s Church. He has drawn a distinction
between offensive and defensive war, and, since the latter is obviously
just, he has maintained that armies are rightly raised to wage it when
necessary. On this petty fallacy the Churches have so long reconciled
themselves to militarism, and have, in fact, been amongst its closest
allies. The clergy did not, or would not, see that the retention of the
military system was in itself the surest provocation of offensive war;
that ambition or covetousness could almost always find a moral pretext
for aggression, and that there have been comparatively few priests in
the history of Europe who ever stood out and unmasked the hypocrisy of
such monarchs. As long as the military system lasted, it was certain
that wars would take place, yet they never denounced the system. The
great conception of substituting justice for violence, law for
lawlessness, did not enter the mind of Christianity. It was born of the
secular humanitarian spirit of modern times.

For any serious person this is the gravest charge which the clergy have
to meet, and they one and all evade it. The civilisation of Europe has a
unique greatness on its material side; in its applied science, its
engineering, its industries, its commerce. For that, assuredly, the
Churches are not in any degree responsible. Our civilisation is unique
also in its political power, its mastery over other peoples; and for
that again the Churches are not responsible. It is great on the
intellectual side, in its science and philosophy, its art and general
culture; and that greatness, too, has been won independently of, or in
defiance of, the clergy. On the moral side only it may plausibly be
connected with its established religion, and here precisely it fails and
approaches barbarism. I do not wonder that the Churches are troubled,
and do not wonder greatly that they are silent.

But while they are silent on the main issue, they have a vast amount to
say about minor issues and secondary aspects. They console and reconcile
their people in a hundred ways. Actually they seem, in a great measure,
to entertain the idea that the Churches are going to emerge from this
trial stronger than ever, and to witness at last that religious revival
which they had almost begun to despair of securing. Let me examine a few
of these clerical pronouncements. I do not choose the eccentric sermons
of ill-educated rural preachers, but the utterances of some of the more
disting