I would say nothing disrespectful of it. I would not pretend for a moment to be void of this very natural craving. I would recognise that impressions made by strain and anxiety are often the means whereby God brings men home to Himself. I thought it a hard saying of an ardent salvationist lad, who told me of a transport sergeant's prayers one night in a ditch by a shrapnelled roadside, and of the same sergeant's reversion to apparent irreligion on return to safety. "I call it," said the boy, "cowardice." But what I do say about it is, firstly, that religion thus mainly associated with danger, is not the Christian religion, and secondly, that many of the best men of all ranks have little to do with it, or what little they do have is intermittent and rather shamefaced. I leave the first statement for the moment. About the second I hazard the belief that this has been more or less true of all soldiers in history. Religion regarded _merely_ as a resort in trouble, as a possible source of good luck, as a charm or insurance policy is as old as man; but I believe many of the best soldiers up and down history have had little to do with it, and the more sporting and soldierly the man, the less he has had to do with it. After all, the soldier-man's code goes clean the other way. It is ever insisting on non-calculating and self-regardless service, endurance, and sacrifice. As such, it lies above the ordinary level of life, calling out the heroic and honourable in men. But religion associated with anxiety touches men at a level lower than the highest in them, it has the morbidity of their weaker moments hanging about it, it wears badly, and, above all, often it does not seem to work. I have had the case propounded to me of "Bill who did pray," but yet had had "his head blowed off." V I recur, then, to my verdict that on the whole there is not a great revival of the Christian religion at the front. Why is this? First, war is war, and, what is more, this war is this war. I will not attempt to paint the picture. Every one must realise by now that the main concentration of all military effort is directed at creating in the trenches an ever-intenser inferno of heavy shells. In a great army there is every degree of risk to be run or immunity to be enjoyed; but at the very front, where all is stripped and laid bare, modern warfare is at times a furnace of horror. Its smoke darkens the heavens, thickening the "clouds and darkness" round about God, and deepening His silence. Its white heat scorches out human confidence in Him. He does not seem to count. There are stars in the darkness of war--stars which are the achievements of man's indomitable spirit. But God-ward there seems sometimes to be great darkness. Further, war, despite all the easy things said in its praise, is a great iniquity. It is, as others have said, hell. As an environment to the soul it is, for all the countervailing heroisms of men, a world of evil power let loose.