Pope's prayer about me, and I put my faith in that," he answered, in accordance with his simple theology. This prayer of Pope Benedict XV is one "to obtain from the mercy of Almighty God the blessings of Peace." Both soldiers were convinced, as Catholics, that, being under the special protection of the Heavenly Powers whose symbols they wore, they were safe and invincible until their good work was done. Psalm civ. speaks of God, "who maketh the sweeping winds his angels, and a flaming sword His ministers." Why should He not work also through the agency of the religious emblems of His angels and saints? With this belief strong within them, Holmes and Cuddy leaped at the chance of bringing comfort to comrades in anguish, and help to those sorely pressed by the enemy. There is another aspect of this question of the psychology of war. It is a boast of the age that we have freed ourselves from what is called the deadening influence of superstition. Nevertheless, since the outbreak of the war there has been an extraordinary revival of the secular belief in omens, witchcraft, incantations and all that they imply--the direct influence of supernatural powers, of some sort or other, on the fortunes of individuals in certain events. One amiable form of it is the enormously increased demand for those jewellers' trinkets called charms and amulets, consisting of figures or symbols in stone and metal which are popularly supposed to possess powers of bringing good fortune or averting evil, and which formerly lovers used to present to each other, and wear attached to bracelets and chains, to ensure mutual constancy, prosperity and happiness. Even the eighteenth-century veneration of a child's caul--the membrane occasionally found round the head of an infant at birth--as a sure preservative against drowning is again rife among those who go down to the sea in ships. The menace of the German submarine has revivified the ancient desire of seafaring folk to possess a caul, which was laid dormant by the sense of security bred by years of freedom from piracy, and the article has gone up greatly in price in shops that sell sailors' requirements at the chief ports. Fortune-tellers, crystal-gazers, and other twentieth-century witches and dealers in incantations, who pretend to be able to look into the future and provide safeguards against misfortune, are being consulted by mothers, wives and sweethearts, anxiously seeking for some safe guidance for their nearest and dearest through the perils of the war.