While Britain was the template for the institutions and culture of British Australia, nevertheless there were differences in how these were manifested when transplanted to the far side of the world. In particular, the place of religion in Australia differed from that in Britain. While the United Kingdom had Established Churches, Australia had no legislated official religion and, though Anglicanism was the largest and politically most influential denomination due to its entrenchment in Australia's ruling class, it did not have the same power and reach as its parent body in England. Instead, the four largest denominations – the Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians and Methodists – engaged in considerable sectarian sparring for influence and control. Anglicanism's cultural advantage made it a target for Protestant groups who wanted to ensure that Anglican hegemony was not repeated in the Antipodes, even occasionally allying with the Catholics, of all people, to dethrone Anglican aspirations.
At the same time, Anglicanism had its own divisions, as the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century developed out of High Church Anglicanism to become known as Anglo-Catholicism. It reacted against latitudinarian and Evangelical Anglicanism by stressing its continuity with pre-Reformation Catholic and Orthodox tradition, elevating the role of sacraments, ritual and religious orders, and decrying Protestantism as a German innovation bordering on heresy. Its reach and impact can be judged in part by the vigorous reaction of Evangelicals, the firebrand Anglican theologian Everard Digges La Touche denouncing its ‘strong following among the clergy’, and accusing it of undermining church membership.Footnote 1 Jeremy Morris's review of the historiography of the High Church revival considerably nuances the common perception of its triumph in the twentieth century, also noting the difficulties in distinguishing between Anglo-Catholicism and High Church Anglicanism, which existed on a complex continuum of intersections and overlaps, though he affirms the considerable influence of both on the Anglican Church of the period.Footnote 2
As with its parent church, Australian Anglicanism was fracturing under challenges from secularism, liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism, the latter seen by many Anglicans as the greater threat, sparking a vigorous fight for dominance in the Church. As Australia's leading clerics were invariably imported from Britain, they brought with them the internecine struggles between Low and High Church Anglicanism, and dioceses tended to one side or the other according to the temper of the bishop. Diocesan outlooks become entrenched and self-perpetuating through episcopal appointments of like-minded administrators and parish priests, thus ensuring an episcopal succession in the same tradition.Footnote 3 Just prior to First World War, Evangelicals were precariously poised in the Australian Anglican Church, feeling increasingly challenged as they held sway in only a minority of the Australian dioceses, and were divided even among themselves.Footnote 4 The battle for supremacy between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics continued during the war, for example in Melbourne, where the 1918 synod was fiercely contested, with controversy continuing in the inter-war years.Footnote 5
A standard-bearer for Anglo-Catholicism in Australia was David John Garland, a canon of St James Cathedral in Townsville, Queensland, and archdeacon of North Queensland. Surprisingly, he was of Irish Orangeman origin, with a background in law, but he became ‘a most fervent Anglo-Catholic’,Footnote 6 being ordained a deacon in 1889, and serving in New South Wales and Western Australia, where he made his reputation as an energetic missioner with a gift for organisation and administration.Footnote 7 An ambitious man, he rose rapidly in the hierarchy, but fell out with his bishop in Western Australia and transferred to Queensland where he became influential in its Anglo-Catholic milieu. Historians have said that his party ‘could readily be described as either “Catholic Evangelicals” or “Evangelical Catholics”’.Footnote 8 He was passionate about religious instruction in government schools, Sunday observance and military chaplaincy, being an ‘accomplished lobbyist’ for the first in Western Australia, Queensland and New Zealand, and having been a chaplain to the militia since 1896.Footnote 9 While being a most effective promoter of Anglo-Catholicism and a mentor to many clergy and laity, he was also capable of influential ecumenism, cooperating with the Baptists for example on shared concerns over ‘drink, gambling and morality’.Footnote 10
The Australian military faced a complex situation in providing Army chaplains. With no state religion to turn to, an uneasy arrangement was negotiated whereby the four major denominations, Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist, ran their own affairs on a more or less equal footing through the appointment of four chaplains-general. The new Australian Army Chaplains’ Department was established in 1913, and had not really bedded down before being thrown into action when the Great War erupted the following year.Footnote 11 Each denomination appointed chaplains on a ratio roughly matching the census data for religious affiliation, with additional chaplains from minor denominations such as Baptist, Congregational and The Salvation Army. On the outbreak of World War One, Garland reactivated his chaplaincy and was appointed senior chaplain to army camps in Queensland, ‘in order to be able to minister to troops coming into barracks for training prior to transport to Egypt’.Footnote 12 He was enthusiastically, perhaps even aggressively, supportive of the war effort, promoting voluntary recruitment while advocating compulsory military service, and he proved to be one of the most successful fundraisers in the country for soldier-related charities. As Army camps were established around the state capital of Brisbane, a stronghold of Anglo-Catholicism, he successfully used his position to promote Anglo-Catholicism in the camps under his jurisdiction. By 1916 new camps were established in the regional centres of Toowoomba, Maryborough, Rockhampton and Townsville, and again Garland was active in supplying ministry and welfare to the men in the new locations.
Another prominent Anglo-Catholic in the Brisbane archdiocese was William Maitland Woods. He was also a military chaplain, serving in the Queensland forces since 1893. In 1915 he volunteered as a chaplain for the Australian Imperial Force, spending the war in active chaplaincy with the Australian Light Horse at Gallipoli and during the Palestine Campaign.Footnote 13 Maitland Woods and Garland worked closely, bookending home camps and front line to promote their common interests, and their wartime correspondence forms the core of this study.
Two interlinked themes emerge from the letters preserved in the State Library of Queensland archives.Footnote 14 First was an active engagement in supporting the war, specifically through soldier welfare, fundraising, recruiting, patriotic advocacy, chaplaincy and the promotion of soldier morality – the latter two tying in with the second theme of the advancement of Anglo-Catholicism. They emphasised a Catholic spirituality in the form of sacramentalism, prayers for the dead, a love of church history and a contrasting of Anglo-Catholicism with the tainted liberal Protestant theology of German origin, the religion of the enemy, now sadly shared in modified form by so many British denominations. The net effect was that alongside their wholehearted commitment to the British war effort, was an attempt to use the war to position Anglo-Catholicism as the only true form of British Christianity. Defeating Germany went hand-in-hand with assaults on latitudinarian and Evangelical Anglicanism as well as the various Protestant groups.
Garland was the dominant force in the partnership, applying his many skills and passions to the task at hand with singular efficacy. He also had a network, built over the years, of like-minded priests and influential lay people and, once the war began, many civilians and soldiers repaid in loyalty the care he had invested in them. While committed to the soldiers’ spiritual welfare, he recognised that ‘it was also essential that the Church be seen to be caring as well for their creature comforts’.Footnote 15
Garland led the way in investing in soldier welfare, establishing the Soldiers’ Church of England Help Society (SCEHS), which provided various comforts for the recruits in training in Brisbane. By September 1915, within the first three months of its existence, the society had set up five recreation tents in training camps and supplied Anglican soldiers embarking for overseas with Prayer Books.Footnote 16 Its impact can be seen in a departing soldier thanking Garland ‘for all the kindness and good nature you have shown to me. Will you express to the Ladies of the church my gratitude for their kindness in providing those Sunday teas which I have so much enjoyed’.Footnote 17 Reading material was placed on almost every transport leaving from Brisbane, while in 1916 the SCEHS ensured that every transport had a piano on board, with a chaplain speaking of the pleasure this afforded a very musical group of soldiers sailing to England.Footnote 18
The society also distributed money to chaplains to provide welfare to troops while travelling to the war, and in the war zones, usually donations of £10. Chaplains were free to spend the money as they saw fit.Footnote 19 Padre Thomas Hely-Wilson used the money to provide leisure activities during the otherwise boring sea voyage, later funding a soldier excursion to Stonehenge, near the Australian training camps on the Salisbury Plain in England, with more money from the SCEHS. In both cases, the soldiers expressed appreciation to the society for its kindness to them while in camps in Queensland and overseas.Footnote 20 Hely-Wilson ran a soup kitchen in the forward areas of the trenches in France, providing hot drinks during the bitter winter of 1916–17, possibly using SCEHS funds as well as other sources, for which he was thanked by Brigade staff.Footnote 21 Maitland Woods used funds to purchase books about Palestine, which he circulated amongst the men, who, he said, ‘read them with great interest’. He also ‘fitted up a comfortable reading tent for them’.Footnote 22 Obscure units were not overlooked either, with the miniscule Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force occupying German New Guinea supplied with recreational material.Footnote 23 Returning soldiers were catered for with the establishment of the new Kitchener Memorial Chapel at the military hospital in Brisbane, and an AnzacFootnote 24 Club for repatriated soldiers, which Garland considered ‘a perfect boon to the men’.Footnote 25
This welfare was made possible through Garland's extraordinary fundraising, largely sourced through the Anglican Church in Queensland, which was disproportionately successful. Public fundraisers were run under the banner of ‘Lavender Day’ events, which triumphed against many competing charities, including high-profile national organisations such as the Red Cross and the Comforts Fund.Footnote 26 Garland's reach extended beyond Queensland, with a number of donations from Anglican clergy in other states.Footnote 27 In 1917 Garland's ‘Lavender Day’ raised over £7,000 (about £1.5 million sterling in today's money),Footnote 28 a figure that ‘much astonished a great many people outside Queensland’. He was soon appointed to head a nationwide appeal among Anglican churches for a ‘Church of England Fund for Soldiers at the Front’, ‘to meet the moral and social needs in Egypt’. The government had appealed for £10,000 for such work, and Garland wrote that ‘We inaugurated the fund with a grant of £4,000 given by the Soldiers’ Church of England Help Society, Queensland, being part proceeds of “Lavender Day”; in addition to that we cabled £1,000 to England’, to be used for two soldiers' huts in France. The SCEHS allocated a further £1,400 for the Anzac Club and Returned Soldiers’ work, and £500 for the work of SCEHS branches.Footnote 29 Seven rest clubs, similar in style to those of the YMCA, were established in Egypt and Palestine, and a house-boat on the Nile acquired for convalescents, with funding from the SCEHS, and all facilities were made available to other denominations when not used for Anglican services. Also supplied were ‘marquees, sports, games, comforts, libraries, and on many occasions free quarters and free meals either for groups or for individuals’.Footnote 30 Garland, while praising the work of the YMCA, was anxious to publicise the similar efforts of the Anglican Church, which in his opinion was too little recognised.Footnote 31 Rumours that Garland was being handsomely paid for the ‘astronomical’ amount of money raised for war work, as well as other related war work, were dismissed, revealing that his only income was his clerical stipend, and that this voluminous additional work, which had earlier brought on a breakdown, was purely voluntary.Footnote 32
The majority of the Australian clergy of all denominations supported the war effort, but few as ardently as the Anglo-Catholics. Their commitment to God and Empire was strong, while their antagonism to German liberal Protestant militarism was deep-seated. Garland was very proud of the Kitchener Memorial Chapel at the Army hospital in Brisbane, in memory of the iconic, and recently-deceased, imperial Field Marshal Lord Kitchener.Footnote 33 Garland's most enduring achievement, however, was the foundational effort in celebrating the first Anzac Day in 1916,Footnote 34 working hard to ensure that it was a solemn rather than festive occasion, with ‘Meetings held to extol our heroes’, but with ‘no jubilation’. He was successful in preventing united church services, and introduced the institution of the minute's silence at commemoration events.Footnote 35 Anzac Day has since become Australia's most celebrated national day, retaining a number of rituals of his devising.Footnote 36 Maitland Woods also extolled the virtues of the British Empire, but made a special point of lauding the uniqueness of the Australians in physique, courage and character, labelling them as ‘Crusaders under the triple Cross’.Footnote 37 Soldiers who looked to Garland as their mentor also expressed their patriotic commitment, linking God and imperial sentiment, a sergeant writing, ‘you can scarcely imagine how glad I am to have the honour of being able to assist our boys in striking a blow for our Empire, in a cause I feel that God approves’.Footnote 38
As Empire loyalists, Anglo-Catholic leaders were active in recruiting and strong advocates of conscription. Garland in particular was prominent, becoming the head of recruiting in Queensland. Using the flag raised on Gallipoli at the first landing, which Maitland Woods had brazenly acquired as a souvenir and sent home, Garland had ‘taken it over the country for recruiting marches; it has been cheered in the streets and at meetings and kissed by men and women’. He was quick to see that voluntary enlistment would not answer the manpower needs of the AIF, and was an early advocate of conscription.Footnote 39 However, leading the recruiting campaign undermined his health, and Garland gave up the leadership, though he still helped with it, judiciously using covert information from Maitland Woods at the front to appeal to people in Australia.Footnote 40 In mid-1916, when the formal campaign to approve conscription began, Garland ‘tried to keep out of it but they forced me into it’, its leader in Queensland, Andrew Thynne, being a close friend and political ally.Footnote 41 He noted that among the groups that supported conscription were nearly all the Churches, though it was opposed by the Labor Party, the trade unions and the Catholic Church.Footnote 42 But while the Anglican Church Synod came out in favour of conscription, Garland was ‘very disappointed with our Church authorities’ for not publicising the decision adequately.Footnote 43
Garland was ‘very ashamed’ at the failed referendum vote in October 1916, surprised that ‘the heart of Australia would have proved anything but sound to the Empire, and yet we find half of the people of Australia have voted from sheer selfishness’.Footnote 44 Within weeks, however, Garland bounced back from his disappointment and had been ‘made a member of the new State Recruiting Committee’, and was getting ‘plans ready for a fresh campaign’.Footnote 45
The chaplaincy work of the Anglo-Catholic chaplains was, on the whole, quite effective, led again by the charismatic Garland and the flamboyant Maitland Woods. Garland had a knack for creating special bonds with the soldiers in the camps in Queensland, with many writing to him to express their appreciation.Footnote 46 Chaplains also wrote to tell Garland how highly soldiers spoke of him, and of the lasting impact of his ministry. Maitland Woods wrote of men who ‘spoke so warmly of your work, such real affection!’ In a later letter, Maitland Woods wrote of meeting ‘some of your disciples’.Footnote 47 Sergeant William Leacock wrote from England, ‘I can assure you, Sir, that very many of our soldiers remember you with feelings of gratitude; remembering that you have done much towards furthering their welfare; and also your zeal in working for the Cause we are fighting for.’Footnote 48 One chaplain noted the difference in attitude between the New South Wales soldiers and those from Queensland, who had been under Garland's influence in camps, concluding, ‘Eloquent testimony to work of the Church in camp’.Footnote 49 Sometimes, individual soldiers were brought to Garland's attention, and he invariably mentored them, building lasting relationships with them through personal contact and correspondence.Footnote 50
Maitland Woods was also charismatic and effective, delivering hugely popular lectures to the troops on biblical history in Palestine, and leading tours of biblical sites. His reputation as an Oxford-trained classicist led many soldiers to go straight to him if they found anything of archaeological interest, leading eventually to the excavation of the Shellal mosaic, now displayed in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. A soldier wrote of him as ‘the most wonderful and interesting speaker I have ever heard. He had us – dumb – spellbound … Wonderful’, though some considered this fount of knowledge to be ‘skiting’, an Australianism for showy boasting.Footnote 51 Other chaplains allied to Garland also reported, or were reported by soldiers to have, effective ministries.Footnote 52 Maitland Woods laughed to Garland that troops were asking for ‘lectures’ which were ‘really Bible Classes’ such as they had delivered at Sunday School for many years.Footnote 53
A key concern of Anglo-Catholic chaplains was the morality of the soldiers, one shared by many Anglo-Catholic laity – and indeed by chaplains of all denominations, as well as by a large proportion of soldiers, religious and otherwise.Footnote 54 Garland again led the charge against alcohol and sexual immorality, and one officer appealed to him to ensure that chaplains devoted one sermon in six to ‘the subject of drunkenness and sexual matters’.Footnote 55 A chaplain on a troopship engaged the services of an Anglican doctor on board to ‘give them a straight talk on Purity, which is our subject for the day’.Footnote 56 In 1917 Garland accepted a voluntary appointment, ‘to look into the moral and social needs of the troops [in Egypt] and to deal with them’. The government had preferred the non-denominational YMCA to take this responsibility, but Garland's reputation and his success as a fundraiser for this mission forced its hand.Footnote 57 Garland spent 1918–19 in Egypt and Palestine, exerting his influence and the considerable funds that he had raised to improve soldier welfare, with the aim of keeping bored soldiers away from the brothels and bars of Cairo.Footnote 58 Maitland Woods was also active in lobbying for the 6 o'clock pub closing time advocated by temperance organisations in Australia, backed by a number of the smaller denominations. This impressed a young Congregationalist, who said to Maitland Woods, ‘“Your Church did that! My word the Church of England has come on lately.” He was referring to [Archdeacon Robert] Hammond and Archdeacon [Francis] Boyce [two leading New South Wales-based Anglican temperance advocates], he had also heard a lot about your work in Queensland he told me.’Footnote 59
The Anglo-Catholic chaplains were able to convert the good standing that they gained with the soldiers through a deep attention to their physical needs to spiritual ends. A chaplain on a transport wrote of running a voluntary service, with hymn singing for an hour. ‘Big crowd to the service which seemed to meet with general appreciation. The action of the men in asking for the service and their evident earnestness, made a great impression amongst the officers. It certainly is amazing. The desire for religious ministration is very real and one is thankful to be of use.’Footnote 60 On Gallipoli, Maitland Woods urged the delivery of more Bibles. ‘We want Bibles here very badly’, he wrote. ‘You see, the long waits in the trenches are very trying to the men, they have to wait; and as we know, they are waiting for, in some cases “the one clear call” and they know it.’Footnote 61 On the other hand, a Church of England theology student serving as a stretcher bearer offered his insights into soldier spirituality, observing that ‘I cannot notice any remarkable religious tone about them’, arguing that exposure to war left soldiers more or less spiritually where they had been previously. He concluded that the Australian soldier ‘can be won and held if he [is] only understood and approached in the right manner’.Footnote 62
A key element of Anglo-Catholic spirituality was a heightened sacramentalism, and Garland was effective in promoting this with the soldiers in Queensland camps. He repeatedly stressed the efficacy of the sacraments in living holy lives, and placed great emphasis on the Prayer Book, ensuring that every soldier had the opportunity of carrying one to war. Writing to Chaplain Tomkins, Garland told of the ‘hundreds of men present’ at Evensong, ‘some of whom had never handled a Prayer-book before’. The men spontaneously sang ‘For he's a jolly good fellow’ in his honour at the end of the service. He added, ‘I aim at teaching the men to use their Prayer-books because that will be of more use to them later on … There is a hunger for the Sacraments, mere preachment and talk does not satisfy them.’Footnote 63
Garland wrote to individual servicemen and women, encouraging their use of the sacraments. To Sister Ellen McLean he wrote spiritual encouragement, concluding with, ‘Keep close to your religion and especially to Holy Communion, never miss an opportunity of being present at the Holy Eucharist whenever you can, going right into the presence of Jesus to gain from the good Physician himself the strength and grace for your share in his work.’Footnote 64 To Private George Tarrant, he directed, ‘Stick to your Religion as you have been doing and especially so to the Blessed Sacrament that keeps us in touch with God.’Footnote 65 To Maitland Woods, Garland observed, ‘I am now more than ever convinced that the Service which helps the men the most is the Holy Eucharist and that it ought to be the Church Parade.’Footnote 66
In return, people wrote to him about how they fared spiritually. Nurse Edith Avenell added a postscript to her letter, saying, ‘I am still wearing my cross’, while Lieutenant Jack Collum urged him and all chaplains ‘to base five sixths of all your sermons on the use of the Sacraments, especially the H.C. and Penance’. In resisting temptation, while no saint, Collum claimed,
a great advantage over many in having those ten [sic] most helpful Sacraments to fall back on. Please do your best to get in the minds of Churchmen with regard to ‘Penance’. As a Christian I make use of the Sacraments and found it useful and as a soldier I have found it together with H.C. the most steadying influence one can wish for.Footnote 67
Various chaplains in Garland's sphere of influence updated him on their ministry, tracking how many attended the celebration of holy communion, the uptake of Prayer Books and the ornaments with which they decorated chapels while on active service.Footnote 68 Others wrote approvingly of Anglican churches that they attended which worshipped in the Anglo-Catholic manner. Writing from Colombo, Chaplain Horace Walton told Garland of attending St Michael and All Angels Church for mass one evening. ‘The service was sung, was a feast day’, he lauded, noting the presence of a number of Sisters of a religious order and the use of incense.Footnote 69 Maitland Woods and Garland exchanged letters detailing their various efforts to foreground ceremony and ritual, Maitland Woods highlighting that, ‘One realizes here in this land the wisdom of Holy Church in giving us, her children, a daily office’, which he celebrated in a little chapel that he had equipped.Footnote 70 Chaplain Cecil Edwards noted in his diary various Confirmation sessions, also allowing the unconfirmed ‘to receive the Blessed Sacrament … They seem a fine lot and most earnest. Sister Stone threaded the bronze crosses for the boys to wear round their necks’.Footnote 71 Chaplain Gerard Tucker maintained as much ritual décor as he could manage in extempore chapels in dugouts and tents at the front, with ‘an altar … hangings, crucifix, candles and flowers’. He attended the wounded at a casualty clearing station in full robes, ‘offering bedside confession, absolution, the Prayer of Humble Access and blessing’.Footnote 72
A hypersensitive Private Verdi Schwinghammer wrote several times to Garland, sometimes to praise services and sometimes to damn them when services fell short of his Anglo-Catholic expectations. He appreciated the churches he visited in South Africa, with their altar lights, vestments, incense, processions, banners and Anglican sisterhoods, though he found one well-ornamented church strangely using only ‘a moderate ritual’. On his transport ship, he was disappointed ‘when the Chaplain does not worthily represent our Church, and teach its full doctrine’, and though excusing the young cleric's inexperience, he missed the full vestments at all services and the relegation of Holy Communion to the background. ‘It's really too bad after the beautiful services and full Prayer-book teaching at Enoggera Camps … Wouldn't it have been grand to see the Holy Service being pleaded on the main deck before nearly all the men every Sunday instead of Combined Services?’ he asked. He ‘was also disgusted at the irreverent way our Eucharist was celebrated’, the ship's smoke room being used, ‘and our Chaplain used to place the sacred vessels on the green table covering (where the officers had been smoking and playing cards the night before) without a linen cloth or even a small napkin under them. This is done every Sunday. No cross or candles on table! He only wears coloured stoles’. He found more comfort in some Churches in England, enjoying ‘a beautiful Catholic service’ at an Evensong, exclaiming, ‘oh what a joy it was to worship in a real Church again’. In camp, he considered church parades to be ‘just Mutilated Matinees’, while, ‘The ignorance on church matters amongst Anglicans in camp is appalling.’Footnote 73 Garland replied, telling him that the small Canterbury stone cross that Schwinghammer had sent him would be ‘among my most valued treasures’.Footnote 74
On the matter of prayers for the dead, the Anglo-Catholics found the Great War helpful to their cause. The theology of grace made it hard for Protestants to argue that all soldiers killed in battle went to heaven, as this would suggest salvation by works, yet there was a tacit belief in this among Protestant chaplains and among many of the men.Footnote 75 Anglo-Catholics had no such difficulty, capitalising on a sentiment in favour of prayers for the dead. Garland integrated it into his Anzac Day memorialisation, his requiem eucharist ensuring that, ‘There will be no doubt in the minds of those present that we are pleading for the souls of our fallen heroes.’Footnote 76 Despite opposition from senior chaplains, Maitland Woods held weekly services ‘when we pray for the souls of our dear comrades who have fallen’. He found receptive soldiers who told him that his talks reminded them of Garland's.Footnote 77 Trooper Frank Weeks wrote of Chaplain Francis Tubman speaking to soldiers about death, concluding, ‘He says, therefore, if we have a comrade who has fallen, mention his name to God. I cannot tell you all he says, but I tell you it is good.’Footnote 78
Seeing an unbroken link to the historic Church extending back to the time of the early Fathers, the Anglo-Catholics were receptive to ecclesiastical history. Anglo-Catholics in the AIF enjoyed the opportunity of visiting old churches in England, soaking in the historic elements that they saw. Schwinghammer took the opportunity to visit four cathedrals and ‘scores of churches’ while in camp on Salisbury Plain, rejoicing in their ancient qualities and high rituals while bemoaning the damage done to frescoes and stained glass during the Reformation and English Civil War. ‘We have much to be thankful for that God saved England from Levitan rule [a reference to the Puritan governments of the Interregnum, which subjected England to religious law, much like ancient Israel with its Levitical laws], and restored our church to its rightful place again’, he told Garland.Footnote 79 Private Spencer Booth, who was seeking to train for the Anglican ministry at Cambridge, wrote ‘as for the Churches with records dating back to 1200 to be seen and with histories and traditions going back much earlier still is beyond me to say how much they interested me’.Footnote 80
Maitland Woods managed two pieces of historic collecting with the intention of using them in Brisbane Cathedral as objects of veneration. The first was a modern relic, namely the flag planted by a group of Queensland Anzacs ashore on the day of the Gallipoli landings. Maitland Woods acquired this historic flag as a souvenir with breathtaking audacity in front of a crowd of men, exercising a kind of self-appointed droit du seigneur. ‘I simply took it being a Lieutenant Colonel and they being simply non coms and officers of junior rating.’ His motivation was that ‘The flag has become, through its wonderful history and associations, a sacred object, a symbol, a holy thing.’ This appropriation provoked a hostile reaction, but he mailed it to Garland in Brisbane and asked him to defend its possession.Footnote 81
The other notable piece of heritage collecting was the now-famous Shellal Mosaic, once the floor of a seventh-century church in Palestine. Maitland Woods excavated the ruins, including the bones presumed to be of its saint, George of Shellal, and had it shipped to Australia, intending that it be kept at Brisbane Cathedral, though it was eventually acquired by the Australian War Memorial. He admitted using ‘devious devices’ to recover it, and expected that ‘a perfect hurricane of abuse will be directed against us in the Press’, having to fight not just competing Australian claims but also those of the British, who wanted it for the British Museum. He intended it as ‘a fitting witness to bravery of our Anzacs in Palestine and a link between our Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in Queensland with the Church (alas! now extinct, since it was destroyed by the Mohammedan invasion of the 8th Century) in Southern Palestine’.Footnote 82 With characteristic high-handedness, he had it covertly crated and sent to Australia. While the Church lost the battle for the mosaic, it retained the relic of the bones of St George, which Maitland Woods gave to his friend the Revd Herbert Rose at St Anne's Anglican Church, Strathfield, for safekeeping, where they were stored under the altar.Footnote 83 Such behaviour was driven by Maitland Woods's conviction that Anglo-Catholicism was the rightful heir to such significant heritage pieces, pre-empting any claim that might be made by national or other religious bodies.
As this demonstrates, driving the good work done by Garland, Maitland Woods and other Anglo-Catholics was an evident grief at the position of Anglo-Catholicism in the religious world, revealed in the swipes that they took at others in their correspondence and, occasionally, behaviour in the field, and their representation of Anglo-Catholicism as a Church within a Church – or more accurately in their minds, the Church within a Church. They had a strong sense of being misunderstood and misrepresented, as if displaced from their rightful position as the true heirs of historic Christianity, a grievance shared with their English Anglo-Catholic colleagues.Footnote 84 While virtually every shade of Christianity carries an assurance of its own theological orthodoxy from which all others deviate, Anglo-Catholic legitimacy was based on many centuries of church tradition that the Protestant world had overthrown in order to validate its own theological positions.
There were frictions between certain Anglican chaplains and those of other denominations over perceptions of entitlement to pre-eminence. ‘The C of E chaplains are causing a vast amount of trouble’, complained Methodist chaplain Thomas Rentoul to his fiancée, decrying their application of British Army rules of Anglican supremacy to the Australian context where Anglicanism was merely one denomination among many. He objected to their exclusive behaviour, using the Anglican prayer book instead of the authorised Australian Service Book, and refusing to hold combined church parades.Footnote 85 The aggressively anti-Catholic Presbyterian chaplain John Rentoul (no relation) also bristled at Anglican pretensions to superiority, while the Salvationist chaplain William McKenzie crowed over chaplains of mainstream denominations jealous of his success in getting men to attend his services, telling his wife he had ‘the parsons snowed under’, but by and large, relationships between Australian chaplains were marked by ecumenical goodwill.Footnote 86 This ecumenism was abetted by a soldierly hostility towards sectarianism and an expectation of an interdenominational closing of the ranks in time of war.Footnote 87
However, combined services were the bane of the existence of Anglo-Catholic chaplains, for they disliked having to adulterate their high ritual to meet the expectations of mere Protestants. Garland wrote to Chaplain Tomkins, arguing that soldiers objected to combined services. He communicated his sense of superiority in saying, ‘Of course we get larger attendance than anyone else; this might be expected as we are numerically superior’, but noted that ‘in some cases, rather more than I like, men of other denominations prefer to come to us’.Footnote 88 He triumphantly told Maitland Woods that while the free Testaments distributed to soldiers ‘were meant for Nonconformists, … many of them preferred to take our Prayer-book’.Footnote 89 Chaplain Horace Boultbee noted the attendance of a Roman Catholic, a Methodist and a Baptist at his Confirmation classes with quiet pride.Footnote 90
Garland's sense of being wronged was highlighted in another letter to Tomkins about the Anzac Day commemoration in 1916, speaking of the ‘great fight to get better provisions for Church of England Chaplains. We contend it is wrong to take the percentage of the population as the basis on which Chaplains are provided, because we are convinced the majority of the soldiers belong to the Church of England’.Footnote 91 In fact, there was little variance in the proportions of denominational affiliations in the AIF compared to the national statistics, though it was a bone of contention in Australia during the war.Footnote 92 Garland had waged a successful battle against combined services for Anzac Day, thus being able to preserve the full Anglo-Catholic ritual in the service that he ran on that day, with no compromise with Protestant sensibilities.Footnote 93
Maitland Woods also used combative language to describe his relationships with Protestants, and even with Anglican moderates. Replying to Garland's account of Anzac Day, Maitland Woods took a pot-shot at the Evangelical archdiocese of Sydney, for its ‘very tame reading with its open service in the Domain [a large park in central Sydney, and a common venue for public ceremonial and political events]. The Protestant German influence has always been strong there’.Footnote 94 He also revelled in the conflict over his seizure of the Anzac flag, telling Garland, ‘The tremendous attacks on the “flag of the IXth” is a splendid testimonial to the growing power of our Church, I gave you a hint when I sent the flag that it would mean a fight and I knew you would protect our right to it.’Footnote 95 In a letter to Garland which he marked ‘Confidential’, suggesting his covert intent, Maitland Woods told of ‘hundreds’ of men seeing things ‘in their true light’ regarding ‘the Catholic position of our Church … They are beginning to realize that our dear Old Church is not a Protestant sect, that she is Holy, Catholic and Apostolic; that the word “Protestant” was made in Germany etc., etc’.Footnote 96 In both instances, Maitland Woods positioned Anglo-Catholicism as the Church, against both latitudinarian Anglicanism and Protestantism.
Garland's correspondence with Schwinghammer highlighted similar attitudes towards Protestantism and Evangelical Anglicanism. In a lengthy letter Schwinghammer bemoaned how ‘The Y.M.C.A. and Protestants were in the front in everything and our dear old Church put in the background.’ Despite finding the Presbyterian chaplain and YMCA secretary on his ship ‘excellent’, ‘fine’ and hard-working, Schwinghammer, an accomplished musician, took offence when ‘Anglican hymns are sung altered to suit the Protestants’, with doctored lyrics and no ‘“Amens” at the end of hymns’, to the extent of ‘refusing to play the organ at his “sing song” services’. Schwinghammer also refused to attend combined services.Footnote 97 Replying to Schwinghammer's description of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Garland took him to task over his terminology. ‘Why do you use the word “Anglican”? and not the words “Church of England”, which is the real name of the Church, far better’, he admonished; ‘our dissenters love to call us “Anglicans” because it places us on a level with the Methodists and Presbyterians. “Ecclesia Anglicana” does not mean “Anglican Church”, but “Church of the English speaking people wherever they are”.’Footnote 98
Other chaplains vented yet more strongly against Protestants, or noted even minor triumphs of Anglo-Catholic superiority. Horace Watkins conducted a service using ‘the vestments, lights, etc. and heard no protestant squeals’, persistently refusing to capitalise their name. Of the main church parade, he labelled it the ‘mutilated form of Anglican Matins’, resenting the populist description of it as ‘very hearty’, for ‘one never hears of a “hearty” mass’. In another letter he damned an Anglican Church for its Evensong, attended by ‘all kinds of protestant freaks in galore’.Footnote 99 Even writing paper became a battleground, as the bulk of soldiers’ letters were written on YMCA stationery, distributed free by the ream with its distinctive triangular red logo at the top. ‘The ship is inches deep with YMCA writing paper but ours is being increasingly used’, wrote Chaplain Edwards to Garland, while Garland himself wrote to Chaplain David Collins that ‘it was most useful what you said about the demand for Church of England note-paper as it was so superior’.Footnote 100
Anglo-Catholics in Australia came to the Great War with a sense of being besieged. Their practical ministry in camps, on ships and at the various fronts formed an impressive foundation for them to reclaim territory, influence and power of which they felt wrongfully deprived. Their effectiveness contributes to the growing scholarly awareness that contradicts the popular myths of Anglican chaplaincy's ineffectiveness during the Great War, and of the secularity of the Australian soldier.Footnote 101 Garland in particular was a most effective exponent of Anglo-Catholicism, mentoring fellow clergy and large numbers of laymen and women to advance the cause of Anglo-Catholicism in its battle against the forces that would dilute its adherence to historic Catholicism. Anglo-Catholicism had a great influence on the memorialisation of the Great War through the work of Garland on Anzac Day commemorations, and also an impact on Australian society more broadly through the introduction of the Toc H movement, a wartime service organisation emphasising personal relationships and hospitality inspired and organised by British Anglo-Catholic chaplains.Footnote 102 It also saw ‘substantial growth in both numbers and influence’ in post-war Australia, especially in rural parishes in New South Wales and Queensland.Footnote 103 While the rivalry between Anglo-Catholicism and the rest of Anglicanism would continue for decades, the war work of Garland and his colleagues undeniably strengthened the cause in Australia.
