William Penn Lecture
1917
The Christian Patriot
Delivered at
Race Street Meeting House
Philadelphia
by
Norman M. Thomas
Preface
This is the third of the series of lectures known as
the WILLIAM PENN LECTURES. They are supported by
the Young Friends' Movement of Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting, which was organized on Fifth month thirteenth, 1916,
at Race Street Meeting House in Philadelphia, for the
purpose of closer fellowship; for the strengthening by such
association and the interchange of experience, of loyalty to the ideals
of the Society of Friends; and for the preparation by
such common ideals for more effective work thru the Society
of Friends for the growth of the Kingdom of God on earth.
The name of William Penn has been chosen
because he was a Great Adventurer, who in fellowship with his
friends started in his youth on the holy experiment of
endeavoring "to live out the laws of Christ in every thought, and
word, and deed," that these might become the laws and habits
of the State.
Norman M. Thomas, pastor of the American
Parish, New York City, delivered this third
lecture at Race Street Meeting House on Fifth month twelfth, 1917.
Philadelphia, Pa., 1917.
Published 1917 by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Republished electronically © 2004 by Quaker Heron Press
http://www.quaker.org/pamphlets
email: [email protected]
The Christian Patriot
A Discussion of the Relation Between Christianity
and Patriotism
It is interesting to recall the general picture which
I venture to believe would come before our eyes if we
were thinking about the subject you have assigned me, ten
years ago. Instinctively we would see a worthy citizen,
eminently respectable, "the husband of one wife," sober, prompt
in paying his debts, reasonably prosperous, a pillar in
church or meeting, moderately interested in philanthropy
and missions, not concerned very deeply with politics
tho somewhat given to deploring the country's loss of
pristine virtues in short a man estimable and often lovable
in personal life, but a bit smug, narrow and superficial,
without any adequate conception of the social and economic
forces which gave rise to labor unions and other more
radical movements which he too often denounced
without understanding. Perhaps the more radical would
have assigned to our Christian Patriot certain deeper interests
in social justice than those of my typical picture and the
more ardent or romantic would have found the phrase
suggestive of Washington at Valley Forge rather than of any staid
citizen in the piping times of peace.
The point is that practically all of us, men and
women, who honestly thought we were lovers of Christ, of
our country, and of mankind, were really fairly content with
a social order which contained in it the seeds of this
world catastrophe and innumerable fruits of evil and
injustice. We were blind to the terrible contrasts of the principles
of self-seeking which inspired business and national life
and the self-forgetting love incarnated in the Christ to whom
we professed allegiance.
In the midst of the tragedy around us we can look
with some confidence to the future because as never before
men see that the very walls which buttressed our civilization
have crumbled, and that the city of God must be built anew
upon foundations of goodwill, Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone.
No task is more imperative for the Christian than
an examination of true Christian patriotism. How far are
the terms compatible? What are the marks of the Christian
in his social relations? What sort of state shall be the ideal
for one who is trying to think in terms of the Kingdom of God?
By the lurid flames of this conflict we can see
with appalling vividness the utter opposition between Jesus'
way and the world's. We have sought in the organization of
life, first security for ourselves and then power over others.
Our business and political life is fundamentally based on
maxims like these: self preservation is nature's first law;
competition is the life of trade; every man for himself and the devil
take the hindermost; a man can do as he will with his own.
We measure the worth of men in money and even in our
republic Christ's bitter commentary on the Kings of the
Gentiles remains true: "they that have authority over them are
called benefactors."
The law of social life is still largely the law of the
jungle and we have developed a sort of pseudo-science to
justify the brutality and injustice of civilization by talk of
the survival of the fittest. Does this statement seem too
harsh? I grant that the world has shrunk from the logic of its
own theories; mercy and compassion have crept in;
notorious abuses have been cropped off; humanity has made
headway. Nineteen Christian centuries have not been utterly in
vain. The jungle has been fenced and caged and the
self-seeking beast in men has been somewhat tamed by law, by
custom, and by love.
But how slow has been the progress and how
strong the old principles show themselves! We shall not, for
the moment, stop to think of the hideous proof given by war,
by the utter depravity of nations who until recently forced
opium on China for the sake of gain, or by the black iniquity
of men who grow rich by selling women's honor and
corrupting the manhood of the nation with drink. Rather think
of average business, its motives and values in the light of
the Golden Rule in the light of any high idealism. Only
the other day the "New York Times" contained the
following statement:
"Two of the best-known private bankers in
New York said a system of taxation such as had
been proposed by Amos Pinchot would stop the
wheels of commerce by removing any incentive to work."
What is that system? Briefly, it is a scheme for
war finance which would allow no man an income over
$100,000 per annum. These same men doubtless favored
the conscription of life! In plain English, the God of business
is unlimited profit, Mammon, not Christ not even patriotism!
These false principles work out their inevitable
results in the hideous wastes of our civilization, in its
derelict classes, both among the very rich and the very poor, in
its mediocrity in the fields of art and of thought. We who
belong to the more comfortable classes, who can afford to
indulge in the amenities of life, often fail to realize how little our
so-called Christian civilization means to great numbers of
our fellow-countrymen. In spite of our enormous
material progress and national wealth, the masses of laborers
cannot possibly earn for themselves or their children the
minimum necessary for decent subsistence. To give a single
illustration: the average annual income in the garment trades of
New York is estimated to be one-half of the amount (now said
to be $980) needed for a man to support a family of five.
We have abolished slavery but still have
industrial autocracy; we have reformed our tenements but they
are still barracks, not homes, which put the heaviest
possible handicap upon family life. In one school near my
home thirteen per cent of the boys were arrested from one to
six times before they finished the sixth grade, and this is
not because of unusual inherent depravity, but
because economic conditions and the home environment denied
them a fair chance.
Manifestly it is impossible to discuss in any
adequate fashion our industrial situation; fortunately there is
a growing body of literature on the subject. My only
intention in making this indictment of our social order is that in it,
in its principles of self-seeking and its practical denial
of brotherhood, are buried the roots of war; and the
awful horror of war itself is not more terrible than the daily
wastes of life and the worse sacrifices of what makes life
glorious, which are the fruits of a system of the exploitation of
the weak by the strong. The oppression of backward
peoples, child labor, the terrible toil of women, prostitution
these are not singular evidences of individual depravity in
a Christian civilization but the inevitable results of an
un-Christian civilization which daily crucifies Christ afresh.
Before we speak of war or of the state in any detail
we cannot too clearly understand that the religion of Jesus
is profoundly revolutionary. It would substitute
co-operation for competition, greatness in service for worldly gain,
the blessedness of giving for the joy of acquisition. Under it
men and nations which seek life must be willing to lose it. In
the twentieth Christian century men still laugh at Jesus
the dreamer, or wistfully sigh for ideals beyond their grasp;
yet the dreamer has the only hope for the world, the
only medicine for its mortal sickness.
The world has sought safety and power by the way
of individual and national aggrandizement; men and
women have accumulated property and built high and strong
their walls and the end is destruction. Civilization hangs in
the balance. The world's way has failed and its power and
its marvelous mastery over nature are turned to its own
ruin. In the light of this situation we must face the problem
of Christianity. In the twentieth century scarcely more
than in the first is true Christianity a bulwark of the
existing order; rather is it the prophet and pioneer of the
Kingdom of God; but in the twentieth century as in the
first Christianity seeks to change the old ways, not because
of scorn for humanity, but out of passionate love for
mankind, and its weapons are not those of cynicism or violence
but the terrible might of love.
It is because of this belief that Christ came not
merely to proclaim a glorious ideal and challenge us with a
splendid vision, but to reveal a new way of attainment of our
goal that we are utterly opposed to war as a method even in
the service of righteousness. We can not make it too clear to
the world that of course we recognize the difference
between wars for liberty and for conquest; for defense and
for aggression: between Germany and Belgium or France.
We recognize reverently the heroism and idealism which
have inspired soldiers on many a battlefield in the days that
are gone and which are now summoning our friends to go
forth gladly in service for their country as their conscience
leads them to see that service.
But we are compelled to challenge them to face unanswerable facts: all the investment of idealism
and heroism in the wars of history has left us where we
are today. Imperialism has followed imperialism,
feudalism perished and capitalism arose. Men say God grant
they say truly that now the free nations of earth fight for
liberty and democracy and "the privilege of free men every
where to choose their way of life and obedience." Yet that
struggle for freedom has seen in England the rigors of an
absurd and arbitrary censorship and the imprisonment of men
who lived by what they and we think is Christianity. In
America it has already meant our entrance into a war for
democracy without any referendum of the people, our adoption
of conscription without referendum and without
adequate exemption even for conscientious objectors, the
introduction of an espionage bill which denied absolutely
fundamental rights of information and discussion, and a determined
effort in various states to break down all the laws
safeguarding conditions of labor.
In the field of international affairs the story of
Greece and Rumania sadly reminds us that not all disregard
for the real interests of small nations has been on the side
of the Central Powers. But is it not such examination of
the affairs of nations that best shows the ghastly denial
of righteous ends involved in the method of war.
We Christians believe in the supreme worth of personality. War demands that I give my conscience
that which proves my sonship of God into the keeping of
my superior officer. It knows no crime but disobedience.
It sanctions deception and countenances the buying of
treason. It organizes all the triumphs of science for the killing
of men. It denies to me any force in dealing with the
enemy save death and destruction, and it sends me forth to
kill, not individual criminals, but their dupes who seek my
life even as I seek theirs, for ideals of patriotism and of
liberty. Its invariable accompaniments are the lowering of
standards of the sanctities of the home and epidemics of
unmentionable vice and disease. Before this audience it is not necessary
to argue these points but only to remind you of them.
In the December number of "The Atlantic Monthly"
there is the self-told story of a young Canadian officer, a
likable chap, a lover of clean sports and of comradeship.
He describes a bombing party in the trenches undertaken
with skill and heroism. Two of his men were killed in the
attack. He says:
"We had been in six minutes! What happened was that our men spread right and left,
and cleaned up three or four bays altogether. We
had run slam into a `stand to' and men were thick.
We killed between forty and fifty of them. The men were so wild about Bates and Brown that
they killed everyone, altho they squealed and
yelled, `Please, mister!' and `Kamerade.' We got
two prisoners and they were both killed getting
them out. We sure got even for the mine explosion
in October that night."
This is war, and to this brutalizing horror of battle
are we subjecting our young men in the name of
humanity. Really we have not dared face facts but have glossed
them over with sentiment. We have sung "dulce et decorum
est pro patria mori" but in reality we have sent men out not
to die, but to kill for their country, and from a
military standpoint their death is a regrettable incident in the
effort to kill the enemy.
The oft-repeated comparison of the soldier's
sacrifice with Calvary is an even more terrible sentimentalizing
of war. Christ indeed laid down His life; He did not first try
to kill as many others as possible. No righteous end can
justify unholy means; no righteous end can be permanently
attained by such means. You cannot conquer hate by hate,
cruelty by cruelty. You cannot cast out Satan by Satan. Is it
not really the supreme atheism for the Christian to say
that there is no recourse save to the way of war? We believe in
a God of Love, whose way of dealing with evil was revealed
in Christ. Is He so weak that we must save His cause by
such violations of every one of His laws as war requires?
Then our faith is vain and our God is tragically inadequate to
our needs. Or is He after all so little a God of Love that he
willingly countenances this monstrous horror of war? Then He is
not worthy of the love of the least human being who has
ever felt compassion.
Nor is it an answer to challenge us to show
definitely and precisely a program in the history of Christendom
by which each war might have been avoided and justice
served. We can reply that most wars were worse than useless;
none was wholly righteous; even those most righteous have
left behind legacies of hate and unsolved problems.
Moreover, we can point out that the blood of the martyrs has been
far more effective than that of soldiers, and the triumphs
of love which suffers wrong rather than resort to violence
have been astonishingly great when one considers how rarely
men have dared to try that way of overcoming evil.
But our real answer from a Christian standpoint
is found in this fact: God reveals His will to men or to
nations only as they try to do it. We cannot refuse to follow the
light we have and expect God to reveal His perfect day; we
cannot stand outside His paths and wonder that we do not see
how His roads lead over the mountains of difficulty; we can
not follow commercial practices that lead to war, pile
up armaments as a national duty, be comparatively
indifferent to the cry of the starving, and then complain that God
has not shown us the way of salvation from war. Events
have shown that we can trust in huge armaments or in
organizing good will not both. The trust in armaments has led to
this catastrophe. Why not try as a means of national
security the organizing of good will?
The church has haltingly recognized a high
ethical standard in dealing with individuals. We do not preach
that the end justifies the means for the individual Christian
or that a man must know all God's teaching before he
dares trust himself to God's will. It is true also in dealing with
the conflict of social classes that the church with
some consistency has refused to endorse the doctrine that
the end justifies the means. She has said to the working
class: You may be the victims of injustice and oppression,
you may see your children stunted in development or
actually suffering from malnutrition because you have not
enough for food, but in your struggle for justice you must not
use the organized violence of bloodshed.
And now that same church with but rare exceptions
is bidding those same workmen in the name of patriotism
to go out to wage organized warfare surpassing in violence
and fury of destruction all the riots of class conflict, and calls
it holy. To one who thinks, who sees how much more
nearly human well-being for multitudes is bound up in
questions of economic justice than in questions of government
between nations, this inconsistency of the church is a cause for
the utmost foreboding. After the war, when class conflict
will inevitably run high, how can the church say that the way
of readjustment is not the way of organized killing?
Not long ago I attended a meeting of the most violent
of working class radicals. They were men with a
grievance, and that grievance had stirred up hate in their souls.
Most of us whose lives have been lived in more
gracious surroundings would have shuddered at the feeling
revealed that night. I came home to hear my own friends, men
and women trained in our churches, educated in our
universities, express perhaps more violent feeling, not merely
against Germany, but against certain pacifists, groups of willful
men who they felt were blocking the war. As Christians and
as patriots there is no greater service we can render than
to cry out ere it be too late against this fatal inconsistency
of sanctioning between nations those methods which
the church has condemned between classes.
I am not speaking as an absolute non-resistant. I
believe that there are occasions when force, even physical
force, may be justified, but not the hideous violence of war.
One fair test is whether that force can be harmonized with
a redemptive purpose for the individual. This is never true
of the wholesale slaughter of war. I believe in police force,
but war is essentially anarchistic, and denies precisely
those elements of regulated and controlled force exerted against
a known offender, if possible for his ultimate
redemption, which characterize police force in its ideal form. Just
what methods a Christian nation may develop in
resisting organized injustice no one man can foretell, but it is safe
to say that such a nation can find methods infinitely
more effective than war in promoting ends of righteousness
and protecting the weak.
Striking confirmation of the failure of war has
come from men who did not at all speak on Christian
premises. The famous passage from Nietzsche upon the nation
brave enough to lay down its arms is well known. The daily
papers reported a more modern expression in a recent speech
of Mr. Seitz, of the "New York World," before the
American Academy of Political Science :
"As to the consummation for which all mankind should wish, a durable peace based
upon good will and justice, I frankly believe it will
never come. If it does, it will be because some nation
is brave enough to lay down its arms, dismantle
its ships of war and say to all the world: `We have
put aside the tools of conflict. We will be brothers
to mankind and will abide the event, feeling that
if our sacrifice fails the red will be on other
hands than ours'."
Why not try this way? Is there any higher
Christianity or patriotism than to urge this one hope? "Yes," some
earnest Christians will reply. "All this may be true
we ought
not to be in our present position. That we are there is due to
the failure of the church to practice Christianity, but now
war is upon us. Doubtless the motives that led to the war
were mixed and the ends sought may not all be ideal, but on
the whole the country is seeking ideal ends. The thing for us
to do is take our part in the struggle, strive to maintain
ideal values, and after the world has been rid of the fear of
a ruthless autocracy we will be in a better position to
work our Christian ideals in short, war is the less of two evils."
Against this reasoning, whether it arises in our
own hearts or from our friends, we must earnestly
protest. Essentially it is yielding to opportunism and
denying principles. We follow not the fixed star of right, but the
will-o'-the-wisp of advantage. There is a certain tragedy
about the effort of able men to save liberalism and humanity
by the denials of democracy and kindliness necessitated by
war. After all, the surest realities are principles and not
attempted interpretations of opportune ways of reaching the goal.
The ultimate hope of the world is not in the victory
of this government or of that government, but in the
awakening in the heart of the people every where of a passion
for democracy and brotherhood. Who knows in God's
providence what is the surest way to that end? Russia has been
badly defeated by Germany in battle, yet Russia has won
freedom and apparently the leaven of Russian democracy is
doing far more to cast down Prussian autocracy than the
attacks of the Allies. What we surely know is that war is wrong;
we will not try that method; we will try the way of love
and leave the result to God.
The Christian is a lover of his country, but he
could not love his country so much if he did not love God's
kingdom more. The nation may choose war as a way of
righteousness. We should reverence whatever there is of sincerity
and heroism in that choice. We should not forget that we
are part of that nation for better or for worse, and sharers
in the social order out of which has come war. In no
Pharisaic spirit shall we cry out to God in penitence and
intercession, but we must not forget that our supreme loyalty is to
that will of God which for us absolutely forbids war. Not
long since a minister quoted from memory a striking passage
in an old address by President Wilson:
"The supreme citizenship of a Christian
man is in heaven; it is that fact which makes him
free to use, as he thinks best, his citizenship on earth."
That same truth finds moving expression in that
saying of Romain Rolland's which is already a classic:
"For the finer spirits of Europe there are
two dwelling places; our earthly fatherland, and
that other city of God. Of the one we are the guests,
of the other the builders. To the one let us give
our lives and our faithful hearts; but neither
family, friend nor fatherland, nor aught that we love
has power over the spirit. The spirit is the light. It
is our duty to lift it above tempests, and thrust
aside the clouds which threaten to obscure it; to
build higher and stronger, dominating the injustice
and hatred of nations, the walls of that city
wherein the souls of the whole world may
assemble." (Romain Roland: "Above the Battle," p. 54.)
When the Christian fails to acknowledge this
supreme allegiance to the City of God, does he not degrade from
its high place his religion, and in the act of exalting
patriotism above loyalty to God's Kingdom really debase that
patriotism to a poor and empty thing, barren of ideals and of hope
for the future? The highest patriotism is the patriotism
that sees in love of country a means of service to the Kingdom
of God, and it is perhaps the deepest of all the tragedies of
war that it tends to deny this truth.
There is, therefore, really no greater service that
can be rendered by the Christian patriot than the effort to
think thru the problem of the State and its relation to
the individual. Obviously so large a task quite transcends
the bounds of this lecture; yet it is necessary to make the
attempt to suggest certain broad lines along which each of us
may direct his thought.
Inevitably in war time the tendency is to magnify
the State, to make of it a metaphysical entity, a sort of god,
to whom the individual should cheerfully offer his life. To
be sure, we are going to war in part to conquer the
Prussian ideal of the state, but in war we adopt a large measure
of the Prussian ideal; for the difference between the
Prussian and the democratic ideal of the state is only partially
that one has an hereditary Kaiser and the other an
elective president; it is mainly in that the Prussian ideal
teaches that the individual exists for the State which is above
the ordinary moral law; while the true democratic ideal is
that the State exists for the well-being of individuals and
must be judged by the moral law.
But we are hearing all about us that men who
have enjoyed the equal benefits of government must be
prepared without question, even at the cost of conscience, to
give their lives to the order of government, and this in spite
of the fact that the benefits of government are really far
from equal and that the government has decided without
any real appeal to the people on the policy of war. Moreover,
as we have seen, the very act of engaging in war means
that we set up the state as a law unto itself, so that what
is hideously immoral for the individual or for groups
of individuals becomes righteous when done by the order
and in the name of the state. What is this but the beginning
of Prussianism?
In part, this doctrine of the state is due to a
wholesome reaction against an unreal individualism. It is perfectly
true that no man is self-made, but that we owe what we are
to society. However, society and the state are by no
means synonymous. I am not merely indebted to my country,
but to humanity. Paul stated that great truth when he said,
"I am debtor both to the Greek and to the barbarian, both
to the wise and the foolish." I am dependent literally upon
the labors of men of all races thruout the world for the
material basis of life, for food and for clothing; while all that
makes for the glory of the life of the spirit science, art,
music, knowledge, religion, these are international and
supra-national or they are nothing.
I am a humble member not only of my nation, but
of the great toiling human brotherhood, of the group of
seekers after truth and beauty, of the glorious company of the
church invisible and universal. For me and those of my
generation the wise and the foolish of every race since time began
have toiled; and we shall pass on the better or the worse for
our fidelity this heritage to unnumbered generations of
nations that may be yet unborn. Nations are but creatures of a
day humanity endures; and to make me transfer to my
nation all the debt I owe to mankind is fundamentally unjust
and a striking example of that loose thinking which helps
to make war possible.
At this hour we must emphasize this truth, tho
at another time or in other company we might rather
dwell upon the deep, pure springs of love of country. There is
a cheap and shallow cosmopolitanism which has no roots
in the soil, no strong affections for one's kin. It loves all
men and places equally because it loves no men or places
deeply. Americans are not now in danger of this thing. We do
not need to be warned of the sorry and empty life of the
man without a country.
There is another distinction we must make in
speaking of the state and the individual. It is a distinction
obvious enough in times of peace, tho somewhat confused in
times of war. The government and the country are not
identical. Love and loyalty to the country do not necessarily
mean implicit support of the government; rather, they
may necessitate all honorable means to change that
government. Service to one's country is by no means always
and everywhere the same as service to one's government; tho,
of course, save in extraordinary circumstances, obedience
to a constitutional government of which one does not
wholly approve is a necessity for the life of the nation and a
logical implication of love of country.
With these necessary distinctions in mind, let us
look for a little while at certain just and unjust functions of
the state. By all odds the most stimulating modern thinker
on this subject is Bertrand Russell, from whom I shall
frequently quote in this section of my address. In modern theory
and practice the state exercises two functions
almost unquestioned: the preservation of internal order and
of external security against foreign foes. The prevention
of internal anarchy and the imposition of some checks
upon the might of the strong, are very great achievements; yet
we need to have a care lest our devotion to order make us
feel too great a reverence for the status quo.
The problem for the Christian patriot is to try to
bring about a state sufficiently intelligent and flexible to
maintain order without ruthlessly repressing men's search for
justice. When extreme fear of disorder makes the state as
happens so often the blind ally of the property-holding,
power-possessing class, it really becomes the agent of
injustice and creates, in turn, a blind hate of itself on the part of
the workers which bodes ill for the future. Here in our own
land the history of the West Virginia strike, the Colorado
strike terminating in the tragedy of Ludlow, and the
disgraceful handling of the strike of foreign workers in Bayonne,
are vivid illustrations not only of the faults of our
industrial system, but of the state's management of matters of
vital importance.
Again, the vastness of the modern state lies like a
load upon the average citizen and tends to crush his
initiative, and leaves him with a hopeless sense of the inevitable.
The history of the efforts of the past few months gives
striking proof of this fact. There can be little doubt that the
more articulate upper classes which controlled the press forced
a war upon the people which large masses either did not
want or did not understand, but before which they felt
themselves helpless. No effort ought to be more appealing to
the intelligent citizen than the quest for a doctrine and
practice of the state which will both maintain order with
out forbidding progress and leave larger room for local
action where the individual can make himself and his ideals felt.
These and other internal changes will not come
until we can deal more effectively with what is commonly
assumed to be the chief function of the state namely, the
preservation of security against foreign foes. Heretofore need of
such security has led men to tolerate injustice in order that
a strong government may be feared abroad. Nations have
piled up armaments always on the plea of defense.
"But the armaments which are nominally intended to repel invasion may also be used
to invade. And so the means adopted to diminish the external fear have the effect of increasing it,
and of enormously enhancing the destructiveness of war when it does break out. In this way a reign
of terror becomes universal, and the state
acquires everywhere something of the character of
the Comité du Salut Public." (Bertrand Russell :
"Why Men Fight," p. 54.)
The state whose main purpose is safety from a
dreaded foe, still more than the state whose governing class
ruthlessly seeks power, simply cannot grant real individual
liberty, even in the sacred matter of conscience. It can and does
perhaps it must take poet and scientist and artist,
men made to be leaders of the life of the human spirit,
and sacrifices them as cannon-fodder in nationalistic wars.
It exercises a tyranny upon conscience more ruthless
than that claimed by any church, for it takes all young men at
a formative period and drills them in the habit of
automatic and unquestioning obedience. When young men are
forming ideals and convictions, it subjects them to the iron bonds
of the philosophy and practice of war. Under these
cir-cumstances, it is absurd to talk about freedom of
conscience in any state where universal military service prevails,
no matter what exemptions may be made to the adult conscientious objector in time of war. We begin with
the school boy and regiment conscience and ideals to
support the doctrine of the glory of the supreme atrocity of war.
Nor can we hope for anything else:
"So long as war remains a daily imminent danger, the state will remain a Moloch,
sacrificing sometimes the life of the individual, and
always his unfettered development to the barren
struggle for mastery in the competition with other
states. In internal as in external affairs, the worst
enemy of freedom is war." (Bertrand Russell : "Why
Men Fight," p. 77.)
Of course, the cure for this is some sort of
world organization for the regulation of international affairs.
We are tolerably familiar with the ideals of the League to
Enforce Peace, and one of the good results of this war
will undoubtedly be that the world will turn in
self-preservation to some such new form of organization.
Yet there are certain dangers in the form in which
the doctrine of this League is often propagated. No
mere organization of new and greater alliances will bring
us permanent salvation; still less, a situation wherein
each nation drills all its young men for war. We must strike
into the roots of the matter. What are those roots?
1. In general, as we have seen, they lie buried in
the unchristian social order of which we are a part. In
particular, they are found in the existence in all powerful nations
of classes possessing surplus capital and not surplus
morality. These classes covet the marvelous profit to be made
by exploiting weaker peoples in China, India, Africa,
Morocco, Mesopotamia, Tripoli, Mexico. Our system of
secret diplomacy and our false national pride make it easy for
such groups to use nations as their tools. "The place in the
sun" that every great power in the world including ourselves
has sought with shameful disregard of treaties and
fundamental morality, is not really a place for anyone in the nation but
a group of financiers who seek enormous concessions and
in credible dividends. Such studies as Brailsford's "War of
Steel and Gold" and Howe's "Why War" have laid the facts
before us. A league of nations which leaves unchecked this sort
of alliance of states and exploiting capitalists will never
heal the open sores of the world. It will be the duty of some
sort of international commission to protect the weaker
peoples from exploitation and aid them in their development
like brothers. No other policy will bring just or lasting peace.
2. But the roots of war lie in a false psychology as
well as in the self-interest of certain classes. Mr. Russell
has shown how war springs from a deep-seated impulse,
rather than from a calculation of advantage.
"The impulse to quarreling and
self-assertion, the pleasure of getting one's own way in spite
of opposition, is native to most men. It is this impulse, rather than any motive of calculated
self-interest, which produces war and causes the difficulty of bringing about a world state. And
this impulse is not confined to one nation; it exists,
in varying degrees, in all the vigorous nations of
the world." (Bertrand Russell: "Why Men Fight," p. 113)
These impulses become further organized in a kind
of religion of patriotism.
"Patriotism is a very complex feeling, built
up out of primitive instincts and highly
intellectual convictions. There is love of home and family
and friends, making us peculiarly anxious to
preserve our own country from invasion. There is the
mild, instinctive liking for compatriots as
against foreigners. There is pride, which is bound up
with the success of the community to which we feel
we must belong. There is a belief suggested by
pride but reinforced by history that one's own
nation represents a great tradition and stands for
ideals that are important to the human race. But
besides all these, there is another element at once
nobler and more open to attack, an element of
worship, of willing sacrifice, of joyful merging of
the individual life in the life of the nation. This
religious element in patriotism is essential to the strength of the state, since it enlists the best that is in
most men on the side of national sacrifice.
"The religious element in patriotism is reinforced by education, especially by a
knowledge of the history and literature of one's own
country, provided it is not accompanied by much
knowledge of the history and literature of other countries.
In every civilized country all instruction of the
young emphasizes the merits of their own nation,
which because of its superiority, deserves support in
a quarrel however the quarrel may have originated. This belief is so genuine and deep that it
makes men endure patiently, almost gladly, the
losses and hardships and sufferings entailed by war.
Like all sincerely believed religions, it gives an
outlook on life, based upon instinct but sublimating
it, causing a devotion to an end greater than any personal end, but containing many personal
ends as it were in solution." (Bertrand Russell :
"Why Men Fight," pp. 55-56.)
It is one of the terrible inadequacies of this religion
of patriotism that usually it only functions strongly
against foreign danger. Men will give their lives for their country
in battle who pay taxes with exceeding reluctance and cry
out against all effort to make the state an efficient social servant.
I know a woman who glories in her patriotism and
saw her son enlist with pride, who was offended when she
was advised not to go in her automobile to a certain district
of the New York East Side at the time of the food riots,
and could not under stand that patriotism might in any way
be involved in solving the desperate need of the people for
fairer and more economical distribution of food.
About that same time a distinguished American,
an ex-cabinet minister, spoke to a crowded public forum
urging that humanity and patriotism demanded our entrance
into war, but he grew angry when in the course of discussion
it was urged that thousands of his fellow-citizens thought
there was at least an equal urgency for patriotic and
intelligent dealing with the food problem.
In short, our religion of patriotism with all its
noble elements is based upon certain selfish impulses, it
lacks the universality which is the mark of all true religion,
and heretofore it has only applied with force to the
external security and power of the state and not to the internal
well-being of the people. Is it not a sad commentary that so
many nations including our own are adopting or considering
social reforms simply because they are necessary war measures?
If ever we are to have peace it will be because Christianity, which has shown such extraordinary power
in substituting impulses of righteousness in the individual
for the old selfish desires, will do the same for the nation.
It will go on and cleanse and purify patriotism. It will take
all that is noble in it and apply it to the removal of
ancient abuses within our common life. It will make it the
servant of mankind. The things that the Christian patriot will
desire for his country, "Will no longer be things which can
be acquired only at the expense of others, but rather
those things in which the excellence of anyone country is to
the advantage of all the world. He will wish his own country
to be great in the arts of peace, to be eminent in thought
and science, to be magnanimous and just and generous. He
will wish it to help mankind on the way toward that better
world of liberty and international concord which must be
realized if any happiness is to be left to man. He will not desire
for his country the passing triumphs of a narrow
poss-essiveness, but rather the enduring triumph of having
helped to embody in human affairs something of that spirit
of brotherhood which Christ taught and which the
Christian churches have forgotten. He will see that this spirit
embodies not only the highest morality, but also the truest
wisdom and the only road by which the nations, torn and
bleeding with the wounds which scientific madness has inflicted,
can emerge into a life where growth is possible and joy is
not banished at the frenzied call of unreal and fictitious
duties. Deeds inspired by hate are not duties, whatever pain
and self-sacrifice they may involve. Life and hope for the
world are to be found only in the deeds of love." (Bertrand
Russell, Atlantic Monthly, May, 1917, p. 628.)
So far we have considered the attitude of the
thoughtful Christian to the usual functions of the state. In
modern times there has been a wholesome extension of its
powers to what we may call work of social well-being. The state
has properly taken over certain services like the post office
and the control or regulation of public utilities as the
most convenient agent of society. It has required for the
common good certain minimum standards of health and
education. It is more and more becoming the protector of children.
Another most useful power of the state is that
which seeks to diminish economic injustice which is
usually connected with the extreme forms of the right of
private property. Here we enter on a field of extraordinary
interest and of the utmost importance to the Christian patriot. It
is so vast as to make any attempt to discuss it in the limits
of this lecture ridiculous. May I, however, venture to state
the problem somewhat as follows: How shall the state
protect its citizens from the inevitable exploitation of a system
under which land and public resources pass into the control of
a few people? It is said that in America two per cent of
the people own sixty-five per cent of the wealth, and the
most ardent defender of the competitive order will not argue
that this proportion entirely corresponds to differences in
ability and energy between the "haves" and "have-nots."
One answer to this question is, of course, state Socialism, but that raises its own problem. How shall
we then protect individual initiative and freedom from the
deadly weight, if not the actual tyranny, of an unsympathetic
and unimaginative bureaucracy? Only by large
dependence within the state upon strong voluntary
cooperative organizations of individuals which compete with one
another, not for the amassing of private wealth, but in service,
can we rescue the individual from the tyranny of our
present system on the one hand and state Socialism on the other.
It is not for the Christian to dogmatize on the
method; it is his task to try to inspire men with the sense of the
joy of service which alone can energize any such program
of social righteousness.
I have tried to point out to you the extraordinary
and inspiring problems raised when we try to visualize
what manner of man the Christian patriot should be and what
is involved both in his Christianity and his patriotism.
Our discussion of those fundamental problems ought
to illuminate for us the particular problem we may have
to face of choice between the obedience to the voice of
the government of the country which we dearly love, and
that voice of conscience which is for us the voice of God. For
us in these things there can be but one answer. We will
render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but unto God
the things that are God's, and conscience is God's.
There is, of course, laid upon us an imperative duty
to neglect no means of inward illumination. We shall seek
the light that comes in social contacts; in general we may
do well to be suspicious of a conviction that sets us at
variance with the majority of our fellow Christians. Yet surely
we who are here in this room can say with confidence
that since all our search into the problem of war and
Christianity makes us the more certain that war is the open and
absolute denial of Christianity, if ever we are ordered into
military service we cannot hesitate to obey God rather than the
state, at whatever cost to ourselves. In so doing we are
really attesting our love for the soul of the state which
perishes when conscience is denied. We who are here apparently
will stand in a somewhat favored position which, we are
proud to say, is not of our seeking. Members of the Society
of Friends and ministers of religion, as such, are
exempted from combatant service. This is manifestly absurd.
Either the iron logic of war should override all considerations
save the necessity of compelling the citizen to fight, or
else exemptions should be granted to the individual on the
basis of his own conscience.
The fact of our exemption ought to redouble our
efforts for justice and for peace. No conceivable political action
at the present time will perfectly embody our ideals. Even
peace itself might be a peace of exhaustion, of cowardice, or
of indifference, which would fall far short of the peace of
a nation devoted to the ideals of the Kingdom of God.
There is, therefore, a certain disappointment about all
political efforts to save what idealism can be saved in times of
war. Yet we are by no means to be forgiven if we do not
make every possible effort to incorporate our principles into
the life of the state by political action.
The events of the last few weeks demonstrate
beyond need of words that it will take the hardest kind of a fight
to maintain freedom of conscience, speech, and
assemblage here in America. We have held these treasures, bought
by the blood of martyrs, very lightly. We have
carelessly assumed that a republican form of government was
an infallible guarantee of freedom, and certain flagrant
denials of those fundamental rights here in America have not
yet aroused us.
Personally, I cannot but feel that the conscription
bill is subversive of our liberties, and that we should agitate
for its repeal. I know that some who share our hatred of
war are persuaded that now that war has come,
selective conscription is the less of two evils. They argue that
its alternative, the volunteer system, is neither a genuine
system nor truly voluntary. They point to the disruption of life,
the loss of the most ardent young men, and the
enormous recruiting campaign of hate and hysteria which are
the inevitable attendants of volunteering. These arguments
have weight, yet it seems to me that they are seriously
outweighed by other considerations.
Recognition of the conscription principle in
America means the triumph of a false and dangerous idea of
the state. It is, as we have seen, inevitably opposed to
freedom of conscience. It means the monstrous absurdity of
expecting conscripts to fight for ideals. They may understand a
war for territory or for protection of hearth and home, but
only free men can undertake war for ideals. Terrible as war
is, for the man who enters it with a sense of embarking on
a holy crusade or even with the love of adventure, there
is some thing to lift up his soul above the cruelties, the
lies and the hatred of the battle line, but the conscript who
fights in a war which he does not understand or to which he
may be opposed, has no such partial redemption. Hysterical
or coercive public opinion is a fearful evil, but to a certain
extent it may be fought on its own grounds with weapons of
reason, but the principle of coercion is written in the statute
book, and one can only oppose it in time of war by
seeming disloyalty to the government. Yet even at this risk we
cannot allow the American public to forget what is involved
by embarking on this policy.
A secondary, but important, issue is that of gaining
a proper exemption law for individual conscientious
objectors. This is more immediately hopeful. Men may be aroused to
a sense of shame that the descendants of exiles
for conscience's sake should deny the right of conscience
to men on pain of imprisonment. The Pilgrim Fathers
were only the first of thousands of men and women in
all generations who sought asylum in a new world. For us
there are no new worlds save as we can renew this land
in allegiance to the ancient loyalties. If we fail in this we
can still give legal, material, and spiritual help to
the conscientious objectors and their families, for there is
no doubt that if the war continues we shall find
Americans brave enough to suffer punishment rather than to
betray their souls. Conscription of the conscientious objector
on whatever ground is worse than chattel slavery, for the
slave may still be in heart and conscience free. It raises the
grave question whether the state which considers it necessary
for its own security is worth the price.
During the fight against conscription and for at
least the exemption of conscientious objectors, I was
in Washington for a number of days. There is no doubt
that the law in its present form passed chiefly because it was
an administration measure; many men voted for it even
though they did not believe in it. An observer could not but be
greatly depressed by the lack of courage and of
intelligent understanding in the discussion of principles displayed
by Congress. Some men voted under pressure; others with
an irritated desire to make objectors fall in line; others
from fear that in no other way could an army be raised;
others with a rather touching faith in the governmental
machinery that somehow or other would take no really useful men
from civil life.
In the House fifteen minutes was given to the
whole matter of the exemption of conscientious objectors.
There was no real discussion, but after an able speech by
Mr. Keating, who proposed an amendment in behalf of this
vital principle of liberty, there was along parliamentary
wrangle as to the time of taking a vote, so at last when the
amendment was voted on many men had forgotten what the issue
really was.
To observe all this was to feel one's self stripped
of illusions as to the ideal character of our conduct of
this war, and yet, after all, probably these mixed motives
and this lack of understanding displayed by Congress are
fairly typical of the dominant public opinion. It is our task
by fearlessly speaking the truth to try to educate our
fellow countrymen.
Meanwhile we must steadily work for peace, the
only condition under which men can have true liberty. We
must insist on democratic control of diplomacy, upon no
secret agreement that binds us to fight for nationalistic
interests of the various allies: that England may have
Mesopotamia; France, Syria; or Italy, the eastern coast of the
Adriatic. With whatever influence we have we must see to it
that America does not descend into war for revenge or
for indemnities or for trade advantages after the war. No
just and lasting peace is possible unless men continually
discuss its conditions and agitate for it.
Nor is this all. During the war there is bound to
be steady assault upon such safe guards as we have
painfully erected around the labor of women and children. It is for
us to be foremost in the struggle to maintain and
strengthen these safeguards and to insist that there is no
higher patriotism than that which would protect the
coming generation and generations yet unborn.
These duties of political action, of education
and agitation, do not satisfy all the demand laid upon us.
What service can we who are steadfastly opposed to war render
to our country and to mankind by the way in which we
order our daily lives? It is entirely possible that before the end
of the war we may face individually our attitude toward
the draft for non-combatant service. Now we face the
more inspiring search for the best opportunities for
voluntary service. We have two perils to avoid. We cannot on the
one hand fall in line behind a "win the war" slogan,
craving indulgence for individual idiosyncrasies of conscience
which make us unwilling to help win it with a gun but not with
a hoe; on the other hand, we dare not seem indifferent to
the tragedy of the needs of the world.
What principles shall guide us? After all, this is
an individual problem. We cannot dictate to one another. All
of us, I presume, will avoid direct participation in the war
or in military operations. We will not merely refrain
from fighting, but from making munitions or cutting
trench timbers for the army. Yet by our very membership in
the nation we cannot avoid some indirect participation in
war unless we commit suicide. I may protest against paying
a war tax, but the government can take my property. If I
am doing any useful service, I am indirectly adding to
the nation's strength, all of which is pledged to winning
the war. I can, how ever, avoid even indirect participation
in military operations, and it is there that I personally
would draw the line. I would not voluntarily do
non-combatant service under military control in such a capacity as
camp cook, even though feeding men is in itself good. I
should, however, gladly do anything in my power to raise more
food for the feeding of a world on the verge of starvation,
even tho some of that food might benefit the army. If there is
a food scarcity it will not be the army that is the first to
suffer. I believe our voluntary associations engaged in this
problem should do what they can to direct their food supplies to
the poor who may be close to the verge of starvation, and to
the infinitely more unfortunate refugees of Europe and
Asia; but if in the glorious task of helping to create means of
life I indirectly aid the army I shall remember that it, too,
is composed of men, and that I am the son of a Father
who makes His rain to fall upon the just and the unjust. So,
too, I might take part in volunteer ambulance service,
feeling that it was my concern to save life without too close
an inquiry as to whether that life will again be invested
in military service.
When it comes to conscription for such service
the problem is changed. The conscriptive principle as such
has its dangers. Conceivably it could be used to promote a
state approaching involuntary servitude among workers. If so
we should be obliged to resist it. Moreover, anyone with a
sense of a call from God to his own particular task might
look with sorrow upon the institution of state regulation of
men's labor. But the chief opposition to conscription even for
useful civil service under the civil branches of the government
will come from men who feel that it is a war measure and
that as such they cannot agree to any compulsory change
of occupation even if the alternative be imprisonment. I
respect but do not now share this view, but would consent
to conscription for some form of useful public service
in agriculture, administration of relief, reclamation of
waste land, and the like if in so doing I should feel that I
was serving not so much a war government as society and
my country. It would be my profound hope that I might be
found at tasks of such usefulness that even the State could
not deny my real social value and would leave me at my
task. Each of us must give his own answer to these
problems, looking to God for help.
The one thing that the Christian Patriot cannot
afford to have said of him in these days is that he is a
"slacker" who is uninterested in the well-being of his country and
of his comrades. There is a patriotism of saving life,
of organizing goodwill, to which we are called alike in times
of peace and of war. It is the duty of the Christian to feel
that he must at all times invest his life where it will count for
the most in the task to which God calls each of His
children thru the vision, the opportunities and the capacities
which He entrusts to us.
Perhaps the war will present new and urgent opportunities which will temporarily or permanently
change our particular calling. It will certainly summon each of
us to examine his conscience to see to it that he is
rendering the maximum of service. We cannot live in ease and
luxury while men and women and little children are perishing
and civilization hangs in the balance. It is peculiarly our task
to find ways of feeding the starving populations of the
world and of reconstructing on a better basis life that is
utterly devastated. This will call for a high order of courage
which will show the world that men are not pacifists because
they are cowards.
Few of us may find opportunity for actual service
among refugee peoples or in prison camps. All of us can
find opportunities for unselfish support of this work
of brotherhood. The development of the war may bring us
face to face with the problem of the Christian treatment of
alien enemies within our borders or ultimately of prisoners of
war. It will almost surely make more acute many
anti-social conditions in our cities; juvenile delinquency has
greatly increased in Germany and England. A similar fate may
befall us, and we must be prepared to meet it.
I am necessarily speaking in general terms. It
would be presumptuous in me to do more, for it is the
Committee of the Society of Friends which has taken the lead
in constructive suggestions; and yet I cannot close
without reminding myself as well as you that in days when many
of our friends are showing supreme heroism in leaving
homes and families and risking their lives in a cause which
they believe to be holy, we cannot for very shame's sake so
live that we need defense against the charge of selfishness.
Our service will come thru our manner of life, our loyalty to
truth, our personal contacts with all men and especially with
the suffering, our generosity in giving, our struggle to
maintain the rights of freedom of conscience, of speech and
assemblage in time of war, and our devotion to God's cause
everywhere. It will not be merely a matter of acts but of thought.
There is nothing that our country needs more than
the effort of men to think on the problems that confront us.
In Washington there is a restaurant upon whose walls
hang mottoes of great variety, such as:
"Let us have peace."
"Don't give up the ship!"
"My country right or wrong."
"There is a higher law than the Constitution."
This is a parable of the state of our minds, which
are furnished not so much with clear-cut principles as
with conflicting phrases which we bring forth upon
occasions without thinking of their implications. It is for us to face
the hard task of straight thinking; to know the power of
thought "which looks into the pit of hell and is unafraid." It is for
us to use the war both as the text and the occasion
for proclaiming by life and by word our faith in a God of Love.
God has called us to set forth upon a high venture.
He has granted us an unforgettable vision. Tho we are
weak, yet He has chosen us as pioneers of His Kingdom,
fellow workers with Him. Can we possibly face this task without
a profound sense of our own inadequacy? Shall we not
bow ourselves before the Most High in utter humility because
in wisdom, in strength and in love we come so far short of
His glory? In humility and penitence will be our strength.
We are not called to judge our brothers but ourselves. We
are called to dedicate ourselves to truth as God gives us to
see the truth. So let us press forward. Tho the night be
dark around us, our faces are set toward morning; tho sorrow
be our companion, ours shall be the joy of victory, for He
who has given to us our heavenly vision will give us strength
to be obedient unto it.
God's cause cannot be defeated. Now in the hearts
of brave and thoughtful men suffering in the trenches of
the battle line, of steadfast and lonely men who have
chosen imprisonment rather than disobedience to conscience,
of faithful, serviceable men and women of all nations
whose compassion goes out to the sorrows of mankind, a new
sense of love and brotherhood is arising which shall yet
conquer war and make peace glorious. Is there any joy that
shall equal our comradeship in this company of God's soldiers?