Yet despite the chaplains the men developed the habit of swearing; soldiers always have. War requires emphatic expressions. It destroys flexibility of expression--and "damn" and "hell" do seem the fittest description of a soldier's occupation. "It's an innocent kind of swearing, though," said a chaplain. "It does not really blaspheme. It may help them in fighting the battle of the Lord against the German." In the assignment of chaplains, of course, the plan was to place a Catholic with a regiment which was preponderantly Catholic; a Protestant with a regiment that was preponderantly Protestant; a rabbi with a regiment that had many Jews. When it was reported that the majority of the men of a certain regiment were not of the same church as their chaplain, a transfer was recommended. The colonel wanted to keep his chaplain, and suggested that he put the question to a vote, which he did: with the result that all the men of the regiment declared themselves of the same faith as their chaplain. This chaplain's religion, as it worked out in the daily association of the drudgery of drill and the savage ruck of battle, was quite good enough for them, without regard to the theological label he bore. He had faith, simply faith, and he gave them faith through his own work. Division commanders who were not religious men, but hard-hitting fighters, thinking only of battle efficiency, used always to be asking for more chaplains. I recollect during the Meuse-Argonne battle a division commander exclaiming: "Why don't we get more chaplain replacements? I'm right up against it in my division. I've had one killed and one wounded in the last two days. I'm going to recommend both for the Cross, but there's nobody come to take their places. You stir them up on this question at Headquarters." The chaplain stoutened the hearts of the fighters against hardship, cheered the wounded, administered to the dying, wrote letters home to relatives, went over the fields after the battle with the men of the Graves Registration Service, which had the pitiful and reverent task of gathering and burying the dead. Our soldiers who knew religion at home as repeating "Now I lay me down" in childhood and the Lord's Prayer when they were older, as grace before meals, going to Sunday school, sitting in pews listening to sermons, and as calls from the clergyman, now knew it as the infinite in their souls in face of death, exemplified by the man of God who was wearing the uniform they wore, who was suffering what they suffered, who kept faith with the old thought that "the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church." XXX THROUGH THE KRIEMHILDE