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 them without 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 reenlist 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 immigrants mustered 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!