WAR AND RELIGION

In a striking antithesis former Justice Clark of the Supreme Court said: "We must choose now between Christ and Mars." In his lecture at Brown he pictured all too vividly the inevitable horrors of a future war; and he discussed the problem from a unique standpoint. His thesis in brief is that Christianity will never survive the next war; as if more reasons were needed to prove that such a conflict must be avoided at all cost!

Plausible as his opinions are, there is another attitude which can be taken as to the interaction of war and religion. In a recent volume Mr. Bakeless of Williams writes: "It is but a few years since . . . Russian, Austrian, and German troops were marching in the names of gods as truly tribal as Allah and Yahweh ever were, . . . and the Jehad, or Holy War, was proclaimed in the Moslem world. Even a "D man" in History 1 recognizes that it was religion that set Europe aflame with hostilities after the Reformation and sent war and misery to the Indian empires of the West. Christianity, like other religions, has all too often become a tool in the hands of the war lords.

The trouble, indeed, is not with Christianity, but in the way with which men practice it. Ideally, Justice Clark's dilemma is a true one; practically, it is not. Instead of merely pleading for religion, therefore, he must urge a moral regeneration of mankind, a true use of the precepts of Christianity. The prospect of peace is made all the more gloomy because in the present very materialistic civilization the practice of brotherly love scarcely extends beyond the home circle, let along transcends national boundaries. To pound home the very sordid conclusion that another war will forever wreck American prosperity and the European hope of future wealth is perhaps the only way in which the great mass of people can be persuaded to change its militaristic tactics. It is only ideally that religion is a foe of Mars.