10 
 
 The War and our Responsibility, 
 
 SERMON PREACHED AT THE 
 BERKELEY STREET SYNAGOGUE, 
 On Saturday, October iyt/i, 19 14, 
 
 By the REV. MORRIS JOSEPH. 
 
 Genesis iv. 9-10: " And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy 
 brother? And he said, I know not; am I my brother's keeper? 
 And He said, What has thou done? The voice of thy brother's 
 blood crieth unto me from the ground. " 
 
 ACCORDING to a Rabbinic legend when Cain had done his murder- 
 ous deed the whole brute creation assembled before God to demand 
 the punishment of the malefactor. His foul crime moved even 
 the fiercest creatures — the ravening beasts and the birds of prey — with 
 anger and detestation. The legend expresses the horror with which 
 deeds of bloodshed, especially those perpetrated by men upon their 
 brothers, upon their kith and kin, upon those entitled to their mercy and 
 protection, have inspired the human mind from time immemorial. And 
 this righteous sentiment has gained in scope and intensity with the 
 progress of the ages. Human life has acquired an extended value, 
 drawn to itself a greater reverence. Murder, we have long since come 
 to see, may be committed with more delicate instruments than the 
 bludgeon or the knife. The " Thou shalt not kill " of the Sixth Com- 
 mandment is violated by every process, even though it consist in merely 
 harsh acts or words, that wears away the vitality of a human being by 
 sapping his happiness, his courage, his spirit. The brother, whose 
 keeper we are, for whose life we are responsible, is our fellow-man, 
 whoever and wherever he may be, seeing that we are all children of one 
 Divine Father, members of one world-wide family. The brotherhood 
 of man, the solidarity of the human race — this grand idea set forth by 
 implication in the text and explicitly in the subsequent declaration, 
 " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in 
 the image of God made He man," has taken faster hold upon the human 
 
mind the further the world has moved along the path of progress. This 
 seems like a truism ; or it would have seemed so a few short weeks ago. 
 But to-day we are in the presence of events which not only prove it to 
 be no truism, but set us doubting whether it is even a truth. At this 
 moment nations claiming to represent the high-water mark of civilization 
 are trying to outdo each other in acts of bloodshed. The conception of 
 human brotherhood which we deemed so safe and well-established has 
 been uprooted and swept away in the savage welter of war. Men, 
 created in the image of God, have lost that sacred impress and been 
 transformed into demons. Nor is this the whole of the paradox. Part 
 of the tragedy of War lies in the demoralization, not only of the com- 
 batants, but of the spectators. We read with equanimity of the 
 slaughter of thousands of our fellow-creatures, especially if they are 
 enemies, heedless of their agony, forgetful, too, of the fact that every 
 life thus sacriliced means at least one other darkened and ruined. There 
 are those who protest against the inclusion in a modern service of a 
 War-cry like the Song of Moses, with its appeal to primitive passions, 
 its glorification of the All father as 
 
 A God of War, 
 
 its shout of triumph over the fallen foe. But have they any right to 
 protest — they whose hearts are chaunting a like paean almost every day 
 in these times!'' " 1 never dreamt," said an aged friend to me the other 
 day, " I never dreamt that my last years would be darkened by this 
 world-shaking war, and is it not dreadful to think that we rejoice at 
 news that tells of widespread ruin and death? " You will say that it is 
 human nature so to rejoice. Yes, I reply, unregenerate human nature. 
 Surely this blunting of the humanitarian instincts, which war inevitably 
 produces, must be unnatural. God could never have meant us to 
 acquiesce in these horrors. He could not have intended, as His final 
 aim, that the world should continuously fall back from time to time to 
 the inferior moral level which that acquiescence betokens. Judaism has 
 its clear teaching on this point. When, says the old Talmudic legend, 
 the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea the angels would have 
 broken out into a song of praise. But God rebuked them. " What," 
 Hi- said, " My creatures, the work of My hands, are perishing, and you 
 would exult ! " And yet the Israelites, as we know, did exult. Is it 
 mil clearly the opinion of the Rabbins that the time will come when men 
 will put from them their old recurrent savagery, and keep for ever the 
 foothold nl broad and tender humanity hard won by ages of moral 
 struggle? I have suggested this train of thought, not to abate your 
 ardour for the present conflict, or your conviction of the righteousness 
 of our participation in it, but in order to emphasize the inherent badness 
 and enormity of War regarded as a principle. In all the vicissitudes of 
 this titanic struggle, in its reverses and its triumphs alike, we have to 
 remember that it is essentially an evil, though a necessary one. The 
 conflict is not of our making. It has been forced upon us, on the one 
 
hand by the duty of resisting a policy which would deify brute force and 
 destroy human freedom, and on the other by regard for the sanctity of 
 our plighted word. Never have we gone to war with a clearer con- 
 science. But the fact remains that we are at war, and that we stand 
 committed to the slaughter of our fellow-men, whose keepers we are. 
 It means the swift and sudden reversal of the tide of progress, and the 
 hurling back of the world into primeval barbarism. The reaction, it is 
 true, is only for a time. The world will regain the moral ground it has 
 lost. But it has lost it ; it has been capable of losing it — there is the 
 sinister, the disconcerting fact. With whom lies the main responsibility 
 for this disaster, this rebuff to our idealism? We believe that we know. 
 The proclamation of might as right, the insensate claim to usurp the 
 function of Divine Providence and determine the destinies of the world, 
 the arrogant intention to impose one nation's will, one conception of 
 civilization, upon the whole of mankind, the tearing up of the code of 
 international ethics as though it were a mere scrap of paper — this, we 
 affirm, is responsible. Therefore, as I have said, we are fighting with 
 an easy conscience. But that 
 
 Ease of Conscience, 
 
 will suffice us, at best, only as long as the conflict lasts. All mankind 
 will have to pay the price for the crime of this war — the guiltless as 
 well as the guilty, the victors as well as the vanquished — so closely inter- 
 woven are the str.ands of the world's fate. Let us see to it that we pay 
 the price not only as a victorious, but as a guiltless nation. The voice 
 of our brothers' blood shed in this war will cry unto God from the 
 ground. Against whom will it cry? Let us be able to say "not 
 against us." " Is this not certain? " you will protest; " we have not 
 made this quarrel; at the bar of Heaven we stand absolved." Yes, I 
 reply, for the time being. But what of the years to come, when other 
 wars spring out of this war, a monster begetting progeny after its 
 kind? Suppose those wars arise without hindrance from us. Suppose 
 we sow the seed of them by a craven disinclination to proclaim the duty, 
 the glory, of promoting peace among men. No; now, when war grips 
 us with its horrors, it is for us to range ourselves definitely on the side 
 of peace, on the side of all the great souls among mankind, from the 
 ancient Hebrew prophets onward, who have saved the world from going 
 down hopelessly into the pit, and to resolve that the human race shall be 
 permanentlv 
 
 Purged from Blood-guiltiness, 
 
 and the awful voice that crieth against it from the ground shall cease its 
 lament and its denunciation for ever. There is need for such a resolve. 
 Later on it may be too late; defeat may beget the desire for revenge, 
 victory inflame us with a love of so-called glory. When an English 
 professor, lecturing at an English college, can gravely talk of the beauty 
 
of war, and bid us learn from the enemy to make physical force our 
 God, we need to be on our guard. The one justification for our share 
 in this struggle is the belief that it will put an end to such teachings and 
 demonstrate not the beauty of war, but its ugliness, its brutality, its 
 wickedness. This, we must vow, shall be the last war. It may not 
 be; but the vow, if we are faithful to it, will acquit us of all share in the 
 responsibility for this conflict at the judgment-seat of God. We shall 
 have done something, as a recent writer has well phrased it, " for the 
 soul of England, so that when peace comes again it will be a treasure 
 unimpaired." Nay, let all good men among all the nations join in the 
 vow, and the end of War will be in sight. A new humanity will arise, 
 with the mark of Cain effaced at last from its brow — a new humanity 
 like unto the ideal Servant of the Lord whom the Prophet portrays for 
 us, whose weapons are gentle peace and all-conquering love: — " He 
 shall not cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised 
 reed shall he not break, and the dimly burning wick shall he not quench ; 
 he shall bring forth justice in truth." It is a gracious vision. As men 
 and Israelites we arc doubly pledged to speed its realization. 
 
 Zhc Jewish peace Society 
 
 exists to promote the following objects : 
 
 (i) To give effect to the teaching of Judaism by emphasizing the two- 
 fold duty of combating the war-spirit, and of working actively for peace 
 as part of the divine ideal of human society. 
 
 (ii) To promote the growth of international friendship. 
 
 (iii) To work for the adoption of arbitration and other peaceful means 
 of settling international disputes. 
 
 The Society shall endeavour to carry out these objects by the issue 
 of suitable literature, the holding of meetings and all other appropriate 
 methods. 
 
 Particulars may be had from the Hon. Secretary, Jewish Peace 
 Society, c/o the National Peace Council, 167, St. Stephen's House, 
 Westminster, S.W. 
 
 GARDEN CITV PRESS LTD., PRINTERS, LETCH WORTH.