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I 12 GOODWIN'S WEEKLY WHAT DO SOLDIERS BELIEVE? Hi, By An Officer, "B. E. F." In The London Nation !rHA', does the soldier believe? I J How far does religion influence his life? Is he, in fact, influ enced by religion at all? I have some times been asked questions such as f those by my friends who are anxious to know something of the private sol i diers' attitude towards life and death, and when I attempt to make an ade quate answer to each question I find myself in an extraordinarily difficult K'1 position. Organized religion seems to H have no influence whatever on the sol i dier. I should say that the Roman 'j Catholic church has the strongest hold H J on its members, the various Noncon H; formist sects the second strongest M hold, and the Church of England the M ' least. Numerically, in my regiment H at all events, the Church of England H leads the Nonconformists and the Ro M man Catholics, but it is perfectly ob H vious that many of the Anglicans are H Anglicans but nominally. H But religious influence does not con Hf sist in professing allegiance to this or V that form of faith, and so the dlvi H, sions of the regiment give no indica M tion whatever of the extent to which H, the men are moulded by their beliefs, j . I should say that, on the whole, m ' Christianity has singularly little in j fiuence on the mass of the men in the M t ranks, and since most of them have H lately been in civil life, that is tanta Hf mount in saying that Christianity has ' singularly little influence on the whole M life of Great Britain and Ireland. I M am aware, of course, that such state M, ments have frequently been made be i fore, but it is only in time of crisis M that one understands the truth of B some familiar statement. V One detects in the conversation of M the rank-and-file a curious strain of B disappointment when they talk, as M they sometimes do, of religion. Here M is something, they seem to say, which B j ought to have made the war Impossi M ' ble, but has not done so; and in that HT disappointment I find a strong strain H' l of contempt, or, failing that, Indiffer 1 ence. It is not my business to dis k cuss here the Tightness or the wrong s' ness of that view: it is my business H merely to record it. Certainly, the H f failure of Christianity to influence the B lives of these men does not appear to Hi'l me to be datable from August, 1914: Hi the beginning of the decline was lon H j ger ago than that. The cmious flip H I pancy with which the men speak of H' I the Deity was not acquired in a couple H j of years, nor is the blasphemy, some H' j times perfectly outrageous, which I H 1 frequently hear in the barracks, a H thing of recent origin. Hi j I should say that church parade is I, ' the most unpopular feature of army Hh life. Men actually prefer to perform H ; ) fatigue work rather than go to church. Hj It is a little difficult to understand H this objection to church parade, par- tlcularly when one discovers that l some of the most emphatic of the ob HI jectors go to church of their own ac H 1 cord in the evening. I imagine that Mb" a good deal of the objection lies in the fact that church parade is obliga tory, and that It is accompanied by a great deal of "Form fours" and "Form two-deep," and "marching at atten tion." One gets the sensation at church parade of worshipping God by numbers. ... At the same time, it must be remembered that some of the men go to church in the evening, not because of religious motives, but because it is dull to walk about in dark streets and cheerier to sit in a lit interior, where one may sjng and listen to the music of an organ. More over, there is a certain amount of amorous intention In evening church going. Girls are to be met at church sometimes, indeed, "the girl" insists on a visit to church. Whether there would be more or less church going by soldiers if church parade were abolished I am unable to say. Some men certainly would nev er go to church, and their number would not be negligible; a fairly large number would go irregularly, some for devotional reasons, others for purely social reasons; and a smaller number would go almost every Sunday, mainly because of a religious intention. But I feel certain that if church parade were abolished there would be far more religious feeling in the church going soldiers than there is now. I have difficulty in understanding the religious purpose of a function such as church parade which causes men to let loose a great deal of bad language, nor can I see how it is possible to get into a devotional frame of mind on entering a church immediately after you have beep told by a sergeant to "form two deep, for Christ's sake!" as I heard a sergeant say to a soldier one Sunday morning, as we were en tering church. The plain truth about church parade is that it has become as much a piece of military drill as any other parade, and the Chaplain-General might seriously consider whether it is worth while sacrificing religion in this fashion. But all these questions of the influ ence of Christianity on the soldier and the utility of church parade do not settle the question of how far the sol dier feels the influence of religion, using the word religion in an unde nominational sense. What does the soldier feel about life after death? loes he, while indifferent to or con temptuous of the tenets of Christian ity, show signs of being Influenced by some other form of religion? I think I can say, so far as my own regiment is concerned, that most soldiers be lieve in the existence of God, but I think it is true also to say that they are puzzled about God. They are not men who have explored the region of theology very extensively or at all; at all events that was their position prior to August, 1914; but since the outbreak of the war, these men, rather crudely perhaps, but nevertheless very earnestly, have been asking questions of themselves and of each other (con cernlng God and God's nature. I have heard men in my billet talking about religion in that questioning fashion, and, en each occasion, the discussion ended vaguely, inconclusively. The men were out of their depth, and they knew that they were out of their depth, and so, having expressed their sense of puzzlement, they left the mat ter there. But I have noticed, particularly in men who have been to the front, that out of that vagueness and puzzlement is growing a curious sense of fatalism. One of my comrades, a man who had been through the lighting in the Per sian gulf and elsewhere, told me one night that the German bullet was not yet made which would kill him. "An it never will be," he added with extra ordinary assurance. My friend, the late Rupert Brooke, was equally as sured that he would die during the war. The commonest speech uttered by men In the army, when the talk turns to the chances of eluding death In battle, is, "Well, if your number's up, it's up!" and now and then a man will say, "There's a German bullet with a number on It, and it'll get you if it's your number, and there's no good in chewing the rag about It!" More and more does the belief In pre destined death In war become part of the soldiers' creed. He does not re late it to any wide theory of existence. He does not, unless he be from Scot land, understand what you mean when you speak of the doctrine of Predes tination. But his faith in this settled fate is unshakable. There is no ques tion of chance. He will not admit that every man who goes to the front has the same hope of surviving or the same possibility of dying: he believes, simply and immovably, that some men are marked out to be slain and that others are not. How far that belief has come into the army by way of In dia I cannot say, but the old or pre war soldier has certainly inculcated that belief in the minds of the new army. Outside that belief in a settled fate there seems to be very little manifes tation of religious spirit among the soldiers. There are many soldiers of a deeply religious bent of mind in the army a' Student in Arms" is a no table instance but these men are highly individualized; they certainly are not representative of the soldiers as a whole. I am not unmindful of the fact that the average man, par ticularly the average Englishman, is chary of revealing his intimate feel ings to change observers, and I have made allowance for the fact that I may have seen only the superficial side of my comrades' nature; but at the same time I do not believe it is possible for men so to conceal their spiritual character that it does not ap pear to exist at all or to disguise it so effectually that it seems to be some thing totally different. There is no in- dicatlon whatever, apart Xrom excep tional individuals, that the Christian faith has any deep hold on our sol diers' minds. There are signs of an entirely non-committal belief in God, ' vaguely held. There are more definite signs of difficulty In understanding just what is God's purpose, and a strong suspicion that perhaps that purpose is not quite so beneficent as they bad sometimes imagined. And there is an unshakable belief that, in this war at all events, something has settled definitely and irrevocably that for some men, as my drill sergearit says, it is "thumbs up," and for some other men it is "thumbs down." Be yond that, there is nothing more to be said. HOW HE KNEW Casey: It's the iligant time 01 had . lasht Saturday. Divll a thing can I remember afther four o'clock. O'Brien: Thin how d'ye know ye had a good tolme? Casey: Sure, didnt 01 hear th' cop tellin' the joodge about Jt on Mon day marning? Transcript. AIN'T 1 RIGHT? "It's easy enough to be pleasant4 When life flows by like a song, But the man worth while Is the man with a smile When everything goes dead wrong." I've heard of this guy for a long time, I've hunted him, many a mile, And I've come to this final conclusion, There's no such "animile." i M1& BWaiWal LOUIS BENNISON IN HIS ORIGINAL ROLE OF "JOHNNY WIGGINS" IN JOHN CORT'S LAUGHING SUCCESS "JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN" AT THE SALT LAKE THEATRE, 3 DAYS BE GINNING THURSDAY, JANUARY 31.