Peace must wait.
Brotherhood must wait.
International federation, social grandeur, the human race, must wait.
All these must wait for the poor little fellows to get the emotions of the prize-fighter and the savage heat and hate of the bull-pup out of their veins; all these must wait, too, while the cash-register devotee and his man Friday get the money—and “divide up.”
Possibly, reader, some of these paragraphs seem unfair.
Very well; perhaps it will seem fair to let a clergyman speak with frankness on this matter. Here following are some paragraphs from a powerful book, The Moral Damage of War, by the fearless Dr. Walter Walsh, a distinguished and eloquent clergyman of Dundee, Scotland.[[294]] In the chapter, “The Moral Damage of War to the Preacher,” Dr. Walsh speaks to his clerical brethren with the courage and directness of the ancient Jewish prophets. Here are some illustrative paragraphs (reprinted with kind permission of publishers):
“The belief that Christianity is incompatible with war, was designed to abolish war ... was held by all the Christians of the first three centuries.... Christianity is the religion of peace. How then is Christendom still at war? We naturally turn to the professional teachers of religion for an answer.
“The paid teachers of Christendom are numbered by hundreds of thousands: Priests, bishops, ministers, catechists and so on,—while their lay helpers—deacons, church-wardens, elders, Sunday-school teachers, missioners, lay preachers—may be counted by the million and it is incomprehensible that war should continue to exist in Christendom unless by first demoralizing these formers of religious opinion. The fact also that all Christian countries alike compete in the equipment and spoils of war can be understood only as a proof of a corrupt or undeveloped conscience. The reason why Christendom is today in such straits and that so many countries wallow in debt, waste, ignorance, covetousness, poverty and misery unspeakable, is chiefly that the paid teachers of Christianity with their hosts of unpaid assistants have capitulated to the war god.... War is never pure, but is hell; and it can never be permissible to inaugurate heaven by the help of hell.... Here and there a smaller Elijah refuses to bow the knee to the military Baal, a faithful Micaiah, tho’ smitten on the mouth, continues to bear his testimony to the true significance of the gospel.... ‘For centuries the church met the hostility of a pagan and unscrupulous world and never flinched.... No revenge or bitterness marred the security of her soul.’... The appalling nature of the preacher’s defection is seen by the contrast with the magnificent opportunity war time affords him, than which prophet or apostle never had a greater.... A trial of strength between conflicting nations is also a trial of the preacher’s moral character; the height of noble opportunity to which it lifts him has its counterpart in the base opportunism to which he may descend. He may temporize like a politician.... He may accept the carnal policies of the parliament as limitations of his gospel and hang his head like a dumb dog when statesmen fling Christianity incontinently out of the house of legislation. He may soothe his conscience with the lie that war is a matter of politics, having nothing to do with the preaching of the gospel, and slide gently down into the dastard, blind equally to the humor and the atheism of his position. Between the churches which cry, “No politics in the gospel!” and parliaments which cry, “No gospel in politics!” the Son of Man is hard put to it to maintain a footing in modern affairs.... Few invocations to the Prince of Peace are heard [in time of war], but many to the God of battles.... The conscience [of ecclesiasticism] lies limp and voiceless before the uplifted sword, bribed by gold, paralyzed by fear ... shielding itself.... The federated tribes of Israel slink to their tents, murmuring some safe platitudes about peace and prayer meetings whilst the world triumphs, the flesh riots and the devil grins with infinite content.... It were hard to say which is worse,—the silence of the pulpit or the timidity or wickedness of its speech when it does find tongue.... A dumb dog is bad, but a bloodhound baying upon the trail is worse.... What is to be said of a preacher, who, when the war spirit and the peace spirit are trembling in the balance, either can not speak or speaks only to blaspheme his own gospel?... It can not be doubted that the church, exerting herself in accordance with her principles, could make all bloodshed impossible, and could have averted every war of recent times; yet on many such occasions the multitude of ministers stir no finger, preach no sermon, sign no petition, sound no note that the government, willing enough to know the temper of a nation, can interpret as hostile to their project.... The appalling truth has to be faced: that the church, contrary to every expectation that might be formed from her principles and the character of the Being she worships, is always, as a whole, for the war of the day. It is true that when peace is the popular cry, the preachers are also for peace. If there is a peace crusade on hand which excites the shallow enthusiasms of the fashionables, the preachers will also catch the excitements of the hour; but when the white banner yields to the red, the pastors beat the drums for the fighters as furiously as they had previously denounced the savagery of armed conflict.... Organized Christianity divests herself of her robe of righteousness and her garments of meek humility to clothe herself in khaki.... A thousand pulpits are manned by Bible bullies who cite every obsolete and bloody precedent of the wars of the Jews and show themselves destitute of the elementary humanities and of the faculties necessary to discriminate between Judaism two thousand years before Christ and Christianity two thousand years after him.... What can mankind do with a church that peels itself like a pugilist and reveals the murdering pagan instead of the martyred Christian; which for carnal reasons cancels the Sermon [on the Mount], contradicts the Beatitudes, flatly denies the gospel, repudiates every specific Christly ideal, and unseats Jesus in order to elevate Mars to the throne of conscience?... At frequent intervals the cross with its suffering victim recedes and out of the blood-red mist emerges the foul idol of war erect on his crimson chariot.... The sanctification of revenge is, indeed, the vilest function performed by a war-poisoned, blood-stained church.... It is thus that the masses are kept from seeing the degenerate nature of the thing.... Their pastors lead them into the blood-red fields of Jahveh when the politicians give the word, and into the green pastures of the Nazarene only when there is no national scheme of murder and robbery afoot.... The churches as they are today can not prevent war. Their palsied lips can not echo, however feebly, the words of the master, ‘Put up again thy sword into its place!’ There is not spiritual power left in organized Christianity to insure the substitution of reason for brute force.... Alas! it has hitherto been impossible to get Christianity to obey Christ.”[[295]]
That is the language of a brave Christian preacher. In connection with the reverend Doctor Walsh’s chastisement of the church in the morning of the twentieth century it is interesting to read on the same subject the words of a philosopher of the eighteenth century, Voltaire.[[296]]
“This universal rage which devours the world.... The most wonderful part of this infernal enterprise [war] is, that each chief of murderers causes his colors to be blest, and solemnly invokes God before he goes to exterminate his neighbors.... A certain number of orators are everywhere paid to celebrate these murderous days.... All of them speak for a long time, and quote that which was done of old in Palestine.... The rest of the year these people declaim against vices.... All the united vices of all ages and places will never equal the evils produced by a single campaign. Miserable physicians of souls! you exclaim for five quarters of an hour on some pricks of a pin, and say nothing on the malady which tears us into a thousand pieces.... Can there be anything more horrible throughout nature?”