tradiction of the first
principle of Christ and Christianity.

Then again in France, one came up violently against the sheer nuisance
and waste of division. Imagine upon a Friday every C.O. and adjutant
(and adjutants are always over-worked) of every unit approached by three
Chaplains--Church of England, Roman Catholic, and Nonconformist; and
requested to make different arrangements at different times for
different fractions of his command to attend divine service on the
Sunday. This in the midst of modern war, where organisation for war
purposes is complex and laborious enough. The mere typing and
circulating of these arrangements at Brigade and Divisional H.Q. mean in
sum total a vast expenditure of paper and labour. The chaplains, who, I
hope, are at least gentlemen, feel considerable shame at being the
guiltless authors of these confusions. And the effect is so deplorable.
Just when the nation is one, just when each military unit seeks to
promote, for mere military efficiency, the _esprit de corps_ of its
oneness, the religion of the one Christ enters as a thing which almost
flaunts fissure. Or again, think of the mere waste of pastoral
efficiency involved in this fact. Each infantry brigade consists roughly
of four battalions, and three or four somewhat smaller units (R.A.M.C,
M.G.C., etc.). For these there are four chaplains, normally two Church
of England (who have 80 per cent. of the men under their care), one
Roman Catholic and one Presbyterian or Nonconformist. The two latter
have to do the best they can each to get round all these scattered units
to provide for small handfuls of men in each. Each of the Church of
England chaplains has to arrange for a whole half brigade. How much more
efficiently and thoroughly, with how much less needless labour, had the
work been done, if an one Church could have set one chaplain to live
each with one battalion, and be responsible as well for one smaller
unit. That had made it easy for a chaplain to know his flock intimately;
now it is next to impossible.

But above and beyond these misfortunes, which after all are details,
must be ranked the big thoughts and truths which have swum into the
sight and experience of everybody. The first is this. Granted that the
Church like the world was surprised by the sudden outbreak of war, and
therefore could not stop it; yet that she should have no voice at all
even to denounce the unrighteousness and barbarities into which the
world