h teaching," it is no wonder that he stands a bit away from it.
I in no way mean to suggest that all religion in the army is of this
kind. But the broadly indisputable result of the preaching to which
our men have been subjected is this: They have come to regard
religion as an obscure and difficult subject in which a few people
with eccentric tastes are interested, but which simple men had better
leave alone. And the tragedy lies in the fact that the very men who
think and speak thus about religion have in them something very like
the spirit of Christ.

The padres themselves, the best and most earnest of them, are
painfully aware that the ordinary pulpit sermon is remote, utterly
and hopelessly, from the lives of the men, is in fact a so many times
repeated essay on tithes. And the padres, again the best of them, are
not content to be just padres. They feel that they ought to have a
message to deliver, that they have one if only they can disentangle
it from the unrealities which have somehow got coiled up with it.
All the odd little eccentricities in the form of service and the
recent fashion of spicing sermons with unexpected swear-words are
just pathetic efforts to wriggle out of the clothes of ecclesiastical
propriety.

But something more is wanted. It is of little avail to hand round
cigarettes before reading the first lesson, or to say that God isn't
a bloody fool, unless some connection can be established between the
religion which the men have and the religion which Christ taught.

There is another story which should be told for the sake of the light
it gives on the way men regard the padres, or used to regard them.
They are less inclined to this view now.

A chaplain, wandering about behind the lines, found a group of men
and sat down among them. He chatted for a while. Then one of the men
said "Beg pardon, sir, but do you know who we are?" The chaplain did
not. "I thought not, sir," said the man. "If you did you wouldn't
stay. We're prisoners, sir, waiting to be sent off for Field
Punishment No. 1."

The story often finishes at that point, leaving it to be supposed
that the padre was unpleasantly surprised at finding himself on
friendly terms with sinners, but there is a version sometimes told
which gives the padre's answer. "It's where I ought to be."

I am not, I hope, over-sanguine, but I think that men are beginning
to realise that the padre is not a supernumerary member of the
officers' mess, nor c