1. If the principles of Jesus mean anything, they apply to universal humanity. And there can be no insular or national or imperial limitations to the duties we owe to our common humanity. In Christianity, at any rate, there are no aliens or foreigners: “neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, no male and female: for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus” (Gal_3:28). And so we welcome the truth that the religion of Christ is the pioneer of new national careers, by creating a new type of individual character, and a new public opinion.
It was Horace Bushnell’s great saying that “the soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul.” A regenerate man becomes a new and living force in unregenerate society. Christianity first plants itself in the individual soul, and then works from the centre to the circumference, from the person to the State; creating purer homes, a higher and finer social temper, a sounder and truer type of civilization. And a new public opinion is created. A perverted social conscience, moulding public sentiment, and dominated by traditional prejudices and invincible habits of centuries of superstition, is a rigid and uncompromising factor of amazing force, and a gigantic hindrance to the work of Christ. The individual conditions and ideals of men need to be changed; and the spiritual energies of Christianity represent the only power that can grapple with them and overcome them.
The effects of the war upon the character of women, and the influence of women upon public opinion, must be taken seriously into account by those who see the urgent need for moral reconstruction. The majority of men are far more influenced by the character and the ideals of the women with whom they are in contact than they either realize or are ready to admit. One of the great reconstructive forces after the European convulsions of the past has been the influence of the surviving women. It is difficult to overrate what France owed to them after the Napoleonic wars and the Franco-German conflict of 1870. It is to women above all that the world ought to be able to look with hope for keeping alive the traditions of civilization and the ideals of Christianity and for revitalizing the conscience of Europe; and it would be disastrous for the future if the fine moral characteristics and religious instincts of women have been or are being seriously stunted and withered by the poisonous atmosphere of a prolonged war such as the present one, so different from and so far more demoralizing than any other of modern times. [Note: A. W. Rimington, The Conscience of Europe, 98.]
2. There are two great arguments against war. The one is economic, the other moral. Both are sound, and they may well be worked together. But the more powerful argument is the moral or spiritual one. And that for two reasons. First, because the ethical and spiritual aspects of the paramount claim of peace carry that claim into deeper currents of our nature, and bring it closer to the innermost springs of human volition; secondly, because by far the most commanding of the argumentative strongholds of the enemy are quite beyond the range of even the most skilfully directed economic fire. The loftiest ideal, before it can be realized on this earth, must encounter material problems, and utilitarian argument has its own proper part to play. Nevertheless, “an ideal which the imagination may clothe with a divine nimbus” will often prove of greater effect in influencing conduct than the clearest motives of expediency enunciated by the reason.
Therefore, let us draw upon the forces of religion to drive home the lessons of philosophy, since after our brains have been convinced of what is wise and right, we shall still need a motive to dispose us to pursue it. And until the true conclusion has become “operative in the minds and conduct of nations,” the most lucid and cogent logic in the world will be exercised in vain.
Set up what League of Nations you choose, establish what system you like of limitation of armaments and arbitration of disputes, unless there is widespread among the peoples “a will to peace,” and not a “will to war,” they will all be as ineffective as building walls to shut out lightning. The truest word was spoken by Goldwin Smith long ago, “The only sure guarantee of peace is morality.” [Note: Sir Herbert Samuel, The War and Liberty, 125.]
