morning to help him in cheering up the patients, giving them Testaments,
meeting their needs, and answering their doubts and difficulties. While
we were proceeding through one of the wards, the Nonconformist chaplain
came by. The writer was speaking to a poor boy who was dying. The
chaplain seemed shocked and surprised that we were speaking to one of his
patients without his permission. The young Episcopal chaplain explained
that he felt sure that the chaplain would not mind if we tried to help
the men. Although he followed him out of the ward and tried his best to
make his peace with him, the chaplain reported the matter, and we were
prevented from doing personal Christian work in neighboring hospitals.
The Roman Catholic chaplain in the next hospital, a most consecrated and
earnest man, has managed to get a military rule passed that no services
can be held in any ward of the hospital unless every Roman Catholic
patient is bodily carried out. This has successfully prevented the
holding of any Christian services whatsoever, Catholic or Protestant.
Throughout the entire war we have never known of a single instance of any
man trying to proselytize or to divert a soldier from allegiance to his
own church. We have known of men leaving the churches altogether during
the war, but not one instance of a man's changing his church or being
asked to do so. Yet the jealousy and suspicion of the bare possibility
of men's doing so has blocked and excluded much genuine Christian work.
To give another instance--a personal friend of the writer, a young
Anglican clergyman, a widely known college principal, was serving in one
of the huts of a Convalescent Camp. He had made the acquaintance of the
patients in some twelve wards and was going the rounds every morning
telling the war news, giving oranges to the fevered, and cheering up the
depressed. The Commandant came with apologies and told him that although
he was doing the best Christian work in the hospital it must be
discontinued, as the chaplain objected. Our friend, who was a clergyman
of the same communion as the chaplain, called upon him and asked if he
had any objection to the distribution of fruit. He replied that if our
friend did this it would give an unfair advantage to his work as his
particular organization would get the credit, and that he, as the
chaplain, must "push his own show." To continue in the words of our
friend: "Then I asked him if I could send the
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