The Churches and the Crisis 
 
 By Edwin D. Mead. 
 
 The Church is admonished to-day as never before, by the 
 awful European crisis, of its high and fundamental duty to 
 advance the supremacy of spiritual forces in international life. 
 This is a primary dictate of our religion. The vision and 
 injunction of the Hebrew prophet was that nation should not 
 lift up sword against nation, neither should they learn war 
 any more. The heralding of Christ was as the bringer of a 
 new era of peace and good-will among men, and his gospel 
 was that of universal human brotherhood. The message of 
 the first Christian apostle to Europe was that God hath made 
 of one blood all nations of men. The time has come for 
 religious men to take these mighty principles seriously and to 
 make their influence so felt in the organization of the world 
 that their operation shall not cease at national frontiers nor 
 be subordinated to false and selfish patriotisms. 
 
 Our religion is a religion of peace and not of war; and 
 the spectacle presented by Christendom to-day is an appalling 
 irony. Above all nations is humanity; and if religion and the 
 church fail to instill this truth in every nation, they fail in then- 
 paramount duty. That they have so failed in mournful 
 measure is the solemn witness and reproof of the present 
 European crisis; and the call comes to religious men and 
 women everywhere to unite in a worthier conception and more 
 definite fulfillment of our common obligations. 
 
 A civilization based upon materialism and heartless 
 political machinery, instead of upon trust in God and in our 
 brothers, cannot endure. War only breeds further war; and 
 a dominating military establishment in any state makes 
 
recourse to the existing instrumentalities of peace—and these 
 are now broad and varied—in any real crisis difficult or 
 impossible. We cannot serve at once the god of war and the 
 Prince of Peace. The awful lesson of the present hour is 
 that of the futility of force as the final appeal of nations and 
 of reliance on great armaments as preservers of peace. These 
 have proved, as the world’s peace party has persistently fore¬ 
 told, and as the caller of the first Hague Peace Conference in 
 his call pronounced them, the world’s chief menace rather than 
 defense; and it is for the world’s real religion now to inspire 
 and fortify the world’s statesmanship in the supplanting of the 
 system of militarism and war by the methods of justice and 
 reason in the settlement of international disputes. 
 
 International morality must henceforth conform to 
 individual morality. Murder and pillage do not cease to be 
 such when committed on a great scale by great powers. 
 Governments, like citizens, must be made to settle their 
 differences not in battle but in court. The present inter¬ 
 national anarchy, with each state acting as a law unto itself, 
 regardless of the common welfare and of common rights, 
 must yield to international order; and every nation must be 
 made to understand that when, in this modern interdependent 
 world, one nation declares war against another nation, it 
 declares war against the world. War is an anachronism in 
 this twentieth Christian century, unworthy of the civilization 
 which we have actually achieved ; and the common sense of 
 men, much more the first principles of religion, demand the 
 immediate supplanting of the arbitrament of the sword by 
 the arbitrament of reason. 
 
 The true defenses of nations are not dynamite and dread¬ 
 noughts, but justice and co-operation. Friendship and for¬ 
 bearance are not only nobler but stronger than defiance and 
 vengeance; and it is true to-day as ever that they who take the 
 sword shall perish by the sword. The influence of religion 
 and the churches especially should be exerted in the promo¬ 
 tion, through the most generous use of national resources, of 
 
the broadest and most far-reaching policies which inspire 
 confidence and love rather than the present exhausting policies 
 which inspire fear and prove no real or reliable defense, as the 
 voice of true religion has ever proclaimed. The world is 
 learning at frightful cost what yoke is hardest and what 
 burden heaviest, and in what consist the true shield and buckler 
 of states; and when that lesson is more fully learned, peace 
 budgets will grow large and war budgets small, and secretaries 
 of peace will be multiplied and magnified in every Cabinet, 
 where to-day the war function still holds such portentous 
 place. There are safety and salvation for the nation and for 
 the family of nations only when spiritual forces become 
 sovereign and material things are made to serve instead of 
 to master men. 
 
 Our religion has not been rightly brought to bear, in 
 faithfulness to its clear imperative, in the creation of a 
 fraternal society and the making of the nations of this world 
 a united kingdom of God; and to that unfulfilled task “God's 
 people’’ are summoned at this critical and searching juncture 
 by every high divine and human call. For the recognition of 
 this duty this fateful hour makes its solmen appeal to the 
 churches in our nation, in every peaceful and neutral nation, 
 and in every nation now at war. Many heavy and yet hopeful 
 hearts are deeply moved by the conviction that some direct and 
 earnest message to the religious forces among the warring 
 peoples might light some lamp in the thick darkness and prove 
 not without persuasive and compelling power. 
 
 In accordance with these principles, confronting the 
 political reconstruction which must follow the war, and in 
 which every nation, and especially our own nation, must per¬ 
 form its part, our churches and our people are called to very 
 distinct and definite thought. They should consider earnestly 
 their duty to make their influence speedily and powerfully felt 
 in the demands. that there shall be no more appropriation of 
 territory by victors in war ; that the true interest and desire 
 of the inhabitants of every territory as to their political 
 
relations shall be respected ; that there shall be no sowing of 
 the seeds of revenge and future war; that in Europe there 
 shall be established some real concert, in the interest of real 
 world concert; that the private manufacture of armaments and 
 all vested interests in war shall be abolished; that no loans 
 nor sale of war material shall be made by neutral peoples to 
 belligerents; that the control of foreign policy shall be made 
 more open and democratic in all nations, with an end to secret 
 treaties and diplomacy; and that above all the monstrous 
 armaments, which are so largely responsible for the present 
 catastrophe, shall be drastically reduced. 
 
 Meantime, let not our own nation, safest of nations, and 
 never so safe as now, be betrayed by any reaction, hysteria or 
 false fear, or by the insidious militarist agitation to push false 
 inferences from the war instead of its true and urgent lessons, 
 into temptation to intensify here the very evil which has 
 wrought such ruin in Europe. While the best thinkers and 
 best statesmen there are aiming to make the war itself issue 
 in the overthrow of the whole system of militarism and armed 
 peace, let us above all men hold up their hands. Let us 
 bravely lead the world toward the supplanting of rival national 
 armies and navies by an international police; let us labor to 
 extend the prevalence and scope of international arbitration, 
 mediation and commissions of inquiry; and let us, fixing our 
 minds upon the positive policies which promise a better order, 
 co-operate with the peace workers of the whole world to 
 secure for the next Hague Conference the broadest and most 
 advanced program and to make that official congress of the 
 nations a truer and more potent Parliament of Man, surely 
 and steadily developing a peaceful and united world. This 
 is not simply international politics; it is the concern of all who 
 profess that God’s will should be done on earth as it is in 
 heaven. 
 
 The Church Peace Union 
 70 Fifth Avenue, New York