CHAPTER VII

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR

B. THE AIMS AND SPIRIT OF THE ALLIES AND OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

We must now consider the ethical values involved in the action of the Allied Powers and of the United States of America when they entered into the great war.

1. We must state the matter as simply and bluntly as possible in relation, say, to the United States. "Was it the duty of the American nation, acting through its Government, to enter into the war against Germany?"

Let us be careful to see what the wrong ways of putting this question may be. The question is not, “Are you angry enough to strike back?" nor, "Do you hate Germany hard enough to wish to kill the Germans?"" Nor again, is it a relevant question whether America is herself sinless enough to engage in such a task. Some would say it is hypocrisy for a nation which has its own faults, to blame and chastise another, as this nation blames Germany and seeks to bring her to her knees. We

must remember that a man who sees before him a definite duty is not absolved from performing it because he is conscious of faults of his own. Shirking the duty imposed upon him by his office and relations to other people will never help to cleanse his conscience. Indeed, the hypocrisy may rather lie on the other side, on the side of a nation which should avoid the performance of its duty in war by professing to be morally unfitted for the task. These considerations are all aside from the real question, which is exactly as we have stated it above. Assuming that no man is without sin, no nation without its faults, its blunders, perhaps even its crimes, the question remains facing us, whether or not it is the duty of the United States of America as a nation and government to cast itself with all its strength into the task of defeating Germany, and so help to direct history away from the path on which German doctrine and the German spirit would drive the nations of the world.

There is still another way of putting the matter which we must deprecate. There are those who say, from the security of their Christian life, that this is a wicked world and that in such a world nothing else could be expected. This means that perhaps from mere earthly standpoints the declaration of war can be defended and those who live on these lower levels may not be adding therefore to their guilt before God by accepting their share

in the matter. This seems a clear case of intellectual prevarication. Our whole life and all our duties arise in a world of sin. All fulfilment of duty is infected with the imperfection of our personal characters, and all our attempts to obey the Sermon on the Mount are met by the perplexities of our situation. These principles, serene as the stars when Jesus speaks them, become confusing lights among the shadows of our earthly and our sinful relations and impulses. There is no region where Christian duty does not come upon us in the midst of relations which are not perfect, human laws which are defective, situations which have evil in them. It is into these that the will of God must enter and can enter only through our fulfilment of duty. Is it a religious duty to engage in the war?

2. Manifestly the Church of Christ in America could only maintain that this Government did wrong in declaring a state of war with Germany, on the theory that the existence of the State and the fulfilment of its functions lie outside the will of God, a position which, as we have seen, is inconsistent with the whole conception of human nature and the relation of the providence of God to human history, and with the place and task of the Church in the midst of the nations. In seeking, therefore, to discover whether the action of the State must receive the approval of Christian men and their support, we must briefly review the

action of the nations that are at war with Germany. What, on the whole, is the spirit in which they have undertaken this tremendous enterprise?

First, we must emphasize their unpreparedness and weakness up to the hour when the cataclysm occurred. These very conditions were confessedly part of the incitement felt by the German people. France was understood to be undermined in her morale, and inefficient in her military organization; Russia was understood to be very rapidly reforming her army institution and building up great military power, but this process was far from complete; Great Britain had indeed the most powerful navy in the world, but if she entered into the war, her efforts would be confined to the sea, as she had only a small standing army, large numbers of which were constantly necessary for garrisoning far-distant parts of her empire.

Next, we must remind ourselves of the most strenuous efforts made by each and all of these countries to prevent Germany from plunging Europe into a struggle that might end in the utter destruction of her civilization. It is no exaggeration to say that the ambassadors of all these nations at Berlin, and their cabinets in their own capitals, in almost hourly conference with German ambassadors and ministers, exhausted all the means which the human mind could conceive to change the purpose of the Kaiser and his ministry. Moral