SOCIAJ , ST OF THE ELMER T.CL. R..T flHEl A PAPER PUBLISI PE IONS. EKMANY ... 10 We tntk COUNTKIES » Pig rs Class ___5X1_ Book j Gopyiight]\ ]0 _ LLOYD GEORGE, ADRESSING THE SAMMIES: ! 'My bay, are yon able to appreciate the high honur that yua arc permiitett to die tor Engjantj I" NEWSfromAMERICA. Symptoms of Imminent Awakening, Even the Chicago "Oaily Trihtme" takes ex- ception to English censoring of American Press Dispatches. tajting Since the United Statu o- active part in the war and al!o\v men to spill their Wood on Etirt first and iast European causes, meo over in America begin to and more Ibui it won't do to uHi-jiu.Uwn exclusively with ! As Ion£ as America's ijitBte Fnn.e bv Mar of ihi- d for delivery by July! Bui these 87 haven't ks ago six Anurirr.li liters .nine to grief near :u-York Times was in the dark, and demanded >n.d committee, no, bv a grand jury! And as Tie people who were - anxious for war knew :■•■ leun.l ... -inn./. And they knew also that «,y as soon as Ibey 'had swallowed sohw high some catch phrases. The expenses for doling it ot the proceeds of the war, for no war was a* this one. Money is poured out like water, ime to. the ret cue of the endangered money of a little vvar they hoped to pet it all back. Yet -ge.l war the w'ortd bus ever seen or ever will .• is lost. Therefore they are yelling at the top for the dollar, oh no! Only for help for the lurkhas und Senegalese negroes, and for help undred wo are just crazy to have the Bowery iday and Eveline Pankhurst are. yelling loo — ttlefielri, blockade", a.- Mr. (to/-, blockade before joining U4 us hope thai l iideislund this and alsi lias repeatedly don,., enter into peiH'--negL.I..: nd for J no Objectionable Historical Facts. (si- .lite* , lii.uiy. Ai isked to do your bit at home in the Red ntrosted with the glorious task to do the ;. To vo« is left the immortal honor of a mortal wound or a somewhat precipitate And wiiat an honor It must be to die for John Pierpont or for Charley Schwab the Du Pouts! They all hope you will be fttlry aware of this honor, higher -till ami more lowering must be the distinction that you are allowed lo limed for life or get killed straigbl for Hi« Britannic. Haughtiness, the British ! The dollar — well, he is some relative of yours, even h" he shons you mora? ou like. But Hie Pound Sterling uio't make ym feel +romesick, even if it is kith l of the dollar, just as The colonels lady And Mary O' Grady Are slaters under the skin. Pound and the Dollar - that It what you are flgbtinu fort you arc expected lo appreciate the honor that fell to your lot. e.atiy John Bull expects every Frenchman and every American to do his duty 11. In China, during the Boxer uprising, the British general culled, "tlic Germans front". .Now, in Prance, he calls the Sammies. It must be a great satisfaction ver the call! illustrious School Board considers America u morally too uncertain to be confronted willi historical truth? What an insult to protect Ihe United Slates aigainst truth! This insinuation really means; America is in danger when she sees Germany as she really is and no! as England has painted 5 San Fi anciseo raid against us Milan t is not delieient .1 bv-pby .inna F. Crwfa-cU nar School objected ■Brn-I mi den Kui-er" : "There is inueh of Ihe letter the child .■ll',|.T01' , she protests. But Sehool Department sided - object io i by inking mil the in.) ,-ub-l luting the word Prc- ,st.r-,iroke! So the epted, is sanctioned, devote itself lo the t is, spirits are rather my enuttii nids of School boards 1 «i» Ibe substitution ,r Kaiser vill hardly regain tile Kaiser" or the San rranchen iB ,AD EMS r*33r by any favorite of the President can't win this war by talking about suffrage and prohibition. We war by sitting around at pink teas sing about putting pink chemise on i and knee-breeches on the won* down to brass-tacks. Lets find c Lets investigate these irregulariti ion-partisan way and report t. t Against Jdlers. ier it new state law passed at a s l of Ihe legislature, declaring thos ■k, of whatever class, and not occupied y useful occupation, shall be declared ' of sedition, the Omaha polio enced to arrest all idlers. The interesting an is if the Omaha police looks upon liilionair who is idling away half the in his swell clubr'ooros us an id use of Ihe new law. Italy suffered a c an. West England s g to check the offer Lodendorff which b .v,y. e "unlawful; the English i For lion jood' fellowship among al! nations I The booty of the Central-Powers after four years of war. r.a. bhU«. At the end of Ihe fourth year of war ! number of prisoners stationed in camps of the Central-Powers amounts to more than 3,800,000 of whom 2,300,000 are in Germany. The last year alone has increased their number by 840,000 men. As far as booty of war-matei ial is concerned there were on August 2nd. 1917 12,156' nowi23,000, the number of machine during the same period climbed from 8352 lo 38.000, that of vehicles from 10.640 65,000. Not counting the destroyed ones, ? number of captured Tanks is 365. Furthermore, to the number of rifles were ded since die first ot August 1st 7 one million, lo that of Artillerie ammunition at. million rounds, and of Infaiilry-amiuunilion 200 million rounds. Moreover 3000 Loco- ;es and 28.000 railroad-cars were taken, his enormous booty shows how the German General stuff accomplished its aim weaken the fighting-force of the Allies, I to decrease their national-wealth by bitlions. TflE WAR AND THE TAM-EOLOTH. The fallowing lines in the Pittsburgh Cbronicle- Tetegrapb seem lo imply that ibe United States are also threatened with a shortage of linen: Get up. You lary s firstSaoimy: The theatre* dour go to very Baa after all. My enter is playing al present 1 La a show and get» almost the whole pay of a Colonel Second Sammy ■ (afief redeclion) What doe* the wife ; of Ibe Colonel say to Hut ' - To satisfy and farther stimulate haired against i eiveuntbelre- n ■ - 'lie "Kaiseriol cabbage' 1 . Quile appropriate! an army against hie will. He serves as butcher and principal cook and now baa been made sergeant, everything against bis will m trte America, j Ob, sweet land ot Liberty! PALMENOARTEN FRANKFURT Bclicbtcster VcrgnOgmigsplatr Gro6-Frankrurts. :: Relchhalttge Mfttags- ___ •.e Blere -:- Retoe neue a. altt Weine rack u-SormUg gro8i PAGE OF THE GERMAN PROPAGANDA ORGAN, "AMERICA IN EUROPE," PUBLISHED FOR CIRCULATION AMONG AMERICAN TROOPS SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR ELMER T. CLARK DR. ELMER T. CLARK IN TRENCH EQUIPMENT SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR BY ELMER T. CLARK ILLUSTRATED NEW ^E*r YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY .0 ** Copyright, iqiq George H. Doran Company Printed in the United States of America ©CU525961 M 21 !9!9 PREFACE One is perhaps guilty of an unwarranted rashness when he submits another contribution to the multitude of discussions which have covered so many phases of the great world war, especially since it comes after hostilities have ceased, and I gather courage to risk it only from the fact that the subjects with which these essays deal have not been adequately interpreted to the American people. Indeed they have scarcely been touched at all, and yet they are of vital importance to our thinking and to the settlement of the lines along which our social effort is to proceed in the future. When there are so many voices calling us to follow them, and since so many of them are calling us in oppo- site directions, one should present his credentials be- fore he presumes to speak. During the time which I spent on the western front with the American armies, it fell to my unfortunate lot to be drafted many times for the purpose of guiding sight-seers through the sec- tor we occupied, and I became very familiar with the tourist who came out to spend a day and see "the ter- rible war." Many times they were veritable nuisances, yet from them we secured a great deal of amusement. These people, returning to America, have enlightened the public so thoroughly on all the events and move- vi PREFACE ments of the war that one is sometimes inclined to think that nothing more remains to be said on the subject. The shorter the stay abroad the more authority does one frequently throw into his utterances; and so I am persuaded that every person who writes should attach to his writing a full statement of the experience which qualifies him to put his pen to paper. I remember one person who was quite frank in this regard. The regularity with which I guided tourists across No Man's Land had become a joke among the officers of the regiment, and we would sometimes gather in the evening to recount the experiences of these won- dering visitors at the front. One night the chaplain came into the assembly with a copy of a well-known magazine which contained an article on some general subject connected with the welfare of the American soldier. The writer began by announcing that he had the answer to all the questions the people had been asking about the welfare of their boys in France, and as proof of this he cited and numbered his experiences. He had spent ten days with five hun- dred officers, presumably on the transport which car- ried those officers to France. He had visited general headquarters, which was a hundred miles behind the lines, and had a conversation with Pershing. He had talked with doctors, officers, and leading people. He had lived four days in a Y. M. C. A. dug-out at the front. These and similar facts were the basis on which he rested his statement that he had the answers to all the questions the people were asking. Naturally, there PREFACE vii was great glee among the officers when the chaplain read to us the article in question. Nevertheless the journalist established a good precedent, and one which I shall here follow. Since the entry of the United States into the war I have made two extended trips through certain of the European nations involved, and I was accredited as a correspondent by the foreign offices of both Lon- don and Paris. The first trip was undertaken for the sole purpose of making intensive social investiga- tions for the daily and religious press of America; on the second I was commissioned to do some special jour- nalistic work for the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion, and also to continue the social studies I had pre- viously made for the press. On these journeys I have gone into all sections of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Italy, visiting all of the great cities and a multitude of smaller towns and villages. In more than one hundred and fifty centers I have studied social conditions in relation to the soldiers, the civilian pop- ulation, and the various institutions of the world's activities. I have gone into the churches, the schools, the universities, the factories, and the homes of the people; I have lived in the east end of London and shared the life of the people down Whitechapel way; in Eome, London, Dublin, Paris, and a hundred other places, I have mixed freely with the common people of the streets. Night after night and day after day I have watched the evil machinations of the most sinis- ter agencies working in European society, and for a v iii PREFACE year I have delved into the facts and the causes of the reign of immorality in the warring countries; I know personally scores of persons involved, I have heard the stories in courts of justice, I have seen the workings of the devilish agencies with my own eyes. And in the same degree I have studied as best I could the other social institutions and influences. As regards the actual war itself, I have not been altogether lacking in opportunities for study. I have been in scores of military centers of all kinds; I have visited and personally inspected rest camps, base hos- pitals, convalescent camps, training centers, munition factories, ordnance plants, lumber camps, aerial train- ing centers, naval aviation stations, construction camps, mine bases, destroyer bases, submarine bases, army headquarters, and ports of entry. I have lived for an extended period with the fighting men of the American armies, marching with them across Trance and moving with them into the front lines. For months I have lived with a division under the enemy's fire, sleeping in the trenches and dug-outs, moving at will through support lines, front trenches, and outposts in No Man's Land, and in every way sharing the experiences of the men. I have driven a truck for many successive nights through the American sector, where nothing could move in the light of day, along roads choked with traf- fic and swept by the enemy's fire. I have messed and lived in the wrecked and ruined villages of northern France, and from the last observation post watched the enemy in his own lines. I have been through forty air PREFACE ix raids and a dozen gas attacks. I have spoken to soldier audiences in machine gun emplacements and dug-outs while the shells burst about us ; I have associated with enemy prisoners, and have seen our own men mangled, bleeding, and dying. In the great hospitals I have undressed them, have served as a stretcher bearer, and have heard their stories as they lay pale and helpless at the door of death. But why prolong an egoistic recital! I have shared in the experiences of the sol- diers and have lived their life, I have seen the terrors of the war in all of its departments, and I have investi- gated social conditions as thoroughly as possible all over the allied nations which I visited. Out of this experience I give these essays. Two or three explanatory remarks should be made. One is that I approach all questions from the stand- point of the average man on the streets, and the con- clusions set forth are from his point of view. I have been criticized frequently, and my conclusions have been disputed, by clergymen and others who have looked at things through their own glasses. Especially have I been berated for my revelations concerning im- morality; some have denounced me because they doubted the statements, others because they did not think the situation should be revealed. I can only reply that I have simply told what I absolutely know to be the facts, and I think the truth should be told. Two of my close friends took offense when my dis- patches were first published in regard to the moral breakdown; I later met both of them in London, and x PREFACE both of them then apologized for the attitude they had taken prior to seeing matters for themselves. One in my position, after having been severely condemned early in 1917 for the publication of dispatches reveal- ing the deplorable situation in the cities of Europe, may be pardoned for welcoming the verifications, like that of Alfred Noyes in The Saturday Evening Post, which have been openly admitted since the cessation of hos- tilities. In these articles one will find certain repetitions here and there, and there will appear differences in the matter of tense, etc. It is sufficient to say that some of the material has been published in another form, and all of the articles were written independently and at different times. The New York Tribune and the St. Louis Republic have kindly consented to the reworking and republication of the material herein. I claim no un- usual degree of insight or information over other peo- ple who have visited the war zones ; I only seek to write from a different standpoint and with absolute freedom. If the essays throw any light on any phase of society in these times, and especially if they will enable any American organization to see how suffering Europe may be helped, I shall be amply repaid for the writing. ELMER T. CLARK. CONTENTS PREFACE PAGE I Immorality in Europe During the War . 17 II What Does Ireland Intend? 46 III The Root of the Irish Question ... 66 IV The Pope and the War 87 V The Religious Situation in the War . . 106 VI The Clergy and the People 136 VII The Church and the War 152 VIII Reconstruction in Religion after the War 171 IX The Challenge of the War to the Church 201 X The Germans and the Turks .... 226 XI Among the Toilers ......... 240 XII A Heritage of Hate 252 XIII The Cities of Horrible Nights . . . .261 ILLUSTRATIONS Dr. Elmer T. Clark in Trench Equipment Frontispiece PAGE Proclamations of the Mansion House Con- ference and the Roman Catholic Church Urging the Irish to Resist Conscription . . 48 Corner of Sackeville Street in Dublin after the Sinn Fein Rebellion of 1916 .... 80 Wrecked Shop in Dublin after the Sinn Fein Rebellion of 1916 80 Irish Anti-Conscription Pledge 96 American Lumbermen in the Scotch Highlands, The First Contingent of the A. E. F. to Land on European Soil 128 Y. M. C. A. Hut in the Woods Miles from Any Town or Habitation 128 German Propaganda: "In the Trenches — 'Be- hold I Am with You Always* " 232 German Propaganda: "At The Advance Posts — T am The Good Shepherd' " 232 "Le Vieux Dieu Allemand." The French Con- ception of the German God 256 Xlll SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR • CHAPTEE I IMMORALITY IN EUROPE DURING THE WAR We are accustomed to hearing that war acts as a regenerator of the national life, bringing patriotism, sacrifice, unselfishness, and devotion to principle for- ward to such a degree as to produce a more virile and devoted citizenship. It may be that such a contention has a certain foundation in fact upon the one side, yet the most casual observer of events in the great Euro- pean war must be impressed with the fact that this struggle is breeding enough immorality and vice to overwhelmingly counter-balance any such spiritual gains that may perchance accrue. The war has bred viciousness in an amazing fashion, and there is a de- mand, therefore, for some very plain speaking and a frank recognition of a critical condition in order to insure our social salvation. To one interested in the problems of society the most apparent fact in connection with the war is this great 17 18 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR increase in immorality. In every European city vice is rampant. It stalks the streets openly, day and night, and with brazen effrontery flaunts itself in the face of the law, order, and all moral conceptions. So deplor- able has the situation become that there is small danger of exaggerating its seriousness. While there has been a decrease in what we usually regard as the more fla- grant forms of crime, burglary, highway robbery, mur- der, and the like, owing to the fact that the men, who usually commit such crimes, have been placed in the armies, misbehavior of the more unmentionable type has received the greatest impetus it has ever known. And to-day the streets of London, Paris, Kome, and other cities are veritable cesspools of iniquity. So much so, indeed, that the sojourner in these places feels as if they have abandoned all moral restraints and thrown to the winds all desires and attempts to pre- serve the purity and the health of their people. In all of these cities the streets are thronged with women of the underworld. There are thousands upon thousands of them, moving here and there in the dark- ened avenues and plying their trade with the utmost abandon and boldness. So prolific are they that it is nothing unusual to see four or five girls accost a man simultaneously and fall to disputing among themselves as to which has the prior claim upon his attentions; and so bold are they that they frequent constantly the lounges and the tea rooms of the best hotels with per- fect freedom and confidence. The courtesans have an especial predilection for the soldiers, and these men, IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 19 many of whom come from distant colonies overseas and are without friends in the great centers of European population, fall easy prey to their machinations. So alarming are the proportions which the vice problem has assumed on account of the war that the casual observer is almost constrained to believe that the whole moral fabric of the nations has been destroyed. The causes for such a state of affairs are very ap- parent. In the first place the problem is aggravated by the thousands of refugees who have been driven into foreign cities. These refugees have furnished a large per cent of the immoral women, hundreds of them drifting to the street under the pressure of economic and social needs. Then there are the wives and the widows of the soldiers, who, in the absence of the husbands, have become degenerate. It is a remarkable fact that nearly all of these women claim to belong to this class; I have spoken to a large number of them, and almost without exception they have claimed that their husbands are in the army or have fallen on the fields. One may not judge whether the statements are true or whether the women believe there is an especial virtue in having a man with the colors, but it is well known that the absence of the men is one of the largest factors in the increase of crime. Here is a young woman whose husband has cared for her in all things, furnishing her the support, the companionship, and the amusement which her nature has desired. The young man is taken into the army, and at once the companion- ship, the amusement, and most of the support is with- 20 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR drawn. The young woman becomes the victim of an intense loneliness. She can no longer live in the man- ner to which she has become accustomed, and unless she is a strong character, or is willing to seek employ- ment, both for its income and for the occupation itself, she will have difficulty in adjusting herself to the new condition. She seeks companionship and diversion, finding both in the public house or saloon, which is a social institution and which prevalent ideas permit her to frequent without a compromise. Naturally, the friends she makes at the public house do not strengthen her moral determinations, and the liquor she drinks causes her to lose her sense of restraint. And from this environment she drifts to the streets through a gradual evolution, and in accordance with the funda- mental cravings of her nature. This is the history of thousands of women whose husbands serve with the armies in the field. Of the seriousness of this situation there can be no doubt. Hundreds of soldiers have returned on leave to their homes to find their wives gone, depraved, diseased, or the mothers of illegitimate children. The law courts, temperance societies, and all social agencies have been forced to take cognizance of the deplorable situation. Case after case has been brought to public notice until the list runs into the thousands. A corporal, who was declared by his officer to be the best type of soldier, came home from the Somme to spend Christmas with his family, and when he found the public house had caused the ruin of his wife he committed murder ; and in pro- IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 21 nouncing sentence the judge declared from the bench that "such a man, with such a character, ought not to be with criminals." "You should make trenches be- tween our homes and the public house," exclaimed a young soldier to a Member of Parliament who had urged his enlistment under promise that his family would be cared for. Another man, returning from the trenches, found that his wife had committed suicide, preferring death to facing her husband after her shame, leaving three children, including one just born, to break to their father the news of their mother's infidelity. Such happenings are so common that they are now scarcely exceptional; the tragic tales are told daily in the press and before the courts. So common, indeed, have they become that the British courts, for the first time in history, have recognized what in America is called "the unwritten law." It must not, however, be supposed that the wrong is confined exclusively to the women left at home, for the men have done their share in bringing about the condi- tion. I was told on good authority, by one who pro- fessed to know and who had every opportunity of know- ing, that there had been more than ten thousand proven cases of bigamy among the overseas troops of the Brit- ish Empire, and that the government was endeavoring to solve the difficult problem thus presented. I was one day approached by an officer in great distress of mind, because, having been summoned to testify regarding the suicide of a. brother officer, he faced the necessity of perjuring himself or bearing a witness which would dis- 22 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR grace the memory and family of his friend. The truth was that the man had married a second wife in France and, ahout to he discharged from the army, committed, suicide to avoid the revelations which would inevitably follow his return to civil life. I have personal knowl- edge, also, of a case in which an officer attempted to marry a French girl; the girl, however, took the pre- caution of writing the mayor of the man's home town, and she received the intelligence that her suitor had a wife and children back at home. On another occasion I talked with a young woman who had been placed in a difficult situation. Her hus- band was an officer, the son of a wealthy English fam- ily, and when he returned from the front on leave he spent all of his time with another woman and openly refused to have further relations with his young wife. The result was that his family promised her a liberal allowance if she would go to London with one of the children and give the other to the mother-in-law. With- in a few months she was notified that the allowance would be reduced to a point which made it almost im- possible for her to live, and her protest brought infor- mation from a solicitor that the family were under no obligations to her, that her husband had nothing in his own right, and that she must either accept the reduc- tion or get nothing. It was evident that this action was preliminary to cutting her off entirely, and one could but be apprehensive of the result when such action should finally be taken. I know another case personally, sadder than either of IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 23 these mentioned. The husband was in a venereal hos- pital, from which he went to his home regularly on visits. Because his wife refused to receive him inti- mately on account of his condition he placed the small child in a boarding school and withdrew all support from his wife, leaving her in London with nothing save the government allowance of one pound per week. In this case the man had long been carrying on improper relations with his wife's younger sister. The condition of which these cases are symptomatic seems to ramify through all classes of society. I have seen American officers and welfare workers with a large number of visiting cards bearing the names of women respectable in society, judging from their addresses, which had been given to them on trains, in the streets, and in motor busses, always with the suggestion of fur- ther acquaintanceship. I talked with the wife of a ma- jor in the British army, expressing my surprise at such a condition, and she said, in effect, "We are under such a strain that we have simply agreed to set aside our old conceptions. My own friends are doing things openly which would have caused their disgrace before the war. While the war continues we are seeing nothing and thinking nothing." In England the condition was brought prominently to the fore during the trial of Mr. Pemberton Billing, Member of Parliament, for libel, a trial which was a national scandal. Mr. Billing alleged that people of high estate were guilty of the most unspeakable ex- cesses, even mentioning in court the name of a former 24 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Prime Minister. It was declared that the Germans possessed a Black Book containing the names of 47,000 prominent English people thus guilty, and that this in- formation was used by the enemy not only to further the demoralization of the social life of England but also to prevent activity on* the part of the people thus known. Over and over again Mr. Billing was de- nounced by the judge who was trying the case, and he in turn gave and offered testimony* showing that the judge's own name was in the Black Book. At the con- clusion of the disgraceful trial the jury quickly acquit- ted the defendant, thus proving that they believed the story of the Book, to the great joy of the hangers-on. As an aftermath of this trial the journal John Bull, a very popular and influential weekly which possesses, however, little to commend it to the conservative or con- structive forces of the Empire, made these remarks: "For years past there have been persistent and never to be stifled whispers and rumors of the prevalence of these sexual vices — on the part of both sexes — amongst all the higher ranks of society. Artists, authors, poli- ticians, musicians, actors, actresses, the clergy — all have contributed their quota to the volume of evil report. Go into any West End club, into any theatrical group, into any artistic coterie, or any political social gathering — where men and women are free to speak — and you hear the same names repeated. Go to any week-end party at a country house, and you find the same scientific selec- tion and grouping of guests. Before the war the Thing was bad enough — to-day it is infinitely worse. So far IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 25 as women are concerned, the absence of their men at the front has undoubtedly aggravated the evil. On the other hand the nervous strain of the war and the idiotic talk about modern culture and all the rest of it, have had their effect upon the neurotic and erotic tempera- ments of men blase with the ordinary attractions of life — with the result that to-day sexual perversity is more rife than ever it has been before. It is no part of my intention recklessly to pillory the principal de- votees of these devilish arts — but I solemnly warn them that unless they take the hint given by recent events and disown and discard their abnormal practices, no consideration of either fear or convention will restrain me from publishing a Black Book of my own. I do not say it will contain forty-seven thousand names, but there are certainly forty-seven — known to every man and woman about town — the publication of which would shake the foundations of society. They include those of peers and their sons and daughters, of politicians and their wives, of actors and actresses, of authors and ar- tists, of clerics and ministers — 'established' and non- conformist — all famous in their respective spheres, and all at present protected by that weird free-masonry which is the gospel and moral of sexual perversity." That a vast deal of the immorality prevalent in Eng- land and France comes from Germany is the belief of thousands of those who are well versed in the methods of the enemy. "Le Vice Allemand," it is called. That such evil was prevalent in Germany to a horrid extent even before the war is well known, and since the out- 26 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR break of hostilities the world has heard the most atro- cious rumors of what was happening in the social life of the enemy country — of how women were used like beasts for the propagation of the race, of how it became the acme of patriotic achievement for even girls "to present a future soldier to the emperor," of how men were instructed in regard to their social duty when sent away from the front on leave or discharged on account of wounds. The record of the Boche in Belgium and northern France and Poland bears witness to the fact that his militarism had bred viciousness in its worst form and corrupted an entire people. And there seems little cause to doubt that the wave of immorality in al- lied countries is at least aided and abetted by enemy spies. Thousands of the refugees are declared to be no refugees in the proper sense of the word, but common prostitutes sent by the enemy from Alsace, Lorraine, everywhere, to spread destruction in the social order and worm secrets from the people of allied lands. The fact that such a belief had been gaining adher- ents explains something of the anger of the people at the revelations made in the case of Pemberton Billing. Some of those whose names were mentioned had con- ducted affairs of state in a manner very displeasing to the people who were anxious "to get on with the war" ; they had refused to undertake a policy of reprisals in the matter of air raids, to intern all enemy aliens, to make cotton contraband, to stop the flow of German reservists from America to Germany, to adopt a more positive military policy than that of "wait and see." IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 2Tt There was, therefore, a storm of indignation when it was openly declared that some of those thus lax figured in the notorious Black Book. Could it be that the en- emy was blackmailing influential men into inactivity by virtue of a loathsome knowledge possessed about them? "How can it be wondered," asks John Bull, "that ordinary citizens — what the superior folk call the 'common people' — believe that German influence has been at work ? One mistake — two mistakes — of policy ; one blunder — ten blunders — favoring Germany, might be put down to ignorance. No government is fool-proof, but deliberate acts, defended often with venom, justified with heat, the critics either derided or denounced — which have all helped the enemy and crippled us in the war — need some other explanation than stupidity — and God knows we have seen enough of that since August, 1914! The crowds that seethed about the Old Bailey the other day believed that one secret of much of this cruel incompetence and wicked weakness and inaction which until recently clogged the wheels of war is to be found in that Black Book, and the jury — despite every rule of law — accepted fully the story told them. "If the Hun was content to wallow in his own filth, to sink in the bog of his own bestiality, we might de- plore the decadence of a race never noted for moral strength and cleanliness. But there is a greater danger, and it is one against which this country must fight with all its might — the danger of contamination from crea- tures like Bertha Trost — the woman of unspeakable practices, who was kicked out of this country after war 28 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR had run some months its course, and who used her house not only to corrupt some of the best manhood of England, but to play the spy for Germany. There is enough evidence to convict our foul enemy of deliber- ately using men and women for the fell purpose of de- moralizing those who might from their position fall an easy prey to the careful inquisitiveness of those agents of the Hun. !Not only in the west end of London have these degenerate harpies designed their lairs, but in the big seaports of the country depraved women have been used by the Kaiser and his tools to worm the se- crets out of men and make them play traitor to their King and country. If ever there was a nation of des- picable creatures who subscribe to the gospel that 'the end justifies the means,' Germany is that nation. With- out common decency, ignorant of the meaning of honor, corrupt and corrupting, these skunks of Europe have played their loathsome game to the end that the purity of civilized communities might be defiled and honest men turned into miserable moral lepers. If the true story of the plots and schemes leading up to, and continuing during, the war is ever told, it will be found that decent men — yes, and women, too — have been art- fully enmeshed in the toils of lasciviousness, shackled in chains of unnatural vice, and held in bondage by the terror of their own evil doings." The realization that the enemy could thus intrigue to destroy even personal purity among the civilian popula- tion was responsible for a new outburst of hatred. "They have turned unnatural vice into a religion; they IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 29 have their ritual for wrong doing and their orders of service for the most debased and bestial of practices. Among all decent men — in any society where chastity is given honorable recognition, where the purity of young manhood and the virtue of women is counted a priceless possession — the things which are spoken of in Germany with devilish arrogance and inhuman pride are only recognized in asylums for the insane, in re- treats for the mentally debased. Would it be believed that in the land of the Hun they would alter the very laws which bring to punishment those who debase phys- ical purity, and one of their most famous, or infamous, authors pleads for toleration of the most unspeakable crimes against naturehood, and contemplates the time when his false and perverted view shall have 'permeated the wide circles of the population' and when 'the old con- sciousness of right will be replaced by the new one, which will demand the repeal of a criminal law by which a natural phenomenon is regarded as a vice and is treated as infamous'? How can any decent man boast of finding a 'spiritual home' in this land of male perverts and female decadents? The time will come when the morally weak, and those whose patriotism is thin and anemic, will ask the manhood of Great Brit- ain to make friends with the nation of moral lepers. In God's name, let us keep our heads — aye, and en- deavor by every means in our power to keep free from the contaminating touch of the Hun." Thus far has social looseness gone in England; thus far has it been recognized by a saddened people. Not SO SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR only is London thus affected, but the blight has spread to most of the cities and towns of the United Kingdom — Liverpool is the worst of all. And the same condi- tions obtain in the other nations; in the degree of bad- ness I would arrange them thus: England, France, Italy, Scotland, Ireland. The nations have realized the necessity of some corrective measures but have been powerless to devise them. A proposition was made to place the wives of soldiers under control, but it was dropped because of the reflection which such an act would inevitably cast upon the families of the men giv- ing their lives for the country. There is another phase to the subject in connection with the causes for the carnival of crime ; it is found in the lack of restraint on the part of the womanhood of the lands towards the soldiers. At its heart this is founded upon a noble sentiment and has been encour- aged in many ways. Europe loves her soldiers. She will make any sacrifice for their comfort. The women have vied with one another in their efforts to entertain them and contribute to their well being. The best homes are opened to them and they are wined and dined con- tinuously. Each woman and girl seems to consider her- self a committee of one to do something for a soldier. Thus the restraint which in ordinary times hedges the freedom of association between the women and the men has been thrown aside. And beyond question this has contributed something to the ruin of the girls and the seriousness of the social evil. Now if this is the actual state of affairs in the bel- IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 31 ligerent countries, we might expect that superhuman ef- forts would be put forth to stem the tide of immorality and save the people. Yet the exact reverse is true. So far as the ordinary person is able to discover, there is absolutely no action being taken to control the evil. The laws, of course, stand on the statute books and we oc- casionally read of a conviction, but all this means noth- ing but a small fine, perhaps a brief imprisonment, notoriety through the public press, and then the victim is sent out worse than ever, hardened, resentful, and with the door of reformation effectually closed against her. The difficulties in such a situation are well known and are the same in all countries: the difficulty of se- curing evidence, the lack of any adequate corrective agencies, the general attitude which prevents reforma- tion, and the inability to grapple with the evil at its base by reaching the ultimate cause of it. To speak of the problem which such a reign of im- morality is preparing for the future is to raise at once the entire range of social questions. There is no form of crime which ramifies so thoroughly through the struc- ture of a people's life as the social evil, and the present carnival of misbehavior, which I am constrained to be- lieve rivals any similar situation which has ever faced the world in its history, is piling up for us trouble of a most serious kind. In the first place, we shall have to consider anew the question of illegitimacy, and this will involve a complete change of attitude toward unfortu- nate children if it is to be answered in a way that will preserve the best interests of the social order. It will 32 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR require more than a mere official edict or legal enact- ment ordering the legitimatizing of all children born out of wedlock; this, indeed, is a foolish proceeding, since it secures to the children nothing which they would not obtain without it except in unusual cases. The remedy must go deeper ; it must secure to such children all the benefits of opportunity and respect, and this cannot be done until the attitude of society, which denies them these things, is changed. And this is the most difficult of all tasks, as well as the most dangerous. Deep seated prejudices, moral conceptions with centuries of time behind them, ideas of respectability which are the out- growth of the social experience of all ages, the instinc- tive sentiments of the heart to which violations of con- jugal confidence are repulsive — no law or edict can change these things. And what if they are changed? In that case we face the danger of plunging the world into a very hell of crime by overthrowing all of its moral ideas. Surely the best interests of civilization will not be served by the cultivation of a spirit which ex- cuses illegitimacy and looks with toleration upon the violation of the seventh commandment ! For such a re- laxation could not be a temporary expedient ; our ideas are too fundamental to be changed and adjusted at will. In either case the social problem remains serious. Another aspect of this social problem will concern the preponderance in the number of the women over the men. This is a favorite subject of speculation, and the superficial suggestions for its adjustment range all the way from "equal rights for women," through polygamy, IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 33 to the complete abolition of the institution of marriage. But it is not nearly so serious as it has been pictured. Its economic aspects are, indeed, practically negligible. In this war the women have shown once for all that they are abundantly able and willing to take care of them- selves, so that their dependence upon the opposite sex for support is a thing of the past. In the matter of morality and the welfare of the home as an institution, however, the influence of the disparity of one sex will be felt. It will not be a good thing, either for the women or for the world, to throw the women into industry by the side of men, giving them the same wages and oifer- ing them all inducements to become cogs in the ma- chine of industry. That thousands of them are forced to turn their activities into this channel is quite true, and in such cases simple justice demands that they be not discriminated against. But the well-worn argu- ment that "woman's place is in the home," however much it may be ridiculed by the radicals, is after all founded upon the most fundamental conception of our social life. Whatever adjustments we may be forced to make out of necessity, the fact will remain that the ideal life for the woman is in the home ; from this stand- point we will digress at our peril. Now the prepon- derance of women over the men will necessarily force us to make a wide digression from this ideal. Many thousands seem to be barred from the home life to which they are attracted by instinct and by training. But an industrial occupation cannot change human na- ture nor eradicate the deepest instincts of the life, while 34 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR the association and competition with men on a common basis will neither give the men a deeper respect for the women nor strengthen their moral conscience. Hence it seems certain that immorality will resnlt from the new situation. The world is also threatened with having its confi- dence in and respect for the women undermined. It is already apparent that the men of Europe have really less respect for their women than they had before the be- ginning of hostilities. They are very proud of the won- derful things the women have done, and of this they may well be proud, but these achievements have not deepened their respect — perhaps it would be better to say that they have given them a different kind of respect. But whether the difference be in kind or degree, it seems plain that the women do not occupy such an exalted place in the moral estimate of the men as they once held. This has been caused, or accompanied, by a de- cline in the tone of the women. Their familiar asso- ciation with the men, the profligate use of cigarettes, which the war has so heightened that it seems well-nigh universal, the masculinity which comes from doing the work of men, the increasing carelessness in the mat- ter of personal appearance — these are the things about which the men are complaining. Then in connection with this there is the awful deluge of vice which has degraded so many thousands and resulted in so much disease. This situation has undoubtedly caused people to lose confidence in each other. There is a confusion of mind which partakes of doubt and suspicion. Men IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 35 do not know whether to trust the women, and women do not know whether to trust the men. And so this subtle attitude, which really fastens suspicion upon every- body, is another element in the social problem of the fu- ture. It will prevent reformation, cause more immo- rality, hinder marriage, and threaten the free and righteous relations of the people. It will be seen at once that all of these phases of the situation drive straight at the home. And this is the most serious element in it. To destroy or even to seri- ously injure the home is more dangerous than to have the immorality, the disease, and the illegitimacy amongst us ; and when we have the immorality, the dis- ease, and the illegitimacy present with us and combined in an attack upon the hpme, then the situation is peril- ous in the extreme. And that is exactly the case at the present time. The most discerning minds among us have known for many years that we were drifting into a state of being which was gradually assailing the home. The drift of population to the cities, the laxity of our laws concerning divorce, the forcing of our women into industry, their oppression by the capitalists, the modern feminist movement with its "votes for women" slogan — each of these things has struck a blow at the home. Then came that immoral phase of socialism which openly ad- vocated the theory of the home's dissolution and urged the repeal of our notions concerning marriage. These things caused many people to be exceedingly anxious. If matters continued for a few more years in the same channel, and at the same rate of progress, soon there 36 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR would be no home; and since no substitute bad been provided and nothing bad been done to meet a situa- tion that was threatening to dethrone all our morality and place the world in a condition which moral senti- ment had always regarded as the extreme of corruption, there was ample cause for alarm. And now on top of all that there comes this war and brings with it a social problem at least as serious as any the world has ever faced before, a problem having all the various phases we have mentioned, with each phase leveling its attack at what was left of the home. If there lives a man whose highest hope for the future welfare of the world lies in the moral stability of the home, he must now be weep- ing his heart out over the danger which threatens this ancient and holy institution. And it will behoove him to bestir himself for a solution which will avert such danger. One naturally turns to the Church for something of promise in such a crisis, and in this he follows a right instinct ; for the Church is the only purely moral insti- tution on earth, and it stands for nothing save the pres- ervation of moral values ; the home has always been its hobby, and rightly so. Therefore if the Church is not prepared to offer help in such a situation as that which prevails in Europe at the present time, we would be at a loss to know where to turn. But when one asks the European Church of the present day for light in this moral crisis, he meets the disappointment of his life. For the Church has no light; she is not seeking any light ; she seems blissfully ignorant of the fact that any IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 37 light is needed. If she has any, it is snugly hid under the bushel of a smug self-satisfaction and the hollowest sort of a simulated patriotism which is in itself a sham. Surely these are the saddest days that the modern Church ever fell upon. She preaches enlistment and sets her holy sanction on the crudest war of history. She stirs up the passions of the people to fight and hates her own members who urge conscientious objections to bear- ing arms. Her pulpits ring with bitter denunciations of sin, but it is always German sin. She pictures the coming of a golden era, but according to the will of God, that era must be achieved by blood and battle. On these things the Church is a unit, and if there is a dis- senter his voice is too puny to be heard. For once at least, the European Church has found something upon which it can unite. And all the while vice of the most repulsive sort flaunts itself before the very doors of the Church, cor- rupting the morals of the people, perverting all the righteous conceptions which hold together the social fabric, and nullifying both the message and activity of the Church. It is so flagrant that its presence cannot be unnoticed, even by the most innocent. The Sunday School children and the clergymen are brought into contact with it if they walk the streets or possess any knowledge of current events. And yet the Church says little and does less. The clergy seem to think that it would be treason to the state to suggest that England is corrupt ; to let it be known that England is rotten to the core and does not care, would be giving aid and com- y 38 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR fort to the enemy. And so patriotism of the sort which consists wholly in hating the national enemy, rather than in seeking the purification of the motherland, holds sway. The Church still "practices respectability and calls it holiness," and she keeps herself respectable by turning her face away from horrid immoralities. It is like the ostrich escaping danger by hiding his head in the sand. At the beginning of the war, so it is said, Mr. H. G. Wells spent his time in the yard of a village Church, overwhelmed by the calamity which had overtaken the world, and lost in thought. He reflected that one of these Churches stood in each hamlet and settlement of the civilized world, and that no living person in these lands was beyond its influence. He knew that the Church stood upon the platform of Christ, urging love and goodness as against hate and violence, and that upon this platform it had come to be the most respected, the richest, and the most influential of all human forces. Then the question came upon him with crushing vio- lence : Why has there not gone out from this institution an influence which would make this war impossible? And because he could not answer this question Mr. Wells, converted by the war into a man keenly alive to the spiritual realities of the universe, became confused in his thinking, and has conjured up a kind of religion which even he does not understand and which offers nothing to the world. And when we contemplate the situation of the world in regard to the problem of vice, we are forced into the IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 39 same position in which Mr. Wells found himself. Why is it that the Church, with all its influence, power, mo- rality, and respectability, has done nothing whatever in checking this evil? It is a strange thing to contem- plate, that after the Church has been operating twenty centuries this form of wickedness is just as wide-spread and flagrant as it has ever been. It has been more re- pulsive, perhaps, but I doubt if there ever has been a moment in history when it was more common than at the present moment. Can it be that our ideas are wrong? Are we disapproving of a thing which is such a funda- mental element of human nature that it cannot be eradicated, and must we admit our mistake and reform our morality so as to leave room for indiscriminate licentiousness? There are those who so think, and it seems that we must either adopt this attitude, or else be- stir ourselves to the application of our morality with greater care to the solution of this age-long problem. We will not easily believe that our ideas are wrong, but we must confess that we have hopelessly failed in applying Christianity to the problem before us. And Christianity has failed here for the same reason that it has failed in other departments of life — simply because it has never been tried. Let us frankly admit that the Church has never tried to solve the question of social vice; she has not created any paraphernalia, she has not educated her people, she has not even preached upon the subject. In her way, there have been and still are mighty obstacles which she has not been able to sur- mount. And yet most of these obstacles are of her own 40 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR making and the task of unmaking them will be as diffi- cult as the surmounting. But it must be done. Here is one of the clearest challenges which the Church hears, and in responding she will come to one of the most diffi- cult tasks she ever attempted. She must bestir herself, and she must do it immediately ; else the tidal wave of immorality which the war has set in motion will en- gulf us. One of the greatest difficulties between the Church and her task has been her inability to obtain access to the people she would help. It is quite true that the Church has made little attempt in this direction, but her reticence has been caused largely by the knowledge that a deep gulf, almost impassable, stretches between her and the denizens of the underworld. How could this be bridged? Street preaching, home missionaries, rescue schemes, have all failed, and even now we know no way by which a minister or any other religious worker can get in personal touch with depraved women in such a manner as to impress them with the sense of their sin. And this situation has been rendered more difficult by the type of persons who have takeri upon themselves the task of such work. Usually they have been men or women of limited intellectual ability and with absolute- ly no grasp upon the details of their work; they have gone into the slums with a sentimental evangelistic mes- sage and have endeavored to convert the wayward out of hand. But they have had no conception of the social problem involved, and have been completely baffled at the first question, "Then what shall become of us ?" If IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 41 the underworld is to be evangelized, men and women of the very highest attainments, intellectually and spirit- ually, must take the task in hand. And at the outset, the Church must find some answer to return to the question, "Then what shall become of us?" The saddest fact in connection with the whole problem is that the sinful are practically barred from reforming and taking their places in a respectable so- ciety. This is the point to which immediate attention must be paid. We have no homes, no schools, and no other agencies to which these people can be taken and where they can be rehabilitated. And the situation would be bettered but little even if we had such agen- cies. To be known as the inmate of such an institution is as bad as to be known as a courtesan, and it is a true instinct which prompts most women to avoid them. What is needed is a different attitude on the part of society toward the unfortunate. Let us realize at once that the trouble is not all on the side of the sinner. They will reform in large numbers the moment we make up our minds to let them reform. The present attitude of society is the thing that keeps them in the immoral life, for it denies them employment, opportunity and respectability. How, then, can they reform ? Let us imagine what would happen in the average Church if a woman known to be a prostitute should prostrate herself at the altar and confess her sins, seek- ing and obtaining salvation in the way taught by the Church. Then what ? Could she take her place in the pew as a member of the Church on a level with the other 42 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Christians, say, on the level of the man who was re- sponsible for her ruin ? We all know she could not. If the pastor introduced her to his ladies' society she would he either spurned or treated with such reserve that life would he made unbearable. Not a woman in the con- gregation would give her employment in the home or as- sociate with her upon terms of equality. No man would care to seek her company, unless indeed he were seeking to drag her down again. Such a woman would have ab- solutely no hope because the Christian people in the Church would allow her none. And at the same time the man who had been responsible for her defection might associate with the best people of the community at his pleasure. The only chance for a reforming sinner, if she be a woman, is to live a life of deception, to hide her past from all the world; and this means to live in constant dread and haunted by a sense of her own hypoc- risy. In this state there can be no true religion and no reformation. But the fault is not upon the sinner ; it rests at the door of the respectable people, those who profess to be followers of the Christ who said, "Neither do I condemn thee ; go and sin no more." The plea is made that such an attitude is necessary for the protection of society. We all know how care- fully a mother should guard her daughter and shield her from persons and influences that might cause her ruin. But is it really true that we prevent immorality by making one false step fatal ? We have notified our girls severely enough that if they go wrong they are doomed forever, but the notification has not checked the sin. It IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 43 has only kept the. girls in it after they enter. If this at- titude is right, in Heaven's name, let it be applied im- partially to men and women alike. At a state legislature before which a bill for the establishment of a segregated vice district was pending there appeared a woman who caused the introduction of a similar bill applying to all men frequenting the district ; the men were to be segre- gated and subjected to all the restrictions which the bill ordered for the women. This was enough to prevent the enactment of the law. Yet there was no reason why one would not be as just and as safe as the other. It is a risky thing to advise the lowering of the stern attitude against fallen women, but since this attitude is the only thing that prevents reformation such advice must be given. This is not to say that the social evil must be regarded lightly. But it is to say that persons who have committed this sin have the same right of pardon as other sinners, and we have no moral justifica- tion for erecting a barrier against them. When thieves, murderers, and highwaymen are. allowed to repent and be respectable, we have no right to deny the privilege to the women who fall. They should be forced to prove their repentance by their works to be sure, but we must open the way for them to regain the place in society which they forfeited when they sinned. If we do not do this, then let us no longer claim to be the representa- tives of Christ on earth. For if the example of Christ teaches us anything, it surely is that women taken in sin have His utmost respect and sympathy and kindness. But how shall we protect our homes? There is but 44 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR one way, and this is educational. The lack of proper training in home, and school, and Church on this sub- ject is a national disgrace to us, I have never heard a sermon on the subject. I have never known it to he mentioned to any children in the home. I know of no school that takes notice of it in the curriculum. We are leaving our young people to their own devices, letting them grow up in ignorance and gain all their informa- tion from the most vicious sources. And when we have thus dealt with them, we place the eternal brand of shame on their brows at the first false step. Then we wrap our sanctimonious cloak of respectability about ourselves and easa our consciences, as Pilate washed from his hands the. blood of Christ. And yet at our own door crouches the. sin. On our own shoulders rests the responsibility. At our own hands shall the blood of a thousand erring girls be required. Let the Church give some of the thcfught which she now expends upon foolish intricacies of theology to this practical and urgent problem of sin and salvation. Let her put some of her wealth into agencies which will in- sure kindness and helpfulness to the fallen. Her ora- tory ought to be brought to bear upon the text: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." Eevelation should claim less attention and Hosea more. Make it known that there is a gospel for those who fall, and that sympathy and comfort in the truest sense await such at the house of God. Let people who call themselves Christian display the spirit of Christ to those who are in truth their sisters. By laws and state regulation we IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 45 should protect our girls and exterminate the breed of men who speculate in their blood, either openly or through the medium of factories and department stores. Then give us, through home, school, and Church, the most comprehensive and far-reaching educational move- ment we have ever seen, so thorough that no child who reaches the age of understanding can escape its influ- ence. When we have, done all this, we will be in a fair way to grapple seriously with the social evil. CHAPTER II WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? Since all the statesmen, diplomats, and publicists of Europe have failed to arrive at a solution of the Irish question, and since Irishmen themselves are hopelessly divided on a matter with which they are perfectly fa- miliar and in which they are vitally concerned, it ap- pears presumptuous for a casual observer, and he a foreigner, to venture any word upon it. But even sur- face impressions have a certain value, especially if they are arrived at without any previous bias. An American is perhaps the only person, from that standpoint, who is qualified to speak, for strict impartiality in regard to Ireland scarcely exists anywhere in Europe. Men are either pro-Irish or anti-Irish, so much so that one must read with care any of the innumerable books and pam- phlets which are issued in regard to the problem. I sup- pose that more passion, prejudice, enmity, and misrep- resentation have come about in this connection than has been true of any problem which ever vexed the public affairs of the world. One of the surprising things in the war is the loyalty with which the colonies have risen to the defense of the British Empire. The self-governing dominions adopted 46 WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 47 conscription, if they needed it, in order to furnish a full quota of troops, and we have seen that Britain possessed a solidarity hitherto undreamed of. The southern prov- inces of Ireland have heen the only outstanding excep- tion to this rule; and the fact that opposition also de- veloped in the Catholic sections of Canada and Austra- lia serves only to make more prominent and regrettable the defection of these Irish. For this has emphasized the religious difficulty which rests at the base of the Irish question, and the result has heen to widen the breach already existing between the Protestant and Catholic elements in the population and to lay the Catho- lics open to the charges of treason and disloyalty. As an American sincerely attached to the principle that governments derive their just powers from the con- sent of the governed, as a democrat believing that the will of the majority should rule, and as a Protestant without prejudice against Eome or sympathy with anti- Catholic propaganda, I visited the various sections of Ireland for the purpose of obtaining first-hand informa- tion and personal impressions. And I came away with the opinion that the attitude of southern Irishmen at the present time is altogether impossible, deplorable, and unworthy. Their program, if carried into execution, will mean anarchy in the Emerald Isle, it will threaten the stability of the British Empire and all that is thus represented, it will mean a harking back for many generations in that section of the world, and it will ul- timately mean the ruination of Ireland. Sinn Eeinism controls the south, and has been able 48 SOCIAL STUDIES OF L THE WAR to unseat the Nationalists in Parliament ; in their stead radicals have been elected who refused to take their seats, and even boasted in the campaigns that if elected they would ignore the Commons. The result is that the places at Westminster have been vacated, no one is at hand to care for Irish interests, and we have the spec- tacle of the south standing apart and raving over prob- lems which they refuse to assist in settling. But this is to the liking of Sinn Fein, and the great majority of the southern people honestly believe that by such a proc- ess they are destined to obtain the independence they crave. The most outstanding feature of the present situation is the ardency with which these people defend their posi- tion and the eagerness with which they seek to obtain support from Americans. The time-worn arguments against England, all of them arranged without any his- torical sense whatever, have been mastered by men and women of all classes, and the American passing through the island is besieged constantly by enthusiastic apolo- gists. On trains, in hotels, on the streets, in jaunting carts, he is beleaguered, the people encompassing the earth to make one proselyte to their cause. Members of Parliament and other dignitaries are everywhere met with, and their cordiality is always the precursor of the eternal question, "What do you think of England's treatment of Ireland V 9 The cart driver cannot take one three blocks until he inquires, "Why should we fight for England V 9 Loungers in hotel lobbies seek out the trav- eler to demand, "What does America think of the Irish rf%s Ggfg Ms- IRELAND &? CONSCRIPTION Unanimous !>ki.\k \ i ion of thi- Mansion Housf Conference T PROCLAMATIONS OF THE MANSION HOUSE CONFERENCE AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH URGING THE IRISH TO RESIST CONSCRIPTION WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 49 question V 9 Shop-keepers greet the American genially, and at once lead up to the query, "If Mr. Wilson believes in self-determination for small nationalities, will he not right our wrongs V 9 And so from one end of the country to another the poor wayfarer is sought, courted, cajoled, flattered, and fed on a diet of ancient argument which he has heard from his youth up. And a great propa- ganda machine is maintained to convince America that the Irish are friendly to the States, As to whether they really are friendly to us, one can only judge by events. The city of Cork has been placed "out of bounds" to American sailors because of the riots and brawls, resulting in actual bloodshed, which their presence in the city caused. Even at Queenstown I was informed that Americans riding bicycles along the roads had been stoned until they were forced to discontinue the exercise. "When I arrived at Cork I was met by a Y. M. C. A. secretary in civilian clothing who explained that he had discarded his uniform to avoid trouble ; in London I was even advised to lay aside my uniform be- fore venturing into Ireland. On one occasion several men in khaki, with U. S. on their collars, deemed it the part of wisdom to remain in the hotel during the even- ing and were subjected to taunts through the windows from the young Irishmen on the streets* A religious director of the Young Men's Christian Association told me that he had been attacked on the street, and soon his story was verified in my own experience. I reached Cork one evening when the atmosphere was surcharged with the spirit of rebellion. A great Sinn 50 SOCIAL STUDIES OF [THE WAR Fein street meeting had been scheduled as a demonstra- tion against England, a large speakers' platform had been erected in the Grand Parade, and the young Irish- men had nocked in from the surrounding country to par- ticipate in the anti-English seance. The meeting had, however, been dissolved by order of the commander of the British garrison, the streets were guarded by con- stables with carbines, and the soldiers were patrolling with fixed bayonets; everywhere were groups of Sinn Eeiners, sullen, angry, muttering under their breath. As I passed as quietly as possible down the street I could hear remarks issuing from the various knots of young- sters: "There is a damned Yankee," "damned Ameri- can," and the like. Suddenly a man emerged from a group, lifted a small cane, and struck me violently across the face, while his action was greeted by roars and shouts of laughter from his compatriots. These actions indicate that the love of Sinn Fein for our country is not so wholehearted as it might be, and yet it would be an injustice to say that they are repre- sentative of the general sentiment prevailing among the more stable citizenship. At heart these people under- stand that they have no friends among the Allies except America, and for the most part they are anxious to cul- tivate this friendship for ulterior reasons; but their hatred of England is so deep, their desire to see her hu- miliated so intense, that among the young Irishmen, who constitute the strength of Sinn Fein, it often expresses itself in hostility towards all those who are assisting in WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 51 saving England from the defeat which is so cordially wished her. That this element is pro-German and traitorous to the cause for which we contended there can be little doubt. The British Government has apprehended them in many plots with the enemy, and it is a matter of common con- versation on the streets of Irish towns that the German submarines are making regular attempts to land ammu- nition and machine guns on Irish soil. Although I have tried repeatedly, I was never once able to induce a Sinn Feiner, or any other southerner, for that matter, to speak one word in condemnation of Germany. When in the midst of vehement strictures against England I have injected the question, " Would you prefer the dom- ination of Germany V 9 the result has been a quiet and hesitating "]5To," or a total silence; in either case the speaker refused to discuss the matter. Certain of them, however, have gone so far as to declare that "German rule could be no worse than English at any rate." This attitude of mind prevailing everywhere in the south, while it can hardly be explained, creates a dis- tinct atmosphere of hostility which can be felt most un- comfortably by the pro-ally traveler. It is constantly impressed upon him that there is something wrong with this country, that sedition and rebellion are in the very air, that respect for law and order has reached a low ebb. It is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that Sinn Eein is bending heaven and earth to arm it- self, in spite of the law against drilling and keeping arms. Burglary always follows a report that a citizen 52 SOCIAL STUDIES OF [THE WAR has a rifle or pistol in his house, and from the British garrison on Bere Island, as well as from the American submarine base and kite balloon station at Castletown Bere, the signal rockets and lights can be seen issu- ing from the hills as Sinn Fein calls her devotees to- gether or flashes communications to enemy submarines. One day I was standing on the pier at Castletown Bere when a man wearing a green hat appeared ; the hangers- on greeted him warmly and he remarked, "Remember the: green, Friday night" ; whereupon his hearers all sa- luted respectfully and the man rode away on a bicycle. The incident was significant of the plans and the organi- zation of Sinn Fein in this remote section of Ireland. When the present war broke out there were, of course, a large number of Irishmen who desired heartily to see England decisively defeated and humbled, and they saw in such a possibility the "liberation" of their island. Germany believed that Ireland was ripe for a rebellion and her propaganda was set to work in an effort to hasten that event, an effort which bore abundant fruit in the Easter rebellion. This fiasco settled, and in a manner by no means as harsh as the Irish agitators would have us believe, England was in a position to control the turbulent people if she had been able to adopt a definite and firm Irish policy. But as a matter of fact England had no Irish policy, and has never had. By using pa- cific methods with a people who have always refused to be pacified, she permitted, and even encouraged, the for- mation of other plots and the general dissatisfaction of the population. The Irish constantly complain against WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 53 the cruelty of England and the oppression to which they are su ejected at the hands of that power, but most disinterested people who visit Ireland are almost amazed at the laxity of her administration of the Defense of the Eealm acts and at the insults and seditious encourage- ments which she tolerates. When we in easy-going and tolerant America were arresting men for remarking that the Eed Cross was a "fake," England was permit- ting Irish people and newspapers to call the flag a '"floor-mat," stage giant demonstrations against the Empire and the war, and talk openly in severe denun- ciation of the government of which they are a part, even to the limit of declaring in open parliament that a re- bellion would be advised if the leaders could persuade themselves that it would be successful. In the Grand Parade in Cork there stands a great monument bearing the names of "the martyr vanguard," mostly men who have been executed for treason, and an inscription urg- ing young Irishmen to follow their example ; and in the great Dublin cemetery one of the epitaphs reads thus: "I have been adjudged guilty of treason. Treason is a foul crime. Dante places traitors in the ninth circle of hell, I believe the lowest circle. But what kind of trai- tors are these ? Traitors against country, kindred, and benefactors. But England is not my country and I have betrayed no friend. I leave the matter there." I doubt if there is a land on earth where such open sedition would be tolerated as is carried on daily in Ireland. Great Britain believes that Ireland would be pacified somewhat if she were placed on the footing with other 54 SOCIAL STUDIES OF [THE WAR self-governing dominions, and thus the home rule and conscription bills were prepared. But the result was an explosion more violent than any that had occurred hitherto. Sinn Fein did not desire and would not have Home Rule, Ulster of course set her face against it, and conscription was opposed like the plague. All over the south the anger of the people waxed hot, and that section became a seething caldron of disaffection and sedition. The population resolved to resist unto the last limit, and they pledged themselves, men and women alike, to op- pose conscription by all the means at their disposal. Anti-conscription pledges were signed everywhere, hun- dreds of thousands affixing their signatures and display- ing the little white buttons on their lapels as a token of their resistance. There were meetings, committees, plots, and movements in every city, town, and village to crystallize sentiment and weld together the opposition. The observer could not escape the knowledge that south- ern Ireland would have nothing to do with the war or allow the people to be conscripted. The young men of military age swarmed the streets of the larger towns by multiplied thousands, showing by their very numbers what Ireland could do in the way of supplying man power to the armies if she only would. And now for the first time the Church came openly to the front and assumed the leadership of the anti-British crusade. The Church, as is well known, had always been behind the sentiment against the Empire, but hitherto her influence had been more or less veiled ; now it is open and avowed. The priests head the committees, issue the WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 55 propaganda literature, handle the funds of rebellion, make the political speeches, and influence the people to sign the anti-conscription pledges. These pledges are always signed in the Churches after special masses, and in each town there are great posters urging the people to attend the masses and sign the pledges. This is the text of the pledge and the inscription on the buttons: "Denying the right of the British Government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist Conscription by the most effective means at our disposal. 5 ' The women wear buttons which pledge them to refuse to take the place of any person conscripted and to assist the families of those who may suffer through resistance. The hierarchy made the following pronouncement, which was signed by Cardinal Logue and all the bishops and archbishops of Ireland: "The Bishops direct the clergy to celebrate a public Mass of intercession on next Sunday in every Church in Ireland to avert the scourge of conscription with which Ireland is now threatened. They further direct that an announcement be made at every public Mass on Sunday next of a public meeting to be held on that day at an hour and place to be speci- fied in the announcement, for the purpose of administer- ing the following pledge against compulsory conscription in Ireland: 'Denying the right of the British Govern- ment to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist con- scription by the most effective means at our disposal.' The clergy are also requested by the Bishops to announce 56 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR on Sunday next that a collection will be held at an early suitable date outside the Church gates for the purpose of supplying means to resist the imposition of compulsory military service. "An attempt is being made to force conscription upon Ireland against the will of the Irish nation and in de- fiance of the protests of its leaders. In view especially of the historic relations between the two countries from the very beginning up to the present moment, we con- sider that conscription forced in this way upon Ireland is an oppressive and inhuman law, which the Irish peo- ple have a right to resist by all the means that are con- sonant with the law of God. We wish to remind our people that there is a higher Power which controls the affairs of men. They have in their hands the means of conciliating that Power by strict adherence to the Divine law, by more earnest attention to their religious duties, and by fervent and persevering prayer. In order to secure the aid of the Holy Mother of God, who shielded our people in the days of their greatest trials, we have already sanctioned a National Novena in hon- or of Our Lady of Lourdes, commencing on the 3rd May, to secure general and domestic peace. We also exhort the heads of families to have the Rosary recited every evening with the intention of protecting the spir- itual and temporal welfare of our beloved country, and bringing us safely through this crisis of unparalleled gravity." This action on the part of the hierarchy followed the famous Mansion House Conference, attended by Irish WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 51 leaders and Members of Parliament and presided over by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. This Conference started the opposition to conscription by issuing the following state- ment : "Taking our stand on Ireland's separate and dis- tinct nationhood, and affirming the principle of liberty, that Governments of nations derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we deny the right of the British Government or any external authority to im- pose compulsory military service in Ireland against the clearly expressed will of the Irish people. The passing of the Conscription Bill by the British House of Com- mons must be regarded as a declaration of war on the Irish nation. The alternative to accepting it as such is to surrender our liberties and to acknowledge ourselves slaves. It is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities to self-determination, which even the Prime Minister of England — now preparing to employ naked militarism and force his Act upon Ireland — himself officially announced as an essential condition for peace at the Peace Conference. The attempt to enforce it will be an unwarrantable aggression, which we call upon all Irishmen to resist by the most effective means at their disposal." These pronouncements are sufficient indications of the light in which the Irish regard conscription and the lengths to which they are determined to go in preventing its operation. The Lord Mayor of Dublin applied for passports to visit America in order to lay his case be- fore the President, and he was assured that such pass- ports would be granted him ; he refused, however, to per- 58 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR mit the proper authorities to examine the documents he was carrying and on this account the journey was not made. I was frequently asked about the attitude of America, "Are you coming here to shoot us down also V 9 was a form which the query often took. And my reply always was the same : "I do not think America will have any part in the policing of Ireland. There has always existed in our country a great sympathy for the Irish cause, but I am quite sure the President and people will not look kindly upon any attempts or movements which are calculated to weaken England's efforts in the win- ning of the war." I was in Ireland during the spirited campaign in East Cavan between a nationalist candidate and Arthur Griffith, a Sinn Feiner who was at that time in Birming- ham prison on a charge of high treason. The Sinn Fein cause was being represented by various priests, and the result was a victory for Griffith, who gained strength by virtue of his prison experience, by a large majority. At this time excitement was running high. The proclama- tion of Lord French calling for 50,000 volunteers in lieu of conscription was referred to in the columns of "Young Ireland" as "the magnificent French farce," under a heading "Imperial Grand Theatre of Varieties." In re- gard to the call for the 50,000, the following is a char- acteristic editorial from the Sinn Fein press: "Like the Irish Times, we are certainly astonished at the very reasonable demand made by the Military Governor.and General Governor of Ireland. Fifty thou- sand ! Sure, boys, we would never miss that number of WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 59 fly-boys out of Ireland. Their fathers would still be here to contribute the 2,000 or 3,000 required monthly as from the first of October, 1918. We would, however, ad- vise Governor French not to expect too many of these fly-boys till about the day before the entries close, as they would not think of joining up in the middle of the season. They are getting nice and tanned at our seaside resorts, and, when caught, they will, we have no doubt, make good soldiers. Their papas, who only arrived over here recently, will be ready when their time comes. The younger fry are making themselves fit by constant exercise. As you will understand, hide and seek is a good fat-reducing medium, and, as most of them are continually 'on the run/ they will prove just the stuff you want, Jackie. The only request which they are likely to make is that they will be allowed to retain, when on more active service, their distinctive national costume — broad trousers and hipped coats. They are looking after the alteration of the facial and nasal de- partments themselves. When you get these 50,000 and the 5,000,000 American troops, you will have about 5,- 000,000 good fighting men. If that is not enough, we know where more can be got. We append first lists : — Irish Times Office : Editorial— 9 likely, 2 fit. Works — Many probables and fit. Offices— 9 likely, 2 fit. Reporters — 1 likely, 4 fit. Young Ireland Office : Editorial — None likely, all fit. 60 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Works — None likely, all fit. Offices — None likely, all fit. Reporters — None likely, all fit. (Exemption claimed owing to the fact that theirs is work of national importance). Nationality Offices: (Same remarks as Young Ireland.) Freeman s Journal Offices: Editorial— 6 likely. (On government work.) Banba — 1 likely. (Cannot be spared, although as a fly-boy he should go with the first 50,000.) Letter writers — 20 likely. Works— 20 likely. Offices— 20 likely. Reporters — 5 likely. (Grand total— 82 probables.)" Perhaps one or two other quotations from Sinn Fein journals, picked up at random, will be illuminating. One paper thus observes: "Discovering plots is seem- ingly becoming an international (All-lies only) pastime. In France it is known as 'Boloism/ in England it is, we believe, called the 'Black Book, or the 47,000/ and America calls it 'Treason/ and, although enthusiasm dropped in the 'land of the free' after Police Inspector Flynn was deposed, it is now revived with a vengeance. Mr. Jeremiah O'Leary and ^ve others have been in- dicted by the Federal Grand Jury on charges of Trea- WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 61 Everywhere the most strenuous means are adopted to make the opposition to conscription and England unani- mous. Eor example, when several leaders were arrested for treasonable communications and plots with the en- emy, Sinn Fein demanded that all Ireland denounce these arrests. The Clogheen Guardians declined to pass the required resolution, and at once a convention was held at Burntcour, which forced two of the Guardians to resign and unanimously called on the others to do likewise. When Sinn Eein was declared to be a danger- ous organization the Armagh Asylum Committee dis- missed a store-keeper who was head of the local cumann, and the action was brought before every Sinn Fein club in the country, the members "being resolved to carry on the movement, as per instructions from the Executive in Dublin, regardless of any interference by the authori- ties." When the chairman of the Mullingar Board of Guardians was asked to resign his position as Justice of the Peace as a protest against conscription he declined, and immediately the board elected to succeed him a mem- ber of the Westmeath Sinn Fein Chaimhairle Ceann- tair. And the following item of news sheds an inter- esting light on Sinn Fein methods also : "Messrs. Thomas Hickey, Lisgibbon, and D. O'Brien, Golden, received a hearty welcome on their return home after two months' imprisonment in Belfast for drilling the local Volun- teers. They were met at the local station by a band and an enormous crowd, who escorted them to their homes." ISTow what does Ireland intend? Under the leader- ship of Sinn Fein she plans for complete and absolute 62 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR independence, the making of Ireland into a separate Re- public. This Celtic I. W. W., this Irish Bolsheviki, will have no more to do with Home Rulers than she will with Ulster — the principles of both Nationalist and Unionist are alike rejected. In the attainment of their ambitions they do not ask any concessions or favors from Great Britain; the Sinn Eein members of Parliament refuse to take their seats at Westminster, and they maintain an attitude of aloofness from the motherland. They are at war with Great Britain, because the Mansion House Conference decreed that the conscription act was a dec- laration of hostilities. They go over the head of Parlia- ment and look to the Peace Conference for the righting of their wrongs and the establishment of the republic of their dreams. Drawing inspiration from the history and literature of their past, rejecting even the English lan- guage in so far as possible, they hope to appear at the conference table as a distinct and much-oppressed na- tionality clamoring for liberation. And on the Peace Conference they pin all their hones. Thus the matter is summed up by "Young Ireland": "When we said 'nation' did we mean a shire of England ; did we mean a colony of the British Empire; did we mean that the Irish people would be much obliged to their oppressors for allowing them to contribute towards their own deg- radation ? Is a country that is content to pick up the crumbs of justice which may fall from the tables of her oppressor worthy of the honor of nationhood? What respect can a bully have for a cringing and fawning slave? 'Down on your knees, you dog,' sums up the WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 63 answer Ireland may expect to get for degrading herself by crawling through the filth of Westminster to kiss the feet of England's Prime Minister. If Ireland is a nation she can demand her rights at the Peace Con- ference. She cannot be content to remain in slavery." Supporting the plea for independence there is put for- ward a series of figures designed to prove that such a republic as Sinn Eein proposes could be self-support- ing. This has always been the difficulty encountered by the radicals, it having been a foregone conclusion that without Ulster, which shows no disposition to enter a republic and which possesses the wealth of Ireland, the new government could not maintain itself; therefore Sinn Fein has always coupled with a demand for inde- pendence a further demand that England grant to Ire- land a subsidy sufficient to pay the bills for a number of years. There now seems a disposition to abandon the latter phase of the matter, the leaders realizing its fu- tility and at the same time becoming convinced that they can support themselves. Their figures have been drawn up to show that Ireland has more square miles of ter- ritory than either Belgium, Holland, Denmark, or Switzerland, and about the same as Serbia, Greece, Por- tugal, and Bulgaria ; in the matter of population she is larger than Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland, and about the same in population as Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. It is pointed out that "Dublin Castle" rule cost Ireland last year 23,766,000 pounds, while Serbia, Greece, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Norway, and Denmark supported their governments at a much smaller expense. 64 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR "Liberty costs only 32s. per head in Bulgaria, 35s. in Serbia, 37s. in Switzerland, 40s. in Greece, 51s. in Sweden, 55s. in Portugal, and 60s. in Norway; in Ire- land subjection and corruption cost us 5 pounds 8 shil- lings per head." "Judged by any standard we may select, Ireland is admirably fitted for freedom. She is large enough, populous enough, and rich enough. For the money we paid England .last year we could run the gov- ernment business of Bulgaria, Norway, and Denmark, paying for all their police^ soldiers, ships, and guns. Is not Ireland fooled and robbed long enough ? The hour for freedom and the Irish Republic has struck." It is unnecessary to discuss the correctness of these statistics or to inquire how they were obtained; to demonstrate their uselessness it is necessary only to point out that the statisticians quietly take it for granted that Ulster, the dominating factor in the matter of wealth and quite in- fluential in population and territory, will enter heartily into the new scheme. But this is by no means the case, for Ulster will have none of it ; and she stands ready to prove at any time to the entire satisfaction of the south that she cannot be coerced. Ireland has appeared clamoring at the Peace Confer- ence, and she has behind her the influence of the Vati- can. The whole course of recent events tends to con- firm this view. In every country where Irish propa- ganda is carried on, in America as well as in other lands, the movement is backed by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and headed by the adherents and priests of that communion; this fact makes it all WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 65 the more deplorable that the United States should tol- erate an agitation which constantly endeavors to en- gender bitterness toward the nation which should be our best friend — the British Empire. To those who have knowledge of the methods of the See of Rome it appears inconceivable that the Irish clergy would have launched on such a far-flung program of political aspiration with- out the consent of the Pope, and if that consent were given we may well inquire into the meaning of it. Does the Pope desire Ireland as another papal state? Will Ireland consent to be so placed ? That His Holiness de- sires a seat free from the sovereignty of any other power is well known, and Ireland is the only place on earth where his occupancy would meet with the approval of the population. That the Irishmen of the south would accept his lordship there seems not the slightest doubt — that Ulster would not, goes without saying. But since Ulster cannot be included in any nationalistic scheme without her protest, it may be that some scheme of par- ition is considered. I say one may well believe that both the Pope and the southern Irish have some such plan in consideration. Yet it is needless to discuss it, for its consummation is not even in the range of remote possibilities. Not a single nation among the Powers would approve it. And yet none need be surprised if some such agitation appears. CHAPTER III THE BOOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION The antagonism on the part of the Irish toward Eng- land is as old as the relations between these two coun- tries. Its roots run deep in history, and it still flour- ishes because it is constantly watered by religious agita- tion and prejudice. The Irish regard themselves as a subdued people in a conquered country. Possessing no historical sense and exaggerating their own abilities and virtues, they are totally blind to their own crimes while those of England loom large before them. "Like a wounded animal, Celtic Ireland is always licking her sores and nursing her anger. Her leaders are forever raking into the embers, or rather the burnt-out cinders, of the past. To them there is no amnesty of complaints, and the remembrance of mistakes and wrongs is ever fresh. Time brings no limitation of offenses, and no healing on its wings. Without a single grievance in the present, the self-styled Nationalists are forever talking of the old tyranny of England, and her old oppression of Ireland. "Not a word do they utter of England's awakened conscience, or of her sincere desire to remedy every wrong, and to conciliate every subject throughout her Empire." 66 ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 67 That the crimes of England toward Ireland have been great, no man, not even the most loyal English- man, would care to deny, and no lover of justice can hold a brief for her in this regard. But Ireland's skirts are not clear. Her cruelty has rivaled that of England, and as for intolerance her guilt is deeper in that she has never repented or forsaken her ways. She will not understand that actions are to be judged by the prevailing moral standards of the age in which they are performed, and not by the more exalted standards of more enlightened times. And so she goes back into past centuries and finds there oppressions, cruelties, and in- justices on the part of England, and when she finds them she drags them across the centuries unchanged and holds them up in the light of present day morality, in which they naturally appear repulsive. "This is Eng- land," she exclaims. But it is not England. It is the seventeenth century in the light of the most tender conscience the world ever knew. And when such a proc- ess is coupled with complete forgetfulness of her own shortcomings, it constitutes injustice and misrepresen- tation on the part of Ireland of the worst sort. Suppose the horrors and the unspeakable villainy of Ireland's massacre of Protestants, than which no more vile crime stains the page of history, were to be pictured in its true colors and underneath it the legend were placed, "This is Ireland !" There would be a world-wide Irish protest, and justly so. Yet the stock in trade of Irish agitators even to-day is the painting of just such por- traits of England. And this in spite of the fact that no 68 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR people on earth have had greater concessions made to them than the Irish have received from England in the past two generations. Ireland is indeed a conquered country. She was in- vaded first hy the Normans at the close of the eighth century. In the middle of the twelfth century Pope Adrian IV granted Ireland to Henry II with instruc- tions .to possess the island "for the purpose of enlarging the borders of the Church, setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion." It surely seems that the Irish would respect the signature, on that deed ! Erom that day the soil of Ireland has been the scene of almost constant warfare. ~Ho less than four times the country has been conquered, and the insurrections and rebellions have been innumerable. A history of Ireland is most wearisome reading, being as it is a long, verbose record of rebellions, plots, schemes, intrigues, injus- tice, oppression, and bloodshed. England found the ancient tribal system of land tenure in vogue in Ireland, and indeed the people have not yet gone beyond their ideals of such a tenure. The feudal system conflicted sharply with the holdings of the clan, and through the process of wars and consequent confiscation of the lands of the rebel chieftains the landlord system, which has been the curse of Ireland, was built up. These land- lords were largely absentees, holding lands from which the Irish themselves had been driven, exacting rents from the poverty-stricken peasants, and holding these at their mercy. Through the system of ejectments which ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 69 was practiced, thousands of persons were thrown from their homes and lands, and suffering untold became the consequence. And when on top of all this England passed laws to kill the Irish trade because of its compe- tition with English commerce, the climax of suffering was reached. To this there was added the religious persecution of the people. Henry VIII attempted to extirpate Cathol- icism, and the Penal Laws which were directed against the Catholics were oppressive in the extreme. They were denied some of the most fundamental of all human rights, and the steel entered their soul to leave a rancor that has never passed away. Religious persecution is never justified, but it is simple truth to say that the English in Ireland are not the only ones who will have to answer for crimes in this regard. Roman Catholics, of all people, can condemn Protestants for intolerance with the least consistency, for the entire history of this Church shows that it has also been one of her favorite weapons. And it has been used in -Ireland. Each time, declare the Protestants, that the Catholics have gained the ascendency they have been as bitter and as cruel against their enemies as any people have ever been to- ward themselves ; in fact they have resorted to measures so extreme against Protestants that they shock the world even to-day. "We have learned from history," say the Protestants, "that the Irish or Celtic party, when it pos- sessed supreme power, abused the opportunity to plunder the wealthy and industrious Protestants ; and we can see 70 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR no change in the sentiments of a faction which has al- ways displayed rancor and race-hatred towards us." When we remember the prevailing ideas of the days in which these evils flourished we may find some sort of justification to apply to both sides. The confiscations were all according to law and were the result of rebel- lions on the part of the old holders. The Penal Laws were retaliations for the Catholic oppressions of Protes- tants under the reign of Tyrconnel. But nothing can be said for the commerce laws and the destruction of Irish trade. These were the results of the most selfish kind of perversity, and for them England deserves and has obtained the contempt of the civilized world. But for all other grievances one will have difficulty in deciding whose misdeeds weigh heaviest in the scales, unless we do as is common and follow the lead of our own preju- dices in the matter. And so if we expect to find in the past history of the English and Irish relations the basis for a just settlement of their present misunderstanding we will be disappointed ; the matter grounds in history, but this history is so tangled and crisscrossed with abuses and counter abuses that it is well-nigh impossible to disengage the various strands and estimate the compara- tive degrees of guilt. Ireland is a conquered country which has never rec- ognized the claims of the conqueror. She has been subjected to a. long line of persecutions; her terri- tory has been devastated, her people have been killed, she has been taxed for the support of a foreign and minority Church, her land has been wrested from her, ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 71 and ignominy of a thousand sorts has been heaped upon her. This is her case. But England retorts that she has a case also. Ireland has refused to be pacified, and has endeavored to give aid and comfort to every enemy that England ever had. She has murdered Prot- estants, and has organized a long line of prowling bands for the purposes of terrorizing the Protestants, driving off their cattle, burning their homes, and devastating their fields. Her emigrants have plotted against Eng- land on the soil of all the civilized nations of the earth. And thus the case stands. Far better would it be to call the contest a draw, forget the past, and effect a settle- ment on the basis of the present day situation. And on this basis no man can truthfully accuse England of treat- ing Ireland with any degree of hardness; the exact op- posite is the case. The positions of the three different parties in Ireland are well known. First, and most important from every angle except in numerical strength, there are the Union- ists, commonly known as the Ulster Protestants. They possess the wealth, the energy, the ability, and the in- telligence of Ireland, and hold an unquestioned com- mercial supremacy. The inhabitants of northeast Ul- ster are descendants of English colonists, and their po- litical attitude is that of a steady loyalty to the British Empire. It is by no means true that they are not de- voted to Ireland, but they take the position that the inter- ests of their island will be furthered by its connection with England. They are opposed to most phases of the Home Rule movement, and that for various reasons: 72 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR One is religious. The northern Protestants fear re- ligious oppression at the hands of the Catholic majority if political control is vested in that majority. They remember the former massacres and it is their convic- tion that the Irish character has not changed ; "I think it is not very unreasonable to suppose and believe that what the Irish people have done before they will do again," said Lord Harrington, and this expresses the sentiment of Ulster. Another reason is commercial. These Protestants possess the wealth and the industries* of Ireland. But they are in a minority, and self-govern- ment would mean that they would have to finance the government while its affairs were administered by their enemies. Under the Irish situation the control of poli- tics opens the way for abuses and oppressions of various kinds, and Ulster cannot be convinced that such, would not be directed against her. Then there is the political side of the question. The north holds that there is no hope for Ireland detached from Britain. Such a Repub- lic as might be set up would be the center of foreign in- trigues and its position would make Ireland an easy and desirable prey for other powers. Her location on the shore of England would make all such movements in- imical to that country, and in the end that Power would have no course open to her except to again conquer Ire- land. Thus argue the Protestants. The second party, the one that for long was the most numerous, calls itself the Nationalists. It embraces that section of the people who have so long contended for Home Rule, and they believe that the entire control of ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 73 Irish affairs should be in the hands of the Irish them- selves. They have consistently demanded this of Eng- land. On their side they have most of the political argu- ments that appeal to the modern world ; they have been in the majority and their demand for control of their own affairs is legitimate. This party is predominantly Roman Catholic and it has always had the support of the hierarchy of the Church. Priests have been its leaders and agitators. And herein lies the reason of its failure thus far, and the basis for the suspicions of Ulster. The third group are the extremists who now call them- selves the Sinn Feiners. They are a continuation of the old Fenian movement, and they draw their inspiration from the history, genius, and literature of old Ireland. These people go the whole length, and demand abso- lute and final separation from England. 'Ireland must be erected into an independent Republic and her talents must be allowed free exercise in her own life. This is also a Catholic movement, although it is not so distinctly religious as the Nationalist party and really embraces many Protestants in its fold. Its leaders are for the most part sincere and enthusiastic patriots. But it jcom- prises the radical element of the country, and has been called the I. W. W. of Ireland. It opposes the aims of the Nationalists in that it will not agree to any half- way measures and advocates armed revolt against Eng- land. On this account it is regarded as a traitorous con- spiracy by the government, and the Easter revolt, ac- complished while the Empire was struggling for exis- 74 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR tence and with the connivance of the enemy, has em- bittered the English against it. In any settlement of the Irish Question these three groups must be dealt with, and the claim of Great Britain must also be considered. Britain demands, and has a right to demand, that any government set up on her shore, especially from a part of her own body, shall be friendly to herself and thoroughly trustworthy. But she has no reason to believe that any Irish Bepublic would be friendly to her ; the mind, history, and general attitude of Ireland make her think, indeed, that such a government would be hostile. Since the Irish have in- trigued with every enemy that England ever had, it is natural that such suspicions should be aroused. The problem of the pacification of Ireland is thus ex- ceedingly complicated by the fact that all four of the interests concerned stand upon platforms that are reason- able and legitimate. The suspicions of both England and Ulster are well founded, as history attests, and the safeguards demanded by both are legitimate. According to all our ideas of democracy the majority should rule and Ireland should have the right to direct her own af- fairs, and thus the Nationalists gain strength. And again, no man can dispute the fact that the Irish genius should have free exercise, and that no people should be held under an alien power against their own will, and here lies the power of Sinn Fein. But the real issue lies between Ulster and the Sinn Eeiners, although neither of them will be likely to win in the contest. I say the real issue lies between them, because the aims of ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 75 the Nationalists are ultimately the same as those of the Sinn Feiners. While this party has been willing to take all that it could get, and has agitated for Home Rule in the halls of Westminster, no one has supposed that Ireland would he pacified when it was granted. If such had been the case it might have been had long ago. But the securing of Home Rule would have been nothing but a signal for the renewal of the agita- tion, this time directed at a complete break. Hence the Sinn Fein contingent drive directly at the thing which the Nationalists ultimately desire. One of the most acute analysts of Ireland has recently written: "I be- lieve that nothing short of complete self-government has ever been the object of Irish Nationalism. However ready certain sections have been* to accept installments, no Irish political leader ever had authority to pledge his countrymen to accept a half measure as a final set- tlement of the Irish claim. The Home Rule act, if put into operation to-morrow, even if Ulster were cajoled or coerced into accepting it, would not be regarded by the Irish Nationalists as a final settlement, no matter what may be said at Westminster. Nowhere in Ireland has it been accepted as final. Received without enthusiasm at first, every year which has passed since the bill was in- troduced has seen the system of self-government formu- lated there subjected to more acute and hostile criticism : and I believe it would be perfectly accurate to say that its passing to-morrow would only be the preliminary for another agitation, made fiercer by the unrest of the world, where revolutions and the upsetting of dynasties 76 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR are in the air, and where the claims of nationalities no more ancient than the Irish, like the Poles, the Finns, and the Arabs, to political freedom are admitted by the spokesmen of the great powers, Great Britain included, or are already conceded." (A. E. : "Thoughts for A Convention: Memorandum on the State of Ireland," 1917.) The position of England is well known ; she is willing for Ireland to have nearly anything that she wants, if the island can set her own house in order, settle her own internal troubles, and offer certainties that England and English people will not be threatened. But England is in a strained and unenviable position. Ireland is a con- stant menace to her, in this war, in every war, and even in times of peace. Far better would it be to throw Ire- land to the winds and let her take care of herself. But this cannot be done, because England is in duty bound to protect herself from the intrigues of a free Ireland, and also to protect English people in Ireland from oppression and destruction at the hands of the so-called native Irish. So the Irish Question is in all reality an Irish Question. It is an internal problem which the people themselves must work out. Of course the difficulty they will encounter will be Ulster. It seems somewhat strange that the most en- lightened and prosperous part of Ireland should be the very section wherein is contained the most determined and bitter opposition to Irish freedom. But it is easy to understand when we have even the most casual ac- quaintance with the history of Ulster and the mind of ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 11 the Ulster people. They are called Irishmen, but they have practically no Irish blood in their veins; they are the descendants of the British colonists who were sent into Ireland to occupy the land under James and Crom- well. At the accession of James the land of Ulster was desolate, inhabited by a low Irish peasantry and owned by the great earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, the O'Neill and O'Donnell chieftains. After a rebellion in which they joined forces with the Spanish, the earls were forced to flee and their lands were forfeited to the Crown. James then conceived the idea of the Planta- tion of Ulster with border people from England, hoping to settle the border feuds in his own country and at the same time to introduce order and prosperity into north- ern Ireland. Other plantations had been attempted in Ireland and they had all failed, but to James it ap- peared that these failures had been due to the fact that the colonists had intermarried with the natives and thus been absorbed. His idea was to transplant a sturdier people and to send their women with them to prevent intermarriage. Thus were the Protestants sent, whether or no, to Ireland. The scheme of James worked, the presence of the English women and the barrier of re- ligion preventing intermarriage, and under the industry of these settlers Ulster began to blossom and to bear fruit. All went well until the fateful year of 1641, when the Irish Catholics rose at a signal and began the systematic butchery of the Protestants, and the massacre was fol- lowed by a civil war that continued twelve years. His- 78 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR torians have exhausted the powers of language in their attempts to depict the horrible cruelties of these wanton murders. Men, women, and children were drowned, burned, ripped open, and killed in every conceivable way in this attempt to exterminate the foreigners, and in the massacre and the war that followed it has been estimated that no less than 200,000 Protestants lost their lives. And thus the plantation of James failed. The rebel- lion was put down by Cromwell, who went about the task in his customary energetic way; in this he earned the never-dying hatred of the Irish, but it is likely that the measures of Cromwell were excusable according to the tenets of warfare then existing, and even mild and gen- erous in the case of non-combatants. Cromwell saw that the English colonists would always be in danger as long as the sullen Irish remained in the province, so he ban- ished them across the Shannon and divided, the land among his soldiers. This is the basis of the Irish griev- ance, and the reason why "the curse o' Crummel" is re-' membered to this day : the lands were then safely in the possession of the foreigners. Then began the midnight prowlings of the Rapparees, a proceeding for which the island is famous. Organized bands of cattle drivers and moonlight prowlers, the Rap- parees, the Houghers, the .White-Boys, the Right-Boys, the Defenders, the Molly Maguires, the rvibbqnmen, the Moonlighters, the Land-Leaguers, and others, appeared to carry on systematic outrages against the fields, crops, stock, and persons of the settlers. Under the reign of the last of the Stuarts the Protestants were disarmed and ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 79 excluded from the army, thus placing them at the mercy of their foes. James II fled to Ireland and civil war broke out under his standard, but this was brought to an end by William of Orange, who was supported by the Protestants. In 1798 another rebellion started under the leadership of the United Irishmen. This League had started some years before as a non-sectarian move- ment and some Protestants were connected with it, but it was soon discovered that the United Irishmen were the supporters of the prowling Defenders and the Protes- tants scented danger. When the rebellion began it soon developed into a Catholic war on the Protestants, and the cruelties and massacres perpetrated on the settlers out- did those of the days of 1641. They were impaled on pikes, roasted before slow fires, and tortured in many ways. It was from this war that the Orange Lodge and a defensive organization called the "Peep o' Day Boys" took their rise. Thus is indicated the historical basis of the Irish Question as it concerns Ulster. The antagonism of the Irish is based upon the fact that there are some thou- sands of foreign people in possession of land which three hundred years ago belonged to their fathers, and back of most of the agitation lies the desire to repossess this land. Generation after generation hand down the tradition, and they publish maps showing the fertile fields of Ul- ster parceled out among the old families. Never have they regarded the settlers in any other light than that of usurpers; never have they conceded their right to the lands of Ulster. Lord Ernest Hamilton, formerly a 80 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Member of Parliament from North Tyrone, a man who for years was in the center of the political life of Ire- land, has thus stated the case from the standpoint of Ulster. "The only attraction of Home Kule to the inner soul of the Irish (especially in Ulster) is the hope that it will provide the machinery by which the British colo- nists can be got rid of and Irish soil revert once more to the Irish. In Ulster the cry of 'Ireland for the Irish' is not the mere innocent expression of a laudable patrio- tism ; it has a deeper and a far more sinister meaning. It means the expulsion from Ireland of the Protestant colonists, and it is so understood clearly by both sections of the population. There are no sentimental illusions in Ulster, whatever there may be in England. Home Rule holds out to the native Irish a coveted and substan- tial prize which lies under their very hands to pluck, and which faces them enticingly at every 'turn of their daily labor. Half the lands of Ulster, and that the best and the richest, are in the hands of the stranger within the gates. It matters nothing that these lands, when originally granted, were waste, and that the industry of the colonists has made them rich. It matters nothing that Ulster was then a sink of murder, misery, and vice, and that now it is a land of smiling prosperity. The natives know none of these things ; they are not politi- cally educated along these lines. All they know is that the lands were once theirs, and that they are now occu- pied by colonists of another race and another religion. And so they cry, or, rather, they mutter under their breath, 'Ireland for the Irish/ a cry which, under the ex- CORNER OF SACKVII.LE STREET IX DUBLIN AFTER THE SINN FEIN REBELLION OF 1916 WRECKED SHOPS IN DUBLIN AFTER THE SINN FEIN REBELLION OF 1916 ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 81 paneling influence of J. Kinahan, becomes freely trans- lated into Ho hell or to the sea with every bloody Protes- tant.' There is not a Boman Catholic in Ulster to whom the promise of Home Rule does not mean the promise of the recovery of forfeited lands. In some districts the lands of the Protestant farmers have already been offi- cially allotted among the native population." ("The Soul of Ulster," 112, 117, 120-121.) As early as 1793 a Dr. Duigenan, who had been reared a Catholic but who adopted Protestantism in manhood, pointed out this phase of the question in an address before the Irish Parliament. "The Irish Cath- olics," he said, "to a man esteem all Protestants as usurpers of their estates. To this day they settle those estate?, on 'the marriage of their sons and daughters. They have accurate maps of them. They have lately published in Dublin a map of this kingdom cantoned out among the old proprietors. They abhor all Protes- tants and all Englishmen as plunderers and oppressors, exclusive of their detestation of them as heretics." So the situation stands to-day. Behind both race and religion there lies the fact that the settlers are in pos- session of lands that once belonged to the Irish, and the deepest conviction of the Irish soul is that these lands should be restored. This means the expulsion of the English from Ireland. It is possible to work up a vast deal of sympathy for the Irish claim, when we remember how the lands came into English hands. But with all this, it is impossible to think that dispossession of the settlers would be either just or beneficial. It is unde- 82 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR niable that these settlers have made out of land once waste a province surpassing anything in southern Ire- land for fruitfulness, and have built up in Ulster a sys- tem of commerce upon which all Ireland depends for revenue. It is therefore apparent that the restitution of this section to the natives would work to the disad- vantage of the country. Then, entirely apart from the ethics of the planta- tions, it must not be forgotten that no one of the Eng- lish, and none of their ancestors remembered by them, were concerned. For three hundred years they have been in undisputed possession, and even at the time the natives were dispossessed the will of the settlers them- selves did not dictate governmental action. So however unjust the original settlement may have been, dispos- session at this late day would be a thousand times more unjust. Furthermore, according to the codes of that day, and it is unallowable to judge on the basis of any other code, the plantations were perfectly legal. The lands were declared confiscate on account of rebellion, the people were banished beyond the Shannon for the same reason, and all of the cruelties of which they so bitterly complain were thus caused. But this phase of the question carries us into the whole range of the morality of colonization, and this concerns practically the entire earth. Would it be right for the American Indians to insist upon a restitution of the land and the expulsion of the people who now occupy them ? If we grant the contention of the native Irish the principle should be carried further. Give ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 83 England back to the Welsh and expel France from Algiers, Canadians from Canada, and all European na- tions from India and Africa ! This would be the proper course of procedure to accompany the expulsion of the settlers from Ireland. This, then, explains the opposition of Ulster to Home Rule, an opposition that is stern, unbending, and uncom- promising. It will go to the full length. When the Home Rule bill which now stands on the statute books was enacted into law in 1914, Ulster announced her in- tention to fight, and she made ready her instruments of warfare. The operation of the law was suspended in view of this attitude. And a great injustice is done to the best citizenship of Ireland when people do not re- member that she opposes, not Home Rule, but the conse- quences of expulsion, robbery, murder, and oppression, which she believes would inevitably follow. She deems it not very unreasonable to suppose and believe that what the Irish people have done before they will do again. That Home Rule would give, an opportunity for such injustice, even with all conceivable safeguards, is very true. There would be no more open murders, and per- haps no openly adverse legislation. But the offices would be filled with the hostile element, injustices would creep into the taxation, prowlings and rapine would be con* thmed, juries would be sympathetic, and even legislative and judicial bodies might take cognizance of the natives' plea that they were entitled to the lands of the north. All this is a possibility under Home Rule, and Ulster thinks she possesses enough knowledge of the native char- 84 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR acter to know that such opportunities are never lost. And so the deadlock stands. If England should stand apart and allow the Irish to fight it out, Ulster could never be conquered. She stands ready at any time, with her facilities, to defeat three times her own number of na- tives. And a self-governing Ireland without Ulster can- not support herself, for the north possesses all the wealth of the island. This lends support to the Ulster side, for in spite of the doctrine of majority rule, there is ground for objection when the south expects the north to pay all the bills while the south, with all her hostility, runs the country. "What," asks Ulster, "if the Eed Indians outnumbered the Canadians iive to two and the govern- ment should be placed in their hands ?" The venom recoils on the head of England, but she is in no way to blame. She has long stood ready to make any concession to Ireland when the people settled their own differences and made known their desires. But she cannot permit her own people to be dispossessed and destroyed, nor can she permit a Republic to be set up by her side which would harbor enemy agents and become the hot-bed of intrigue against her; the action of the Irish in every war the Motherland has ever waged makes England exceedingly and justifiably wary in this re- gard. In the meanwhile, she has gone to the most un* usual length in her attempts to pacify the unpacifiable people. Realizing that the landlord system was making against the people, she arbitrarily and forcibly dispos- sessed the landlords through a series of land laws, and now the land has passed largely into the hands of the ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 85 people themselves. If any Irishman aspires to become a landowner, the way is open to him. England will loan him all the money to make the purchase, she will com- pel the landlord to sell at a reasonable figure, and she will allow the native half a century to return the money at an insignificant rate of interest. If the native is a laborer and does not desire a farm, he is at no disad- vantage. For England will take a selected piece of ground, build upon it an elegant and adequate cottage, and let the cottage to the laborer for a rent that is a mere pittance. I do not know of any other people who are so treated. But these measures on the part of Eng- land meet with no gratitude from the Irish ; "what vir- tue is there," they ask, "in paying back in installments what was originally stolen en hlocf The impartial observer will very likely believe that there is no salvation apart from the British Empire for the Irish. Ulster will never agree to cast her lot with such a Republic as the extreme Sinn Feiners propose, and they cannot compel the northern province. And without her no Republic can support itself. This is recognized, and the Sinn Fein faction go to the unusual length of demanding that England repay their treason and intrigues by setting them up as a Republic and at the same time making them an allowance large enough to pay their bills — this, they claim, is what England owes to Ireland. At the present time this faction will accept nothing less. When England proposed the convention of all the Irish for the purpose of arriving at a solu- tion of their own differences, the Sinn Feiners held 86 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR back and refused their cooperation, thus placing them- selves in the position of obstructionists. It is difficult to believe that the Irish could really govern themselves on the Emerald Isle ; it is quite certain they could not, either in finances or in peaceable administration, if Ulster held back. Sinn Fein should modify its demands and Ulster should modify hers, thus finding a basis of settlement on the Home Rul6 platform. Guarantees of the most sin- cere and liberal kind must be thrown about Ulster, and the connection with Great Britain must be retained. This, is not only true for the purpose of securing the al- legiance of the northern province, but also for the pro- tection of Ireland herself. A weak and struggling Re- public, bordering the .coast of England, has no chance in these days in Europe. Her desire is to place herself under the protection of Germany, but in this she would be out of the frying pan into the fire, to say nothing of the menace this would afford to England. An Ire- land with the status of a dominion, enjoying a degree of Home Rule that will protect her Protestant inhabit- ants, seems to be the solution of the problem until both sides grow into a more lenient attitude. CHAPTER IV THE POPE AND THE WAR The Pope of Home is more deeply interested in the ex- ternal facts of the European war than the head of any other ecclesiastical organization, and the war naturally affects the communion of which he is the head more vitally than any other Church. This is true because of the nature, the claims, and the historical attitude of the Eoman Catholicism. It once possessed temporal power greater than that of national rulers, and one of its fundamental tenets is that the Church, being the direct representative of God on earth, has a right to exercise external authority of various kinds. This principle not only applies to the affairs of state, perhaps we may say that in this field it urges its claim with less insist- ence than elsewhere; but in the matter of morals, the- ology, interpretation, and even history it insists upon a recognition of this authority. Protestants generally disapprove of such a claim, but there is something to be said for it nevertheless. The point here to be made, however, is that such an attitude inevitably gives the Pope, as the head of his Church, an interest in the diplo- matic affairs of all peoples, and when these affairs issue in war that interest is very much intensified. And if,. 87 88 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR as in the present instance, nations which recognize offi- cially the claims of the Pope are pitted against each other, the interest becomes so vital that it conld not possibly be ignored. And so the Roman Catholic Church had a concern in the war that went far beyond the purely moral and spiritual interest which all com- munions shared in common. She is supposed to exert an influence in its settlement that is different in kind from the influence of other Churches — the logic of her his- torical position makes this necessary. Accordingly, we have had many evidences that the war has been the subject of deep consideration on the part of the Vatican. The Pope has even gone beyond the defined attitude of the Church, and he has an- nounced that he regards all the belligerents as his chil- dren and himself as the common father, irrespective of the affiliations adopted by these people and their gov- ernments — even though they are "not yet" Catholics, he puts it. Many times he has issued prayers, addresses, and appeals to the belligerent nations, urging peace. He made a strenuous effort to secure a Christmas truce, and as a matter of fact such an armistice was quite generally observed by the armies, although it was not accepted by the authorities; we are told by the soldiers themselves that at Christmas they sang across "No Man's Land" from trench to trench, exchanged cigarettes and delica- cies, and fraternized quite freely and generally. Then the Pope exerted a very great influence in securing the exchange of prisoners who were incapacitated, for military service, in having thousands of prisoners trans- THE POPE AND THE WAR 89 ferred to Switzerland, where they received much better treatment and attention, and in securing commutation of sentences and pardons for a large number of con- demned persons. There is no doubt that in these mat- ters the Pope was able to exert an influence for great good ; he strengthened himself with a large element, and as far as he was able to go he really earned the gratitude of mankind. The Vatican therefore believes that it has added very much to its prestige during the war. Both England and Russia sent ministers of state to Rome accredited to the Vatican, which action is taken by the Church to mean that these countries are coming to recognize the authority of the Pope. But this is a mistaken idea. So far as England, at least, is concerned the action was taken solely because the representatives of the Central Powers were constantly in touch with the Pope, and England felt it necessary to have a representative on the ground to prevent possible intrigues. So these ambas- sadors are little better than secret service agents of the governments accrediting them, and instead of indicating a kindlier feeling towards the Church they really sig- nify a suspicion that is the very reverse of kindness. The simple truth is that the Pope is everywhere con- sidered pro-German. His enemies constantly accuse him of having been in league with the Central Powers. In the first place, there is the fact that Austria was the greatest Catholic nation on earth, and the relations be- tween the Vatican and Vienna are well known. It is impossible that the Pope should look with compla- 90 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR cence upon the prospect of seeing Austria crushed, for if there still remained a hope of regaining temporal supremacy or of securing another group of papal states, such a hope was undoubtedly closely bound up with the success of Austria. And that meant nothing but the triumph of Germany. In the second place, the Pope has been subjected to a vast deal of criticism because of his refusal, or failure, to denounce the invasion of Belgium and the outrages consequent upon such invasion. In view of the fact that Belgium was one of the countries still loyal to the papacy, some such action was expected; and when it failed to materialize an idea prevailed that the silence was due to the fact that such a protest would have been a denunciation of the Central Powers. Again, there are those who believe that the Church cherishes a deep resentment against France, once her favorite child, for having cast off the establishment some years ago, and that she would not have been averse to seeing Prance humiliated, especially if such humiliation were accompanied by advantages accruing to Austria. This is strenuously denied by Catholics; they declare that France is still the favorite daughter of the Vati- can in spite of her defection. But as a matter of fact, it is plain to be seen that there is a deep gulf between France and Rome. France was the last nation to ex- press any gratitude to the Pope for his services in the transfer of prisoners, and her reticence has been much commented upon. Then France is the only nation that does not exempt priests from military service ; thousands THE POPE AND THE WAR 91 of them were conscripted and fought in the trenches. While this action indicated a lack of consideration on the part of the government towards the Church, it has really been of great advantage to the Church. While in the other allied countries there is wide spread dissatis- faction because of the exemption of the clergy, which has lost to them much respect and prestige, the French priests have gained immeasurably in the opinions of the people because of their experience in the trenches. In addition to this alleged sentiment towards France, there exists the fact that the Vatican has no reason to ally herself closely to England. Here she gets no hope of a recognition of temporal authority. The actions of the priests in Ireland, and the disloyalty of the Catholic population in this island generally, have angered and ex- asperated England to such an extent that there is a deep prejudice against the Church which reaches even through the colonies of the British Empire. Then there is the further fact that the Pope is not on good terms with Italy, and Italy is not on good terms with the Pope. The Church regards the state as having usurped the au- thority and stolen the territory of the Pope, and the fiction of "the prisoner of the Vatican" keeps alive this attitude. All of these things naturally contribute to the feeling that the Pope desired the defeat of the allied cause. On the other hand, it is asserted that certain inter- ests and hopes bound the Church to the cause of the Central Powers. Austria was, of course, the strongest bond of attachment. But the Vatican was said to have 92 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR had interests in Germany also. It is qnite true that this is the home of the Reformation and the anathematized Lutheranism ; hut Germany has a large Catholic element in her population, and this element exerts a considerable influence. Several of the states are Catholic and con- tinue relations with Rome. And the Center Party is wholly Catholic. So even in Germany the Pope had a basis for hape, according to those who have conjectures upon such matters. Then again, the incident of Mgr. Gerlach's conviction contributed still more to the belief that Benedict XV is pro-German. Gerlach, although a German and a former officer in the German army, enjoyed the con- fidence and patronage of the Pope in a remarkable de- gree, and the Pope appointed him "Cameriere segreto participante" and Keeper of the Wardrobe. Suspicion fell upon him because of his connection with the Prus- sian agents in Rome, but even after Italy entered the war he was kept in his position in the Vatican. It later developed that Gerlach had taken charge of the Ger- man espionage system; he disbursed German money, subsidized the press, and managed the entire work of propaganda and spying. Although he was sentenced to death by the government, the priest made his escape into Germany. There is no evidence that his holiness was in any way concerned in the matter, but the mere fact that a traitor should be found among the papal officials, and that such a man was retained in office after Italy had declared war against his government, gave the enemies of the Vatican a chance to make capital against it, THE POPE AND THE WAR 93 Even the attempts of the Pope to secure peace were used against him by those who sought to convict him of being pro-German. It is well known that all of the peace offers came from the side of the Central allies, and when the voice of the Vatican was lifted it was considered to be a voice from the same side. And that is one reason so little attention was paid to such proposals looking to peace: they were considered by the Allies exactly as if they emanated from the enemy ; while this was not the official attitude, of course, it was the attitude of the people at large, and the one under which the governments were supposed to move. This at- titude was strengthened when the Pope put forth his definite peace program, for that was a proposition which Germany could have well afforded to accept. While it refused to Germany the annexations and indem- nities which she hoped to gain, it must be remembered that she had already practically despaired of ever ob- taining her ambitions; and even a return to the status quo ante bellum would still have left Germany dominat- ing Central Europe through her alliances, as President Wilson pointed out, and this would have been a prac- tical victory for her. There were several points in the Pope's proposal which could hardly have been accepted by the Allies. In the first place, it provided that Belgium should be evacu- ated and guaranteed independence — nothing more. Now that was exactly the case with Belgium before she was outraged, and this proposal made no provision for a guarantee on the part of Germany that such inde- 94* SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR pendence should be respected other than the Teutonic word of honor. Belgium had that word of honor, ratified by a solemn treaty, before this war began, and Germany declared it to be "a scrap of paper." So when nothing was offered to Belgium except another treaty of the same sort, it was plain to see that she could only reject it. There was no security in it, to say nothing of the injustice of having Germany simply evacuate after de- stroying Belgian property and life. In the second place, the proposal was voided by its treatment of the problems of Alsace-Lorraine and the Italian Irredenta. These territories, because of his- tory, nationality, and the desires of the people, should have been taken from Germany and Austria, and it was clearly no settlement of the questions to suggest "peace- able negotiation." If that would have sufficed, a set- tlement might have been effected years ago. In the third place, the very phrase "freedom of the seas" has a German sound. For what can this mean ? Germany has always had freedom of the seas so far as her commerce and legitimate pursuits are concerned. She has been restricted on the seas only in the matter of attacking England. The European arrangement has, of course, been for Germany to maintain supremacy on the land while England maintained supremacy on the sea, an arrangement entirely equitable owing to the charac- ter of the two nations. But since the Franco-Prussian war Germany has insisted upon being supreme upon both land and sea, a program which, of course, was aimed at England. It was this unreasonable demand upon the THE POPE AND THE WAR 95 part of Germany, that she dominate both sea and land, which nullified The Hague conferences and brought to nothing the repeated attempts on the part of England to secure a limitation of armaments. So to Germany the freedom of the seas means noth- ing except that she be allowed such domination, since she has always had freedom of every other sort. And when this suspicious phrase was discovered in the proposal of the Pope, it caused suspicion in- stantly. These fundamental defects were reenforced by many others. Eor example, why speak of disarmament with- out setting up some form of authority, in view of the historical facts that Germany has always rejected Eng- land's atempts to secure a limitation, that she has nulli- fied every Hague conference that has been held, and that she even refused to enter into peace treaties, which had been signed by all other nations? No acceptance of such a proposal could change the German attitude or government, and hence autocracy would only be per- petuated by its acceptance. In dealing with a power which refused point-blank to declare that it would re- spect its own treaty, and which later declared it to be a mere "scrap of paper," it is plain that something more substantial than agreements made with the same parties must be a condition of any lasting peace. 'Now all of these things have been taken by the Al- lies to show that the Pope was not at heart really fa- vorable to their cause, and his enemies have not failed to turn every scrap of evidence against him. It is for 96 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR this reason that any peace proposal which emanated from the Vatican was regarded with suspicion. I have pointed out that the Pope was able to ac- complish much, good in the war by securing a trans- fer of prisoners and other concessions. But in spite of what lie has done, the chances are all in favor of a further decline of his influence. There is a widespread dissatisfaction with the Church, and in Italy and France it is naturally directed against the Roman Catholic Church, just as in England it is against the Anglicans. As a matter of fact, Rome, in spite of her relation to the Church, is perhaps the most anti-papal city of Eu- rope. Here one may hear more outspoken protests against the Vatican than anywhere else — than in France, for example, where her influence has just been shaken off and where she is regarded with great sus- picion and reticence. This opposition is found in all ranks of society, from ministers of state down to waiters and carriage drivers. I was told by many people in Rome that the body of the late Pope could not be re- moved from its temporary tomb in St. Peter's to its final resting place in St. John Lateran because the Church feared a hostile demonstration on the part of the people. This attitude is toward the Church as an institution rather than against the Roman Catholic religion. In- deed, the very people who adopt it are good Catholics and may be seen regularly at worship in the Churches. The hostility is against the temporal pretensions of the Vatican, and in this direction it is quite intense. Com- paratively few communicants of the Church are mem- IRISH ANTI-CONSCRIPTION PLEDGE THE POPE AND THE WAR 97 bers of the Clerical party, which is the instrument through which these temporal aspirations and agitations are kept alive. To the mass of the people the "Legge delle Guarantigie," the Law of Guarantees, by which Italy pledged herself to support, protect, and honor the Popes so long as they made Rome their home, is entirely satisfactory and they would by no means suffer its re- peal. But the Vatican steadily opposes this law and its party insists upon a recognition of temporal power; therefore the sum set aside for papal support has never been drawn and the Pope considers himself a prisoner, although the inconsistency of accepting the Vatican, Lat- eran palace, the villa at Castel Gandolfo, and protec- tion for conclaves and assemblies is practiced. And re- cently the antagonism between the Vatican and the gov- ernment has been made more acute on account of the protests of the Pope against being subjected to delays and restraints, especially in the matter of messages and couriers, which are imposed upon all persons, even gov- ernmental officials, by military regulations. There was also a complaint that the diplomatic representatives of Germany and Austria accredited to the Holy See had been forced to leave Rome, although this is vigorously denied by the government. In all of these political movements, the Church is sadly injuring her own cause and is gradually alienating her own people. In every issue the masses take the side of the state and the breach between them and the Church is thereby widened. But this does not mean that Protes- tantism is growing accordingly. Protestantism seldom 98 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR makes any advances as the result of agitation against or dissatisfaction with Romanism; this agitation usually has a political basis, and if it succeeds in alienating any persons from Rome it usually embitters them also against all other Churches. Protestantism is tolerably influential in Italy and is respected ; it carries on a mis- sionary and educational activity that is of great value. But aside from the Waldensians, it does its best work among the foreign population. Atheism is growing far more rapidly than Protestantism, if we can trust the statistics. These show that there are only 123,253 Prot- estants in Italy, while the avowed Atheists number 874,- 532. There are 563,404 persons who refuse to state their religious preferences, and these are claimed by all sides : the Catholics declare they are Romanists who de- pend for employment upon the Socialists, while on the other hand it is declared that they are Weak-kneed Protestants who fear the Catholic majority. When it is remembered that the outspoken Catholics number 33,000,000, it is easy to see that Protestantism has made small progress. The work of Protestantism in Italy is now mainly a testing of the open Bible theory through a wonderful distribution of copies of the JSTew Testament to the sol- diers and the people generally. The various foreign and local Bible societies have recently given away a million copies of the Scriptures, many of them very elegant edi- tions with copious notes and explanations, and this work is proceeding with much system and rapidity. At first this activity met with stern resistance on the pari of the THE POPE AND THE WAR 99 Roman clergy, and they caused the government to challenge the Protestants to show cause why it should not be stopped, at least so far as the armies were concerned. Fortunately, the societies were able to prove that the people were demanding the Scriptures by show- ing thousands of letters, mostly from soldiers, expressing gratitude for the Testament, requesting one, or asking that a copy be sent to wives. Such evidence was so over- whelming that the Protestants were allowed to proceed with their work. And it also forced the Catholics to make some concessions and to issue a version of the Scriptures themselves. But the people prefer the other version and regard the Catholic with suspicion, and the fact of its being issued has given them a greater liberty in accepting what is offered to them from the other side. The Protestants have always considered this to be a fundamental work of propaganda. This faith has con- tended that the open Bible is its main support, and that only a free acquaintance with it is necessary to secure the conversion of the people. If this be true, then it stands to reap great results from such a general distribu- tion. But wholly aside from the possibility or desir- ability of such results, there can be little doubt that the movement will issue in great good educationally. And it is already causing a reaction upon Catholicism which will make that faith more liberal, and this will also be great gain. In justice to the distributors it should be said that they are not actuated by any proselyting mo- tives, but are carrying on their work purely for benevo- lent reasons; the leading spirits among them are men 100 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR whose Churches have no missions in Italy. One can hardly forecast the future of Protestantism as a result of this activity ; but at any rate it will put to an adequate test the doctrine that the Bible in the hands of the peo- ple will eventually mean their acceptance of a more spiritual type of religion. The nature of the Protestant religion which prevails in Italy is that of a moderate orthodoxy, a brand which is not up to the liberal ideas of America and England but which does not go in for the fantastic notions of me- dieval orthodoxy, like pre-millenarianism, for ex- ample, which we sometimes find in these countries. The faith is very uncritical and unscientific, for the modern historical spirit has not yet reached Italy. When this spirit does begin to affect the religious life it will make an immediate difference, but from a purely pragmatic and practical standpoint it is doubtful whether this dif- ference will immediately redound to the advantage of religion. On the contrary, it may drive the uninformed orthodox back to Catholicism, which cannot be expected to change. And to some it may seem like a concession to rationalism. Conditions in Italy are remarkably like they were in America during the days of Ingersoll, who based his entire propaganda upon an idea of the Bible which has since been entirely corrected by historical scholarship. Ingersoll would have no message in Amer- ica, to-day, but in Italy he would be a power of destruc- tion against the Church. To-day the Italian rationalists are carrying on the same kind of agitation, seizing and THE POPE AND THE WAR 101 turning against religion the contradictions, the imperfect morality, and the differing ideas of the Bible. The his- torical spirit, with its doctrines of the gradualness of revelation, dynamic inspiration, and composite character of the Bible, will utterly destroy all this as a basis for the rejection of religion, but it will require some time for these ideas to take hold upon the consciousness of the people. At first, as in America, it will seem like conced- ing all the claims of rationalism; and the opposition with which it will be met by the clergy will lend counte- nance to this view. This has been the effect of such short-sighted opposition the world over. Yet nothing can stop this spirit, since it expresses fundamental truth. And in opposing it the clergy have always been the real enemies of the Bible and of the religion founded upon it ; they have despised the greatest apologetic value of all time, after all other apologetics have lost their force. So from this standpoint one may question whether there be not ground for the Catholic contention that it is dangerous to place the open Bible in the hands of the people. It is indeed dangerous if we are to place it be- fore them and at the same time involve them in the old doctrines of verbal inspiration and literalness. For this will mean a repetition of the sad history of the last few years. They will get a view of it which cannot stand the light of criticism, and when the principles of criti- cism begin to dawn upon them they will think their Bible is gone, nevermore to be trusted. They will be under the necessity of either holding to their literal notions 102 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR and rejecting science and history, or of accepting the tenets of scholarship and giving up their ideas about the Bible — and this latter course, for the common man, will likely mean giving up his Bible in more cases than other- wise. Therefore, one of the most urgent needs in the religious world is for a general and popular educational movement which will clarify the ideas of the people as to the nature of the Bible, its contents, and its inspira- tion. Otherwise the people must continue to fight ration- alism with broken blades. So far as the Roman Catholic Church itself is con- cerned, we may be quite sure that she will survive. Ma- caulay said that this Church would be living when a New Zealander stood upon a broken arch of the London Bridge and sketched the ruins of St. Paul's, and Tyrrel remarked that when she dies other faiths may order their coffins. These comments state the case now. And yet, while it is unthinkable that Rome should perish, it is almost as certain that the world will not turn back to her communion. The Reformation laid hold upon the best blood and brain of the world, and from that time the drift away from Rome has been constant. This will never turn towards her again unless she makes changes that no man can safely prophesy she will ever make. Yet this is not to say that she is doomed ; far from it. She has elements of strength which will enable her to survive, and elements of truth which make her salva- tion possible. It has recently been said that a man is a poor Christian who is not attracted by the worship of the Catholic Church. The beauty of her ritual, her THE POPE AND THE WAR 103 connection with the past, her wonderful possessions, and the steadiness with which she adheres to her traditional positions all make an appeal to us. But in spite of this, there are few non-Catholics who would prefer to be- come her communicants. Yet the greatest opportunity in the realm of religion to-day is possessed by the Roman Catholic Church. The Protestant divisions, lack of centralization, in- definiteness of doctrine, absence of authority, lax and lowering standards, laxity in government — all of these things contribute to the weakness of Protestantism. Yet in these same things lies the strength of Catholi- cism. Especially does her form of government add to her power, and the fidelity with which she has adhered to her doctrines cannot but command admiration, even from those who do not agree with her interpretations. It has been rightly said that Rome has added to the faith and has corrupted it, but she cannot be accused of having forsaken it. And so it seems plain that if Rome would consent to make the adaptations demanded by the spirit of the age, she would come into a new influence. These, adaptations would have to run the entire course of her life. In the very first place it would be necessary to renounce all the claims to temporal authority, to ac- cept, and even to immensely modify, the Italian Law of Guarantees, to overthrow the meaningless fiction of the "prisoner of the Vatican," and to take her place in the world as a purely spiritual force. That action would have to be accompanied by a radical change of heart and attitude toward the entire question of scholarship, espe- 104 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR cially as it affects the Bible and the doctrines of the Church. This would mean the overthrow of the author- ity of the Church in matters of dogma, the upsetting of the entire range of traditions which are unsupported, the opening of the minds of all people to whatever light may be in the world, and the beginning of a new educa- tional method among them. The world believes, no matter how strongly the Church may protest, that Rome deliberately keeps her people in ignorance in so far as she may; this belief stands on the basis of the his- torical fact that her religion is purest where she is com- paratively weakest, and that education is not enhanced and furthered where she is in absolute control. When such reconstructions have been made and the world is aware that Rome has entered upon a new policy which will concern itself wholly with the spiritual af- fairs of life, stands for progress in all matters of doctrine and knowledge, and places upon morality an importance which she has never stressed, then the strength of her organization, her fidelity, and the wonderful richness of her worship will assert itself with telling force. On that basis she can come into her own and dominate the world ; on the present basis it is clear to be seen that she has no prospects other than continued opposition, the total de- struction of her political ambitions, and a gradual and constant decline of influence. But will Rome consent to make the adaptations? Of this there seems to be no hope. She has displayed a deplorable blindness to the ongoing of all the forces of civilization through the centuries, and this has been THE POPE AND THE WAR 105 her greatest handicap. It seems a little too much to expect that this war has opened her eyes. And this situ- ation may well cause one interested in the religious welfare of the world to he sad. There is nothing over which such a person might so well weep. That the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the martyrs, the saints, and the fathers of our religion, the possessor of most of the art treasures of the world, the heir of all the sentiment and prestige which history can hestow upon any institution, should insist upon the crystalliza- tion and perpetuation of ideas derived from the middle ages and ignore the advances of the world, thereby bringing about her own impotence as a moral power on earth — this is a condition which even the most ardent Protestant must heartily regret. CHAPTEK V THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN THE WAS One would have expected that the great European war, as it spread death, devastation, and bereavement over the world, would have called the minds of the peo- ple to reality and to matters of eternity, thus bringing them around to religion. We have for centuries educat- ed the people to rely upon religion in times of great crises, and we have been so successful in our tutoring that multitudes of them never rely upon it in any other times; in line with all the religious ideas which we have inculcated, the people should have flocked to the Churches when they heard the dread sound of the tocsin of war. This was what the religious world expected the people to do, and preparations were made for a sweep- ing revival of spirituality. Books were written for the purpose of outlining the situation from the religious viewpoint, and the Church made ready the forces of en- couragement and conservation. During the first few months of the war all signs pointed to the fact that these expectations were to be abundantly fulfilled. The peo- ple flocked to the Churches in ever-increasing streams, they resorted to prayer with much constancy, and they gave all evidences of a quickening religious life. In 106 THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 107 these months it appeared certain that a great revival was imminent. But this early religious awakening was founded on fear, and fear is a motive that cannot long support an intelligent faith. Some years ago I had occasion to in- vestigate the records of a little church which was located in the heart of the district devastated by the great New Madrid earthquake of 1812, and these ancient records showed that before the earthquake the church had but 27 members, immediately after it there were 165, and a year later the membership had shrunk to its original figure. Thus it has always been with religious fervor that sprang from fear, and thus it was during the first months of the great war. When the first fear and dread produced by the war had passed, when people were able to think calmly, and especially when the fervor of patriotism had caught them and avenues were opened through which their energies could be used for the com- fort of the soldiers, the superficial religious sentiments passed also, much to the disappointment of those who had desired a renaissance of evangelism and spirituality. Perhaps the fault was with these very people who most desired a religious awakening, for they utterly failed to adapt their message and their program to the needs of the time; they committed the blunder of be- lieving that the same message which these people had spurned in times of peace would suffice to hold them in time of war. In this they were much mistaken, as the entire social and spiritual history of these warring times has shown conclusively. The religious leaders should 108 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR have known better; perhaps they did know better, but the crisis was upon them, so suddenly that they were unable to make the necessary adaptations, showing that they had no real grasp on the entire problem of religion as it applies to life. At any rate, they should now know better than to attempt to hold the people after the war with the same old platitudes which the people had ignored before the war, and which they have tried and rejected during the war. To-day the person traveling through the warring countries will certainly see no signs of a religious awak- ening; even the religious specialist who investigates in- tensively will not be able to discover them. In all of the cities vice is more rampant than ever, the people are as little concerned with eternal matters, and the Church faces the same problems of sin and indifference. Evil habits, such as cigarette smoking, liquor drinking, pro- fanity, and sexual immorality, are steadily increasing and are enjoying a popularity which makes them diffi- cult to denounce; as a result they are not denounced, even many chaplains palliating and excusing them to a large extent. By selecting detached instances of conver- sion, the workers encourage themselves to believe that religious sentiments are growing, but the general situa- tion, and even their own observations and statistics, do not give foundations for their belief. I went to Europe for the purpose of making social and moral investiga- tions, resolved to get the truth from all angles. I asso- ciated with the religious leaders and workers, with uni- versity professors and their students, with soldiers and THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 109 officers in the army, with governmental officials and the men on the street^ endeavoring to avoid the common mis- take of the theologians and preachers who look at facts from their own angle and leave out of account facts that do not come within their immediate range of interests. Such an investigation will surely reveal that the re- ligious outlook in Europe is not bright, and that few people are trying to make it appear bright. All classes are fully aware that the world faces a crisis in her re- ligious and moral life. It is not that people are no longer religious. It is rather that they are confused in the face of all the facts with which religion is presumed to deal. They are con- fused, in the first place, in regard to the function and the efficacy of prayer. People never prayed so much as they did at the .beginning of hostilities; people who had never prayed before resorted to the holy exercise then. But what did their prayers avail ? The war went on and men were killed just the same. And there were no distinctions. The son of the man who prayed for the boy's safety day and night fell by the side of the lad whose friends recognized no God to whom they could pray. Agonizings meant nothing in the face of the scourge of war. Then there came the thought that both sides were praying for victory to the same God, both relying upon the same God to further their success. There were heathen alliances on both sides, and mingled with the petitions to God there were pleadings with vari- ous pagan deities. Yet none of them responded to the appeals of their followers. In the midst of it all there 110 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR was confusion and uncertainty. What, then, is the good of prayer ? [Who and where is God ? Perhaps there is no God after all ! Such doubtings affected people in all stations. "There's Bill," said the soldier, " 'e prayed like 'ell and got 'is bloomin' 'ead blowed off." The trouble with the people is not far to seek, of course, and a trained theologian might discover it at once. They had an antiquated doctrine of prayer. They understood that its primary function was to secure fa- vors and things from God, that it has an objective effect by securing a special Providence for the elect who resort to it or have it resorted to for them. This is founded, of course, on a misconception of the nature of God and His dealing with men. "They think," says a chaplain, "that religion is mostly concerned with self -saving. They tend to recognize most easily the signs of God's favor in this or that instance of safety or escape." A soldier on the Somme, who had fallen on the field, gave to his chaplain a copy of the 91st Psalm, with the remark that it was his handbook. "Yet by itself," says the padre, "the 91st Psalm, though a wonderful expression of trust in God, promises a security to which our Lord, and others akin to Him in spirit, have not put their seal. He did not ask — He resisted the temptation to ask — that no evil should happen to Him, nor that angels should bear Him in their hands lest he should hurt His foot against a stone. He would not have men set their face in the day of battle in the assurance that, though a thousand should fall beside them and ten thousand at THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 111 their right hand, the same lot should not come nigh them." The right minded person who resorted to prayer as a spiritual exercise, as communion with the Infinite, and for the purpose of securing its subjective benefits of comfort, hope, and strength encountered no such stress of heart in the emergency. And the theologian would want to inform all others that their difficulty was not with prayer but with a misconception of it. But it must be remembered that the people are holding the doc- trine that has been taught them, and they have more right to abuse the theologian than the theologian has to abuse them. The lofty theory of prayer as communion conferring subjective benefits has not been understood by the rank and file ; we can, in fact, say that it is not the doctrine of the Church. As Mr. H. G. Wells says, the doctrine of prayer as a process of begging God for spe- cial favors would not be admitted by the Hibbert Jour- nal, but it is freely proclaimed by the parish leaflet ; and the leaflet, rather than the Hibbert Journal, establishes the standard of ideas for the rank and file. This war has sufficed to destroy the faith of people in prayer as thus understood, and since the multitudes have difficulty in reaching a more spiritual understanding they have be- come involved in doubt and obscurity. From this con- fusion here there must issue a more spiritual type of faith, just as a spiritual religion must issue from simi- lar confusions in other departments. The prevailing state of intellectual confusion in re- gard to religion is caused further by the uncertainty as 112 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR to the exact status of Christianity at the present time. When the war broke out there was a wide-spread cry that Christianity had failed and been discredited, and since the fact of the war was directly opposed to the principles of our faith many people were not able to preserve their hope in the final triumph of the kingdom. The rationalist press, aided and abetted by the repre- sentatives of isms and cults of various kinds, labored assiduously to spread such doubts and to make the roar of the war serve as the requiem of our religion. As the war progressed the discontent with the Church began to spread and the clergy fell more and more into dis- repute. All of this tended to fasten upon the minds of the people a fear or a belief that Christianity had finally broken down and would ultimately be discarded. This thought found lodgment in the breasts of some of the most devout people, and the ensuing confusion has worked much to the detriment of religion. Perhaps the trouble here lies in the fact that we have no well-defined doctrine or conception of teleology. We do not know exactly where the world is going or where it ought to go. Even to-day most Christians have no under- standing of the kingdom of God, its elements or the proc- esses of its achievements. Premillenarians have taught that the world must go to hell before the kingdom comes ; others have understood our gospel to be wholly personal and the kingdom to be a heaven in which saved persons are to be taken ; still others have had visions of a social kingdom and have urged a social service activity of a superficial kind as the sum of all Christian ideals. But THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 113 neither school has worked out its doctrines into a system- atic theology, or even # given a program that could ap- peal to the religious needs of the world or of the indi- vidual life. The old theology set the standard for such uncertainty, for it failed to give its devotees a reasonable doctrine of teleology. It pictured a perfect world, then the fall of man and the world into sin, then a long proc-« ess of coming back to perfection, then the end of the order. In this scheme there was no moral evolution, since the highest hope of the race was to get back to the point from which it started. It worked in a circle. So we really had no vital doctrine of teleology, and in this situation one can scarcely blame Bergson for making a philosophy and leaving it out altogether. It is, indeed, a difficult task to harmonize the Chris- tian doctrine of a coming social kingdom with our ideas of a Christian personal life. In fact, it cannot be done at all on the basis of the old ideas of authority and literal interpretation. The hearts of millions are thrilling to- day at the thought of a coming kingdom, and such peo- ple can behold the war as the leading factor in such a kingdom. The war will mean the destruction of autoc- racy and the enthronement of democracy, the reign of brotherhcL^ and equality; it will mean a new world, a better civilization, a new appreciation of the spiritual ideas of freedom and justice, a better evaluation of man. !N*o person has difficulty in thinking that the war will mean this. But nearly all of us have difficulty in believ- ing that this is Christianity. In a dim sort of way we understand that Christ would be pleased to have such a 114 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR world, and that we will have gone a long way in the general direction of His social kingdom when this comes to pass. Yet we hesitate to proclaim that this awful war is Christ's method of ushering in His kingdom, and when one does have the courage to thus proclaim we are somewhat shocked even though we know he is telling the truth. Our trouble is that we are in a strait between the doctrine of a social kingdom and the doctrine of a personal life. We want to preserve both, yet we hesi- tate to make either supreme. In after years, when the horrors of this conflict have passed away and its benefits have been realized, perhaps we shall understand. Per- haps we shall then see that men are not so valuable as principles, and that great civilizing movements are worth what they cost. This is the doctrine of Christ. It was on this platform that He taught, lived, and died ; His history will bear no other interpretation. "We must not confuse patriotism with Christianity nor make Christ an international politician ; but we can be- lieve that the kingdom will not come until the doctrines which were incarnate in the German Empire, doctrines of force, autocracy, ruthlessness, barbarism, have been eradicated once for all. And when these ideas take physical shape they can only be met physically. It in- volves us in contradictions, uncertainties, anxiety, and doubt, to be sure, but it is no time for Christians to be discouraged or to admit that their religion has been discredited. Along the same line we meet the fact that the war has bred sentiments so different from religious sentiments THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 115 that these have added to the confusion and the discard- ing of religion. And here we are not able to make any defense or adjustment ; we can simply plead the frailty of human flesh. The person who goes from a neutral country, or even from America at the present time, to any of the belligerent nations of Europe will be amazed at the hatred which flames everywhere. The Germans have not been the only ones to sing a "Hymn of Hate" ; the French have done the same, and so have others, al- though they have not been so deliberate nor so frenzied in their hatred as the Germans. Eacial antagonism of the most bitter type has overthrown all sentiments of brotherhood as they applied to other nations. Murder and blood are in the air. Immorality has become so flagrant that its very commonness has robbed it of its repulsion, and a general lowering of the moral tone has resulted. Liquor drinking, vulgarity, profanity, and sexual looseness are tolerated with the utmost compla- cency. "I never knew a chaplain," a soldier can write, "to refuse his drink, his cigarette, or to sit in a little game/' and when a clergyman scatters "damns" through a book which he publishes no one thinks of complaining. These sentiments, and others like them, are not the senti- ments of religion, yet they are the prevailing sentiments of the day. And religion suffers accordingly, for the peo- ple seem to understand that it is no time to attempt re- ligion seriously, so far at least as its stricter morality is concerned. They are quite aware that to be religious would mean that such sentiments were to be set aside, and even would 116 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR have to be opposed. Therefore they let religion go, since few are in a condition of mind to attempt a strenuous op- position. In fact, to be religious in Europe to-day seems to many people to imply a task too large to be attempted. One may well hesitate, for example, before he urges a solution of the problems raised by the scourge of im- morality which has swept Europe. To be sure, to use chaste language, to refuse to gamble, to be a total ab- stainer from intoxicants, to keep the Sabbath, to pray night and morning, to protest wickedness — to do these things in the armies to-day would require as much cour- age as the martyrs possessed. It is too big a job to be religious, so religion can be set aside until after the war — this seems to be the attitude. And it is heightened by the fact that it seems to prevail in the minds of the re- ligious leaders of the world. The Church preaches no vital morality to-day, and many of the chaplains in the army stand ready to palliate the moral delinquencies of the soldiers, to excuse and even defend them. And this has the double effect of confirming the men in their sins and at the same time causing them to lose respect for their religious leaders. The religious situation among the soldiers themselves is perhaps more important than the general situation as it pertains to the churches, because of the number of men under arms and because their popularity will give them the power to shape the controlling ideas of the fu- ture. One cannot, of course, state the soldier's attitude toward religion in a word ; it is undefinable and it varies with different men and in different situations. Speaking THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 117 very broadly, perhaps we may say that trie average sol- dier neither knows nor cares much for religion. He "carries on" in accordance with his own desires and tastes. In a general way he is interested in the talks at the welfare hut, but if nothing were there but the talks he would not darken its door. He smokes and swears day in and day out, nor thinks his profanity an offense to God. When the time comes to "go out" he be- comes very serious, reads his Testament, thinks of home, and prays ; if he comes back alive his seriousness gives way and he "carries on" as usual. It is impossible for one who is interested in the future of religion, and who wants to see a revival of spirituality, to obtain much comfort from the religious attitude of the soldiers in the field to-day. Detached instances of faithfulness and conversion are, of course, recorded, but no general spirit of evangelism is evident. There appears an attempt in some quarters to deny this, and to make out that this war has given great impe- tus to religion, but when one investigates these attempts he will soon see that it can be accomplished only by denaturing religion, separating it from morality, and making it synonymous with patriotism and courage. Ac- cording to the most reliable statistics we have, only 20 per cent, of the men now under arms had any con- nection with the Church before the war, and half of the number have fallen away from their ideals and are not now classed as Christians. In the name of religion a protest should be uttered against a prevalent charity and forbearance on the part 118 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR of clergymen which goes to the length of excusing sins. It is not necessary to he uncharitable or to underestimate the strength of temptation when one lives an unnatural life in order to hold to moral standards. The men who adopt such an attitude are the real enemies of religion, and they are failing to be the real friends of the hoys. A distressing feature of our religious life for the last generation has been the fact that the Church has lowered her standards, and we will suffer immeasurably if we allow millions of men to return from the battle field with ideas that immorality does not matter much, that it is not condemned by those who speak for religion and the Church. Whatever happens to us, we must not forget that it is wrong to sin. Allied to this error is a disposition on the part of these same religious leaders to make a religion out of ele- ments that are not religious, at least that are not dis- tinctly Christian. Thus we are told that the men are really religious, although they may not know it ; they do not know much about God and Christ and spirituality, but they display superhuman courage, they are unsel- fish, they are cheerful, they are brotherly, they are pa- triots. These are admirable traits to be sure, and men will not be very religious without them, but their pos- session is compatible with the rankest infidelity and sin- fulness. Sherwood Eddy says the men have five virtues — courage, brotherliness, generosity, straightforward- ness, and cheerfulness — and five moral weaknesses — im- purity, obscenity and profanity, drunkenness, gambling, and a lack of moral courage. Eew people will really be- •THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 119 lieve that there is much vital religion represented by the five virtues as long as the five vices exist. It must be remembered that there has never been a war, even among the worst pagans, when men did not display courage and patriotism, and the inevitable conclusion seems to be that no Christianity is needed to produce these things. And yet some of our modern chaplains make them the very essence of our religion; chaplains, so says Eddy, have widely preached the idea that death in battle saves. ("With Our Soldiers in France." Chap, vii.) The following statement from a chaplain seems a frank and fair statement of the religious situation among the soldiers : "There is not a great revival of the Chris- tian religion at the front. Deep in their hearts is a great trust and faith in God. It is an inarticulate faith ex-. pressed in deeds. The top levels, as it were, of their con- sciousness, are much filled with grumbling and foul language and physical occupations ; but beneath lie deep spiritual springs, whence issue their cheerfulness, stub- bornness, patience, generosity, humility, and willingness to suffer and to die. There is religion about ; only, very often it is not the Christian religion. Rather it is natu- ral religion. It is the expression of a craving for se- curity. Literally it is a looking for salvation." Here is* a situation which is charged with promise if it could be met fully and frankly. The first step should be to translate this natural religion into Christianity, for this so-called "natural religion" rife in our society to-day furnishes the animus of most of the attacks upon the Church and Christianity. It is everywhere issuing in 120 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR materialism, and if these soldiers return with this de- tached and undefined sentiment it will bode no good for our social order. It does not deserve the praise that is being heaped upon it. The fact that it is not Christian is not really the fault of the men ; rather is it the fault of those whom we have sent to be the religious guides of the men. They have lowered standards and been content with too little, thereby practicing a deception upon the men themselves. They come from the Church, but the men feel that the Church cares nothing for them, and while they revere Christ they identify the Christian Church with a re- spectability that is not unlike the Phariseeism that Christ denounced. The problem that is before us at the present time is to make the world understand that our religion, as the Church interprets it, comes from Christ — and this means that our interpretation must be changed. "I am sure," says a chaplain, "that the soldier has got religion, I am sure that he has Christianity ; but he does not know he has Christianity." The task is to make him know he has Christianity, that our religion, stripped of the extraneous ideas we have wrapped about it, embodies all the things which he regards as high, holy, and noble. Our danger is that we will so lower our stand- ards that our religion will be emasculated by its friends, that the soldiers will reject it, and that they will come back with their "natural religion," their religion that is not moral, and fasten upon us materialism, unbelief, and a shadowy semblance of idealism that goes under the name of spirituality and faith. THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 121 Eeligion will survive this war, but it may not be the same kind of religion we have had — and that may be a ground of hope. Men are learning that experiences come in which they cannot escape God, and never have they felt such a need of Him in the soul. And we have faith to believe that this religion will be the Christian religion. But reconstructions of the most radical sort will have to be made if we are to catch up in the breast of the Church the religious sentiments of humanity and use the Church to give them expression in the service of the race. It is too much to say at this time that the reconstructions can be easily made ; we are not able at the present time to tell what will be demanded. The indications are not satisfactory, this we know. Itiseems likely that the new turn of religious affairs, the recon- structions necessary, will be opposed by the Church. It has opposed such changes before, and in so doing it has been its own worst enemy. Already it is being charged with getting ready to preach after the war the same old platitudes which it preached before the war. If it does this we may safely predict that the breach between itself and the people — already wide — will be broadened. Strong forces on the other side are striving for that very thing, seeking to make the people still more discontented with the Church, their hope being to establish this "natural religion," with neither organiza- tion nor priesthood — with nothing but a "finite God." But can this be done? What will happen to the re- ligious and moral interests of society when it has no or- ganization through which to express its faith in action, 122 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR and when its God has shrunk to the size of Mr. Wells' deity ? The proceeding has always failed ; it has always resulted in confusion, despair, ignorance, and crime. Our God must be bigger, not smaller. And, in some form or other, the Church must be preserved to height- en, to propagate, and to express the spiritual sentiments of the heart of humanity. There has been a vast deal of speculation and theory expended on the matter of the soldier's attitude toward the Church and religion, and the learned conclusions have given great joy to the rationalists and anxiety to the Churchman. Most of the time and sentiment thus devoted might well have been spared if persons had borne in mind that the soldier is simply the average young man whom we have always known. The young man never was very religious and never had any close connection with the Church, and since donning his uni- form he remains the same kind of person. Why should the Church be so concerned over his attitude to-day when she did not seem to care about him yesterday? Why does the rationalist cry out that the Church must die because the soldiers are not in its membership when the same fact afforded him no comfort when the soldier wore his "civics" ? The Church is in no greater danger now from this source than she has always been ; indeed the Church is much better established in this quarter, for although the war has not converted the soldier it has made him more appreciative of the real values in social life. When a person returns to America after an experi- THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 123 ence with the American forces in the field he is at once subjected to a cross-examination concerning the morals and general behavior of the soldiers. He can tell in ad- vance what the questions are to be: Are the men re- ligious as they go under fire ? Do they drink, gamble, swear, or practice immorality in the towns and villages ? Are they becoming degenerates or will they return with higher moral conceptions than when they went away? These and similar questions are fired at one from all sides. Every social institution which we have seems planning for big things when the boys come home. The Church seems especially interested in their .welfare at the present time. This is a thing which the men them- selves seem unable to appreciate, for they are well aware that the Church took no extraordinary interest in them when they were at home, in civilian life. But now that duty has called them and they have responded, when they are displaying a courage, a self-sacrifice, a devo- tion, and an unselfishness the like of which the world never knew before, the Church at once becomes extreme- ly solicitous for their moral welfare. JSTow the Amer- ican soldier is the wisest person imaginable. It is ab- solutely impossible to "fool" him about anything. He detects insincerity and camouflage instantly. He re- sents flattery in all its forms. He is alive to all that is going on about him, and woe unto that organization or institution which seeks to capitalize his influence or build upon him after the war. He has a passion for genuineness, he hates shams, he despises narrowness and littleness with his whole soul. Therefore, it might as 124 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR well be said very plainly that the newly-born interest of the religious forces of the country in the soldier will benefit said forces little unless it be coupled with a re- construction of doctrine, message, methods, and life. I think I can set forth in a few words the gen- eral character of the American soldier overseas, as com- pared with the young men we have always known at home. The man overseas is an inveterate cigarette smoker and the most profane individual to be found any- where — this is the worst that can be said of him. In this regard he is much worse than he was at home, if we consider cigarette smoking and profanity as vices, or even as bad habits. But he does not drink very much, he is seldom seen under the influence of liquor, he gambles a little, and. he does not indulge in sexual immorality to any large degree. In these details he is a better man than he was at home, better than the young man who is still in civilian life. This about sums up the situation. The soldier has little opportunity to commit sins other than those named; in fact those of the fighting armies have little chance to commit sins of any kind. In regard to the profanity of the soldier, there is little to be said in defense of it. This is the most fool- ish and inexcusable of all bad habits which human flesh is heir to, but it is practically universal in our army. I have had a wide association with men of all the allied armies, and I say without hesitation that our men are the worst "cussers" in Europe. They swear without any provocation; in their ordinary conversation they punc- tuate their remarks with an elaborate and artistic array THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 125 of oaths. And they are teaching the French to use our American swear-words also; it is nothing unusual to hear little boys and little girls bandying these expres- sions about on the streets. On one occasion when a young lady inquired the meaning of a certain vulgar word the soldier, covered with embarrassment, informed her that it meant "very nice," the same as "tres jolie"; and the result was that the young lady applied it to a medical officer who had kindly bandaged her finger. One day a ministerial Y. M. C. A. secretary gave a small tip to a French barber and received in return a smile and a "Thank you, s — I" In a certain sector great- strictness was being observed in regard to the pass word, and the report gained currency that the sentries had orders to fire without question on any person who did not immediately answer his challenge with the proper word. A young French lieutenant strayed out of his dug-out one night and was challenged by the soldier on guard. Instantly he remembered the situation and his blood froze within him at the prospect of instant death, for he was without the pass word, and he involuntarily ejaculated, "God damn." The sentry, who knew the man, was convulsed with laughter and said, "Pass, Lieu- tenant." Ever afterward the officer declared that he would use American oaths as long as he lived, because this expression had saved his life. On my first visit to the war zones I heard the British chaplains and welfare workers excusing their men for swearing, and I believed that this attitude constituted a distinct lowering of their moral ideas, out of motives 126 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR of affection for the soldiers. But when I had lived inti- mately with the soldiers for several months I learned that in fact the habit did not argue any especial irrev- erence on the part of the men. The best of them do it ; even those who are active in religious matters are accom- plished "cussers." They are living under a mighty ten- sion, they feel deeply, and they have powerful thoughts ; nothing but the strongest language they can command is sufficient to express their sentiments. This, as nearly as I can determine, is the explanation of the prevalence of profanity. As hard as it may be for the average moralist to understand and appreciate the situation, it is nevertheless a fact that the soldier who swears so recklessly does not mean a word he says and has not the faintest idea of taking the name of the Deity in vain. For he loves and respects God, and has a powerful con- sciousness of His presence and power. One evening I was conducting a religious service, and the men had flocked in by hundreds, as they always do when conditions permit an assembly. I had a quar- tette of men who were to sing some of the familiar hymns. A fervent atmosphere of spirituality pervaded the place when the men arose to sing. There was no musical instrument and the men, in pitching their voices, struck a scale altogether too low. They uttered a few words and then stopped suddenly, and the leader re- marked, "O hell, that is too damned low!" The men seemed to take the remark as a matter of fact and it in no way spoiled the spirit of the occasion. There was a sergeant in a certain company who was THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 127 unspeakably profane, and the chaplain had often de- clared his intention to "call down" the fellow. One day he was heard making the air blue behind the dug- out, and the chaplain seized the opportunity. But when he sought the sergeant's presence there was no oppor- tunity at all. The man was cursing a soldier who had in his possession a package of obscene postal cards, bear- ing pictures of a vile sort. The sergeant, with an ad- mirable string of oaths, was declaring that any soldier who would carry such pictures was a disgrace to the United States army, and in conclusion he took from his pocket a New Testament and remarked: "If you want to carry something why don't you get one of these damned Bibles; a man who carries one of these will never go far wrong." Naturally, the subject matter of his discourse disarmed the chaplain ! Those who for propaganda purposes or otherwise have been responsible for rumors to the effect that the Amer- ican soldiers in France are becoming addicted to the use of intoxicating liquors have been most unjust to these men and have rendered the country a distinct disservice. While the motives of those concerned were no doubt le- gitimate, the circulation of these reports tended to de- moralize our own spirit and to give aid and comfort to the enemy. Prom a close knowledge of the soldier in all the situations in which he ever finds himself, I can contradict the word of any man who accuses him of drunkenness. He does not drink to any appreciable de- gree; of the hundreds of thousands I have seen I can recall but three who showed any effects of drink. This 128 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR is not to say that lie is a total abstainer; it is to say that he drinks far less over there than he did in civilian life at home. And the wines and beers that are used have been so "denatured" that they have little effect upon the drinker. The fighting forces at the front, offi- cers and men, are forbidden to buy champagne, although they can purchase the lighter drinks during certain hours of the day ; the villages are under martial law, and for the most part the men have their canteens filled with beer at the estaminet and consume it in the seclusion of their billets. All in all, the evils of intoxication among our overseas forces are so slight as to be almost negli- gible. And, without going into an unsavory subject or quot- ing meaningless statistics, the same is true of sexual im- morality. Venereal disease has been practically eradi- cated ; the problem is as nothing in comparison with the same problem in the camps and civilian population at home. The use of the prophylactic preventative has been largely responsible for this, it is true, yet the clean lives of the men is the leading element. In the very worst places, like Liverpool and other centers in Eng- land, and England is far worse than Erance, the infor- mation I received tended to establish the fact that about 25 per cent, of the men received prophylactic each month, this including all the repeaters. Near the front lines in Erance the percentage drops until it practically disappears. The use of prophylactic has been the sub- ject of heated discussions pro and con, the antagonists insisting that it is a virtual encouragement of immoral AMERICAN LUMBERMEN IX THE SCOTCH HIGHLANDS THE FIRST CONTINGENT OF THE A. E. F. TO LAND OX EUROPEAN SOIL Y. M. C. A. HUT IN THE WOODS MILES FROM ANY TOWN OR HABITATION THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 129 practices by an offer of protection on the part of the government. However this may be, its use has reduced disease almost to the vanishing point. The leading preventative of immorality among the men is their own strong moral consciousness, very marked and easily discerned. But this consciousness is not narrow and does not concern itself with trivial de- tails. They have denned it themselves, very clearly and very strikingly. The welfare workers who had been preaching and moralizing to the boys had concerned themselves with what they regarded as the cardinal sins : profanity, gambling, drunkenness, and sexual immoral- ity. But while they harped on these things constantly, they secured little interest on the part of the soldiers themselves. At last cards were circulated among multi- plied thousands of the men and they were asked to desig- nate what they regarded as the "five most repulsive sins. The answers were illuminating. Neither drunkenness, nor gambling, nor profanity, nor vice figured in the re- plies. Heading the list was cowardice. Then came sel- fishness. And the other three in order were hypocrisy, disloyalty, and meanness. It will be noted that these are all sins of the spirit, and when these "old rooks," as we used to call them, nailed these as the worst of all sins, they displayed a greater profundity, a better grasp on the fundamentals of the moral life, than any of the pro- fessional moralists who had presumed to lecture them. Are the soldiers religious ? No one can hope to evade the question. The answer is in the affirmative if by re- ligion we mean a pure spirituality based on a recogni- 130 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR tion of the character of God. The answer is in the negative if we make it embrace any form of ecclesias- ticism, dogmatism, or credal orthodoxy. In the former elements the men are firmly grounded. There is never one who does not recognize God, Christ, human need. They all carry Bibles, most of them pray, they are al- ways ready to attend a religious service or talk about religion sincerely and without the slightest trace of em- barrassment. But they care very little about the Church, less about the forms of religion, and still less about doc- trines of all kinds. It is not that they antagonize these things; if they were asked about them they would doubtless reply that in their opinion they were all right ; but they simply have no interest in them. In their mind the Church and creeds obscure rather than enhance the real values of faith, and it is not possible to work up in their souls any enthusiasm for anything that smacks of ecclesiasticism. As surely as the world stands, these men will absolutely ignore the Church on their return unless the Church has the courage and consecration to do away with ecclesiasticism, out-grown notions of ortho- doxy, and the hollow statements of doctrine which have not had any content in a hundred years. Personally, I am not inclined to think that the Church will do this. But the choice is hers to make, and she may do what she chooses. But the soldier has a vital religious consciousness which embraces all the fundamental ideas of the faith. I remember a gathering of men one evening in an old stable in a town where we were billeted; we had been THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 131 smoking, telling stories, singing snatches of popular songs, and enjoying ourselves generally. Suddenly a sergeant entered and informed the men that the bat- talion would move forward into the lines that night. There was a slight pause in the conversation; some of the men rose to leave and others expressed gratification at the news. Then one of the soldiers who had been fumbling a song book, and who was not known to be religious at all, called out: "Let's sing this song!" It was an old hymn beginning : Lead on, King Eternal, the day of march has come; Henceforth in fields of conquest thy tents shall be our hoine. Through days of preparation thy grace has made us strong, And now, King Eternal, we lift our battle song. The men sang this song with a vim, the very ring of their voices attesting their sincerity and their apprecia- tion of the sentiment. On another occasion I was walking through the streets of Lironville in company with a. rather rough sergeant, dodging here and there behind the ruined walls to avoid being seen by the enemy, whose lines were a few rods away. We passed the ruins of the once beau- tiful church, terribly wrecked now, and on glancing up we observed that the cross on the tower was still intact. The sergeant gazed about at the devastation by which we were surrounded, fixed his gaze again on the cross, lifted his hat, and quoted : In the Cross of Christ I glory, Towering o'er the wrecks of time. 132 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR When I first joined my division it was in training far behind the lines, and I carefully observed the religious sentiments among the men. Here they were rowdy, boisterous, seemingly careless, yet there was always a strain of deep seriousness present, which manifested it- self on all occasions when religious meetings were held. These services were invariably crowded. Once I an- nounced a Bible Class for Sunday morning and asked the men to designate a subject for our discussion. With practical unanimity they selected the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," and in the discussion I was sur- prised at the depth of understanding with which they regarded their present occupation in relation to the principles of our religion. Within a week the division moved, for the first time, to the battle front. When the* order came the men gathered again. A change was easily noticeable. They were just as rowdy as before, all were glad of the pros- pect before them, and none signified any desire to be- come religious simply because they might be killed. But the latent spiritual impulses of their natures came more to the surface, and nearly all of them took advantage of the opportunity to express their faith, to get a new grasp on their religion, and to renew their allegiance to the spiritual realities of the universe. Week after week I have gone in and out of the lines, to the farthest outposts, through the trenches, in the support lines, and among the artillery positions in the rear of the lines. It was almost impossible to give away New Testaments because all of the men carried THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 133 them in their pockets already. In any position, trench, dug-out, or emplacement, it was only necessary to an- nounce that we would have a little religious service to get a crowd ; all of the men who could leave their places would gather at once. And in those unusual spots, while the guns of the enemy roared about us and shrap- nel pieces from the shells of the anti-aircraft batteries sprinkled us liberally, these men, armed to the teeth, wearing gas masks and steel helmets, and engaged in the awful business of death, entered into the spirit of re- ligious observances with a quiet zeal and fervor which evidenced that beneath the rough exterior their hearts were fully alive to eternal verities. But they are conscious, as all of us are, of the contra- diction between their present business and the principles of the faith which they profess. If they were theo- logians, if they cared one whit for systematic doctrines, they would be confused and bewildered, even as the Church is now floundering in confusion. It is a good thing for them and for religion that they are not theo- logians. They simply know that their country has called them to do battle, and they are sure that God will be with them — that is all they know or care. They have no idea that a special providence will hedge them about — which is another good thing : they thus have no embar- rassing questions to answer, or try to answer. One day a visiting minister wanted to preach and I took him to a gun emplacement in the support lines. With about twenty men gathered around him he was discoursing with great unction of soul upon his belief that this war 134 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR was the cause of God. Suddenly the enemy got our range and a few 105s fell alarmingly near. We tumbled down into the old dug-out with unseeming alac- rity, and as he disappeared into the ground one of the soldiers remarked, "This may be the work of the Lord, but I'll be damned if I believe it." On a certain occasion I was asked to prepare an ar- ticle on "The Soldier's Confessional.' 7 I gave thought to the subject, and even started the article; but I was forced to abandon the effort because I discovered that the soldier had no confessional. His religious ideas are not systematic enough to be formulated into a confes- sional. He cannot even use the Apostle's Creed, unless indeed he uses it in the manner after which it is em- ployed by the average Christian in the Church and re- peats it with his lips without any real understanding of its contents or deep conviction of its truthfulness. If the soldier carefully analyzed his thoughts about the creed he would no doubt be compelled to repeat it some- what after this fashion : " T believe in God, the Father Almighty ;' He may be the creator of heaven and earth, but I know nothing about the scientific facts in the case. 'And in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord;' as for the physical facts of His life I do not doubt them especially, but there are questions, and I do not consider these things material. 'He was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day He rose again from the dead, He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty ;' I doubt if He shall come again, and THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION 135 I am quite sure that He is not acting in the role of judge of the quick and the dead. I believe in a spiritual pres- ence in the world and have no objection to calling it the Holy Ghost. I think the holy catholic Church is a good thing. If 'communion of the saints' means the fel- lowship and fraternity of Christian people, then I am for it. And I am strong for the forgiveness of sins, the immortality of the soul — I do not believe in the resur- rection of the physical body — and the life everlasting." The soldier's faith is strong but simple. He believes in God and Christ, without definition; in man's need of God and forgiveness; in the eternal goodness of Deity ; in the supremacy of spiritual and moral values ; in the resurrection and eternal life. And that is about all. Some of us believe it is quite enough. So when the soldier returns he will be open to the religious appeal, but it must be sincere and unmixed with propaganda for the perpetuation of institutions. Ecclesiastical rivalries, jealousies, and divisions will be despised by this man who has learned so much about fraternity and the necessity for solidarity and union. When a preacher tells him again that "simple faith in Christ is all that is required for salvation," he will be quick to ask in return, "Then why do you have so many denominations, representing so much pure waste, all founded on things which every preacher on earth con- fesses to be side issues and non-essentials." And we will be interested in knowing what reply the dogmatist will make. CHAPTER VI THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE It is hardly possible to live anywhere in Europe, or in America either, for that matter, and pay even a casual attention to religious ideas without discovering that there is a tremendous ferment going on in the do- main of spiritual faith. There is a realization in nearly all quarters that the times are calling for a life of the spirit, and the demand for an adequate interpretation of God is insistent. But with this there is coupled a frank recognition of the fact that no human institutions or conceptions are meeting the needs thus felt. And accordingly there is a protest against the Church and the clergy because of their failure to supply to the world the elements which its heart craves in these times ; they were naturally expected to conserve and sustain the spirits of men in the war the same as other agencies were supposed to supply guns, clothes, recreation, amusement, cigarettes, and the like. Now the other agencies fulfilled their functions admirably, but the Church did not. She let people grope in the dark and failed to interpret God and the facts of religion in ade- quate terms for purposes of these severe days. The Church tried to perpetuate her platitudinous utterances 136 THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 137 and doctrines, and since the world had lost interest in these things in peaceful times it could hardly be ex- pected to flock back to them when war spread its blight and brought the demand for a closer touch with reality. Hence the protest, which ranges all the way from mild indifference to bitter antagonism. This about sums up the religious situation as I found it in England, France, and Italy after much investiga- tion. After reaching Europe my first concern was to discover what the Church was doing; my natural in- stincts thus prompted and my knowledge that the spirit of the people depended largely upon the Church made me doubly anxious to secure adequate information. If I was making social investigation and was interested in the life of the people, of course the Church must not be neglected; and the conversation that one could hear any- where in regard to religion and its institutionalized life convinced me that there was a marked situation to deal with. It was therefore with much zest and expectancy that I set about the task of securing an understanding of these matters. The method of approach was through the people, and from that standpoint all conclusions were made. I have since had these conclusions severely criti- cized, particularly by the clergy, and the strictures were always based on the fact that my statements were not in total agreement with the views of certain ministers ; the critics did not understand, or else they did not approve, the fact that my observations were made through the people and embodied the views of the people — of all ranks and classes, the rich and poor, the soldiers and 138 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR government officials, rationalists and clergymen, Catho- lics and Protestants. One trouble with the clergymen to-day is that they approach all matters from their own standpoint and regard all social movements through their own spectacles. I tried to adopt a different meth- od, and my statements have embodied the attitude of the people whether they meet with the approval of the clergy or not. What are the religious ideas in the hearts of the peo- ple in these times ? This was one phase of the situa- tion, which I started to investigate. After the formation of some acquaintances, especially in the case of some religious workers in the slum districts and some persons who had access to Christian homes of a more elevated social station, it was an easy matter to form judgments. For several days I did little save visit homes, going the pastoral rounds with the social workers, attending little home receptions with the soldiers, and in all possible ways endeavoring to obtain access to the people. Prac- tically all of the homes had suffered from the war — sons, husbands, fathers, brothers were dead, mutilated, or "out there" — and the utterances that fell from the lips of these people at home were representative of the deepest sentiments of the heart. Without detailing the record of visits and conversa- tions with these persons, I may say that the war has had upon religious people two opposite effects. In the case of one section, the old and more intensely religious element of the population, it has served to drive them deeper into their faith and make them cling to their THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 139 conceptions and practices with a more passionate devo- tion. Suffering of the most intense character, the loss of all that they had deemed dear in life, and a dreadful uncertainty concerning the outcome of it all — these things have driven the people to have recourse to the only source of hope and comfort which they have ever known, their religion. And so all over Europe one may find people to whom religion means more and gives more at this time than ever before. I visited in the home of a lady prominent in the affairs of a certain Church; she and her daughters were in deep mourning, and the features of their white faces told stories of mental an- guish unspeakable. The two sons and brothers, three nephews and cousins, a multitude of friends and loved ones were all sleeping beneath the little white crosses "out there." To these people the war had no more horrors; it had done its worst to them. They were re- markably quiet and smiled with a wonderful sweet- ness — it made me better to see them smile ! Their con- versation was filled with assurances of comfort and faith and their hearts were as calm as a summer's after- noon. They were sad, but no hatred rankled in their souls; they never once spoke of "the 'un." "Perhaps the war is a good thing after all," the lovely lady said to me; "at any rate it has brought me a faith that I never knew before. I have something to pray for now ; I know what Christ suffered, I know how valuable the doctrine of immortality is, and my faith in a heaven is strengthened into a certainty and conviction that nothing can shake. When the war came I was driven 140 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR to my knees and to the Church. When the blows began to fall upon my heart I was driven more and more deep- ly into communion with God. And now I understand how little avails the things that we can handle and lay up. Nothing counts but love, and love cannot be sus- tained apart from God." And then she smiled her wonderful smile and was content. There are not many like this lady, but I found sev- eral who had known her experience. Down in the slums of the east end of London and in other walks they are living on the Bread of Life. Each day they go to their Churches and return with a new comfort. The fleeting glance that I received of this side of religious life made me understand that here were the germs of a tremendous awakening. But alas! the other side was so apparent that it was evident the trend of things was in the other direction. The war has had an opposite effect upon the lives of another section of the people. It has brought to them nothing save distress, confusion, doubt. These are the more intellectual folk — it is not that the other section do not possess intellectual strength, but they do not ap- proach the facts of life through that channel. This second sectioa is more inclined to weigh facts, evidence, and influences. And to them the war has meant mis- understandings that have beclouded their faith and filled their hearts with uncertainty. In the first place, they have heard the charge that Christianity has broken down and proved a failure. Over and over the rationalist press presents the well-worn arguments. Christianity THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 141 failed to prevent war ! The world has repudiated the doctrines of Christ ! Now what about your doctrine of the other cheek! And people have been deluded and deceived by these specious utterances until some of the best of them are half-inclined to throw over religion alto- gether. With socialists, labor union enthusiasts, skep- tics, New Thought advocates, and the whole coterie of agitators inveighing against religion from morning until night, and with the Christian apologists either ignor- ing the attacks or replying in bulky and expensive tomes couched in the phrases of the university lecture room, and which the people never see and would not read if they did see, it is small wonder that those average men who think seriously but superficially have been all but swept from their moorings. Then adding to this confusion are a group of ex- tremely orthodox ecclesiastics with a set of outgrown no- tions concerning verbal inspiration and literal interpre- tation of the Bible, which issue in a doctrine called pre- millenarianism. As Principal Eorsyth remarked, not one of these men ever did the New Testament the honor of becoming a recognized authority in it, but they are vociferous enough to make up for their lack of influ- ence and intelligence. Their teachings are that the Bible is verbally inspired by God and is infallible, that it must be interpreted literally, that prophecy was the prediction by inspired men of events that would happen in the distant future, and that Christ will soon come to establish Himself in person in this world, rule on a temporal throne, put his enemies to death, catch up the 142 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR faithful and make them float in the air, etc., etc. They believe that Christ will not come until the world goes so completely to hell that it cannot longer get along without Him, and in the war they see signs of the com- ing. They do not know, or else they do not regard the fact, that there has never been an age in which these notions did not flourish, there was never a calamity which did not breed a perfect swarm of their adherents. I visited a preacher who is more or less noted for expounding such views. He told me that the world had forsaken "the word" and thus the war came about; "the word," as understood by him, meant verbal inspira- tion and literal interpretation. With his permission I propounded a series of questions to which I requested answers from his standpoint, some of them being the following: On the basis of verbal inspiration how do you deal with differing and contradictory accounts of the same happening, like the conversion of Paul, for ex- ample, without impeaching God by throwing onto Him, as inspirer, the responsibility of contradicting Him- self? If the Bible is accepted literally in all sections what shall we do with the statement in Ecclesiastes that "a man hath no preeminence above a beast," and the implication in the question "Are ye not much more than they ?" If the world must go to hell does not that imply the failure of Christ's attempt to redeem the world through the operation of His Spirit ? If this hellward process is a part of God's plan for the final establishment of His kingdom, prepared and outlined centuries ago, is not God impeached as the author of a program of THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 143 immorality? If you are anxious to secure the return of Christ, and if He will not return until the hellward process is complete, would it not be logical for you and your crowd to assist the hellward trend by becoming out- breaking criminals in society? If you insist on being pure and saving yourself, are you not selfish in that you postpone the coming of the kingdom in order to secure your own salvation ? As was to be expected, this preach- er refused to discuss such matters and accused me of being an infidel in the employ of the Eationalist Press Association ! By forcibly injecting these views into the religious situation to-day these pre-millenarians have contributed much to spread dissension, confusion, and doubt among the people. They play into the hands of the rationalist, because, as the people have learned, literalism and verbal inspiration cannot be defended in the face of the plain fact of the Bible itself; and the people who are constantly being taught these indefen- sible theories are becoming more and more confused. One day a group of correspondents were en route to the British Headquarters under the escort of some offi- cers detailed for the service by the war department. The topics of conversation were naturally varied, but I was surprised to note that the subject of religion was broached over and over again, and each time the officers were willing and prepared to discuss it. The remarks relative to spirituality and religion were always most respectful and reverent, but they were exceedingly flippant and disrespectful in regard to the Church and the clergy. "The Archbishop of Canterbury is a Vic- 144 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR torian relic," was a remark that caused laughter and agreement. One intelligent young captain seemed to be the spokesman for the entire company, and I ventured to put to him certain questions and suggestions in the hope that his answers and the attitude of the others to them might furnish me some information of value. "What has the Church done in the present war in the way of service to the people and the nation?" I asked him. "Nothing whatever," he replied. "She has only made trouble. The Church was expected to render no service save a spiritual service ; this she has not even attempted, and in deserting this legitimate field and trying to work in others she has made a jolly mess of it." "What has she done in particular, in creating this mess ?" "Much in every way. There is not an officer in the army who does not know that the Church has interfered with discipline and contributed to inefficiency by object- ing to cricket and other games on Sunday. We use these games in training the men : for example a good bowler is an excellent bomber because the method of throwing is the same, and in the same way fencing develops effi- ciency in bayonet fighting. It was our custom to encour- age these games on Sunday afternoons, thereby assisting our men, entertaining them, and keeping in touch with them. Then came the clergy to object, and wherever they have sustained their protests demoralization has re- sulted. Our men are bored and we lose track of them THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 145 on Sunday. It is a damned outrage, perpetrated by damned fools !" This conclusion I found to be concurred in by prac- tically all the officers, the noted General, an old Sudan veteran who had charge of all the training activities, be- ing especially indignant at the suggestion that his games might be prevented. And when we were being shown the cricket field the question, "Have the bishops inter- fered with you yet V 9 brought a sullen scowl to the offi- cer's face. "Have they done anything else V 9 1 asked. "Much," my officer replied. "They have made such a howl against reprisals that we must sit quietly and be bombed day after day by the Hun without being able to lift a finger in retaliation. The clergy alone are re- sponsible for the situation, as everybody knows. They plead the efficacy of moral suasion and example in deal- ing with an enemy whose conceptions of such things are long since dead. The army demands reprisals, and the same demand is echoed by the king and tke people. But the clergy prevent the policy. Bah ! To hell with such a government l" "Do not the clergy render good service as chaplains ?" "Some do, most do not. Too many times they hinder by their jealousy of the Y. M. C. A. and of other chap- lains sent out by different communions. We could dis- pense with most of them and be better off." "What do you think is wrong with them V 9 "I think the trouble is plain ignorance. They know nothing about the people. They have been trained in 146 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR another direction and have lived apart from them, so that to-day they have no message for the nation. I went home from the trenches on Easter and went to hear my own parson. He preached from the text, 'I go a-fishing,' and I sat there hungry for some message of hope and some sign of God ; but the padre had no idea of what I needed or what the people needed. They should compel all young clergymen to spend a few years in the east end as a part of their education." "What do the soldiers think of the clergymen at the front?" "They have different ideas for different parsons. But as a rule they do not take the chaplains seriously. He is either what you call 'a good fellow' and drinks with the men, else he lives apart from them; in either case his spiritual influence is small. The men understand that a drinking parson, and one who excuses their im- morality, as most of them do after some fashion, does not represent Christ." "You seem to see little good in the clergymen," I at last said to him. "Little good at the present time," he agreed. "The Church has caused trouble in every land. In Ireland, England, Mexico, Eussia, Italy, Canada, and Australia the Church has been the source of mischief and dissen- sion. The only exception is in France, where the gov- ernment paid not the least attention to the clergy but conscripted them as common soldiers along with the run of men. The result has been that the French priests are more beloved than ever before." THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 147 "But you must remember that in all of these coun- tries you mention the trouble has been caused by a Church which either has or claims temporal and politi- cal rights." "Ah! You have sensed the trouble/' he exclaimed. "It is a political Church that bothers us. Even here in England the non-conformists have kept their souls. Their young men have 'joined up' willingly, their mes- sage has been true, and they should be excepted from any of the strictures which I have pronounced against these Anglicans. After this war we will have a settle- ment, and one of the first acts of reconstruction must be the disestablishment of the Church." The doctrines set forth by this young captain I later found to be the prevailing sentiments everywhere — among the soldiers, officials, and men on the street. And they are held and freely promulgated by men who are themselves deeply religious and communicants of the established Church; in practically all instances these persons took care to conclude their prophecies on what would happen to the Church after the war with the state- ment, "But we must see to it that religion does not suf- fer." The situation created in me a new desire to see for myself these clergymen who were thus abused. Armed with letters of commendation and introduction from some of the leading clergymen of America, the posses- sion of which, reenf orcing my own position, seemed cal- culated to secure for me the attention of any minister anywhere, I began the rounds. My first visit was to a 148 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Methodist known on both sides of the Atlantic, a dis- tinguished editor, author, and preacher. He received me with a pale smile and showed a mild interest when he read my credentials and heard my mission. But I could get nothing from him of interest, and my hopes that he would assist me faded. He showed no inclina- tion to extend facilities that would expedite my work, and as for the fact that the Church had any especial mission in the present crisis, or was the object of any special opposition on the part of persons who mattered, he seemed never to have heard of it. Across the street I would find the old Bunhill Fields burying grounds and the graves of Susannah Wesley, John Bunyan, DeEoe, and other celebrities, while the City Road Chapel, Wesley's House, and Museum were close at hand ; I would be interested in these things ! And in- deed I did get more inspiration from these remains of the dead than I received from the living in that vicinity. I tried it again. Mine host this time was another noted divine, author of books on sale but seldom read in this country, whose mighty Church lifts its dome across from Westminster Abbey. I searched for thirty minutes before I could discover where this pastor kept himself, and at last I found myself in his presence. He said he was glad to see me, but he did not act like it. He put himself out but little in receiving me ; in fact he entirely dispensed with the formality of asking me to have a chair and talk with him. One swift glance over his spectacles was the only look I received from him, and as he bustled around he observed, "If you are pres- THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 149 ent at any of our services I shall be pleased to have a word with you." I thought I would perhaps succeed better elsewhere, and I motored across Westminster Bridge to a clergy- man known around the world. Here I was received kindly but coldly. I could not draw this pastor out on any subject, and my suggestion that the war presented a challenge to the religious world simply evoked the re- ply: "Certainly, sir, certainly. We must hold the faith. I see in it all the fulfillment of prophecy. We must be nearing the end ; yes, we must be, indeed !" By this time I had begun to think that discourtesy was a part of the general equipment of British clergymen. It was not until later that I realized the possible cause of the attitude I encountered; a Scotchman told me — I was wearing a straw hat and a brown suit with a belt around the waist ! Offense enough ! I met the one representative of an efficient ministry in a live young minister down Whitechapel way; he was in charge of a system of missions in the east end of London and was living, moving, and having his being with the people. He knew them and their problems, and his* establishment radiated helpfulness* He smoked but did not drink, and lived the life of a man among men. I found him open to the appeal of the national crisis and crying out his heart for a method to assist, and daily he was giving his strong right arm to the service of the distressed. It was no wonder that his auditorium, down in the slums, was an immense one 150 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR and that the Queen and the Princess Mary were wont to pay him a visit once in a while. I came from the atmosphere of America, and was almost amazed at the lethargy which possessed the clergy of England. I found it a literal truth that those whom I visited "knew little about life and little about the de- mands made upon them by the present age. There were brilliant exceptions, of course, but as a general rule it seemed to me true that "their training had stereotyped their minds." I attended their services and heard them preach — good, wholesome sermons for the most part and from a theoretical standpoint. But I met no clergymen who could tell me what should be done about the de- plorable state of European social morality, and none offered a program of social endeavor. Surely if ever a Church deserved disestablishment it is the Church of England, and one hopes that the prediction of the young captain may come true. I should be dealing unjustly, however, if I left the impression that there are no clergymen who are grasp- ing the significance of these days. I have seen scores of them. They labor in the trenches and on the firing lines, in the hospitals and prison camps, everywhere men are found. !No sacrifice is too great for them to make. These are they who have a firm grasp on the spiritual realities of the universe and are able to interpret them in terms of life. They do not, like so many of their fellows, cover the sins of the Tommies with admiring phrases and balance their courage and unselfishness over against their immorality and drunkenness so as to give THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 151 them a clean slate. Neither do thej dabble in pre- millenarian foolishness or any other form of physical interpretation. And they are not confused in their thinking concerning God. To such as these Mr. Wells makes no appeal, because they know what Mr. Wells does not; while he was reveling in socialistic fantas- tics they were sitting at the feet of the Master of all the ages; their wisdom is the fruit of long experience while his is the result of presumptuous conceit, touched with a sense of former failure. Unto such men as these all honor should be accorded — and it will be. And the soldiers are religious too, in a sense, al- though they do not seem to be Christians. They know "the White Comrade" but they do not connect Him with the Church — rather do they connect the Church with the Pharisees whom He denounced so severely. It is a natural religion that they have — the kind that the Stu- dent in Arms described in those wonderful words which have been so often quoted that they do not need quota- tion any more. Perhaps when this war is over the clergy will have learned a lesson. Perhaps the Church will reform enough to learn where the people are and what the Bible is. And then this natural religion which the soldiers have can be made to issue into the Christianity of a repentant Church, and the "White Comrade" will cover the earth with His spiritual influ- ence. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH AND THE WAR There are perhaps few well-informed people to-day who do not realize that the outlook for the Church, aside from our faith in its ultimate triumph and on the basis of the facts as they now present themselves, is far from bright. There is a protest against it in all parts of the world, ranging in its degree of severity from mild in- difference to violent hatred, and this opposition from the outside is reenforced by unrest on the inside. And so marked is the tendency against the Church that we might abandon all hope and join the ranks of those who so confidently predict its early and complete destruc- tion did we not understand the social and personal need of religious organizations, and did we not have a spiri- tual faith in the premises. In France the antagonism to the Church is perhaps not so marked as elsewhere, for there prevails at the present time a more cordial feeling towards it than has been the case in recent years. The trammels of Roman Catholicism were recently broken, and as a result of this action there grew up an estrangement between France and the Vatican that amounted almost to open hostility. This feeling still exists in a great degree, the 152 THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 153 Pope still maintaining a sullen attitude toward France and France having a deep suspicion of the Pope. Un- like some of her allies, she has not sent a diplomatic representative to the papal court, and she was the last nation to officially thank his holiness for his efforts in securing the transfer and exchange of prisoners of war. But while the relations are by no means cordial, there are signs that France regards the Church in a light somewhat more favorable than formerly. This is due almost wholly to the fact that the priests are fighting in the trenches as private soldiers. By conscripting the ecclesiastics along with all others France avoided the trouble which England has incurred and kept down some of the causes of the anti-ecclesiasticism which pre- vails across the channel. At the same time certain of the priests have demeaned themselves nobly in the war and have gained the respect of the people. Thus France has forgotten that the priests are conscripts, that they doubt- less would not have "joined up" otherwise, and that they have caused dissension and trouble in all of the allied countries where they were exempted. The worst thing that could have happened to the Church was clerical exemption from military service; this lies at the base of much opposition and misunderstanding and has served to draw the Church farther away from the peo- ple. But although the attitude of the French toward the Church has somewhat improved, there are no signs that cordial relations are about to be entered into, nor are the people flocking to the churches as a result of the war. The indifference and opposition which prevails 154 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR elsewhere in the world is prominent in France also. In Italy the anti-ecclesiastical spirit is marked. Here the Church has suffered much from the war. Rome is convinced, along with the rest of Europe, that the Pope is at heart pro-German, and the action of the Vatican in retaining enemy aliens in official positions, and the Gerlac case in particular, has embittered the people. The Pope protested because the diplomatic representa- tives of Germany and Austria left Rome at the outbreak of the war, and he has been unwilling to submit to the delays and inconveniences in the transmission of mail and telegraphic communications which the state of bel- ligerency made incumbent upon all people. Then his peace proposals have all had a pro-German ring. It would be difficult to convince the Italian masses that Benedict is not at heart in sympathy with the cause of the Central allies. The Vatican itself, however, does not understand that it has estranged the people more and more during the war. Because of the fact that Eng- land and Russia have sent representatives to its court since the war began it believes the hand of the Pope has been strengthened, and that these nations are coming to a recognition of his temporal claims. Nothing could be farther from the truth. These agents are little more than secret, service operatives, and their appointment was made with no other motive than to have men on the ground to watch the operations inside the Vatican pal- ace. They represent suspicion rather than cordiality. This attitude which is the outgrowth of the war comes on top of an anti-papal sentiment which has been grow- THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 155 ing in Italy since the adoption of the absurd "prisoner of the Vatican" theory, and even before that time. This fiction, and the temporal phases of the Italian question upon which it rests, are derided and sneered at by the people in all the ranks of society, and the longer these political aspirations are cherished the deeper will be- come the gulf between the Church and the people. Rome is by far the most anti-papal city of Europe, and the lack of respect for the Church is surprising to the casual observer. The most strenuous opposition to the hier- archy of the Church runs through Italian society, and it comes from ministers of state, captains of industry, leaders in thought, the men on the street, socialists, and all other social groups. The clerical party, defenders of the Church, embraces an insignificant portion of the people who are Catholics; these people are determined to stand by and support the Law of Guarantees no mat- ter what may happen to the Church. The same state of affairs prevails in England also. So far as the Catholic Church is concerned the oppo- sition has deepened into hatred. In Ireland the Catho- lics have hobnobbed with the enemy and have attempted to betray the Empire while it was struggling for its life, just as they have done in every war in which Britain has been engaged. In Canada they have opposed con- scription, prevented enlistment, and hampered the con- duct of the war in many ways, and they have done the same thing in Australia. England, therefore, has a settled conviction that the Catholics are traitors, and she hates the Church accordingly. 156 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR And England lias come almost to blows with the An- glicans also. Time and again I have heard the officers of the British army condemn the Church with deep bit- terness, and in nearly all cases these officers were com- municants of the Church and possessed of deep religious sentiments. In one group I heard an officer express the consensus'of opinion by saying that in Russia, England, Prance, Italy, Germany, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Mexico the Church had given trouble in the war, and he expressed the sentiment that the entire idea should be thrown overboard, or some new organization be built up on the facts of religion. The governmental officials, the officers, the soldiers, and the people gener- ally feel that the Church has not "played the game," and that the war has broken down her organization com- pletely. The Countess of Warwick states the case against the Church this way: "Granted that the task before the Church was a very formidable one, that it was even im- possible, something of the equivalent in moral courage to the physical courage shown upon the battle field should have been forthcoming from its spokesmen. Un- fortunately there is much to suggest that the Estab- lished Church is conserving its courage for the post hel- ium task of preaching the old platitudes and asking those who have seen war, or merely suffered by it, to take them seriously. And truly courage of a kind is needed for this. . . . The failure of the Established Church during the war is the inevitable result of its failure during the long years that preceded it. It has THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 157 been the collapse of an Institution that deliberately dwelt in a world of its own imagining, and never had the strength of will or purpose to tell home-truths to the comfortable and the possessing classes, upon whose support it has learned to rely. . . . Peace has its mas- sacres no less complete than war, and to the most of these massacres, whether by drink, disease, poverty, or vice, the Established Church has been a spectator, if the term can be applied to that which has eyes but sees not, ears but hears not, and a mouth in which most ut- terance is platitudinous. The Heads of the Estab- lished Church, with one or two brilliant exceptions, do not know anything of the actualities of the world in which they live ; they do not dare to know ; their train- ing has stereotyped their minds; the present state of the world has found them not only unprepared, but quite helpless to cope with it. I do not expect to live to see the Established Church recognize the truth that the real salvation of this country depends upon the removal of all social conditions that create paupers, criminals, and lunatics. I do not expect to hear ministers advocating ceaselessly in the pulpit the taking of the necessary measures for restoring the social balance, quite regard- less of the chance that there may be among the congre- gation some of those whose life-work is responsible for one or more of the evils denounced. Before the war, such home-truths were tolerated only from the preachers who were extremely fashionable and preached to an audience almost exclusively feminine, an audience that took no heed of what they said, and was concerned only 158 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR with the manner of saying it. One does not dare to dwell upon the fashionable preacher whose congrega- tion is largely feminine !" ("The New Religion," Hib- bert Journal. July, 1917.) This protest is voiced from the standpoint of the In- ternationalist, whose opposition is based on the alleged fact that the Church has not performed her social duty. This attitude on the part of socialists is by no means new, but it has been accentuated and given a new influ- ence by the war. This is true because the war has re- vealed the need of some social agency which can solve the problems of inequality and secure social justice ; and these problems have been revealed as moral at the bot- tom and hence in the province of the Church. And since they have not been solved it is perfectly natural that the failure to solve them should be laid at the door of the Church. Then the laboring man has gained a new in- fluence in the order of things as they exist at the present time ; he has more money and he is recognized as being a more vital factor in the life of our times. Therefore his opinions have more weight, and thus much atten- tion is being given to his opinion of the Church. Social- ism is also become more formidable in Europe, owing to the new position of the laborer, the strength of labor unions in the present crisis, and the hopes which the Allies placed upon the German socialists in the matter of destroying autocracy from the inside and bringing about peace. The causes for such an attitude towards the Church are many and varied. One of them is the general unrest THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 159 and uncertainty in all matters of religion. The war has shocked people out of their old complacency in regard to spiritual affairs, and in the search for stability they have become confused. A thousand voices call them this way and that. One cries out that the war proves the final failure of Christianity, another says that the end of the world is at hand, still another upholds one of the multitude of foolish isms that are adrift to-day, and one makes a rationalistic attack on the subject matter of faith. Gradually people are losing their religion, as a systematic and well-grounded conviction. It brings them no comfort and hope in the midst of the greatest sorrow they have ever known. They hear of move- ments and doctrines which they cannot understand, and their minds and hearts become beclouded with anxiety and doubt. There is religious unrest, change, and flux all over the world, and the Church suffers on both sides. There can be little doubt that when the religious atmos- phere clears the ecclesiastical air will clear also. Then the European clergy are clearly out of touch with the people. They do not know where the people live, what they are doing, what their problems are, or how they are getting on. When the Countess of War- wick declares that they are living in a world of their own imagining, she is right. Their education really does separate them from life, and under the European form of ecclesiastical administration they have little in- centive to plunge into the social tasks and problems of the day. It is a common complaint on the part of the soldiers that the Church never cared anything about 160 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR them, hence they never cared anything about the Church. The clergymen themselves will readily admit, in many cases, at least, that they are divorced from the people. In this situation it is inevitable that the Church should decline; in this situation the Church ought to decline, since it cannot fulfill its function in the world while it lives over the heads of the men in the street. The ser- mons that one hears in the average Church in which a middle aged clergyman officiates will reveal the fact that the preacher does not take his start from the facts of human existence. On one occasion I heard a chaplain who had just come from the front tell of a fellow chap- lain who had preached to a company of men just emerged from an experience of eight days under fire in the front line on the subject, "Does the Holy Spirit pro- ceed from the Father or from the Father and the Son f ' The Church knows more about heaven than it does about the earth, and it knows next to nothing about heaven. Its theology, its concerns, the very tones of its ministers unfit it to grasp the life of the times. The people know this, and they see no good in such an institution. Here is the secret of much of the opposition which the Church encounters. There is the further fact that the divisions in the Church serve to repel the people. The average man sees no sense in such divisions, since they are based on things which do not interest him in the least; when the Churches themselves admit that the things upon which they differ are details and not fundamentals and at the same time set so much store by the details that they re- THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 161 fuse to get together, the average man repudiates them. It seems to him that they spend more energy caring for their details than in pushing their fundamentals. In this he is undoubtedly right. When the war broke out everything else united in a common task. Political and social differences were forgotten, old animosities were laid aside. But the Church refused to unite, and to-day her divisions are among her greatest handicaps. And by keeping them up she is more and more estrang- ing the people. The following extract from Sherwood Eddy will show the situation in too many cases: "In the last hospital we visited, the young American Episcopal chaplain working with one of our own units asked the writer to accompany him one morning to help him in cheering up the patients, giving them Testaments, meet- ing their needs, and answering their doubts and diffi- culties. While we were proceeding through one of the wards, the Nonconformist chaplain came by. The writer was speaking to a poor boy who was dying. The chaplain seemed shocked and surprised that we were speaking to one of his patients without his permission. The young Episcopal chaplain explained that he felt sure the chaplain would not mind if we tried to help the men. Although he followed him out of the ward and tried his best to make his peace with him, the chaplain reported the matter, and we were prevented from doing personal Christian work in neighboring hospitals. The Roman Catholic chaplain in the next hospital, a most consecrated and earnest man, has managed to get a mili- 162 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR tary rule passed that no services can be held in any ward of the hospital unless every Eoman Catholic patient is bodily carried out. This has successfully prevented the holding of any Christian services whatsoever, Catholic or Protestant. To give another instance — a personal friend of the writer, a young Anglican clergyman, a widely known college principal, was serving in one of the huts of a Convalescent Camp. He had made the acquaintance of the patients in some twelve wards and was going the rounds every morning telling the war news, giving oranges to the fevered, and cheering up the depressed. The Commandant came with apologies and told him that although he was doing the best Chris- tian work in thethospital it must be discontinued, as the chaplain objected. Our friend, who was a clergyman of the same communion as the chaplain, called upon him and asked if he had any objection to the distribution of fruit. He replied that if our friend did this it would give an unfair advantage to his work as his particular organization would get the credit, and that he, as the chaplain, must 'push his own show.' To continue in the words of our friend : 'Then I asked him if I could send the fruit through the lady workers or the hut orderlies, or the Tommies who were friends of the wounded. But he refused all. So I asked him if he would distribute them if I gave them. This he agreed to, and I have sent them to him since then. But he is too busy/ The oranges were not distributed, and our friend concludes : 'I am out against the whole principle on which he acts. I don't think he is much to be blamed. He is one of the THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 163 best; a keen, hard working, pleasant man, zealous for his own show, and in its interests doing much for the men. And in his principle of action he is not an ex- ception, but a common type of the Anglican padre as I have met him in many lands. They are trained and encouraged to push their own show. But this keen- ness on one's own show rather than on men, is the very essence of the sin of schism, and the very root of Phari- saism. Now, as a rule, all the sects stand for their own show first, and men know it. I am ashamed to be a parson to-day. Men were not made for any Church, but the Church for them.' " ("With Our Soldiers in France," 156-158.) The sight of a divided Church, divided in most cases over the merest trivialities in comparison to funda- mental agreements, entailing the most tremendous waste and overlapping of energies, is calculated to repel and disgust the average man ; and the matter is made worse by the fact that the leaders of the ecclesiastical organi- zations alone are responsible for the situation, since the denominational divisions have long since lost the loyalty of the laity. Another cause of the present antagonism to the Church is found in the wide spread feeling that the Church does not properly represent Christianity. Re- ligion is not suffering overmuch, and Christianity, while it is the object of attack, is still supreme in the world. In this situation the Church could not decline except the people believed it to be unrepresentative of Christ. Such sentiments appear especially among the soldiers. 164* SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR They seem to associate all that they deem noble with the name of Christ, and "The White Comrade" secures their love and worship. They realize His religion means love, peace, goodness, salvation — the very negation of everything this war means; they are quite sure that if Christ had His way this horror would not have hap- pened ; and they are longing for the time to come when Christ may have His way, for no person hates war so cordially as the common soldier. Therefore any move- ment that bids fair to let Christ have His way may be sure of the support of these men. They draw away from or ignore the Church for the simple reason that they do not see the Christ influence emanating from it. It stands, in their opinion, for a smug respectability. It does not seem to insist upon morality very much, and upon social justice not at all. Its social activity does not reflect its prayers, and to the soldier it seems to represent the very Pharisaism which Christ so bitterly denounced. If it ever cared much for them, common men of the streets, before the war they never found it out. And its love for them in the pres- ent crisis does not seem to affect them much. It over- shoots the mark, and in many cases even verifies the suspicion they have always entertained concerning it. For its clergymen are coddling them and flattering them without making any serious attempts to convert them; and they even go so far as to excuse the most immoral practices and assure the men that they will be saved if they are brave and die as true Britishers. You cannot deceive the soldier in any such way; he instinctively THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 165 understands that this is not the way of Christ. On one occasion an English chaplain, wholly unknown to me, recognized me as an American by the cut of my coat and, leaving the company of soldiers with whom he had been drinking and smoking, came to me with an offer of whiskey and cigarettes. "You will like these," he said, "for they are American brands." I declined his kind offer and handed him my card with the remark, "I am a clergyman and hence do not drink whiskey." He seemed not in the least abashed, rather surprised, and merely replied, "Oh, well, this is war." But the soldiers enjoyed the incident immensely and were rather harsh in their ridicule of the chaplain. And later one of them said to me, "He had better have your ideas or you had better have his cross and collar !" It is easy to see that the European Church did very little in the war. There was a "Church Army," organ- ized in imitation of the Salvation Army, and supposedly in opposition to it, but its influence was nil. In social endeavor, and even in evangelistic religion, the Y. M. C. A. supplanted the Church, and the Church seemed perfectly willing to give way, knowing that in her di- vided state she was entirely impotent to deal with the situation. She sent out her chaplains, but they accom- plished little; they were either out of touch with the problems of life and could make no appeal to the men, else they were "good fellows" with them, socially popu- lar but religiously uninspected. At home the Church preached the war, prayed for the war, and urged en- listment. But while she thought that in this way she 166 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR was rendering a great service, the public did not con- sider this any service at all. Little thanks the Church received for her prayers and moral sanctions. No man would be excused from military duty, remarks a recent writer, on the ground that he devotes so many hours per day to praying for the war. These things were taken as a matter of course, deserving neither thanks nor attention ; they did not count in the balance either way. Over against this, however, there were certain things which make some people believe that the Church did not support the war sincerely. Leading the list was her opposition to a policy of reprisals in the matter of air raids. The people demanded reprisals, that the Hun be repaid in his own coin. They wanted British air- ships to sail over German towns and bomb unprotected German people, as the Germans themselves had treated the British. The king desired this, although it makes not the least difference in England what the king de- sires. Ministers of state wanted it, so did the army, and the same is true of the public generally. But it was opposed by the Church, which, under the leader- ship of the Archbishop of Canterbury and some leading educators, long prevented it. The argument was that their country had conducted the war on a high plane and should not descend to barbarism for the simple reason that the enemy descended to it. There was no military advantage to be gained by returning evil for evil, and it would even work against military success by forcing the withdrawal of airships from the fronts. The posi- tion taken by the Church leaders was right, and the THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 167 only one morally defensible ; if it could have been main- tained England would have come out of the war morally redeemed from the disgrace which some of her past ac- tions have brought upon her, and then even those who favored reprisals would be proud of her. But hatred held sway to such an extent that most of the people were even willing to jeopardize success at the front to wreak vengeance upon German women and children, whose destruction would in nowise help win the war. In fact, it might have defeated its purpose by cementing the people, as the German outrages did in England. There is no doubt that the policy of ruthlessness on the part of the Hun was the thing which united England and made possible the creation of a mighty army by the volunteer system. But the people saw red. "Let the gutters run full with the blood of German women and children" — this, says the Archbishop of Canterbury, was the sentiment expressed in many letters he re- ceived. Coupled with this was the exemption of the clergy, a cause of dissatisfaction that was practically universal. Over and over again have I heard complaints based on this score. It was not that the young clergymen were unwilling to "join up"; they were not permitted by their superiors to enlist. Some of them, it is true, entered the army regardless, but in so doing they doubtless forfeited all hope of preference in their pro- fession after the war, and the chances are that they will not return to it. The people feel, and rightly so, that there was no justice in exempting the young clergy- 168 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR man, and the fact that lie was exempted drew him apart from the common run of men — and he was already too far apart from them. And it caused the clergy to be regarded as a group of unpatriotic "slackers;" the speeches and prayers of a set of men who will not serve their country by bearing arms avail little. But the most serious aspect of this matter is the fact that after the war we are likely to have clergymen who are still more out of touch with life, who missed the experiences which most of their fellows underwent, and who must bear the stigma of missing it for unpatriotic reasons. Unless this can be corrected there is little hope for the Anglican Church in the future. Practically all of this opposition is against the dom- inating or established Church in the various countries ; in Italy and France the Eoman Catholic and in Eng- land the Anglican communions bear the brunt of the dissatisfaction. With the Nonconformists the case is different, for while they suffer from the general religious uncertainty and the disrepute which has overtaken the leading ecclesiastical organizations, they do not meet such bitter denunciation as falls to the lot of the others. I took the liberty of pointing out to a group of officers, whose criticism of the Church had been quite sharp, the fact that all of the communions which had given trouble in any country were either the possessors of or claimants for political power, and that the Nonconform- ists had deported themselves better. All hands agree in this ; even the Countess of Warwick admits that the chapel has preserved its soul and its moral courage in THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 169 the present crisis. There is toward it a kindlier feeling everywhere. Nonconformist clergymen have "joined up" more freely, they have not dabbled in politics or endeavored to dictate to the government, and they have demeaned themselves more admirably in every way. It was easier for them, since they were not looked to for any definite program or leadership. They at least are in touch with the people; since their income depends upon the voluntary contributions of the people they have a motive for understanding them that is not alto- gether spiritual. If there is any happy outlook for the Church in Europe to-day it is in the case of Noncon- formity. And if these communions would only be con- tent to live their own lives and make their own appeals, without the constant imitation of the Anglican ritual and practices, it would be easy to predict that they would control the society of the future. But the general dissatisfaction against the Estab- lishment does not signify at all that the Nonconformist Churches are gaining from it. Men do not fall out with the former and then go to the latter; they rather fall out with all and either disregard religion entirely or are caught by some of the visionary schemes of "natural religion," unattached and unorganized idealism like that represented by the Countess of Warwick or Mr. Wells, and in the end this means a total loss of religion through the loss of expressional channels. Neither does the dissatisfaction with the Church in- dicate that religion is suffering. Christianity suffers, although most of the critics of the Church do not mean 170 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR it to, but not in proportion with the Church itself. Most of the people who criticize the Church so severely are themselves communicants of the very Church they criticize. In Italy I employed a guide and interpreter, a most intelligent and cultured man, possessed of a wonderful degree of historical knowledge. This man was most outspoken against the Vatican, criticizing it unmercifully on the most reasonable grounds. But while he thus condemned the Church and its entire hierarchy he was a devout Catholic, and when I re- quired his services I could always find him on his knees in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. The feeling is that religion must in some manner be pre- served and that an organization is absolutely necessary to preserve its vitality. The idea of the Church is safe in Europe, for, with the exception of a few vociferous persons, the people understand the necessity of some- thing that corresponds to it and fulfills its functions. But they have done with whatever hierarchy exists. In Italy the political pretensions of the Vatican can never be realized, in France the disestablishment will be per- manent, in England the Anglican establishment is tot- tering to its fall. While the world is being made safe for democracy, the Church is being made safe for it also. Henceforth the people, and not a superior clergy, will have charge of their own religious affairs. And that will give us a different Church, interpreting re- ligion in different terms, and affording different ave- nues for its expression into living service. CHAPTEE VIII RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGION AFTER THE WAR The person who sets himself the task of preparing a definite program for the readjustment of the ideas of religion and the rejuvenation of its spirit to meet the changed conditions which will prevail after the war may well he looked upon askance, for the problems are such that they can neither be understood nor solved until the war has done its worst and run its course. It is comparatively easy to dissect and to sift out the ele- ments that are being discarded; the religious situation upon which any one can look does that for us. But to do the constructive work is more difficult ; in fact we may say that it is impossible to fully cover the case, especially in the matter of developing a detailed pro- gram systematically outlined. This is true in all such cases, and it has been made the basis of conservative protests against making any sort of a diagnosis. On all sides and at all times we may hear from the conserva- tive camp, especially from the superior clergy and the ecclesiastical vested interests, frantic urgings that noth- ing be said against the present order of things until one has a fully prepared system which can be auto- matically slipped in as a substitute. But advancing 171 172 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR things do not go that way, and never have. Faults al- ways stand revealed before we know the method of cor- rection, and the revealing is a prior necessity to the cor- rection. Construction must follow destruction in all instances, and the diagnostician is just as important as the man who effects the crure on the basis of the diag- nosis. We shall not, therefore, pay overmuch attention to the official conservatives who denounce us for recog- nizing the shortcomings of the present order before we are fully prepared to reconstruct it and make it per- fect. Nevertheless, we should be able to point out the gen- eral direction in which the process of reconstruction will move, and the details of the program will have to be discovered and applied when all the facts are before us and as the world goes on. Both the development and the application of the remedy must be a gradual and progressive process. There are some, we may be sure, who will believe that no reconstruction will be necessary. Certain religious persons have always opposed reconstruction of "the faith once delivered to the saints," and they have insisted on bringing under the category of "the faith" all the matters of theology, polity, and administration. As they have refused to recognize any signs of progress anywhere, it is doubtful if even the war will be suffi- cient to shock them out of that attitude. If they had their way the Church would die and Christianity would be banished from the face of the earth by the natural advances of civilization. But we need give no heed to RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION ITS such persons. It is as certain as the shining of the sun that our religious ideas and processes will have to be reorganized and rejuvenated if Christianity is to he perpetuated in the society of this world after this war. It is not strange that this should he so, for all other influences will have to submit to the same process. The only thing of which we are sure to-day is that we are sure of nothing. Everything that we know is being tested in the crucible of the world war, and this in- cludes every idea, every institution, and every influence. We cannot prophesy that anything will come out of it alive ; we can prophesy that nothing will come out of it as it went in. This is true of the home. Industry, so- cialistic theories, immorality, feminist movements, dev- astation, the preponderance in numbers of women over men — these and similar influences are attacking the old conception of the home with telling force, and all kinds of propositions are being put forth to solve the sex problem in its vital aspects. Some advocate polygamy, some the abolition of marriage altogether, and, if we may believe the reports, Germany has already adopted most severe, unusual, and revolting measures to increase her population. With all of these things attacking the home, we are not sure what adaptations the future will force us to make in our ideas. The same situation pertains in relation to educa- tion. There is a revolt against the German language, German books, and German scholarship generally, and this is likely to continue for some time after the war. When we consider the tremendous influence which Ger- 174 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR many has been exerting in the educational world, we can easily see that this protest must have an abiding effect on our ideas. Education will also be affected by the military or anti-military spirit which prevails after the war, since the schools will be called upon to support and inculcate the doctrine which is finally adopted. We are not even sure what our morality is to be to- morrow. To-day things are tolerated and excused that would have caused a storm of protest yesterday. Pro- fanity, liquor drinking, sexual immorality are sweeping Europe like a storm. The niceties that have always hedged the association between the sexes have been largely discarded, and the tone of womanhood has been lowered appreciably by the industrial life and the gen- eral situation brought by the war. It is extremely possible that after the war some of the things which we have always branded as sinful may be tolerated more easily, and on the other hand the reverse may be true in certain instances. In all of these departments of our life, and in all others also, changes and adaptations are likely to be made. And we need not expect religion to be the exception; in this department we are likely to see more far-reaching changes of attitude than else- where. "We may be quite sure of one thing, however, and that is that religion will not die. Nothing is more certain than that, and all the signs of the times confirm it. The Church might die, Christianity may suffer, but the vital principle of religion will not depart from the world. And this is true not alone because religion is implanted RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 175 deeply in human nature; the fact is evidenced by the deepest movements of our society to-day. It is an age in which the Church is attacked very roundly ; it is an unchristian age; hut it is not an age without religion. This war has revealed the need of God as men before have not known it. Everything else has failed. Ma- terialism has run its course, and even the soldiers in the trenches seem to understand that the ultimate cause of this war was unbelief, irreverence, godlessness, wick- edness, and the worship of matter. They, of all people, understand how badly the world stands in need of God and spiritual reality. It is the easiest thing in the world to talk personal religion to a soldier, because the subject is always at the very top of his mind ready to come to utterance; usually it is smothered or covered by profanity and carelessness, yet it is there, and he knows that there must be a God somewhere in this uni- verse who is capable of helping this suffering world. In a real sense, in spite of immorality and anti-eccle- siasticism, the war has given birth to the God-idea. And this insures the perpetuation of religion. Then the philosophic situation in the world is ex- tremely favorable to religion. Tyndall's Belfast ad- dress could not get a hearing in Europe to-day. The whole attitude upon which it stood has been changed. The scientific orgy of the nineteenth century issued in a mechanistic philosophy which professed to bring all the operations of the world, the seen and the unseen, under the reign of physical force, matter, and motion. It ruled out all ideas of a spiritual world and denied 176 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR the presence of an animating principle in man. So confident did this mechanism become that it openly pro- fessed to have dethroned forever all of the tenets upon which our religion stood. But in the latter part of the nineteenth and the first few years of the twentieth century came the great idealistic philosophers with their insistence upon Life. This confounded the mechanistic doctors, for they suddenly discovered that they had left Life out of their calculations and were wholly unable to deal with it. The result was that scientific materialism lost the place it had held and was reduced to the posi- tion of a starveling seeking shelter among the vagaries. Even before the war there were but one or two people on earth who still cared to defend this system through the reviews, and since the war broke out even they have been silenced. The war brought such things as patri- otism, generosity, unselfishness, sacrifice, devotion to principle, duty, and kindred sentiments forward, and in their presence mechanism had to slink away; it had no place in its machine for such spiritual elements as these. And the people were so intent upon them that materialism was smothered. Even such a man as H. G. Wells needed nothing but this war to shock him out of his religious indifference and give him a vital appreciation of the spiritual values of the uni- verse. To-day, if we could think about philosophy, idealism holds the field unchallenged; it held the field even before the war. And idealism is closely akin to religion; in a certain real sense we may say it is re- RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 177 ligion. It must either issue in religion, else it must evaporate into the thin air and be lost. Herein lies one of the strongest proofs that religion will not be lost out of this world. Then religion is in the very air to-day. Men reject Christianity and they attack the Church, but they set great store by religion. The presence of so many vaga- ries and isms proves this. Christian Science, Russell- ism, Dowieism, social-serviceism, Invisible-Kingism, and the long list of cults and creeds that are pulling away from Christianity and trying to set up new re- ligions all testify to the fact that religion is still with us, and will be with us. The soldiers have it especially, although they are about the most unchristian of the lot. They have natural religion, it has been said over and over again. And it is true. Over and over again I have heard them of their own will bring up the subject of religion, always to abuse the Church and the clergy, always to predict their overthrow, but always to end with the remark, "But we must be careful to see that religion does not suffer." I heard one man make a slighting remark about religion and he was instantly re- buked by a comrade in these words: "There's a ? ell of a lot of us as believes religion's a damn good thing for the world." And he was commended by the crowd, although practically all of them had expressed them- selves unfavorably concerning the Church, the clergy, and the entire paraphernalia of Christianity generally. There are a multitude of other signs which plainly sig- nify that religion is still in the world and that it is 178 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR attracting a wider attention than was given to it a few years ago. But this religion is not the Christian religion. Nat- ural religion is the best name for it. It is unformulat- ed and undefined; it has no system and no interpreta- tion; it implies no duties and offers no program of service. In this state it cannot exist. It will filter out into the air and lose itself, or else it will exist as a baneful influence amongst us. This natural religion, existing in the state of dreamy idealism and having no moral consciousness, will issue in positive immorality, it will unstabilize our thinking and our social action, it will give us no method of gathering up religious in- fluences and moving them on the social tasks of life. It is in that very direction that the current is moving at the present time. Not only is this religion not Christianity, but there is a positive and well-defined effort being made to disconnect it from Christianity and the Church, and from all other forms of organization likewise. Its leaders outspokenly prefer to have their religion drift in the air, to be breathed and felt once in a while and used for purposes of personal satisfaction and exhilaration; but they will not have it attached to a Church, or organization, they want no clergy, no propagating movement, no devices through which to develop, enhance, and cultivate it. And, strange to say, some of these leaders who thus urge base their objection to an organization to embody religion upon social grounds! In this they are worse than silly; it is the KECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 179 most positive inanity to imagine that our social prob- lems and needs can ever be solved and met by religion when that religion is detached from all embodiments through which effort and sentiment can be mobilized, multiplied, and expressed. Yet that is exactly what is proposed by the Countess of Warwick and other leaders of the new religion, which is the oldest kind of re- ligion. A deliberate attempt is also being made to destroy all systematized thought upon which religion rests. Theology is discarded, the Bible rejected, our doctrines repudiated, and everything that we have used to give a mental stability and direction to our faith is set aside. We are left with an odor, a sweet smell, a cooling breeze that drifts by, a sentiment that attracts the mind once in a while — and we are told that this is the religion of the future! It is no religion at all; it is an emasculation that cannot live, and cannot be comprehended while it does live. If any reasonable, well balanced, and ordi- narily intelligent man can obtain any sensible meaning from Mr. Wells' theory of an invisible King," I should personally like to be enlightened by that man. I will venture the assertion that on the basis of pure common intelligence Mr. Wells himself does not understand his own writings about "a finite god," and God being youth, courage, and the like. Words without an anchor, without a message, without a meaning — that is what comes of most of this material that is printed as reli- gious theorizing. Now all of this must not be allowed to obscure the 180 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR minds and hearts of the people. Yet they have been weaned away from the Church as it has operated and from Christianity as we have expressed it. They must be drawn back — not for the sake of the Church and Christianity, but for the sake of the people and the world. This means that our religion must be rejuve- nated, filled with deeper meaning, and quickened by a newer spirit. To outline the details of such a process of rejuvenation is a task which cannot be accomplished at the present time and at one sitting. The best we can hope to do is to mark out the way which such a process will be very likely to take. And that way will be found along the line of a new harmony and a new correlation between religion and theology and between religion and sociology. When we speak of a new correlation between religion and theology we broach a subject with which it is diffi- cult to deal, but with which some sort of dealing is im- peratively demanded. It is a matter of common accep- tance that theology has fallen into disrepute in these modern times. It has become the butt of ridicule and slighting remarks not only from those who might be expected to oppose it but also from ministers and Chris- tian leaders who might be expected to uphold it. The world has moved, attitudes have changed, and social problems have taken on new phases, but theology has re- mained practically the same. Each contemplated ad- vance has been strenuously opposed, and by the very persons whose position in the Church qualified them to speak for the system, and thus the science has been RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 181 effectually divorced from the life of our times. When it was discovered that conservatives would not permit a restatement or an adaptation of theological formulas the enlightened world contented itself with ignoring them. ~No other course was open, and so it has come about that practically no persons take theology serious- ly to-day, unless it be those invested with Episcopal au- thority, whose influence on the life of the times is nil. Many ministers, and the brainiest and best of them in many cases, no longer feel it incumbent upon them to accept the ancient creeds to which their Churches stand theoretically committed, and the laity neither know nor care that such creeds exist. This spirit has brought about a change unconsciously. It has not, indeed, changed the statements but it has revolutionized the whole theological attitude of the Church. So it has come to pass that most of the Churches have one theology in their confessions and quite another in actual operation in the minds and spirits of the people. Eor example, predestination may still be recorded in certain theological treatises the authority of which has never been revoked, yet it has not the least influence in congregations that worship under the theoretical flag of Calvinism. The ancient two-nature doctrine of the person of Christ still stands, but who believes it % Its adherents have been scattered so that in the number one can find scarcely any represen- tative people. The same is largely true of the doctrines of literal inspiration, the atonement, soteriology, and many others. The spirit of the people is abreast of 182 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR the times, but the formulated statements have drifted to the rear; so for practical purposes we might throw overboard all the formulated statements of theology which we possess and never miss them — or we may keep them and never be aware that they exist. So little interest do we have in these creeds to-day that heresy trials are practically unknown. In this situation it surely seems as if those inter- ested in scientific statements of the foundations of our faith would be intensely concerned for restatements that would preserve the fundamentals and again commend them to the people. But they are not. One of the strangest facts in the life of religion to-day is the fact that in the present situation the conservatives are de- termined to keep these formulations just as they are, in the same state in which the people have rejected them. One of the great Methodist communions recently made an attempt to restate its creed, under the leadership of its most noted author and teacher of theological works. Instantly conservatism, under the leadership of the superior clergy, put up a formidable opposition, and since the superior clergy possessed absolute power over the common clergy the movement was decisively de- feated. It is perfectly clear that religion and theology can never be harmonized and correlated again as long as this attitude is kept up. Try as we will, preach as we may, legislate to our heart's content, write for the re- ligious papers as much as we choose — the people of a modern world are not going to take seriously again the RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 183 ancient theological conceptions whicH they have now forgotten. We should not worry about such a state of affairs were it not for the fact that theology is of great and vital importance to a people. When the modern world considers theology as such ja worthless remnant of the past, fit only to be discarded and serving when re- tained only to prevent and obscure religious values, it makes a mistake from which it is certain to suffer. Re- ligion cannot be safely divorced from systematic state- ments and mental processes. Such a divorce gives us an unattached mysticism, a sentimental emotionalism that is more likely to issue in vagaries and immorality than in Christian character ; this is the process through which the world to-day teems with foolish isms and fantastic religious movements of a thousand sorts. We need a systematized theology, without, however, the pas- sion for system which possessed our fathers and which gave us some of the hard and fast doctrines which have little to commend them except that they dovetail excel- lently into other similar doctrines. Now it is quite clear that the theology of the future must not make the old mistake of explaining all things, seen and unseen, earthly and eternal. If God, Christ, and the Bible do not see fit to reveal to a scientific cer- tainty the intricacies of the atonement, the person of Christ, the time of the parousia, the nature of future punishment, the location and extent of heaven, we may be quite sure that a theology which we can build upon the revelation given us through them will fail in ex- 184 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR plaining these things. We have taken the position that theology must begin where revelation leaves off and amplify it; we must understand that theology has no function except to assist us in applying religious facts and influences to the living of our lives in this en- vironment. Thus our theology should reconstruct itself along lines of personality and social endeavor. Its primary function is to develop a personal religious life, to ad- just this life to the social tasks and needs of a modern world, and in connection with those tasks to call out the creative genius of a religious man. It is designed to hold up before religious people, and through them to the world, the supreme value of spiritual elements, and thus enable Christian men to project these values into the various departments of this world's activity. The greatest need of the religious world to-day seems to be a new theology, a theology written from the social point of view and designed to plunge Christianity into the very midst of the struggles of this world. We know enough about heaven and hell, death and immortality, atonement and the person of Christ — at any rate we know all that we are likely to know about these things. But we do not yet understand how to live in this world. We do not know what the duties of a religious man actually are. We are actually confused about what is right and what is wrong. We must understand where this world is going and when we may know it has ar- rived. If theology can teach us these things it may live. RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 185 !Now our task in this regard is very like that faced by the early Church; we again must make natural re- ligion issue into Christianity. The whole world is full of religion and notions about God, duty, and salvation. But these notions do not affect life; they do not even make those who hold them better men. Upon them, however, Christianity, or any other system, must build. It is not so much a question of meeting and overcom- ing these things as it is a question of commending our faith to their adherents so that they may be absorbed into our body. In the process of absorption the extra- neous features will slough off. Such was the process in the early Church. Christianity did not convert the world, she absorbed it. Our enemies have made much of the fact that Constantine simply converted pagan temples into Christian churches by an edict, and that paganism merged into the new religion because it be- came popular. The basis of this complaint is not valid for a complaint. This was the right process, whatever we may think about the methods of its ac- complishment. We are not called to destroy all that differs, for we must know that these varying religions express truth and are a part of the world's search for God. Our mission is one of absorption, and we trust in the transcending superiority of Christianity to keep itself pure while it accomplishes the process of amalga- mation. While our task is remarkably similar to that of early Christianity, it is much more difficult — we can make this statement with a full consciousness of its meaning 186 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR and implication. It will be more difficult because we must commend the already familiar. We do not have the charm of novelty, the appeal of sacrifice, and the leverage of the attraction of the Christian superiority over anything else known. Here lay the power of the early fathers, here lies the power of missionaries to-day. But in our situation we have to stop a trend that is un- mistakably away from us and to turn it backward to- ward the thing which it left. To many this will seem like retrogression, this going back. Of course the re- ligion to which they return will not be the same in spirit, but the difference will perhaps be too subtle to be caught by the mass. And the fact that the creation of the difference will be bitterly opposed by some of those influential in the Church will make the task doubly difficult. In the recreation of theology in the light of the prob- lems before us the most important element will doubt- less be the making of a new apologetic. Under the old method of defending and commending the faith the world has gradually slipped away from us, and it will be useless effort to attempt the task of drawing it back with these same arguments. It will require an apolo- getic that is preeminently social and that rests itself upon an idealistic philosophy. We may as well dis- continue the process, in which many writers have re- cently engaged, of commending Christianity by adopt- ing half -compromises with materialism. The science of the nineteenth century issued in a mechanistic philos^ ophy and sadly injured religion. Its advance was not RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 187 stopped by our defenses and neither did we benefit by our attempts at adaptations. Christian leaders were quite foolish in their opposition to the advance of scien- tific knowledge, and when these adaptations were at- tempted it appeared as if we were making a compro- mise for the sake of saving our faces and a remnant of our system. The saviors of religion were men who labored not for religion at all, who were not even on good terms, in many cases, with the Church; men like Eucken, Bergson, James, and their fellow laborers de- stroyed the mechanistic scheme by upholding the tenets of idealism, and they thereby saved religion, because it cannot exist save in an idealistic atmosphere. We, therefore, are under the necessity of insisting upon the idealistic position at all times and under all circum- stances. Nor must we be caught by the attractions of Pragmatism, which after all is akin to materialism in that it makes this world and its society the final test of truth. It afTords*us no final criterion for the judgment of reality, and in the end it will put an effectual stop to the search for it. And the new apologetic must give us a new view of revelation and the facts upon which we base our faith. No longer can the old ideas of the Bible be maintained. Literalism and verbal theories of inspiration are thor- oughly mechanistic. But we have depended upon them, and we have as yet scarcely passed away from the old proof-text method of using revelation for purposes of argument. Here again we retain in theory what has been rejected in practice; for the great body of the 188 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR people no longer regard revelation in this light, even thongh the Church has not yet had the courage and wis- dom to repudiate the old doctrines. We can no longer maintain faith in the Bible on these premises. Literal- ism gives us the fantastic vagaries like pre-millenarian- ism, with its teaching about the apostasy of the world and the necessity for the wrecking of this social order in order to achieve the Kingdom. If the adherents of this scheme were thoroughgoing and logical they would be outbreaking sinners and criminals and they would urge crime as a duty under God, since this is the re- vealed and prophesied will of God; surely if God can- not establish His Kingdom until this world goes to hell, we are justified in sending it to hell as speedily as pos- sible. Ingersoll and other superficial infidels like him used the position of the Church in discrediting the Bible, and they would have succeeded if that position had been maintained. The Bible can be torn to pieces and dis- credited if we base our defense of it upon the literalistic method; it will be a happy day when this is officially recognized as it is to-day unofficially recognized. What message would Ingersoll have to-day ? None ! The so- called Higher Criticism, which is still a bugaboo in some quarters, has saved us by giving us a new view of inspiration and revelation, so that it is no longer neces- sary to dispute the accepted and demonstrated facts of science and history in order to have religious faith founded upon the Bible. And a crying need of our time is for a recognition of these newer and better views and. RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 189 an educational movement which will insure their ac- ceptance by the masses of people who affiliate with our Churches and call themselves Christian. Let literal interpretation go forever. Let verbal inspiration go with it. Then, and not until then, can we have a dy- namic and intelligent faith and an apologetic which will enable us to defend the Bible before all comers. Then pre-millenarianism and its allied nuisances will disappear and a consistent and intelligent faith will come into its own. I recently read an article in which the Kaiser of the German Empire was identified with the biblical Anti- christ because there were six letters in the name, be- cause he has six sons, and because the number of the letters as they stand in the English alphabet, with a six placed by each, total 666 when added. Another writer has found that the automobile with electric head-lights fulfills an ancient prophecy and proves that "the end of the age" is near at hand. Another has taken the trouble to find out how many people travel on ships and rail- way trains in a given time, finding thereby the ful- fillment of the prediction that "men shall run to and fro" and the speedy destruction of the world. Others find signs of "the end" in the growth of schools and colleges, the spread of culture, the circulation of the Bible, and a great line of other facts. And these fool- ish interpretations are accepted by large numbers of people because they seem reasonable according to the theory of inspiration and interpretation they have been taught. A theological school is in existence to teach 190 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR these vagaries. Such a method makes the most ingenious man the best interpreter of holy writ. And if we start from their premises we will have difficulty in refuting them. But it is needless to point out that they are bringing the Bible and our religion into serious dis- repute with the intelligent world, and we are helpless because we do not have the courage to repudiate once for all these premises. There can be no apologetic which will defend the Scriptures until the tenets and the methods of the Higher Criticism are accepted. The denunciation of the Higher Criticism ought to be an offense that would bar any man from a Christian pulpit, for the historical spirit has been and will continue to be the best friend that the Bible possesses. Now the literalists and pre-millenarian faddists will very strenuously oppose all attempts to secure a corre- lation between religion and sociology. Most of them look upon sociology as their foe, since the betterment of this world would defeat the plans of God and prevent the establishment of the Kingdom. I recently read an editorial in a leading periodical of premillenarianism on the subject of the liquor traffic, written in reply to a correspondent who inquired whether Christian people should patronize papers accepting liquor advertisements. The position taken was that such things are immate- rial ; the prohibition movement was foolish and useless, because this world was in the power of "the evil one" and the entire order must be destroyed. While a little outspoken, the editor was logical and loyal to his posi- tion, and from his spirit there emanates the wide-spread RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 191 antagonism to the social program of the modern Church. If we ever understand that the genius of Christianity is social we will then know that no greater duty rests upon us than that of harmonizing religion and sociology. In this direction the Church has gone a long way, through the estahlishment of social centers and her un- faltering opposition to such institutions as the saloon, but it is evident that she has scarcely touched the rim of the problem. And she will never solve it until her the- ology is written from the social point of view, until she adopts the definition that the Kingdom of God is "an ideal social order," and until she puts a social interpre- tation upon her message and the facts on which her re- ligion stands. The social interpretation of Christianity ought to in- clude several elements. The question of teleology must be settled once for all, and we must understand just what God intends with His world. Without an ade- quate teleological element no theology or system of philosophy can hope to secure an acceptance on the part of the race, for on it depends our whole conception of God, the world, and our own duty; it is the foundation of faith, for apart from this there is nothing for our faith to grasp. Hitherto our teleology has been per- sonal, and has bent all the plans of the universe to the end of securing the personal salvation of an individual. The world scheme of the old theology was fantastic enough ; it gave us a perfect world, then a fall into sin, then a long process of building back, and then the end of the world order at the point of beginning. Thus it 192 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR made God work in a circle and accomplish absolutely nothing except the trouble of laboring millions of years to attain what was originally existent — a perfect world. Certainly there were the values of* the struggle itself for the sons of men, but so far as a real world order was concerned the plan reflected no undue credit upon the purposes of God. And the pre-millenarian variation which made the world start at absolute perfection and end at absolute imperfection was worse, for it made God positively immoral. In all of this the war has come to help us. If Berg- son's philosophy had been written after the war, it would no doubt have been completed by the addition of a teleological element, thus eliminating its glaring fault ; it is to be hoped that the distinguished French thinker will now round out his system. Men now have clearer ideas of God's purposes for His creation; we realize that in spite of the untold agony the earth has, through the war, taken a mighty stride forward, and it is not too much to believe that God's aims have been furthered. Even the war has brought the world closer to Christ's ideal of the Kingdom, for His doctrine of human broth- erhood has at last been accepted as the platform upon which all nations must henceforth stand — for that is the real meaning of the present passion for Democ- racy. Along this line the Church must reform her thinking. We must have a teleology that is social, that does full credit to the character of God, and that looks forward infinitely. This teleology must embody a program of RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 193 human betterment, one which shall take in the interests of humanity on a grander scale than any program of which, the Church has ever dreamed before. And its central element must be a practical application of the doctrine of Democracy interpreted as a part of the very character of God. This will involve an adjustment on the part of some denominations in regard to their own polity ; it will not be possible for a Church to inject into society a demo- cratic principle while its own spirit remains monarchi- cal. The time loudly calls for the reduction of all epis- copal authority, the recognition of the principle that the Church is the laity, and that any superior clergy holds only as the servant of the people. Those invested with episcopal authority may oppose such an interpre- tation, yet it must be made if ecclesiastical organization is to harmonize with the tasks and spirit of the times. Recently a Methodist bishop attempted to have the Church denned as being composed of the bishops, the General Conference, and the preachers — the bishops being mentioned first and the laity not at all. The en- suing struggle between the people and the episcopacy in American Methodism is about to be won by the peo- ple; at any rate they have won all of the skirmishes thus far. And so it should be in all of those denomi- nations which do not afford a clear and unobstructed channel for the projection of democratic principles. The task of democratization will be for the Church a peculiarly difficult one; and yet its accomplishment is imperatively demanded to avoid an antagonism of the 194 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR spirit in the Church with the spirit of the age* an an- tagonism which is already felt and which will he fatal to the influence of religions organizations if accentuated. Ecclesiasticism has never heen democratic ; on the con- trary it has openly advocated and gloried in autocracy. The people themselves have never ohtained any recog- nition in the councils of the Church except over the op- position of episcopal interests. Ecclesiasticism seems to have an instinctive distrust of the people, and has always sought to hedge them ahout with safeguards and harriers ; it has created an Index to determine the chan nels through which truth shall reach them, it has expur- gated and suppressed news and reports of Church af- fairs in religious journals, and in a multitude of ways it has always proceeded upon the assumption that a su- perior clergy must he extremely careful in allowing freedom of investigation and information to the people. Even to-day there is scarcely a Church periodical on earth which has the courage to give to the people all the facts concerning the movements in the life of the Church, and allow them to form their opinions in the light of these facts. In a recent conversation, an editor of official and public documents for a certain denomination earnestly contended that it was a part of his duty to expurgate speeches which had heen delivered, when it appeared to him that "the speaker had not represented himself or when he had made remarks for which he might after- wards he sorry." The fundamental principle of the journalist, to tell the exact truth without hias and allow RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 195 the people to reach their own conclusions, has not yet reached the Church. Therefore it has not yet grasped the first element in democracy, which is confidence in the people. On one occasion I wrote an editorial in which I de- nounced the anarchy and the fanaticism of the Russian Bolsheviks and declared that the Church must oppose the Red Terror. The article was prefaced by a state- ment to the effect that the Church was not primarily in- terested in forms of government, that she believed in the people, and that if it developed that the Russian people sincerely desired a Soviet government we would be content. This statement aroused hot resentment on the part of certain Churchmen; although this is the attitude of the Peace Conference, the Allied govern- ments, and the government of the United States, these Churchmen declared that any theory which would allow a Soviet government in Russia, even if the people wanted it, was subversive. A few years ago a large number of prominent and representative laymen in a certain denomination launched a movement for a greater degree of democracy in their Church and for a reduction of episcopal power. Their aims were set forth in a pamphlet, bearing the names of all the sponsors of the movement, which was rather widely circulated. The result was a strong pro- test upon the part of many ecclesiastical leaders, and the movement met the almost unanimous opposition of the Church press. And the basis of much of the denun- ciation heaped upon the movement, and the laymen who 196 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR were urging it, was not the lack of merit in the cause itself, hut the fact that the men had published and distributed a pamphlet ! These are indications of the fact that there is an in- herent tendency somewhere in the Church to distrust the people. It is a survival of autocracy and partakes of the very essence of Prussianism. In such a day as this it is imperatively demanded that the people be taken into the confidence of the Church, that all the facts* be placed before them and all the power be reposed in them. Otherwise it will be impossible to avoid a con- flict between the Church and the spirit abroad in the world. Having repudiated autocracy in government, men will not longer tolerate autocracy in their religion. Our religious organizations are now under the neces- sity of providing an expressional agency through which religion can be interpreted into service, and the very first step should be a program of religious education which will reach the last member of the last congrega- tion. Religious people have never been able to pro- foundly influence society because most of them have been wholly untrained. Their ideas of the Bible will not stand the tests of intelligence, and as long as they hold such ideas, they will be open to the attacks of rationalism; and many of them will continue to throw over their faith when they at last discover that their old notions cannot be defended. Shall the Church con- tinue to allow her people to confuse such notions with fundamentals ? Shall she continue to oppose giving to her people those modern interpretations which her lead- RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 197 ers know to be true? It must not be! We need above everything else in the Church a clear and frank recognition of the historical approach to the Bible, and an educational scheme which will give the method and spirit to all the people. Along with this there should go a plan of social effort which will include an answer to two questions: What is a Christian? and What must a Christian do to be saved ? Neither of these questions can be answered by the American Church to-day, even though there be de- tached spirits who fully understand their implications. At the present time religious standards have been so lowered that there is very little difference between a "Churchman" and a "sinner." Most of our Churches make few distinctions ; I have known preachers to move heaven and earth to obtain or keep for their member- ship persons known to be immoral, and that without any thought of their reformation. I have known preachers to support in a political campaign a candidate backed by the saloon element because, forsooth, he be- longed to their denomination, when the opposing can- didate was being fought by all immoral agencies and enjoyed a national reputation for integrity and law enforcement in public office. In a world with such a keen moral consciousness as that which now prevails, the Church will display a great unwisdom if she does not look to her standards and make it impossible to truthfully say that there is no difference between those inside and those outside the fold. There should be a revival of preaching from the text, "What do ye more 198 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR than they V We are about to lose the value of a human soul, and it were better to lose any other value than that. It can be recovered through a social gospel, one that rests human values not only upon the eternity of the individual spirit but also upon the strategic import- ance of the individual in the social scheme of God. Give us also a new missionary message and under- standing. JSTow we know as never before that men are mutually dependent, that our duties are not bounded by racial or national lines, that the world is a small place inhabited by those who are brothers. In the missionary program of to-morrow there must not be the idea of saving a soul in heaven which might otherwise be lost in hell; neither must it be inspired by motives of de^ nominational aggrandizement. Let it be lifted into the realm of world reconstruction and be made the leading element in the civilizing of the earth. Include in the missionary enterprise all social movements and ideas, and in pursuit of this the Church will have a policy worthy of these days. The truth is that nothing except missionary activity can save the world in the present crisis. The social or- der in a great part of the world has been wrecked and must now be rebuilt. Upon the nature of the recon- struction depends the weal or the woe of the Church for many centuries to come. If the world attempts to leave God out of the new order it will mean what it meant during the French Eevolution — a reign of terror and anarchy. And in the present situation — with godless Bolshevism rampant in all lands, with a citizenship con- RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION 199 fused and sad at heart, with wide-spread destruction and poverty, with a constant trend on the part of the people away from Roman Catholicism toward rational- ism — there is very great danger that such an attempt will be made. Surely it will he made unless the Protes- tant Church of America has the courage to project everywhere the sanest and the most far-reaching mis- sionary program the world ever knew. The world is intoxicated with democracy. It is to be tried everywhere, and the people seem to believe that when democracy is applied to all the evils and ills of society the Millennium will be ushered in. This is, to be sure, a step in the right direction, yet democracy is the most dangerous experiment which has ever been tried. Theoretical ideas of democracy will never save a people or make the world safe and civilized. Mexico has a democracy, yet she menaces the peace of the world. Russia has a democracy of a kind, yet she wanders in anarchy and confusion. China is a democracy, yet she is unnumbered among civilized nations. Why are these lands not safe? It is because the citizenship is not of such a quality that democracy can rest upon it. Three- fourths of the people in Mexico could not read the Bible even if they had it to read. Seventy-five per cent, of the Russians are ignorant. Nine-tenths of the Chi- nese are illiterate. It is rather startling to reflect that in China there are three times as many people who cannot read a line as there are people of all kinds in the United States. And no democracy can stand that rests upon a citizenship which is illiterate. Now the 200 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR whole world is to try democracy as a magic something which can cure its ills and evils. Yet more than half of the people in the world are unable to read and write a word of any language. In this situation the world which trusts simply to democracy is riding upon the shoals. When we consider this state of affairs the duty of the Church appears perfectly plain. That duty is to make sure that Christian culture and enlightenment prevail everywhere. It is ours to place under the democratic forms and conceptions of the world a citizenship which is educated, a people whose radical tempers are stabil- ized by Christian morality and wisdom. Unless this is done there will be universal Bolshevism, constant con- fusion, more wars, and the eternal threat of anarchy. We may trust the people to organize their govern- ments when the people know what Christian culture means. We will be free from the menace of the Bol- shevik when individual people are regenerated and educated. But so long as they languish in the densest sort of ignorance no stable government can be erected upon them, and there can be no peace for the world. Let us have democracy, but for the sake of the future the democracies must be safe for the world. And they will be safe only when they are Christian. CHAPTEE IX THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR TO THE CHURCH When the war broke out it brought immediate con- fusion to the Church. War always brings such con- fusion, because it is the negation of the Christian mes- sage of good-will and loving fellowship. On this the Church has stood for twenty centuries and the world has accepted the doctrine as an ideal; so universally had this ideal come to be acknowledged that many be- lieved Christianity had been able to weave its spirit into the social order so thoroughly that wars had become impossible. Then the unprecedented catastrophe came, and all the preaching and influence of two thousand years was negatived in a day. It seemed as if the earth had officially forsaken the Christian platform. It is said that Mr. H. G. Wells, at the outbreak of hostilities, spent some time in the graveyard of a country church, reflecting after this fashion : "Here is the most influential and respected of all human institu- tions, and it stands upon a platform of brotherhood. It operates throughout the civilized world, and no com- munity is apart from its spirit and message. Why has there not emanated from this institution a power which 201 202 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR would have made this war impossible?" And because he could not answer the question Mr. Wells conjured up a fantastic religion of his own. Out of the general confusion arose the cry which we have heard so oftentimes, "Christianity has failed." The rationalist press took it up and made it into a far- flung propaganda. Christian apologists did not reply, because in the general confusion there were no clear visioned prophets to speak. To say that it was a righteous war was to make no reply at all, for this was conceded on all hands; it was conceded on both sides, for the Christian Church was as influential in the Teutonic countries as in those lands mobilized under the Allied banners. Two sets of Christians sent pray- ers to the same God for exactly opposite favors, invok- ing His support for irreconcilable principles. The crux of the situation did not concern the justice or the in- justice of the issues involved; it was the stark fact that in all the centuries of Christian history our religion had not persuaded the nations that brotherhood was a practical principle in international affairs, and that there was a better way of adjusting disputes than that of resorting to force, bloodshed, and barbarism. The Church was powerless against such a charge of failure as this, for it bore its truthfulness on its very face. As the war progressed the confusion deepened, and there grew up in Europe a positive antagonism to the Church. Eor this there were various reasons. The Church really had no message for the times, and this was a source of disappointment even to Christian people. THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 203 The war came so suddenly and so unexpectedly that the religious forces of Europe had no time for preparation, and when suddenly confronted with the crisis they were powerless to meet it with a dynamic pronouncement and program. The Church continued to preach the same old platitudes, and the people who nocked to the shrine when the carnage began failed to find the hope, the solace, the vision which they desired. They found only sermons urging patriotism, demanding enlisting, and justifying the nation's course, the very same things they were hearing everywhere else. And so the in- creased congregations so apparent at the beginning soon diminished. Then the doctrine of prayer began to be discounted. We had taught a theory of prayer which caused people to believe that there was a special providence for those who prayed and for those whose friends prayed for them, that its benefits were physical and objective, that it could actually change the mind and purposes of God. Never has there been so much praying as during the opening months of the war. But the course of events soon ex- ploded that theory of prayer. The praying soldier fell by the side of the one who knew no God to whom he could pray, and the sons and loved ones of millions of devout people were laid to rest in Flanders Field with the friends of atheists, infidels, and sinners. So they began to doubt the efficacy of prayer, which meant that they doubted everything they had been taught about God. Their trouble, to be sure, was with a mistaken 204 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR notion of prayer, but it was the only notion the masses had ever been taught. Then there came about the wide-spread reign of wick- edness, a social condition most terrible and one which even to-day threatens the welfare of society and the very future of the race. In regard to this situation the Church did nothing. There was no attempt to correct the evil, no effort to save the people. She stood per- fectly helpless in the face of such a condition of im- morality as Europe had never known before, and ap- peared so out of touch with life that she did not even realize into what a state the world was drifting. By this apathy, this inaction, this lack of message and ma- chinery for such a crisis, she contributed still further to her own undoing and the general dissatisfaction. Again, the actions and attitudes of the Church towards the war were not calculated to add to her influence, especially in England. While all other classes of the population were taken into the army, the young clergy were exempted from service ; and the exemption was in- sisted upon by the leaders until an antagonistic public sentiment had crystallized, and then it was too late to undo the evil. The hierarchy of the Anglican Church gave support to the liquor traffic, and encouraged im- morality by advising soldiers to marry, for the sake of the race, before departing for the fronts. They angered the military chiefs by an alleged interference with train- ing and discipline through opposition to athletic games on Sunday in the camps, and they infuriated the gen- eral populace by their stern objections to a policy of THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 205 reprisals against German cities when the enemy mur- dered helpless women and children by air raids on un- defended towns. At the same time there grew up the opinion that the head of the Roman Catholic Church, which is the con- trolling religious force in many of the warring coun- tries, was pro-German and desired the defeat of the allied cause. There were many foundations for this prevalent belief. The Roman Catholics in Ireland, openly led by the leaders of the Church, connived with the enemy, staged a revolution in the most serious mo- ment of the war, and absolutely refused to allow con- scription. In Canada and in other dominions of the British Empire the opposition of the Catholic element to the war and conscription was so marked that rebel- lions were feared. The Pope refused to denounce the invasion of Belgium specifically and dealt only in plati- tudes relative to the unspeakable outrages of Germany, even when perpetrated on Catholic peoples; his peace effort embodied a proposal entirely satisfactory to the Central Powers, but which none of the Allies could accept. It was known that the Pope cherished a deep hatred against Italy and Prance and expected no favors from England ; on the other hand he was closely linked to the Hapsburgs of Austria, some of the German states were officially Catholic, and through the Centrum they exercised a practical balance of power in the Empire. Therefore, if he hoped through the war to obtain a rec- ognition of temporal authority, it was evident that all of his interests lay with the Central allies. And when 206 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR it was discovered that the virtual head of the enemy spy system in Italy was in the Vatican, an ex-officer in the German army whom the Pope had elevated and re- tained over Italian protests, the suspicion deepened into a conviction. In this situation the lot of the Church was unenvi ahle. Owing to her divisions it was impossible for her resources to he mobilized and moved against the prob* lems created by the war even if there had been any clear recognition of the character of such problems. Aside from furnishing chaplains, who were taken out of her hands the moment they entered the army, there was little for the Church to do in a cooperative way. There was no distinctive responsibility which the gov- ernment could entrust to her ; the work which the Church would otherwise have been expected to do was given to welfare agencies, because the Church proper had wasted her energies and rendered herself impotent by internal dissensions. Even in America it was necessary for the government to actually go to the extreme of forbidding the doing of distinctive work in the camps by the Church. These are the counts against the Church, all weighty and all reflecting upon her a degree of blame. Let us frankly recognize this. There is, however, another side to the case. Accepting fully all the condemnation which can justly be assigned to her, the Protestant Church, especially in America, where many of the stric- tures against the European Church do not apply, has a right to be heard in reply. Her preachers have nearly THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 207 all been patriotic and self-sacrificing in their devotion to the national cause, and they have perhaps done more than any other class to consolidate the people with a deep conviction of the justice of the allied cause. She has stripped herself of preachers in supplying men for chaplains and workers in the various welfare organiza- tions, furnishing to such organizations more workers perhaps than any four or five other trades or professions combined. Behind them all stands the spirit which is the product of the Church, for she has given to the world the atmosphere which makes welfare work possible. Even the liberality of the nations, through which they have obtained their millions, comes from the Church; if it is not a sound argument to point out the fact that most of this wealth has come from religious people, it remains true that her long teaching and training in the matter of stewardship and generosity has been the lead- ing element in the large giving on the part of the public. Nor is that all. While the fundamental principles of Christianity may have been somewhat negatived by the war, these same principles are still the most influential factors in the war. Whence came the spirit of horror which swept the world when the war broke out, the re- volt against cruelty and outrageous conduct even in the strain of the conflict, the resentment of the world against a nation which broke its plighted word ? These things are reflections of the conceptions of fairness, love, and brotherhood, which religion has spread abroad in the lands. Why is democracy the slogan of the world ? 208 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Why do nations strive to show that they were not to blame, that they have no motives of conquest, that their aims are altruistic % Why do they insist that the rights of small and helpless nationalities shall be conserved? These are new things under the sun, and they emanate from the Christian attitude which the Church has pro- jected into society. For democracy is nothing more than a political application of the doctrine of the broth- erhood of man. This is the proper field for the opera- tions of the Church, and here her failure has been only relative. But the Church obtains small credit for her work when it reaches the point where it is recognized as so necessary that the governments must take it over. This is notably true in the great systems of public hospitals and public schools; few people think of giving the re- ligious organizations of the world credit for these things which were begun by them. So it is perfectly natural that the world should overlook the values which she has projected into the seething world and center criticisms against her blunders and the helplessness connected with the uncompleted parts of her program. The failures, so called, of the Church are simply the fields which lie beyond. What lies before the Church now, with the coming of peace ? Her entire program lies before her, broad- ened and magnified a hundred fold by the greatness of the present hour. Evangelistic power, educational genius, missionary vision — never was there such a de- mand for them. The challenge to the Church to-day THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 209 is mightier than it has ever been at any other moment of the world's history. When Christ gave to His friends the great commission to preach the gospel to every crea- ture, the specific responsibility upon them was not great- er than the specific responsibility now upon the Church. It not only comes out of the world's need, but it con- cerns her own life and self-preservation. And it is not too much to say that if she fails to respond on a scale commensurate with the needs and visions of such a time as this the days of her influence and her life are num- bered. In a world of human need — a need for the very things which the Church has always professed to be able to give — she stands, criticized, doubted, ridiculed, and condemned. The eyes of the earth are upon her in anx- iety, in hope, in suspicion — but hardly in expectancy. If the Church is to save herself and the world, the effort she must make will go far beyond the dreams of the men of a past generation. We can obtain an idea of the task before the Church by visualizing the world situation, for the task must be a world task in such a day as this and it must relate itself to all the needs of all the people of all the nations. In a world survey, what do we find ? The whole earth in ruin unspeakable. Under little white crosses lie mil- lions, representing the best blood and brain of the world. Millions of homes are bereaved, children are or- phaned and left without hope in the world, refugees wander in droves about the face of the earth without places to lay their heads, unnumbered hearts are torn and bleeding with unspeakable grief. £10 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR The fairest fields of Prance and Belgium are devas- tated and ruined. Towns, cities, and villages are black- ened piles of shapeless debris, with rank weeds where happy children used to play and the silence of death where industry used to hum. Homes, mills, mines, fac- tories, farms, stores — all these are gone, and their places have been taken by ruin, death, and shallow graves. Churches are but shattered piles of stone, art treasures of priceless value have been swept into nothingness, col- leges are closed or wrecked, and all the processes of spir- itual culture have been stopped. Nations have starved themselves in the struggle. Raw materials have been shot away and wasted, while debts have accumulated which may not be paid in a thousand years. Immorality and vice hold sway in all the towns and cities of Europe and the people have all but for- saken and lost their moral consciousness. And the souls of men, women, and little children are charged with hatred and venom. It were impossible to think ade- quately upon the moral, spiritual, and physical wreck- age which the war has spilled upon a suffering world. The world must be rebuilt, and upon a surer founda- tion. There is no comfort for the sorrowing, no hope of future peace, if Christianity is left out of the re- building process. We must reconstruct upon a Christian basis. Into the process we must inject the spirit of Christ, and the values of a Protestant faith must be woven into the very warp and woof of the new social order. There are orphanages, schools, hospitals, benev- olent movements, Churches needed in every land of THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 211 Europe, and only American Protestantism can provide and maintain them so that their influence will become a vital part of society. With all due respect to the Eoman Catholic Church, we know it to he inadequate for the task, and yet this faith controls many of the stricken lands. It stands upon a platform of ignorance, suppression, and extor- tion. It is avowedly autocratic in its very nature and the sworn foe of democracy. Its hierarchy believes in and thrives under such intrigues and diplomatic chi- canery as made this war possible and unavoidable. By its disgraceful action in the war it has lost its grip upon the people to such an extent that its hierarchy is now respected in no nation of the earth. If European society is left with no religious influence save that which this Church supplies, it will be rebuilt without any rec- ognition of God; France tried such a rebuilding once and the world obtained a lesson concerning the danger of a Godless social order. It must not be again. In France, Belgium, and Italy the Protestant faith now has the chance to measure steel with Koman Ca- tholicism with all the advantages except actual occupa- tion in its favor. That these lands are breaking away from the Poman Church is well known. In Italy it is impossible to bear the body of a dead Pope through the streets of the eternal city to its final resting place lest the people fling it into the Tiber, and in Prance the influ- ence of rationalism and freemasonry, practically unaid- ed by Protestantism, was able to make the government throw off the trammels of the establishment. Belgium, 212 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR always loyal to the Church, deeply resents the compla- cency with which the Pope viewed her destruction. These people all remember that the Pope induced Eng- land to grant to Germany a respite from air raids on a holy day and then allowed Germany to use her own air fleet, freed from the necessity of protecting the border for the day, to destroy a Church in Paris and kill the worshipers and to bomb London on that same Sunday night. Protestantism never had such an opportunity to take Europe for her own as that which is to-day pre- sented to her. For while Europe turns against Catholi- cism she turns towards America ; she has seen the unsel- fish labors of the welfare agencies in the allied armies and has come to believe that American Christianity means altruistic and loving service. In a certain place an American soldier was killed and his comrades desired to bury him in the local cemetery, but the request was re- fused by the priest on the ground that the man was a Protestant and would defile consecrated ground. He was accordingly buried just outside the wall of the cemetery, and the humble peasants of Prance gathered to witness the ceremony. And in the darkness of the following night these peasants returned, tore down the wall of the church-yard, and rebuilt it around the grave of the sleep- ing American boy. If the simple peasants of Prance think more of a dead American than of the traditions of their Church and the dictations of their priests, may we not hope that America will be able to give them the liberal gospel of the Protestant religion? One of the greatest calls of the present hour is that THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 213 which comes from the Slavic peoples of Russia, Serbia, and those nationalities which constituted the old Em- pire of Austria. Greater in extent than all the rest of Europe, mighty Russia to-day wanders in the blindness of the worst kind of anarchy, harassed and oppressed by murderous and perjured Bolshevik fools, who play upon the helpless ignorance of the masses for the fur- therance of fanatical schemes and personal aggrandize- ment. To respond to the call of Russia means not only to save a people and to reinstate a nation in the ways of orderly government; it will also enable the Church to take this people for the Protestant faith, and to draw out from them a dynamic of spiritual force which will do much to establish the kingdom throughout all the world. There is a sense in which we may say that Russia really won the war for us. Never for a moment did she falter in her loyalty to her Slavic kinsmen in Serbia, it was her mobilization in the beginning which occupied the almost exclusive attention of Germany, and by her advance she kept from the west in the most critical days a great Teutonic army. If Germany could have thrown her full strength in the west the resistance of Liege could not have held her, Paris would have fallen, France would have been rendered impotent, and the Central Powers would doubtless have come off victori- ous. In a very real sense, then, we may say that Russia saved the world from all the agony which would have been entailed by the triumph of Prussianism. Let us not forget that the Russian people were whole- 2U SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR hearted in their support of the war. An unwilling gov- ernment confessed to Germany that Russians could not be restrained; the prospect of seeing Serbia humiliated and oppressed aroused them to fury and they were re- solved to fight. And they fought heroically and well, but under handicaps the like of which a nation had never before been forced to face. The Czar was a weakling surrounded by traitors; the Czarina was a German by birth and instincts, and in every possible way she in- trigued with the foe against her own people. We read of private wires leading from the palace at Tsarskoe Selo direct to German headquarters, over which went constantly news of troop movements and military plans ; and to a friend in Berlin the Czarina wrote, "Give my best greetings to the brave Hindenburg ; it is horrid to be compelled to sustain an anti-German attitude when one knows that our Fatherland is unconquerable, even hough the Russian flag be bathed in blood." The will of the unspeakable Rasputin was law at the court, and Rasputin was an agent of the Hun. In the highest posts of the government sat men like Boris Stunner, the Prime Minister, Kurloff, the Minister of the Interior, and the notorious Protopopoff, all paid tools of Ger- many, and the government deliberately planned confu- sion in the army, revolution at home, and victory for the foe. So completely was the situation given over to Ger- many that she could and did actually demand that a suc- cessful offensive be stopped and all communication be- tween Russia and her allies be broken off. In this sit- uation, what remained for a patriotic people but revolt ? THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 215 They turned on a traitorous government, drove it from power, destroyed the autocracy, and endeavored to place in its stead a government of the people. To he sure they found themselves at sea. The transi- tion from the most absolute kind of autocracy to a free government could not be made in a day, in the midst of a great war, and by a people wholly ignorant of the principles of government. Ground down and oppressed as they had been for time out of mind, they craved lib- erty unrestrained, and in their ignorance they were ripe for socialistic schemes of the most radical sort. The pendulum swung too far and they found themselves in the clutches of Bolshevism. But the Bolsheviks do not represent Russia. They are Jews, crazed and maddened by untold persecution, and they are out for blood and vengeance; Russia can never struggle to her feet until the heel of the Red is lifted from her neck. But fools cannot always rule such a people. Sooner or later Rus- sia, perhaps reduced in territory and surely chastened in spirit by her terrible excesses, must take her place among the nations. To-day Russia needs everything which a people ever need. An orderly government must be set up. Tbod must be given to her millions. We must send her im- plements and teach her to use them in the develop- ment of her wonderful resources. The people should be supported and guided back to the ways of decency and placed upon a firm basis of democracy. Above all, she needs to be educated. Her people are ignorant, and hence a prey to all the vices of which ignorance is the 216 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR prolific source. She needs the Protestant religion, and without it she will never be wholly free. The only religion Russia knows encourages the very ignorance which has cursed her and imposes an ecclesiastical tyr- anny quite as severe as the political autocracy from which she has escaped ; only western Protestantism will establish the schools which she needs, and in order to complete her salvation it will be necessary for the liberal and powerful ideas of the Protestant faith to permeate her life and leaven her society. Perhaps it is not the province of the Church to send food and imple- ments to Russia, but it is surely her province to send re- ligion and education, hospitals and benevolent institu- tions. And nowhere else in all the wide world is there such a crying need for these as in Russia. The very character of these people makes Russia an inviting mission field for the Church. It is a mistake to judge them by the acts of a Bolshevik. The Russian is religious by nature, and no person lives so constantly under the influence of spiritual ideals and motives. !None has such a clear realization of the presence and demands of God, none has a higher appreciation of spiritual values. The very career of Rasputin is proof of the desires of the people to touch spiritual reality — and not only the poor and ignorant ; because of this in- herent instinct the mock monk was able to seduce some of the noblest people of the nation. The genius of the Russian is remarkably like that of the old Hebrew, who saw God in rainbows, storms, victories, adversities, trees, and mists upon a mountain top. Prom such a people THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 217 sprang our religion; from another such will come the spirit which will fill it with new meaning and power. One who wanders about over Europe to-day will meet hundreds of Russian refugees, and he cannot fail to he impressed with their idealism and innate spiritual cul- ture. They are the greatest linguists of the world, and they have a wonderful appreciation and knowledge of literature and music. There is in London to-day a refugee who has been driven through five nations; her jewels, her wealth, her family, have been lost, but she still retains some volumes of poems in beautiful bindings of hand-tooled leather. There is another who is deeply pained at the sight of great mansions, because they are too large for the families occupying them and their very presence brings up thoughts of the east end, where thousands huddle together in apartments too small for comfort. There was another who preferred suicide to the prospect of living until the close of the war in a disagreeable environment, and her philosophy was this : "To die means physical suffering and does not affect the soul, while an oppressed spirit means unhappiness and the dwarfing of personality. A Russian believes that the soul is worth more than the body. The American professes to believe that also, but a Russian believes it strongly enough to act upon it." That these people are superstitious, socialistic, and ultra-idealistic is quite true, but they need only the guid- ance of a liberal and intelligent faith, and the stabiliz- ing influence of a Church with a social message. A Protestant Russia is a large ambition, but on such un- 218 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR dertakings the Church has always thrived. The con- summation is necessary to Russia's future, for if the spiritual genius of this people must continue to be dom- inated by either Greek or Roman Catholicism it will mean further superstition, ignorance, and oppression; to attempt such a continuance will stifle the new dem- ocracy which is trying to find establishment in the con- ceptions of the people. And this they will not easily tolerate. Eventually they will come to understand the conflict between their religion and their national con- sciousness — they are coming now to understand it — and then their religion will suffer. If there is no other faith to supplant it in their affections they will be likely to believe that the Bolsheviks were right, and religion will be thrown overboard entirely — and we know what that will mean. What shall be said of the other branches of the Slavic tree? In a window on Regent street and Picca- dilly Circus there is a streaming banner which reads, "Bohemia, Britain's Ally," and underneath it is a great picture of John Huss, the protomartyr of the Reforma- tion ; it is a typical indication of the spirit of the Czechs. Even though an almost total ignorance of this people prevailed among the masses in America, they were rec- ognized as a co-belligerent nation with the Allies and the United States ; and although they had no home and no national capital, the mere enunciation of their desires was sufficient to change the entire attitude of the Allies, as expressed by President Wilson, towards Austria- Hungary. Peace conditions which were laid down be- THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 219 fore the emergence of the Czecho-Slavs and the Jugo- slavs at once became obsolete when these people pro- claimed their ambitions for freedom. And now we hear of them everywhere. Their voice shook the fragile foundations of the House of Haps- burg until it tottered and fell; that voice tore asunder the Dual Monarchy and liberated the suppressed senti- ments of the varied nationalities contained in that poly- glot empire. Czecho-Slavs and Jugo-Slovaks, Magyars and Teutons, all seek self-determination, and it seems likely that as many nations as there are constituent races will emerge from the old empire of Franz Joseph. The land of Czechs is the geographical center of Europe, an equal distance from all European seas, and these people have the lowest proportion of illiteracy of all the provinces in the constituency of Austria-Hun- gary. They have inhabited this section since the sixth century according to historical certainty, and the schol- ars believe they have occupied it since about 500 B. C. These people have been Christians since 873 A. D., and they would have been Christians before had not their distrust of the German impelled them to wait until the Moravians came to teach them. They have been Protestants longer than any other people of Europe, and they have suffered more for their faith in Protes- tantism than any other. They produced John Huss and bore the agony of the Hussite Wars ; the Catholics made war on them because their Nobles declared, "We will defend the law of our Lord Jesus Christ and its pious, humble, and steadfast preachers at the cost of our blood, 220 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR scorning all Human decrees that may be contrary to them." The Czechs lost their independence and came under the hoof of Austria at the Battle of "Bila Hora" (White Hill) on November 8, 1620, and since that time they have been victims of oppression and intolerance. The first act of Austria was to destroy all the books printed in the language of the Czechs, because all such con- tained heresy; the next was to execute, on June 21, 1621, all their leaders and confiscate the property of their sympathizers. All the Nobility were exiled, Protestants were expelled, Catholicism was set up, the clerical estate was added to the three estates then exist- ent and made superior to all others, and the German language was established by force. Thus matters have stood for four hundred years. In all their vicissi- tudes during these centuries the Czechs have always been victims of an insidious and powerful German propa- ganda, but they have never faltered in their contentions for constitutionality, as opposed to autocracy, in the Austrian parliament. No persons have done more to secure an open Bible in the vernacular of the people than the Czechs. In the fourteenth century, Thomas of Stitney wrote his theo- logical works in the native language, and for this he aroused the bitterness of the monks, who insisted on the use of Latin, unreadable by the people. Around their language has been waged the fiercest of conflicts. Always the Catholics have hated it ; always the Czechs have clung to it. In all the movements and spirits of THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 221 the Reformation these devoted peoples have been the leaders, and to them the Protestant forces of the world owe a great obligation. For 400 years the Czechs have been the victims of religions bigotry and political oppression, for of course Austria would not be kind to the descendants and fol- lowers of John Huss, whose spirit still breathes through this people and is the source of their inspiration. The famous fifth regiment of the Czech army bears his name, and an American traveler who recently visited the lead- ers of this army in Siberia found on the wall of a freight car in a troop train a wonderful painting of Huss at the stake, executed by a private of the fifth regiment who had formerly been a famous artist in Vienna. This is the spirit of those men who have at last secured their freedom. And when they secured it they hoisted no red flag, espoused no Bolshevism, turned loose no anarchy. Although a scattered people, without a land of their own or any seat of government, they elected a Presi- dent and proceeded to organize for an orderly and civil- ized existence. The settlement of these people into a national exist- ence will afford an unique opportunity to the American Church. They have a claim upon us, for they fur- nished the cradle of Protestantism, and their loyalty to Huss shows the strength of their religious convic- tions. Already they have drawn upon our resources, for many of the American missionaries in China, Japan, and Korea have been called from their fields into service with the Czechs in Siberia, and certain hospitals have 222 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR sent their entire staffs and senior classes to undertake relief work among the soldiers and refugees in Vladivos- tok. These missionaries, according to their report, "found such conditions as would stir any man with red blood in his veins. Through the perfidy of the Bolshevik Soviets, urged on by the Germans, and the continuous fighting all across Europe and Siberia, the Czechs were, through lack of medical attention, in a most pitiable con- dition. It seemed necessary to undertake responsibility for entirely supplying the medical arm of the Czech army." In addition to the need of the Czechs, hun- dreds of thousands of refugees have fled through Si- beria to the Pacific and clamor to the missionaries for help. The Slavic people, then, constitute an inviting mis- sionary field for Protestantism, and the help which the missionaries already are rendering to them in Vladivos- tok and Siberia is preparing the field for a more in- tensive cultivation. The Church should undertake the task, not only for the sake of the peoples themselves but even for her own salvation. We of the west have become commercialized and self -centered ; there are al- ready evidences that the war has not cured us. Even the soldiers of Prance seem sorry for the Americans, because they say we cannot rise above our interest in mere things. We need to be saved from our worship of the physical, and the Church shares this need with all other departments of our activity. The best way to save ourselves is to kindle elsewhere a different spirit. The Slavs have it. If we will give the idealism of the THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 223 Russians and kindred peoples free play under the in- fluence of a liberal faith, we may expect to see come from them a wave of spiritual appreciation which will sweep the world. If we add to the challenge which is thus brought to the Church by the new problems created through the war the tremendous missionary demands which were al- ready existent before the war in China, Japan, Korea, Africa, India, South America, and elsewhere, demands which have been made a hundred-fold more urgent by the events of the past years, we will obtain a glimpse of the duty of the American Church toward the foreign field, for whatever missionary work is undertaken in the world at the present time must be carried out largely by American organizations. And then if we add to all that the challenge of the home land — our cities, industri- al populations, immigrants, rural communities, negroes, and all the social problems entailed by their needs — we should be able to understand that the Church never faced such a task as that which lies before her at the present time. Before this challenge she must not draw back in such a time as this, and if it be undertaken the Church must plan and act on a scale so large that it would have stag- gered the men of the past generation. Where we once expended hundreds we must now pour out millions, and divisions, petty insistence upon trivialities, the ambi- tions of ecclesiastical leaders and organizations must all be laid aside and forgotten. There is no other way out for us ; the task must be undertaken or the Church will SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR lose her influence in the life of our time. The Chris- tian leader, or the ordinary Christian man, who balks at the program, or who refuses to cast his attitude and his liberality on such a scale, is the real enemy of the faith and must have no place among us. Once the duty of a Christian man seemed to be summed up in the necessity of "being good" — the re- ligious man was one who behaved himself, went to Church, and prayed. But in four years the ideal has been forced infinitely beyond that. To the world, and especially to the millions of men under arms and who will return to dominate affairs in all nations, religion now means unselfish devotion, loving service, complete sacrifice of self and possessions in doing good. Who is the religious person in the minds of the sol- diers? The Salvation Army lassie or her kind. The religious man is one who is willing to brave the dan- gers of a modern war in order to scrub floors and do drudgery for his fellow man. He is one who is willing to toil over shell-swept roads, to sleep on the ground in a front line trench, to clamber over a parapet to be with his friends in death and danger — to bare his breast to death and place his naked human spirit against the guns of a whole world in order to be a friend to man. He is a man who places no value upon himself or any thing he may possess, who counts his life as of less value than a chance to be a brother. He is one who gives all and risks all just to "help a little in his own way. That is what a religious man means to a soldier who has seen such men in the mud of the front line, THE CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH 225 in a gun emplacement deep in the earth, carrying stretchers or supplies across a field of death, kneeling on the blood-soaked ground with his canteen to the lips of a dying friend. And to them a religious insti- tution means something which can inspire the motives under which such men act, and which will pour out its millions to supply the means whereby such men can render their full quota of service. How puny will religious men and institutions of the average type appear when these return and look at them ! How small visioned will appear the Church with its old program of preaching and paying assessments! "We need not expect men who have saved a world in the mightiest movement of human history to be content with an average Christian, an average religion, or an average Church. The day of such averages as we have known is forever in the past, CHAPTER X THE GERMANS AND THE TURKS It appeared somewhat incongruous in the beginning that there should be an alliance between the Germans and the Turks, for a surface view of things inclined us to believe that the two races were absolutely incom- patible. The Turk is known through history and around the world as the "Unspeakable." He is the bloodiest, most cruel, and most villainous pagan on earth; his instrument of propaganda is the sword and his most characteristic act of worship is the spilling of human blood. He hates Christianity with a deadly hatred, and in all the ages of his occupancy in Europe or in Asia his misrule and his outbreaking criminality against Christ and His followers have been a standing source of amazement to the civilized world. On the other hand the German has boasted around the world about his standing in the sight of God. The German Church bolstered up the doctrine of the di- vine right of the Hohenzollerns. The Germans have assumed that they are the chosen of God and enjoy a monopoly of His favor. "Germany is precisely — who would deny it," preaches Pastor H. Francke, "the rep- resentative of the highest morality, of the purest hu- 226 THE GERMANS AND THE TURKS