8 RELIGION AFTER THE WAR 



assertion strictly to my own experience, and it is right for me 

 to say that I did once, at the front, come across an officer 

 who rose very early on Sundays before a heavy day's work 

 and unostentatiously and simply went to mass. He was a 

 Frenchman and a clericalist.) 



When one looks broadly at the record of the British 

 Christian churches in regard to the war one sees Y.M.C.A. 

 huts. I have no accusation to bring against Y.M.C.A. huts, 

 and I am ready to believe that they generally fulfil a useful 

 function. But I cannot accept them as proof that Christianity 

 has come triumphantly or even respectably well out of the 

 war. Indeed, the multitude of them does not in the least 

 degree modify my conviction that the war has finally demon- 

 strated the authenticity of an event which in importance far 

 transcends the war itself namely, the fall of the Christian 

 religion. The fall of a religion, even a religion relatively so 

 crude and poor in theological invention as the Christian, is a 

 majestic and overpowering circumstance, with enormous im- 

 plications. It cannot fail to solemnize even those whose 

 devotion to truth, after an age of acrid bitterness, suffering, 

 and passionate derisions, has brought it about. 



Some will say : " But if Christianity is dead, what are you 

 going to do?" To which I should answer that I do not 

 propose to do anything. To which again they will rejoin : 

 "But religion is a universal human necessity." If by the 

 word " religion " is meant merely moral aspirations towards 

 an ideal, I agree. But if the word is to retain its ordinary 

 meaning, and to connote a supernatural dogma concerning 

 an alleged creator of the universe and an alleged future life 

 and the proper means for providing for one's welfare in that 

 future life, then of course I disagree. I have no supernatural 

 religion, and I have never had one. I do not feel the need 

 of a supernatural religion, and I have never felt such a need. 

 And though it would be unphilosophical to be positive about 

 the future, I do not think that I shall ever feel such a need, 

 or that if I do feel it I shall ever succeed in satisfying it. I 

 was brought up in an atmosphere of dogma. I regularly 

 attended all sorts of divine services, and some of my earliest 

 recollected feelings are those of instinctive protest against 

 their absolute futility. I never prayed sincerely or without a 

 sharp sense of the ridiculous. The moment when I could 

 cut myself free from any religious organization was a moment 

 of intense relief, and from that moment I have never entered 

 a place of worship save in a spirit of sociological, historical, 



