VARIETIES OF SHELLS AND BOMBS
(Photographed at Nancy)[ToList]
The most impressive thing to me about the religion of the soldiers was its wholesomeness. "Over there" a man dared to be natural. The mask of pretense was torn off. Men were not hypocrites in the face of death. They were free; and that freedom showed itself in their religion as well as in their pleasures. The soldier whom I met in the front line trench with "I need Thee every hour" printed across the front of his gas mask, was not considered a fanatic.
And when an American Bishop consented to share a Sunday night program with Elsie Janis, the famous vaudeville actress, the great Bishop became suddenly greater in the estimation of Christian and non-Christian alike, and the passionately expressive "Elsie" had a new and wholesome interpretation put upon her fun and her jokes by the magic which that combination wrought.
My plea is for that type of Christianity, so pure as to be above reproach and question and so genuinely human as to enjoy the wit and humor and even the frivolities of life, its Christliness lifting its pleasures out of the mists of evil into which we have permitted the devil to drag them, and placing them side by side with the more serious considerations of our life work.
My observations teach me that the effort of the army to solve the fundamental problem of the soldier's spiritual life met with a large measure of success.
The army took millions of our boys from every walk of life. It sent two and a quarter millions across the sea. It fed them an abundance of plain but wholesome food. It gave them plenty of hard exercise to convert that food into hard muscle. It demanded attention, so that a keen mind directed a strong body. It provided the leisure hour with huts where the touch of home suggested the writing of millions of home letters which otherwise would never have been written. Concerts, lectures, reading rooms with books and magazines and games of all kinds were furnished to all—free. Even something homemade to eat and drink, in addition to the regular canteen supplies, which covered practically every legitimate desire of the men, could be purchased at reasonable cost.
Having done all this for his body and his mind, it took a broad view of his spiritual needs, and carefully selected chaplains from the various denominations and creeds and sent them with the boys as their spiritual advisers. So splendidly was the choice of religious leaders made that often on the battlefield a Protestant minister or a Jewish rabbi would borrow a crucifix and bring the word of comfort to a dying Catholic; or a priest would read the Bible or the Prayer Book to a dying Jew or Protestant. On one occasion a woman canteen worker aided a Jewish rabbi to give absolution to a Catholic boy in a Y.M.C.A. hut when a priest could not be secured in time. In all this is there not more than a hint for the Church of to-morrow?
These our boys, now men, have come back to become the great leaders of our new civilization, and they will be intolerant of dogmatic denominationalism, and well they may. The church that holds their respect and commands their allegiance must have a world view of Christianity and a Godlike love for the lives of all men. And the theology of to-morrow must be as broad as the teachings of the Bible.