Most assuredly there were among the
numbers of fine characters who appeared in Christendom in the course of
a thousand years many who deeply resented the prevailing violence. But
when we speak of the Church, we speak of its official action and its
predominant sentiment. The official action of the Popes was, during all
that period, to make the same use as any terrestrial monarch of the
service of soldiers; they failed, from Gregory the Great to Pius X, to
recognise one of the supreme moral needs of Europe. The bishops of the
Church of England and the heads of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches
did not prove to have any sounder moral inspiration in this respect. It
was left to despised bodies like the Friends, who were hardly recognised
as Christians, and to rare individuals to protest against the system
which has brought such appalling evil on Europe.
In the nineteenth century the moral sentiment of Europe began to advance
more rapidly than it had previously done, and the idea of substituting
arbitration for war began to spread. The history of this reform has not
yet been written, as far as I can discover, but it is hardly likely that
any will be bold enough to suggest that the idea was due to
Christianity.
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