That reminded me that I had some neglected parishioners in Company I, so I went over their set of trenches. Around the P. C. it looks like pictures of the houses of wattles and clay that represent the architecture of Early Britain. Met Harry Adikes and Ed Battersby and found them easy victims when I talked confession. Where do the Irish get such names? Ask Wilton Wharton what his ancestors were and he will say “Irish”; so will Bob Cousens and Bill Cuffe, Eddie Willett, Jim Peel or Jim Vail. Charlie Cooper is half way to being Irish now, and he will be all Irish if he gets a girl I know. I know how Charlie Garret is Irish,—for he comes from my neighborhood, and if it were the custom to adopt the mother’s name in a family he would be Charles Ryan. The same custom would let anybody know without his telling it, as he does with his chest out, that George Van Pelt is Irish too. I saw one swarthy fellow with MIKE KELLEY in black letters on his gas mask, but on asking him I found that he was Irish only by abbreviation, as he was christened Michael Keleshian. Tommy O’Brien made himself my guide and acolyte for my holy errand; and he first took me on a tour amongst the supply sergeants and cooks for he wanted us both well looked after. So when we had gotten Eddie Joyce, Pat Rogan, Michael O’Brien, Tom Loftus and Joe Callahan in proper Christian condition for war or hospitality, we sallied forth around the trenches. Religion in the trenches has no aid from pealing organ or stained glass windows, but it is a real and vital thing at that. The ancestors of most of us kept their religious life burning brightly as they stole to the proscribed Mass in a secluded glen, or told their beads by a turf fire; and I find that religion thrives today in a trench with the diapason of bursting shells for an organ. I had a word or two for every man and they were glad to get it; and the consolations of the old faith for those that were looking for it. It makes a man feel better about the world and God, and the kind of people he has put into it to know in conditions like these such men as Bill Beyer, Fordham College Man; Pat Carroll, Chauffeur; Tom Brennan, Patrick Collins, whom I am just beginning to know and to like; Bill Dynan, whom I have known and liked for a long time; manly Pat Hackett and athletic Pat Flynn, solid non-coms like Ford, Hennessey, McDermott, Murphy, Denis Hogan, Michael Jordan, Hugh McFadden, not to mention the old Roman 1st Sergeant Patrick McMinaman. It was the vogue at one time to say with an air of contempt that religion is a woman’s affair. I would like to have such people come up here—if they dared: and say the same thing to the soldiers of this Company or of this Regiment—if they dared.