WAR’S EFFECTS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4953, 9 February 1937, Page 2

WAR’S EFFECTS

AN ARCHBISHOP’S REVIEW. Dr William Temple, Archbishop of York, in his book, “Christianity in Thought and Practice,” makes a reference to the duty of the Christian with regal'd to the problem of war. He says:—“Christianity gives no ground for affirming that the psychological life of a human being is sacrosanct. If it were, it would always bei wrong to surrender it in martyrdom “The real evil is always the curtailment of liberty-—the over-riding of personal choice. To take life is to do this in the most absolute and final way; whereas to give life for a cause is the supreme manifestation of liberty, the fullest exercise of personal choicew Taking life should be the very last resort; but justice is more sacred than life.

“The personal guilt of innocence of the individuals affected seems to be irrelevant, for the action is not of individuals as • such against individuals as such, but of community against community, and its incidence upon this, that, or the other representative of either community is relatively accidental. “There is one really strong argument against the use of armed force; it is that none of us are good enough to use it without moral deterioration. As soon as fighting begins, passions are released which strangle high aspirations, and the spirit of truth is stifled in the hearts of men. Yet I cannot hold that this is a valid reason for refusing the perilous duty; it is a cogent reason for spiritual discipline in preparation for it. “Why, then, did Christ not fight nor suffer His followers to fight for His kingdom ? He gave the answer to Pilate. If His kingdom were one of this world’s kingdoms, His servants would fight for it, for their, heritage and treasure is temporal, and such as may be destroyed by conquest or loss of autonomy or preserved by successful armed resistance. But His kingdom is spiritual; its essence is that Truth to which He bears witness. To fight for that is to betray it, for it only wins victories where surrender to it is free.

“Thus the Christian may fight to preserve his country from invasion, or to uphold defined justice among the nation with which his own is in contractual relations; but he must not fight for his Faith, nor to defend his life when that is threatened because he is a witness to that Faith; for to fight the Faith otherwise thafi by argument and by appeal is to betray it.”