The custom of what is known in the army as Church Parade affords another instance of the unreasonable curtailments of individual liberty that are still regarded as essential to discipline. A soldier is drummed to church just as he is drummed to the drill-ground or the battle-field. His presence in church is a matter of compulsion, not of choice or conviction; and the general principle that such attendance is valueless unless it is voluntary is waived in his case as in that of very young children, with whom, in this respect, he is placed on a par. If we inquire for the origin of the practice, we shall probably find it in certain old Saxon and imperial articles of war, which show that the prayers of the military were formerly regarded as equally efficacious with their swords in obtaining victories over their enemies; and therefore as a very necessary part of their duty.[277] The American articles of war, since 1806, enact that ‘it is earnestly recommended to all officers and soldiers to attend divine service,’ thus obviating in a reasonable way all the evils inevitably connected with a purely compulsory, and therefore humiliating, church parade.[278] It may be that these restrictions of a soldier’s liberty are necessary; but if they are, and if, as Lord Macaulay says, soldiers must, ‘for the sake of public freedom, in the midst of public freedom, be placed under a despotic rule,’ ‘must be subject to a sharper penal code and to a more stringent code of procedure than are administered by the ordinary tribunals,’ so that acts, innocent in the citizen or only punished slightly, become crimes, capitally punishable, when committed by them, then at least we need no longer be astonished that it should be almost as difficult to entrap a recruit as to catch a criminal.