MERCY AND PITY MUST NOT DIE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 228, 5 November 1943, Page 10

MERCY AND PITY MUST NOT DIE

The War And Christian Fealism

By DR.

J. H.

OLDHAM

D.,

in. a BBC Talk for Overseas

R. OLDHAM has been the statesman behind the scenes in building up the structure of united thought and action by the Christian Churches in relation to the State. He was Secretary of the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, and of the Continuation Committee and the International Missionary Council which grew out of it. He edited ‘The International Review of Missions’ from 1912-27. Subsequently he became Administrative Director of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, a member of the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies, and Chairman of the Research Commission of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work.

HE Archbishop of Canterbury maintains-and I agree with him-that what is at stake in this war is the preservation of a tradition and civilisation, made up of strands that derive from Greece and Rome and Palestine. In particular, there lies at the heart of it a belief in the dignity, freedom, and responsibility of man, as a being answerable to the law of God, and intended to live in the world as His child. Truth or Delusion This faith in the dignity of man and in God’s love and purpose for him is either, as a wise man once said, the greatest truth about the world that has ever been set forth, or it is the greatest delusion ever cherished. There is no half way house. This faith, which is an affair of the mind and spirit, is clearly something which cannot be either promoted or defended by bombs and bullets. How then is it involved in the war? The answer is that in order to do its work in the world it has to build institutions which are in accord with its

spirit, such as the systems of law and justice which have taken shape through the centuries. It can flourish only in the soil of freedom, and a, network of liberties have been won and secured by the courage, perseverance, and sacrifice of many generations. It is this great and precious tradition and these hard-won liberties that the United Nations are defending. They are fighting for the survival of the peoples who still cherish these gains of civilisation and want to preserve and extend them in the future against those who threaten to submerge them in a new

reign of barbarism. It is on these grounds that Christians feel it right to support their Governments in this war. The Means and the End The war can do nothing to achieve or further spiritual ends; while victory is essential, all that it can do is to keep open the opportunity of continuing to work for them. If we have this distinction clearly in our minds, it will be evident that the winning of the war is only a means to an end. It is the end that matters. If we fail to remember that, the terrible fate may overtake us that

through our blindness our sacrifices may turn out to have been in vain; we may win the war and lose all that makes it worth winning. It is the. greatest possible delusion that we can act in one way through the years of war and suddenly become different people when it is over. Life is all of a piece. Our acts leave their mark on our character. We cannot allow ourselves to become brutal and callous for years and then expect to find in ourselves resources of humanity and mercy for the tasks of peace. We have therefore to make sure that the war is not waged in such a way as to defeat its own ends. If it is a struggle, as the Archbishop said, between two completely opposed conceptions of life, that difference must never be blurred. It is impossible, for example, for us, like the Axis Powers, to make the nation the object of our ultimate loyalty. The cause we are defending is bound up with belief that there is an eternal and ineradicable difference between right and wrong-that there is (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) an unchangeable law of God by which both individuals and nations are impartially judged. We are bound by that law, no less than our enemies. ° Clamour for Retaliation It is extraordinary how unthinkingly some people clamour for retaliation. Why should we take it for granted that, because the Axis Powers act in a certain way, we must necessarily do the ‘same? We profess to have different principles; why should we slavishly imitate our enemies? Things that are odious and shameful when they are done by the Axis are no less odious and shameful when they are done by ourselves. We cannot in waging war leave out of our reckoning the technical advances which. have created new weapons possessing a more terrible destructiveness than ever before. We cannot avoid using these weapons. It is nonsensical to engage in war and to hesitate about dealing the strongest possible* blows at the enemy‘s military power. To wage war half-heartedly would be to frustrate our deliberately chosen purpose and if we embark on war we must not shrink from the consequences of our decision. But equally Christians cannot shut their eyes to the inhumanity of modern war. The persistent, pitiless rain of metals and explosives from the sky on the habitations of men, destroying both them and the work of their hands, is an utter reversal of the purpose of civilisation. Modern methods of warfare are indiscriminate in their effects and compel us to inflict death, wounds, and lifelong disability on children and other innocent, or relatively innocent, persons, The methods which have to be used to achieve victory are utterly contrary to the purpose for which Christ came into the world. War thus confronts us as Christians with intolerable contradictions. What attitude are we to take towards them? Three things seem to me to be demanded of us. "Permissible" and "Wanton" Killing First, we have to discover how to preserve, under modern conditions, the vital distinction on which the Christian conscience has always insisted between killing in war and murder. Those who are opposed to war altogether keep telling us that once you engage in war the line between what is permissible and what is not permissible gets pushed further and further back until, as one friend wrote to me, it comes to be drawn in hell itself. Admittedly the line, like a good many other boundary lines, is difficult to draw. But the principle seems to be clear. If we are fighting in a just cause whatever is clearly necessary to achieve a proper military objective is permissible, even if it causes incidental and unavoidable injury and suffering to non-combatants. Whatever goes beyond that-all destruction, that is to say, that is merely wanton-is wrong, and those who light-heartedly inflict it or sanction it have the guilt of murder on -their souls. Secondly, we must not deceive ourselves in regard to the evil character of many of the acts that are required of us by military necessity. Many people think that it is simply a question of deciding that a particular course is necessary and right, and that when we have

so decided our conscience is clear. But the Christian view goes much deeper into the heart of things. It sees that the real tragedy of the human situation is that we have got into a position in which there is no escape from doing what is wrong. We are apt, when we think of sin at all, to limit it to individual false choices. But St. Paul had a profounder insight when he wrote of sin as a power reigning in the universe and holding men in slavery. It is important that we should realise this deeper truth that we are all bound together in a solidarity of sin. It -will free us from the fatal folly of supposing that evil is only in our enemies and not also in ourselves, and thereby save us from the mistakes into which those inevitably fall who are lacking in the spirit of penitence and humility. Thirdly, if we have to take part in the inhumanities of war, it becomes all the more necessary that we should diligently cultivate at the same time the opposite qualities of mercy and compassion and seize every opportunity of giving expression to them. Not even in war can we forget that pity is God-like. Christ continually insisted that it is in the exercise of mercy that men most fully manifest their kinship with God. His own acts were prompted, as the Gospels constantly record, by the motive of compassion. Mercy and pity are the humanising forces in the relations of men, To let them die is like allowing organic matter to disappear from the soil, so that it becomes arid and barren. Treatment of Enemies After Victory In the treatment of our enemies after the war the same principles must be our guide. If any persons ever deserved punishment it is certainly those who have been guilty of unspeakable brutalities and wanton cruelty to the defenceless victims in their power; though the punishment on a vast scale even of war criminals is found, when the matter is looked into, to be beset with greater difficulties than is supposed. As regards the Axis peoples as a whole, whatever measures are most likely to deter them from again plunging the world into war it is the clear duty of statesmen to adopt. What those measures ought to be is a task for statesmen and must be based on an unsentimental and just appraisal of all the factors in the situation. But for this difficult task of appraisal, cool heads are essential, and nothing is more certain to cause blunders which will sow the seeds of future wars than that we should allow ourselves to be swept away by blind passions of revenge. There is only one thing that will enable us to deal rightly with these men who are now our enemies, so that they may one day become good neighbours, and that is a clear vision of the kind of world we want and a firm purpose to achieve it.