I can only venture upon a verdict after first acknowledging that it is
inseparably bound up with my own shortcomings. Other men of a truer
devotion and love may well have grounds in a more effective ministry for
challenging and amplifying it.
Further, I have to ask that allowance be made for the fact that men like
myself, who have been working as 'C. of E.' chaplains, are not very well
qualified to speak about the religion of the men. There is something wrong
about the status of chaplains. They belong to what the author of _A
Student in Arms_ calls 'the super-world' of officers, which as such is
separate from the men. As a class we find it hard to penetrate the
surface of the men--that surface which we can almost see thrust out at us
like a shield, in the suddenly assumed rigidity of men as they salute us.
We are in an unchristian position, in the sense that we are in a position
which Christ would not have occupied. He, I am sure, would have been a
regimental stretcher-bearer, truly among and of the men. We are very
unlike Him. We are often liked, and are thought good fellows, but we are
unlike Him and miss what He could discover. Our--my--verdict is not
necessarily His.
Lastly, all verdicts must be rough in war. The nature of war and of its
effects often precludes any one from knowing exactly what is going on in
the souls of men. War is a muddy business, encasing the body in dirt, and
caking over the soul. It forms hard surfaces over the centres of
sensitiveness. It is benumbing to spiritual faculties. That is nature's
way of accommodation with war's environment. To feel things much would
literally be maddening. To brood about danger, to apprehend or anticipate
or philosophise may imperil 'nerve.' Rather the majority of men carry on,
callously, almost gaily, with mental and spiritual faculties if possible
inactive. I have met an entirely devout lover of music (since killed in
action) who told me that he didn't miss music out here because "he wasn't
carrying on with those faculties." I have seen a man of indubitable
Christian conviction come down from the cold clam of the trenches in
mid-winter and take up a religious book which ordinarily would have
excited him and say--"Ah! yes, there is all that." I could almost see the
surface which war had hardened over him. Beneath it in him and all the
rest, who knows what may not be in process, ready to emerge when they can
bathe in the solvent waters of peace?
Meanwhile they 'carry on.' That I think is especially congenial to the
British. There is no doubt that men of our race have an invincibility,
which is due in part to the fact that they do not think about or feel what
is really going on. To be practically and sensually occupied with the
passing moment is the way to carry on in war. It is characteristic of our
men. They are remarkably void of apprehension in every sense of the word.
Had the rank and file who fought the first battle of Ypres--when the whole
of the British forces came to be strung out from Ypres to La Bassée in one
line without a reserve--formed a general apprehension of and as to their
position, they would have been 'rattled' and broken. They were not
beaten, in part because they did not think of being beaten. "You can't,"
as they sing, "beat the boys of the bull-dog breed," but this
invincibility has not altogether the virtue of facts understood, faced,
and triumphed over. In short, British qualities and defects of qualities
are closely interwoven. But my point is, that this being so, any verdict
about what is going on in British souls during a war must be humble and
tentative and patient of qualification.