20 WILL CHRISTIANITY SURVIVE THE WAR? 



are the conscientious objectors. Indeed, the story runs that 

 among the incriminating literature seized at the house of a 

 leader among these was " Bishop Gore on the Sermon on the 

 Mount." Was it not Bishop Magee, the Chrysostom of Peter- 

 borough, who declared that society run on the lines of the 

 Sermon could not stand for twenty-four hours? Appalling, 

 also, is the way in which either side finds the other hypocritical 

 in its profession of Christianity. A cross fire of those who 

 were about to ally themselves with the Turks vowed it would 

 be the end of right and justice would even cast a doubt on the 

 Divine government of the world if the Entente Powers, pro- 

 fessing Christianity, called in the help of Africans or Asiatics, 

 or the ungrateful and treacherous Japanese. The Roman 

 Catholics of Germany pious two-fifths of the population 

 invoke the same Godhead, the same saints, the same infallible 

 Pope, against the Roman Catholics of France, of Italy, of 

 Ireland. The German Protestants, more steeped in individual 

 study of that two-edged weapon, the Bible, outdo our most 

 narrow-minded sects in more than Cromwellian, more than 

 Boer, self-identification with the Chosen People, to whom all 

 things are lawful in proving their high status. At the head 

 of them is the Kaiser, with " Our old Ally at Rossbach " up 

 his sleeve that approver of the fait accompli, gratified by 

 human hecatombs, showing his favour by fat harvests and 

 gracious permission, as the preachers tell the people, to 

 torpedo defenceless shipping. 



An Old Testament ideal? Yes, but firmly held by men 

 who avow themselves orthodox Christians. Nineteen cen- 

 turies seem only to have laid a veneer of the gospel of love 

 over the European's insatiable soul. And what of the 

 preachers who go about instructing us why these horrors 

 have been permitted by Omnipotence? It is, they say, 

 because of our national sins, our want of faith (as construed 

 by an amazing theology), our failure to observe the Sabbath, 

 our devotion to money-making or games. Let the nation 



pray all together, and faith will prevail over the equal 



faith, the similarly united prayers of our opponents, while 

 vows, entreaties, protestations, intercessions, sputter equal 

 and opposite round the throne of grace. 



For these curious reasons, we are told, a bold, skilful, 

 organized, relentless nation has been " permitted " to make 

 war upon half the world, and confound the innocent with the 

 guilty. In all this there is little instruction and less comfort. 

 It calls up a picture of mockery. 



