Religion and the War

by Yale University. Divinity School

Here lies the supreme moral issue of the war. Shall the world, which has become a neighborhood, organize itself into a great community of mutual respect, good will and brotherhood, or shall its structure be that of restless orders of exploiters and exploited? It is over-familiar; yet, lest we forget, hear some random verses from various Pan-Germanist scriptures: "Not to live and let live, but to live and direct the lives of others, that is power." "To compel men to a state of right, to put them under the yoke of right by force, is not only the right but the sacred duty of every man who has the knowledge and the power." "The German race is called to bind the earth under its control, to exploit the natural resources and the physical powers of man, to use the passive races in subordinate capacity for the development of its Kultur." "Life is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation at the least, and in its mildest form exploitation."

Contrast with this the words of Jesus: "Ye know that they who are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you: but whosoever would become great among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever would be first among you, shall be servant of all." The present struggle is not merely between democracy and autocracy as rival systems of government. It is a struggle between opposed philosophies of life. Nietzsche was more consistent than the Kaiser who has followed him, for Nietzsche did not claim to be a Christian. He frankly proposed a "transvaluation of values" which would do away with the religion of Jesus as fit only for slaves. That proposed transvaluation of values the Kaiser is trying to bring about, however piously he may lie about it or claim God's partnership in his enterprise.

Prophecies are always hazardous; never more so than now. The outlook for religion has been discussed both by puzzled pacifists and by facile forecasters of the fulfilment of their own wishes. One may perhaps question whether there will be any one trend of the churches in the immediate future. Yet this is clear: that the interests of democracy and the interests of true religion are ultimately one. We may confidently expect the churches of tomorrow to realize this more fully, not simply in the ideals they preach, but in the temper and quality of their own life. One effect of the war upon religious education, undoubtedly, will be to make it more democratic in aim, content and method.

Education in general will become more democratic. The experiences of these years are helping us to understand education and to estimate its values. Our eyes are being opened to the diametrical difference between democratic and undemocratic education. We have come to see that the latter may be as great a menace to the world as the former is a vital resource.

The time was, not long ago, when Germany was deemed the school-master of the world. German efficiency and German obedience to authority were seen to be the products of German teachers and German schools. In methods of teaching and in school organization, as well as in ideals of scholarship, the world sought to follow Germany. If here and there one objected that German education seemed to sacrifice the individual to the system and to beget an obedience too implicit, we felt that it was only because the Germans are such docile, pious, family folk, and we rather chided ourselves for our rougher ways and for that self-will that made us unholily thankful that we had been born in a freer land.

But now the character of German education stands revealed. We are no longer as hopeful as we once were of the possible success of an appeal to the German people over the heads of their military masters. They seem on the whole to like the kind of government they have, and to want to be exploited by Prussia. They are perilously near to what Mr. H. G. Wells has given as his definition of damnation—satisfaction with existing things when existing things are bad. They are experiencing what Mr. Edmond Holmes has called the Nemesis of docility.

And it is their system of education that has brought about this result. If the German people are damned to satisfaction with irresponsible autocracy and fatuous docility, their schools have damned them. For a century, German education has been at work to breed the present world-menace. The German schools have made the German people what they are. They have sought to develop habits of mind rather than free intelligence; they have valued efficiency in a given task above initiative and power to think for oneself. They have set children in vocational grooves and molded them to pattern. They have educated the few to exert authority, and have trained the many to obey. They have nurtured the young upon hatred of other peoples; and, much as the Jews of old awaited the Messiah, they have lived and labored in expectation of "The Day." They have exalted Vaterland into a religion, and have degraded God into a German tutelary deity. The German schools have welded the German people into a compact, efficient, military machine. The desires of the State are their desires; the Kaiser's will is their will.

We have been following false gods, therefore, in so far as we have sought to shape our schools upon German models. "The German teacher teaches," wrote one of our great educators some years ago, in criticism of our American way of giving to children text-book assignments which they are expected to study for themselves; yet the text-book method, fumblingly as we have so often used it, gives better training in initiative and intelligence than the German teacher's dictation methods. Professor Charles H. Judd has recently pointed out the confusion and waste of time brought about by the fact that our eight-year elementary school was modeled upon the German Volksschule, which is a school for the lower classes, and not intended to lead on to higher education. Our purpose, on the contrary, is to maintain for every American child an open ladder through elementary school, secondary school and college to the university; and to that purpose a six-year period of elementary education is much better adapted—a plan which many of our school systems have adopted within the last decade. We need better vocational education in this country and better systems of vocational guidance; but we are becoming clear that these must not be of the German sort, that compel a choice before the teens.

Education in a democracy must be education for democracy; and education for democracy must itself be democratic in content and method. Such education practices and aims at intelligence rather than habit of mind. It trains its pupils to think and choose for themselves. It prizes initiative above conformity, responsibility above mere efficiency, social good will above unthinking obedience.

Such education is more difficult, of course, than education of the undemocratic type. We shall at times be tempted to fall back into the ways of the German schools in some respect or other, because they represent the line of least resistance in education. Specious arguments will be presented in favor of these ways by shortsighted "practical" men. Education of the German type is more efficient, they will say; it is more direct and practical; it brings more immediate results. It is more patriotic, moreover, they will insist; it better serves the ends of authority; it makes people more prosperous and contented, each in his appointed niche. But such arguments, we may well hope, will no longer win the uncritical assent that they have sometimes found. German education may be more efficient in the fulfilment of its end than American education—but what an end it has sought and reached! In the moment of our temptation to undemocratic short cuts in education, we shall henceforth look to the Germany of yesterday and today, and shall be strengthened to resist. Her ways are not our ways. Her schools cannot be ours. Education must mean to America something quite different from what it has meant to Germany.