Onward Christian Soldiers

In 1917 chaplains got less attention from the Army than cooks. Few cantonments had chapels, and chaplains got neither religious equipment nor other assistance. Officers could assign the chaplains to all sorts of chores--tending the canteen, courts-martial, postmaster, athletic or entertainment director, checking up on mess purchases. Many colonels made virtual errand boys of their chaplains.

Today all this is changed--partly because many church groups protested World War I indignities, partly because few ministers would volunteer if it meant the 1917 kind of odd jobs. In this war chaplains can concentrate on spiritual work, and, instead of holding services in mess halls and "Y" huts, they will have a $21,220 chapel for every post (22 in the biggest camps), each seating 400 soldiers, equipped with altar, electric organ, slant roof, steeple. The altars are being built on tracks, so they can be slid back when the chapels are used for other purposes. Ground for the first of these new chapels was broken last fortnight at Arlington, Va.

Relieved of their chores, chaplains besides writing sermons and holding services will have as their principal jobs trying to make friends with the men of their regiments, trying to lead them in wholesome amusements, visiting them when they are sick, helping to get them out of jail, writing to their families on unpleasant occasions, and, if it comes to that, they will also have the privilege (but not the obligation) of going into battle with them and ministering to them while they die.*

The chaplain's official training manual five times tells them they must have a sense of humor. "If you don't have a sense of humor when you get in the Army," said a chaplain in Texas last week, "the boys give it to you."

Changed also from 1918 is the status of religious and welfare organizations. Then they worked in the camps themselves. Now the Army's Morale Division, aided by the chaplains, will manage matters inside the posts. But cooperating closely in off-the-reservation work are the Government's National Defense Council, headed by Episcopal Layman Charles Phelps Taft (son of the 27th President), and the inter-faith United Services Organizations for National Defense (U.S.O.), which will combine the war service work of the Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A., National Catholic Community Service, Jewish Welfare Board, National Travelers Aid Association, Salvation Army.

The Government will spend some $15,000,000 on 350 clubhouses outside the camps for soldiers' recreation. Next month U.S.O. will start a drive for $10,765,000 to pay for running these buildings. A soldier's uniform will be his ticket to the clubhouses, and soldiers are to have a say in their running.

Typical U.S.O. clubhouse will be far swanker than the barren "Y" and K. of C. huts of World War I. It will have lounge rooms, free newspapers and magazines, pianos, radios, photographic darkrooms (one out of every two draftees has some kind of camera), facilities for dances, forums, hobby clubs, amateur dramatics. Only charge it is promised will be for food, cigarets and soft drinks at the snack bar.

Religion is already swinging into action on a third major front--churches in town near the Army posts. There Protestants have organized a Christian Commission for Camp Communities. Its job: to get local pastors working smoothly with the Army, make local churches feel it is their job to help look after soldiers on leave.

In London, Ont. the Rev. T. G. Wallace let loose to his parishioners. Reminding them that he is no missionary, he refused to go from door to door, as cheerful as a Fuller Brush man, begging them to come to church. "The people of this community are classified as Christians," said he, "and I am not sent here to introduce Christianity for the first time."

* Twenty-three U. S. chaplains were killed in World War I, many of them in battle. Chaplains are noncombatants, but Chief of Chaplains William R. Arnold, asked last week "What would you do if an enemy soldier should attack you?", squared his jaw and said: "I'd stick my dukes up and protect myself. It would be my duty to do it. A dead man can't help anybody."

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