The very fact that we were receiving from the Old World annually a gift of a million foreign-born, most of whom were in the active ages, has led us to think that the supply of labor for this country was assured. We were receiving from Europe all of the natural increase from a population half as large as our own. The ships that brought these hopeful workers to this country took back many who had been maimed in our industries. We had paid too little attention to this problem since the source of this supply of cheap labor seemed inexhaustible. Upon the declaration of hostilities in Europe, the stream of labor to this country suddenly ceased and it is a serious question whether it will ever again reach its former proportion. Most of the European countries are going to be so drained of their young men that a large emigration from them is not to be expected for a long time to come. The demands for raw material and finished products from certain of the European countries has increased tremendously and a shortage of labor in this country has been the result. Concerns have bid against one another to secure sufficient labor and for the first time in years we have a condition in which the demand for labor of all kinds exceeds the supply. With the impossibility of securing this needed labor from abroad, we have realized the necessity of conserving the supply in this country. Every effort must be made to reduce the toll from accident and injury and to decrease the amount of sickness in the country. We may expect an increase in compensation insurance and in health insurance among the states. This summer we are having a campaign to save the lives of a hundred thousand children. This movement for the conservation of life would undoubtedly have come in time but has been hastened by the war. Thousands of our young men will be returned to us from overseas more or less crippled and steps are already being taken to give them expert training to fit them for some useful occupation. It is only a step to provide the same sort of training for those who are maimed in our industries.
No matter what may be the waste in life and property resulting from such a conflict, if the people of this country can preserve in their purity the ideals with which they have entered upon this crusade, social workers may face the future with confidence.
IX
[THE WAR AND CHURCH UNITY]
WILLISTON WALKER
The great war has been conspicuously one of alliances. For its successful accomplishment coöperation and individual subordination have been manifested in military, political and economic fields in heretofore unexampled fulness. Liberties, the result of long struggles, and deeply cherished, have been laid aside, for the time, that larger efficiency may be accomplished. Individual opinions strongly held have been subordinated to a common purpose. The time has witnessed a reappreciation of values in many realms. Much that in days of peace has seemed of importance, has appeared in the fierce light of war of relatively minor significance. A change of perspective has been the consequence. Has this result, so apparent in most realms of activity and of ordinary life, been manifest in the realm of religion? Are the same forces at work there also? An answer to these questions cannot as yet be fully formulated; but it is at least possible to indicate certain influences which are at work.
The entry of the United States into the world-war has been in a degree unexampled in the history of this country a response to the appeal of righteousness. No action in which the nation has ever engaged has been so unselfish. We have taken our part in the struggle without hate, and with full consciousness of the prospective cost in life and treasure, that certain principles of justice may prevail, and that despotism, brutality and falsehood may not dominate the civilized world. We look for no indemnities, no annexations, and no pecuniary rewards. The American people has never more fully exhibited that idealism which, in spite of frequent misapprehension by those unacquainted with the real national spirit, is its fundamental characteristic. The consonance of this attitude with some primary teachings of religion is apparent. Self-sacrifice that the weak may be helped, that wrong may be resisted, and that a truer and juster order may be established among the nations, are aims that are closely akin to those of the Christian faith in its aspect of love to one's neighbor. Nor is it without evidential value to the essentially religious quality of American life that no enterprise has ever so united the people, and that Americans, whether so by long inheritance or immigrants who have more recently caught the national spirit, have never before been so at one in a common endeavor. Nothing less noble, less idealistic, less in a true sense religious could so have fused them into one.
The war, furthermore, has been a revelation of the fundamental purposefulness of the rising generation. The years immediately antecedent to the struggle saw not a little shaking of older heads over what were called the irresponsibility and pleasure-seeking of our young people. The call to arms has shown them as patriotic, as whole-hearted in devotion, as sacrificial as ever their elders were. They need bow in reverence to none who have gone before them. The cheerfulness with which a selective draft has been accepted, and in thousands of cases anticipated, has shown the readiness of youthful response to high appeal. This demonstration of the soundness, the earnestness and the unselfishness of those who are soon to be the leaders of the national life is full of religious encouragement.
Equally heartening has been the cheerful and effective answer of the responsible population of America to limitations in food and drink that the needs of the Allies should be met and the national resources conserved. Doubtless other nations in the world-struggle have made larger sacrifices and endured far severer privations; but the impressive quality of what America has done is that it has been so largely self-imposed, a voluntary sacrifice, in which suggestion rather than compulsion has been the task of its leaders. Strikingly impressive, also, has been the outpouring of wealth and effort to relieve human suffering through the Red Cross and kindred agencies, not only for the alleviation of the miseries of our own sons, but of the martyred population of Belgium, of France, of Poland and of Syria. No village has been too small, no community too remote or too rural, to have a share in this altruistic endeavor. Its spirit is in a true sense that of religion. More openly and professedly religious has been the marvelous work of the Young Men's Christian Association and of the Knights of Columbus. No previous war has seen anything comparable in extent of effort or scope of plan. The aim, and to a great extent the accomplishment, has been to cast Christian sympathy and brotherly helpfulness around the soldier and sailor in every camp at home and abroad, in the trenches, the hospitals, the battleships, the transports, and in the cities where his furlough is spent and his ideals so easily forgotten. These agencies have not labored for our own sons alone, but for those of France and Italy also. Even more impressive than the vast sums of money contributed from all over the United States for this cause have been the numbers and the quality of the men and women who have given themselves freely and in Christian consecration to this service. The Young Men's Christian Association and the Knights of Columbus have been in truth the right arm of American Christianity stretched out to shelter, to hearten and to aid. They have been the agents of the churches in their ministry. Without them the contribution of organized American Christianity would have been relatively ineffective. Through them that Christianity has exhibited itself in practical and achieving power as never before.
The outstanding feature of these conspicuous manifestations of American religious life is that they have been absolutely undogmatic. Their type of Christianity has been broadly inclusive of what may be called universally accepted doctrine. Chaplains from most various denominational antecedents have labored together in a spirit of Christian comradeship, bearing only the sign of the cross. The workers, ministerial and lay, recruited by the Young Men's Christian Association have been drawn from all shades of American Evangelicalism and have wrought not only harmoniously one with another, but with the Knights of Columbus and with the representatives of Jewish faith. In common efforts to reach common needs, differences which loomed large at home have been laid aside. The requirements and experiences of our soldiers and sailors have been elemental, and these agencies have sought to meet them with a simple, earnest, uncontroversial Gospel,—the common denominator, if it may so be called, of our American Christianity. They have presented God, sin, salvation, faith in Christ, purity of life, brotherly helpfulness; and to this presentation the young manhood of our armies and navies has been quick to respond. These young men have cared little as to the particular denominational label which these messengers may have worn at home. Spoken with manliness, sincerity and sympathy, the message has won their hearts.
These experiences have inevitably raised the question more insistently, which had already before the war been sounded increasingly loudly in our home churches, whether the divided state of American Christianity is to continue. It has long been deplored. Can it not be in a measure abated? A disposition to believe that it can is increasingly evident. The enlarging support given to the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ since the beginning of the war is significant of a growing conviction that at least a larger federal coöperation is not merely desirable but feasible. The much-divided Lutheran body has taken steps which promise its union in one fold. The last General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States has empowered a committee to issue a call for a Council to meet before the close of the present year by which practical action may be initiated looking towards the organic union of all American Evangelical Christianity. The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States still urges its ambitious and remote plan of a World Conference on Faith and Order, aiming at a general reunion of Christendom; though in this case the war seems to have delayed rather than furthered the project. In the local field, the scarcity of fuel during the recent winter led to hundreds of instances of temporary combinations of congregations representative of different denominations throughout the northern portion of the United States. Not only has no evil been the consequence, but better acquaintance and larger Christian sympathy have resulted. In some places, as in New Brunswick, N. J., these temporary unions have led to efforts to make these combinations permanent. It is evident that the possibility of a larger unity is being discussed as never before, and in a spirit which more than at any previous time tends to emphasize the great truths in which Christians are agreed and to minimize their differences.
Will anything permanently effective come out of this widely diffused desire? Shall we be satisfied with the remarkable exhibitions of Christian coöperation in our army and navy, shall we entertain a pious wish that something similar may be achieved at home, and will the end of the war find us, nevertheless, in our present divided state? The answer will depend on the sacrificial willingness of our American Christianity. Is it ready to pay the cost? That is a far-reaching question any answer to which is at present impossible, for the difficulties in the path of a larger union are enormous. Such a greater unity can be achieved only as several barriers of great strength are overthrown.