Love and Justice
Love and Justice
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LOVE
AND
JUSTICE
Selections from the Shorter Writings
of
REINHOLD NIEBUHR
Edited by D. B. ROBERTSON
Meridian Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
written permission from the publisher, except for brief passages included in a
review appearing in a newspaper or magazine.
Preface
9
Introduction n
Part I. General Essays on Love and Justice
D. Race Relations
24. The Confession of a Tired Radical
25. Christian Faith and the Race Problem
26. The Race Problem
27. Jews After the War
28. The Negro Issue in America
29. Fair Employment Practices Act
30. The Supreme Court on Segregation in the
Schools
31. What Resources Can the Christian Church
Offer to Meet Crisis in Race Relations?
32. Proposal to Billy Graham
A. A Variety of Issues
C. The "Enemy"
48. Love Your Enemies 218
49. The Bombing of Germany 222
50. The German Problem
223
51. What Is Justice? 229
D. The Bomb
52. The Atomic Bomb 232
53. The Hydrogen Bomb
235
303
PREFACE
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PROBLEM OF LOVE AND
Reinhold Niebuhr's thought is well known. It is in
justice in
general the problem of the relationship between the Christian
faith
and the ethical life of men as individuals and as groups. In his books
Dr. Niebuhr has explored the many angles, subtleties, heights, and
depths of the problems of man and society. Where he actually
stands
on given social issues, and where he sees the points of contact
be-
tween Christian love and the multiple ramifications of justice -
these
factors are best seen in his occasional writings.
Some changes in Niebuhr's thinking in social ethics will be evi-
dent over the period covered by these articles, though it has not
been
a primary purpose in the choice of the selections to show
the various
stages in the development of his social ethic. The major purpose has
been to select articles that illustrate the richness and variety of his
analyses of love and justice, to show the points at which he insists
that positive decisions and actions are possible, even imperative, for
the Christian, and to underline his characteristic approach to typical
ethical problems. Even though there has been change and develop-
ment in his thought and change of emphasis at some points, there has
also been a rather notable consistency of approach, particularly since
the late 1930's.
This volume brings together a group of selected essays on some
of
the many issues that have engaged Dr. Niebuhr's attention over a
period of more than twenty-five years. The articles in Part
I are in-
tended to give some introduction to his views on love and
justice and
may be particularly useful to those not very familiar with his
other
writings. At the beginning of Parts II and III, and a few of the sub-
PREFACE
divisions, one or so of the more general essays dealing with particular
subjects isincluded. Otherwise the articles are organized in chrono-
logical order within the various sections. Part IV, devoted solely to
the pacifist issue, includes a goodly number of articles in chronologi-
however, the centrality and the persistence of the great theme is more
obvious in the great mass of articles he has published in dozens of
magazines and papers through the years.*
Christian Love
Love is the "basic law of life." Love on the human side is an ex-
pression of man's distinguishing characteristic: his freedom. In fact,
Himself ". does not regard the contrast between natural human love
. .
and the divine agape as absolute." {The Nature and Destiny of Man,
II, n. 16, p. 84.)
the cross reveals love in its perfect form and symbol. Here is revealed
at the same time God's love and history's meaningfulness, as well as
man's capacity for lovelessness and destructiveness. The Christian ethic
cannot be simply love, for men live in history, and "perfect love" in
history has not fared well.According to Niebuhr, it is this failure to
understand the social dimensions of agape that has been the source of
confusion in modern discussions of ethics.
Niebuhr's reputation as a theologian is to a considerable degree re-
lated to his elaboration of the "Biblical understanding" of man and
history and his polemics against what he has seen as the liberal and
Utopian corruption of this understanding. He has explored the fallacies
and weaknesses of both secular liberalism and the "sentimental version"
of the Christian faith wherein the doctrine of love is transformed into
an overly simplified moralism in which we "ought to love everybody";
wholly eliminate strife from social life, or act as though it did not exist;
and "be like Jesus." Judaism and Catholicism have escaped most of
the limitations of a pure "love ethic," the weakness of both sectarian-
ism and much of liberal Protestantism. This extreme love ethic Niebuhr
characterized in a sermon recently at Union Theological Seminary as
appropriate for "mystics, monastics, martyrs, and mothers!" On the
other hand, it should be noted immediately that he has opposed as
12 INTRODUCTION
"equally absurd" the position of the "realists" and the orthodox Chris-
tians who qualify too rigidly, or destroy the relevance of the love ideal
by dwelling too exclusively upon the implications of "depravity." But
the brunt of Niebuhr's attack, especially after the early 1930's, has been
borne by the "liberals" and "utopians." The liberal code, Niebuhr be-
lieved at one point, could be summarized in six major propositions:
characterize the struggle for justice. The political structures and pres-
sures are perpetually necessary.
A note should be entered here about what Niebuhr has lately referred
to as "... a rather unpardonable pedagogical error in The Nature and
Destiny of Man." {Man's Nature and His Communities, p. 23.) His
theology prompted him "to define the persistence and universality of
man's self-regard as 'original sin,' " and while Niebuhr believes this
designation to be historically and symbolically correct, he sees the
"error" in trying "to challenge modern optimism with the theological
doctrine which was anathema modern culture." {Ibid.) His use of
to
this traditional symbol allowed his critics, therefore, to picture him "as
a regressive religious authoritarian, caught in the toils of an ancient
legend." {Ibid., p. 24.) Even more important, he thinks, is that his use
of traditional symbols led many "realists," who (including many polit-
ical philosophers) agreed generally with his views in the Giflford Lec-
tures, to go to considerable lengths to explain that their agreement did
not include his theological presuppositions. He therefore intends to cor-
rect this errorby discussing the "same human nature" by the use of
"more sober symbols." Dr. Niebuhr concludes the point, however, by
saying that he still thinks that "the 'London Times Literary Supple-
ment' was substantially correct when it wrote some years ago: 'The
doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the
Christian faith.'" {Ibid., p. 24.)
Justice
does not propose abstract schemes of justice that leave the human fac-
tor out of account." The "desire for justice is one form of love," he
writes elsewhere, not perhaps the highest form but one that cannot be
14 INTRODUCTION
despised." ("The Problem of a Protestant Social Ethic," Union Sem-
inary Quarterly Review, November, 1959, p. 4.)
The "regulative principle" of justice, in Niebuhr's discussion, is
clearly equality, or "it is the best nexus between love and justice."
tic view of human nature. It proves that man not only has some capac-
ity to act in other than his own interest, but neither in his theorizing
does he "simply use social theory to rationalize [his] own interest."
(Ibid.)
The ideal of equality is a valuable and necessary standard to hold
over social inequalities and power disparities of all kinds, from those
in family relations to those in international relations. Absolute equality
is not a meaningful social goal. This is true because there are certain
inevitable inequalities associated with function in society and because
actual social institutions or historical circumstances make the abstract
ideal meaningless when it is used in an "all or nothing" sense. One
must recognize the moral obligation to choose between very relative
degrees of justice in practice, though no vested interest should take any
comfort from this point.
other things, the peril of chaos for many parts of the world where un-
just order (tyranny) has prevailed. This fact, says Niebuhr, should be
a vivid reminder to us of the perpetual problem of political order and
at the same time should underscore the special difficulties faced today
in balancing justice and order without falling into worldwide nuclear
destruction. Because of the revolutionary elements in our world and
concomitantly the problem of establishing a viable order in many of
the newer nations, we are reminded that "communities, both parochial
and international, are bound to place order first in their hierarchy of
this problem that led Niebuhr to state the point too sharply more
sharply, in fact, than his own position called for. A young friend re-
cently suggested that in the light of the facts, and Niebuhr's more con-
sistent realism as applied to individuals as well as to groups, a better
title may have been The Not So Moral Man in His Less Moral Com-
munities {Man's Nature and His Communities, p. 22.).
tems on the basis of "natural law," Niebuhr has argued that "it is not
possible to state a universally valid concept of justicefrom any partic-
ular sociological locus in history." (No. 5.) Those who have attempted
to do it too exclusively by way of natural law arguments have inevitably
incorporated culturally conditioned or contingent factors into presumed
absolute and universal concepts. Thus the Roman Catholic view has
harbored feudal elements, and eighteenth-century natural law had
bourgeois accents. Provisional definitions are necessary, but it must be
recognized, Niebuhr emphasizes, that these definitions are provisional
not absolute or fixed. Otherwise, along with other weaknesses of such
systems, the unique and the possible in each new situation will be
missed.
More recently Niebuhr has expressed an appreciation of the natural
law tradition in contribution to a contemporary social ethic. Initially,
its
pp. 121-122; 125.) This ethic, again perhaps the greatest contribution
of the ecumenical movement, is still "pragmatic" and relative in the
sense that it recognizes that the unpredictability of historical events
makes "fixed norms dangerous." On the other hand, pragmatism alone
degenerates into opportunism, so that "modern Christian pragmatism"
is saved from opportunism "by certain definite principles. . . . These
principles have to do with the relation of freedom and equality in the
INTRODUCTION 17
The Christian faith cannot be defeatist. It sees men's sin and the tragedies
of knows the depths of human degradation; and the long hard road
life. It
to the City of God. But also it sees men in the strength of God rising to the
need and the struggle, confident, victorious in spirit. ("The Crisis Deepens,"
Christianity and Crisis, May 5, 1941.)
INTRODUCTION ig
A Note on a Few Particular Issues
Dr. Niebuhr has continued his searching thought and writing in the
decade since the latest of these articles were written. Book-length writ-
ings on national and international problems have been published. Many
occasional pieces have also appeared. A few notes on some of the par-
ticular issues may serve to bring up to date Dr. Niebuhr's current posi-
tions. The Niebuhr sources are both written and partially from Dr.
Niebuhr himself directly.
the use of violence and talk of "the right of self defense" may be log-
ical, and it takes little imagination to understand their angry frustra-
tion. "But they are terrible political leaders for a racial minority of only
ten per cent. Any violence by the Negro isbound to prompt excessive
violence against them." In advocating this policy and social strategy for
achieving Negro rights. Dr. Niebuhr is not, of course, reverting to the
P- 569)
International Relations
Because Dr. Niebuhr was the scourge of pacifists before World War
II, and because he supported the Allied war effort in the defeat of the
or "nuclear pacifists."
As for his criticism of Administration foreign policy, particularly in
Vietnam, there is nothing in his social ethic or his way of thinking
which ever suggested any uncritical acceptance of the policy and prac-
tice of any government or institution. The Government's defense of our
involvement in Vietnam is fallacious in terms of our claim simply to
be defending a "nation's right to self-determination," and our oflScial
parallelism between the struggle against Hitler and the struggle against
North Vietnam. Our motives are not so pure as we pretend, and so
most of the world righdy does not take us at our word. And, Ho Chi
Minh is no Hitler racist; but Ho also seeks "self-determination."
("Vietnam and the Imperial Conflict," one of Niebuhr's longer dis-
cussions of the various aspects of the involvement, is published in the
New Leader, June 6, 1966.)
A final note on Dr. Niebuhr's thinking about the United Nations
and World Government. During and after the War Dr. Niebuhr ex-
plored the great variety of proposals for organizing the world in order
to preserve the peace. (See Nos. 43-47.) One persistent note in his dis-
cussionswas that genuine world government must await the develop-
ment some substructure of community. He attempted to temper the
of
arguments of the cynics. Even more persistent was the warning about
expecting too much from the United Nations, assuming the two (now
three) great power blocs and their contending interests. Writing about
the Congo, Dr. Niebuhr pointed out to those who may have had some
lingering hopes that the U.N. would sooner or later become a world
government that, as of that date, the Congo was proof, if it had not
been evident before, that there is no world government ("The U.N.:
An End New
Leader, Feb. 27, 1961). One saw there not
to Illusions"
the actions of a world united but rather a battleground for contending
interests.
General Essays
25
26 GENERAL ESSAYS ON LOVE AND JUSTICE
recognized claims. Even in the family, in which the spirit of love may
prevail more than in any other human institution, the careful calcu-
lation of rights is an important element in the harmony of the
is given to those who make no claims against us, who do not chal-
lenge our goodness or disinterestedness. An act of philanthropy may
thus be an expression of both power and moral complacency. An act
of justice on the other hand requires the humble recognition that
the claim that another makes against us may be legitimate.
The pronouncements of church bodies and the preachments of the
pulpit still tend to smell of sentimentality in our day because the
law of love is presented without reference to the power of the law of
self-love. " All coercion," wrote a Christian businessman recently, " is
foreign to the Christian life because we Christians know that only
uncoerced goodness is real goodness." This does not take into ac-
count that we need a great deal of second-rate goodness to get along
with one another. We have to have a taxation system that demands
more of us than we are inclined to give voluntarily; and we must
maintain a social security system that holds us responsible for the se-
curity of other families than our own beyond our natural inclina-
tion. We cannot preserve the health of the free world without Amer-
ican aid to other nations that must go far beyond the utmost limits
of voluntary philanthropy.
JUSTICE AND LOVE 27
ways be for the other nation on the ground that concern for my own
nation represents collective self-interest? Was the young pacifist
idealist rightwho insisted that if we had less " selfish concern for
our own civilization " we could resolve the tension between our-
selves and Russia, presumably by giving moral preference to a com-
munist civilization over our own?
less than love. Yet it cannot exist without love and remain justice.
For without the " grace " of love, justice always degenerates into
something less than justice.
But if justice requires that the interests of the self be entertained,
it also requires that they be resisted. Every realistic system of justice
age men to create systems of justice which will save society and them-
selves from their own selfishness.
But justice arbitrates not merely between the self and the other,
but between the competing claims upon the self by various " others."
Justice seeks to determine what I owe my family as compared with
my nation; or what I owe this segment as against that segment of a
community. One of the strange moral anomalies of our times is that
there are businessmen and men of affairs who have a more precise
sense of justice in feeling their way through the endless relativities
of human relations than professional teachers of morals. Practical
experience has made them
sensitive to the complex web of values
and which human decisions are reached, while the pro-
interests in
fessional teachers of religion and morals deal with simple counters
of black and white. This certainly is one of the reasons why the pul-
pit frequently seems so boring and irrelevant to the pew. At his
worst the practical man of affairs is morally heedless and considers
THE ETHIC OF JESUS AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 29
have been futile and the choice to have been wrong. If there is
enough of a world left after such a wrong choice we will be taxed by
the idealists for having made the wrong choice; and they will not
know that they escaped an intolerable evil by our choice. Even now
we are taxed with the decision to resist nazism, on the ground that
the war against nazism has left us in a sad plight. The present peril
of communism seems to justify an earlier capitulation to nazism.
But since we are men and not God, we could neither anticipate all
the evils that would flow from our decision to resist nazism, nor yet
could we have capitulated to the immediate evil because another
evil was foreshadowed.
The tragic character of our moral choices, the contradiction be-
tween various equal values of our devotion, and the incomplete-
ness in all our moral striving, prove that " if in this life only we
had hoped in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." No possible
historic justice is sufferable without the Christian hope. But any il-
lusion of a world of perfect love without these imperfect harmonies
of justice must ultimately turn the dream of love into a nightmare
of tyranny and injustice.
ideal in the gospel of Jesus, but there is no social ethic in the ordi-
nary sense of the word in it, precisely because the ethical ideal is too
rigorous and perfect to lend itself to application in the economic and
political problems of our day. This does not mean that the ethic of
Jesus has no light to give to a modern Christian who faces the per-
plexing economic and political issues of a technological civilization.
It means only that confusion will be avoided if a rigorous distinc-
tion is made between a perfectionist and absolute ethic and the ne-
cessities of a social situation.
The ethic of Jesus was, to begin with, a personal ethic. It was not
individual in the sense that he believed in individual perfection ab-
stracted from a social situation. He saw that wealth tempted to cov-
etousness and that poverty prompted the virtue of humility. He
spoke of the Kingdom and not of salvation, and the Kingdom
meant an ideal social relationship, even though he might emphasize
that it proceeded from internal spiritual forces. His ethic was an
ethic of love, and it therefore implied social relationships. But it was
an individual ethic in the sense that his chief interest was in the
quality of life of an individual. He regarded as a temptation the sug-
gestion that he become a political leader or that he develop the po-
litical implications of the Messianic idea, and he resisted the effort
Jesus did not deny that disinterested action would result in re-
wards; " all these things " would be added, and the man who forgot
himself completely would find himself most truly. Here is the recog-
nition of the basic ethical paradox that the highest result of an ac-
tion can never be its desired result. It must be a by-product. If it is
desired, the purity of the action is destroyed. If I love to be loved or
to be socially approved, I will not be loved or approved in the same
way as if my fellow men caught in me a glimpse of pure disinter-
estedness. Obviously the only way to achieve such pure disinter-
estedness is to have actions motivated purely by religious motives.
But this very emphasis upon religious motives lifts the ethic of Jesus
above the area of social ethics. We are asked to love our enemies,
not because the social consequences of such love will be to make
friends of the enemies, but because God loves with that kind of im-
partiality. We are demanded to forgive those who have wronged us,
not because a forgiving spirit will prove redemptive in the lives of
32 GENERAL ESSAYS ON LOVE AND JUSTICE
the fallen, but because God forgives our sins. Here we have an
ethic, in other words, which we can neither disavow nor perfectly
achieve. We cannot disavow it because it is a fact that the prudential
motive destroys the purity of every ethical action. We have a right
to view the social and personal consequences of an action in retro-
spect, but if we view it in prospect we have something less than the
best. So powerful is the drive of self-interest in life, however, that
this ideal is as difficult to achieve as it is to disavow. It remains,
therefore, as an ideal which convicts every moral achievement of
imperfection, but it is always a little beyond the realm of actual
human history.
Though Jesus was as indifferent to the social consequences of pure
disinterestedness as he was critical of concern for the personal conse-
quences, it is not difficult to draw conclusions in regard to the social
ideal implied by such disinterestedness. In practical terms it means
Justice, in other words, that is only justice is less than justice. Only
imaginative justice, that is, love that begins by espousing the rights
of the other rather than self, can achieve a modicum of fairness.
Whether we view the ethical teachings of Jesus from the perspec-
tive of the individual or of society we discover an unattainable
ideal, but a very useful one. It is an ideal never attained in history
THE ETHIC OF JESUS AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 33
ing for a justice which approximates the Christian ideal more closely
than the present social order, but we are wrong when we talk about
achieving a " Christian social order." The Barthians are quite right,
I think, in protesting against the easy identification of the King-
dom of God with every movement of social reform and social radi-
calism that has prevailed in American Christianity in particular and
in liberal Protestantism in general. Those of us who dissociate our-
selves from the easy optimism of modern liberalism and who believe
that a just society is not going to be built by a little more education
and a few more sermons on love have particular reason to reorient
our thinking in this matter so that we will not come forward with
a social ethic involving the use of force and coercion and political
pressure of every kind and claim the authority of Jesus for it.
good will which they believe Jesus to idealize. The critics of the
former type have no ground to stand upon at all when they accuse
in
radical Christians of violating the ethic of Jesus; for participation
a nonviolent strike action, to choose an obvious example,
is cer-
as
" Christian socialism." We
must justify ourselves by considera-
tions of the social situation that we face and the human resources
that are available for its solution. What we discover in the social
situation is that human life in its group interests moves pretty much
upon the basis of the economic interests of various groups. We
realize that intelligence and spiritual and moral
idealism may
qualify economic interest, but they do not destroy it. Whatever may
be possible for individuals, we see no possibility of a group
volun-
society. Nor do we
tarily divesting itself of its special privileges in
possibility of pure disinterestedness and the spirit of forgive-
see a
ness on the part of an underprivileged group shaming a dominant
group into an attitude of social justice. Such a strategy might pos-
sibly work in intimate personal relationships but it
does not work in
The Negro has been forgiving in his sub-
the larger group relations.
ordinate position in society for a long time, but he has not persuaded
the white man to grant him larger privileges in society.
Whatever
place the industrial worker has won in society has been
won by the
assertion of his rights through his trade-union organizations.
Even
the most imaginative urban dwellers lack the
imagination to en-
THE ETHIC OF JESUS AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 35
visage the needs of the farmer. The farmer has been forced to exert
political pressure for the attainment of even such minimum justice
as he is granted in the present economic organization of our coun-
try. No one who looks realistically at the social scene can fail to dis-
It will use political force created by the votes of the disinherited and
less privileged to initiate and enforce taxation policies, designed to
equalize privileges. Privileged groups may accept such legislation
without violent revolt, but they will probably argue against its jus-
tice until the day of their death. An intelligent society will con-
stantly strive toward the goal of a more equal justice by initiating a
more rigorous policy just as soon as a previous and more tentative
one has been accepted and absorbed into the social standards of the
community. If this is not done by gradual process, with the unreal-
ized goal of essential equality beckoning each generation to surpass
the approximations of justice achieved in the past, the inequalities
of the social order, always increasing through natural process, are
bound to grow until an outraged sense of justice (probably spurred
by actual physical want on the part of the least privileged members
of a community) will produce a violent revolt. In such nations as
Germany, for instance, it is really an open question whether any po-
litical measures can achieve the desired end of social justice quickly
enough to prevent violent revolution.
The necessity of this kind of coercion, based upon the assertion of
interest on the part of the less privileged, is such a clear lesson of
history that one hesitates to belabor the point and would refrain
from doing so were not for the fact that half of the academic
it
mitigate the social struggle on the one hand and may transcend it
on the other.
THE ETHIC OF JESUS AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 37
such imagination the needs of the social foe are appreciated, his in-
adequacies are understood in the light of his situation, and his possi-
bilities for higher and more moral action are recognized. Only the
religious spirit which surveys the human scene from the perspective
of its presuppositions about the character of life is thus able to dis-
regard present facts and appeal to ultimate possibilities. The fact
that in Jesus the spirit of love flowed out in emulation of God's love,
without regard to social consequences, cannot blind the eye to the
social consequences of a religiously inspired love. If modern religion
were really producing it, it would mitigate the evils of the social
struggle. It would, to emphasize the obvious once more, not abolish
the social struggle, because it would not approximate perfection in
sufficiently numerous instances. The fight for justice in society will
always be a fight. But wherever the spirit of justice grows imagina-
tive and is transmuted into love, a love in which the interests of the
other are espoused, the struggle is transcended by just that much.
It is the fashion among many Christian idealists to criticize the
political movements of the disinherited for the spirit of hatred which
THE ETHIC OF JESUS AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 39
because it has greater responsibility for them, but because those who
hold entrenched positions in the social struggle are obviously under
the greater obligation to be imaginative in gauging the needs and
discounting the limitations of those who suffer from social injustice.
The no such distinctions; for
perfectionist ethic of Jesus allows for
it demands poured forth whether or not we suffer from
that love be
injustice. But no one can avow such an ethic from the vantage point
of privilege and security. If the portion of society that benefits from
social inequality and which is endangered by a rising tide of social
discontent attempts to counsel love, forgiveness, and patience to the
discontented, it will convict itself of hypocrisy, except it is able first
cept they are able to detect some genuinely ethical elements in the
policies of the privileged and entrenched social groups. If the spirit
of love is to qualify and mitigate the social struggle, the groups that
profess to believe in the efficacy of love and who, at the same time,
have favored positions in society are clearly under obligation to in-
troduce this Christian element in society. They may be quite sure
that any solid ethical achievement among them would result in prac-
tically immediate ethical reactions of trust and faith among those
who Only the faith and trust of the
are trying to advance socially.
40 GENERAL ESSAYS ON LOVE AND JUSTICE
advancing group will not and ought not ever rise to the point where
purely voluntary action toward equality is expected. A degree of
ethical insight on the part of the whole community will not abolish
the necessity of social conflict, but it may prevent violence and re-
duce the hatred that must inevitably arise when the disinherited are
faced, not only with the stubborn greed of the powerful and com-
fortable social classes, but also with the protection of their privi-
leges by the covert use of force and their hypocritical pretension of
virtue.
A Christian ethical idealism that espouses the cause of proletarian
groups and identifies itself with their political movements is, in
love which it preached was therefore something that was to ease and
qualify but not change the relative injustices of society. In the mod-
ern period the liberal church, rightly impatient with a conception of
static justice, thought of its task as one that demanded the achieve-
ment of a more perfect justice. Since, however, it believed that the
gospel law of love was a source of an effective social ethic, it insisted
that this more perfect justice was to be achieved by admonishing
thosewho have undue privileges to sacrifice them in the interest of
thosewho have been defrauded.
The church's ministry of reconciliation was thus conceived in
purely moral terms. was to make selfish people unselfish, at least
It
cial problem.
that one need only wait for the day when other businessmen will be
42 GENERAL ESSAYS ON LOVE AND JUSTICE
as unselfish as they are and when workers will acknowledge this
idealism with grateful appreciation and stop their own pretentious
efforts toward justice.
In the second case a slightly more realistic and more radical type
ot Christian idealism is achieved, but it can not escape moral con-
job if he had failed to comply with orders. With a sly gleam of de-
rision in his eye for my rather romantic pacifism, he declared that his
conscience wasn't eased a bit by the fact that he had not hit any of
the fifty dismissed men over the head.
kind of realism that the church has been failing to
It is just this
supply in the social struggle. It has preached too much moral ideal-
ism at the expense of religious realism. If one looks at life from a
religious perspective,if one judges human actions in the light of the
law of love and tests every action by the admonition " Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself," one soon discovers what a world of na-
ture this human world is and how necessary it is and remains to es-
tablish basic justice in it by the contest of interest with interest.
Moral idealists are incapable of recognizing that fact. They will live
under the illusion that they can be so unselfish that they will be able
to grant other people justice without any pressure on the part of the
latter.
But any religious realist who has ever looked deeply into his heart
and felt the scrutiny of a holy God upon his sin will not make such
a mistake. He will say with Saint Paul: " I know nothing against
myself, but I am not thereby justified. He who judges me is the
CHRISTIANS FOOLING THEMSELVES 43
Christian Realism
The church would do more for the cause of reconciliation if, in-
stead of producing moral idealists who think that they can establish
justice, it would and Christian realists who know
create religious
some men shall contend against them.
that justice will require that
In the more privileged congregations this would mean the education
of Christian laymen who understood the profound realities of the
social struggle, and who would therefore not give themselves to the
deception that they know what is good for their workingmen and
that their philanthropies are a refutation of the worker's insistence
on organization. This kind of Christian realism would understand
the perennial necessity of political relationships in society, no mat-
terhow ethical ideals rise.
The wise minister will not apply this realism only to businessmen.
There are probably few churches in America in which the janitor
might not well be justified in demanding a larger share of the total
wage bill of the congregation. This does not mean that the demand
will be successful. It will probably not be, because janitors find diffi-
culty in organizing and if they were organized they would find still
tainment. In a final conflict only those who have learned the grace of
humility can be loving, for in a conflict love requires forgiveness and
forgiveness is who know themselves to be sin-
possible only to those
ners. Moral idealists foes. They are too secure in
never forgive their
their own virtue to do that. Men forgive their foes only when they
feel themselves to be standing under God with them, and feel that
under the divine scrutiny all " our righteousness is as filthy rags."
There are a large number of eager young radical preachers in
American Protestant churches who are engaged in the business of
trying to make proletarians out of their middle-class church mem-
bers. It is a futile task from which these young radicals should have
long since been dissuaded by whatever Marxian determinism they
have learned. It is, in fact, a strange phenomenon to find Marxian
Christian leaders insisting in one moment that social justice must be
established by a class conflict and in the next trying to persuade one
class to espouse the cause of another. It is always possible and neces-
sary to persuade a few sensitive spirits to transcend class, race, or na-
tional interests completely in the cause of justice. But surely every
common-sense realist, not to speak of religious must know
realists,
that masses of men, even when they are in Christian churches, move
by interest. It is important that they should know that. It will miti-
gate the fury of their class interest, and thus a reconciling influence
will be exerted upon the social struggle.
identify their particular interests with the eternal sanctities and with
the peace and order of society. When privileged groups fighting for
God and all the angels, they be-
their rights claim to be fighting for
come and nothing will exorcise these demons but the
truly demonic,
worship of the true God. If the church is to reduce the fury of the
righteous man who does not know how unrighteous he is, it will
have to be more than a socio-moral institution. It will have to be a
religio-moral fellowship in which there is some sense of a holiness
does not unite them. Moral idealists can live with other people only
if their ideals are identical with their own. Only
religious realists
can have respect, pity, and forgiveness for the foe whom they do not
has held? " I should like to address myself to this question and sug-
fect of sin upon man's capacity for justice. Something more than a
brief paper would be required to prove such a thesis; I must content
myself therefore with suggesting the argument in general outline.
The Biblical conception of man includes three primary terms:
(a) he is made in the image of God, (&) he is a creature, and (c) he
is a sinner. His basic sin is pride. If this pride is closely analyzed, it is
significance lay in its specific content. The content of this law justi-
fied the bourgeois classes in their ideals, just as the older law justi-
fied the feudal aristocrats. In short, it is not possible to state a uni-
versally valid concept of justice from any particular sociological
locus in history. Nor is it possible to avoid either making the effort
or making pretenses of universality which human finiteness does not
"
justify. This inevitable pretense is the revelation of " original sin
in history. Human history is consequently more tragic than Catholic
theology assumes. It is not an incomplete world yearning for com-
pletion, and finding it in the incarnation. It is a tragic world, trou-
bled not by finiteness so much as by " false eternals " and false ab-
solutes, and expressing the pride of these false absolutes even in the
highest reaches of its spirituality. It is not the incarnation as such
that is the good news of the gospel, but rather the revelation of a
just God who is also merciful; this is the true content of the incarna-
tion. That is, it is the atonement that fills the incarnation with
meaning.
But Catholic thought not only fails to do justice to the positive
character of the sinful element in all human definitions and realiza-
tions of natural justice. It also fails to do justice to the relation of
love to justice. In its conception, natural justice is good as far as it
Saint Augustine quite truly, " cannot tear up nature by the roots."
CHRISTIAN FAITH AND NATURAL LAW 5I
alism, by which it defines the Fall as a historic event and " perfec-
cessity of order in Europe. The blindness of the eye is evil only be-
cause the ideal possibility is sight.
Protestant pessimism has been rightfully accused by Catholic
thinkers of leading to obscurantism in culture and to antinomianism
in morals; would be difficult to estimate to what degree our
and it
ent moment. But among its provisions it contained the forced ad-
mission of guilt by the vanquished, a piece of psychological cruelty
which reveals self-righteousness at its worst. (It is interesting how
our worst sins are always derived from self-righteousness, which is
what gives Christ's contest with the Pharisees such relevance.)
Against such a peace his Grace, and with him many others, are now
pleading for a negotiated peace. They rightly believe that only in
such a peace can Europe find security.
Yet it must be recognized that there is no definition of natural jus-
tice that can give us a really adequate outline of a just peace. Jus-
tice cannot be established in the world by pure moral suasion. It is
achieved only as some kind of decent equilibrium of power is estab-
lished. And such an equilibrium is subject to a thousand contingen-
cies of geography and history. We cannot make peace with Hitler
now because his power dominates the Continent, and his idea of a
just peace is one that leaves him in the security of that dominance.
We believe, I think rightly, that a more just peace can be estab-
lished if that dominance is broken. But in so far as the Hitlerian
imperial will must be broken first, the new peace will be an imposed
denies the reality of this potential perfection and its relevance in the
affairs of politics.
The effort of the Christian church in Britain at the present mo-
ment stem the tide of vindictiveness, which it rightly anticipates
to
as an inevitable danger after the war, is a truer expression of the
Christian spirit than pacifist disavowals of war as such.
It is not pos-
absolute right, but with which have been invested by the accidents
I
of history and the contingencies of nature and which the " old
Adam " in me is only too happy to transmute into absolute rights.
PART
II
57
58 LOVE AND justice: NATIONAL LEVEL
as some contemporary conservatives would have it, that all political
control of economic processes must end in tyranny. But it does prove
that political control has its own
which may or may not be
perils,
greater than the perils of an uncontrolled economy. These alternate
perils are due to the fact that in the realm of politics and economics
we must harness and provisionally justify the forces of egoism and
of power even though they be ultimately hazardous either to free-
dom or to brotherhood. We cannot disavow the use of power be-
cause it is hazardous, but neither must we obscure the moral peril of
power. This is the reason why no political program can be simply
equated with the highest sanctities of life, and why our political de-
cisions must be more circumspect than Christian decisions in Amer-
ica have been either on the right or on the left. Nothing is clearer
than that ideologically consistent political positions have on the
whole been refuted by history, while healthy nations have preserved
freedom and extended justice by various pragmatic policies which
borrowed from various strategies.
This does not mean that we must not and cannot make clear-cut
decisions on matters of principle. It is becoming apparent, for in-
stance, that the question of national health insurance (usually re-
ferred to by opponents as "socialized medicine ") will become an
its
to the religious level and the more they tend to affront fellow Chris-
tians who hold different convictions. Sometimes the problem
emerges, particularly with reference to different convictions between
pastors and congregations. For, generally speaking, the congrega-
tions of American Protestantism are more conservative politically
deal with complex problems of justice, every solution for which con-
tains morally ambiguous elements. All political positions are morally
ambiguous because, in the realm of politics and economics, self-
interest and power must be harnessed and beguiled rather than elim-
inated. In other words, forces which are morally dangerous must be
used despite their peril. Politics always aims at some kind of a har-
mony or balance of interest, and such a harmony cannot be regarded
as directly related to the final harmony of love of the Kingdom of
God. All men are naturally inclined to obscure the morally ambigu-
ous element in their political cause by investing it with religious
sanctity. This is why religion is more frequently a source of confu-
sion than of light in the political realm. The tendency to equate our
political with our Christian convictions causes politics to generate
idolatry.
The other wrong answer stands at the opposite extreme. It is to
cal decisions and obscures our Christian responsibilities for the good
order and justice of our civil community.
If we rule out these two extremes, we still face the primary ques-
have been right in doing so. But this broad moral purpose must be
distinguished from problems of strategy. Various strategic devices
will be advanced as the best ways of fulfilling our responsibilities.
Such devices can never be invested with full religious sanctity. It
would be impossible to claim, for instance, that the Christian faith
requires that America give preference to either the European or the
Asiatic field of strategy, or that we should defend the free world pri-
marily by air, rather than by land, power.
In the same fashion the commandment " Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself " brings us under religious and moral compul-
sions to eliminate the violations of brotherhood in the field of race
relations. But it can hardly compel us to choose between the efficacy
of a state as against a Federal Fair Employment Practices Act. In
such questions of strategy there are reasons for honest differences of
opinion.
In actual life, however, no clear distinction between moral princi-
ples and strategy can be made. This is why Christian convictions that
deal only with ultimate principle and exclude strategic issues tend
to become wholly irrelevant. Yet the farther one moves from a prin-
ciple that is clearly related to the love commandment to detailed ap-
plications in particular situations, the more hazardous the decision
becomes, and the more impossible it is to compel others to a similar
conviction by appeal to a common faith.
That is why it is important to distinguish between the responsibil-
ity of individual Christians and voluntary groups, and the responsi-
bility of the church as a community of faith. Christians must make
these hazardous political decisions with full recognition that others
RATIONING AND DEMOCRACY 6l
ocratic. In the same spirit the pious housewife now regards rationing
as a proof that we have sacrificed democracy.
Rationing is actually the best implementation of the spirit of
equality. When, as in wartime, consumers' goods are scarce, it is im-
possible to maintain a free market. The scramble of competitive buy-
ers would merely result in a special advantage to the rich over the
poor. The would be able to pay the higher prices for
privileged
scarcer goods, and the poor would have to be content with leftovers.
No semblance of justice can be maintained in wartime without price
ceilings on the one hand and rationing on the other. Despite some
mistakes, the Government has done rather well in both its price
fixing and rationing programs. Its record is particularly good if we
remember that it has had to deal with very ignorant opposition, not
a little of which has been informed by supposedly Christian presup-
positions.
It is a rather sad commentary on the state of Christian thought
that men should identify the right to do as they please, without re-
gard to the weal and woe of others, with " Christian liberty." It is
certain that the nation's future is not safe, no matter which party
rules. For such political acrimony endangers the nation's health
more than any specific political policies.
The danger that democratic freedom may destroy the unity of the
nation is in fact so great that our founding fathers never envisioned
the organization of national parties as we know them. Madison was
" faction " as was Washington.
as fearful of the baneful effects of
Madison argued, in fact, that one virtue of a federal community
would be that it would prevent the organization of " factions." He
was right in the sense that our political parties are loosely organ-
and regional political groups, which lack the
ized federations of local
ideological consistency of European political parties. But he would
certainly have been surprised by the consistency of the national or-
ganization of each political group.
The fear of the founding fathers of national disruption through
the organization of " factions," and the complete silence of the Con-
stitution on political instrumentalities which are now the very stuff
of the political process, put party government in the same category
as constitutional monarchy in, say, Britain. They are both unin-
tory. But they must nevertheless have a reserve conviction that this is
not true, that the nation will be safe in the keeping of either party.
Parliamentary government is, in the phrase of the English historian
Herbert Butterfield, a form of " limited war." Its success depends
upon the constant willingness of the defeated minority to trust both
itself and the nation to the victorious majority.
nique for limiting party conflict that might strike the visitor from
Mars as very illogical. The technique requires that the election con-
test be fought with few restraints, generating emotions that some-
times divide families and friends. But, when the count is in, the de-
feated minority submits with what grace it is able to summon, and
the party truce goes into effect for the general public though the
professional politicians are expected to carry on a guerrilla warfare.
We are told that Latin-American observers are " shocked " by our
custom requiring the loser to congratulate the victor and assure him
of support. In Latin America, that gesture smacks of " insincerity."
Actually, it is a ritualistic observance defining the difference be-
tween stable nations, in which the political struggle has limits, and
those nations in which the struggle may be as bitter as it is " sin-
cere " and where the minority is not reconciled to defeat.
The mutual trust between parties, which makes the limitation of
party conflict possible, rests upon certain conditions. The party pro-
68 LOVE AND justice: national level
grams must not be too contradictory and a large segment of the pop-
ulation must not be irrevocably committed to either party. Above
all, there must be a reserve of loyalty to the nation and, what may
center " of democracy was held by neither Right nor Left but by
both conservatives and liberals, who put the standards of justice
above party advantage. This vital center was constantly threatened
by the extremists of the Right, who tried to prove that the whole
Left was involved with the communist conspiracy and that, in any
case, fascism was justified as a weapon against communism; and by
the leftist extremists, who tried to prove that every kind of conserva-
tism was tantamount to fascism and that communism was justified
as a weapon against the fascist danger. Both theories proved wrong.
If theyhad been right, no democracy could have survived.
There was an ironic quality in history's refutation of these theo-
ries. For the two forms of extremism, each of which tried to justify
itself as the most effective weapon against the other, were revealed
with which the conflicts of interest are composed and basic rights
preserved. This is the more true since the political debate in every
modern technological nation centers on the question of how much
or how littleGovernment shall interfere in the free play of eco-
the
nomic forces. There can be no final solution of this problem. Ap-
proaches to it by Right and Left cannot be " objective," for they are
prompted by the respective interests on the one hand of those classes
which are powerful enough to have security and want liberty for the
DEMOCRACY AND THE PARTY SPIRIT 69
temper of his campaign. The contest between the President and the
extremists in his party is, therefore, a contest between those who
would narrow and those who would widen the distance between
the
parties.
President Eisenhower stood resolutely against the
Bricker
When
that expressed and
Amendment and the isolationist nationalism it
symbolized, seemed for a time that the issue had been finally
it
the other type
joined and we would soon know whether the one or
But an old pattern repeated
of Republicanism would be victorious.
The President did not act until it was
itself, and an equivocal one.
Secretary of the Army from at least the
too late to rescue an inept
increased
appearance of capitulation to Senator McCarthy and thus
of American
the status of this demagogue at home and his caricature
life abroad.
anything more
This incident, together with his failure to enforce
moderation even upon
than an outward compliance to his rule of
whether the party in
members of his own staff, raises the question
a
power may not have elaborated, either by design or inadvertence,
Presi-
method of working both sides of the street. If this works, the
unsullied symbol of moderation and wisdom,
dent will remain an
the
who will appeal to the dominant mood of the nation, while
" bully boys " will " rough up " the opposition without real hin-
after the proletarian dictatorship has destroyed all the foes of a new
society. But the anarchists are pure Utopians who have no realization
of the necessary role of power and forces in politics. Anarchism is a
dangerous doctrine. Its conceptions of human nature are purely ro-
mantic. It imagines that if it can only destroy the present instru-
ments of power and greed, humanity will naturally and inevitably
express the innate goodness of human nature, thus securing the
blessings of both liberty and voluntary co-operation. Pure anarchist
doctrine is dangerous because it confuses the political realities and
prompts men to chase phantoms and illusions. The more realistic
anarchism which dates from Bakunin is even more dangerous than
the earlier and purer variety of Proudhon. It is the anarchism of ter-
ror, assassination, and insurrection. It justifies any deed of violence
against men of power because it falsely imagines that to get rid of
powerful men in society is to solve the problem of power. It does not
know that the same power that is the source of injustice in a society
73
74 LOVE AND justice: national level
So destructive are the illusions and the policies of anarchism that
the failure of the Spanish Government to throttle its fascist foes
and the fascists who feel so certain that they are fighting for a Chris-
tian civilization in Spain.
Before we do so we might ask the reason for the significant sur-
vival of this curious libertarian and terroristic creed in Spain. Spain
and Russia were the two nations of Europe who entered the twen-
tieth century with an unreconstructed feudalism. Anarchism flour-
ishes in Spain for the same reason that nihilism flourished in Russia
before the genius of a small group of communists transmuted its
anarchism into a more realistic collectivism. This fanatic, not to say
psychopathic, libertarianism is a natural reaction to an outmoded
feudalism. It is a reaction to the injustices of a feudal social order,
injustices that were onerous enough in the period of its flower and
which grow more and more oppressive in the period of its decay.
Whenever power produces only a minimal social peace and a maxi-
mum of social injustice one must expect the doctrine to arise that all
power is evil.
But feudalism is not only a particular form of agrarian social or-
der. It is also a peculiar type of culture in which religion is more in-
necessary evil, lest society fall into chaos. The difficulty with all es-
tablished religion is that it stops short in its realism and fails to rec-
will " cast the mighty from their seats and exalt them of low de-
gree," that " he bringeth the princes to naught and maketh the
judges of the earth as vanity." Prophetic religion sees how all hu-
man power is tempted to pride and to injustice. In its pride it
regards itself the sole source of social peace rather than a purely
ancillary factor. Thus it imagines that the inordinate privileges that
it demands merely because it has the strength to demand them are
really just wages that society ought to pay for Thus
its services. the
76 LOVE AND justice: national level
same power, whether priestly, military, or economic, that builds a so-
it by its
ciety in its youth, destroys injustices in the period of its age.
who judges all peoples, it can never be completely at ease with any
government. At least it cannot as long as it is true to its essential na-
of
But unfortunately, if its genius is perverted, its sanctification
ture.
that of non-
power and injustice will be even more grievous than
prophetic religions.
subject to the
Catholicism is not the only form of Christianity
power. But it is
temptation of a too intimate relation with secular
built a civilization. It is
the only form of Christianity that ever
of becoming the de-
therefore particularly subject to the temptation
that it built. In both
fender, rather than the critic, of the civilization
relation to its civilization
medieval Europe and modern Spain, its
always has its own religious genius. That was true of the middle-class
whom the princes of the world are as nothing, and which is able to
The true believers insisted upon this creed in spite of the fact that
evidence had been multiplying for years that nationalistic motives
were gaining the ascendency in Russia. The Bolshevists had begun
to extol Peter the Great as a founder of modern Russia; and the Rus-
sian word for " fatherland " was popularized. Yet the comrades be-
lieved that Russia represented a force of pure disinterestedness in
politics. Its only thought was supposedly the defense of the workers
throughout the world. The " united front " politics of the Kremlin
seemed to give some support to these ideas for a while. Russia was
supporting democracy against fascism. Democracy was, of course, not
as good as communism. But it was better than fascism, and Stalin
was wise enough and merciful enough to support the children of
light even if they were only the children of twilight.
All this was, of course, not politics at all. It was a naive religion.
People must believe something. Analyze the life attitudes of even the
most sophisticated and emancipated modern, and you will discover
that somewhere in his credo there is a Christ and a Kingdom of God,
something that he trusts, though all else fail. If one deals with poli-
tics realistically, unhindered by the confusions of primitive reli-
gions, one must soon discover that in every national organism there
is both a primal instinct of survival without reference to the " ideo-
logical," the cultural, and ideal values that the nation bears, and
some loyalty to a " civilization," a " culture," a religion which tran-
scends the nation. In each case there is also an oligarchy in each na-
THE HITLER-STALIN PACT 79
tion, whose instincts of survival cut diagonally across both the other
impulses. nation ever supports values that transcend its life if
No
they are diametrically opposed to the preservation of its life. Na-
tions can and do support higher values than their own if there is a
coincidence between the higher values and the impulse of survival.
The international situation up to a recent date was as follows: In
the so-called democratic nations there was a coincidence between the
values of democracy (which are still very real, however corrupted by
economic injustice) and the defensive necessities of the French na-
tion and the British Empire. In the same way there was a coinci-
dence between the preservation of Russia and the preservation of
socialism against fascism. The defensive necessities of the capitalistic
oligarchs in the democratic nations did, however, run counter to this
community of interest. The Polish landlords were reluctant to allow
a Russian for the defense of the nation. The
army into Poland, even
British Tories were equally reluctant to make a pact with Russia.
they did make halfhearted efforts in that direction. But the Russians
were not slow to perceive how halfhearted these efforts were. They
therefore counted discretion the better part of valor and made a pact
with the enemy.
The Germans come into this picture as an illustration of another
possible relation between national interests and those which tran-
scend the nation. Nazis have long proclaimed themselves the
The
" ideological,"
defenders of civilization against Bolshevism. But the
that is, dishonest element, in this universal value was greater than in
the other cases. Nazism Rauschning has pointed out, the wor-
is, as
ship of power for its own Even its devotion to the racial prin-
sake.
devotion to " civilization " certainly is. Nothing
ciple is bogus. Its
was more natural for the Nazis than to seek this pact with Russia.
The fact that Russia accepted it and set the Nazis free to attack
the democratic powers places Stalin's Russia in the same relation to
the cause of socialism as Napoleon's France had to the bourgeois
revolution of the eighteenth century. This is not a new phenomenon
of history. Nor is it anything about which good people can be par-
ticularly horror-struck. It conforms to the law of nations in so far as
ment, that the fear of the great Red Army brought Hitler to heel,
that Stalin broke the Axis by disassociating Japan from Germany,
etc., etc. This is to make black white and white black in a fashion
reminiscent of Nazi propaganda. The arguments outrage the sim-
plest logic. A pact that sets Germany free to fight does not circum-
vent appeasement. It is appeasement on a larger scale than ever at-
Christians who have not fled into quietism, but who have a sense of
responsibility toward the problems of civilization, to recognize
clearly that the tragedy of our era is not merely the decay of a capi-
talistic-bourgeois social order, but the corruption of its alternative
socialist order almost as soon as it had established itself. This does
not mean that the task of advancing democracy to include economic
justice as well as political justice is a hopeless one. After all, bour-
geois democracy did succeed in destroying feudalism despite Na-
poleon's treason, and, one might add, despite the degeneration of
Cromwell's City of God into the first tyranny of modern history.
The Kingdom of God is not of this world; yet its light illumines
our world and its hope saves us from despair. The Chris-
tasks in this
tian faith stands between the illusions and the despair of the world;
it is particularly an antidote to the illusions which are stubbornly
from time to time. This jealousy of Sir Stafford Cripps was apparent
in the past. It is apparent now in the attitude toward its most prom-
ising leader, Herbert Morrison. The latter is of working-class origin,
but he belongs to the political, rather than trade-union, section of
the party. If anyone is to lead the party to triumph it will be Morri-
son. But there is little prospect of such a triumph in the next decade.
In the field of religious radicalism, the genuine achievements of
national unity have the same tendency to dull the edge of a reli-
long line of British radicals who represent the of the left wing
Christian tradition. From Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of the
trant forces that must be overcome before we can offer basic health
security to our citizens. Adequate medical care in this nation is still
the monopoly of the well-to-do and the very poor.
But there is never a simple " ideal " in social justice. The British
health service is ideal from the standpoint of the breadth of its se-
curities. But the medical profession is taxed with tasks beyond the
limits of its endurance. There is good evidence that doctors lack
time for adequate diagnostic work. Furthermore, the cost of the
serviceis greater than anticipated. This contributes to the size of a
den. Sir Stafford Cripps's very honest budget message made it clear
that no reduction of the tax could be expected so long as the Gov-
ernment financed social services on the present scale. The new
budget, with no promise of relief to the taxpayer, has created an
atmosphere of pessimism which has led to the loss of many Labor
seats in themunicipal elections.
This may or may not be an augury of a defeat of labor in the
loss
scured for the time being by the theory that the undue demands
upon the doctors represent a "backlog" of unsatisfied medical
needs. Since there is an element of truth in this argument, it may
well preserve the present program for some time to come. But ulti-
mately it will be discovered that something more than a backlog of
untended ailments prompts some people to make inordinate claims
upon the doctor. Then a way will be found to protect both the doc-
tor and the more modest patients against the claims of the thought-
less.
FREEDOMASALUXURY 87
own, the production power does not equal the demand of consumers
for goods. Even in our own nation we have been involved in infla-
tion because it proved impossible under conditions of full employ-
ment to produce enough goods to satisfy all demands. We had our
own experience after the war with a too precipitate decontrol of
meats, for instance, which resulted in high prices for meats. If prices
rise high enough, they do of course restrict consumption, but merely
upon the basis of capacity to pay. The poor are priced out of the
market.
This is why the most disciplined poor nations achieve a high de-
gree of justice through planning and control. The less disciplined
nations provide every luxury for the rich while the poor are in want.
brate as the last word in political idealism is, from the perspective
of the rest of the world, merely the luxury of a very fortunate na-
tion. That is why we have, and will continue to have, little success
in commending the " American way of life " to the rest of the world.
We imagine ourselves the keeper of the ark of democratic virtues;
but the world regards us as a profligate rich man who can afford to
be wasteful.
The controls required by poor nations for the sake of justice are
not, however, the final answer to the problem of freedom and justice
in a technical society. It may well be that a healthy technical society
can preserve its freedom only if it has enough economic margin to
permit itself the luxury of a free market in some areas of its econ-
omy. For obviously complete planning does lead to an omnicompe-
tent state.
C. Economic Issues
main the absolute ideal of social life. It is the final ideal because the
individual never completely ethical if he must be restrained by
is
89
go LOVE AND justice: national level
the main facts of history. Pious kings have held to their power until
robust nobles divested them of it. Good aristocrats took their heredi-
tary advantages for granted until emerging middle classes
the
matched the strength of the aristocracy with their own newly won
commercial power. Even in the family relationship, where love has
been a more potent force than in less intimate social organization,
the autocracy of the male was not challenged until the women
gained a measure of economic independence. The industrial worker
must develop power through organization before he can hope to dis-
lodge the commercial classes from their favored position in the eco-
nomic order.
There are always a few individuals in the privileged classes who,
because of religious insight or rational analysis, have divested them-
selves of their privileges in the interest of an equitable society. Their
achievements are not futile; for moral splendor in individuals al-
ways has exemplary power and persuades others to do likewise, per-
haps with a lesser degree of consistency. But the total effect of the
lives of such individuals mitigates without abolishing the eternal
conflict in society, which the pressure of those who have not against
those who have makes inevitable.
The Christian church has been singularly oblivious to this plain
lesson of history. It has tried to escape the logic of the facts by its
Sanctifying Privilege
tax, and they may be given partly to escape the tax. If contemporary
standards of honesty are followed, part of the income thus tithed
may have been made in stock speculation, in which socially created
wealth is privately appropriated without a qualm of conscience; or,
as is not infrequently the case, the income for the year has been de-
rived from stock dividends, in which the productivity of the industry
is used to compound the original holdings and becomes forever after
a charge upon the industry.
of the strike, or the strike threat, and political force through the
creation of a political party that protects the interests of the less
privileged members of an industrial community, there is no possi-
bility of equalizing privilege and destroying arbitrary power.
the state in the interest of human welfare is the first step down the
slippery slope which leads to totalitarianism. And the ethos of the
business community does influence sources of culture which ought
to be more immune to the growing national idolatry.
Thus the annual report of the Carnegie Corporation of New
York, in surveying the grants it has made for various educational
enterprises, speaks of the " basic rules of the American system,"
which it declares remain unchanged but which must be reinter-
preted in a day in which technology shrinks the world's distances
and brings about " conflicts between our value system and those of
other nations." The more
report also speaks of the necessity of a
adequate program of American studies in our colleges in order to
" give our young people more understanding of and dedication to
sion " by adding mere " human opinion " to the " laws of God."
For him the laws of God consist of two propositions: (i) the love
commandment, and (2) the proposition that men are endowed by
their Creator with the right to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." The treatise is a work of art in explicating the meaning
of " love " and of " freedom " without a word about justice. The
author insists that the state has only a negative function according
to " God's plan," namely, to " protect the right of every man." Any
more positive action in the interest of justice is deprecated. The pi-
ous layman wants good Christians to be socially minded, but he
doesn't want them to be coerced to do justly, for " man's individual
behavior as a social being cannot be forced on people. Social . . .
qualities come from within," he declares, " and can therefore only
be cultivated." One is reminded of the day when Herbert Hoover
opposed unemployment insurance on the ground that it destroyed
the good old American way of voluntary aid to the unfortunate.
Thus Christian sentimentality is made a cloak for a corrupt form
of laissez-faire politics. What is left out of account is that a healthy
society forces practically all people to be just beyond their natural
inclinations. It does not do this by pure coercion. It does it by es-
THE IDOLATRY OF AMERICA 97
assent of the
tablishing standards of justice which gain the moral
majority of the population but yet operate against the immediate
inclinations even of some of the good people who helped to estab-
ments.
is actually creating a mood among
Our present prosperity our lay
approximates the uncritical Christian adoration of
Christians that
" free enterprise system " before the rise of the social gospel
the
challenged The social gospel was frequently itself too moralistic,
it.
but one might be grateful now for some of its emphases, however
inadequate.
our great urban churches become again the
If the ministers of
subtly com-
simple priests and chaplains of this American idolatry,
pounded with a few stray Christian emphases, they will merely add
is how the gospel becomes a salt that has lost its savor.
gospel cannot be preached with truth and power if it does
The
but
not challenge the pretensions and pride, not only of individuals,
of nations, cultures, civilizations, economic and political systems.
The good fortune of America and its power place it under the most
grievous temptations to self-adulation. If there is no power
and grace
in the Christian church
" to bring down every high thing which ex-
The trouble is that the facts do not bear out Mr. Ford's conten-
tion that his wage obviates the necessity for philanthropy. Outside of
a few thousand of the highly skilled workers, such as toolmakers, die-
makers, and patternmakers, it is hardly possible to find a Ford
worker who earned more than $1,500 during the past year. The five-
day week was in fact in effect long before it was publicly proclaimed,
and there were layoffs without pay besides. As a result, few Ford
100 LOVE AND JUSTICE: NATIONAL LEVEL
workers have actually averaged the $30 per week which are needed
to provide an annual total of $1,500. Years ago, when the $5 a day
minimum was established, which meant $30 per week, the Ford
boast that an adequate wage obviated the necessity for charity was
not an idle one. Today it is an idle boast, for living prices have well-
nigh doubled and the weekly wage still hovers around $30. Mr. Ford
declares that a third of his men have received increases. Most of these
increases are either $2 or $4 per week, which means that even the
best of his men are still short from $2 to $4 in their weekly pay en-
velope. That is, they receive either $32 or $34 instead of $36. At the
present moment the five-day week has been reduced to four and one
half days throughout the plant, and many workers have even less
work than At the present rate the only workers who actually
that.
equal the money wages of 1913 are those few thousand who receive
$6.80 a day or more. Whatever the pay in dollars may be, it is an
established fact that the actual wage is immeasurably lower than in
1913. Every social worker in Detroit knows that the Ford wage places
Ford workers in the ranks of social liabilities. The Ford worker in
times of distress and sickness is thrown upon the charitable resources
of the city. The statistics of practically every charity reveal not only
a proportionate but frequently a disproportionate number of Ford
workers who are the recipients of charity.
Not only is the Ford wage no longer a minimum subsistence wage,
not to speak of a minimum comfort wage, but there is no conscience
in the industry in the matter of unemployment or old-age insurance.
An industry that shows regular profits from a hundred to a hundred
and fifty million dollars per year does not lay aside a cent for unem-
ployment insurance. The old argument used to be that an adequate
wage would protect the worker not only against sickness disability
but against periods of unemployment. It is quite obvious that the
present wage is not high enough for that, if, indeed, it ever was.
During the business depression five years ago. Ford managed to keep
more men employed than many other automobile concerns, partly
because bad times affect a cheap car less than a high-priced product
and partly because he weeded out thousands of workers, speeded up
production with the remaining force, and cut the price of his car.
This was an effective business strategy, but it cannot be classed as
humanitarian business. It shows no consideration for the average
man, thrown upon the streets because he is unable to keep up.
HOW PHILANTHROPIC IS HENRY FORD? lOl
cost of the finished article than other concerns which must satisfy
stockholders with big dividends. It is remarkable with what gullibil-
ity the public has accepted this explanation; for
the big profits of the
sentee owners get the whether they stay with one man to
profits or
create the largest centralization of wealth the world has ever known,
if the profits are there? The fact is that the General Motors Corpora-
tion this year underbid Ford in the cost of the finished product,
on the whole, too credulous and uncritical to make any critical anal-
tue. Moral philosophers and teachers of religion have ever been crit-
ical of obvious success, believing it inimical to moral perfection. But
the man in the street has a fine disregard for these scruples. Nothing
intrigues his fancy so much as the vision of a hero who is as good as
he is great. In a recent school vote on the most famous men of his-
tory, Jesus received the highest number of votes and Napoleon the
second highest. It is because most men would like to follow Jesus
and Napoleon at the same time that they so credulously accept and
even help to fashion the Ford myth. It is a thankless but an impor-
tant task to set history against mythology.
analyzed. The article brought responses from all parts of the world,
most of them from people who were loath to revise their previously
are fortunate.
Two thirds of the slender savings of ten years of industry have been
used up on these months, chiefly because the family did not want to
take the oldest girl out of school.
five weeks. His family, consisting "of wife and two children, became
the object of public charity and he himself became a public charge.
The wife is now seeking employment. The family was without any
reserves for the illness.
F seeking charity to prevent dispossession. Sickness of two chil-
is
Managerial Autocracy
and no one can discover the source of the authority. Of late men
have been discharged in cases of sickness even when they were me-
ticulously careful to report their disability. Men who have worked
at the plant for years were under the necessity, upon their return to
health, to apply for a position, and were subjected to the indignities
of a crude medical examination through which all recruits must
pass. Worse than that, they discovered that pay increases that come
through years of service were withheld because tenure of service was
reckoned from the date of reinstatement rather than the actual date
of first employment.
Communistic Propaganda
history of their religious and secular life and then demanded that we
do likewise.
The maintain an attitude of complete guilelessness on the
effort to
part of the chairman did not succeed for long. He
was out to prove
with modernism.' We read The Christian Century, were
us tainted
the hated Civil
interested in pacifist activities, held connection with
believed in disarmament, did not believe in " the
Liberties Union,
could not de-
inerrancy of Scripture as the absolute Word of God,"
to prove that we be-
fine the divinity of Jesus in terms exact enough
only
lieved that
"
he was begotten by God." In short, we are not
interests that the
modernists, but proved by our connections and
perennial contention of fundamentalists that
modernism is the
that men under " alien influence " could not understand her ideals.
" "
Criminal Syndicalism
There good evidence that the operators are not as worried about
is
the atheism of the communist as are the good people of the commu-
nity. They have carried on an unremitting warfare against all labor
organizations for decades. They do not want the mines organized.
They profess a respect for the United Mine Workers only since the
communists have come in. The United Mine Workers are inert and
thoroughly suppressed. Sometimes they allow themselves to be used
to break up communist unions, but promises of rewards for their
services are not kept. In spite of protestations to the contrary on the
part of operators there is evidence that membership in any union
results in the immediate dismissal of the miner. The head of the dis-
trict of United Mine Workers is under indictment for murder in
There is, in short, every manifestation of a " class war " in Pineville,
has been raised in the county for their aid. Of course, only the com-
pletely destitute may receive aid. The funds are not large enough to
help any miner who has any work. The average work week of the
miners who do have work is one and a half days, and the average
wage about $2.25 per day. An official in one of the best mines in
the county, where the men work three days per week, confessed that
the men found great difficulty in meeting minimum needs.
The picture of the church as a thoroughly middle-class institution
in Pineville differs only in vividness and clear demarcation from
that which may be found everywhere. The clearness of the demarca-
tion arises from the fact that the mountaineer miner is much more
clearly a class and a race apart than the worker in the cities. There
is an interest in his plight but a fatalistic attitude
toward it. The
depression and the sickness of the coal industry are held responsible
for it, and the most radical remedy that any churchman proposed
for the difficulties was an association of mine operators to prevent
price cutting and consequent wage reductions. Some of the min-
isters have denounced the violence of the officials and citizens'
com-
mittee unqualifiedly, but it is only at this one point that they dis-
sociate themselves from general community sentiment, and it might
be added that a very considerable part of the community is equally
critical of the reign of terror.
would communist
just as soon tie a in a sack and throw him in the
river as do anything else I know."
Lest liberal Christians raise themselves in pharisaic judgment over
their fundamentalist brethren, it would be well to hasten the men-
tion of the second aspect of the religious-social ethic of Pineville,
which fundamentalist and modernist Christianity usually share. It is
preachers (who usually dig coal for a living) must preach in com-
pany-owned churches, and they are generally too ignorant to offer
real leadership. Only occasionally one arises whose native intelli-
gence overcomes educational handicaps, to speak with the voice of
an Amos. Last year one such mining preacher was indicted in a
neighboring county on a charge of criminal syndicalism. He had ad-
vised his flock to join the union. The best that can be said for the
most of the preachers mining communities is that they are
in the
not as subservient to the companies as the company doctors. But if
one knows the history of the company doctors that is meager praise
indeed.
garchy of this nation. He does not help the wealthy to realize that
the demand for stronger state control upon business springs from the
increased power of industry and finance in the community and from
the peril to justice that resides in this power.
Even when no religious sanctities are appealed to, it is dishonest
to scare people with the perils of state power if these are not consid-
ered in comparison with the perils of irresponsible economic power.
The growth of state power is neither a caprice of history nor the
fruit of " paganism." It is the consequence of the community's ef-
more hours; ^ (2) that price restrictions should be removed and that
such a policy would not lead to inflation because
it would encourage
standards " beyond any previous dreams of avarice. All this we can
have if only we stop striking or placing price restrictions upon our
goods.
The trouble with this picture is that more and more production,
without a proper distribution of the ever-increasing wealth which the
machine produces, eventually results in overproduction and crisis.
late about the character of man which makes it possible for respecta-
ble citizens to defy the known lessons of our common experience in
thisway in order to reap some momentary profits. Most of them
would not have cheated the Government in the time of war. But they
are quite willing to risk the horrors of another depression for the
sake of an immediate advantage.
We still find rationalists speaking wisely about the necessity of
overcoming a " cultural lag " and bringing our social intelligence to
the level of our scientific intelligence. But obviously something more
than ignorance is involved in this stupidity that defies all the lessons
of our experience. It reveals the pathetic capacity of powerful men
and groups to prefer their own and their immediate interests to the
wider interests of the group and their own long-term interests.
Fortunately labor is powerful enough to prevent the wide hiatus
between productivity and wages that resulted during the last boom
period. But there is little likelihood that it will be powerful enough
or that the nation will be wise enough to avoid all the evil conse-
quences of the policy that our economic oligarchy is determined to
follow.
increases are the consequence, and not the cause, of inflation. But
they cannot deny that they may well be the cause of future inflation.
The fact is that every particular group in society is more intent
upon its own position in this radical readjustment of social forces
than it is in the total result. Some of the reasons used in the debate
wonderfully reveal the limits of reason in political debate. Thus a
Senator who owns a vast industrial establishment lectures labor lead-
ers on the injustice of their wages compared with the sacrifices that
the soldiers make in Korea. But he fails to see that the contrast be-
tween his profits and the sacrifices of the soldiers is even greater. Ac-
tually the operations of a free economy become anachronistic as
INFLATION AND GROUP SELFISHNESS II9
crowd. I ask the minority groups who suffer from the sins of my
group to be generous and forgive our sins. That seems to stamp me
as a humble and contrite person. But of course my very confession is
supposed to impress my hearers with the fact that I do not really
belong to my group, that I am superior to it. I would be greatly cha-
grined if anyone took my confession at its face value. For pride dic-
tates my humble confession. Its insincerity, however, is not its only
limitation; It prevents the conference from dealing objectively with
the social facts and problems that concern it.
Sincerity Lacking
120
THE CONFESSION OF A TIRED RADICAL 121
arises to make an abject apology for the sins of the Protestant Nor-
dics,and the conference thereupon resolves itself into a discussion of
ways and means by which the sinners may be brought to see the error
of their ways. The turn of the discussion thus makes it quite impos-
sible to deal realistically with the whole problem of group
loyalties
and the resulting friction between groups. It may be true that Nordic
people have an undue amount of race pride. But racial arrogance is
certainly not a unique Nordic sin. Nor is religious bigotry and intol-
The fact seems to be that all groups, religious and racial, tend to
preserve their self-respect by adopting contemptuous attitudes to-
ward other groups and to express their appreciation of their own
characteristic cultureby depreciating that of others. Whatever group
happens to be in the majority seems to be the most bigoted simply
because it is in a position where it can indulge its arrogance more
freely. The minority groups may commit fewer social sins, but
they
groups from pooling their lives and fortunes and from thereby ef-
facing the dividing line?
The sins that the white has committed against the colored
man
man cry to heaven. But might it not be well for the ultimate peace
of society if intelligent white men and colored men studied and
analyzed these sins not so much as the peculiarities of a race, but as
the universal characteristics of Homo sapiens, so-called? Colored peo-
122 LOVE AND JUSTICE: NATIONAL LEVEL
pie who have long lived in the North and gained social and cultural
advantages that recently migrated Southern Negroes do not possess,
have almost as difficult a task to deal justly with their underprivi-
leged brothers as have the white people. There are fortunately al-
All over the world we find minority groups which once suffered
from the arrogance of majorities, quickly adopting the vices of the
majority when they attain a dominant position. Bohemians who
have been only recently emancipated from the German yoke are try-
ing very hard to give the German minority in Czechoslovakia a dose
of their own medicine. Poles who felt the heels of Russia and Ger-
many celebrate their new freedom by oppressing the Jews. Assimi-
lated Jews are not always anxious to claim their kinship with their
brethren of the ghetto. Catholics plead for tolerance in America
where they represent a minority group and practice every kind of
intolerance in Italy and Spain where they are dominant.
Is the evidence not all for the thesis that we are dealing not with
the peculiar vices of particular groups and races but with character-
istics of man? All human groups are essentially predatory and tend
to hold desperately to their privileges against the pressure of the un-
derprivileged, who demand a fairer share of the blessings. All hu-
man groups are essentially proud and find that pride very convenient
because it seems to justify their special privileges and to explain the
sad state of the underprivileged. It is this combination of selfishness
and pride that makes the problems of group relationships so difficult.
Thus the white man keeps the Negro in poverty and attributes the
poverty to the Negro's sloth. The industrial master prevents the in-
dustrial worker from sharing the problems of industry and attributes
his irresponsibility to innate defects.
ubiquitous class struggle. In the South white men justify their atti-
Universal Failings
But to learn of each other does not mean futile comparisons be-
tween incommensurable virtues and vices. Spiritual as Gandhi is,
there is considerable pride in his assumption that the East is spiritu-
ally superior to the West. World peace and social harmony wait
upon the men who make common war against the defects of the hu-
man heart and the deficiencies ofhuman imagination and intelli-
have inherent characteristics. We are told for instance that " the
Scandinavians now known as the world's most co-operative people
were once, as Vikings, the terror of coastal towns." Differences be-
tween races are the product of history and social circumstances, and
there is no evidence to support the idea that there are inferior and
superior races. " Science concludes," the pamphlet declares, " that
there is no good evidence of inborn mental differences between
races."
All this marshaling of scientific evidence for the essential equality
of the races is good propaganda for the Christian idea of
perfectly
racial brotherhood. Yet there is something faulty with this scientific
unconscious effort to make himself, his race, and his culture God.
This idolatry is not broken until man is confronted with the real
God, and finds his pride broken by the divine judgment, and learns
that from this crucifixion of the old proud self a new self may arise,
and that this new self has the " fruits of the spirit," which are " love,
joy, and peace."
Racial conflict has become the most vicious of all forms of social
conflict in this nation. And the racial tensions will become worse
long before they will become better. The church has been very busy
telling the nation what to do about this. The church might better
try to present the national community with a greater number of
truly contrite souls, truly " emancipated " of race prejudice, who ex-
has the capacity to rise above race pride and prejudice if only he
becomes a little more enlightened.
There are, in other words, no solutions for the race problem on
THE RACE PROBLEM 13I
to allwhite men, they would still be wrong if they did not under-
stand that all men, and not merely white men, have race prejudice.
One salutary form of religious realism is to brush aside all illu-
sions which have hitherto saved us from cynicism and despair, to all
the facts about human nature to become fully revealed, until all
grace.
132 LOVE AND justice: NATIONAL LEVEL
This does not mean that we ought to capitulate to aggravated
forms of evil, merely because we know ourselves to be tainted with
them. We may deal with them more resolutely if we fully under-
stand the situation. We can also deal with specific problems more
wisely. If we imagine that race pride is only a vestigial remnant of
barbarism, which civilization is in the process of sloughing off; if we
do not understand it as a perennial corruption of man's collective
life on every level of social and moral achievement, we are bound to
he democratic world. Even the Jews are loath to bring the problem
o our attention in all its tragic depth. We will not face it because
ve should be overwhelmed by a sense of guilt in contemplating
hose aspects of the problem which Hitler did not create but only
ggravated. Some Jews have refused to face it in dread of having to
ecognize that the solutions provided by the liberal Jewish world
lave failed to reach the depths of the problem.
The liberal world has sought to dissolve the prejudice between
ews and Gentiles by preaching tolerance and good will. Friends of
he Jews have joined the Jews in seeking to persuade their de-
ractors that the charges against them are lies. But this does not
neet the real issue. The real question is, Why should these lies be
nanufactured and why should they be believed? Every cultural or
acial group has its own characteristic vices and virtues. When a
ninority group is hated for its virtues as well as for its vices, and
ivhen its vices are hated not so much because they are vices as be-
ause they bear the stamp of uniqueness, we are obviously dealing
with a collective psychology that is not easily altered by a little more
nlightenment. The fact is that the relations of cultural and ethnic
^oups, intranational or international, have complexities unknown
n the relations between individuals, in whom intelligence may dis-
olve group loyalties and the concomitant evil of group friction.
American theories of tolerance in regard to race are based upon a
alse universalism that in practice develops into a new form of na-
ionalism. The fact that America has actually been a melting pot
n which a new amalgam of races is being achieved has given rise to
the illusion that racial and ethnic distinction can be transcended in
history to an indeterminate degree. Russian nationalism has the
same relation to Marxist universalism as American nationalism has
to liberal universalism. There is a curious, partly unconscious, cul-
tural imperialism in theories of tolerance that look forward to a
134 LOVE AND justice: national level
complete destruction of all racial distinctions. The majority group
expects to devour the minority group by way of assimilation. This is
a painless death, but it is death nevertheless.
The collective will to survive of those ethnic groups in America
which have a base in another homeland is engaged and expressed in
their homeland, and need not express itself here, where an amalgam
of races is taking place. The Finns need not seek to perpetuate them-
selves in America, for their collective will to live is expressed in Fin-
land. But the Jews are in a different position. Though as an ethnic
group they have maintained some degree of integrity for thousands
of years, they are a nationality scattered among the nations. Does the
liberal-democratic world fully understand that it is implicitly mak-
ing collective extinction the price of its provisional tolerance?
This question implies several affirmations that are challenged by
both Jewish and Gentile liberals; it is therefore important to make
these affirmations explicit and to elaborate them. One is that the
Jews are really a nationality and not merely a cultural group. Cer-
tainly the Jews have maintained a core of racial integrity through
the ages. This fact is not disproved by the assertion that their blood
is considerably mixed. There are no pure races. History develops
the nations. I use the word " nationality " to indicate something
more than " race " and something less than " nation." It is more
than race by reason of the admixture of culture and less than nation
by reason of the absence of a state. The Jews certainly are a nation-
ality by reason of the ethnic core of their culture. Those Jews who
do not feel themselves engaged by a collective will have a perfect
right to be so disengaged, just as Americans of French or Greek
descent need feel no responsibility for the survival of their respective
JEWSAFTERTHEWAR I35
I
prejudice if only they could prove that they are a purely cultural or
religious community.
The Jews are quite prepared to be spurlos
fact that millions of
i;
must affect
versenkt, to be annihilated, in a process of assimilation
j
the program of the democratic world for dealing with the Jewish
\
question. The democratic world must accord them this privilege, in-
cluding, of course, the right to express the ethos of their history in
purely cultural and religious terms, in so far as this is possible, with-
out an ethnic base. The democratic world must resist the insinuation
that the Jews are not assimilable, particularly when the charge is
They are not assimilable but they have added to the riches of a
democratic world by their ethnic and cultural contributions. Civili-
zation must guard against the tendency of all communities to de-
mand a too simple homogeneity, for if this is allowed complete ex-
pression, it results in Nazi tribal primitivism. The preservation of
tolerance and cultural pluralism is necessary not only from the
standpoint of justice to the Jews but from the standpoint of the
quality of a civilization.
The assimilability of the Jews and their right to be assimilated are
not in question; this conviction must prompt one half of the pro-
gram of the democratic world, the half that consists in maintaining
and extending the standards of tolerance and cultural pluralism
achieved in a liberal era. But there is another aspect of the Jewish
problem that is not met by this strategy. That is the simple right of
the Jews to survive as a people. There are both Jews and Gentiles
who deny that the Jews have such a survival impulse as an ethnic
group, but the evidence of contemporary history refutes them, as
does the evidence of all history in regard to the collective impulses
of survival in life generally. Modern liberalism has been blind to
this aspect of human existence because its individualist and uni-
versalist presuppositions and illusions have prevented it from seeing
some rather obvious facts in man's collective life.
One proof of the Jews' will to survive is, of course, that they have
survived the many vicissitudes of their history. They have survived
in spite of the fact that they have been a nationality scattered among
the nations, without a homeland of their own, since the dawn of
136 LOVE AND justice: NATIONAL LEVEL
Western European They are a people of the Diaspora. Mod-
history.
ern assimilationists on both sides sometimes suggest that the sur-
vival of the Jews through the centuries was determined on the one
hand by the hostility of the feudal world and on the other by the
toughness of an orthodox religious faith; and they suggest that the
liberal era has dissipated both the external and the internal basis of
this survival. They assume that the liberal ideals of tolerance are in-
finitely extensible and that the breaking of the hard shell of a tradi-
tional religious unity will destroy the internal will to live.
The violent nationalism of our period proves the error of the first
demned, but where they can be what they are, preserving their own
unique identity without asking " by your leave " of anyone else.
It is this understanding of a basic human situation on the part of
JEWS AFTER THE WAR l^^j
the less privileged portion of the Jewish community which has given
Zionism a particular impetus. There are of course individuals in the
more privileged groups who make common cause with the less privi-
leged because they have the imagination to see what their more in-
tellectualist brothers have not seen. But on the whole Zionism repre-
sents the wisdom of the common experience as against the wisdom
of the mind, which tends to take premature flights into the absolute
or the universal from the tragic conflicts and the stubborn particu-
larities of human history.
The second part of any program for the solution of the Jewish
problem must rest upon the recognition that a collective survival
impulse is as legitimate a " right " as
an individual one. Justice, in
history, isconcerned with collective, as well as with individual,
rights. Recognition of the legitimacy of this right must lead, in my
opinion, to a more generous acceptance of the Zionist program as
correct in principle, however much it may have to be qualified in
application.
The Jewish religionists, the Jewish and Gentile secularists, and
the Christian missionaries to the Jews have, despite the contradic-
tory character of their various approaches, one thing in common.
They would solve the problem of the particularity of a race by a
cultural or religious universalism. This is a false answer if the uni-
versal character of their culture or religion demands the destruction
of the historical in this case racial particularism. It is just as
false as if thecommand " thou shaft love thy neighbor as thyself "
were interpreted to mean that I must destroy myself so that no fric-
tion may arise between my neighbor and myself.
The author, who happens to be a Christian theologian, may be
permitted the assertion, as a postscriptum, that he has his own ideas
about the relation of the Christian to the Jewish religion. But he re-
gards all religious and cultural answers to the Jewish problem that
do not take basic ethnic facts into consideration as the expressions of
either a premature universalism or a conscious or unconscious eth-
nic imperialism.
Part II
I offer " a " solution rather than " the " solution to the problem
of anti-Semitism precisely because a prerequisite for any solution of
Jews to our Western democratic world calls for at least two different
approaches. We must on the one hand preserve and if possible ex-
tend the democratic standards of tolerance and of cultural and racial
pluralism that allow the Jews Lehensraum as a nation among the
nations. We must on the other hand support more generously than
in the past the legitimate aspiration of Jews for a " homeland " in
which they will not be simply tolerated but which they will possess.
The type of liberalism that fights for and with the Jews on the first
battle line but leaves them to fight alone on the second is informed
by unrealistic universalism. If its presuppositions are fully analyzed,
it will be discovered that they rest upon the hope that history is
moving forward to a universal culture that will eliminate all particu-
larities and every collective uniqueness, whether rooted in nature or
were physically able to absorb them, we know very well that migra-
tions never develop as logically as this. I cannot judge whether
Zionist estimates of the millions that a fully developed Palestine
could absorb are correct. They seem to me to err on the side of opti-
mism. But in any case it would be fantastic toassume that all Jews
could or would find their way to Palestine, even in the course of
many centuries.
more important, however, to consider what democracy owes
It is
to its own
ideals of justice and to its own quality as a civilization
than what it owes to the Jews. Neither democracy nor any other
civilization pretending to maturity can afford to capitulate to the
tendency in collective would bring about unity by estab-
life that
lishing a simple homogeneity. We must not underestimate this
tendency as a perennial factor in man's social life. Nor must we fail
to understand the logic behind it. Otherwise we shall become in-
volved in the futile task of seeking to prove that minority groups
are not really as bad as their critics accuse them of being, instead
of understanding that minority groups are thought " bad " only
because they diverge from the dominant type and affront that type
by But to yield to this tendency would be to allow
their divergence.
civilization to be swallowed in primitivism, for the effort to return
to the simple unity of tribal life is a primitive urge of which nazism
is the most consistent, absurd, and dangerous contemporary expres-
sion. In the case of the Jews, with their peculiar relation to the
modern world and the peculiar contributions that they have made
to every aspect of modern culture and civilization, any relaxation of
140 LOVE AND justice: NATIONAL LEVEL
democratic standards would also mean robbing our civilization of
the special gifts that they have developed as a nation among the
nations.
The necessity for a second strategy in dealing with the Jewish
problem stems from certain aspects of the collective life of men that
the modern situation has brought into tragic relief. The Jews re-
quire a homeland, if for no other reason, because even the most
generous immigration laws of the Western democracies will not
permit all the dispossessed Jews of Europe to find a haven in which
they may look forward to a tolerable future. When I say the most
" generous " immigration laws, I mean, of course, " generous " only
enough to cope with the magnitude of the problem that the Jewish
race faces. They are afraid of political repercussions, tacitly acknowl-
edging that their theories do not square with the actual facts. Race
prejudice, the intolerance of a dominant group toward a minority
group, is a more powerful and more easily aroused force than they
dare admit.
A much weightier justification of Zionism is that every race finally
has a right to a homeland where it will not be " different," where it
will neither be patronized by the " good " people nor subjected to
calumny by bad people. Of course many Jews have achieved a posi-
tion in democratic nations in which the disabilities from which they
suffer as a minority group are comparatively insignificant in com-
parison with the prestige that they have won. A democratic world
would not disturb them. Their situation would actually be eased
to an even further degree if the racial survival impulse were pri-
marily engaged in Palestine. Religious and cultural divergences
alone do not present a serious problem, particularly under tradi-
tions of cultural pluralism. But there are millions of Jews, not only
in the democratic world, but in the remnants of the feudal world,
such asPoland and the Balkans, who ought to have a chance to es-
cape from the almost intolerable handicaps to which they are sub-
jected. One reason why Jews suffer more than any other minority is
that they bear the brunt of two divergences from type, religious and
racial, and it is idle for the Jews or Gentiles to speculate about
which is the primary source of prejudice. Either would suffice, but
the prejudice is compounded when both divergences are involved.
JEWS AFTER THE WAR I4I
proof of the fact that basic social issues become more complicated in
Christianity and Society, Summer, 1944.
THE NEGRO ISSUE IN AMERICA I43
to the present situation. If, for instance, the church were to make a
rigorous religious analysis of the motives that underlie the white
man's pride and fear, if it allowed the Word of God to be sharper
than a two-edged sword, if it searched the conscience of men in the
light of that Word, might help white people to see to what degree
it
the very hysteria of their attack upon the Negro is the evidence of
an uneasy conscience.
It is not possible to travel in the South or to mix in the complex
only 33 per cent of the population accepts the standard that the law
embodies, it is always possible that the effort to enforce the law will
arouse such resentment that the proportion of the population in its
nar Myrdal's phrase. The dilemma was that we could not conform
our race attitudes, at least to the one race that had at one time had
slave status among us, to the basic presupposition of American de-
mocracy, eloquently stated in the Declaration of Independence,
which affirmed " that all men are created equal," and given a new
significanceby the war that abolished slavery and that left the resi-
due of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment in our basic law.'
Since the facts of history do not, however, conform readily to the
challenge of a law that states the ideal, rather than some minimal of
conduct, American democracy was subjected to long years of tortu-
ous experience in trying to conform to the ideal, incorporated in
the law.
In 1896, the Supreme Court tried to ease the hiatus between the
150 LOVE AND justice: NATIONAL LEVEL
"
ideal and the social realities by its doctrine of " separate but equal
rights before the law. Itwas a very good doctrine for its day; for we
must remember that the present Supreme Court decision would, at
the beginning of the century, merely have prompted revolt. And re-
volt that is so widespread that police power cannot suppress it rep-
resents the defeat both of the law and the ideal. History had to
prepare the nation for the present Supreme Court decision. By
" history " we mean something more embodied than that abstract
inferiority for the colored group, the Court met the challenge by
admitting this indictment of segregated education and proving the
correctness of the indictment by an analysis of the " intangible " as
well as the tangible factors of education.
_ Thus the Court wrote a
great State paper as well as rendering a wise decision. Its rejection
of segregated education is so persuasive that no one will probably
have the hardihood to challenge it. It has fixed a point in our ad-
vance in democratic racial relations. Of course, the fact that the de-
cision was unanimous served to increase its moral authority.
The court might have been satisfied with this show of statesman-
ship; but it gave additional proof of its wisdom by deferring the date
on which most of the states, not directly involved in the litigation,
would have to meet the new norms. This policy did much to deflect
any incipient revolt against the decision.
The reaction in the South to the decision is almost as cheering as
the decision itself. Only the Governors Talmadge of Georgia and
Byrnes of South Carolina are in open opposition. Most of the
Southern journals have accepted the decision as " inevitable." Some
have regretted that the South was not allowed to make further
progress under the old norms. There will no doubt be evasions and
circumventions of the law, even as the " white primary" is an eva-
sion of the equal suffrage law. But there will evidently not be a wide-
spread revolt against the Court's interpretation of the law, so that
the decision would be negated in fact.
Thus we have had another demonstration of the way in which an
" open " community may grow, with the ideal furnishing the norm
of conduct with progressive interpretations of the ideal, rendering
it more rigorous and with social and moral history furnishing the
stuff to givebody to the ideal.
To illustrate the significance of the Supreme Court decision and
its light upon the health of our democracy, we must report on a re-
of the human conscience and the capacity of the self for self-decep-
tion, that our visitor spent his time proving to himself that there was
a wide hiatus between our ideals and our practices; that there was
in fact much evidence of bias in our race relations, and that, there-
fore, South Africa was justified in its policy of rigorous segregation
152 LOVE AND justice: NATIONAL LEVEL
of races, which our visitor declared were created by God to be " dif-
ferent but not unequal." We tried to prove to him that if he and his
fellow countrymen really believed that the difference did not spell
inequality and if they did not regard " creation " as fixed, but as part
of the historic development to which every race and person was sub-
ject, they could not maintain the rigor of their policy. We argued
further that the sin of South Africa was in closing the doors of hope.
This would create increasing hardness of heart among the dominant
group who had an uneasy conscience, and would leave the minority
group resentful and outraged. We told him that our society un-
doubtedly had an unsolved race issue. But we had many citizens in
the white group who had dedicated themselves to the cause of justice
and many Negroes who hoped for the future, and allowed their
hopes to console them about present bitter realities. We did not pre-
tend that our community was free of race prejudice, but we asserted
that the difference was in the way a society was closed or kept open
for future possibilities. The Supreme Court decision has justified
every argument used in that encounter. We hope our South African
will hear of this decision and learn from it.
because of their color and partly because of their " previous condi-
tion of servitude." Men are very slow in their collective life in meet-
ir^g the elementary norms of the Christian life. They violate the sim-
ple commandment, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." So
here we are a hundred years after the emancipation of the slave in a
new crisis because our Government, based upon a conception of law
that makes " equal protection under the law " the cardinal principle
conscious of the moral crisis in our nation on the age-old race issue.
Though a Southerner, he is " enlightened " on the race issue. He
does not condone racial prejudice. But neither does he incorporate
the demand of love transcending racial boundaries into his evange-
listic appeal. He does not suggest that the soul, confronted with the
revitalize the Christian faith on the one point where Jews and secu-
156 LOVE AND justice: NATIONAL LEVEL
lar idealists who do not share our faith would find a Christian wit-
ness most relevant and impressive.
This Jewish comment is much more searching than the innumer-
able Christian comments that find Billy Graham's interpretation of
the Christian life too simple and perfectionist but counsel the rest
of us to be sympathetic rather than critical because, they argue,
Billy will bring people into the Christian church, and then the rest
of us will have the opportunity to reveal all the duties and possibili-
ties that a Christian commitment implies. These proposals might be
relevant to the problem of the relation of a perfectionist version of
the Christian faith to all the ambiguities that any man, including
the Christian, must face in the realm of international politics. Even
in this realm it is clear that Graham's insights, gained as a world
traveler, are in conflict with his perfectionist solutions of the prob-
lem of the hydrogen bomb, for instance.
But these counsels do not apply to the race issue. There the moral
dimension of the issue is fairly simple. It is whether the Christian
recognizes the validity of the Biblical observation, " If a man sayeth
that he loves God and hateth his brother, he is a liar." If the issue is
Calculations in Justice
to the plight of the miners, simply because they felt that the com-
munity itself was endangered by a higher wage scale.
These calculations in justice, which touched the collective inter-
ests and challenged the moral complacency of the middle-class
There is more hope that Graham himself will see the weaknesses
of a traditional evangelical perfectionism in an atomic age than that
his clerical and lay sponsors, with their enthusiasm for any kind of
revival, will see it. For Graham is a world traveler and a very per-
ceptive observer of the world scene with its many collective prob-
lems. His instincts are genuine and his sense of justice well devel-
oped. He could embody the cause of justice particularly where it
in International Relations
A. A Variety of Issues
chosen; therefore will I visit you with your iniquities." Jesus was
seeming perversity of the severer judgment upon
later to justify the
the righteous with the words, " To whom much hath been given, of
him much shall be required."
Nothing gives Biblical faith a greater consistency than this sub-
ordination of the struggle between good and evil men to the more
161
l62 LOVE AND JUSTICE: NATIONAL LEVEL
significant struggle between all men and God in " whose sight no
man living is justified." If there was any inconsistency in the Old
Testament upon these two strains of interpretation, it is certainly
overcome in the New Testament. There only the one conflict is dealt
with so consistently that one sometimes wonders whether the conflict
between justice and injustice in history is considered at all. This is
why in times of such conflicts, as in the recent war, we turn with a
certain relief to the Old Testament and thank God that it is a part
of the Bible. For the faith of the New Testament, which knows lit-
tle of this distinction, seems almost too sheer for us. The insights of
faith upon the conflict between good and evil men and upon the
conflictbetween just and unjust nations rightfully belongs to the
Bible,and we have no reason to be ashamed for including it in our
Christian life. In times when some Christians are tempted to evade
their responsibility for maintaining a relative justice in an evil
world, we must actually turn to this level of thought in the Bible.
But in times of victory, when the so-called righteous nations have
prevailed, we had better not forget the words of our Lord, " Judge
not that ye be not judged," and the words of Saint Paul, written in
the same spirit, " Who art thou that judgest thy brother; for we
must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ."
These words are spoken out of the ultimate insights of New Testa-
ment faith. They are, furthermore, remarkable sources of insight
into our contemporary experience.
Consider our relations to our vanquished enemies. We were cer-
tainly righteouswhen we fought the Nazis, that is, righteous by
comparison. But how quickly our righteousness runs out, not only
because we have destroyed the evil with which we compared our-
selves,but also because we inherited some of the irresponsible power
through our victory, which tainted them with evil. As far as Japan
is concerned we seem to have less reason for an uneasy conscience;
mistrust of each other, fighting as it were the next war over the pros-
trate body of the vanquished foe of this war. Every once in a while
kind of reason.
Statesmen must work out the details for giving our vanquished
foes the economic and political basis of a sane and healthy life. But
certainly it is the business of the Christian church to create the spir-
itual atmosphere in which this can be done. The primary engine of
injustice in victory is still the pride of victors who have no idea of
the fact that the judgment of God is upon them as well as upon
their foes. It is a question whether nations, as such, can ever have
any other but a semipagan arrogance, though they call themselves
Christian. But those individuals who are really informed by the
mind of Christ must have some conception of the more ultimate
conflict between all nations and God; and from that conception
there must flow some decent pity and mercy to leaven the arrogance
of nations.
164 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
II
Biblical viewpoint. They are, let us say, the unjust and we are the
just. (One might stop to think, by the way, of the curious fact that
no matter how the vicissitudes of history run, the Lord always puts
us on the just side. Such qualms give this author a momentary
pause, but he would still go on to insist that the distinctions be-
tween Western justice and Russian totalitarianism are significant.)
But the Russians are afraid, and so are we. Those are the marks of
our common humanity. Out of these fears they generate strategies
of defense, and so do we. Those are the marks of our common sin.
Sin is always trying to be strong at the expense of someone else.
The Russians want to make themselves strong by dominating East-
ern Europe, and as much more beside as they can. They would prob-
ably swallow both Turkey and Iran if they thought they could get
away with it. They deny that we have a will to peace; and their
propaganda falsifies the almost pathetic desire of the Western world
for peace most ludicrously. It is difficult to restrain one's self-right-
eousness when one contemplates all these facts.
Only we cannot be certain whether we are really more righteous
than they, or merely stronger. Perhaps they are hysterical because
they know that they are not really as strong as we. Some of our
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN NATIONS AND GOD 165
tion for the control of the atomic bomb. We actually surpass our-
selvesby that offer which looks forward to the suppression of atomic
destruction by international action. Yet in practically the same
week in which the offer is made we demonstrate at Bikini the de-
structive power of the bomb, which we say we are never going to
use any more. There is something very unlogical in this. It is in fact
the lack of logic of a man or a nation which has a law in its mem-
bers that wars against the law that is in its mind.
we might still avoid the conflict. For a very wise statesmanship does
manage to insinuate some vestige of the divine judgment into hu-
man judgments.The Christian faith, in so far as it understands the
conflict between God and men, stands right across and transcends
all historical conflicts. But in so far as it can insinuate something of
this ultimate perspective into the competing and contradictory judg-
l66 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
ments of men and nations, it introduces some leaven of pity, mercy,
and forebearance into the conflicts of men and nations.
native is worse. Therefore one ought to support both the League and
Britain and be thankful that there are George Lansburys who
call attention to the hypocrisy involved in the cause of law and
order.
The problem that Christian pacifists face in this situation is typi-
not only in abstention from war but also in creating a system of col-
lective security that will prevent war. Now they have the oppor-
tunity of supporting it. But how is the League going to " enforce
peace " against Italy? By economic sanctions. Very well, is not the
pacifist able tosupport such sanctions since he objects only to vio-
lence? But sanctions may lead to war. Shall they be supported only
until they lead to war? or not supported at all because they may lead
to war? These questions prove how impossible it is to deal with po-
liticalproblems from the standpoint of an absolutist credo. One
must support sanctions in the hope that they will not lead to war.
But if they should, one can hardly withdraw from the political con-
sequences of such a policy. It is a great pity that a Christian saint
in politics like George Lansbury should bring his official life to a
close because he has pacifist scruples against these sanctions. His re-
ligious penetration into the hypocrisy of British imperialism is a
part of his saintliness. His effort to translate this judgment into a
political policy leads to confusion. He has no policy for restraining
Mussolini. Politics must deal with immediate necessities as religion
l68 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
deals with ultimate insights by which the danger and hypocrisy of
these immediate necessities is revealed.
All this does not suggest that American pacifists ought above all
tem that will relieve the imperialism of the hungry nations. Even
SirSamuel Hoare admits that. We radicals might well underscore
this admission of Hoare. In it capitalistic imperialism confesses that
there no peace within terms of its own economic presuppositions.
is
the van Zeeland report. About this policy he declares, " Such an at-
tempt and no other might confidently claim the support and ap-
proval of God." This statement literally took my breath away.
How can Dr. Tittle be so sure about God's will? " Such an attempt
and no other" will meet with God's approval, declares Dr. Tittle.
Has he no appreciation of the ambiguity of all human actions and
the endless relativities in which political policies, particularly, are
involved?
The whole history of Christian faith is filled with the tragedy of
righteous fanatics who were certain about God's will. The Catholic
hierarchy is God's will that General Franco be
certain that it is
my mind just as certainly not God's will for us in this crisis as for
democracy out as they did, for reasons of their own, if they had not
been certain to be able to count on the moralistic illusions that
have filled the so-called liberal world for generations. Is it really
" Christian," is it God's will, never to call the bluff of a bully for
fear that you might be involved in violence? Then we had better
THE VAN ZEELAND REPORT 1*71
mate communion. But the church that he has set up will exclude
many of us. For we are determined upon political policies for the
saving of democratic civilization boycott of Japan, lifting the boy-
cott on Spain, etc. which in his opinion are counter to God's will.
172 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Perhaps the only church to which both groups could comfortably
belong would be one in which there was some knowledge of the de-
fiance of God's will in even the best of human intentions.
ning of the war and has been given periodic impetus by various
groups since that time. If we are informed correctly, we may expect
a new campaign along this line shortly.
This stubborn belief, held by men whose sincerity cannot be
doubted, is a perfect revelation of the lack of political realism in
American Protestantism. Hitler bestrides the Continent of Europe,
and nothing stands between him and the complete victory, which he
undoubtedly regards as within his grasp, but the stubborn resist-
ance of the British and the increasing aid of America. Naturally
Hitler has visions of the possibility of a complete triumph. His suc-
cess against British shipping has been so great of late that he may
not even attempt the hazardous adventure of invasion. This is not
to say that Hitler will be victorious. The point is that he still has
good reason tofor victory and therefore no incentive at all to
hope
make a peace thatwould conform to even minimal standards of
justice. The only possible peace that Hitler would accept now would
be one that left an unredeemed continent under the heel of his dic-
tatorship and that would give him the possibility of a more com-
plete triumph later.
To insist that it is the religious duty of Christians to advocate a
negotiated peace under these circumstances means that Christian
" idealism " has been compounded with one of two possible errors:
1. It may mean
that the Christian idealist considers any kind of
peace, without regard to the quality of its justice, as morally prefer-
able to the continuance of the war. Although there are few Chris-
tian idealists who will admit that they actually prefer a tyrannical
peace to continued resistance, it is a fact, nevertheless, that many
are driven to this unwilling conclusion. Since they begin all their
reasoning on the question of war with the premise that nothing can
be worse than war, they can hardly escape the conclusion that the
enslavement of Europe is to be preferred to the continued resist-
ance of Britain.
2. Most isolationists and political pacifists seek to escape the ne-
cessity of arriving at such a conclusion by holding out the hope that
if only someone, the President or the pope or some other leader,
would be willing to call a conference, the matter in dispute between
the nations could be arbitrated or mediated, and a just peace might
be achieved. Sometimes this hope is supported by the belief that
such a conference would be able to appeal over the head of Hitler
to the German people and prompt them to force Hitler to yield.
This belief obviously does not take into consideration that a mod-
ern dictatorship is able to mold the public opinion of its nation so
thoroughly and to suppress dissident opinion so completely that it
is fatuous to expect a rift between a dictator and the people. Fur-
thermore, the hope does not take another very ugly fact into ac-
count: the fact that in every nation there are millions of people for
whom nothing succeeds like success. Even though disaffection among
German masses may be wide and deep, it is not likely that the pres-
tige of the Nazi dictatorship can be broken without a military de-
feat. If there had been such a possibility, it would have been real-
ized more easily before the war than now.
More frequently the hope of a just peace by negotiation is ex-
pressed even more naively. It is simply the hope that if only the
cool discussion of a conference room can be substituted for the
" passions " of conflict, a just settlement is bound to be worked out.
to gauge an egoistic mania that has broken all internal and external
checks. We do not understand Hitler because we do not understand
ourselves and fail to realize to what degree men achieve justice
against our interests, not merely by appealing to our consciences,
but by resisting our pretensions. If we understood the stubbornness
of sin in all men, including ourselves, we would realize more per-
fectly why the collective egotism that Hitler embodies is not to be
beguiled at a conference table and why Hitler would regard any
effort to bring him to a conference as merely a proof of the weak-
nessand irresolution of the foe. The conflicts of life and history
happen to be more tragic than the philosophies and theologies of
many of our contemporaries envisage.
There is something rather ironic in the fact that we must be on
our guard lest those who regard the peace of the Kingdom of God
as a simple alternative to the difficult justice and precarious peace
of the world deliver us into a peace of slavery. They would not do
it willingly; but they willingly nourish illusions that obscure the
difficulties of achieving justice and the sorry realities of a peace
without justice.
unilateral.
All this immensely important for America at this moment. The
is
peace should have been made in Berlin. It would take little en-
couragement from Britain to give impetus to a boisterous demand
iiLAmerica that " this time " no halfway job shall be done.
It may indeed be argued that in failing to make any distinction
between Hitler and the historic German nation Mr. Eden is more
realistic than Mr. Roosevelt, who never fails to make it. There is a
surprising degree of continuity in the foreign policy of a nation
regardless of what group administers it. But the inference drawn
from this fact is precisely the point at issue. A nation's foreign
policy is formulated and carried out within a complex of interna-
tional relationships, and it is not likely to undergo radical and
permanent change except in response to a change in the system of
which it is a part. The counterpart of this truth in personal rela-
tions is one of the basic assumptions of Christianity. This is the
meaning of redemption. If a Christian justifies war, it is because
he recognizes no permanent limits upon this redemptive principle:
he believes that while criminality on a national scale must be met
with stern justice, it can and must be followed by a regime in which
every nation concerned shall participate, as of right, in the creation
and maintenance of a juster peace.
Perhaps the admirable, but rather cryptic, portions of Mr. Eden's
address concerning political and economic co-operation in the post-
war world imply that he did not mean what has been inferred from
his remarks about the restraints to be imposed on Germany. If so,
his statement should be clarified without delay.
tion to his fellows, who knows the duties that communal life re-
quires, and who is willing to accept the consequences that these
duties impose.
As with men, so with nations. An irresponsible nation is an im-
moral nation, while a nation that is becoming dimly aware of its
responsibilities and acts accordingly is moving toward morality.
The Neutrality Act of 1939 was the culmination of a recent im-
moral trend in American life that needs to be recognized for what
it is and dealt with accordingly.
Two or three hundred years ago it was possible to set out from
Europe to a New World in the hope of gain or of building a better
society. The oceans were then so vast that there was some reason
for thinking of the Americas as a separate world from Europe. But
the mechanical revolution of the last one hundred years has de-
stroyed the distinction between the Old World and the New. Air
transportation has hurdled the vast barriers of the oceans; space
has shrunk. The peoples of America and Europe are now becoming
members one of another. We belong to a common community and
we have acquired immense communal responsibilities as a result
of that fact. To deny these responsibilities is unchristian and un-
ethical. This is exactly what the Neutrality Act did.
The normal channels of human intercourse provide the occasions
when responsibility expresses itself. To withdraw from the use of
these channels is to attempt to escape from responsibility. The man
who shuts himself up in his house, and refuses to go out on the vil-
lage street because he doesn't like conditions in his neighborhood,
is not a type that Americans admire. He is either a weak, timid soul,
air the
highways of our world community. Moral responsibility
requires us to use these highways. To put the matter bluntly, free-
dom of the seas is a condition of developing a responsible national
policy. To say that Americans are not to sail the seas is to say that
they are to do nothing about their world.
The advocacy of national do-nothingness in the interests of peace
has been justified by an appeal to Christian ideals. No argument
could be more fallacious. Do-nothingness for the sake of peace is
not moral. It is pure escapism in a world where nations can escape
no longer from the ethical consequences of their interdependence.
The dream that our forefathers had when they sailed from Europe
of building a better world in the Americas has been perverted by
selfish minds into a desire to evade moral obligation to the rest of
the world. This degenerative trend in our national life must be
arrested. The Christian ethic demands that we turn and face the
world.
When a great fire has broken out in a small town, responsible
citizens who do something about it do not draw
are in a position to
their shutters, lock their doors,and crawl under their beds. To do
so would be to forfeit forever moral authority in their community.
The Christian ethic requires these citizens to go out on the street
and do whatever may be necessary to help their fellows bring the
fire under control.
of our war efforts to democracy. The thesis is that only the chastise-
ments of a fairly long war can prompt a really thoroughgoing re-
pentance and conversion from those sins of the democratic world
which helped to produce the Nazi revolt against our civilization. We
were much too soft and fat, much too heedless and indifferent to the
ultimate issues of life to be changed by the only casual chastise-
ments of a brief belligerency. This is not to say that war as such is
the only possible source of repentance to nations. We must think
not abstractly but historically about these questions. When we are
guilty of sins that make a revolt against civilization possible, we
can hardly repent of those sins until bitter experience has
taught us what the consequences of the sins are and by what kind of
sacrifices and change of heart the evils we have done can be over-
come.
How for instance can the sins of national irresponsibility, by
which the democratic nations invited aggression, be overcome?
They are overcome partly by learning how terrible are the conse-
quences of an international anarchy, which we aggravated by our
effort to escape from it into our own continental security. They are
overcome partly by forms of international co-operation that the
exigencies of war force upon us and that we would not accept except
under the pressure of necessity. It is idle, for instance, for idealists
to wash their hands of the war and then speculate upon what kind
of a system of international co-operation they will be able to build.
The Constitution of the United States grew out of the experience
of the Revolutionary War, in which the inadequacies of colonial
particularism were glaringly revealed and the necessity of the
abridgement of the state sovereignty became apparent.
The forms of international co-operation that we adopt during
the struggle may of course be disavowed after the struggle, as we
did after the first World War, But it is quite certain that they will
not in any event rise higher than the level to which the pressures of
war forced them.
In the same manner the sacrifices of the war will greatly reduce
the inequalities of our economic system. The discipline of wartime
taxation has had strong equalitarian effects upon British life and
will have similar consequences in our life. The gross inequalities
of capitalistic democracies are disappearing under the wartime ne-
cessity. These gains are not necessarily permanent. We must expect
the privileged classes to make desperate efforts after the war to re-
l82 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
gain their imperiled position in society; and we cannot deny that
these desperate efforts may imperil democracy itself. But on the
other hand, it is not likely that democratic society will reach higher
standards of equal justice, after the pressure of war is removed,
than it achieved under the pressure of war.
In so far as one of the basic weaknesses of bourgeois society is
the love of ease and the identification of civilization with the com-
fortsand gadgets that technical achievements have made possible,
the chastisements of war are, again, the primary prompting to re-
pentance. The fact that we have lost our rubber and may thereby
become bereft of our automobiles is a highly symbolic form of chas-
tisement for all of the most characteristic sins of bourgeois life.
For what could be a more perfect symbol of our idolatries than our
automobile? If we can stand its loss, we can bear almost anything.
On the other hand, there is the possibility that we might prefer to
give in to the Axis rather than be without our automobiles. If fat-
ness was our sin, thewar is quite obviously making us more lean.
But of course such experiences in themselves do not bring re-
pentance. There is always the possibility that we might decide to
be fat slaves rather than lean freemen. It is in that sense that the is-
ment. India will probably gain its freedom under the pressure of
necessity. It would not have secured it, at least not for years, if the
British Empire had not come so close to defeat. The similarity be-
tween the white man's arrogance in the democratic world and Nazi
race theories is apparent. If we do not repent of this arrogance, we
cannot win the war. Our co-operation with China and the British
co-operation with a free India are fruits meet for repentance,
brought forth by the rigors of war.
One could only wish that our Negroes had a strategic position
comparable to that of the Hindus and the Chinese. In that case they
would win more concessions from our pride than they are likely to
get. Nevertheless, they are going to win some concessions, provided
ANGLO-SAXON DESTINY AND RESPONSIBILITY 183
darity; for if Britain and America cannot agree together, all other
necessary agreements become improbable.
The position of the Anglo-Saxon peoples at the crucial and stra-
The prophet Amos was certain of two things. One was that Israel
had been particularly chosen of God; and the other was that this
special mission gave the nation not a special security but a special
peril. " You only have I chosen," he declared in God's name, " there-
fore will I visit you with your iniquities." It would
no good serve
purpose to try to compare the Anglo-Saxon
special destiny of the
peoples with that of Israel in olden times. Certainly no one would
be so rash today as to claim the kind of destiny for our nations that
the prophet's word " only " implies. Nevertheless only those who
have no sense of the profundities of history would deny that various
nations and classes, various social groups and races are at various
ANGLO-SAXON DESTINY AND RESPONSIBILITY 185
, Yet as soon as one has said this, one is forced to make qualifica-
tions. All historical destiny is compounded of virtue and grace. If
the position that any nation or group of nations holds is attributed
to the virtue of those nations alone, one has the beginning of that
Pharisaism which destroys virtue, whether in individual or in na-
tional life. The fact is that no nation or individual is ever good
enough to deserve the position of leadership that some nations and
individuals achieve. If the history that leads to a special mission is
of its right to rule. Ideas of " manifest destiny " in our own history
have this same source.
heard the end of this charge from either Germany or France, from
either the Continent or Russia, because there is an element of truth
in the charge.
There no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure reli-
is
relation to the national life to encourage the hope that it will help
to purify the nations for their mission; in both cases, however, the
Christian forces are to some degree the salt that has lost its savor. If
the nations should fail therefore, the failure would be the conse-
quence of the prior failure of the Christian church.
our enemies, that will partly prove how great a loyalty an evil cause
can claim before it is finally defeated. But it may also prove that a
good cause can be emptied of its essential meaning in the heat of
conflict. We are not pleading for dishonest promises as weapons
of " psychological warfare." What is needed is a more meaningful
definition of our positive aims. The defeat of tyranny will give this
war a negative justification in any event. But it cannot be positively
justified if it does not give Europe and the world a working alterna-
tive to the twin evils of international anarchy and international
tyranny.
It is same statesmanship that would make the
significant that the
war meaningful run would also
in the long, as well as in the short
hasten the victory; all of which proves that ideas and ideals are im-
portant in conflict, even though they are never disembodied as the
idealists imagine.
One tragic aspect of such a world which we are
conflict as that in
engaged is that preoccupation with the and ur-
immediate issues
gencies among both statesmen and people, occasioned by the war,
seems to render us incapable of lifting our eyes to the wider and
more ultimate issues. But we must not succumb to this peril. Physi-
cal weariness could cost us the victory, but spiritual weariness or
complacency could rob our victory of its virtue.
is the fist of a hand; but the hand must be attached to an arm, and
the arm to a body; and the body must be before the fist can be
effective.
Military power is, therefore, necessary, particularly in moments
of crisis when the community and anarchy at
faces recalcitrance
home, and dispute with another community abroad. It is more
effective in international disputes than in domestic ones because the
order and peace of a community is primarily dependent upon forces
of cohesion and accommodation for which pure force is an irrele-
vance. But, even in international disputes, military force has its
196
THE POSSIBILITY OF A DURABLE PEACE I97
achieving the first goal, but little prospect of achieving the second
in any adequate measure. For the first merely requires that each of
the powerful nations understand that has become impossible for
it
any one nation, no matter how powerful, to control the world's eco-
nomic and political life. The second requires a degree of imagina-
tion and self-abnegation of which the powerful nations do not yet
seem capable.
There is some possibility that Britain, America, China, and Rus-
sia may preserve and extend the mutual relations that the urgencies
of the war have forced upon them. It is not at all certain that they
will achieve this end; but there is a possibility of it. It is not certain
because each of these nations has impulses toward solitary domin-
ion; and some of them (particularly America and Russia) have
tendencies toward isolationist irresponsibility, which must be over-
come before a stable alliance between them can be formed. Of the
four nations Great Britain is prompted by geographic circum-
stances and political experience to espouse the cause of mutual se-
curity with fewer reservations than any of the other nations. It is
not tempted to the isolationist alternative at all, because that
would quite obviously mean suicide. It has some temptation in the
direction of solitary dominion. That expresses itself in ideas such
as the possibility of extending the " British Commonwealth " idea
until all nations would be included in it. Obviously there is no
possibility of arriving at a real partnership between Russia, Britain,
and America, merely by extending the scope of the British Com-
monwealth. While there are such ideas in British political thought
today, they are generally not held in authoritative circles. On the
whole, Britain holds the promise of playing a creative role in form-
ing a genuine alliance of the larger powers.
It must be observed that such an alliance would degenerate into
nothing more than a new global balance of power if Britain merely
became the broker between the other powers. We must have a direct
and intimate relation with Russia and must not depend upon
Britain to act as broker between us. But at best Britain will have a
special function in the alliance because she will be closer to each
of the other partners than either is to the other.
The organization of preponderant power represents tremendous
and we may therefore fail in achieving it. It is, however,
difficulties;
Nor are there any indications that the Western powers will allow
the socialization of property to which it would naturally be
prompted by its poverty and by the socialization that has already
taken place under a war economy. It is much more likely that abor-
tive efforts will be made to undo what the war has done, and thereby
to lose the chance of creating a property system upon the Continent
that would give a new unity and health to its economic life.
It is probable, moreover, that irrelevant political sovereignties
stake in the same way as that of the other nations. It is this fact that
makes it quite impossible to overcome the impulse toward irrespon-
sibility in our national life as absolutely as we might desire. The
fires of history have not, and will not, purge us as completely as
they have some other nations. Nor will the lash of fear support the
gentler persuasion of conscience to the same degree as in the experi-
ence of others.
Isolationism Impossible
tal world (Europe having lost its position as the world's strategic
center) and (3) that even if the first two points were not true,
;
guarantee it. But our temptation lies in the fact that we have just
Isolationist Imperialism
the fact that such a policy nicely combined the diffidence of our re-
cent adolescence with the pride of our mature strength. Already the
204 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
signs are multiplying that the isolationists of yesterday are the im-
They will not yield any of the strategic points
perialists of today.
thatwe have secured in the world conflict. They even want more air
and naval bases. They know that we have the economic power to
maintain a larger air force and navy than anyone else; and they in-
tend to do it. But they do not intend to make any international
commitments that would bring our strength into mutual relations
with other nations, either great or small.
We need not assume that the present Administration will give it-
self to such ideas and ideals. Its orientation runs, on the whole, in
into the general imperialist pattern. The fact that we disavow " im-
perialism " consciously is no guarantee against the expression of
II
der the illusion that " national sovereignty " is merely the fruit of
faulty conceptions of international law. They would write new in-
ternational laws in which the absolute sovereignty of nations is de-
nied; and they believe that such a legal refutation of national claims
would be sufficient to tame the stubborn self-will of nations and to
maintain " law without force." (This phrase is the title of a recent
book upon that subject, written in the temper just defined.)
In the latter case they conceive of some federation of the world
with an international police force, and with a newly and abstractly
created moral and political prestige, sufficient to maintain itself
against the divisive forces that will inevitably challenge its author-
ity. Usually they refer to the creation of American nationhood as
analogy and proof of the possibility of creating such a new author-
ity. It happens that the history of the American Constitution and of
as it was necessary to go; and that when they did take the final step,
PLANS FOR WORLD REORGANIZATION SOQ
Ill
In the present situation, both the idealists and the realists may be
divided into two subordinate schools of thought. One group of ideal-
210 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
ists does not deal with the problem of power at all. They would
simply organize the world by law without asking where the power
and authority to enforce the law is to come from. The other group
is conscious of the problem of power, but they deal with it ab-
stractly. Among the realists, one school of thought would merely
reconstructsome new balance of power among the nations, having
no confidence in international political organization. The other
group believes in some kind of imperial organization of the world,
with some small group of dominant nations furnishing the imperial
power.
The most brilliant exposition of the school of thought that thinks
in terms of reconstructing the balance of power as a principle of
world peace is Professor Spykman's very able book America's Strat-
egy in World Politics. The book has the merit of recognizing all the
geographic, economic, and other elements that must enter into any
kind of international equilibrium and which cannot be disregarded
on any level of political achievement. But it does not fully realize
that an unorganized balance of power is potential anarchy and can-
not preserve peace. The introduction of a single new factor into the
precarious equilibrium, or the elaboration of a single new force of
recalcitrance (as for power of Germany) may de-
instance the air
stroy the balance. The world community requires instruments for
the manipulation of its social forces. Without them it is bound to
fall into periodic anarchy.
For this reason the imperialistic realists actually have a more
hopeful program than the " balance of power " realists. They know
that a balance of power must be organized and that a dominant
power must be the organizing center. They expect either America,
or the Anglo-Saxon hegemony, or the four great powers, Russia,
China, Britain, and America, to form the organizing center of the
world community. I think they are right in this thesis and that
there is no possibility of organizing the world at all that will not be
exposed to the charge of " imperialism " by the idealists who do
not take the problem of power seriously.
realists usually do not take the problem of
But the imperialistic
justice seriouslyenough. An Anglo-Saxon imperialism might be a
great deal better than a Nazi one; but the Nazi order is so purely
new imperialism could be a great deal better than
destructive that a
nazism and yet not good enough to bring peace to the world. The
new understandings with Russia, which cannot be overestimated.
PLANS FOR WORLD REORGANIZATION 211
IV
It would be unjust to claim that the realists are consistently un-
is true that the stronger the internal political and moral checks
upon the imperialistic impulse are, the easier will it be to solve the
problem of external checks. If a stable peace depended altogether
upon the achievement of an ideal democracy in the constituent na-
tions, we would have to resign ourselves to decades of further purga-
tory. For obviously history does not move consistently in these mat-
ters; and we will have to include many nations of varying internal
barton Oaks. In reality the conference was unable to solve the main
problem that confronted it, which was the establishment of a gen-
uinely mutual accord between Russia and the West.
On paper the character of the charter was improved because the
small nations made themselves heard and because general public dis-
cussion served to bring a greater degree of moral idealism into the
charter. The power of the general assembly has been considerably
enlarged and the veto power of the great nations has been slightly
abridged. A preamble has been added which gives the charter a
moral meaning that it did not have in the original document. An
international bill of rights has also been added, the significance of
which has been lauded by all international idealists, despite the
fact that there is no international sovereignty that could enforce its
provisions upon any constituent states. All in all the instrument
that has come out of San Francisco deserves all the praise that the
hopeful have bestowed upon it, provided you do not look too
much beneath the surface.
Under the surface of this document the political realities are
such as to give little assurance for the future. The simple fact is
Thus for instance the conference was for a time in conflict on the
problem of trusteeship. The Russians demanded that the trustees
of backward regions should be committed to the proposition that
the purpose of trusteeship was the ultimate independence of these
ment. They do not fill the apprehensive and yet hopeful soul with
too much confidence in the future. They have in fact prompted
something akin to despair among some thoughtful observers, though
such despair is premature. There may still be a possibility of grad-
ually working out better schemes of mutual accord.
In the light of these facts the religious interpretations of the con-
ference have been unbelievably naive. We have been favored from
time to time by estimates from our Federal Council delegation of the
achievements of the conference. In these estimates the " six pillars of
peace " of the Federal Council's Commission have been used as a
yardstick of the achievements of the conference almost as if they
were some kind of ultimate standard, some new decalogue. The
various provisions of the conference dealing with international law,
ideals of international justice, etc., have been carefully measured
against these ideal standards. Plus and minus marks were indicated
with careful discrimination. But nothing was said about the power-
political realities that underlay all these words. One blueprint was
compared with another. But the fact that no foundation for an in-
ternational security system had been laid was not fully compre-
hended. There was no desire on the part of our observers to fool
us. They had merely been so preoccupied with the blueprints that
they had not bothered to look too carefully at the actual bricks
that had been laid at San Francisco.
2l6 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
ers, that the Christian church should take the lead in a movement
that challenges the idea of unreserved national sovereignty in a day
in which it is obviously necessary to stretch our political loyalties
to global proportions.
This question deserves an answer. The movement for world gov-
ernment takes two forms; according to the one, it is assumed that
the institution of world government would rob the Russians of their
fear and would bridge the chasm between the communist and the
free world. This project is simply refuted by the observation that no
law or constitutional arrangement can supply the mutual trust that
is the necessary basis of any community. The law in fact presup-
tional arrangement.
That is why only a very few abstract idealists hold to this interpre-
tation of world government. The majority believe that a world con-
stitution would be an ideal instrument for solidifying the resources
of the free world and rendering it safe against communist infiltra-
tion. In answer to this proposal it must be pointed out that even if
we eliminate the communist-democratic chasm there is little " social
tissue " to bind up the so-called free world together. The most ob-
vious cement is the common fear of all nations. This common fear
prompts them into all kinds of ad hoc arrangements such as NATO
and the proposed Pacific Pact, which do in effect erode unqualified
national sovereignty and which do in fact establish community be-
tween them.
The question is whether more unequivocal constitutional arrange-
ments would hasten the building of world community. To this ques-
tion one must give a reserved negative answer in the light of previ-
ous experience. The history of India gives us a tragic example of the
impotence of constitutions. The very effort to arrive at a common
constitution heightened the tension between India and Pakistan and
not possible to love anyone with whom one is in conflict, and that it
218
LOVE YOUR ENEMIES SIQ
not find adequate to express its highest conception. That word was
eros. The connotations of that word linger most obviously in the
English adjective derived from it the word " erotic." It is a word
that is rooted in the natural life of sex and which defines first sex-
ual, and ultimately other forms of attachment between people.
Plato did his best to spiritualize the concept, and his " intellectual
love " is something that quite transcends physical desires. But it
Kingdom of God. This love is something more than even the most
refined form of sympathy, for it does not depend upon the likes
and dislikes that men may have for each other. It is not determined
220 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
by interest or passion. It is not the love that we have for people
because we share common ideas with them, or because we are in-
trigued by the tilt of their nose, or because we admire their intel-
lectual brilliance, or because we take pity upon their weakness. The
Swedish theologian, Professor Nygren, has sought to prove in his
interesting work Agape and Eros that the classical and the Christian
conception of love stand in opposition to each other. In this he may
have overstated the case. For when Jesus compares parental affec-
tion (which certainly belongs in the category of EROS) with God's
love, as he does in the words, " If ye then, being evil, know how to
give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your heav-
enly father give good gifts to them that ask him? " he is not setting
EROS and AGAPE in complete contradiction to each other.
There is, nevertheless, a distinction between them. The love that
the gospel demands is justified and validated only transcendentally.
We are asked to love our enemies that we may be children of our
Father in Heaven. An attitude of spirit is enjoined without any
prudential or selfish consideration. We are not told to love our ene-
mies because in that case they will love us in return. The love that
is asked of us does not move on the plane of emotion or desire.
Such a love is not easily achieved. In a sense no one ever perfectly
achievesit. But it is, at least, no psychological absurdity. It does not
dence in estimating the virtues and vices of groups other than their
own, are bound to accentuate this error in times of conflict.
Nor is it easy to desire the good of an opponent when in the im-
mediate instance we are doing him harm. There will always be
moralists who will laugh and jeer at the very attempt of combining
this ultimate attitude with the immediate tragic task in hand. If
they were wholly right, no officer of the law could ever arrest a
criminal, and no warden could ever jail him without hatred.
Though we have known of police officers who were filled with vin-
dictive passion toward criminals, there certainly have been many
others who have genuinely desired the ultimate good of the hapless
men whom they were forced to harm in the immediate instance. In-
ternational conflicts are, of course, never completely analogous to
these instances of domestic justice. For they offer no such vantage
point of disinterested judgment, from which blame and punishment
may be apportioned. But it would be ridiculous to assert that there
can be no moral and spiritual disinterestedness in international
affairs, simply because there is no political vantage point for
its expression. Morals do not depend upon politics as slavishly as
that.
Sometimes the idealists who insist most rigorously upon the im-
possibility of loving those with whom we are at war are not as
scrupulous as they might be in their conflict, short of war, with their
opponents. William Lloyd Garrison was certain that the Christian
War. But he hated the Southern slaveowners
ethic forbade the Civil
with a personal hatred and failed to make any distinction between
the historic evil of slavery and the individuals who were caught in
the system. Guilty of a lack of AGAPE
toward his opponents be-
fore the North and South were in overt conflict, he insisted that
there should be no overt conflict because it would not be possible to
maintain EROS during the war. He never knew to what degree his
self-righteous hatred of the South actually contributed to the inevi-
tability of the conflict.
The hatred of an enemy who does not fight us but merely opposes
us is frequently combined with the pious avowal that we will not
fight because we do not want to hate anyone. The confusion may
be aggravated by the linguistic difficulties to which we have referred.
But its root lies deeper than the poverty of a language.
828 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Broadcasting Corporation, seemed to gloat over the " revenge " that
American and British planes now exacted for the destruction in
Britain, common people both in Britain and America had the de-
cency to feel and express sorrow over the necessity of this terrible
measure of war. A simple old elevator operator in a London hotel
touchingly observed to the writer, " I don't care what the newspa-
pers say; I bombing of those cities is terrible, however nec-
think the
essary." A
young student at Oxford, product of the Christian Stu-
dent Movement, and preparing for service in the Royal Air Force
declared: " I have written to the B.B.C. [radio] to protest against its
gloating announcements. I will probably do some bombing myself;
but I will take no satisfaction in the human misery it causes."
It is natural of course for those who are inclined to pacifism to
declare that those of us who support war prove the untenability
this
of our position by this moral embarrassment and discomfiture. For
the bombing of cities is a vivid revelation of the whole moral am-
biguity of warfare. It is not possible to defeat a foe without causing
innocent people to suffer with the guilty. It is not possible to engage
in any act of collective opposition to collective evil without involv-
ing the innocent with the guilty. It is not possible to move in his-
quent guilt; for it will most certainly corrupt the virtue of its vic-
tory by egoistic and vindictive passions. There is no escape from
guilt in history. This is the religious fact that Saint Paul under-
stood so well and that is so frequently not understood by moralistic
versions of the Christian faith.
Once bombing has been developed as an instrument of warfare, it
is not possible to disavow its use without capitulating to the foe who
refuses to disavow it. No man has the moral freedom to escape from
tems " of abstract thinkers do not allow. Long before Hitler made
politics demoniacally religious Germany was too
all political life in
ing class between them; and both helped to divide the industrial
poor from the agrarian poor. These aberrations Germany shared
with us. Only we were not far enough advanced in our social
226 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
thought to be deeply harmed by them. It may be well to remember
are better than the foe against whom we contend. There are at least
many cases in which this is the case. But we are nevertheless pro-
foundly involved in the sin of the foe. Sometimes we are guilty of
milder forms of the evils that we oppose in the foe. One thinks of
the pride of races and nations in the so-called democratic world as
a potent source of international friction long after the Nazis are
destroyed. Sometimes we are guilty of opposite errors. One thinks of
the international anarchy of the democratic world that gave the tyr-
anny of nazism its chance.
Yesterday we had to stand against the sentimentalists who de-
clared that we had no right to resist Nazi tyranny because we were
also guilty. They did not know that common guilt is a perennial
which does not annul our responsibility to strive for
fact in history,
Today we must resist the pharisees who imagine
relative justice.
that our impending victory is the proof and the validation of our
virtue. Yesterday the sentimentalists falsely regarded the humility
that men ought to have in God's sight as a reason for being humble
in the sight of the Nazis. Today the self-righteous Philistines will
seek falsely to play the part of God and try to summon the defeated
foe to a judgment in which they are themselves involved.
The recognition of the mutuality of guilt does not of course pre-
clude the necessity and advisability of relative punishment for the
relatively guilty. Here it will be important to make a sharp distinc-
tion between the profound guilt of the German people, which is too
deep to be reached by our punishment, and the particular guilt of
particular Nazi tyrants. It goes without saying that specific acts of
tyranny and cruelty ought to be punished. It may be shocking to
suggest that some of this punishment may well take place exactly
in the hour of the Nazi collapse. The idea of international courts to
try these criminals for the sake of establishing the sanctity of inter-
national law is largely illusory. An international court organized by
victors may have the form, but will not have the substance, of such
sanctity. It may make martyrs out of criminals. At any rate it may
be better to have Germans destroy their criminals in hot blood than
have the victors do it in cold blood. Either way has its hazards; and
both ways will undoubtedly be tried. There is no reason for a zealous
preference for one over the other.
It may be shocking to observe, but it is nevertheless true, that one
reason for the severe punishment of these individual criminals is
that it may act as a catharsis and draw off some of the vindictiveness
228 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
that Nazi cruelties have generated. Thus there would be less likeli-
esses of history under the providence of God visit such terrible pun-
ishment upon the evildoer that our power to add or subtract from
it seems puny indeed, and our effort to do so pretentious. The maj-
esty of the German cities will have been reduced to rubble. The de-
feated nation will be politically, economically, morally, and spiritu-
ally bankrupt. It will face chaos and humiliation in every direction.
The war has punished the victors also. But no one would quarrel
at the justice of that fact, since they are also guilty of the evils that
we are seeking to overcome. If there is a difference in the propor-
tion of guilt, as indeed there is, would anyone question that this is
that now exists. Our task is to find a working accord between the
hegemonous powers. If this is not done, one of them may well draw
Germany into its orbit, make it a partner in some future war, and
WHAT IS JUSTICE? 229
cannot disguise the pride of the victors which dictates it. It is merely
a special case of the old sin of man, his inclination to play the part
of God.
Furthermore, the sentences reveal the inability of men and of na-
tions to gauge the limits of justice in overcoming evil. Evil must of
course be punished. But punitive justice has only a limited efficacy
either in deterring from future crime or in changing the heart of
the criminal. Forgiveness without punitive justice degenerates into
sentimentality. But punitive justice without forgiveness becomes
WHAT IS JUSTICE? 23I
232
THE ATOMIC BOMB 233
used, as was used in the closing days of the war, for purposes of
it
rather indiscriminate destruction. This proves that " total " war is
not a Nazi invention. The Nazi only hastened and accentuated a
historical logic implicit in a technical civilization. Technical soci-
ety produces total war, because it enables men to harness the re-
sources of a society for a certain end totally; and its instruments of
destruction become more and more total. The thoughtful element
in the democratic world has a very uneasy conscience about the use
of the bomb against the Japanese. Critics have rightly pointed out
that we reached the level of Nazi morality in justifying the use of
the bomb on the ground that it shortened the war. That is exactly
what the Nazis about the destruction of Rotterdam and War-
said
saw. They claimed that a brief conflict aiming at total destruction
was more merciful than a long-drawn-out war. In any case the use of
the bomb was merely the culmination of our own strategy of total
war, involving the use of ever more powerful obliteration bombing
and incendiarism. Mr. Churchill reported honestly on how he and
President Truman reached the decision to use the bomb after it
had become apparent that, without it, the war against Japan might
last many more months. It is a simple matter to condemn the states-
men who made the decision to use the bomb. The question is
whether they were not driven by historic forces more powerful
than any human decision. If we remember that the bomb was de-
veloped in competition with the Germans and under the lash of the
fear that they might perfect it before we did, it becomes apparent
that it was not possible to refuse to develop it. Once perfected, it
was difficult to withhold it when its use held out the prospect of a
quicker end of the war. We can criticize the statesman, however, for
lack of imagination in impressing the enemy with
power of the the
bomb without the wholesale loss of life that attended our demon-
stration of its power. Suppose we had announced the perfection of
the bomb to the enemy, threatened its ultimate use, and given some
vivid demonstrations of its power in places where the loss of life
would have been minimal. The moral advantage of such imagina-
tion would have been tremendous. As matters stand now, we have
completely lost our moral position, particularly in the Orient. We
speak rather glibly of the necessity and possibility of repentance on
the part of Japan, without recognizing how difficult we have made
repentance for a vanquished foe who feels that he was defeated by
234 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
the use of an illegitimate form of destructiveness.
In regard to the future, it is almost idle to speculate what effect
mension of military power could make the world more secure only
if a stable universal government, which would have exclusive use
perish. But the prospect for the next decades, or indeed for the next
century, is not reassuring.
since secret weapons have been developed. It is, at any rate, fairly
certain that, had the President submitted the matter to Congress,
the decision would have been identical with the one he made. Thus
we have come into the tragic position of developing a form of de-
struction which, if used by our enemies against us, would mean our
physical annihilation; and if used by us against our enemies, would
mean our moral annihilation. What shall we do?
Christianity and Society, Spring, 1950.
236 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
The pacifists have a simple answer. Let us simply renounce the
use of such a weapon, together with our enemies if possible, but
worth living? Even nations can reach a point where the words of
our Lord, " Fear not them which are able to kill the body but
rather fear them that are able to destroy both soul and body in
hell," become relevant.
The point of moral transcendence over historical destiny is not as
high as moral perfectionists imagine. But there is such a point,
though the cynics and realists do not recognize it. We must discern
that point clearly. A nation does not have the power to say that it
241
242 LOVE AND JUSTICE AND PACIFISM
become what we think they are, that they become trustworthy only
as we trust them and lovable only as we love them. Whenever such
religious imagination is developed to its highest potency, it not
only essays to strengthen the forces of virtue by assuming them, but
it definitely undertakes to overcome developed evil by failing to take
cognizance of So Jesus counsels his followers to forgive, not seven
it.
times, but seventy times seven, and to turn the other cheek if they
have been made the victims of aggression.
On the whole the common-sense attitude toward other men is not
seriously imperiled by this force of religious imagination. Imagina-
tion is a virtue and achievement that is rare at best and that only
occasionally rises to such a potency that it is able to create as well
as to discover hidden virtue in other men. Even religion undertakes
to cultivate that type of imagination only in rare moments of in-
sight and power, and usually contents itself with maintaining the
common-sense balance against the threat of unbalanced fears and
hatreds. Yet there are times when mutual fears, resulting in mutual
hatreds, reduce themselves to such an absurdity that large numbers
of men are prompted to experiment with the attitude of trust. We
are living in an age in which one element in every nation is still
suffering from pathological fears created by the World War and an-
other element in every national group is more than ordinarily
anxious to adopt an attitude of trust because it has realized that the
war was itself a spontaneous combustion resulting from excessive
fearsand hatreds. That is why the question of preparedness, of
armament and disarmament, is so urgent in practically every West-
ern nation.
Because of these influences of the war, large numbers of people
espouse the cause of pacifism, of nonresistance and mutual trust,
new world of which it dreams. Its weakness lies in the fact that it
II
Applied specifically to our own and other nations, this means that
the moral task that faces our generation is to persuade groups
groups of every kind, but particularly nations to a measure of un-
selfishness as well as to a measure of trust toward their neighbors.
That is a formidable task. Groups have never been unselfish in the
slightest degree. L. P. Jacks has observed that all human groups
tend to be predatory. Henry Adams, who shrewdly observed that
the statesmen of England equivocated on the slavery issue during
the Civil War until they could determine their course by considera-
tions of expediency, came to the melancholy conviction: " Masses
of men are always prompted by interest rather than conscience.
Morality is a private, and a costly, luxury."
One reason why modern civilization finds itself in such moral
chaos is that intergroup relationships are increasingly becoming
more important than intragroup relationships without becoming as
moral. It is difficult to introduce ethical attitudes into the rela-
tions between groups, partly because these relationships are com-
paratively recent and partly because the individual, even if he
possesses a sensitive conscience, is not inclined to demand ethical
actions of his group as long as his own attitude toward the group is
course, who are passionate in their espousal of world peace and dis-
A CRITIQUE OF PACIFISM 245
demptive.
Since it is more difficult for groups than for individuals to moral-
ize and since nations have long enjoyed complete
their actions,
moral autonomy, it would be foolish to expect any immediate or
easy spiritualizing of national conduct; nor is it necessary to post-
pone every policy of international trust until nations have become
completely ethical in their conduct. But it is obvious that it is at
least asimportant to create an unselfish national attitude as to adopt
policies of mutual trust. This fact is easily obscured, particularly
in those nations which for the mom.ent enjoy the highest privileges.
There are Continental cynics and shrewd observers in other parts
of the world who slyly suggest that pacifism is a virtue that only
the two great Anglo-Saxon nations are able to enjoy. The implica-
tion is England and America are the only two really solvent na-
that
tions in the Western world, and that, since they have what they
want and need, it is to their interest to preach peace. The hungry
nations will meanwhile fail to react to this moral idealism. They
will shrewdly and cynically observe that it is always the tendency
of those who have to extol the virtue of peace and order and to
place those who have not at a moral disadvantage.
It is quite impossible for the strong to be redemptive in their re-
lation to the weak if they are not willing to share the weakness of
the weak, or at least to equalize in some degree the disproportion of
advantages.
Ill
It is for this reason that the " outlawry of war " idea so passion-
ately espoused by many Americans takes so little root in Europe.
The outlawry of war " program is practically to adopt pacifism
"
ishly than any nation has yet been inclined to, it is bound to array
the world against it. That is the prospect that America faces.
Those of us who are pacifists ought to realize more clearly than
we do that spiritual attitudes can never guarantee us security in
the possession of material advantages. There is much to be said for
the position that a civilization and a culture may not only be pro-
tected without the use of force, but that they can be maintained
uncorruptibly in no other way. But it requires an army to preserve
a higher standard of living than the rest of the world enjoys. An
essentially selfish nation cannot afford to be trusting. Its self-
trust.
Many individual idealists are taking the justified position that
the best way under ethical control is to
to bring unethical groups
disassociate themselves clearly from the unethical conduct of the
group, at whatever cost. Too few of them have realized that if such
action is to be morally redemptive, it must disassociate the indi-
vidual not only from the policy of using physical force but from
the policy of insisting on material advantages that destroy human
fellowship and make the use of force necessary.
tions. Those who are less consistent regard it as an evil in all situa-
only those among the pacifists who express their critical attitude
toward the use of force by disavowing it completely in at least one
important situation. Perhaps it ought to be added that a true paci-
fist will prove the sincerity of his conviction by seeking the diminu-
pute and who are innocent of the evils that a war may be designed
to ehminate.
If international conflict is outlawed on these two grounds, it
would follow that the use of force by some society of nations would
fall in a different category. If force is under the control of an im-
they can hardly gain this conviction if the weak do not offer re-
sistance in some form to oppression. It may be that this resistance
need not express itself physically at all. It may express itself in the
use of the " soul force " advocated by Gandhi. But even as thor-
oughgoing a spiritual idealist as Gandhi has realized that the for-
250 LOVE AND JUSTICE AND PACIFISM
giving love of the oppressed lacks redemptive force if the strong
are not made to realize that alternatives to a policy of love are
within reach of the oppressed. Oppressed and nations,
classes, races,
like the industrial worker, the Negroes, India, and China, are
therefore under the necessity of doing more than appeal to the
imagination and the sense of justice of their oppressors. Where
there is a great inequality of physical advantage and physical power
it is difficult to establish moral relations.Weakness invites aggres-
sion. Even the most intelligent and moral individuals are more in-
clined to unethical conduct with those who are unable to offer re-
sistance to injustice than with those who can. It must be admitted
that an inert China did not succeed in inviting the attention of the
world to its maladies, while a rebellious China did. Even the social
idealists in the Western world who were not totally oblivious to the
evils of Western imperialism in the Orient before the nationalist
movement assumed large proportions had their conscience quick-
ened by it.
It is obviously possible to resist injustice without using physical
itsattainment but because they are too low for its ideals. It has been
the tragic mistake of almost every society to number its prophets
among its transgressors. Thus the same coercion by which it sought
to avoid social disintegration has operated to produce social stag-
nation. The same force that preserved its standards also destroyed
the social forces by which those standards might have been gradu-
ally perfected. A high degree of imagination, which few societies
have achieved, is required to distinguish between the creative and
the disintegrating forces in its life. It may be observed in passing
that while it is in the interest of social progress to dissuade societies
from undue reliance upon coercion it will probably always be neces-
sary for creative minorities to pay a certain price in martyrdom
for their achievements. All social organisms are conservative and
are bound to resist not only those who try to draw them backward
but those who them forward.
try to pull
Even after the distinction between creative and disintegrating
forces in the social minority has been made, there is no clear case
for the use of force upon the remaining, really " criminal " minority.
Some force may be necessary in dealing with the criminal, but
every undue reliance upon force obscures the defects in the life of
society itself, which have helped to create the criminal. A wayward
child is just as much the product of a faulty pedagogy as of innate
human defects. It is dangerous to follow Clarence Darrow's moral
nihilism and insist that every individual is merely the product of his
dismissal.
I am not a good enough Marxian to declare that convictions are
While respecting this position of the pure and the qualified paci-
fists, I am bound to admit that I cannot share their position. For
this reason I am forced to associate myself with 20 per cent of the
Fellowship who are pacifists only in the sense that they will refuse
to participate in an international armed conflict. Perhaps it would
clear the issue if we admitted that we were not pacifists at all. We
probably all recognize the terrible possibilities of violence. We re-
In the case of the social struggle that is being waged between the
privileged and the disinherited classes in every Western nation,
some of us, at least, know that there are possibilities that modern
civilization will drift into barbarism with the disintegration of the
capitalistic system. We believe that not only fascism but communism
has the perils of barbarism in it. The peril of the latter arises not
so much from its preaching of violence as from its preaching of
hatred. Hatred is very blinding; and those who are blind cannot be
good enough statesmen to become the instruments of a new unity
amid the complexities of Western civilization. We would certainly
have as much sense of responsibility toward the avoidance of bar-
baric civil strife as any other intelligent and responsible person.
The reason we cannot, in spite of our scruples, maintain our con-
WHY I LEAVE THE F. ^'57
cial struggle simply as a contest between two classes in which the one
class is fated to play the role of creating a classless society. Those of
jus who are Christian Marxians would renounce some of the utopian-
ism implied in this belief. We believe rather that the world of na-
ture and history is which egoism, collective and indi-
a world in
vidual, will never be completely overcome and in which the law of
love will remain both an ideal for which men must strive and a cri-
terion that will convict every new social structure of imperfection.
A Pragmatic Problem
The outsider may think that those careful definitions of just what |
renounced the pacifist position ought not any longer to regard our-
selves as Christian, I would answer that it is only a Christianity |
'
that suffers from modern liberal illusions that has ever believed
that the law of love could be made an absolute guide of conduct in
social morality and politics. As a Marxian and as a Christian I
j
recognize the tragic character of man's social life, and the inevita-il
bility of conflict in it arising from the inability of man ever to bring)
his egoism completely under the dominion of conscience.
As a Marxian I will try to guide that conflict to a goal that guar-i
antees a basic economic justice and creates a society that makes mod-'j
ern technical civilization sufferable. As a Christian I will know that
even the justice of a socialist commonwealth will reveal the imper-
fections of natural man and will not destroy the contest of wills and
interests which will express itself in every society. As a Christian I
will achieve at least enough contrition before the absolute demands
that God makes upon me and that I never completely fulfill to be
able to deal with those who oppose me with a measure of forgive-
ness. Christianity means more than any moral attitude that can ex-
press itself in social politics. But it must at least mean that the so-
cial struggle is fought without hatred. Nonhatred is a much more
important sign and symbol of Christian faith than nonviolence.
why i leave the f. o. r. 259
risy of hiding its behind the forms of justice, and the vic-
injustices
tims of injustice express their politics in terms of resentment
against this injustice. As Marxians we support this resentment
against the hypocrisy. As Christians we know that there is a devil
in the spirit of vengeance as well as in the spirit of hypocrisy. For
that reason we respect those who try to have no traffic with devils
at all. We cannot follow them because we believe that consistency
would demand flight to the monastery if all the devils of man's
collective life were to be avoided. But our traffic with devils may
lead to corruption, and the day may come when we will be grateful
for those who try to restrain all demons rather than choose between
them.
26o LOVE AND JUSTICE AND PACIFISM
57. PACIFISM AGAINST THE WALL
The Italian-Ethiopian dispute has brought the problem of the
compatibility between consistent pacifism and support of the
League of Nations to a sharp focus. Since the war, pacifist senti-
ment has increased to a remarkable degree, particularly in England
and the United States. From the traditionally pacifist Christian
sects, such as the Quakers, it has spread to the Christian churches in
general. To a certain degree it has also expressed itself in purely
secular terms. Usually this postwar pacifism was compounded with
devotion to the principle of collective security embodied in the
League of Nations. The present dispute between the League and
Italy raises the questionwhether it is possible to combine the paci-
fist disavowal of every form of armed conflict with the obligations
feared that an oil embargo against Italy might lead to war. The
British Foreign Secretary feared such a war, not because of pacifist
scruples, but because the promise of co-operation by France in the
event of war was too reluctant to give him security. He seems also
to have been prompted by the consideration that a possible Italian-
French-English military entente might be more effective in stop-
ping a resurgent Germany than the system of collective security
under the League that Anthony Eden sought to construct. In any
event the threat of the use of armed force, dangerous as it is, is still
a necessary weapon, even for a League of Nations.
The serious embarrassment of League proponents who are also
pacifists is illustrated by a recent article in the English weekly
The New Statesman and Nation. The article by C. E. M. Joad justi-
fies pacifist support of the League on the ground that since the
" Tfie use of force is after all not his policy; and it is only because fie fias
been unable to convert tfie world to fiis policy tfiat the use of force by the
League has come to seem the least evil of the various courses that are
practicable. But the pacifist has no personal obligation to take part in a
course that he advocates only under duress. His " best " is disarma-
. . .
ment. Meanwhile, because of the hardness of men's hearts and the thickness
of their heads, he is driven to support sanctions as the best that is offered
under the circumstances and as a means to the absolute best."
as well as mitigate this conflict. After all, the " enlightened " na-
tions have a stronger imperial will and are more effective in ex-
pressing it than the more vegetative backward nations. Mr. Joad's
effort to escape the pacifist dilemma reveals how implicit the idea
of progress is in all liberal approaches to the political problem. It
may be that human history is a much more tragic enterprise than
these liberal optimists assume.
An analysis of pacifist scruples about the League and sanctions
would be incomplete without reference to the radical position of
such men as Sir Stafford Cripps, leader of the Socialist League in
the British Labor Party. His position, shared by most Socialists in
America, is that the League is too much the instrument of capital-
istic imperialism to be an effective instrument of peace. It merely
supports the satiated imperialistic nations against the hungry ones,
Italy, Germany, and Japan, whose special crime is that they came
too tardily upon the division of spoils in the game of imperialism.
This position is not pacifistic in any exact sense of the word. It be-
trays no scruples against the use of force in government. It merely
regards the League of Nations as a pretense in international govern-
ment rather than as a reality. And it can hardly be denied that many
facts support this criticism. The League of Nations did not act in
the Japanese-Manchurian dispute because the imperial interests of
France and Britain were not threatened by Japanese aggression.
Nor did it act energetically against Italy until British interests in
Africa were threatened. Even now it fails to act without equivoca-
tion because the interests of France and Britain are only partially
compatible on this particular issue.
The real fact is that the League of Nations is, in the present mo-
ment, the combined force of French and British diplomacy plus the
moral prestige of the common opinion of the small nations of Eu-
rope. The force of the small nations, as a balance wheel of imperial
politics, is the only really significant gain achieved through the
World War. But how solid this gain is may well be regarded as a
question upon which no clear or convincing answer can be given.
Certainly the facts do not justify League enthusiasts who speak of
the League were an impartial international government,
as if it
one hand, and on the other than the kind of neutrality that assumes
no responsibility for the disciplining of recalcitrant nations.
While it is important therefore not to overestimate the virtues,
achievements, or possibilities of the League, it is equally unrealistic
to abstain from every possible support of its policies on the ground
that its course is dictated or influenced by the imperial politics of
Britain or France. One need not regard either British or French
diplomacy as morally pure to be willing to use it to prevent a Eu-
ropean conflagration. Moral purists who advance this consideration
might well be challenged to point to any possible or conceivable
force in politics of such purity as their criticism of the League sug-
gests as possible. The fact is that politics is always confronted with
the task of beguiling conflicting egoistic wills into some kind of
harmony or equilibrium. The anarchy of nations happens to be
greater than the anarchy within nations, and for this reason the
self-interest of the component community
parts of an international
is more apparent than But that is all the more
in domestic politics.
reason why it is inadvisable to make moral demands of too absolute
a nature upon the diplomacy of nations. If the League as now con-
stituted gives any promise of holding Italy, Germany, and Japan
in check, it is worth supporting even though the radical knows full
well that it cannot guarantee permanent peace. The alternative is
that each one of these nations, freed of the fear of any international
force opposed to them, will break loose, destroy Soviet Russia (by
simultaneous attacks on the part of Germany and Japan) and es-
tablish a triumphant fascistic nationalism in both Europe and Asia.
Such a resolution of the present covert anarchy would be decidedly
worse than the present uneasy armistice in both Europe and Asia.
The armistice has no real virtues of peace in it and cannot last in
the long run. But it is better to try to maintain it than to allow overt
anarchy to break out. While there is peace there is always a possi-
bility that the imperialistic policies of the dominant nations in
Europe will be altered through internal pressure. That is a more
hopeful alternative than to permit anarchy to break loose in the
hope that the next war will destroy capitalistic imperialism and es-
AN OPEN LETTER (tO RICHARD ROBERTS) 267
AN OPEN LETTER
58.
and convicts the one who uses it of not being " too sure of the posi-
tion that he is defending." Maybe you are right. I have never known
a controversy between human beings in which the contestants are
not more certain of the righteousness of their cause than they have
a right to be. All human
controversies are controversies between
self-righteous sinners. But this does not absolve us of the necessity
of seeking for the truth between contrasting claims, just as the sin-
obey the law of love if you only set your mind to it. If any of us
declare that all historical existence is involved in a self-love that
contradicts the law of love, they accuse us of defeatism and apostasy.
One of the most prominent pacifists in this nation runs up and
down the country accusing me and my kind of " moral breakdown "
and " moral bankruptcy." My view of what human character and
historical existence is like may be wrong; but I have arrived at it
by as honest an analysis of human behavior, including my own, as I
am capable of. There
is a type of Christian pacifism that does not
rest upon about the goodness of man. But I can find little
illusions
of that type of pacifism around about me. Most of the pacifism I
know is deficient in the " tragic sense of life " and corrupts its per-
fectionism by offering its refusal to participate in conflict as a politi-
cal alternative to the contest of power that is the very character of
the political order.
You ask: " Why should any incident in history impose a mora-
torium upon the business of human redemption? Am I to soft-pedal
the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ at every international
crisis? " This question neatly poses the between us. Fully
issue
analyzed, the question reveals the theological gulf between pacifism
and nonpacifist Christianity. I do not believe that war is merely an
" incident " in history but is a final revelation of the very character
absent from the highest levels of Christian life, I cannot regard re-
demption as freedom from sin. The redemption in Christ is rather
the revelation of a divine mercy that alone is able to overcome the
contradictions of human history from which even the best of us
AN OPEN LETTER (tO RICHARD ROBERTS) 269
scious of the persistence of sin in life.You say that you try to " fol-
low Him and fail all the way. But this does not entitle me to make
a virtue or a sort of philosophy out of my failure." You are afraid
that those who follow our position may not realize that " the rela-
tivist is itself sin in spite of what seems to be its inevitabil-
attitude
moment." Of course you are quite right. Relativism easily
ity at the
degenerates into opportunism, and opportunism into unprincipled
conduct. You are quite right in declaring that " it is my business to
keep alive the tension within me between the very relative good that
I at best achieve and the ideal good that I profess." But you forget
270 LOVE AND JUSTICE AND PACIFISM
that it is also the business of a Christian to preserve some relative
decency and justice in society against the tyranny and injustice into
which society may fall. He cannot do this without supporting rela-
tive standards of justice against the threats of anarchy and injustice.
You are willing to slightly favor the Allies against Hitler, but you
are not willing to allow such a discrimination to result in an action
in favor of one side against the other. To allow such an action is to
Your difficulty is that you want to try to live
involve yourself in sin.
in history without sinning. There is no such possibility in history.
The danger of admitting this is, of course, that we make sin norma-
tive when we declare it to be inevitable. We must see the sinfulness
of war, but we must also see the sin of egoism in which all life is
involved and of which war is the final expression. Furthermore, we
must be able to see the difference between the relative virtue of a
decent scheme of justice and the real peril of tyranny. All modern
pacifism regards the Kingdom of God as a simple alternative to the
contests of power, which lie at the foundation of the political order
and which we may beguile into some decent balance of power if we
understand their true nature. If we do not understand their true
nature, our effort to set up the Kingdom of God on earth ends in a
perverse preference for tyranny, simply because the peace of tyranny
means, at least, the absence of war.
In this connection I call your attention to the fact that many of
have to raise the cry from Macedonia to some of you Christian paci-
fists in belligerent nations, asking you to give proof by such a spirit
whole Continent of Europe. She may succeed. Nothing but the re-
sistance of Great Britain now stands in her way. One nation after
the other has collapsed before the might of her arms or before a di-
plomacy that knows how weaknesses and internal
to exploit all the
divisions of her adversaries. These imperial ambitions of Germany
are in quality and extent perilous to all the nations outside Europe.
Thomas Mann and many others, and that far from being swayed by
any ties with Britain I thought Britain was much too slow in under-
standing or challenging the peril that Nazi imperialism presented to
both our common civilization and the vital interests of Britain, just
as I believe that we have been too tardy in understanding this peril.
Challenge to Conscience
The fact is that this whole pitiless perfectionism, which has in-
formed a large part of liberal Protestantism in America, is wrong
not only about this war and the contemporary international situa-
tion. It is wrong about the whole nature of historical reality. It wor-
ries about some of us " crucifying the Lord afresh " by being in-
volved in war and does not recognize that the selfishness of the best
of us is constantly involved in the sin of crucifying the Lord afresh.
It thinks there is some simple method of extricating ourselves from
conflict, when as a matter of fact all justice that the world has ever
known has been established through tension between various vi-
talities, forces, and interests in society. All such tension is covert con-
flict and all covert conflict may on occasion, and must on occasion,
become overt.
The premium placed by some of our liberal Protestants upon neu-
trality, upon noninvolvement in war, is not merely an error in the
tory. It has sought to make a success story out of the story of the
cross, and has admonished men to be resolute in sacrificing their
lives and interests because in that way they would not have to sac-
rifice their lives and interests, for their goodness would shame their
one sense he is not our possibility at all but a revelation of the re-
sources of divine mercy, which knows how
overcome the sinful to
contradiction of human history to Most of our lib-
its true pattern.
eral Protestantism has neatly disavowed all the profounder elements
of the gospel, which reveal the tragic character of history, and has
made the gospel identical with the truism that all men ought to be
good and with the falsehood that goodness pays. The end of pure
goodness, of perfect love, is the cross.
There is, of course, a place in Christian thought and life for the
kind of goodness that knows martyrdom to be its end and that de-
clares that rather than be involved in the claims and counterclaims
of politics, in the struggle for justice with its ambiguous means and
its dubious and speculative ends (there is always a risk that the
cisms that are made of Colonel Lindbergh. Does he not desire peace
and ought the apostles of peace be thus vilified? they ask. But they
neglect to point out that his peace policy means connivance with tyr-
anny in very precise terms. In the Nofrontier News Service, a paci-
fist organ, we read in the issue ofOctober 22 that it, the news serv-
ice, is " able to state categorically " that rumors of a certain peace
move " are true "; that in this peace move the Germans offered Brit-
ain, among other things, the opportunity to " take over all the
French colonies " and " to
control the United States economic
sphere "; that negotiations over these proposals were " brought to a
halt by the understanding arrived at between England and the
United States including the destroyer-naval base swap." The news
service makes this information public because " the American peo-
ple have a right to know of the responsibility their Government has
taken upon itself in causing the war to be carried on in an ever-
widening sphere." I am not as certain as this news service that the
rumor it reports is true. But that is irrelevant. I find it very shocking
that it should assume so naively that any kind of peace, involving
even the most dishonorable sacrifice of the interests of other na-
tions, is preferable to carrying on the war.
No matter how they twist and turn, the protagonists of a political,
rather than a religious, pacifism end with the acceptance and justi-
fication of,and connivance with, tyranny. They proclaim that slav-
ery is I beg leave to doubt it and to challenge the
better than war.
whole system of sentimentalized Christianity that prompts good men
to arrive at this perverse conclusion. This system must be chal-
lenged, not only in this tragic hour of the world's history, lest we
deliver the last ramparts of civilization into the hands of the new
barbarians. It must be challenged in peace and in war because its
our Christian faith in its relation to world events. This first article
will therefore seek to offer a general introduction to the faith that
is in us. We believe that many current interpretations have obscured
important elements in that faith and have thereby confused the
Christian conscience. This confusion has been brought into sharp
relief by the world crisis; but it existed before the crisis, and it may
well continue after the crisis is over. We therefore regard our task
as one that transcends the urgent problems of the hour, though we
do not deny that these problems are the immediate occasion for our
enterprise.
At the present moment a basic difference of conviction with re-
gard to what Christianity and what it demands, runs through the
is,
Christianity and Crisis, first issue of tlie journal, February 10, 1941.
28o LOVE AND JUSTICE AND PACIFISM
least) it is easily compounded with an irresponsible and selfish
nationalism.
to realize to what degree the sinfulness of all men, even the best,
makes justice between competing interests and conflicting wills a
perennial necessity of history.
The perfectionists rightly recognize that it may be very noble for
an individual to sacrifice his life or interests rather than participate
in the claims and counterclaims of the struggle for justice (of which
war may always be the ultima ratio) They are wrong in making no
.
other than our own are defrauded or destroyed. They seek errone-
ously to build a political platform upon individual perfection. Me-
dieval perfectionism, whatever its limitations, wisely avoided these
errors. It excluded even the family from the possible consequences
of an individual's absolute ethic, and it was profoundly aware of
the impossibility of making its rigorous standards universal.
We believe that there are many
Christians whose moral inclina-
tionsmight persuade them to take the same view of current prob-
lems as our own, except for the fact that they are inhibited by re-
ligious presuppositions that they regard as more " purely " Christian
than those represented by the consensus of the church through
CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE WORLD CRISIS 281
all the ages. Therefore we will begin with an analysis of these reli-
gious presuppositions.
Religious Issues
source and end of our existence and that therefore his character and
will are the norm and standard of our conduct. It is only in recent
"
decades, however, that it has been believed that the " gentleness
of Jesus was a sufficient and final revelation of the character of God,
that this character was one of pure love and mercy, and that this
revelation stood in contradiction to an alleged portrayal of a God
of wrath in the Old Testament.
Both the Old and the New Testament take the wrath of God as
well as the mercy of God seriously. The divine mercy, apprehended
by Christian faith in the life and death of Christ, is not some simple
kindness that is indifferent to good and evil. The whole point of
the Christian doctrine of atonement is that God cannot be merciful
without fulfilling within himself, and on man's behalf, the require-
ments of divine justice. However difficult it may be to give a fully
rational account of what Christ's atoning death upon the cross
means to Christian faith, this mystery, never fully comprehended by
and yet not wholly incomprehensible to faith, speaks to us of a
mercy that transcends but also satisfies the demands of justice.
The Biblical answer to the problem of evil in human history is
a radical answer, precisely because human evil is recognized as a
much more stubborn fact than is realized in some modern versions
of the Christian faith.These versions do not take the problem of
have obscured what the Bi-
justice in history seriously, because they
ble has to say about the relation of justice to mercy in the very
heart of God. Every sensitive Christian must feel a sense of un-
worthiness when he is compelled by historic destiny to act as an in-
strument of God's justice. Recognition of the common guilt that
makes him and his enemy kin must persuade him to imitate the
mercy of God, even while he seeks to fulfill the demands of justice.
But he will seek to elude such responsibilities only if he believes, as
many modern Christians do, that he might, if he tried a little
Ethical Issues
Christians are agreed that Christ must be the norm of our human
life as well as the revelation of the character of God. But many mod-
ern versions of Christianity have forgotten to what degree the per-
fect love of Christ was recognized both in the Bible and in the
Christian ages as finally transcending all historic possibilities. The
same Saint Paul who admonishes us to grow into the stature of
Christ insists again and again that we are " saved by faith " and
not " by works "; which is to say that our final peace is not the moral
peace of having become what Christ defines as our true nature, but
is the religious peace of knowing that a divine mercy accepts our
generosity and mercy. Yet when the mind is not confused by Utopian
illusions it is not difficult to recognize genuine achievements of jus-
tice and to feel to defend them against the
under obligation threats
of tyrannyand the negation of justice.
Love must be regarded as the final flower and fruit of justice.
When it is substituted for justice it degenerates into sentimentality
and may become the accomplice of tyranny.
International Issues
erties and legal standards that are the priceless heritage of ages of
Christian and humanistic culture, to make truth the prostitute of
political power, to seek world dominion through its satraps and al-
284 LOVE AND JUSTICE AND PACIFISM
lies, and generally to destroy the very fabric of our Western civiliza-
tion.
Our own national tardiness in becoming fully alive to this peril
has been compounded of national selfishness and religious confu-
sion. In recent months American opinion has begun to respond to
the actualities of the situation and to sense the fateful destiny that
unites us with all free peoples, whether momentarily overrun by the
aggressor or still offering heroic resistance. How far our assistance is
We believe that the Christian faith can and must make its own
contribution to this issue. The task of building a new world, as well
as the tragic duty of saving the present world from tyranny, will re-
Yet there are times when hopes for the future, as well as contri-
tion over past misdeeds, must be subordinated to the urgent, imme-
diate task. In this instance, the immediate task is the defeat of Nazi
tyranny. If this task does not engage us, both our repentance and
our hope become luxuries in which we indulge while other men
save us from an intolerable fate, or while our inaction betrays into
disaster a cause to which we owe allegiance.
men have openly joined the " America First " committee, although
this committee believes in the strongest possible military and naval
defense of our hemisphere.
This increasingly intimate relation between those who are sup-
posedly religious absolutists and a political movement that has no
trace of religious idealism or perfectionism in its program must be
understood in the light of the criticisms leveled by the religious
perfectionists against those of us who believe that our Christian
fusion of the champions and protagonists of " love " in politics and
life about the relation of the absolute demands of God upon our
conscience and the relative evil of all our actions that many of them
work themselves into a perfect fury in criticizing their foes, not
recognizing that the identification of our relative political and
moral perspectives with the absolute will of God is sin in its quin-
PACIFISM AND "AMERICA FIRST" 287
National Self-interest
One main planks in the " America First " platform is that
of the
we must rely purely upon our own resources. Mr. Lindbergh de-
clares that we " can compete in commerce or in war with any com-
bination of foreign powers " and Senator Wheeler asserts that " no
nation dependent upon another is or can be an independent na-
tion." One wonders whether, by that standard, there has ever been
an independent nation, for certainly there have been few nations in
the history of the world who could match the combined might of all
other nations. The idea that America can stand alone and preserve
288 LOVE AND JUSTICE AND PACIFISM
all the virtues of its present civilization, even if forced to defend its
ists " think of this limitation upon national policy, forced upon the
Government by their intimate allies, the proponents of " America
First." Does it sound very " Christian " to them? If it does, what be-
comes of their criticism of other nations and empires who are ac-
cused of lacking Christian principles because they act only when
their own interests are involved?
We understand, of course, better than the Christian idealists, that
geography sets certain limits to moral principles in politics, and
that no degree of moral imagination can make a European nation
out of one that must have its eyes upon two oceans and that enjoys
the comparative security of its own continent. Nevertheless, one
would expect Christians to have a certain sense of uneasiness about
these geographic limitations rather than to revel in them.
entry into the war is because the Allies had lost the war before they
began it. " I knew," he said, " that Britain and France were not in a
PACIFISM AND "AMERICA FIRST" 289
position to win and I did not want them to lose." Here again is a
strategic issue. Does such defeatism on a strategic question have
more gospel warrant than more hopeful view? Since unwillingness
a
to join issue with a ruthless opponent inevitably invites further and
further encroachments, must we be driven to the conclusion that it
is " unchristian " to challenge an enemy because one's own previous
tian " to believe that one cannot oppose tyranny without becoming
transmuted into a tyranny than to believe that submission to tyr-
The finaldictum that brings " America First," the " Ministers No
War " committee, and the religious " Churchmen's Campaign for
Peace Through Mediation " closer together than any other, is the
idea that a negotiated peace is possible at the present time and that
it represents a real alternative to what is admittedly a dark future
The fact is, that every one of the propositions, political, strategic,
and moral that Christians are asked to accept as a more " idealistic "
solution of the world's problems than that which the rest of us, who
know of no way of defeating tyranny without resisting it, can offer,
is a revelation of the spiritual and moral confusion that has char-
acterized so much of our Protestant Christianity in recent decades.
A religious perfectionism that shuns the realities of politics in one
moment and embraces the sorriest political relativities in the next
is the natural fruit of decades of sentimentality in which religious
absolutes were regarded as easily achieved goals of political justice.
It is the fruit of a " religious idealism " that never gauged the
tragic factors of human sin in human history adequately. It was an
idealism ostensibly devoted to the " truth," but yet unwilling to face
the truth about man. It met every attempt to face the human situa-
tion realistically with the admonition that we must not " discour-
age " man. If he were to learn what depths of evil there are in his
souland to what depths of malignancy his common life might sink,
he might not continue to be " idealistic." As a consequence this
whole culture is unable to gauge the peril that it faces. It may well
be that our civilization will not survive. It has been too filled with
sentimental and Utopian illusions to know what a precious and pre-
carious thing any achievement of human justice is, how easily it
can be destroyed by the vicissitudes of history, and how readily it
may succumb to the decay that it has itself nourished.
If it does not survive, it would be a quite appropriate though ter-
rible fate if its final destruction should have been hastened by the
fantasies of religious idealists who had, in the words of Karl Barth,
" mistaken humility before the foe for humility before God "; who
had involved themselves in American pride in their effort to state
the gospel truth that all men are sinners (having failed to include
America in sweeping judgment) and who had imagined that
this ;
the peace that Vichy enjoys was somehow closer to the peace of the
Kingdom of God than the horrible realities of war. One might dis-
miss all these confusions as the mistakes of good people who are ig-
norant of the realities of politics and strategy. But the fact is that
292 LOVE AND JUSTICE AND PACIFISM
every mistake points to, and is derived from, a basically false analy-
and took the decision out of our hands. We might have known that
it would be like this. History is not as completely under the control
sumed.
The interventionists wanted us
to go to war by a clear moral de-
cision. The thought we could stay out if only we willed
isolationists
to do so resolutely enough. The isolationists underestimated the
element of " fate " in history, the fact that the decisions of others
frequently take the initiative out of our hands.The interventionists
overestimated our power of will. They (or let us say we) argued
that our moral obligation to the community of free nations re-
quired our participation. Or they contended that our own national
self-interest required that we act. They were right on both counts.
They did not recognize the " defect of our will," or understand that
over allhuman actions, and possibly over collective actions particu-
larly, there hangs the terrible truth of the confession, " The will in-
deed is present with me but how to perform that which is good I
know not." This is to say that ideally we ought to resist injustice
done to others as much as we resist it when done to ourselves. But
their fellow men by throwing them into like miseries and necessi-
ties. Of course, if there were no moral content in our life at all, if
ing us primarily by moral and political means and our defense must
be primarily moral and economic. If we can preserve and extend the
moral health of the noncommunist world, we will preserve the pre-
ponderance of power. In an actual conflict military might is, of
course, the ultima ratio. But the power by which conflict is avoided
is primarily nonmilitary.
This method of preserving peace must not, of course, exclude con-
tinued contact with Russia. We must preserve the bridge between
ourselves and Russia at almost any cost. But there are approaches to
the present issue that make it appear that it might be easy to dis-
solve the Russian intransigence, if only we tried hard enough. Take
for instance the Quaker proposals, recently published by the Yale
University Press, entitled The United Nations and the Soviet Union,
Some Quaker Proposals for Peace. In this document, which is a good
deal more realistic than most pacifist approaches to the problems of
our era, the chasm between ourselves and the Russians is neverthe-
less constantly underestimated by suggestions that it could be
bridged if only we tried hard enough. Thus we read: " In the light
Christianity and Society, Winter, 1949-1950.
THE QUAKER WAY 207
advice. Thus we are told: " United States policy should have as its
objective the conclusion of a general peace treaty with a unified
Germany, the inclusion of Germany in the United Nations and its
related agencies, and the establishment of all possible safeguards to
insure that Germany's strategic position between the East and West
will not result in increased tensions between the two power blocs."
As if this bland solution of the vexing problem did not obscure the
depth of the whole tragic situation in which we are involved! The
Russians will not let go of their part of Germany if they do not get
in return the dominance over the whole of Germany. That is why
they refused a unified military control of Germany at the end of the
war. Nor could we let go of our part of Germany if we thought that
itmight be subject to communist infiltration. After Russia's break-
ing of every agreement intended to guarantee a noncommunist but
united front government in Poland, Rumania, and Hungary, we
must obviously be wary of any similar agreements. This proposed
solution therefore throws no light whatever upon what we have to
do in the German question, any more than the general advice helps
to solve the total question.
It is natural enough in tragic times that people should be tempted
to seek forways out of a great dilemma that reveal their inability to
measure the proportions of the dilemma. But we hope that it will
not be regarded as particularly " Christian " to close one eye be-
cause the reality that breaks upon the sight of both eyes is too ter-
rible to contemplate.
IS THERE ANOTHER WAY? 209
ous " imperialism " by the white nations and that our cause is
"
gravely imperiled by residual resentments against " colonialism
and against the white man's arrogance toward the colored people.
Any policy that corrects and expiates past evils is both morally and
politically correct and better than undue reliance on military force.
As A.D.A.'s 1955 platform declares:
" We need a policy not of massive retaliation but of massive ren-
ovation. We need a clearer view of the new place of Asia and Africa
in world affairs, a more concrete and positive policy of opposition
to surviving colonialism and racism. Only within such a context can
programs of economic aid effectively contribute to the development
of common self-interest between ourselves and the other peoples of
the world and provide us with the power needed to force a world-
wide retreat of communist totalitarianism."
Two Our negative attitude toward our problems with commu-
nism, our preoccupation with its evils and our frantic ferreting out
of " subversives " with little discrimination between genuine disloy-
alty and mere dissent, has lowered our prestige in the world and not
aided us in the real contest. Happily the worst aspects of the psy-
chosis known as " McCarthyism " seem to be overcome in the pres-
ent more sober mood of the nation. A.D.A., however, like the
Quaker approach, continues pledged " to inalienable rights of ev-
ery American freedom of speech, of thought, of inquiry, and of
dissent. . We believe that the impairment of these liberties on
. .
than to resort to force can one wholly disavow the use of force. It is
IS THERE ANOTHER WAY? 30I
303
1
304 INDEX
Butterfield, Herbert, 67 212, 216, 217, 226, 228, 229, 230,
Byrnes, James, 151 296, 300
Conservatism, 1 1
Calvin, 47 Constitution, U.S., 66, 67, 152, 181,
Capitalism, 77, 168, 170, 254, 257 208-209
Carnegie, 98 Coolidge, President, 244
Carnegie Corporation, 95 Cooper, Alfred Duff, 175
Carter, Hodding, 152 Costigan-Cutting bill, 108
Catholic, Catholicism, 47, 48, 49, Couzens, Senator, 99
50, 51, Article No. 11, 97, 122, Criminal syndicalism, 110, 113
169, 269, 279, 282 Cripps, Sir Stafford, 81, 84, 85, 265
Chamberlain, 80, 170, 171 Cromwell, Oliver, 80
China, 95, 182, 184, 187, 197, 201, Cross, the, 33, 276, 277, 281
210, 250 Czechoslovakia, 52, 122, 274
Chinese Nationalists, 192
Christian action, 57
Daladier, 170
Christian Century, The, 103, 109,
Darrow, Clarence, 252
168, 272, 274, 275, 276
Declaration of Independence, 149
Christian moralism, 28
De Gaulle, Charles, 229
Christian social order, 33
de' Medici, Cosimo, 26
Christianity and Crisis, 216
Democracy, democratic, 61, Article
Christianity and Society, 267
No. 8, 63, 65, Article No. 10, 67,
Church (es) , 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 45,
68, 79. 95. 119- 129, 135, 139,
46, 59, 60, 61, 77, 89, 90-91, 93-
143, 146, 149, 151, 176, 180, 181,
94, 97, 110, 111, 112, 125, 128,
202, 212, 235, 289, 297
143, 144, 145, 148, 150, Article
Democratic Party, 64, 69
No. 31, 155, 158, 163, 171, 172,
Denmark, 217
175, 187, 189, 2i6, 254, 256, 272,
Destiny, meaning of, 184-186
280
Dewey, Governor, 183
Churchill, 70, 71, 81, 183, 233
Dumbarton Oaks, 213
Churchmen's Campaign for Peace
Through Mediation, 285, 290
Civil Liberties Union, 109 Eden, Anthony, 174-177, 264
Civil War, 147, 200, 221 Education: and class struggle, 37;
Coercion, 26, 32, 34, 35, 36, 93, 147, free, 86
170, 171, 250, 254-255, 264 Eisenhower, 57, 64, 68, 71, 72, igi,
Commission on a Just and Durable 301
Peace, 205 Electoral College, 67
Committee on War and Peace, 205 Emancipation Proclamation, 146
Common interest, 27 Enemy, relation to, Articles Nos.
Communism, communists, 29, 32, 48-51
68, 69, 73, 77, 78, 107, 109, 191, Equality, 36, 62, 149
192, 193, 214, 216, 225, 237, 256, Eros, 219, 220, 221
299 Ethiopian War, Article No. 34, 260
Community, 177-178, 216, 232, 257; Europe, 51, 52, 68, 74, 75, 163, 175,
Christian, 145, 148, 154, 155; na- 178, 184, 190, 193, 198, 199, 226,
tional, 67, 146, 147; world, 60, 93, 241, 244, 245, 246, 263, 265, 266,
178, 185, 188-189, 200, 209, 210, 271, 273, 274, 283, 284, 290, 297
INDEX 305
Evangelical Christianity, weaknesses Gospel (s), 34, 153, 226, 262, 286
of, 156-157, 158 Grace, 187, 294, 295
Graham, Billy, Article No. 32
Fair Deal, 1 18, 146
Greeks, 225
Fair Employment Practices Act,
Group interest, loyalties, 34, 121,
Article No. 29
122, 123, 131, 133, 141, 244
Fall of man, 47, 50, 51
Guilt, mutuality of, 226, 227
Family, 26, 90, 280
Farmer, 35, 64
Hardie, Keir, 84
Fascism, 68, 74, 78, 79, 256, 267
Henderson, Arthur, 84
Faulkner, William, 152-153
Hillman, Sidney, 107
Federal Council of Churches, 96,
Himmler, 170
215
Hindenburg, 225
Federal Fair Employment Practices
History, 150, 261, 268, 281, Article
Act, 60
No. 62
Fellowship of Reconciliation, 41,
Hitler, Hitlerism, 52, 71, Article
Article No. 56
No. 12, 129, 132, 141, 169, 170,
Feudal, feudalism, 48, 74, 82
172, 173, 174, 224, 225, 226, 275,
Fifield, James, 113, 114
286, 290
Finland, 134, 198
Hoare, Sir Samuel, 168
Finney, 154
Hoare-Laval proposals, 264
Five-Day Week, 104
Hogg, Quentin, 82
Force: and redemption, 248-249,
Holmes, John Haynes, 255, 262, 285
250; dangers of, 253, 300
Hoover, Herbert, 96, 255
Ford Worker, The, 107
Forgiveness, 44, 53, 54, 231, 295
Human nature, 54, 73, 74, 75, 85,
86, 117, 131, 183, 241, 253, 261,
France, 70, 71, 77, 79, 166, 175, 180,
278, 282, 293; Biblical conception
186, 191, 192, 194, 198, 229, 253,
of, 47 ff.
264, 265, 266, 278, 288-289
Hume, David, 97
Francis of Assisi, 75, 243, 261
Humility, limits of, 61
Franco, General, 169
Hungary, 298
Frank, Waldo, 108
Hydrogen bomb. Article No. 53
Freedom: of man, 49, 50, 54, 66, Ar-
ticle No. 15, 94, 95, 129; and con-
Idealism, idealists, 29, 33, 41, 42,
trol, 87, 119, 163; and security,
43, 45, 46, 88, 119. 144, 153, 172,
114
177, i8i, 189, 191, 204, Article
Free enterprise, 57, 87, 88, 96, 97,
No. 45, 213, 216, 218, 221, 245,
113, 114
247, 252, 277, 285, 288, 290, 291,
Gandhi, 124, 249, 250 295
Garrison, William Lloyd, 221 Ideological taint, 48, 50
General Motors Corporation, 102, Imagination, 242, 249, 252
104, 116 Immorality, essence of, 177-178
Germans, Germany, 35, 36, 52, 79, Imperialism, 211
80, 122, 134, 162-163, 166, 169, Incarnation, 49, 268
170, 171, 173, Article No. 37, 186, India, 176, 182, 193, 195, 216, 250
189, 198, 220-221, Articles Nos. Industrial Christian Fellowship, 83
49-50, 253, 264, 266, 267, 273, 278, Inflation, Article No. 23
" Innocence," 200-201
290, 298
3o6 INDEX
Intelligence and justice, 35 Labor, labor organization, 34, 110,
Ireland, Irish, 126, 195 113, 116, 117, 118
Isolationism, isolationists, 57, 60, 64, Labor Party, 82, 263, 265
72, 173, 176, 180, 183, 197, 202, Lansbury, George, 84, 167, 263
203-204, 246, 278, 293, 295 Latin America, 67
Israel,217 Latvia, 276
Italy, 122, Article No. 34, 263, 264, Law: international, 208, 215, 227;
290 limits of, 146, 149, 216, 217
Lawson, Victor, 99
Jacks, L. P., 243 League of Nations, 166, 168, 198,
Japan, Japanese, So, 123, 126, 128, 214, 246, 260, 264, 265, 267
131, 171, 214, 233, 263, 265, 266, Lend-Lease Act, 179
267, Liberal church. Christians, 37, 41,
293
Jesus: ethic of. Article No. and 111, 128, 130, 254, 257, 259, 271,
3;
prudential motive, 31; social 276, 277
teachings of, 30, 89 Liberalism, liberals, 120, 123, 130,
Jews, 26, 121, 122, Article No. 27, 133, 134, 136, 140, 146, 148, 180,
i55-56, 274, 283 199, 214, 225, 260, 261, 262, 264,
229; requirements of, 28; and McCarthy, Senator, 65, 72, 299
self-interest, 28, 157, 173, 174; McConnell, Bishop, 205
spirit of. Article No. 1, 35; and MacLeish, Archibald, 289
the state, 96, 146; and the strong, McMahon, Senator, 237
32; structure of, 283; and war, Madison, 66
53. 182 Malvern, 83
Justification by faith, 269 Manchester School, 108
Mann, Thomas, 275
Kentucky, Article No. 20, 157 Marshall Plan, 96
King James Version, 102 Martyrdom, 277, 286
Kingdom of God, 59, 78, 80, 89, Marx, Marxism, 44, 45, 48, 69, 70,
171, 174, 219, 223, 261, 270, 271, 73, 86, 225, 257, 298
277, 291, 292 Matthews, J. B., 255
Korea, Korean War, 64, 65, 192 Mexico, 244
INDEX 307
Military power, limits of, Article Pacifism, pacifist, 53, 109, 119, 167,
No. 42 168, 170, 171, 173, 222, 236, Ar-
" Ministers No War," 285, 290 ticles Nos. 54-64
Minorities, 251-252 Page, Kirby, 255, 263
Moral suasion, 93 Pakistan, 216-217
Moralism, moralists, 36, 170, 183, Palestine, 139, 140, 141
189, 259, 294 Palmer, Albert W., 285
Mordhorst, Rev. Mr., 216 Pan-American Regional System,
Morrison, Herbert, 81, 83 214
Munsey, Frank, 99 Peace: aims, Article No. 37; nego-
Mussolini, 166, 167, 171, 260, 290 tiated. Article. No. 36, 290-291
Myrdal, Gunnar, 149 Pearl Harbor, 180
Pelagianism, 224
Napoleon, 79, 80, 103 Perfectionism, 254, 269, 271, 274,
National Manufacturers Associa- 276, 280, 282, 285, 287, 291-292
tion, 115, 116 Philanthropists, philanthropy, 26,
Nationality, 134, 139 41, 92, Articles Nos. 18-19, 111,
Natural law, Article No. 5; bour- 112
geois views, 48-49; and feudalism, Plato, 219
40. 254-255
ticle No. 44; economic, 64, 193,
New Deal, 63-64, 69, 113 199, 204, 257; military, 193
New Statesman and Nation, The, Pragmatic, pragmatism, 58, 257, 261
Price control, 118
171. 264
New York Times, The, 164 Pride, 186, 227
Nygren, Anders, Agape and Eros, 47' 48, 50' 5I' 53. 59. 77. 97. H5-
220 157, 172, 254, 269, 279, 282, 291
Proudhon, 73
Prudence, 154
Orthodox Church, Christianity, 40-
41, 128, 130 Quakers, 254, 255, 260, Articles
Oxford pledge, 262-263 Nos. 63-64
3o8 INDEX
Race relations, 60, Articles Nos. 24- 268, 269, 270, 274, 276, 279, 280,
32; and scientific knowledge, 125, 282, 286, 291, 292, 294-295
127, 130; and sports, 150 Smillie, Robert, 84
Rationing, 118 Smith, Bedell, 297
Rauschenbusch, Walter, 29 Social control, 93, 199
Rauschning, 79 Social gospel, 25, 41, 83, 97, 157-
Realism, realists, 42, 43, 46, 75, 91, 158
119, 131, 172, 176, 204, Article Socialism, socialists, 69, 86, 254, 265
No. 45, 295 Social security, 26
Reason, limits of in political de- Socialized medicine, 58, Article No.
bate, 118 14
Reconciliation, ministry of, 54, 292 South Africa, 151-152
Relativism, 269 South America, 246, 287, 290
Religion and class struggle, 37, 38 Spain, Article No. 11, 171
Repentance, 38, 182, 233, " Spiritual Mobilization," Article
144, 145,
234. 295 No. 21
Republicans, Article No. 9, 183, Spykman, Professor, America's
203 Strategy in World Politics, 210
Responsibility, 177, 178, 181, 187, Stalin, 70, 77, Article No. 12, 292,
198, 200, 203, 261, 268, 301 298
Ribbentrop, 170 Stettinius, 214
Rights, 26, 137, 141 Stewardship, Article No. 16
Roberts, Richard, Article No. 58 Stoic, stoicism, 32, 49, 219
Rockefeller, 98 Strategy, problems of, 60
Roosevelt, 63, 64, 177 Sunday Observer, 108
Rumania, 298 Supreme Court, 76, 143, 146, Arti-
Russia, Russian, 57, 6g, 74, 75, 77, cleNo. 30, 152, 155
79, 133, 164, 165, 167, 184, 186, Sweden, 113
187, 197, 198, 199, 201, 211, 213,
215, 216, 234, 235, 251, 266, 296- Taft, Robert, 57, 294
298 Talmadge, 151
Tax, taxation, 26, 36, 117, 181
Saint Paul, 42, 75, 77, 223, 282 Taylor, Henry J., 116
San Francisco Conference, Article Temple, Archbishop, 81, 82, 84
No. 46 Tittle, ErnestFremont, 168-171
Sayre, Nevin, 255 Tojo, 230
School segregation. Article No. 30 Tolerance, 61, 138
Secularism, secularists, 186 Tolstoi, 261
Self-interest, 53, 119, 294 Tragic element, 29, 49, 80, 137, 174,
Self-love, 97 223, 225, 258, 268, 292, 298
Self-righteousness, 52, 188-189, 201, Truman, 148, 233
226, 267, 268, 282 Trusteeship, 213
Shepherd, " Dick," 263 Tyranny, 53, 57, 189, 191, 196, 201,
Sin, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48-49, 50, 51, 205, 224, 227, 270, 277, 279, 285,
76, 115, 120-121, 123, 124, 125, 286, 291, 292
128, 130, 144, 153-154, 155, 157,
158, 163, 164, 181, 182, 183, 187, Unemployment, 104, 106, 116
199, 212, 223, 229, 230, 261, 267, United Mine Workers, 110
INDEX 309
7 2002
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