WAR AND PEACE

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21470, 11 May 1935, Page 17

WAR AND PEACE

Is War Obsolete? By Charles E. Raven. Allen and Unwin. 186 pp. (4s 6d net.) This book embodies the Halley Stewart Lecture for 1934. In it, Dr. Raven, Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, sets forth the conflicting claims of religion and citizenship in relation to war. In 1914 he accepted and even approved of war, but in 1934 he neither accepts nor approves of it. "It is not my intention," says the author, "to deny the value of certain methods in the past, but only to insist that they belong to the past not to the present." Moreover, "we have no right to forfeit the hard-won gains of the ages, and to revert to primitive methods for conducting modern life." The book is a very powerful plea for the outlawi-y of war and the cultivation of a peace which is a moral equivalent and a satisfying alternative to war. Professor Raven realises that peace can often be merely a synonym for ease and prosperity, and that such a "peace" could be thoroughly demoralising to those great nations of the world. Quite equally is he convinced that the pacificism which has its motives in disillusionment, depression, disgust, and fear cannot be regarded with satisfaction by Christians. Altogether this book is an excellently balanced contribution to anti-war literature and is well worthy of its place in the series of lectures to which it is a contribution.