E-text prepared by Irma Spehar and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) from page images
generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
http://www.archive.org/details/warandchurches00mccauoft
THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES
by
JOSEPH McCABE
[Issued for the Rationalist Press Association, Limited]
London: Watts & Co. 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
1915
WORKS BY THE AUTHOR
_Modern Rationalism_ (Watts), 2nd ed. 1/-
_Peter Abelard_ (Duckworth), 2nd ed. 3/6.
_Saint Augustine and his Age_ (Duckworth), 2nd ed. 3/6.
_Twelve Years in a Monastery_ (Smith Elder), 3rd ed. _6d._ and 1/-
_Life in a Modern Monastery_ (Grant Richards). 6/-
_Life and Letters of G. J. Holyoake_ (Watts), 2 vols. £1/1/-
_Talleyrand_ (Hutchinson). 14/-
_The Iron Cardinal_ (Nash). 12/-
_Goethe_ (Nash). 15/-
_A Candid History of the Jesuits_ (Nash). 10/6.
_The Evolution of Mind_ (Black). 5/-
_Evolution_ (Twentieth Century Science Series). 1/-
_Prehistoric Man_ (Twentieth Century Science Series). 1/-
_The Principles of Evolution_ (The Nation's Library). 1/-
_The Decay of the Church of Rome_ (Methuen), 2nd ed. 7/6.
_The Story of Evolution_ (Hutchinson), 2nd ed. 7/6.
_The Empresses of Rome_ (Methuen). 12/6.
_The Empresses of Constantinople_ (Methuen). 12/6.
_Church Discipline_ (Duckworth). 3/6.
_Can we Disarm?_ (Heinemann). 2/6.
_In the Shade of the Cloister_ (pseudonymous--Constable). 6/-
_The Bible in Europe_ (Watts). 3/6.
_The Religion of Woman_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
_Woman in Political Evolution_ (Watts). _6d._
_Haeckel's Critics Answered_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
_From Rome to Rationalism_ (Watts), 4th ed. _4d._
_The Origin of Life_ (Watts). 1/-
_Secular Education_ (Watts), 2nd ed. 1/-
_The Martyrdom of Ferrer_ (Watts), 2nd ed. _6d._
_The Religion of the Twentieth Century_ (Watts). 1/-
_A Hundred Years of Education Controversy_ (Watts). _3d._
_The Existence of God_ (Watts). _9d._
_Shakespeare and Goethe_ (Cole). _6d._
_George Bernard Shaw_ (Kegan Paul). 7/6.
_The Religion of Sir Oliver Lodge_ (Watts). 2/-
PREFACE
The searching crisis through which the nation is passing must have the
effect of securing grave consideration for many aspects of our life and
institutions. We have already traversed the acute stage of suspense, and
are gradually becoming sensible of these wider considerations. It was
natural that for a prolonged period the disturbance of our economic
conditions, the anxiety for the safety of our nation in face of an
appalling menace, the personal concern of millions about the lives of
sons or brothers who have bravely responded to the call, should keep our
thoughts enchained to the daily or hourly fortunes of the field of
battle. Now that the initial disorder has been allayed and we have
attained a quiet and reasonable confidence in the issue, we turn to
other and broader aspects of this mighty event of our generation. How
comes it that the most enlightened century the world has yet seen should
be thus darkened by one of the bloodiest and most calamitous wars that
have ever spread their awful wings over the life of man? Where is all
the optimism of yesterday? Must we reconsider our reasoned boast that
our civilisation has lifted the life of man to a level hitherto
unattained? Is there something entirely and most mischievously wrong
with the foundations of modern civilisation?
A dozen such questions will press for an answer, but it will be granted
that one of the most urgent and most interesting of the many grave
considerations which the war suggests is its relation to the prevailing
creeds and standards of conduct. The war coincides with an advanced
stage of what is called the spread of unbelief. In each of the nations
of Europe which are engaged in this awful struggle complaints have been
made every year for the last two or three generations that Christianity
is losing its moral control of the white race. In the cities, especially
in the capitals, of Europe there has been a proved and acknowledged
decay of church-going; and, however much we may be disposed to think
that these millions who no longer attend church retain in their minds
the beliefs of their fathers, the slender circulation of religious
literature makes it plain that the vast majority of them do not, in
point of fact, receive either the spoken or written message of the
Christian Church. In the great cities--and it is undoubted that the life
of a nation is mainly controlled by its cities--there has been an
increasing reluctance to listen to the authoritative exponents of the
Christian gospel.
A number of the clergy have very naturally noticed and stressed this
coincidence. Prelates of high authority have, as we shall see, even
declared that the war is a scourge deliberately laid on the back of
mankind by the Almighty on account of this spreading infidelity. As a
rule, the clergy shrink from advocating a theory which has such grave
implications as this has, and they are content to submit the more
plausible suggestion, that the decay of the Christian standard of
conduct in the mind of a large proportion of our generation accounts for
this tragic combat of nations. A distinguished Positivist writer, Mr. J.
Cotter Morison, commenting in the last generation on the decay of
Christian belief, expressed some such concern in the following terms:
"It would be rash to expect that a transition, unprecedented for
its width and difficulty, from theology to positivism, from the
service of God to the service of Man, could be accomplished without
jeopardy. Signs are not wanting that the prevalent anarchy in
thought is leading to anarchy in morals. Numbers who have put off
belief in God have not put on belief in Humanity. A common and
lofty standard of duty is being trampled down in the fierce battle
of incompatible principles."[1]
It is true that in the work from which I quote[1] the learned, if
somewhat nervous, Positivist does not, by his masterly survey of the
moral history of Europe, afford us the least reason to think that we
have really deteriorated from the standard of conduct set us by earlier
generations, but his words do tend to press on our notice the claim of
many writers, clerical and non-clerical, that we are returning from
Christianity to Paganism, from a settled moral discipline to an
unhealthy moral scepticism. Can one entirely and safely reconstruct the
bases of personal and national conduct in one or two generations?
This very plain and plausible theory is, however, exposed to criticism
from other points of view. The clergy as a body are not at all willing
to concede that the decay of belief has spread as far as the theory
would suggest. In order to suppose that the life of Europe has, in a
matter of the gravest importance, been directed by a non-Christian
spirit, one must assume that at least the majority in each nation have
deserted the traditional creed. It is by no means conceded or
established that the fighting nations have ceased to be predominantly
Christian. Indeed, if we confine the awful responsibility for this
tragedy, as the evidence compels us, to Germany and Austria-Hungary, we
are casting it upon the two nations which have been the chief
representatives in Europe of the two leading branches of the Church.
Most assuredly no prelate of either country would admit that his nation
has ceased to be Christian or surrendered its life to non-Christian
impulses; and in our own country we have frequently been assured of late
years that the real power of Christianity was never greater.
Clearly these conflicting claims and this contrast of profession and
practice suggest a problem that deserves consideration. The problem
becomes the more interesting, and the plausible theory of non-Christian
responsibility is even more severely shaken, when we reflect that war is
not an innovation of this unbelieving age, but a legacy from the earlier
and more thoroughly Christian period. Had mankind departed from some
admirable practice of submitting its international quarrels to a
religious arbitrator, and in our own times devised this horrible
arbitrament of the sword, we should be more disposed to seek the cause
in a contemporary enfeeblement of moral standards. This is notoriously
not the case. Men have warred, and priests have blessed the banners
which were to wave over fields of blood, from the very beginning of
Christian influence, not to speak of earlier religious epochs. There is
assuredly a ghastly magnitude about modern war which almost lends it an
element of novelty, but the appearance is illusory. That intense
employment of resources which makes modern war so sanguinary tends also
to shorten its duration. No military struggle could now be prolonged
into the period of the Napoleonic wars; to say nothing of the Thirty
Years War, which involved the death, with every circumstance of
ferocity, of immensely larger numbers than could be affected by any
modern war. Nor may we forget that it is the modern spirit which has
claimed some alleviation of the horrors of the field, and that the
majority of the nations engaged in the present struggle have observed
the new rules.
These considerations show that the problem is less simple and more
serious than is often supposed, and I set out to discuss each of them
with some fullness. That the war has _no_ relation to the Churches will
hardly be claimed by anybody. Such a claim would mean that they were
indifferent to one of the very gravest phases of human conduct, or
wholly unable to influence it. Nor can we avoid the issue by pleading
that Christianity approves and blesses a just defensive war, and that,
since the share of this country in the war is entirely just and
defensive, we have no moral problem to consider. I have assuredly no
intention of questioning either the justice of Britain's conduct or the
prudence of the Churches in adapting the maxims of the Sermon on the
Mount to the practical needs of life. If and when a nation sees its life
and prosperity threatened by an ambitious or a jealous neighbour, one
cannot but admire its clergy for joining in the advocacy of an efficient
and triumphant defence. But this is merely a superficial and proximate
consideration. Not the actual war only, but the military system of which
it is the occasional outcome, has a very pertinent relation to religion;
the maintenance of this machinery for settling international quarrels in
an age in which applied science makes it so formidable is a very grave
moral issue. It turns our thoughts at once to those branches of the
Christian Church which claim the predominant share in the moulding of
the conduct of Europe.
But these questions of the efficacy of Christian teaching or the
influence of Christian ministers are not the only or the most
interesting questions suggested by the relation of the war to the
prevailing religion. The great tragedy which darkens the earth to-day
raises again in its most acute form the problem of evil and Providence.
More than two thousand years ago, as _Job_ reminds us, some difficulty
was experienced in justifying the ways of God to men. The most
penetrating thinker of the early Church, St. Augustine, wrestled once
more with the problem, as if no word had been written on it; and he
wrestled in vain. A century and a half ago, when the Lisbon earthquake
destroyed forty thousand Portuguese, Voltaire attempted, with equal
unsuccess, to vindicate Providence with the faint hope of the Deist.
Modern science, prolonging the sufferings of living things over earlier
millions of years, has made that problem one of the great issues of our
age, and this dread spectacle of _human_ nature red in tooth and claw
brings it impressively before us. Is the work of God restricted to
counting the hairs of the head, and not enlarged to check the murderous
thoughts in the human brain? Nay, when we survey those horrid stretches
of desolation in Belgium and Poland and Serbia, where the mutilated
bodies of the innocent, of women and children, lie amidst the ashes of
their homes; when we think of those peaceful sailors of our mercantile
marine at the bottom of the deep, those unoffending civilians whose
flesh was torn by shells, those hundreds of thousands whom patriotic
feeling alone has summoned to the vast tombs of Europe, those millions
of homes that have been darkened by suspense and loss--how can we repeat
the ancient assurance that God _does_ count the hairs of the head and
mark the fall of even the sparrows? Does God move the insensate stars
only, and leave to the less skilful guidance of man those momentous
little atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?
These are reflections which must occur to every thoughtful person in the
later and more meditative phases of a great war, when the eye has grown
somewhat weary of the glitter of steel and the colour of banners, when
the world mourns about us and the long lists of the dead and longer list
of the stupendous waste sober the mind. Something is gravely wrong with
our international life; and, plainly, it is not a question _whether_
that international life departs from the Christian standard, but _why_,
after fifteen hundred years of mighty Christian influence, it does so
depart. Is the moral machinery of Europe ineffective? One certainly
cannot say that it has not had a prolonged trial; yet here, in the
twentieth century, we have, in the most terrible form, one of the most
appalling evils which human agency ever brought upon human hearts. We
have to reconsider our religious and ethical position; to ask ourselves
whether, if the influence of religion has failed to direct men into
paths of wisdom and peace, some other influence may not be found which
will prove more persuasive and more beneficent.
J. M.
_Easter, 1915._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES 1
II. CHRISTIANITY AND WAR 25
III. THE APOLOGIES OF THE CLERGY 48
IV. THE WAR AND THEISM 70
V. THE HUMAN ALTERNATIVE 95
THE WAR AND THE CHURCHES
CHAPTER I
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCHES
The first question which the unprejudiced inquirer will seek to answer
is: How far were the Churches able to prevent, yet remiss in using their
influence to prevent, the present war? There is, unhappily, in these
matters no such thing as an entirely unprejudiced inquirer. Our
preconceived ideas act like magnets on the material of evidence which is
submitted to us, instinctively selecting what bears in their favour and
declining to receive what they cannot utilise. Nowhere is this more
conspicuous than in the field of religious inquiry, nor is it confined
to either believers or unbelievers. There has been too much mutual
abuse, and too little attention to the fact that the mind no less than
the mouth has its palate, its impulsive selections and rejections. One
can meet the difficulty only by a patient and full examination of the
pleas of both parties to a controversy.
And the first plea which it is material to examine is that, since it is
claimed that all the nations engaged in the war are Christian nations,
one may accuse them collectively of moral failure. From the earliest
days of the Christian religion it was the boast of those who accepted
it that it abolished all distinctions of caste and race. In the little
community which gathered round the cross there was neither bond nor
free, neither Greek nor Roman. This cosmopolitanism was, in fact, a
natural feature of religious movements at the time, and was due not so
much to their intrinsic development as to the political circumstances of
the world in which they spread. All round the eastern and northern
shores of the Mediterranean a great variety of races mingled in every
port and every commercial town, and it was the policy of the powerful
Empire which extended its sway over them all to overrule their national
antagonisms. When, in the earlier period, Jew and Greek and Egyptian had
maintained their separate nationalities, hostility to other races had
been a very natural social quality, an inevitable part of the spirit of
self-preservation in a race. When the great Empires had conquered the
smaller nationalities or the decaying older Empires, this mutual
hostility was moderated, and, as the vast movements of population which
marked the end of the old and the beginning of the new era filled the
Mediterranean cities with extraordinarily mixed crowds, mutual
friendship became the more fitting and more useful social virtue. A good
deal of the old narrow patriotism had been due to the fact that each
nation had its own god. In the new Roman world this theological
exclusivism broke down, and the priests of a particular god, scattered
like their followers among the cities of the eastern world, began to
seek a cosmopolitan rather than a nationalist following. In the temple
of each of the leading gods of the time--Jahveh, Serapis, Mithra, and so
on--people of all races and classes were received on a footing of
equality. The doctrine of the brotherhood of man spread all over that
cosmopolitan world.
When the old world, to the south and east of the Mediterranean, was
blotted out of history, and Europe in turn became a group of conflicting
nationalities, racial hatred was revived and in its political and social
aspects the doctrine of the brotherhood of man was virtually forgotten.
But the Christian Church had embodied that doctrine in its sacred
writing, and was bound to maintain it. In its ambition of a universal
dominion it was the direct successor of the Roman Empire. All the races
of Europe were to meet as brothers under the one God of the new world
and under the direction of his representatives on earth. It was this
change in the features of the world which gave a certain air of
insincerity to the Christian gospel. In the older days there had been
political unity with a great diversity of religions; now there was
religious unity spread over a great diversity of antagonistic political
bodies. Men were brothers from the religious point of view and, only too
frequently, deadly enemies from the political point of view. The discord
was made worse by the feudal system which was adopted. Even within the
same race there was no brotherhood. In effect the clergy as a body did
not insist that the noble was a brother of the serf, and did not exact
fraternal treatment of the serf. Thus the phrase, "the brotherhood of
man," which had been a most prominent and active principle of early
Christianity, became little more than a useless theological thesis.
The solution of the difficulty would, of course, have been for the
clergy, as the supreme representatives of the doctrine of brotherhood,
to apply that doctrine boldly to every part of man's conduct; to
pronounce that all violence and bloodshed were immoral, and to devise a
humane means of settling international quarrels. I will consider in the
next chapter why the Christian leaders failed even to attempt this great
reform. For the moment it is enough to observe that the conditions of
modern times favoured a fresh assertion of the doctrine of brotherhood.
Great as the power of sincere moral idealism has always been, the
historian must recognise that economic changes have had a most important
influence upon the development or acceptance of moral ideas. Just as in
earlier ages the development of forms of life was conditioned by changes
in their material surroundings, so man's moral development has been
profoundly influenced by industrial, commercial, and political changes.
The destruction of feudalism and the development of the modern worker
were notoriously not due to religious influence, yet they had an
important relation to religious doctrines. Once the new spirit had
asserted its right, the clergy recollected that all men are brothers
from the social as well as the religious point of view. Many of them,
and even some social writers of Christian views, maintain that the new
social order is itself based on or inspired by the religious doctrine of
brotherhood. This speculation is entirely opposed to the historical
facts, but it will easily be realised that when the workers had, in
their own interest, asserted afresh the doctrine of human brotherhood,
the Churches had a new occasion to preach it. How timid and tentative
that preaching was, and even is, we have not to consider here. On the
whole the brotherhood of men was re-affirmed by the Churches both in the
social and religious sense.
This situation makes more violent than ever the contrast between the
political and religious relations of men, and gives a strong _prima
facie_ case to the charge against the Churches which I am considering.
It is wholly artificial and insincere to say that men are brothers
socially and religiously, yet are justified in marching out in millions,
with the most murderous apparatus science can devise, to meet each other
on the field of battle. We condemn crime for social reasons. We have
relegated to the Middle Ages, to which it belongs, the notion that the
criminal is a man who has affronted society, and that society may take a
revenge on him. In the sane conception of our time the criminal is a
mischievous element disturbing the social order, and, in the interest of
that order, he must be isolated or put out of existence. It is not the
_guilt_, but the _social effect_, which we regard. And from this point
of view a single great war is far more calamitous than all the crime in
Europe during whole decades. It is estimated by high authorities that if
the present war lasts only twelve months it will cost Europe, directly
and indirectly, including the destruction of property and the loss to
industry and commerce, no less a sum than £9,000,000,000; and it will
certainly cost more than a million, if not more than two million, lives,
besides the incalculable amount of suffering from wounds, loss of
relatives, outrages, and the incidental damage of warfare. The time will
come when historians will study with amazement the wonderful system we
have devised in Europe for the suppression of breaches of the social
order at a time when we complacently suffer these appalling periodical
destructions of the entire social order of nations.
It is quite natural to arraign the Christian Churches in connection
with this disastrous outbreak. Unless they discharge the high task of
the moral direction of men, in international as well as in personal
conduct, they have no _raison d'être_. Few of them to-day will plead
that their function is merely to interpret to their fellows what they
regard as the revealed word of God. In face of the challenging spirit of
our time they maintain that they discharge a moral mission of such
importance that society is likely to go to pieces if Christianity is
abandoned. We therefore ask very pertinently where they were, and what
they were doing, during the months when the nations of Europe were
slowly advancing toward a declaration of war.
In examining the charge that, for some reason or other, they neglected
their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few
of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the
declaration. No indictment of the clergy is valid which presupposes that
they are more sagacious or far-seeing than the rest of us. Yet, however
much we may have doubted the actual occurrence of war, we have known for
years, and have quite complacently commented upon, the danger that half
of Europe would sooner or later be involved in the horrors of the
greatest war in history. Now it is notorious that the Christian Churches
have done little or nothing, in proportion to their mighty resources and
influence, to avert this danger. No collective action has been taken,
and relatively few individuals have used their influence to moderate or
obviate the danger. The supreme head of the most powerfully organised
and most cosmopolitan religious body in the world, an institution which
has its thousands of ministers among each of the antagonistic peoples--I
mean the Church of Rome--gave his attention to minute questions of
doctrine and administration, and bemoaned repeatedly the evil spirit of
our age, but issued not one single syllable of precise and useful
direction to the various national regiments of his clergy in connection
with this terrible impending danger. The heads or Councils of the
various Protestant bodies were equally remiss. Here and there individual
clergymen joined associations, founded by laymen, which endeavoured to
maintain peace and to secure arbitration upon quarrels, and one Sunday
in the year was set aside by the pulpits for the vague gospel of peace.
But in almost all cases these movements were purely secular in origin,
and the few movements of a religious nature have been obviously founded
only to keep the idealism linked with a particular Church, have had no
great influence, and have been too vague in their principles to have had
any effect upon the growing chances of a European war. There is no doubt
that the Churches have remained almost dumb while Europe was preparing
for its Armageddon.
I speak of the clergy, but in our time the responsibility cannot be
confined to these. Even in the Church of England the laity have now a
considerable influence, and in the other Protestant bodies they have
even more power in the control of policy. No doubt the duty of
initiative and of work in such matters lies mainly with the more
leisured and more official interpreters of the Christian spirit, yet it
would be absurd to restrict the criticism to them. The various Christian
bodies, as a whole, have confronted a very grave and imminent danger
with remarkable indifference, although that danger could become an
actual infliction only by seriously immoral conduct on the part of some
nation. They saw, as we all saw, the vast armies preparing for the fray,
the diplomatists betraying an increasing concern about the relations
between their respective nations, the press embittering those relations,
and a pernicious and provocative literature inflaming public opinion. We
all saw these things, and knew that a war of appalling magnitude would
follow the first infringement of peace. Yet I think it will hardly be
controverted that the Churches made no serious effort to avert that
calamity from Europe. They were deeply concerned about unbelief, about
personal purity, about the cleanness of plays and books and pictures,
even about questions of social reform which a rebellious democracy
forced on them; but they took no initiative and performed no important
service in connection with this terrible danger.
That is the indictment which many bring against Christianity, and we
have now to consider the general defence. I will examine later a number
of religious pronouncements about the war, and will discuss here only a
few general pleas which are put forward as a defence against the general
indictment.
It is, in the first place, urged that the moral and humanitarian
teaching which the Christian Churches never ceased to put before the
world condemned in advance every departure from the paths of justice and
charity; that it was not the fault of Christianity if men refused to
listen to or carry into practice that teaching. But at no period in the
history of morals has it sufficed to lay down general principles.
Everybody perceives to-day, not only that slavery was in itself a crime,
but that it was essentially opposed to the Christian morality. Yet, as
no Christian teacher for many centuries ventured to apply the principle
by expressly denouncing slavery, the institution was taken over from
Paganism by Christian Europe and lasted centuries after the fall of the
Roman Empire. The Church itself had vast numbers of slaves, and later of
serfs, on its immense estates. Leo the Great disdainfully enacted that
the priesthood must not be stained by admitting so "vile" a class to its
ranks, and Gregory the Great had myriads of slaves on the Papal
"patrimonies." So it was with the demand for social reform which
characterised the nineteenth century. To-day Christians claim that their
principles sanctioned and gave weight to those early demands of reform,
yet their principles had been vainly repeated in Europe for fifteen
hundred years, and, when the people themselves at last formulated their
demands in the early part of the nineteenth century, it is notorious
that the clergy opposed them. The teaching of abstract moral principles
is of no avail. Man is essentially a casuist. Leave to him the
application of your principles, and he will adapt almost any scheme of
conduct to them. The moralist who does not boldly and explicitly point
the application of his principles is either too ignorant of human nature
to discharge his duty with effect or is a coward. The plain fact is that
the preaching of justice and peace throughout Europe has been steadily
accompanied by an increase in armaments and in international friction.
It had no moral influence on the situation.
A more valid plea is that we must distinguish carefully between the
nations which inaugurated the war and the nations which are merely
defending themselves, and we must quarrel with the Christian Churches
only in those lands which are guilty. It may, indeed, be pleaded that,
since each nation regards itself as acting on the defensive and uses
arguments to this effect which convince its jurists and scholars no less
than its divines, there is no occasion at all to introduce Christianity.
Most of us do not merely admit the right, we emphasise the duty, of
every citizen to take his share in the just defence of his country,
either by arms or by material contribution. Since there seems to be a
general conviction even in Germany and Austria that the nation is
defending itself against jealous and designing neighbours, why quarrel
with their clergy for supporting the war?
When the plea is broadened to this extent we must emphatically reject
it. There has been too much disposition among moralists to listen
indulgently to such talk as this. When we find five nations engaged in a
terrible war, and each declaring that it is only defending itself
against its opponent, the cynic indeed may indolently smile at the
situation, but the man of principle has a more rigorous task. Some one
of those peoples is lying or is deceived, and, in the future interest of
mankind, it is imperative to determine and condemn the delinquent. There
is no such thing as an inevitable war, nor does the burden of great
armaments lead of itself to the opening of hostilities. It is certain
that on one side or the other, if not on both sides, there is a terrible
guilt, and it is the duty of Christian or any other moralists, whether
or no they belong to the guilty nations, sternly to assign and condemn
that guilt. It is precisely on this loose and lenient habit of mind that
the engineers of aggressive war build in our time, and we have seen, in
the case of neutral nations and of a section of our own nation, what
chances they have of succeeding. They have only to fill their people and
the world at large with counter-charges, resolutely mendacious, and
many will throw up their hands in presence of the mutual accusations and
declare that it is impossible to assign the responsibility. That is a
fatal concession to immorality, and we must hold that in some one or
more of the combatant nations the Churches have, for some reason or
other, acquiesced in a crime.
The plea is valid only to this extent, that the guilty nations in this
case were notoriously Germany and Austria-Hungary, and therefore one
cannot pass any censure on British Christians for supporting the war. I
have in other works dealt so fully with the guilt of those two nations
that here I must be content to assume it. The general and incessant cry
of the German people, that they are only defending their Empire against
malignant enemies, must be understood in the light of their recent
history and literature. No Power in the world had given any indication
of a wish to destroy Germany; there were, at the most, a few
uninfluential appeals in England for an attack on Germany, but solely on
the ground that it meditated an attack on England, and the accumulated
evidence now shows that it did meditate such an attack. England did not
desire an acre of German ground. France had assuredly not forgotten
Alsace and Lorraine, but France would have had no support, and would
have failed ignominiously, in an aggressive campaign to secure those
provinces. On the other hand, an immense and weighty literature, which
is unfortunately very little known in England, has familiarised Germany
for fifteen years with aggressive ideas. The most authoritative writers
claimed that, as they said repeatedly, "Germany must and will expand";
and leagues which numbered millions of subscribers propagated this
sentiment in every school and village. A definite demand was made
throughout Germany for more colonies and a longer coast-line on the
North Sea; and it was in relation to this ambition that England, France,
and Russia were represented--and justly represented--as Germany's
opponents. England, in particular, was described as the great dragon
which watched at the gates of Germany and grimly forbade its
"development." It is in this sense that the bulk of the German people
maintain that their action is defensive.
In passing, let me emphasise this peculiar economic difference between
the four nations. Russia had a vast territory in which her people might
develop. France had no surplus population, and had a large colonial
field for such of her children as desired adventure abroad or would
escape the competition at home. England had, in Canada and Australasia
and South Africa, a magnificent estate for her surplus population. None
of these Powers had an economic ground for aggression. Germany was
undoubtedly in a far less fortunate position, and had an overflowing
population. Six hundred thousand men and women (mostly men) had to leave
the fatherland every year, and, as the colonies were small and
unsatisfactory, they were scattered and lost among the nations of the
earth. The proper attitude toward Germany is, not to gratify the cunning
of her leaders by superficially admitting that she was not aggressive,
but to understand clearly the very solid grounds of her desire for
expansion.
Into the whole case against Germany, however, I cannot enter here.
Familiar from their chief historical writers with the supposed law of
the expansion of powerful nations, convinced by their economists that
the country would soon burst with population and be choked by their own
industrial products unless they expanded, knowing well that such
expansion meant war to the death against France and England (who would
suffer by their expansion), the German people consented to the war.
Their official documents absolutely belie the notion that they were
meeting an aggressive England. But the Christians of Germany were
utterly false to their principles in supporting such a war. I do not
mean merely that they set aside the precept, or counsel to turn the
other cheek to the smiter, for no one now expects either nation or
individual to act on that maxim. They were false to the ordinary
principles of Christian morals or of humanity. Even if one were
desperately to suppose that, learned divines like Harnack were unable to
assign the real responsibility for the war, or that the whole of Germany
is kept in a kind of hot-house of falsehood, it would be impossible to
defend them. The Churches of Germany have complacently watched for
twenty-three years the tendency which William II gave to their schools;
they have passed no censure on the fifteen years of Imperialist
propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive
war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that,
in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity
should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext
for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their
passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and
Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of
justice by which, in recent years, their statesmen sought to compass
the judicial murder of scores of Slavs; they raised no voice when, at
the grave risk of a European war, Austria dishonestly annexed Bosnia and
Herzegovina; they gave their tacit or open consent when Austria,
refusing mediation, declared war on Serbia and inaugurated the titanic
struggle; and they have passed no condemnation on the infamies which the
Magyar troops perpetrated in Serbia.
I am concerned mainly with the action or inaction of the Churches in
this country, but it is entirely relevant to set out a brief statement
of these facts about Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Christian religion
was on trial in those countries as well as here. It failed so
lamentably, not because there is more Christianity here than in Germany
and Austria, not because the national character was inferior to the
English and less apt to receive Christian teaching, but because the
temptation was greater. Until this war occurred, no responsible
traveller ever ventured to say that the German or Austrian character was
inferior to the British. It is not. But the economic difficulties of
Germany and the political difficulties (with the Slavs) of
Austria-Hungary laid a heavier trial on those nations, and their
Christianity entirely failed. Catholic and Protestant alike--for the two
nations contain fifty million Catholics to sixty million
Protestants--were swept onward in the tide of national passion, or
feared to oppose it.
One might have expected that at least the supreme head of the Roman
Church would, from his detached throne in Rome, pass some grave censure
on the outrages committed by Catholic Bavarians in Belgium or Catholic
Magyars in Serbia. Not one syllable either on the responsibility for the
war or the appalling outrages which have characterised it has come from
him. The only event which drew from him a protest--a restrained and
inoffensive remonstrance--was the confinement to his palace for some
days of my old friend and teacher, Cardinal Mercier! To the stories of
fearful and widespread outrage, even when they were sternly
authenticated, he was deaf. One knows why. If Germany and Austria fail
in this war, as they will fail, the Catholic bodies of Germany and
Austria, the strongest Catholic political parties in Europe, will be
broken. Millions of the Catholic subjects of Germany and Austria will
pass under the rule of unbelieving France or schismatical Russia. So the
supreme head of the Roman Church wraps himself nervously in a mantle of
political neutrality and disclaims the duty of assigning moral guilt.
On us in England was laid only the task of defending our homes and our
honour. It is in those other countries that we most clearly see
Christianity put to the test, and failing deplorably under the test. I
do not mean that there was no opportunity here for the Churches to
display their effectiveness as the moral guides of nations. In those
fateful years between 1908 and 1914, during which we now see so plainly
the preparation for this world-tragedy, they might have done much. They
did nothing. They might have seen, at least at the eleventh hour, the
iniquity of sustaining the military system, and have cast the whole of
their massive influence on the side of the promoters of arbitration. I
do not mean that any man should advocate disarmament, or less effective
armament, in England while the rest of the world remains armed. As long
as we retain the military system instead of an international court, the
soldier's profession is honourable, and the man who voluntarily faces
the horrors of the field is entitled to respect and gratitude. But in
every country there was an agitation for the _general_ abandonment of
militarism and the substitution of lawyers for soldiers in the
settlement of international quarrels. Had the Churches in every country
given their whole support to this agitation, and insisted that it is
morally criminal for the race as a whole to prolong the military system,
we might not have witnessed this great catastrophe.
Before, however, I press this charge against the Christian bodies, let
me discuss the third plea that may be urged in defence of the Churches.
It is the plea of those who are so eager to disclaim responsibility that
they are willing to allow an enormous decay of religious influence in
the modern world. You have repeatedly told us, they say to the
Rationalist, that Christianity has lost its hold on Europe. You speak of
millions who no longer hear the word of Christian ministers, but who
_do_ read Rationalist literature in enormous quantities. Very well, you
cannot have it both ways. Let us admit that the nations of Europe have
become non-Christian, and we cast on your non-Christian influence the
burden of responsibility for the war.
This language has been used more than once in England. It leaves the
speaker free to assume that in England, whose action in the war we do
not criticise, the nation remains substantially Christian, while in
Germany and Austria the Churches have lost more ground. Indeed, one may
almost confine attention to Germany. Profoundly corrupt as political
life has been in Austria-Hungary for years, there is no little evidence
in the official publications of diplomatic documents that at the last
moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria
hesitated and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was
Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its
terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism
and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in
London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship.
It is almost as low as at Paris, where hardly a tenth of the population
attend church on Sundays. In other large towns of Germany the condition
is, as in England, proportionate. Almost in proportion to the size of
the town is the aversion of the people from the Churches.
It is absolutely impossible in the case of Germany to determine, even in
very round numbers, how many have abandoned their allegiance to
Christianity, though, when one remembers the enormous rural population
and the high proportion of believers in the smaller towns, it seems
preposterous to suggest that the country has, even to the extent of one
half, become non-Christian. But I am anxious to do justice to this plea,
and would point out that it is the educated class and the men of the
large cities who control a nation's policy. The rural population--the
general population, in fact--follows its educated leaders. Now there is
no doubt that in Germany, as elsewhere, this body of the population--the
middle class and the workers of the great cities--has very largely lost
the traditional belief. The workers of Berlin are solidly Socialistic,
which means very largely anti-clerical. And I would boldly draw the
conclusion that the responsibility for the war is shared at least
equally by Christians and non-Christians. The stricture I have passed on
the Churches of Germany is based on the fact that they, being organised
bodies with a definite moral mission, were peculiarly bound to protest
against the obvious political development of their country, and they
entirely failed to do so. But I should be the last to confine the
responsibility to them. Not only religious leaders like Harnack and
Eucken, but leading Rationalists like Haeckel and Ostwald, have
cordially supported the action of their country. So it was from the
first. Of that large class of men who may be said to have had some real
control of the fortunes of their country a very high proportion--I
should be disposed to say at least one half--are not Christians, or are
Christians only in name.
While we thus candidly admit that non-Christians as well as Christians
in Germany bear the moral responsibility, we must be equally candid in
rejecting the libellous charge that the principles, or lack of
principles, of the non-Christians tended to provoke or encourage war, in
opposition to the Christian principles. This not uncommon plea of
religious people is worse than inaccurate, since it is quite easy to
ascertain the principles of those who reject Christianity. In Germany,
as elsewhere, the non-Christians are mainly an unorganised mass, but
there are two definite organisations, which, in this respect, reflect or
educate the general non-Christian sentiment. These are the Social
Democrats, a body of many millions who are for the most part opposed to
the clergy, and the Monists, an expressly Rationalistic body. In both
cases the moral principles of the organisation are emphatically
humanitarian and opposed to violence, dishonesty, or injustice; in both
cases those principles are adhered to with a fidelity at least equal to
that which one finds in the Christian Churches. It is little short of
monstrous to say that the moral teaching of Bebel and Singer and
Liebknecht, or of Haeckel and Ostwald--all men of high moral
idealism--gave greater occasion than the teaching of Christianity to
this atrocious war. The Socialists, indeed, were the strongest opponents
of war and advocates of international amity in Europe. How, like the
Evangelical and the Christian Churches, they failed in a grave crisis to
assert their principles may be a matter for interesting consideration,
but it would be entirely dishonest to plead that the substitution of the
influence of Rationalists and Socialists for Christian ministers has in
any degree facilitated the war.
The Christian who regards all these non-Christian influences as "Pagan,"
and feels that a "return to Paganism" explains the essential immorality
of Germany's conduct, usually has a grossly inaccurate idea of Paganism.
Whatever may be said of sexual developments in modern and ancient times,
we shall see that the Roman writers held principles which most decidedly
made for peace and brotherhood and justice. In point of fact, the
majority of the German writers who have been responsible for the
education of Germany in war-like ideas have been Christians. The Emperor
himself, who is mainly responsible because of his deliberate
prostitution of German schools to militarist purposes since 1891, will
hardly be described as other than Christian; certainly every prelate or
minister in Germany would vehemently resent such a description.
Treitschke, who is probably the best known in England of the Imperialist
writers, definitely bases his appalling conception of life on Christian
principles, and claims that he is acting from a sense of the divine
mission of Germany. General von Bernhardi uses precisely the same
Christian language. But these are only two in a hundred writers who,
for more than half a century, have been educating Germany in aggressive
ideas, and, speaking from personal acquaintance with their works, I
should say that the overwhelming majority of them are Christians. Not a
single Socialist, and not a single well-known Rationalist, has
contributed to their pernicious gospel.
Probably the one German writer in the mind of those English people who
speak of Germany's return to Paganism is Friedrich Nietzsche. It is true
that Nietzsche was bitterly anti-Christian, and he has probably had a
greater influence in Germany, in spite of his strictures on the country,
than many seem disposed to allow. German booksellers have recently drawn
up a statement in regard to the favourite books of soldiers in the
field, and it appears that Nietzsche's _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ is
second on the list--leagues ahead of the Bible. But to conclude from
this that the anti-moral doctrine of the Pagan Nietzsche is the chief
source of the outrages committed is one of those slipshod inferences
which make one despair of Christian literature.
In the first place, Goethe is even more popular with the troops than
Nietzsche, and, although Goethe too was a Pagan, his teaching was the
very antithesis of crime, violence, injustice, or hypocrisy. No nobler
human doctrine was ever set forth than in the pages of his _Faust_, the
first on this list of favourite books. In the second place, this fact at
once warns us of a circumstance which we might have taken for granted:
in the knapsacks of the overwhelming majority of the soldiers there are
no books at all. It is the minority who read; and it is quite safe to
assume that this thoughtful minority are not the minority who have
disgraced German militarism. Thirdly--and it should hardly be necessary
to make this observation--the sensitive and high-strung Nietzsche would
have regarded with shuddering horror these outrages which some
ignorantly attribute to his influence. It is indeed probable that, if he
still looked from his hill-top upon the fields of Europe, he would pour
out his most volcanic scorn upon the warring nations, and especially
upon Germany and Austria. In fine, it is necessary to remember that
Nietzsche was violently anti-democratic. For the mass of the people he
had only disdain, and it is folly to suppose that his aristocratic
philosophy has been accepted among them as a gospel.
Nietzsche has had a considerable influence on the more thoughtful
reading public in Germany, yet even here one has to make reserves in
charging him with a part in the preparation of the country for an
aggressive war. His peculiar art and temperamental exaggerations make it
impossible for any but a patient few to grasp his teaching accurately,
and are peculiarly liable to mislead the less patient. When, therefore,
he stresses--as most anti-Socialists do--the Darwinian struggle for
existence, when he assails the humanitarian and Christian doctrine of
helping the weak, when he calls into question the received code of
morals, and when he extols self-assertion and strength of will, his
fiery words do lend some confirmation, which he assuredly never
intended, to the Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much
averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching,
which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt
for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We
must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to
the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von
Bernhardi's admiring references to his philosophy sufficiently show
this.
But Nietzsche's very limited influence on German thought cannot
reasonably be quoted as justification of the common saying that Germany
had deserted Christianity for Paganism. Had such a statement been made
before the war began, our divines would have indignantly repudiated it.
The truth is that all classes--Christian and non-Christian--have yielded
fatally to the pernicious interpretation which interested politicians,
soldiers, manufacturers, and Jingoistic writers have put on the real
economic needs of the country. Of the Socialist and Catholic parties, in
particular, the two most powerfully organised bodies in Germany, we may
say that, in deserting their ideals, they have been partly deceived into
a real belief that Russia and England sought their destruction, and they
have partly yielded to that very old and familiar temptation--the desire
to retain their numerical strength by compromising with their
principles. In justice to the Socialists it should be added that that
party has furnished the only men and journals in Germany to raise any
protest against the madness of the nation. One of the most repulsive
moral traits in Germany to-day is, even when we have made the most
liberal allowance for the painful and desperate circumstances of the
people, the astounding expression and cultivation of hatred. It has
transpired time after time that the _Vorwärts_ has protested against
this. Not once has it been reported that the religious press or
religious ministers have protested. The new phrase that is officially
sanctioned, "God punish England," is a religious phrase that no
Neo-Pagan could use. On the very day on which I write this page it is
reported that Socialists have protested in the Reichstag against the
official endorsement of outrages. We do not hear of any Christian
protest, from end to end of the campaign.
Yet I do not wish to disguise the fact that both Christians and
non-Christians share the guilt of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The real
difference between the two bodies appears when we take a broader view of
the war, and only in this way can any general indictment of Christianity
be formulated. Important as it is to determine the responsibility for
this war, it is even more important to conceive that the war is the
natural outcome of a system which Europe ought to have abolished ages
ago. We are not far from the time when, in spite of the official
teaching of the Churches, every Christian nation maintained the practice
of the duel which the Teutonic nations introduced fourteen centuries
ago. Although in Germany the Christian clergy have not the courage to
assert their plain principles in opposition to the Emperor's barbaric
patronage of the duel, the people of most civilised countries now regard
the duel as a crime. No one who surveys the whole stream of moral
development can doubt that a time is coming when war, the duel of
nations, will be regarded as an infinitely graver crime. The day is
surely over when sophists like Treitschke and callous soldiers like
Bernhardi could sing the praises of war. The pathetic picture drawn by
our great novelist of a worthless young lord lying at the feet of his
opponent touched England profoundly and hastened the end of the duel in
this country. If England, if the civilised world, be not even more
deeply touched by the descriptions we have read, week after week, of
tens of thousands of braver and more innocent men lying in their blood,
of all the desolation and sorrow that have been brought on whole
kingdoms of Europe, one will be almost tempted to despair of the race.
War is the last and worst stain of barbarism on the escutcheon of
civilisation.
The question of real interest is, therefore, the historical question.
Those of us who did not foresee this war until we were in the very
penumbra of the tragedy cannot complain that our Christian neighbours
did not foresee and prevent it. Those of us who feel that the
participation of our country is just and necessary may, with no strain
of imagination, conceive the men of other countries equally persuading
themselves that the action of their country is just and necessary. But
from the day when we awoke to an adult perception of the life of the
world we have been aware that the established system of settling
international quarrels was barbaric and might in any year lead to just
such a catastrophe. How comes it that such a system has survived fifteen
hundred years of profound Christian influence? Whatever we may think of
the clergy of to-day, with the more powerful clergy of yesterday we have
a grave reckoning. The Rationalist is a new thing in Europe. The very
name is little more than a century old, and until a few decades ago only
a few thousand would accept it. Not from such a new and struggling
movement do we ask why this military system has dominated Europe for
ages and has only in recent times been seriously challenged. During
those ages the Churches suffered none but themselves to pretend to a
moral influence over the life of the nations, nor were there many bold
and independent enough to make the claim. It is of the Churches we ask
why this appalling system has taken such deep root in the life of Europe
that it resists the most devoted efforts to eradicate it. It is not
_this_ war, but war, that accuses the Churches. We are entangled in a
system so widespread and so subtle that, when a war occurs, each nation
can persuade itself that it is acting on just grounds. It is the system
which interests us.