me, and was still alive. I used
to expect that trouble of some sort would arise, but none ever did.
Perhaps the authorities were merciful to me because I made no
attempt to propagate my opinions; which indeed are scarcely opinions.
I should not dream of denying that inoculation of every known kind is
excellent for other people, and ought to be rigorously enforced on
them. My only strong feeling is that I should escape.

My medical examination was a much more rigorous and unpleasant
business than my interview--I can scarcely call this an
examination--with my particular chief, the Chaplain-General. He
appeared to be satisfied by previous inquiries that I was a fit and
proper person--or as little unfit as could reasonably be hoped--to
minister to soldiers in France. He took down my answers to half a
dozen questions on a sheet of paper which somebody afterwards must
have lost, for I had to answer the same questions again by letter
after I got to France.

Up to the point of my interview and examination in London, the
negotiations with regard to my commission as Chaplain to the Forces
were conducted with dignified deliberation. My letters were answered
a fortnight or so after they were received. There was no sense of
urgency or hurry. We might have been corresponding about a monument
to be erected at a remote date to some one still alive and quite
young. This, if slightly irritating, gave me a feeling of great
confidence in the Chaplains' Department of the War Office. It was
evidently a body which worked methodically, carefully, and with due
consideration of every step it took. Its affairs were likely to prove
efficiently organised. I looked forward to finding myself part of a
machine which ran smoothly, whose every cog fitted exactly into the
slot designed for it. No part of the War Office was likely at the
moment to adopt a German motto; but the Chaplains' Department was
plainly inspired by the spirit of Goethe's _Ohne haste, ohne raste_.

I have heard other men complain that the Department is dilatory, not
merely deliberate, and that it is often impossible to get an answer
to a letter at all. There is a story told of a man who wrote offering
his services as chaplain, wrote again after a decent interval,
continued to write for many months, and finally received, by way of
reply, a nice little tract--not even on patience, but on conversion.
I do not know whether that story is true or not. No tract was ever
sent to me, an