REVOLT AGAINST CHURCH PARADE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7915, 26 September 1911, Page 6

REVOLT AGAINST CHURCH PARADE

: Should soldiers he compelled to attend church on Sunday—that is to say. should they be marched there in company with their officers, whether they want to.:go to church or net? This question lias attracted public attention in Germany, owing' to the demonstration against compulsory church parade recently made by three officers and 150 men of the Eliza-beth-Guard regiment at Charlottenburg. The order was given for a certain , number of the men to attend the garrison church, but when the sermon came, a sermon which was long and prosy and controversial, three of the officers marched out at the, head of their men. The ■"Frankfurter Zeitung” thinks some of the men and officers were Catholics, who had already been to church, and naturally objected to ; a parade ,march and d long service in the Protestant chapel. However that mav be, the men had been up at C o’clock all the week hard at work at the manoeuvres, and they wanted their Sunday off. A Prussian officer writing in the "Zeitung” suggests that the German soldier should be given B free choice in tho matter. A Home paper wonders how this would work out in an ordinary line regiment in England, and suspects that church parade in full muform is hardly more; popular there. _lt might end in very few of the men going to church. In France there is no question of church service for soldiers. No French soldier is ever, marched to Mass, although not a few soldiers in uniform may be seen in the churches of Paris on Sunday. . '