Page:The War and the Churches.djvu/23

Rh This situation makes more violent than ever the contrast between the political and religious relations of men, and gives a strong prima facie case to the charge against the Churches which I am considering. It is wholly artificial and insincere to say that men are brothers socially and religiously, yet are justified in marching out in millions, with the most murderous apparatus science can devise, to meet each other on the field of battle. We condemn crime for social reasons. We have relegated to the Middle Ages, to which it belongs, the notion that the criminal is a man who has affronted society, and that society may take a revenge on him. In the sane conception of our time the criminal is a mischievous element disturbing the social order, and, in the interest of that order, he must be isolated or put out of existence. It is not the guilt, but the social effect, which we regard. And from this point of view a single great war is far more calamitous than all the crime in Europe during whole decades. It is estimated by high authorities that if the present war lasts only twelve months it will cost Europe, directly and indirectly, including the destruction of property and the loss to industry and commerce, no less a sum than £9,000,000,000; and it will certainly cost more than a million, if not more than two million, lives, besides the incalculable amount of suffering from wounds, loss of relatives, outrages, and the incidental damage of warfare. The time will come when historians will study with amazement the wonderful system we have devised in Europe for the suppression of breaches of the social order at a time when we complacently suffer these appalling periodical destructions of the entire social order of nations.

It is quite natural to arraign the Christian Churches