It is hardly surprising that such coöperation strengthened men in loyalty to their own faith. As the soldiers saw the military rank of all the chaplains and their influence everywhere in the interests of the men, as they saw men of other faiths coming to their chaplain because of his loved personality or his high standing, as they saw the official bulletins announcing religious services of different faiths at different hours but under the same auspices, they grew to respect themselves and their own faith a little more. A young man is likely to be defiant or apologetic about being religious unless he sees religion, including his religion, respected by his comrades and his commanding officers. Therefore this mutual service, instead of weakening the religious consciousness of the various groups, rather strengthened it. Men grew to respect themselves more as they respected others more; they became stronger in their own faith as they became more understanding of others. The five chaplains at the burial detail did not give up their own ideas, but they did learn more about the others' faiths, and they certainly learned to respect each other profoundly as workers, as ministers and as men. Thus our mutual friendship and our mutual help became the foundation of all our efforts for the men, religious, personal and military. We did our work together as parts of one church, the United States Army.
This situation was brought out in strong relief for me when I met in Le Mans a young French priest, who had served as chaplain in an army hospital through most of the war. He was overcome with astonishment when I told him that, while the majority of the men in our army were Protestant, the Senior Chaplain of the area at that time was a Catholic priest. I had to go into considerable detail, explaining that in some organizations the head was a Protestant, and in one division a Jew. Finally he grasped it, with the remark, "C'est la liberté." As a Frenchman it was hard for him to understand the kind of religious liberty which means coöperation and friendship. In France religious liberty is based on hostility and intolerance of religion. Religious liberty there means liberty for the irreligious and consequent limitation of the liberty of the religious. On the other hand, religion there has meant historically, the domination of one religion and the curtailment of liberty. It is a peculiar view, which is paralleled among French Jewry also. Active and interested Jews have little interest in modernism, even in modern methods of religious education; French Jews who are interested in the world to-day have little interest in Judaism.
We who served together in the United States Army have a different ideal. We think of a religion which gives equal freedom to all other types of piety, which works equally with men of every faith in the double cause of country and morality, which does not give up its own high faith but sees equally the common weal of all humanity, to be served by men of many faiths. We have fixed our gaze upon religion in action, and have found that the things which divide us are chiefly matters of theory, which do not impede our working effectively together. It needs but the same enthusiasm for the constant and increasing welfare of all God's creatures to carry unity in action of all religious liberals into the general life of America, to give us not merely religious toleration, but religious helpfulness.
CHAPTER X
THE RELIGION OF THE JEWISH SOLDIER
Much has been written of the soldier's religion, most of it consisting of theoretical treatises of how the soldier ought to feel and act, written by highly philosophic gentlemen in their studies at home or by journalistic travelers who had taken a hurried trip to France and enjoyed a brief view of the trenches. The soldier himself was inarticulate on the subject of his own soul and only the soldier really knew. Here and there one finds a genuine human document, like Donald Hankey's "Student in Arms," which gave the average reaction of a thinking man subjected to the trials and indignities of the private soldier in war-time, in words far above those the average soldier could have used. Theorizing about the soldier was worse than useless; it often brought results so directly opposite to the facts that the soldier himself would have been immensely amused to see them.
As a matter of fact, the soldier had the average mind and faith of the young American, with its grave lapses and its profound sources of power. He was characterized by inquiry rather than certainty, by desire rather than belief. His mind was restless, keen, eager; it had little background or stability. It was dominated by the mind of the mass, so that educated men had identical habits of mind with the ignorant on problems of army life. The moral standards of the soldier were a direct outgrowth of the morals of sport and business rather than those of the church. He had a sense of fair play, of dealing with men as men, but no feeling whatever of divine commandments or of universal law.
A significant incident, bringing out the peculiar ideals of the soldier, is related by Judge Ben Lindsey in his book, "The Doughboy's Religion." He tells how a number of Y. M. C. A. secretaries conducted questionnaires at various times as to what three sins the soldiers considered most serious and what three virtues the most important, hoping to elicit a reply that the most reprehensible sins were drink, gambling and sexual vice. But hardly a soldier mentioned these three. The men were practically unanimous in selecting as the most grievous sin, cowardice and the greatest virtue, courage; as second, selfishness and its correlative virtue, self-sacrifice; and as third, pride, the holier-than-thou attitude, with its virtue, modesty. The result, to one who knew the soldier, would have been a foregone conclusion.