The British soldier was gay and careless of death—always. Shellfire meant nothing to him. If he were killed—well, after all, what else could he expect? Wasn’t that what he was out for? The twice-married girl knew a charming boy in the air force. He had made love to her even before Charlie was “done in.” These dear boys were so greedy for love. She could not refuse them, poor darlings! Of course they had all got to die for liberty, and that sort of thing. It was very sad. A terrible thing—war! … Perhaps she had better give up dancing for a week, until Charlie had been put into the casualty lists.
“What are we fighting for?” asked officers back from leave, turning over the pages of the Sketch and Tatler, with pictures of race-meetings, strike-meetings, barebacked beauties at war bazaars, and portraits of profiteers in the latest honors list. “Are we going to die for these swine? These parasites and prostitutes? Is this the war for noble ideals, liberty, Christianity, and civilization? To hell with all this filth! The world has gone mad and we are the victims of insanity.”
Some of them said that below all that froth there were deep and quiet waters in England. They thought of the anguish of their own wives and mothers, their noble patience, their uncomplaining courage, their spiritual faith in the purpose of the war. Perhaps at the heart England was true and clean and pitiful. Perhaps, after all, many people at home were suffering more than the fighting-men, in agony of spirit. It was unwise to let bitterness poison their brains. Anyhow, they had to go on. How long, how long, O Lord?
“How long is it going to last?” asked the London Rangers of their chaplain. He lied to them and said another three months. Always he had absolute knowledge that the war would end three months later. That was certain. “Courage!” he said. “Courage to the end of the last lap!”
Most of the long-service men were dead and gone long before the last lap came. It was only the new boys who went as far as victory. He asked permission of the general to withdraw nineteen of them from the line to instruct them for Communion. They were among the best soldiers, and not afraid of the ridicule of their fellows because of their religious zeal. The chaplain’s main purpose was to save their lives, for a while, and give them a good time and spiritual comfort. They had their good time. Three weeks later came the German attack on Arras and they were all killed. Every man of them.
The chaplain, an Anglican, found it hard to reconcile Christianity with such a war as this, but he did not camouflage the teachings of the Master he tried to serve. He preached to his men the gospel of love and forgiveness of enemies. It was reported to the general, who sent for him.
“Look here, I can’t let you go preaching ‘soft stuff’ to my men. I can’t allow all that nonsense about love. My job is to teach them to hate. You must either cooperate with me or go.”
The chaplain refused to change his faith or his teaching, and the general thought better of his intervention.
For all chaplains it was difficult. Simple souls were bewildered by the conflict between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of war. Many of them—officers as well as men—were blasphemous in their scorn of “parson stuff,” some of them frightfully ironical.
A friend of mine watched two chaplains passing by. One of them was a tall man with a crown and star on his shoulder-strap.
“I wonder,” said my friend, with false simplicity, “whether Jesus Christ would have been a lieutenant-colonel?”
On the other hand, many men found help in religion, and sought its comfort with a spiritual craving. They did not argue about Christian ethics and modern warfare. Close to death in the midst of tragedy, conscious in a strange way of their own spiritual being and of a spirituality present among masses of men above the muck of war, the stench of corruption, and fear of bodily extinction, they groped out toward God. They searched for some divine wisdom greater than the folly of the world, for a divine aid which would help them to greater courage. The spirit of God seemed to come to them across No Man’s Land with pity and comradeship. Catholic soldiers had a simpler, stronger faith than men of Protestant denominations, whose faith depended more on ethical arguments and intellectual reasonings. Catholic chaplains had an easier task. Leaving aside all argument, they heard the confessions of the soldiers, gave them absolution for their sins, said mass for them in wayside barns, administered the sacraments, held the cross to their lips when they fell mortally wounded, anointed them when the surgeon’s knife was at work, called the names of Jesus and Mary into dying ears. There was no need of argument here. The old faith which has survived many wars, many plagues, and the old wickedness of men was still full of consolation to those who accepted it as little children, and by their own agony hoped for favor from the Man of Sorrows who was hanged upon a cross, and found a mother-love in the vision of Mary, which came to them when they were in fear and pain and the struggle of death. The padre had a definite job to do in the trenches and for that reason was allowed more liberty in the line than other chaplains. Battalion officers, surgeons, and nurses were patient with mysterious rites which they did not understand, but which gave comfort, as they saw, to wounded men; and the heroism with which many of those priests worked under fire, careless of their own lives, exalted by spiritual fervor,
