have heard more than one chaplain repining because the killing was not to go on until a few German towns had been smashed and our last thing in gas had had a fair innings. No doubt the notion was good, in a way. If the parson in war was to make the men mind what he said he must not stand too coldly aloof from "the men's point of view": he must lay his mind close up alongside theirs, so as to get a hold of their souls. It sounds all right; the wisdom of the serpent has been bidden to back up the labours of the dove. And yet the men, however nice they might be to the chaplain himself, would presently say to each other in private that "Charlie came it too thick," while still allowing that he was a "proper good sort." They felt there was something or other--they could not tell what--which he might have been and which he was not. They could talk lyddite and ammonal well enough for themselves, but, surprising to say, they secretly wanted a change from themselves; had the parsons really nothing to say of their own about this noisome mess in which the good old world seemed to be foundering? The relatively heathen English were only groping about to find out what it was that they missed; the Scots, who have always had theology for a national hobby, made nearer approaches to being articulate. Part of a famous division of Highland infantry were given one day, as a special treat, a harangue by one of the most highly reputed of chaplains. This spell-binder preached like a tempest--the old war-sermon, all God of Hosts and chariots of wrath and laying His rod on the back of His foes, and other thunderous sounds such as were then reverberating, no doubt, throughout the best churches in Berlin. In the south-western postal district of London, too, his cyclone might have had a distinguished success at the time. As soon as the rumbling died away one of the hard-bitten kilted sergeants leant across to another and quoted dourly: "A great and strong wind, but the Lorrd was not in the wind." III