plant or in any conceivable way to
undermine the influence of the chaplains. Its large and commodious huts
and tents have been used in thousands of camps for the official Church
Parade services, and in many cases there has been no other suitable
room available. We have counted it a privilege on Sunday mornings to
place our equipment unreservedly at the disposal of all the official
chaplains who desired to use it. We have welcomed the opportunity of
assisting the great and important work the chaplains are doing for the
men of His Majesty's Forces, for the Y.M.C.A. is itself a wing of the
great Christian army, and has sometimes been described as the Church in
action. Apart from the support in men and money it has received from
members of the Churches, the war work of the Red Triangle would have
been impossible. The Y.M.C.A. is not a church, and will never become
one. It administers no sacraments, its membership is confined to one
sex; it discourages in all its branches the holding of meetings that
clash with those of the Churches, and in every possible way each member
unattached is encouraged to join the Church of his choice.

In the course of a striking letter to _The Challenge_ of July 12, 1918,
a correspondent said:--'We turn, for an example, to the Y.M.C.A. Conceal
the unpleasant truth how we may, the outstanding religious performance
of this war in the eyes of the public at large has not been the daily
services in Church--not even the Holy Communion--but the work done in
the Y.M.C.A. huts. It is along those lines that we must travel if we are
to win the world. For the mediaevally-minded, for the intellectually
timid, there is always Rome. But it is not by those that the new England
will be built, and it is the new England we must save for Christ.'

Another writer to the same Anglican journal said it had been stated that
'after the war there would be a holy Roman Church and a holy Y.M.C.A.,
but no more Church of England.' The fact of the matter is the Y.M.C.A.
is not making the work of the Churches unnecessary, but rather it is
giving the ordinary man a new conception of what Christianity really is,
and is thus helping to interpret the churches to the masses, and is
acting as a bridge or a communication trench between the organised
forces of Christianity in the front line, so to speak, and the great
masses away back in reserve, on which they desire to draw. Some people
have spoken sneeringly of 'canteen religion'; the