THE CLERGY AND MILITARY SERVICE;
[To THE EDITOR. OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
$m,—May I be allowed to suggest to your correspondent Mr. Ellis that, it is time that the cold light of fact was let in upon the subject of the clergy and combatant service? We are understood to be fighting this war to maintain great principles, and one of these is that the things of the. Spirit shall not be crushed out of existence. Never was there a greater need of a class of men whose business it is to keep alive the remembrance of this. But we do not ask that this principle shall be so applied as to give the clergy, or any one else, a pretext for saving their own skins, and a very little reflection will show that it is not so employed. I will boldly assert that there are as many of the able-bodied clergy who either are or have been in the fighting zone as there are of any other class of men. Ever since the beginning of the war there has been a continuous stream of clergy offering themselves as chaplains for the forces, and when these men get to the trenches they have to face danger as much as any one else. Many a parish magazine has already contained the melancholy proofs of this, and those of us whose work brings them into contact with large numbers of the younger clergy can now recall with sadness a long list of clerical friends of whom some have been killed and some wounded or disabled, it may be for life. I can assure your correspondent that when we read such letters as his we can do our share of "boiling " at the oblivion of all this which runs through them. Nor does he mend his case by drawing pictures, as though they were typical, of curates selling wool at bazaars. I should like to challenge him to send to you, Sir, privately, the particulars of any instances of this which he has known recently. I should probably be pretty safe in undertaking to set off against each an ordained student of this College with a military decoration (and there is a V.C. amongst them). The call for men to do spiritual work with the forces is continuous, and if the Bishops had made the fatal error of sending forth the clergy as combatants, we should now be unable to answer that call, and for a mess of cheap popularity in certain quarters should have sold our power to give the nation the service it needs from us. As a soldier put it. " Parsons must still stick to their job." This is the verdict which in the end will stand.—I am, Sir, C. T. l)oiosr. Theological College, Salisbury.
Previous page
