MILITARY CHAPLAINS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1402, 30 March 1912, Page 6

MILITARY CHAPLAINS.

Important questions as to the duties and status of military chaplains in the new defence schemo are raised by Mr. Allen Bell, formerly connected with the Waikato Regiment, in a memorandum which _ we printed in yesterday's issue. Tho chaplains' department has lately been reorganised and placed on a more satisfactory basis, but in any case Mr. Bell largely discounts the value of his criticism by the unsympathetic and exaggerated language in which it is stated. A chaplain of the right stamp only cares about rank and titles in so far as they may bo of assistance to him in the performance of his duty, but Mr. Bell is very much mistaken if he thinks that clergy men who are told off for work in our military camps will consent to be placed in the position of mere organisers of entertainments, amusements, and regimental institutes, however useful such things may be. The sort of clergyman who would acquiesce in this narrow view of his office is just the sort of man that a military chaplain should not be, for the main justification of a chaplain's department is based on the big broad fact that man has a spiritual and moral side to his nature, and that in becoming a citizen soldier ho does not forthwith become some abnormal being who has suddenly divested himself of his higher instincts. A chaplain's first and foremost duty is to provide for the spiritual needs of the troops, and as the Hev. W. E. Gillam, vicar of St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Auckland, states in his dignified and sensible reply to Mr. Bell, parents ■ will not be satisfied unless the moral and religious welfare of the lads is looked after. It is quite' true that men, and especially young' men, do not wear their hearts on their sleeves, and most of them endeavour to conceal their deeper and more sacred feelings under a superficial display of indifference; but deep down in the human heart, embedded in tho very foundations of our being, are to be found those permanent religious instincts which havo played such a wonderful part in the evolution of the race from tho very dawn of human _ history. The main duty of the military chaplain is to do his best to train and develop in our young citizen soldiers these fundamental instincts on .right lines, and as opportunity offers. The influence for good of tho ideal chaplain cannot be over-estimated, and he will probably find time, in addition to his higher duties, to help to make camp life interesting and attractive by providing wholesome recreation for the men when they are off duty. Not every clergyman is by nature fitted for the work of a chaplain, and the authorities of Church and State should endeavour to sea that the most suitable men available should be selected for the position, and that they should be given every reasonable facility for the performance of their duties in the best possible way.