Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1909 — MORALS IN U. S. ARMY [ARTICLE]

MORALS IN U. S. ARMY

Chaplain at Fort Walla Walla Says They Demand Legislative Action Walla Walla, Wash., April 12. In a philllpic delivered to members of the Fourteenth United States cavalry, Chaplain Francis P. Joyce denounced the morals existing in the army and called for legislative action by the national government making religious instruction compulsory among soldiers and fixing some means whereby credit for attendance on divine service would be given, The philllpic has created a great sensation among soldiers at Fort Walla Walla. Chaplain Joyce charged that with no regulations to force the soldier to attend divine service, atheism, scepticism and agnosticism prevail throughout the rank and file. Continuing he said: “I Bpeak in appeal foV the dignity of the trumpet calls, in appeal for some legislation whose inducements may lead enlisted men toward God. “Would that oUr legislators could realize that present conditions, take off the tariff in hell upon a soldier’s soul; would to God that every man in this army could keep in his mirid a picture of the apostate. Julian, when, dying upon the field of battle, he threw a handful bf his blood toward heaven and uttered the famous blasphemy, ‘Thou bast conquered, O Gallllean’—the sort of death that eyery regular should lament because he wears a uniform made sacred by genius, the patriotism, the faith of Washington.”