AT THE THREE DRUMS PULPIT.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 247, 21 November 1914, Page 8

AT THE THREE DRUMS PULPIT.

THE CHURCH MILITANT ON THE FIELDS OF WAR.

" There is one military function of our Army that they do not have in the French forces, and that arouses considerable though, respectful curiosity among the French p.eople who live in the neighbourhood of the groat English base camps that exist in France just now," writes Mr G. Ward Price, the Paris correspondent of the "Daily Mail," "and that, is Sunday, morning service. Familiar though the scene is in England, it takes on an added significance here on foreign soil. A Martial Pulpit. "It is ten o'clock on Sunday mornings From the different lines of the far-stretching camp regular columns begin to march to the place on the open ground abound where . stand already three drums draped with a Union Jack that makes a brilliant splash of colour against the grass and among the yellowbrown uniforms. Bound this martial pulpit the soldiers form a hollow square, facing inwards towards, the chaplain, who, with cassock and surplice and stole fluttering oddly in the breeze, stands by the piled drums. '' There is something incogruous about his dress that is hard to locate at first until you notice that it is his boots, thick-soled, stout campaigning boots, with puttees above, which, seen now and then under the hem of his cassock, make against it a curious contrast of clumsiness with grace. '' Close to the stands the general with a little group of officers of 'his staff. When all the troops have marched into position and stand there at ease, he grves a glance round and then turns his eyes to the chaplain. Immediately the first words of Morning Prayer, read in a strong, manly voice, ring out—well known and yet sounding so strangely here and half their sonorous resonance lost in the open air.

"Bareheaded and with faces bowed the men follow the words reverently, and there is a note of sincerity in the gruff bass 'Amen' such as not many churches hear in peace time. A Vigorous Address.

"Then come the Psalms, read in alternative verses by chaplain aiid congregation. And then a brief, vigorous address—not a sermon, in the sense of a religious essay, but the simple, earnest words of a strong, earnest, sympathetic man speaking to ' wen who are going many of them to wounds and death, all of them to perils and hardships. Sometimes the men are ordered to sit down on the grass for this address, but their attention does not flag for all that. "It is only now, with the great elementary issue of life and death hanging so close over the head of every one of them, that these things begin to take on new values. They have been thinking, these private soldiers, whose language can sometimes almost scorch the barrack-room —and there are a lot §f things, some of which they hardly understand, that they want to hear about. The chaplain knows it. He has studied the heart of the soldier, and he knows that without flinching it is nevertheless made a little more impressionable by Ifhe neighbourhood of a death that cannot, be denied. Khaki Host Sings. "Theu there are, more,.prayers and the Benediction, for which every head is bowed, and then, on the note given by the band, if there is one, or set by a powerful singer if not, the whole khaki host rolls out in its deep bass voice of unison the first verse of ,'God Save the King.' There is a thrill at that moment that completes rather than effaces the gentler emotions that have gone before. And the French people standing in an interested group of onlookers a little distance away take off their hats instinctively."