WILL CHRISTIANITY SURVIVE THE WAR? 33 



X 



BY THE RIGHT HON. J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P. 



As the vast conflict progresses, we seem to hear less and less 

 of the " revival " of religion that was announced as actual, or 

 imminent, in the earlier stages. Early in September I learn 

 from a newspaper article by Dr. J. Holland Rose, the his- 

 torian, that " religion, in its essentials, is now a matter of 

 interest to very many of the troops." This would seem to 

 mean that it was formerly not so, the preceding sentence 

 having reference to " the religious work done by chaplains 

 (often in our huts) and by our workers " i.e., in the huts and 

 by the workers of the Y.M.C.A., which Dr. Rose justly 

 describes as doing much for the bodily and mental refresh- 

 ment of the troops, with little time to spare for "spiritual " 

 operations. But, on any view, the finding of " matter of 

 interest" in the " essentials" of religion whatever these may 

 be is hardly an attitude of mind to be described as indicating 

 a religious " revival " at the front. And there is really little 

 more (if so much) to be said of the position at home. Some- 

 thing is still said from time to time of the persistence of the 

 revival in France, where, according to English orthodox 

 notions, there was most scope for the phenomenon ; but as 

 regards our own country and our own Army, even clerical 

 testimony, so far as my own observation has gone, is for the 

 most part quite unfavourable to the theory of a religious 

 renascence. 



In Germany, on the other hand, the evidence is rather the 

 other way. I know nothing in English official pronounce- 

 ments that will compare with the allocution addressed some 

 months ago by the Kaiser to a gathering of German Pro- 

 testant clerics. For his Majesty, the state of war was for the 

 German laity, in effect, an Imitatio Christi, as, no doubt, he 

 has always reckoned it for the Army. Broadly speaking, the 

 religious emotion is everywhere in the ratio of the degree of 

 the national strain. France invaded is presumably more 

 ostensibly religious than she would have been had the enemy 

 been confined to the other side of the Rhine ; and even 

 without evidence we may presume that in Belgium, Serbia, 

 Turkey, and Poland the religious instinct is more active than 

 in England. Russia, in peace time perhaps the most religious 

 country in Europe as regards the mass of the population, had 



