CHRISTIAN ECHICS
IN CHE WORLD \M

W Douglas Mackenzie

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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
Mrs. Samuel Xisk

CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WORLD WAR

CHRISTIAN ETHICS
IN THE WORLD WAR

BY

W. DOUGLAS MACKENZIE ' * t
PRESIDENT OF HARTFORD SEMINART FOUNDATION

ASSOCIATION PRESS
Nbw York: 347 Madison Avenue
1918

Copyright, 1918, by
The International Committee of
Young Men's Christian Associations

DEDICATED to
Mt Former and Present Pupils
Who Having Heard
the Call of Their Country and the Master
of Us All
Have Given Themselveb to Varied Forms of Service
in
the World War

PREFACE
The aim of this book is described in the intro
ductory chapter. The subject has been partially
treated in many books, pamphlets, and articles
since August, 1914. But there is good reason
why it should be discussed as a whole, a chapter
in Christian Ethics. For the department of
Christian teaching which is known as Ethics always
contains some pages devoted to the State and the
Church, and also to the place of war in the life
of man. These three topics are drawn together
in these pages. Each of them has been the sub
ject of whole volumes. I have had to cut a straight
path through the forest, avoiding important aspects
of each, and all technical matters; concentrating
directly on the main problems which disturb the
Christian conscience as it struggles to live in a
darkened world.
As the substance of this book was given in the
form of lectures to students in Christian Ethics,
I have ventured to retain the occasional use of
the first personal pronoun.
W. D. M.

vn

CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface  vii
Chapter I
INTRODUCTORY
i. Correct statement of the ethical problem  3
2. Perplexity and Pacifism  5
3. The facts to be investigated  12
Chapter II
THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
I. Definition of a State  17
2. The State a divine institution  20
3. The State and physical force  22
4. The State and the individual  26
5. The individual and the State  27
6. The influence of religion  28
7. International life and morality  30
8. Forms of the State  33
9. The vision of a universal State  34
Chapter III
THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR
1. Aggressive war and Christian morality  39
2. The moral obligation of an invaded nation .... 41
3. Belgium as the supreme illustration  45
4. Sacrifice and force  47
ix

x CONTENTS Chapter IV
THE GERMAN MILITARIST DOCTRINE OF THE
STATE PAGE
I. "The will to power"  53
2. The good of the people  56
3. Efficiency and defects  58
4. The formation of German character  59
5. Relation of German nation to other nations ... 61
6. The resulting doctrine of war  66
7. Criticism  69
Chapter V
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
1. The founding of the Church  75
2. Definition of the Church  77
3. The Church and the State  79
4. Christ and the State  80
5. The Sermon on the Mount  86
6. Can a State imitate the sacrifice of Christ?. ... 94
7. The teaching of the Apostle Paul  96
8. The ethics of the Church and of the State. . . . 100
9. War and the doctrine of love  103
10. Can we pray for the Germans?  108
11. Summary of argument  112
Chapter VI
ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR
A. The Aims and Methods of Germany
1. Germany began the war  119
2. German policy  124
3. German preparation  125

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

4. German methods of warfare  128
a. World-wide treachery
b. War is between nations, therefore ruthless
c. Evacuation of conquered territories
5. German use of treaties  139
6. German practice based on theory  140
7. Is all Germany guilty?  141
Chapter VII
ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR
B. The Aims and Spirit of the Entente and
the United States of America
1. Correct and incorrect forms of stating the
question  145
2. Moral value of the conduct of the Allies on
entering the war  147
3. Policy of President Wilson  151
4. The declaration of war by the United States.. . 155
5. The duty of America  156
Chapter VIII
ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR
1 . From study of the moral standing of the belliger
ents  161
2. From the moralizing of war  164
3. From the defence of democracy  167
4. The moral standards of the soldiers  172
5. The birth of a universal State  174
6. Industrial and social reconstruction  177
7. Enthusiasm for personal service  180
8. The victory of the Sermon on the Mount. . . 185
Index  191

INTRODUCTORY

"No natural instinct, nothing less than a moral
obligation, can be an excuse for risking the lives
of our citizens, for threatening the lives of other
men." — Frederick Denison Maurice.

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
As no war has ever been so extensive as this
one, it is no less true that never before have so
many men and women inquired with agony of
soul into the origin and meaning of war. The
numbers and the agony are beyond our ken. So
much has been already gained since August, 1914.
For we may perhaps dare to assume that when
a sufficient number of human beings have pursued
the inquiry deep enough, with grief and moral
indignation, wars will cease.
1. We must make clear to ourselves the correct
form in which we are to put the question. At
the outset we shall refuse to consider it in this
form, "Is war right or wrong?" Later in the
discussion we shall have to cite the opinion of
those who say that war is necessary for the best
development of human nature, and that it is the
highest duty of every nation that would be strong
and great to be ever perfecting itself in the art
of war. Here we must point out that the ques
tion is infected with what we may call the disease
of abstraction. Against that infection students of
3

4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
Ethics must be continually warned. The word
"war" is evidently used to cover a vast multitude
of individual wars, and to include both sides in
any one war. Those who answer, "War is right,"
are reasoning, as logicians would say, from the
particular to the universal. Because some wars
in some ages, and under some circumstances, have
produced good results, therefore war is right.
That is not convincing. The other party, who
answer, "War is wrong," begin with the universal
proposition that all war springs from passion and
sin, and always involves the killing of men, and
conclude that no nation has any right under any
circumstances to engage in war. It is the purpose
of these pages to prove that both methods of argu
ment are logically fallacious and the conclusion in
both cases is false.
Nor can we be satisfied with the exact form into
which Sir Gilbert Murray has thrown the question:
"How can war ever be right ?" 1 For it is clear that
in any case with which we can be practically con
cerned, war must be always wrong on at least one
side. Both sides may indeed be guilty, equally
guilty, of the immeasurable crime, but there may
be cases where one side is free from blame in the
eyes of posterity and of God. If one side made the
contest inevitable by unjust demands, if it refused
the last, desperate offer of reconciliation without
1 "Faith, War, and Policy." By Sir Gilbert Murray.

INTRODUCTORY 5
bloodshed, issued the aggressive ultimatum, fired
the first shot, that one is guilty; and for it that
war, whatever its issue may be, can never "be
right." But what of the other side? Can that
war be a right war for it? That is the real ques
tion with which we are practically concerned. For
there are those who maintain that there are no
conceivable circumstances under which a nation
has the right to engage in war. The government
of a people ought indeed to maintain just and
honorable relations with all others, and if its rights
are invaded, it ought to protest, it ought to use
all the powers of moral suasion which can be dis
covered, but it ought never to fight. The real
question which confronts the modern man, there
fore, when it is expressed carefully and clearly,
is this: "Are there any circumstances in which
it is the moral and religious duty of a government
to engage in war?" That puts the matter in its
final form, as a problem in Christian Ethics, and
that is the question which it is proposed to dis
cuss in the following pages as frankly and yet as
briefly as possible.
2. There are three classes of people for whom
the discussion is mainly intended. First, there
is that very large class who look upon war, especially
this war in all its monstrous extent and horror,
with spiritual dismay. They feel rather than see
that the purely pacifist attitude contains some

6 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
error, but they cannot name it. They are confused
by the contrast between the vast fields of carnage
and destruction, and the spirit of peace and love
which they identify rightly with the name of Christ.
And yet they cannot bring themselves to believe
and to say with the courage born of reasoned con
viction that America was wrong to enter the fray.
They feel that she was right, and yet feel also as
if it were a sin to say so, a sin against that spirit
of peace and love.
In the next place there are those soldiers, born
and bred to lives of industry and honor, whose
very breath was to live and let live, rather to help
all others to live nobly and righteously and happily.
Now they are suddenly caught into a career where
they are to share in the dreadful work of killing
their fellowmen. Many of these noble young men
have been driven almost to madness on the field
of battle by the crushing hideous facts before them,
the heaps of slain, the stream of wounded carried
in all degrees of shatteredness and pain, to suffer
on beds of torture, perhaps to go through the long
years of a life that promised sunshine and freedom
and health, maimed, or halt, or blind — or mad.
How can this be the will of God? That is the
bitter cry of many a brave and confident soldier
as he returns to billets, with a heart bruised and
sick, wounded more deeply than he of the shat
tered frame.

INTRODUCTORY 7
In the third place there are those who occupy
the position of reasoned pacifism. Several Chris
tian sects have arisen which hold that it is wrong
to make war, in the sense that it can never be
right in any conceivable circumstances for a govern
ment to come to its citizens and order them to fight
against an enemy. The Society of Friends, pop
ularly known as the Quakers, is the leading ex
ponent of this view. The movement began in
England in the seventeenth century, though it
had been variously prepared for in the course of
the sixteenth century. It has had a most honor
able history. Its members have been distinguished
alike for piety and a noble philanthropy. William
Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, John Howard,
the prison reformer, Wilberforce, the triumphant
worker for the liberation of slaves throughout the
British Empire, are among its many illustrious
names. The Government of the United States has
done honor to the history and influence of the
Quakers by exempting from direct military service
members of that Society who adhere to its tra
ditional interpretation of the meaning of war and
of their relation to it as followers of Christ.
What is that interpretation? It can be better
understood if we remember that it was preached
with great success at a period when war was ac
cepted almost as a normal condition of national
life. All nations in Europe had their ambitions

8 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
for self-aggrandizement, their hereditary monarchies,
whose dynastic interests were matters of national
concern and defence, and consequently their pro
fessional soldiers, ready and eager always for the
fray. Many earnest men and women saw and felt
that this was wrong. They contrasted the situa
tion with the spirit of the New Testament, and
asked how professedly Christian nations could
maintain the habit of warfare, in this deliberate
manner. Further, these devoted souls endeavored
to apply literally the specific words of Jesus Christ
to their daily conduct. They refused to take
oaths in court because He said, "Swear not at all."
They refused to give each other titles, even to
address anyone as "Mister," because Jesus said,
"Call no man Master." In the same spirit they
understood the command which Jesus quoted from
the Old Testament and deepened, "Thou shalt
not kill." They so understood the words, "Resist
not evil," and asserted that no one could obey the
great and glorious law, "Love your enemies," and
engage in any war for any cause.
These men were not cowards. It is foolish to say
that all pacifists are "yellow," have no red blood
in their veins, and are taking refuge in a religious
plea to shelter a craven spirit under sacred words.
Many of these Quakers of the seventeenth cen
tury were very brave, heroically enduring all manner
of persecution and physical suffering rather than

INTRODUCTORY 9
do what they believed to be wrong. And many of
their representatives today are as noble of spirit
as they.
In recent times the pacifist position has been
maintained by arguments which are drawn not
from Scripture, but from a certain philosophy of
human nature. Man is not primarily prone to
evil, but to good, it is said. He will not resist the
appeal to the generosity, the humanity, that is
latent in him. If you trust a man, he will respond
to your trust. If you refuse to resist his physical
attack, he will be ashamed and withhold the hand
that was raised to strike. In the long run, it is
urged, though not in every individual case, the
refusal to fight will result in the greater good.
It is an extension of this argument when philosophi
cal anarchists hold that the root of all social dis
order is to be found in the use of physical force
by the governments of the world. The use of
force, it is said, calls out and encourages the evil
in man. Remove that incubus from the history
of society, and the inherent goodness of human
nature will spring to light. Men will be honest
if you do not force them to it. Men will be pitiful
if all men desist from revenge or physical retaliation.
This line of thought has gradually allied itself
with the religious position described above, in a
very interesting and subtle way. Assuming that
human history is under the guidance of God and

io CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
that in all men there is a spark of the divine, the
true attitude of every reverent soul is to leave the
governance of the race to the persuasive, all-per
vasive Spirit of God. He who resists evil takes
the scepter out of the hands of God. He smites
his fellowman for a wrong done, while punish
ment ought to be left with Him who alone dispenses
justice with unerring wisdom and absolute sym
pathy. Moreover, the supreme rule of God over
man is through the appeal of perfect love. It is
not the divine terror but the divine mercy that
is the source of salvation and hope. Rather than
resist evil with physical force Jesus died on the
cross, and from that sublime act of self-devotion
the fountain of life has sprung for all the race of
men. He had faith in the power of sacrificial love
to win the victory, and history is slowly but surely
justifying His confidence.
From these facts, and facts they are, the con
clusion is drawn that all men who follow Christ
ought to make the same appeal to human nature.
In the long run it will respond. Love will prove
itself omnipotent. The most selfish and most cruel
fiends will at last give way before the irresistible
appeal of innocence that remains meek, and loving-
kindness that refuses all resistance or revenge.
If any one nation would wholly disarm and pursue
no policy but that of purest honor, no other nation
would dare to attack it. Its courageous helplessness

INTRODUCTORY n
would disarm its foes. But since no government
has yet been found Christian enough to accept this
as its law of life and rather die as a government
than fight an assaulting foe, there is nothing left
for individual followers of Christ, and the com
munities which they compose, but to refuse obedi
ence to any government which would enlist them
in even a defensive war against the most indefensible
and wicked assault by another people.
The argument of reasoned pacifism might be
elaborated, but these are its fundamental positions,
and I have tried to put them as fairly and sym
pathetically as I can. I hope it may not be too
personal a matter, but may help the reader himself,
if I say that I who write at one time occupied this
position. In boyhood I was brought directly and
indirectly under powerful and gracious Quaker
influence. In young manhood I gave much thought
to the problem of Peace and War, and was proud
to have some of my public statements reproduced,
with compliments that a young man welcomes,
in The Herald of Peace, of London, England. As
I look back I can remember that, strange to say,
the first stirrings of doubt arose when I was read
ing Tolstoi. His sheer individualism in religion,
his arbitrary and wayward dealing with the New
Testament and even with the teaching of Him
whom he accepted as his supreme Authority and
Master, led me at last through other lines of thought

12 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
to see that the argument outlined above, persuasive
and pious as it is, rests upon foundations that are
too narrow to carry the weight of the world's life.
Gradually it became clear that the following funda
mental matters must be reconsidered.
3. First, war must be considered as a function
of national government. The ordinary puzzle put
to pacifists, "What would you do if a man assaulted
you?" is irrelevant. Even the further question,
"What would you do to a man who tried to murder
your wife?" does not present an exact parallel, but
only a partial illustration of what is meant by war.
War is a national act; and its moral significance
can be studied only by investigating what we
mean by the State, what its nature and functions
are, and what those duties are which rest upon the
individual as the citizen of a definite country,
ruled by a definite government.
Second, the Christian man is not by his con
version separated at once from all secular relations
and obligations. He remains a member of a family,
perhaps a family of unbelievers. He remains the
citizen of a country, where he lives and whose
government both protects him and exacts from
him certain duties, even although it be not a pro
fessedly Christian government.
Third, the Christian man is a member of the
specific organization or community called the
Church. From the beginning, from the hour when

INTRODUCTORY 13
Jesus deliberately founded and taught and ruled
this community in His own lifetime on earth, on,
through its fuller establishment after His death
and resurrection, into its rich and multiform his
tory in the world, it has found itself related to the
State in many intricate ways. The one institution
has acted upon the other continuously. At times
they have seemed to be rivals. One has sought
to subdue and absorb the other. At the best they
have been but imperfect coadjutors in the great
task of perfecting the conditions and the character
of human history. Today, in most countries of
the world, they are recognized as separate, com
plementary institutions, each having its own sphere
of influence, its characteristic work to do.
The problem of war which we are discussing in
these pages can only be solved, if solved at all, by
means of a careful consideration of these two su
preme institutions in human life. What is the
meaning (or telos) of each? How does each stand
related to the will of God? How does the spirit
of the one affect the spirit of the other? What
does each do for the individual, and what shall
the individual do for each ? These are some of the
questions which we must investigate if we are to
have any chance of answering the main inquiry
which we have set before us.

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN

CHAPTER II
THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN
I. When we speak or sing of "my country,"
we are thinking primarily of the territory or region
where we and the nation to which we belong are
established. It is our "fatherland." Its "templed
hills" and valleys are in our mind, and all peoples
speak with thrilling love of the scenes where their
fathers died and their own life is spent. When we
speak of the "nation," it is the inhabitants whom
we have in view. We picture all the classes which
compose it, from the highest to the lowest, the
rulers and the ruled, the rich and the poor, the
dweller in the city and the laborer on the farm,
the men and women, parents and children, home
and friendly circle. They compose the nation.
When we speak of the "government," our eye is
upon those on whom authority rests for the order
ing of the life of the nation, the protection of the
land from invasion. When we speak of the "State,"
we summarize all these in a conception which in
cludes them all. The State is the name we give
to a mass of human beings occupying a definite
territory, among whom there is an ordered life
17

1 8 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
resting on a certain form of government, and who
stand in recognized relations with other similar
masses of human beings, occupying their own terri
tory and exercising sovereignty over their own
life. When each State is looked at in relation to
the one life of its whole people and in relation to
the life of other States, it takes the form of an
idealized individual. It is looked upon as having
a character of its own, interests of its own, a will
of its own. Hence there has grown up in the process
of time even a system of law known as "inter
national law," which seeks to determine the moral
conditions under which States may act toward
one another. This system seeks to guide and
restrain the conduct of nations as if they were
individuals capable of distinguishing between right
and wrong, responsible for their actions towards
one another, liable to reproof and correction for
wrongdoing. The State has existed from the beginnings of
human history, and has assumed innumerable
forms. Its changes can be traced through the
patriarchal to the tribal form. The growth of the
independent and rival Greek cities led to the identi
fication of the State with the individual city, in
which all the freemen had an equal voice in the
making of laws, bearing the burden and directing
the external policy of the community. The rise
in modern times of nations, which comprised cities

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 19
and rural populations, created the more extended
forms of monarchical and republican government.
The combination of republican and monarchical
ideals gave rise to what are known as limited or
constitutional monarchies. The sway of one ruler
or one centralized government over peoples who
had enjoyed an independent national life gave
rise to the fact, and the theory, of the Empire.
All these classes of state organization have existed
in forms too numerous to be named or described
in these pages.
That which stands out as an indubitable fact is
that some kind of State, some measure and form
of centralized government, is essential to the well-
being and the moral development of mankind.
Even if men were sinless, agreements would have
to be reached, arrangements formally made and
publicly announced, operations would have to be
directed, from a central authority for the organ
ization of the activities of men in their united
concerns. The alternative to state government
is not freedom, but chaos.
When we remember that man is inherently self-
seeking, that this gives rise as a well-observed
fact to universal selfishness, with all its results in
vice, cruelty, deceit, greed, and their miserable
consequences, we see that a central authority,
which means a recognized tribunal of justice,
the execution of penalties upon wrong-doing, is

20 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
absolutely essential. Only so can order of the
most primitive character be established and those
conditions secured in which the moral progress
as well as the physical well-being of man can be
made possible. Hegel, in an interesting passage,
has used the illustration of a house. As wind and
fire and water are used to build the house, whose
object is to defend the dwellers in it against these
natural forces, so the State is erected out of the
passions and desires of the individual to defend
the nation against them. Undisciplined, they are
destructive of the nation; coordinated and con
trolled by law and force, they contribute to its
richer life.1
"The principle of the State is the idea of Right.
This does not mean that the State is the sole admin
istrator of justice on earth; justice has also a place
in the family and its discipline, in the Church, and
in the life of the individual. But it administers
public right, and has to express it by means of
compulsion and with the certainty of a national
force." 2
2. From the very beginnings of history the
existence and authority of the State have been
connected with the religious faith and life of every
people. All kingly prerogatives have been traced
to the will of the god whom the tribe or the nation
1 Hegel, "Philosophy of History." Trans, by Sibree, pp. 28, 29.
2 Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans., p. 558.

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 21
worshiped. It is natural that in the course of
thought upon the subject it should become clear
that much superstition was mixed up with this
idea. Low ideas and primitive ideas of man and
of his relations to the Creator and Lord of his life
must color his conception of the State and its
function. But this does not lead inevitably to
the conclusion that the will of God has no relation
to the existence and work of the State. It is true,
we cannot hold that the chief of his tribe is in
direct communication with the divine, from whom
he receives immediate revelations of his duty and
of the coming fortunes of his people. Nor can we
fail to see defects in the view held by ancient Israel
concerning the nature of the theocracy under which
the noble leaders and inspired prophets of that
race strove to guide the destinies and mould the
character of that people. The view that God
Himself announced in a supernatural way all the
explicit and detailed laws of a nation cannot be
maintained. But this by no means implies that
the State exists outside the will of God, nor that
the will of God has no relation to the development
of its political and legal system.3
It must be insisted that any principle of con-

8 The State as a Divine Institution: "The State is neither a
divine creation of God nor something that is wholly secular; but
it is a human product resting on a divine basis, and thus has both
a divine and a human side." Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans.,
P- 555-

22 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
duct which springs from the nature of man and
of that world in which he lives is essentially divine.
It is an ordinance of God. The working out of
that principle is indeed largely in the power of
man. It is the very law of his nature that he can
do what he ought to do and become what he ought
to be only by discovering the needs of action and
the ideals of character, by the exercise of his mind,
by response to his inherent instincts and impulses
and appetites. But it is also a law of his nature
that the discovery of his ideals, the control and
right use of his instincts and appetites, the develop
ment of his character, have never been possible
without some vision of the divine law and the
consciousness of relation to the divine will.
3 . The State exists as the organization of a people,
for the promotion of their entire well-being. Its
form may change, but the end must always be
the same. When this aim is lost sight of and the
well-being of a dynasty or a regnant class is pro
moted at the cost of the community as a whole,
the rulers will in course of time be overthrown
and either new men take their place, and do better
or worse, or the very form of government may be
changed in hope of a worthier result for the mass
of the people. Tyranny exercised by an autocracy,
or corrupt government conducted by a representative
legislature and executive, always interfere with that
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" which

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 23
are the fundamental rights of the people as a whole.
The extent of that interference, when we take
account also of the intelligence and virility of the
nation, determines the hour of a revolution. At
some point the intolerable limit is reached, and the
seats of the mighty are cast down. History abun
dantly proves that such changes, whether violent
or gradual and orderly, arise from the judgment
of the people, from the working of their deep, in
stinctive demand for justice, freedom, and peace,
that they may enjoy the fruits of their labor and
secure the ideals of happiness which they cherish.
The State, then, must exist for the good of the
individual and the mass of individuals which com
pose it. These must be protected against one an
other and against their enemies from without.
Laws are made and executed, not to destroy, but
to establish the freedom and selfhood of the citizen.
Right laws are not restrictive, except upon selfish
ness and criminal intent. They are intended either
to forbid wrongdoing or to lay down the rules,
mark out the relations, which will enable all the
citizens most fully to develop their individual
powers and attain their lawful ambitions.
Now the fact that men are selfish and so many
are vicious makes it necessary for the State to
use physical force to secure the ends for which it
exists. In an immoral world it is the moral duty
of the State to use force. It is basic to all other

24 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
functions of government, is named in every law
where penalties are defined, is visible to the public
in every policeman, and in fact pervades the entire
civilized order in which we live. Without it there
would be chaos.4
The people who revolt against the use of force
and wish to establish a social arrangement without
it, yet live by it even in the making of their plea.
The anarchist who would destroy physical-force-
government by dynamite, carries his dynamite in
a taxicab under police laws which save his life in
the doing of it. For it is the policeman at the
street corner who prevents a collision of his taxicab
that would blbw the anarchist to pieces. "My right
to walk along the high road involves an obligation
upon all other persons not to obstruct me, and
in the last resort the State will send horse, foot,
and artillery rather than let me be causelessly
obstructed in walking along the high road." 5
It is true that we are learning to use more than
force, whether by fine or imprisonment, or by
capital punishment. Our social workers and re
ligious prison reformers are rightly insisting that
more can be done for society than merely inflict
ing physical punishment on lawbreakers. But
it is clear that when the utmost is done for prisoners,

4 See Bluntschli's admirable brief chapter on "The Theory of
Force," in "The Theory of the State," pp. 242, 243.
' B. Bosanquet, "The Philosophical Theory of the State," p. 209.

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 25
they are yet prisoners; and it is only on the basis
of their liability to punishment that moral influences
can be brought to bear upon them successfully.
Again it is true that "the place of actual fear of
punishment in maintaining the social system is
really very small, while the place of a habituation,
which is essentially ethical, is comparatively large." 6
But this habituation to the laws and customs of
the State and of society is made possible by the
physical force which underlies the entire social
order. A man lives freely and healthily when he
has formed and obeyed such rules of living as
produce health and freedom, and he may even
"forget that he has a stomach." But dyspeptic
penalties are part of the system of life, elements
in the physical basis on which his conduct rests,
and the penalties will be inflicted if he breaks his
good habits. So it is with the mass of citizens.
They obey the law as a rule without thought of
penalties. In fact there are only three occasions
in a well-ordered community when the physical
force of the State is directly considered, namely,
when a law with penalties is promulgated, when a
criminal is punished, when a citizen or a group
are tempted by greed or passion or ambition delib
erately to transgress a known law. But even for
a law-abiding community, law and penalty are

* Ibid., pp. 290, 291.

26 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
ever-present as the, as it were, "subconscious"
bases of life.
4. Of course history has revealed the fact that
there are intricate and baffling problems involved
in the relation of the State to the individual citi
zen. What are the limits of the State's respon
sibility? How far can it rightly and healthily go
in the restraint of individual impulse? This is a
perplexing question, and is under constant dis
cussion, alike among students of political science,
legislators, and thoughtful citizens. Theoretically
the State claims the whole life of the individual for
the good of the community. But the State, being
human, has not perfect knowledge, and therefore
has not perfect authority. Moreover, there are
sacred depths in the life of a personal being into
which no fellowman can enter, and there are indi
vidual rights which no one can surrender without
the loss of manhood itself. The fight for freedom
of thought in religious matters is one example, the
most influential of all, of the fact that there are
regions of personal life with which the State cannot
safely deal. We recognize that if the very liberty
and happiness, for whose preservation the State
exists, are to be cherished, a limit to its control
of the individual must be established. Beyond
that point, the State would create slavery if it
interfered with the natural action of the individual
personality.

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 27
This fact has been recognized by the action of
the United States Government in granting exemp
tion from active military service to those who at
the time of the declaration of war in April, 1917,
were members of certain religious communities,
which have been for centuries committed to the
pacifist position. In a way the Government could
take no other attitude. For these communities
came from Europe because they were persecuted
for holding pacifist and other unpopular doctrines.
The fact that they have been accepted and classed
among the citizenry of this country gives them that
claim to special treatment which has been acknowl
edged and honored. But even there the Govern
ment has drawn a line. It reserves the right to
conscript pacifist citizens for those forms of service
in connection with the war which serve to heal the
wounds it has made and to restore what it has
destroyed. In all this the State is striving both
to honor that in the individual life which ought
to lie beyond its province, and yet to insist on the
full measure of that personal service which every
citizen owes to the whole nation.
5. What are the responsibilities of the individual
towards the State? Under the latter he has re
ceived his birth, education, health, and all the
conditions for the making and enjoying of his
livelihood. Under its protection he has established
his family and pursues the higher aims of culture

28 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
and religion. In return he owes, first, obedience to
the laws and regulations of the community from
which he derives his earthly life and its conditions.
Further, he owes to the State his own cordial sup
port and assistance in the performance of its vital
functions. To the modern world it has become
clear that no State can prosper whose individual
members do not cherish a sincere loyalty and
render constant and intelligent assistance. The
more intelligent the citizens become, the more
wide is their interest in all the concerns of the
nation to which they belong. The more they value
what they have received from it, the more they are
determined to render what service they can in
preserving and conveying to succeeding genera
tions the institutions from which such blessings
have flowed to themselves. But the individual has
something no less essential than obedience and
support to contribute. If he be a man of high
moral ideals, and still more if he be of high religious
aspiration, he is able to contribute to the national
life something which is absolutely essential to its
continuous development and power. He can bring
all sides of the national life, all the functions of
government, all the details of legislation and ad
ministration, into comparison with those ideals of
human relationship which only religion fully dis
closes to our view.
6. There are many factors which contribute to

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 29
the evolution of a national character and of national
fortunes, and many efforts have been made to
identify and describe these factors and to appraise
their relative values. In recent times there has
been a tendency to undervalue the influence of
religion. But thoughtful men have always seen
that from the beginning of history national ideals
have been closely associated with religious faith.
No doubt the material and outward side of a na
tion's history acts on its religion, and that in more
ways than the churches usually realize. But the
highest religion has an independent life of its own,
is a distinct fountain of energy in human nature,
originates history as well as receives influence from
history. Hence no nation can live well and move
toward the best forms of national character and
international influence whose religion has lost grip
upon the conscience and intelligence of its people.
It is those who worship God most sincerely, who
know best His will, those who possess in fullest
measure and are most completely surrendered to
the divine spirit, who do most to sustain the nobler
side of the national life. It is from them that the
severest rebukes, in them that the intensest hatred,
of crime and vice and all materialistic habits arise.
They are, of course, objects of derision and hatred
on the part of those who live in these things which
they condemn; but, in spite of their defects — the
unwisdom of their methods, the partial nature of

30 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
their own visions, and the imperfections of their
character — they are always the springs of the loftiest
patriotism, the real directors and sustainers of the
noblest will of the State.
In the nation whose citizens consciously receive
the blessings of orderly government, and render
to the State the truest service, there arises that
spirit of patriotism which in dignity, in fulness of
meaning, and in range of power is second only to
the claims of the religious life. No doubt patriotism,
like all other human affections or operations, has
its dangers; but he knows nothing of the deep life
of man nor of the history of nations who does not
see that in patriotism there is a force at work which
has contributed some of the richest elements to
the moral and spiritual elevation of the human
race. It is in the name of patriotism that men give
themselves to the service of their country, un
selfishly, willingly; it is in the name of patriotism
that they are willing to die that the nation may live.
7. It has been a defect in many students of
political science that they have considered the State
too much as if it grew in isolation, functioned in
isolation as to the interests of its own people,
then suddenly found itself confronted with other
States. No wonder it has seemed to such students
as if the primary relation of one State to another,
thus conceived as exclusive of each other in origin,
organization, and growth, must be one of friction.

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 31
People seem to think that nations must have grown
up saying of each other only this, "We are natural
enemies because we are different States." There
are signs already that the World War will compel
many scholars to revise their whole manner of
thinking at this point. As a matter of fact, modern
nations are born, and grow, and die in a community
of nations. Even the United States sprang from
another nation, and grew in the colonial period to
a measure of power and self-consciousness in rela
tion with the aborigines of this country and the
nations of Europe from which the colonists had come.
For nearly a hundred years some statesmen have
tried, always in vain, to maintain the life of the
United States in isolation from the lives of other
countries. But the efforts of the Government in
this direction have been continuously counteracted
by the whole life of the people. Immigration and
travel, commerce and culture, religion and art,
have all combined their forces to keep America
in the family of nations and to develop her life in
continuous contact with the life of foreign peoples.
As there is no such thing as a mere individual
man, so there is no such thing as a mere individual
State. Hence there always has been a wide range
of conduct in which nations have dealt with one
another, and a less wide range of conduct in which
their governments have formally acted in relation
to each other. These relations are much more

32 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
than those which can be covered by such words
as "alliance" and "war." Treaties have been
formed and honorably observed, whose breach
could never have led to war. The observance of
such treaties has rested upon the fact that there
are moral relations which bind States together as
individuals are bound together, and that a sense
of honor can be kindled in the heart of one nation
in its dealings with another. The laws of honesty
and even of generosity obtain in the international
field, as in the field of private business and indi
vidual life. Instinctively all people have realized
that the State as an expression of the moral unity
of a nation must act in the name of the character
of that nation. If the nation is composed of men
of honor, the State will act with honor. If the
nation is composed of people who seek to convey
blessings of education and religion to each other,
the State will be impelled to think of other nations
in terms of a like benevolence. The nation that
has created foreign missions will gradually inspire
its government with the will to lift up dependent
races, over whom it has in the course of history
obtained control. America reflects the religious
spirit and morality of her people by her dealings
with the people of the Philippine Islands. It was
a great missionary who first moved the Govern
ment of India to establish a system of education
for the people of that land. And it was the develop-

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 33
ment of the love of constitutional government and
of individual freedom in Great Britain which
made that people the leaders of the world in the
sublime task of lifting up primitive races by the
very methods of their government and the spirit
of their national dealings with them.
There is, then, a morality of nations, of which
the prescriptions of international law are but im
perfect expressions, just as the statute laws of
any people are but a partial reflection of the total
moral consciousness and behavior of the individuals
who compose it.
8. Reference already has been made to the
divergent forms which the State has assumed
at different periods of history, and in different
parts of the world at any one period. Today the
varieties of state organization have made it exceed
ingly difficult to say exactly what the limitations
of nationality actually are. The national con
sciousness itself assumes various forms and is
realized in varying degrees of intensity, according
to the range of relationship in which each com
munity stands towards the rest of the world. Thus
before 1871 each portion of the German Empire
existed as a separate State, and yet people spoke
of the German nation, though there was no State
embracing all the German peoples. Switzerland is
a nation which comprises a number of self-govern-^
ing cantons differing in race, language, andjre^igion,

34 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
and in other characteristics. The British Empire
deals with the world as one State, and yet com
prises within itself an indefinite and perplexing
variety of forms of government. Canada speaks
of itself as a nation; Australia calls itself a common
wealth; India is known as an Empire; within the
boundaries of South Africa a number of distinct
forms of government still exist, in addition to that
young State known as the Union of South Africa.
The United States has become an Empire standing
in peculiar and separate relations with Porto Rico,
Cuba, and the Philippines, not to speak of the
Panama Canal Zone. The war has brought sud
denly into view the right of every distinct people
to maintain what is called their self-determination,
and the Allies at present are pledged to secure full
opportunity for even very small nations in Europe
to realize their independent existence, to organize
themselves into States according to their own
genius and ideals.
9. It is manifest that in spite of this vast variety
of conditions under which humankind is organized,
the vision of Mankind itself is rising before the
minds of all men. The world is being drawn to
gether into a conscious unity of life. The races
are realizing themselves as the Human Race, the
peoples of the earth are almost rushing into the
most astonishing revelation of what humanity can
become. The nations and the States are preparing

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 35
themselves deliberately, with open eyes, for a new
era, in which there shall be, first, an irresistible
effort to honor the national consciousness of the
smallest peoples, and in which the forces of the
mightiest empires shall be brought under the
control of a new international system. No one
can at present describe the form which that system
will assume. We may be sure that it will react upon
the fundamental morality of humankind, that it
will aim at an adequate and clear definition of
international law, and that it will be content with
nothing less than the establishing of some tribunal
or other method of securing the observance of
international law by all the States that exist in the
world. None shall be so small as to be treated
contrary to that law, none shall be so great that
it can with impunity trample upon the prescrip
tions of that law. Towards this the world has
been slowly moving since the discovery of America.
The pace of movement was accelerated by Christian
missions, commerce, and the bringing of all the
world into relationship with Western civilization
during the nineteenth century. The tides are now
rushing with incalculable force, carrying all nations
into a position where they must begin history
afresh, together, in deliberate cooperation, on the
basis of a divine, universal, absolutely authoritative
moral law.

THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR

CHAPTER III
THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR
This brings us to consider the function of the
State in relation to the practice of war.
i. To begin with, it may be confidently asserted
that no Christian man of the type with whom we
may be concerned can or will defend an aggressive
war. By that we mean a war undertaken by one
State against another in order to deprive the latter
of territory, commerce, or inhabitants for the
exclusive benefit of the former. And in doing so
it is good to claim the theoretical support of a
man so Christian as Professor W. Herrmann of
Marburg in his well-known work on Ethics; al
though, alas! he has forsaken the position in prac
tice by his support of the German policy in this
war. "War is for the Christian morally justified,
if it is politically correct, as an act of self-assertion
on the part of a people in the carrying out of its
culture-task (Kulturaufgabe),"1 that is, in main
taining and propagating its own type of culture.
If Herrmann explicitly limits this statement to the
act of self-defence on the part of a people desiring
J W.Herrmann, "Ethik." 2d Ed., p. 189.
39

40 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
to defend its own form of civilization against in
vasion by another people, there can be no objection
to it, as we shall see later on. He goes on to urge
that it is the duty of the Christian to establish
the conviction among the peoples that war for
any other reason destroys the people that walk
into it.
It is, as we have already insisted, an essential
view, absolutely necessary to be held, that the
rules of Christian morality govern States as States.
For, let it be repeated, the State is not a mere
addition to the nature of the individual man, it
is not a new kind of being in addition to the sum
and organization of the individuals composing it.
Rather is it the expression of the prevailing moral
character and personal ideals of all its citizens.
It is the effort of all these wills to act as one will.
When we speak of it as if it were a person, we must
remember always that it is less than a person,
and yet is the attempt of all the persons who be
long to it to interpret the meaning of life and to
realize it in harmony with one another. Hence
the rules of justice and of honor apply to the con
duct of citizens through the State, in their unified
will, as truly as through the family, and other
groups within the State, to which each man belongs.
We have seen that there are limits to what the
State may attempt to do with and for its citizens.
These limits are fixed on the one hand by its own

STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 41
limitations of wisdom, insight, and goodness, on
the other by the sacred depths of the personal
life of its citizens and the necessity for a large and
indefinite measure of freedom, without which the
individual person cannot fully live his own true
life and be in fullest measure the person he is fitted
to be. But when these complementary facts are
understood, it becomes clear that the State must
be made subject to the same fundamental prin
ciples of morality as the individual in its dealing
with other States. Hence there can be no just
reason invented for an aggressive war whose aim
is the murder and robbery of one State by another
State. The aggrandizement of one nation at the
cost of the freedom and rights of another nation,
or even the propagation of a higher form of civiliza
tion, by war, is immoral. Only an autocracy could
deny this and menial philosophers support the
denial; only an ignoble democracy can make it the
deliberate policy of its government.
2. The essential question, then, for a student
of Christian Ethics, and the one at present urgent
question, is this: What is the duty of a State, which
while maintaining good conduct on its own side
is actually attacked and invaded for purposes of
conquest and depredation by another State? The
whole and fundamental fact is that when an in
vading army crosses its border it becomes an organ
ized mass of murderers and robbers. They are col-

42 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
lectively and individually within the scope of its
government. Towards them it has the same duties
as towards all others who are living at that time
upon its territory. The invaded State has the
same responsibility, though a heavier task, towards
the invading criminals as towards the less numerous,
less organized, less equipped criminals among its
own citizens. If the State is to fulfil its duty, the
invading force must be put down. Whatever force
is necessary to do this must be exercised at all
costs, and to the limit of the powers of the nation
which the State represents and for which it acts.
Manifestly the invading criminals cannot be arrested
and imprisoned by the ordinary police force. Their
numbers, equipment, organization, and methods
make that impossible. An army must be gathered,
trained, equipped, to meet the situation. But this
is what we call war.
To refuse on any ground to meet the situation
thus created is to abandon the State. It is to
deny and surrender the primary functions for which
it came into existence, and without whose fulfil
ment it simply does not exist. It is here that the
honor of a nation becomes involved with its duty.
The killing of the invading enemy is a necessary
form of the fulfilment of that duty. In the circum
stances described, punishment cannot be inflicted,
the State cannot carry out its inherent task, without
inflicting that penalty. The pacifist who insists

STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 43
that the State should rather perish than kill is
saying rather that it becomes wrong for a State
to exist as soon as it is attacked by an enemy. It
must consent to die whensoever an organized foreign
foe appears within its borders. No argument will
ever make this program of conduct appear reason
able to the vast majority of Christian men. They
will always feel that somewhere in it there is con
tained a fallacy, a misinterpretation of the meaning
and of the effect of sacrifice, a misrepresentation or
miscalculation of the duty of the State, a failure
to compare truly the fulfilment of its task in that
act of killing which is necessary under these cir
cumstances, with the fulfilment of that task among
its own citizens.
The pacifist mode of thought seems to surrender
the whole world of moral considerations which are
implied in the existence of the State, for the one
theory that it can never be right under any cir
cumstances to inflict death upon any man. The
duty of the State to safeguard its citizens, the
sense of honor involved in the defence of its duty,
the noble instinct of the human soul to protect the
weak and prevent the wicked from attaining their
ends — these are all cast aside in Order to avoid
the one fact, which is indeed a dreadful, but here
an inevitable, fact, the putting of the criminal
to death. Frankly, it comes to be a weighing of
alternatives in the light of their moral content

44 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
and the significance of their future for the Kingdom
of God and the welfare of mankind — whether it
is a greater or holier thing for a State to allow its
citizens to be destroyed by murderous invaders
or to repel their purpose by putting them to the
death which they seek to inflict. Death at human
hands will eventuate in either case. Is the mere
act of killing, of putting an end to the life of a
man, itself so inherently sinful that it cannot be
considered in relation to any purpose had in view,
to any results which may flow from it? From all
this it seems to be the one conclusion which the
most sincere Christian thinker ought to reach that
a country has the same right to fight invaders
from another country as it has to put down by
force its own criminals; and if in order to do this
the infliction of death is inevitable, then the func
tion of the State clears it of guilt in the matter,
turns the act into a solemn duty.
It is an obvious corollary from this that another
country has not only the right but has it as a most
sacred obligation to aid the country which has
thus been invaded, to rid itself of the enemy and
to punish him for the breach of international rights.2

2 "Every nation should be an armed nation, not because it re
gards any other with hostility, not because it imagines that any
other has an interest in assaulting it, but because its own soil, its
own language, its own laws, its own government, are given to it
and are beyond all measure precious to it." F. D. Maurice, "Social
Morality." 2d Ed., p. 191.

STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 45
3. Of course in writing all this we have in view
constantly the supreme event in modern history,
which at once illustrates the depths to which a
State may descend when it invades a land, and
the heights to which another State may go when
it seeks in the name of righteousness and of God
to maintain the order, the freedom of its citizens.
Belgium had exactly the same obligations to resist
Germany when the German soldiers were within
her border as to punish her own criminals; and
Great Britain and France, apart from all questions
of danger to themselves, had a moral obligation to
intervene for the protection of a neighboring State,
in the fulfilment of a divine obligation. Even
without that solemn covenant or treaty which
bound both countries to do this thing, and even
if there had been no further danger incurred by
themselves, when Germany set out brutally to
overwhelm and absorb the Belgian people and
State, it was a righteous act for Great Britain and
France to prevent the crime and to maintain the
existence, integrity, and honor of the Belgian people.
These are the deep and universal moral prin
ciples which underlie the action of America in her
entry upon the war. First, she was actually invaded,
for her own citizens and property were attacked
against all law and all human considerations when
her ships were sunk, her citizens drowned. It
certainly aggravates the crime of Germany, and

46 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
casts a luster upon the will of this people, that it
was only after a long series of protests against the
German policy and when every means of avoiding
the issue had been carefully and deliberately em
ployed, that the Government of America at last
found itself face to face with a duty which it
could not escape without surrendering the very
meaning of government and losing the sense not
merely of national security but of that sacred and
intensely Christian thing, national honor. It is
an added, although not the primary consideration,
and one which adds a high and generous zest to
her great undertaking, that America found herself
side by side with nations which were in danger of
being overwhelmed. The foe against which they
struggle acts, as we shall see later, with flawless
consistency and tremendous energy upon a theory
of national life which at crucial points is the direct
contradiction of that which we have adopted and
described in these pages, and which we believe to
represent in the main the spirit, the conscience, the
will of all the other great nations of the world. It
is in pursuit of ends which no Christian civilization
can tolerate as a permanent element in human
history that the German Empire entered upon
this war. It is in meeting the assault not merely
of one State upon another, but of one reasoned
system of morality, which is deeply immoral, upon
a system of morality which is founded on conscience

STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 47
enlightened by the will of God through the mind
of Christ, that America fights beside Great Britain
and France. On the outcome of the struggle the
future of righteousness depends.
4. If we pursue the argument to the end it works
out in this way. If the invaded State submits
with only verbal protest, with only an appeal to the
law and judgment of God and to the better self,
the conscience, of the foe, it refuses to do its essential
duty in the suppression of crime within its borders.
And the refusal is then based on the fact that the
criminals are foreign and powerful. That is what
the State of Luxemburg did when German hordes
poured into its territory across the Rhine. And
none has called her act sublime.3 Further, if the
State proceeds, not believing perhaps in capital
punishment, to arrest the invaders and to imprison
them, and refuses to smite them lest they should
die, its representatives will certainly themselves be
killed and the invaders will quell the land. If,
still further, seeing the futility and wickedness and
weakness of all this, the State determines to do
all it can to put down this lawlessness within its
borders, to fulfil its sacred duty as the guardian
of moral order, it must create a force which shall
be able to execute capital punishment upon the so-
called invading army — which is only a traditional
name for criminals, for murderers, ravishers, and
' See below, pp. 94-96.

48 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
robbers within its own borders. Whatever dignity
they may claim, these terms describe accurately
the invading soldiers from the point of view of the
invaded nation. The resisting force it creates is
called an army, and its operations are called war.
But a State using such a force and for such an end
in such a spirit is simply carrying out to the limit
of its power the duty inherent in its nature, the
essential task for which, in the will of God and in
the nature of man's life, it was created.
This is no mere recondite and subtle argument.
This is exactly what happened when Belgium was
ruthlessly trampled under foot by the German
armies, and, losing her life for a while, saved her
soul; while Luxemburg, saving her life, lost it.
The Armenians for long centuries lay at the
mercy of the Turkish Empire, unarmed, meek,
helpless. If any appeal to the generosity of human
nature could be imagined more direct, more pathetic,
more prolonged, let it be named and described.
Yet even today the Moslem Government is carrying
on the work of systematic massacre and complete
abolition of that race. It is not true that a State
can save its life from an enemy by submission and
trust and sacrifice. The Russians the other day,
or rather the Bolsheviki acting in their name,
flung themselves at the feet of Germany, unarmed,
appealing to the pledged word, the sense of honor
of a great military Empire; and immediately all

STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 49
promises were broken, all honor denied its claims,
all mercy treated as ignoble weakness, and whole
regions brought under the ruthless domination of
a pitiless invader. It is not true that a State can
save its life from an enemy by submission and trust
and sacrifice, if the enemy has made itself deliber
ately impervious to any moral appeal.
The fact is that a great deal, if not all of the
argument for non-resistance urged on religious and
Christian grounds, arises from a confusion of two
separate and divine institutions, namely, the State
and the Church. We shall try in later pages to
describe the mutual relation of these supreme
institutions in human life. Suffice it to say here
in brief that while sacrifice is essential to the life
and growth, and is an inherent duty, of the Church,4
it is fatal to the State. While the use of force is
essential to the functions of the State, necessary
to the healthful and beneficent discharge of its
duty, it is fatal to the Church. Force and sacrifice
are both methods of God, as Christianity has at
last made known in its Gospel to the world. In
God they are both exercised with that perfection
of wisdom which is His alone. In human society
as a whole their operation has become assigned
to two different institutions. The same men must,
or ought to, live and work wholeheartedly in each,
out of which devotion, if it become universal in
' See below, pp. 94-96, 114-117,

50 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
sincerity and constancy of soul, the perfect race
of man would swiftly and gloriously emerge, like
a noontide sun. In the meantime we must be con
tent to live in the bewildering twilight which our
partial consecration, infected and limited by our
selfish and callous hearts, prolongs. And the
result is that we must serve the State with its
use of force, and the Church with its use of sacri
fice, aware that in our world as it is, each is difficult
of fulfilment, each is obscure in its effect, yet both
being more widely and fully exercised today than
yesterday, a brighter tomorrow is being prepared
for our race.

THE GERMAN MILITARIST DOCTRINE
OF THE STATE

CHAPTER IV
THE GERMAN MILITARIST DOCTRINE
OF THE STATE
We must reckon now with a very different con
ception of the State from that which we have
described above. For there has arisen in our mod
ern world a system of government which is founded
more openly and deliberately upon a definite theory
than any other known to history except the United
States of America. And in most of the fundamental
principles on which they are based these two govern
ments stand in complete and irreconcilable hos
tility to one another. It is true that the world
owes much to German students of political science,
and that many of them would repudiate almost
in toto the theory, policy, and spirit of the German
Empire of today. But another group has gained
the mastery, and it is their position with its con
sequences which we must examine partially in this
chapter. i. There is one strong characteristic of the
German mind which we must remember if we
would understand in part how it has come to hold
opinions and engage in practices from which the
53

54 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
rest of the world recoils. This characteristic, at
once its glory and its supreme danger, is its strict
adherence to the faith in ideas and in their logical
applicability to history. When it has laid hold
of an abstract statement as being the essential
truth, it has no hesitation, rather a great joy, in
deducing from it all possible logical conclusions
and applying them without fear upon fields of
inquiry or action. It has been trained to take the
consequences of this, alike in the work of a philosr
opher or a theologian in his study, and of a states
man dealing with national life. The latter in
Germany boasts of dealing always with the actual
and of attaining dazzling results by his close atten
tion to the facts before him. Nevertheless he is
ever guided by, generally he is the slave of, some
abstract principle, or even some term, which he
uses as a key to the facts and a guide in his en
deavors. This method receives a vivid, and in its results
a lurid, illustration in the use which the German
militaristic school have made of the doctrine that
the essence of the State is "the Will to Power."
The history of the phrase must go back at least
to the emphasis which Hegel put upon the "will"
in his theory of the State. This has been by some
criticized as a defect (so Bluntschli), but treated
by others as if it were the supreme merit in Hegel's
philosophy of the State; the fact being that he

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 55
was careful to recognize other elements of human
nature as entering into the State in addition to
the mere will of man.
Another word was emphasized by Bluntschli
in his famous work, when he said, "The State
must have power in order to maintain its independ
ence and to enforce its decrees. It is only as pos
sessing power that a State can exist and live."1
But we must remember that that very careful
thinker balanced this with many other equally
true, but modifying utterances; as, for instance,
when he says on the same page, "the forces of
moral and political development shall not be op
posed to the destiny of humanity." But there has
arisen in Germany a school which has maintained
that the central and essential nature of the State
is "the will to power." And from that unmodified
statement, the combination of the phraseology of
Hegel and Bluntschli, they have drawn the most
astonishing logical conclusions and have used them
to produce the most appalling practical results in
history.2

1 "The Theory of the State," p. 321.
2 Some maintain that Nietzsche's phrase "the will to power"
is derived from Schopenhauer's doctrine of "the will to live." But
the doctrine of the will has received a rich development since the
days of Kant and Hegel; and the theory that "power" is the supreme
characteristic of the State, so fully worked by Treitschke, com
bined with it naturally to make Nietzsche's phrase "the will to
power" strike fire in imperialistic minds among the leaders of
thought and action.

56 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
Let us trace some lines of this logical process,
those which concern us especially in this discussion.
2. While the possession of power is essential to
the existence of the State, it must be used always
for the good of the people as a whole. The State
must undertake the full task of guidance and con
trol, in defining the highest good, in seeking to
promote it, and in defending its citizens in the
pursuit and possession of their national well-being.
From certain points of view the German Govern
ment has carried out this program with magnificent
results. We cannot here tell the story of its lavish
encouragement of science, its effective municipal
government. It has even taken in hand, to direct
and control, the higher life of the people in respect
of art and religion. No side of human interest
has been neglected which could be employed to
create a unified nation, conscious of dependence
upon the supreme governing authorities, rendering
to them a grateful obedience and an unlimited
confidence, nourishing the consciousness of a dis
tinct and unequalled destiny.
It is true, of course, that the remarkable success
of this German system of government has not
satisfied its people entirely. The Social Democratic
movement, however its leaders have betrayed it
since the inception of war, did express an ever-
widening yearning of the heart for another kind
of freedom, for a government where the people

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 57
could themselves speak and be conscious of direct
ing their own destinies. And some indeed main
tain that the dread of this movement on the part
of the rulers of Germany was one of those forces
which drove them into war. But uneasiness of
conscience in some, devotion to more humane ideals
in other, sections of the German people have proved
to be powerless before the steady, systematic, tyran
nous pressure of the will which pursued the ideals
we have set forth.
That which has given the German form of national
organization its peculiar significance is the fact
that it was organized by a government which
conceived of itself primarily as a military force,
which looked out upon the world through the eyes
of military leaders, which considered every side of
the national life as contributing something more
or less directly to the efficiency of the armies of
Germany. Teachers in the primary schools were
raising generations of soldiers, preachers from the
pulpit were inspiring German ideals, men of science
were employed to investigate every device that
would add to the power of a fighting force, as well
as to the power of industry and commerce. The
Emperor in one of his speeches said that the army
was the main prop on which the life of the nation
rested. He himself did as much as anyone to
turn it from a mere prop of a great structure into
the rudder of a vessel sailing out on a great

58 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
adventure. The King of militant Prussia was the
Emperor, director of German destiny.
3. We should never forget, in discussing the
progress of the German Empire, that there were
great and deep defects in its system, defects which
were making themselves manifest with increasing
force as the Government developed its authority
and established its policy. In fact the efficiency
was outward and physical in its principal forms;
the defects were in the structure of life. The
workingmen cherished no gratitude for the indus
trial efficiency to which they had been trained;
and the almost socialistic laws which were supposed
to care for their old age and their days of sickness
did not appease them. In spite of these blessings,
they were conscious of their poor wages, their
political helplessness, their social disabilities. Every
where the spirit that was in them found itself
hemmed in, compelled to practice only the virtues
of unlimited obedience and submission. Even the
development of the mighty army and the glorifica
tion of the military career cast its shadow upon the
spiritual life of the people. The prestige of the
officer class tended to disparage those careers
which until 1870 had been considered the supreme
objects of ambition by the young men of Germany;
The enormous and very rapid development of
industry concentrated the attention of the people
thus suddenly enriched upon money and the pleas-

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 59
ures which it could buy. The whole people were
like some families whom sudden wealth drives
into materialism of spirit which destroys the soul.
On the other hand the efficient local government
could not conceal the fact from close observers
that there were deep diseases hidden under a fair
surface. In Berlin before the war there were 40,-
000 one-room homes, whereas in London, whose
slums Germans were taught to despise, with its
population many times larger than that of Berlin,
there were only 12,000 one-room homes. Only
the strictest police control could have concealed
the fact that such misery existed in Berlin. But
it is just the maintenance of police control which
on the one hand produces superficial good results
and on the other creates a universal feeling of
restrictedness, of humiliation, of irritation, which
does not help to produce a noble personal bearing
and a generous social spirit.
4. On the educational side the development of
intellectual power was not equalled by attention
to the development of character. So far as character
was dealt with, it was the character of a boy who
looks forward to the service of his Kaiser, the career
of one who makes wealth or makes war, or gains
distinction in official life. Between these his mind
must choose, and his spirit was impelled in too
prevailing a measure to the standards and ideals
which such careers suggested to him. Even

60 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
academic careers became tainted, and the Church
an expression of the imperial spirit. The relentless
thoroughness with which the very effectual educa
tional process was carried on seems to have tended
towards the elaboration of the memory and the
logical faculties at the expense of other powers of
the mind, and the process was so relentless that
German observers traced to it the increasing num
ber of child suicides which caused anxiety in high
places. But a character was actually being formed
through fifty years of imperial policy. A character
had become familiar already all over the world,
which stands revealed and confessed in the making
of the war and in the publications by which the
Germans have sought to justify it and to inspire
each other for its prosecution to a victorious end.
The main feature of this national character may
be summarized in the phrase, "unparalleled self-
esteem." They came to believe that Germany
had manifested powers beyond those of any other
race or nation, that in every department of life
they excelled all others; and that the providence
of God which allowed them to develop later than
other nations intended them as the perfect flower
of human evolution to exercise authority over all
other inferior races and peoples. This conscious
ness of surpassing excellence tended to aggravate
the craving for power. The matter has been well

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 61
put by Dr. Bang in that work which has thrown
So lurid a light upon one side of the life of the Ger
man people:3 "In Germany, such a craving for
power, such a worship of mere strength, has taken
root and grown, that the claim of right to be the
determining factor in international relations has
been entirely pushed aside. A colossal and ever
increasing self-admiration, a belief in the glory
of all things German, the surpassing merits of the
German nature [Wesen), which alone has the right
to rule in the world, a cynical, brutal assertion
that in relation to this claim all existing treaties,
all appeals to international law, all consideration
for the weaker peoples, are of no significance what
ever — all this we have witnessed with shuddering
astonishment. This German claim is to be en
forced, of course, for the true welfare of the world,
but if necessary against the will of the whole world,
by the aid of sheer violence. This is barbarism
unadorned." 4
5. The possession of power by a nation, taken
along with the effectiveness with which it de
velops the life of its own people, is the measure
of its right to deal forcibly with other nations,
alike for its own interest and for theirs. This
means, of course, that a nation has always the
» "Hurrah and Hallelujah, The Teaching of Germany's Poets,
Prophets, Professors, and Preachers, A Documentation," by J.
P. Bang, D.D., Professor at the University of Copenhagen.
* Ibid., p. 18.

62 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
right, if it has the power, to seek the well-being
of its own people at the cost of other peoples; with
the subjoined ethical defense that it will in this
way convey the blessing of its higher attainments
to the people whom it conquers. From this point
of view the Germans, over a wide section of their
intelligent people, have been taught to cherish
the idea that they, as a people, must use their
power in order that the whole world may receive
the blessing of their national civilization. It is
strange that this idea should have arisen in the
hearts of some thinkers and poets long before the
Empire was founded. Dr. Bang in the work al
ready quoted (p. 35) has described the influence
of one of these poets, Geibel, whose famous distich
has exercised an enormous influence over the thought
of the people. It has been quoted probably hundreds
of times in every direction during the war. Dr.
Bang's book, in its citation of opinions, is able
to give us a glimpse of the extent to which these
extraordinary words have convinced and inspired
the leaders of the people:
" Und es mag am deutschen Wesen
Einmal noch die Welt genesen."
The words may be translated: "The world may
yet be healed by the German nature."
We are familiar with the utterances of speakers
and poets who in other lands arouse the patriotic

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 63
devotion of their people by enthusiastic reviews of
their history and descriptions of their position
in the world. Utterances like these as expressions
of national joy, pride, and hope have their real
value, and a certain moral beauty; but among the
Germans these sayings have been made essential
parts of the program of the nation. If, as the
Kaiser in an exalted moment said in 1905, "We
are the salt of the earth," then the German con
cludes that he must sprinkle the salt over the
whole surface of the earth. If the German nature
can be a healing benefit to mankind, it must be
forced upon the sick patient which mankind is.
If German culture has produced astonishing results
at home, how good and great a thing it would be
to produce the same astonishing results in every
other land. From thoughts like these the German
has quickened in himself a sense of duty to the
world. He has sanctified as a pious endeavor the
will to power and a determination to expand the
dominions of Germany until she shall cease to be
merely a great power and become a world power.6
Yet another element in the situation must be
brought forward. The German people have mul
tiplied with great rapidity. The population was
found to be too dense to be supported within the
home territories. Millions of Germans had left

6 For the distinction between these two ideas see Bluntschli.
"The Theory of the State," p. 321.

64 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
for other lands. They had settled in North America
and South America and Australia. They had
disappeared into the life of other nations, come
under the control of other governments. Germany
looked upon this as a loss over which she must
mourn, a wrong which she must correct. The
mission of Germany in the world will be limited,
its full exercise prevented unless Germany can
follow her sons overseas, and retain them under
the imperial system to count as Germans still,
expressions all around the world of her glory, nour
ishes of her life. To the logical German mind
again this seemed to suggest, nay even to impose,
the duty of following her emigrants even by force,
fighting all opposition, that the Fatherland might
still retain the control of its far-wandering children.
These various lines of thought are not themselves
wrong, except in the aggressive deductions. Other
nations have sought to develop themselves to the
utmost, other nations have colonies, other nations
have expanded their civilization over neighboring
peoples and into distant portions of the world.
Spain in South America, Great Britain and her
dominions and the Indian Empire, France and
every region in the world that is counted to her
credit, even that young nation, the United States
of America, with its West Indies and its Philippine
Islands — these have all given the blessings of their
civilization to great portions of the world, and in

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 65
doing so they have all undoubtedly received the
richer development of their own national life. But
Germany, confronted with the situation, forming
these ambitions and intensifying them to a degree
of white heat, found herself without a world which
she could conquer, without the opportunity in
which she had been prevented by other nations.
There remained only one possible way, it seemed
to her, of achieving what other peoples had achieved,
the way of war. But this dream of war under the
circumstances meant the conquering of other strong
empires. And the contemplation of that idea in
the mind of the Kaiser, as his speeches abundantly
show, and at last in the almost official declarations
of von Bernhardi, grew into a conception of world
domination. Germany could not win her way
to the place occupied by the countries we have
named except by conquering one or all of them;
and conquering them meant raising herself above
them to a height they had not reached, and exercis
ing a world influence they had not exercised. The
dream to us seems ghastly, to them it seemed
heavenly in its inspiring force.
The development of German power might have
gone along other lines which already it was pur
suing. A more spiritually-minded race might have
said: "In commerce we are catching up and will
soon pass them all, in science, in art, in the ways
of an orderly home government, we are leaders

66 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
of the world. This is glory, this is essential power,
this is what we are really giving to humanity. Let
us continue the gift even when it means the sending
abroad large numbers of our people to live else
where." This is the very essence of power when
it is interpreted in the supreme terms, which are
moral and spiritual. And this is what the earlier
German men of letters and philosophers meant
when they spoke of the preeminence of Germany
among the peoples of the world.
But in our day Prussia had gained control of
Germany. Her extraordinary growth had been
frankly created by her devotion to military power.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century the
aggrandizement of that warlike race proceeded
with great strides. She conquered Denmark, ab
sorbed Hanover, brought Austria to her feet.
Then she tore away valuable portions of fair France.
It seemed as if there were no limits to her power
in the pursuance of military ideals and the con
tinuance of the military spirit as cherished in
Prussia for centuries.
6. These two great streams of history, character,
and national interest in Germany coalesced. The
passion for the development of a worthy national
life was united with the forceful energy of a Prussian
militarism. Hence there arose the modern con
ception of war which, while no doubt rejected by
many intelligent and spiritually-minded Germans,

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 67
yet became the dominant influence in its life,
directed its policy at home and abroad, created
the empire of unparalleled military efficiency and
energy, and drove it into the World War.
First, we must begin with a certain abstract
principle which may be stated as follows: The
essence of the State is power, the supreme mani
festation of power is war. Therefore the State
must ever make itself fit for war. Or in this way:
War is the manifestation of power, the result of
war is the determination of the right of a nation
to dictate terms to the conquered. The conquered
has no right except that of submission, the con
queror no duty except that of gathering the full
fruits of victory.
Second, war being an essential of national life,
it must be necessary to the health of the people.
"The efforts directed towards the abolition of war
must be termed not only foolish, but absolutely
immoral, and must be stigmatized as unworthy
of the human race." 6 "War is an instrument of
progress, a regulator in the life of humanity, an
indispensable factor in civilization, a creative
force." 7 "Our people must learn to see that the
maintenance of peace never can or may be the
goal of a policy. . . . The inevitableness, the ideal
ism, and the blessings of war, as an indispensable
« Von Bernhardi, "How Germany Makes War," p. 34.
' Ibid., p. 2.

68 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
and stimulating law of development, must be
repeatedly emphasized." 8
Third, the conduct of a war is part of the struggle
for existence, which is a law of nature, as Darwin
ism has revealed to the modern world. According
to this doctrine, real evolution from the lower to
the higher forms of life depends on the conquest
of the weak by the strong. War, therefore, is the
manifestation in human life of this deep, divine
principle. "Might is at once the supreme right,
and the dispute as to what is right is decided by
the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically
just decision, since its decisions rest on the very
nature of things." 9 "But it [war] is not only a
biological law, but a moral obligation, and as such,
an indispensable factor in civilization." 10
Fourth, German writers are quoted abundantly
by Dr. Bang who have striven to bring this con
ception of war into relation with Christianity.
This is not the place to make quotations, but it
may be right to say that after a careful reading
of these and of numerous similar passages to be
found elsewhere in the literature of the war, the
judgment must be recorded that seldom in the
checkered history of Christian thought has a mass
of opinion been expressed that can equal this in
8 Von Bemhardi, "Germany and the Next War," p. 37.
9 Ibid., p. 23.
10 Ibid., p. 24.

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 69
the qualities which we may summarize as grotesque,
immoral, and blasphemous. Every one of these
hard adjectives can be easily justified by a scrutiny
of the writings referred to.
7. This whole view of war is in direct contrast
to that which we have in earlier pages described
and defined. It derives itself from abstractions,
it seeks to justify itself by past history and im
perfect scientific theories. There is nothing more
dangerous in our world than the tyranny of ab
stract ideas, of the use of terms not carefully defined
and limited by application of them to the manifold
circumstances of life, where they only partially
apply. On the general conception described above,
the following points of criticism must in the mean
time be sufficient:
First, whatever truth is in the statement that
some wars have brought blessings in the past does
not in the least prove war to be a permanent and
essential condition of progress. When the nations
have been raised to higher levels of life and brought
under the guidance of moral principles which were
inoperative in earlier periods of history, the spirit
and practice of war must depress and degrade.
Second, this doctrine, if practiced by all nations,
would concentrate the whole world upon war as
the supreme good. Every other side of life would
be organized and made subservient to this. It
is one thing for a German military philosopher to

70 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
argue as von Bernhardi does, in order to encourage
the uneasy conscience of his people living in a
peaceable world, or a world that desires peace.
The picture of one supremely powerful military
power is the picture before their minds. It is quite
another thing when one calmly pictures a world
of nations, every one of which holds the doctrine
of von Bernhardi. It would be a world made up
of armed nations, of vast organizations of life, all
of which found their true meaning and unified
effect in the efficiency of their military establish
ments; and these establishments would have to be
co-extensive with the total activities of the peoples.
This appalling picture means the destruction of
all moral ideals, the expulsion of the Christian
spirit, the erection of a kingdom of evil as wide
as the world and as deep as man's devotion to war.
Third, this whole conception of a world uni
versally ordered for war would establish as the
ultimate moral truth the doctrine defended by
von Bernhardi regarding the struggle for existence,
in which the fittest would always be the victorious
army. This is the negation of all right. It must
be pronounced the most inhuman, the most anti-
Christian view of human nature which can be
fashioned by an evil and distorted imagination.
The present situation in Europe is an illustration
of what the dethroning of righteousness and the
enthroning of force would mean for the whole world.

GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 71
Fourth, it is certain that humanity will not
accept this doctrine. It may be that it is difficult
for us to anticipate the manner in which the human
race can maintain virility without war, can nour
ish the passion of patriotism without the rivalries
that hitherto have led to war, can manifest the
fulness of sacrifice without the free offering of
soldiers in battle. But this question is one which
we may well leave to the future. The spirit of
man has not shown itself without resources; there
are no doubt within it as yet unsuspected, undis
covered wellsprings of life. There may yet be
developed tasks as great as war which will call out
sacrifice, nourish virility, stimulate the spirit of
adventure. What these may be, how they will
shape themselves, what ends of pursuit will be
involved, and what price the struggle will demand,
we cannot as yet imagine. But beyond the present
horizon these things lie. What we have to deal
with today is the fundamental fact that he en
thrones might without mercy, force without right
eousness, who conceives of the development of a
people only in terms of war, with all its ruthless
results. He has lost the vision of that Kingdom
of God which the Christian faith has urged us to
believe is the destiny of man.11
u The extent to which the conscience even of Christian men
has been confused and blinded by the military ambition of the
German Empire is nowhere more lamentably illustrated than in
the recent published utterances of an eminent theologian and

72 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
brilliant writer, Professor Ernst Troeltsch of Heidelberg. An
apparently trustworthy account of his opinions as given in the
year 1917 in a conversation at Heidelberg has been published by
Professor Charles S. Sherrington of Oxford.
On being asked why war should be a necessity, since no one in
England thought of making war on Germany, Professor Troeltsch
said: "The War is a necessity for Germany because England has so
much that it is absolutely necessary for Germany to possess in
order to fulfil her role as a world State."
Being asked what were the possessions which Germany so much
desired, Professor Troeltsch said:
"Ports and colonies in many parts of the world — Australia,
South Africa, Hongkong, India. England is not really strong,
but there has been no strong power to dispute these great sources
of wealth with her. These sources of wealth must fall to a new
world power, and that is clearly Germany." . . . "But England
as a political influence is becoming effete; her governments exem
plify that; they exhibit little insight into world-politics today.
When our navy is larger than the English it will be too late for
England to interfere, and the opportunity will rest with Germany.
The day for the decision of England's fate will then come quickly."

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

CHAPTER V
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
Hitherto we have been discussing the institution
called the State, especially in relation to the fact
of war. We have tried to establish the position
that war as a defensive measure for the protection
of the rights of its citizens is one of the essential
functions of the State. It arises from the necessity
for the maintenance of a moral order within its
territory, on the basis of which the national life is
to proceed.
We have also examined briefly the doctrine of
the State and of war which has been promulgated
by the limitless ambition and the uneasy conscience
of German leaders. The program which they
describe would result, we believe, in the destruc
tion of all morality within any nation which delib
erately and thoroughly adopts it. And if it were
made the program of all nations and carried out
over the face of the earth, it would create a con
dition from the very imagination of which heart
and mind must shrink back in amazement and
^horror. i. There is another institution in the world,
75

76 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
the Church of Christ, with whose nature and influ
ence we must now reckon; for we cannot understand
the life of a community without understanding its
religion, and throughout Christendom religion de
pends upon the existence and work of the Church.
In early times religion was looked upon simply as
one phase of the life of the community, as a whole,
one function of the State. The chief of a tribe was
very often its priest. Only with the fuller develop
ment of the life of a people has a distinction been
drawn between the organization of the people for
religious ends and their organization for temporal
and secular ends.1
When Jesus began His ministry, the Jewish people
existed mainly as a Church, while the functions of
the State rested in the representatives of imperial
Rome. The political situation in Palestine was
extremely complicated. There were four main
political sections: first the Roman authorities,
second the party of the Sadducees, third the party
of the Pharisees, fourth the party of the Herodians.
At every point the principles on which Jesus founded
His own policy came into competition with the
principles or policy of one or other of these parties.
His principles laid an emphasis on individuality,
on the infinite value of each human personality,
which has proved itself one of the deepest forces
1 The progress of this development is best illustrated in the
history of Israel from Moses to the death of Christ.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 77
in the creation of the modern, the Christian world.
But in His ministry He was not dealing, as we too
often suppose, merely with individuals, irrespective
of their social and political environment. He was
deliberately creating a new community, whose
nature would bring it into contact with every
other human institution.
The Church of Christ was not founded and
did not come into full consciousness as a distinctive
community until after His death and resurrection.
Without these events it cannot be conceived to
exist. They are among the primary forces which
produced it, and their permanent power is one of
the vital conditions of its continued existence.
When the Church did come into conscious being
as a distinct community, it became speedily iden
tified as a new and mighty fact in human history.
Roman statesmen ere long saw in it a foe more
subtle than any which they had ever encountered,
an institution whose very nature made it, as his
tory has proved, invincible before even the breadth
and force of Roman statesmanship.
2. We may briefly define the Church for our
present purpose as that community of human
beings of all races and classes who are brought
together by reason of their ardent faith in Jesus
Christ as their Saviour and Lord, and whose lives
are spent in obedience to His law in the practical
manifestation of His spirit of universal love.

78 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
Two of the great characteristics of this com
munity, which we may name as relevant to our
present task, are that in its essence it is unworldly
and international or inter-racial. By the former
we mean not merely that its source is spiritual,
but that the whole meaning of its existence is to
be found in the moral and spiritual sphere. It
may possess buildings, but it does not exist for
them and can exist without them. Its continued
life may be nourished by the variety of its institu
tional arrangements and its influence upon humanity
enlarged by them, but if these institutions bring
it into the exercise of merely earthly policies and
the pursuit of earthly gains, its spirit is wronged,
its reality is brought into doubt. It is international
in the sense that it draws its members on equal
terms from literally all classes of human beings,
and seeks to bring them into a conscious fellow
ship with one another which cannot be equaled by
any other institution, not even by the State.
These facts do not mean that it has no relation
with the actual world. Rather is it true that the
more intensely it realizes its spiritual nature and
pursues its spiritual ends, the more powerfully does
it produce its characteristic and ennobling effect
upon human life. As a distinct social community
it necessarily comes into comparison and contact
with other social institutions. It has interacted
with them from the beginning of its history to this

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 79
day. It has been influenced by their spirit, and
it has, wherever its true functions have been exer
cised, exerted immeasurable influence upon their
character. 3. Especially has the Church from the beginning
been related to the State, in whatever form the
latter existed in any country, in any period of
history. No more than its Master can it escape
that relationship. Slowly did it emerge through
what we now call Christendom, as the one supreme
organization of men whose ideal is to gather all
the citizens of a nation, and even the citizens of
all nations, into conscious mutual relationships of
trust and love and service under its own inspira
tion and direction. Thus in its empire over the
spiritual life it alone stands comparison with, and
is vitally related with, the State in its empire over
the temporal relations of men.
The ideal relationship of the Church to the State
is somewhat simple of description, though the
actual history has been extremely complicated. Its
purpose, and where it is powerful its actual effect,
is to stimulate the ethical ideals of the community
as a whole, to purify the purposes of the govern
ment, to give energy to every political and social
force that seeks to extend justice and mercy through
out the community, to encourage all efforts to
elevate the entire life of the nation. It is under
the influence of the Church that the very fact of

80 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
war has been brought increasingly under severe
criticism and condemnation. If today men hate
war, if they have ceased to consider, in most Chris
tian lands, that it is a necessity of human life, if
efforts have been made to moralize the methods
of warfare between modern nations, these influences
can be traced directly to the teaching and spirit
of the Church of Christ. One of its most powerful
and subtle influences is to be found in the fact that
men who deny the claims of the Church yet cling
to its ethical and social ideals as if these were pri
meval and indisputable possessions of the human
spirit. But it is one of the glories of the Christian
religion that its fundamental teachings about man
have thus come to be accepted as if they were
inevitable and inalienable. As a matter of fact,
their meaning has been only laboriously discovered
and their tenure of the human heart must always
be insecure unless the force which revealed them
also retains them in the hearts of men. Neither
that discovery nor that tenure is yet complete.
4. Throughout the history of the Church it has
always appealed to the New Testament, that is,
to the teaching and example of Christ and His
Apostles, as the primary and supreme interpreter
of its nature and its task in the world. To these
writings, the only writings of the ancient world
that dominate the life of today, and that with
ever widening influence, we must go for light upon

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 81
the specific question before us: What is the relation
of the Church to the State when the State engages
in war? First, we must try to discover something
of the relations in which Christ set Himself towards
the State, the organized life of the people among
whom He lived and worked.2
In the first place, a close study of the gospels
reveals the fact that Jesus was involved in a struggle
with Jewish political parties in the work of estab
lishing His community. After vain dealings with
the Jewish authorities themselves, there was nothing
for Him to do but to draw to Himself individuals
whom He gradually moulded into a distinct com
munity. He established this community on a
purely spiritual basis, releasing it from any relation
to or dependence upon any political party in the
land. This was a daring thing to do, and it cost
Him His life.
But in the second place, a close scrutiny of His
life and teaching reveals the fact that He was
consciously creating His community with relation
to the background of social organization. He did
not attempt to draw His followers into a desert
place to form a separate community. He left
them in their natural human, social, and even
national relations. His teaching has constant
2 This subject has been recently investigated in a work called
"The Political Relations of Christ's Ministry," by Stephen Liberty,
M.A. (University Press, Oxford), an original and penetrating
study of the subject.

82 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
reference of a genial and positive nature to the
world in which they live, the business life of an
ordered community, the functions of judges, the
homes from which His disciples came and to which
they returned, the institution of the synagogue.
These and other facts are present as accepted ele
ments in the life of His community. He assumes
that the community will continue in the midst of
the world, hence His parables of the tares and of
the good and bad fish brought to shore in the net.
His very teaching concerning the nature and uses
of wealth presupposes the continued activity of
His disciples in their natural social relations. There
is not the slightest suggestion of a separatist spirit
in His teaching, so far as the relation of His com
munity to the life of the whole people is concerned.
Rather do we find that He treats as a matter of
great personal grief the fact that He had been
rejected by the city of Jerusalem, by the rulers
and leaders of the people. He even prophesies that
this rejection will have as one of its results the
transfer of the power, which they greedily grasped
and misused, to the hands of an alien power. He
seems to have given full warning that the failure
of the leaders of Israel to establish their community
on purely spiritual lines, would mean not only the
abolishing of their earthly power in whatever
minor ways it still survived, but the loss of their
spiritual destiny in the life of the face. As He

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 83
looks into the future He foresees the continuance
of national history, nation fighting with nation, He
sees His own disciples confronting the hostility of
the powers that be, brought before governors and
kings for their allegiance to His authority.
In the third place, it is of especial interest and
importance to see how Jesus related Himself with
the Roman Government, the de facto authority in
Palestine. First, He avoided identifying His move
ment with any form of religious revolutionary
method. This means that He acceptecftfcnd under
stood that His disciples would live under the au
thority of the State in the form of the Roman
Empire. Next, as we have already pointed out, He
warned the Jews that the history of States is under
the governance of God, and that the policy they
pursued would decide whether He would continue
them in authority or give that authority to others.
Further, he accepted the Roman Government by
entering into friendly relations with and approving
the faith of men who were in the service of the
State. People complained that He made friends
of tax-gatherers, and it is one of the outstanding
events of His ministry that He blessed the faith
of the centurion. Now Thomas Barclay, whose
"Apology" is recognized as one of the leading author
ities among the Society of Friends, urges that there
is no proof that the centurion on exercising this
faith in Christ and receiving His blessing did not

84 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
leave the army at once. It is a fact that there is
no proof, but the negative argument is always
dangerous; and here it loses sight of the main
point. For where Jesus was dealing with a man
or woman leading a wrong life, He always said,
"Go and sin no more." There is no indication of
that here. He does not seem to have forbidden
Zaccheus to continue in the service of the State.
If the continuance of relations with a military
authority were sin for the centurion, it would be
impossible that He should not have acted upon
the fact. And such action would have been so
significant that it could not have escaped a place
in the record.
And finally we come to the most significant of
all His sayings in this direction. On one occasion
the Jewish authorities, seeking to embarrass Him
in His political relations, to commit Him to a
declaration that would bring Him under the law,
challenged Him as to whether it was right to pay
taxes to the Emperor or not. Now the answer of
Jesus to this question was not a merely clever
retort. He did not, as so many have thought,
elude the question. Rather was the question much
deeper, much more far-reaching in its significance
than many of us have supposed, and the answer
was a much more powerful determinant of history
than appears on the surface. The purpose of the
question was to discover whether Jesus would

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 85
attach Himself to those who were advocating re
sistance to the imperial authority. On the other
hand, if He approved of the payment of taxes, it
would seem that He was denying the worship of
the living God. For in those days it had come
about that the head of the Roman Empire was
spoken of as Saviour and Lord, and worship was
rendered to his name. Indeed, long years after this,
readiness to offer incense on the altar of the Em
peror was one of the tests to which the Christian
was set, and many a man and woman was done to
death for refusing to worship the Emperor with a
pinch of incense cast on the flame. As it has been
said, "Loyalty to the State and worship of the
deified head of the State became identical in the
eyes of the law." This was, then, a question whose
answer must make history for Him to whom they
addressed it. His reply was, "Pay to Caesar what
belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to
God." In each direction there is a duty. The coin
which He held in His hand was proof that they as
citizens, as merchantmen, were indebted to Caesar's
Government for the whole order under which they
lived and made their living. The tax represented
their payment for the security, the order, which
they enjoyed. Let this obligation, therefore, be
recognized, was the decision of Jesus. Let this
duty be paid to Caesar as a moral obligation. On
the other hand, Caesar is not God. There is no

86 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
duty which any human being owes to Caesar which
can be or ought to be paid in religious worship
and adoration. That is due only to the living
God, Who is over Caesar himself, the Father of
all mankind. To Him the duty of the spirit must
be paid in spiritual kind, as the material duty to
Caesar in material kind.
In these words Jesus finally set His seal upon
the doctrine that even those citizens who belonged
to His own community and were committed to
the worship of God in spirit and in truth were
indebted also to the State, and must be committed
to the payment of all their due obligations to the
ruler of the day.
5. The main arguments for pacifism, apart from
questions of general ethical principle, are based
upon what are considered to be the explicit teach
ings of Christ as given in the Sermon on the Mount.
Of this discourse as a whole it must be said that
it is universally regarded as among the most im
portant declarations of moral ideals, among the
most glowing revelations of the divine will, which
even the Bible contains. Moreover, "In this
teaching Jesus aimed at being universally intelligible;
and He was so; for through the Christian centuries
the kind of life which He here describes has been
the guiding star of civilization."3 In spite of the
' C. W. Votaw, Hastings's "Dictionary of the Bible," extra
volume, p. 1.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 87
fact that the teaching is intelligible and has illu
minated the higher life of men, it has also caused
infinite perplexity in all generations. What is
very clear in statement baffles all efforts to carry
it literally into obedience.
The three passages which are chiefly appealed
to in support of the doctrine that under no cir
cumstances can a Christian man take part in war
are Matthew 5:21-26, 38-42, 43-48. In the first
of these passages Jesus quotes the Old Testament
law, "Thou shalt not kill," and interprets it as
involving the deeper law that men must not cherish
hatred or even scorn of one another. From this
the conclusion is drawn by some that no follower of
Jesus can have any part in the killing of a man
under any circumstances whatsoever. Even capital
punishment is thus forbidden. It is important to
note, however, that the correct translation of the
command in the Old Testament is, "Thou shalt
do no murder." The command was uttered to a
people constantly engaged in warfare. They were
at all times surrounded with enemies who were
ready to destroy them. Israel could not possibly
have demobilized, in obedience to the command
that they should kill no one under any circum
stances, without being themselves utterly destroyed.
When Jesus quotes the law, His development of
it must be made in line with the original meaning
and application of that law.

88 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
In the second passage Jesus refers to an early pre
scription, according to which penalties for injury to
the person were to be proportioned exactly to the
injury done. This, again, was a merciful piece of
legislation whose intention was not to drive men to
revenge, but to make the system of penalties a just
one. He who lost an eye must not take two eyes
from his enemy, nor should the State that inflicts
punishment exaggerate it beyond that which is rea
sonable in the circumstances. Jesus goes on to
deepen the meaning of the command, and does so
by means of several successive utterances: "I say
unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whoso
ever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him
the other also. And if any man would go to law
with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have
thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee
to go one mile," go with him two. Give to him that
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of
thee turn not thou away" (Matt. 5: 39-42).
It is of great interest to note in passing that in
V. 41, "Whosoever shall compel thee" would better
be translated, "Whosoever shall impress thee." The
word is a technical term, referring to a custom of
the Roman Government, one prevalent for many
ages in the East, of compelling anyone within their
reach to aid in the transportation of military bag
gage. Jesus seems to say that if the Government
compels a private citizen to serve it in this way,

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 89
he must be willing not merely to obey under com
pulsion, but to have a good heart in the doing of
it. Oppressive as it can be made, and often was
made, this custom must be accepted as a service of
the State.
But the central words of the passage around
which controversy has raged are in that utterance,
"Resist not him that is evil." Are there no limits
to that apparently limitless, absolute injunction?
Does it mean that no man may exercise the office
of a judge or aid the State in the arrest of evil
doers ? Does it mean that no Christian man can be
a policeman or a lawyer who deals with criminal
affairs? Or still further, does it mean that a man
must not resist even in words, since words some
times cut more deeply than swords? Did Jesus
Himself or did He not resist evil when he denounced
the traffickers in the Temple and drove them
forth? These are questions which must be an
swered by those who apply the command against
the exercise of force in a Christian State, or by
those who specially apply it to the one form of
resisting him who is evil, which is called war.
In the third passage, Jesus says, "Love your
enemies." And it is in relation to this passage
that, for example, Thomas Barclay, the famous
theologian of the Society of Friends, has argued,
"If a magistrate be truly a Christian or desire to
be so, he ought himself in the first place to obey

90 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
the command of his Master, saying, Love your
enemies and then he cannot command us to kill
them." What does our Lord mean when He commands
us to love our enemies? It is not He who has put
these words into immediate connection with the
command, "Thou shalt not kill," but only those
who interpret the words as having that application.
And no doubt when we understand that the word
killing means murder, the command has immediate
application. Indeed, one of His own apostles long
afterwards echoed the two passages in one great
utterance, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a
murderer" (i John 3: 15).
We must remember, however, as Dr. Horton has
so well pointed out recently, that in ordinary usage
men make a deep and fundamental distinction be
tween murder and the act of a soldier in battle.
"The distinction between killing and murder is
quite familiar to our minds, as it is familiar to every
maker of laws. . . . We realize the distinction in
stinctively. . . . When from a personal motive, and
actuated by a personal passion, a man kills another,
that is murder. . . . When a soldier kills an enemy
in battle, he is not actuated by any personal feel
ing at all, he has no personal animosity; he is simply
carrying out a command which is laid upon him
by the State to which he belongs. . . . While we
1 Barclay, "Apology," Proposition 15.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 91
entirely exonerate the soldier when he kills, we of
course recognize that if that soldier kills a comrade
or kills anyone else, he is immediately proceeded
against as a murderer, and if he is found guilty,
he is condemned to death. . . . The peculiar gravamen
of the charge that we bring against the German
Government is that it has obliterated the distinction
between murder and the killing that is recognized
as lawful killing in war." 5
There are many questions which might be asked
of those who believe that the command, Thou
shalt love thine enemy, is to be taken in the sense
suggested. Does it mean that the enemy who has
done wrong is not to be condemned ? Does it mean
that no effort is to be made to punish him ? Does
it mean that the State is to abdicate its right to
deal with any man who acts as an enemy of other
men? Does it mean that the citizens of the State
are guilty of resisting the laws of Jesus if they
support its action in restraining the enemies of
law and order?
On the whole subject of the significance of the
Sermon on the Mount with especial relation to
these three passages the following observations
must be made:
In the first place, it will not do to forget that
political and social background which we have
6 Robert F. Horton, D.D., in "Christ and the World at War,"
pp. 74-76.

92 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
already tried to understand as we watch Jesus
forming His new community. When He launches
this community into history, He knows it is into
the history of a world organized into human govern
ments. He is creating the Church on spiritual
foundations. He is interpreting the meaning of
life as it shall be seen when various social organ
izations are created out of its inmost and divine
spirit. But He does not attempt to lay down
prescriptions for the exact manner in which His
disciples are to deal with the political situation of
their own day. He does not say how the mem
bers of His community, and the community as a
whole, shall be related to the successive problems
which must arise as it enters into the wider life
of the world and into contact with all the other
institutions of humanity.
In the second place, they are right who have
uttered the startling opinion that literal obedience
to all parts of the Sermon on the Mount would "dis
solve" every government and nation in the world.
We need only to look quite frankly at the rest of
the Sermon in order to see the truth of this opinion.
Literal obedience to the outward phraseology would
actually cause the death or suicide of one institu
tion after another. For instance, the sayings con
cerning wealth (Matt. 6: 19, 20), if taken au pied
de la lettre would destroy all the business in the
world. Even Jesus' own company of twelve dis-

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 93
ciples would not have been able to use Judas as its
treasurer and give him the bag to carry. A literal
obedience to the command that we should take no
careful thought about food or drink or clothing
would reduce us to savagery. Communities have
arisen that tried to apply literally the full meaning
or suggestion of the passage concerning the relation
of the sexes (Matt. 5:27-32), and have attempted
to live in perpetual celibacy. This proceeding
would be the suicide of the race in the most com
plete fashion possible. Literal obedience to the
passage concerning almsgiving (Matt. 6: 2, 3),
would make it impossible for anyone to subscribe
to any society lest someone should know that he
had given something. Literal obedience to the
command about the manner of prayer (Matt. 6:
5, 6) would mean the abolition of public worship,
and some people have actually taken this literally.
Literal obedience to the command, "Judge not,"
would shut down the training of children, the con
demnation of the wrongdoer, even the commanding
of an army, and abolish every court of law. It is
no exaggeration to say that there is exactly the
same amount of reason for translating these in
junctions into actual conduct as those which deal
with murder and the resistance of evil and the
treatment of enemies.6

* The high-souled English Quaker, Thomas Hodgkin, the famous
historian, wrote on this subject: "I also feel that if War is abso-

94 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
The real solution of the problem of the Sermon
on the Mount must not be one which is created
merely to satisfy the selective impulses of this
group or that group, but one which interprets the
purpose of Jesus Christ throughout the whole dis
course. It must rest upon an understanding of
the method which He employs, the spirit which
He is putting into the world, and the effect of that
spirit upon the history of men in their relations
with society and the State, and even with the
natural forces on which our physical existence rests.
6. Here I must refer to an opinion held by some
that if only a nation would sacrifice itself rather
than fight for its existence, it would be fulfilling
the will of Christ. And some even have the au
dacity, shall I say the blindness, to parallel such
an act by a national State with the self-sacrifice
of Christ on the Cross.
Two essential facts are entirely forgotten when
men speak thus of the sacrifice of Christ as an
example which ought to have been followed by
Belgium. In the first place, the act of Christ made
no impression on the Romans who put him to death.
Nor did the Jewish authorities repent of their deed,
lutely condemned under all circumstances by the Sermon on the
Mount, Business, as we understand it, is equally condemned. . . .
Except on some such principle of interpretation as I have sug
gested, I fear that my forty years of banking life are quite as clearly
astray to the commands of Christ as Lord Roberts' forty years'
campaign in India." Mrs. Creichton's "Life of Thomas Hodgkin,"
p. 241.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 95
with all about it that made them a hundredfold
more guilty than the imperial rulers. Christ's
sacrificial death became a moral force first of all
to the men who already knew and trusted and
loved Him. The Cross did no good to any of His
enemies till after His resurrection. That event
proved to every one who believed in it that the
sacrifice must have been deliberate, that the Son
of God need not have died, that an Empire could
not have crushed Him. Then its meaning and
glory broke upon their minds and subdued their
hearts, "and a great company of the priests were
obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7). Without the
story of the resurrection Christ's use of non-resistance
could have appeared only as "passivity, weakness,
cowardice, or folly," 7 and could have awakened
of itself no response of faith, admiration, and love.
Easter Day made Good Friday.
Mere self-sacrifice is mere suicide unless some
thing for which it was made survives. The sub
lime act of Regulus when he went back from Rome
to Carthage to die, was only justified and only
became a moral force because it was a witness to
the continued life and energy of that Roman honor
in whose name he died. But if a State should at
tempt the sacrifice, it would resemble neither
7 These words are taken from a keen and illuminating discussion
of non-resistance from the psychologist's point of view in "Human
Nature and Its Remaking," by W. E. Hocking. The chapter on
"Pugnacity" should be read by all students of the ethics of war.

96 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
Regulus nor Christ. Not Regulus, because the
honor which belonged to it in the protection of its
people is itself dead, ignominiously surrendered to
brute power. Not Christ, because the State which
has consented to be destroyed has no resurrection
except through a later war. Luxemburg may live
again, but it will not be through the grace of a
stricken conscience in the Kaiser, as he sees her
prone at his feet. Her life can be restored only
by the sacrifice of others in war.
7. We must pass to a brief but instructive con
sideration of the interpretation of Christ's teaching
which is given to us by the Apostle Paul in the
famous passage, Romans 13:1-10. The Apostle
Paul always had some very definite reason for
the successive paragraphs in his epistles; and
this passage, like the words of Jesus about the tax
payable to Caesar, must have been addressed to
a particular situation in the Christian community
at Rome. It is certain that there must have been
a group of people in that church who were inclined
to withdraw themselves as completely as possible
from responsibilities to the State. They may have
attempted to carry into the Church the spirit of
the Pharisaic party at Jerusalem, with whom Jesus
dealt so drastically in His own ministry on the
earth. It is to such persons that the Apostle sends
this powerful and far-reaching instruction which
has no parallel elsewhere in his writings. There are

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 97
three fundamental statements made which are rele
vant to our present subject.
In the first place, he says that the powers that be —
that is, the actual governing authority of a nation —
"are ordained of God." He goes on to explain what
he means by this — rulers exist simply to secure the
community against evil-doers, and by their authority
they encourage healthy-minded people to do that
which is right. "He is a minister of God to thee
for good." This deep-seeing assertion is the justi
fication, for a Christian believer, of the position
that the State is a divine institutiom.
In the second place, the State which thus acts
as "a minister of God," "an avenger of wrath to
him that doeth evil," "bears the sword," and that,
he says, "not in vain" or "for nothing." Whether
the Apostle Paul today would defend capital pun
ishment or not is an idle question. In this passage
he recognized it, for when men punished with the
sword in those days, they did not use the flat of it.
For him that was no transgression of the com
mand, "Thou shalt do no murder." Nor was it a
transgression of the command that we must love
our enemies, if for conscience' sake we put our
selves under the guardianship of the State, which
holds the sword.
In the third place, he re-echoes the words of
Jesus concerning the paying of taxes, and insists
that this must be done because those to whom they

98 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
must be paid are "ministers of God's service."
How complete the loyalty of the individual citizen
must be to the State which protects him is summed
up in the powerful phrases of verse 7, "Render
to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due;
custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor
to whom honor." Then he passes on, apparently
without any sense of break with what; he has already
been saying, to urge upon his readers thorough
obedience to the sublime law of love which the
Saviour had brought into the world.
This teaching of the Apostle Paul is amply
illustrated by his own life and example. He in
herited the rights of a Roman citizen, and was
proud of the privileges which thus became his as
he moved over the world. When he was illegally
punished at Philippi, he did not scruple to warn
the breakers of the law that they might be pun
ished; when he pled his case before Festus and before
Agrippa, he stood on his rights, he appealed from
the Jewish persecutors to Roman justice. When
at the court in Caesarea he had no fair trial, he
claimed the supreme privilege and rights of Roman
citizenship and appealed directly to the Emperor
himself. Throughout the whole long and bitter
experience of nearly five years' imprisonment, we
know of no word uttered by him which can be
interpreted as disloyalty, or indicated that because
he was a Christian man he ought to avoid his

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 99
responsibilities, or forego his rights as a Roman
citizen. It would be foolish in the light of all history
to conclude that the Apostle Paul in another age
and when the Church had won its way to larger
influence would have refused to take any part in
the improvement of the form of government.
When he says "the powers that be are ordained
of God," he cannot be interpreted as binding the
Church forever to the ideal of the State as it existed
under the Emperor of that day. It is the State
of any day which, so far as it sums up and cares
for the life of a nation, is the ordinance of God at
that time. It is human, and therefore character
ized by the frailties of humanity; it is human, and
therefore liable to change and subject to improve
ment; it is human, and therefore through human
sources must its continual correction of evil and
strengthening of righteousness be secured. It is
in this very task of continual criticism and im
provement of the methods of the State that the
spirit of Jesus Christ has had such enormous and
manifest influence through the Christian centuries.
Due to the Church is the modern hatred of war,
the modern attempts to moralize its methods, to
limit the scope of its terror and destruction, to
define the conditions under which alone a people
may enter with a clear conscience and with the
spirit of God into warfare. All the discussions of

ioo CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
the hour on every hand are in their sum total a
glorious witness to the influence of the Sermon
on the Mount and the spirit of Christ, in every
form of its manifestation, upon the history of the
nations, the States, the wars of the world.
8. It is not, then, through the forsaking of duty,
the casting down of self-respect, the ignoring of
wrongdoing, it is not through the refusal to execute
righteousness at the cost of right, that the Church
has secured these grand results. It is through deeper,
slower, more patient, more divine ways that the
body of Christ, which is the Church, is acting
upon the human mass which is the world, and
bringing all the nations into that new brotherhood
which He alone has made possible, and which can
be realized at last only when He is universally
accepted and obeyed as "the Ruler of the kings of
the earth."
The very obligation set forth by the Apostle
to unite oneself with the government of the hour,
as a religious act, gives us the right to inquire whether
the actual wielders of power at any one time are
truly carrying out the divine intent of the State
as "a minister of God for good." When the rulers
of the hour fail to administer justice, fail even in
their conception of public right, they unfit them
selves for fulfilling the ordinance of God. How
and when and by what means a change is to be
effected, no one can say. There is no general rule.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 101
But it may be said that changes are always go
ing on in the very form of government, and that
inevitably every Christian man is not only free,
but under religious obligation to give his influence
to those changes which are directed towards the
better fulfillment by the State of its fundamental
task as the protector of right, justice, and freedom,
of that moral order which is the will of God.
It is here that the function of the Church in rela
tion to the State comes into clear view. History
warns us with a loud voice against the intrusion
of the Church as an institution into the field of
politics where good men and true may differ from
one another. It is as dangerous for the Church
officially to seek coercion of the State as for the
State to seek coercion of the Church. But the
Church cannot exist, cannot do its own proper
work thoroughly, without continuously acting upon
the moral ideals of the nation, and quickening the
public conscience. Its own work involves the
pursuit of justice, charity, and freedom among its
own members. To understand and value these,
to receive them from God, to value them with the
whole heart and soul, to practice them in the whole
habit of life of the sacred, the beloved community,
this is the purpose and vital work of the Church.
This is the purpose and effect of all its worship,
instruction, and philanthropic endeavor. But when
this is thoroughly done, the entire community must

102 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
be illuminated, aroused, directed, inspired to pur
sue the same great principles of life within the
whole sphere of the State's responsibility. The
ethical history of the modern world is a witness
to the power of the Christian community thus
exercised. Modern democracy was born in the
Christian community of the post-reformation period;
the emancipation of the slave was born in the
hearts of individual Christian men, who by their
fire and persistence convinced whole nations; the
modern treatment of prisoners is the result of the
work of innumerable Christians; the ideals of uni
versal and compulsory education were given to
the modern world by Martin Luther and John
Knox, nourished by the Christian communities
which they inspired; the task of uplifting vast
masses of mankind in non-Christian lands was not
primarily undertaken by the governments of vic
torious and civilized lands, but by the missionaries
of the cross. That the Church has failed in many
directions, allowing itself to be shackled by the
sins of selfishness, misused wealth, and prejudice,
the members of the Church are the first to com
plain. But what has been done in the last three
centuries to spread the light of justice, charity,
and liberty in our world is due in the main, directly
and indirectly, to the pervasive influence of all
that has been sincere, generous, and sacrificial in
the life of the communities of Christ in all lands.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 103
In the very matter of war it is the Christian spirit
which has most influenced human thought. The
fact that aggressive Germany must prove to her
own people that she did not begin this war, the
very fact that she must write elaborate arguments
to prove that ruthless methods are necessary or
conducive to victory and therefore right and com
mendable (even when outwardly horrible and
deplorable) proves that a higher spirit is in the
world today than of old. If today the conscience
of Germany as a whole can be appeased only by
proof that their war is defensive, it is because the
Sermon on the Mount, the Cross, the thirteenth
chapter of Romans, have combined to make ag
gressive war appear as it never did before, to the
human conscience everywhere, ungodly and in
human. It is significant also that the vision of a
world-wide league of nations, of universal standards
of justice between nation and nation, of freedom
for all peoples to direct their own internal affairs,
is not cherished or advocated most convincedly and
earnestly by those nations, whether autocratic or
democratic, where the work of the Church has least
effect on the governments, but in those regions
where the authority of the Spirit of Christ is most
openly and generally obeyed by those who mould
opinion and direct the affairs of State.
9. The final question is whether this doctrine,
that a citizen is under obligation to support the

104 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
State actively in its exercise of justice upon all
criminals, including an invading army, does not
annul the Christian witness and the great doctrine
of love. Sometimes the position is explained by
an appeal to what is called "the omnipotence of
love." It is held that merely to go on loving, and
to claim no right for the individual and the State
to punish wrongdoing, will in the end win the whole
world to right doing. It may seem very hard to
speak of this as a mere chimera; but the argument
almost forces this or a similar term upon the mind.
The abstract phrase, "the omnipotence of love,"
like the abstract phrase, "might is right," or "war
is a biological blessing," is open to all the dangers
which haunt abstractions when they are applied
with logical consistency to the concrete facts of
human experience.
When we speak of love, we speak of the attitude
of one rational soul to another. If we speak of the
omnipotence of love, we mean that this attitude,
when it is one of benevolence and self-sacrifice,
has an inherent power completely to change the
spirit and will of a hostile man. When brought in
this way to the concrete, the phrase is less im
pressive, less convincing. When, for convenience'
sake, we speak of the omnipotence of love, we may
indeed acknowledge that there is a range of life
where it is to be accepted as a great truth. The
love of God is omnipotent intensively, inwardly, in

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 105
relation to the life, character, and destiny of the
individual man who accepts it and sets himself
to live in its light, drinking into his very soul its
infinite power. All our hope of salvation depends
on the omnipotence of the divine love in this sense
and when it is, as Paul puts it, "shed abroad into
our hearts." But it is nowhere affirmed in the
Scriptures that love is omnipotent extensively. Not
even of the love of God is it guaranteed that it will
finally subdue every human will. Rather does the
New Testament hold out the most solemn warnings
that it is possible for even a finite will so to identify
itself with evil as to lose the very power to appre
ciate, to receive, and to be saved by that love.
Further, the display of love extensively or uni
versally, without discrimination or action concerning
wrongdoing, is to condone sin. It is to establish
crime and spread moral disorder. There is no range
of human experience, where benevolence towards
wrongdoing can be exercised apart from the in
fliction of punishment and the defense of right,
without moral danger to all concerned. Every
act of forgiveness, if it is to be of healthful result,
must be exercised only towards the penitent, and
no penitence is sincere which does not confess the
justice of punishment, or which rebels against the
law that exacts penalty.8
s "What pugnacity wants is to make the man over; it wants to
create the conditions for the free self-rejection of the evil. And

106 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
An extension of this argument confronts us with
the question whether it is possible for a man sin
cerely to support the State when it exercises force
upon wrongdoers, and yet obey the far-reaching
and glorious command of Jesus that we must love
our enemies. It is obvious that love and pity are
not impossible even when men punish criminals,
any more than when parents punish children for
the maintenance of right in the home. It is also
obvious, and the history of the Church has gloriously
illustrated it, that it is possible for Christian men
to manifest love towards their persecutors even
when these put them to torture and death. It is
only in relation to the act of the State when it
would punish an invading force by warfare that
the question becomes most searching.
In the first place, it must be remembered that
there are many instances in which Christian men
have fought against an enemy and have borne
witness, and proved it, that they cherish no hatred
of the individual opposed to them. If he dropped
wounded they immediately ran to his succor, and
did all they could to alleviate his pain and to restore
his life. The British soldier of whom an authentic
story is told, who, having struck down his German
opponent, immediately tried to ease his position

for this act of creation the absolute justice of 'Love your enemies'
is a necessary demand." W. E. Hocking, "Human Nature and
Its Remaking," p. 351.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 107
and to share with him his own meager supply of
water, and asked him whether he could do more
for him, manifested the spirit of love. The act
of his opponent was even more sublime, when he
took from his pocket an English Testament, and
in English said to the man who had struck him
down, "I am dying. This book has been to me
the water of life. I pray that it may be the same
to you." This is not hatred, but it is war. It is
not mere sentiment, yet it is love. It is the gleam
that falls upon the murk of battle and the shame
of war from the heart of the Eternal Father of both
those men. The British officer who could not en
dure the sight of a German officer wounded and
writhing on the wires, who leaped over the top,
took the man from the wires, carried him across
to the German trenches, and gave him to his friends,
was acting in love. The German officer who took
from his own breast the Iron Cross and pinned it
on the breast of that English officer, was at least
revealing his sense of admiration for the generous
love of his enemy. In this very war, amid all that
is sordid and hateful, amid all passion and revenge-
fulness of spirit, thousands of such events have
occurred which prove that obedience to the law
of Jesus, strange and illogical as it may seem,
baffling to the cold reason, is yet not only possible,
but extensively actual on the field of battle itself.
People who believe that it adds to the efficiency

108 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
of the fighter to get him into the mood of passionate
hatred, forget that hatred originally, as an animal
instinct, was born of fear. When hatred fails of
its purpose, it is fear which springs up as its active
substitute. Drill sergeants who, as I have heard,
shout at their men practicing the bayonet on dummy
figures, "Hate him, hate him," are running a great
risk. They are in danger of creating a loss of morale
if their men suffer temporary defeat. Hate may
fall back into its matrix, which is fear. On the
other hand, those who think love cannot go into
war forget that love is not pure love unless it has
in it the capacity for moral indignation and that
love itself withers unless the indignation is made
effective. This is abundantly evident in private
life, where no man would allow love to make him
fellowship with ' works and workers of darkness.
The same deep principle obtains in the world
field and in national life. Love, which burns with
moral indignation at the diabolical deeds of Ger
many, will lose its divine quality unless it find a
powerful way of making its indignation effective.
The only way that can be discovered is the crushing
of German armies.
io. But the final test which Jesus gives for the
love of our enemies is the will to pray for them.
He is thinking of prayer in its most real, sincere,
and energetic form. The man who can in the very
depths of his heart pray to God for the supreme

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 109
blessing of his foe has conquered hate and ful
filled the law of love to the uttermost. Can we
pray for Germany?
One who sincerely believes that this is not only
possible, but obligatory for all Christian men in
Christian lands, must be very careful to define
the conditions of such prayer. It cannot be sin
cere if it be untrue to the situation. It cannot
be earnest unless the situation and the meanihg of
the prayer are both clearly seen. In the first place,
no one who believes that the German Government,
and the people so far as they have shared the spirit
and purpose of the Government, has committed a
colossal crime against humanity can wish or pray
for anything less than that the German army should
be defeated. The German people must forever
be compelled to resign their mad and wicked dream
of universal dominion, of supremacy over the na
tions of the world. Moreover, if Germany is guilty,
then it is a prerequisite for the moral order of the
world that Germany should be punished by defeat.
Sincere prayer for Germany must begin with that.
In the second place, if Germany is thus deeply
guilty and unaware, if her statesmen and her armies
have broken every law of honor and decency, as
they have, it follows as day follows night that
Germany can never come to her best, cannot re
ceive the full divine blessing upon her national
life, until she becomes aware of the moral repro-

no CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
bation of the world.9 She must awake to see the
guilt which rests upon her, which all the world
sees resting upon her name, staining deep her record.
No sincere prayer for Germany can stop short of
an intense spiritual desire that that nation may
become aware of the position in which her rulers
have placed her before God's holy will and man's
conscience. It is true that this view must be taken
with the utmost humility by the Christian citizens
of other lands. They know the moral iniquities
which obtain among themselves, they know what
wrongs their own governments have done in the
past, what sins are spread broadcast among their
own people, they know what mixture of motives
has entered into the share which they take in this
war. These things they will no less earnestly and
seriously confess before God than the confession
which they make of the sin of Germany. Neverthe
less, as imperfect men everywhere have to deal
with the holiest things, and to pass judgment on
open crime and vice, so in this case. A sin more
flagrant than that of any other government has
been committed, a criminal will has been adopted
or acquiesced in by a whole people, which has done
greater wrong to the race than ever the world saw.

9 "War is not to be understood as necessarily a negation of the
principle of Christianity; a just war is an attempt to create the
conditions under which the opponent is disposed to listen to the
language of the still small voice." W. E. Hocking, "Human Nature
and Its Remaking," p. 351.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH m
Germany must herself see that, ere her own con
science can be cleansed and her future place in
history as one of high honor and achievement can
be recovered. For this the Christian man may pray.
And lastly, prayer for Germany will include an
intense desire that the people of that Empire may
in true penitence of national spirit resolve to cleanse
themselves of this wrong, to change the very depths
of their purpose, if necessary to overthrow their
system of government, which has proved itself
the destroyer of moral order. These acts must
be taken openly, whether they come up through a
spread of the principles of their Social Democracy,
or through the establishment of a thoroughly
representative and responsible government. They
must include secured guarantees for a period
of years that international obligations shall be
observed. If these changes rest on a new will
to peace, proved by cordial entrance into a league
of nations for the enforcement of peace, they will
be witness to the world of the penitence of a
people. What lies beyond these outward acts in
the inner soul of the nation, how various classes
relate themselves to it, is all beyond the eyes of
man. For us this will be taken as proof enough
of a true penitence. Sorrow will accompany it,
and humiliation, that is most certain; long the
burden of these years and the years that prepared
for them will rest upon the conscience and agon-

ii2 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
ize the heart of the best people in the Empire,
as doubtless they do among many German Chris
tians already. It is this that we may pray for.
In doing so we are petitioning the Throne of Grace
for the highest blessing which even God can confer
upon our enemies of the German Empire.
This is to pray for Germany, and thus to pray
is not only within the reach of every Christian
man : it is one of the most solemn duties of his life.
ii. In view of all that we have said regarding
the State and the Church, certain very important
questions arise which may be summarized in the
following brief statement. How shall men act
who, first, are in fellowship with Christ and seeking
to manifest His spirit; and, second, are also under
obligation to the State to maintain its true func
tions with sincerity and loyalty, when the State
orders them to take part in its work of punishing
evil-doers, whether these are of the criminal class
among their own citizens, or of the criminals con
stituted by an invading army making an unjust
war? In answer to this, the following statements
may perhaps prove to be sufficient.
In the first place, the most obvious duty of the
Christian man is so to live and teach and share in
the life of the Christian community that the sins
from which all crime and the gravest crime of all,
namely an aggressive and robber war, arise, shall
be rebuked. He must seek to use his influence as a

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 113
citizen to remove all conditions of thought and life,
and all forms of social and industrial wrong, which
produce their fruits in crime. This, as we have
seen, is the true and national function of the Church,
and in the exercise of that function every follower
of Christ must exert his and her full personal in
fluence. The second, and equally obvious, duty of the
Christian citizen is that he shall stand by the
State, that he shall be prepared to support it and
share in its divinely ordained task of maintaining
the basic moral order on which the structure of
civilized life is erected. The problem becomes
acute in discussion with pacifists at this very point.
Does a situation arise when the law that I shall
stand by the State in the exercise of its true func
tions comes into conflict with my duty to obey
Jesus Christ? Clearly such a case might arise if
a man were ordered to do an injustice to a fellow
citizen who is innocent of transgression. Such
cases have occurred in abundance when the State,
under erroneous views of its rights, persecuted its
citizens for the holding of certain religious beliefs.
Such an event is illustrated in the secular sphere
by the action of those British officers who refused
to fight against the Americans in the war of the
Revolution. These men gave up their commissions,
cut short their careers, rather than assist their
government in the performance of an act which

n4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
they considered to be obviously unjust and unwise.
But does such a case occur when the State orders
the service of its citizens to put down actual and
undeniable crime, to repel attacks upon the moral
order and the very existence of the State? Most
pacifists are quite clear about the matter when it
is restricted to the work of the judge on the bench,
the policeman on his beat; they object only when
the work of the soldier is under consideration.
I trust we have made it clear in the preceding
argument that the work of the soldier in the only
kind of war which a Christian can defend, namely
a defensive war, is simply an extension of the work
of the judge, the policeman, and the executors of
justice. It is a case of completely broken logic,
therefore, when one fails to see the essential identity
at this point of the functions of the courts and of
the Army; and of the obligation which they impose
upon a loyal citizen.
As we have pointed out in an earlier chapter, 10
the function of the State is to exercise force, the
function of the Church is to exercise the spirit of
sacrifice. I venture to illustrate the operation of
these two principles from the somewhat unusual
experience of one man, my father, John Mackenzie
of South Africa.
In the late seventies of the last century, John
Mackenzie was working as a missionary at Kur-
10 See above, p. 49.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 115
uman in South Bechuanaland. A threatening
movement arose over a large part of South Africa
among the natives, who resolved to clear the white
man out of those regions. They began by murder
ing isolated traders and farmers, and a large force
marched on to Kuruman to kill the missionaries.
A number of missionaries and traders took refuge
in the strong buildings of the Moffat Institution,
of which John Mackenzie was the head. The
refugees pled with him to appeal to the British
government in Cape Colony for assistance. He
declined to do so, on the ground that when he be
came a missionary he took his life and the lives of
his family in his hand, knowing the risk. He did
this in the cause of the Gospel, whose law is sacri
fice. To prove that it was not fear that guided
his policy, or weakness of will, he walked out alone
and unarmed, one day, into the camp of the native
warriors; and discussed with them the wickedness
of their actions, and the folly of their plans. In
this way he fulfilled the meaning of non-resistance
as Professor Hocking analyzes it when he says:
"The forgiving, or non-resisting, or enemy-loving
attitude has its entire justification in the 'new
idea' which it conveys to the wrong-doer. It is
a language; and the whole virtue of a language is
that it is understood." u "So sprach" — the Spirit
of Christ, not of Nietzsche. A few years later some
11 W. E. Hocking, "Human Nature and Its Remaking," p. 352.

n6 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
Transvaal Boers, contrary to a clear covenant,
broke over their Western boundary, and began to
harry the natives among whom the foundations
of a Christian civilization had been laboriously
laid by Moffat, Livingstone, Mackenzie, and their
fellow-missionaries. The native farms were seized,
their cattle driven off. They were threatened with
oppression and serfdom. The British Government
sent an expeditionary force of five thousand men
under that good Christian and splendid admin
istrator, the late Sir Charles Warren, as Special
Commissioner. He asked John Mackenzie to go
with him as Civil Commissioner to assist him in
dealing with both the natives and the Boers. With
out hesitation John Mackenzie accepted the task
and Sir Charles Warren in his dispatches and
reports bore witness to the invaluable work of the
missionary. In each of these cases John Mackenzie acted in
the light of his singularly clear conscience. In the
one as a representative of the Church he was ready
for the extreme of sacrifice. In the other as a
servant of his State he was ready to share in the
use of force. The final aim of each course of
conduct was the same, and in each that aim was
measurably secured.*

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR

CHAPTER VI
ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR
A. The Aims and Methods of Germany
It is our duty now to see more closely how the
principles which have been worked out in the preced
ing pages can be applied to the present situation.
No event so great as the World War can be due
to causes that are merely local and occasional.
Its sources must lie wide and deep in the history
of Europe and the world. It is not our duty here
to investigate all the origins of the catastrophe.
We are concerned, for the purposes of this ethical
discussion, with the very definite, narrow field
presented by the position and purpose of Germany.
I. In the first place, it is written forever in his
tory that Germany began the World War. It is
in vain for her authorities to cast the blame now
upon France, now upon Russia, now upon England,
or upon all three combined, as if they had con
certed to launch the bolt. It was Germany which
began the war; and there are many Germans of
first-rate importance who openly acknowledge the
fact. Abundance of literature written before the
119

120 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
war, published broadcast in the German Empire,
bore witness to the hardening will of the nation
preparing for war. Works like those of von
Bernhardi, of Tannenberg, von Claussewitz, and
many others, reveal the energy with which the people
were being instructed, organized, fired with enthu
siasm for the supreme test of their power and con
summation of their ambition.
No doubt it is unjust to place the full respon
sibility upon any one man, even the Kaiser, when
we consider the last steps and the last fatal act.
No one man could hurl an empire into such a strug
gle unless he represented the mind of at least a
large part of the population, the will of their prin
cipal leaders; unless his act had been prepared for
through many years of history and seemed justified
to the great majority by their experience and the
position of their nation in the midst of others. It
is true that when Prussia put herself at the head
of the German Empire she found herself in course
of time ringed round with powerful nations which
might prove hostile to her if occasion for hostility
arose. It is true also that the Balkan wars had
opened a new day in the history of the Slavic
world, and that the silent, constant, irresistible
movement of Slavic life westward across Europe
was, and is, destined profoundly to transform the
life of the older nations of the continent. Their
invasion of Germany was much deeper than we

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 121
realize. It is true also, as we have said before,
that some sympathy may be felt for the German
mind when it discovered that the subjects of the
Kaiser who forsook the Fatherland did not go to
their own colonies in Africa, but to settle under
other civilized governments in North and South
America and elsewhere. Germany felt herself,
therefore, hemmed in on a territory becoming
increasingly inadequate and unable to gain new
regions eligible for colonization without overthrow
ing and annexing territories already under the
sway of other States.
It was this situation which opened the eyes of
the Kaiser nearly twenty-five years ago to the
fact that what Germany required, in order to be
come in the largest sense of the word a world power,
was a navy strong enough to compete successfully
with the most powerful navy in the world — this,
on the theory that two powerful navies cannot
exist in the world at the same time and fulfil their
functions each for its own country without coming
to war with one another. Hence her claim that
"the freedom of the seas" did not exist so long as
the major part of the seas was guarded by the
navy of the British Empire. The fact that this
navy never interfered with the course of commerce,
that the harbors of that Empire were all open on
equal terms to all the nations of the world, as
well as to the ships of the British dominions, was

122 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
not a fact that conveyed any meaning to the Ger
man mind. Freedom was not freedom unless it
meant dominion; and if even in name or ultimate
resources the British navy held dominion, no other
navy in the German sense had freedom. There
fore the only way for Germany to secure freedom
of the seas was to secure dominion for herself.
There is no other conceivable sense in which the
German cry for freedom of the seas can be under
stood. The Kaiser by his naval policy prepared long
years before the event for the great war of conquest.
No doubt he began his reign by proclaiming himself
a "prince of peace," partly to allay the nervous
fears of his own people, who were not yet educated
to grasp those ideals which early stirred in his
restless and ambitious mind. But he used with
supreme skill the very work of preparation as the
means for carrying on that education. As his power
grew, he tested and enjoyed the taste of it. He
found that other nations were increasingly over
awed by the magnitude of his military and naval
achievements. Time after time France and Great
Britain, Russia and Italy, were confronted with
challenges before which they seemed to quail.
And each diplomatic victory, which was always
secured by a rattle of the scabbard, made his con
fidence grow. It was the Moroccan affair which
proved to him that the limit of patience was being

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 123
reached, and that the day must come when his
gage of battle would be taken up by one or more
of his rivals. This hastened and intensified the
process of preparation. The people were blinded
and excited by the means which were used to in
crease the army and navy. Fabulous and glitter
ing prospects were held before their eyes. Pride in
their power, scorn of all other peoples, were sedu
lously cultivated by every means which skilful
rulers could devise. Then when the propitious
hour seemed to have struck, the famous and in
famous Council of German and Austrian rulers
and leaders was held at Potsdam, July 5, 1914,
to arrange for the assault on Europe.
It is not we, non-Germans, who hurl an unjust ac
cusation against an innocent and beleaguered race.
Many of their own most important men have with
pride confessed the diabolical crime, its preparation,
its purpose, its origin in their own souls. The
words of that stormy petrel, but true and loyal
German, Maximilian Harden, are enough. In his
newspaper, Die Zukunft, where so much truth,
even unpalatable to his own Government, has been
flashed on the world, Harden wrote on August 1,
1914: "Let us drop our miserable attempts to excuse
Germany's action. Not against our will and as a
nation taken by surprise did we hurl ourselves
into this gigantic venture. We willed it; we had to

124 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
will it. We do not stand before the judgment seat
of Europe; we acknowledge no such jurisdiction.
Our might shall create a new law in Europe; it is
Germany that strikes."
But for that act Germany does stand now and
forever before the judgment seat of humanity
and of the living God.
2. Secondly, Germany began this war with a
policy, partly announced officially, partly discussed
and accepted by the people as a whole, partly
revealed only by the course of events and the steady
development of plans since the war began. It is
known now through one or all of these sources
of information that Germany had set her mind
and still maintains her purpose as to the following
points: She desired to control the life of Bel
gium; probably she had been determined to pos
sess the industrial portion of northern France and
some, at any rate, of the Channel ports. The
attainment of these desires would mean the easy,
progressive absorption of Holland, perhaps with
out a war. It is now known that her intention
was, and is, to seize parts of Russia, that she might
balance her industrial gains on the West by en
larging the field of agricultural opportunity for
her people to the East. The rapid development
of her alliances with Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey
made not merely possible but actual that imperial
sway from Hamburg to Bagdad which has come

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 125
to be recognized as one of her supreme ambitions,
and one full of menace for the rest of the world.1
It is believed, and the proof is practically com
plete, that Germany desired not merely territorial
aggrandizement, but a reconstruction of imperial
finances. The costly growth of her armies and
navy had put a burden upon the people which
threatened to bring about a disturbance of credit.
While she boasted that she had achieved her aims
without imposing a crushing load of taxation,
it must be remembered that a system of loans
had been created which merely postponed the fall
of the burden upon the nation. Only one method
of deliverance was possible, and that was by the
exaction of enormous indemnities in gold from
conquered nations. How far thL' motive was
felt as a driving force, we may not here attempt
to say. It seems, however, to be completely proved
that it must be counted as one of those circum
stances which urged the Government onwards to
her momentous act.
3. In the third place, we must take account
once more of the long and thorough course of
preparation which was made for the supreme hour.

1 Acknowledgment should be made by all thoughtful people
of the extremely important service of Andre Cheradame in his
publications, which are the chief literary authority on the subject
here referred to: "The Pan-German Plot Unmasked," "Pan-
Germania, the Disease and Cure," "The United States and Pan-
Germania."

126 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
As it approached, the possession of almost im
measurable military force brought world dominion
within view, and then threw into relief as the only
alternative to complete national success a national
downfall. Nowhere has this been more clearly
expressed than in von Bernhardi's famous chapter,
"World Dominion or Downfall" {JVeltmacht oder
Niedergang). Perhaps the climax of all her prepa
rations is to be found in the German military
law which was passed on June 30, 1913. This
law provided for an addition of 136,000 officers
and men to her army, and especially provided
for an expenditure of a large part of the new
taxation in the provision of war material. To
meet this expenditure an impost was made upon
the capital of German subjects, and they were
induced to make the sacrifice by a special appeal
to their patriotism in an hour of special diffi
culty for the Fatherland. Manifestly the hour was
approaching for some great act. Dr. Gottfried
Nippold is quoted as having said in that very
year that "systematic stimulation of the war spirit
is going on," and he accuses his Government of
deliberately carrying on "the systematic cultiva
tion of a war-like spirit." There were those who
maintained that the passage of the law to which
I have referred was simply the beginning of mobil
ization, and that throws light upon the fact, of
which Germans boast so much, that they mobilized

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 127
forces beyond the calculation of all other military
powers with a rapidity which looked like a miracle.
It is one of themselves who has said, "When we
saw all this, we were not astonished, because it
was no miracle; it was nothing other than the
net result of a thousand years of work and prepara
tion, it was the natural product of the whole of
human history."2 The rhetoric here may be for
given. The fact is, forty years is enough to account
for the apparent miracle, or even twenty. For it
seems to have been only towards the end of last
century that the rulers of Germany began to form
deliberate plans for the achievement of the vic
tory which this war was intended to obtain.
Among the means adopted to make a German
victory secure we are compelled to place the policy
which that Empire pursued in relation to the
Hague Conventions. These great international
conventions, which awoke the admiration of thought
ful people throughout the world, seemed to open
a new day to human history. Perhaps they did.
But in the meantime the promise is delayed or the
dawn made hideous. Or is this war the deep dark
ness that precedes the dawn? At these conven
tions it was felt from the first that the German
representatives were an alien force. They set

2 Quoted in "Conquest and Kultur, Aims of the Germans in
Their Own Words," issued by the Committee on Public Informa
tion, Washington, D. C.

128 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
themselves in opposition to all the main provisions
which seemed to make for what we may call the
moralizing of war. But they set themselves in
most determined and successful opposition towards
all efforts at establishing compulsory arbitration
and a process of compulsory disarmament among
all the nations of the world. Indeed, in relation
to the last matter it was recently stated by a cab
inet member in the British House of Commons,
that when reduction of armaments was beginning
to be discussed at the last Hague Convention the
German Government informed Great Britain that
if she pressed that subject upon the Convention
it would be considered a casus belli!
4. In the fourth place, it is necessary to con
sider the methods of war which have been delib
erately adopted and carried out by Germany.
It has already been pointed out that the German
mind is nothing if not thoroughly logical, and that
it is willing to take all the consequences in the
application of its process of logical reasoning to
the process of active life.
Starting out then with the conception of war
as a necessary, healthful, and constant function
of the State, with the belief that every nation
has the right to develop its own life even at the
cost of others,3 Germany has pursued to the bitter
end for herself and others every deduction which
8 Discussed above, Chapter IV, passim.

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 129
seems to be legitimately made from those funda
mental principles:
a. In the first place, a State that is wisely guided
in modern times will make long, thorough prepara
tion for war. It will try to foresee the directions
in which war is likely to arise, the enemies it may
have to deal with, the gains which it must strive
to secure, the significance of these for its own
history and its further relations with the rest of
the world. In pursuance of this policy of com
plete preparation, Germany not only built up the
most mighty military system the world has ever
seen, but made her preparation in all parts of the
world for the world crisis which she not only fore
saw, but expected herself to create. Among the
rights of government is that of becoming acquainted
with the conditions of life, the military resources,
and the foreign policy of other lands. All govern
ments seek this information more or less exhaustively,
but all other governments of the world have imposed
upon themselves certain restrictions which we may
bluntly call restrictions of decency. They have
realized that there must be a limit to the thorough
ness, the completeness, with which this work is
carried on, and a very definite limit to the methods
which are employed. Such limitations Germany
has scorned to regard. Logical consistency dictates
unlimited completeness of work in every direction,
and therefore in this. Therefore Germany has not

130 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
scrupled to create a system of espionage and to
enter upon secret policies of influencing public
opinion in other lands, which no other government
would conceive of undertaking. The result has
been, as the world has discovered since 1914 to
its astonishment and indignation, that Germany
has carried out systematic treachery in practically
all her dealings with every country. The Prussian
ascribes this procedure to energy of will, our failure
in it to laxity of will. We ascribe avoidance of it
to our moral self-respect.
The system is as follows: Every German subject
is a servant of the Kaiser — wherever he goes he is
at the call of his master. If, therefore, a merchant
is traveling in China, a professor of science attends
a meeting of a learned society in Paris or Australia,
a pious missionary is working in India or Africa
— they are all understood to be at the service of
their country. They have often received instruc
tions to send to Berlin ethnological and geographical
studies of the countries they visited or lived in,
with the result that important data were gathered
by the military authorities in Berlin concerning
those regions which would be of great value to an
invading army. In pursuance of this policy the
German Government has used even its colonies
in Africa, by the building of railways, the making
of forts, the storing up of military resources, as
bases for future warfare against neighboring terri-

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 131
tories. The exposures of the work done by her
embassy in the United States and the Argentine,
in Mexico and Japan, since 1914 have revealed
the depths to which even her highest ambassadors
and diplomats would descend in the carrying out
of this terrible policy. Everywhere they have
used every means conceivable, however shameful,
to gain information, and everywhere they have
used every means conceivable, however shameful,
to undermine the authority of governments among
their own people, to entangle them in their relations
with other countries, and thus to win advantage
,to the German Empire.
b. A German doctrine of war which has startled
the world since it has been proved to be not merely
the theory of scholars, but the living policy of the
German Government, consists in this — that war
is not a war between armies, but between nations.
The object of each is not merely to beat the enemy,
but to conquer the people of the other land. In
fact, even though there were a sincere desire only
to fight with armed men, account must be taken
of the fact that armed enemies defending their
own territories are immediately and constantly
supported and strengthened by the sympathy and
loyalty of their civilian fellow-citizens. It is ob
vious, then, that an invading army must realize
the whole population as constituting its object
of attack. Since the one aim of warfare is victory

i3 2 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
as complete as possible, victory as swiftly as possi
ble, and therefore victory at least cost to the invader
and at greatest cost to the nation invaded, no act
should be neglected which will secure that end.
This doctrine is the logical fountainhead of those
methods of warfare which have been constantly
and systematically carried out by Germany in
Belgium, France, Serbia, Rumania, and Russia.
There is no difference in her methods in all these
lands. Everywhere she has treated the civilian
population as active enemies. Everywhere she has
used them without scruple for her own military
advantage. There is no need here to recite the
details or proofs which abound concerning the
theory, and the unflinching method in which war
thus conceived has been carried on.4 The following
actions are abundantly established by unques
tionable witnesses: Early in the war certain Ger
man officers put Belgian women and children in
front of their advancing regiments to face the fire
of French and Belgian forces. Women and children
have been constantly employed in war work against
their own country, and this often within the fire
zone of the battle-field. Men, women and children

4 The report of the Bryce Commission, the report of a judicial
inquiry by Belgian officials and judges, the diaries of German
soldiers, the witness of newspaper correspondents and of the Amer
ican Belgian Relief Commission, are all sources to which any reader
may turn easily for full information on this ghastly subject. The
United States Government through its Committee on Public In
formation has issued two Reports on German War Practices.

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 133
have been executed without trial in large numbers
on various pleas, all unproved and all out of relation
to the terrible penalty exacted. Women and chil
dren have been driven homeless and starving out
of their homes, in order that German soldiers
might occupy these and eat the produce of their
farms and gardens. "War is not itself unchristian,
when it is not, as regards its purpose, an offensive
one. The State has to guard its honor, that is,
its sovereignty; and when this is assailed, it is its
duty to make use of every material means, and
therefore of war also, to repel such assault — an
imposing example of self-defence. But its aim is
not to destroy the enemy, not to strike to the
heart, but to attain to an honorable peace." 5 Shades
of Belgium and Serbia, this was written in Berlin!
In all invaded lands German officers and men
have been allowed systematically to pillage prac
tically every village, city, or lonely farmhouse,
or chateau which they entered. Where furniture
could not be carried off, it has been smashed;
where machinery was valuable, it has been taken
away to Germany; where money has been found,
it has been stolen. All this has been done con
trary to the modern laws of war to which Germany
put her own name publicly and solemnly in the
Hague Convention. The destruction of cities and
churches has been carried out systematically with-
6 Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans., p. 580.

134 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
out military reason. Cathedrals have been shelled
down on the plea that they were used as outlook
posts by the French and British, in spite of the
repeated and solemn denial of the latter that they
had ever been so used. And indeed in those days,
when Rheims Cathedral was in the center of a
zone where many observation balloons and air
planes were constantly higher in the air than any
town, there could be no good reason for any French
officer endangering the cathedral by attempting to
use a spot so low down as that for observation pur
poses. When the Germans retired over a wide
territory after the battle of the Somme in 1916,
they devastated the country thoroughly, cutting
down even fruit trees, a proceeding denounced
as barbarous by Oriental warriors in ancient times.
Germany, in pursuit of logical thoroughness, and
seeking to subdue not an army but the spirit of a
people, raided open towns and villages in England
and France with bombs dropped from airplanes.
Large multitudes of civilians of all ages and both
sexes have been killed in this way. Germany has
sunk merchant ships without observation of the
recognized principles of international law. Many
thousands of civilians have been drowned. Ger
many has sunk hospital ships, has now begun
almost systematically to bomb Red Cross hospitals
in France. Finding that the Young Men's Chris
tian Association, by its superb service, helps to

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 135
sustain the spirit of an army, Germany now makes
Y M C A huts in France a special object of attack
by shells from her guns and her airplanes.
The sickening indictment might be carried much
further, for there is literally no act which could
injure a country and so seem to hasten the victory
of the invaders from which the German commanders
would shrink.
c. We must take account of the revival by the
Germans of that ancient system of deportation
which has not been thoroughly carried out by any
other race since the days of the Assyrians. It is
a clear and simple deduction from the original
principles which have been laid down, that if a
State with an overflowing population intends to
conquer and occupy neighboring territories, it must
secure in some way the removal of the inhabitants.
This procedure has been carried out by Germany
since 1914 in three or four different ways. In
Belgium she has done it by murder of many thou
sands of the people, by creating conditions of starva
tion which decrease the population, by carrying
off large numbers to work in Germany, where,
insufficiently fed and sufficiently ill-treated, they
have died by the thousand. In the Orient another
method has been employed. Turkey- has been
engaged to clear out the glorious regions of Armenia,
that German colonists might settle there in the
great day when the Empire stretches to Bagdad,

136 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
How its work has been carried out under Germany's
direction and by Germany's approval is known to
all the world. In Serbia depopulation meant sim
ply massacre, or expulsion from their territory,
of practically the entire population by Germans
and Austrians. In Russia, in the new Northern
territories wrested from the Bolsheviki, the process
goes on no less certainly than elsewhere. Eye
witnesses from America have told of seeing corpses
of the Polish dead, men, women, and children,
by hundreds of thousands strewn along the high
ways. For miles they traveled in a lane of human
bodies. A young German officer, who for a time
served in Galicia when Germany drove back the
Russian armies that had conquered and occupied
that territory, writes with astonishment of the
fact that everywhere the Russian armies had
paid respect to the persons and property of the
inhabitants. He recorded in his diary that nothing
was destroyed and the people were content. But
he goes on to describe with almost naive frankness
the thoroughness with which his own fellow-officers
and men proceeded to correct the mistake which
the Russians had made. Where the Russian armies
left order, property, self-respect in the people,
the German armies, which were supposed to be
delivering the territory from a foreign foe, left
only devastation, poverty, and shame amongst the
same people.

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 137
It is needless to cite specimens of the literature
by which this very process of evacuating conquered
territories has been expounded and defended. It
is always open to say that any one utterance is the
private opinion of the man who made the speech
or wrote the book. But when you have many
speeches and many books from many men, and
even from governmental leaders of thought and
public policy, and when you find that the actual
practice of war fulfils the warnings of these speak
ers and writers, the conclusions are obvious, and
they are damning. Thus Friedrich Lange so long
ago as 1904: "If we take, we must also keep. "A
foreign territory is not incorporated until the day
when the rights of property of Germans are rooted
in its soil. With all necessary prudence, but also
with inflexible determination, a process of expro
priation should be inaugurated, by which the
Poles and the Alsatians and Lorrainers would be
gradually transported to the interior of the Empire,
while Germans would replace them on the fron
tiers." Daniel Frymann, in a work which by the
year 1914 had passed through twenty-one editions
and therefore had been accepted as significant if
not authoritative by multitudes of German people
of all classes, wrote as follows: "But if we con
sider seriously the peculiar position of the German
people, squeezed into the middle of Europe, and
running the risk of being suffocated for want of

138 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
air, it must be agreed that we might be compelled
to demand from a vanquished enemy, either in
the East or in the West, that he should hand over
the unpopulated territory. . . . (In case of war with
Russia) We shall demand the cession of such
territory as we need for the straightening of our
frontiers and for colonization. Evacuation of it
will be required." Some of these German brains
write on this subject as if they had actually lost
their balance, as when Klaus Wagner in his book
entitled "Krieg" (War) writes as follows: "By
right of war the right of strange races to migrate
into Germanic settlements will be taken away.
By right of war the non-Germanic (population) in
America and Great Australia must be settled in
Africa. ... By right of war we can send back the
useless South American Romance peoples and the
half-breeds to North Africa." The extreme folly
of such language must not blind us to the ghastly
significance of the fact that men who seem other
wise to fulfil the requirements of a rational life,
when they come to think and speak of the German
Empire lose all sense of proportion, all sense of
human decency. In the name of their honor they
have lost the respect of the world, in the name
of consistency they have blasted their reputation
for humanity.6
6 For the above quotations I am indebted to the document issued
by the Committee on Public Information entitled "Conquest
and Kultur, Aims of the Germans in Their Own Words."

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 139
5. The German Government long ago committed
itself to the definite doctrine that treaties were
to be observed only at the convenience of the
stronger power. The world did not take this seri
ously and continued to enter into covenants with
the Imperial Government. This will never again
be possible. Two acts of the German autocracy
are sufficient to expel her as an autocracy forever
from the world of covenanted nations. When she
invaded Belgium she trampled upon a sacred
treaty. She confessed through the mouth of her
chancellor and of her foreign secretary that this
deed was wrong, but she pleaded military necessity
as not merely her excuse but her justification.
Whatever war needs, that must be done without
regard to any other standards, even though they
be the standards of truth before God and the world.
There is no need to labor this point, which must
be referred to again in a later chapter. Sufficient
to say that, as if she had not thus convinced the
world of her superiority to the laws of faithfulness,
Germany proceeded three years later to make a
treaty with the so-called Russian Government of
the hour, and ere the ink was dry proceeded to
trample her signature in the dust. The world can
never forget the treachery of those who signed
a treaty of peace at Brest-Litovsk, February, 191 8,
and since that date have progressively broken
every one of its conditions and obligations, and

140 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
have used it merely as an instrument for absorb
ing vast and rich territories under the sway of
the German sword, that the development and
enlargement of the German people might pro
ceed. 6. The conclusion of the matter is not merely
that Germany is powerful, or that the German
Government is wicked, but that this powerful
Empire has deliberately adopted a policy which
she defends with intellectual as well as physical
methods, a policy which renders her superior to
all treaties, superior to all dictates of humanity,
superior to all the traditional laws of morality.
This constitutes the Empire a menace to the world.
The very meaning of humanity is in dispute; the
purposes which the race is to pursue, the moral
ideals which the nations must cherish, are in dis
pute; the fundamental principles of human charac
ter, not to speak of the revelations of the divine
will concerning righteousness and justice, are in
dispute. The principles which the whole world
acknowledges are denied by Germany, and Ger
many does not merely deny them, but makes
herself the most powerfully armed force in the
history of men to put an end to those principles
and to make effective, wherever her domination
and influence go, those principles which we have
described above, and which her conduct of the
war, from the invasion of Belgium to the murder

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 141
of Red Cross nurses the other day, illustrates
perfectly in practice.
7. There has been much discussion by intellec
tual Christian folk of the question whether or not
it is just and wise to speak of Germany as a whole,
when we pass a judgment of condemnation on the
acts of her Government. The point is of ethical
and practical importance.
On the one side we must remember that in so
large a mass of people, many of them highly in
telligent, many of them persons of a "good con
science," there must be centers of difference on all
matters concerning national policy. In some parts
of Germany there always have been a dislike and
distrust of the Prussian spirit and the Prussian
person, and a constant resentment against assim
ilation of the whole country to the moral type of
the predominant partner in the Empire. There
are three groups of considerable number and in
fluence where there is today an inner and powerful,
and not always silent, rebellion against the plans
and spirit and methods of the Pan-Germanist
party which has led the Empire into and in this war.
There are the Social Democrats, many of whom
are true to their faith; a large number of intellec
tuals, some of whom have left the country, many
of whom have remained in silent grief; and an
indefinite but considerable section of the religious
people, whose pastors have not misled them and

142 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
whose hearts are in anguish, torn between the fear
of defeat and hatred of the leadership which has
produced the war. It is in these circles that the
hope of a morally regenerated German government
and national policy lies.
It is wise and powerfully helpful that Pres
ident Wilson should distinguish between the Ger
man people and their Government. Even though
at present the better part is small, and the larger
part of the nation deluded, the day approaches
when the Government must face an awakened and
indignant people. That the President of the United
States should speak as if that day had come is one
way of bringing it to pass.
But, on the other hand, we must consider the
fact that a nation acts as a whole. Protesting
minorities do not and cannot abolish the fact that
the majority constitutes for the time being the
will of the nation. There is no doubt that the
vast majority of Germans welcomed the war with
out apprehension and with joyous foretaste of
victory. The wiser and undeluded minority had
no voice. Hence the necessity is upon us, even
when we remember these silent circles who hold
to the better part, to speak of the guilt of Ger
many as a whole. It is the German State that
began the war, and the German nation must en
dure all the ignominy and the woe that will come
with peace.

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR

CHAPTER VII
ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR
B. The Aims and Spirit of the Allies and of
the United States of America
We must now consider the ethical values involved
in the action of the Allied Powers and of the United
States of America when they entered into the
great war.
I. We must state the matter as simply and
bluntly as possible in relation, say, to the United
States. "Was it the duty of the American nation,
acting through its Government, to enter into the
war against Germany?"
Let us be careful to see what the wrong ways
of putting this question may be. The question is
not, "Are you angry enough to strike back?" nor,
"Do you hate Germany hard enough to wish to
kill the Germans?"* Nor again, is it a relevant
question whether America is herself sinless enough
to engage in such a task. Some would say it is
hypocrisy for a nation which has its own faults, to
blame and chastise another, as this nation blames
Germany and seeks to bring her to her knees. We
145

146 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
must remember that a man who sees before him
a definite duty is not absolved from performing
it because he is conscious of faults of his own.
Shirking the duty imposed upon him by his office
and relations to other people will never help to
cleanse his conscience. Indeed, the hypocrisy may
rather lie on the other side, on the side of a na
tion which should avoid the performance of its duty
in war by professing to be morally unfitted for the
task. These considerations are all aside from the
real question, which is exactly as we have stated
it above. Assuming that no man is without sin,
no nation without its faults, its blunders, perhaps
even its crimes, the question remains facing us,
whether or not it is the duty of the United States of
America as a nation and government to cast itself
with all its strength into the task of defeating
Germany, and so help to direct history away from
the path on which German doctrine and the German
spirit would drive the nations of the world.
There is still another way of putting the matter
which we must deprecate. There are those who
say, from the security of their Christian life, that
this is a wicked world and that in such a world
nothing else could be expected. This means that
perhaps from mere earthly standpoints the declara
tion of war can be defended and those who live
on these lower levels may not be adding therefore
to their guilt before God by accepting their share

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 147
in the matter. This seems a clear case of intel
lectual prevarication. Our whole life and all our
duties arise in a world of sin. All fulfilment of duty
is infected with the imperfection of our personal
characters, and all our attempts to obey the Sermon
on the Mount are met by the perplexities of our
situation. These principles, serene as the stars
when Jesus speaks them, become confusing lights
among the shadows of our earthly and our sinful
relations and impulses. There is no region where
Christian duty does not come upon us in the midst
of relations which are not perfect, human laws
which are defective, situations which have evil
in them. It is into these that the will of God must
enter and can enter only through our fulfilment
of duty. Is it a religious duty to engage in the war?
2. Manifestly the Church of Christ in America
could only maintain that this Government did
wrong in declaring a state of war with Germany,
on the theory that the existence of the State and
the fulfilment of its functions lie outside the will
of God, a position which, as we have seen, is in
consistent with the whole conception of human
nature and the relation of the providence of God
to human history, and with the place and task of the
Church in the midst of the nations. In seeking,
therefore, to discover whether the action of the
State must receive the approval of Christian men
and their support, we must briefly review the

148 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
action of the nations that are at war with Germany.
What, on the whole, is the spirit in which they
have undertaken this tremendous enterprise?
First, we must emphasize their unpreparedness
and weakness up to the hour when the cataclysm
occurred. These very conditions were confessedly
part of the incitement felt by the German people.
France was understood to be undermined in her
morale, and inefficient in her military organization;
Russia was understood to be very rapidly reform
ing her army institution and building up great
military power, but this process was far from com
plete; Great Britain had indeed the most powerful
navy in the world, but if she entered into the war,
her efforts would be confined to the sea, as she
had only a small standing army, large numbers
of which were constantly necessary for garrisoning
far-distant parts of her empire.
Next, we must remind ourselves of the most
strenuous efforts made by each and all of these
countries to prevent Germany from plunging Europe
into a struggle that might end in the utter destruc
tion of her civilization. It is no exaggeration to
say that the ambassadors of all these nations at
Berlin, and their cabinets in their own capitals,
in almost hourly conference with German am
bassadors and ministers, exhausted all the means
which the human mind could conceive to change
the purpose of the Kaiser and his ministry. Moral

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 149
suasion was carried to the utmost verge of self-
respect. Appeals to the honor of Germany were
urged with passion and conviction. Serbia agreed
to the Austrian note except on one or two points,
which she begged that Empire to refer to a neutral
conference. Through her skilled and competent
minister at Berlin, Belgium used all the resources
of reason, all the appeals of heart and conscience,
upon the chancellor and the foreign secretary of
the Imperial Government.1 France employed her
ancient diplomatic skill and energy; Russia, all the
resources at her command, to secure the same end.
As to the action of Great Britain, it is only nec
essary to quote the final judgment of the one Ger
man who of all others will stand in history as the
supreme judge of the matter at this point. Prince
Lichnowsky, in his Memorandum entitled, "My
Mission to London, 191 2-14," after describing the
history of the negotiations which he carried on
with Sir Edward Grey, declares that the mission
was wrecked "not by the wiles of the British, but
by the wiles of our policy," and again he says,
"It is no wonder that the whole of the civilized
world outside Germany placed the entire respon
sibility for the World War upon our shoulders." His
account of his negotiations with the British Govern-
1 The work of Baron de Beyens, " V Allemagne avant la Guerre''
(translated as "Germany before the War"), is surely one of the
most illuminating, moving, and conclusive of all the many author
itative documents describing the origins of the war.

150 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
ment reveals the fact that to the very end that
Government sought by every means to hold back
the hand of Germany from its fatal blow. The
decisive hour in British history was not reached
until Belgium was invaded. Until that event took
place, a large section of the British public and an
important section of the British cabinet were not
convinced that it would be necessary for Great
Britain to enter the war. It is quite certain that
she would have done so in any case; but the in
vasion of Belgium, carried out with extreme cynicism
in defiance of treaty obligations, precipitated the
conflicting opinions and impulses of the national
life. Every honorable man decided that Great
Britain had no alternative. Immediately all parts
of the Empire sprang to arms, convinced that the
motherland was right, determined to prove their
conviction by assuming their full share in the un
measured labor which now lay before them. It
is useless, and indeed inept, to recall the fact that
other interests of a more material kind must be
served in the case of all these countries, when they
win victory upon the fields of battle and Germany
is on her knees. Whatever political benefits may
accrue, nothing can ever change the fact that each
and all of these nations drew the sword in defence
of honor, in defence of freedom, in defence of right
and justice against a force that trampled on all
these, the highest treasures of the human national

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR i5I
spirit. Moreover, there is no earthly reward which
can possibly be proposed to any of these nations
which will weigh even as dust in the balance against
the losses, the agonies, the crushing burden which
they have endured through the years of war. They
have paid and are paying a price beyond calcula
tion, whose ultimate statement must be in terms
of the soul, and its supreme sorrows.
3. From the beginning of the war the eyes of
all nations were directed towards the United States
of America. Her enormous resources made it
certain that her successive decisions of policy would
profoundly influence, perhaps finally determine,
the fortunes of the war. During the first period
President Wilson, as the leader of the policy of
the government and the interpreter of the spirit
of the people, issued a long series of notes, addressed
now to Germany and now to the Allies. In these
successive notes the President sought to make
clear three different subjects:
First, he sought to expound the attitude of
America towards the general situation and the
defence of her proceedings when these were called
in question by either side.]
' Second, he tried as the head of a neutral govern
ment to discover ways in which peace might be
secured by inducing both sides to define their aims
and at least the preliminary conditions on which
peace might be restored.

152 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
Third, he was later compelled to deal in a very
special manner with the German breach of inter
national law at sea. Her submarine warfare be
came ruthless. She attacked and sank merchant
ships contrary to the rules of international law,
under the plea that the submarine by its very
nature could not do its work and observe the pre
scriptions of that law. With this excuse American
citizens were drowned and American ships were
directly attacked. On one occasion submarines
sank ships off the American coast. The President's
notes were intended to convince Germany that
this procedure was wrong in itself, was practically
an attack upon the United States of America,
and therefore ought to be abandoned. For a brief
time in April, 1916, it seemed as if his method had
triumphed; but subsequent experience showed that
the German Government had no intention of aban
doning her claim of right in this matter. Through
the winter of 1916-17, especially when she an
nounced that an unlimited warfare would be carried
on against all ships sailing within certain zones,
the world saw that a crisis was being reached.
In the meantime the United States Government
discovered that an appalling amount of treachery
had been carried on twithin its own territories by
German emissaries. This system was traced even
to the German embassy at Washington. Men who
were trusted as official representatives of the Ger-

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 153
man Government were found to have been engaged
in conspiracies to attack Canada and to destroy
factories and shipping in America. The disclosure
of the famous Zimmermann letter to a German
official in Mexico, in which it was proposed that
Mexico and Japan should combine against the
United States, brought matters to a crisis.
The world was astonished and often impatient
at the long-drawn-out controversy which the Pres
ident carried on with the German Government.
He resisted every appeal to declare war in hours
of passion, in a spirit of revenge. In his address
to Congress on April 2, 1917, looking back over
this period of history, he speaks of "all these bitter
months through which America had endured the
policy and hostile action of the present German
Government." It was evident to all who under
stood the situation that President Wilson had
exercised an almost unparalleled self-repression in
carrying out what he considered to be the true
policy of the Government of the United States.
No one ever confronted a threatening foe with more
patience. No one ever tried to divert him from
acts of hostility more sincerely. No one ever
allowed himself and the people over whom he ruled
to endure more of what the world calls humiliation,
in the endeavor to maintain that self-respect which
only he can deeply feel who feels that when at
last he begins* to fight, the compulsion has come

154 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
from without. "Too proud to fight" is a famous
phrase which was hurled back at the President
with contempt and scorn by eloquent lips; but
people forget that it was matched by the correlative
phrase which was uttered at a later date, when
he said that times came when a man must be "too
proud not to fight." Only in the combination of
the elements of these two ethical ideals can the
true law of life be found. The American treat
ment of Mexico is the triumphant fulfilment of
the former, the American armies in France are the
result of the latter principle.
It became increasingly clear to the whole Amer
ican people, not merely that Germany had already
made war upon the Republic when it attacked her
innocent citizens going about their rightful business
and upon her ships on the open sea, but that Ger
many must include an attack upon America at
some date yet to come in her program of world
conquest. Mr. Gerard in his book, "My Four
Years in Germany," bears witness to the fact
that the Kaiser himself twice uttered the threat
that after the war Germany would reckon with
America. What confronted the nation, therefore,
was not merely a present wrong, but a future
attack. The great war ceased to be merely a Euro
pean affair. Already it had involved Japan, India,
and the British dominions, already it had invaded
Africa. It was quite clear now that the republics

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 155
of North and South America were involved. Espe
cially was the Republic of the United States of
America at last compelled to decide whether she
could longer maintain her position as a State com
mitted to the task of maintaining order and right
within her own life without entering upon the great
contest. 4. It was on April 2, 1917, after some months of
increasing anxiety for the American nation, that
the President made his momentous address to
Congress. In this address he pointed out that
Germany was now engaged in "a war against all
nations." "The challenge," he said, "is to all
mankind." He made it clear that in respect of
the United States the duty of Congress was not
to initiate war, but to recognize the fact that Ger
many had actually begun war against the American
people. "I advise that the Congress declare the
recent course of the Imperial Government to be
in fact nothing less than war against the Govern
ment and people of the United States; that it
formally accept the status of belligerent which has
thus been thrust upon it." Far beyond the imme
diate pressure of the hour, he saw the goal towards
which America must move in the conduct of this
war. "Let us be very clear," he said, "and make
very clear to all the world, what our motives and
our objects are. . . . Our object ... is to vindicate the
principles of peace and justice in the life of the

156 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
world as against selfish and autocratic power, and
to set up among the really free and self-governing
peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and
of action as will henceforth ensure the observance
of those principles." The most famous utterance
in this momentous document, the one by which
it will be known in history, is this: "The world
must be made safe for democracy"; but the really
most important statement of policy in the whole
message is contained in an earlier paragraph, where
after describing the ideal for which America and
the Allies must fight, which we have quoted above,
he says, "A steadfast concert for peace can never
be maintained except by a partnership of the dem
ocratic nations. No autocratic government could
be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its
covenants." These are words from which the
opponents of the German Empire can never resile
without loss of honor and disaster to the human
race. They are the central statement in the address,
the essential meaning of the war.
5. We come now to answer the question for
which the material is laid before us by the entire
argument of the preceding chapters. The question
from the point of view of Christian Ethics has
already been put point-blank in the very simple
words, "Was it the duty of America to enter into
this war?" If we answer, "Yes," we must take all
the consequences upon our shoulders. Our whole

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 157
argument has aimed at establishing the fact that
behind this question there lies another: "Is it
necessary for America to use force against the force
of another country in order to fulfil her own func
tions and preserve her own existence as a State
and nation?" For as we have so fully argued, if
the State is a natural and divine institution, if its
functions are sacred functions, then, in the largest
sense, they must be looked upon as essentially
Christian functions.
In view of the whole situation, the conclusion
of a student of Christian Ethics must be as follows :
First, the fundamental function of maintaining a
moral order wherever her authority and the life
and sacred rights of her citizens extend must be
exercised against the attacks, present and to come,
of the German Empire. This duty could not be
avoided without the surrender of the life of the
State. Second, the burden of this duty involves the
moral necessity of supporting and assisting those
sister nations which are in danger of being de
stroyed by the same enemy that seeks the destruc
tion of the State and nation of America. From
the beginning of the war many American citizens
maintained that the Government ought at once
to have ranged itself on the side of stricken and
murdered Belgium. The country as a whole was
not convinced. But it has added enormously to

158 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
the sense of high moral obligation, and even of
religious devotion, that America now finds herself
in active defence not only of her own rights, but
of those of Belgium and France, which have been
so ruthlessly trampled under an iron heel.
Third, it is a moral obligation that all nations
in the world which are organized for the establish
ment of freedom and justice and the promotion
of moral and peaceful relations among the peoples
of the world, should form a coalition to confront
and defeat those nations which have banded them
selves together with conviction of intellect and
devotion of heart to maintain the contrary ideals.
It is two fundamental moral principles which are
at war with one another in the world today. On
the one hand is the principle that the will to power
is so much of the essence of a nation that war
becomes its primary function and conquest its
supreme ideal. On the other hand there is the
conviction of those peoples which hold that the
essence of the State is to secure justice, and that
this justice is to be maintained not simply within
the individual nation but in the relations of one
State with another throughout the world. The
appeal to force is made by them in order to main
tain justice, and the maintenance of justice in
international relations will inevitably lead to a
coalition of the peoples of the world, whose final
effect will be the abolition of war.

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR

\

CHAPTER VIII
ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR
The World War marks one of the greatest crises
in the moral history of mankind. Future writers
on the history of Ethics will be able to see more
clearly and completely than we can the moral
significance of the developments, national and
international, which led up to the war, and of the
mighty changes in the structure of society and in
the spirit of government throughout the world
which it has wrought. But there are certain out
standing facts in the situation whose ethical value
we are bound over to consider if we would take
our part intelligently and with a clear conscience
in the great events of this great hour. In naming
them and attempting a brief statement of their
significance, we shall be compelled to survey in
another form some of the arguments of the pre
ceding chapters.
i. The first great moral advance has been made
evident in the world-wide study of the causes of
this war. Even the German Government is a
witness to the necessity felt in our day for a moral
justification of her part in the great event. The
161

162 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
primary desire of the Government quite evidently
was to justify the war before the German people
themselves, which could be done only by assert
ing that it is for them a war of defence. It appears
that straightforward lies were told in order to de
ceive the German people. Their Government
told them that France had invaded Alsace, that
French cavalry were seen in Belgium, that Belgium
herself had broken neutrality, all of which asser
tions are proved to have been without foundation
in fact. But they enabled the Kaiser to exercise
his constitutional right of declaring war under
the plea that it was a war of defence.
A secondary and no less powerful desire gradually
awoke in the mind of the German Government,
namely, to justify herself before the judgment of
the world, and especially of the neutral nations.
The idea that what Germany does is right because
Germany does it, was a strident utterance of her
military Pan-German enthusiasts. It could con
vince no one outside, and only a section in Ger
many. It was too immoral and blatant an asser
tion to prevail over the natural dictates of the
human conscience. Hence Germany was com
pelled to seek one way after another of proving
that she was rather the victim and prey of ruthless
neighbors than herself a beast of prey.
The act of Belgium, France, and Russia needed
no defence. It was justified absolutely by the

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 163
unnecessary act of aggression upon their territories
on the part of German armies.
The act of Great Britain no doubt may now be
described as an act of self-defence. It is clear to
the whole world that the conquest of Belgium and
France would have proved but a stepping-stone
for the conquest of the British Empire. It will
ever remain a strange fact that at the beginning
of the war the British people were not unanimous,
and even the Cabinet was divided as to whether
it was the duty of the Government to declare war.
So deep had become the passion for peace, so prev
alent the belief that Germany might yet be won
to a policy of neighborliness and peace in the de
velopment of her world relations ! It was not until
Belgium was actually invaded that the British
sprang unanimously to arms. Then honor spoke,
and only one voice, a voice of anguish and yet of
supreme determination, answered from the heart
of the Empire. Even Mr. Lloyd George, a life
long pacifist, who had opposed the Boer War on
principle and at the risk of his life, was convinced
by this one act of treachery, this one base trans
gression against the laws of humanity and honor,
and became the flaming leader of the Empire in the
most tragic and the supreme effort of its history.
As to the actions of America, we have already
spoken in a- recent page sufficiently. One more
quotation from the President's address to Con-

164 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
gress is the complete exposition of her spirit: "We
are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose
because we know that in such a Government, fol
lowing such methods, we can never have a friend;
and that in the presence of its organized power,
always lying in wait to accomplish we know not
what purpose, there can be no assured security
for the democratic governments of the world.
We are now about to accept the gage of battle with
this natural foe to liberty, and shall if necessary
spend the whole force of the nation to check and
nullify its pretensions and its power. . . . We have
no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest,
no dominion. We seek no indemnities for our
selves, no material compensation for the sacrifices
we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham
pions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satis
fied when those rights have been made as secure
as the faith and the freedom of nations can make
them." These words will ring for generations to come,
as they rang through the world when they were
first uttered, as among the most sublime expressions
of the devotion of a nation to the noblest moral
ideals, and its willingness to stake its all on their
accomplishment against a predatory foe.
2. In the second place, we must name as mark
ing one of the great ethical gains of the war that a
new conception has been driven home to the heart

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 165
of man of what we may call the moralizing of war.
This process has been going on for centuries in
the development of international law and in the
decisions of successive conventions, first of the
leading powers at Geneva, 1865, later at the suc
cessive Hague Conventions where all the nations
of the world were represented. At first sight it
may seem as if this war signalized the destruction
of this process. Chivalry, which came to life on the
fields of France and Flanders and flourished there
"when knighthood was in flower," has been done
to death, trampled in the very mire of her birth-
land by the German spirit. The story of German
atrocities not simply against civilians, but even
in the act of war, is black indeed. The frequent
killing of the wounded, the occasional crucifying
of living men, the raiding and shelling of open
towns, are all contradictions of that sentiment of
humanity which had come to prevail on the field
of battle, even in the heat of the fight. The sudden
use of deadly gas marked a new era, not only in
this war, but in the history of Germany's destruc
tion of chivalry.
The rule of the Allies in meeting these mani
festations of diabolism has been perfectly simple.
Wherever an act of Germany has been such as to
give her armies a military advantage and to threaten
defeat of her foes, reprisal in kind has been neces
sary. Gas has been answered by gas. But where

166 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
the act does not yield military advantage, the
case has been less clear. As a rule the Allies seem
to have decided to avoid reprisal in kind. If the
French have occasionally dropped bombs on open
towns in Germany, the act has been very rare and
goes against the grain of the national character.
The rule they have observed is to select only those
objects which are of military importance for their
attacks; that the neighboring civil population is
terrorized is perhaps a welcome by-product of
their policy. Where civilians have been killed,
the Allies are quite willing to confess it as a re
grettable accident. The difference between the
German moral character and that of their foes
is vividly expressed in the utterance attributed to
a British officer. Someone was urging that the
British and the French should treat German prison
ers exactly as their prisoners were treated in Ger
many. The story of this treatment is extremely
painful and shameful. The British officer replied,
"Yes, I suppose we ought to do it. But then, you
know, we cant do it!"
We must be profoundly thankful that in the
face of severe temptation and constant trial of
patience, the Allies have striven to maintain the
highest standards that have been hitherto attained
in the moralizing of warfare. The contrast between
the two methods stands before the world, and is
giving to humanity everywhere a lesson in prac-

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 167
tical ethics which will undoubtedly influence his
tory forever.
3. The ethical progress of humanity is further
discovered in the definition of the purposes held
by the Allies and America in their prosecution of
the war to a victorious issue. In the first place,
when they speak unanimously of the defence of
democracy, this is no mere form of words or vacuous
ideal. Democracy for the self-governing peoples'
of the world is a spiritual and solid reality of infinite
worth. As a method of government it has its own
difficulties. It has certain weaknesses when com
pared with the directness, rigidity, and superficial
efficiency of an autocratic government. And of
these the democracies of the world are more keenly
aware than their critics in imperial palaces. The
history of every democracy in the world reflects
a systematic effort to correct defects in its govern
ment. For the defects are not inherent in the
theory. They arise from the imperfections of
human nature as it pursues far-off ideals. To over
come them step by step, through self-criticism,
humiliation, discussion, even internal disturbance,
is itself a noble and lofty ethical task, the highest
yet presented to the living conscience of a nation.
On the other hand, the defects of autocracy are
inherent in the theory, and utterly incurable by
any process of history. The very right of some
one family and its chosen advisers to rule a whole

168 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
nation autocratically and without responsibility has
become in the presence of constitutional monarchies
and democracies an actually immoral conception.
The evil of it becomes visible in two irresistible
tendencies which not merely haunt the heart but
drive the will of every autocracy. The first is that
of subordinating other interests to the ambition
of the rulers. It is practically impossible for the
autocrat to interpret the highest good of his people
apart from his own personal glory. The other
tendency flows from this, and was noted by Pres
ident Wilson in his address. It consists in the
forrriation of secret purposes concerning the rela
tions of the autocrat and his people to other nations
and their interests. These secret purposes become
policies, they guide the making of treaties and the
forming of alliances, they infect with their poison
every form of relationship between that State and
all others. The old but potent spirit is passed on
from one generation to another. Continuity of
will is maintained, working in this sinister and
menacing manner upon the life of other peoples.
The present Kaiser is himself the loudest pro-
claimer of these very facts. He has boasted in
speech after speech that he maintains the continuity
of the history handed down to him by his pre
decessors in the Kingdom of Prussia. For him this
continuity in the autocratic will is a supreme virtue
instead of a crime against the world. With him

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 169
the policies which this will shapes in secret and
the far-reaching preparations it makes for victory
are of the very essence of righteousness instead of
the quintessence of wickedness. It was one of
the greatest of German students of political science,
whom we have repeatedly quoted, who said that
the perfecting of a national life must proceed,
"provided of course that the principles of moral
and political development shall not be opposed to
the destiny of humanity."1 Happy had it been
for Germany if this qualification of statecraft had
been observed by her rulers. But our whole point
is that autocracy is simply incapable of permanently
cherishing and obeying this healthful law of national
life. The world cannot endure this system any
longer. It has been a menace and a source of
irritation among the free. It has made itself
at last an intolerable disease in the body of hu
manity. Excision is the only remedy. That means,
of course, that the defeat of Germany is now a
moral obligation resting upon the free peoples of
the world. It is true that the remedy cannot be
made sure without a change in the German mind.
This has been well put by Mr. A. F. Whyte, M. P.:
"The goal itself, the destruction of German mil
itarism, can only be reached by the Germans them
selves! Any attempt to achieve it by force, from
» Bluntschli, "The Theory of the State," p. 321.

i7o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
without can only end in riveting the system more
firmly on the acquiescent backs of the German
people. No great nation, even in dire defeat, will
tolerate any alien attempt to set its house in order.
The substitution of free government for the tyranny
of militarism must be the deliberate and conscious
act of a politically-awakened people: otherwise it
cannot last." This is true, but it must be reckoned
among the ethical gains in the war both that
autocracy must be destroyed and that the German
people themselves must learn to do it, with relief
and joy to themselves, and the satisfaction of the
conscience of mankind.
Democracy has suffered because its deepest prin
ciple has only slowly emerged to the view of the
world. Men have thought of its freedom from the
tyranny and irresponsibility of autocratic rulers,
whether one or many. Or they have thought of
the noble responsibility which rests on each citizen
to vote for the rulers and directors of the State.
But that is not the point at which Christ began
the history of democracy. There is one passage
in Scripture where the two great completely hostile
principles of government confront each other. It
is that scene where two brothers, thinking of the
new community in terms of a vulgar political
party with its earthly and selfish prizes, beg for
the positions of prominence "in Thy kingdom."
Jesus succinctly describes the essence of rulership

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 171
among the Gentiles. It means the exercise of
authority, personal dominance of others, from
which all false ambitions, rivalries, wars, arise.
"Not so shall it be among you." The complete
antithesis of this spirit is to fill the new community.
The path of self-forgetting service is the way to
glory. The humblest shall be exalted. Love that
gives itself to secure the highest good of others
leads to unsought thrones. "Even as the Son
of man came," so shall His servants go into the
wide world of wild self-seeking. "I am among you
as he that serveth," are the words of Him who
is their actual ruler there, even as He speaks and
they obey. This is the taproot of democracy — the
Cross of Him who served even so far as "to give
his life a ransom for many." These are the acts,
facts, and words which have brought us thus far
even to the platform, with all its deficiencies, of the
Labor program.
How deeply the idea of service has penetrated
the mind of the world is proved by many changes
in our conception of the State. "Civil servants"
is a term not of reproach but of honor. "Prime
Minister" technically means a servant of the Crown,
but actually it has become the title of the man
who wields the greatest power in the greatest
empire in the world, and that on sufferance of the
people, for a time measured by their will, not by
his, and for ends which must lie outside his personal

172 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
enrichment or the aggrandizement of his person
and family. The President of the United States
is elected to a position of extraordinary power.
He is the chief magistrate for four years, and then
lays down the exacting burdens of his term of
service and steps down to the level of an ordinary
citizen with the right to one vote.
This is Christianity at work. And democracy
realizes its true essence when it aims at perfecting
the spirit in which its citizens learn, not to be
served, but each in his place to serve the common
weal. If the war is to make the world safe for
democracy, it must become a world where the
prizes of life are awarded with increasing public
insight and moral conviction, not to those who
seek most what "the rulers of the Gentiles" seek,
but to those who have spent themselves most
wisely and loyally upon the best service of their
fellowmen. But democracy cannot quickly succeed,
as long as public servants are supposed to rule a
mass of business people, among whom selfishness is
taken as the law of life and self-aggrandizement the
proof of success. The ideal of service must pene
trate the whole body politic, and the governors who
are elected to serve must be chosen by men who
honestly seek in their individual callings not to be
served, but to serve.
4. Another proof that the ideals of Christian
Ethics are taking hold even of the conduct of the

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 173
war is to be found in the special efforts which are
being made to raise as high as possible the standards
of character among the soldiers of the Allies and
of America. We may confine the subject to the
armies of America, where four chief methods are
being employed. In the first place prohibition is
practically enforced on the army and on the civilians
in their relation to the army, as a war measure.
Any citizen who offers alcoholic drink to a man in
uniform is liable to arrest and punishment. What
this has done to strengthen the army and to save
the nation from scenes of depravity cannot easily
be computed. Provision is being increasingly made
for the religious life of the men through the chap
lains, the Y M C A, and the various other church
agencies. The response of the men to the religious
appeal rightly made by the right means and men
is often most remarkable. Ample provision is also
madey chiefly through the Young Men's Christian
Association, the Knights of Columbus, and the
Young Men's Hebrew Association, for the instruc
tion of the men in the origin and purpose of the
war and the spirit in which it must be worthily
waged. Thus may be carried throughout the
fighting forces the high-souled and moving words
of the President: "Just because we fight without
rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing
for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with
all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct

174 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
our operations as belligerents without passion and
ourselves observe with proud punctilio the prin
ciples of right and of fair play we profess to be
fighting for."
Finally there are carried into the camps and
even to the fighting line, chiefly by means of the
Y M C A and its parallel institutions named above,
opportunities for recreation, rest, and education,
some slight substitutes for and suggestion of the
comforts and inspiration of club and home life
in the home land.
All these splendid efforts to moralize and spiritual
ize the meaning, method, and purposes of the
World War are the undoubted fruit of that spirit
which the whole world knows and names as Chris
tian. 5. In the next place the insistent demand is
being made by the heart, the mind, and the con
science of mankind that this World War shall end
in the complete reconstruction of international
relations. Not merely because of the agonies and
losses wrought by the war, but because of the
revelation which it has given to us all of the causes
from which war springs and their ethical disgrace,
the human mind has set itself to the mightiest task
known to history. This is nothing less than laying
the secure foundations of a united humanity.
Bluntschli, in the work so often cited, describes
the "tendencies towards a common organization of

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 175
humanity." 2 He said, it is true, that "the Aryan
race feels itself called to manage the world," but
that was more than forty years ago. Today he
would not express it exactly so. Then follows this
passage, which because of its authorship by a Ger
man who was yet undeflected from correct think
ing by the influence of the newly-born Empire, is
the more significant: "We have not yet got so far:
at the present day it is not so much will and power
that are wanting as spiritual maturity. The mem
bers of the European family of nations know their
superiority over other nations well enough, but
they have not yet come to a clear understanding
among themselves and about themselves. A definite
result is not possible until the enlightening word
of knowledge has been uttered about this and about
the nature of humanity, and until the nations are
ready to hear it. Till then, the universal empire
will be an idea after which many strive, which none
can fulfil. But as an idea of the future the general
theory of the State cannot overlook it. Only in
the universal empire will the true human State
be revealed, and in it international law will attain
a higher form and an assured existence. To the
universal empire the particular States are related,
as the nations to humanity. Particular States are
members of the universal empire and attain in it
their completion and their full satisfaction. The
' "The Theory of the "State," p. 31.

176 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
purpose of the universal State is not to break up
particular states and oppress nations, but better
to secure the peace of the former and the freedom
of the latter." 3
It was in the same general period of unfettered
German life that Dorner, the great theologian, in
his famous work, "Christian Ethics," maintained,
"that the ends for which the State exists cannot
be reached by means of legal institutions which
shall embrace the whole human race, that is, by
one universal State, but can only be realized in a
multiplicity of States, each possessing its own
sovereign power."4 But this seems to be a de
cision due to purely verbal or technical considera
tions, for on a later page he seems to contradict it
in substance, though not in form. "Those be
ginnings of international law which we see," he
says, "make it possible for Christian nations to
hope that one day Christian princes and Christian
peoples will unite to form a high Areopagus, to
which they will commit the task of settling their
differences with each other, so that Christian blood
will no longer have to be shed by Christian men." 5
But Treitschke was teaching at Berlin at the same
time as Dorner. And Treitschke won.6

3 "The Theory of the State," pp. 31, 32.
4 Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans., p. 556.
6 Ibid., pp. 579, S8°-
6 From Treitschke's victory arose the Kaiser's speeches, von
Bernhardi's book, et id genus omne — and Belgium.

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 177
Nevertheless some progress was made even be
fore the war in the direction of the World-State.
Of this the years prolific of peace propaganda
were witness. The Hague Conventions and Mr.
Carnegie's Peace Palace, the very alignment of
Europe in opposing leagues of great nations, and
the formation of many associations to promote
international understanding and conceit of mind,
were all forces acting in that general direction.
But the World War is the mightiest force. Al
ready, in the intimate cooperation of the enemies
of Germany, in their mutual good will, in their
willingness to sacrifice for each other as no nation
ever did before for another nation, in the mingling
of the blood of their sons on the fields of France
and Flanders, in the concentration of an inter
national will upon the victory of nations that are
equal brothers, free from each other's domination,
but in holy bonds to each other's succour, we see
far more than mere prophecies or faint beginnings
of the universal State. The history of it has definitely
begun. The leading nations of the world are co
operating to establish it. The overthrow of German
militarism Will not only sweep away the supreme
obstacle, but will compel the more rapid fulfilment
of the age-long dream of seers and saints. The I
League of Nations has already arisen, a new era
in the moral development of humanity.
6. Another sphere in which the war has hastened

178 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
ethical progress must be referred to less at length
than its importance demands. The war has com
pelled the democratic powers to reconstruct their
industrial life. Indeed, it is the entire fabric of
society that is being rapidly changed. Two of
the most dignified, luminous, and far-reaching
documents produced in the war are "Labor and
the New Social Order," adopted by the British
Labour Party, and "Labor War Aims," the agree
ment adopted by the Inter-Allied Labor and Social
Conference in London, February, 1918.7
In these momentous utterances we discover the
force and breadth of the changes which have come
like a tidal wave upon the slowly unfolding internal
history of the allied nations. The former docu
ment does not profess any abstract socialist pro
gram, nor do its proposals involve the doctrine of
communism. Its fundamental principles are three
fold: first, every worker by hand or brain must
receive the full value of his labor, and the determina
tion of this must not be left to the decision of any
class of employers; second, the Government must
take full control and retain the initiative as to
education, adjustment of wages to changing eco
nomic conditions, etc.; third, the immediate na
tionalization of land, railways, mines, and the
production of electrical power, must be arranged.
7 Both documents are published, the former in draft form, by
The New Republic, New York.

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 179
The fulcrum on which the powerful lever of the
Labor Party rests is the fact that all these features
of the program are already in operation more or
less completely, by stress of the war.
Two quotations will suffice to give us a sense
of the ethical idealism and the intense earnestness
which inform this powerful declaration of principle:
"If we repudiate, on the one hand, the imperialism
that seeks to dominate other races, or to impose
our own will on other parts of the British Empire,
so we disclaim equally any conception of a selfish
and insular 'non-interventionism,' unregarding of
our special obligations to our fellow-citizens over
seas; of the corporate duties of one nation to another;
of the moral claims upon us of the non-adult races,
and of our own indebtedness to the world of which
we are part." And again, "Especially in all the
complexities of politics, in the still undeveloped
science of society, the Labor party stands for in
creased study, for the scientific investigation of each
succeeding problem, for the deliberate organization
of research, and for a much more rapid dissemination
among the whole people of all the science that
exists. And it is perhaps specially the Labor party
that has the duty of placing this advancement of
science in the forefront of its political program. . . .
But no Labor party can hope to maintain its position
unless its proposals are, in fact, the outcome of the
best political science of its time; or to fulfil its

i8o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
purpose unless that science is continually wresting
new fields from human ignorance. Hence, although
the purpose of the Labor party must, by the law
of its being, remain for all time unchanged, its
policy and its program will, we hope, undergo a
perpetual development, as knowledge grows, and
as new phases of the social problem present them
selves, in a continually finer adjustment of our
measures to our ends. If law is the mother of
freedom, science, to the Labor party, must be the
parent of law."
Assuredly the fruits of the great war will not
be measured merely in terms of tears and blood.
There is a spirit in man, there is a moral energy at
work even amid sin, suffering, and death, ghastly
as these may be, which is securing many a victory
for the Sermon on the Mount.
7.- Amongst important moral values which result
from the war we must reckon those which are
being discovered and realized among the voluntary
services rendered in a multitude of ways by the
general populations, especially of Great Britain
and America. These countries had become habit
uated to the ways of peace, their attention had
been fastened upon the problems of commerce and
the development of the national life in the lines
of material prosperity, luxury, and aesthetic in
terests. There can be no doubt that a great deal
too much attention was given exclusively to sport

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 181
and pleasure of all kinds. These interests have, of
course, their value. The value is vital and im
measurable if they are subordinate to the tension
of a life spent upon high aims and hard endeavors.
They become diseases just at the point where they
become the ends of life, the chief interests of the
heart and mind of large sections of the population.
Suddenly the war broke upon us, and a moral
transformation as extensive as it has been sudden
took possession of the inhabitants of these lands.
In the first place, we must take account of the
devotion of the manhood of these peoples to the
active task of war. Volunteers must be counted
not by hundreds of thousands, but by millions,
men who gave up all that they might get to the
fighting lines. In the vast majority of cases prob
ably the impulse was not that of mere youthful
adventure. There was something of moral idealism,
something of passionate patriotism, something of
profound conviction, which underlay and gave
direction and force to the decision and spirit of
the volunteers. When conscription came it found
men, who for innumerable reasons had not volun
teered, ready to answer the call of their country,
and many of the noblest soldiers and the best
fighters have been found among the ranks of drafted
men. In the second place, the population as a whole
found its energies drawn upon to carry on many

182 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
forms of service without which the armies could not
be supported at the front. In America already thou
sands of men and women have given up positions
of importance and lives of ease to serve long hours
in unaccustomed places under restricted conditions,
in order to assist the organizations on which are
based the training and movement and fighting
success of the armies. The world knows how lavish
has been this sacrificial spirit in Great Britain and
France. In the third place, there fell upon the hearts
of these countries the demand for service and for
money required in many ways not strictly mil
itary, but that bore upon the succor of the wounded,
the comfort of prisoners, the support of families
left destitute in devastated lands, the conduct of
the instrumentalities of education and religion in
the camps and even in the trenches, the aid re
quired by many wives and children whose sup
porters had been taken to war. In these and other
ways, especially as far as America is concerned,
through the wonderful organization of the Red
Cross, the moral enthusiasm of the people has been
roused, and multitudes have given large sums whose
charities hitherto were mere driblets. Large numbers
who toiled only for their own pleasure are now toil
ing long hours every day for the blessing of others.
Among the most remarkable evidences of devo
tion, readiness for sacrifice, intelligent cooperation,

ETHICAL GAINS TN THE WAR 183
we must name the response made by the citizens
of America to the demands of the Department
of Food Administration. "Hooverizing" is one of
those humorous terms by which men have de
lighted to express a very serious situation. Few
more impressive testimonies to the soundness of a
national heart could be found than the response
made by the American people to the call of Mr.
Hoover that they should deny themselves in matters
of food and drink for the support of the Allies and
the winning of the war. Germany cannot under
stand how a people could ration themselves. Any
nation accustomed to wait only for the directions
of its rulers under penalty of law has no concep
tion of how a people can take the mere proclamation
of a need as a command that must be obeyed.
Mr. Hoover has announced that hundreds of mil
lions of bushels of this, hundreds of thousands of
pounds of that, hundreds of thousands of measures
of something else have been saved during the
winter of 1917-18 by the American people. They
have taken these things from their tables that
they might find their way to the tables of Great
Britain and France. It was done voluntarily,
gladly, not as a sacrifice, but as a joyous duty.
It cannot be said, alas, that all have acted in this
way; too large are the classes of people whose minds
are too idle and hearts too selfish for such an act.
But the fact stands that Mr. Hoover is himself

184 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
amazed at the nation-wide extent of this generous
response to his guidance and his inspiration.
Among the most cheering and hopeful features
of the situation is the witness borne by the churches
that enthusiasm for Christian work at home and
abroad has not abated but has been rather intensi
fied during the war. It seems strange that when
nations are giving so much in taxation and benevo
lent gifts for war causes directly, they should have
increased their contributions to the work of foreign
missions. It seems as if the imagination had been
widened, the spiritual insight of men had been
deepened, the sense of responsibility had become
more grave and more compelling. They who have
been doing most and making the gravest sacrifices
for the war itself are those who have enlarged their
wonted support of the great cause of the Gospel.
In the last place, we must note a deeper sense
of religious need. It is true that in some of the
lands that have been longer at war people speak
of a lessening interest in religion. This can only
be on the surface. What we find everywhere is
that men and women are open to religious thought
and religious appeal whose lives lay beyond this
vision in past days. The spectacle of a world wreck
ing itself, of multitudes of lives carried off simul
taneously into the unseen, of brutality and sor
row, sacrifice and sin, the experience of bereavement,
of homes broken forever, of hearts made lonely

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 185
for the rest of their lives — these things are of spiritual
import, they have drawn people together in deeper
sympathy who had no ties and no contacts before.
They have spread through the community a cer
tain seriousness and tenderness which make the
determination of their wills the more strong and
the picture of a Christian nation at war more
sublime. He would be mad who says that it is worth
being at war to win these results; but he would be
equally untrue to the facts who ignores these bless
ings of the spirit which God in His mercy is drawing
out of human hearts, even in the midst of the
tragedy which seems to wreck their lives.
8. On a survey of the course of argument which
we have pursued, it appears that we ought to
conclude by a joyous celebration of the Victory
of the Sermon on the Mount! This startling result
is not so much of a paradox as it seems. True,
we began by considering the case of those who
set the World War and the teaching of Jesus Christ
in complete hostility, as wholes which mutually
exclude one another. It seemed as if the only
right thing to say must be this: Whatever war is,
it excludes the Spirit of Christ, and, Whatever
the Spirit of Christ is, it cannot be found in war
fare. To many minds that is self-evident.
But in the course of our argument several things
have become clear which not only make us less

1 86 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
certain of that position, but force us to see the
nature and history of war and the mind of Christ
in deeper historical and essential relations with
one another. For example, it has assuredly become
clear that war can be, on the part of a people like
the Belgians defending their existence, a pure effort
(as pure as human effort could ever be) to maintain
moral order, to repress wrongdoing, and to do it
by the exercise of force. Now that effort is a divine
thing. God Himself makes it. Jesus Christ made
it, even if only symbolically, in cleansing the Temple.
Further, we have seen reason to believe that moral
ity needs always a physical basis for its manifesta
tion, just as life needs it if life is to be something
real for us in our world of experiences. On the other
hand, the Spirit of Jesus, which was exhibited in
act as well as speech, and whose action is as far
above our reach apparently as the Sermon on the
Mount, has no way of being manifested by us at
all except it be in our physical and social life. It
is not by taking us out of the world, but by keeping
us from the evil that His Spirit has its way with us.
What we say and do where we are, as we are, in
the midst of our conscious weakness and blindness,
that is our life; and exactly there, and only there,
is the Spirit of Christ to be found in us, and to have
its way with us. The Sermon on the Mount from
first to last is addressed to men and women who
must hear it, grasp it, obey it, in the midst of this

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 187
world and all its claims and forces of nature. As
married, as in business, as under government, as
exercising government, as workman at a carpenter's
bench or banker putting his money out at interest,
as teacher, traveler, scholar, soldier, the words of
Jesus enter a man's heart and find him where he is.
Now that means that the Sermon on the Mount
is not a mere ideal hung in the sky to allure, baffle,
condemn the human soul. Many elude its difficult
problems by that notion of it, and so lose all its
thrilling, compulsory energy. They can have no
vision of the measureless sway which it has exer
cised and exercises today over the conscience and
the conduct of man.
Therefore I venture the assertion that nowhere
has the Sermon on the Mount, the embodiment
in words of the Spirit of Christ, exercised more
visible and amazing power than in the matter of
war. If today the world is horrified, aghast, at
what the will to war can do, it is because all its
meaning, methods, and results are subjected to
the standard of His Spirit. That will must be
broken and cast as a disgraceful thing into the
past. But it is being broken by the might of the
command, Love your enemies. Yet the strange
thing is that the triumph of that command at this
point cannot be and is not being secured by pacifists.
It is being secured by the gradual discovery, an
age-long process, that war is absolutely wrong on

188 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR
the side of the self-seeking and criminal aggressor,
and absolutely right on the part of the defender.
As the individual is protected from crime not
by willingness on his part to submit to assault
and robbery, but by yielding the original right
of self-defence to the State, so the nations of the
world are learning in and through the World War
that security against aggression is to be won not
by a duel between the two, but by yielding the
act of justice up to the league of nations. So were
the warring dukedoms of medieval France brought
into the harmonious life of a nation. So were the
kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, and free cities
of Germany welded into the unity of the German
Empire. These all had been rival States. When
they yielded their international rights to a higher
power, they ceased to war with one another and
learned even amid continued rivalries and jealousies
to sacrifice themselves for the whole. And that is
love among enemies! The warring nations and
empires of the whole world surely must have learned
through the fearful penalties of a world war to
yield up part of their freedom of international
action. When they have slowly and painfully
mastered the bewildering problems which are in
volved, they will establish that universal State
of which ancient prophets and modern poets have
dreamed, which statesmen and militarists, philos
ophers and preachers of the Gospel have combined

ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 189
in their several ways to produce. Not till then
can we have the fulfilment of the divine promise
that there shall be "peace on the earth among
men of good will."
That is why this war, when carried by the Allies
and America to the right issue, will be another
proof of the divine power of the Sermon on the
Mount.

INDEX

Abstract ideas, 3f., 54, 69.
Armenians, 48.
Autocracy, i67f.
Bang, Dr. J. P., 6if., 68.
Barclay, 83, 90.
Belgium, 45, 94, 124, 132, 139,
149. IS?, 157. 162.
Bernhardi, von, 65-68, 70, 120,
126.
Beyens, Baron de, 149.
Bluntschli, 24, 54f., 63, 169, 174f.
Bosanquet, 24f.
British Empire, 34.
Cheradame, Andre, 125.
Christ (Jesus) and the Church,
13, 7sff. Cross and Resurrec
tion, 94-96.- Moral order,
185(1". Roman Government,
83?., 88. Sermon on Mount,
86ff. The State, 76f., 8 iff.
Church, The, I2f.; founding of,
76; moral influence of, 100-
103, 112IF.; and sacrifice, ^gf.;
and the State, 76ff.; (Christ),
79, 99 (Paul); and war, 81,
147.
"Conquest and Kultur," 127, 138.
Creichton, Mrs., 94.
Darwinism and War, 68.
Democracy, 167, 170-172.
Dorner, 20, 21, 133, 176.
France, 162.
Friends, Society of (Quakers),
7ff., 27.
Frymann, D., 137.
Geibel, E. von, 62.
George, Lloyd, 163.
Gerard, J. W., 154- „. rrc
German character, S9ff., 66f.,
166; mind, 53f., 129.

German Empire, 33, 46.
German Government, defects
of, 58ff.; efficiency of, 56; and
Hague Convention, I27f.; in
ternational law, I33f.; men
ace to the world, 140?., 157;
military force, as, 57, 66f.,
177; policy of devastation,
I35ff.; of ruthless war, 131-
135; possible change in, i6af.;
and treaties, 139; self-justifi
cation of, i6if.
Germany, population of, 6\l.;
prayer for, iCKjf.; responsibil
ity of, for the war, 119?.,
I4lf.
Great Britain, declaration of
war by, 149-15 1, 163; unpre-
paredness of, 148.
Grey, Sir Edward, 149.
Harden, M., 123.
Hate and Fear, I07f.
Hegel, 20, 54f.
Herrmann, W., 39.
Hocking, W. E., 106, no, 115.
Hodgkin, T., 93?.
Hoover, Herbert, 183.
Horton, R. F., 9of.
Individual, responsibilities of
the, 27.
Kaiser (Emperor), The, 57, 63,
65, i2off., 130, 162, i68f., 176.
Labor party, program of, 1798".
Lange, Fr., 137.
Liberty, Stephen, 8m.
Lichnowsky, Prince, 149.
Love, of enemies, 898*".; omnip
otence of, I04ff.; and prayer,
lo8ff.
Luxemburg, 47, 48, 96.

191

1 92

INDEX

Mackenzie, John, illustration
from life of, 114-117.
Maurice, F. D., 44.
Mexico, 154.
Murray, Sir G., 4.
Nippold, G., 126.
Pacifism, Theory of, 7-12.
Patriotism, 30.
Paul, the Apostle, his doctrine
of the State, 96ff.; Roman
citizen, 98.
Potsdam, Council at, 123.
Prussia, 66, 120.
Quakers (see Society of Friends).
Reconstruction, social and in
dustrial, 1778°.
Regulus, sacrifice of, 95f.
Religion and the State, 20, 29,
48.
Russia, 139, 149, 162.
Sermon on the Mount, The,
86ff.; literal application of,
92f.; meaning of, 9lff.; in
fluence of, 103; victory of,
180, l85ff.

State, The, definition of, 17-20;
and defensive war, 4 iff., 47ff.;
divine institution, 2of.; and
force, 23 ff.; forms of, 33f.;
and individual, 26ff.; inter
national morality, 18, 3off.,
35. 4°f-; object of, 22f., 56f.;
as "power," 55, 6$ff.; and
sacrifice, 48ff., 94ff.; as "will,"
54; universal? I74ff, l88f.
Treitschke, 176.
Troeltsch, E., 7 if.
Turkey, 48.
United States, The, and the
War, I45f., 155-158, 167.
Votaw, C. W., 86.
Wagner, K, 138.
War, correct statement of prob
lem, 1-5; as function of the
State, 12, 47f., 67ff.; (Ger
man view), 128; as moral
obligation, I57f.; moralizing
of, 164?.; results of German
theory of, 129(1".
Whyte, A. F., 169.
Wilson, President Woodrow,
142, 151-156, i63f., 168, 173.