A Padre in France

by George A. Birmingham

I remember scenes, not without an element of comedy in them, but singularly unedifying. A young lady, prettily dressed and pleasant to look at, recited a poem about a certain “nursie” who in the course of her professional duties tended one “Percy.” In the second verse nursie fell in love with Percy, and, very properly, Percy with her. In the third verse they were married. In the fourth verse we came on nursie nursing (business here by the reciter as if holding a baby) “another little Percy.” The audience shouts with laughter, yells applause, and wants to encore. The hut leader seizes his opportunity, announces prayers, and the men, choking down their giggles over nursie, find themselves singing “When I survey the wondrous cross.”

My own impression is that prayers cannot with decency follow hard on a Y.M.C.A. concert. The mind and soul sides of the red triangle seem to join at an angle which is particularly aggressive. The body side, on the other hand, works in comparatively comfortably with both. Tea and cake have long had a semi-sacramental value in some religious circles, and the steam of cocoa or hot malted milk blends easily with the hot air of a “Nursie-Percy” concert or the serener atmosphere of “Abide with Me.”

Yet I am convinced that the evening-prayers idea is a good one and it can be worked successfully for the benefit of many men. I have seen the large hall of one of those Y.M.C.A. huts well filled night after night for evening prayers, and those were not only men who remained in the hall drinking tea or playing games, but many others who came in specially for prayers. A choir gathered round the piano, eager to sing the evening hymn. The hush during the saying of a few simple prayers was unmistakably devotional. It was impossible to doubt that when the benediction fell upon those bowed heads there did abide something of the peace which passeth all understanding and that hearts were lifted up unto the Lord.

There was, unfortunately, a certain amount of jealousy at one time between the Y.M.C.A. workers and the recognised army chaplains. I think that this is passing away. But when I first went to France the relations between the two organisations in no way suggested the ointment which ran down Aaron’s beard to the skirts of his garment, the Psalmist’s symbol of the unity in which brethren dwelt together.

The Y.M.C.A. workers were perhaps a little prickly. The men among them, often Free Church ministers, seemed on the lookout for the sort of snubs which Nonconformists often receive from the Anglican clergy at home. The chaplains, especially the Church of England chaplains, appeared to think that they ought to conduct all religious services in the Y.M.C.A. huts. This was unreasonable. If the Church of England had been awake to her opportunity in the early days of the war she could have built church huts all over northern France and run them on her own lines. She missed her chance, not having among her leaders any man of the energy and foresight of Sir A. Yapp.

The Church Army has done much during the last years; but it has been the making up of leeway. The Church once might have occupied the position held by the Y.M.C.A. She failed to rise to the occasion. Her officers, the military chaplains, had no fair cause of complaint when they found that they could not straightway enter into the fruits of other men’s labour.

But the little jealousy which existed between the chaplains and the Y.M.C.A. was passing away while I was in France, has now, perhaps, entirely disappeared. The war has done little good, that I ever could discover, to any one, but it has delivered the souls of the Church of England clergy who went out to France from the worst form of ecclesiastical snobbery. There are few of those who tried to work in the army who preserve the spirit of social superiority which has had a good deal to do with the dislike of the Church, which has been I imagine, a much more effective cause of “our unhappy divisions” than any of the doctrines men have professed to quarrel about.

And the Y.M.C.A. workers are less aggressively prickly than they used to be. The army authorities have weeded out a good many of the original men workers, young students from Free Church theological colleges, and put them into khaki. Their places have been taken by older men, of much larger experience of life, less keen on making good the position of a particular religious denomination. They are often glad to hand over their strictly religious duties to any chaplain who will do them efficiently.

The women workers, a far more numerous class, never were so difficult, from the Church of England chaplain’s point of view, as the men. They are, in the fullest sense, voluntary workers. They even pay all their own expense, lodging, board, and travelling. They must be women of independent means. I do not know why it is, but well-off people are seldom as eager about emphasising sectarian differences as those who have to work for small incomes. Perhaps they have more chance of getting interested in other things.

It is, I fear, true that the decay of the sectarian—that is to say undenominational—spirit in the Y.M.C.A. has resulted in a certain blurring of the “soul” side of the red triangle. This has been a cause of uneasiness to the society’s authorities at home, and various efforts have been made to stimulate the spiritual work of the huts and to inquire into the causes of its failure. I am inclined to think that the matter is quite easily understood. There is less aggressive religiosity in Y.M.C.A. huts than there used to be, because the society is more and more drawing its workers from a class which instinctively shrinks from slapping a strange man heartily on the back and greeting him with the inquiry—“Tommy, how’s your soul?” There is no need for anxiety about the really religious work of the huts. That in most places is being done.