CHURGHES AND WAR

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22510, 19 September 1938, Page 8

CHURGHES AND WAR

Address by Peace Lecturer

AMERICA AND .THE LEAGUE

The Christian attitude to war, and a Possible conflict between the Church andJ^jl^xnox 'SSt£3SSS£ “ D^/rH,rlpw K ”Sn American at.present touring the ' Harlow is lecturing m the interests _of the Car negie Endowment fpr ’ International Pea?®- . fn the war he had been associated with New Zealand troops, Dr. Harlow said, and the slaughter he had seen in the last few days before the Armistice had led him to .say: This is murder,” and to devote his energies to the 'cause of world peace. _ ,■ . * The millions who died in the last war had died we had been told, that there might be no war. The fighting had been that fighting might cease. After the war at an Armistice service by candlelight in prance the speaker had preached to New Zealand troops, an d t tenor of what he had said then had been that, after the war, there was to be a new world. It would be a world in which democracy would replace autocracy; the new world would be freed from goose stepping, and from tne militarists. . To each in this new world would Co “Ani U then after that came the Treaty of Versailles. How terrible that was, continued Dr Harlow. He remembered that after the war he had said in a sermon that the of building the new world would require a greater battle—more courage and more sacrifice—than had been required to win the war itself. Remembering the millions who had died we were to dedicate ourselves to these new ideals. ■ , „ v -j “But somebody has betrayed them, he said. “Have we a world in which there is more freedom and less militarism? Are our boys and girls sure that they will be free from that which we endured?” , . ' .. Dr. Harlow said he had Campaigned the United States after the Great War in the attempt to secure American' s uPP° r J; ®”try into the League of Nations. But h°P® 9* our dying world became a pawn in the hands ° f The"llnitecl States, he considered had a grave not able to do, because of the politicians, that which the hearts of her peopie had wanted her to do. Every President the United States had had since the Gr«St War had wanted the country to join the world court, and the people wanted it; how tragic it was that politics and the politicians blocked such a move. Some of the opponents of, Woodrow .Wilson had said that if Christ came into the United States Senate with a plan, and Woodrow Wilson supported it, they would vote against it. Church and State Discussing the issue between Church and State, which was a factor in world peace, Dr. Harlow said that in some countries it was clearly defined. Those loyal; to their church were sent to concentration -camps. But even in the United States, a distinguished Scottish theologist, now a lecturer at the University of Vale, had been denied citizenship because he would not sign a declaration to support the Government i n any war it might wage—just or unjust, whatever its cause. And in his own city of Boston the Quakers sought in war-time •to issue as a pamphlet the Sermon on the Mount. Permission was refused unless an addition was made to the pamphlet—the addition to be written by the War Department. “Does, the Church permit war departments to tell us what Christ meant?” he asked. He was coming- to the conclusion, he said, that, some Christians were in that position. If they were, the teachings of Christ were not being followed. He appealed for man to regard man as an immortal spirit. If that were, done, what would happen, to war, to race prejudices, arid to exploitatiow?