s as
representing the attitude of the men toward the churches:

1. _Indifference to the Church_. As one typical young sergeant, a member
of the student movement, puts it: "The men simply have no time for it.
They do not care for the Church because it did not care for them." There
is a general feeling that the churches do not understand them or
sympathize with the social and industrial disabilities of the men. They
feel that the ideals of life for which the Church stands are dull, dim,
and altogether unnatural; its standard of comfort and complacent
respectability makes no appeal to them and they have no part or lot in
it. They feel that this respectability of the Church is quite in keeping
with flagrant selfishness in social and industrial relationships, that
the Church is largely in the possession of the privileged classes, who
monopolize it, and who have neither sought nor welcomed them within its
doors.

As one representative chaplain in a most influential position in France
says: "There is the plain fact that the great mass of men are out with
the Christian Church, and do not look to it as being in any vital
relation to life as they know it, either in peace or war. There is the
deeper and sadder fact that to a very large proportion of them God
Himself means little or nothing, or means something that is very
unchristian. Where there is a living presentation of religion men are
responsive--extraordinarily so. Put it how you will, men must be
summoned to a new thought, a new outlook on life, a new attitude towards
the unseen and eternal."

2. An attitude of _separation and alienation_ from the Church. For the
most part the men are largely ignorant of what the Church really is, and
for this the churches are largely responsible. They believe that its
message and presentation of truth are often too feminine and impractical
and that its fellowship is too cold and exclusive. They do not
understand the vocabulary and tone adopted frequently by preachers in
speaking of religious things, and they feel that the churches are almost
complete strangers to the real facts of life with which they have to deal.

It is true that the practical work of the churches in their helpful
ministry through the various organizations working in the camps has
brought many of the men into vital contact with religion for the first
time. But the war has revealed the lack of the churches' hold upon the
men in pre-war times.

3. _Critic