THE BATTLE OF FRANCE
The Rival Churches
The Catholic and the Anglican chaplains had just
finished a long tour of the base cantonments, the
lines of communication and then the troops in the
line itself. They had got on very well together.
'We've travelled together/ they said, 'eaten
together, but, thank God, we haven't had to sleep
together. We've always had the luck to find a
couple of beds/
In the evening they were interviewed by the
journalists, and felt, according to one of them, like
Daniel in the lions' den.
'I asked the Adjutant-General's advice as to what
I should say, and all I got from him was: "Give 'em
a sermon or take a collection." *
Actually, they proffered some interesting
information. The British Army allows one chaplain
to each eleven hundred men. On this basis, one half
are Church of England, a quarter Roman Catholics,
with the remaining quarter split up between the
other Protestant churches. The men seemed more
religious than in the last war. They communicated
and confessed more freely.
Isn't that explained,' asked a sceptical American,
'by the present inaction?'
'It's true enough,' said Father C------, 'that this is
a very wearisome war. I've known the Boer War.
I've known the Great War. But this is the Great
Bore War. All the same, there's something else in
58