"Sergeant William Sawelson, deceased, Company M, 312th Infantry, Congressional Medal of Honor awarded for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy at Grandpré, France, October 26, 1918. Hearing a wounded man in a shell-hole some distance away calling for water, Sergeant Sawelson upon his own initiative left shelter and crawled through heavy machine-gun fire to where the man lay, giving him what water he had in his own canteen. He then went back to his own shell-hole, obtained more water and was returning to the wounded man, when he was killed by a machine-gun bullet. Posthumously awarded January 10, 1919."
The 27th Division, in which I served, was fairly typical in this respect, as it was a National Guard unit, composed of volunteers from both the New York metropolitan district and "up-state." Therewere about a thousand Jews in the entire division and seven hundred of them were in the infantry, machine-gun battalions and engineers, which served together. I did not find a company without from two to thirty Jewish soldiers, and seldom without at least one Jew among the non-commissioned officers. I remember the time I motored over to one battalion to organize a Jewish service and inquired for a "Jewish non-com" to take charge of getting the boys together. I was told that three top sergeants out of the four companies were named Levi, Cohen and Pesalovsky, and that I could take my choice. The same thing occurred time and again when I visited other divisions. For example, Sergeant Major Wayne of the 320th Infantry prepared the Passover passes for the 40 Jews of his regiment, then in the Le Mans area, but missed the Seder himself, staying at his post of duty to prepare the regimental sailing list.
The 27th Division had several Jews among the officers of high rank—Lieutenant Colonel H. S. Sternberger, the division quartermaster; Lieutenant Colonel Morris Liebman, killed in action in Flanders; Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Emanuel Goldstein, Medical Corps, who was awarded the D. S. O. by the British command, one of four such decorations given to officers of our division. Captain Simpson of the 106th Field Artillery, Lieutenant King of the office of the division chief of staff, 2nd Lieutenant Samuel A. Brown of the 108th Infantry, 2nd Lieutenant Sternberger of the Interpreters' Corps and 2nd Lieutenant Florsheim of the division quartermaster's office were among the officers of Jewish origin. In addition, there were a few, suchas Sergeant Schiff of the 102nd Engineers and Sergeant Struck of division headquarters, who were recommended for commissions for their excellent service but were disappointed on account of the stoppage of all promotions after the armistice.
I mentioned in connection with my own work the list of sixty-five Jews of the 27th who were killed in action or died in hospitals in France, their full proportion of the nearly 2,000 dead of the division. The first man in the 27th who was killed in action was a Jew, Private Robert Friedman of the 102nd Engineers. Most of our losses, like those of the division as a whole, were incurred in the terrific fighting at the Hindenburg Line, and most of our men were buried there in the great divisional cemeteries of Bony and Guillemont Farm, right at the furthest point which they reached alive. The cemetery of Bony is to be one of the permanent American cemeteries in France, and I can still see the Magen Davids standing here and there among the rows of crosses, where I had them placed.
The Jews of the 27th won their full share of decorations, too. Nine of them wear the Distinguished Service Cross conferred by the American command; one, the British honor of the Distinguished Service Order; one, the British Distinguished Conduct Medal; seven, the British Military Medal; one, the French Croix de Guerre with star; and one, the Belgian Order of the Crown. Eliminating cases where one man received several such honors, fifteen Jews of this one division alone were decorated for unusual courage and initiative in battle. I add the official citations of four of these menas further examples of the heroism of the Jewish soldiers in the American forces.
"Major Emanuel Goldstein, Medical Corps, 102nd Engineers. D. S. O., Belgian Order of the Crown. On Sept. 29, 1918, in the vicinity of Lompire and Guillemont Farm near Ronssoy, France, he remained in the most exposed positions under heavy shell fire and machine-gun fire, to render first aid to several wounded men, displaying exceptional bravery and courage, and setting a fine example of devotion to duty to all ranks."
"Second Lieutenant Samuel A. Brown Jr., 108th Infantry. D. S. C. awarded for extraordinary heroism in action near Ronssoy, France, Sept. 29, 1918. Advancing with his platoon through heavy fog and dense smoke and in the face of terrific fire which inflicted heavy casualties on his forces, Lieutenant Brown reached the wire in front of the main Hindenburg Line, and, after reconnoitering for gaps, assaulted the position and effected a foothold. Having been reënforced by another platoon, he organized a small force, and by bombing and trench fighting captured over a hundred prisoners. Repeated attacks throughout the day were repelled by his small force. He also succeeded in taking four field pieces, a large number of machine guns, anti-tank rifles, and other military property, at the same time keeping in subjection the prisoners he had taken."
"Corporal Abel J. Levine, Company A, 107th Infantry. For extraordinary heroism in action near Bony, France, Sept. 29, 1918. After his platoon had suffered heavy casualties and all the sergeantshad been wounded, Corporal Levine collected the remaining effectives in his own and other units, formed a platoon and continued the advance. When his rifle was rendered useless he killed several of the enemy with his pistol. He was wounded shortly afterward, but he refused assistance until his men had been cared for and evacuated." Corporal Levine received the D. S. C. and the British D. C. M.
"Private Morris Silverberg, Company G, 108th Infantry. For extraordinary heroism in action near Ronssoy, France, Sept. 29, 1918. Private Silverberg, a stretcher bearer, displayed extreme courage by repeatedly leaving shelter and advancing over an area swept by machine-gun and shell fire to rescue wounded comrades. Hearing that his company commander had been wounded, he voluntarily went forward alone, and upon finding that his officer had been killed, brought back his body." Private Silverberg received both the D. S. C. and the British M. M.
One more point must be noted with regard to these Jewish boys who served America so bravely and so effectively. Many of them showed in their sacrifices the true Jewish spirit of Kiddush ha-Shem, sanctification of the name of God. Time and again have I heard men give such a turn to their speech, as when I asked a boy from one of our machine gun battalions why he had led a group of volunteers in bringing from an exposed position some wounded men of another regiment, an act in which the only other Jew in the company had been killed and for which my friend was later decorated. "Well, chaplain," he answered me, "there were only two Jewish boys in the company and we'd been kidded about ita little. We just wanted to show those fellows what a Jew could do." Dr. Enelow tells a similar story of a boy dying in a hospital, who gave the rabbi a last message to his parents, saying: "Tell them I did my duty as a soldier and brought honor to the Jewish name."
Once again, in the American forces during the World War, the Jew has proved himself a devoted patriot and a heroic soldier, and this time he has done so in broad daylight, before the eyes of all the world.
To those of us who served with the United States Army overseas, religious unity, coöperation between denominations, is more than a far-off ideal. We know under what circumstances and to what extent it is feasible, and just how it deepens and broadens the religious spirit in both chaplain and soldier. We have passed beyond the mutual tolerance of the older liberalism to the mutual helpfulness of the newer devoutness. Our common ground is no longer the irreducible minimum of doctrines which we share; it is the practical maximum of service which we can render together. I was in a critical position to experience this as the only Jewish chaplain in the Twenty-Seventh Division; my duty was to minister to the men of the Jewish faith throughout the various units of our division, with the friendly coöperation of the twenty other chaplains of various faiths. And I was able to do my work among the Jews, and to a certain extent among the Christians also, simply because these Protestant and Catholic chaplains were equally friendly and helpful to me and my scattered flock. Not by mutual tolerance but by mutual helpfulness we were able to serve together the thousands of soldiers who needed us all.
It is a commonplace that as men grow acquaintedthey naturally learn to respect and to like one another. When a Jew from the East Side of New York, who had never known any Christian well except the corner policeman, and a Kentucky mountaineer, who had been reared with the idea that Jews have horns, were put into the same squad both of them were bound to be broadened by it. And, provided both of them were normal, average boys, as they were likely to be, they probably became "buddies" to the great advantage of both of them. Often such associations would bring about the sort of a friendship which death itself could not break.
One of the Jewish chaplains tells an incident of the first night he spent in the training camp at Camp Taylor, Ky. The candidate for chaplain in the cot next to his was a lanky backwoods preacher from one of the southern States. The two met, introduced themselves by name and denomination, and then prepared to "turn in" for the night. The rabbi noticed that his ministerial neighbor sat about, hesitated, and played for time generally, even though it was fully time to turn out the lights. Finally the matter became so obvious that he could not resist inquiring the reason for this delay. The answer came, a bit embarrassed but certainly frank enough: "I don't want to go to bed till I see how a Jew says his prayers."
On the whole, considering the many individual differences in an army of two million men, religious prejudice was not engendered by the army; some persisted in spite of it, and much was lessened by the comradeship and enforced intimacy of army life. In most commands prejudice against the Jew was a very small item indeed. It was so rare as tobe almost non-existent in places of responsibility. It was often overcome by the acid test of battle when men appeared in their true colors and won respect for themselves alone. It was occasionally the fault of the man himself, who turned a personal matter into an accusation of anti-Semitism, and sometimes without cause. One Jewish corporal complained to me of discrimination on the part of his commanding officer, who had recommended his reduction to the ranks. On investigation, I found that the officer might have been unfair in his judgment, but had recommended the same for two non-Jews at the same time; the case may therefore have been one of personal dislike but was certainly not a matter of religious prejudice. When I found authentic cases of discrimination, they were usually in the case of some ignorant non-commissioned officer, who presumed on his scanty authority at the expense of some Jewish private. Or it might be a sort of hazing, when a group of "rough necks" selected a foreigner with a small command of English as the butt of their jokes. When men complain of prejudice against Jews in the army, it usually means that they met there a group of prejudiced people with whom they would not have come into contact in civil life. The tendency of the American army during the World War was definitely against prejudice of any kind; prejudice made against efficiency, and the higher one went the more difficult it became to find any traces of it.
In the army and especially in overseas service men went naturally to the nearest chaplain or welfare organization for any benefit except worship, and sometimes for that also. From my first religiousservice in a hospital with the crowd of non-Jews and sprinkling of Jews in the Red Cross room, I found that the men went to the entertainment hut for whatever it might offer. Every large service afterward, especially if held in a convenient place, included a proportion of non-Jews, and invariably they were both respectful and interested.
The burial work of the Twenty-Seventh Division at St. Souplet was the climax of coöperation among chaplains, where the five of us represented five different churches. Our service was a three-fold one, as was the later one held at the larger cemeteries at Bony and Guillemont Farm. I have already referred to the meetings held by the chaplains of our division to discuss our common work and arrange to do that work most effectively together. My very last duty in France was to read the burial service over four Christian sailors drowned outside Brest harbor.
Such incidents as these were not exceptional at the front or among men who have been at the front and have learned its lesson; I give them especially because they are typical. The men who were under fire together grew to overlook differences as barriers between man and man. They knew the many times that their lives depended on the courage and loyalty of the next man in the line—be he rich or poor, learned or ignorant, pious or infidel, virtuous or wicked. They grew to respect men for themselves, to serve them for themselves alone. The men used any stationery that came to hand, writing home indifferently on paper labeled Y. M. C. A. or K. of C., or Salvation Army, or Red Cross, or Jewish Welfare Board; they attended a picture show or boxingmatch under any auspices and were willing to help at any of the huts that served them. In the same way the welfare workers and chaplains overlooked one distinction after another, at the end serving all alike and regarding their status as soldiers alone. Once when I dropped into a strange camp two boys whom I had never seen crowded through the press of men in the Y. M. C. A. hut; they had seen the insignia of the 27th, and being fresh from hospital, appealed to me to help them back to the division that they might return home with their own units. I was never surprised when non-Jews came to me for advice in ordinary cases, but I have had such extreme instances as a Jew and non-Jew coming together, to ask advice in a case where both felt they had been discriminated against by their commanding officer. In hospital work, in front line service, even in the ordinary routine of the rest area, we came closer to one another than ever in civil life.
As I said above, the logical climax of friendly coöperation comes when ministers of different faiths assist each other in their own work. I shall never forget a day in that busy October at the front when I met a Baptist chaplain belonging to our division. "Hello," he said, "I've just come to headquarters here to look for you and a priest." "All right, what can I do for you?" "Well," was his reply, "our battalion goes into the line tonight, and I wanted the Jewish and Catholic boys to have their services, too. If you can come over at four o'clock, I'll have the priest come at six." And so I came there at four, to find the fifteen Jewish soldiers grouped about a large tree near the battalion headquarters;the chaplain had notified them all. And, as the barn was both dirty and crowded, we held our little service under the tree, even though the rain began in the middle of it. Two of those boys did not come back three days later, and one was cited for heroism, so that I have often remembered the immeasurable service which the coöperation of that chaplain meant for his men.
On a minor scale such things took place constantly. One day, going to a distant battalion in a rest area, I not only went to the Y. M. C. A. man, who arranged for my services in the school-house, and to a Jewish corporal, who passed the word around to the men of my faith, but I arranged also that the "Y" man should conduct the Protestant service the following Sunday, and that the Catholic chaplain on coming should find arrangements made for his confessions and mass. A classic incident of the war is the story of Chief Rabbi Bloch, of Lyons, a chaplain in the French army, who met his death before Verdun in the early days of the war while holding a cross before a dying Catholic lad. The incident was related by the Catholic chaplain of the regiment, who saw it from a little distance. But by the time the gigantic struggle was over such incidents had become almost matters of everyday. I, for one, have read psalms at the bedside of dying Protestant soldiers. I have held the cross before a dying Catholic. I have recited the traditional confession with the dying Jew. We were all one in a very real sense.
A Christian chaplain preached the sermon on the second day of my Jewish New Year service in Nevers. Similarly, I was a guest, with the othermembers of the divisional staff, at the splendid midnight mass arranged by Father Kelley in the little village church of Montfort. For the first time in its history, the church was electrically lighted by our signal corps; the villagers and the soldiers were out in force; colonels assisted as acolytes; and the brilliant red and gold of the vestments, with the pink satin and white lace of the little choir boys, stood out brilliantly from the dark garments of the French and the olive drab of the Americans. Father Kelley delivered a sermon of profound inspiration, as well as a brief address in French to the villagers, whose guests we were. The staff were seated in a little chapel, at one side of the altar. The next day my orderly overheard two of the soldiers arguing about me. One insisted: "I did see the rabbi there right on the platform." "You didn't," said the other, "even if this is the army, they wouldn't let him on the platform at a Catholic mass." It reminded me of the incident in Paris when I had visited the Cathédral of Notre Dame, accompanied by my chauffeur, a Catholic boy, and I had given him a lecture on the architecture and symbolism of that splendid structure. It was only afterward that the humor of the situation struck me—a rabbi explaining a cathedral to a devoted Catholic.
Every chaplain with whom I have compared notes has told me of similar experiences. Chaplain Elkan C. Voorsanger, for example, at the time when he conducted the first official Jewish service overseas at Passover 1918, received four other invitations in various sections of France both from army officials and Y. M. C. A. secretaries. At one point the Young Men's Christian Association even offeredto pay all his expenses if his commanding officer would release him for the necessary time. I have mentioned that Rabbi Voorsanger had no regular services in the 77th Division during the fall holydays of 1918, due to the military situation. There was one exception to this, however, a hasty service arranged at one of the brief stops during the march by Father Dunne of the 306th Infantry, and that service arranged by a priest was conducted by the rabbi in a ruined Catholic church. Chaplain Voorsanger is full of praise for the thirty chaplains of various religions who worked under him when he was Senior Chaplain of the 77th. Their enthusiastic support as subordinates was fully equal to their hearty coöperation as equals.
Peculiarly enough, the Christian Science chaplain in our division was the only one who found it difficult to become adjusted with the rest. This could hardly have been personal, as he was generally respected. It may have been due in part to the general suspicion of some for the ministers of a new faith which had lured away a few of their adherents. But it seemed due chiefly to the ideas and the method he represented. He was handicapped for the necessary work of caring for the sick and wounded by a unique attitude toward physical suffering, different from the rest of us and different from that of most of the soldiers themselves. As a consequence he could serve most of them only as a layman might. Certainly he could give no religious treatment of disease, as the medical department was supreme in its own field. In addition, he could conduct general services only with difficulty. To the rest of us a service meant the same thing,—a psalm, a prayer, atalk, perhaps a song or two. But the Christian Scientist could not give a prayer. Prevented from using his ritual by the fact that the service was to be non-sectarian, he had not the power of personal prayer to fall back upon. He was not a minister in the same sense as the rest of us, and the army had no proper place for either a healer or a reader.
With this single exception, I feel certain that every chaplain in France had the same sort of experience. When I first arrived in France I was one of thirty-five chaplains assembled at the chaplains' headquarters for instruction and assignment. Our evening service was conducted in front of the quaint, angular château on a level lawn surrounded by straight rows of poplars. One evening Chaplain Paul Moody, of the Senior Chaplain's office, gave us an inspirational appeal derived from his own experience and his observation of so many successful chaplains at the front. Afterward, informally, a Catholic told us briefly what we should do in case we found a dying Catholic in the hospital or on the field, with no priest at hand. Then I was asked how best the others might minister to a Jewish soldier in extremity. I repeated to them the old Hebrew confession of faith;Shema Yisroel adonoi elohenu adonoi echod,"Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One." I told them to lead the boy in reciting it, or if necessary just to say it for him, and the next morning when I brought down copies of the words for them all I was deeply touched by their eagerness to know them. These men did not go out to convert others to their own view of truth and life; they were ready to serve pious souls and to bring God's presence near to all. Christianministers were eager to help Jews to be better Jews; rabbis were glad to help Christians to be better Christians. We learned amid the danger and the bitterness to serve God and man, not in opposition and not even in toleration, but in true helpfulness toward one another. I doubt whether these men, once so willing to serve men of all creeds at the risk of their lives, are foremost in the ranks of Jewish conversionists to-day.
Much of this spirit of genuine religion and of equal regard for all religions was due to the example and personal influence of the Senior Chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces, Bishop Charles H. Brent, now the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Western New York. Bishop Brent utilized his great ability, his high spirituality and his personal acquaintance with the Commander-in-Chief all for the welfare of the men in the service. Assiduous in his personal devotions, definite in his personal preaching, when he turned to his duties as Senior Chaplain he simply forgot his own affiliations in the interest of all religions alike. Catholic and Protestant had equal faith in the impartiality and justice of his acts. He was especially careful in behalf of the Jewish men because he knew that they were a minority and might otherwise be neglected. The official orders and the detailed arrangements for the various holydays were a serious consideration with him. His spirit animated his entire staff. Chaplain Voorsanger felt it from the outset. Chaplain Paul D. Moody, Bishop Brent's assistant in the chaplains' office at General Headquarters, was animated by it equally with his chief. Chaplain Moody, a son of the great evangelist and now in oneof the important Presbyterian churches in New York City, was fond of telling how the various commanding officers would often greet him as "Father" or "Bishop."
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, includinghisreligion, 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 relieffor 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 oftheory, 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.
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 withthe 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.
The soldier was honest, he gave no cut-and-dried answers but his own full opinion, based upon the circumstances of his own life. At the front courage is actually the most important attribute of manhood and cowardice the unforgivable sin. One coward can at any moment imperil the lives of his entire unit by crying out in surprise on a night patrol, by deserting his post as sentinel or gas guard, by infecting with the spirit of panic the weaker men who follow any contagious example. Selfishness likewise was more than serious; it was vital. The selfish man was one who ate more than his share of thescanty rations on the march, who did not carry his full pack but had to be helped by others, who was first in line at the canteen but last to volunteer for disagreeable duty. Pride, on the other hand, was not dangerous but merely irritating in the extreme to an army of civilians, of Americans with the spirit of equal citizens, who felt that they were doing everything for their country and resented equally the autocratic and the patronizing manner. Besides the soldier saw examples of these his highest virtues about him constantly. Courage became a commonplace; self-sacrifice an everyday matter. Officers often shared the discomforts and exceeded the dangers of their men. When one reads the accounts of citations for the D. S. C. and Medal of Honor, one wonders that human beings could do such things. And when we who were at the front recall the utter democracy of those days, how salutes and formality of every kind were forgotten while only leadership based on personality could prevail, we realize anew the emphasis of the soldier on modesty and his resentment of the attitude of many a civilian and even a few military men in patronizing him either as a common soldier or as a miserable sinner.
As to religious tendencies, the soldier had, first and foremost, hope. He looked forward to better things both for himself and for the world. He had the religious longing and the religious certainty that the future will witness the dawning of a better day. He had a vast respect for manhood, though his democracy did not go so far as to include other nations, whom he very largely despised on account of their "queerness" and his own ignorance. He had an abiding hatred for anything which smacked in theslightest degree of hypocrisy or "bluff." I mention this in my next chapter in connection with preaching to soldiers, but preaching was not the only field in which it applied. The soldier laid an inordinate value upon personal participation in front line work, ignoring the orders which necessarily kept the major part of the A. E. F. in back area work, in supply, repair, or training duty. I know of one chaplain, for example, who joined a famous fighting division shortly after the armistice, through no fault of his own but because he had been previously detailed to other duty, and who found his service there full of obstacles through the suspicion of the men—because he who was preaching to them had not been under fire when they were. Of course, this worked favorably for those of us whom the boys had personally seen under fire at the first aid post or in the trenches.
This very respect for deeds and suspicion of words, especially of polite or eloquent words, made for suspicion of the churches and churchmen. We had so pitifully few chaplains to a division, and some of them were necessarily assigned to hospitals in the rear. Only here and there did a Y. M. C. A. or K. of C. secretary go with the men under fire. True, they had nothing to do there, as there was no canteen or entertainment hut at the front; true, strict orders forbade their entering certain territory or going over the top. The soldier asked not of orders or duties; he knew only that this man, who in many cases seemed to consider himself superior, who preached and taught and organized, had not slept night after night in the rain, had not fallen prone in the mud to dodge the flying missiles, hadnot lived on one cold meal a day or had to carry rations on his shoulder that he and his comrades might enjoy their scanty fare.
Therefore the soldier cared little for creeds of any kind. He could not apply any particular dogmas to the unique circumstances in which he found himself—he had probably never applied them to any great extent even in the more commonplace circumstances of peace—and he was suspicious of many of those who attempted to apply them for him. The soldier needed religion; he wanted God; he cared very little for churches, creeds or churchmen.
In most characteristics the Jewish soldier was one with his Christian brothers. He differed only in those special facts or ideas which showed a different home environment or a different tradition. For example, the usual Christian minister used the word, "atonement" with a special meaning which was understood, if not accepted, by every Christian present, but which meant nothing whatever to the Jew, except through the very different association with the Day of Atonement. So any analysis of the religion of the Christian soldier would begin with his attitude toward the atonement, but with the Jewish soldier this must be omitted—he had no attitude at all. The Jewish soldier was guided by the same general facts in his attitude toward the Jewish religion which animated the Christian soldier in his attitude toward the Christian religion; the difference was largely that of the religion which they considered rather than of the men themselves.
Of course, it was hard to be a good Jew in the army. The dietary laws were impossible of fulfillment, and the Talmudic permission to violate themin case of warfare meant less to the average soldier than the fact that he was breaking them. The Sabbath could not be kept at all, even in rest areas where there was no immediate danger to life. No soldier could disobey an order to work on the Sabbath; if the work was there, the soldier had to do it. In many ways Judaism was difficult and Christianity just as difficult. For example, I know of one division where the Passover service was held under difficulties, as the unit was about to move, and where the Easter service had the same handicap, as the men had just finished moving and were not yet established in their new quarters. Most of the obstacles to religious observance were common to all religions.
A few Jews denied or concealed their religion in the army as elsewhere. Some few enlisted under assumed names; a number denied their Judaism and avoided association with Jews, perhaps fearing the anti-Semitism which they had heard was rife in military circles. Their fear was groundless and their deception, as a rule, deceived nobody. The American army as it was organized during the war had no place for prejudice of any kind. Efficiency was the watchword; the best man was almost invariably promoted; in all my experience abroad I have never seen a clear case of anti-Semitism among higher officers and only seldom in the ranks. Occasionally also I met the type of Jew who admitted his origin but had no interest in his religion. Such a one—a lieutenant—who was known as a friend of the enlisted men generally and especially of the Jewish ones, assisted me greatly in arranging for the services for the fall holydays, but did not attendthose services himself. He represented the type now fortunately becoming rarer in our colleges, the men who have too much pride to deny their origin but too little Jewish knowledge to benefit by it. It is noteworthy that this particular man was stationed in the S. O. S. and had at that time never been at the front. Most men turn toward religion under the stress of battle; those who have never been in battle presented in certain ways a civilian frame of mind.
Most of the Jews in the army were orthodox in background, rather than either reform or radical. Perhaps the orthodox did not have the numerical superiority they seemed to possess; in that case I saw them as the most interested group, the ones who came most gladly to meet the chaplain. Not that the other two groups were lacking in this army, which took in practically all the men of twenty-one to thirty-one years in America. The dominating group, however, was orthodox in background, though most of them were not orthodox in conviction. Causes are not far to seek—they had never studied orthodoxy; they were young men and had few settled religious convictions; they were in the midst of a modern world where other doctrines were more attractive. The fact is that their convictions were usually directed toward Zionism rather than toward one or another form of Judaism itself. Again, they were without reasons for their interest. Zionism appealed to them simply as a bold, manly, Jewish ideal; they did not enter into questions either of practicability or of desirability. In other words, they were young men, not especially thoughtful, who were interested in Jewish questions onlyas one of many phases of their lives. They had their own trend, but were glad to accept leadership of a certain type, adapted to their own lives and problems.
All these Jewish soldiers welcomed a Jewish chaplain. The Catholics and Protestants had chaplains, and all Jews except the negligible few who denied their faith were very glad to be represented also, to have their religion given official recognition in the army and to see their own chaplain working under the same authority and along the same lines as chaplains of other religions. Most of the Jewish soldiers had personal reasons also to greet a chaplain. In many of the occasions, small and great, when a Jewish soldier desired advice, aid or friendship, he preferred a Jewish chaplain to any other person. As a chaplain he had the influence to take up a case anywhere and the information as to procedure, while only a Jew can feel and respond to the special circumstances of the Jewish men. On the other hand, not all Jewish soldiers were eager to welcome the Jewish Welfare Board although they all liked it after it had arrived and made good. Some were afraid of any distinction in these semi-military welfare organizations, feeling that the two already in the field, the Y. M. C. A. and K. of C., were quite adequate. The Jewish Welfare Board, however, made such an impression at once on both Jews and non-Jews that even the doubtful ones became reconciled and felt that Jewish work in the army was more than justified by results. As always among Jews, who lay great emphasis on non-Jewish opinion, one of the chief causes of the popularity among Jews of Jewish war work was its popularityamong Christians. When a Jewish boy found his building overcrowded by non-Jews, when he had to come early to get a seat at the picture show among all the Baptists and Catholics, when he saw Christian boys writing to their parents on J. W. B. stationery, he thought more of himself and his own organization. This same fact refuted the argument against segregation; men of all faiths used the J. W. B. huts, just as they did those of the other welfare organizations. They were one more facility for men of every religion, even though organized by Jews and conducted from a Jewish point of view.
In their religious services, as in most other things, the Jewish boys liked practices which reminded them of home. Just as many of them enjoyed a Yiddish story at an occasional literary evening, so they all appreciated the traditional Seder at Passover more than all the shows and entertainments which were provided at the Passover leave. They preferred to have many of the prayers in Hebrew, even though I seldom had a Jewish congregation in the army in which more than one third of the men understood the Hebrew prayers. They liked the home-like and familiar tone of the Jewish service on both Sabbaths and festivals. They preferred to wear their caps at service and to carry out the traditional custom in all minor matters.
But at the same time they had no objection to changes in traditional practice. The abbreviated prayerbook of the Jewish Welfare Board was much appreciated, even though one or two of the boys would state proudly that they had also a special festival prayerbook. The short service was practical and the boys therefore preferred it to thelonger one of the synagogue. They understood that, with the large number of non-Jews at our services and the usual majority of Jews who could not read Hebrew, it was necessary to read part of the prayers in English. They liked an English sermon, too, although the chaplain skilled in army methods always gave a very informal talk, far from the formal sermon of the synagogue. And when interested they asked questions, often interrupting the even flow of the sermon but assisting the rabbi and congregation to an understanding of the problem at issue.
One of the chief characteristics of an army congregation was its constant desire to participate in the service. The soldiers liked responsive readings; they preferred sermons with the open forum method; they were ready to volunteer to usher, to announce the service throughout the unit, or for any job from moving chairs to chanting the service. At the Passover services at Le Mans, we had all the volunteers necessary among the crowd for everything from "K. P." (kitchen police) to assist in preparing the dinner to an excellent reader for the prophetic portion. The services meant more to the soldiers as they became their own.
Another characteristic of services in the army was the large number of non-Jews attending them. I have come to a Y. M. C. A. on a Sunday morning directly after the Protestant chaplain, when most of his congregation joined me, and my group in consequence was nine-tenths non-Jewish. At first this factor was a source of embarrassment to many of the Jewish men. They came to me beforehand towhisper that a few non-Jews were present, but I took it as a matter of course, having learned my lesson with my first service in France. Later even the most self-conscious of Jews accepted the presence of non-Jews at a Jewish service just as Christians expect those of other denominations than their own. When Jewish services often have from ten to eighty per cent. of non-Jews in attendance, the Jewish soldiers are doubly glad to have a partially English service and a sermon. They want the Christians to respect their religion as they do their own, an end usually very easy of attainment. And while a few Jews would have preferred to drop the special Jewish characteristics of our service, I have never heard a critical word from a Christian about our wearing our hats, our Hebrew prayers, and the rest. Often, in fact, I have had to answer respectful questions, giving the sort of information which broadens both sides and makes for general tolerance.
At the front, even the most thoughtless desired some sort of a personal religion. In the midst of the constant danger to life and limb, seeing their comrades about them dead and wounded, with life reduced to the minimum of necessities and the few elemental problems, men were forced to think of the realities of life and death. With these eternal questions forced upon them, the great majority must always turn to religion. The menprayedat the front. They wanted safety and they felt the need of God. After a battle they were eager to offer thanks for their own safety and to say the memorial prayers for their friends who had just laid down their lives. Perhaps the most religious congregation I have ever had was the little group of men who gathered togetherunder the trees after the great battle at the Hindenburg Lane. The impressions of the conflict had not yet worn off. The men were, in a way, uplifted by their terrific experiences. And the words they spoke there of their fallen comrades were infinitely touching. The appeal of a memorial prayer was so profound in the army that many of the Protestant chaplains followed the Episcopal and Catholic custom and prayed for the dead although their own churches do not generally follow the custom.
But with all this deep yearning for personal religion, the men adopted fatalism as their prevalent philosophy. For one thing, it seemed to answer the immediate facts the best. When five men are together in a shell hole and a bursting shell kills three of them and leaves the two unharmed, all our theories seem worthless. When one man, volunteering for a dangerous duty, comes back only slightly gassed, while another left at headquarters is killed at his dinner by long distance fire, men wonder. And when they must face conditions like this day after day, never knowing their own fate from minute to minute, only sure that they are certain to be killed if they stay at the front long enough, they become fatalists sooner or later. As the soldiers used to say, "If my number isn't on that shell, it won't get me." I argued against fatalism many times with the soldiers, but I found when it came my own turn to live under fire day after day that a fatalistic attitude was the most convenient for doing one's duty under the constantly roaring menace, and I fear that—with proper philosophic qualifications—for the time being, I was as much of a fatalist as the rest.
At the rear the personal need for religion was lessin evidence. The men who had gone through the fire were not untouched by the flame, and gave some evidence of it from time to time. The men who had not been at the front, who comprised the majority in back areas, had no touch of that feeling. They all shared in the yearning for home and the things of home and for Judaism as the religion of home, for the traditional service of the festivals, for the friendship, ministrations and assistance of the chaplain. Judaism meant more to them in a strange land, amid an alien people, living the hard and unlovely life of the common soldier, than it ever did at home when the schul was just around the corner and the careless youth had seldom entered it. The lonely soldier longed for Judaism as the religion of home just as under fire he longed for comfort from the living God. And the military approval of all religions on the same plane, the recognition by the non-Jewish authorities of his festivals and his services, gave Judaism a standing in his eyes which it had lacked when only the older people of his own family ever paid much attention to religion. Thus Judaism as an institution, as the religion of home, had a great place in the heart of the soldier in France.
Some of the men, especially at the first, felt that they were being neglected by the Jews of America, that our effort was not commensurate with that which the Christian denominations were making to care for the soldiers of their faiths. We must admit sadly that they had some justification for such a view. Our representatives arrived in France late though not at all too late for splendid results. American Jewry was almost criminally slow in caring for our hundred thousand boys in serviceabroad. A few of the soldiers carried this complaint even to the point of bitterness and estrangement from Judaism. Here and there I met an enlisted man who challenged Jewry as negligent. Usually these were not our most loyal or interested Jews, but they were Jews and should not have been neglected. The men who entertained real loyalty to their faith were usually active already in some minor way and ready to coöperate with the Jewish Welfare Board when it was in a position to back them up. Most of the men, however, were eager to forgive as in a family quarrel as soon as our welfare workers arrived in France and showed immediate accomplishment.
Our Jewish boys came back from overseas with certain new knowledge of life and new valuation of their religion. Beginning merely as average young men in their twenties, they acquired the need and appreciation of their ancestral faith, though not in a conventional sense. They are not to-day reform Jews in the sense of adherents of a reform theology; neither are they orthodox in the sense of complete and consistent observance. They have felt the reality of certain truths in Judaism, the comfort it brings to the dying and the mourner, the touch of home when one celebrates the festivals in a foreign land, the real value of Jewish friends, a Jewish minister, a Jewish club to take the place of the home they missed over there. That is, Judaism means more to them both as a longing and an institution.
But not all the things which we customarily associate with Judaism have this appeal to them. Some seem to them matters of complete indifference,and the usual emphasis on the wrong thing makes them feel that the synagogue at home is out of sympathy with their new-found yearning. If we give them what we consider good for them, they will take nothing. If we give them what they want—the religion of God, of home, of service—and with all three terms defined as they have seen and felt them, then they will prove the great constructive force in the synagogue of to-morrow. The Jewish soldier had religion; if he was at the front, he has had the personal desire for God; in any case he has felt the longing for the religion of home. He was often proud of his fellow Jews, sometimes of his Judaism. He did heroic acts gladly, feeling the added impetus to do them because he must not disgrace the name of Jew.Kiddush ha Shem, sanctification of the name of God, was the impelling motive of many a wearer of the D. S. C., though he may never have heard the term. The recognition by church and synagogue of the world-shaking events of the war must be accompanied by an equal recognition of the influence of war on the minds and hearts of the men who engaged in it, and for whom those world-shaking events have become a part of their very being.
Preaching to soldiers, as I soon learned, was a very different thing from addressing a civilian congregation. The very appearance of the group and place was odd to a minister from civil life—young men in olive drab, sitting on the rough benches of a welfare hut or grouped about in a comfortable circle on the grass of a French pasture. The group was homogeneous to an extent elsewhere impossible, as all were men, all were young, and all were engaged in the same work and had the same interests. The congregation and the preaching became specialized; the work became narrower but more directly applicable to the individual than in civil life. The soldiers had unusual experiences and interests as their common background; their needs were different from those of any group of civilians, in or out of a church or synagogue. They were soldiers and had to be understood and approached as such.
The circumstances of our services were never twice the same. I have led groups in worship in huts of the Y. M. C. A., K. of C., and J. W. B.; in châteaux, army offices, and barns; yes, and out of doors in the rain. I have come to a Y. M. C. A. and found it full, taking my group for an announced service to the stage and lowering the curtainfor privacy. Once, in a great brick building used by the "Y," I found the place occupied by a miscellaneous crowd of a thousand men, reading, writing, playing checkers, lined up at the canteen for candy and cigarettes. My services had been announced and my fifty men were present, some of them after a five-mile walk. The secretary in charge and I walked about to find a vacant spot and finally found one, the prize ring. So I called for attention, announced my service, and held it in the prize ring, with my men seated on benches in the ring itself. The non-Jews near by stopped their reading or writing to listen to the little sermon, so that my actual audience was considerably larger than my group of worshipers.
I remember one week-day evening when I came to a J. W. B. hut in a camp near Le Mans for an announced service only to find the place packed to the doors. On inquiry, for such a crowd was unprecedented in this particular camp, I found that a minstrel show had been unexpectedly obtained and was to run later in the evening. So, while the actors were making up behind the curtain, I held forth in front, and when the show was announced as ready, a couple of Irish soldiers and a Swede pushed to one side and made a little room for me in the front row.
This very informality and friendliness of spirit meant, first of all, that one could not "preach" to soldiers in any case. They were intolerant of preaching. They did not want to be preached to. They wanted "straight goods, right from the shoulder." They wanted deeds more than words, or at least words which were simple and direct, ofthe force of deeds. One who knew soldiers had totalkto them, not preach. The more informal, the more direct, the more effective. A good sermon would often miss fire completely before an audience of soldiers when a good talk would wake them up and stir them. Informality, simplicity, knowledge of the soldier and his needs were the best qualities with which to approach the enlisted man, especially when he was or had been in the actual fighting and thus acquired a new sense of perspective. The strongest hatred of the fighting man was directed toward sham of whatever type, and he exerted that prejudice without any fine sense of discrimination against anything that seemed to him pretentious or hollow. The danger of pretense or dishonesty in the trench or on a patrol seemed to have entered into the whole mentality of the soldier. He distrusted the brilliant orator, who found more difficulty in winning him over than did the simpler and more direct type of speaker. He was certain to prick the bubble of a poseur at once, and was more than suspicious of anything which even hinted at pose or pretense.
For one thing, the material had to be concrete, the sort of thing the soldier knew. Jew and non-Jew were very nearly the same in the army, with certain minor differences of background. And hardly ever did one have an audience composed overwhelmingly of Jews; there was always a large admixture of others in any army audience, even when a Jewish service had been announced. Now, as to background and memories, our army was too mixed to rely on them for much material. Whenthe chaplain spoke of home, the soldier might think of a tenement home or a ranch-house or a mountaineer's cottage. Certainly, only a few would ever have the same picture as the chaplain. When he spoke of foreigners, he might be addressing a group composed largely of Poles, Italians and Irish, who entertained very different ideas of what a foreigner might be, but would all consider our old Southern population, white and black, as foreign.
The only common ground of all soldiers was the army. The men knew work, discipline, war. They did not regard these things as an officer would, and a wise preacher found out their attitude in detail whenever he could. But this was concrete material, common to them all. They all hated to be under authority, but had nevertheless learned the lesson of discipline for practical purposes. They were fascinated by fighting, but feared it and preferred it, on the whole, to the tedium of peace. They found a greater monotony in army drill than in any other one thing in the world. They were brave when occasion arose. They had seen their friends drop dead at their side and had mourned and buried them. They had seen comrades promoted, now by favoritism, now by ability, and held a mixed feeling of ambition and of dislike for responsibility and the drudgery of thinking for themselves. They had problems of conduct, problems of morale, problems of vision, and they welcomed any discussion of their own problems in their own language, while despising infinitely the man who made a mistake in military terminology or showed lack of knowledge of the army. Their knowledge and their interest wasnarrow but keen, and one was compelled to meet the soldier on his own ground to interest or influence him.
This concrete material of the soldier's daily life had to be presented to him in his own language—minus the profanity which was all too common and meaningless in the average soldier's vocabulary. Here again the soldier proved a unique audience. With all his quickness to grasp an idea, his lightning sense of humor, his immediate sense of reality and recognition of fact, he had in many cases the vocabulary of a ten-year-old child. Many of our soldiers were from the mine, the farm, the sweatshop. Many of them learned English from the daily papers; many from their semi-literate companions. A few hundred very simple English words and plenty of army slang were the chief reliance of the preacher, and other expressions had to be defined as one went along. One did not need to "talk down" to the soldier in ideas—he could leap past a course of argument to a sure conclusion in any field within his experience—but the language was necessarily the language of the soldier for either full comprehension or complete sympathy.
Of course, the average soldier, Jew or non-Jew, had no homiletic background; he was not a frequent listener to sermons in civil life. In many cases the men admitted that they had never been in a church in their lives. Many of the Jewish boys had not been to a synagogue for years, and when they had gone many of them had attended an orthodox service where they had not understood a single word of the Hebrew service. Therefore the language of the Bible meant literally nothing to themwithout paraphrasing, except where it came very close to modern speech. Therefore also the cant phrases of the pulpit or of the public speaker generally had no meaning whatever to their minds, favorable or the reverse. They left the soldiers completely untouched. Thus the best civilian sermon may have been meaningless to a group of soldiers, while a direct talk, even a sort of conversation with the audience, was of real benefit to them. For there was no formality about an army audience. If one made the mildest joke, the boys laughed out. If one "paused for a reply," the reply was apt to come in loud and unmistakable tones. In a talk to a group about to return home, for example, I remarked, "I suppose you'll all reënlist in the National Guard when you get mustered out," only to be greeted by an immediate chorus of groans. If the soldiers were interested, they interrupted with questions; if uninterested, they frankly got up and left the room. They gave more than the cold decorum of a church; they gave a living response; they talked with and thought with the preacher. But the type of decorum one found in a church or temple was utterly beyond them. Their response was better, but different in its very activity.
Certainly, there were different audiences even among soldiers. I know of one preacher who traveled about France with a great speech on courage which fell utterly flat on a certain occasion. He had made the mistake of speaking on courage to a group of men from the Service of Supply, whose chief contribution to the war had been carrying cases of canned salmon and repairing roads. A certain chaplain had a battalion of recent immigrantsmustered for a service before going into battle, only to be privately cursed afterward in the five languages spoken by the boys he had addressed. For he had made those boys give up their short period of rest to talk to them of home and mother, to make them think of the dear ones they were trying to forget, to put before them the one thought that was most likely to unnerve them for the terrible task ahead!
It was just as great a mistake to preach about sacrifice after a battle. In battle sacrifice was the most common thing; ordinary men rose to heights of heroism to save their "buddies" or to assist in the advance. The high courage of self-sacrifice became familiar. Preaching self-sacrifice to these men was useless—for Christian as well as Jew. They had seen stretcher bearers shot down while carrying their precious burdens to the rear. They had seen officers killed while getting their men under shelter. They had seen the gas guard, as a part of his daily duty, risk the most horrible of deaths in order to give the alarm for his comrades. Such men responded to an appeal on the divine in man, on the brotherhood of all those heroes about them, on Americanism, on a hundred congenial themes; they did not see the cogency of an appeal to sacrifice.
The profound friendships and violent dislikes of the soldier have been often noticed. His fidelity to his "buddy," to any popular officer, to his company and regiment, stand out as part of his vigorous, boyish outlook. On the other hand, a swiftly acquired prejudice would go with him forever in the face of many facts and much argumentto the contrary. The relative standing of the Y. M. C. A. and the Salvation Army among the men is a case in point. The Young Men's Christian Association was by far the largest war work organization which worked among the mass of the soldiers, as the Red Cross confined its activities largely to hospitals and related fields. It was a wide-spread organization, covering practically every unit and almost every type of activity, religious, athletic, entertainment, canteen. But the soldier, while using the Y. M. C. A., disliked it. The Salvation Army, a very small organization in both amount and scope of work, which I never saw in action because I did not happen to be in the limited sector it covered, was, however, popular if only by hearsay in every part of the great army. Now, the soldier had very real grievances against the "Y." It charged him more for its tobacco than did the quartermaster's store; it gave away very little, while other organizations, not burdened with the canteen, gave away a great deal; it had a certain proportion of misfits, men who did not belong in any military work, who considered themselves better than the common soldier and did not share his trials or his viewpoint.
These facts were all explained later; some of them were inevitable. The presence of a board of inquiry in the army testified that the caliber even of army officers was not always what it should have been. The canteen had been undertaken by the Y. M. C. A. at the request of the army authorities, who desired to be relieved of the tremendous burden, and its prices were determined by cost plus transportation, which latter item was not included by the quartermaster's stores. The tremendous rush ofthe last six months of the war made the task too great for any of the organizations in the field, including sometimes even the quartermaster's corps. But after the prejudice had been conceived it could not be shaken. It persisted in spite of excuses, in spite of remedies for some of the evils, in spite of the excellent work which the Y. M. C. A. did in the leave areas. I have mentioned its activities in Nice, Monte Carlo, and Grenoble, how it provided the enlisted man with free entertainment,—excursions, dances and shows, during his entire period on leave. This striking contribution to the morale and the pleasure of the forces was almost overlooked in the general criticism. On the other hand, nobody ever heard the enthusiastic doughboy mention a mistake made by the more limited forces of the Salvation Army, which therefore received more than adequate commendation for its really effective work.
A similar violent contrast existed in the soldier's attitude toward the British and colonial soldiers, especially the Australians. The doughboy liked the "Ausies"; he despised the "Tommie." The usual phrase was: "Oh, well, the 'Tommies' are all right to hold the line, but it takes the 'Ausies' to make a push." This was strictly untrue, according to the terrific fighting we ourselves witnessed on the British front. It was simply that the Australians were all volunteers, young and dashing, like the pioneers of the western plains, the precursors of our own men. They were independent, lawless and aggressive. The British whom we knew were the survivors of four years of warfare, veterans of many a campaign in the field and siege in the hospital, or older men, the last draft of the manhood of GreatBritain. No wonder our boys liked the "Ausies" and refused to see any good whatever in that very different species of men, the "Tommies."
So the soldier was an exacting but a grateful audience. He emphasized deeds rather than words, and therefore he was much easier of approach for his own chaplain, who was under the same regulations as he, who went with him to the front and tended the wounded and the dead under fire, than for the most eloquent or the most illustrious of civilian preachers. He conceived violent likings and equally violent prejudices, always based upon some sort of reason but usually carried beyond a reasonable degree. He had to be approached on his own ground, with material from his own experience, with language which he could understand. And when that was done, he was the most thankful audience in the world. He thought with the speaker, responded to him, aided him. As an audience he was either the most friendly and helpful in the world or the most disappointing. But that depended on the speaker and the audience being in harmony, knowing and liking each other. A man who knew and loved the soldier could work with him and help him in achieving great results, for the American soldier, though the most terrible enemy, was also the best friend in the world.