While we thus candidly admit that non-Christians as well as Christians
in Germany bear the moral responsibility, we must be equally candid in
rejecting the libellous charge that the principles, or lack of
principles, of the non-Christians tended to provoke or encourage war, in
opposition to the Christian principles. This not uncommon plea of
religious people is worse than inaccurate, since it is quite easy to
ascertain the principles of those who reject Christianity. In Germany,
as elsewhere, the non-Christians are mainly an unorganised mass, but
there are two definite organisations, which, in this respect, reflect or
educate the general non-Christian sentiment. These are the Social
Democrats, a body of many millions who are for the most part opposed to
the clergy, and the Monists, an expressly Rationalistic body. In both
cases the moral principles of the organisation are emphatically
humanitarian and opposed to violence, dishonesty, or injustice; in both
cases those principles are adhered to with a fidelity at least equal to
that which one finds in the Christian Churches. It is little short of
monstrous to say that the moral teaching of Bebel and Singer and
Liebknecht, or of Haeckel and Ostwald--all men of high moral
idealism--gave greater occasion than the teaching of Christianity to
this atrocious war.
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