_rapprochement_ between the missions of a given national group,
and to a less extent between those of different nations. This is due
to the necessity for cooperation in order to make a reduced force
serve for the needs of an increasing work. In a few cases already a
desire to economize resources has led to readjustment of fields; in
others to a temporary filling of vacant places by missionaries of a
different denomination or nationality. The home constituencies are
thus being taught the beautiful lesson of the trenches as related to
true brotherhood and essential Christianity. Perhaps one of the best
discussions of this war as affecting the international and
interconfessional relationships of missions is that of Dr. J.
Schmidlin, a Roman Catholic professor of theology in the University of
Muenster, found in _The Constructive Quarterly_ for December,
1915, from which we quote two sentences: "Thus that which has served
to separate missionaries who were comrades in belief and
confession--national solidarity and love of country--has also united
and reconciled children of the same country who were separated in
their belief. Surmounting all barriers of dogma and church polity, men
have learned to love and cherish one another, yes, even to recognize
that in spite of all that separates us there is much also that binds
us together."
Turning now from the effect of the war upon missions, a few paragraphs
may be devoted to considering post-bellum reconstruction in mission
lands. The Germans, even more than the Allies, are diligently studying
the many problems and possibilities of changes necessitated by the
readjustments that must surely come. The economic waste of the past
four years is almost inconceivably great; and to restore this waste
puts upon every nation an amount of production vastly greater than any
known in the past. Raw material, freedom of the seas that the
manufacturing countries may buy from every land and carry back for
sale and distribution the manufactured products, a new enlistment of
labor in countries where climate and primitive living make work
irksome and unnecessary, an uplift in desires and ideals that new
markets may be created, increasing intelligence and friendliness so
that cooperation may be willing and profitable--these are some of the
essentials of progress after the war.
In earlier cognate discussions, men like Captain Mahan have emphasized
the importance of eastward and westward movements in the temperate
zone, while others of Benjamin Kidd's school have insisted no less
strongly upon the importance of the Tropics and the consequent north
and south line of industrial life. A score of years ago nearly,
Professor Reinsch, in his "World Politics," startled many American
readers by his insistence upon the importance of the undeveloped and
unoccupied tropical regions of the globe, mainly in South America and
Africa. Even more insistently Kidd's "Control of the Tropics" had, two
years before, magnified the same zone, but more particularly the
densely peopled tracts with their varied possibilities of production
and exploitation. In a recent article by J. A. R. Marriott, M.P.,
entitled "Welt-Politik," General Smuts of Africa is thus quoted:
"Formerly we did not fully appreciate the Tropics as in the economy of
civilization. It is only quite recently that people have come to
realize that without an abundance of raw material which the Tropics
alone can supply, the highly developed industries of today would be
impossible. Vegetable and mineral oils, cotton, sisal, rubber, jute
and similar products in vast quantities are essential for the
industrial world."[12]
Another aspect of tropical Africa is brought out in an article by Herr
Emil Zimmerman, writing in the _Europaeische Staats und Wirtschaft
Zeitung_ of June 23, 1917: "If the Great War makes Central Africa
German, fifty years hence 500,000 and more Germans can be living there
by the side of 50,000,000 blacks. Then there may be an army of
1,000,000 men in German Africa, and the colony will have its own war
navy, like Brazil. An England that is strong in Africa dominates the
situation in Southern Europe and does not heed us. But from Central
Africa we shall dominate the English connections with South Africa,
India and Australia, and we shall force English policy to reckon with
us."[13] And again Dr. Solf, the German Secretary for Colonies, has
lately proposed a simple solution of Africa's industrial future. "In
redividing Africa those nations which have proved most humane toward
the natives must be favored. Germany has always considered that to
colonize meant doing mission work. That is why in the present War the
natives of our colonies stick to us. England's colonial history, on
the other hand, is nothing but a list of dark crimes."[14] The
principle enunciated in the first sentence of this statement is as
important and true as the later ones are incorrect, if the present
writer's inquiries and observations in British and German East Africa
in 1912 are indicative of the facts in the case.
The political problems of the countries here considered are quite as
important and perplexing as is their economic status. Three theories
of control have been tried: (1) That of plantations or possessions,
worked for the possessor's profit with little regard for the governed;
(2) the policy of vigorous expansion by the whites themselves, despite
the perils of tropical environments; and (3) permitting the natives to
work out their own development independently, with or without white
oversight. Of these the third is the only one favored by the ethics
and political sagacity of enlightened nations today. But this demands
the consent and good will of the governed, and how may these
essentials be secured?
India is the most important, politically considered, of all tropical
lands. And that Empire's relation to England the eminent Indian ruler,
Sir Herbert Edwardes, declared in an address delivered at Liverpool in
1860, should be that of a stewardship in Christian hands, a
designation echoed in Kidd's general phrase, "a trust of
civilization," and John H. Harris's "trusteeship vs. possession." How
shall this trust be fulfilled? Certainly one must consider the
question of India's poet laureate, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, "Is the
instinct of the West right where she builds her national welfare
behind the barricade of a universal distrust of humanity?"[15] Such
distrust is not removed by the Indian educational scheme alone, or
with the addition of civilization. "If we pursue the _ignis
fatuus_ of secular education in a pagan land, destitute of other
light," quoting Sir Herbert again, "then we English will lose India
without those Indians gaining any future."[16] In a similar vein Sir
Alfred Lyall testified: "The wildest, as well as the shallowest notion
of all, seems to me that universally prevalent belief that education,
civilization and increased material prosperity will reconcile the
people of India eventually to our rule."[17]
A partial solution of India's political problems is found in the
deputation to that Empire in accordance with Mr. Montagu's speech in
the House of Commons of August 30, 1917, in the course of which he
said: "The policy of His Majesty's Government, with which the
Government of India is in complete accord, is that of the increasing
association of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the
gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the
progressive realization of responsible government in India as an
integral part of the Indian Empire."[18] The favorable outcome of the
deputation's visit has been mentioned already.
Religious problems and readjustments will also be part of the
aftermath of the war. At least six millions of Jews, who rightly or
wrongly are the objects of the Christian missionary propaganda, have
been released from disabilities in Europe, and new careers and
educational opportunities will lie before that remarkable race.
"Jewish influence in the life of the world, already great in
proportion to the size of the community, will gain a fresh accession
of strength. Religiously the emancipation may be expected to result,
as it has done in other countries, in a decay of Jewish orthodoxy, of
which the Jews of the Ghetto have been the main support. While the
weakening of the forces of conservatism will open new doors of
opportunity to the Christian Church, there is on the other hand the
grave danger that many Jews may drift into irreligion and cast the
weight of their natural ability and energy on the side of
materialism."[19] Mr. Balfour's letter to Lord Rothschild of November
2, 1917, stated that the British Government viewed with favor the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
In the case of missions to Moslem lands, if the Allies are victorious,
the work in Turkey will be greatly simplified. Whether this will be
the case in Africa depends upon whether the dominant Powers permit
missionary organizations to act with greater freedom than they have
been granted in the past in North Africa and in certain British
possessions. In any case Islam will present strong claims and serious
problems for consideration by missionary organizations.
Is the foreign missionary enterprise willing and competent to aid in
the reconstruction soon to come in mission lands? Here are a few
typical and representative replies to this important question.
Representing in a semi-official way the missionary societies of the
United States and Canada, Dr. Robert E. Speer writes thus: "Foreign
Missions are the direct antithesis of the world conditions which men
most deplore and the purest expression of the principles which
underlie the world order for which men are longing. Foreign Missions
represent international friendship and good will. The missionary goes
out to help and serve. He bridges the gulf between his own nation and
the nation to which he goes. He is not seeking to exploit, or to take
advantage, or to make gain. He is seeking only to befriend and aid.
And his aim and spirit are internationally unifying. The missionaries
succeed in surmounting all the hindrances of nationality and language
in binding different peoples together in good will. Furthermore, they
are demonstrating the possibility of the existence of a strong
nationalistic spirit side by side with human brotherhood and
international unity. They are seeking to develop in each nation a
national church embodying and inspiring and consecrating to God the
genius and destiny of each nation. But they are doing this because
these are the elements of a yet larger unity, the unity of mankind.
The first is not contradictory to the second; it is essential to it,
as the perfection of the State requires the perfection of the family
unit, and the family demands and does not exclude the richest
individualism. It is out of her perfect ministry to the life of each
nation that the Church is to be prepared to minister to the life of
all humanity and to achieve its unity."[20]
As editor of _The International Review of Missions_ and secretary
of the Edinburgh Continuation Committee, Mr. J. H. Oldham states his
views of the world-functions of missions: "Missions are the antithesis
of war. They have created between different peoples relations, not of
competition, but of cooperation. With all their shortcomings they are
an embodiment of the idea that the stronger and more advanced nations
exist to uplift the weaker and more backward. They are a vital
expression of the principle on which the new society must rest.... The
gospel of love must embody itself in act no less manifestly than
selfishness and brutality have expressed themselves in the terrible
scenes that the world has witnessed. The non-Christian races fear, not
without cause, that the object of western peoples is to exploit them.
Missions must convince them that the Church exists to help and serve
them, and the desire to serve them must be made evident in ways that
they can understand. The task of Missions thus grows broader and
larger than we at first conceived."[21]
And such statements are not the claims of interested propagandists
merely,--officials employed by missionary organizations, and hence
liable to overrate the character and importance of missions to the
nations. Few men have traversed the world as extensively and
observantly as Sir Harry Johnston, and probably no one equals him in
his varied administrative and anthropological services to Africa. In
his Introduction to the Cambridge University Maitland Prize Essay for
1915, he says: "Although the writer ... is so heterodox a professor of
Christianity, practical experience in Africa, Asia and America has
brought home to him ever and again during the last thirty-four years
the splendid work which has been and is being accomplished by all
types of Christian missionary amongst the Black, Brown and Yellow
peoples of non-Caucasian race, and amid those Mediterranean or Asiatic
Caucasians whose skins may be a little duskier than ours, but whose
far-back ancestry was the same, whose minds and bodies are of our
type, but whose mentality has been dwarfed and diverted from the
amazing development of the European by false faiths,--false in their
interpretation of Cosmos, false to the best human ideals in daily
life."
On a later page he upholds with the author "the work of Christian
missionaries in general and lays down the rule that our relations with
the backward peoples of the world should be carried on consonantly
with the principles of Christian ethics--pity, patience,
fair-mindedness, protection and instruction; with a view not to making
them the carefully guarded serfs of the White race, but to enable them
some day to be entirely self-dependent, and yet interdependent with us
on universal human cooperation in world management."
And once more this British administrator asserts: "The value of the
Christian missionary is that he serves no government. He is not the
agent of any selfish State, or self-seeking community. He does not
even follow very closely the narrow-minded limitations of the Church
or the sect that has sent him on his mission. He is the servant of an
Ideal, which he identifies with God; and this ideal is in its essence
not distinguishable from essential Christianity; which is at one and
the same time essential common sense, real liberty, a real seeking
after progress and betterment. He preaches chastity and temperance,
the obeying of such laws as are made by the community; but consonantly
with all constitutional and peaceful efforts, he urges the bringing of
man-made laws more and more into conformity with Christian
principles."[22]
As representing nations of ancient culture coming under the helpful
influences of Christian missions, perhaps no one will command a more
attentive hearing than Marquis Okuma, ex-premier of Japan and one of
the world's foremost statesmen. From a summary of his address,
delivered at the semi-centennial of Protestant missions in that
Empire, we excerpt the following: "The coming of missionaries to Japan
was the means of linking this country to the Anglo-Saxon spirit to
which the heart of Japan has always responded. The success of
Christian work in Japan can be measured by the extent to which it has
been able to infuse the Anglo-Saxon and the Christian spirit into the
nation. It has been a means of putting into these fifty years an
advance equivalent to that of a hundred years. Japan has a history of
2,500 years, and 1,500 years ago had advanced in civilization and
domestic arts, but never took wide views, nor entered upon wide work.
Only by the coming of the West in its missionary representatives, and
by the spread of the Gospel, did the nation enter upon world-wide
thoughts and world-wide work. This is a great result of the Christian
spirit. To be sure Japan had her religions, and Buddhism prospered
greatly; but this prosperity was largely through political means. Now
this creed [Buddhism] has been practically rejected by the better
classes who, being spiritually thirsty, have nothing to drink."[23]
These representative testimonies suggest both the fitness and the
willingness of Christian missions to participate in the coming
international readjustments necessitated by the war. Such an
enterprise supplies what the war-weary world so greatly needs--the
_elan vital et creatur_, to borrow Bergson's fine phrase. And the
missionary leaders are alert and at their task. On April 4, 1918, Drs.
John R. Mott and Charles R. Watson, representing the missionary boards
of the United States and Canada, met with the Standing Committee of
Missionary Societies in Great Britain and Ireland, when it was
resolved to form an international "Emergency Committee of Cooperating
Missions." Already the British committee had been consulted by the
Government concerning certain important matters affecting the mission
fields and their problems arising from the war. Such questions are
becoming increasingly numerous, and their solution demands an intimate
knowledge of missions and of the spirit and aspirations of African and
Asiatic races. America is likewise needing such a body of experts to
supplement government investigations. This country has a slight
preponderance in representation on the Emergency Committee; and in the
chairman, Dr. John R. Mott, the foremost Protestant leader of the
world, and a man of such diplomatic gifts that President Wilson twice
vainly called him to the position of minister to China,--though he
accepted appointment upon commissions to deal with Mexico and Russia
later,--the committee has a missionary statesman who is equal to the
important trusts that will be committed to its consideration. To serve
as the eyes, ears and hands of this important post-bellum council, the
two largest fields, India and China, have each an energetic
Continuation Committee of the Edinburgh Conference of 1910,
established as the result of Dr. Mott's visits and conferences in
1912-1913. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America, and
especially its Board of Reference and Counsel, are in annual and _ad
interim_ consultation as questions arise from time to time.
President King quotes these words from Lloyd George's address to a
labor delegation: "Don't always be thinking of getting back where we
were before the War. Get a really new world. I firmly believe that
what is known as the after-the-War settlement will direct the
destinies of all classes for generations to come. I believe the
settlement after the War will succeed in proportion to its audacity.
The readier we are to cut away from the past, the better we are likely
to succeed. Think out new ways, new methods, of dealing with old
problems."[24]
Another horizon of the same idealistic character opens before the eyes
of our own President, the seer to the nations in this epoch-making
time. In an address delivered on October 5, 1916, President Wilson
proclaims the new day to the United States: "America up to the present
time has been, as if by deliberate choice, confined and provincial,
and it will be impossible for her to remain confined and provincial.
Henceforth she belongs to the world and must act as part of the world,
and all the attitudes of America will henceforth be altered." And
again three weeks later he adds: "America was established in order to
indicate, at any rate in one government, the fundamental rights of
man. America must hereafter be ready as a member of the family of
nations to exert her whole force, moral and physical, to the assertion
of those rights throughout the round world." Here is a sentence from
his greetings to France on Bastille Day, 1918: "The War is being
fought to save ourselves from intolerable things; but it is also being
fought to save mankind." And as a final word from President Wilson,
taken from his discussion of the new international morality: "My
urgent advice to you would be, not always to think first of America,
but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love
humanity, if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity
can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by
jealousy and hatred." While none of these utterances refer
specifically to missions, yet surely Dr. W. I. Hull is correct in
interpreting President Wilson's relation to races of the mission
fields in these words: "Instead of exploiting backward peoples, he
would apply the maxim of _noblesse oblige_, and would summon all
nations to mutual aid in their ascent of 'the world's great altar
stairs' up to the law and order, peace and justice, which constitute
the true sunshine of God."[25]
The "really new world" of Britain's Premier will not be dominated by
Machiavelli, the motto of whose sixteenth and seventeenth century
monarchs was "_L'etat c'est moi!_" even though Treitschke ranked him
second only to Aristotle as a political philosopher.[26] The present
cataclysm of woes does not prove Professor Cramb's contention that
"Corsica has conquered Galilee"; nor has Nietzsche thrust the "pale
Galilean" from his throne. That semi-insane philosopher's _Uebermenschen_
must fall before Sir John Macdonnell's "_Super-Nationalism_" as set
forth in the March, 1918, issue of the _Contemporary Review_. And the
President's world-echoed phrase, "world-democracy," is uttered only
with the corrective in mind that was sounded forth a score of years
ago by England's Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, "Think
imperially." It is only by the establishment of an _Imperium in
imperio_ through obedience to what the Duke of Wellington called the
Christian's Marching Orders, the Great Commission, that the new reign
of the Prince of Peace can become possible. If the blood-soaked
"savagery of civilization on the march to save the world from the
civilization of savagery" is the dolorous duty of the present hour,
there is solace in the thought that Golgotha was but the prelude to
the Resurrection and Ascension. The Ascent of Mankind in all its
nations and peoples and kindreds and tongues is at hand. To hasten
this universal uplift and aid the World Powers as they seek to
inaugurate the New Order, no agency is likely to aid more than foreign
missions among the peoples reached by that enterprise. And the new
Imperial Thinking and Acts are simply those of the seven-fold
Commission of the Saviour of the World, "Behold, pray, go, heal,
preach, teach, baptize, all nations," the conquering Labarum of an
onward-moving Church.
[1] A. C. Coolidge, "The United States as a World Power," p. 329.
[2] F. Lynch, "President Wilson and the Moral Aims of the War," New
York, 1918, pp. 50-51.
[3] Beach and St. John, "World Statistics of Christian Missions,"
1916, pp. 59-61.
[4] For the year 1913, see P. K. Streit, "Atlas Hierarchieus,"
summarized in "World Statistics of Christian Missions," pp. 103-104.
[5] London _Times_, May 16, 1918.
[6] Personal letter from an investigator in France, May 29, 1918.
[7] "Das Kriegserlebnis der deutschen Mission in Lichte der Heiligen
Schrift" as quoted in _The Missionary Review of the World_ for June,
1918, pp. 423-424.
[8] J. H. Oldham, "The World and the Gospel," p. 200.
[9] J. L. Barton in _Missionary Ammunition, Number One_, 1916, p. 19.
[10] _Missionary Review of the World_, January, 1917, p. 4.
[11] _International Review of Missions_, April, 1916, p. 183.
[12] _Nineteenth Century and After_, April, 1918, pp. 675-676.
[13] Reported in the London _Times_, November 9, 1917.
[14] _Nineteenth Century and After_, April, 1918, p. 681.
[15] R. Tagore, "Nationalism," p. 101.
[16] Quoted in W. Archer's "India and Its Future," pp. 307-308.
[17] M. Durand, "Life of Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall," p. 89.
[18] _International Review of Missions_, January, 1918, p. 23.
[19] _Ibid._, p. 53.
[20] _Missionary Ammunition, Number One_, 1916, pp. 12-13.
[21] _International Review of Missions_, October, 1914, pp. 632-633.
[22] A. J. Macdonald, "Trade, Politics and Christianity in Africa and
the East," xii, xv, xviii.
[23] _Japan Daily Mail_, October 9, 1909.
[24] F. Lynch, "President Wilson and the Moral Aims of the War," p.
72.
[25] F. Lynch, "President Wilson and the Moral Aims of the War," p.
64.
[26] H. von Treitschke, "Politik," p. 3.
VIII
THE WAR AND SOCIAL WORK
WILLIAM BACON BAILEY
Although the duration of this world-war, and the part which we may be
called upon to play in it, makes the destruction in wealth and human
life in this country uncertain, and although we cannot tell so far in
advance what will be the probable extent of social reconstruction to
follow, still the war has progressed far enough, and its effects upon
this country are sufficiently apparent, to enable us to forecast more
or less indefinitely certain changes which are likely to follow its
close.
With regard to the future of social service, three facts are apparent: