y
asked me one day what "C" mess was. I told him it was a lot of
withered old boughs on the great tree of the Canadian Expeditionary
Force--a description which was naturally much resented by the other
members. I had no difficulty now in arranging for my billets, as that
was always done for me by our Camp Commandant.

Life in Nieppe was very delightful and the presence of the British
Division gave it an added charm. We had very pleasant services in the
Hall, and every Sunday evening I had a choral Evensong. So many of the
men who attended had been choristers in England or Canada that the
responses were sung in harmony by the entire congregation. On week
days we had smoking concerts and entertainments of various kinds. I
sometimes had to take duty with the British units. On one occasion, I
was invited to hold a service for his men by a very staunch churchman,
a Colonel in the Army Service Corps. He told me, before the service,
that his unit had to move on the following day, and also that he was
accustomed to choose and read the lesson himself. I was delighted to
find a layman so full of zeal. But in the midst of the service I was
rather distressed at his choice of the lesson. It was hard enough to
get the interest of the men as it was, but the Colonel made it more
difficult by choosing a long chapter from Deuteronomy narrating the
wanderings of the children of Israel in the desert. Of course the C.O.
and I knew that the A.S.C. was to move on the following day, but the
congregation was not aware of the fact, and they must have been
puzzled by the application of the chapter to the religious needs of
the men at the front. However the reader was delighted with his choice
of subject, and at tea afterwards told me how singularly appropriate
the lesson was on this particular occasion. I thought it was wiser to
make no comment, but I wondered what spiritual fruit was gathered by
the mind of the ordinary British Tommy from a long account of Israel's
pitching their tents and perpetually moving to places with
extraordinary names.

We had several meetings of chaplains, and I paid a visit to the Deputy
Chaplain General, Bishop Gwynne, at his headquarters in St. Omer. He
was exceedingly kind and full of human interest in the men. The whole
conception of the position of an army chaplain was undergoing a great
and beneficial change. The rules which hitherto had fenced off the
chaplains, as being officers, from easy intercourse with the