Royalty and nobility and military, judges and stockbrokers and working
men--above all, a surging, thrilling, ecstatic mass of women--will
gather round the clergy, and will avow that they see the finger of God
in this glorious consummation. The relation of the war to God will then
become the supreme consideration for the Christian mind. It may be more
instructive to consider it now, before the last flood of emotion pours
over our judgments.
I have already discussed some of the clerical allusions to the share of
God in the war. They are so frankly repellent that one cannot be
surprised that the majority of the clergy prefer to be silent on that
point. They prefer to await the victory and build on its more genial and
indulgent emotions. The war is either a blessing or a curse. One would
think that there was not much room for choice, but we saw that some are
bold enough to hint that the spiritual good may outweigh the bodily
pain. They remind us of a Treitschke or a Bernhardi writing smugly of
the moral grandeur of war, the need to brace the slackness of human
nature periodically by war, the chivalry and devotion it calls out, and
so on.
Still worse is the theory of those who regard war frankly as a curse,
yet put it to the direct authorship of the Almighty.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121