Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/386

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336
DISTINGUISHED CHURCHMEN

commissioned also. In the Army it is estimated that the Church has no less than sixty-eight per cent. of adherents, the Roman Catholics eighteen per cent., Presbyterians seven per cent., Wesleyans five per cent., and other Protestants one per cent. It should be made clear, I think, that any soldier has the fullest liberty of conscience, and he can go where he likes to Church. There are Jewish ministers, for instance, employed for the benefit of those of the Jewish faith, and the Jewish soldiers are allowed to observe their fasts. The chaplains are distributed among the various stations, the general rule being that where there is a garrison of above 1,000 men there you find a commissioned chaplain. At the present moment there are two at the Royal College, Sandhurst, and at the Duke of York's School, and there are, of course, always many chaplains abroad at large stations like Gibraltar, Malta, the West Indies, Egypt, Halifax, Nova Scotia and Hong-Kong. Just now a great many of our chaplains are in South Africa with the soldiers in the field. There are, I believe, twenty commissioned chaplains, and these besides seven or eight on probation and very many other clergy. In small garrisons the parochial clergy are employed in return for capitation fees—i.e., so much per head. Some hundreds of these civil clergymen, as they are called, are so employed, including about fifty in South Africa.”

“How do the chaplains rank in the Army?”