•^%N 
 
 BR 115 .17 M4 1919 
 Merrill, William P. 1867- 
 
 1954. 
 Christian internationalism 
 
CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 HEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
CHRISTIAN 
 INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 BY / 
 
 WILLIAM PIERSON MERRILL 
 
 iI3eto gotb 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1919 
 
 AU rights reterved 
 
COPTEIGHT. 1918 
 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 19x8. 
 
TO 
 
 MR. AND MRS. ANDREW CARNEGIE 
 
 PIONEERS IN THE CAUSE OF TRUE INTERNATIONALISM, 
 
 AND LOYAL TO IT THROUGH ALL CHANGING 
 
 WORLD-CONDITIONS. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Function of Christianity in the 
 
 World i 
 
 II The Old Testament and Internation- 
 alism 17 
 
 III The New Testament and Internation- 
 
 alism 34 
 
 IV Christianity and Internationalism . 51 
 V Democracy and Internationalism . . 68 
 
 VI America and Internationalism . . .81 
 
 VII Constructive Proposals for an Inter- 
 national Order 95 
 
 Problems Confronting International- 
 ism 113 
 
 Christian Principles Underlying In- 
 ternationalism 131 
 
 X The War and Internationalism . .144 
 
 XI The Church and Internationalism . 160 
 
 XII Conclusions i74 
 
CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE WORLD 
 
 Christian Internationalism! Is there such a 
 thing? Can there be such a thing? Can there 
 be Christian nations, living together like Chris- 
 tian gentlemen? 
 
 If not, we may as well stop talking about 
 *' Christian Civilization." We have well nigh 
 stopped talking of it, those of us who are sensitive 
 to the real values and high meanings that lie 
 locked within that great word " Christian." 
 
 One of the most tragic facts about the war is 
 that it has gone on in Christendom. There is a 
 sarcasm that bites and stings in the cartoon which 
 represents a party of Africans looking on at the 
 scenes of fury and bloodshed in Europe, and ask- 
 ing, "Why do the Christians rage?" The pic- 
 ture in the second Psalm is reversed. It is the 
 " people of God " who are raging, and the 
 " heathen " laugh and have them in derision. 
 
2 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 How can such things be, when Christ has been 
 in the world these two thousand years? 
 
 We cannot lay the whole blame on any one 
 man, or even on any one living nation. Germany 
 planned and made the war. History will pro- 
 nounce that verdict. Had It still been In doubt, 
 Prince LIchnowsky's revelations have removed the 
 last shred of possibility of doubt. Harden's 
 proud " We willed it " will some day be the sad 
 confession of shame made by a Germany at last 
 seeing herself as others see her, and as she Is. 
 
 Yet it is clear that the blame does not rest on 
 Germany alone, certainly not alone on the Ger- 
 many of to-day. We can trace the war back to 
 remote causes. Perhaps heavier blame rests on 
 the Germany of 1871, and the Germany of 1866, 
 and the Germany of Frederick the Great. So 
 many times Germans had learned the lesson that 
 the way of the transgressor may be very profit- 
 able ! 
 
 We cannot lay the blame for this tragic catas- 
 trophe, in any degree, upon a hidden, mysterious 
 fate. Wise words of warning have been spoken 
 lately: 
 
 "Again the venerable refrain Is heard: 'The 
 fatality of war Is stronger than our wills.' The 
 old refrain of the herd that makes a god of Its 
 weakness, and bows down before him. Man has 
 
FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 3 
 
 invented fate, that he may make it responsible 
 for the disorders of the universe, those disorders 
 which it was his duty to regulate. There is no 
 fatality! The only fatality is what we desire, 
 and, more often, too, what we do not desire 
 enough. Let each now repeat his mea culpa. 
 The leaders of thought, the church, the Labor 
 Parties did not desire war. That may be. What 
 then did they do to prevent it? " 
 
 No matter how clearly it may come to be seen 
 and acknowledged by all the world, Germany in- 
 cluded, that the war came because Germany would 
 have it, Christendom as a whole must bear a 
 heavy burden of shame and guilt, that such a 
 hideous thing could come out of her twenty cen- 
 turies of knowing Jesus Christ. Such things ought 
 not to be; they would not be If Christianity had 
 laid hold firmly on the relations between nations, 
 and controlled the spirit and conduct of states. 
 If such things are not to be In the future. It must 
 be by a Christian control of International life, 
 that is by an outworking of Christian Internation- 
 alism. 
 
 The question whether there can be Christian 
 Internationalism rests back on the question. What 
 Is the true function and mission of Christianity in 
 the world? 
 
 A helpful discussion of this fundamental ques- 
 
4 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 tlon is found in Professor Peabody's " The Chris- 
 tian Life in the Modern World." Its usefulness 
 is lessened by the fact that, written before the 
 war, it is necessarily somewhat out of touch with 
 the radically changed and rapidly changing condi- 
 tions of our time. But it still has value, for it 
 deals with basic issues. 
 
 All through the ages there has gone on a con- 
 flict between two conceptions of the place of Chris- 
 tianity in the world. We may call them the in- 
 digenous and the exotic views; the one holds that 
 Christianity has a natural place and function in the 
 world; the other that it is here under protest, in 
 the interests of another world, a thing apart from 
 the normal interests of social life and develop- 
 ment. 
 
 A certain amount of truth underlies the convic- 
 tion that the Christian is to be something more 
 than a citizen of his world and of his time, that he 
 is really a citizen of another world, or another 
 age. But the vital truth is not that he is a citizen 
 of another realm, living here altogether as a pil- 
 grim and a foreigner. The truth is that the Chris- 
 tian is a citizen of the world that ought to be and 
 that some day shall be, through the good grace of 
 God. He lives on the front line, and is supremely 
 interested in what lies ahead. 
 
 When settlers come into a strange country 
 
FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 5 
 
 where customs and standards are different from 
 those by which they have lived in the home land, 
 lower than those they have known, three courses 
 are open to them. They can abandon their inher- 
 ited standards and ideals, and lapse into the lower 
 life about them, as educated Indians have, some- 
 times, " gone back to the blanket." They can 
 stand stiffly by their cherished customs and famil- 
 iar standards, like the Englishman of whom Price 
 Collier tells, who, living in a remote village of In- 
 dia, where no other white man ever came, put on 
 evening dress for dinner every night. Or they can 
 hold steadfastly to their great principles and 
 ideals, while yet adjusting themselves and their 
 conduct, at every possible point, to the life about 
 them, and so lift up that life to their own high 
 plane. So are Christians in the world. Some of 
 them are frankly and wholly worldly, content with 
 things as they are. Some are otherworldly, out 
 of touch with the things of earth through holding 
 their thoughts and fixing their hopes on the here- 
 after. But the best Christian, the real and whole- 
 some Christian, mingles with life as Jesus did, 
 above it In holiness, yet a part of it in wholesome- 
 ness, feeling it his mission and the mission of the 
 Christ he serves to lift the world to a better and 
 higher life. 
 
 As Professor Peabody so well points out, there 
 
6 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 are two sets of extremists who hold that Christian- 
 ity and the modern world are irreconcilable. 
 
 On the one hand we find those who glory in the 
 modern world, in its thoughts and ideals, Its prog- 
 ress and splendor, and condemn Christianity as 
 outworn, hopelessly out of touch with modernity, 
 or even a weakening and retarding influence which 
 must be cast away if man is to make the progress 
 he might and should. 
 
 The High Priest of this party which clings to 
 the modern world and rejects Christianity is Nietz- 
 sche, with his scorn for Jesus, his hatred of Paul, 
 his glorification of ruthless power, his beatitudes 
 of hatred and force, his ideal of the superman. 
 He has a host of followers, few of them going so 
 far as their leader went, but many of them holding 
 the insidious and dangerous doctrine frankly 
 avowed by General Bernhardi, that the standards 
 of Christ are authoritative for the individual life, 
 but cannot hold for the conduct of great groups of 
 men, and least of all for nations In their conduct 
 and relations. 
 
 At the other extreme we find ascetics, rebels 
 against the established order, men wholly out of 
 touch with the world. Tolstoi Is the most con- 
 spicuous example of this group. Like the first 
 group, these men hold that Christianity and mod- 
 ern life are incompatible; but, unlike the other 
 
FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 7 
 
 group, they abandon not Christianity, but modern 
 life. They flee from it, to save their souls. 
 They " leave the poor old stranded wreck " of a 
 world, and " pull for the shore " of some little is- 
 land, where they can live as spiritual Robinson 
 Crusoes. Such are legitimate successors of the 
 great monks and mystics who, in earlier times, 
 sang " de contemptu mundi." 
 
 To this group belong those extreme pre-millena- 
 rians, who form an interesting, rather pitiful, 
 somewhat dangerous, element in the religious life 
 of our day. In their view the world as a whole 
 is all wrong, hopelessly wrong. They have no 
 use for a " social gospel "; they distrust efforts to 
 put the power of the Christian Church into move- 
 ments designed to make a better and happier 
 world; they scorn such efforts as " mere humani- 
 tarianism." The world, as they see it, is going to 
 the devil, where it belongs; and nothing can save 
 it but a catastrophe, a miraculous intervention; and 
 that, in reality, will not save the world so much as 
 substitute for it another world. 
 
 It may seem strange to group together Nietz- 
 sche and Tolstoi, the formalist and the fanatic. 
 Yet they are in complete agreement in their con- 
 viction that Christianity and the modern world are 
 hopelessly incompatible; that no one can hold to 
 both; that Christian principles and ideals have no 
 
8 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 vital connection with the world's practical life. 
 One says, " Christianity and the world are incom- 
 patible; therefore I give up Christianity." The 
 other says, " Christianity and the world are incom- 
 patible; therefore I give up the world." But they 
 agree in leaving the world untouched by the power 
 of Christianity. 
 
 Between these two extremes stands the real 
 Christian, the wholesome Christian, who lives by 
 the faith that Christianity is in the world to save 
 the world, not merely the individual in the world. 
 Christianity is a power manifested in human so- 
 ciety for its redemption and transformation. 
 The Christian " way " is not most of all a way to 
 heaven, but far more a way to fair and happy liv- 
 ing for all men here. Their Christ is One Who 
 came to be King of Kings, and Lord of Lords; 
 such a Christ must be tremendously interested in 
 political and social evolution. Christianity will 
 never have come to Its fruition until we do in fact 
 what we are always singing, " Bring forth the 
 royal diadem and crown Him Lord of all "; and 
 that not In some distant heavenly realm, but here 
 on earth. 
 
 How splendid Is the picture presented of the 
 goal of Christianity in the opening chapters of the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians! How tawdry by com- 
 parison are the cheap stage settings, the canvas 
 
FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 9 
 
 and paint imitations of a real triumph, set before 
 us in the spectacular pictures of pre-millenarian- 
 ism ! Paul's later thought is incomparably richer 
 and more real than that which we find in his ear- 
 liest letters, those to the Thessalonians. Here in 
 the cnapters referred to, we see as God's purpose, 
 in creation, in evolution, in redemption, " to sum 
 up all things in Christ." The world, " all 
 things," is to be brought " into subjection under 
 the feet of Christ"; and the church is Christ's 
 body, His instrument, here in the world to work 
 out the will of Christ in the world. Christ's aim 
 is to bring peace on earth, through " breaking 
 down middle walls of partition," and making of 
 different races and creeds and groups " one new 
 man, so making peace." 
 
 It Is a defective and unsound Christianity which 
 is overmuch exercised about heaven, or the second 
 coming of the Lord, or any other unearthly as- 
 pects of religion. The true Christian sees God 
 here and now, " every common bush afire with 
 God." He cries with the clear-vlsioned Psalmist, 
 " the heavens are thine; the earth also is thine "; 
 *' the earth Is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; 
 the world and they that dwell therein." The true 
 Christian sees himself not as one set apart and 
 waiting for some future divine use; but as one ap- 
 prenticed to God in His present work-shop, where 
 
lo CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 his motto may be; " my Father worketh even until 
 now, and I work." The church, in his view, is 
 not an ark, or a hfe-boat, in which one here and 
 another there are saved; it is a movement, a broth- 
 erhood, to save the corporate life of humanity. 
 Salvation becomes to him not a purely personal 
 and individual affair, but a common racial and so- 
 cial experience or aspiration. God works with 
 man even more than with men. The best mark 
 of a " saved " man is not that he wants to go to 
 heaven, but that he is willing to go to China, or 
 to the battle-field in France, or to the slum of the 
 city, or to the last dollar of his resources, or to 
 the limit of his energy, to set forward the Kingdom 
 of God, with a great faith in his heart that Christ 
 in him can make a difference that will last, here on 
 the earth. Real Christianity is not like those 
 richly illustrated lectures on Colorado or Califor- 
 nia, skillfully designed to make people want to go 
 to that distant place and live there; it is rather like 
 a talk on community welfare, arousing those who 
 hear it to a new enthusiasm for making their own 
 neighborhood a better, healthier, happier place. 
 
 If one holds the " otherworldly " view of the 
 nature and function of Christianity, then there Is 
 no place in his scheme of things for Christian In- 
 ternationalism. He may hope that the relations 
 between nations might be somewhat improved by 
 
FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY ii 
 
 the presence of Christian individuals in places of 
 influence and authority, but he cannot hope for the 
 dominance of Christianity in world-affairs, until 
 the end of the world comes, and God sets up a new 
 world which shall stand forever as a confession 
 that He met defeat in this present world. 
 
 But if one takes the wholesome view, then he 
 will confidently expect Christianity to manifest its 
 power supremely in the control of international re- 
 lations. For he sees that Christ came, and still 
 comes, to make different not only individuals, but 
 homes, and schools, and neighborhoods, and cities, 
 and commerce, and politics; and the very climax 
 of that process whereby Christianity climbs to the 
 seat of authority is in the dominance of interna- 
 tional life and relations by Christian principles and 
 the Christian spirit. That is the hardest, the no- 
 blest, task of all for Christianity to achieve. 
 
 Christianity has proved its power in the home; 
 there are Christian homes, many of them. It has 
 shown its power in communities. No community 
 ever had a hospital before Christ touched it. 
 There are such things as Christian cities. But the 
 mighty realm of diplomacy, of international rela- 
 tions, has scarce been touched by Christianity as 
 yet. It stands the greatest and most stubborn of 
 all heathen provinces. 
 
 The true Christian believes that there is '* no 
 
12 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 other name under heaven, given among men, 
 whereby we must be saved." And he believes 
 that Is true of nations, as well as of individuals. 
 He sees Christian Internationalism not only as a 
 clear possibility, a desirable achievement, but as 
 the very capstone of the social structure of the 
 Kingdom of God. All other out-workings and 
 demonstrations of Christianity must be imperfect 
 and defective until Christ is enthroned there at the 
 top. A man is not wholly saved, his redemption 
 lacks something, if his home is not Christian 
 through and through; a home cannot be wholly 
 Christian until the city in which It is located is un- 
 der the power of Christian ideals; a city is ham- 
 pered in Its outliving of Christian Ideals If it is 
 part of a nation dominated by unchristian princi- 
 ples; and a nation can never be fully and really 
 Christian until Christianity rules the Inter-related 
 life of the nations. 
 
 Can any one doubt or question this Influence of 
 the larger environment, In this day? Here are 
 thousands of Christian young men; each of them 
 knows God has said, " Thou shalt not kill." He 
 does not want to kill; he hates the Idea of murder. 
 He has no hatred for other men. But he must 
 march forth to kill other men; he must be trained 
 to kill them expertly and expeditiously. And the 
 fault lies not in any defect In his individual Chris- 
 
FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 13 
 
 tian life or ideals, but In the simple fact that inter- 
 national relations have never become a part of the 
 Kingdom of God, and back from that unregener- 
 ated part of the common life of man reach influ- 
 ences which make it necessary for that Christian 
 man to do what his conscience condemns as essen- 
 tially unchristian acts. The man cannot be 
 wholly Christian until the world in which he lives 
 is subject to the rule of Christ. 
 
 The holiest, the most exciting, the most adven- 
 turous, the most truly Christian cause Is this of 
 Christianizing international relations. All else 
 waits upon the success of that. 
 
 It may be wise to say a word as to the meaning 
 of the word " Internationalism." There Is, in 
 some quarters, grave distrust of the word and the 
 idea back of It, a fear that the development of in- 
 ternationalism would mean the decline of patriot- 
 ism, a distrust accentuated by the Russian situa- 
 tion. Was it not internationalism, men ask, which 
 dissolved Russia and left it helpless In the hands 
 of Germany? Was It not Internationalism which 
 worked so insidiously and so disastrously In the 
 Italian army? Is it not a dangerous word and a 
 dangerous propaganda ? 
 
 No ! It was not internationalism that brought 
 Russia to her present Impotence; it was un-natlon- 
 alism. Internationalism, as I am using the term, 
 
14 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 as I believe It should be used, does not mean a sort 
 of free love toward nations, a promiscuity of rela- 
 tionship in ^vhich all the sacredness of patriotism is 
 lost. Those are quite right who tell us that it is 
 just as immoral to say " I love every other country 
 as well as my own " as to say, " I love every other 
 woman as well as my wife." God has set us In 
 families and in nations, and we realize our best 
 possibilities in loyal allegiance to those relation- 
 ships. There is still a place, and always will be, in 
 the heart of the Christian man for that intense de- 
 votion to one's own nation that leads to the solemn 
 declaration, " If I forget thee, may my hand for- 
 get its cunning." 
 
 But the sort of patriotism w^hlch stops at the 
 border, the sort of patriotism which Involves ha- 
 tred and suspicion toward other nations. Is defec- 
 tive and unworthy. Am I worse as a father for 
 being a loyal citizen? Am I weaker in civic loy- 
 alty for being devoted to the nation? Why then 
 should it be assumed that I shall be a weaker pa- 
 triot for being a thorough-going Internationalist? 
 Is it not reasonable to go on with the process until 
 the highest loyalty to the widest fellowship of all 
 takes supreme place among my Interests? 
 
 If 1 am a true patriot, I will want my nation to 
 have Its rights In Its dealings with other nations; 
 but. If I am a true patriot, I will even more desire 
 
FUNCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 15 
 
 that my nation prove true to its duties and fullill its 
 rightful obligations, in the general society of the 
 nations. Just as my love for my home makes me 
 the more eager for a national life worthy of that 
 home, so my love of country should make me more 
 eager for an international life and order in which a 
 nation can safely play the part of a Christian na- 
 tion. 
 
 Christianity is here in the world not as an inter- 
 ruption, or an irruption, that it may pull a few out 
 from a general wreck and take them to some better 
 place. Christianity is here on a mission, to trans- 
 form " this present evil world " into the world 
 God means to have here, the world that shall be a 
 home for God and His children, a society of men 
 and women and children, organized into national 
 groups, but growing into a world-wide fellow- 
 ship of knowledge, love, and achievement, under 
 the leadership of Jesus Christ. 
 
 An army, pushing its victorious advance, finds 
 one stubborn stronghold which resists; and it real- 
 izes that it must capture that one center of resist- 
 ance, or its advance is imperilled. So Christian- 
 ity, advancing to the control of the world's life, 
 halts before this great citadel of International Re- 
 lationships, where pagan forces are still strongly 
 Intrenched; and it realizes that the whole program 
 and hope of Christian redemption is held back, 
 
1 6 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 thwarted, Imperilled, until that fortress is reduced. 
 The social life of nations must be brought into 
 obedience to Christ. The principles and ideals of 
 Christianity must be worked out for great groups 
 of people, and set In control of their common 
 thought and conduct. Only so can the creation, 
 " groaning and travailing In pain together even 
 until now, be delivered from the bondage of cor- 
 ruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of 
 God." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 Christians base their faith upon the Bible. 
 They profess to regard It as the rule of their faith 
 and conduct. It becomes then a matter of real 
 importance that any movement or cause claiming 
 the interest and support of Christian people should 
 be able to justify Itself on scriptural grounds, or at 
 least to show that it Is In general harmony with the 
 teachings of the Bible rather than antagonistic to 
 them. 
 
 What Is the attitude of the Old Testament to- 
 ward internationalism? One might be a reason- 
 ably careful reader of the Old Testament books, 
 or even a student of them, and come upon little or 
 nothing on which to base the theory or practice of 
 godly Internationalism. 
 
 There have been few books so openly and in- 
 tensely nationalistic as the Old Testament writings. 
 There have been few races so vividly conscious of 
 being different from other people, having a holy 
 mission, few people so certain that the purposes of 
 God were wrapped up In them, as the ancient He- 
 
 17 
 
1 8 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 brews were. In fact the remark has been common 
 of late that the God of Germany is in reality the 
 Jehovah of the Old Testament, the God of a 
 chosen people, Who sends out His people with a 
 passion and a program and a sword, to make the 
 world serve that one chosen nation. There has 
 been a distinct reaction against the Old Testa- 
 ment, on the ground that there is so much in it 
 which seems to harmonize with that intensely na- 
 tionalistic temper of which Germany is the chief 
 exponent. Irving Bacheller, in his little book, 
 *' Keeping up with William," says that it is time 
 the Old Testament was " divested of its odor of 
 sanctity," for much of it " reads like a report of 
 the German General Staff." 
 
 There is much to warrant the Impression that 
 Internationalism finds little recognition in the Old 
 Testament. We see God choosing one man, and 
 then the descendants of that one man, as His pe- 
 culiar people. He gives His law to them; He 
 makes His revelations through them; He protects 
 and guides them; He sends them to dispossess and 
 kill off and subjugate other races. Their heroes 
 are intense nationalists, — Moses, abandoning 
 Egypt, demanding the right of way through ter- 
 ritories belonging to other races, leading a war 
 of extermination against the Amalekites because 
 of some ancient Injury Israel had suffered at their 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 19 
 
 hands; Joshua, refushig to make any covenant or 
 agreement with the people of Canaan, killing men, 
 women, children, and cattle when a town was cap- 
 tured; David, setting Israel high above the sur- 
 rounding nations; Ezra and Nehemlah, with their 
 strict prohibition of inter-marriage, and their rigid 
 refusal to come to any friendly relations with the 
 Samaritans; the Maccabees, nationalists to the last 
 degree. It might well seem that the first thing 
 for the internationalist to do, if he would have a 
 Bible that would sanction his aims and hopes, 
 would be to throw out from his Bible the entire 
 Old Testament. 
 
 But closer and deeper study reveals certain 
 facts. In the hght of which our estimate must be 
 revised. Here are certain conclusions which be- 
 come clear to the honest and thoughtful student: 
 
 First, we must admit the presence, in the Old 
 Testament, of an outgrown element of aggressive 
 nationalism, and must beware of counting it still 
 authoritative or admirable. 
 
 Christ did come to fulfill the law, to do away 
 with much of the old thought and practice of the 
 people of God. The Old Testament Is rightly 
 bound in with the New as one volume of the Word 
 of God; our Bible would be seriously Impaired 
 were the Old Testament to be dropped from it; 
 for It shows the growth of our faith. Christianity" 
 
20 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 cannot be rightly seen in a static condition. It 
 must be seen living, growing, changing, to be seen 
 at all as it is. Growth and change are essential to 
 it. Christianity cannot be set forth in a set of 
 slides, each complete in itself. It must be seen as 
 a moving picture, where one scene melts into an- 
 other, and the true impression comes from the 
 movement of the whole, rather than from the sep- 
 arate parts. The Bible is the record of how 
 Christianity came to be what it is. 
 
 That necessarily involves the inclusion, in the 
 earlier portions of the Bible, of much which now 
 is obsolete, and which we must frankly admit to 
 be outworn or outgrown. We may then, and we 
 should, accept the fact of the presence, here and 
 there through the Old Testament, of a bitter, sec- 
 tional, nationalistic tone, — the temper we associ- 
 ate w^th the word " jingo." The Book of Esther 
 glories in the exaltation of the Jew, in the misfor- 
 tunes that come upon his enemies, in the glory of 
 his victory over them. Luther heartily disliked 
 Esther, calling it a " heathen " book. Ezra and 
 Nehemiah set forth a policy of race exclusiveness, 
 which makes it clear to us that the feud between 
 the Jews and the Samaritans was not all the fault 
 of the Samaritans. Certain of the Psahns and of 
 the prophecies reflect this temper, with their in- 
 tensely nationalistic spirit, their glorification of the 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 21 
 
 Hebrew race. We are shown, as the ideal ruler, 
 one who shall rule the other nations with a rod of 
 iron, and " dash them in pieces like a potter's ves- 
 sel." The Messiah, riding forth at the head of 
 his troops, will smite the foe so vehemently that 
 the ravines will be filled with corpses. 
 
 The plain, crude, original meaning of many of 
 these Old Testament passages has been softened 
 and obscured by a process of spiritualization, a re- 
 interpretation in the light of Christian thoughts 
 and emotions. We read the 63rd chapter of Isa- 
 iah, '' Who is this that cometh from Edom, with 
 dyed garments from Bozrah," and we see Jesus 
 Christ, Savior of the world, " marching in the 
 greatness of his strength," " treading the wine- 
 press alone," " bringing salvation." The blood 
 we see is His own blood, shed to redeem men. 
 We need not quarrel with those who can thus take 
 that passage. But it is beyond all question that 
 no such vision was in the mind of the original 
 writer. He saw a conqueror, a War-Lord, re- 
 turning from a bloody campaign against Edom, 
 the enemy of Israel; He has trampled the people 
 in his fury, and it is their blood that is sprinkled 
 on his garments. It is a cry of satisfied ven- 
 geance, of exultation almost savage over punish- 
 ment meted out to men of another, an alien, race. 
 
 In our attitude toward the presence of such 
 
22 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 passages In the Bible, we are helped very greatly 
 by the newer light on the Bible and on the doctrine 
 of Its Inspiration. A half century ago or less 
 many were seriously troubled over the divine ap- 
 proval of the slaughter of the Canaanltes, and the 
 unchristian spirit of certain Psalms. I remember 
 the way in which my boyish protests were met, with 
 reference to the slaughter of the Canaanltes. I 
 was told that the Canaanltes were the worst of all 
 people, brutal and beastly folk, who had to be ex- 
 terminated as a jungle full of wild beasts might be. 
 But better acquaintance with the facts showed me, 
 later, that there was no foundation for the claim 
 that the Canaanltes were the wickedest of all men. 
 The argument ran merrily 'round In a circle, as 
 many another has done : The Israelites killed the 
 Canaanltes because they were so wicked. How 
 do we know they were so wicked? Why, they 
 must have been, or God's people wouldn't have 
 killed them. It Is a characteristic bit of squirrel- 
 cage theology. 
 
 The sane, true explanation Is in terms of 
 growth. These parts of the Old Testament are 
 valuable still as showing us that out of which we 
 have grown, the crude, early stages of that devel- 
 opment of the knowledge and service of God which 
 comes to us purified by the handling of Jesus 
 Christ. They are in the Bible as warnings to us, 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 23 
 
 not as examples, not as justification for a similar 
 spirit on our part. He who uses the nationalistic 
 temper of the Old Testament to justify a narrow 
 jingo spirit to-day shows that he has not grasped 
 the very heart-significance of the Bible as a revela- 
 tion of God and of religion; for that heart-signifi- 
 cance lies in growth, movement, religious develop- 
 ment which is ever leaving '' its low-vaulted past." 
 
 The Word of God is our light. All along the 
 coast line of our country are light-houses. Many 
 of them are set to indicate where safe harbors lie. 
 They say to the mariner, " Come; here is safety." 
 But many more of them are set to warn the mari- 
 ner away from dangers. They say, "Beware; 
 come not here; a ship was wrecked here." Who 
 would say that the lights that warn are not as use- 
 ful as the lights that beckon? Much that we find 
 In the Old Testament the Spirit of God has set 
 there for warning, to show us where the people of 
 God made false steps, thought wrong thoughts, 
 followed wrong lines that led to disaster. And 
 the Bible Is never more truly a " light to our way " 
 than when It thus shows us the mistakes of the peo- 
 ple of God, that we may not fall Into the same 
 errors. 
 
 This then is the first fact to remember In esti- 
 mating the relation between the Old Testament 
 and internationalism, — that much of the Bible Is 
 
24 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 outgrown, to be frankly set aside as possessing no 
 authority over us to-day. 
 
 The second great fact to be kept in mind is the 
 fact that these very parts of the Old Testament, 
 and this entire policy of exclusiveness and narrow 
 nationalism, were necessary at the time that men 
 might be carried on through them into broader 
 and more generous views and practices. 
 
 So far as we can see, it was necessary that God, 
 in leading men on to the full truth, should set apart 
 one people, and train them, with an exclusiveness 
 almost rigid, in order to the ultimate good and 
 blessedness of mankind. This is not to justify all 
 their exclusiveness and narrowness. When God 
 allows an inch, men take a yard, particularly when 
 it is in the direction of their natural instincts. 
 
 But that method of restricted, intensive cultiva- 
 tion is the method of nature, and that means that 
 it is the method of God. When Luther Burbank 
 undertakes to produce a plant of a certain variety 
 superior to any now to be found, his ultimate hope 
 and aim is to have that plant cultivated every- 
 where, proving a blessing to all men. But he be- 
 gins by carefully isolating certain plants for ex- 
 perimentation; he guards them jealously from in- 
 fluences surrounding them, until he has produced 
 the superior plant. 
 
 There never was a religious leader so concerned 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 25 
 
 for all humanity, so free from racial or class par- 
 ticularity, as Jesus. Yet Jesus deliberately chose 
 twelve men and gave the major part of His atten- 
 tion to them. His aim was the reaching of all 
 men; but His method was the method of restricted 
 and Intensive cultivation. 
 
 An example from political evolution is right at 
 hand. America began as an experiment in democ- 
 racy. Our first President warned us, in a phrase 
 still harped upon, to beware of " entangling al- 
 liances." It was wise and necessary advice. Un- 
 til we had established our government, confirmed 
 our strength, tested our principles, achieved a real 
 and thorough unity — and we had to fight a great 
 war before all that was won — it was the part of 
 wisdom to avoid entanglements, to pursue a pol- 
 icy of comparative isolation. But now we are be- 
 ginning to lift our eyes to a wider horizon, to see 
 that *' what God has given us. He has given us for 
 all mankind," to see, as President Wilson so forc- 
 ibly said in his address at Mount Vernon on July 
 4th last, that Washington and his fellows were do- 
 ing something of vital concern to all the world of 
 mankind, and not for one people only. 
 
 So in the outworking of the true religion, that 
 restriction which marked the earlier stages was In 
 order to future growth, to universal blessing. We 
 can see that It may have been necessary, perhaps it 
 
26 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 was the only way, to keep the people aloof, to 
 guard them jealously from inter-mixture of race or 
 of thought, to cultivate in them an intense nation- 
 alism. We may well remind ourselves also that 
 *' internationalism," in the modern sense of that 
 word, was outside the range of the mind of Old 
 Testament times. The only world-unity men then 
 saw as possible was an imperial unity, in which 
 one power should dominate the whole world. 
 There was little in such a vision to arouse the en- 
 thusiasm of believers in God and In justice and 
 freedom. 
 
 We can clearly see then that the Intense nation- 
 alism of the Old Testament was in part due to the 
 crude, defective, primitive stage of thought and 
 feeling at which the people of God stood; and In 
 part also may be justified as necessary in the prog- 
 ress of mankind toward larger views and more hu- 
 mane and brotherly practices. 
 
 A third fact we should keep In mind Is the pres- 
 ence In the Old Testament of a surprisingly large 
 amount of material which counteracts and protests 
 against the narrow and exclusive nationalism 
 which some thoughtlessly take as characteristic of 
 the entire Old Testament. 
 
 In the original word to Abraham, calling him to 
 be the chosen man of God, It Is distinctly stated, 
 " In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 27 
 
 blessed." Very often we come upon a realization, 
 clear or vague, that the real end of Israel's exclu- 
 siveness is universal brotherhood. 
 
 We do find Ezra and Nehemiah holding up as 
 worthy of the approval of God and of all right 
 men their rigid policy of non-intercourse between 
 Israel and other peoples. But we find also a 
 book, coming probably from that very period, 
 which quietly but effectively puts forth the other 
 side, — all the more effectively for setting it in 
 story-form. The book of Ruth takes a Moabitess 
 as its heroine, and makes her shine forth as one 
 of the great and true women of God, a better wife, 
 a better daughter, than her Hebrew contempora- 
 ries. What an effective thrust at the narrow pol- 
 icy of isolation, to show that David, hero of the 
 Jewish heart, was the fruit of a mixed marriage! 
 It is a marvel to find in the Old Testament so lib- 
 eral a book, one with so broad and generous a 
 view. It shows us the Spirit of the God of Broth- 
 erllness at work in the midst of the spirit of ex- 
 cluslveness and race prejudice. 
 
 The book of Esther does exhibit a spirit of In- 
 tense nationalism which is quite unchristian. But 
 over against It we may set another Old Testament 
 writing, — the book of Jonah, — like Ruth the 
 more effective for being In story form. We see 
 the Hebrew prophet contrasted unfavorably with 
 
28 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 the heathen seamen, their simple piety more true 
 than his, for all his superior enlightenment. We 
 see the people of Nineveh, — that hated, heathen 
 city, ready to repent, and, through their penitence, 
 winning favor from God. (How quick was our 
 Lord to see and set forth the significance of that 
 scene!) Above all we see the prophet, type of 
 that very nationalism so strong in the Old Testa- 
 ment, reluctant to go to Nineveh and preach, be- 
 cause in his heart he suspected that God had wider 
 sympathies than the prophet's theology allowed 
 Him, — we see the prophet rebuked and shamed 
 by the revelation of the love of God for other 
 men and other races, a love that cares for men as 
 men, for children, even for the beasts. The spirit 
 of internationalism comes to fine flower in the 
 book of Jonah. 
 
 Some of the prophets are uncompromising in 
 their sense that Israel has a monopoly of the favor 
 of God. But one clear note of protest sounds 
 from the last chapter of Amos, in which the man 
 of God tells Israel that they are not the only 
 people God cares for and favors. Even as He 
 brought up Israel from Egypt, so has He brought 
 up the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians 
 from Kir. The nation that Is truly God's Chosen 
 is the righteous nation. How sturdy in its sense 
 of a universal reign of law is the opening sermon 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 29 
 
 of Amos, where, after denouncing the sins of the 
 surrounding nations, the prophet declares that Is- 
 rael and Judah shall be judged exactly as Edom 
 and Moab and Ammon are to be judged. 
 
 The 63rd chapter of Isaiah may show us a na- 
 tionahstic hero, red with the blood of other peo- 
 ples, justly slain that Israel may be set on high 
 above them; but the 42nd chapter of Isaiah, and 
 the other great '' Servant " passages show us a 
 great, world-wide, humane destiny for the chosen 
 people. They are to be " a light to the nations," 
 and " a salvation to the ends of the earth." 
 There is one inspired bit in which the prophet fore- 
 sees a day in which Egypt and Assyria, the two 
 great dread enemies of Israel, shall no longer be 
 looked on as the enemies of God, but God is repre- 
 ss ted as saying, *' Israel shall be a .third with 
 Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the 
 earth; for that Jehovah of Hosts hath blessed 
 them, saying. Blessed be Egypt my people, and 
 Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine 
 inheritance." 
 
 The last book in the Old Testament strikes a 
 clear and high note. The prophet represents Je- 
 hovah as protesting that He Is not dependent on 
 Israel for worship; '' for from the rising of the 
 sun unto the going down of the same, my name Is 
 great among the nations; and In every place in- 
 
30 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 cense is offered unto my name, and a pure offer- 
 ing." 
 
 So, here and there in the Old Testament, far 
 more frequently than we sometimes note, shines 
 forth a faith In universal brotherhood, a light of 
 true Internationalism. 
 
 The fourth fact we should hold In mind Is that 
 in the Old Testament prophets we find the roots of 
 our universal religion, and of our faith In the pos- 
 sibility and desirability of Internationalism. 
 
 It should be to us a cause of profound encour- 
 agement, that It was In a time like that In which 
 we are living that the foundations of faith In the 
 one and only God were laid. A ruthless empire 
 was over-running the earth, devouring small na- 
 tions, breaking covenants, compelling the peace- 
 loving to fight for life and freedom. And It was 
 just then that, under the pressure of the world-sit- 
 uation, the great prophets of the eighth century 
 before Christ awoke to the mighty truth that there 
 Is but One God for all the earth and all the races 
 upon It. He It Is Who calls and commands, uses, 
 and throws aside, the mightiest monarchs and em- 
 pires. He rules In heaven and earth. Such a 
 faith In the One God lies at the basis of all our 
 religion, and all our faith In the possibility of In- 
 ternational law and order. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 31 
 
 The first commandment reflects the earHer con- 
 ception : " Thou shalt have no other gods before 
 me." It Is not a declaration that there Is no other 
 God, not even a demand that Israel shall acknowl- 
 edge no other God as real and existent. It Is a 
 command to Israel not to set other gods In Je- 
 hovah's presence. " Though there be gods many, 
 yet for us there Is but one God " ; that was Israel's 
 attitude. But x^mos, Hosea, Isaiah, and MIcah 
 laid the granite foundations of ethical and univer- 
 sal religion when they proclaimed that In all the 
 universe there Is no God but Jehovah. Faith In 
 the one God of all humanity Is the very basis of 
 true Internationalism. The question which com- 
 pels all true men who face It to answer In terms of 
 internationalism Is the great query of MalachI; 
 *' Have we not all one Father? Did not one God 
 create us? " 
 
 So, even In the Old Testament, Is found the con- 
 ception of Internationalism, clear evidence that 
 God's aim was to make a people who should be 
 servants of humanity, that all men might come at 
 last to a unity of faith in the one God, their 
 Father. Seldom, or never, reaching the height 
 of the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ, mingled with 
 reactionary statements and impulses of exclusive 
 patriotism, realized by only a few who climbed to 
 
32 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 the heights while the mass lingered In the low 
 places, this conception of the unity of the race nev- 
 ertheless haunted the consciousness of the Hebrew 
 seers, who saw In the world's life a movement to- 
 ward a goal set forth in the words of a gifted soul, 
 " the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of 
 the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea." 
 
 Under the inspiration of this prophetic vision, 
 Judaism had become to a limited extent, even be- 
 fore Christ came, a missionary religion, with a 
 desire to bring all sorts and races of men together. 
 Too often its missionary zeal was fierce, crude, In- 
 tolerant, stained with an offensive sense of supe- 
 riority. Yet some there were who saw the glory 
 of the wider view, like Philo who tried to combine 
 the Old Testament with Plato's dialogues, that 
 men might have one great fountain of Inspiration 
 for their thought and worship of God. 
 
 In making ready for the coming of Jesus Christ, 
 the Old Testament made ready for the coming of 
 universal religion, of international goodwill, of the 
 fellowship of nations, of the brotherhood of man. 
 
 And all along the way, the greatest influence of 
 the Old Testament toward Internationalism was in 
 its clear consciousness that God Is fundamentally 
 a God of principles rather than of people, a God 
 of justice, righteousness, freedom, and law, rather 
 than a God tied to the fortunes of one race, re- 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 33 
 
 gardless of the moral and religious character of 
 that race. Such a faith made for a sane interna- 
 tionalism a foundation of God that cannot be 
 moved, but abideth forever. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT AND INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 One might expect, in passing from the Old Tes- 
 tament to the New, to come out of the twilight Into 
 the clear day, to find full and unequivocal support 
 for the cause of Internationalism in the Gospel and 
 the literature which grew from it. 
 
 But this is not the case. Jesus gives us not a 
 word of clear, specific teaching about international 
 relationships. Just as the ardent internationalist 
 is tempted to throw over the Old Testament be- 
 cause a rampant nationalism is so patent on the 
 surface of much of it, so he is tempted to turn 
 from the New Testament because it is so individ- 
 ualistic in tone and view. 
 
 In fact there are three characteristics of the 
 teachings of Christ which repel some thoughtful 
 socially-minded folk, and fortify some of the re- 
 actionary and unprogressive elements in the 
 church. 
 
 The first of these is what we may call the con- 
 servatism of Jesus. He seems so content with 
 things as they are. He makes attack upon so few 
 
 34 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 35 
 
 political abuses or social evils. The tyranny of 
 Rome was a very real and very oppressive fact 
 for the mass of men; but He never denounces it; 
 He discourages rather than foments revolt against 
 it. He is put to death at last as a disturber of the 
 peace, an enemy of the existing order; but the 
 flimsy and false charge breaks down. In fact 
 there has scarcely been, in all the riot of misinter- 
 pretation of Jesus, a conception of Him more out 
 of touch with the facts as we know them, than the 
 representation of Him as a social reformer, an 
 agitator, a rebel against the existing order. 
 Those who present Christ in this garb are reading 
 their own thoughts and beliefs and hopes back into 
 Him, and making Him their Incarnation, just as 
 truly and as absolutely as Is the veriest mystic who 
 depicts Jesus as always crowned with a halo of 
 heavenllness. His words and acts were marked 
 with a strong conservatism. 
 
 The second characteristic we note is the limited 
 range of His directions and principles. If, as we 
 profess to believe. He came to be our guide. He 
 left many paths uncharted. Nothing Is easier, in 
 principle, than to conduct one's life on the basis 
 of " In His Steps," asking " what would Jesus 
 do? '* Nothing is harder than to discover what 
 Jesus would do, in those wide ranges of modern 
 thought and conduct which He never entered. So 
 
36 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 many questions that are real and vital to us seem 
 out of His range. The nearest approach He 
 made to the problem of the relation of a godly- 
 man to political and governmental action was in 
 the counsel, " Render unto Caesar the things that 
 are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are 
 God's"; Illuminating, abiding, in its Insight; but 
 vague as a definite direction; for It leaves entirely 
 untouched the really bothersome question, " What 
 really is Caesar's, and what really is God's? " 
 
 How many and how grave are the practical mat- 
 ters on which we go In vain to the specific state- 
 ments of the Gospel for guidance ! Child labor, 
 the rights of women, democracy In Industry, the 
 limits of patriotism, the use of force, the right to 
 go to war, — these are a few of the questions 
 which sometimes seem to us matters wellnigh of 
 life and death; and on them He Is silent. He set 
 up few guide-posts. 
 
 Many have raised the question of late. What 
 would the Good Samaritan have done had he come 
 upon the scene a little earlier, while the thieves 
 were assaulting the traveler? Would Jesus have 
 made the hero of the parable join In the fight, use 
 force to rescue the victim? The pacifist is sure 
 He would not; the mass of Christians believe He 
 would. Many of us find ourselves wishing that 
 the Master, here and elsewhere, had made the way 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 37 
 
 of practical godliness a little more plain before our 
 feet. 
 
 The third marked characteristic of His teaching 
 which sometimes disconcerts us, which will surely 
 mislead us unless we are on guard, is the individ- 
 ualism of it. Jesus deals with men one by one, 
 as if each man stood alone with God. He is very 
 sensitive to human relations, very clear that godli- 
 ness must and will work out good social values; 
 but He seems scarcely conscious of the network of 
 social forces and movements which at times make 
 us feel as if we could hardly call ourselves individ- 
 uals. 
 
 When we grasp these characteristics of the 
 thought and conduct of Jesus, and see their im- 
 mense significance for our modern lives, we won- 
 der if we can hold that the New Testament has 
 any vital connection with social progress, and the 
 movement toward international order. We re- 
 member how Bismarck said, '' If I were not a 
 Christian, I would be a republican " ; and we won- 
 der whether there may not be some fact-basis for 
 the feeling that the religion of the New Testa- 
 ment and the social-democratic movement have lit- 
 tle in common. 
 
 The Christian, whose rule of life is to follow 
 Christ, must face these facts honestly. After all, 
 that is the very primary element in following 
 
38 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 Christ, to face facts honestly. How shall we 
 meet the difficulties created by these facts? We 
 meet them by the frank admission that Christ was 
 not, Is not, and never meant to be, a giver of rules, 
 a law-maker, an Instructor in the details of lifers 
 technique. His method and aim were quite dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 First, we can see very readily certain conditions 
 which necessitated some limitation of the range 
 and the specific guiding value of His teachings : 
 
 Patriotism, for example, was an impossibility In 
 His day. He could not approach the subject with- 
 out at once endangering His life and work. It 
 was only by extreme caution that He was able to 
 keep three years clear for His work. 
 
 Again, there is a very real sense in which He 
 was limited by His time. Had He spoken words 
 specifically applicable to the conditions of modern 
 Industry, or of modern social development, such 
 words would have thrown Him out of gear with 
 His own time, would have made Him a portent, a 
 thing of magic. One of His chief glories is the 
 perfect naturalness with which He fits Into his- 
 tory. 
 
 On the other hand, the limitation we note In His 
 teachings and in His attitude toward specific ques- 
 tions is due In part to the fact that He was for all 
 time, and all conditions, and therefore could not 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 39 
 
 attend with too great particularity to those condi- 
 tions which were peculiar to His own day and 
 place. When He did come close to the peculiar 
 thoughts and theories of His day, as, for example, 
 in the '' little apocalypse " recorded in the 24th 
 chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 
 misunderstanding has arisen, and literalists have 
 been all too ready to take the transient form of 
 His teaching for its inner meaning. He was for 
 the ages, and a certain measure of detachment 
 from the concerns of any particular age was vital 
 to the success of His eternal mission. 
 
 But the reason for the limited range of His 
 practical guidance and example lies deeper than 
 these explanations. When we come to a true view 
 of Jesus and His teaching, we see clearly that His 
 method and His aim were such as to forbid deal- 
 ing overmuch with specific details. 
 
 His method finds statement in the saying, " I am 
 not come to destroy, but to fulfil." He was con- 
 structive, not destructive. He was concerned not 
 with the taking away of evil things but with the 
 starting of good things that should in time displace 
 the evil. He did come to " take away the sin of 
 the world " ; but His method of taking it away was 
 to establish and confirm goodness. He would al- 
 ways set up a positive ideal, give men a spirit in 
 which to breathe and live, and trust the ideal, the 
 
40 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 spirit to overcome in time the evil in the world. 
 
 This was His method with the law, and with the 
 whole system of Jewish exclusiveness. When 
 Paul saw the law, he smote it, with a fierce joy at 
 being privileged to help break it to bits. But one 
 searches in vain for any iconoclasm in the soul of 
 Jesus. He even spoke words that gave the Ju- 
 daistic Christians In the early church some excuse 
 for claiming that their Master intended that they 
 should always be good Jews. *' Think not that I 
 am come to destroy the law or the prophets.'* " I 
 am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of 
 Israel.'* ^' Go show yourself to the priest." 
 *' Whosoever shall break one of these least com- 
 mandments, and shall teach men so, the same shall 
 be called the least In the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 But He Introduced, as the essential element of 
 religion, as Its very heart, the principle or Ideal 
 of free, filial love to God; and in the end It was 
 not chiefly Paul's sledge-hammer blows, but Jesus' 
 doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, that brought 
 the law to Impotence, and made the Jewish Chris- 
 tian ashamed of his heritage of exclusiveness. 
 
 Such has been Christ's method In dealing with 
 slavery. It was a hideous and monstrous evil In 
 His day, a curse on slave and master. Must not 
 Jesus have seen what It meant? Yet where In His 
 teachings can one find a clear, specific word deal- 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 41 
 
 ing with the problem of slavery? He assumes 
 slaves and serfs as part of the order of society. 
 
 But He brings into form and into force the 
 great principle of brotherhood, of the dignity and 
 worth of each soul of man In the eyes of God; 
 and ultimately, slowly, yet certainly, slavery finds 
 Itself on the defensive, and losing ground, and 
 at last Is vanquished. Christ has done It; yet 
 He never definitely attacked the institution of 
 slavery. 
 
 So has It been In the matter of exploitation of 
 women and children. Here the Master did come 
 nearer to a positive and specific rule, in His clear 
 direction with reference to marriage and divorce, 
 and His warnings against those who despise the 
 children or make them stumble. Yet the principle 
 holds, that He set up an ideal, and left it to work 
 the ruin of the systems that profited from the 
 weakness of women and children. He taught the 
 sacredness of personality, the loftiness and beauty 
 of love; and that force has driven the world so 
 far as it has progressed toward fairness to woman 
 and child. 
 
 He gave no definite Instructions as to the rela- 
 tion of His followers to war. There have been 
 honest followers of Jesus who feel that He com- 
 manded non-resistance; there have been Christians 
 of equal honesty that have gone Into battle with 
 
42 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 clean consciences and a sense of deep consecration 
 as they fought against their fellowmen. How 
 painfully earnest Christians have searched the 
 Gospel for light on their duty in time of war! 
 And to what widely-separated views their studies 
 have led them. 
 
 Yet if ever, as we firmly believe and hope, war 
 shall follow slavery to the limbo of discarded 
 follies and crimes, the mightiest force in sending 
 it thither will have been the leadership of Jesus 
 Christ. For His great principle of brotherly love 
 is fundamentally incompatible with war, and 
 sooner or later one of them must go, vanquished 
 by the other. Christ started a society, a brother- 
 hood, destined to unite the world. Better and 
 more surely than by any frontal attack, He thereby 
 made internationalism a certainty of the world's 
 future life. 
 
 But not only His method. His aim also explains 
 His lack of definiteness. For His aim, as the 
 Great Teacher of men, was, and ever is, not to 
 relieve the reason and conscience of mankind, not 
 to lighten the burden of thought and study; but 
 rather to increase that burden, to make men more 
 conscientious, more eager, more active in mind and 
 moral sense. 
 
 That is to say. He came not to answer ques- 
 tions, but to ask them; not to settle men's souls, 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 43 
 
 but to provoke them; not to save men from prob- 
 lems, but to save them from their indolence; not 
 to make life easier, but to make It more educative. 
 We ase quite in error when we think of Christ as 
 coming to give us a key to life's difficult text-book. 
 He came to give us a finer text-book, calling for 
 keener study, and deeper devotion, and more In- 
 telligent and persistent reasoning. The fact has 
 been noted that when Jesus gave the first great 
 commandment. He added to the Deuteronomic 
 statement the necessity that we love God with all 
 our mind. His aim was ever to challenge men to 
 the fullest, deepest use of their powers. 
 
 Christ's teachings are to us what the compass 
 Is to the mariner. We mis-state their use as we 
 mis-state the function of the compass. We say 
 sometimes that a sailor need not go astray, be- 
 cause he has a magic needle which will always 
 point the way for him. But the compass does not 
 do that. If the mariner steers always where the 
 needle points, he will make shipwreck soon. 
 What the compass does Is to point out a direction; 
 and on the basis of that, the mariner determines 
 his course. But he must take pains to see that no 
 mass of Iron or steel Is near to deflect the needle, 
 he must allow for variations of the needle, he 
 must take careful observations to determine his 
 immediate location, and he must study his chart 
 
44 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 to know what lies about his ship In that place; only 
 then can he sail safely. So to the Christian Christ 
 points out a star, sets forth unerringly an ideal, a 
 principle. But the Christian must free himself 
 from prejudices and preceptlons and selfish mo- 
 tives, he must allow for accidents of form and 
 statement In Christ's sayings, he must see and in- 
 terpret the circumstances In which he Is set, and he 
 must read and study to know his course. 
 
 There Is of course a danger in stating thus the 
 function and limitation of Christ's leadership, — 
 a danger that we shall be content to admire His 
 ideals and principles, without making positive and 
 definite connection between them and our practi- 
 cal conduct, that we shall yield Him only a senti- 
 mental and theoretical obedience. We must ever 
 remind ourselves that our obedience to him, while 
 never literal, must always be serious. Better the 
 extreme of literal following than the extreme of 
 contentment with a dream of following. After 
 all, the llteralists, St. Francis and Tolstoi, and the 
 like, have made upon the world a mighty impres- 
 sion of reality In their religion. Better too literal 
 than too elastic. 
 
 But better far than either the literal or the loose 
 Is the real, wholesome follower of Jesus, who takes 
 the great ideals of the Gospel, and with sincerity, 
 courage, simplicity, and earnest thoughtfulness 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 45 
 
 tries to make the details of his conduct and rela- 
 tionships realize those principles of Jesus. 
 
 Taken thus, the Gospel gives wonderful sup- 
 port to the cause of internationalism; for it gives 
 ideals and a spirit which ultimately demand a sane 
 and far-going internationalism. When Jesus de- 
 liberately chose from the Old Testament the ideal 
 of the Servant rather than the ideal of the War- 
 Lord, He set in motion forces which will eventu- 
 ally set war aside. Paul saw the tendency, when, 
 in the opening chapters of his Epistle to the Ephe- 
 sians, he says of Christ, " For He is our peace, 
 who hath made both one, and hath broken down 
 the middle wall of partition, so making peace.'* 
 When Kant wrote his epochal tract on Durable 
 Peace, in 1795, he gave as one of the three condi- 
 tions of stable peace the extension of the spirit of 
 goodwill between races and nations, — the very 
 work of Christ. 
 
 In the social life of the present are two extreme 
 types, each of which seriously hinders the progress 
 of society toward an international order. They 
 are the Militarist and the Pacifist. I use each 
 term In an opprobrious sense. By the militarist 
 I mean one who holds war to be necessary, and 
 good; who counts it one of the chief duties of a 
 state to be completely ready for war at any time; 
 and who regards war as the ultimate arbiter in 
 
46 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 human affairs. By the pacifist I mean the non- 
 resistant, the Tolstoyan, the one who holds that 
 the use of physical force Is immoral, or, In any 
 event, that war Is always unjustifiable, and that no 
 Christian can rightly take part In it. 
 
 We need to see clearly that neither of these 
 extreme types can claim the sanction of Christ. 
 Certainly the militarist cannot. No one can be 
 a militarist and a Christian. For the militaristic 
 view contradicts Christ's trust In man, in love. In 
 the essential goodness of God and of life; it denies 
 ground for the hopefulness and the joy which is 
 of the very stuff of the Christian spirit. 
 
 But, while the pacifist may make out a better 
 case, he too is far from the kingdom of Christ. 
 Certainly we can say this at least, that one need 
 not be a pacifist to be a Christian; and the pacifist 
 misses the balance of Christ. He glorifies method 
 above spirit; he makes a fetich of one saying, taken 
 with bald literalism. 
 
 Christ does say, " Resist not evil." But to cen- 
 ter the Gospel on that saying, as Tolstoi did, is to 
 reveal a condition of painful religious astigmat- 
 ism. Why take that saying with a literalism we 
 cannot apply elsewhere? Does not the Master 
 go on to say, " Give to every one that asketh 
 thee "? Shall I then let my child have poison, or 
 unlimited sweets, If he asks for them? " From 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 47 
 
 him that would take thy goods, ask them not 
 again." Shall we let burglars roam at will 
 through our streets and homes, and leave them in 
 undisturbed possession of whatever they may fancy 
 to take? Is not the Tolstoyan caught in his own 
 trap when he comes to the counsel, — no less posi- 
 tive and explicit than the command not to resist 
 evil, — " Whoso would compel thee to go one mile, 
 go with him two"? For the verb in that sen- 
 tence means government action, conscription, de- 
 mand for military service or assistance. It has 
 passed into technical use as the legal term " An- 
 garry," " Jus Angariae," under the sanction of 
 which the United States lately took over the ships 
 of Holland. Literally, then, the verse bears the 
 meaning, " If the government demands service of 
 you, conscripts you, give double what is de- 
 manded." 
 
 War is a brutal, a detestable business, which 
 could have no place in a world ordered according 
 to the ideals of Jesus Christ. In such a judgment 
 all true Christians must agree. Yet when, for our 
 sins and the sins of our fathers, or for the sins of 
 our contemporaries of which we may be compara- 
 tively guiltless, war has come, and, so far as we 
 can see, freedom and joy and justice for the future 
 hang upon the issue of the conflict. It is pitiful to 
 sec men content to base their Christian attitude 
 
48 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 and duty on the letter of one saying of Christ, 
 when life is challenging them to a decision so great 
 that all the light God has given to all men is not 
 too much to illumine the path, and all the reason 
 and conscience they possess must be taxed to the 
 utmost to find the worthy response. " War is 
 hell "; but " though I make my bed in hell, behold 
 Thou art there "; and sometimes one muot be will- 
 ing to descend into hell if he would keep company 
 with Christ. 
 
 Thus, though the Master of Christians said no 
 specific word about international relations, He set 
 in motion forces, principles, ideals, which, given 
 fair and full opportunity, will work out an interna- 
 tional brotherhood, in which nations shall live to- 
 gether like neighbors in God's great city. It is 
 not without profound significance that the narra- 
 tive of His life shows us shepherds from the coun- 
 tryside and Wise Men from distant lands, meet- 
 ing at His cradle; and that over His cross hung a 
 placard, written in Hebrew, and Latin, and Greek; 
 for all the world was concerned in Him, the Son 
 of Man. To leave out Christ and His Gospel 
 would be to leave out the mightiest force making 
 for internationalism. For the spirit He taught 
 and exemplified Is the very source of our hope of a 
 better and more brotherly world. No one can 
 pray the Lord's Prayer, in a large and worthy 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 49 
 
 spirit, and not be an internationalist; for to pray 
 " Thy Kingdom come " is to pray for righteous- 
 ness, peace, and joy the world over; and to pray 
 *' Thy will be done on earth as it is done in the 
 heavens " is to consecrate one's self to the ideal 
 of a human society in which the various states shall 
 move in harmony and order such as mark the 
 courses of the stars, great and small alike con- 
 trolled by the mighty, majestic, and perfect will 
 of God. 
 
 Christ is no dreamer; His Gospel is no purely 
 individualistic message, unrelated to the vast social 
 questions and political programs of our great day. 
 He does stand nearer to the dreamer than to the 
 materialist. If we must choose, give us Tolstoi 
 as an example of what it means to be a man of 
 God, rather than Bismarck; give us poor, help- 
 less, befuddled Russia as a national ideal, rather 
 than cold-blooded, hard-hearted, efficient Prussia. 
 But the choice is not confined to those extremes. 
 There is '' a more excellent way." I dare to hold 
 up, as nearer than either Tolstoi or Bismarck 
 to the Gospel ideal of what a man should be in his 
 relation to the practical affairs of the world, a bet- 
 ter Christian, a better internationalist than either, 
 our own Lincoln. Committed to peace and jus- 
 tice and Christian Idealism, as truly as was the 
 soul of the great Russian prophet, the very hero 
 
so CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 of democracy and of humane social conduct, yet 
 firm and relentless in his pursuit of justice and 
 order, he has left us an example of the man who 
 is true to Christ without forfeiting his part In the 
 stern tasks of the social order. " With malice 
 toward none, with charity for all, with firmness 
 in the right as God gives us to see the right," — 
 that is a spirit caught from Christ. We see in 
 Lincoln a truer, saner example of what It means 
 to live in the world after Christ's spirit and way 
 than we see in the Prussian statesman or In the 
 Russian mystic; and we dare to say that In Lin- 
 coln's America we find a closer approximation to 
 the ideal of a Christian nation, and a mightier 
 force toward enduring peace and a right interna- 
 tional-order, than In Militarist Prussia or Pacifist 
 Russia. 
 
 It is in Christ, His Gospel, His spirit, that true 
 internationalism finds its best expression, Its might- 
 iest help, its surest hope. And some day the par- 
 able of the Prodigal will be fulfilled on a world- 
 scale, and the whole race of mankind will arise 
 and go to the Father In penitence for its past, 
 henceforth to live the life of the family of God, 
 as He taught us to live In Christ Jesus. Then will 
 come the great days of a Christian world-order. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 When we speak of the relation of Christianity 
 to InternationaHsm, we may mean only that with 
 which the last chapter deals, — the relation of the 
 great principles and Ideals and faiths of the Chris- 
 tian system to the movement for a better inter- 
 national order. 
 
 But Christianity is more than a system of faiths 
 and principles. It is an institution, a movement, 
 a part of human history, a factor in social evolu- 
 tion. 
 
 The Christian faith took shape in an Institution; 
 more than that, it worked itself into many institu- 
 tions. It became a movement. The principles 
 and ideals of Christianity profoundly influenced 
 the social and political development of the race, 
 and that development in turn reacted upon the 
 faiths and forms of the Christian church. 
 
 Jesus left no set forms or Institutions for the 
 brotherhood He founded. He never used the 
 word " church " In the formal, technical sense of 
 that term. He created a brotherhood, with latent 
 
 51 
 
52 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 power to become a world religion ; but He showed 
 a divine carelessness for the forms it might take 
 to itself. 
 
 When the forms of organization appeared, 
 they took on at once a new and a universal mean- 
 ing and appeal. Christianity took shape in an 
 international institution, as a religion for all men, 
 transcending the bounds of nationahty and class. 
 
 It was a movement profoundly significant for 
 internationalism, no less than for religion, which 
 began at Antioch, a movement so novel that it had 
 to find a new name. Up to that time Christianity 
 had been no more than a Jewish sect. But the 
 ideas and faiths which were central in it naturally 
 led its adherents to where they could not help 
 passing over the bounds of their own race. Christ 
 had spoken words prophetic of the universal range 
 of His influence: " I, if I be lifted up from the 
 earth, will draw all men unto me." " Ye shall be 
 my witnesses — unto the uttermost part of the 
 earth." True, these words were not so precise, 
 and clear, and Indubitable, nor was the message of 
 universal brotherhood so^ single, that there was no 
 room for doubt or hesitation. It took the vision 
 on the roof of Joppa to convince Peter that Gen- 
 tiles had a right to the privileges of the church. 
 A sharp and long conflict was necessary before 
 Paul could lead the church as a whole Into a world- 
 
CHRISTIANITY 53 
 
 view of its mission. But Christianity came to 
 that world-view, that consciousness of a universal 
 mission, and it then stood forth in its real meaning 
 and power, as an organization transcending all 
 bounds and limits, so that " in Christ Jesus there 
 can be neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, 
 bondman, freeman; but Christ is all and in you 
 all." 
 
 Here we find one of the reasons for the rapid 
 spread of early Christianity. The world was 
 ready for a religion that took the world into its 
 view, a religion international In character and con- 
 viction. Rome had, in a way, unified the world; 
 perhaps in the only way then possible, by imperial 
 dominion. One has but to read Hatch's " Influ- 
 ence of Greek Usage on the Christian Church," or 
 Harnack's " Mission and Expansion of Christian- 
 ity," to realize how marvelously the world which 
 primitive Christianity faced was a unit. There 
 was easy communication by road and by speech. 
 Rome laid the roads, and Greece provided the 
 language. Paul could speak wellnigh anywhere 
 without the need of an Interpreter. There were 
 many wandering lecturers, teachers, preachers, 
 prophets of strange cults, old and new; there were 
 guilds of working-men, with features that strike us 
 as quite modern, such as sidkness benefits, and 
 burial provision and the like. There was easy 
 
54 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 passage from one place to another; on a tomb In 
 Phrygia was found an inscription telling that the 
 merchant there buried had made the journey to 
 Rome seventy-two separate times. It was not 
 unlike our 19th century, this first century of the 
 Christian era. Into this world, diversified yet 
 one, came Christianity, with its passion for hu- 
 manity, its exaltation of brotherhood Into a creed, 
 its Identification of the supreme man, the Lord of 
 all, not with kings and mighty men, but with the 
 lowly, with carpenters and fishermen, its glow of 
 impatience toward artificial distinctions. The 
 world was ready for an inclusive religion, which 
 would exalt the brother of low degree, and bring 
 down the pride of the rich and mighty, by the 
 revelation of the greatness of the soul into which 
 Christ came. 
 
 Why was it that Rome, so tolerant of all forms 
 of religion, made implacable war upon Christian- 
 ity? Largely, no doubt, because of Its uncom- 
 promising spirit. It opposed to the imperial wor- 
 ship a worship that tended to make men conscious 
 of their unity quite apart from their connection 
 with the Roman empire. Rome saw that here 
 was something new, a new international force and 
 movement, a rival to the Empire. 
 
 It Is amazing how swiftly, and how thoroughly, 
 the Christian church grew Into an organism which 
 
CHRISTIANITY 55 
 
 the Empire had reason to view with respect and 
 with fear. The growth was largely due to the 
 international character of Christianity. It re- 
 fused respect to the things that divided men. It 
 held their allegiance to a kingdom transcending all 
 bounds and distinctions. In those first centuries 
 Christianity stood for a sublime ideal, a new inter- 
 national force. What a stupendous change in 
 the point of view when a Roman Emperor put 
 upon his banner a cross, — symbol of Rome's 
 heaviest and most disgraceful punishment for 
 crime and sedition. It was as if the Kaiser should 
 substitute for the Prussian Eagle one of Rae- 
 makers' tragic figures symbolizing Belgium under 
 the heel of Germany. 
 
 One of the chief glories of those early centuries 
 was the vivid consciousness that the church was a 
 unity transcending all distinctions, a supra-national 
 body. That fact set the church above emperors. 
 One of the great scenes in Christian history is the 
 picture of Ambrose, refusing the sacrament to the 
 great Theodosius, until he should repent of his 
 bloody slaughter of the Thessalonlans. In the 
 name of the sacred brotherhood of humanity, the 
 Christian prelate stood above the Emperor. 
 
 For some hundreds of years the Catholic 
 Church stood splendid and mighty as the repre- 
 sentative of an international, or supra-national 
 
S6 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 force. Amid much that was evil and false in that 
 ancient CathoHc Church there was this at least 
 of good, that it claimed the first allegiance of men 
 to something higher than their political rulers, 
 something which united men of different races, 
 even when they made war upon each other, some- 
 thing inclusive of their racial divisions, a visible 
 representative of the ideal of the Kiiigdom of God 
 on earth. 
 
 But the church fell from its high estate. It is 
 interesting to speculate and dream on what the 
 Catholic Christian Church might have been and 
 done in the life of Europe, had it kept faith with 
 its high ideal, steered clear of politics, and given 
 itself to its sacred work, holding its ideal of a 
 universal brotherhood clearly before kings, in- 
 stead of taking their tricks and ambitions as its 
 own method and spirit, and finally coming to where 
 it was more concerned with crowning and uncrown- 
 ing emperors than with telling them the truth of 
 God and man. It was a tragic fall from Ambrose 
 to Hildebrand. The church failed because it sub- 
 stituted for its real, high, spiritual internationalism 
 an imperial internationalism, in which the title 
 " Roman " came to mean more than either 
 " Christian " or " Cathohc." 
 
 From the political point of view, there were two 
 glaring errors on the part of the Catholic Church 
 
CHRISTIANITY 57 
 
 which made the Reformation necessary. The 
 first was that the church became imperialistic; the 
 second was that it resisted the growth of healthy 
 nationalism. 
 
 The Reformation was necessary because free- 
 dom is more precious than unity. International- 
 ists must ever remember that. Incidentally so 
 must all who work for church unity. When the 
 interests of freedom and of unity conflict, unity 
 must go. The passion of patriotism, the Instinct 
 of nationality, the desire of racial groups to be 
 independent political entities, self-ruling and free, 
 was wholesome and Irresistible. It is still strong, 
 an instinct to be reckoned with, not to be Ignored 
 without penalty. One of the Issues of the war is 
 *' the right of self-determination for all nations, 
 great or small." No internationalism will be 
 really stable or valuable which violates that prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 Yet we cannot withhold regret that the Refor- 
 mation broke the sense that Christianity was a 
 supra-national body, and produced churches or- 
 ganized on national lines. How painfully little 
 there seemed to be when the war flamed up of the 
 consciousness of Christianity as transcending na- 
 tional Issues, and particular loyalties! The most 
 glaring Illustration of the complete victory of the 
 nationalistic conception of Christianity over the 
 
SS CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 supra-nationalistic was In the haste and vehemence 
 with which the churchmen of Germany ranged 
 themselves as a matter of course on the side of 
 their country. But in what nation has the church 
 proved itself more than a patriotic partisan? 
 Has it, in a single instance, shown itself dominated 
 by a consciousness of an allegiance transcending its 
 loyalty to the one nation? It may be that the 
 hesitation on the part of the American church to 
 pronounce judgment at once against Germany, a 
 hesitation so heavily scored by some critics as due 
 to cowardice and want of moral vision, was In 
 part due to a dim, haunting sense that Christianity 
 ought to beware of partisanship, ought to stand 
 for something " above the battle," something not 
 lightly to be exchanged for partisan satisfaction. 
 In any event the war gave us a startling revela- 
 tion of the thoroughness with which the church 
 had been split Into national groups, how com- 
 pletely It had lost its international character. 
 The head of one of the leading theological schools 
 In America publicly declared in a recent gathering 
 of clergy, that In his opinion the church could have 
 no higher function than to stand for and stimulate 
 patriotism, to become an agent or a function of the 
 national life. 
 
 Yet, serious as has been this loss of the Interna- 
 tional consciousness of the Christian church, the 
 
CHRISTIANITY 59 
 
 Reformation on the whole meant gain, not loss, in 
 the long out-working of a true internationalism. 
 For the true development of an international life 
 and order lay along the lines of federation, which 
 must be built upon a wholesome and thoroughgo- 
 ing development of independent nationalities; and 
 the Protestant movement, dividing the church into 
 national and local groups, did get closer than it 
 could otherwise have done to the spirit and life of 
 the people, came to share their deepest aspirations, 
 and worked with the separate groups toward that 
 international order which will come at last from 
 the inter-relation of strong, self-conscious, inde- 
 pendent states. 
 
 Imperial unity was, and always must be, a colos- 
 sal failure. The alternative is federative unity, 
 such as has been realized on a small scale in Swit- 
 zerland, in a more impressive way in the United 
 States of America, and most remarkably in the 
 British Empire. For the outworking of such 
 federative unity a period of intense nationalistic 
 development was necessary; and the Protestant 
 movement, by furthering and encouraging that 
 process through the establishment of nationalistic 
 churches, played an indispensable part in making 
 ready for the new order of internationalism. 
 
 Nor has the Protestant Christian church wholly 
 lost, even during this period of nationalistic de- 
 
6o CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 velopment, Its consciousness of an international 
 mission and function. It has been doing a work 
 of immense significance for internationalism in the 
 foreign missionary enterprise. 
 
 The missionaries have, of course, been sent out, 
 supported, directed, by the national churches. 
 That has worked harm, and impaired the catholic 
 and Christian value of the missions established. 
 There has been too much eagerness to make 
 Christians of one particular stamp, too much de- 
 sire to propagate a Christianity distinguished by 
 special creeds and forms and orders. Moreover 
 too often the fact that missions have been national 
 enterprises has been used unscrupulously by politi- 
 cal governments to advance their national inter- 
 ests. Trade has pushed In, following the mis- 
 sionary, and political control has followed trade. 
 Irreparable damage has been done to the cause 
 of Christ by such acts as that of the seizure of 
 Kiao-Chau In punishment for the murder of two 
 German missionaries. " Spheres of Influence '* 
 have too often been claimed on the basis of mis- 
 sionary operations on the part of national 
 churches. But such acts of Injustice can not be 
 laid to the charge of the church, save as the church 
 has failed to protest against them. On the whole 
 the Protestant churches have, In their foreign mis- 
 sionary operations, kept a high and true sense of 
 
CHRISTIANITY 6i 
 
 the supra-national character of their work and of 
 their faith. 
 
 And how great and true has been the influence 
 of missions toward real international good-will 
 and order! The missionary enterprise has 
 strongly tended to the standardizing of thought, 
 conduct, and customs. It has thus brought the 
 nations nearer to a common life. To take some 
 of the best of our western folk and set them down 
 quietly in some crowded center of Oriental life, 
 to exemplify every day and year after year what 
 It means to be a Christian neighbor and citizen 
 and friend, has been of untold advantage. What 
 the Settlement has done for social good-will and 
 progress in our home cities, that the mission com- 
 pound has done in many a foreign locality. 
 
 Missions have opened the way to trade, a great 
 Influence for internationalism. While commerce 
 has often made for the debasement of backward 
 peoples, yet on the whole it has tended to bring 
 the world together, and to establish connections 
 that bind men of varied nations and races to each 
 other. 
 
 Of Immensely greater Importance is the fact 
 that the work of Foreign Missions has put into 
 effect the creed of human equality. It recognizes 
 and acknowledges no bar of race or color. It 
 takes to all men the chief blessings enjoyed by the 
 
62 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 most favored races, with a simple but fargolng 
 faith that all men deserve the same goods of life, 
 and that these foreigners are capable of receiving 
 the best we have and of being transformed by it. 
 
 Foreign Missions greatly help the cause of in- 
 ternationalism by bringing into play the forces of 
 Christian trust, sacrifice, and service. 
 
 Set the nations at serving each other, let them 
 follow Jesus in taking as their ideal, not the " War- 
 Lord " of the Messianic Psalms, but the " Servant 
 of the Lord " of the great exilic prophecies, and 
 the day of International good-will and order will 
 speedily dawn. Here the Christian churches have 
 been pioneers, in this sympathetic, self-sacrificing, 
 serviceable enterprise of missions. They have 
 rendered this service, moreover, precisely in che 
 sensitive places, where our peace is jeopardized 
 and our antagonisms find fuel, and wars have their 
 obscure and hidden roots. It is only a superficial 
 view that reckons this a war about Alsace-Lor- 
 raine, and Serbia, and Italia Irredenta. It is far 
 more truly a war about Mesopotamia, and China, 
 and Persia, and Africa, yes, and Mexico. Chris- 
 tian missions have been powerful and indispensable 
 agents of the coming internationalism in interpret- 
 ing these backward races to the powerful nations 
 of the West, and mediating between the weakness 
 of the one and the strength of the other. 
 
CHRISTIANITY 63 
 
 But the greatest contribution of the missionary 
 enterprise to the cause of internationalism has 
 been the winning of men of all races and condi- 
 tions to a single allegiance to the Son of Man, and 
 to a brotherhood of faith and service In Him. 
 Missions have been creating a nucleus of Interna- 
 tionally-minded folk, and that not alone on the mis- 
 sion field. The supporters of the missionary en- 
 terprise in the home lands have been receiving a 
 steady education in the International spirit and 
 mind. One cannot really be enthusiastic for mis- 
 sions and not be a thorough-going internationalist. 
 
 Closely associated with the missionary move- 
 ment as an agency making for internationalism, — 
 part of that movement Indeed, in the right and 
 large interpretation — are the great world-move- 
 ments for the betterment of mankind, of which 
 the Young Men's Christian Association is the most 
 conspicuous example. The whole world has been 
 impressed with the resourcefulness and power with 
 which this Association has taken hold of the moral 
 and religious problems connected with the war, 
 the sane and wise way In which It has provided the 
 Christian ministry the men need In the camps and 
 trenches. But not all have realized that this 
 power to meet the present exigency was accumu- 
 lated during years and decades of development, 
 in which the Young Men's Christian Association 
 
64 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISiM 
 
 was becoming more and more a movement of 
 Christian Internationalism. The Continuation 
 Committee of the Edinborough Conference is an- 
 other striking illustration of the fact that the real 
 spirit of the Christian Church is an international 
 spirit. 
 
 Such mov^ements as the Young Men's Christian 
 Association and the Red Cross are not in any 
 sense competitors of the church; they are not In 
 reality auxiliary to the church. They are the 
 church functioning in the only possible way Prot- 
 estant Christianity could function. Critics who 
 condemn the church for leaving to " outside or- 
 ganizations " the work of ministry to soul and 
 body which Is being done by the Young Men's 
 Christian Association and the Red Cross might as 
 well condemn a mother for sending her children 
 to school Instead of teaching them herself, or 
 buying their clothing ready made instead of stitch- 
 ing It at home. The conclusive answer to such 
 criticism Is the question, What could the Prot- 
 estant church have done, had It tried to meet the 
 needs of the war situation, save to organize just 
 such movements as the Young Men's Christian 
 Association and the Red Cross? It Is of the very 
 essence of Protestantism to foster a spirit, and 
 leave It free to take what forms It will. And 
 these great organizations are simply natural and 
 
CHRISTIANITY 65 
 
 effective forms which the spirit of Protestant 
 Christianity has taken to itself for certain specific 
 and important ends. 
 
 The early part of the present century was 
 marked by the strong growth of an international 
 consciousness on the part of the organized church. 
 Churchmen in Great Britain and Germany felt the 
 burden of responsibility for lessening the growing 
 suspicion and estrangement between their coun- 
 tries, and a society was formed for bringing about 
 better relations between the churchmen in Great 
 Britain and Germany. This led to a general 
 movement, which took definite shape at a council 
 held at Constance in late July and early August, 
 19 14, just as the war broke out. It was a little 
 company that gathered there, for the clouds of war 
 were thick; but representatives of some twelve or 
 more different nationalities met as Christian broth- 
 ers to plan for the revival of the spirit of Christian 
 brotherhood between men of different races. No 
 one who was present can ever forget those ses- 
 sions; they were prophetic of better days to come, 
 when the church shall have regained its lost supra- 
 national character, and the middle walls of parti- 
 tion shall again have been broken down by Christ, 
 the maker of Peace. 
 
 Out of this Conference at Constance came the 
 World Alliance for Promoting International 
 
66 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 Friendship through the Churches, which, though 
 hampered and almost halted by the war, has 
 nevertheless preserved a healthy and vigorous life, 
 and promises much for Christian internationalism 
 In the future. One ventures to predict that, 
 though the racial divisions of Christendom have 
 been torn apart by the strong hand of war, when 
 once that grip is loosened, the groups on either side 
 that will be most ready to renew relations of good- 
 will and knit up again the fabric of severed friend- 
 ships, will be these groups of Christians, who see 
 and accept the international Implications of the 
 faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Internationalism has been, through all the his- 
 tory of the church, a part of Its vital spirit. With 
 all Its faults, despite its piteous weaknesses and 
 its heinous sins, the Christian Church has acted as 
 a force to draw men together, to make them con- 
 scious of a real unity transcending their external 
 differences, to make them dissatisfied with a di- 
 vided world, restless until there is among the 
 severed parts of humanity an at-one-ment, a re- 
 conciliation. 
 
 Moreover the missionary enterprise has reacted 
 vigorously upon the international movement. For 
 missions find themselves hampered at every step 
 by selfish aggrandizement at the expense of the 
 weak and backward races to which the church 
 
CHRISTIANITY 67 
 
 ministers through Its missionary enterprise. Next 
 to the baleful Influence of the evil Individual who 
 misrepresents Christianity In the sight of the 
 Orient, the missionary enterprise suffers most from 
 the influence of the immoral conduct of so-called 
 Christian nations. Nothing could give so power- 
 ful an Impetus to missions as could a righteous so- 
 lution of the relation between East and West, 
 between the Great Powers and the great needy 
 races, an International order that shall " set judg- 
 ment in the earth." 
 
 Christianity and Internationalism are one and 
 the same. Internationalism is essentially Chris- 
 tian, In origin and spirit and cardinal tenets. 
 Christianity Is essentially International, In charac- 
 ter and faith. One cannot be a true Christian and 
 not be a true Internationalist. Christianity stands, 
 the first great movement In history, the only great 
 movement in religion, the founder of which left 
 as his great commission to his followers a com- 
 mand to go to " all nations," and as the goal of 
 their efforts a kingdom the citizens of which shall 
 be a " great multitude which no man can number, 
 out of every kindred and tribe and nation and 
 tongue," living together as one great family, 
 working out their common life In freedom and In 
 peace, a world kept one by the free spirit of man 
 and the Holy Spirit of God. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 The war has brought many watchwords into 
 use. So great and diversified a conflict must find 
 expression in many phrases and slogans. But 
 here in America, and in many another country as 
 well, the one word that would be chosen, should 
 we be restricted to a single term, would undoubt- 
 edly be " democracy." 
 
 President Wilson has made this the key-word 
 of the war. It has been well said that even more 
 significant than the entry of America Into the war 
 was the way the President brought America in. 
 Instantly " democracy " became a shining emblem 
 on our banners, the watchword of the war. 
 
 It is not, as the President has said clearly and 
 positively, that we are embarking on a crusade to 
 made the world democratic. We have neither 
 the right nor the power to decide what form of 
 government any nation shall adopt. An enforced 
 democracy would be a contradiction in terms. 
 But we have the right and the duty, and we think 
 we have the power, to see that democracy has a 
 
 68 
 
DEMOCRACY 69 
 
 fair field and a free chance, that peoples every- 
 where shall be at liberty to establish and maintain 
 democratic institutions, if they so desire, and that 
 popular governments, wherever set up, shall not 
 be endangered by the intrigues of autocratic 
 cliques. 
 
 The President's addresses have made increas- 
 ingly clear the fact that the dominant issue in the 
 war is this issue of democracy. The latest con- 
 cise definition of our aim makes it clear: " What 
 we seek is the reign of law, based upon the con- 
 sent of the governed, and sustained by the organ- 
 ized opinion of mankind." 
 
 We see that the world can be no longer safe if 
 autocratic governments are left free and uncon- 
 trolled. We are beginning to see the priceless 
 values of democracy. One of the chief benefits of 
 the war is the recovery of that sense of the value 
 and glory of simple democratic ideals which we 
 had so nearly lost. Not many years ago one 
 heard much complaint about the ill-working of 
 democracy, with an occasional sigh for " the 
 strong man, who can rule," with emphatic words 
 about the slowness, the inefficiency, the corruption, 
 the clumsiness of popular government. Such 
 complaints have ceased, and all through our coun- 
 try Is a profound conviction that popular govern- 
 ment, however inefficient, and slow, and cumber- 
 
70 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 some It may be in contrast with the processes of 
 autocracy, is worth all it costs. 
 
 If we would work toward a sane and lasting in- 
 ternationalism, we must realize how intimate is its 
 connection with democracy. Autocracy is as in- 
 compatible with the right order of political affairs 
 as slavery was. Dr. Talcott Williams makes a 
 strong and true historical comparison when he 
 says that our war of i860 was to put an end to 
 the impious theory that certain races were made to 
 serve other races, while the present war is to put 
 down the twin blasphemy that certain families 
 were made to rule other families. 
 
 As long ago as 1795, Kant published a pamphlet 
 on the conditions of durable peace, in which he 
 said that the world would never have lasting peace 
 until the ultimate control of governmental proc- 
 esses rested in the hands of the people, rather than 
 in the hands of kings or select groups. It is in- 
 teresting to note the fact that the great philoso- 
 pher, old and honored as he was, was publicly 
 snubbed by the King of Prussia, as he might have 
 been by the latest of the Kaisers. We are coming 
 to see with increasing clearness that Kant was right 
 in naming the democratization of the nations as 
 one condition of lasting peace. 
 
 What do we mean by the word " democracy "? 
 We do not mean, above all, a form of government. 
 
DEMOCRACY 71 
 
 We Include that as the best or surest means to the 
 end we seek. But we really mean something like 
 this, do we not? — a square deal and a fair chance 
 for the average man and the average family; and 
 we mean also a conviction that the best way to 
 secure and safeguard that state of fairness is 
 through letting the ultimate responsibility and au- 
 thority rest In the hands of the mass of the people. 
 The democracy for which we are fighting Is not 
 Bolshevism, or any class-conscious rule. For 
 class-domination violates one of the essential 
 features of true democracy, by excluding some ele- 
 ments of the population from participation In the 
 government. To exchange the rule of one class 
 for the rule of another may be a step In progress, 
 but It Is not an advance In democracy. Mr. Ray- 
 mond Robins tells of hearing an Impassioned agi- 
 tator at a meeting of worklngmen cry out, " Oh, 
 you men In your automobiles, we're going to 
 change all that. We're going to pull you out of 
 your autos and get In and ride ourselves." He 
 says he could not refrain from asking, " Are you 
 so foolish as to suppose that the big problems we 
 are facing can ever be solved by changing the oc- 
 cupants of a lot of automobiles?" Some of us 
 would frankly admit that. If It came to a choice be- 
 tween submitting to the rule of a Kaiser or to the 
 rule of a proletariat, we would take the proletariat. 
 
72 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 But democracy, as we see it, means the combined 
 sense and power and action of all classes in the 
 state. James Russell Lowell tells us that one of 
 the defects in the American idea of democracy is 
 that we think it means that any fellow oft the 
 street can run a locomotive without special train- 
 ing. Democracy does not imply a trust in the 
 average man to do the business of governing better 
 than the expert can do it. It implies a confidence 
 in the honesty of the mass of men, and in their 
 ability to find the man best fitted to govern. It 
 means that we beheve that, on the whole, we shall 
 be more sure of getting the right men in office by 
 letting the mass of people choose them than in any 
 other way. And we think our faith is justified by 
 comparing our list of Presidents, as to their ability 
 and character and general fitness to govern, with 
 the successive scions of any dynasty in any country. 
 Now this matter of democracy is a sacred mat- 
 ter. We come nearer to the rule of God and the 
 will of God through ascertaining the w^U of the 
 people and trusting the rule of the people than 
 in any other way. One occasionally hears the 
 strange doctrine advanced that neither democracy 
 nor autocracy has divine sanction, that the true 
 scriptural method of government is a theocracy. 
 But one finds that most of those who stand for a 
 rule of God rather than a rule of the people, mean 
 
DEMOCRACY 73 
 
 in practical effect the putting into force their own 
 personal convictions and ideals. 
 
 The phrase, vox populi vox del, may be but a 
 half truth; but it is a half truth at least. Cer- 
 tainly we never hear vox dei more surely than 
 when it speaks through vox populi. A real de- 
 mocracy would be the best expression we could get 
 of the rule of God on earth. Democracy and 
 true religion are vitally connected; each is essential 
 to the other. Democracy thrives best when there 
 is most pure Christianity. Religion flourishes 
 best when democracy is purest, when there is the 
 largest measure of freedom, equality, and fratern- 
 ity, when wealth and opportunity and power are 
 most evenly distributed. 
 
 Christian internationalism must be profoundly 
 interested in democracy, for the Bible is a demo- 
 cratic book, and the Gospel is of one fabric with 
 democracy. The Magnificat is a great hymn of 
 social democracy. Christ is the founder of mod- 
 ern democracy as truly as of modern religion. 
 Greece and Rome made their contributions to the 
 growth of the democratic ideal; but the Hebrew 
 was the real source of modern democracy. 
 
 In the stories of the dim and shadowy times of 
 early Israel, we find a tale of great interest, deal- 
 ing with the beginning of the monarchy in Israel.^ 
 
 1 1 Samuel 8. 
 
74 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 Why was it that the prophet objected so vehe- 
 mently to the setting up of a monarchy? Was it 
 the desire of the priest to retain his power over 
 the people? One cannot read the story and not 
 catch the sense of a dim and vague conception of 
 the rule of the people, hidden in the prophet's 
 vehement desire that they should have no king but 
 Jehovah. It is the same great instinct that has 
 led a modern prophet of the people to talk of 
 " God the Invisible King " as the hope of demo- 
 cratic progress. The prophet wanted the rule of 
 God, as made clear to and in the conscience of the 
 average man. 
 
 All through the history of the Hebrew people 
 we find the prophets standing for popular rights 
 as against royal prerogatives. The climax of 
 Elijah's career is found in his noble and indignant 
 protest against the seizure of Naboth's vineyard. 
 It is interesting and illuminating to note that the 
 Israelitish king did not dream of forcible violation 
 of the rights of the humble citizen until his wife 
 brought forward the plan. She had the back- 
 ground of the other nations of the time, where the 
 king could do as he would. Ahab had the back- 
 ground of Hebrew history, and felt instinctively 
 the sacredness of the rights of the people. In the 
 freedom with which Nathan talked to David, and 
 Ahijah to Solomon, and Isaiah to Ahaz, and Jere- 
 
DEMOCRACY 75 
 
 mlah to Jeholakin, we find recurring proofs of the 
 profound sense that the cause of the people is the 
 cause of God, and that kings must bend to its 
 righteous demands. 
 
 Even more is the New Testament the source of 
 real democracy. The beginning of modern de- 
 mocracy may be most truly found, if we seek one 
 place and time for it, when Jesus looked into the 
 eyes and into the heart of common men and 
 women, and said, " You, just as you are, — not the 
 mighty, but plain common people — you are the 
 children of God and the heirs of the grace and 
 glory of life." Those early Christian churches 
 were the first truly democratic communities in the 
 world, where men and women, regardless of dis- 
 tinctions, met on equal terms and voted for their 
 officers. The synagogue of the Jew, the church of 
 the Christian, the town meeting of the Puritan, 
 the Congress of a democratic nation, the Soviets 
 of Russia, these are phases of one movement, links 
 in one chain of democratic progress. 
 
 The great watchwords of modern democratic 
 progress, " Freedom, equality, brotherhood," — 
 these were watchwords of Christianity long before 
 they were battle-cries of social progress. It was 
 Christ Who said, " Ye shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall make you free," " All ye are breth- 
 ren," " as ye would that men should do to you, 
 
76 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 do ye even so to them." When that spirit ^ame 
 into the world, democracy came. 
 
 Some may raise the objection, some have raised 
 it, that Christ is represented in the New Testament 
 as a King, and His rule as a Kingdom; that the 
 conception of Christianity is essentially monar- 
 chical. But the plain and sufficient answer is that 
 there never was a government which rested more 
 absolutely on the consent of the governed than 
 does the rule of Christ. He will not rule over 
 any one who does not choose Him freely as Lord. 
 The vital principle of democracy that " govern- 
 ments derive their just powers from the consent of 
 the governed " is fulfilled In the Kingdom of 
 Christ as nowhere else. 
 
 We who are Protestants often overlook the 
 splendid story of how the Holy Catholic Church 
 stood for the preservation of democracy through 
 the dark ages when barons and lords and kings 
 held all political power in their hands. While the 
 pernicious doctrine of the divine right of certain 
 families was growing up and choking the seed of 
 democracy, here stood a mighty organization, 
 claiming the highest authority, exercising vast 
 power, and any man, whatever his social rank, or 
 his family lineage, or the amount of his posses- 
 sions, was free to enter the church and to mount 
 as high In its ranks as his abilities would carry 
 
DEMOCRACY 77 
 
 him, even to the chair founded by the fisherman 
 of Galilee. We must not forget that splendid 
 service of the Catholic Church to the cause of the 
 people. 
 
 That cause of the people is holy, is Christian; 
 it is the cause of God, of man, and of the Godman, 
 Jesus Christ. It is the nearest and best fulfill- 
 ment, in political and social life, of the ideal of 
 the Kingdom of God. To serve it is to be a com- 
 rade of the apostles and prophets, a companion of 
 Christ and of His Kingdom. 
 
 It is this cause of democracy which is involved 
 in the present conflict, and which must win if ever 
 we are to have a sure and safe and lasting interna- 
 tional order. It has become increasingly clear, 
 until it has become indubitable, that the war was 
 brought upon the world by an autocratic clique, a 
 group of men who held the power the people ought 
 always to wield for themselves. Had there been 
 in Germany even such a measure of popular over- 
 sight and control of the government as obtains in 
 Italy or Belgium, not to say England or France, 
 the war would never have come as it did. 
 
 The testimony of Prince Lichnowsky Is conclu- 
 sive as to the guilt of the rulers of Germany, and 
 as to the secrecy with which they carried out their 
 designs. The revelations of August Thyssen and 
 others have shocked the world with the realiza- 
 
78 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 tlon of the vast power of the military clique In 
 Germany, and the reckless and Immoral use they 
 made of it. 
 
 There never was, there hardly could be, a sys- 
 tem of government more skillfully devised to pro- 
 vide for the absolute rule of a monarchical clique, 
 under the appearance of popular procedure, than 
 the German system, which thrusts forward the 
 Reichstag, with its comparative freedom of de- 
 bate, and conceals the power of the Bundesrath, 
 that upper house in which fourteen votes are suffi- 
 cient to block any legislation, and the Kaiser abso- 
 lutely controls twenty votes. There Is much loose 
 talk to the effect that the President of the United 
 States is the " greatest autocrat in the world." 
 Imagine the President empowered to appoint one- 
 third of the members of the Senate, and to direct 
 them as to their voting, when one-fourth of Its 
 membership could block any proposed legislation! 
 Talk about " Presidential autocracy " is childish 
 and silly in the face of such comparisons. 
 
 Frederick the Great expressed the workings of 
 the Prussian system in his cynical remark, " I and 
 my people have a perfect understanding as to the 
 conduct of affairs; they say what they please, and 
 I do what I please." Such is the government 
 which must be changed radically If the world Is 
 
DEMOCRACY 79 
 
 ever to be a safe place for democracy, If Christian 
 internationalism is ever to be achieved. 
 
 Democracy Is the word which unites the sacred- 
 ness of the past with the hopes of the future. It 
 is the practical political expression of the faith of 
 the Bible; it Is the great essential condition of the 
 hope of future world-peace and world-order, the 
 absolute condition of any lasting Internationalism. 
 
 There is wonderful significance and Inspiration 
 in that scene from the life of the Master in which 
 we see Him led by the tempter to the top of a high 
 mountain, whence He could see all the kingdoms 
 of the world and the glory of them, and was of- 
 fered all of them if He would take them by un- 
 scrupulous means. When He turned away from 
 that vision and went down to walk among men and 
 win them by appealing to their sense of right and 
 justice and truth, determined to have no authority 
 which did not rest upon their free choice and con- 
 sent, He was setting an example for all who would 
 govern the people in accordance with the will of 
 God. When the great day of His triumph shall 
 come, and " at the name of Jesus every knee shall 
 bow," It will be the triumph of true democracy no 
 less than of true religion. For the cause of man 
 IS the cause of God, and " freedom, equality, fra- 
 ternity " are watchwords of Christians no less 
 
8o CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 than of liberals. We are fighting, as our Presi- 
 dent has said, " to make the world at last free." 
 " If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall 
 be free indeed." For the Christ Who is in every 
 true heart of man is indeed King of Kings and 
 Lord of Lords; and all kings must fall down be- 
 fore Him, all nations must serve Him. 
 
 " We knelt before kings ; we bent before lords ; 
 For theirs were the crowns, and theirs were the swords: 
 But the times of the bending and bowing are past, 
 And the Day of the People is dawning at last. 
 
 No more shall the kings, for their glory and gain, 
 
 Drive the masses of men to slay and be slain ; 
 
 For the folly and fury of warfare shall cease 
 
 When the Day of the People brings justice and peace. 
 
 Great Day of Jehovah! Prophets and seers 
 Have sung of thy coming, these thousands of years. 
 On the wings of war's whirlwind God's judgments fly 
 
 fast. 
 And the Day of the People is dawning at last." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 AMERICA AND INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 One great service the war has rendered to this 
 country Is to bring America to a full and vivid con- 
 sciousness of her real meaning and place and duty 
 in the world. 
 
 We have been amazed and mightily heartened 
 at the revelation of national strength and unity 
 that has come through the experience of war. 
 Many faced the crisis with dread, fearing lest the 
 diverse elements of which our national life was 
 compounded would fly apart, revealing the weak- 
 ness of our national fabric. But It has stood, firm 
 and strong and untorn. There Is no better ex- 
 ample of national unity In the world than our own 
 country. Especially have the grave and natural 
 fears that our citizens of German descent might 
 prove disloyal been dispelled with the advent of 
 war. The great mass of Americans of German 
 ancestry are thoroughly loyal; and the greatest 
 honor Is due them for that firm fidelity to the coun- 
 try of their choice which cost them the sacrifice of 
 their loyalty to the country from which they had 
 
 8i 
 
82 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 come. There Is no body of citizens whom we 
 should more delight to honor than the loyal Amer- 
 icans of German lineage. 
 
 We have learned much also as to the defects 
 and weak places in our national life. There has 
 been much criticism of the slowness with which 
 our War Department responded to the need, and 
 of the mistakes of the administration. But can- 
 did critics must confess that our worst failure has 
 been in that department of our national affairs in 
 which we were surest and proudest of our effi- 
 ciency, — our industrial and commercial life. 
 The breakdown has been most severe and most 
 costly in transportation, in coordination of busi- 
 ness, in meeting the vast needs of coal, food, and 
 other supplies. On the v/hole the worst failures 
 have been made not by poHtical appointees, but 
 by captains of industry. Those of us who in- 
 sisted, when the campaign for " Preparedness " 
 was at its height, that the greatest need was in- 
 dustrial and social and spiritual preparedness, 
 and that we could get and equip an army with 
 greater ease and certainty than we could prepare 
 the nation to back up and support the army, feel 
 that our warnings have been justified. 
 
 In many another way we have learned truths 
 about our country which we needed to know. But 
 the greatest and most striking effect of the war 
 
AMERICA 83 
 
 upon the national consciousness has been our awak- 
 ening to such a sense as we have never before 
 known of our right relation to other nations and 
 to the world, of America's international position 
 and responsibilities. 
 
 We recall vividly the talk of " Imperialism,'* 
 and of America as a " World-Power," which 
 marked the days of the war with Spain, twenty 
 years ago. We remember the '' Anti-Imperial- 
 ist " crusade of those days, in which a few very 
 earnest and thoughtful people made a disturbance 
 quite out of proportion to their numbers. That 
 protest against Imperialism was right in motive; 
 for Imperialism must ever be one of the most 
 dangerous and constant foes of a real democracy. 
 But it was quite wrong in method and emphasis, 
 in Its conviction that the way to guard America 
 against imperialism was to keep our nation small 
 and at home and out of the main currents of the 
 world's life. The Impulse which, in those days, 
 seized the heart of our nation, to go out and play 
 a worthy part in the common political life of the 
 world, was a worthy Impulse; to gratify it was 
 honorable; to reject it would have been cowardly. 
 
 This war has brought us to a full and deep sense 
 of our world-responsibility. It is hard to realize 
 how far and how fast we have moved In these 
 four years of wartime. At the opening of the 
 
84 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 war the people of the United States of America 
 generally viewed it as a quarrel between European 
 nations. We thanked God that it was not our 
 affair, and painfully tried to preserve a thorough- 
 going neutrality. But we came slowly and in- 
 evitably to see that it is a struggle exactly in line 
 with the best beliefs, traditions, and ideals of 
 America, and that participation in it is a part of 
 our honorable destiny. 
 
 We can never be too thankful for the leader we 
 have had, a man Intelligent beyond most as to the 
 past history and present ideals of America, a man 
 with a tendency to err on the side of patience and 
 delay rather than on that of rashness, a mediator 
 who at last led us all to where we saw the conflict 
 from a great moral height, and moved into it 
 unitedly and with gathering power. We easily 
 forget how unready our nation was for action In 
 world affairs In August, 19 14. The more facile 
 minds, those better Informed as to world politics, 
 have moved so quickly that they forget where they 
 stood and what they judged In the summer of four 
 years ago. Certainly no leader of any prom- 
 inence urged that we should go to war over the 
 invasion of Belgium. Nothing that Mr. Roose- 
 velt can say to-day avails to alter his article in the 
 Outlook In September, 19 14, disclaiming Ameri- 
 can responsibility in the matter. The Monroe 
 
AMERICA 85 
 
 Doctrine, the most sacred article In our political 
 creed, seemed to us to forbid our Interference In 
 the affairs of Europe, even as it forbade Europe's 
 intermeddling with affairs on this hemisphere. 
 One may doubt If any leadership less watchful, 
 patient, and high-minded than that of President 
 Wilson would have availed to loose us from our 
 traditional moorings and send us on paths so new 
 and strange, with substantial unity of soul. 
 
 But now we see, with crystal vision, that our 
 participation In this war Is a natural step forward 
 for America. 
 
 Some one has pointed out the fact that our entry 
 Into the war is In reality the latest of four great 
 steps forward in the outworking of our democratic 
 destiny. 
 
 The first step was taken In 1776 when our 
 fathers adopted their Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. There they laid down certain principles, 
 such as resistance to tyranny, the absolute depend- 
 ence of governments upon the consent of the gov- 
 erned, the existence of certain Inalienable human 
 rights, the obligation on the part of groups of 
 men to show " a decent respect to the opinion of 
 mankind," — principles which they declared worth 
 dying for, as without them life would not be worth 
 living. It was as If they put a fence about this 
 little strip of territory along the Atlantic seaboard, 
 
86 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 and said, " Henceforth liberty and democracy shall 
 live here unmolested. These great principles 
 which underlie and condition happy and just hu- 
 man living shall have the right of way here among 
 these thirteen colonies." 
 
 The second step was taken when President 
 James Monroe replied to the threat of the Holy 
 Alliance with the defiant declaration of the Mon- 
 roe Doctrine. The sign forbidding trespassing 
 was placed all about this Western Hemisphere. 
 The area within which freedom and democracy 
 should have unmolested rights was thus extended 
 to one-half the world. 
 
 The third great forward step was taken with 
 the winning of our Civil War. Here two great 
 Issues were involved; could a democratic and free 
 government, resting upon the consent of the gov- 
 erned, hold when a supreme strain came, and en- 
 force Its rights against rebellious elements within 
 It? And could a theory and practice which nulli- 
 fied the freedom we professed be put down and 
 brought to an end? The outcome has received 
 Immortal statement In the Gettysburg Address: 
 '' Whether any government so conceived and dedi- 
 cated can long endure." " That government of 
 the people, by the people, and for the people, shall 
 not perish from the earth." 
 
 The fourth step is our entrance Into the present 
 
AMERICA 87 
 
 world-war, the accepted statement of our aim be- 
 ing the oft-quoted phrase, " to make the world 
 safe for democracy." What our fathers did for 
 the thirteen colonies, what America, backed by 
 Britain, did for the Western world, what our 
 great Civil War emphasized and Insured, must be 
 done for all men everywhere ; their right to a free 
 and just life must be enforced. The relation of 
 the present conflict to America's great heritage 
 could not be better stated than In the words of the 
 President at Mount Vernon, on July 4, 1918 : 
 
 " A great promise that was meant for all man- 
 kind, was here given place and reality. It Is 
 significant that Washington and his associates 
 spoke and acted not for a class, but for a people. 
 It has been left for us to see to it that it shall be 
 understood that they spoke and acted, not for a 
 single people only, but for all mankind. We here 
 in America believe our participation in this present 
 war to be only the fruitage of what they planted. 
 We are happy in the thought that we are permitted 
 to do what they would have done had they been in 
 our place. There must now be settled, once for 
 all, what was settled for America In the great age 
 upon whose inspiration we draw to-day. Here 
 were started forces which the great nation against 
 which they were primarily directed at first re- 
 garded as a revolt against its rightful authority, 
 
88 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 but which it has long since seen to have been a 
 step in the liberation of its own people as well as 
 of the people of the United States; and I stand 
 here now to speak — speak proudly and with 
 confident hope — of the spread of this revolt, this 
 liberation, to the great stage of the world itself! 
 The blinded rulers of Prussia have roused forces 
 they knew little of, — forces which, once roused, 
 can never be crushed to earth again; for they have 
 at their heart an inspiration and a purpose which 
 are deathless, and of the very stuff of triumph." 
 
 We are seeing clearly at last that America Is, 
 by birth and by nature, committed to a sane and 
 thorough internationalism. What is x'\merica but 
 an experiment, a successful experiment, in inter- 
 national order? Our very flag sets forth the in- 
 ternational character of our national life and 
 ideal. It speaks of the possibility of indefinite 
 growth through the federation principle. There 
 stand the thirteen stripes, showing that from which 
 we have grown, and the forty-eight stars, showing 
 that to which we have grown, a harmonious and 
 natural growth, though not lacking its anxious pe- 
 riods, its crises, its mighty conflicts. 
 
 Some years ago a German lecturer was speaking 
 of national emblems, and remarked, " The United 
 States of America has no flag." An American 
 present challenged the statement with the question, 
 
AMERICA 89 
 
 " What about the Stars and Stripes? " The Ger- 
 man answered, " That Is not a flag; it Is a statis- 
 tic." 
 
 A statistic it may be; but of the growth of de- 
 mocracy. And we know it to be even more a 
 prophecy of the future expansion of world-democ- 
 racy and world-federation. 
 
 The flag speaks also of success In safe-guarding 
 tne rights of small states. Each state In the union 
 nas its star, and the stars do not differ In glory, 
 it speaks to us of a unity that is not uniformity, of 
 a national life as vivid in its contrasts as are the 
 red, white and blue colors, yet as rich and wonder- 
 ful a unity as is the flag. And who can look 
 upon the stars in the blue field, noblest emblem 
 ever taken by any nation, no beast or bird or crown 
 or weapon, but a bit of God's sky — and not see 
 there a reminder that earth shall come to peace 
 and righteousness and joy when the nations move 
 in harmony as the stars move in their orbits, and 
 the will of God Is " done on earth as it is done in 
 the heavens "? 
 
 It is not too much to say that the only real and 
 serious Issue between America and Germany in the 
 present war has been the issue of internationalism. 
 Other issues lie between Germany and France, be- 
 tween Germany and Britain, between Austria and 
 Italy, between Germany and Russia. But this is 
 
90 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISiM 
 
 the only issue between Germany and America. 
 All we seek from the war is an international order 
 of justice, goodwill, and lasting peace. We are in 
 the war because America believes in such an order, 
 and Germany does not; because we always have 
 believed m it, and she never has. The record is 
 clear. Every time an attempt has been made to 
 limit armaments, to restrict the savagery of war, 
 to bring about some larger measure of interna- 
 tional order, at Hague Conferences and the like, 
 America has gone to the extreme of willingness 
 and eagerness; and almost every time the effort 
 has failed of its aim because Germany refused to 
 advance, or to modify in any respect her theories 
 or practices. Throughout her history America 
 has, on the whole, respected international law and 
 agreement, and Germany has not. America has 
 pushed international treaties of arbitration, now 
 having them between herself and twenty-nine other 
 nations; Germany has scorned them. We need 
 not, and must not, claim a guiltless record. We 
 are not wholly proud of our Mexican War, nor of 
 all our dealings with Oriental nations, nor of the 
 way we got the canal at Panama. But on the 
 whole we have stood before the world a nation 
 that obviously wanted to live with other nations 
 as a Christian gentleman wants to live with his 
 neighbors; we have stood for the principles on 
 
AMERICA 91 
 
 which the peace of the world would justly and se- 
 curely rest. We went into Cuba, declaring that 
 we would come out. Few among the nations be- 
 lieved we would keep our word; but we did. We 
 took the Philippines from Spain, but we paid the 
 defeated nation $20,000,000. How many other 
 cases are there in history where the conqueror paid 
 an indemnity to the conquered? And we have so 
 far administered the Philippines in the interests of 
 the inhabitants, and not for the advantage of the 
 United States. We paid back to China one-half 
 the indemnity asked after the Boxer Rebellion. 
 We stood for the righteous principle of the " Open 
 Door " in China, when no other nation would take 
 that stand. The course of the present administra- 
 tion in Mexico may have been marred by blunders ; 
 at least it has been marked by extreme patience 
 and reluctance to threaten or dominate. As has 
 been wittily said, " Our course in Mexico may 
 have been a mess; but, thank God, It has not 
 been a mess of pottage. " Our very reluctance 
 to enter this war Is proof that we have " the In- 
 ternational mind," that will not break the peace 
 until compelled by irresistible demands of con- 
 science. 
 
 Set America's dealings with Cuba and Mexico 
 over against Austria's dealings with Serbia; set 
 America's dealings with Spain over against Ger- 
 
92 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 many's dealings with France In 1871; set Amer- 
 ica's handling of the Philippines over against Ger- 
 many's handling of Alsace, or Poland, or her Af- 
 rican colonies; set America's conduct in China over 
 against Germany's seizure of Kiao-Chau, her 
 " punitive expedition " under Count von Walder- 
 see, her spirit as revealed In the Kaiser's speech 
 to the troops as they started for China; could two 
 nations be further apart in their sense of interna- 
 tional justice and goodwill and order? 
 
 And our President has expressed the heart-de- 
 sire of America as a whole when he declares that 
 we are in this war in order that out of it may come 
 a " League of Free Nations," pledged to keep the 
 peace by administering justice. We would be 
 false to our best heritage of action and ideal if we 
 fought for any less an end. 
 
 There are two warnings we should take to heart 
 with utmost seriousness. 
 
 One of them is that we must face our special 
 problems In a spirit broadly fair and International. 
 We must shape our relations with Mexico, with 
 Latin America, with China and Japan, In a spirit 
 of true and full Christian internationalism, seeking 
 no selfish advantage, determined to do as we would 
 be done by, asking not what we have the power to 
 do, nor what is to our Interest to do, nor even what 
 we have the right to do, but what our International 
 
AMERICA 93 
 
 duty may be, how we may best insure justice and 
 goodwill in increasing measure throughout our re- 
 lations with these nations that touch us most 
 nearly, and that watch us with that jealous care in- 
 evitable when one knows that another is stronger 
 than himself and is not quite sure that he is just 
 and generous. We must fear to inflict injury even 
 more than to suffer it; we must covet the respect 
 paid to just and generous character even more 
 than the respect yielded to obvious power; we must 
 be, in all our relations, conspicuous for that Chris- 
 tian internationalism for which we have fought 
 against Germany. 
 
 The second warning is that we citizens of Amer- 
 ica must look forward and not back. We have set 
 our hand to the plow. To look back is to prove 
 ourselves unfit for the Kingdom. To fail to go to 
 the end of the furrow is to be unworthy of our past 
 heritage and of our present position. There is 
 danger that, when the war is over, we shall be con- 
 tent to lapse into our isolation again, shall make a 
 fetich of Washington's warning against '' entan- 
 ghng alliances," shall be content to make America 
 great and forget to make America the great serv- 
 ant of mankind. We must see that our entrance 
 into this war is not a mere crusade, but the begin- 
 ning of a new life, of world-wide responsibility, of 
 unrestricted fellowship with all men and all na- 
 
94 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 tlons. Historians tell us that the turning-point of 
 the Revolutionary struggle was the battle of 
 Kings' Mountain, where the farmers and back- 
 woodsmen of the Carollnas gathered and defeated 
 the British army which was threatening the regu- 
 lar American forces. But after that battle, the 
 men who had won It went home again, leaving 
 Washington and his men to fight the rest of the 
 war unaided. Our participation In this war must 
 be no Kings' Mountain affair, turning-point of the 
 war though it may be, after which we shall come 
 home and let the world go on as It will, without 
 care on our part. It must be rather the beginning 
 of the deep devotion of all we are here in America 
 to the good of the whole world. Our motto may 
 well be the great words, '' America asks nothing 
 for herself that she does not claim for all man- 
 kind." We are in the war for no local issue, but 
 for the great cause of a free, ordered, righteous 
 internationalism. And we say, as Lincoln said in 
 1863, " We accepted this war; we did not begin it. 
 We accepted It for a purpose, and when that pur- 
 pose is achieved, the war will end. And I pray 
 God It may never end until that purpose is 
 achieved." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS FOR AN INTERNA- 
 TIONAL ORDER 
 
 In Kant's classic pamphlet, " Zum Evigen 
 Frieden," he notes clearly three essential condi- 
 tions of enduring peace. One of them Is the pro- 
 vision of adequate legal machinery whereby ju- 
 dicial process may readily take the place of war. 
 
 There is no hope of lasting peace until such an 
 international order is established. Nations will 
 not cease from war until a better way of securing 
 their rights Is made clear and safe for them. The 
 weakness of international law up to the present 
 time has been In the fact that there was no force 
 back of It; It rested only upon the mutual consent 
 of the nations, and the international order secured 
 by it was ever at the mercy of any unscrupulous 
 power. Suppose our common, civil law were 
 formulated only as men cared to enter Into agree- 
 ments and contracts with reference to specific mat- 
 ters, and were left unenforced save by the honor 
 or interest of the individual. Society would be In 
 a state which no one but an anarchist would count 
 
 95 
 
96 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 desirable, and which even the anarchist would find 
 intolerable, were the theory put Into practice. Yet 
 such Is the actual condition of the relations be- 
 tween states. 
 
 The serious problem confronting the world just 
 now Is well stated In a paragraph from " The War 
 and Democracy " ^ ; — " Can Inter-State Law, 
 hitherto a mere shadow of the majestic name It 
 bears, almost a matter of convention and etiquette, 
 with no permanent tribunal to Interpret it, and no 
 government to enforce It, be enthroned with the 
 necessary powers to maintain justice between the 
 peoples and governments of the world? " 
 
 That is altogether the biggest question affecting 
 the future of the human race just now. Upon the 
 faith or the unbelief, the courage or the faint- 
 heartedness, In which we deal with It will depend 
 the welfare of the race for all the generations to 
 come. 
 
 It Is not strange then that strong and resolute 
 minds are attempting to deal with this problem 
 constructively, and daring to put forth programs 
 more or less detailed. The wisest among them 
 does not dare to assert that he has found the per- 
 fect solution of the problem, or even that the solu- 
 tion he proposes is practicable. But he does not 
 
 1 " The War and Democracy," by Alfred E. Zimmern, page 
 374- 
 
CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS 97 
 
 hesitate to put forward his constructive suggestion, 
 that out of the clash of many minds light may 
 come as to the best and most workable program. 
 
 Mankind has ever been haunted by dreams of 
 universal peace, of International justice and good- 
 will, of a day when war should have faded like a 
 night-mare, and men should live in freedom and 
 comfort. 
 
 A certain measure of internationalism there has 
 always been, for no state can quite live to itself. 
 Alliances have been sought, states have formed 
 groups; but always for specific occasions and ends, 
 usually for defense or offense In war. There are 
 In Greek history germs of the International idea, 
 certain Leagues of Cities which had as one great 
 end of their existence the preservation of peace, or 
 the enforcement of certain principles of public 
 right. The most celebrated of these was the Am- 
 phictyonic Council, to maintain the general inter- 
 ests of Greece, and particularly to defend the sanc- 
 tity of the common shrine at Delphi. One of the 
 most Interesting chapters In ancient history Is the 
 story of how the other states of Greece united to 
 punish Athens for her violation of the sanctity of 
 the shrine which all had united to guarantee. 
 
 The Hebrew, most farseeing and deep-seeing of 
 all the ancient races, had dreams and visions of a 
 wider and nobler sort. He saw the problem of 
 
98 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 war and peace solved by the setting of law In place 
 of war. His dream was often confused and 
 tainted with what we may call a Hebrew imperial- 
 ism, a conviction that the world would never be 
 right and safe until his own race was set securely 
 as arbiter of the destinies of the world, the Mes- 
 sianic King of Israel ruling over all nations with a 
 rod of iron. But always down at the heart of his 
 dreams and visions of future righteousness and 
 peace was the sound kernel of thought that right- 
 eousness, expressed in law, and enforced by God's 
 agents, would solve the problem and bring lasting 
 peace to mankind. 
 
 A great vision meets us in the writings of two 
 of the earliest prophets, Isaiah and Micah. Its 
 appearance in each of these books may indicate not 
 that either borrowed it from the other, but that 
 both of them caught it up from some earlier 
 source. Perhaps it was a popular song which 
 they seized and made lasting. It shows us the 
 nations beating their weapons of war into imple- 
 ments of agriculture, not needing war, nor learn- 
 ing it, any more; because law has taken the place 
 of war, law going forth from the throne of God in 
 Jerusalem, and establishing and maintaining jus- 
 tice and peace throughout the world. ^ 
 
 Far more significant is the great passage which 
 
 1 Isaiah 2:1-5. Micah 4:1-5. 
 
CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS 99 
 
 deals with the International mission of the Servant 
 of the Lord, found In the 42nd Chapter of the 
 Book of Isaiah. We need to emphasize the fact 
 that the hero of Israel Is here shown not as a King 
 or War-Lord, but as a Servant, servant of God 
 and servant of humanity. He Is to " send forth 
 judgment unto victory." He Is to be very tender 
 of little groups and tiny Influences and small be- 
 ginnings: " The bruised reed will he not break, 
 and the dimly-burning wick will he not quench." 
 But equally plain and sure Is his Indomltableness. 
 " He shall not himself be bruised or burn dimly 
 till he have set judgment in the earth." That 
 word " judgment," '' mishpat," Is a word of great 
 significance. It means justice both in spirit and 
 in form, justice as an abstract principle, and jus- 
 tice as an enforced program. It is a magnificent 
 prophecy, this of the Servant of God securing 
 peace and joy for humanity through establishing 
 an International order whereby justice may be ad- 
 ministered and peace thus may be kept on firm 
 foundations. 
 
 But for many centuries men have been under 
 the glamour of the rule of Rome. Imperialism 
 has seemed to thefn the only possible interna- 
 tional order. Church and state have united to 
 foster that idea. No one who is Intelligent 
 about the history of Europe can doubt the Im- 
 
100 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 mense Influence which the Imperial tradition 
 has had on the development of Prussia and 
 Austria. Hapsburg and Hohenzollern count 
 themselves heirs of Rome through Charlemagne 
 and the Germanic emperors. Napoleon felt 
 himself in spirit and destiny the successor of 
 the Roman Imperators, who made the world 
 one by subjugation. The British have talked 
 much of the "empire"; the Imperialist has 
 held sway often in their councils. One of the 
 most wholesome reactions of the war upon cur- 
 rent political life Is the growing strength and out- 
 spokenness of the dislike for the term " empire," 
 on the part of colonials, and of many English and 
 Scotch, and of the desire for some better name, 
 such as " commonwealth," to be the proper desig- 
 nation of such a union of democratic states as that 
 commonly known as the British Empire. There 
 Is too much of the flavor of military autocracy 
 about the words " empire " and " Imperial." 
 
 Overshadowed by this imperial idea of world- 
 unity, the minds of men lost the true sense of an 
 international order firm yet free. But as the dem- 
 ocratic impulse quickened to new life during the 
 19th century, as the minds of men were set free 
 more and more from age-long obsessions, again 
 they began to dream of world-peace secured by 
 
CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS loi 
 
 world-order; and Increasingly the dreams took 
 shape In the suggestion of a League of Nations to 
 enforce peace. 
 
 It was just about at the time that Kant published 
 his great little tract on " Enduring Peace," that 
 Thomas Paine seriously proposed that England, 
 France, and the United States should form a per- 
 manent alliance In order to the preservation of the 
 peace of the world. Some years later, at the close 
 of the Napoleonic era Castlereagh went to the 
 Council of Vienna resolved to attempt the forma- 
 tion of a league of nations to preserve the peace. 
 The scheme fell into the hands of the autocrats, 
 and became distorted into the monstrosity known 
 as the Holy Alliance, a league of kings against the 
 people. In 19 13, shortly before his assassination, 
 Jaures, attempting to forestall the storm of war 
 which he dimly foresaw, proposed a league to be 
 composed of France, Great Britain, and Germany, 
 pledged to maintain the peace of Europe. 
 
 The close of the 19th century and the opening 
 of the 20th were marked by great growth of the 
 idea of a league of nations to preserve peace. 
 The first concrete proposition to that effect seems 
 to have been made by Andrew Carnegie In his rec- 
 torial address at St. Andrew's, in which he urged 
 that, as nations have joined in alliances for pur- 
 
102 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 poses of war, so they should join in an alliance to 
 preserve the peace, to guarantee it jointly. Great 
 public interest was aroused, and a mighty impetus 
 given to the movement, by the Nobel Prize address 
 which Theodore Roosevelt delivered at Christi- 
 ania. May 5, 19 10, in which he urged the practica- 
 bility and necessity of such a league in which na- 
 tions should join, pledged jointly to keep the peace 
 among themselves and to prevent the breach of it 
 by others. It is extraordinary that Mr. Roose- 
 velt Is now one of the very few leaders of Ameri- 
 can thought and action who speak slightingly of 
 the idea of a league of nations, or " damn it with 
 faint praise," having suffered a violent reaction to 
 that nationalistic temper which he rightly saw, In 
 the less passionate times of eight years ago, to be 
 one of the chief dangers of the world's life. Mr. 
 Roosevelt's reaction from a sane internationalism 
 to a violent nationalism, and from ardent progres- 
 sive ideals to marked conservative tendencies Is 
 one of the strangest and most deplorable instances 
 of deterioration and lost leadership to be found In 
 American political life, comparable to the moral 
 weakening of Daniel Webster which led Whittler 
 to write his lament " Ichabod," or the hardening 
 of Wordsworth's mind and heart which made 
 Browning break forth in the passionate protest of 
 *' The Lost Leader." 
 
CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS 103 
 
 The two conferences at The Hague furthered 
 the Idea of international order. Called originally 
 to discuss the matter of possible reduction of ar- 
 mament, these conferences came quickly to the 
 matter of the establishment of courts of arbitral 
 justice, and some form of world-organization. 
 For it was clearly seen, so soon as men gave real 
 thought to the matter, that war could not be gotten 
 rid of by direct attack, but only by providing a 
 reasonable and practicable substitute for its cruel 
 and crude, wasteful and unjust, method of settling 
 disputes between states. Disarmament must al- 
 ways wait on the prior establishment of firm and 
 trustworthy means of administering international 
 justice and law. 
 
 The Hague Conferences closed with but little 
 result, on account of three causes; the mutual jeal- 
 ousies of great powers; the difficulty of finding a 
 satisfying place in an international order for the 
 small states; and the steadfast opposition of Ger- 
 many to any practical suggestions looking toward 
 disarmament, or international organization. 
 
 But, under the stress of war conditions, a vast 
 Impetus has been given to the thinking of men 
 about International problems. They have come 
 to see clearly that some sort of world-unity Is es- 
 sential to a free and wholesome life for humanity; 
 and that only three ways to the achievement of 
 
I04 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 such unity can be discerned, the way of Imperial- 
 ism, the way of the Balance of Power, and the way 
 of a real Federative Internationalism. 
 
 There is general realization of the fact that Im- 
 perialism, even if any one nation could achieve 
 it, would be an unspeakable calamity to the race. 
 The best men in France, England, and America 
 would rather see their nations perish utterly in 
 blood and fire than hve under the imperial rule 
 of Prussia. It is quite certain that there are many 
 in Germany itself, — more perhaps than any of us 
 believe, — who see the dangers of imperialism 
 clearly, and oppose it vigorously. 
 
 Under the clear and forceful reasoning of Pres- 
 ident Wilson, and under the greater power of the 
 facts of the time, we are coming to see with in- 
 creasing clarity that the preservation of peace and 
 order by the play of the Balance of Power is 
 no longer possible or desirable. Great Britain 
 played that game for many years with great skill, 
 and, on the whole, with pacific and disinterested 
 motives. But the Balance of Power will not se- 
 cure justice and peace in the new era of which this 
 war marks the beginning. 
 
 Clearly the time has come for a new interna- 
 tional order, for the last and greatest step in the 
 organization of human life, which has proceeded 
 from the family to the clan, the city, the state; and 
 
CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS 105 
 
 now must go on to some sort of organization of 
 the world of mankind. Aristotle said that there 
 could not be a free state with more than 100,000 
 inhabitants. But the discovery of the two princi- 
 ples of representative government and of federa- 
 tion have made possible the development of vast 
 political organizations of human life, of which the 
 most impressive illustrations are Switzerland, the 
 United States of America, and, most striking of 
 all, the British Empire. 
 
 The war itself has set before the eyes of men 
 an amazing demonstration of the possibility of in- 
 ternational cooperation in the actual working force 
 of the British Commonwealth. We see, not in 
 theory, but in concrete demonstration under cru- 
 cial conditions, the working of a higher patriotism, 
 a loftier and more inclusive loyalty, of exactly the 
 sort that is needed to make any international or- 
 der firm and successful. Australians, New Zea- 
 landers, Canadians, South Africans, each group 
 dominated by a strong local patriotism, each sep- 
 arate colony or dominion a self-governing entity, 
 have been revealed as organized into a common- 
 wealth which holds when the strain comes. Here 
 is a state, an international order, which embraces 
 one-quarter of the human race; and, as has been 
 well said, " These men and nations have come 
 from all the ends of the earth to preserve a union 
 
io6 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 of democracies. They have shown by example 
 what any World League most needs to know, that 
 federalism on a grand scale is not an idle dream." 
 
 Out of the thinking of many men, under the 
 stress of war, have come definite proposals for an 
 International Order, a League of Nations, con- 
 structive proposals to which the leading statesmen 
 of the world have given their strong support and 
 loyalty. The most concrete, and in many ways 
 the most promising, scheme yet set forth is that of 
 the League to Enforce Peace, organized in Phila- 
 delphia in the spring of 19 15. 
 
 Its program embraces four propositions: 
 
 1. That all justiciable questions arising between 
 the nations composing the league (i.e. all questions 
 susceptible of solution on a basis of actual fact 
 or of clearly recognized International law) shall 
 be submitted to a permanent Court of Justice. 
 
 2. That all non-justiciable questions shall be 
 laid before special Councils of Conciliation or Ar- 
 bitration. 
 
 The nations forming the league agree not to 
 proceed to hostilities in any case until the dispute 
 shall have been submitted In one of these ways, 
 and the judgment of the body to which It has been 
 referred shall have been announced, allowing a 
 reasonably restricted time for the rendering of the 
 judgment of the court. 
 
CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS 107 
 
 3. The nations composing the League agree to 
 use jointly their forces, economic and military, 
 against any member of the League which shall be- 
 gin hostilities without first submitting the case for 
 judgment. 
 
 4. Steps are to be taken to provide means for 
 the codification, formulation, and development, of 
 international law, from time to time. 
 
 Criticisms of this scheme have been abundant. 
 Some urge that it goes too far; others that it does 
 not go far enough. The latter point to the fact 
 that no provision is made to govern the case of a 
 breach of the peace by an outsider. The answer 
 is two-fold; first that such a league would ulti- 
 mately, and in all probability very quickly, take in 
 all the great nations; and second, that doubtless 
 the nations composing the League would enter into 
 agreement as to their dealings with outside nations 
 or groups, but that these matters may wisely be 
 left to the developments of future policy. 
 
 Those who criticize the program of the League 
 to Enforce Peace as going too far declare that it 
 demands a yielding of sovereignty to which no 
 great nation would consent. The answer is that 
 no real international order can be established 
 which does not involve some limitation of irre- 
 sponsible nationalism. In fact such limitation Is 
 precisely one of the aims of the League, and such 
 
io8 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 irresponsible nationalism one of the dangers it 
 aims to avert or reduce. The words of Profes- 
 sor Gilbert Murray have the essence of wisdom in 
 them: — '' The chief counsel of wisdom here is to 
 be sure to go far enough. Outvoted minorities 
 must accustom themselves to giving way." 
 
 Such a scheme as this would insure two ines- 
 timable factors of peace-preservation, delay and 
 publicity, with a clear foreknowledge on the part 
 of every peace-breaker of the results of his 
 action. 
 
 There are difficulties in the way of such a pro- 
 gram, very serious ones. We shall attempt to 
 state and meet some of them in a succeeding chap- 
 ter. But at least it is a way out of the present 
 anarchy, which has become clearly intolerable. 
 
 Viscount Grey has recently said that had such 
 a League to Enforce Peace been in existence in 
 the summer of 19 14, there would have been no 
 war. His final note to the Berlin government, im- 
 ploring delay in the interest of the preservation of 
 the peace, pledged his most earnest efforts to bring 
 about some such international understanding, by 
 which Germany might have her rightful future in- 
 sured against attack by any of her neighbors or 
 any coalition of nations. 
 
 Consider what would have been the course of 
 events, had such a League of Nations been work- 
 
CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS 109 
 
 ing effectively in the troubled days and weeks of 
 early summer in 19 14. Austria's demands con- 
 tained in the ultimatum to Serbia would, as a mat- 
 ter of course, have been submitted to the Court at 
 The Hague, or, had the matter been deemed non- 
 justiciable, to a special council of conciliation. 
 Pending the verdict of such court or council, Aus- 
 tria would have been under bonds of honor not to 
 open hostlHtles. Had she Insisted on taking her 
 own course, regardless of her solemn pledges, she 
 would have found the other great powers at once 
 ranged against her. Can any one seriously believe 
 that the atack on Serbia would have taken place 
 under such conditions? 
 
 " But," the critic will urge, " can any one seri- 
 ously believe, on the other hand, that Germany 
 would have kept her promise as a member of the 
 League of Nations? Would she not at once have 
 repudiated her international obligations and 
 ranged herself on the side of Austria? And 
 would not the result therefore have been exactly 
 the same, whether or no a League of Nations had 
 existed in 1914? " Undoubtedly Germany would 
 have been ready to stand by Austria, whatever 
 became of her International agreements. But the 
 situation would have been vitally different In two 
 Immensely Important particulars : — The first Is 
 that the aggressive character of the war would 
 
no CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 have been Instantly and unmistakably clear to the 
 people of Germany and Austria, as well as to the 
 whole world. We would have heard no seductive 
 and confusing statements about " this war which 
 was forced upon us." An immense element of 
 strength would thus have been taken from the Teu- 
 tonic aggressors. The second difference is that 
 the war would have been begun with a clear real- 
 ization on the part of the Central Powers that not 
 only France and Russia, but Great Britain, Italy, 
 and the United States, not to mention less power- 
 ful nations, would instantly have been ranged 
 against them. No one who has studied with any 
 care the events of the opening days of the war can 
 doubt that Germany and Austria would have hesi- 
 tated and very likely would have consented to some 
 of the measures cf conciliation proposed by the 
 British Foreign Secretary, had they known beyond 
 a doubt that England would enter the war, if Ger- 
 many began It. In view of these facts. It is not 
 too strong a statement which Viscount Grey has 
 made, that had such a League been in existence in 
 1 9 14, the war would not have come. 
 
 In considering the proposed scheme of the 
 League to Enforce Peace, earnest attention should 
 be paid to the fourth provision. It is deserving of 
 special emphasis. No League of Nations can be 
 strong and lasting if it lack this provision. A 
 
CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS iii 
 
 league organized merely to preserve in fixed and 
 unchangeable form the status quo of the peace set- 
 tlement Vv^ould in time become an instrument of 
 injustice. For nations grow and decay; problems 
 and conditions change; there must be a certain 
 measure of elasticity about any agreements into 
 which the nations enter, with reasonable provision 
 for discussion with a view to alteration of treaties, 
 understandings, and the like. 
 
 No one, not even the most ardent partisan, be- 
 lieves that any scheme proposed is perfect, or even 
 that any can serve as a model of the desired inter- 
 national order without radical modifications. But 
 some such International organization is the one 
 hope of the world. The choice confronting us 
 has been graphically expressed by Mr. H. G. 
 Wells: " The choice is between a league of free 
 nations, and a lot of freebooting nations, looting, 
 amid the ruins of a burning world, for non-existent 
 food." We do not want a Prussianized world, 
 efficient, powerful, ordered, but subservient and 
 cowed. We do not want a Russianized world, 
 free, but chaotic, disorganized, wild, a prey to the 
 strong:. We want a world where free nations live 
 together and work together as the Entente nations 
 and America are now living and working, a world 
 free and ordered, " the reign of law, based upon 
 the consent of the governed, and sustained by the 
 
112 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 organized opinion of mankind." ^ That amounts 
 to saying that what we want to see, what we must 
 see, if human life is to be decent and safe and 
 happy, is a League of free nations pledged to keep 
 the peace by the efficient and prompt administra- 
 tion of international justice. 
 1 President Wilson; speech at Mt. Vernon, July 4, 1918. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 A SERIOUS mistake, common among peace-lov- 
 ing and internationally-minded folk in the days 
 before the war, was that of facing the task of 
 international organization with an easy optimism. 
 We believed in the reasonableness of human na- 
 ture. We did not appreciate how unreasonable 
 men are, or how tenacious are the roots of old 
 prejudices and passions and points of view. If 
 the war has rendered no other service, at least it 
 has opened our eyes to the serious nature of 
 the task confronting forward-looking men, has 
 aroused in us a wholesome conviction that no 
 progress can be made toward a lasting peace with- 
 out a frank and resolute facing of the difficulties 
 in the way. 
 
 A League of Free Nations will never come Into 
 existence simply by virtue of the fact that good 
 men want it, and admire it, and talk about it in 
 elevated language. It will come only by long, 
 hard work, so determined and skillful that It will 
 be able to clear away the stubborn obstacles, and 
 
 113 
 
114 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 give the great world-ideal free course. It may be 
 well at this point then to set before ourselves some 
 of the major difficulties which must be faced and 
 overcome. We may not be able as yet to discern 
 practical ways of meeting them, but it will be of 
 some service to recognize them clearly. 
 
 These difficulties are well grouped and concisely 
 expressed in a recent article by Mr. H. N. Brails- 
 ford: 
 
 " It Is well that we should remind ourselves en- 
 ergetically that the idea of a League of Nations, 
 familiar though the phrase now is, is still a novel 
 and speculative conception, capable of many defini- 
 tions. Is it merely a treaty of arbitration, or is it 
 a first step towards the federal government of the 
 world? Will it rely on national armies, or will it 
 attempt (surely too hazardous a feat) to con- 
 struct, as Mr. Wells advocates, an international 
 police? Will It Ignore the economic relations of 
 states, as the two propagandist societies In Amer- 
 ica and England seem to assume, or must It on the 
 contrary be built on the control of the world's raw 
 materials, shipping and markets? Will It leave 
 the seas to the control of the strongest navy, as I 
 suppose nine Englishmen In ten assume, or will the 
 League Itself, as the French Socialists phrase it, 
 become " the mistress of the seas "? Will it be 
 a mere league of governments, or shall we begin 
 
PROBLEMS 115 
 
 to build up, at an early stage, some structure of 
 representative and democratic control? Does 
 disarmament mean small professional armies, or 
 does it mean national militias ? Will it tolerate on 
 any terms defensive alliances among its members? 
 Finally, we must face the biggest question of all. 
 Is the League a close conservative structure, built 
 to secure a precarious security by maintaining for- 
 ever the status quo of the war settlement, or is it, 
 on the contrary, an organization which will take 
 growth and ambition into account, and aim at com- 
 passing by peaceful means the largest changes as 
 changes become due? None of these questions 
 have yet been faced, even among ourselves. Few 
 of them have been discussed even in books or 
 pamphlets. None of them has been settled by 
 public opinion." 
 
 Obviously, to form a successful and strong 
 League of Nations will be no easy matter of " do- 
 ing for the world what our fathers did for Amer- 
 ica." Even were the task no more serious and in- 
 tricate than that, we would do well to remember 
 how near our fathers came to failure in framing a 
 constitutional government for the thirteen col- 
 onies. We recall Franklin's request for prayer, 
 all other hope having failed. We remember his 
 final words, in which he said that often, looking at 
 the sun pictured on the head of the chair of the 
 
ii6 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 presiding officer, he had wondered whether it were 
 a rising or a setting sun. It was no light task to 
 organize a government that should command the 
 respect and loyalty of thirteen separate states. It 
 is a task vastly more difficult to make any real and 
 valuable and promising world-organization. 
 
 For such a league must be far more than a 
 means of preserving the status quo of the peace 
 settlement. Some of the problems It must meet 
 successfully are the following: 
 
 I. It must meet the problems created by the fact 
 that human society is continually In flux, and that 
 therefore nations grow, decay, expand, change. 
 Rigidity, the assumption that any settlement what- 
 ever can last unchanged through many years, will 
 make failure Inevitable. In some way treaties, 
 and international laws and agreements, must be 
 susceptible of adjustment to meet new conditions. 
 It Is Intolerable that a growing world should be 
 bound by unyielding bands. 
 
 No scheme or device for an international or- 
 der can long avail which goes no further than the 
 effective enforcement of existing treaties and un- 
 derstandings. Sooner or later, — and not too late, 
 — we must come to something analogous to our 
 Supreme Court In the United States, with power 
 to Interpret, adapt, and legally develop existing 
 laws and agreements, to meet the changing needs 
 
PROBLEMS 117 
 
 of an ever-growing world. Here we confront an 
 immense and intricate problem. How long would 
 our government have endured, had not the Consti- 
 tution been given elasticity by the living decisions 
 and Interpretations of the Courts? An Interna- 
 tional order consisting of nothing more than a 
 court to try cases of breach of existing law would 
 hardly last while being set up. 
 
 2. A second serious problem is the problem of 
 the small state. This Is two-fold. 
 
 Can small states join In a League to Enforce 
 Peace? Could they reasonably and with security 
 for themselves give their pledge to turn their 
 forces instantly against an aggressor, as the 
 League program demands that every signatory 
 shall do? Suppose a war to arise similar to the 
 present struggle, while the League is In existence. 
 Could Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, at once 
 open hostilities toward Germany, and not meet the 
 fate which Serbia and Belgium met in 19 14? 
 Clearly participation for the small state must be on 
 a basis somewhat different from that which holds 
 for a great power. 
 
 On the other hand what representation can a 
 small state rightly expect in the councils and courts 
 of the International government? Fine phrases 
 are heard about the " equal rights of all nations, 
 small and great." How can those rights be rec- 
 
ii8 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 ognized In any scheme of International order? 
 It was necessary, In the formation of our Federal 
 Government, to provide two houses, in one of 
 which the great states have proportionate power, 
 while In the other all the states, great and small, 
 sit as equals. Can some such scheme be devised 
 for the world-government? The Senate of the 
 United States has not proved altogether and al- 
 ways a dependable and valuable part of our gov- 
 erning machinery; there, more than anywhere else, 
 the Intrigues of vested Interests find their nests. 
 On the vaster plane of International government, 
 with the Immensely greater Interests Involved, with 
 the far more subtle and jealous and powerful play 
 of separatist tendencies, and group politics, how 
 can the balance be secured wherein neither the 
 small state nor the great power shall be at the 
 mercy of the other? We must bear In mind that 
 one of the rocks on which the fair-going split at 
 the Hague Conferences was the Insistence of lesser 
 states on the principle of equal representation. 
 Any practicable and successful scheme for an inter- 
 national order would seem to demand great and 
 generous confidence on the part of small states and 
 great states, each toward the other. And no one 
 has as yet suggested the device which will meet this 
 tremendously practical and determinative problem. 
 3. A third problem is the problem of adminis' 
 
PROBLEMS 119 
 
 tration. Not long ago the idea had widespread 
 acceptance that the way to permanent order was 
 through the abandonment of national armaments 
 and the creation and maintenance of an interna- 
 tional pohce. But the difficulties confronting such 
 a scheme are wellnigh insurmountable. The con- 
 stitution of such an International force, the chances 
 for corruption, for underhanded efforts to secure 
 control of It in the Interests of some one nation or 
 group of nations, the temptations to unscrupulous 
 world-politics In the naming of the commander of 
 the force, and the like, these are dangers formid- 
 able and sinister. Attempts to create an interna- 
 tional police force, as in the case of the expedition 
 to rescue the legations In Peking during the Boxer 
 troubles, do not offer much encouragement. We 
 do not want to be involved in any more appoint- 
 ments like that of von Waldersee, or any more 
 united expeditions like that In which the Kaiser 
 sent his troops out with orders to play the part of 
 Huns in China. 
 
 Propositions are being made to meet this diffi- 
 culty. A graded scale of armament Is proposed 
 for all nations, or a graded scale of expenditure 
 on armament, or international control of the man- 
 ufacture and sale of munitions. Some solution 
 must be found, or the International government 
 will have slight power and permanence. 
 
120 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 4. Even more serious is the problem of sanc- 
 tions. How can there be provided sanctions so 
 powerful in their appeal that they will bind the na- 
 tions strongly to the international organization? 
 
 Some two years ago there appeared an article 
 by L. P. Jacks, in the Hibbert Journal, in which he 
 dealt most acutely with this particular problem. 
 He pointed out the obvious fact that one of the 
 forces operating most powerfully hitherto in the 
 way of holding citizens and groups and divisions 
 within a nation to an unwavering loyalty to the na- 
 tional authority has been the fear of other nations. 
 He then raised the serious question, whether an 
 international organization, a world-government, 
 could hold together when, by its very existence, 
 that pressure of the fear of other governments 
 was removed. The question is so grave that we 
 can scarcely wonder that it reduced the writer to 
 the despairing conclusion that " a league of na- 
 tions may be the only hope of the world, but there 
 is no hope of that." 
 
 Some way or ways must be discovered by which 
 the international organization may be set before 
 the nations as so big, and Important, and com- 
 manding, and indispensable to vital Interests, that 
 it will inevitably command their unwavering loy- 
 alty. The economic interests of the nations must 
 somehow be tied up with the success of the league 
 
PROBLEMS 121 
 
 of nations. It must be made economically very 
 advantageous to any nation to " come In and play 
 fair." There must be men to do what Hamilton 
 did in 1789, show the powerful states that to join 
 the union of states will work to their economic 
 profit and to stay out to their economic loss. 
 Some have proposed that large international cred- 
 its be established, huge deposits made by the great 
 nations, which will be forfeited when any nation 
 breaks the peace, " bonds to keep the peace " on 
 an immense scale. 
 
 Here we find the legitimate defense for the 
 threat of continued economic discrimination 
 against an unrepentant and unreformed Germany. 
 The original " Paris Declaration " was seriously 
 defective. It smacked of vengeance, and, worse 
 still, of a hidden eagerness to take advantage of 
 the war to weaken Germany's legitimate commer- 
 cial aspirations. The effort being made at present 
 to enroll men and women here in the United States 
 in an organization each member of which pledges 
 himself never again, so long as he lives, consciously 
 to buy any article made In Germany, Is false, fool- 
 ish, dangerous, and immoral. We have no right 
 so to forecast and discount and bind the future 
 years. Any decent man or woman must hope that 
 Germany will speedily come to such a change of 
 heart and mind that intercourse with her will be- 
 
122 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 come safe and honorable again, and must leave 
 the way open for such a course, even though the 
 grounds for such a hope seem very shadowy and 
 uncertain. 
 
 But on the other hand the action of the Union 
 of British Seamen in announcing a boycott of Ger- 
 man trade, the length and severity of which will 
 depend on the German conduct of the war, is the 
 use of a fair and honorable weapon; and Presi- 
 dent Wilson's warning that we cannot contemplate 
 free economic relations with a Germany still auto- 
 cratic and dominated with the imperialistic ideal is 
 an indication of a legitimate and effective method 
 of securing the allegiance of powerful states to the 
 proposed League of Nations. 
 
 But other sanctions than the economic must be 
 worked out. In some way the imagination must 
 be aroused and the international order made to 
 appeal not merely to cool reason, but to heart loy- 
 alty. We must find something which will do for 
 the International organization what the flag does 
 for the nation, symbolize and make concrete a 
 great object of reverence and loyalty. 
 
 5. The problem of economic relations is a seri- 
 ous one in itself, quite apart from its relation to 
 the sanctions needed by the international order. 
 It may not be possible to trace all wars to economic 
 causes, but no other one source can so readily claim 
 
PROBLEMS 123 
 
 that doubtful honor. Is not this war, at heart, a 
 conflict not about Alsace or Trieste, but about the 
 control of Africa, China, Mesopotamia, Russia, 
 the great backward, unexplolted territories of the 
 world? It Is not too much to say that " just as 
 the chief task of American politics to the Civil 
 War was the organization of the unexplolted 
 West, so the chief task of world diplomacy to-day 
 Is the organization of virgin territory and back- 
 ward peoples." * 
 
 The peace of the world will be unstable just so 
 long as Individuals or groups can go into backward 
 countries, obtain concessions, make investments, 
 develop vast private Interests, and depend on the 
 home government to enforce their claims and de- 
 fend their Interests. Under such conditions every 
 undeveloped country, where are to be found rich 
 resources and a defective political and social or- 
 der, becomes a breeding-place of wars. 
 
 Somehow the international order, if it is to be 
 powerful and permanent, must deal with this prob- 
 lem. Shall national backing of individual Invest- 
 ors be henceforth outlawed? Shall Industrial 
 groups take their own risk? Shall International 
 commissions or syndicates be formed to see fair 
 play, and to adjust rival claims? Certainly that 
 proposition has in it an added advantage, in that 
 
 1 " The Stakes of Diplomacy " ; Walter Lippmann. 
 
124 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 it would enhance the prestige of the international 
 government, by giving to it real and great powers. 
 Shall an International Bank be set up, from which, 
 and from which alone, nations needing funds for 
 their development may obtam credi'ts, subject to 
 careful oversight by an international commission? 
 
 Here is a group of problems to be met and 
 solved, before we can hope for a real and lasting 
 League of Nations. 
 
 6. We are also confronted with the problems 
 connected with the peace settlement of the present 
 war. Can such a settlement be arranged that sore 
 places shall be healed, the roots of future wars 
 eradicated, and the life of small nations assured? 
 Shall Germany be admitted to the League of Na- 
 tions, and, if so, on what terms and how soon? 
 
 These are but samples of the vast problems con- 
 fronting any attempt at the establishment of an 
 international order. The attempt bristles with 
 difficulties on every side, so many and so great that 
 we might well call the task hopeless, were it not so 
 imperative. 
 
 In what spirit shall we face these problems and 
 difficulties? Two ways lie open to us. 
 
 The first is the spirit of hopelessness. We may 
 look at all these problems, taking them, as we 
 should, in their full seriousness, and say that they 
 leave no room for hope, that the idea of a League 
 
PROBLEMS 125 
 
 of Nations to Enforce Peace Is Utopian, the dream 
 of poets and prophets, very beautiful but wholly 
 impossible. 
 
 Many there be who will thus say, " Who will 
 show us any good? " There are large and strong 
 groups who will urge that we relapse Into the old 
 anarchy, counting the proposals for a real Interna- 
 tional order as baseless dreams. There Is the 
 group of the temperamentally hard-headed, — 
 wooden-headed would be the better term, — all the 
 sluggish, the reactionaries, the materialists, the 
 naturally unbelieving, who ever Interpret life In Its 
 lowest terms. There are the many whose private 
 or class advantage lies In maintaining unchanged 
 the present system of Industry and politics, and 
 who note how Intimately the new system of Inter- 
 nationalism Is associated with social and political 
 reform. There are the irreconcilable nationalists, 
 who exalt local patriotism into a supreme religion, 
 and resent any attempt at the establishment of an 
 international order as Involving the weakening of 
 patriotism. There are all the militarists, who 
 count war Inevitable, and good, and believe that 
 no great question Is settled until It has been fought 
 out in battle. This makes a mighty army to sup- 
 port the cause of hopelessness, to impede the prog- 
 ress of a sane and real International order. It 
 will be hard to overcome such forces. 
 
126 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 But another spirit is possible, and it is the onlf 
 spirit in which the work can be done. It is the 
 spirit of faith, of determined resolve. We may 
 well remind ourselves, and all men, of the alterna- 
 tive to the establishment of a League of Nations. 
 That alternative is set forth strongly in the open- 
 ing pages of G. Lowes Dickinson's book, " The 
 Choice Before Us." The war has made palpable 
 to us the fact that no one nation can safely live 
 unarmed while other nations prepare for war, 
 that, in fact, a single nation that arms sets the pace 
 for all the world. The only hope for relief from 
 the burden of competitive armament, inevitably 
 leading to future wars, is through the organization 
 of a League of Nations to guarantee peace and 
 justice to all peoples. What will it mean if fail- 
 ure to set up such an international order condemns 
 the nations, already burdened with the colossal 
 debts of the war, and the vast demands for recon- 
 struction, to arm as never in the past, to put all 
 their energies Into the insane competition which 
 will grow the more keen and insatiable as Russia 
 and China enter it with their vast resources? 
 That way lies ruin, inevitable and complete. To 
 keep up the policy of armaments will mean also 
 that the scientists and inventors, needed so des- 
 perately for leadership In tasks of reconstruction, 
 will be devoting their energies to the discovery and 
 
PROBLEMS 127 
 
 development of new means of destruction. Hux- 
 ley said that Pasteur, by his discoveries In sheep- 
 culture and silk-culture, saved France a larger 
 amount than the huge Indemnity she had to pay to 
 Prussia in 1871. What a loss If future Pasteurs 
 must bend all their energies to the devilish work of 
 making bacteriology available In " the next war " ! 
 
 It will hearten us for the difficult task to see thus 
 clearly the alternative to the establishment of a 
 League of Nations to Enforce Peace. The 
 scheme may be Utopian, but It Is mere good sense 
 to say, " as between Utopia and Hell, give me 
 Utopia," — a remark — strange to say — credited 
 to both David Starr Jordan and Theodore Roose- 
 velt! 
 
 We do well to remind ourselves also, for our 
 encouragement, of the strong men and groups who 
 do not count the establishment of a League of Na- 
 tions an impossibility, but have pledged It their 
 hearty and full allegiance. The men in whose 
 hands now rest the destinies of the world are fully 
 committed to the Idea. President Wilson has 
 given it central place in wellnigh every address. 
 Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asqulth, 
 Viscount Grey, — It Is hard to name a leader of 
 thought and action In Great Britain who Is not 
 committed to a League of Nations. The British 
 Labor Party, In Its strong and arresting statement 
 
128 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 of its war aims, made the establishment of a 
 League of Nations second only to restoration and 
 reparation toward Belgium. The American Fed- 
 eration of Labor set the League of Nations among 
 the indispensable aims and objects of the war. 
 Equally emphatic has been the endorsement of 
 Chambers of Commerce and business leaders gen- 
 erally. The tides of thought and feeling set 
 strongly that way just now. " They that be with 
 us are more than they that be with them." It is a 
 time to be courageous and hopeful. 
 
 But, regardless of numbers and signs and fav- 
 oring winds and tides, this is a task to be faced in 
 the spirit of invincible faith and resoluteness. We 
 should find in every difficulty a challenge and an 
 appeal. When men say that the scheme is im- 
 practicable, let Lord Robert Cecil give his extraor- 
 dinary reply, " Practical men never accomplish 
 anything." What is the history of human prog- 
 ress but the record of the doing of what men said 
 could not be done? The advance of man has 
 been the continual confounding of cold reason and 
 prudence, the continual achievement of that which 
 had been dubbed impossible. Human sacrifice 
 had to go, slavery had to go, prohibition of intoxi- 
 cants is coming, because men went on to do what 
 the mass of men said could not be done. Why, 
 when one of us would voice impossibility, he in- 
 
PROBLEMS 129 
 
 stinctlvely says, " I could no more do that than I 
 could fly"; and even as he says it he may hear 
 overhead the snarl of a propeller, reminding him 
 how the Wrights did that for believing in which 
 Langley was called a fool. 
 
 At least let us have faith that the coming Peace 
 Conference can be radically different from those 
 of the past. Two fatal defects they have had; 
 they were limited to the nations engaged as bel- 
 hgerents; and they dissolved after devising a set- 
 tlement, with no provision for its enforcement, still 
 less for its interpretation and adaptation. It is 
 plainly possible to hold together the coming Peace 
 Conference, as the nucleus of an international or- 
 der, and to recognize in it the right of all nations 
 to be considered. Indeed that part of the prob- 
 lem is almost solved, for almost all the world is 
 in the war. 
 
 The establishment of a sane and real interna- 
 tional order is one of those tasks for which faith 
 alone is adequate. Christian men should feel the 
 challenge and the appeal to them. Christians are 
 in the world in order to do the things which unbe- 
 hevers say cannot be done. They follow a Mas- 
 ter Who said that if they had faith, " Nothing 
 should be impossible." 
 
 When men look at anything great and good and 
 desirable, and say, as Mr. Jacks said of the League 
 
130 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 of Nations idea, that It Is the only hope of the 
 world, but is itself almost hopeless; then the men 
 of faith should rise and, in the might that comes 
 from God, do the thing that should be done, know- 
 ing that that which should be, can be, and resolved 
 that, by the grace of God, It shall be. 
 
 " O why and for what are we waiting, while our brethren 
 
 droop and die, 
 And on every wind of the heavens a wasted life goes by ? 
 Come then, since all things call us, the living and the 
 
 dead. 
 And o'er the weltering tangle a glimmering light is shed ; 
 Ah, come, cast off all fooling, for this at least we 
 
 know : — 
 That the dawn and the day are coming, and forth the 
 
 banners go." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING INTERNA- 
 TIONALISM 
 
 It is of the greatest importance that we see this 
 cause of Internationalism not merely as a wise and 
 prudent enterprise, an expedient move, or a bit of 
 far-visioned wisdom; but that we see it as a holy- 
 cause, with the sanction of God and of faith and 
 of religion. 
 
 We should see the war in that way. There has 
 been much talk about this as a holy war. But if 
 we are to have even the slightest justification for 
 such language, we must see the war as something 
 more than an attempt to whip Germany, or to pun- 
 ish Germany, or to restrain Germany; we cannot 
 count it a holy war, or even a decent war, until we 
 see it as the inevitable way toward something God 
 wants, something which, so far as we see, can come 
 now in no other way, something so great and valu- 
 able that the gaining of it is worth our wading 
 through blood and fire and all the anguish of this 
 war. 
 
 We must realize how deeply Christian princi- 
 131 
 
132 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 pies, the faiths and hopes we count most sacred, 
 are involved in this conflict. We must see how 
 absolutely and vitally Christian ideals and prin- 
 ciples underlie the whole theory and practice of 
 internationalism, for the furtherance of which we 
 have been prosecuting the war. 
 
 What Christian principles and ideals are vitally 
 involved in the war? 
 
 First we note that the very root of the system 
 we are opposing is pagan, or anti-Christian. The 
 war is, at deepest, a conflict between the pagan 
 principle of competition, of self-advantage, and 
 the Christian principle of cooperation and love. 
 
 These forces are struggling with each other all 
 through our organized life. God keep us from 
 the fatal error of supposing that all evil Is on the 
 side of our enemies! We could better afford to 
 be blind to the faults of Germany than to be blind 
 to the faults of America. In education. In busi- 
 ness, in Industry, everywhere, the two forces are 
 locked in a fierce struggle. But that struggle Is 
 most evident, the line-up is most clear, the conflict 
 is most openly avowed, in the political dealings of 
 nations, and especially in the spirit of the one side 
 and of the other in the present war. 
 
 A godless philosophy of evolution has gained 
 prestige and power, and is at the root of the con- 
 duct of Germany throughout the course of the 
 
CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES 133 
 
 war. It is at the root also of the whole organ- 
 ized opposition to the outworking of international 
 order. 
 
 It is not the hypothesis of evolution as Darwin 
 propounded it, as it has become accepted through 
 the whole realm of our scientific and religious 
 thinking, that is making the trouble. Henry 
 Drummond and thousands of other Christians 
 have found evolution a way to nobler and more 
 soul-satisfying conceptions of God. It is when 
 evolution is allied with a materialistic philosophy, 
 that it comes into conflict with godliness, when it 
 justifies and glorifies the brute in us, and exalts the 
 law of the pack and the gang into the supreme law 
 for states, and deifies the " struggle for existence " 
 as carried out in the jungle into the supreme ideal 
 of national conduct. Paganism, in its search for 
 God, goes to the jungle, to nature, to the animal. 
 Christianity, in its search for God, goes to hu- 
 manity. 
 
 And now the two principles are in mortal com- 
 bat, the jungle-view against the family-view of in- 
 ternational relations. 
 
 Some months ago it was my privilege to hear 
 Mr. Vernon Kellogg tell of his experiences under 
 German rule in Belgium. His story was vastly 
 more impressive for the restraint, the care not to 
 exaggerate, which marked his recital. He illus- 
 
134 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 trated the German temper In an instance which I 
 venture to repeat. 
 
 In the discharge of his duties in connection with 
 the Relief Commission in Belgium, it was neces- 
 sary that a German officer be assigned to accom- 
 pany him and pass upon all matters. Mr. Kellogg 
 found it very difficult to get these officers to see 
 the civilian side, the humane side, of the relief 
 work. They were hard to move, unless they could 
 be shown that positive military advantage for Ger- 
 many would result from the particular case of re- 
 lief-giving. Hearing that a former friend of uni- 
 versity days in Germany had been incapacitated 
 for active service by a wound, Mr. Kellogg eagerly 
 asked that this old friend be assigned as his com- 
 rade in the work of relief. Knowing the man to 
 be kind-hearted, loving in his home, a pleasant, hu- 
 mane man in all relationships, he expected no 
 further trouble. But he found the officer harsh, 
 strict, merciless, unwilling to concede anything, 
 however trifling, to show any mercy, unless clearly 
 for the advantage of the German cause. At last 
 the American bluntly asked him how it was that 
 he, kind at heart, loving in his home life, was scp 
 merciless toward the Belgian people. He an- 
 swered readily enough that It was due to his philos- 
 ophy of war and of the state. He said he be- 
 lieved that war takes the same place In the life of 
 
CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES 135 
 
 nations that the struggle for existence takes in the 
 life of animals. A slight lengthening of tooth or 
 claw gives to the type the power to survive. That 
 slight advantage must not be sacrificed. When 
 war comes therefore, mercy must be put aside; 
 ruthlessness becomes the only morality; kindness 
 and consideration for feelings of humanity are 
 weakening and Immoral. 
 
 When such a theory of life and relationship gets 
 a nation In its grip, then a war to keep that nation 
 and that theory from dominance In the world is a 
 war in defense of Christian Ideals. For the very 
 meaning and essence of Christianity is love, coop- 
 eration, the service of the weak by the strong. 
 The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is 
 One Who says, in that quotation from Hosea 
 which Jesus loved, " I desire mercy, and not sac- 
 rifice." 
 
 There can be no question which is the Christian 
 way, the way of ruthless competition, or the way 
 of generous cooperation; the way of the jungle, or 
 the way of humanity. When God said, '' Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," He meant it to 
 govern not Individuals and families only, but na- 
 tions. He meant It to apply to Germany in her 
 relations with Belgium, to Austria in her relations 
 with Serbia, to the United States In her relations 
 with Mexico and China. When the apostle gave 
 
136 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 as the law of Christ the great principle that '' We 
 that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the 
 weak," he set forth a principle which must be in 
 eternal conflict with the law of self-advantage and 
 exploitation, till it drive it out of the social life of 
 mankind. 
 
 It is characteristic of the true Christian view of 
 life also to hold that moral and religious principles 
 apply everywhere, through the entire range of 
 life. 
 
 President Wilson has stated this as one of the 
 great aims of the war; to bring nations to where 
 they will be governed in their relations with one 
 another by " the same code of conduct that obtains 
 among Christian gentlemen." Can there be any 
 doubt that it is a Christian undertaking to attempt 
 to bring about such a change in the relations be- 
 tween states? 
 
 General von Bernhardi is continually insisting 
 that the principles of Christ and of ethics hold only 
 for individuals; that nations are on another plane, 
 where these moral and religious principles do not 
 apply. Between that theory and the faith of the 
 Christian that Christ is King of kings and Lord of 
 lords there can be no compromise. Yet to adopt 
 that view, that the principles of godliness set forth 
 in the Word of God apply throughout the entire 
 range of human life, would involve the condem- 
 
CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES 137 
 
 nation of our past international relations, and the 
 establishment of a new order of Christian inter- 
 nationalism. 
 
 Take a single instance. The 15th Psalm is 
 often referred to as a portrait of " God's Gentle- 
 man." Read it internationally, applying it to the 
 life and conduct of a state, and see how it con- 
 demns the old order for which Germany stands, 
 and necessitates the new order for which we are 
 beginning to see that we are fighting: 
 
 " Lord, what sort of nation is fit to dwell In 
 Thy presence, worthy of a place of honor in Thy 
 world? 
 
 " The nation that walks uprightly, and sets jus- 
 tice first among Its aims, and speaks the truth to 
 other nations and to Itself. 
 
 " The nation that does not slander other peo- 
 ples, nor set spies upon its neighbors,^ nor cherish 
 a grudge against another nation. 
 
 *' The nation which despises reprobate nations, 
 and seeks the friendship of those peoples that fear 
 the Lord. 
 
 " The nation which stands by Its International 
 agreements even at a loss, and which does not em- 
 ploy its power to oppress the weaker, nor use its 
 capital to exploit and dominate the helpless. 
 
 " Such a nation shall never be moved." 
 
 1 Literal translation; cf. Briggs in loc. 
 
138 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 What would the world be If that one little Psalm 
 became the ideal of every nation? 
 
 We must come to see that if it is wrong for an 
 individual to kill, and to steal, and to lie, it is 
 wrong also for nations so to do. If Christian 
 morality is not for the whole of life, it is too weak 
 for any of it. Such a view of the social and polit- 
 ical authority of the religious and ethical principles 
 of Christ necessitates the outworking of an inter- 
 national order. 
 
 What are the legitimate objects of ambition? 
 The Gospel has Its answer. '' Seek ye first His 
 kingdom and His righteousness." " What shall 
 it profit to gain the world and lose the soul? " Is 
 that point of view true for nations, as well as for 
 individuals ? Certainly It Is the direct contrary of 
 the theory of legitimate ambition on which Ger- 
 many has worked. 
 
 Down below the question whether a State, by 
 marvelously efficient use of the resources of sci- 
 ence, by merciless cultivation of military force, by 
 subordination of all individual Interests to the suc- 
 cess of the state Itself, can blast Its way to world- 
 dominion, lies the deeper question of the Christian 
 Gospel, what shall It profit such a state to reach 
 such a throne? It is the Christian view in conflict 
 with the unchristian, that we see In this war. And 
 the implication is clear for international hfe. No 
 
CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES 139 
 
 International order Is possible on the pagan theory 
 of the legitimacy of selfish ambition. A sane and 
 peaceful and lasting international life can come to 
 the world only as nations accept the Gospel prin- 
 ciple that It does not pay to seek national self-ad- 
 vantage at the expense of the welfare of other 
 peoples, that a nation which does not set first the 
 righteousness and the kingdom of God is in the 
 way that leads to destruction. 
 
 What Is the way to true greatness? Christ 
 gives a ready and a clear answer. " The kings of 
 the earth lord It over them; and their great ones 
 are they that execute authority upon them. But it 
 shall not be so among you. But whoso would be 
 great among you, let him be your servant." Is it 
 the word of a dreamer, an impossible theory of 
 greatness? It is the last word of practical wis- 
 dom, the way to greatness which must be accepted 
 by the nations as the only legitimate way, if ever 
 an ordered and happy life for humanity Is to come. 
 
 Who is in reality the great man? Which is In 
 truth the great nation? 
 
 Some years ago, a newspaper in Paris conducted 
 a plebiscite on the question, Who is the greatest 
 man in the history of France? Every one thought 
 the result a foregone conclusion. Of course Na- 
 poleon Bonaparte would receive the majority of 
 the votes. But when the millions of votes were 
 
140 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 counted, Napoleon ran a very bad second, and 
 Louis Pasteur was named as the greatest of 
 Frenchmen. Whoever sought greatness more in- 
 satiably than did Napoleon? Who ever cared 
 less for honors, and more for service than Pas- 
 teur? The common sense of the mass of French 
 people recognized the truth of the standard of 
 Christ. 
 
 So long as false ideas of greatness remain to 
 dazzle nations, so long will there be dangers of 
 wars like the present. What a tragedy in the re- 
 cent course of Germany! Seldom has any nation 
 gone further or faster on the path toward great- 
 ness through service than Germany advanced in 
 the decades just before the war. In science, in 
 education, in production of what the world needed, 
 in sending her product throughout the world, she 
 was becoming the greatest of the nations. And 
 then she turned away from that true path to tread 
 the old, discredited, disgraceful, pagan path to 
 greatness through force and dominion. It is one 
 of the supreme tragedies of human history. 
 
 The world will be safe and secure in its peace 
 only when nations adopt Christ's principle of 
 greatness, and play fair with it. 
 
 Sound internationalism depends absolutely on 
 the principle, enunciated with clearness and fre- 
 quency through the Bible, that peace depends ever 
 
CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES 141 
 
 upon righteousness. " The work of righteousness 
 shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness 
 quietness and assurance forever." God Is calling 
 to a world that knows no peace, " O, that thou 
 hadst hearkened to my commandments; then had 
 thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as 
 the waves of the sea." 
 
 The principle of publicity, of open diplomacy, 
 of the doing away with secret understandings and 
 treaties, which President Wilson rightly classed 
 among the great conditions of ordered and lasting 
 peace, is fundamentally a Christian principle. 
 " There Is nothing hidden that shall not be re- 
 vealed." *' Speak ye every man truth with his 
 neighbor, for we are members one of another." 
 When nations live on that plane, and adopt that 
 law of conduct, international peace and order will 
 be an easy achievement. 
 
 Not only the principles underlying Internation- 
 alism are distinctively Christian, but the very pro- 
 gram of it is to be found first In the Gospel. Dr. 
 Lyman Abbott has made the very interesting sug- 
 gestion that In the Gospel of St. Matthew we find 
 the very method advocated by the League to En- 
 force Peace for use In cases where disputes arise. 
 Christ tells his followers,^ in case disagreements 
 arise, that the injured person shall first go and talk 
 
 iMatt. 18: 15-17. 
 
142 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 over the matter with the other party to the trouble, 
 trying to reach an adjustment; that failing, he is 
 to take one or two witnesses or arbitrators with 
 him; the next step is to tell the matter to the whole 
 community; ^ and, if that fails, he is to count the 
 injurer as a " heathen man or a publican," hav- 
 ing nothing to do with him. 
 
 Here is the program exactly; first diplomacy, 
 attempting to adjust the dispute between the two 
 nations involved; then arbitration, reference to 
 disinterested parties; then, submission of the case 
 to the judgment and opinion of the world; and 
 finally, non-intercourse, economic pressure. It is 
 significant that Christ does not go on to sanction 
 the final step of the use of physical force. May 
 we assume that if nations put this program into 
 effect, in an ordered and decisive way, the final 
 resort to force would never be needed? In any 
 event, Jesus does not forbid it. 
 
 Internationalism has no sound and firm basis 
 save in Christian principles and ideals. And no 
 one can take the principles and ideals of Jesus and 
 His Gospel as authoritative throughout the range 
 of human interests, and not believe in an interna- 
 tional order, organized and maintained for the 
 preservation of peace through the administration 
 
 1 " Ecclesia " here evidently means " assembly " rather than 
 " church." 
 
CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES 143 
 
 of justice, as both possible and necessary. All the 
 demands now vocal for disarmament, for great- 
 ness through service, for the rights of weaker na- 
 tions, for the substitution of reason for might, and 
 law for war, for the putting International Inter- 
 course on a human Instead of an animal basis, all 
 these are thoroughly Christian In spirit and mean- 
 ing and aim. And no one who sincerely professes 
 to be a Christian should fall to enlist among those 
 who propose to bring In a new order of righteous- 
 ness, and goodwill, and human brotherliness. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE WAR AND INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 What relation has this war to the movement 
 toward an international order? How will it, and 
 how does it, affect the coming of that era of or- 
 ganized justice, peace, and good-will for which 
 we long and hope and pray and work? 
 
 Judged superficially, the war may seem to be the 
 greatest blow ever dealt the cause of international- 
 ism. It broke the bands that held mankind 
 united. It came as a sudden and fierce negation 
 of all that lovers of humanity had confidently af- 
 firmed and expected, a brutal denial of the whole 
 program of international good-will, justice, and 
 order. The delicate fabric of international law, 
 woven so slowly and with such infinite pains, was 
 shattered in a moment. 
 
 It seemed a tragedy, or a comedy, according to 
 one's point of view, that just as the war broke 
 there was in session at Constance the first confer- 
 ence of Christians of all nations in the interests of 
 international peace and goodwill. The little 
 group was scattered like a leaf blov/n before a 
 furious gale. One of the delegates remarked that 
 
 144 
 
THE WAR 145 
 
 apparently war could stop a peace conference far 
 more easily than a peace conference could stop 
 war. Some of us recall vividly the wonder and 
 amusement in the faces of the German officers with 
 whom we rode on our way back from that hur- 
 ried and broken meeting, when we told them why 
 we had come to Constance. Evidently they re- 
 garded it as the richest variety of joke that men 
 and women had gone to Germany to hold a peace 
 conference in the summer of 19 14. 
 
 One of the first men to greet me on my return 
 to America that summer was a friend of the posi- 
 tivistic type, who had always scorned idealistic 
 movements. With an air of judicial satisfaction 
 he said, " Well, I guess you peace people will keep 
 quiet for awhile now." 
 
 It may seem the sudden and violent end of all 
 faith and effort in the cause of internationahsm. 
 Germany has cast international morality to the 
 winds. She broke the treaty safeguarding Bel- 
 gium, the law of safety and search at sea, the cus- 
 tom of respect for neutral rights, her own agree- 
 ment not to use poison gas in warfare, the ancient 
 understanding that trees at least were to be spared, 
 — embodied in the old law of the Hebrew peo- 
 ple.^ It seemed as if she had thrown interna- 
 tional justice in the scrapheap. 
 
 iCf. Deut. 2o:i9ff. 
 
146 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 And the other nations followed her lead, com- 
 pelled to do so in order to meet her attacks. It 
 is a relief to know that, in the matter of the use of 
 poison gas at least, America is technically guilt- 
 less, and Great Britain only less so. At the first 
 Hague Conference, proposals were made that the 
 nations agree not to use poisonous gases in war- 
 fare. Admiral Mahan put forward a strong ar- 
 gument against such an agreement, and America 
 and Great Britain declined to join in such an un- 
 derstanding. Other nations, including Germany, 
 entered into a positive agreement, however, to 
 abstain from the use of gas. Later Great 
 Britain gave her adherence to the agreement; 
 but the United States never did so. 
 
 But the plain fact is that international law and 
 understanding have been violated and broken very 
 generally in the stress of this merciless war. Re- 
 prisals have been made, mines sown at sea, vessels 
 illegally held, blockades declared in violation of 
 the common law of warfare; and it might well 
 seem as if international justice and order had suf- 
 fered like the invaded territories, the damage be- 
 ing beyond hope of restoration. 
 
 But this is only a surface view of the situation. 
 Certain great facts stand out which lead us to de- 
 clare that this war is, in reality, the greatest for- 
 ward step ever taken toward internationalism. 
 
THE WAR 147 
 
 First of all, Germany's action In precipitating 
 the war Is a mighty testimony to the growing force 
 of the movement toward an International order. 
 
 Germany, as a state, has always been distrustful 
 of any peace propaganda, of any real movement 
 toward an International understanding. Hope- 
 lessly committed to the Imperialistic Idea of world 
 politics, the leaders of Germany have seemed un- 
 able to see a world organized on the basis of free 
 and friendly cooperation as either possible or de- 
 sirable. Germany has stood as the great cham- 
 pion of the doctrine of absolute and Irresponsible 
 national sovereignty. 
 
 Just as our Civil War was a proof of the grow- 
 ing sense of nationalism in this country, a senti- 
 ment so strong that the advocates of State's Rights 
 felt compelled to fight for the existence of their 
 doctrine before It was too late; so this war proves 
 the growing power In the world of the ideals of 
 internationalism, a power so evidently on the in- 
 crease that the rulers of Prussia felt forced to fight 
 for the principle of irresponsible nationalism be- 
 fore It was too late. Whether or no they saw It 
 clearly, they felt It powerfully, that the cause of 
 internationalism was closely and Inseparably 
 united with the cause of democracy, with all those 
 social developments and movements and forces 
 which they feared most in their own country. 
 
148 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 The plunge into war Is a strong proof of the grow- 
 ing power of the movement toward international- 
 ism, in the success of which the rulers of Germany 
 would have found their downfall. 
 
 We see also, very clearly, that the violations and 
 disregard of international law and agreement on 
 the part of the nations opposed to Germany are a 
 passing phase of their conduct, not a permanent 
 characteristic of it. In very large part they have 
 taken to such practices In self-defense. To sink a 
 submarine on sight may be technically a violation 
 of sea-law, but it Is the only way to meet the Illegal 
 attacks of the submarines. To bomb unfortified 
 towns in Germany may be the only way to bring 
 home to German consciousness the iniquity of the 
 air raids they have practiced against English and 
 French towns. 
 
 A story, credited to Mr. Zangwill, Illustrates 
 clearly the difference between Germany's original 
 and flagrant breaches of International law, and the 
 violation of law and custom In which the Entente 
 nations have Indulged in return. The story is of 
 a Doukhobor, one of the many who emigrated 
 from Russia to Canada to escape religious perse- 
 cution. One of the tenets of the sect, — so the 
 story goes, — Is to wear as little clothing as pos- 
 sible. One very hot day a Doukhobor strolled 
 into a Canadian town quite naked. A policeman, 
 
THE WAR 149 
 
 catching sight of him, started to arrest him. The 
 Doukhobor fled across the fields, and the police- 
 man followed. The policeman was clad in full 
 uniform, and the heat soon became unbearable. 
 He noticed that he was losing ground. So he cast 
 aside his helmet, later his coat, then his shoes and 
 stockings, so one garment after another, until, 
 when he caught the Doukhobor, he was in the 
 same unclothed condition. The Doukhobor said, 
 " You're just as bad as I am." But the policeman 
 repHed, " No; for you left off your clothes because 
 you chose to do it, and I threw mine off only that 
 I might catch you ; and now, having caught you, I 
 shall go back and pick them up and put them on 
 again." 
 
 It Is not a partisan judgment when we say that, 
 on the whole, the Entente nations have violated 
 international agreements only reluctantly, In self- 
 defense, and with full purpose, deepening with the 
 course of the war, to resume the full practice of 
 International justice, and to establish It more firmly 
 for the world's life. 
 
 Many have noted a further evidence of the 
 power of internationalism, as revealed in the cir- 
 cumstances and conduct of the war. This is In the 
 fact that never before have nations, going to war, 
 shown such eager concern to justify their conduct 
 In the eyes of the world. The flood of White 
 
150 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 Books, Red Books, and other documents, each 
 making out a case for some nation or group of 
 nations, showed an unprecedented regard for '' the 
 opinion of mankind." When was there another 
 war in which every participant was eager to prove 
 that the war was, on its own part, defensive? In 
 the speeches and writings of German leaders, dur- 
 ing the first two or three years of fighting, one 
 phrase was always to be found, " this war, which 
 was forced upon us." Why so elaborately, so 
 protestingly eager to disown their work, had not 
 the sense of international justice grown to a great- 
 ness which demanded at least the semblance of 
 respect? 
 
 We note again that the war has emphasized, 
 with increasing force, that for which men of inter- 
 national mind have been contending. 
 
 A striking article, worthy of the widest circula- 
 tion, appeared in a recent issue of the Christian 
 Work, entitled " Have the Peace Societies 
 Failed? " It admitted that many think that the 
 Peace Societies have utterly failed; and then went 
 on to show that, one after another, the great ob- 
 jects for which the Peace Societies have been striv- 
 ing during the past two decades have been avowed 
 by the great nations as the ends for which they are 
 fighting; that, moreover, the strongest conscious- 
 ness of the real moral aims of the war is to be 
 
THE WAR 151 
 
 found precisely In those nations In which the Peace 
 Societies have been most active and most effective. 
 Can a movement be said to have failed when the 
 greatest nations adopt its ideals as their own, and 
 declare that they will fight to the end of their re- 
 sources rather than abandon those ideals? 
 
 I have spoken of the friend who greeted me on 
 my return from Constance In the summer of 19 14, 
 with the remark, " I guess you peace people will 
 keep quiet for a while now." The retort was ob- 
 vious, " Suppose you had been warning a group of 
 men for years that a certain course of action would 
 lead to disaster, and they kept on, and disaster 
 came; would you feel ashamed of your warn- 
 ings?" 
 
 The war has made a sane and right internation- 
 alism seem more desirable, more indispensable, 
 than ever it seemed in the past. 
 
 Most important of all is the fact that the war 
 has assumed more and more the character of a 
 conflict in the interests of internationalism. 
 
 The nations opposed to Germany entered the 
 war, and have stayed in It, because they know it 
 to be an attempt, on the part of the organized 
 forces of humanity, to punish an International 
 crime, and to vindicate International justice. 
 
 If a nation can do what Germany has done to 
 Belgium, and escape punishment for it, then inter- 
 
152 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 national law is a mockery. It is not simply Bel- 
 gium that is interested in having that wrong 
 righted; it is all mankind. It was in defense of 
 internationalism that America entered the war. 
 We had our own wrongs to avenge, our own rights 
 to maintain, our own dangers to avert. But no 
 one who knows the mind and soul of the American 
 people can doubt that we would never have gone 
 into the war for these reasons only. We went in 
 as a united people, ready for any sacrifice, because 
 we realized that the whole cause of international 
 law and order was at stake. Other nations had 
 other issues to fight out with the Teutons. France 
 had Alsace-Lorraine and the wrong of 1870. 
 Britain had the danger to her sea-power, and to 
 her interests in the East. Italy had her interests 
 around the Adriatic. But the only real issue be- 
 tween America and Germany is the issue of inter- 
 nationalism. We believe in It, she never has. 
 We see that the world can never again be safe if 
 such acts as the violation of Belgium can be safe 
 and profitable. 
 
 The German Empire has been built up by wars 
 of aggression, planned In advance, deliberately 
 started at chosen times, from each of which the 
 military power of Germany has emerged with 
 great profit In territory and resources. Society Is 
 not safe so long as lawbreaking is clearly profit- 
 
THE WAR 153 
 
 able. Germany might never have acted as she 
 did in x-lugust, 19 14, had she not found such self- 
 seeking, unscrupulous, deliberately aggressive con- 
 duct toward other states safe and enormously 
 profitable in 1870, in 1866, and in the time of 
 Frederick the Great. For the sake of Germany 
 herself, and for the sake of all the world of our 
 hopes, we must make clear once for all that, — to 
 use the forcible language of the street, — no nation 
 can do such things and get away with it. 
 
 The war has also come increasingly to assume 
 the character of an attempt to establish an inter- 
 national order, firmer and more highly-developed 
 than the past has ever known. President Wilson 
 has made this central in his statements of the aims 
 of the war. Other statesmen have come to ever 
 clearer and more positive conviction that out of 
 the war must come a League of Free Nations, or- 
 ganized to secure peace through the administra- 
 tion of international justice. The war has thus 
 come to be not only an attempt to vindicate inter- 
 national order as it was, but a determined effort to 
 establish International order as the world has 
 never yet seen it. Moreover, the present strug- 
 gle, as the British Premier has pointed out, is an 
 effort on the part of the world to enforce peace 
 against an offender. The winning of the war is 
 thus vital to the establishment of any league of 
 
154 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 nations; for how can any league of nations hope to 
 maintain justice and peace in the future if they 
 cannot now enforce their claims against an of- 
 fender? 
 
 Under the stress and sacrifice of war thought 
 and planning have gone far. Men and nations 
 are ready, as never before, to dare set up an inter- 
 national order which shall be strong enough to 
 compel respect. They are determined that, so 
 far as in them lies, war shall be prevented for the 
 future. 
 
 The war Is also showing us the cost of interna- 
 tionalism, awakening us to the seriousness of the 
 cause of International peace and justice. 
 
 The fatal defect of movements for International 
 justice, peace, and goodwill in the past has been 
 their fluency, their easy optimism, their assump- 
 tion that human nature and the nature of human 
 society could be changed over night by a stream of 
 good talk. We are learning to see a new strength 
 and sternness In that word " peace-makers." To 
 make peace Is to do a supremely difficult thing. 
 It costs blood and treasure and the sacrifice of all 
 except honor. Many have bandied the phrase, 
 " Peace at any price." Well, we are learning 
 what a fearful price must be paid for It; and our 
 glib phrases fade at the vision. There is no easy 
 path to peace and plenty and safety and right- 
 
THE WAR 155 
 
 eousness. We have talked as if, any day, all men 
 might suddenly say, " Come, let us stop being 
 fools, and henceforth live In perpetual peace and 
 goodwill.'* New light has come to us on the mat- 
 ter of suffering; we have begun to discern it as part 
 of the basic fabric of all achievement. We see 
 the path to justice and peace and stable interna- 
 tional order as a terribly hard and sacrificial road, 
 a Via Sacra because It is a Via Dolorosa. Men 
 instinctively rate values in terms of cost. It may 
 be that the awful cost of this war was necessary 
 to make men value International jus^ice and peace 
 highly enough to be willing to do the hard thinking 
 and work and make the personal and national sac- 
 rifices essential to the establishment and mainte- 
 nance of a right International order. 
 
 The war is also actually w^orklng to bring into 
 organized and unified life the progressive, peace' 
 loving nations. 
 
 The President has said, simply but with deep 
 meaning, that we and our allies are now " eating 
 at a common table,'' — a fact which brings our 
 International relationships Into Intimate touch with 
 the deepest sanctities of our religion. The Son 
 of Man Is breaking bread to us all. There Is a 
 pooling of Interest, and a complete Interchange of 
 need and resources, In our shipping, our armed 
 forces, our varied supplies. We are forgetting 
 
156 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 old animosities, and becoming ashamed of prej- 
 udices that have lingered long. The Briton, the 
 Frenchman, the Italian, — we estimate them now 
 by their noblest, not by their most unpleasant 
 traits. There has come about the organization 
 of an Allied Council, and the appointment of a 
 single commander, which is the nearest approach 
 in practice the world has yet made to the creation 
 of an international police force. Especially sig- 
 nificant is the cordial relationship growing up be- 
 tween Great Britain and America. It is well that 
 we remind ourselves that such a relationship can- 
 not go too far. Our natural course is to live in 
 extreme friendliness with Britain. Many ele- 
 ments unite to make this the natural order. We 
 have a common language, common political tradi- 
 tions and ideals, a common literary heritage. We 
 are both vitally concerned in the use of the seas, 
 and in seeing that international trade is kept clear 
 and open. We have a common interest in this 
 Western hemisphere, — an interest shared by no 
 other great w^orld power. For Canadi comes un- 
 der the operation of the Monroe Doctrine, or that 
 doctrine Is worthless. Moreover It is the fact 
 that Great Britain has a vital interest In this con- 
 tinent that has given the Monroe Doctrine its 
 force; for the silent support of Britain's navy has 
 been the biting edge of the Monroe Doctrine. 
 
THE WAR 157 
 
 We have proved that we are good neighbors, as 
 that unfortified border of 3000 miles, and the 
 peace between us for more than a century, con- 
 clusively prove. Finally, we are more akin in our 
 concern for democracy and for a sane, strong in- 
 ternationalism than are any other two peoples. 
 At every stage America has found strong support 
 from Great Britain in the outworking of her na- 
 tional and international ideals, — save at the pe- 
 riod of our Civil War. It was the support of the 
 better elements of British society which made pos- 
 sible the winning of our Revolution against a Ger- 
 man prince who misrepresented the spirit of the 
 kingdom over which he ruled. Again and again 
 has our country felt the quiet comradeship of 
 Great Britain. It is perhaps the greatest single 
 source of hope for a good and just future for hu- 
 manity that the war has brought our two nations 
 into relations so cordial and thoroughgoing. 
 
 The war is a war for Internationalism, to de- 
 fend what we have of it, and to secure a larger 
 measure of it than we have ever dared attempt to 
 realize. 
 
 An American in France noticed a little group of 
 American soldiers. One of them, a lanky youth, 
 obviously from the mountain country of Tennessee 
 or Kentucky, was handling a rifle familiarly, and 
 talking about fighting and being wounded. The 
 
158 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 observer said In surprise, *' How do you know so 
 much about war? You are too young to have 
 been in any war, aren't you?" With a charac- 
 teristic drawl, he replied, " Wall, this Is the first 
 public war I ever was in." Beneath the uncon- 
 scious drollery, the revelation of conditions of 
 border feuds, lies a big truth. This is about the 
 first public war the world has known, the first war 
 waged not for private interests, but for the public 
 good, for the hopes and faiths and needs of hu- 
 manity. Here is one of the greatest reasons why 
 the war had to be pressed to full and final victory, 
 why no premature peace could be tolerated. This 
 war was Inextricably bound up with the cause of in- 
 ternatlonahsm, which is humanity's hope for the 
 future. The triumph of Germany would have 
 meant a growing imperialism; an indecisive out- 
 come would have meant a perpetuation, in far 
 worse degree, of the old International anarchy. 
 The triumph of the humane group of nations 
 means the possibility of a free and ordered life for 
 mankind. In which the souls of men shall be at 
 liberty to go about their legitimate business of art 
 and work and play and love and religion, un- 
 hampered by the heavy hand of militarism and 
 imperialism. 
 
 The war means that, for better or for worse, 
 the nations have been drawn, or thrown, together; 
 
THE WAR 159 
 
 and " what God hath joined, let not man put asun- 
 der." 
 
 Just as our {^^reat Civil War brought to final and 
 splendid realization the Ideal of a united nation, 
 so this war must bring the realization of the Ideal 
 of a united world, In which we shall see, — not 
 now for one nation, but for all the nations that 
 make up the common life of humanity, — " union 
 and liberty, now and forever, one and insepar- 
 able." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CHURCH AND INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 It Is Christian Internationalism that we have 
 been discussing; not merely the principles and 
 Ideals and program of an international order, as 
 they may and should appeal to all right-minded 
 men; but the cause of Internationalism as some- 
 thing which should appeal with peculiar force to 
 men who believe In God and find Him revealed 
 In Jesus Christ. 
 
 In such a discussion the question of the relation 
 of the church to the cause becomes of vital Impor- 
 tance. Religion has ever been one of the might- 
 iest forces at work among men. The church, or- 
 ganized religion, Is a potent factor in social evolu- 
 tion. Once get It actively interested in any move- 
 ment, make Its potencies actual, and it can accom- 
 plish great things. 
 
 If the church Is true to her own great Ideals, 
 set before her by her Master, If she is responsible 
 to the true spirit within her, and has the ear where- 
 with to " hear what the Spirit Is saying unto the 
 churches," she will see and seize this movement 
 
 1 60 
 
THE CHURCH i6i 
 
 toward Internationalism as peculiarly her own, her 
 own because of what she can do for it, and, no less, 
 because of what it may do for her. 
 
 The church can contribute elements of power 
 immensely, even vitally important, elements so 
 great and strong that the success or failure of 
 the movement toward a firmer and better interna- 
 tional life may hang on what the church does or 
 fails to do. 
 
 The church can aid greatly by helping to pro- 
 vide certain indispensable conditions of success. 
 It can give to the cause of Internationalism a Sanc- 
 tion, a Spirit, and a Dynamic. 
 
 We have seen, in our discussion of the Prob- 
 lems Confronting Internationalism, that one of the 
 most serious needs is that of providing adequate 
 sanctions for the World-Organization. We men- 
 tioned some which would have great force, the eco- 
 nomic, the military. Without these the interna- 
 tional order would never be strong and permanent. 
 But we saw also that something more was needed, 
 an appeal to the imagination, a challenge to the 
 affections, something to do for the international 
 cause what the flag does for patriotism. Men's 
 hearts must be caught and held, If they are ever to 
 give to the world-order that high and firm loyalty 
 without which It must surely fail. 
 
 Here the church has it in its power to help 
 
1 62 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 mightily. For it can give to the International Or- 
 der something of the glory of the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 All through the long ages during which the 
 Christian ideal was slowly taking shape and gath- 
 ering force, the hope of a coming Kingdom has 
 glowed with inspiring grace before the eyes of the 
 men of God. The prophets saw its day and sang 
 of its glory. Christ set it in the very center of 
 the prayer He taught His disciples, and talked of 
 that Kingdom more frequently than of any other 
 theme. The church has had much to say about 
 *' salvation," but the Master spoke of the " King- 
 dom of God " ten times for every mention He 
 made of salvation. The Bible ends with glowing 
 pictures of that Kingdom of God realized on 
 earth. The hymns of the church are bright with 
 its glory. The true Christian feels his heart- 
 loyalty claimed above all by this Kingdom that is 
 to come. He is ready to give to it an allegiance 
 higher and deeper than that which he gives to any 
 other cause on earth. 
 
 But the Christian has never had a clear and as- 
 sured answer to the question, What is this great 
 Kingdom of God for which you are to work and 
 to pray and to spend yourself? Is it heaven, some 
 city of God lying afar in an after life? So 
 thought Bernard of Clairvaux, and so many others 
 
THE CHURCH 163 
 
 have thought, transferring their loyalty from pres- 
 ent to future, and from earth to heaven. But the 
 best religious sense to-day is alive to the conviction 
 that the Kingdom of Heaven is a state of society 
 on earth. We see that the glowing picture of the 
 Civitas Dei, set before us in the final pages of the 
 Bible, is a picture of a society of men here on the 
 earth, a Civilization to be built up here. Chris- 
 tians see now that to sing de contemptu mundi is to 
 sing as no Christian should. That Kingdom for 
 which we pray and labor must be something here 
 on earth. 
 
 Is it the church? So some have thought. But 
 few Christians in any age have taken the church 
 as equivalent to the Kingdom, and therefore as 
 claiming their supreme allegiance. The best 
 Christian insight has always clearly discerned the 
 fact that the church is the agent of the Kingdom, 
 the means of which the Kingdom of God is the 
 end, the scaffolding necessary to the erection of 
 the structure, but to disappear when the work is 
 completed; for In that City of God no temple is 
 to be found. 
 
 Can we identify the Kingdom of God with the 
 nation? The Jew found no difficulty In making 
 such an identification. To him the Kingdom of 
 God was nothing more nor less than the realized 
 glory of Israel. In the intensity of nationalistic 
 
1 64 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 feeling evoked by the war, It may be possible for 
 some to see no higher conception of the Kingdom 
 that Is to come than a glorified America, or Brit- 
 ain, or Germany. 1 heard a leading churchman 
 say not long ago that the highest function of the 
 church in the future must be the exaltation of pa- 
 triotism, that the honor and integrity of the na- 
 tion is the highest object toward which churchmen 
 can direct their loyalty. But there are few true 
 Christians who do not see and feel that such a 
 definition of the Kingdom of God would degrade 
 the American Christian church to the low level of 
 the German churchmanship revealed In '' Hurrah 
 and Hallelujah," or In the blind nationalistic zeal 
 of the signers of that amazing declaration put 
 forth by the German churchmen and professors in 
 the opening days of the war. 
 
 None of these conceptions will serve the best, 
 present-day mind with regard to the Kingdom of 
 God. Where then shall we find it? Suppose we 
 could see In this proposed International Organiza- 
 tion, this World-State, the political expression of 
 the Kingdom of God! And why should we not? 
 It would be the fulfillment of the Magnificat on the 
 broadest and grandest scale possible, this free 
 union of free nations to secure world-wide justice 
 and peace, and to make mankind a brotherhood; it 
 would be the best possible realization, in terms of 
 
THE CHURCH 165 
 
 actual, concrete living, of the great ideals of Isaiah 
 and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, of Jesus and Paul and 
 the seer on Patmos. What is there, in the whole 
 range of the Christian imagination, that can so 
 fully and nobly realize the dream of a Kingdom of 
 God come true among men, as can this installation 
 of an international order, a loyalty free from all 
 alloy of competition, narrowness, and selfishness, 
 a loyalty worthy of those who claim to be follow- 
 ers of the Son of Man? 
 
 If once the church can claim this cause of inter- 
 nationalism as its own, a powerful sanction will 
 be given to it; something of the majesty and glory 
 of the New Jerusalem will attach to the rising 
 walls of the international order. The mighty 
 force of Christian loyalty, the force which inspired 
 the hosts of martyrs and apostles and missionaries, 
 will be set at work for the establishment and main- 
 tenance of the international order. 
 
 No one who looks deeper than the surface, and 
 sees things as they are, can fail to discern the 
 power that has been set free in the service of the 
 Entente nations, by the conviction that they are 
 fighting for something bigger and more honorable 
 and more commanding than any nationalistic inter- 
 ests. It is impossible to calculate the value, just 
 as a military asset, of that consciousness that, on 
 our side, this war is a crusade for the sake of all 
 
1 66 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 humanity. Such a realization comes close to the 
 heart of the Christian faith, and gives the church 
 a chance that should be eagerly seized, to serve as 
 no other organization can serve, to give to this 
 international movement and to the international 
 organization which shall come from it the highest 
 and hohest of all sanctions, the commanding glory 
 of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 The church can also render great aid by helping 
 to contribute a spirit, without which the Interna- 
 tional movement must fail. 
 
 In that greatest of all peace pamphlets to which 
 we have referred more than once, Kant gives as 
 one of the three essential conditions of the achieve- 
 ment of lasting peace, the extension of the spirit 
 of goodwill among all men and all nations. 
 
 Here the church can find its legitimate func- 
 tion. If the church of Christ Is not vitally con- 
 cerned in the extension of goodwill. It has for- 
 feited its right to exist. 
 
 We have already referred to the missionary en- 
 terprise of the church as revealing the interna- 
 tional spirit of Christianity. Here in the exten- 
 sion of goodwill between nations and races Is a 
 further opportunity which the church should be 
 eager to seize. A movement has been begun 
 which aims to realize this Ideal, to make the Chris- 
 tian church a potent factor In the extension of 
 
THE CHURCH 167 
 
 goodwill among all peoples. It had its origin as 
 already stated In an attempt to use the churches 
 to bring about better and more cordial relations 
 between Great Britain and Germany, in the early 
 years of the present century. Started too late to 
 aftect very powerfully the growing distrust be- 
 tween the two nations, powerless to stem the ris- 
 ing tide of arrogant nationalism in Germany, it 
 nevertheless planted seeds which, like that tiniest 
 of seeds of which the Master told, will some day 
 grow to greatness of influence. We are confident 
 that those seeds have not all died out, even in Ger- 
 many. 
 
 The movement seemed so full of promise that, 
 In the year 19 14, the plan was made to extend it 
 to all nations, making it a world-movement. Del- 
 egates from the Protestant churches of all nations 
 gathered at the historic town of Constance In the 
 opening days of August, 19 14. The storm of 
 war scattered the gathering almost as soon as they 
 arrived. But those privileged to attend the few 
 and hurried sessions felt that they were sharing In 
 one of the great events of Christian history, when 
 men of many races and nations and points of view 
 realized their loyalty to that which transcended 
 their differences. 
 
 A conference of Catholic Christians was to have 
 followed, at Liege ; but at the time set for the con- 
 
1 68 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 ference, Liege was In the hands of the Germans, 
 and the host of the proposed conference, Cardinal 
 Mercier, was proving that the true international- 
 ist is also the truest patriot. 
 
 Out of this hasty effort came the World Alli- 
 ance for Promoting International Friendship 
 through the Churches. It has its councils in all 
 the nations of Christendom, and its International 
 Committee of delegates from all nations. In 
 every country it numbers among its supporters 
 many loyal patriots, and none disloyal to their 
 country. It keeps alive, amid the blighting con- 
 ditions of war, the sense of international brother- 
 hood and friendship. The members of the Ger- 
 man Council of the World Alliance, when the war 
 broke, immediately published and distributed a 
 translation of the British White Book, the first, 
 perhaps the only, real attempt to get the German 
 people to understand the British view of the or- 
 igin of the war. They also turned their attention 
 to the care of British prisoners in German deten- 
 tion and prison camps. No connection is main- 
 tained, of course, between the German council and 
 the members of the World Alliance in the coun- 
 tries at war with the Central Powers; but we are 
 confident that in all of Germany there is no group 
 that will show itself more eager to resume broth- 
 erly relations, once the war is over, than the little 
 
THE CHURCH 169 
 
 group connected with the World Alliance of 
 Churches. 
 
 Quietly the movement has spread among the 
 neutral nations, in England, and in America. In 
 the United States it is giving much of its thought 
 and means to encouraging goodwill between Amer- 
 ica and the Orient, and to furthering the cause of 
 intelligent study of the international movement 
 and its principles and Ideals. Small though it is, 
 it holds within itself the potency of the Christian 
 Church as an agent of goodwill and frlendhness 
 on earth. It points the way toward an adequate 
 discharge of one of the chief duties and opportuni- 
 ties of the church in the cause of a sane and last- 
 ing internationalism. 
 
 The third contribution the church can make to 
 this great cause is a dynamic. 
 
 We have seen, in the chapter in which we dis- 
 cussed the problems confronting the International 
 movement, that the great need is faith, resolute 
 determination to do the needful thing, however 
 chimerical it may look to worldly wisdom. The 
 church is here on earth to furnish faith for the 
 great affairs of men. It is the proper and su- 
 preme social function of the church to provide 
 inspiration for every good work. 
 
 The church here in America ought to be pour- 
 ing forth streams of faith and courage and hope 
 
I70 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 for the support of the nation, of our soldiers and 
 sailors, of all who serve the cause of our nation 
 and its allies. I believe that the church in Amer- 
 ica is giving mighty aid in just that way; that thou- 
 sands on thousands of our boys have been lighting 
 the more bravely in France, and working the more 
 cheerfully in the camps, and standing by their tasks 
 at sea with greater fortitude, and flying through 
 the air with fuller courage, because they know that 
 the church at home is praying for them, and sing- 
 ing every Sunday hymns of stirring patriotism and 
 of loving regard for them in their absence. 
 When dark days have come, when the fight has 
 gone against us, or we have feared the insidious 
 demoralization of a " peace offensive," there has 
 come from our churches a power to stiffen the 
 national will to righteousness, a strength from 
 God to aid His men in His cause. 
 
 But the church can and should do more. It 
 should arouse and inspire and quicken the faith of 
 men continually in the ideals and principles of 
 Christian Internationalism. When many are 
 shaking their heads, scornfully thrusting aside 
 proposals for an international order as chimerical, 
 the church should stand for the Christian convic- 
 tion that faith can move mountains, that nothing 
 can oppose successfully God and His people. It 
 should sound forth in the ears of all the faint- 
 
THE CHURCH 171 
 
 hearted the splendid message of the Master, 
 " Fear not; only believe." It Is the richest and 
 most promising opportunity that has come to the 
 church for ages, to fulfill its function as a fountain 
 of faith. 
 
 All this and more the church has to contribute 
 to the cause of Internationalism. But its relation 
 to this movement and cause Is not wholly found 
 In giving. The church has something to gain 
 from making the cause of internationalism Its own. 
 
 In a hearty espousal of the cause of internation- 
 alism the church can " find Itself." It has suffered 
 from spending itself on petty tasks, from being 
 tamed, domesticated, until men lost Interest In it 
 and respect for It. Once let the church feel Itself 
 the divine Instrument of a great and holy cause, of 
 Immense significance to the world, and days of 
 power and glory and splendor will come to her 
 again. Many have longed for a " revival of 
 faith." But what we need most Is not a revival 
 of Intellectual or theological opinions, but of that 
 faith which Is a fire In the soul and in the bones, 
 faith as an active principle, the faith that puts the 
 mai»tyr-splrit Into a man and into a church. Here 
 is a cause, a movement, which holds the promise 
 of the dreams of the prophets, the visions of the 
 apostles, the goal set by the Master of Christians. 
 Let the church give herself to that great cause, and 
 
172 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 she will find her soul, and stand before men as 
 worthy of their respect, and love, and loyalty. 
 
 And here also. In this great cause, the church 
 will find her best chance to recover her lost inter- 
 national character. No one can doubt that the 
 church was meant to be a brotherly movement and 
 order, transcending all national and racial bounds, 
 uniting men of all sorts through a higher loyalty. 
 The church lost this character at the time of the 
 Reformation. It can never again stand as a sin- 
 gle political entity, dominating the world-life. 
 But It may stand as a world-brotherhood, giving 
 sanctity to a world-organization of humanity. 
 
 All through the history of the church, even in 
 the days when individualism flourished most pro- 
 fusely, there lingered In true Christian hearts a 
 sense that Christianity was something that trans- 
 cended human differences. Part of that hesita- 
 tion to take sides which marked the American 
 church in August, 19 14, — so severely blamed by 
 some critics, — was due, as we have said, not to 
 cowardice, or lack of vision, but to a vague sense 
 that the Christian church ought to rise above par- 
 tisan views, and nationalistic Issues, a dread lest 
 the church forget Its international character and 
 responsibilities. That sense of the International 
 character of Christianity had grown so strong just 
 before the war, in the Foreign Missionary enter- 
 
THE CHURCH 173 
 
 prise, the Christian Associations, the International 
 Student Movement, and many other world-organ- 
 izations for specific religious ends. These have 
 been shattered by the war. Yet a stronger unity 
 has come to some of them among the nations now 
 in comradeship of arms. And sometime the sev- 
 ered parts of the Christian church will come to- 
 gether again. If only the Christian church will 
 have the Christian insight to ally itself firmly with 
 the cause of internationalism, to see the logical and 
 Christian connection between a League of Nations 
 to secure justice and peace and the meaning and 
 aim of the church itself, the greatest and best day 
 for the church of Christ since He was here will 
 have dawned. Then will be brought to pass the 
 saying that is written in a letter from an unknown 
 writer of the second century of our era, — 
 
 " What the soul is in the body, that are Chris- 
 tians in the world. For the soul holds the body 
 together, and Christians hold the world together. 
 This illustrious position has been assigned them of 
 God, which it were unlawful for them ever to for- 
 sake." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 Certain great convictions, reactions, and du- 
 ties face us as we reach the end of this discussion 
 and turn to survey the country through which we 
 have come. 
 
 I. There are five convictions that come to us 
 with great force, the framework of a strong, con- 
 sistent, and persistent policy of internationalism. 
 
 I. The first Is the conviction that Christ has to 
 do, and therefore Christians have to do, with the 
 whole of life. 
 
 A common view of the relation of the godly to 
 the life about them is that of a pilgrim passing 
 through a country on his way to some desired 
 place. He naturally wants to do all the good he 
 can as he passes through, but he has no sense of 
 responsibility for the solution of the social prob- 
 lems that trouble the communities through which 
 he passes. What he can contribute of social help- 
 fulness is simply done by the way. 
 
 It would be hard to say whether on the whole 
 the thoughts of Christians about the future life, 
 
 174 
 
CONCLUSIONS 175 
 
 their tendency to put the emphasis on heaven 
 rather than on the present world, have had a good 
 or an evil effect. Certainly the tendency has not 
 been all to the good. The hope of heaven has 
 been a help. But the exaggerated consciousness 
 of it, the dwelling upon It until a spiritual farsight- 
 edness has developed in which all things close at 
 hand become blurred, has been a source of un- 
 measured evil. It has kept Christians from play- 
 ing their proper part in the life of the world. It 
 Is time Christians took to heart what Paul said in 
 a sentence which has never In any translation re- 
 ceived recognition of Its real significance. In the 
 Authorized Version it reads, " Only let your con- 
 versation be as becometh the Gospel of Christ.'* 
 In the Revised Version it Is given In the form, 
 '* Only let your manner of life be as becometh the 
 Gospel of Christ. What Paul really wrote is 
 " Act as citizens In a manner worthy of the 
 Gospel of Christ." He may have had his 
 thoughts on a heavenly citizenship; but we shall 
 never be true to the mission and function Christ 
 set for us until we take the Injunction as referring 
 to our conduct as citizens of our own nation and 
 of the world. 
 
 Critics of the New Testament often condemn it 
 for Its *' otherworldliness." But it Is amazing 
 how practical the New Testament Is In its em- 
 
176 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 phasis on conduct now and here. It is Christians, 
 with their misinterpretations, that are responsible 
 for the reputation of otherworldliness which at- 
 taches to the Bible. We have transferred to an- 
 other world great sections of the New Testament 
 which plainly refer to affairs here. We read 
 " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have 
 entered into the heart of man, the things which 
 God hath prepared for them that love Him"; 
 and our thoughts fly at once to heaven and its 
 glories, awaiting the blessed ones who die In the 
 Lord. Read the passage and you will see that 
 what Paul has In mind is the wonderful prepara- 
 tion God has made to bless men In this life. We 
 talk of resurrection and heaven as future possi- 
 bilities. Paul is constantly telling us that God 
 hath raised us, and hath made us sit In the heav- 
 enly realm with Christ. Ask a Christian of or- 
 dinary Biblical knowledge what the Book of Rev- 
 elation deals with, and It Is practically certain that 
 he will tell you that It deals with heaven. There 
 is astonishingly little In that book relating to the 
 future life. Its glowing pictures are attempts to 
 portray the crowning civilization to which this 
 world may come under the lordship and leader- 
 ship of Christ. The " New Jerusalem " comes 
 down from heaven to take Its place on earth. 
 Ask the average Christian what It means to be 
 
CONCLUSIONS 177 
 
 '* saved," and he will probably answer that It 
 means to " go to heaven." But that is very far 
 removed from the most common idea in the New 
 Testament. There a saved man is a man who is 
 living now in fellowship with God, and in line with 
 the great humane and redemptive purposes of 
 Christ. 
 
 There is a text of great significance In one of 
 Paul's later letters. In It he speaks of Christ as 
 *' Saviour of all, specially of them that believe." 
 It is a text quite unintelligible on the basis of the 
 old individualistic and otherworldly view of Chris- 
 tianity. But it Is full of light for one who has 
 caught the new (and yet the very oldest) concep- 
 tion of the mission of Christianity. Is not that 
 just what Christ has been, and still Is, doing? 
 While His Gospel ever has a very special meaning 
 and value to those who believe and so find en- 
 trance into the life of fellowship with God In 
 Christ, It is lifting up and redeeming all of human 
 life. Hospitals, and settlements, juvenile courts, 
 welfare work, child conservation. Red Cross ef- 
 fort, and the rest, are for all men and for the 
 welfare and happiness of all society. 
 
 We have come much nearer to the mind of 
 Christ in moving on from an exclusively Individ- 
 ualistic to a socialized interpretation of the mis- 
 sion and meaning of Christianity. Had you asked 
 
178 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 a good churchman of a century ago what was 
 meant by the text, " It is not the will of your 
 Father in heaven that one of these little ones 
 should perish," he would probably hav^e answered 
 that it warrants the belief that all who die in in- 
 fancy are saved. Ask a thoughtful modern Chris- 
 tian, and he will be likely to answer that it con- 
 demns child labor, and all forms of the exploita- 
 tion of youth. 
 
 Decisive proof that it is the chief business of 
 the Christian to make this world different through 
 his Christianity is found in the star.dard of char- 
 acter which Jesus left for us. What did He 
 reckon the worst of sins? Look through His 
 Gospel, and you can have no doubt. Two sins 
 are there condemned as no others are, unless we 
 except that hypocrisy which characterized the 
 Pharisees whom He so sternly judged. These 
 two sins are unhrotherliness, and slackness; and 
 they seem closely associated in His mind. Rob- 
 ert Louis Stevenson got the Christ point of view 
 when he said that the only really grave sins are sins 
 of omission. Jesus visits severest condemnation 
 on the men who are unloving and the men who do 
 nothing. 
 
 He drew for us just one picture of a man in 
 hell. What had the man done? We are only 
 told of something he had failed to do; he had neg- 
 
CONCLUSIONS 179 
 
 lected the poor man at his gate. For all we are 
 told, Dives may have been moral, orthodox, pious, 
 a model of all individual virtues. But he failed 
 to do the things God set before him, failed to 
 affect for the better the wrong social condition con- 
 fronting him; and Christ chooses him as the ex- 
 ample of the man who goes to hell. 
 
 Jesus painted one picture of the Last Judgment, 
 more solemn and awful than Michaelangelo's 
 great canvas. He shows us a group on whom Is 
 pronounced the severe judgment, " and these shall 
 go away Into eternal punishment." What have 
 they done? Nothing, so far as we are told. We 
 are only told of that which they had not done. 
 " Inasmuch as ye did it not "; that is all. 
 
 Christ left a graphic picture of a man who 
 failed, the man with one talent. What had he 
 done? Again the answer comes, He had done 
 nothing; that was his damning fault. Similar is 
 the meaning of the story about the Wedding Gar- 
 ment. The man is cast into outer darkness, be- 
 cause of slackness. Even so the foolish damsels 
 are left outside because of neglect to provide what 
 they might need. 
 
 Nothing is more certain from these passages, 
 and from all others where our Lord touches at all 
 on the life-and-death problems of human charac- 
 ter and conduct, than that He meant that His fol- 
 
178 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 a good churchman of a century ago what was 
 meant by the text, " It Is not the will of your 
 Father in heaven that one of these little ones 
 should perish," he would probably have answered 
 that It warrants the belief that all who die In in- 
 fancy are saved. Ask a thoughtful modern Chris- 
 tian, and he will be likely to answer that it con- 
 demns child labor, and all forms of the exploita- 
 tion of youth. 
 
 Decisive proof that It is the chief business of 
 the Christian to make this world different through 
 his Christianity is found in the standard of char- 
 acter which Jesus left for us. What did He 
 reckon the worst of sins? Look through His 
 Gospel, and you can have no doubt. Two sins 
 are there condemned as no others are, unless we 
 except that hypocrisy which characterized the 
 Pharisees whom He so sternly judged. These 
 two sins are unhrotherliness, and slackness; and 
 they seem closely associated in His mind. Rob- 
 ert Louis Stevenson got the Christ point of view 
 when he said that the only really grave sins are sins 
 of omission. Jesus visits severest condemnation 
 on the men who are unloving and the men who do 
 nothing. 
 
 He drew for us just one picture of a man in 
 hell. What had the man done? We are only 
 told of something he had failed to do; he had neg- 
 
CONCLUSIONS 179 
 
 lected the poor man at his gate. For all we are 
 told, Dives may have been moral, orthodox, pious, 
 a model of all individual virtues. But he failed 
 to do the things God set before him, failed to 
 affect for the better the wrong social condition con- 
 fronting him; and Christ chooses him as the ex- 
 ample of the man who goes to hell. 
 
 Jesus painted one picture of the Last Judgment, 
 more solemn and awful than MIchaelangelo's 
 great canvas. He shows us a group on whom is 
 pronounced the severe judgment, " and these shall 
 go away Into eternal punishment." What have 
 they done? Nothing, so far as we are told. We 
 are only told of that which they had not done. 
 " Inasmuch as ye did It not " ; that is all. 
 
 Christ left a graphic picture of a man who 
 failed, the man with one talent. What had he 
 done? Again the answer comes. He had done 
 nothing; that was his damning fault. Similar is 
 the meaning of the story about the Wedding Gar- 
 ment. The man is cast into outer darkness, be- 
 cause of slackness. Even so the foolish damsels 
 are left outside because of neglect to provide what 
 they might need. 
 
 Nothing is more certain from these passages, 
 and from all others where our Lord touches at all 
 on the llfe-and-death problems of human charac- 
 ter and conduct, than that He meant that His fol- 
 
i8o CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 lowers should make a difference in the world in 
 which they live. His chosen symbol, ^' salt," em- 
 phasizes that fact with great force. What is salt 
 for, if not to flavor that with which it mingles? 
 This world is not a mine, or pit, out of which the 
 salt is to be extracted for use elsewhere. The 
 world is a mass of stuff needing to have salt mixed 
 with it for its flavoring and preserving; and Chris- 
 tians are " salt of the earth " not In order to be set 
 apart, but to be mixed with the life of the world 
 most intimately for the healing and flavoring of 
 that life, to give it wholesomeness and zest. 
 
 The *' otherworldly " conception of the func- 
 tion of Christianity persists so tenaciously, and 
 with so unwholesome an influence, that we must 
 be eternally on guard against it. We must realize 
 that too often, in ourselves and in others, the em- 
 phasis on the creed, on the future life, on the 
 *' preaching of the simple gospel," on the Impor- 
 tance of orthodox opinions, and the like, is only a 
 means of escape from the uncomfortable require- 
 ments of that social mission and message which is 
 the real Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 
 2. The second conviction coming from our dis- 
 cussion is that the history of God*s dealings with 
 man has been a record of grozving brotherhood, 
 of which the rightful climax is a brotherhood of 
 nations. 
 
CONCLUSIONS i8i 
 
 We have tried to trace, through the record of 
 the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the 
 history of the Christian church, the patient effort 
 of the Father to lead His chosen people, those who 
 have had His clearest light on their pathway, to 
 throw over their exclusiveness, to distrust that 
 which set them apart from other men, and enter 
 into a fellowship as wide as humanity. May it 
 not be that the intense hatred Jesus felt for Phari- 
 saism was in part due to the very name, which 
 means "Separated," "Set apart"? 
 
 The revelation of God, the outworking of His 
 divine will for man, lacks its capstone, without 
 the establishment of Christian Internationalism. 
 The Bible opens with a picture of one man and 
 one woman living in a garden, sufficient to them- 
 selves, and with little to occupy them but their indi- 
 vidual fellowship with God. Some pious people 
 never get beyond the religion of the Garden of 
 Eden. But the Bible gets far beyond that, until 
 it ends with a great multitude, of all races and 
 tongues and customs and nationalities, flowing like 
 a river of life through the streets of a city, a world- 
 community, open to all sorts and conditions of 
 men, a city with gates on all four sides and always 
 open, a city Including In its citizenship men and 
 women and children of all the nations; the 
 " kings," the governments, find their place in it. 
 
1 82 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 Gold is not too precious for the paving of its 
 streets, nor jewels too costly to be built into its 
 walls; and a multitude which no man can number 
 goes singing through the streets. The revelation 
 of God will be incomplete until we move on to that 
 climax of a world-brotherhood, a universal Chris- 
 tian civilization in which all men and nations live 
 in ordered justice and reverence and peace. 
 
 3. The third conviction is that the cause of the 
 people is the cause of God, and leads directly on 
 to the establishment of an international order. 
 
 As the course of religious development has 
 flowed steadily on toward a widening and deepen- 
 ing sense of brotherhood, so the course of political 
 development has flowed toward Increasing democ- 
 racy. And the two great streams unite to-day to 
 form a mighty river of God's life for the people 
 on earth. Democracy Is a holy cause, supremely 
 worth dying for or living for. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher once said that the secret 
 of the deathless Influence of the Bible Is in the fact 
 that it is " always on the side of man, and man will 
 not let it die." Christ is the source of our mod- 
 ern political Idealism, no less than of our religious 
 aspirations and principles. Democracy Is sacred; 
 and it blends with true religion to demand and to 
 produce a sane and permanent international order. 
 Neither religion nor democracy can ever have Its 
 
CONCLUSIONS 183 
 
 perfect work until a sane and strong International 
 order Is established. As American Christians, we 
 cannot fall to be Internationalists In the best sense. 
 If we are not ardent Internationalists we are fail- 
 ures as Americans, as Christians, or as both. 
 
 4. The fourth fundamental conviction Is that 
 true Internationalism, so far from being antago- 
 nistic to patriotism, or inconsistent with it. Is Its 
 very fruitage. 
 
 The man who sets patriotism over against inter- 
 nationalism, as if the two were mutually exclusive, 
 or as if internationalism were a parasite thriving 
 on the life-strength of patriotism, shows that he 
 has a false sense of both these great terms. 
 There is so great and grave misunderstanding 
 right here that we may well stop a moment to re- 
 peat and emphasize what was said earlier, that 
 to believe in an international order does not 
 weaken but rather fulfills and deepens one's loy- 
 alty to his own nation. It is because I love Amer- 
 ica so much that I want her to do her full duty to 
 humanity. It is because I have such confidence in 
 her ideals as essentially right, and In her power as 
 invincible, that I am willing to have her enter the 
 frankest and fullest sort of fellowship with all 
 nations. It is only a false, selfish, unworthy na- 
 tionalism, unentitled to the fine name of patriot- 
 ism, that suffers from the growth of the spirit of 
 
i84 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 a true, sane, fervent internationalism. Patriot- 
 ism that distrusts internationalism always is con- 
 cealing something false and unworthy under its 
 fine garments. 
 
 In truth, each loyalty to the larger unit makes 
 deeper and finer the loyalty to the lesser unit. A 
 man is a better father for being a good neighbor; 
 a better neighbor for being a good townsman; a 
 better townsman for being a good patriot; and a 
 better patriot for being a good internationalist. 
 Why should that process halt at the boundaries of 
 the nation? The doctrine of a restricted and 
 selfish nationalism as the ultimate loyalty is as 
 unprogressive and as impossible as was the doc- 
 trine of States' Rights; and it must give way be- 
 fore the life of humanity can be right and peace- 
 ful, even as the States' Rights doctrine had to be 
 decisively put down before our national govern- 
 ment could be strong and stable. Those are 
 wisest, most in line with the needs and the call 
 of the future, who mean to use this war as the 
 end of irresponsible nationalism, and the be- 
 ginning of that sane and strong internationalism, 
 in which true patriotism finds its fulfillment. 
 
 5. The last of the five convictions to which we 
 have referred is that the definite plans now offered 
 for an international order, and the movement to 
 put them into effect, are strong and practical. 
 
CONCLUSIONS 185 
 
 They are doubtless Idealistic; they are not chi- 
 merical. 
 
 Honest effo»*t has been made In Chapter VIII 
 to state the very serious difficulties which must be 
 met and mastered before the cause of ordered 
 internationalism can be successful. No one can 
 rightly think that the international movement has 
 an easy task before it. Far more than fine 
 phrases or good talk will be needed to bring a 
 single atom of its program Into real being. 
 
 Yet the movement can be condemned as unprac- 
 tical only by those who have no vision, and leave 
 no room in their world for the working of human 
 faith and hope. The strongest leaders of the 
 world's life to-day are leading In the cause of in- 
 ternationalism. If a firm and just International 
 order is not set up, our victory will be barren, and 
 our professions stultified. There is scarcely a re- 
 sponsible leader of political life In America and 
 Great Britain who Is not heartily committed to the 
 cause of a League of Nations. To call the roll 
 of its supporters is to call wellnigh every name of 
 the men who count. And the few strong men who 
 do not espouse the cause are careful to say that It 
 is a desirable scheme, and that their objection Is 
 simply to Its practicability. 
 
 There was a time, not very long ago, when the 
 cause of international peace and justice and good- 
 
1 86 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 will seemed to enlist only the halrbrained and quix- 
 otic, the '' long-haired men and short-haired 
 women." The word "pacifist" has fallen into 
 disrepute largely because it was used so much by 
 fanatics and fools. But a new note was sounded, 
 and a new set of men came into the movement In 
 America for international peace and justice, when 
 the League to Enforce Peace was organized. 
 The cause of internationalism has become serious, 
 sane, and splendid, under the guidance and care of 
 cool, hardheaded, farseeing men. The church is 
 taking a growing Interest In It. The very Inter- 
 esting and successful work of the National Com- 
 mittee on the Churches and the Moral Aims of the 
 War during the present year is a strong proof 
 that the best and most thoughtful and most pa- 
 triotic sections of our population respond Instantly 
 and heartily to the presentation of a sane and 
 Christian Ideal of Internationalism. The move- 
 ment has been conclusively shown to have not only 
 high ideals, but practical good sense in it. 
 
 These five big convictions stand out from our 
 discussion. They make this cause of Christian 
 Internationalism an adventure, exciting, uncertain, 
 tremendous, hard, but hopeful. It is just the sort 
 of enterprise to win and hold the allegiance of all 
 true liberals or progressives, all " forward-looking 
 folk," all real Christians. 
 
CONCLUSIONS 187 
 
 When we remind ourselves of what the tiny 
 handful of early Christians dared dream and pre- 
 dict for their movement, as they set It forth in 
 the Book of Revelation, how that little, weak, 
 despised set of Idealists looked forward confi- 
 dently to the victory of their cause over the empire 
 and the religion of their day, when we remember 
 how much of that dream has come true, we are 
 ashamed to doubt that the Christianity of to-day 
 is able to dominate and transform international 
 relations, to bring the Kingdom of God to author- 
 ity in the affairs of nations and governments. 
 
 II. There are certain powerful reactions which 
 we cannot escape, If we face these facts and con- 
 clusions, reflexes on our normal life In other 
 realms than the political. 
 
 I. The Ideals and policies of Christian Interna- 
 tionalism react powerfully on the church and Its 
 life. For the moment the church takes up the 
 cause of uniting the nations, it Is faced with the 
 duty and necessity of bringing unity and order Into 
 its own life, of uniting the denominations. 
 
 If the church attempts to teach or preach the 
 need of international order, of the subordinating 
 of Irresponsible nationalism to the general wel- 
 fare of humanity, the nations can retort In the 
 words of Paul, " Thou therefore that teachest an- 
 other, teachest thou not thyself? " If we cannot 
 
i88 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 get Presbyterians, and Methodists, and Baptists, 
 and Episcopalians, together, how can we expect 
 great states to form federative unions, or correlate 
 their political functions? The church must either 
 be silent on this great matter, the greatest moral 
 question of the age, or must set her own house In 
 order, so that she can speak peace to the nations 
 in the name of God with a united voice. 
 
 Moreover the church must see that the Chris- 
 tian religion has to do with far more than the con- 
 duct and faith of the individual; that it is pro- 
 foundly concerned with group morality, with social 
 relationships and duties, that religion is not syn- 
 onymous with piety, but is a blend of piety and 
 social service. 
 
 2. The cause of internationalism reacts power- 
 fully also upon social and political conditions here 
 in America. We cannot speak great words about 
 international justice, and stand for international 
 fair dealing, and then deal unfairly with the for- 
 eigner within our own bounds. It will be a dis- 
 grace if we send some hundreds of thousands of 
 negroes to help " make the world safe for democ- 
 racy," and then let them come home to find them- 
 selves the victims of the same sort of race discrim- 
 ination that has been practiced toward them in the 
 past in this country. We cannot talk largely of 
 " brotherhood," and not desire to play the square 
 
CONCLUSIONS 189 
 
 and brotherly part toward China and Japan and 
 all the nations with which our relations are deli- 
 cate and have been questionable. We cannot 
 avoid an uneasy conscience as we reflect that the 
 men who have misled and are misleading Russia 
 got their notions of democracy from their life here 
 in America. There must be changes here, or we 
 cannot without shame stand positively for a world- 
 organization that shall be fair and just. 
 
 3. Internationalism has its reflex influence also, 
 and a powerful one, upon industrial and commer- 
 cial affairs here in our country. It is not enough 
 to fight Germany; we must fight that for which 
 Germany stands. Our casualty lists, long as they 
 are growing, are not yet comparable with those 
 resulting from the processes of industry, in which 
 some 500,000 persons a year are killed or 
 maimed. Why should not the one horror move us 
 as profoundly as the other? Can we fight against 
 autocracy in Prussia, and leave it dominant and 
 protected in American business and industry? 
 Can we fight to extend democracy, and not see that 
 it is extended to the processes of industrial life? 
 Can we outlaw selfish aggression as practiced by 
 Germany, and leave it unmolested when it controls 
 corporations, or unions, or other social groups? 
 Can we abhor " ruthlessness " in warfare, and 
 leave it to work its will in the competitive strug- 
 
I90 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 gles of our commercial life? We shall learn that 
 it costs a great deal to adopt a high and Christian 
 ideal for the world. We must be prepared to 
 bring all our processes of national life under the 
 power of that ideal, or be condemned as hypo- 
 crites. 
 
 4. The most powerful and cutting reaction Is 
 that upon our personal life. For no one can be- 
 come a Christian Internationalist, and not be in- 
 stantly and forcefully challenged to say whether 
 he will be a Christian In reality throughout the 
 range of his personal conduct. 
 
 In a sense Germany has done us a service, 
 though a terrible and shameful one. Germany 
 has shown us, by an extreme and naked forthset- 
 tlng, the repulslveness and heathenlshness of a 
 way of life which we had never quite let go, a way 
 of life with which we Christians made all sorts of 
 compromises. It Is time Christians were seeing 
 that they must be whole Christians or none. We 
 cannot serve God and mammon. We cannot go 
 on '' limping between two sides." If Christ be 
 the Master, we must follow Him, clear through, 
 from end to end, from side to side, from top to 
 bottom, of life. Too long we have been content 
 to define Christian faith In terms of profession, 
 creed, opinion. Faith, In the Bible, and in real 
 Christian experience, always means commitment, 
 
CONCLUSIONS 191 
 
 loyalty. No amount of theological soundness, or 
 mystic saintliness, can ever make up for a lack of 
 plain, downright loyalty to the ideals and words 
 and things of Jesus Christ. There is a sharp 
 sting in the quiet saying of Tolstoi: " Christians 
 do not think Jesus meant what He said ! " We 
 must crown Him Lord of all, or send Him away. 
 IIL What duties face us therefore, in our rela- 
 tion, as Christians, to the cause of a true Chris- 
 tian Internationalism? 
 
 The first duty is to think about that cause, to 
 think straight and hard, and always in the light of 
 Christ's Spirit and ideals; to study the matter, to 
 become increasingly intelligent about it, realizing 
 its necessity, understanding its program, facing its 
 problems, sharing its hopes. 
 
 The soldiers have been doing their part, the 
 greatest, the most indispensable part. You must 
 help think out that future for which they have been 
 fighting in order to give it a chance to live and 
 grow fair. 
 
 The crisis in the campaign for internationalism 
 will come when the proposal for the establishment 
 of an international order comes before the Amer- 
 ican Senate in the form of some concrete treaty 
 or peace settlement. We shall fail at that critical 
 point, unless there is at that time in this country 
 a large body of intelligent, convinced, popular sen- 
 
192 CHRISTIAN INTERNATIONALISM 
 
 timent, able to demand that America shall play 
 her full and leadmg and dismterested part in the 
 proposed League of Nations for justice and peace. 
 
 A second duty, closely akin to the first, is the 
 duty of getting into intimate relation with those 
 societies and organizations which are working for 
 a sound Christian Internationalism; such as the 
 League to Enforce Peace, the World Alliance for 
 International Friendship through the Churches, 
 and the National Committee on the Churches and 
 the Moral Aims of the War. Help to set clearly 
 before all our people what it is for which America 
 is really fighting, how intimately the organization 
 of a League of Nations is bound in with the mean- 
 ing of the war itself. Do all in your power to 
 open churches and clubs and all sorts of social 
 groups to discussions and presentations of this 
 cause of Christian Internationalism. 
 
 But the chief duty, the first, the last, the basic 
 one, is that each of us make his own solemn and 
 determined choice, in the sight of God, and in the 
 strength of Christ, to be loyal through and 
 through; loyal to our nation, and to our govern- 
 ment, and to our cause; and loyal to this great end 
 of Christian Internationalism so intimately con- 
 nected with all the faiths that come to us from the 
 past, and with all the hopes that lie before human- 
 ity. It is the supreme epoch in human history for 
 
CONCLUSIONS 193 
 
 Christians to be Christian, and to determine that 
 the world's life shall be brought into obedience to 
 the will of God in Christ. 
 
 No words can better set forth the spirit In which 
 we should face the world of our day, its immense 
 demands, its sore needs, its vast responsibilities 
 and opportunities, than words such as those with 
 which Lincoln closed his second Inaugural Ad- 
 dress : 
 
 ** With malice toward none, with charity for all, 
 with firmness in the right as God gives us to see 
 the right, let us strive onward to finish the work 
 in which we are engaged, to do all that may 
 achieve a just and lasting peace among all na- 
 tions." 
 
 THE END 
 
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