A CHURCHMEN'S BATTALION.
[TO TEE EDITOR OP TEE " SPECTATOR."]
Sra,—Your correspondent " J." (Spectator, February 19th) has written a letter which is of real service to all those who are concerned with the moral of our country. His last paragraph ought to give us furiously to think, and I would not trouble you with a letter unless it were to bring to the notice both of him and of your readers a very cogent example of a battalion which has been recruited upon the lines he suggests. The Church Lads' Brigade has raised just such a battalion from its ranks. In September, 1914, the War Office granted the C.L.B., at the request of Field-Marshal Lord Grenfell, its Governor and Commandant, permission to raise a special battalion. The outcome of this is the 16th (S) Battalion King's Royal Rifle Corps (C.L.B.), which is now serving in the trenches, while its depot companies are being trained at Banbury. The battalion was quartered at Denham, moved to Bexhill, Clipstone, and Salisbury before going to the front. The raison d'ttre was Churchmanship. Without wearying your readers with unnecessary details, it may be well to say that it had its own Chaplain and Church Hut, frequent celebrations of the Holy Communion, a daily silence for morning and evening prayers—at the request of its members—and its usual parades were opened with the C.L.B. Parade Service. The result has been exactly what your correspondent prognosti- cates. There has been an entire absence of crime, even in the -military sense. Wherever the battalion was quartered, it earned the highest commendation alike from the clergy and such bodies as Urban District Councils, &c. Letters testifying to the good conduct of the men are in the possession of Head- quarters. At the same time, the battalion proved itself singularly efficient from a milite.,7 point of view, and was distinguished by taking the top place in its division in musketry. Since it has been in the trenches it has proved itself, and already won the corn- raende.'..ion of the General under whose command it is serving.
A Churchmen's battalion is a fact, and, I venture to think, a clinching argument in favour of that sort of spiritual moral which your correspondent advocates. Its promoters would be only too glad to see similar battalions formed by the Roman Catholics, Nonconformists, and Jews, who have Lads' Brigades, and therefore the necessary organization at hand.—I am, Sir [We should greatly like to see a Wesleyan battalion, and also one of Independents—i.e., Congregationalists. The latter would have an hereditary right to be called " The Ironsides." " The Maccabees " would be a fitting name for a Jewish battalion of Fusiliers or Rifles. In the Southern Irish regiments we already have Roman Catholic battalions.—ED. Spectator.]
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