JEW AND CHRISTIAN AT THE FRONT
To those of us who served with the United States Army overseas,
religious unity, cooeperation 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 cooeperation 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 acquainted they 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 to be 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 religious service 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 cooeperation 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 boxing match
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 cooeperation 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 cooeperation 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 other
members 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 Cathedral 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 offered to 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 cooeperation 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, a talk, 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 chateau 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.
Christian ministers 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 one of
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 cooeperation 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 liberte_." As a
Frenchman it was hard for him to understand the kind of religious
liberty which means cooeperation 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.