WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENCE.
By JOHN D. BRADLEY
One Sunday Bill Defeated in Congress.
UNFAVORABLE action has just been taken in Congress on one of the two measures in behalf of enforced Sunday observance which the International Reform Bureau has had introduced into Congress at the present session, and which it has persistently sought for some years to get enacted into law. The measure in question is entitled, "A bill to prevent Sunday banking in post-offices and the handling of money orders and registered letters," and provides "that the issuing and paying of money orders, and the registering of letters and delivery of registered mail on Sundays, is hereby prohibited in the mail service of the United States." On February 22, it was announced that the Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads of the Senate had ordered an adverse report on this measure. By this action of the Senate Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads this measure is no doubt killed for this session of Congress, but of course it will appear at the next session. The Fifty-ninth Congress had not been in session two weeks before this measure, which has been introduced in all the recent Congresses, had been introduced in the Senate by Senator Penrose of Pennsylvania, and scarcely more than two days before it had been introduced in the House by Congressman Sibley of the same state. The measure is designed by the Reform Bureau as an entering wedge for further prohibition of Sunday work in government departments. This measure has been energetically opposed by the Religious Liberty Bureau at Washington, which is maintained to oppose Sunday and other religious legislation, and to it is no doubt due much credit for the action of the Senate Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads. The officers of this bureau have corresponded with the members of the committee in opposition to the measure, and have refreshed their memory with reference to the historic and truly-American precedent in this matter afforded by the nobler report on Sunday mails, rendered by the Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads of the Senate in 1829. The Appointment of Chaplains Unconstitutional.
IN the course of a rather unusual debate in the United States Senate, on February 7, between Senators Patterson and Bailey, over the eternal issue between the individual and his organized fellows, the fact was emphasized by Senator Bailey, that in appointing chaplains there is a violation of that provision of the Constitution which declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." A feature of the debate was Senator Patterson's relations with the President, and to demonstrate that he was enjoying no favor or patronage from the President, he declared that during his five years in the Senate he had "never requested the President to make a single appointment, with one exception," and that had been refused. He stated the matter thus: Last fall I sent him a letter from Denver, asking him to appoint a most excellent young Episcopalian clergyman to a vacant chaplaincy in a regiment in the Philippines. . . . I was almost immediately and politely informed that the chaplain whose resignation created the vacancy, was a Methodist, and that one of that denomination would be selected for his place. The result of it was, Mr. Eustis is still performing the duties of pastor of a Denver church, and I suppose that some good Methodist is now drawing the salary and performing the duties of a chaplain. Referring to this matter in the course of his speech, Senator Bailey said: I wonder that the senator did not have something to say about the President's oath of office when they wrote him that letter that a Methodist parson must hold a particular place. In the very oath to which he turned in the Constitution for an argument against us, it is provided that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States, and yet the senator says that the President answered his letter by saying that a particular place belonged to the Methodists, and that no Episcopalian could hope to secure it. Senator Patterson here interrupted Senator Bailey, saying: I was a little inaccurate in my statement. The answer did not come from the President. It came from his secretary who spoke for him. I trust there will be no assumption that that would make the slightest particle of difference as to the meaning or effect of a thing of that kind. . . . I would scorn to take advantage of a quip of that kind, but the truth ought to be stated as it is. Senator Bailey then continued: The President ought to get him a secretary who would keep the oath against establishing religious discriminations, because the Constitution requires that there shall be no religious test. I knew they had established certain political discriminations at the White House, but I did not know that they had divided the places among the various religious denominations. It is not at all strange that in the selection and appointment of chaplains that provision of the Constitution which declares that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office under the United States" is violated, for the chaplaincy system itself is a flouting of that provision. How can religious teachers and guides be appointed to the government service without a religious test? Even where no discrimination is made as to denomination, no chaplain can be appointed without violation of the provision of the Constitution prohibiting a religious test. That provision can be observed only by having no religious persons as such in the service of the government, and of course that leaves no place for the chaplaincy system. The fact that in the selection and appointment of chaplains a religious and denominational test is applied, proves how sound is the position of those who declare the chaplaincy system to be a violation of the principle of separation of church and state. A significant statement made in a newspaper report of a visit to the President by a committee of the Presbyterian Church, on January 25, says: It is probable that the Presbyterian Church, through its general assembly, will adopt the plan long ago put into operation by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church of recommending ministers of their faith to the President and Secretaries of War and the Navy for appointment to chaplaincies in the armed services of the government. The committee was composed of Rev. John Bancroft Devins, editor of the Observer, and Rev. John H. Edwards, both of New York. A bill was pending to increase the number of chaplains in both the army and the navy, and this church committee "called upon the President for the purpose of discussing the question with him"—the question evidently of having a share of these chaplaincies accorded to the Presbyterian Church! "The callers said that if the bill became a law that the Presbyterian Church would ask for recognition." It looks as if things were in a fair way to exhibit the utterly-church-and-state nature of the chaplaincy system. It is to be hoped that the denominational cupidity and rivalry for the chaplaincy appointments will increase, for it may serve the good purpose of having the church-and-state chaplaincy system abolished. The President referred this church committee to Secretary Taft, "upon whom devolves the work of selecting men to fill the vacancies in the army chaplaincies."