The Cross and the Trenches

Writing some years ago Warren Wagar observed that 'the spiritual history of the First World War remains to be written'.l Unfortunately Wagar's observation still holds true in terms of our understanding of the religious lives British soldiers in the Great War, for existing contemporary and scholarly treatments of this topic are either misleading or incomplete. Contemporary interpretations of the relationship between the war and soldiers' religious beliefs tend to be either didactic2 or, more often, strident and bipolar.3 Before exploring this bipolarity, a brief comment on the cultural context from which the contemporary interpretations emerged is in order. Samuel Hynes has argued that the dominant cultural pattern of the era was a struggle between defenders of a traditional estab~ishment culture and an avant-garde that sought to subvert the traditionalists.4 While the chasm that separated the two cultures was particularly noticeable in the postwar period, it was also evident during the war itself. It is within this context of a bipolar culture that the contemporary interpretations of soldiers' religious beliefs must be understood

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