Page:The War and the Churches.djvu/31

Rh the country would soon burst with population and be choked by their own industrial products unless they expanded, knowing well that such expansion meant war to the death against France and England (who would suffer by their expansion), the German people consented to the war. Their official documents absolutely belie the notion that they were meeting an aggressive England. But the Christians of Germany were utterly false to their principles in supporting such a war. I do not mean merely that they set aside the precept or counsel to turn the other cheek to the smiter, for no one now expects either nation or individual to act on that maxim. They were false to the ordinary principles of Christian morals or of humanity. Even if one were desperately to suppose that learned divines like Harnack were unable to assign the real responsibility for the war, or that the whole of Germany is kept in a kind of hot-house of falsehood, it would be impossible to defend them. The Churches of Germany have complacently watched for twenty-three years the tendency which William II gave to their schools; they have passed no censure on the fifteen years of Imperialist propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that, in order to attain Germany's purposes, every rule of morals and humanity should be set aside. They have servilely accepted every flimsy pretext for outrage, and have followed, instead of leading, their passion-blinded people. It was the same in Austria-Hungary. Austrian and Hungarian prelates have passed in silence the fearful travesties of justice by which, in recent years, their statesmen sought to compass the judicial murder of scores of Slavs; they raised no voice when,