who has done extraordinarily effective work with the Canadian troops in England and France. It was, from the side of companionship alone, a most happy experience, and from the point of view of the purposes for which I went over seas, an educative visit. S , one of the largest, if not the largest, and most important of the Canadian camps in England, is situated over a scattered ter- ritory ranging from one and a half miles to eight miles from the city of F , so well known as one of the best patronized water- ing places in England, and extensively used in these war times as a point of embarkation for France. It is divided into a series of en- campments, S proper, St. Martin's Plain, Dibgate, East Sandling, and West Sandling, 106 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY Otterpool, Monks Horton, and Sandgate. There have been as many as fifty thousand soldiers in residence in these different places at one time — soldiers recently arrived from Canada and on their way to the battle fields of France, invalided soldiers from the Western Front and elsewhere, and, in the rest camps, soldiers returning from temporary leave in England on their way across the neighboring channel. At S I had the pleasure of meeting an old friend, Captain Woodcock, of the chap- lains' service ; the rector of the Church of Eng- land in Oakville, Ontario. Under his fostering care I was shown about the camp with a thoroughness which could leave nothing to be desired by the most enthusiastic and voracious pilgrim. We inspected the Officers' Barracks and the Barracks for soldiers — the latter an innumerable collection of solidly constructed huts arranged in rows and fronting narrow street-ways; the several hospitals, differen- tiated and graded in their minstrations ; the Garrison church, where the parade services of the Church of England are held on Sundays, together with frequent celebrations of the Holy Communion, and a Sunday school for the chil- dren of the vicinity ; and the graveyard of Canadians who, far away from their native land and kinsfolk, have perished during the past three years from disease, or German air raids. It was an interesting tour — interesting, and A VISIT TO S CAMP 107 enlightening, in every sense of the words — for to the topographical features there was added the prevailing presence of marching companies of men on every hand, and the whirring sound of air craft over our heads — many of them aeroplanes on their flight to the fields of Flanders, which at the speed which they were travelling, would, I was informed, be reached within the compass of an hour or less. I was privileged to mess with the cavalry officers in Somerset Barracks — a group of men of whom Canada, trusting her reputation to their keeping, has every reason to be proud — and was fortunate enough to meet several friends whom I had known in Hamilton and elsewhere in times of peace. The economy of war has entered into the abiding places of our fighting men even as it has assailed the homes of the civilian population in England; for, at Somerset Barracks we regaled in margerine in lieu of butter, and sugar was an absent luxury — provided, in accordance with regulations, only at breakfast and dinner. The atmosphere of the dining room, as indeed, the atmosphere of the entire building, was a fragrant reminder of one's college days, when stewards presided over the daily menage, and when the dainty touch of woman's hand was conspicuous by its absence! At S , as in all other camps which are blessed with their presence, the chaplains 108 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY are performing a service of love, which is as much appreciated by the men who come under its beneficent influences as it is comparatively- unknown, at any rate in its intensive scope, by the rank and file of Canadian people in the homeland. Here are ministers and priests of all denominations and hailing from every part of the Dominion of Canada, who have left their families and their important parishes thousands of miles behind them to serve, unostentatiously and faithfully and in the spirit of the Christ, fellow-countrymen, the preponderating ma- jority of whom they have never seen before, exiled, temporarily but realistically, from the old scenes and the familiar faces which alone make life enduringly worth while. These chaplains have voluntarily subjected them- selves to military discipline, and entered a system of life altogether divorced from their previous experience — signing up, most of them, for the "duration of the war" — in order that they may "play the game" and "do their bit" in the untoward tragedy which has for the time being overshadowed the human race. It is a fine piece of self- sacrifice, in some senses a greater piece of self- sacrifice than the active excitement of the self-sacrifice of the combatant officer, and it is a living testimony, in the somewhat monotonous round of duties borne without murmuring, of what consecrated men will do A VISIT TO S CAMP 109 for Christ's sake and for the cause of the King- dom of God. It is one thing to be a peripatetic evangelist — to travel around from place to place, and from area to area, inclusive of both England and France — under the kindly super- vision of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion; preaching the Gospel to large audiences of men who have been gathered together through the effectiveness of extensive adver- tising; but it is quite another thing, and a far harder and more spiritually exhausting process, to minister day in and day out, month in and month out, and, in some individual cases, year in and year out in the same locality, and apparently to the same body of men; to ad- minister the sacraments to comparatively small congregations; to preach at formal parade services, where the authoritativeness of the proceedings oftentimes militates against the receptiveness of the hearers; to visit the sick in the hospitals, and to bear testimony by the character of one's daily living of the reality of the faith which possesses the citadel of person- ality. There is all the difference between a Rev. William Sunday, who "blows into" a community, pulverizing the inhabitants by the excellence of a series of startling sermons — for every man, even the most insignificant preacher, has a limited series of best addresses — and the faithful parish priest, who incon- spicuously, but with a perpetual "woe is me," 1 10 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY summers and winters his people, and gives of the treasures of his soul for the constructive welfare and spiritual education of "the flock committed to his care." What some of these chaplains have suffered — and uncomplainingly — in the homesickness and shepherd-illness of enforced separation from their loved ones and their congregation is known to their secret hearts alone, and to the Great Heart of the Master whom they serve. It is all a magnificent instance of the "motive" which encharges the ministries of all the Churches of Christendom, and it argues well for the ultimate transformation of the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. To these men, some of them known to me personally and the greater number of them unknown, I tender most sincere, even if unsought for praise, and humbly bow my head as in the presence of men whose "shoe latchets I am not worthy to unloose." The Y. M. C. A. huts in this area are veri- table hives of activity. They seem to be thronged with soldiers from noon until night, and the service being rendered is, and obviously so, as multiform as the needs demand. Every- thing is, as it were, dynamic rather than static, and avenues of approach to the men are opened up even before the opportunity itself appears to exist in tangible form. The minds of the A VISIT TO S CAMP I'll Y. M. C. A. workers are busy day and night in formulating schemes of usefulness adapted to enlarging or shifting circumstances, and the body, mind, and spirit of the individual "Tommy" are catered to and nourished from every conceivable angle of contact. The detail of administration, for the individual hut leader, and, above all, for the Supervisor in every area, is a surcharging business which occupies to the full every available hour of the average day, and which calls for the application of the most experienced business acumen. It is, of course, the "Spiritualities" which have occupied my most undivided attention, and it is of the Services in the several huts, at which I was privileged either to be present or to participate, that I would speak. The hut at S.. , the best equipped Canadian hut in any of the English camps, a hut erected by the Canadian Y. M. C. A. in memory of a fallen comrade, with a seating capacity of some seven hundred men, is filled from end to end, many soldiers actually stand- ing up along the walls, and at the rear entrance. These men, ranging from privates to sergeants and with a scattering of officers, are, appar- ently, of almost every age — from the beardless youth of twenty summers to the serried face of the fighting man who has passed the boundry marks of middle life. The color scheme is prevalently Khaki, with splotches of 112 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY blue daubed here and there where the invalid men are scattered among their companions — all caught up into the conglomerate gaudiness of the national flags of the Allies hanging in festooned simplicity from arching rafters and tin slated roof. These men, a congregation of men which it would be dificult to assemble in similiar num- ber in the precincts of any Church at home, have all gathered together with the avowed purpose of taking part in a religious service, and of listening to a religious address. They are voluntarily present, and they are saturated with a reverent earnestness which is indicative of the exercise of their own free will. They are far from home and loved ones; they are embarked upon the most harrowingly un- toward experience which could possibly fall to the lot of mortal man; and they have come in soul hunger and in soul thirst to hear a simple exposition of a Gospel theme which may prove to be both food and drink amid the unusual temptations which surround them in their army life. There is a sweetness, and, withal, a sadness in the faces of these men which strikes one, and unhesitatingly, even at the most cursory glance. These men are lonely — all the more lonely in that their loneliness must, for man- hood's sake, be kept to themselves. These men are homesick, with that thrustful quality A VISIT TO S CAMP 113 of homesickness which may only be experi- enced by the man who has good reasons to believe that he has looked upon his nearest and dearest, so far as life on earth is concerned, for the last time. These men are filled with wonder, and a wonder all shot through with an unspeakable horror; for they have, many of them, seen such things and heard such things during the past few years the existence or the enormity of which they could never have conceived to be possible in bygone days, and they have temporarily returned from a living and festering hell, into the maelstrom of which they have good reason to believe they must shortly go back again. They would under- stand what it all means, and yet they find it quite impossible to put into words the inter- rogation which thumps at the doors of their souls. These men are self-conscious men — those, at least, who have not up to date had their baptism of fire, and they are fearfully speculating as to the stuff of which they are made. How will flesh and blood behave when it is faced with that the very thought of which sends a revolting shudder through the shrink- ing human frame? Some of these men are pen- itent men — a number of them, through sheer heartsickness and through spacial separation from their restraining environments, have done things in the last few months, or weeks, which they have never done before, and which have 114 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY sullied their self-respect to the depths of con- scientious despair. All of them are human men, subject to all the hopes and longings of humanity, with hearts that feel and minds that think and souls that dream, sensationfull and idealistic, and, joined together in outward companionship whilst isolated in innermost personality, they bear in eye and feature, in fixed and shifting expression, the melancholy pilgrim look which is common to all those who are consciously, or unconsciously, aware of the fact that "here they have no continuing city." It is a sight to fill the preacher's heart with love; with a portion of that compassion which overflowed the Master's consciousness as He looked upon the multitudes; and he whispers an unuttered prayer that he may be able to speak a message of penetrative power such as will satisfy the dumb and animate needs of his heroic brothers to whom he has the extraordinary privilege to speak. The service begins with a hymn; the men either sitting or standing ; then another hymn, selected by the men themselves; after that an extemporaneous prayer; then a solo by a singer, one of many who have given their services in such fashion to the enlisted men during the war; then another hymn followed by the address, and the benediction. The sing- ing is full volumed, and fairly lifts the roof; A VISIT TO S. .... . CAMP 115 the men rejoicing in all the well-known tunes, feeling their association with the Church life of former days ; the solo is greeted with vocifer- ous applause; the prayer is carried through amid intense stillness, and with bowed heads ; and the address is listened to with such eager intentness that the hundreds of men, so far as all movement is concerned, might be one man, and that man a graven image chained to his chair. At the end of the service proper, and just prior to the benediction — although the practice is varied by circumstances and atmosphere — the men are called upon to make a decision to lead the Christ life, or to renew a similar de- cision made at some previous time, and for this purpose cards, with the following in- dentitures, are handed by the willing ushers from row to row of seated men: "I hereby express the desire to become a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and to become more closely identified with the work of the Christian Church." Below this heading there are spaces for the regimental number, and for the Church denomination. The men are requested to sign their names, and to give the address or addresses of relatives or friends in Canada to whom they would like a form letter sent advis- ing the interested parties of the decision which they have made. The letter, forwarded im- mediately to the interested chaplains of the 116 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY area and to the people whose names have been indicated, is stereotyped, and couched in the ensuing terms : "Dear Friend : "You will be interested to know that has attended the religious services conducted by Rev , and has signed one of the decision cards. "This voluntary act on his part will indicate one of two things ; either that he has decided to become a follower of Christ, or, having already made that decision, he has expressed a desire to take a forward step in the service of Christ's Kingdom. "Permit me to assure you that we shall join our prayers with yours that strength may be given him to live out in his life the resolution he has made. I would also add that this letter is sent at his own request. "Yours in Christian Service, "Captain, Canadian Y. M. C. A." It has been proved by experience that in the course of an ordinary year these letters have reached countless homes in Canada, and that the comfort to the recipients, specially in cases where the loved one has died on the field of battle, has been altogether unmeasurable in words of human speech. One night I journeyed to another of the camps in S area — West Sandling, not A VISIT TO S CAMP 117 for evangelistic purposes, but to deliver a lecture on the subject America and the War. The hut conditions were similar ; but with this difference — the sing song was purely secular in character, and the atmosphere was redolent with tobacco smoke. Through the lurking haze I could discern hundreds of men, sitting, lolling, and standing from platform to canteen department. All were, of course, in uniform, but there was an abandon of discipline, for the men were enjoying their well-earned evening rest, which expressed itself in ringing laughter, and audible good fellowship. When my turn came to deliver my speech I was announced as a citizen of Cleveland, Ohio, and, with the exceptional courtesy for which the Canadian soldier is justly famed, I received a rousing ovation. This cordiality of response was continued throughout the lecture, getting altogether out of bounds when the name of President Wilson was mentioned, or when the enthusiastic participation of the American nation in the war was affirmed, and I was conscious of the fact that American interven- tion means much to the Allied soldier who has been fighting the hard fought battles of the ear- lier stages of the War. It suggests succor to the beleagured, and bespeaks a speedy termina- tion to a conflict in which the veteran is alto- gether "fed up." Moreover, and I was glad to notice this fact, the Canadian does not seem to 118 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY be suffering under the impression that the United States should have declared war against Germany before she actually did, and he is convinced of the fact that the American ex- ecutive threw in his lot with Great Britain, France, and the rest, at the earliest possible moment — when American opinion was crystal- ized, and wholesale unanimity of sentiment reasonably assured. The applause and cheering which greeted me at the conclusion of the address — a feeble attempt to cover an almost endless subject in a limited space of time — were far from being personal; they were expressive of the good feeling which the Canadian soldier has for his brother-in-arms, and of thanksgiving that the greatest of all Republics has determined to do her part in ridding the world and civilization of a menace which threatens to standardize the one and destroy the other, until liberty, fraternity, and equality perish from off the earth. One may only hope that the Americans and Canadians, the inhabitants of the same Con- tinent, may be thrown closely together on the battle fronts of Europe, for they understand and appreciate one another as few of the armies- associated together in the Allied cause. A VISIT TO W CAMP EARLY in the month of October, 1917, I was detailed to visit W Camp, the home of the Fifth Canadian Division. I reached Godalming, Surrey, after an hour's ride from London, and was met at the station by a representative of the Canadian Y M. C. A. Taking a taxi we arrived at W , a distance of some three miles, at the sunset hour when the community of far-stretching huts, clustered around and on the summit of a well-defined hill, were bathed in the glowing embers of the dying day. It was a sight indigenous to the fact of war, and aroused many feelings in the heart of a man who, thousands of miles away from home, realized that he was in the midst of an armed encampment of his fellow-countrymen. It is a difficult matter to describe the topography of an English training camp to anybody who has never been privileged to come within sighting distance of the same; but in order that my readers may achieve the atmosphere of one of these extemporized cities so far scattered throughout Europe and 120 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY America to-day, I would attempt a brief description. W. . . . Camp, more or less typical of similar camps throughout England, is the temporary abiding place of some twenty thousand Cana- dian troops. It is situated, as suggested above, on high ground amid the rolling dunes of the far-famed County of Surrey, and, crowned with pine trees, lies on the direct road between London and Portsmouth ; an ideal location in every way — from a military point of view, and in regard to the valued healthfulness of its in- habitants. The camp is composed of seem- ingly miles upon miles of primitive appearing huts, arranged in streets and blocks, with in- tersecting open spaces which mark the division of the various Units and which serve at the same time for parade grounds and practising areas for the troops. It looks for all the world like the pictures which one sees of mining towns in the western states, where the neces- sities of men in community life have naturally outrun the luxuries of either architectural stability or ordered beauty. It is saturated with the soul deadening monotony of buildings erected en bloc and devoid of individualistic appeal to the eye. Apart from differentiating numbers and printed sign boards it would be altogether impossible for; the stranger to distinguish one street from another street, or one structure from its neighboring structure. A VISIT TOW CAMP 121 There is a lack of mosaic and a prevalence of clean cut pattern which is so closely related to efficiency as to be thoroughly divorced from all semblance of artistic display. One feels that one is walking through a cemetery of the living, where every tombstone is like its fellow in ut- most detail, and that one must avoid the sacri- lege of expecting, in scenery at least, more than the circumstances legitimately permit ! The Canadians in W. . . .have been living in W for more than a year, under the most stringent military discipline — men, young and middle-aged, drawn from the liberty-loving civilian class of population — and, as may well be imagined, the men are tired to death of their surroundings, of their prolonged training, and are craving for the privileged opportunity of experience at the front. When one thinks of thousands of heart whole men, many of them husbands and fathers, who have been away from their families for a considerable length of time, irrevocably separated from their respect- ive callings and "cooped up" in the boundaries of a restricted plot of ground, one begins to get some idea of the autocracy of war, whether it be waged by democratic or un- democratic nations. One also appreciates the extraordinary endurance of untoward condi- tion which soldiers exhibit in the performance of their bounden patriotic duty! Homesick and bored to extinction, hungry, with a soul 122 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY compelling appetite, for the old scenes and the familiar faces, and perforated with keen-edged anxiety as to the assurance of their ultimate return to their native land, men are "playing the game" with obvious cheerfulness and un- flinching determination. Surely human nature is a marvellous affair, and worthy of the most ecstatic encomiums of the psychologically unprejudiced ! My chief interest in W lay, of course, in the work of the Canadian Y. M. C. A. I had come to the Camp with the intention of learning as much as possible about the manner in which the organization was catering to the well-being, physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual, of its military constituency, and my enquiries immediately on arrival were directed toward that end. I was quartered at one of the five Y. M. C. A. Huts in the Camp — a long building somewhat resembling a skating rink in the small Canadian town — and through the courtesy of Y. M. C. A. officials was quickly given an opportunity to see the work in progress — and at first hand. The work at W is — at the present time, although the same experiment is being tried at S and other Camps — unique in its educational activities. With a view to pre- paring soldiers for better citizenship in Canada when they return at the conclusion of the war, and also to give them every opportunity A VISIT TOW CAMP 123 and facility for improving their minds, the Y. M. C. A. have organized a definite course of study— the widespread popularity of which has been beyond the fondest dreams of the pro- moters. The movement, for movement it is, and calculated to become all embracing in its SCO pe_arose out of vocational groups that had been organized in the Y. M. C. A. Huts during the summer of 1917 for the education of the men and for the occupying of their leisure time. The original study group was a student organ- ization, meeting together for discussion, and the majority of the members have become teachers in the classes now being held. At the opportune moment in the develop- ment of this undertaking Dr. Tory, President of Alberta University, arrived on a special mission of investigating the possibilities of educational work among the men. Under his guidance and inspiration special courses of study were arranged for those soldiers who were planning to go to a university, a business college, or an agricultural institution on their return to Canada. Three courses of study have, at the time of writing, been adopted: literary, business, and agricultural. The students are duly registered, as in any home institute ; the roll is called at the beginning of every class; text books are prescribed; and examinations are duly held, 124 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY looking towards the attainment of a high standard of excellence. The military authorities have most gener- ously placed their Instructional Huts at the disposal of the Y. M. C. A., and have gone so far as to allot an additional building for the purposes of a library and students' room. The attendance has steadily increased from the inauguration of the classes, and the interest awakened has involved a total membership of more than two thousand soldiers. The courses of study comprise, under the head of Literary, classes in English, History, Latin, Greek, French, and Mathematics ; under the head of Business, Shorthand and Book- keeping; and under the head of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Farm Bookkeeping, and Law relating to negotiable papers. I had the good fortune of attending the classes in session one evening, and in rotation, even going so far as to act as registrar in the agricultural department. I found hundreds of soldiers, amongst their number many college undergraduates and graduates, collected in the various huts, and listening most attentively to illuminating lectures being delivered by the staff of commissioned and non-com- missioned instructors. There was a collegiate atmosphere in the whole performance, and with this unconventional difference — the men were obviously in earnest and were present of A VISIT TOW...... CAMP 125 their own free-willed enthusiasm; not because their parents or guardians had seen fit to give them a college education! When one realizes that throughout the "drag" of war the soldiers of Canada, the sol- diers, at any rate, in English camps, will have the opportunity of keeping their minds in work- ing order, and that the time and efficiency which they manifest in these classes will be linked up with university requirements in the home land, one has some faint idea of the value of this new and, until recently, untried work being carried on, in the usual self-sacrificing spirit, by the Canadian Y. M. C. A. The possibilities are altogether untold; the effect upon the morale of the soldier alone is incom- putable; and the movement may well be em- ulated by the armies of our allies which, in this long drawn out campaign of hostilities, are in a fair way of losing their civil initiative through long desuetude. sjc 4; if. j*s ;Js s|e Has the reader ever slept in a Y. M. C. A. Hut on a cold autumnal night in England? If not, he has an experience ahead of him which he may conscientiously determine, for his health's and comfort's sake, to avoid ! I have slept in a Y. M. C. A. Hut on a damply frigid English night, and, unless unkind fate pre- scribes a repetition of the misfortune, I shall 126 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY never duplicate the agony. For agony it was ! Sheetless, but blanketfull, I lay down to rest in a wooden shack, for, as a matter of fact, the average hut is neither more nor less than a shack, through which in well-defined spots one could feel the sweeping winds of evening, and, if one were possessed of astronomical pro- clivites, count the stars, telling them all by name ! I lay down to rest, but, as events proved, not to sleep! Coldness, a blood- curdling coldness, a coldness which literally wrapped the entire body in a swathing chill of death, settled down upon me, and from head to foot, as well as through and through. The temperature had suddenly gone down to freez- ing point, and tenderfoot that I was, I was all unprepared, physically and materially, for the unexpected variation. I cuddled myself to myself, and, staring-eyed, wondered how I might best retain some semblance of circulation until the dawn of morning's light ! The next day my companions in the neighboring com- partments assured me that they had passed a blissful night, and, far from sympathizing with my predicament, chided me upon the softness and the preponderance of my sensitive flesh — going so far as to suggest that I was a fit subject for the rigors of a winter in France! There are times when even Christian men seem to fall short of one's preconceived conception of requisite tender-heartedness ! A VISIT TOW CAMP 127 Among the other remarkably serviceable activities of the Y. M. C. A. I discovered the following — symptomatic of the range of work being prosecuted by the same organization in all the English military camps. In each of the Huts certain nights of the week are set aside for letter writing. An effort is made by the officers in charge to keep the men persistently reminded of the importance of regular communication with their relatives and friends at home. The average daily mail from each of the five huts at W is close to the five hundred mark. This is, as any anxious parent or wife realizes only too well, an organ- ized effort which in the aggregate means much to countless thousands of people. It has, since the outbreak of the war, been one of the pro- nounced endeavors of the Y. M. C. A. of all countries. In the line of athletics the Y. M. C. A. officers reported games of baseball, lacrosse, football, basketball, hikes, quoit tournaments, etc., and the records went to show that they had furnished the men with a considerable amount of sporting equipment, including balls and bats of all description. During my short stay in W the championship game in a baseball series, and a gymnkhana of alarming propor- tions, were "in the air", and scheduled for an imminent date. Add to all the foregoing ministrations to 128 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY the soldiers the splendid concerts which are held frequently, when the very best artists are pressed into service, and the indispensable work which is being expressed in the daily canteen, where the enlisted men literally congregate in mobs, and you have some conception of what the Y. M. C. A., whether English or Canadian or American, means to the soldier in this pres- ent war. It is not merely the letter of the thing that counts — it is, preeminently, the personal touch of the Y. M. C. A. worker; than whom there is no more self-sacrificing man in the ranks of the combatant armies to-day. A VISIT TO A CAMP THE last Canadian camp which I visited in England — and my impressions concerning it are somewhat vague, in that my outlook was obsessed with the predominant coloring of conscious ill health — was A , on the south coast, and not far from the well-known city of B On arrival at A I went immediately, my luggage being carried upon the shoulders of a valiant, although impecunious, small boy, to the Esplanade Hotel; a comfortable hostel beautifully situated on the verge of the sand dunes, and suffocated with the reverberating music of the thundering ocean. Here I spent a lonely evening, so far as direct conversational companionship was concerned, and in the midst of hundreds of my former, countrymen. Canadian officers, the majority of them ap- parently on temporary leave from the Western Front, literally thronged the corridors of the hotel, and filled all available space before the brightly blazing fire places. Many of the officers, as I could readily gather from their 130 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY remarks, had been away from Canada for a year, for two years, and for even longer time, and had been fortunate enough to see active service on the Somme, at Ypres, and elsewhere. A splendid set of men they were, physically fit, and with that inexpressible look of endurance, endurance both of body and of soul, which comes of experience in the trenches. They spoke of battles fought and won; of comrades killed in this "Push" and in that — "gone west," as they phrased it in their picturesque vocab- ulary ; but chiefly they reminisced of incidents which had occurred in the homeland in days of peace, and of loved ones whom they had not seen since war farewells of long ago. It was a typical gathering, a gathering to be met with under similar surroundings in almost every coastal town in England in wartime, and somehow or other, it pressed home the nobility and the heinousness of war to a degree and an extent almost overwhelming to the imagina- tion Here were men, men of parts, irrevo- cably cut off, for an appreciable period of time, from their families, from their businesses, from their useful and influential standings in their own localities, from all the deeps of life which forever call to the corresponding deeps, and — for what? To live monotonously (and would that someone would write befittingly upon the monotonies of army life), in hutted encamp- ments, in disagreeable ditches where, like as A VISIT TO A CAMP 131 not, the water is waist rather than ankle deep, and in broken down, shell-shattered barns where the scientifically inclined may study astronomy through the roof as well as geology through the floor. For what ? To be divorced indefinitely from all that life holds dear — love, ambition, the society of children, the obligations of career, in order to murder their fellow-men with gunshot or bayonet thrust for democracy's dear sake ! I felt the beastliness of the war that evening in A as, perhaps, I had never felt it before. A pathological nausea it may have been, and yet, in moments of health and sanity, how much there is to make us loathe the absurdity, the asininity, the pathetic infutility, the unproductive heinous- ness, of war. When all is said and done it is an infantile pastime for full-grown men. As I sat that evening in A , alone in the midst of company, and what a lonely loneliness is the loneliness of a crowd, I heard a story, a story suggestive of the callousness of the human heart, which I shall never forget, and which, although it is irrelevant to the motive of these pages, I shall pass on to my readers to think of, in all its inferences, as they will. Two officers were sitting near me — one evidently a born Canadian, the other, as his words soon proved, a Welshman who had lived in Canada for several years, and who, on the outbreak of war, had received a commission in 132 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY the First Canadian Contingent, and gone over- seas as a loyal citizen of his adopted country. It was the erstwhile Welshman who told the story, the intimate story of his life, and who, apparently, heeded not the presence of the seedy looking stranger huddled up beside the blazing fire seeking that meed of warmth which should be generated internally within one's accomodating veins. "You know, Dick," for so the one man spoke to the other man, his friend ; "you know, Dick, I was born at in Wales. I grew up in a family circle of three, my mother, my brother, and myself. We lived in a small home in a hill- locked village, and although our means were small and my education was achieved in the somewhat limited atmosphere of the neighbor- ing board school I was as happy and self re- spectful as any irresponsible youngster well might be. I accepted my lot without question- ing, joining in all the innocent pleasures of my play-fellows, and grew toward maturity with- out the semblance of a shadow over the sunlit panorama of my destiny. It was good to be alive in that state of things unto which it had pleased God to call me, and the commonplace days succeeded one another even into the vista of the years without a conscious break in the uniformity of their sufficient happiness. "On the sudden, however, everything was changed, and an element of tragedy entered A VISIT TO A CAMP 133 into my experience, never again to be dissipated so long as life might last. My mother took me aside, when I had reached my twenty-first year, and told me that she was not my mother —that I was the illegitimate child of her only sister, and that my supposed brother, the com- rade and close companion of my youth, was my illegal cousin. She said that she thought I ought to understand these things, that the knowledge of the truth would prevent un- pleasant complications in the future, and that she told me at this time as she judged me to be old enough to endure such disillusionment without inimical effect to my moral character. "You may imagine my feelings ! My Temple of Life was laid in ruins at my feet ; my affec- tions were smitten in their most vulnerable in- timacies; and I was new born to a stigma which to my sensitive imagination seemed to brand me as a Cain among my fellows. "The upshot of the revelation was that I left home, and journeyed overseas to try my fortune in the new world. I settled in Western Canada, and by slow stages, meeting many seemingly insurmountable obstacles and over- coming them one by one, made my way to a fair competence, and an honored name. Over those years I must draw a veil. They are years tinged with an inward struggle which has left its marks upon my face, and which, for the sake of life's equanimity, I would not voluntarily 134 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY recall. The tendency and the recurrent temp- tation of a man so circumstanced is to feel that he has been handicapped from birth, that fate has played him a sorry trick, that God is an unfair God, and that he should seek nirvana in unholy dissipation. From such a course I was saved by a deeply religious training, and an ingrained love for the services of the Christian Church. "The worst, however, was still to come. After I had been in Canada for some years, and was so circumstanced that I could afford the expenses of a journey home, I went back to Wales, to the memory packed village of my boyhood days, and looked up the woman who had been to me as a mother, and my 'cousin brother'. From them, after reiterated interro- gation — for I was determined to learn the truth — I discovered that my real mother was dead, and that my natural father was an influential resident of a community not many miles away. To the neighboring city I went, resolved to meet my father face to face and to discover whether or no there were mitigating circum- stances which would atone his offence in my eyes, and purge the stain which I had ever felt must be running through the channels of my own life's blood. "Through the telephone, and with much difficulty — for he was a man of affairs in truth — I made an appointment with my father to A VISIT TO A CAMP 135 meet him in his office. I arrived on time, and with trembling limbs and suffocating heart — for it is an experience to meet one's father for the first time in middle life, and such a father, I was ushered into the presence of the man who had brought me into being as a labelled bastard for as long a time as life should last. "A man rose from a desk — a desk heaped high with correspondence and papers of all sorts — and said, 'Well, sir, who are you, and what may I do for you ?' I replied, ' I am your son/ "Do you suppose that the man was overcome with emotion — flabbergasted — nonplussed? Not at all, and not for the fraction of a mo- ment; without the slightest tremor of voice, without so much as a moistening of the lips, he immediately asked in an even tone, 'Oh, is that so? Which one are you? Who was your mother?' "I could not speak. There was nothing to be said. Had there been volumes to utter — volumes which such a monster-man might have understood — I could never have uttered them. Something arose within me that strangled my articulation; that caused my heart to thump against my ribs; that blinded my eyes, and made the room to swirl about me as a living thing. Murder, frenzy, an overpowering lust of destruction, gripped me as in giant's em- brace, and, keeping my thread of sanity amid 136 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY the skein of insanity which entangled me, I tottered shufflingly from the room. " 'Which one are you ; who was your mother?' I tell you, Dick, the words were literally burned into my brain; they forever sear my conscience as with red hot iron ; they soil my soul as with the smoking fumes of hell ; and I shall never be at rest until Bosche's shell, delayed these twice twelve months, blots out my earth-born curse, and gives me entrance into that land where, in God's denned and ap- proachable Presence, 'a man's a man for a* that/ " What do you think of the story, gentle readers? Is it not calculated to make the most unthinking think, and to open the floodgates of resistive remorse in the stony heart of the most case hardened, habit ironed, sensualist? All through that livelong night, for it proved to be one of the longest lived nights of my life, the story banished sleep from my eyes. I kept on repeating over and over again, to the verge of insanity, the wages of sin is death — death — blackest death. And so they forever are ; either for the sinner, or for the sinned against, or both. The next morning the Supervisor of the Y. M. C. A. for the A area called for me at an early hour, and took me out to the Garrison church, to preach at the Church of England parade service. A VISIT TO A CAMP 137 All along the line of route we passed detach- ment after detachment of soldiers bound for their respective places of worship — spick and span in their furbished accoutrements. The Lord's Day in an English military camp is, for the morning hours at least, a busy day, and streets are filled with swinging companies of troops; whilst a veritable babel of conflicting sounds ascend from the numerous bands, echoing and re-echoing in din of chorus from iron hut and neighboring hillside. A is, I think acknowledgedly so, the most picturesque Canadian camp in England. There is a finished and proportionated appear- ance about the buildings ; a paved and finished look about the sectoring streets; and, above all, a grouping of verdure-clad hills around and about and running down to the shimmering sea, which are not duplicated in W. . . ., or S. . . . — beautifully situated as W and S undoubtedly are — and which, so I have been informed, find unequal parallel in either B . . . . or C Has the reader ever been present at a parade service? If not, then, it is in my opinion an experience to be sought, and, when attained, to be forgotten. There is a compulsory note about a parade service which is apt to endanger the spirit of true religion. The men are there, many of them, simply because they have to be there. It is a business ordained by the powers 138 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY that be, and so there is little, if any, atmosphere of privileged pleasure in the whole perform- ance. Moreover ; brevity is the soul of a parade service. From beginning to end, throughout prayers, scripture reading, hymn singing, and address, everything is "run off" with a military precision which murders artistic effect with the stiletto of prescribed efficiency. One feels that the General, or, perchance, the Colonel, is "on deck" ; but one is not quite so sure, so palpably sure, of the agreeably wooed Presence of God — the Generalissimo in whose Name the ranks are, nominally at any rate, mustered for worship. At A , in the Garrison church — so it seemed to the writer, and, of course, he may be wrong — the responses of the congregation lacked that whole-souled spontaneity and enthusiasm, and the hymns fell short of that thunderous upheaval of sound, which might have been expected in a handled gathering of some eight hundred men, and which one was accustomed to experience in the voluntary assemblies of men at the religious services in the Y. M. C. A. Huts. The preacher was conscious of having to make an unusual effort to grip the attention of his hearers, and to im- press them with the fact that he was in living earnest, sent to preach to them by "the Captain of our Salvation," rather than by the camp commandant. It must be said, however, that A VISIT TO A CAMP 139 when the effort had been made, and that when the crispness of the service had rediscovered itself in the assumed crispness of the preacher's utterance, the opportunity was obviously matched by the apparent response of the ordered listeners. It was "good to be there," and God Himself was in "the midst". In A , as in all other camps, the chap- lains are accomplishing a painstaking and re- sultful work. Their lives must be, from a worldly point of view, monotonous to a degree ; but they show no signs of spiritual fatigue, and, undaunted, far from home, separated from the environment which means mecca to them, they perform punctiliously their specified and un- specified duties — in hut, in hospital, in church, and in personal contact with the men — as true soldiers of Jesus Christ ; as men of God, with- out fear, and without reproach. A VISIT TO OXFORD TO walk in the City of the Dead must be an exhilarating experience as compared with the feelings of an old-time Oxford man who revisits the scenes of his student days in this Year of Hate, 191 7. All that made Oxford Oxonian — apart, of course, from its architect- ural uniqueness — has temporarily departed. Scholasticism, in its somewhat indefinable, but patent, atmosphere, has given place to a mar- tial obtrusiveness altogether out of harmony with its environment. Instead of the undergraduate swinging along "the High," or the student returning in athletic raiment from his daily exercise, the swanking soldier meets the eye at every turn — in the parks, along the river banks, and in the far- famed "quads." The lean-faced and ascetic looking don — for the non-port drinking don is the most cadaverous of men — has given way to the ruddy cheeked officer, whose wholesome- ness of body leaves the lining of his mind an open question. The gown and mortar board are exchanged for the khaki tunic and the A VISIT TO OXFORD 141 swagger stick, whilst the ubiquitous cleric is swallowed up in the blue-clad returned "Tommy," who having suffered upon the fields of France, and elsewhere, for his country's in- tegrity is now convalescing in obvious comfort within the walls of England's greatest seat of learning Just think of it! Two hundred and fifty undergraduates in residence where before the War the number ranged at the three thousand mark, and over — and the younger professorial body to a man either at the Front, or dead upon the field of battle ! It is a living witness, or, in another sense, a dead testimony, to the inroads made upon the youth of England and her Dominions since the ill-fated month of August, four years ago, when blood-lit hellishness was let loose among the nations of the earth, and Mars, gory Mars, came into its guilty own. Imagine the disorganization, a disorganiza- tion which it will obviously take many years to overtake ; picture the depletion in constituency, a depletion which in substance shall never be redeemed; then, regarding all this as sympto- matic of the havoc of life and opportunity wrought at large and in wholesale fashion, curse in a Christian sort of way, but in the Name of God, the Prussian system which has upset the equilibrium of the universe. "It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man, or nation, by whom they come/' In a 142 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY very real sense — "it were better for that nation had it never been born." I set out one morning to see Oxford as I remembered it, and, apart from the fact that the streets ran in the same direction as of yore, and that the well-worn buildings were still intact, Oxford as I remembered it was dead. The body remained but the soul had taken its flight. I had walked only a few blocks when a regi- ment of soldiers came marching by — a mag- nificent body of men, with ringing step and thrustful arm swing; but altogether unaca- demic in their appearance. I traced the martial host to its lair, and lo! it was quartered in Keble College — at ordinary times the haven of aspiring candidates for Holy Orders. I crossed the street, and was almost annihilated by a fast speeding military automobile, driven by a chauffeur in regulation blouse and bloomers! I turned into the neighboring parks, and be- hold! a grand review — hundreds of soldiers going through manoeuvres under a cantanker- ous colonel who made short and staccato work of the third commandment ; and with their fixed bayonets flashing in the autumn sunlight. I wended my way to Magdalen College, and dis- covered that I had inadvertently run into a barracks for flying corps ! I walked to Christ Church, aristocratic Christ Church, and "Tom Quad" was spotted all over with commissioned A VISIT TO OXFORD 143 and non-commissioned men, unceremoniously smoking the inevitable and ubiquitous cigarette amid the pastures of the self-consciously elite I Along the "Tow Path" I strolled in saddened meditation, feeling like a modern Rip Van Winkle, only to be awakened by a blasphemous sound to which I grew accustomed in the next few hours, coming to regard it as one of the characteristic sounds of Oxford — the whirring of aeroplanes ! Surely an incarnate sacrilege in the haunts of eight weeks' ghosts of former years ! For comfort and refreshing conversation, whistling as a boy in a cemetery at night to keep my courage up, I called upon my small circle of acquaintances among the younger pro- fessors and fellows whom I once had known. Not one of them did I find at home. Either "at the Front, sir," or "dead," was the reply I received in every case. It was harrowing, and disillusioning, and thought-provocative to a degree. I was driven in silently upon myself, and, in a human sense, "my soul was exceed- ingly sorrowful, even unto death." But, what a joy-shot mourning it proved to be on second thought ! Was not this, although a vastly and intensely different Oxford to any Oxford that one had even known, Oxford at its best? Was it not Oxford "on the heights" — Oxford touched with the Breath of God, and in a fulness of measure unequalled in all the 144 THE RELIGION OF THE TOMMY momentous ages of its hoary past? Was it not Oxford dying in order that England and Civili- zation might live, and self-willingly deceased in order that a greater Oxford might rise again from the dead ? Was it not the availing process which must ever be gone through with before there may be a most glorious resurrection? Was it not an institution of learning put to the test and not found wanting? Was it not by such a thing as this that a university justified its right to exist — to pour from its walls the youth of the nation when the service and the salvation of the nation called ? Verily — Oxford has lived for this very hour, and her classic halls, to him who has eyes to see, and ears to hear, are filled with the sights and sounds of countless holy ones who, "having washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb", now throng her quad- rangles, her stone-chipped stairways, and her verdant meadows with ringing laughter and victor's songs "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend." From such a sowing there cometh forth eventually a mighty reaping, and "the fields are already white unto harvest." Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: j|jm 2001 PreservationTechnologiesi