The meaning of the war for religious education

Foreword

HE forces involved in the war are so bound up with the currents of history that time only can reveal their full significance. “He

is a blind man,” says Robert E. Speer, “who does not see that one great lesson that this war has taught is the importance of education to national character and purpose. The Christian churches are facing a problem the right solution of which is vital to the very life of Christianity.” In a speech at Manchester, Lloyd George asked this very pertinent question, “What is the next lesson of the war?” and he answered, “We must pay more attention to the school. The most formidable foe we had to fight in Germany was not the arsenals of Krupp or the yards in which they turned out submarines but the schools of Germany. They were our most formidable competitors in business and our most terrible opponents in war. This fact was only half comprehended here before the war.”

The war was the direct result of a certain theory or philosophy of life which for two generations was taught unchallenged in the schools and universities of Europe and America. It is also true that the glorious victory won can be attributed to certain other educational forces at work in national life. The one may be called the materialistic view and the other the Christian conception of life. The con-

7 ieoloy ia SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY N6293 AT CLAREMONT

Bo - FOREWORD flict between these two theories of life is still going on and the conquests of peace must first be made in the schools and the coclleges of the land. It is to religious education as promoted by the Church, that we must chiefly look, for those distinctively Christian influences that, permeating all of our institutions and life, will make for final victory. Whatever light, therefore, the meaning of the war can throw on the future work of religious education is of the utmost value.

R. W. V.

Philadelpia, Pa.

MY.

Contents

. THE SCHOOLMASTER AT SEDAN ...... . THE VISION AND GREATNESS OF YOUTH . MARTIAL MUSIC AND MARRIAGE BELLS . CHRISTIAN CULTURE AND THE Na-

. WAR AND THE WorLD OrnDER—THB

. WAR AND THE WorLD OrDER—THDB

II The Vision And The Greatness Of Youth

NE of the most subtle dangers of our day is QC) that people will settle back into pre-war conditions and conceptions. Nowhere is this more true than in regard to the new value which the war has placed upon the soul of a man and his capacity for spiritual vision and attainment. It is of the utmost importance that the Church shall seize upon this new appreciaiton of the human spirit. What did men see and believe that caused them potentially to die before ever they went into the battle? How does God come into the souls of men and summon their latent capacities for heroic endeavor and how can religious education take these same capacities and organize them for the no less glorious conquests of peace? These are some of the momentous questions which this chapter seeks to answer, not in a theoretical way but rather by a study of the mind and conduct of the — soldier.

It was upon one of the many murky mornings in October, 1918, that the remnant of the 39th U. S. Infantry came out of the Argonne Forest. The usual rain was falling, and a heavy fog hugged the earth, shutting out the landscape and sending a chill to the very marrow of one’s bones. We could hear the slow, heavy tramp of feet before the forms of the first company loomed out of the mist. As they filed by we were deeply sensible that they were typical of many other regiments who, in those last terrible days of exposure and fighting, had chopped and hewn their way through tangled underbrush and barbed wire, attacking with extraordinary bravery and success, formidable trench systems and lines of natural defense that stretched from the Argonne to the Meuse River. In the fresh vigor of youth théy had gone into that inferno of fire with every company complete. Out of it they came a victorious few, for the company with more than sixty men and one officer left was an exception.

Bringing up the rear of the last company and some distance behind his comrades was a big Indian. His round face, deeply lined, was like a pumpkin bronzed by the September sun. His hat was gone and his clothes were torn and covered with mud, while a canteen and a gun swung carelessly from his shoulders. There was no elasticity in his step and whatever of romance his figure might have possessed had disappeared in weeks of weary fighting. Close behind him trailed an ungainly, half starved French dog. Together they looked like a soiled and crumpled page torn from the great book of history, very dark, but illumined by a gleam of prophecy.

The streets of the village were almost deserted, for the meager populace was not yet astir. A peasant woman with a long gnarled stick was driving from the doorstep a flock of obdurate, scolding geese. Across the way there was a high wall covered over with a crimson tinted vine. A door in this wall opened and an aged priest came out, dressed in a long black cassock and wearing a flat broad-brimmed hat. For a moment he stood watching the passing troops; then he raised his hand, mumbled a blessing and went his way toward the little chapel near by. Out of the mist loomed a grey motor car, flying the insignia of a major-general. Quickly it sped by and disappeared in the fog, on its way to the battle-front. There were no flags flying, no martial music stirred the jaded pulse, no multitudes cheered these silent world conquerors. It was just grim war, robbed of its popular glamor, but clothed about with an indefinable glory.

Who will ever forget these soldier boys as they trudged along, leg weary, hungry and seemingly dazed! The subtle, recuperative power of youth had not yet had its opportunity; hence there were deeply lined faces and gray hairs and hollow eyes and nervous jerking bodies, but never a suspicion of discontent. For days and nights they had fought unceasingly, often going twenty-four hours without hot food, and always sleeping in the wet and the mud, without even a single blanket to keep out the night chill, while all about them, in the line and for three kilometers back of it, shells split the air and churned the ground, leaving behind the hor-

28 THE WAR AND RELIGIOUS EDOCATION rible memory of mangled bodies and fiying flesh and the smell of warm blood. Well we knew the hell they had been through, but we also knew equally well that it was not physical courage that had sustained them but fellowship with the intangible things for which they were fighting. The man who controls his emotions and impulses and of his own volition deliberately goes under shell fire for a noble cause, knows, if he is at all conscious of his mental processes, that for a time at least he has died unto the material world and is living in a new found world of unseen realities and spiritual values. He no longer sees with human eyes but as God sees. This is not the isolated experience of a few mystic temperaments, but one common to thousands of normal, practically-minded lads.

It very often happens that when a man is deprived of his physical sight he can see much more accurately. This only goes to prove that men have the capacity for spiritual vision if they would learn the secret of its development. Sergeant Irving Clair, of the 19th Infantry, was blinded by shell explosion at the second Battle of the Marne, on the memorable night of July 14, 1918. When America entered the war, young Clair was a third-year law student at Temple University, where eyesight is of almost incalculable value. Now he is blind, with his future all before him, yet, with manly vigor, he resents any reference to his injury as a great sacrifice, and always replies quickly with these words:

“No, I have not paid too high a price, and besides I have gained a two-fold power of vision. I can see with my memory and I can see with my soul.” _ Those who have talked with him say that over and over he will repeat these words as if to assure his friends that he has abundant compensation for his loss of eyes. When they are skeptical he will particularize often as follows:

“T can see the little French village on the edge of the Marne battlefield, with its wonderful big fountain which I loved to watch sparkling in the sunshine. On the 13th of July we rode all day ina motor truck reaching Conde-en-Brie late in the afternoon. I can see the bright red poppies nodding in the fields as we passed by, and the blue and yellow wild fiowers that grew along the wayside, and the vast loveliness of the hills and the sky. Oh, it was a wonderful day, and life never seemed so dear to us boys, but there was not one of us who did not know down in his heart that the things we were going to fight for were worth all it would cost. We somehow felt that we were in the hands of an unseen power that was hurrying us on through the clash of battle out into a larger and more beautiful life than anything we had ever known before. I now understand what that life is.”

Perhaps it is this sensing of spiritual realities that gives so many soldiers what may be called a noble contempt for death. In attaining this attitude a man first fears death instinctively, then he conquers fear by an act of the will, and after that he forgets through absorption in the thing which he is called upon to do. When the truth fought for looms larger than the fighter, heroism becomes a sublime self-forgetfulness and death a step toward the fullest realization of life. “I have seen with the eyes of God,” writes Donald Hankey in “A Student in Arms.” “I have seen the naked souls of men, stripped of circumstance. Rank and reputation, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, manners and uncouthness, these I saw not. I saw the naked souls of men. I saw who were contemptible and who honorable. I have seen with the eyes of God. I have seen the vanity of the temporal and the glory of the eternal. I have despised comfort and honored pain. I have understood the victory of the Cross. O death, where is thy sting? Nunc dimittis, Domine.” How else can one explain the almost innumerable acts of individual and group heroism in connection with the world war, any one of which, set apart, would make an incomparable epic? When that heroic battalion of the 77th Division had been surrounded by the enemy in the heart of the Argonne Forest, it became necessary to get food to them. The following is the official account: “On October 6, 1918, Lieutenant Erwin J. Bleckley, with his pilot, Second Lieutenant Harold E. Coettler, left the airdrome late in the afternoon on their second trip to drop supplies to a battalion of the 77th Division, which had been cut off by the enemy in the Argonne Forest, Having been subjected on the first trip to i, } a 3 } & c t A y i violent fire from the enemy, they attempted on the second trip to come still lower in order to get the packages even more precisely on the designated spot. In the course of this mission, the plane was brought down by enemy rifle and machine-gun fire from the ground, resulting in fatal wounds to Lieutenant Bleckley, who died before he could be taken to a hospital, and in the instant death of Lieutenant Coettler. In attempting and performing this mission, these men showed the highest possible contempt of personal danger, devotion to duty, courage and valor.”

Here was conduct deliberately planned in the contemplation of certain death. The thrill and the glamour of adventure had disappeared with the first trip. They were not fools; they loved life as all brave men do. It is also impossible to believe that the love of fame lured them. How shall we explain the motives which ied to such transcendent nobility of action? Equally valuable is the following official report of Lieutenant Arthur V. Savage, who, on July 15th, with the aid of a lone private, fought an entire regiment of picked German grenadiers and guards who were attempting to cross the Marne in their last attack on Paris. “Lieutenant Savage and a private named Thomas Oakes, from Texas, of Company E, 144th Infantry, found themselves the only members of their command remaining in action. The Germans were crossing the Marne. Seizing a machine-gun whose operator had been killed, they faced an entire regiment of German soldiers and assisted most effectively in stemming the German advance over the Marne at that point. Finally, they were surrounded from the rear, and fell, fighting to the last, with their faces to the enemy, the dead bodies of whom strewed the ground around them.”

It is in the letters which they write that men reveal their inmost selves. Here are two extracts from letters which display a remarkable insight into the meaning of duty and courage which are the most fundamental of all virtues in the educational process :

OcTOoBER 17, 1918.

“We, too, had a sad death over the lines recently, that of Wilbert W. White, Jr., of New York. We were on a balloon strafing expedition—the balloon attacker, Brotherton, went on to one on the ground, leading us away from the large body of Spads supposed to protect us. We last saw Brotherton diving on this low balloon, amid a hail of machine gun bullets. Our three planes were attacked from five Fokkers at that moment, 10 kilometers from our lines and well behind the large protecting formation of Spads! White was leading, so when a Fokker dove on Cox, a new pilot, White turned in his tracks and went back at it. The Fokker kept diving on Cox as White raced back, head-on at it, firing without effect. He must have realized that Cox would be shot down unless he put the Boche out of the fight, so he never swerved. I watched them come together, thought for a moment they would just pass side by side, but next instant off came a wing of each plane amid a cloud of splinters and shreds of fabric, and down they went spinning like tops, nose on into the ground, not 50 feet apart. White was married, had two children, was to have received orders returning him to the States in a few days and knew it. But he never hesitated when he saw his duty cut out, which makes his act all the more heroic. It was his seventh official plane.”

How accurately this young aviator analyzed the mind and motives of his companion and incidentally revealed the calibre of his own soul is seen by reading the following extract from a letter written by young White to his father from Fort Worth, Texas, in January, 1918:

“The situation as it now stands is that I am a qualified cadet, temporarily and it may be permanently attached to the 147th Squadron.

“Life to me now is a whole lot more serious matter than it ever has been before. I realize that I’ve something to live for, and if necessary to die for, and I’m fully prepared to do either. If God wills that I come through this war with my senses, ’m going to do a lot of things I was never thinking of before—and if I’m not to get back—well, I will at least have given my life for the right. It is a great war we’re in, father, a wonderful war; a war between right and wrong and I’m in it heart and soul to the end.”

In the book entitled, “The Love of an Unknown Soldier,” there is the most intimate and amazing revelation of character. The book is a series of letters written by an English Artillery officer, but never mailed. As one reads through the pages he becomes increasingly conscious that here is a man seeing through life with the eyes of God.

“In this strange world where courage masquerades as duty we have left all hope behind us. To’ hope too much is to court cowardice. In the past I was so selfish and full of plans for happiness. Then this war came. One had to sink personality and ambition and stand the chance of dying in a manner which seemed incommensurately obscure and ghastly. And why? Because Calvary had repeated itself; after two thousand years to die for others had become again worth while.”

A little later on he adds this pertinent comment: “I suppose even in peace-times the chance was always there, only one’s eyes were blinded. Perhaps the sacrifice demanded wasn’t large enough.”

Here are sentences which enable us to trace the groping of his mind toward the discovery of the higher self:

“Unhappiness is a form of disloyalty.”

“Tf I needs must die I will at least die with honour.”

“Life becomes a murky affair only when people are cowards.”

“The beginning of all aristocracy is the subjugation of fear.” This sentence he quotes approvingly from “The Research Magnificent—”’

There is a sense of reality about the following passage that is most refreshing. For moral earnestness and grandeur it is unsurpassed, and the wonderful thing about it is that we can look into it as into a mirror and see reflected the mind and character of the young manhood of the world.

“Don’t you see,” he writes to the young Red Cross nurse whom he has come to love ardently, “how I was learning that it isn’t the thing you plan to do, but the thing you are inside yourself that counts? And life, as I say, was going by while I, in my earnestness that future centuries might be better, was neglecting the dear, simple, daily, loyalties.

“Then this war broke out, stripping us of our sham refinements and clothing us in the armour of duty. We hadn’t known how to live wisely; God restored to us the chance to die for something worthy. He’d grown tired of seeing us charging windmills, so He set over against us the mustered hosts of hell. How real everything has become of late! All the ghosts of distrust and derision have vanished. Men’s souls gleam in their eyes. We have regained the old primitive strength of the saints to strike sin where we find it. We no longer doubt when the sky is overshadowed that heaven floats above the clouds.”

This profound moral and religious experience of the American and British soldier was shared equally by the Frenchmen. Nowhere is this more finely voiced than by the French historian Hilaire

Belloc when he says: “The Battle of the Marne secured Europe, not from an external peril, as did Tours and Chalons from the Arab and the Hun, but from one internal and spiritual. It decided that most profound of all issues which can appear within a man’s own soul or within that of a nation, or within that of a whole vast tradition, such as the tradition of Christendom—I mean whether the lesser should conquer the greater, the viler the more noble, the more changeable the more steadfast, the baser the more refined. The Marne was that moment of issue in which a soul is saved or lost.”

While in France it was my privilege to ride for an entire day in the same railway compartment with a great grandson of Lafayette. He was a most cultured gentleman and secretary of the Lafayette Society. In the course of our conversation he said to me with feeling:

“We Frenchmen will never forget America for coming over here to help us in this hour of our great need.”

My reply somewhat startled but greatly pleased him as I said:

“We are here because we have always dreamed of coming, ever since we read about Lafayette in our schoolboy days.”

With an impulsive movement of his body he threw one arm around me, and the tears ran down his cheeks as he uttered these memorable words:

“IT have always heard that. the young men of America were materialists and now they are teacha ing my beloved France to again believe in the power of the ideal.”

It was impossible for one who was in France during the months just preceding and following the Battle of Chateau-Thierry not to realize that a profound change had taken place in the mind of the world, a change so profound and far-reaching that we have not yet grasped its full meaning. It was a change wherein the great masses of the people suddenly and for all time turned from a belief in physical force as the final arbitrament of nations to faith in the sure supremacy of Christian ideals; and in making this change the world unconsciously experienced a religious rebirth. The thrilling and beautiful thing about this whole new experience of humanity is just this: the secret of human progress lies in the inborn capacity of youth to dream dreams and see visions and die for ideals. At first thought our visions and ideals seem rather nebulous and flimsy things upon which to rest great issues; but in the long run they prove to be possessed

_ of the real substance of things worth while. As it has so often happened in the past, so it will come true again, that the dreams of the youth of today will become the constitutions of tomorrow. In his Boston speech President Wilson has given us a glimpse of what happened in France in the great midsummer days of 1918. Among other things he said: “Men have testified to me in Europe that our men were possessed by something that they could only call a religious fervor. They were not like any of the other soldiers. They had a vision; they had a dream, and they were fighting in the dream, and fighting in the dream they turned the whole tide of battle and it never came back.”

As we contemplate thoughtfully upon the heroism-of these men who went forth to crusade for the world’s redemption and seek to penetrate to the main springs of action, the interior and mysterious greatness of the human soul begins to disclose itself—the soul with its infinite appreciation of spiritual values and its -immense capacity to suffer nobly. Here is the secret of true culture, both in the life of the individual and of the nation. Religion does not have to -be clothed in pious phrases or conventional forms or result in emotional and effervescent expression, in order to reveal its presence. It is something far deeper, more intimate and spiritual.

If the reader has perused this chapter at all thoughtfully he will have discovered that the deeper life of man finds its center of orientation in three fundamental facts.

1. There is the fact of faith in the reality of the unseen; the vision of God at work in His world; the sense of Divine comradeship in the struggle, the pain and the final issues of life.

2. There is the fact of the sure reaction of the soul to the demands of duty, through loyalty, courage and love and a similar sure reaction to the principles of justice, righteousness and self-sacrifice.

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3. There is the fact of the ideal, like a mighty magnet drawing men upward into the realization of their best selves.

These are the intangible things that war made real, and in obedience to which men found that they became free; for liberty is the reign of law in the realm of the spirit, and the highest form of freedom is the right to lay down one’s life for his fellowmen. Just as the tide irresistibly returns to the shore, drawn by the invisible arms of natural law, so by faith, duty, loyalty and love God is forever coming into the souls of men, and men are being drawn upward into the larger life of God. Because of the reality which the war gave to these funda: mental virtues, men came to put the emphasis on sin in a new place. In the reaction of conscience to their own conduct and in their attitude toward their fellows, the soldiers almost unanimously agreed that the three sins worthy of the severest condemnation were cowardice, selfishness and disloyalty. These are the things that make men mean and contemptible and that must be fought and defeated both in friend and enemy. When these are present God cannot come into the life of a man.

It can be seen at a glance that these three sets of facts are of the utmost value for religious education and any statement of educational laws that would meet the needs of the new day must take them into account. In a study of the training of the twelve disciples, one sees how Jesus was always bringing them face to face with these fundamental things and it was only as he was able to develop in them, faith, loyalty to duty, courage and love and a keen sense of justice, righteousness and self-sacrifice, that he could use them mightily for his work. The way in which Jesus was able to accomplish this transformation of character in a group of fearful, selfish, and unletttered men is one of the most vital studies in religious educational method. The war has given us a deeper insight into God’s estimate of the greatness and the possibilities of all men and the consequent worth of their redemption.

ITI MARTIAL MUSIC AND MARRIAGE BELLS

HE home must ever be a new and diviner place to every man who spent any time in

the army. So also it will always have a deeper spiritual meaning to those who stood upon the threshold and bid farewell to dear ones who went away to fight for love and home and native land. Mothers, fathers, war brides, sweethearts and little brothers as well as big brothers have all done their part to glorify love. The home is the cradle of love, of spiritual ideals and of that real democracy which is born of love and idealism. If a nation would be truly great it must first become a nation of Christian homes where God is honored, true love kept undefiled and where each new born child is reverenced as a spiritual gift from heaven. At the center of the home is a natural reverence for parenthood and because of this the influence of the mother and father in shaping character and in imparting religious faith is a fact of the very highest educational value. The parent who for any reason forfeits this inborn reverence of the child very largely destroys the home as a religious educational institution. It is a natural step in the child’s experience to pass from reverence for parents to reverence for God which is the beginning of all wisdom and character. The influence of the home was revealed in a thousand ways during the long days of struggle and pain and heartache. Intending to make some purchases before sailing for America, I entered the Grand Maison Blanc, a linen store situated on the main Paris Boulevard. In one of the display rooms were two lads, looking at some lace collars. When they saw a representative of the Young Men’s Christian Association, his aid was immediately enlisted by the following hearty invitation:

“Hello, ‘Y’ man! Come over and help us select some lace collars for Christmas presents for our mothers.” The invitation was promptly accepted and soon we were admiring the delicate creations deftly placed before us. Each of us instinctively sensed the stirring up of deep emotions in the heart of the fellow next to him, as imagination and memory formed fond images of dear ones far away. It became desperately hard to resist the temptation to buy the whole store and ship it home as a slight expression of affection. Perhaps this explains why one always saw so many American and British soldiers standing longingly before shop windows with their faces pressed close up to the glass, like street waifs the day before Christmas, hungering for something they knew they could not have.

“You see,” said the soldier, “this is not exactly in our line, but they are for our mothers and they have got to be right,”

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I had to admit that I was not an expert in buying for women folks, but together we made a selection of what we thought were two particularly beautiful pieces of real lace.

When the saleslady had gone away to tie up the packages for mailing and make change we fell to talking.

“What Division are you in?” I inquired, a very natural and frequent question.

“The Third Division, sir,” answered the lad who had invited me to join them.

“The Third Division!” I exclaimed in surprise. ' “They are at the Verdun Front, holding the line just north of Montfacon. I came from there yesterday.”

“So did we,” was the prompt rejoinder. “We have a three days’ leave.”” Then he added in a tone of voice which indicated the sudden awakening of some horrible memory that would not be effaced, “If ever there was a hell, mister, it is up there in that Argonne Forest.”

This comment no doubt urged his companion to offer the following explanation of their presence in Paris.