G. H. Q.

isations-E.F.C. Comforts-Studying t

this was not in answer to a call for spiritual leaders to combat a special degree of wickedness. Quite the contrary. The Army was a very well-behaved, sober-minded institution on the whole, as if it recognised the solemnity of its task and fitted its conduc

ickedness. His trouble was rather in the other direction. "I don't see how I can have the 'front' to prea

ill face any danger that comes in the way of duty, but will not go looking for danger in a spirit of bravado. The padre could make two mistakes. He could take things too easily and just be a parson available to conduct Divine service when he was wanted to; or he could try to do too much, to interfere too much and become a nuisance in the fig

or him. But he was rarely "At home." He wandered all over the district, picking up a meal here and there and sleeping wherever he found himself after dinner. At first it was thought to b

ts, except the padres of the Church of England, who had a separate organisation under a Deputy Chaplain General, Bishop Gwynne, who had been Bishop of Khartoum before the war. What was the exact reason for the division of authority I could never quite

vine services, but was a genuinely spiritual man withal. There was credited to one the aphorism that the men did

Service almost every Sunday at Montreuil, but most of the Staff Officers followed the maxim "laborare est

ot expected to make too much concession to "the cloth" in the way of con

in a sporting fashion. The conversation had turned on Lord Roberts' campaign before the war to try to arouse the

rly lacking in clearness of argument and persuasiveness seeing that, kno

to have been singularly lacking in clearness of argument and persuasiveness for nearly 2,000 years,

arers will not listen. Lord Roberts' name was venerated by most officers, and the Army was glad that when the t

mless recreation as the best missionary work. G.H.Q. recognised the Y.M.C.A., the Church Army and the Salvation Army as semi-religious agencies, and all these bodies did excellent work in providing rest huts

of whose intentions was obvious but who had "a marked moral strabismus," as a Scots doctor pawkily observed. She wanted to form an organisation of ladies (and said she could do so) to meet soldiers at the ports of disembarkation and take

he officer thus had never to wander to strange places. From the Expeditionary Force Canteens during the greater part of the time you could buy cigars, cigarettes, chocolate, sweets, all kinds of canned goods and so on, duty free, and at prices far lower

ter, of jam, of tea, milk and sugar; a moderate supply of tobacco and cigarettes; a small ration of rum. I know from my own experience that one could live excellently on the men's rations. Nothin

cement conducted by Sir Alexander W. Prince and Colonel F. Benson, both of whom patriotically gave their services. In due course the organisation took on various other functions, but its canteen business alone made it by far the biggest shopping concern in the w

record week was that ending March 16th, 1918, just prior to the great German offensive, when 3,643 tons of canteen supplies were landed, and a turno

ures of total sales at

ar ende

1915 3

, 1915 1

916 48,

, 1916 1

917 150

, 1917 1

918 223

, 1918 2

f December, 19

to a strict minimum. By a happy decision prices for the same goods were the same on every Front. You bought a tin of tobacco at Baghdad for the same price as at Boulogn

came that what supplies did come over were largely absorbed at Base and on Lines of Communication, and the men in the front line got very little. The Q.M.G. got rid of that complaint very simply. An order went out that: (1) certain luxuries which were in very short supply should go only to front

roubles. Perhaps G.H.Q. remembered a much earlier B.E.F. in Flanders in the reign of Henry VIII., which did very badly until that great War Minister, Cardinal Wolsey, took the matter of supplies in hand and saw that the Army was well supplied not only with arrows but with beef and beer. Thereafter that early B.E.F. retrieved

eetotalism and in part only governed by shipping considerations. If so the teetotallers

somewhat with the comfort of its majority. The average American was not a teetotaller and did not object to wine and beer or even an occasional whisky. At his own canteens he had to be. The French of course