In Patrick O’Brian’s novel Desolation Island, Captain Jack Aubrey explains to ship’s physician Stephen Maturin why Aubrey has doubts about having a chaplain on board a man-of-war. “On Sunday,” he observes, the chaplain “will tell us to treat one another like brethren we will all say, ‘Amen’.” But, Aubrey continues, this is “precious near to cant, to tell the ship’s com-pany of a man-of-war with loaded guns to love your enemy and turn the other cheek, when you know damned well that the ship and every man jack aboard her is there to blow the enemy out of the water.” He quite reasonably concludes: “Either the hands believe it, and then where is your discipline? Or they don’t, and then it seems to me to come hellfire close to mockery of holy things.”