The War and the Churches | Page 7

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