6 RELIGION AFTER THE WAR 



tremendously current when the war ends. The signing of 

 the treaty will free us from the irritation caused by hundreds 

 of journalists who can never say that the enemy is engaged 

 in any operation without saying that the enemy is feverishly 

 engaged in that operation ; but long after peace has become 

 a fact the tell-tale phrase, "There is no harm in admitting 

 now," will continue to be rife. All official communiques 

 nearly without exception are obviously composed by persons 

 who love comfortable illusions for the delectation of other 

 persons who love comfortable illusions ; and to read most of 

 them is to feel humiliated at the capacity of human nature for 

 crude self-deception. Of the belligerents, it is precisely the 

 most bellicose, the supreme professional bruiser of the earth, 

 which is deepest sunk in illusions of its own manufacture. 

 Indeed, war is both the offspring and the mother of illusion, 

 and a state of war produces a state of mind in which illusion 

 must flourish. 



Consider the probable influence of all this upon the 

 fortunes of the Christian religion in the United Kingdom. 

 We were prosperous, over-luxurious, and idle. (When I say 

 we, I exclude, as people usually do in such generalizations, 

 the poor, though they are the majority.) We have had a 

 shock. In the physical sense we have braced ourselves. We 

 have put off a certain amount of luxury, and we have worked 

 as perhaps never before. We have made material sacrifices. 

 We are conscious of some degree of rectitude. Again, war 

 has given birth in us, as war always does, to a fear of freedom, 

 an intolerance of minorities, a desire for uniformity as well as 

 unanimity. Further, we have been in danger. Lastly, and 

 chiefly, capping all, the conditions have been favourable to 

 illusion. The moment, therefore, was eminently suitable for 

 a Christian revival. If Christianity, with its offer of eternal 

 security in return for an act of faith, with its specious appeal 

 to the spirit of intolerance and to the spirit of self-satisfaction, 

 with its machinery still complete, with its undeniable virtues, 

 and with the enormous prestige of its grandiose historical 

 past if Christianity could not find new vitality and accep- 

 tance amid the circumstances of the present war, would it 

 ever be likely to find new vitality and acceptance ? 



Has Christianity found new vitality and acceptance? No 

 realistic student of human nature would have been surprised 

 if the churches and chapels had rapidly filled with emotional 

 crowds of devotees who, uplifted by an unaccustomed austerity 

 and an unaccustomed diligence in labour, were seeking in 



