OUR concern, however, in the present world conflict goes further than our own immediate affairs, and meets those interests which we have in common with the rest of humankind. Much as we deplore the wanton destruction of property, much as we bewail the reckless loss of life, we mourn especially the diminution of ethical standards and the perversion of our whole outlook on life. For this means the lapse of much for which our own teachers have stood, the forfeit of many a principle which has been dear to the Jewish heart. Let me touch lightly upon three points out of the many that come to mind.
First of all, what we must deplore most is the defiance to law and to its reign which has become so marked a characteristic during the present war. The agreements arrived at in conventions, the bases of treaties, the binding character of compacts, and the sanctity of engagements—all seem to have been thrown into one melting pot. The mere fact that the expression "a scrap of paper" has become a household word, bandied about by orators and scribblers, shows the distance we have descended into the abyss. The whole structure of our international relations seems to have fallen to the ground and the labored work of centuries to have been undone in a few months. Now, the Jews have been from the earliest times a people that have laid the greatest possible stress upon the rule of law; so much so, that their own laws were supposed to have divine sanction. In olden Jewish times everything was regulated by law—man's relation to his fellow men, to the state, and to God; to such a degree that we have been blamed often for being a law-ridden people. We cannot, therefore, remain oblivious to the fact that the sanctity of law has now been rudely called into question and its authority greatly weakened. As Jews we must be deeply concerned in assisting the European world back to a full consciousness of the majesty and eminence of the rule of law.
But more than that, it was part of our earliest teaching that "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." What clouds of hatred have not been blown from one line of trenches to the other! What volumes of spleen have not been sent from one country to the other! In countless speeches, in newspapers and in books, the doctrines of dislike, of animosity, of deepest malice have been preached. Men have been taught to look upon certain neighbors as born enemies, to see in those who do not speak their own tongue not only a stranger but an enemy. Back of the soldiers under arms, back of the cannons with their deadly missiles, stand millions of loathing men and women shooting darts of odium that reach further than any shell and that are more poisonous than any gas. When shall we be able once again to preach the beautiful teaching of the prophet, "Have we not all one Father; hath not one God created us all?"
And lastly, we must bear in mind that the Jews have been opposed from of old to the rule and reign of might as represented by the God of War. In a syllabus on the history of the Peace Movement just published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, it is passing strange to find that the Old Testament is entirely overlooked and that from the first point, "The Cosmopolitan Ideal among the Greek Philosophers," the jump is made at once to the second, "Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace." And yet we know that in the outlook of our greatest teachers and philosophers the vision of peace loomed large and powerful. "Ye shall not teach war any more," said one of our greatest. And for another the true sign of his prophetic mission is that he preached peace. How sadly these teachings have been belied in the present war we know only too well.
Is War Necessary and Good?
IN many circles it has been held that development is possible for the human race only with the concomitance of war. What wonder—when modern teachers have preached just such a necessity? Even so great a religious leader as Luther said, "War is a business divine in itself, and is as necessary as eating or drinking or any other work." Should we then wonder that a historian such as von Treitschke has added, "War is the last revealer of power. God will see to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race,"—or that another historian, Delbrueck, should have said, "What beauty was to the Greek, holiness to the Hebrew, government to the Romans; what liberty is to the Englishman, war is to the Prussian." Nietzsche, one of the greatest of modern apostles, has based many of his theories upon "a violent repudiation of any faith or tradition which recognizes a power of right and justice lying beyond our impulsive nature; an identification of self-restraint with degeneracy and of self-assertion with health; a search for happiness in the conquest of others rather than in self-conquest; a substitution of the Will to Power for the Darwinian Will to Live, with the consequent intensification of the unconscious and instinctive struggle for existence into a battle for conscious mastery; and a sharpening of the competition of life, with its self-observed rules of fair play or its traditionally imposed limitations, into a glorification of war as the supreme test of strength, obtaining its justification in success."
In a very remarkable article which appeared in the Nineteenth Century for last September, written by a man evidently most religiously minded, appears the following: "Is the heart of England still strong to bear and to resolve and to endure? How shall we know? By the test? What test? That which God has given for the trial of people—the test of war. The real court, the only court in which this case can and will be tried, is the court of God. This twentieth century will see that trial, and whichever people shall have in it the greater soul of righteousness will be the victor. The discovery that Christianity is incompatible with the military spirit is made only among decaying people. While the nation is still vigorous, while its population is expanding, while the blood in its veins is strong, then on this hope no scruples are felt. But when its energies begin to wither, when self-indulgence takes the place of self-sacrifice, when its sons and daughters become degenerate, then it is that a spurious and bastard humanitarianism masquerading as religion declares war to be an anachronism and a barbaric sin."
The Jewish Answer
THE Jewish attitude in regard to this great problem before the world can be dealt with in a very few words. These words have already been given to us in the twentieth chapter of Exodus: "If thou wilt make an altar, thou shalt not wave thy sword over it; for if thou wavest thy sword over it thou hast polluted it." It has been emphasized by the prophet Jeremiah when he said, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord who exerciseth loving kindness, judgment and righteousness on the earth." To this I will add only one single word of the Rabbis: "The whole Torah exists solely for the sake of the ways of peace." This ideal of peace has been the guiding star of Israel for which the Jew has prayed morning, noon and night, and I trust that the young men of the Menorah will be true to that which the Menorah typifies, and will assist in the spreading of its light by upholding the reign of law, the reign of love, and the reign of peace.
