The War and the Churches | Page 7

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