Obviously, morale was a loose general term for many actual conditions. It meant one thing at the front, another thing at the rear. It included morals, although sometimes a high state of morale could exist together with many lapses from the moral code. It summed up the general state of mind of the troops at any time with regard to the special purpose for which the troops were just then intended. A study of morale gave insight into many related factors, including that of morality. The young man, as we saw him in the army, had a morality of his own, related closely to sport and business, but to neither law nor religion. It is a moral standard--we cannot possibly mistake that--the young man is not in his own mind immoral. But it is a standard which makes much of friendship, loyalty, fair play, something of honesty, nothing of the special code which we usually call "morality." It allowed much laxity in sexual relations; it laid no stress at all on obedience to military regulations; it had hardly such a word as "duty." Religion to the soldier meant habit, or sentiment, or fear, or longing; it did not mean a code of morals. The attempt to build up a moral standard on a basis of duty to one's country or to one's self was largely inadequate. Courage the soldier recognized, and sincerity and self-sacrifice; he did not know much of duty. This fact was both the cause and the result of military discipline, which made duty an external matter of obedience to a million trivial and arbitrary rules, rather than to a few definite and outstanding principles. The young man has a morality of his own in civil life; he had a slightly different, but related morality in the army. It was not the conventional morality of society, which rests upon the historical standards of the middle-aged. It was a type of morality which we must learn to recognize and understand for both his benefit and that of society as a whole. CHAPTER XIII THE MORAL GAIN AND LOSS OF THE SOLDIER