tered voters. At the last session of the License Court fifteen new applications were made for licenses in the county. Early in January one hundred prominent coke and coal operators assembled at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, to consider the situation. It was reported that the 40,000 men employed in the neighboring mines and coke plants were working only about half-time, and passing the remainder of their days in the saloons spending their war-time checks in drinking bouts. If we are going to have coal-fuel to run our factories and keep us warm next winter-it can be secured only by running the mines at one hundred per cent efficiency. And the mines can be run at one hundred per cent efficiency only by taking booze away from the miners. The situation is so critical that we cannot await the final ratification of the Federal Prohibition Amendment or the passage of prohibition legislation in coal-mining States. The situation must be remedied, and remedied now. Fortunately, that can be done. The Government, and the Government only, has the power to suppress the liquor traffic near mining centers. It is just as important to safeguard our coal production-which is basic and vital to all accomplishment-as it is to protect munition plants and camps of soldiers. The railway tangle is fast being straightened out; and if Uncle Sam will establish dry zones about mining centers the coal will pour forth as fast as the railways can possibly handle it. Action of this sort should be taken if we are to avoid a repetition of last winter's distressing shortage of coal. HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE Friends of the late Hamilton Wright Mabie, for so many years Associate Editor of The Outlook, who have letters from him or personal recollections of incidents connected with his life and work which would be of interest in the preparation of a proposed volume of memoirs, would confer a favor by allowing his literary representatives to see such letters or accounts of such incidents or anecdotes. If they are sent to the editors of this journal, they will be acknowledged, will be carefully preserved, and in due time will be returned. THE CASE DEL SOLDATO In the Italian army, as in the French army, all religious propaganda work is, by mutnal agreement, taboo. This, of course, has not prevented our Young Men's Christian Association from doing an inspiring work in both armies. Contrary to the direct request from the French authorities to the "Y," as the Y. M. C. A. is now familiarly known, to take up work in France, the Italian authorities did not request the "Y" to enter their army. The "Y" itself sought the opportunity of serving our Italian ally. Last September an American mission, headed by Mr. Francis B. Sayre, visited Italy. Acting on its recommendation, General Cadorna, Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Army, accepted our "Y" co-operation. In its Case del Soldato (Soldiers' Homes) the Italian army has a similar system of recreation facilities to the Foyers du Soldat in the French army. At the time of the visit of the American mission one hundred and forty of these case had already been established by Father Giovanni Minnozzi, head chaplain of the Italian army, one of the most broad-minded and forward-looking of the Roman Catholic clergy. Father Minnozzi quickly recognized the immense value of the American co-operation, and our Y. M. C. A. appropriated a very large sum to help him to erect new case. In addition, the "Y" of course put up its own centers. These and the new Case del Soldato are of particular note, because when the German attack put the Italians to flight the invaders overran the country in which practically all of the old case were located; thus, almost overnight, much of the work which Father Minnozzi had labored through many months to establish was swept away. In the Case del Soldato, as well as in the exclusively "Y" centers, American and Italian secretaries work side by side. 66 24 Apr The "Y" budget for the work in the Italian army up next September is $700,000. This is not a large sum when considers that in Italy, as in France, the "Y" has to fur much of its own transportation, of which the largest item is motor transportation. Our work in the Italian army is under the direction of John S. Nollen, formerly President of Lake Forest Colle Lake Forest, Illinois. On March 8 he cabled as follows: D COURAGE ISASTER is the supreme test of courage. It is easy to le courageous in victory. It is not difficult to be courage in action. But to see disaster approaching and be unable do anything to avert it, and still to confront it with an unwhi pering voice, an undarkened face, a brave heart-there is greater revelation of character than this. It was thus that Was ington met the darkest period in the American Revolution—t winter when he was assailed by cabals in Congress undermini his authority, and was compelled to witness the sufferings of L soldiers at Valley Forge, which he could do little to ameliora and nothing to prevent. It was thus that the company of Ame ican sailors a few weeks ago met disaster when, after their sh had been sunk by a torpedo, another American ship found the upon a raft on the Atlantic Ocean, singing, "Where do we from here?" Most of us in life's pilgrimage are called upon to through some valley of the shadow of death. He who tur back in terror is lost; he who goes forward, though it be tol death, is saved. faith. He who does not take the path of truth when it leads For such a crisis is not only a test of courage, it is a test disaster, while error offers him a safe-conduct, does not belie in truth at all. He who has not such a faith in his ideal that dares not only fight for it but to suffer defeat for it has real faith. Courage may be tested any day or every day. B bring forth. True courage is neither exhilarated by success the patient courage which persists in disaster only disaster disheartened by failure. Rudyard Kipling has portrayed it the lines: "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat these two impostors just the same." Paul has portrayed it in the sentence, "I know both how to abased, and I know how to abound." soldiers in the field are meeting it with deathless Such a crisis the American Nation now confronts. Th courage. shall we meet it who must remain at home? preparations for war the day the Lusitania was sunk. Ber It is evident that the Nation blundered in not beginni regrets are idle; reproaches of ourselves or of others are wor than idle; false hope that what seems disaster is only strate preparation for victory may bring us only a greater disappoin ment. We need all our energies to speed up the preparation. to repair our blunder; we have none to waste in idle regrets o idle hopes. Each one of us can do something by his lament tions to foment the spirit of panic. Each one of us by his coage can do something to inspire the spirit of heroism. We do something by what we do or say; we can do more by whe we are. For feeling is contagious and spreads from man to ma and from group to group by a wordless and wireless communcation which no one understands. “Hard pounding, gentlemen," said Wellington at the Batt We of Waterloo. "We will see who can pound the longest." We can, each one of us, do something to inspire the patient courage in our Nation to pound the longest. In 1914 an American Army officer prophesied that this war would last until one side or the other was exhausted. History has justified his prophecy. Each one of us can contribute something to maintain unexhausted the material resources of our Army; each one of us can do something by an exhaustless courage to make the courage of a Nation inexhaustible. God is in his world. He does not fight our battles for us. But he allows us to fight his battles with him. He who has made what was the gallows of the first century a symbol of divine glory to all Christendom can bring a beneficial harvest out of the rain of blood and tears. The answer to Samson's riddle is the answer to the riddle of the universe: Confront with courage the lion who roars against us, and out of his carcass we shall by and by gather honey. But the audacity of greed of power can be conquered only by the courage of selfsacrifice. The crosses hung in innumerable windows by Catholies and Protestants, believers and unbelievers, Jews and Christians, are confessions of faith in the divine spirit of self-sacrifice. If we have the courage of that faith, we are, whether we know it or not, following Him who, despising the shame, endured the cross, and was the victor by his courage of faith in an hour of apparently hopeless defeat and disaster. If we have the courage of that faith, we can pass through the direst disaster singing: "God is our hope and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be moved, And though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same. 66 HOME RULE AND CONSCRIPTION When, on September 19, 1914, the Irish Home Rule Bill received the royal assent, the momentous event was announced in The Outlook under the heading " Irish Home Rule at Last." Three years and a half have passed away, and Home Rule has not gone into effect. Now the ever-present question of Home Rule is seriously involved and complicated with that of conscription for Ireland. A cartoon reproduced on another page represents Lloyd George holding out to Ireland two documents labeled, respectively, "Home Rule" and "Conscription," with the comment, "Both Mean Liberty." Ireland's road to selfgovernment lies as truly in the direction of patriotism as of local control of affairs. The Convention of Irish representatives of different views and parties, under the wise and calm leadership of Sir Horace Plunkett, has struggled with the difficult problem of Home Rule for many months. Its purpose was not to find a basis upon which a majority of the individual members could agree; it was necessary to have agreement between the large political ele ments. The report which has just been made to Parliament by Sir Horace shows simply a deadlock as to such an agreement of sections and parties. It still remains true that the Nationalists will not accept a plan for Home Rule which leaves the protesting Ulster counties out; that the Ulster counties will not consent to any scheme of Home Rule under which they should be governed in local matters by the majority in an Irish Parliament; while a third body of Irishmen will consent to nothing except complete separation from Great Britain. The last class was not officially represented in the Convention, because their political faction, the Sinn Fein, flatly refused to take part. The only agreement which the conference could reach was that of a majority of the members of the Convention as to certain specific measures to be recommended, not that of the different parties to accede to any proposed plan as a whole. The agreement, such as it was, was presented in a series of resolutions which recommended the giving of full powers over internal legislation to an Irish Parliament and the postponement of the difficult matter of the customs and of free trade with England, leaving meanwhile the power of imposing duties with the Imperial Parliament, the proceeds of these duties to be paid into the Irish treasury. Sir Horace Plunkett declared that the difficulties of the Convention lay in two words: Ulster and the Customs. And as the Ulster Unionist delegates were immovably opposed to any form of Home Rule which would compel Ulster to have lot or part in an Irish Parliament, we certainly seem no nearer a workable plan of Home Rule for all Ireland than before. Thus, for the present at least, fails England's attempt to persuade Ireland to solve the Home Rule question for itself. There has never been a day since the Home Rule Bill was signed on which England would not willingly have enacted legislation to put in force the law which Parliament has passed if Ireland could have agreed upon a method. The only reservation would be that Ireland should remain part of the British Empire, and that the Imperial Parliament, in which Ireland should be represented, should rule in the affairs of the Empire. With this in mind, the unreasoning nature of Irish politicians in resisting conscription in Ireland becomes evident. On the one hand, they declare that if there is to be conscription it should be enacted by an Irish Parliament; on the other hand, they refuse to agree among themselves upon any compromise by which an Irish Parliament may be brought into existence. They claim that in the matter of conscription they should have the privilege which Canada and Australia have had-of submitting to their own people a conscription bill. There are obvious reasons why the relation of Ireland to the Imperial Government must for a long time be different from that of the fardistant realms which have practiced self-government for many years. An Irish referendum on conscription before Ireland had begun to govern herself would be a patent absurdity. Meanwhile there are two very cogent reasons why conscrip tion in Ireland is necessary. In the first place, it is a continual confession of moral weakness for the Government of Great Britain to exempt Ireland from the law under which all other portions of the realm of Great Britain and Ireland are called upon to aid in the struggle for world liberty. There is neither legally nor morally any reason why Ireland should not be treated precisely as Wales or Scotland are treated. She is an integral part of the Kingdom; her liberties are in danger as well as those of the other portions of the Kingdom; and her oppression under German domination would be as great. She has long been treated, certainly for the last twenty-five years, not only with substantial justice, but in certain ways with liberality. Special concessions and laws have given to her peasants and tenants advantages which those classes possess nowhere else in Great Britain. Parliament must and should govern Ireland as it governs the rest of the territory now under its rule; to do otherwise would be a confession of impotence. It would react in many ways on the critical struggle in which the nation is now engaged. It is true that, sometimes, not fundamental principle but expediency must govern. But when a practical statesman like the Prime Minister declares that the time has come for applying the conscription law without a special exemption for Ireland, Parliament is justified in accepting that decision as sound and necessary. Evidently the House of Commons thought so, for it passed the second reading of the Government's Man Power Bill by a vote of 323 to 20. It is quite possible that the bill may be modified in its future stages, and, indeed, Mr. Asquith indicated his intention to make such proposals. Mr. Bonar Law declared that the decision was made after mature consideration, and that if the Irish section were rejected the whole bill would fall. He added that the Government was asking Ireland to do nothing which was not asked from the citizens of every belligerent country. In his great speech on the present condition of the war, preluding the introduction of the Man Power Bill, Mr. Lloyd George pointed out that no Home Rule plan ever submitted proposed to deprive the Imperial Parliament of the power of dealing with all questions relating to the army and navy. With reason he declared that it is no longer possible to exclude Ireland from the call to fight for liberty and independence when the emergency now existing makes it necesblood flowed. There was a crash of weapons as the sabers of sary to call out men of fifty and boys of eighteen in other parts the "seconds" swept upward, parting the rapiers. of the realm. Despite the violent and disloyal exclamations of some Irish Members of Parliament-utterances which in a less free country than Great Britain would have led to severe measures by the Government-the better feeling of the Irish people should, and we believe ultimately will, agree with the sentiment announced in 1914 in the declaration of the Irish National party and aptly quoted by Mr. Lloyd George. The declaration says: "It is a war for the high ideals of human government and international relations, and Ireland would be false to her history and to every consideration of honor, good faith, and self-interest did she not willingly bear her share in its burdens and its sacrifices." This is a time when every patriotic Irish civilian, in whatever part of the world he may live, should cry with the thousands of fighting Irish soldiers at the front, so well interpreted on another page by a poet of Irish descent: "Faugh-a-Ballagh! Clear the Way! Let us rid the world of the Prussian menace first. We shall then more easily and more justly be able to settle our differences at home.' For to settle differences at home one must have a home. And slaves of Germany can never have homes in the Irish, the English, the American sense of that word. AN ETCHING WITH CARBOLIC ACID As the Happy Eremite descended the stairway to the subway platform the odor of carbolic acid struck his nostrils. And instantly he was transported sixteen or eighteen years back to an old tavern outside a sleepy German university town. It was a day in midsummer. The tavern stood in the shade of young apple trees that flanked the white macadam road, and in the large assembly-room, with its neatly scrubbed floor and high ceiling, standing and sitting about, was a crowd of men attentively and with the eyes of experts watching a contest that was going on in the open space in the center of the room. There must have been a hundred or more-young men, most of them boys of nineteen and twenty, with here and there a portly elder scattered among them. They were dignified, rather finelooking youngsters most of them, slender, erect in carriage, in no wise made ridiculous by the ridiculous little round caps they wore, some cockily on the back of their heads, some sedately, with the visor over their foreheads. The faces of some of them were bandaged almost beyond recognition; all of them bore scars on their left cheeks or on their chins or through their lips or ears. All but a half-dozen held mugs of beer in their hand; the exceptions bore huge bowls on stems, like exaggerated wineglasses, filled with a pinkish liquid known as "Berlin white beer," sweetened with raspberry juice, The contest they were watching was a duel with swords. The contestants were men like themselves-youths of nine teen or twenty. Chest, neck, and right arm of each were heavily padded. Heavy iron goggles protected their eyes. But no cage covered their faces. For an instant they stood motionless, facing each other no more than five feet apart, with legs spread wide, the right hand bearing the slender, whip-like blade, held high, the left clutching the trouser-strap behind. To the left of each, alert and crouching low, as if ready to spring, was a "second," also heavily padded, with a curving cavalry saber held ready for an instant sweep upward. A surgeon in a white apron and two solemn-looking referees stood by: one in a dark-blue cap with a tiny border of white and lighter blue set with careful precision a little to the left of the crown of his head, the other in a cap of olive green bordered with red and black-each with a ribbon of his cap colors from shoulder to waist across his waistcoat. 66 Legen Sie an !" cried one of the referees. The swords met. "Sie liegen an !" cried the other. "Los!" cried the first. The right arms of the duelists remained upright over their heads, motionless. But with incredible swiftness each willowy sword, propelled from the agile wrist, struck, guarded, struck again, swung to the left, to the right, struck, guarded, struckDown the cheek of one of the contestants two streams of The surgeon, who was stout, with a red, fleshy face with many gashes, ambled forward and examined the wound. Then he shrugged his shoulders and stepped back. The men watching drew forward more attentively. The duelists faced each other once more with swords high. The seconds crouched once more with bare sabers. The room was very still. "Legen Sie an !” "Sie liegen an!" Once more the swords met, and once more there was the swift succession of clicks as the slender stems of steel struck on each other. There were four, five, ten, twelve, twenty lightning. like passes; then again the crash upward of the sabers. It was the other man, this time, who had been struck. The surgeon examined the cut. "Keine Abfuhr !" he announced. A third time the light swords flashed; and a fourth time. The man who had been struck first was bleeding badly. The lobe of his ear, it appeared, was dangling by a thread of flesh. "Abfuhr!" declared the surgeon. The duel was over. "Erich, hold your dog tight!" cried one of the students to another across the room who had a genial-looking Dachs-in leash. The piece of ear might come off. Remember the way Knellenberg lost the tip of his nose.' There was a general laugh. 66 "Unfortunate affair!" added somebody, with mock solem nity. surgeon. The defeated contestant meanwhile nonchalantly took off his goggles and withdrew to an alcove in the rear. He sat down in a chair. "Well, now, we'll see what he did to you," said the cheerfully. "Hier du, Fuchs!" the man in the chair called to a boy of eighteen or so who was watching with large eyes. "Bier her The surgeon laughed. "Mit Strohhalm!" he added. The neophyte brought the mug of beer with the straw. The wounded man took it and sipped it with a bored expression while the surgeon put fifteen stitches through his left cheek and ear, and five through the flesh on his forehead. The surgeon was not gentle. He did not have time to be. In the middle of the room the referees were again calling: Legen Sie an !" 66 "Sie liegen an !" 66 Los!" Another contest was on. The day was warm, and after a while the passionless precision and orderliness of the succeeding contests, the systematic gashing of one handsome head after another, became a little weari some to the Happy Eremite. The trouble was that there was no excitement of real competition, no sense at all of the struggle of spirit behind the agile wrists, of one valiant heart supporting the weaponed hand against a valiant opposing heart; no sense of that reckless flinging of every ounce of spirit and heart into each fierce blow in the passionate desire for the belt and the purse that gives even a prize-fighter a certain moral grandeur. Here there was no place for ardor. A member of one Corps fought a member of another Corps. They had nothing against each other personally. They were settling no score, no rankling "affair of honor," deciding no issue for their Corps or their college, defending no cause, high or low; fighting not even for personal glory. As freshmen in the university each had joine a fighting fraternity. Before he could become a full-fledged Bursche he must receive so and so many stitches through his anatomy. It was not pleasant, but one went through with it because of the friendships one made in the Corps, and because in Government circles the gash on the cheek helped to open many doors. If one fought with skill, well and good. One acquired a certain amount of merit thereby among one's fellowstudents. But that was all. The crucial point of the duel was had winced once under the surgeon's hands. Forthwith he had been expelled from the Corps. For the remainder of his life he would be under the shadow of that expulsion. The Happy Eremite was not at all sure that he might not wince once or twice under that surgeon's clumsy, hurrying fingers. He wondered whether he ought to consider himself a potential pariah. He was an American school-boy, and accustomed to going crazy with enthusiasm at interscholastic games. The absence of any fervor among these undergraduates, scarcely older than he, the absence of any apparent eagerness to have one's Corps mate win for the glory of the Corps, the absence of any sporting zest, puzzled him and chilled him and made him feel lonely and strange in that place. He tried to reason it out, remembering what he had been told about the value of these Mensuren as a test of essential manliness. But somehow that argument did not seem to reach down to certain fundamental conceptions of manliness which had been injected into him with infinite patience and perseverance at school. He decided that the day was too warm to settle questions of that sort, and made his way outside. Something was going on there which he could understand. It was a long-distance automobile race whose course happened to lie down the straight highway on which the tavern stood. A number of the men in colored caps had already preceded him and were straddling chairs or standing about in small groups under the apple trees, with beer-mugs in their hands, watching the cars whiz by. Motor cars were still curiosities in those days, the essence of modernity. The contrast to the perplexing mediævalism indoors was rather refreshing. The cars rushed by at minute intervals to the accompaniment of cheers from the lookers-on and answering greetings from the racers as they dashed past. A driver of one of the closed coaches which had brought the students to the place of meeting found considerable entertainment in dancing to and fro across the highway during the interval between the passing of the cars, for he was very drunk. A car was upon him. He dodged; the car swerved. The man THE CHURCH N the face of the German offensive on the western went under the wheels and the car crashed through one of the coaches into the trunk of an apple tree. There were wild cries. The coach-driver was dead when they picked him up. The occupants of the car had been flung into the beet-field beside the road and were badly hurt. The men in the gay-colored caps gathered round, looking very pale. The contestants from within the tavern, the seconds, the referees, stood about with frightened eyes. The surgeon in his blood-stained apron applied first aid. The injured were packed into one of the coaches which had not been damaged in the crash, the dead man into another. The smashed car remained with its radiator against the trunk of the apple tree, with the smashed coach beside it. Silently the students adjourned again to the tavern. Some one called for beer, and then every one was calling for beer. After the clear warmth without, the air of the room was oppressive, thick with smoke and the odor of carbolic acid. Two new contestants took their places in the center of the room. "Legen Sie an!" "Sie liegen an !” "Los!" Once more there was the click of the willowy blades, once more the blood, once more the crash upward of the sabers of the seconds, once more the shrug of the shoulders of the corpulent surgeon and the careless" Keine Abfuhr !” The Happy Eremite stepped into the subway express he had been waiting for, wondering what exactly the connections were between that cool exhibition of sword play, that disdainful indifference to pain on the part of the contestants and on the part of the men watching, that frightened pallor in the presence of disaster and death, that calm return to beer and skillful swordplay, andThe Lusitania medal, spurlos versenkt, and the seventy-fivemile gun. There was a connection there unquestionably. He offers the subject with his compliments to the psychologists, the living and the yet unborn. AND THE WAR Bible Society, and the Federal Council of the Churches of front, it is well to keep in mind these words of General Christ. Among these existing agencies are the chaplains in the : lines, but by the disintegration of the people back of the lines." Indispensable for maintaining these qualities of mind and heart essential to victory is the Church. In war time the churches have not merely to carry on their usual activities, such as regular worship, ministering to the sick and the distressed, maintaining religious education, and so on, and do this work with forces necessarily depleted by the demands of war, but also to undertake new and unaccustomed work on behalf of soldiers and sailors and the great army of industrial workers that create new communities in a night, as it were; and, above all, to keep uppermost and foremost in the minds of all the people that issue between right and wrong, oppression and liberty, truth and falsehood, unselfishness and self-seeking, the issue between the robber and his victim, which is the issue of the war itself. In this country, in order to perform its functions, the Church has been employing already existing agencies and creating new agencies. To almost everybody the first thought will be that of the Young Men's Christian Association. That is an agency of the Church which has been doing very great service. It must not be forgotten that the "Y" is not something different from the church; it is an arm of the churches. There are other similar existing agencies that the churches are using in time of warlike the Young Women's Christian Association, the American tions and the Federal Council of Churches as a body have created new organizations. Practically every Protestant denomination, as well as the Catholic Church, has created for itself a war-time commission. Each denomination has a distinctive name for its own commission. These various denominational commissions are not superfluous; they are doing an important and imperative work wherever a training camp has been erected and what is veritably a new city has come into being. The churches in the neighborhood of such a military community are of course overwhelmed. They cannot meet the burdens alone. In one such neighboring community one of the ministers asserted that he would rather "the soldiers should go to hell" than that his church should provide amusements for them; and, as a pamphlet of the National Service Commission of the Congre gational Churches says, "they went to hell," for "the military medical examination showed sexual diseases more than sixty times as prevalent as in corresponding cantonments where the churches were organized and busy at this work." It is impossible here to detail at length what is being done by these denominational commissions. It is sufficient to say that never before in their history have the various churches had such an opportunity or responsibility placed upon them, and there is no way by which they can learn of this opportunity and learn how they can meet it so well as through the various denominational commissions. The Report of the General War-Time Commission of the Churches, which has been issued by the Executive Committee of the Federal Council, gives a list of these denominational commissions and a great deal of information about them, and it can 664 CHURCH HEADQUARTERS, CAMP UPTON, LONG ISLAND be had undoubtedly by addressing the Secretary of that Commission at 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City. The General War-Time Commission of the Churches itself has multitudinous duties. It stands for the joint work of thirty denominations, representing some eighteen million communicants. As the war has tended to obliterate class distinctions in the new National Army and to obliterate political distinctions in Congress, so it has tended to obliterate denominational distinctions among the churches. There are still old rivalries. There is still unwillingness on the part of some to work with others who do not believe just as they do; but wherever men have been engaged in the real work of the Church for the Army and the Navy the distinctions that used to seem so great have become small. One of the most remarkable signs of the breaking down of these denominational lines recently occurred at Camp Upton, the National training camp on Long Island, at the opening of the church headquarters on ground adjoining the administrative building of the Young Men's Christian Association, and just opposite the building of the Knights of Columbus. This building, which consists of an attractive chapel, with a parish house adjoining, was erected by a committee representing six different communions: the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Lutherans, and the Congregationalists. It is designed to provide a place for those religious services which require more quiet and detachment than is easily obtainable in the buildings of the Young Men's Christian Association and the Knights of Columbus, which must serve other interests as well. It is open freely, so far as time and space will admit, to all the religious bodies represented in the camp. This fact was impressively recognized in the opening service, in which all the religious interests were represented regular and voluntary chaplains, Protestants, Jews, and Catholics, as well as the Young Men's Christian Association and the Knights of Columbus. The meeting was addressed by the commanding general, who expressed his cordial sympathy with the project, and paid an impressive tribute to the contribution of the religious forces to the morale of his troops. Music was furnished by a choir of the Young Men's Christian Association and the orchestra of the 152d Depot Brigade. The service was largely attended and was most impressive. The Rev. Dr. William Adams Brown, Secretary of the War-Time Commission, presided at the presentation service of "Church Headquarters." The presentation was made by the Rev. Dr. Carson, Presbyterian; the invocation was offered by Chaplain Halligan, Catholic; the responsive readings were led by Mr. Hermon Eldredge, the camp "Y" Director, Christian Church; prayers were offered by the Rev. Dr. Manning, Episcopalian, and by Chaplain Howard, Presbyterian; and the benediction was pronounced by Rabbi Blechman, representing the Jewish Welfare Board. The significant thing about this service, unique so far as we are aware in our history, is the fact that it involved no sacrifice of principle on the part of any of the participants. Since that service was held the building has been in constant use. On one day a visitor found the living room of the parish house that is part of the building used for a service of Christian Scientist soldiers, the main auditorium used by a congregation of Jewish soldiers at worship, and one of the private offices used by a Lutheran minister and a group of Lutheran communicants. On Saturdays one of the rooms has been used by Roman Catholic soldiers for confession-a room, by the way, set apart for those who desire privacy. The Upton building is not a union church; it is a headquarters of the churches where each communion in its own way may make provision for those more intimate needs of the personal religious life which cannot be adequately cared for in a larger gathering which includes all. It is an impressive exhibition of the unity in diversity for which democracy stands. What has been going on in Camp Upton has been repeating itself in various ways in the different cantonments and training stations throughout the country, and, what is more encouraging, in the religious bodies which are represented in the work which has been carried on there. During the months that are past, in quiet and unobtrusive ways, much has been done toward unifying the efforts of the churches in a constructive programme of co-operative work: arranging conferences between the different interests which are at work in different localities; studying special problems, such as that of moral conditions about the camps, the welfare of industrial workers, provision for the religious and social needs of the Negro troops, care of interned aliens, and the like. On this Commission are members of the war commissions of the different Protestant churches, the interdenominational agencies like the Young Men's Christian Association, the Young Women's Christian Association, the American Bible Society, the Young People's Societies, the Sunday-School War Council, as well as the commissions and committees of the Federal Council. It is co-operating with the Catholic War Commission and with the Jewish Welfare Board in matters of common interest, and through its appeal to the local churches is cordially sustaining the Government in great common enterprises like the Red Cross, Food Conservation, and the Liberty Loan. We may hope that the lessons thus being learned in war may not be forgotten in peace, and out of the experience of working to gether for a great cause churchmen may learn to know one another better and find in action that unity which has thus far been sought in vain in doctrine and in worship. |