THE CHURCH AND THE ARMY. 



183 



circumstances. He is still paid for it. He still has his Church 

 or his Church Army Hut, but no one any longer expects that it is 

 all right. On the contrary, there is a general feeling that the 

 parsons have somehow messed their job. They have not seen 

 after it as they should. ' 



The feeling is much the same as that which most men have 

 about politicians and statesmen. Once we were all fairly well 

 content to leave the management of the nation's affairs to those 

 who made a business of such matters. That was their job. 

 Occasionally, in a spirit of fair play, after one party had enjoyed 

 an innings, we gave the other party a chance. We did not expect 

 that anything very much, either good or bad, would come of 

 a change of Government. So long as nobody interfered with 

 our beer and tobacco we were not to be aroused to enthusiasm 

 or resentment. There was a class of politicians, just as there was 

 a class of parsons, and politics was their job. They were paid for 

 it, and we supposed it was all right. Since the war began, it has 

 come home to us that so far from being all right, this business of 

 politics has been all wrong. The politicians have muddled their 

 job badly, and we are beginning to be seriously angry with them. 



The comparison breaks down, of course. All comparisons 

 break down somewhere. Our discontent with politicians, who 

 have managed our affairs for us, leads to efforts to get rid of 

 particular men or particular parties and put others in their place. 

 Hardly anyone thinks that we should get better religion or more 

 of it by meting out to the present Archbishop of Canterbury 

 the punishment inflicted on Laud. We grumble about the 

 activities of this and that prelate or the way in which the Chaplain 

 General manages his department, but we recognize that the 

 trouble goes deeper. It is the Church which has failed, or seems 

 to have failed, not those who are the leaders of the Church at the 

 moment. Nor is there the smallest sign of any general desire 

 to substitute one Church for another. There is not going to be 

 a Roman Catholic Revival any more than an Anglican or a Pro- 

 testant Revival. The failure of the Anglican episcopate to make 

 plain the path of righteousness in war, and to justify the ways of 

 God to men, is in no way more complete than the impotent silence 

 of the Papacy. It is perhaps only patriotic prejudice which leads 

 us to suppose that our own " war religion is any more Christlike 

 than that of the German Lutheran. If the English Church has 

 failed to make Christians of Englishmen — I am not sure that it 

 has — it can scarcely be claimed that the Roman Church has 



