issued September 29, 1914, and designed as a reply to those German
theologians who had asked English “Evangelical Christians” to hold back
their hands from blood-shed. The manifesto was signed by Bishops and
Archbishops of the Church of England, and by leading Nonconformists,
all of whom found themselves for once in heartfelt amity. It is a
plain-spoken document, declaring that truth and honour (it might have
added safety) are better things than peace; and that Christian England
endorses without reservation the rightness of the war. One of the
signers, the Bishop of London, is chaplain to the London Rifle Brigade.
No doubt about _his_ sentiments. The words of another, the Archbishop
of York, are simple, sincere, and pleasantly free from patronage of the
Almighty. “I dare to say that we can carry this cause without shame or
misgiving into the presence of Him who is the Judge of the whole earth,
and ask Him to bless it.”
As for Germany, it may be, as some enthusiasts assert, that her
“creative power in religion,” keeping pace with her “genius for
empire,” will turn her out a brand-new faith, the “world-faith”
foreseen by Treitschke, a religion of valour and of unceasing effort.
Or it may be that the God of her fathers will content her, seeing that
she leaves Him so little to do. Like Cromwell, who was a religious man
(his thanksgiving for the massacre at Drogheda was as heartfelt as any
offered by the Kaiser, or by the Kaiser’s grandfather), Germany keeps
her powder dry.
Christianity and war have walked together down the centuries. How could
it be otherwise? We have to reckon with humanity, and humanity is not
made over every hundred years. Science has multiplied instruments
of destruction, but the heart of the soldier is the same. It is an
anachronism, this human heart, just as war is an anachronism, but it
still beats. Nothing sacred and dear could have survived upon the earth
had men not fought for their women, their homes, their individual
honour, and their national life. And while men stay men, they must give
up their lives when the hour strikes. How shall they believe that,
dying on the frontiers of their invaded countries, or at the gates of
their besieged towns, they sin against the law of Christ?
Heroism is good for the soul, and it bears as much practical fruit as
lawmaking. It goes further in moulding and developing the stuff of
which a great nation is made. “There is a flower of honour, there is
a flower of chivalry, there is a flower of religion.” So Sainte-Beuve
equips the spirit of man; and the soldier, no less than the civilian,
cherishes this threefold bloom. Because he “lives dangerously,” he
feels the need of God. Because his life is forfeit, there is about him
the dignity of sacrifice. Anna Robeson Burr, in her volume on “The
Autobiography,” quotes an illustrative passage from the Commentaries of
that magnificent fighter and lucid writer, Blaise de Monluc, maréchal
de France: “Que je me trouve, en voyant les ennemis, en telle peur
que je sentois le cœur et les membres s’affoiblir et trembler. Puis,
ayant dit mes petites prières latines, je sentois tout-à-coup venir un
chaleur au cœur et aux membres.”
“Petites prières latines!” A monkish patter. And this was a man
belonging to the “educated classes,” and a citizen of the world.
Sully, in his memoirs, tells us that, at the siege of Montmélian, a
cannon-shot struck the ground close to the spot where he and the king
were standing, showering upon them earth and little flint stones;
whereupon Henry swiftly and unconsciously made the sign of the cross.
“Now I know,” said the delighted Sully,--himself an unswerving
Protestant,--“now I know that you are a good Catholic.”
We must always reckon with humanity, unless, indeed, we are orators,
living in a world of words, and marshalling unconquerable theories
against unconquered facts. The French priest at Soissons who
distributed to the Turcos little medals of the Blessed Virgin may not
have been an advanced thinker, but he displayed a pleasant acquaintance
with mankind. There was no time to explain to these unbelievers the
peculiar efficacy of the medals; for that he trusted to Our Lady; but
their presentation was a link between the Catholic soldier and the
Moslem, who were fighting side by side for France. Perhaps this priest
remembered that close at hand, in the hamlet of Saint-Médard, lie the
relics of Saint Sebastian, Christian gentleman and martyr, who was an
officer in the imperial bodyguard of Diocletian, rendering to Cæsar the
service that was Cæsar’s, until the hour came for him to render to God
the life that was always God’s.
The wave of religious emotion which sweeps over a nation warring
for its life is not the mere expression of that nation’s sharpened
needs; it is not only a cry for help where help is sorely needed. It
is part of man’s responsiveness to the call of duty, his sense of
self-sacrifice in giving his body to death in order that his country
may live. “Religion,” says Mr. Stephen Graham, “is never shaken down
by war. The intellectual dominance is shaken and falls; the spiritual
powers are allowed to take possession of men’s beings.” That a truth so
simple and so often illustrated should fail to be understood, proves
the torpor of materialism. A sad-minded American writer, commenting on
the destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims, made the amazing discovery
that the sorrow and indignation evoked by this national crime showed an
utter collapse of Christianity. Every one, he said, bewailed the loss
to the world. No one bewailed the loss to religion. Therefore faith lay
dead.
That religion can lose nothing by the destruction of her monuments
is the solace of Christian souls. Her churches lie in crumbling
ruins. Ypres, Pervyse, Soissons, Revigny, Souain, Maurupt, Étavigny.
Everywhere stand the shattered walls of what was once a church, with
here and there an altar burned or hacked, and a mutilated crucifix. But
the faith that built these churches is as unassailable as the souls of
the men who died for them. There are things beyond the reach of “high
explosives,” and it is not for them we grieve.
It is a common saying that the New Testament affords no vindication of
war, which is natural enough, not being penned as a manual for nations.
But Catholic theology, having been called on very early to pronounce
judgment upon this recurrent incident of life, has defined with
absolute exactitude what, in the eyes of the Church, justifies, and
what necessitates war. From a mass of minute detail,--laws laid down
by Saint Thomas Aquinas and other doctors of the Church,--I venture to
quote two salient points, the first dealing with the nature of a right,
the second with the nature of a title.
“Every perfect right, that is, every right involving in others an
obligation in justice of deference thereto, if it is to be an
efficacious, and not an illusory power, carries with it as a last
appeal the subsidiary right of coercion. A perfect right, then, implies
the right of physical force to defend itself against infringement, to
recover the subject-matter of right unjustly withheld, or to exact its
equivalent, and to inflict damage in the exercise of this coercion,
wherever coercion cannot be exercised without such damage.”
“The primary title of a state to go to war is, first, the fact that the
state’s rights are menaced by foreign aggression not otherwise to be
prevented than by war; second, the fact of actual violation of right
not otherwise reparable; third, the need of punishing the threatening
or invading power, for the security of the future. From the nature of
the proved right, those three facts are necessarily just titles, and
the state whose rights are in jeopardy is itself the judge thereof.”
I am aware that theology is not popular, save with theologians;
but after reading Treitschke and Bernhardi on the one hand, and the
addresses delivered at “peace demonstrations” on the other, it is
inexpressibly refreshing to follow straight thought instead of crooked
thought, or words that hold no thought at all. I am also aware that
Catholic wars have not always been waged along the lines laid down by
Catholic theology; but this is beside the point. The Mosaic law was not
the less binding upon the Jews because they were always breaking it.
Nor are we prepared to say that they would have been as sound morally
without a law so constantly infringed. It is well to know that, even in
the spirit, there is such a thing as justice and admitted right.
To prate about the wickedness of war without drawing a clear line
of demarcation between aggressive and defensive warfare, between
violating a treaty and upholding it, is to lose our mental balance, to
substitute sentiment for truth. The very wrongness of the one implies
logically the rightness of the other. And whatever is morally right is
in accord with Christianity. To speak loosely of war as unchristian is
to ignore not only the Christian right, but the Christian duty, which
rests with every nation and with every man to protect that of which
nation and man are lawful protectors. Even aggressive warfare is not
necessarily a denial of the Christianity it affronts. Crooked thinking
comes naturally to men, and the power of self-deception is without
bounds. God is not deceived; but the instinctive desire of the creature
to hoodwink the Creator, to induce Him--for a consideration--to
compound a felony, is revealed in every page of history, and under
every aspect of civilization. The necessity which man has always felt
of being on speaking terms with his own conscience, built churches
and abbeys in the days of faith, and endows educational institutions
in this day of enlightenment; but it very imperfectly controlled, or
controls, the actions of men or of nations. If our confidence in the
future were not based upon ignorance of the past, we should better
understand, and more courageously face, the harsh realities of life.
Two lessons taught by the war are easily learned. There is no safety
in talk, and there is no assurance that the world’s heritage of
beauty, its triumphs of art and of architecture, will descend to our
children and our grandchildren. We never reckoned on this loss of our
common inheritance. We never thought that the gracious gifts made by
the far past to the dim future could be so speedily destroyed, and
that a single day would suffice to impoverish all coming generations.
What can the pedantry, the “culture,” of the twentieth century give
to compensate us for the loss of Rheims Cathedral? The deficit is too
heavy to be counted. Not France alone, but the civilized world, has
been robbed beyond measure and beyond retrievement. Life is less good
to all of us, and will be less good to those who come after us, because
this great sacrilege has been committed. As for culture,--the careful
destruction of the University of Louvain proves once and forever that
scholarship is no more sacred than art or than religion, when the tide
of invasion breaks upon a doomed and helpless land.
This affords food for thought. Italy, for example, is the
treasure-house of the world. She is the guardian of the beauty she
created, and to her shrine goes all mankind in pilgrimage. How long
would her cathedrals, her palaces, her galleries, survive assault? What
would be left of Venice after a week’s bombardment? What of Florence,
or of Rome? There is no such thing as safety in war. There is no such
thing as safety in neutrality. Italy has more to lose than all the
other nations of Europe, and is there one of us who would not be a
partner in her loss?
And the United States? “God’s own land”? Are we forever secure? True we
have little to fear in the destruction of our public monuments, which
are rather like the public monuments of Prussia, the ornate edifices
and ramping statues of Hamburg and Berlin. It might be a pious duty to
let them go. But we have homes which are as precious to us as were once
the devastated homes of Belgium to happy men and women; and we confide
their safety to treaties, to scraps of paper, like the one which made
Belgium inviolate. If we are in search of life’s ironies, let us note
that a Roman Catholic Peace Conference was to have been convened in
Liège, the very month that Germany struck her blow. A fortnight’s
delay, and delegates might have been making speeches on the concord of
nations, while the streets of Aerschot ran blood, and Wespelaer was
looted and burned.
Yet so deep-rooted is sentiment in our souls, so averse are we to
facing facts, that to-day a “peace meeting” will pack a convention hall
in any town of any state in the Union. We are as pleased to hear that
“the brotherhood of man is the only basis for enduring peace among the
nations” as if this shadowy brotherhood had taken form and substance.
We listen with undiminished trustfulness to Mr. Bryan’s oft-repeated
plans for ending the war by remonstrating soberly with the warriors.
We see hope in conferences, in speeches, in telegrams to Washington,
in appeals “from the mothers of the nation.” How many months have
passed since Mr. La Follette evoked our enthusiastic response to these
well-timed, well-balanced words? “The accumulated and increasing
horrors of the European wars are creating a great tidal wave of public
opinion that sweeps aside all specious reasoning, and admits of but
one simple, common-sense, humane conclusion,--a demand for peace and
disarmament among civilized nations.”
To this we all cried Amen! But as there was nobody to bell the cat, the
war went bloodily on. The question who was to “demand” peace, and of
whom it was to be demanded, was one which Mr. La Follette could not,
or at least did not, answer. “Public opinion” has a weighty sound. All
our lives we have pinned our faith to this bodiless thing, and it has
failed us in our need. Why, if it can work miracles in the future,
should it have been so helpless in these two sad years? The Hague
Conference of 1907 laid down definite rules of warfare,--rules to which
the nations of Europe subscribed with cheerful unanimity. They forbade
pillage, the levying of indemnities, the seizure of funds belonging
to local authorities, collective penalties for individual acts, the
conveying of troops or munitions across the territory of a neutral
power, and all terrorization of a country by harshness to its civilian
population. The object of these rules, every one of which has been
broken in Belgium, was to keep war within the limits set by what Mr.
Henry James calls the “high decency” of Christian civilization. Public
opinion has been as powerless to enforce the least of these rules as it
has been powerless to prevent the sinking of unarmed merchant ships,
the drowning of men, women and children belonging to neutral nations.
How can we hope that a force so feeble to-day will control the world
to-morrow?
If the Allies emerge triumphantly from the war, and England demands the
reduction of armaments, then this good result will have been gained
by desperate fighting, not by noble sentiments. We, whose sentiments
have been of the noblest, shall have had no real share in the work.
If Germany conquers, and stands unassailable, a great military
world-power, fired with a sense of her exalted destiny, rich with the
spoils of Europe, and holding in her mailed hands the power to enforce
her will, is it at all likely that our excellent arguments will prevail
upon her to reverse her policy, and enfeeble herself for our safety? A
successful aggressive warfare does not pave the way to a lasting and
honourable peace. This is one of the truths we may learn, if we will,
from history.
For years we have chosen to believe that arbitration would ensure for
the world a maximum of comfort at a minimum of cost, and that the
religion of humanity would achieve what the religion of Christ has
never achieved,--the mythical brotherhood of man. From this dream we
have been rudely awakened; but, being awake, let us at least recognize
and respect that simple and great quality which makes every man the
defender of his home, the guardian of his rights, the avenger of his
shameful wrongs.
We, too, have fought bravely in our day. We, too, have known what it
is to do all that man can do, and to bear all that man must bear; and
it was not in the hour of our trial that we talked about bankrupt
Christianity. When Serbia made her choice between death and the
uttermost dishonour, she vindicated the sacred right of humanity. When
Belgium with incredible courage defended her own good name and the
safety of France, she stood erect before God and man, and laid down her
life for her friend.
Women and War
The only agreeable thing to be recorded in connection with Europe’s
sudden and disastrous war is the fact that people stopped talking
about women, and began to talk about men. For the past decade, women
have persistently occupied the front of the stage, and men have seemed
a negligible factor; useful in their imperfect way, but hopelessly
unproblematic. Then Austria delivered her ultimatum, Germany marched
her armies across a peaceful earth, and men, plain men, became
supremely important, as defenders of their imperilled homes. In this
swift return to primitive conditions, primitive qualities reasserted
their value. France, Belgium, England called to their sons for succour,
and the arms of these men were strengthened because they had women to
protect.
A casual study of newspapers before and after the proclamation of war
is profoundly instructive. Even the illustrated papers and periodicals
tell their tale, and spare us the printed page. Pictures of recruits in
place of club-women. Pictures of camps in place of convention halls.
Pictures of Red Cross nurses bending over hospital beds, in place
of militants raiding Buckingham Palace. Pictures of peaceful ladies
sewing and knitting for soldiers, in place of formidable committees
baiting Mr. Wilson, or pursuing the more elusive Mr. Asquith. Pictures
of pitying young girls handing cups of broth and the ever-welcome
cigarettes to weary volunteers, in place of suffragists haranguing the
mob of Hyde Park. Never was there such a noteworthy illustration of
Scott’s archaic line,--
“O woman! in our hours of ease.”
Never did the simplicities of life so triumphantly efface its
complexities.
As the war deepened, and the tale of its devastations and brutalities
robbed even the saddened onlooker of all gladness in life, it was
natural that women, while faithful to their rôle of ministering angels,
should mingle blame with pity. It was also natural, though less
pardonable, that their censure should be of that vague order which
holds everybody responsible for what somebody has done. Perhaps it was
even natural that, confident in their own unproved wisdom and untried
efficiency, they should believe and say that, had women shared the
control of civilized governments, the world would now be at peace.
Here we enter the realms of pure conjecture,--realms in which
everything can be asserted and denied, nothing proved or disproved. It
may be that when women become voters, legislators, and officeholders,
they will do the better work for this profound and touching belief in
their own perfectibility. Or it may be that a perilous self-confidence
will--until corrected by experience--lead them astray. These
speculations would be of small concern, were it not that the claim to
moral superiority, which women advance without a blush, disposes many
of them to ignore the hard conditions under which men struggle, and
fail, and struggle again. It narrows their outlook, confuses their
judgment, and cheapens their point of view.
When a prominent American feminist said smartly that war is the
hysteria of men, she betrayed that lamentable lack of perspective
which ignorance can only partly excuse. The heartless shallowness of
such a speech commended it to many hearers; but of all generalizations
it is the least legitimate. There was as little hysteria in the
well-ordered, deeply laid plans of Germany as there was in the heroic
defence of France and Belgium, or in the slow awakening of England, who
took a deal of rousing from her sleep. “Most women,” says Mr. Martin
Chaloner, “regard politics as a kind of foolishness that men play at.”
But the campaign in Belgium is not to be classed as “foolishness” or
“hysteria.” The attack was a crime past all forgiveness; the defence
was one of flawless valour. If it be hysterical to prize home and
country more than life, then we must re-write that temperate old axiom
which has swayed men’s souls for centuries: “Dulce et decorum est pro
patria mori.”
Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, an English-woman and an advanced feminist,
has devoted many busy months to persuading American women that the
incapacity of men to rule the world is abundantly proven by the present
state of Europe, and that the downfall of all that civilization has
held dear is due to their arrogant rejection of feminine advice.
Women, she asserts, are the “natural custodians of the human race”;
they have for years “sought to find entrance into the councils of
the human commonwealth, in order that they might there represent the
supreme issue of race-preservation and development”; now at last
their hands must be free “to build up a surer and safer structure of
humanity.”
“To-day it is for men to stand down, and for the women whom they have
belittled to take the seat of judgment. No picture, however overdrawn,
of woman’s ignorance, error, or folly could exceed in fantastic yet
tragic horror the spectacle which male governments are furnishing
history to-day. The foundation of the structure of civilization which
they have erected in Europe has proved rotten. The edifice, seemingly
so secure, has collapsed. The failure of male statecraft in Europe is
complete.”
This is a bitter indictment, and one not to be lightly disregarded.
But its terms are too general to support an argument. What could
the women of Belgium and the women of France have done to save their
countries from invasion? When we are told that “the woman-movement and
war cannot flourish together,” and that we should never have witnessed
this “campaign of race-suicide,” had women been justly represented, we
have no answer to make, because a denial would be as hypothetical as
is the assertion. But when Mrs. Lawrence ventures to call the war “a
great dog-fight,” caused by an “obsession of materialism,” we recognize
a smallness of vision and coarseness of speech incompatible with clear
thinking, or with that distinction of mind which commands attention
and respect. If this militant pacifist sees in the conduct of England
and in the conduct of France only the greed of two dogs, squabbling
with Germany over a bone, which apparently belongs to none of them,
we can but hope she is not expressing the views, or illustrating the
knowledge of her countrywomen.
Great events, however lamentable, must be looked at greatly. There is
much to be commended in the peace platform endorsed by the suffragists
in Washington, January, 1915. There is everything to be hoped for in
the sane and just settlement of national disputes by an international
tribunal, which might advantageously include women representatives. The
decisions of such a tribunal must, however, be supported by something
stronger than sentiment, which has proved singularly inefficacious
in the past. It is well that men and women should work hand in hand
for peace and for prosperity; but it is not well that women should
invite themselves to “take the seat of judgment”; or that they should
be complacently sure that their arguments would have prevailed, when
similar arguments, advanced by men, have been unheeded.
What, after all, is the line of reasoning which Mrs. Lawrence
sincerely believes would have swayed the councils of the nations? After
assuring us that “the woman’s movement is spiritual and religious,
founded on the belief that human life is sacred,” she continues:
“As mothers, women would have impressed upon men the cost of human
replenishment; as chancellors of the family exchequer, their influence
would have been felt in forcing legislatures to recognize the direct
relation between the plenteousness of the food-supply, endangered and
restricted by war, and the health and growth of the rising generation.”