February 7 , 1 9 i 8 
Land 6c Water 
15 
The Faith of the Soldier : By Centurion 
" Wliat of the faith and fire within us 
Men who march away ? " 
" Every soldier, whi;n not prevented by military duty, wil' 
attend divine serviee." — The King's Regulations. 
I HAVE read somewhere of late statements by two Army 
chaplains — one, I think, a Wesleyan, the other an 
Anglican — to the effect that the ministrations of their 
Churches had failed to " reach " the soldier. Whether 
this confession of failure was a reproach, and, if a re- 
proach, whether it was directed against Church or against Army 
I do not know. But the conclusion itself is indisputable. Yet 
the Churches have not wanted for advantages. Their 
chaplains have been given commissioned rank and a spiritual 
hierarchy is recognised under military forms. The soldier is 
classified according to his religious profession, and once his 
election is made, the secular arm is called in to punish him if 
he is " late on Church Parade " or neglects to " follow the 
drupi." A prayer-book figures in the inventory of his kit, 
and to be without it is to be " deficient in necessaries." His 
religion is stamped on his identity-disc, and is recorded in the 
nominal roll of his company " returns," with his name, his 
number and liis rank. 
With all these facilities for access to him the Churches 
have failed to " reach " him. In an earlier age 
when, as on a wet and gusty morning at Agincourt, 
the priests shrived the archers and men-at-arms as they 
formed up in order of battle, such an admission would have 
meant not that the Church had failed, but that the Army was 
damned. But in those days men were more exercised with 
the problem of how to die than with the question of how to 
live. To-day if a man has solved for himself the latter, he 
may well be excused if he ceases to trouble himself about 
the former. And in that sense the soldier has a faith and 
by that faith he is justified. 
This may seem to some a hard saying. The soldier is 
sometimes ribald, often profane, and always ironical. He 
does not* sing hymns on going into action like Cromwell's 
Ironsides or accompany reveille with a morning psalm. He 
has been known to put the tune of " Onward, Christian 
soldiers " to base uses. The name of Christ is often on his 
lips, but as an imprecation rather than a prayer. He will 
make a jest of a " white cross " as though it were a new Army 
decoration. The language in which he speaks of death is, in 
fact, often picturesque, but it is rarely devout. A " pal " 
may have " gone West " or " stopped one " or been " outed " ; 
he is never spoken of as being " with God." Death is rarely 
alluded to as being the Will of God ; it is frequently character- 
ised in terms of luck. A soldier on going into action is much more 
exercised about the condition of his rifle than the state of his 
soul. There are, of course, exceptions, but the average soldier 
does not seem to feel any confidence that he is in the hands 
of a Divine Providence ; he is fatalistic rather than religious. 
After all, if, like the writer, you have looked on the obscene 
havoc of a battlefield and seen the entrails of men 
torn out, their heads severed from their bodies, and all the 
profane dismemberment of that which according to the teach- 
ing of the Church is the temple of the soul, you find it rather 
difficult at times to believe that the fate of the individual, 
whatever may be the case with the typ)e, is of any concern to the 
Creator. For the soldier who ponders on the realities of war, 
the judgments of God may be a great deep ; what he Jeels 
to be certain is that they are past finding out. 
As to whether this agnosticism is real or assumed, transient 
or permanent, the writer offers no opinion. But he will 
hazard the conjecture that it is not without its sublimity. 
To go into action with a conviction that j'our cause is every- 
thing and yourself nothing, to face death without any assurance 
that in dying you achieve your own salvation, whether 
victorious or not, is surely a nobler state of mind than that 
of the old Protestant and Catholic armies in the " Wars of 
Religion," equally assured of their own personal salvation 
and of the damnation of their opponents. The religious 
soldier of history may have been devout, he was certainly 
fanatical. And as he was fanatical, so he was cruel. Regard- 
ing himself as the chosen instrument of God, he assumed 
he did but anticipate the Divine judgme'nt — and incidentally 
ensure his own salvation — by giving no quarter to the 
" papist" or the " infidel." The morning psalm ended in the 
evening massacre. The English soldier is not cruel ; though he 
* S'orics by " C^cntu'ion " appear exclusively in Land & V.'ater. 
Cop> right in the t'nilcd Stated oj America. 1917. 
■.-.;■;. * .0 •.;.';..,- '.' 
can, and does, take a terrible revenge for treachery. He 
certainly despises " Fritz " but he rarely hates him. Ha 
believes in " getting his own back " but he docs not give 
himself religious airs about it. His view of death may be 
" light " but, at any rate, it is not morbid, neither is it 
egotistical. I am no theologian, but it has always seemed 
to me that the religion of the English Churches^ with its 
profoundly Calvirtistic colouring, has always been inclined to 
a certain egotism in its emphasis on personal salvation and its 
attainment exclusively by admission to the congregation of 
the elect, whether by baptism, confirmation, or prc-f<Hsion. 
The literature of English religion, especially in the 17th 
century, is full of an extraordinary preoccupation, some- 
times a morbid preoccupation, with the state of the individual 
soul and a frantic desire to escape a damnation which was 
regarded as the common lot of men. " Save yourself " was 
its burden, and the official professors of religion exhorted 
others to join them in a kind of spiritual sauve qui pent. " Save 
others " is the creed of the soldier ; all his military education 
is directed towards making him forget himself. He has, 
indeed, no time to think of himself ; all his time is given 
to' thinking of others — to " doing his bit," to holding a line of 
trench, keeping up a covering fire, getting up rations, dehver- 
ing his " chit," for fear that otherwise someone else will be 
" let down." Self-effacement and not self-a.ssertion is the rule 
of life in the Armv. 
It was well said by de Vigny that the virtue which 
characterises the good soldier is "abnegation," and that his is a 
cross more heavy than that of the martyr : and one which must 
be borne a long time in ord^r to know the grand jur and the 
weight of it. The renunciation of the pursuit of gain, the 
surrender of one's liberty of though^ and action, the acceptance 
of the duty of implicit obcdit nee, the certainty of punishment 
in the case of failure, the uncertainty of reward in the event 
of success, the contraction of ambition, the repression of 
emotion — these, ind xd, are great abnegations. They might, 
perhaps, seem, like the \ o.vs of the early religious orders, more 
calculated to cramp the character than to develop it, were it 
not that the soldier, unhke the monk, lives a life of action, 
not of meditation : that this long abnegation has for its object, 
however remote, some definite achievement, and that it carries 
with it, in the case of our own nation, no imputed rightLOUS- 
ness and few or no prerogatives. Except in rare moments 
the British nation has never " spoilt " the British Army, 
-still less has it glorified it, and the disabilities of the soldiei 
have been far more obvious than his privileges. Pacifist 
writers may fulminate about " militarism " but there never 
was a less " militarist " army than the old British Army : and 
if ever there was a job that the British officer hated it was 
being called in to " aid the civil power." He knew it would 
never bring him any credit, while it might often involve him in 
irretrievable disaster. If he took counsel of the King's 
Regulations the only thing he found was that whatever he did 
was almost certain to be wrong. His miUtary character 
invested him with no sanctity, but it often e.\po,cd him to 
much obloquy. The so dier took his oath of attestation, and 
the officer accepted his cemmission, knowing full well that he 
sacrificed far more than he gained. He joined a great 
fraternitv, but he d;d not become a member of a caste. He 
accepted these sacrifices as incidental to his choice and in that 
act of voluntary abnegation he consecrated them. 
It is this spirit of sacrifice which animates the soldier of to- 
day. For tliis Army had that character stamped upon it in 
the first two years of the war and it has never lo;t it. Never 
in any country in the world had there been anything like that 
great ctusading rush to the colours : and by the time the rush 
had begun to spend itself the character of the New Army 
Mjas fixed for all time. If ever men dedicated themselves to 
a cause these were they. Long-service N.C.O. instructors 
were astonished at the enthusiasm with which the men learnt 
their duties, often learning more in the 14 weeks' intensive 
training than the men had learnt in a year in the days of th^ 
old Army. The abnegations of a military life may make 
a man or they may mar him ; it all d^penel; on the spirit 
in which they are accepted. If the original impulse is com- 
pulsory, as in Germany, they will enslave him ; if it is 
voluntary, as in England, they will exalt him. The British 
soldier has learnt how to extract the best out of military Hfe — 
to see that, if rightly regarded it offers every day such 
opportunities for voluntary sacrifice as are to be found 
nowhere else ; you have only to read the award? in the 
Gazette to find the proof of it, and when yon read them 
remember that for one d(>cd that stands rewarded a th()usand 
go unrecorded. Every natioh get^' tb^ Army it deserves ; and 
