The call of a world task in war time

Preface

These studies have been prepared as part of the advance missionary program which emanated from the Student Volunteer Conference held at Northfield, Mass., January 3-6, 1918. It was felt by leaders of the Student Christian Movements in the United States and Canada that accompanying a call to the students of these nations for intensified missionary undertakings in this college year there should be the promise of a new course of study interpreting the present world situation in terms of missionary responsibility. It was with much reluctance that the writer consented to prepare a book within the brief compass of a month on so immense and important a subject. The haste with which it has been written will account in part for its obvious limitations of material and style. For those who will use this book as a textbook for group study there have been added Questions for Thought and Discussion and Suggestions for Auxiliary Reading.

J. L.M.

New York, February 9, 1918.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction . . vii

I The Call for Reality in Religious Life . 1

Introduction

TO THE THIRD (rEVISED) EDITION^

In the months that have intervened since the first edition of this book was printed there has been developing in AlUed countries a clearer discernment of the issues at stake in the War. This has been due partly to processes of education and partly to historical developments. The selfishness, brutality and perfidy of the German military command have startlingly been made manifest and their secret purposes have been unmasked. This has been true most notably in their shameless treatment of Russia and Roumania. Among the nations linked with Germany there has come as a result a lack of confidence and unity. On the other hand, among the Allies has come a new unity based on a new recognition of the utter necessity of winning the War if the world is to be saved from militarism and the rule of force and saved to righteousness and democracy and peace. The altruistic and noble aims of the Allied cause have become clarified and have gained in fervid acceptance by the individual citizen. In the last hamlet of our lands it is being realized that every man and woman of us must stand up and be counted as a zealous, unsparing champion of the rights of humanity.

vii viii INTRODUCTION

In other words, gradually it is being recognized that merely winning battles, even the last battle, and rendering Prussianism impotent may not spell real victory for our cause. The extinction of Prussian militarism is only incidental to the supreme end for which we are fighting, namely, the development of a new international spirit, a spirit of respect, cooperation and good will that will fully observe the Golden Rule among nations.

We must fortify ourselves with this great conviction, for ahead of us lie stress and strain and increasing losses. The toll of death will grow longer and the sacrifices we must all bear will be heavier as the weeks pass by. We must know that the price is none too great to pay. We must be convinced in our souls that only by going on to the end, the most bitter end, can we make all the past progress of humanity a success, ensure that the utmost sacrifices of these present desperate years are not in vain and guarantee that the generations unborn will be immensely benefited.

We are seeing more clearly than ever that at its root this world conflict is the clash of two opposite principles, the principles of materialism and spirituality, of brute force and good- will. And back of that it is the clash of two opposite conceptions of God — on the one hand as Thor, on the other hand as God, the loving Father. That is it. There lie our satisfaction and our hope amid all the pain and darkness of these evil hours. We are fighting for God, for the Fatherly God, for the God of Jesus Christ.

iFrom this point of view, the impression is ever deep-

INTRODUCTION ix

ening that ultimately this is not a war between this group of nations and that group of nations but between good and evil. Whatever may be said about war in general, the conviction is steadily taking hold that this War, so far as we are concerned, is not a condemnation but a vindication of the religion of Jesus Christ. It is the expression of a vital, victorious Christianity.

So we are seeing that Christ is the only solution of the world's problem and the only hope of world democracy. He must be proclaimed to the nations. Democracy can be firmly established only where His spirit and teachings have been accepted. Therefore the spreading of His doctrine in the world is not one thing and the struggle against autocracy and militarism another. They are two aspects of one great undertaking and they are both urgently necessary. One is the planting of fruitful seeds, the other the uprooting of noxious weeds. We must fight to destroy these abominable growths. Equally and quite as urgently must we scatter broadcast the life-giving principles of liberty, of the infinite worth and inalienable rights of every individual child of God.

More than ever therefore we are led to recognize now the international obligations of Christianity in order that we may faithfully fulfil them in the days that will follow the War. It is with these obligations as revealed and intensified by the War that this book is concerned. It makes no attempt to analyze the immediate causes of the conflict which with savage premeditation the Prussian military machine thrust upon the world. Nor does it argue the justice of the Allies'

X INTRODUCTION

position. It takes this position for granted as being essentially righteous and Christian. It does attempt an inquiry into certain great constructive processes whereby Qiristianity not only can vindicate itself in international life but also can make good the winning of the War by preparing even in the least favored nations a safe dwelling place for Christian world democracy. The discussion of a thorough internationalizing of our Christianity begins with the second chapter.

The first chapter treats of a question of primary and fundamental importance to the rest of the book. The great nations of Asia and Africa are now vivid on our maps as never before. Nearly all of the citizens of those nations are our allies. Their populations comprise the majority of the people in the world. Their possibilities are beyond our imagining. Not only are they in the field of our war purposes as nations entitled to free democratic development, but some of the greatest of them are today facing acute problems of democracy. They are giving us their help. We have before us the amazing spectacle of non-Christian nations fighting for distinctively Christian principles. And they need our help. Most of all they need in their national life the ferment of the ideals of Jesus Christ.

If it is granted that the only condition in which a true democracy can flourish is a condition of essential Christianity, the first lesson of all which the War brings to Christian men and women is the necessity of making sure that the Christianity which we spread

INTRODUCTION xi

among the nations is the real Christianity of democracy, the pure Christianity of Jesus Christ Himself.

Indeed all of the deeper questions that the War will leave with us lead back to fundamental questions of religion, to the quality of our Christianity. How are the losses of the War to be overtaken and the tasks of reconstruction performed ? How may the gains of the War be held secure? How is peace to be made permanent? What international instrumentalities will safeguard the free development of nations ? How may we hold the full benefits of nationalism while building up a new internationalism? How are we to perfect our own dem'ocracy, rid it of any taint of Prussianism and secure complete rights for all classes in our population? These are immense and difficult problems. But back of them all is the problem of human character and will, of the development of a new manhood and womanhood. Christian ideals must be made regnant in individual life.

The fundamental question therefore with which we must begin this study is that of the reality of our own religion.

THE CALL OF A WORLD TASK IN WAR TIME

Chapter I The Call For Reality In Religious Life

What are we fighting for? Surely not for the mere winning of battles. These are but the means to mightier ends. After the last destruction of battle the more difficult task of construction will have to be undertaken. We shall not be content to rebuild according to the old order but according to a finer plan. It is for this better plan we are fighting. It has been described in many elaborate ways but in a word what we are fighting for is a Christian world democracy.

We know now that we must have a world democracy or none at all. Democracy has once and forever passed all national limitations.

Also we know now that we must have a truly Christian democracy or none at all. Jesus Christ and democracy go hand in hand. If a genuine democracy is to take hold of the life of the world, the spirit and teachings of Christ must be made known and applied to all localities of the world's life. This is fundamental to a successful program of world democracy. It is the premise on which these studies proceed. In them we are to consider the projection of the purposes and ideals of essential, which is democratic, Christianity

among all nations, seeking to discover some of the

great lessons pertaining to this task which have been

coming to us in war time. And foremost among the

profound and urgent messages which God is uttering

to His people in this awful hour, we hear His clarion

call for reality in religion. To that call let us direct

our first attention.

Never before have the forces of righteousness been

so thoroughly aroused to the necessity of fashioning

an international order of justice and freedom and good

will. And never has international idealism known

such concerted action or made such rapid strides as

in the past few years. But we are moving into the

new world order through blood and fire. It was little

more than yesterday that an influential New York

daily wrote thus of the prospects of universal peace:

It was nearer last year than it was the year before; it is nearer this year than it was last year ; it is nearer now, today, than it was on the first day of the present year, and, with an advancing step, that has never gone backward, through all these years, the prophecy is safe and beautiful that we are marching swiftly into the vast open of universal peace.

That was three years before the War. How strangely the words fall on our ears today when over four-fifths of the world's population is at war.^ More than a score of nations are at one another's throats. Already the conflict has cost over $100,000,000,000. In six months the United States appropriated, or pro-

* According to the Statesman's Year Book, the population of the world is estimated to be 1,691,751,000. The total population of the belligerent countries is 1,388,264,565.

vid-ed taxation measures for, more than twenty billions. According to the report of the Treasury at Washington on January 31, 1918, the United States was at that time spending $39,000,000 a day for War purposes, including $15,000,000 a day for loans to the Allies. This amounts to $1,625,000 every hour, or more than $450 a second. The outlay for direct war expenses keeps mounting steadily. The Government's original estimate for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918, called for over $18,000,000,000, or an average of $50,000,000 a day.^

But the cost in men is more staggering. Forty million men are under arms,^ away from their productiv-e pursuits and engaged actively in a fierce work of destruction.^ Eight million three hundred thousand have laid down their lives, not including those who have died of disease nor the lives lost as a result of the War. Nearly 7,000,000 men are in prisoner-of-war camps. An equal number are in hospitals and it is estimated that about 2,500,000 are physically handicapped for hfe.

But, after all, figures convey little. They bewilder us and our minds are already numbed to the significance of millions and billions. But we do know what pain means and anxiety and bereavement and despair. These make up the tragedy of countless suffering lives

* The twenty great wars of the last 125 years combined cost only $22,000,000,000.

^Including the Russian army, now inactive.

^ Never before were more than two million engaged in any war.

and countless darkened homes. Habitations of men have beconie smoking ruins and vast areas that were gardens yesterday are deserts today. It is a day of horror and agony to great multitudes of men and v^omen and little children. And what of the morrow ? Small wonder that hope is running low in so many lives. With lessened resources and spent energies men, and women equally, must set themselves to the work of salvage and reconstruction.^ Dr. John R. Mott put it graphically in a recent address when he said of war-stricken countries, 'The curfew is going to ring late in these coming nights and the days of leisure will be few."

Under the shadow of this dark tragedy the first thought that leaps to one's mind is the question. To what purpose is this loss? If it should prove to be only wast-e, that would be the great horror and tragedy of slW And we shall hold it to be waste if out of all the loss and suffering there does not issue a world order in which true principles of Christian democracy will prevail, an order in which right will be set above might, duty above privilege, cooperation above rivalry, the things of the spirit above material good, service

^ Speaking before the Empire Club in Toronto, March 8th, 1917, Professor A. B. Macallum, of the Advisory Research Council of Canada, said that the cost of the War "would impose on the world an annual charge of $500,000,000 for a century."

^A trade review published in Chicago said in its issue of January 5th, 1918: "If a World War does not result in the substitution of Service for Self as the basis of human relations its supreme benefit will have been lost."

above selfishness, ministering above being ministered unto, an order in which nations will recognize the Golden Rule in their dealings with each other.^

Warfare has proved to be necessary. We could not escape the gloom of today if we are to find glory in tomorrow. But to bring about an international order such as this, war alone will not avail. There are already ruins enough on which to climb, but mankind needs more than ruins to help it upward. And it needs more than numbers and wealth and strength and skill. We may mass our treasure and our men and win a thousand wars and still miss the prize. War in itself, however righteous the cause may be, is only destructive; at best it is a surgical process. The problem in its essence is a moral and religious one and it calls for something more than surgical treatment.

The one positive factor needed is Jesus Christ. He alone can supply the upbuilding, redemptive, vitalizing force that will save human society. But He cannot

* President Wilson's repeated insistence that what standards are accepted as binding between individuals should be recognized as binding between nations is to many a new and startling thought. Some one said the other day that we have been preaching the Golden Rule between individuals and Macchiavellism between nations. As recently as two years ago prominent Church leaders in the United States could be heard to declare that the Golden Rule was not practicable in international relations. Multitudes of Anglo-Saxon Christians have been under the spell of the evil view that the Christian law of love, to use Bernhardi's words, "can claim no significance for the relations of one country to knother, . . . Christian morality is personal and social and in its nature cannot be political."

function except through His followers. He cannot conquer in the world if He is defeated in the lives of His individual disciples. Not on the fields of Flanders or Galicia or Mesopotaniia, but on the battlegrounds of men's hearts is raging the ultimate warfare of the hour. If the hands of Christ are tied today, so that He cannot transform the life of mankind, it is only because He does not find free instruments whereby He can do His supernatural, recreative work. It is not the profession but the fact of religion that is lacking. Let the religious life of those who name His name become a living, glowing reality and His miracles will multiply in the whole of human life.

To learn this greatest lesson of the hour we must give ourselves first to introspection and then to action. We must face steadily and humbly the disclosures of religious weakness which the War has made and we must set ourselves resolutely to overcome this weakness. The call to reality which is sounding out today above the clash of the world's armies is therefore a twofold summons.

I. A Summons to Penitent Recognition that there has been Something Amiss with Christian CivilizO' tion.

Very evidently there has been !n Christian civilization some deep-seated and penetrative disease. The real evil is not the war, but what lies back of it. Are we not justified in believing that the disease is of the nature of a malignant growth which the fires of war may help to sear and destroy? At all events, the war is a symptom and like other symptoms may be reckoned of great advantage in betraying the disease and locating its nature and its causes.

We cannot ignore the fact that this is a war of so-called Christendom. One so-called^ Christian nation instigated a second Christian nation to pick a quarrel with a third Christian nation and refuse reasonable amends. This led a fourth Christian nation to mobilize its forces, whereupon Christian nation number one declared war. The result was that a fifth Christian nation became a belligerent. When a sixth Christian nation had its rights shamelessly violated, forcing it into a state of war, there seemed to be no escape for a seventh Christian nation's entering the conflict. And so it went on. Of the twenty-three nations now engaged in the struggle, only four are called non-Christian. In that sense this is Christendom's war. Moreover, the line of cleavage runs through all of the main divisions of Christianity. Before the United States and Roumania entered the war, forty-six million Protestants were arrayed on one side, forty-five million on the other. Sixty-two million Roman Catholics were fighting against sixty-three millions of the same Church. The Greek Catholics were not so evenly divided, but they were on both sides of the encounter.

1. As Christian nations we are partners in the sins that so sharply antagonized us one against the other and that at last ran their shears through the

1 Many people now protest against the use of the term "Christian nation." The term is used here and elsewhere in these pages in the usual acceptance of the term and in full recognition that no nation has yet justified its right to the title.

fabric of international society. We may of course justly claim that we are not equally sinners. Just as we may take reasonable pride that in our conduct of the war we and our allies liave not been guilty of the unspeakable horrors that have stained the banners of our enemies, so we may honestly allege that there is wide disparity between our share and theirs in those faults that deeply underlie the War. But we should frankly acknowledge that some degree of wrong lies at every national door and that the sins of materialism, selfishness, pride and social injustice which are behind the War are common to all the Christian nations.

2. As Qiristian nations we are all at fault in permitting war to survive on the earth. We are not now appraising the motives or ideals that have carried the different nations into the present war. As for the Allied nations, dictates of honor and Christian duty demanded that they enter the struggle.^ We merely point now to the fact that in spite of the development of Christian civilization through the centuries Christian nations continue to resort, for the

*Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson points out that one may consistently hold the view that war in itself is essentially evil and at the same time justify a "war for righteousness" as a necessary evil, to avoid a greater one. "The man who takes that view has apparently the ideal of peace, not of war. He wages war for the sake of peace. It is clear that there need be no war for Right unless some one had first made war for Wrong" — "The Choice Before Us," p. 58. Our present warfare is for peace as well as for righteousness.

settlement of conflicting interests, to so stupid and un-Christian and savage an instrumentality as War.

The conscience against War in general has been developing steadily and with good results within Christian nations. Through righteous diplomacy, through treaties fairly made and honorably kept and through arbitration agreements, many differences have been peacefully compounded which in earlier times would have been hastily put to the arbitrament of the sword. At the same time gigantic military establishments have been developed and provision kept ready at hand for immediate warfare.

3. As Christian nations we have common culpability in the spirit of hate which we have carried into our conduct of the War. There is a hot indignation against wrong that is not only innocent but holy. We refer here to sheer hatred of an enemy, which is something very different.

The most Godlike thing among nations or individuals is love, the most Christlike thing is brotherliness. But how little of this feeling and attitude had been existing in the hearts of Christian people before the War became evident at once when war broke out. What a temper! Where is the new and all-comprehensive commandment Christ gave, that Christians, including Christian nations, should love one another? It is forgotten in the "hymns of late" that Christians are addressing to each other across their national borders. Listen to these words of a recently written German song:

You will we hate with a lasting hate, We will never forego our hate, Hate by water and hate by land, Hate of head and hate of hand.

Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown. Hate of seventy millions choking down. We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone — ENGLAND!

And a multitude of his countrymen join Lissauer in the refrain. It is said that recently in a German city 3,000 people attended a lecture on "How to Hate England Most." But other Christian nations besides Germany know how to hate. M. Henri de Regnier, of France, found a wide response among his countrymen when, brooding over his country's wrongs, he wrote:

I swear to cherish in my heart this hate

Till my last heart-throb wanes; So may the sacred venom of my blood

Mingle and charge my veins !

May there pass never from my darkened brow

The furrows hate has worn!

May they plough deeper in my flesh, to mark

The outrage I have borne!

By towns in flames, by my fair fields laid waste.

By hostages undone, By cries of murdered women and of babes.

By each dead warrior son

I take my oath of hatred and of wrath

Before God, and before The holy waters of the Marne and Aisne,

Still ruddy with French gore;

THE CALL FOR REALITY IN RELIGION H

And fix my eyes upon immortal Rheims,

Burning from nave to porch, Lest I forget, lest I forget who lit

The sacrilegious torch I

And a young Belgian poet writes in the same strain in his "New Year's Prayer":

I pray that every passing hour Your hearts may bruise and beat, I pray that every step you take May scorch and sear your feet

I pray that Beauty never more

May charm your eyes, your ears.

That you may march through day and night

Beneath a heaven of tears.

Blind to the humblest flowers that in

Deaf to whatever sound or cry

May wake in you the memory

Of dear ones left at home

I pray the spectres of our slain May haunt you in your tents — Vigil or sleep, whiche'er you seek — Nought smelling but the bloody reek Of our Holy Innocents.

The translation into English is by Earl Curzon of Kedleston. Doubtless when it appeared there were many fervent Amens from the Earl's countrymen. For there have been profuse expressions of intense hatred of Britons towards Germany. The Archbishop of Canterbury says, "I get letters in which I am urged to see to it that we insist upon ^reprisals, swift, bloody and unrelenting. Let gutters run with German blood.

12 iTHE CALL OF A WORLD TASK

Let us smash to pulp the German old men, women and children/ and so on."^

In France, in Belgium and even in Germany this spirit is far from being universal. There are many who decry all bitterness and hatred even in the most vigorous prosecution of warfare.^ But unfortunately it is a spirit that runs deep with great numbers of the people. And in the United States and Canada many a similar sentiment is heard, and the "cult of hate" gains adherents by the hour. There is nothing surprising in all this. For hatred is an active leaven in war time, and it is made part of the process of motivation for an energetic and widespread war spirit in the general public.^

How fervently we should pray that the wounds in

1 Quoted by G. S. Eddy in "With Our Soldiers in France," page 165.

2 For example, Mr. Jerome K. Jerome writes : "Our victory must be not only over Germans, but over ourselves. We must have no hatred, no bitterness. By no other means will peace be conclusive."

3 There are encouraging signs of a growing sentiment against the development of a spirit of hatred in the public mind. Many soldiers are pledging themselves to carry out their share of the War without hate.

A dispatch from Washington, dated February 3, 1918, reports that in the last issue of "The News Bulletin'* of the Four Minute Men, through which the American Government's 20,000 volunteer speakers are informed and instructed, there is a warning against the preaching of hate. "Hatred," it says, "has been stirred up in civilian populations in order to encourage enlistment, but thanks to the draft, this debasing feature of war is not necessary in order to secure and maintain our army." This is a most significant utterance.

the body of mankind should heal clean, "by first intention," as Canon Gould of Toronto says, and that no self-righteous Or punitive spirit should "leave behind pockets of malignant germs which prevent healing, and result in obstinate conditions of infection, the only cure for which is reopening and radical measures/* Surely these are times when every Christian man and woman should live close to the Lord and Master of us all, close enough not only to hear His steady, persistent whispering, "Recompense to no man evil for evil. Love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you," but also to have communicated to us His own overcoming spirit of love.

In facing these disclosures which have been made of common religious weakness in Christian nations, we are not concerned at this particular point to locate the blame for starting the War. The blame is great and is easily located. But the final question is religious, not political. Just as the rifle, according to musketry instructors, has improved out of all proportion to the man behind the rifle, so the material civilization of Christian nations has outrun its moral and spiritual resources.^ As Dr. Mott says, "We are killing men's bodies because in previous years we were killing men's souls. We are putting men under the sod because in earlier years we did not go to the root of motive and of conduct." Written across the dark tragedy of the hour is the plain, hard fact that our form of Christianity has been found wanting. It is the Christianity of Jesus Christ that

'See pamphlet, "The Discipline," W. R. Maltby, page 9.

must be substituted. Mr. J. H. Oldham, m his recent notable book, puts it pithily: "J^sus claimed to be the Way, the Truth and the Life. But Christendom has made little serious attempt to order its national, social and industrial life in accordance with the way of Christ; there has been wanting a passionsate, exultant conviction that in Him is to be found the truth regarding men's relations with one another ; we have not opened our hearts wide enough to the inflow of that divine life which has power to infuse health and vigour into the social order." ^

Nor are we concerned at the moment to defend Christianity against the charge that it has failed. Our brief, were we to do so, would be very simple, namely, that Christianity has never had a chance to fail in national or international relations, having never been fully tried. True, Christianity did not prevent the War, but should we abandon it on that account? Only if we abandon everything else that men had hoped was leading away from war — commerce, diplomacy, education, ethical culture, community of interest, international law, humanitarian spirit, and a host of other influences that were Operating between nations but that failed to prevent the War. No, we are going right ahead with our commerce and our education and our international sanctions and all the rest and we are going right ahead with our Christianity.