Into the whole case against Germany, however, I cannot enter here. Familiar from their chief historical writers with the supposed law of the expansion of powerful nations, convinced by their economists that the country would soon burst with population and be choked by their own industrial products unless they expanded, knowing well that such expansion meant war to the death against France and England (who would suffer by their expansion), the German people consented to the war. Their official documents absolutely belie the notion that they were meeting an aggressive England. But the Christians of Germany were utterly false to their principles in supporting such a war. I do not mean merely that they set aside the precept, or counsel to turn the other cheek to the smiter, for no one now expects either nation or individual to act on that maxim. They were false to the ordinary principles of Christian morals or of humanity. Even if one were desperately to suppose that, learned divines like Harnack were unable to assign the real responsibility for the war, or that the whole of Germany is kept in a kind of hot-house of falsehood, it would be impossible to defend them. The Churches of Germany have complacently watched for twenty-three years the tendency which William II gave to their schools; they have passed no censure on the fifteen years of Imperialist propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that, in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of justice by which, in recent years, their statesmen sought to compass the judicial murder of scores of Slavs; they raised no voice when, at the grave risk of a European war, Austria dishonestly annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina; they gave their tacit or open consent when Austria, refusing mediation, declared war on Serbia and inaugurated the titanic struggle; and they have passed no condemnation on the infamies which the Magyar troops perpetrated in Serbia.
I am concerned mainly with the action or inaction of the Churches in this country, but it is entirely relevant to set out a brief statement of these facts about Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Christian religion was on trial in those countries as well as here. It failed so lamentably, not because there is more Christianity here than in Germany and Austria, not because the national character was inferior to the English and less apt to receive Christian teaching, but because the temptation was greater. Until this war occurred, no responsible traveller ever ventured to say that the German or Austrian character was inferior to the British. It is not. But the economic difficulties of Germany and the political difficulties (with the Slavs) of Austria-Hungary laid a heavier trial on those nations, and their Christianity entirely failed. Catholic and Protestant alike—for the two nations contain fifty million Catholics to sixty million Protestants—were swept onward in the tide of national passion, or feared to oppose it.
One might have expected that at least the supreme head of the Roman Church would, from his detached throne in Rome, pass some grave censure on the outrages committed by Catholic Bavarians in Belgium or Catholic Magyars in Serbia. Not one syllable either on the responsibility for the war or the appalling outrages which have characterised it has come from him. The only event which drew from him a protest—a restrained and inoffensive remonstrance—was the confinement to his palace for some days of my old friend and teacher, Cardinal Mercier! To the stories of fearful and widespread outrage, even when they were sternly authenticated, he was deaf. One knows why. If Germany and Austria fail in this war, as they will fail, the Catholic bodies of Germany and Austria, the strongest Catholic political parties in Europe, will be broken. Millions of the Catholic subjects of Germany and Austria will pass under the rule of unbelieving France or schismatical Russia. So the supreme head of the Roman Church wraps himself nervously in a mantle of political neutrality and disclaims the duty of assigning moral guilt.
On us in England was laid only the task of defending our homes and our honour. It is in those other countries that we most clearly see Christianity put to the test, and failing deplorably under the test. I do not mean that there was no opportunity here for the Churches to display their effectiveness as the moral guides of nations. In those fateful years between 1908 and 1914, during which we now see so plainly the preparation for this world-tragedy, they might have done much. They did nothing. They might have seen, at least at the eleventh hour, the iniquity of sustaining the military system, and have cast the whole of their massive influence on the side of the promoters of arbitration. I do not mean that any man should advocate disarmament, or less effective armament, in England while the rest of the world remains armed. As long as we retain the military system instead of an international court, the soldier's profession is honourable, and the man who voluntarily faces the horrors of the field is entitled to respect and gratitude. But in every country there was an agitation for the general abandonment of militarism and the substitution of lawyers for soldiers in the settlement of international quarrels. Had the Churches in every country given their whole support to this agitation, and insisted that it is morally criminal for the race as a whole to prolong the military system, we might not have witnessed this great catastrophe.
Before, however, I press this charge against the Christian bodies, let me discuss the third plea that may be urged in defence of the Churches. It is the plea of those who are so eager to disclaim responsibility that they are willing to allow an enormous decay of religious influence in the modern world. You have repeatedly told us, they say to the Rationalist, that Christianity has lost its hold on Europe. You speak of millions who no longer hear the word of Christian ministers, but who do read Rationalist literature in enormous quantities. Very well, you cannot have it both ways. Let us admit that the nations of Europe have become non-Christian, and we cast on your non-Christian influence the burden of responsibility for the war.
This language has been used more than once in England. It leaves the speaker free to assume that in England, whose action in the war we do not criticise, the nation remains substantially Christian, while in Germany and Austria the Churches have lost more ground. Indeed, one may almost confine attention to Germany. Profoundly corrupt as political life has been in Austria-Hungary for years, there is no little evidence in the official publications of diplomatic documents that at the last moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria hesitated and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship. It is almost as low as at Paris, where hardly a tenth of the population attend church on Sundays. In other large towns of Germany the condition is, as in England, proportionate. Almost in proportion to the size of the town is the aversion of the people from the Churches.
It is absolutely impossible in the case of Germany to determine, even in very round numbers, how many have abandoned their allegiance to Christianity, though, when one remembers the enormous rural population and the high proportion of believers in the smaller towns, it seems preposterous to suggest that the country has, even to the extent of one half, become non-Christian. But I am anxious to do justice to this plea, and would point out that it is the educated class and the men of the large cities who control a nation's policy. The rural population—the general population, in fact—follows its educated leaders. Now there is no doubt that in Germany, as elsewhere, this body of the population—the middle class and the workers of the great cities—has very largely lost the traditional belief. The workers of Berlin are solidly Socialistic, which means very largely anti-clerical. And I would boldly draw the conclusion that the responsibility for the war is shared at least equally by Christians and non-Christians. The stricture I have passed on the Churches of Germany is based on the fact that they, being organised bodies with a definite moral mission, were peculiarly bound to protest against the obvious political development of their country, and they entirely failed to do so. But I should be the last to confine the responsibility to them. Not only religious leaders like Harnack and Eucken, but leading Rationalists like Haeckel and Ostwald, have cordially supported the action of their country. So it was from the first. Of that large class of men who may be said to have had some real control of the fortunes of their country a very high proportion—I should be disposed to say at least one half—are not Christians, or are Christians only in name.
While we thus candidly admit that non-Christians as well as Christians in Germany bear the moral responsibility, we must be equally candid in rejecting the libellous charge that the principles, or lack of principles, of the non-Christians tended to provoke or encourage war, in opposition to the Christian principles. This not uncommon plea of religious people is worse than inaccurate, since it is quite easy to ascertain the principles of those who reject Christianity. In Germany, as elsewhere, the non-Christians are mainly an unorganised mass, but there are two definite organisations, which, in this respect, reflect or educate the general non-Christian sentiment. These are the Social Democrats, a body of many millions who are for the most part opposed to the clergy, and the Monists, an expressly Rationalistic body. In both cases the moral principles of the organisation are emphatically humanitarian and opposed to violence, dishonesty, or injustice; in both cases those principles are adhered to with a fidelity at least equal to that which one finds in the Christian Churches. It is little short of monstrous to say that the moral teaching of Bebel and Singer and Liebknecht, or of Haeckel and Ostwald—all men of high moral idealism—gave greater occasion than the teaching of Christianity to this atrocious war. The Socialists, indeed, were the strongest opponents of war and advocates of international amity in Europe. How, like the Evangelical and the Christian Churches, they failed in a grave crisis to assert their principles may be a matter for interesting consideration, but it would be entirely dishonest to plead that the substitution of the influence of Rationalists and Socialists for Christian ministers has in any degree facilitated the war.
The Christian who regards all these non-Christian influences as "Pagan," and feels that a "return to Paganism" explains the essential immorality of Germany's conduct, usually has a grossly inaccurate idea of Paganism. Whatever may be said of sexual developments in modern and ancient times, we shall see that the Roman writers held principles which most decidedly made for peace and brotherhood and justice. In point of fact, the majority of the German writers who have been responsible for the education of Germany in war-like ideas have been Christians. The Emperor himself, who is mainly responsible because of his deliberate prostitution of German schools to militarist purposes since 1891, will hardly be described as other than Christian; certainly every prelate or minister in Germany would vehemently resent such a description. Treitschke, who is probably the best known in England of the Imperialist writers, definitely bases his appalling conception of life on Christian principles, and claims that he is acting from a sense of the divine mission of Germany. General von Bernhardi uses precisely the same Christian language. But these are only two in a hundred writers who, for more than half a century, have been educating Germany in aggressive ideas, and, speaking from personal acquaintance with their works, I should say that the overwhelming majority of them are Christians. Not a single Socialist, and not a single well-known Rationalist, has contributed to their pernicious gospel.
Probably the one German writer in the mind of those English people who speak of Germany's return to Paganism is Friedrich Nietzsche. It is true that Nietzsche was bitterly anti-Christian, and he has probably had a greater influence in Germany, in spite of his strictures on the country, than many seem disposed to allow. German booksellers have recently drawn up a statement in regard to the favourite books of soldiers in the field, and it appears that Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra is second on the list—leagues ahead of the Bible. But to conclude from this that the anti-moral doctrine of the Pagan Nietzsche is the chief source of the outrages committed is one of those slipshod inferences which make one despair of Christian literature.