Much has been said in justification of this view of war from the biological point of view. Prussian militarists are experts in the exposition of similar theories. But from the Christian point of view the complacency with which the world-tragedy is put down as a “purifying, cleansing draught” is somewhat disconcerting. Dean Inge, writing in the Quest in the autumn of 1914, shows himself to be a disciple of the same school:
We see the fruits of secularism or materialism in social disintegration, in the voluntary sterility and timorous acquisitiveness of the prosperous, and in the recklessness and bitterness of the lower strata. A godless civilization is a disease of which nations die by inches. I hope that this visitation has come just in time to save us. Experience is a good school, but its fees are terribly high!
Were we, then, really so bad that “this visitation” was needed to save us from voluntary sterility (by imposing compulsory?) and the other delinquencies enumerated by the Dean? The nature of the punishment hardly fits the crime. Moreover, such a conception of war as
a wholesome corrective is practically indistinguishable from the panegyrics of the extreme militarists whom we are out utterly to destroy. “God will see to it,” wrote Treitschke, “that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race.” “War,” wrote General von Bernhardi, “is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with, since without it an unhealthy development will follow which excludes every advancement of the race, and, therefore, all real civilization.” “A perpetual peace,” said Field-Marshal von Moltke, “is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream. War is one of the elements of order in the world established by God. The noblest virtues of men are developed therein. Without war the world would degenerate and disappear in a morass of materialism.” Many perplexed souls have turned to the Church for guidance during this time of destruction and sorrow, and the directions given have often increased the perplexity. The Bishop of Carlisle expressed the opinion that if we were really Christians the war would not have happened. Archdeacon Wilberforce and Father Bernard Vaughan stated that killing Germans was doing service
to God. Many who have suffered at the hands of the Germans will be inclined to agree, but the trouble from the point of view of the Christian ethic is not removed by such a simple solution. We cannot but suspect that German prelates have been found who have seen in the killing of women and children by air-raids on London a service to the German God. Dr. Forsyth, in The Christian Ethic of War, tells us that “war is not essentially killing, and killing is here no murder. And no recusancy to bear arms can here justify itself on the plea that Christianity forbids all bloodshed or even violence.” He reminds us that Christ used a scourge of small cords, and that he called the Pharisees “you vipers,” and Herod “you fox.” “If the Christian man live in society,” he tells us, “it is quite impossible for him to live upon the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. But also it is not possible at a half-developed stage to live in actual relations of life and duty on its principle except as an ideal.” The Roman form of internationalism he regards “as not only useless to humanity (which the present attitude of the Pope to the war shows) but as mischievous to it.”
It is strange that whilst the war has caused
a number of ordained representatives of the Christian Church to declare that practical Christianity is an impossibility and the Sermon on the Mount a beautiful but ineffective ideal, it has brought agnostics and heathen to a conviction that socialized Christianity is the sovereign remedy for the national and international disease. They have reached the conclusion that the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount is the revolutionary leaven for which the world is waiting. In his preface on The Prospects of Christianity, Mr. Bernard Shaw tells us that he is “as sceptical and scientific and modern a thinker as you will find anywhere.” This assurance is intended to help us to regain breath after the preceding pronouncement:
I am no more a Christian than Pilate was, or you, gentle reader; and yet, like Pilate, I greatly prefer Jesus to Annas and Caiaphas; and I am ready to admit that after contemplating the world and human nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world's misery but the way which would have been found by Christ's will if He had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman.
This is one of the outstanding mental phenomena of the war: sceptics and thinkers have
begun to examine Christianity as a practical way of social salvation. There is a tendency to re-examine the gospel, not with intent to lay stress on historical weakness or points of similarity with other religions, but with the poignant interest which men lost in the desert display towards possible sources of water. It may appear as a coldly intellectual interest in some who are wont to deal with the tragedies of life as mildly amusing scenes in a drama of endless fatuity. But the coldness is a little assumed. There are others who do not attempt to disguise that their whole emotional life is stirred to passionate protest and inquiry, who, though Christians by profession and duly appointed ministers of God, call for a recommendation of Christianity and the establishment of a social order based on the principles of life laid down by Jesus Christ. In The Outlook for Religion, Dr. W. E. Orchard condemns the way of war as the complete antithesis of the way of the Cross. “How can people be so blind?” he cries. “Has all the ethical awakening of the past century been of so little depth that this bloody slaughter, this hellish torture, this treacherous game of war can still secure ethical approval?”