admits us to the peaceful Masonry of Christianity. Rough men pass away,
hard men "go West" with a smile of peace upon their pain-tortured lips if
the padre can get to them in time for the parting word, the cheerful,
colloquial "best o' luck."

Does the padre come to us and sanctimoniously pronounce our eternal doom
should he hear us swear? The clergyman, the minister of old time, is down
and out when he reaches the battle-fields of France, or any other of the
fronts we are holding. No stupid tracts are handed to us, no whining and
groaning, no morbid comments on the possibility of eternal damnation. No,
the chaplain of to-day is a real man, maybe he always was, I don't know. A
man who risks his life as do we who are in the fighting line. He has
services, talks, addresses, but he never preaches. He practises all the
time.

Out of this war there will come a new religion. It won't be a sin any more
to sing rag-time on Sunday, as it was in the days of my childhood. It won't
be a sin to play a game on Sunday. After church parade in France we rushed
to the playing fields behind the lines, and many a time I've seen the
chaplain umpire the ball game. Many a time I've seen him take a hand in a
friendly game of poker. The man who goes to France to-day will come back
with a broadened mind, be he a chaplain or be he a fighter. There is no
room for narrowness, for dogma or for the tenets of old-time theology. This
is a man-size business, and in every department men are meeting the
situation as real men should.

Again, at Neuve Chapelle, there was magnificent bravery. Just across the
street, at a turn, there lay a number of wounded men. They were absolutely
beyond the reach of succor. A terrible machine gun fire swept the roadway
between them and a shelter of sandbags, which had hastily been put up on