PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 HBW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN ft CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lre. 
 
PATRIOTISM 
 AND RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 
 SHAILER MATHEWS, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Dean of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago 
 
 If *m fork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1918 
 
 All right* rtterved 
 
COPTKIORT, 1918 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 S*t up and electrotyped. Published October, 1918. 
 
TO 
 
 THE GRADUATES AND UNDERGRADUATES 
 
 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 WHO ARE NOW EXEMPLIFYING THE PATRIOTISM OF 
 
 DEMOCRACY ON THE BATTLEFIELDS OF FRANCE 
 
 383075 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These lectures were delivered at the University 
 of North Carolina on the McNair Foundation in 
 May, 1918. They cannot claim to be an exhaus- 
 tive discussion of their theme, but they at least ex- 
 press an attitude of mind. It may be that they may 
 hearten some of those who, without abating their 
 devotion to the cause of international peace, have 
 been forced by the course of events to see no 
 possibility of attaining that goal until the world 
 is delivered by war from the menace of Ger- 
 man imperialism. At all events they are a 
 sincere attempt to estimate two of the spiritual 
 forces that underlie social evolution. If I have not 
 dealt at length with the economic and geographical 
 factors of history, it is because I believe that eco- 
 nomic determinism fails to account for human 
 progress and makes a sorry showing as a final ex- 
 planation of the titanic struggle in which the world 
 is engaged. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTUKE PAGE 
 
 I THE KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION i 
 
 II THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM ... 34 
 
 IIL. .RELIGION- AND WAR .- -, , . . . 77 
 
 IV THE SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM . 116 
 
PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 THE KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 Several years ago in company with a young 
 Swedish naval officer I stood watching a squadron 
 of American warships in the harbor of the Piraeus. 
 Without any intention of giving offense he sud- 
 denly remarked, " I don't think your flag is very 
 pretty." Such an estimate had never occurred to 
 me, but I tried to look with dispassionate eyes upon 
 the Stars and Stripes and to summon a detached 
 aesthetic judgment. I failed. My country's flag 
 would not permit detached judgments. Patriot- 
 ism refused an excursion into aesthetics. 
 
 The flags of nations are not pieces of bric-a- 
 brac. They are symbols. The tri-color of France, 
 the union jack of Great Britain, the schwartz- 
 weiss-roth of Germany, are not mere pieces of 
 cloth independent of the nations they represent. 
 Detach ourselves as best we may, we cannot escape 
 the partialities of patriotism. In these days, with 
 
2 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 the fresh memory of the Western Front, one does 
 not need to be an Englishman to know the mean- 
 ing of Browning's " Home-Thoughts from the 
 Sea": 
 
 "Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North- West died 
 
 away; 
 
 Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay ; 
 Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; 
 In the dimmest North-East distance dawned Gibraltar 
 
 grand and gray ; 
 'Here and here did England help me: how can I help 
 
 England ?' say, 
 Whoso turns as I this evening turn to God to praise and 
 
 pray, 
 While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa." 
 
 Yet in times of peace many a good patriot has 
 discounted national loyalty. He has elevated 
 criticism into a supreme duty. As we look back 
 across the years of tragedy through which the 
 world is now passing, we hardly recognize the 
 political attitudes of half a generation ago. 
 Viewed through the atmosphere of a conflict which 
 strains the resources of our nation, the political 
 literature filled with the hypercriticism in which 
 we once rejoiced argues a mood of mind as foreign 
 to these days as if it belonged to the men of Mars. 
 In that far distant world at peace American in- 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 3 
 
 tellectuals prided themselves on being superior to 
 national enthusiasm. Impatient of Fourth of 
 July oratory and steeped in the political thought 
 of Germany, they compared the faults of our 
 democracy with the efficiency of an autocracy, fail- 
 ing to see that most of our faults are the price we 
 pay for our liberties. Criticism of government, 
 political institutions, national habits; contempt of 
 national pride as jingoism, were all but universal. 
 To be a patriot was to be a critic. The words of 
 Adams and of Patrick Henry, the daring sen- 
 tences of the Mecklenberg Resolutions and the 
 Declaration of Independence, were regarded much 
 as modern novelists look upon mid- Victorian litera- 
 ture. 
 
 This self-criticism was by no means insincere, 
 I am not ready to say it was wholly unwarranted. 
 But the startling characteristic which emerges 
 from the recollection of this former patriotism of 
 ours is its coldness. We thought sentiment be- 
 neath our dignity. Political pessimism had be- 
 come fashionable. True, we believed in justice 
 and, as events have proved, were ready to make 
 sacrifices to give justice, but there was no catch of 
 the throat, no break of the voice, as we set forth 
 our national ideals. 
 
4 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 To-day the eyes of our understanding have been 
 opened. We have learned to see that much of that 
 sophisticated criticism of American and Anglo- 
 Saxon institutions was born of a malignant po- 
 litical philosophy which had been implanted within 
 our intellectual life. Liberty then forgotten at the 
 shrine of a new god, Teutonic Efficiency; democ- 
 racy then openly challenged to prove its right to 
 exist; are again ideals for which men dare to die. 
 The patriotic songs we had all but forgotten, the 
 salute to the flag we had never practiced, are now 
 tests of loyalty to a land that rises in splendid per- 
 sonality. We have come to see that our nation is 
 more than a group of people existing under one 
 government within definite boundaries. It is our- 
 selves, yet more than ourselves. It is a glorious 
 super-person, possessed of virtues, power, ideals, 
 daring and sacrifice. Legislatures may harbor 
 petty politicians, administrations may be displaced, 
 political parties may be assailed, but our country is 
 our country! 
 
 As one attempts thus to express the new devotion 
 which has called our nation to arms and has filled 
 America with a militant loyalty, a sense of com- 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 5 
 
 panionship is at once detected. This passion of 
 service, this readiness to sacrifice health and life for 
 national ideals what is it but a counterpart of 
 religion ? 
 
 As we analyze this companionship, points of su- 
 perficial similarity at once emerge. There is the 
 same symbolism in religion as in patriotism. The 
 rite or the doctrine or the shibboleth is a banner 
 as truly as the Stars and Stripes. If in our critical 
 moods we trace unmoved its history and analyze 
 its purpose, we are bewildered when some one treats 
 it as of no heartfelt importance. It is a rare in- 
 terdenominational meeting in which one does not 
 hear good-natured raillery at the expense of a rite 
 or doctrine that characterizes one of the religious 
 bodies there represented. Such sallies meet with 
 laughter, but the parties concerned are always a lit- 
 tle perturbed. It is disconcerting to have that for 
 which one's fathers died and by which we symbolize 
 a faith turned into a joke. The rite or doctrine in 
 someway focalizes a social relationship that is 
 precious a source of inspiration, a bond with the 
 past, a challenge to the future. Over against a re- 
 ligious inheritance as over against one's country the 
 individual feels dwarfed. He stands thankful, 
 humble and proud before the land in which he was 
 
PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 born and the church in which he was reared. Doc- 
 trines may be rejected, worship may be neglected, 
 priests may be suspected, but when religion is really 
 endangered even a Voltaire will erect a temple to 
 God. Many a man looks across the widening sea 
 of disillusionment that sweeps between him and 
 an earlier faith to find his heart growing tender as 
 he thinks of that faith in which his fathers shared. 
 Hope rises above debate, looking for that dear 
 country, the home of God's elect. 
 
 But the deeper kinship of patriotism and religion 
 lies far below^assmg~irnip1iptts, and characterizes 
 national policies as truly as the impulses of citizens. 
 Tnjjiipw-itegg^as in the- -past it is a jeommefi-origin 
 of brutaMtjtaa^iS^^^^^^^Ssio^^afi^sacri- 
 To neglect this spiritual element of national 
 personalities is to misunderstand national characters 
 and to prophesy falsely of national destinies.^ Pa- 
 triotism and religion alike are, the expression of a 
 nation's inner life. If the morale of an jinny is a 
 lcey~to victory or dejfiaV-ttio nationnTsQuLJs the 
 
 of nnttnnn! "fntnrpi SncT international 
 
 Patriotism and religions are both the product of 
 social history. There can be no individualistic 
 patriotism and no anti-social religion. 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 7 
 
 What is patriotism ? I have asked many persons, 
 to be given answers which though apparently various 
 were at heart the same. To one man America was 
 worth every sacrifice because it gave opportunity to 
 men like himself to pass from poverty to education, 
 prosperity and influence. To another patriotism 
 stood for love of national institutions. To another 
 it was loyalty to ideals embodied in the national his- 
 tory. I came across in a little high school magazine 
 a poem by a young friend of mine, Lieutenant 
 Walter S. Poague, now fighting in France, that puts 
 the human side of patriotism so simply and sincerely 
 that I quote a few of its verses: 
 
 My native land ! Your shores sink low 
 
 Into the hazy sea, 
 Which widens to the shiver, 
 To the steady, pulsing quiver 
 Of the ship which takes that dear loved land 
 
 From me. 
 
 My native land ! What does that mean, 
 
 That phrase, to me? 
 Not power most of all, 
 Nor even liberty, 
 Nor wealth, nor fame, 
 Of honor brightly kept; 
 Not the high title of democracy, 
 Of refuge, haven, 
 The land of even chance. 
 
8 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 All these may mean America, my native land, 
 
 To others. 
 
 But just to me it means 
 
 The little house beneath the elms 
 
 Where I was born, 
 And played on brittle autumn days 
 At soldier with my dog. 
 
 My native land! 
 
 You don't mean great high phrases, 
 
 But just these simple things which go 
 
 To make my home. 
 
 And how I love you! 
 
 More greatly 
 
 Than I ever dared to hope, 
 
 I love you, dear America 
 
 Of mine. 
 
 And if great sacrifices 
 
 May be asked of me, 
 
 I'll give them happily 
 
 To you, 
 
 My own dear native land. 
 
 In this appealing picture of a young man's love 
 of his land is a better working idea of what patriot- 
 ism really means than in many a more labored dis- 
 cussion. It is clearly not without the larger vision 
 of that for which a fatherland stands, but its per- 
 sonal identification with a nation's life leads directly 
 to that which is in the heart of every patriot the 
 sense of proprietorship in a nation and that for 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 9 
 
 which a nation stands. To the larger import of this 
 sense of unity we shall repeatedly recur. At pres- 
 ent I desire less to anlayze than to describe the at- 
 titude. 
 
 Loyalty to a nation is not theoretical and volun- 
 tary. It is filial. Our nation is our fatherland. 
 Perhaps that is why it is so difficult to take on a 
 new patriotism. Love for step-parents is learned, 
 not inherited. Criticism of one's family is much 
 like an attack upon one's self. Sensible parents 
 are convinced of unaccountable imperfections in 
 their children, but the protective instinct of parent- 
 hood comes immediately to the fore when neighbors 
 complain of these imperfections. It is not so much 
 that parents refuse to face the disagreeable truth 
 about their children as their incapacity to believe 
 it when it is told them. The solidarity of the family 
 rebels at whatever threatens it. To say that one's 
 father or mother or sister or wife told one such and 
 such a thing is immediately to close discussion as to 
 the truthfulness of the thing told. The statement 
 itself has been built in to the mystic something we 
 call our family. 
 
 How similar this is to the sense of proprietorship 
 we have in our country. A young Frenchman who 
 was landing at New York was asked what city he 
 
IO PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 thought was the most beautiful in the world. " St. 
 Malo," the young man promptly replied. " I was 
 born there." 
 
 Is this not also true of religion? There too we 
 find an analogy with our family life. There is no 
 need of recalling how the mystics have carried 
 eroticism to unbelievable lengths in order to express 
 the fellowship of the soul and its God. The lan- 
 guage of religion abounds in family terms. Gods 
 are all but universally fathers and mothers. Prac- 
 tices and symbols of certain religions which seem to 
 us hideous profanities of the arcana of life are to 
 many the expression of faith in divine paternity and 
 maternity. 
 
 Our social heritage makes this persistence of the 
 family feeling in patriotism and religion all but in- 
 evitable. For when we trace civilization back to its 
 beginnings, and move from the developed to the 
 primitive social life of man, we find the family the 
 center of whatever religious and political activities 
 may have existed. The head of the family was both 
 priest and ruler. True, by his side there were gener- 
 ally the medicine men, the witch doctors, and the 
 seers. But they did not efface the religion of the 
 family. The head of the family gave his name to 
 the tribe, and stood as the priest, or at least as the 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION II 
 
 leader of the worship of those who bore his name. 
 He led in war and in sacrifice. His enemies and his 
 god were family possessions. 
 
 When primitive customs yielded to more com- 
 plicated economic life, the family still dominated 
 social and religious action. The children of Abra- 
 ham were the children of Yahweh. Family loyalty 
 remained the basis of society and the center of re- 
 ligious practices. The head of the family was su- 
 preme because he was the head of the family. His 
 sons might marry the daughters of other families, 
 but they made them members of his own. In war 
 his family and his slaves followed him unhesitat- 
 ingly. An injury to one of them was an injury to 
 him. To call upon his name was to invoke his pro- 
 tection. Blood feuds sharpened the distinction be- 
 tween the group of which he was head and all other 
 groups. His grazing land was held by the preemp- 
 tion of family rights, and such property as was his 
 was to be shared by all those who called him father. 
 When he worshiped, he worshiped not only for 
 himself, but for his tribe. When he died, his suc- 
 cessor carried on a family history and a family 
 religion. 
 
 Nor did this identification of religion with family 
 and state disappear with primitive society. Class- 
 
12 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 ical religion knew nothing of the distinction the 
 modern world finds between church and state. In 
 Greece and Rome politics and religion were phases 
 of a common spiritual life. 
 
 II 
 
 A second element of kinship between patriotism 
 and religion is loyalty to a "beloved community." 
 Just because one finds oneself a part of a national 
 or religious group does one hear the call to service 
 and utter the cry for help. No state however 
 simple has lacked this quality, and no definition of 
 religion is true to facts that overlooks the funda- 
 mentally human sense of participation in the life of 
 a group to which even one's god belongs. Re- 
 ligions break with magic at this point. For re- 
 ligions, as distinct from religion, are efforts to build 
 up social practices of such a sort as will make the 
 super-human power or powers upon which a group 
 believes itself dependent, helpful. The identifica- 
 tion of the divine purpose with the group-will has 
 always been natural. The god was the group's god. 
 He shared in its experiences, rejoiced in its success 
 and sorrowed in its misfortunes. 
 
 When families, grown large, formed a clan or 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 13 
 
 tribe the sense of unity born of common descent 
 and of common worship expanded. If a tribe 
 took new members to itself, as in the case of Ruth 
 the Moabite married to a Hebrew, the land and god 
 became the clan and the god of the newcomer. 
 There was a tribal exclusiveness in religion as truly 
 as in descent. However slight might be the po- 
 litical unity that bound these tribes together, this 
 sense of unity of ancestry and of deity made a 
 community of spirit. To break a union of clans 
 meant the break of the community of worship. To 
 break religious unity meant, as in the case of Jero- 
 boam, to break tribal confederacies. Throughout 
 history states have found at least partial unity in the 
 worship of the god of their political ancestors. 
 Even the Greek cities could federate to support the 
 cult of the Delphian Apollo. 
 
 When tribes through conquest built themselves 
 into conquering peoples, the worship of a common 
 deity became even more a phase of national loyalty. 
 Other gods might be added, but they were con- 
 quered gods, gracing the triumphant progress of 
 the god of the victor. Laws were sanctioned by 
 the deity. Human nature became so standarized 
 that there was practically no exception to the rule 
 that submission to military overlordship meant sub- 
 
14 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 mission to the deity who had made victory possible. 
 Kings derived their authority not from the consent 
 of the governed, but from the authority and power 
 given them by some god. Hammurabi organized 
 the laws of Babylon in the name of the great god 
 who enabled him to beat down his enemies, and 
 who in his own opinion and that of his people, was 
 regarded as his father. The laws of the Hebrews 
 were the laws of their god Yahweh. 
 
 In all nations which have shown military prowess 
 and political unity has there been this extension of 
 the family authority to the king and god. The 
 Assyrian monarchs, the legendary founders of 
 Greece and Rome, the Pharaohs of Egypt, the em- 
 perors of China and Japan alike have based their 
 sovereignty upon the divine descent. Alexander 
 came forth from the temple of Ammon the son of 
 Ammon. Loyalty to rulers has thus been identified 
 with loyalty to their god. The rebel and the enemy 
 were not merely political offenders. They were 
 enemies of a god. The brutality of conquest, mas- 
 sacres, deportations, terror ization of conquered peo- 
 ple, have all been attributed to the prowess and the 
 will of a national god. 
 
 Few indeed were the great rulers of antiquity 
 about whose birth miraculous legends have not 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 15 
 
 gathered. Such legends were the ancient equiva- 
 lents of a genuine patriotism. And when these were 
 lacking, obsequious subjects attributed to the em- 
 peror, as in the case of Rome, divine qualities. 
 The power which the Caesars possessed was so 
 enormous and so unrestrained as to compel identi- 
 fication with divine prerogative. " Come see how 
 a god dies," said the hard-headed Roman emperor 
 as he stood upright waiting his final moment. 
 Throughout the conquered nations rose altars to 
 men who exercised from Rome a control that seemed 
 too great for mortals. To refuse to sacrifice upon 
 these altars was no more atheism than disloyalty. 
 Nor need we look to distant periods for this re- 
 liance upon the deity as the source of sovereignty. 
 In the struggle which marked the rise of modern 
 European monarchies a form of semi-deification is 
 to be found generally. The advocates of the divine 
 right of kings, it is true, shrank from attributing 
 divine paternity to their sovereigns, but they did not 
 hesitate to teach that the sovereignty of the monarch 
 was derived from God. The early struggle be- 
 tween English democracy and Stuart absolutism was 
 not merely political. It was a struggle against a 
 king who claimed by divine right to be head of the 
 church as well as head of the state. To claim in- 
 
1 6 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 dependence in religion was to argue disloyalty to 
 the state. 
 
 In most recent times we see the struggle renewed. 
 The constant appeal of Germans to the German God, 
 their " Old Ally," is survival of the same belief that 
 the sovereign is the representative of God. " Never 
 will I let a sheet of written paper," said Frederick 
 William IV, " come like a second Providence be- 
 tween our Lord God in Heaven and this land, to 
 govern us by its paragraphs." In Germany as in 
 Babylon the outcome is brutality. The identifica- 
 tion of the sovereign's will with the will of God has 
 justified massacre, deportation, terrorization. The 
 continuity of history between the German God and 
 the ancient tribal god is unbroken. The religious 
 leaders of Germany are taught to speak in the name 
 of God when they publish the policies of the Kaiser. 
 The German nation is the nation of the " old Ger- 
 man God." It is a German God, the Kaiser de- 
 clares, who goes with the German armies into Bel- 
 gium and northern France. It is a German God who 
 is praised for the miseries inflicted upon Serbia and 
 Poland. It is a German God who is worshiped 
 when life and property, human happiness and the 
 control of other peoples are trampled under foot. 
 To doubt his presence is to violate religion as truly 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 17 
 
 as patriotism. " We are all aware," says Die Frie- 
 denswart (February, 1916), " that our great general 
 [Hindenburg] prepares his plans in collaboration 
 with God. He is in constant communication, not 
 only with the different bodies of troops, but also 
 with the supreme Arbiter of Battles, with the King 
 of Kings who dwells in the heavens above. This 
 is why God is with him and gives him success." 
 German patriotism is as truly identified with official 
 German religion as was the pride of Sennacherib 
 with the praise of Marduk. The state is the ob- 
 ject of religious loyalty. " We can it may sound 
 strange, but it has its deep meaning/' says Pastor 
 Lehman, " we can say : We love our earthly 
 Fatherland so much that we gladly barter our 
 heavenly for it." " Germany is the center of God's 
 plans for the world." 
 
 Ill 
 
 This community of history shared by patriotism 
 and religion has naturally expressed itself in re- 
 ligious conceptions. Religion, insofar as it has been 
 reduced to formulae, has always been a super- 
 patriotism. Theology has been a super-politics. 
 All but universally the relations of God and hu- 
 
1 8 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 manity have been set forth in the terms of the state. 
 
 Such an exposition was normal and inevitable. 
 The higher values of life have always been ex- 
 pressed in the language and conceptions taught by 
 the greatest experiences of life. Language has 
 gained its power by transcendentalizing the terms 
 of simple experience. One needs only a superficial 
 knowledge of philology to see how words which 
 have had their origin in concrete and commonplace 
 experiences have been by a process of analogy ex- 
 tended into fields which lie beyond these experi- 
 ences. The most abstract words of our diction- 
 aries are really hieroglyphs. What is " attention " 
 but the stretching of the mind towards something? 
 What is " metaphysics " but that which is above the 
 physical ? 
 
 Thus it is not strange that religious thinking is 
 based upon the practices of a monarchial state. It 
 is indeed only one phase of a universal mental 
 process when men speak of God as Father and 
 King; of a nation as his children; of misfortune as 
 his punishment; and of happiness as his reward. 
 As social life developed it was inevitable that the 
 creative social minds which were finding expression 
 in new political forms and institutions imperial- 
 ism, feudalism, nationalism should have used the 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 19 
 
 terms of the state in which they expressed their 
 highest relations of life, for the expression of the 
 relations of religion. That these should have been 
 drawn from monarchy is also only what we should 
 expect. 
 
 In the Hebrew religion this has been particu- 
 larly true. No religion has so consistently worked 
 out its concepts in the laboratory of politics. One 
 has only to recall the great words of Hebrew the- 
 ology most of which live on in Christian theology 
 to realize the truth of this statement. God was 
 a sovereign who gave his laws. To keep these laws 
 was to be assured of the good will of the sovereign; 
 to violate them was to be equally assured of his en- 
 mity. Across the future loomed the great Day of 
 Yahweh in which punishment should be inflicted 
 upon those who had been disobedient, and prosperity 
 should be assured those who had been loyal to their 
 God. 
 
 In later Judaism these thoughts became tinged 
 with the national desire for revenge. The Jew of the 
 first century and a half before and the first century 
 and a half after Christ, chafed under the domina- 
 tion of a succession of world powers which not 
 only denied the supremacy of Yahweh but also 
 crushed his people. The national heart was hot 
 
2O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 with the desire to avenge this oppression and to 
 establish the Jewish nation supreme over all the 
 world. 
 
 In the minds of many Jews such a reversal of con- 
 ditions meant only revolution. The god of the na- 
 tion, so the Zealots argued, would certainly prove 
 to be a deliverer if once the nation faced the alterna- 
 tive of complete destruction or deliverance. And 
 so the Jewish nation revolted, only to find that its 
 sovereign God did not deliver it from the sover- 
 eignty of Rome. 
 
 But other Jews were less ready for the direct ac- 
 tion of revolution and looked forward to the time 
 when Yahweh through miracle would make the na- 
 tion the master of the world. The numerous 
 apocalypses to which these three centuries gave birth 
 set forth in symbolic terms this hope of national 
 deliverance and national revenge. King Yahweh 
 would make his people triumphant; his representa- 
 tive, the One Annointed to do his will, would estab- 
 lish his capital at Jerusalem, and all the world should 
 be his subjects. Judea's enemies should suffer in- 
 calculable pain in return for the sorrows they had 
 caused, while all the Jews, even if they had to be 
 brought up from Sheol and given new bodies, would 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 21 
 
 share in the glory of world domination and the sight 
 of the sufferings of their enemies. 
 
 This is the messianic hope which beat in the 
 hearts of all loyal Jews ; a hope that was as religious 
 as it was political ; in which angels conquered devils 
 as well as men ; and in which hell with its abyss of 
 fire would welcome angels as truly as men. Jewish 
 messianism was a transcendentalized hope of na- 
 tional supremacy, a religious faith eager for human 
 and divine brutality, an ancient forerunner of the 
 Teutonic confidence that its Old Ally, God, will give 
 power to the German people to crush its enemies, 
 terrorize them by indescribable brutalities, and 
 spread over the world Teutonic Kultur. 
 
 This messianic program was the mold into which 
 the early Christians ran their faith. Jesus himself 
 repudiated its militaristic quality, declaring that the 
 true Deliverer would be greater than a militaristic 
 son of David, that the King is a father rather than 
 a conqueror, that the triumph of His will will 
 come when men love even their enemies, and 
 they become His real sons not by ruling over a 
 crushed humanity but by possessing that spirit of 
 love which is possessed by their Father in heaven. 
 But the early Christians could not so understand 
 
22 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 Him. As Jews they kept their Jewish hopes. Con- 
 vinced that Jesus was the Messiah of their hopes, 
 they looked for the kingdom to be restored to Israel. 
 When Jesus tried to make them see that he, the 
 revelation of the Father, would suffer ignominy and 
 death rather than gain control over human lives by 
 appeal to force, they were silent and afraid. When 
 their faith in his imminent triumph sprang anew, 
 they thought of him as returning from heaven as the 
 judge rather than the brother of mankind, of his 
 coming as the Day of Yahweh in which they would 
 achieve individual blessing and national supremacy. 
 Paul sufficiently sympathized with Jesus to realize 
 that the new era would not be an era of Jews but of 
 those of every nation who accepted Jesus as their 
 Lord; yet even Paul did not free himself entirely 
 from his Jewish chauvinism. The salvation which 
 was daily nearer, the day of the Lord which was 
 about to dawn, waited for the conversion of the 
 Jewish people and was described by him in terms of 
 the law court. The Christ was to sit on a throne 
 which was to be a judgment seat. Salvation was to 
 follow acquittal, and the Kingdom of God was to be 
 a heavenly state in which the wrath of God was to 
 confound all His enemies. 
 \ Such a program for a transcendentalized nation to 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 23 
 
 be founded by Jesus in his miraculous return in the 
 skies became the vertebral column of Christian 
 thinking. It, rather than the noble moral system of 
 Jesus and Paul, found its way into the creeds. The 
 hope of the church was expressed in the language of 
 the state, and martyrs died, not to express a hope in 
 a humanity lifted above passions of revenge into a 
 divine fraternity, but because they believed in a tri- 
 umphant Christ who should establish his reign upon 
 earth. The morality of Christians was to be the 
 conduct of those whose citizenship was in heaven. 
 
 The system of theology which constitutes so large 
 an element of the ecclesiastical doctrine of both 
 Roman Catholicism and Protestantism was com- 
 pleted by Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle, the Bible, 
 and the church furnished him materials. The great 
 rubrics of his teaching were not metaphysical but 
 political. Human experience in politics was lifted 
 into the higher air of philosophy. The political 
 practices of his day were transformed by the use of 
 Aristotelian philosophy into the principles of the 
 Christian religion. Theology became a super-poli- 
 tics; and religion became a super-patriotism that 
 sought its ideals in service to the God of Heaven. 
 Christians became heirs of the Other World, human 
 life a pilgrimage through a world of misery to the 
 
24 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 Heavenly City, and salvation a retreat from a lost 
 humanity. 
 
 IV 
 
 Nothing was easier for this orthodoxy of the 
 church than to express itself as a patriotism which 
 centered about a divine monarchy. But a different 
 situation arises in the days of democracy. Here we 
 pass into a creative rather than an inherited patriot- 
 ism. What fellowship has democracy with religion ? 
 Can it too, as the mood of a social mind, give form 
 and terms to religious thought? Can theology de- 
 scribe a divine super-democracy? 
 
 Democracy is more than a term. Social questions 
 cannot be answered by definitions, after the method 
 of the Schoolmen. They thought that if they 
 could define a word, they had the thing for which 
 the word stood. The term democracy is subject to 
 these general observations. If you treat it as a 
 mere word, you may define it so as to get almost any 
 sort of program. If you treat it as a picture that 
 symbolizes actual social experiences, you get some- 
 thing distinct and historical. It is in this latter way 
 that it must be used. Religion and politics to-day 
 do not face academic definitions, but actual social 
 development, recognized institutions, a demolition of 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 25 
 
 precedents and a general creation of new attitudes 
 and aptitudes in society. 
 
 Democracy is more than an ideal. It is a dis- 
 cernible development of institutions. As such it 
 should be regarded historically, not theoretically. 
 And as a development of institutions it has not been 
 symmetrical in different nations. In practice de- 
 mocracy must be described as the development of the 
 rights of Englishmen into the rights of humanity. 
 That which the Englishmen claimed as rights in 
 England, our intellectual and idealistic development 
 has made the basis of our conception of whatever 
 democracy we actually enjoy. Not programs but 
 genetic development has been the method by which 
 such democracy as the world actually possesses has 
 become the precious heritage of humanity. We are 
 at war to preserve a real world in the making, not a 
 Utopia that men have dreamed. 
 
 This actual democracy has been largely outside 
 the range of economics and within the range of poli- 
 tics. The founders of the American Republic were 
 not concerned with economic democracy. In fact, 
 it is probable that if they had thought of it, they 
 would have bitterly opposed it. To think of pro- 
 ductive wealth in a collective fashion was something 
 that obviously they never dreamed of. And this 
 
26 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 conclusion is enforced by the fact that they left in 
 the American Constitution economic factors some of 
 which plunged the nation into civil war, and others 
 which are at present serving as the basis of a federal 
 paternalism. What the future may have in store 
 for a democratized world we cannot foretell. But 
 in the light of our past experience we must believe 
 that the process of extending popular rights by ex- 
 tending privileges enjoyed by some favored class, 
 will continue. Already its direction is becoming ap- 
 parent. Political rights inevitably involve economic 
 rights. 
 
 We are apt to forget the concrete if limited char- 
 acter of the only democracy the modern world has 
 enjoyed, and to speak as if, like the Idea of Plato, 
 democracy somewhere existed complete and ap- 
 proachable. I remember once hearing a young 
 Jewish girl who had fled from Russia, severely criti- 
 cize the restraints of America. The sort of thing I 
 fancy she had in mind was not the actual liberty she 
 had never enjoyed till she came to America, but the 
 sort of Paradise bolshevikism undertakes to produce 
 by the transfer of autocratic control from the Czar 
 to the proletariat. Russia like France under the 
 Mountain is suffering from the democracy of pro- 
 gram. 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 27 
 
 Sometimes men speak of the democracy of Ger- 
 many. There is no democracy in Germany in the 
 sense that there is a democratic movement in Anglo- 
 American history. The very Socialism of Germany 
 is not democratic. The political development of 
 Germany has consciously been opposed to that which 
 has characterized the Anglo-Saxon stock. The 
 heart of Anglo-French and Anglo-American democ- 
 racy is this : the people as such control their govern- 
 ment, the authority of the state resides in the people, 
 and sovereignty lies in the people and not outside 
 the people. That conception sharply differentiates 
 the development of the British, French, and Ameri- 
 can democracies, and most constitutional monarchies 
 from the Germanic institutions. The heart of the 
 Anglo-American representative democracies is that 
 a government derives its authorities and sanctions 
 from the people governed. It is the executive com- 
 mittee of the people themselves. The heart of the 
 German conception is that the government derives 
 its authority from God and not from the people. 
 The democracy of England, America, and France 
 has been worked out in revolutions in which the 
 people dared face an oppressive government. In- 
 deed, practically all constitutional governments have 
 been born of peoples who dared revolt rather than 
 
28 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 lose their rights. The German blood of all Europe 
 has never accomplished a successful revolution. 
 Face to face with their government Germans have 
 always quit the struggle for popular rights. Ger- 
 man patriotism has never centered about the rights 
 of individuals. There has never been a German de- 
 mocracy because Germans have never cared enough 
 about democracy to organize a revolution. 
 
 This difference in political loyalties explains dif- 
 ferences in the religious attitudes of autocracies and 
 democracies. Democracy in America was the child 
 of religious liberty. Professor Jellinek of Vienna 
 has shown the influence of this independent move- 
 ment in the colonial churches of America upon the 
 idea of the development of the rights of man. He 
 traces back the succession of the Declarations of the 
 Rights of Men and Citizens which appeared in the 
 latter half of the eighteenth century to the religious 
 organizations and institutions of New England. 
 And it is, I think, beyond question that the under- 
 lying forces of political democracy working through 
 the English experience of the seventeenth century 
 were deepened "and given spiritual thrust by a re- 
 ligious democracy. Democracy in the church came 
 from and gave new meaning to democracy in poli- 
 tics. German Christianity has not had that line of 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 29 
 
 development because Germany had no democracy to 
 make it possible. The control of the church by the 
 German states makes actual religious democracy, 
 that is, the popular control of the church, impos- 
 sible. It is not there, it never will be there, so long 
 as democracy is not there. Because the Lutheran 
 church has been a creature of politics it has never 
 founded a democratic state. German Protestantism 
 has been democratic only in non-German democ- 
 racies. 
 
 Democratic development has appeared in church 
 organizations but seldom if ever in religious think- 
 ing. Looking at actual history, no theological sys- 
 tem has expressed the fundamental passion and 
 ideals of this Anglo-American democracy. Democ- 
 racy even yet has not supplied actual constructive 
 theological data or rubrics. Yet it has not been 
 without influence. Negatively, it has served to 
 weaken certain theological conceptions. Wherever, 
 for example, there is a real democracy the discussion 
 of the sovereignty of God has grown faint. We 
 very properly speak of God and His laws, but people 
 filled with the spirit of democracy are not much con- 
 cerned with conceptions of the sovereignty of God 
 born of political formulas. Democratic influence 
 has all but ended discussion of foreordination and 
 
3O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 election. Hundreds of years ago, before the leaven 
 of democracy had worked in human experience, men 
 had very much concern about such doctrines. Re- 
 call only the Synod of Dort and the execution of 
 John of Barneveldt. Men influenced by democratic 
 ideals believe in the power of God and the purpose 
 of God, but they draw the description of such attri- 
 butes from the field of science. Natural law rather 
 than legal statutes is their symbol of God's will. 
 They have not yet sufficiently expressed democracy 
 in their social life to be able to think instinctively of 
 God from the point of view of democracy, but every 
 new struggle for the extension of democracy makes 
 such thought more inevitable. 
 
 We say, and I think very properly, that one cause 
 of the failure of our inherited theology to inspire 
 the modern world is because it was incubated in a 
 period of monarchy where there was no religious 
 liberty, that it embodies autocratic ideals, and that 
 it therefore no longer is in functional relation with 
 the modern mind. Every dominant creed was the 
 product of a social mind that had not been touched 
 by the ideals of liberty. If it had been so touched 
 it would not have made a creed to which men would 
 be required to conform. Creeds and confessions 
 were organized in no small way for the purpose of 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 3! 
 
 keeping heretics out of the church and for making 
 trouble for people who did not accept them. That 
 purpose is the fruit of ecclesiastical autocracy, not 
 of democracy. 
 
 The real expression of democracy in religious 
 thinking is outside the field of orthodox theology. 
 We can no longer think of God as spatially separate 
 from the world of action. He is with us till the 
 end of the age. Most of the constructive work now 
 being done in the field of theology is by way of ex- 
 tending Christian principles into social justice. By 
 the process of social reconstruction where democracy 
 is working, lives are being fired with the conviction 
 that human beings have value as men and women. 
 The creative theological thinking of the past 
 twenty-five years has been done by men of the new 
 patriotism men in sympathy with the social move- 
 ments of the day. To them God is not an absentee 
 monarch, but the inner Life of the universe express- 
 ing His will in nature's forces and the growing 
 morality of the group-will. All recent books of 
 theological significance have belonged to that new 
 region into which prophetic souls are entering, 
 where we have learned to see men and women as 
 persons ; where we have learned to see that they have 
 rights ; and where we are learning to give them and 
 
32 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 get them justice. Only where the spirit of democ- 
 racy is working is there creative religious thinking. 
 Only there is the union of the patriotism and the 
 religion of to-morrow. For in democracy alone can 
 the immanence of God be expressed in the terms 
 of human experience. 
 
 When one thus considers the historical kinship 
 of patriotism and religion, it is seen to be something 
 more than an inheritance. It is psychological. 
 Each is a complementary aspect of the same mood 
 of the social mind. Loyalty to one set of political 
 institutions involves loyalty to a conception of re- 
 ligion, both positively and negatively. From such 
 a point of view the world- war gains an even more 
 tragic aspect. It is not merely institutions, histories, 
 and governments that oppose each other in the per- 
 sons of millions of men seeking to kill one another, 
 but two types of patriotism and two types of re- 
 ligion. On the one side is a religion which is the 
 servant of the state; on the other is a social order 
 that is already finding its way into a religion that 
 promises light and freedom for the human soul. 
 Nations and social institutions fight from the North 
 
KINSHIP OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 33 
 
 Sea to the Indian Ocean and with them two concep- 
 tions of Christianity. The patriotism of contend- 
 ing nations has been identified with their religious 
 development. The issue involves not merely world 
 markets, colonies, places in the sun, freedom of the 
 seas. Besides these are a new future for democracy 
 and a religion worthy of democracy. When peace 
 comes it will find the world freed of the fear of a 
 modern Sennacherib praising his tribal God ; assured 
 of opportunity for the development of a spiritual 
 life in which justice shall be advanced between indi- 
 viduals and nations and the religion of Jesus shall 
 inspire and direct social evolution. Patriotism and 
 religion will be the expression of a creative social 
 mind, no longer monarchical or feudal but demo- 
 cratic, more bent on giving justice than on national 
 growth through annexations and indemnities, wor- 
 shiping a God who is a Father of rather than a God 
 of battles and of conquest. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 
 
 A nation is more than a group of people living 
 under a government and occupying a certain area. 
 Of this we are sure. Yet just how to define the 
 word lies beyond our power. Nationality is as shy 
 of definition as life itself. In some cases it seems 
 to express a common descent and inheritance of the 
 same customs; but some who, like the Slavs, share 
 such descent and inheritances, have no political 
 unity. Sometimes, as in the United States, it is the 
 expression of political unity with no community of 
 origin. Sometimes political history, origin, and 
 community of cultural inheritances go to make up 
 national feeling, as in the case of France, England, 
 and Japan, although even in these countries each 
 population may be traced back to different ethnic 
 stocks. Modern nations have their history, but they 
 themselves are more than history. In them all there 
 is the plus element which for lack of a better term 
 may be called a national spirit. As President 
 
 34 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 35 
 
 Faunce has so well said, " Nationality is a collective^ 
 memory and a collective hope.'* Yet when we un- 
 dertake to analyze and describe this spirit we find 
 ourselves again involved in a maze of forces cross- 
 ing and recrossing one another, by no means easy 
 to combine either in logic or in fact. 
 
 In treating of a nation we thus have to deal with 
 an entity which is more or less logically arbitrary, 
 but virtually real. It is more than a form of gov- 
 ernment. France, as example, for centuries slowly 
 evolved from a group of feudal states at last to find 
 a unity in a constitution. But France to the French- 
 man and nowadays to the world ! stands for 
 something vastly more than a political unity. It 
 has a place and a mission in the world to which its 
 government is almost incidental. Similarly in the 
 case of Germany. The German Empire as a politi- 
 cal unity is vastly less important than das 
 Deutschtum. 
 
 ^ So it comes to pass that loyalty to one's nation 
 x is far more inclusive than loyalty to one's govern- 
 ment. True, when, as in the case of Germany, a 
 government is set forth as the state and makes its 
 own ambitions and policies a national program, it 
 becomes the object of loyalty. But the nation, 
 whatever may be its constitutional aspect, is more 
 
36 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 than its government. Loyalty to one's nation 
 or when government is imperfect or lacking, one's 
 people is the only workable definition of patriot- 
 ism. On the one side it is a sort of property right 
 in a social inheritance, and^onjhe other sidejtjs an 
 idealistic devotion to the mission which its citizens 
 believe is the duty of a state to perjEorm. 
 
 It follows that patriotism^ gets its highest moral 
 values not from itself as a state of soul. Patriotism 
 no more than sincerity is a guaranty of wisdom. Its 
 moral values are derived from the significance of 
 the nation to humanity. If this significance be 
 morally indefensible, patriotism becomes a menace. 
 If the political, economic, and international policies 
 of a nation tend to establish a better world order, 
 patriotism is an evangel of peace and justice. 
 
 At the outset of any attempt to estimate the worth 
 of patriotism we are met by the denial of the legiti- 
 macy of the feeling itself. Nor is this denial that of 
 the famous and too often misunderstood say- 
 ing of Samuel Johnson, " Patriotism isjhejast re- 
 
 It involves the legitimacy 
 
 of nationalism itself. Radical democracy rejects 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 37 
 
 patriotism because it is loyalty to a national destiny. 
 The orthodox socialist is an anti-nationalist. The 
 line of cleavage which he would establish runs be- 
 tween economic classes and not between political 
 entities. To that end he would abolish national 
 loyalties. Three-quarters of a-xentury ago Marx 
 proclaimed the revolutionary doctrine that patriotism 
 and a sense of national unity are the survival of a 
 doomed bourgeois order, a superstition born of the 
 deception of the proletariat in the interest of their 
 subjection to the bourgeoisie. In its place he would 
 have established an internationalism based on the 
 world-wide union of workingmen. From the point 
 of view of Marxian socialism, fraternity is identical 
 with a united proletariat and the breaking down of 
 national units. Just how this world wide unity of 
 the working classes is to be accomplished, just what 
 the future is to substitute for nations, socialism has 
 not ventured to set forth in any thoroughly con- 
 structive program. It is content for the present to 
 emphasize the negative side of progress and to seek 
 the destruction of existing social and economic in- 
 stitutions, relegating social reorganization to social 
 revolution itself. Theoretically, therefore, orthodox 
 socialism is opposed to war and to nationality as the 
 great dangers to proletarian solidarity. 
 
38 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 All this, however, with two outstanding excep- 
 tions. The first exception is that of the bolshevik 
 socialism of Russia. How far this movement has 
 been financed by Germany is still a matter of con- 
 jecture. At all events it has helped Germany beyond 
 calculation. Its champions, however, are consistent 
 Marxians in their pacifism. They have naively 
 sought to attach to themselves the working classes 
 of Germany and Austria, and have brought about a 
 national debacle under the guise of proletarian soli- 
 darity. Their red flag flying above their embassy 
 in Berlin is a flaunting of a fatal internationalism in 
 the face of anti-democratic autocracy. Universal 
 democracy as truly as Russia is paying the fearful 
 price of the effort of idealistic sheep to convert ma- 
 terialistic wolves. Brest-Litovsk is the appalling 
 reductio ad absurdum of anti-nationalism. Prom- 
 ises of a socialist Utopia have been fulfilled in Ger- 
 man conquest. For German socialists of the ma- 
 jority group, so far from uniting with their bolshevik 
 brothers in a proletarian world-order, have supported 
 the Hohenzollern autocracy. 
 
 The second exception is that of German socialists 
 in the United States. Here the movement has been 
 so thoroughly organized by German sympathizers 
 that it has become an outstanding center of oppo- 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 39 
 
 sition to war by the United States against Germany. 
 Masquerading as opposition to war itself, national- 
 istic tendencies in Germany have reexpressed them- 
 selves among German socialists in the United States. 
 The St. Louis vote of the socialist party has ex- 
 pressed the attitude of Teutonic socialism. Non- 
 socialist Germans in the political campaigns have at- 
 tached themselves to socialistic opposition to a war 
 with Germany. In their secret propaganda social- 
 ists have favored Germany on the ground that the 
 German government is more friendly to the working 
 people than the free government of America! 
 Patriotism has persisted, but it is German and not 
 American patriotism. Those who have been sus- 
 pected of being leaders of American patriotism have 
 been excluded from socialistic groups. Organized 
 socialism in America has turned itself into anti- 
 Americanism, condemning a war of national self- 
 protection and pleading for peace in speech self -be- 
 trayed by its German accent. The situation is too 
 plain to need argument. The loyal socialists of the 
 United States are those who have broken with the 
 socialistic party because they have seen the danger 
 which German success threatens to a democratic 
 movement. The bolsheviki may be sincere; the 
 German socialist of America is disloyal. 
 
4O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 This sinister situation can be controlled by the 
 rise of a genuine patriotism which discriminates be- 
 tween a nation where socialism is not democratic, 
 and nations that further democracy without being 
 socialistic. 
 
 v- That international crimes have been wrought in 
 the name of nationalism must be admitted. In the 
 name of patriotism strong nations have oppressed 
 the weak. National pride has given countenance to 
 national aggression and brutality. National ego- 
 tism made Continental Europe an armed camp and 
 drenched the earth with the blood of helpless peoples. 
 All this and more must be admitted as legitimate 
 charges against nationalism and patriotism of a cer- 
 tain sort. 
 
 But it does not follow that nationalism and 
 patriotism of another sort are of necessity evil. All 
 intelligent patriots must have sympathy with many 
 of the ideas which socialist internationalism seeks to 
 embody. But the central aim of socialism, the 
 world- wide solidarity of the proletariat and the abo- 
 lition of national ties, is a reform against history. 
 The chief elements of modern civilization have been 
 very intimately connected with national groups. 
 Civilization is a compound of nation achievements. 
 Each nation using that term in a broad sense 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 4! 
 
 has been a laboratory in which definite cultural ideas 
 have been developed. It is a commonplace that 
 Egypt, Judea, Greece, and Rome, each in its creative 
 national epoch, perfected some cultural element 
 which social evolution has incorporated and placed 
 at the disposal of the entire world. Modern na- 
 tions just as truly have their contributions to make 
 to world-life. Without the national life the rights 
 of the individual now so outstanding in democratic 
 states would never have come into existence. Per- 
 sonal liberty is impossible without the protection of 
 the state. Differences in state life enable citizens 
 of one nation to possess rights which are forbidden 
 to citizens of another nation. If it had possessed no 
 national life, how would it have been possible for the 
 American state to work out its characteristic con- 
 tributions to human welfare the identification of 
 citizenship with the state, the right of private initia- 
 tive, the equality of opportunity, the elevation of 
 women into full rights of persons, the extension 
 of education, the assurance of religious liberty, the 
 growing recognition of economic freedom and self- 
 direction of the working-classes, the protection of 
 weaker nations, and the regard for international 
 law and arbitration? These inestimably precious 
 advantages have been made possible by national de- 
 
42 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 mocracy. To expect a reconstruction of human life 
 into a world-state is to confess subjection to imprac- 
 ticable dreams. The fate of Russian radicalism in 
 its dealing with Germany is a warning against en- 
 thusiasm for paper Utopias. 
 
 Unless history is about to reverse its tendencies 
 it is the nation upon which we must build the future. 
 Universal human welfare will result from cooper- 
 ative nationalism. Great empires have not been 
 possible since the rise of nations. The Roman Em- 
 pire was able to produce an extraordinarily efficient 
 type of internal organization and to continue through 
 centuries of warfare because it did not have to face 
 the problems of creative nations. The peoples it 
 controlled had no further contribution to make to 
 history, no traditions for which their citizens were 
 ready to die. It was better for them to enjoy the 
 Roman peace as subjects than to attempt revolt, for 
 they had no national ideals worth fighting for. 
 Only in the case of the little Jewish state was the 
 Roman Empire threatened by a serious revolt. 
 That is to say, there was no worth ful patriotism be- 
 cause the nations had ceased to have the power to 
 make contributions to human progress. 
 
 When one compares the Roman Empire with the 
 modern world a difference is at once apparent. It 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 43 
 
 was threatened by no violated nationalism. Na- 
 poleon at one time controlled practically the entire 
 Continent of Europe. But he was attempting to 
 control national powers. His empire was short- 
 lived because the inner forces of national life were 
 expansive and yearly increased the strain upon the 
 military unity and control which he imposed. Na- 
 tional life was sooner or later bound to express itself 
 in national explosions. 
 
 The same thing is more emphatically true now. 
 If it were conceivable that Germany could establish 
 a military empire like that of Napoleon, the rise of 
 national patriotisms would sooner or later usher in 
 a period of rebellion, war, and the reemergence of 
 national units. We can already see this in the case 
 of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where the Poles, 
 Czechs, and Jugo-Slavs are struggling for national 
 self-existence. They can, of course, within certain 
 limits be restrained and coerced, for they have no 
 national organization to give direction to ethnic 
 loyalty. But an empire composed of conquered na- 
 tions would compress national spirit to the point 
 where violent disintegration would certainly result. 
 Militarism can maintain supremacy in a modern 
 world only as long as its masters are without the pale 
 of the inevitable development of popular rights. 
 
44 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 A German world-state would fall like any social 
 anachronism. 
 
 Admitting, therefore, that there are dangers in 
 patriotism and that nations are as yet competitive 
 groups, we are all the more concerned with the pur- 
 poses and ideals of nations. The danger of patriot- 
 ism to the world-order lies in the sort of policies a 
 nation represents. If nationality and patriotism are 
 to be identified with German theories of the state, a 
 German national loyalty will result. Nationality 
 and patriotism are then undoubted evils which ought 
 to be remedied. But a nation composed of persons 
 who regard national welfare as consistent with the 
 welfare of other nations is not a curse. Patriotism 
 that prompts a nation to protect weaker nations from 
 their stronger neighbors and seeks to lead in co- 
 operative effort for the welfare of humanity is the 
 promise of a new and better world-order. 
 
 Can patriotism thus be made a cooperative rather 
 than a belligerent virtue ? Or in the age which is to 
 come after the war must we expect a development 
 of militaristic patriotism? Will the defeat of Ger- 
 many mean what the success of Germany would 
 mean ? Is the world to become a group of mutually 
 antagonistic political units each seeking its own ad- 
 vantage at the expense of others? Such questions 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 45 
 
 strike through economics and politics into the sub- 
 stratum of moral character of the nations them- 
 selves. On their answers largely hangs our faith in 
 the future. 
 
 II 
 
 To estimate the relative dangers and advantages 
 of patriotism we must deal with historical tendencies 
 rather than academic definitions. Only by a sur- 
 vey of human experience can we clearly appreciate 
 the worth of the patriotism of democracy. 
 
 Patriotism as a loyalty to national ideals is they 
 product of the rise of modern nations. In the 
 Roman Empire there was, it is true, an advance to- 
 ward this conception in which the state rather than 
 the monarch was the center of loyalty. To be a 
 Roman citizen was to be something more than a 
 subject of the Roman emperor. It was to share in 
 legal privileges and to become a partner in a history 
 that had given birth to law and order as well as to 
 military conquests. In this the national pride of 
 the Roman was different from that of the Greek. 
 Greece, although in Aristotle producing the great 
 philosopher of the state and in the Macedonian Alex- 
 ander the first man that dreamed of an empire more 
 than military, had no collective memory or hope of 
 
46 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 a united Greek nation. In Greece as in the Eastern 
 world men were prouder of their cities than of their 
 country. The Athenian and the Spartan, the 
 Theban and the Corinthian, were ready to say with 
 the man of Tarsus, " I am a citizen of no mean 
 city." But the one no more than the other could 
 recall an imperial solidarity like that which the genius 
 of Rome bequeathed to the Mediterranean basin. 
 In this municipal patriotism there were many things 
 which were noble, and there were incentives to self- 
 devotion; but the failure to achieve a Greek nation 
 prevented that intense love of a national entity which 
 characterized Roman literature and Roman expan- 
 sion. The Greeks formed colonies which had a 
 high degree of unity of culture, but no national nor 
 imperial unity. The Roman colony was a part of 
 the Roman state. The Roman citizen in Asia or 
 Gaul, in Egypt or Britain, was a member of an 
 ever-present state quick to defend its citizens from 
 danger and to punish those who injured them in 
 person or estate. This sense of solidarity was radi- 
 cally different from the old tribal unity with its 
 blood feuds. It was a genuinely political concep- 
 tion. 
 
 But it was possessed of an inherent weakness. 
 It could not inspire national self-sacrifice. In the 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 47 
 
 days of the Republic Roman citizens were ready to 
 sacrifice and die for their expanding city-state. 
 Under the Empire they hired soldiers to defend their 
 frontiers and lived securely in a disarmed world. 
 The literature of even the Golden Age of the Roman 
 Empire is singularly lacking in that virile note that 
 sounds in the literature of modern states. Vergil 
 appreciated the Golden Age which had come, and 
 uttered his beautiful panegyrics upon Augustus. 
 His successors were equally thankful for the peace 
 which the world could hardly understand, but even 
 in the philosophy of men like Seneca no note of 
 sacrifice, no appeal for political reforms, gives seri- 
 ousness to their complacency. In the letters of a 
 cosmopolitan like Pliny admiration for the emperor 
 and a business-like discussion of administration give 
 no hint of a readiness to befriend the ideals of a 
 state beyond a keen appreciation of the obligations 
 to maintain order and forestall anything like social 
 discontent. 
 
 One cannot help feeling that the history of the 
 later Empire is the outcome of this attitude of mind. 
 The social organization of the Empire based on the 
 labor of slaves, its unwieldy extent, the diversity of 
 component peoples lacking the unifying influence of 
 suffrage, had within it no singleness of soul which 
 
48 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 could lead its citizens to a united defense of its insti- 
 tutions. Those centuries of disintegration in which 
 the East split from the West, and the West was dis- 
 membered by the incoming of hordes of armed immi- 
 grants, might have been foretold by the absence of a 
 genuine patriotism. Pride in one's country based 
 upon the achievements of a government in which 
 one has no part is a poor substitute for a loyalty to 
 ideals which a nation as a whole is believed to em- 
 body and champion. 
 
 So it came to pass that patriotism even in the 
 Roman sense of the term disappeared from the earth 
 during the centuries which followed the barbarian 
 invasions. Europe reverted to the older local and 
 personal loyalty. The feudal social order that 
 emerged in Western Europe had little of true patriot- 
 ism in it. There were, it is true, a romantic chivalry, 
 the quick response of vassal and villein to the sup- 
 port of their lord, but in the place of a nation there 
 were countless groups, most of them small, in which 
 life centered around a feudal lord, and social solidar- 
 ity found its most effective expression in the respect 
 paid the honor of superiors. The so-called Holy 
 Roman Empire which hovered over this feudal con- 
 fusion never was able to evoke anything like patri- 
 otic allegiance. Its theory left no outlook for citi- 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 49 
 
 zenship, for whatever authority it claimed descended 
 upon it from heaven instead of coming to its em- 
 peror from citizens loyal to a state. True, there 
 were the beginnings of ethnic solidarities, but the 
 prevailing political note even in the emerging middle 
 class was municipal rather than national. There 
 was no Italy, or Germany, or France, or, until the 
 middle of the fifteenth century, a Spain. There 
 were kingdoms which, had the course of history run 
 differently, might have developed into nations; but 
 states, and in consequence patriotism, in the modern 
 sense of the word, were lacking. 
 
 In one state only can there be fairly said to have 
 been a steady development of a national patriotism, 
 and that state was England. The reason for this 
 distinctive characteristic is not difficult to find. In 
 England the people as such gradually gained a recog- 
 nizable share in the government of their land. The 
 thirteenth century for a while gave promise of a 
 constitutional monarchy. The fact that this was 
 lost in the struggle between the feudal houses of 
 England and in the all but complete autocracy of 
 the Tudors could only serve to check the develop- 
 ment. Englishmen had rights as Englishmen. The 
 English people gradually grew into the possession 
 of a national consciousness. And as the little island 
 
5O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 kingdom fought for its very existence against the 
 rich and powerful new states on the Continent, 
 there developed an attitude of mind which was more 
 than the pride of the Spaniard in Spain. It was a 
 sense of national solidarity, of national future, and 
 of national duty. As compared with this English 
 patriotism the contemporary loyalty of Frenchmen 
 and the almost tribal loyalty of the innumerable 
 German states appear of a different order. Na- 
 tionalities grew on the Continent, but it was the 
 nineteenth century that evolved the quality of 
 patriotism which marks the constitutional states of 
 Italy and France. In Russia the serfs had no na- 
 tion to which they could be loyal, and the Little 
 Father at Petrograd was an all but mythical figure, 
 loyalty to whom was hardly more than a survival of 
 the tribal loyalty of the past. In Germany there 
 were Prussians, Saxons, and Bavarians. It re- 
 quired time and the blood-and-iron policy of Bis- 
 marck to bring into actual expression a public mind 
 that could in any true sense be called German. 
 
 When to-day's nations emerged, religious life was 
 identified with this new national patriotism. The 
 reformation produced national churches which 
 served to intensify the exclusiveness of government. 
 Religious liberty was all but -unknown. The citi- 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 5! 
 
 zens of England had their state-church, and the 
 same was true of Scotchmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, 
 Prussians, Saxons, Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes. 
 That the state-church tended to produce a national 
 patriotism undoubtedly is true, but it also tended to 
 limit this nationalism both in boundary and in 
 outlook. The citizen was required to show loy- 
 alty, not only to his sovereign, but also to his 
 church. 
 
 The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries furnish 
 abundant illustration of patriotism born of egoistic 
 nationalism. In that century it is difficult to dis- 
 cover among the nations any dominant sense of mis- 
 sion of service to the world. It was a period of 
 national expansion. Each nation regarded war as a 
 desirable means of national growth. Conquest was 
 regarded without discussion as legitimate. Each 
 nation grew by taking from other nations such terri- 
 tory and population as it was able to win. The 
 boundaries of different states from the middle of 
 the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury were constantly changing. A strongly central- 
 ized power like France was able to expand at the 
 expense of the smaller states about it. The policy 
 of Louis XIV was that of self-aggrandizement. 
 Wars were made by a ruling family in much the 
 
52 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 same way as a modern business house undertakes to 
 absorb the trade of its competitors. The idea of 
 international law, although it had begun to take 
 shape in the works of men like Grotius, possessed 
 little or no influence. Witness the strange negotia- 
 tions between England and the Dutch Republic. 
 The only loyalty which could be expected of French- 
 men and Prussians was that of obedience to masters 
 over whom they had no control. They were cannon- 
 fodder and tillers of the soil. The absence of con- 
 stitutional limitations upon the sovereign made it 
 quite impossible for peoples, even had they possessed 
 any definite sense of a common human duty, to ex- 
 press their will. Prussians and Frenchmen could 
 be proud of their victories, but loyalty raised no 
 question of national morality. 
 
 What was true of France and Prussia was true 
 of every other nation in Europe. Even in England, 
 where the people had some share in the government, 
 the idea of a morality which was superior to the 
 ambitions of national policy in dealing with the rest 
 of the world was not evident. The Commonwealth 
 under Cromwell, though it had more theology, had 
 no higher sense of national obligation than the abso- 
 lute monarchy of the Bourbons. Yet the beginnings 
 of a higher patriotism are to be discerned even in 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 53 
 
 these centuries. For it was then that America began 
 to make its contribution to national idealism. 
 
 The organization of English colonies served to 
 lay the foundations for a broader conception of na- 
 tional mission. Although the colonies themselves 
 were jealous of each other, and in some cases en- 
 gaged in actual war, there were developing within 
 them moral elements destined to lay the foundations 
 both in precedent and in theory for an extension of 
 moral sanctions to national policies. A new and 
 better patriotism was inevitable. 
 
 Why the American colonies should be the pioneers 
 in this new field is not hard to discover. They had 
 been established in large measure by Englishmen who 
 had come to the new world for the enjoyment of 
 what they believed to be rights. At home they 
 found such enjoyment limited by the traditions and 
 the institutions of a state in which the power of a 
 king, aristocracy, and church were only partially 
 limited by the popular will. The rights of English- 
 men, however, had already begun to acquire a real 
 content. When, as Englishmen sought the enjoy- 
 ment of still other rights, they were transferred to 
 America they rapidly tended to become regarded as 
 the natural rights of men. The rights of English- 
 men gave rise to the doctrines of natural rights. 
 
54 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 It seems to be true that when an idea of rights is 
 evolved by some pioneering society it comes as an 
 expansion of rights already partly enjoyed. To ex- 
 pand such rights was the aim of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. The first stage in America and England 
 the only lands in which popular rights were in any 
 real sense indigenous, was that of a struggle to 
 acquire and enjoy privileges which were properly 
 the people's, but in actual practice had been monopo- 
 lized by privileged classes. When, as within the 
 American colonies, there was a practical universality 
 of such rights as properly belong to Englishmen, 
 without the sense of exclusion from the enjoyment 
 of other rights enjoyed by privileged classes, the 
 idea of rights belonging to men as men, was not slow 
 in finding expression. Such development, though 
 aided by the popular philosophy of the day, found 
 largest opportunity for political expression in the 
 American colonies. The compact made by the hum- 
 ble Pilgrims on the Mayflower was in germ a modern 
 democracy. But the rights which this compact ex- 
 pressed were those then already enjoyed, though 
 only in part, by Englishmen. And what was thus 
 expressed in something like actual constitutional 
 form in the American colonies was at the same time 
 developing in the political thought of England and 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 55 
 
 was moving over into the field of French philosophy. 
 That is to say, the idea of rights which had been 
 developing in English history in actual experience 
 was given a theoretical basis and expansion by Eng- 
 lish philosophers, like Hooker and Locke, and by 
 their followers on the Continent. Political practice 
 and social theory reen forced each other and made 
 possible the era of revolutions in the latter half of 
 the eighteenth century. Wherever during that 
 period any people found itself capable of breaking 
 down the wall of partition between those who had 
 rights and those who sought for them, liberty and 
 political equality became identified with national 
 mission. Here was a new patriotism. This was 
 particularly true in the case of the United States of 
 America and France, the two countries in which a 
 privileged class was declared to be contrary to the 
 fundamental nature of the nation. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is well, however, to keep clearly in mind the 
 difference between the American Revolution and the 
 French Revolution. In America the Revolution 
 consisted in the break with English political control. 
 It involved no social change or destruction of politi- 
 
56 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 cal ideals in the colonies themselves. The Constitu- 
 tion of the United States was a codification and in- 
 stitutionalizing of political and social precedents al- 
 ready in existence. The right of the people to con- 
 trol the monarch was already recognized in English 
 politics, although within a limited field. The sub- 
 stitution of popular for royal sovereignty in America 
 had practically been accomplished before 1776, and 
 the achievement of political independence involved 
 no destruction of the idea of sovereignty which thir- 
 teen political entities transferred to the Federal 
 Union formed in 1787. The thirteen individual 
 patriotisms were not altogether destroyed, but sup- 
 plemented, and by the establishment of the indivisi- 
 bility of the Federal Union in the war of 1861-65 
 they became fused in a genuinely national patriot- 
 ism. 
 
 In France on the other hand there was of neces- 
 sity a destruction of political and social institutions. 
 The new national consciousness involved a reorgan- 
 ization of the entire national life. Feudal privileges 
 and the monarchy itself were abolished. The lands 
 of the church were nationalized and distributed 
 among the citizens. The mass of Frenchmen who 
 had had no share in the government were given par- 
 ticipation in new national life through suffrage. 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 57 
 
 Utterly new political institutions were established, 
 destroyed, and reestablished without continuing an 
 earlier course of constitutional development. 
 
 In both the American colonies and France the 
 unification of a genuinely national spirit was accom- 
 panied by disorders, and in France because of inex- 
 perience in self-government by great suffering. But 
 in both alike a political liberty purchased at the ex- 
 pense of revolution gave to the people a sense of na- 
 tional mission which has never been lost. They 
 were patriots who were loyal to a nation that had 
 ideals that other nations needed. Both felt that they 
 possessed the duty of inducing other nations to es- 
 tablish for themselves the state of affairs which 
 revolution had brought. The fact that the new na- 
 tion of the United States was separated from the 
 rest of the world by an ocean on the east and an 
 unexplored continent on the west served to prevent 
 any attempt to spread the gospel of liberty by force 
 of arms. But the general social law holds true that 
 a creative social mind finds its expression at the point 
 where a nation has developed its largest efficiency. 
 The American colonies never developed a large mili- 
 tary efficiency, but did possess at the time of the 
 Revolution a very decided commercial and religious 
 efficiency. Thus on this side of the Atlantic the 
 
58 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 new liberty found expression largely in the field of 
 commerce and the church and the closely allied field 
 of education ; and the new nation entered almost im- 
 mediately upon that particular type of development 
 which resulted in the United States of to-day. Its 
 patriotism, therefore, while it made America always 
 ready to recognize similar movements in European 
 countries, never included the duty of the extension 
 of liberty to other lands by force of arms. Patriot- 
 ism, in the sense of loyalty to a national mission, 
 was unmilitary and throughout the entire history of 
 the United States has opposed military establish- 
 ments and military preparedness commensurate with 
 the growth of national power. In this sense it is 
 undoubtedly historically correct to say that mili- 
 tarism and patriotism in the United States have been 
 and are two mutually antagonistic conceptions. 
 
 In France on the other hand the necessity of de- 
 fending the results of the Revolution which had 
 brought about the destruction of the social order 
 led to the development of military efficiency. The 
 period during which the nation re founded itself was 
 marked, not by the development of commerce and 
 religious liberty, but by the necessary rise of mili- 
 tary leaders. A sense of national mission involved 
 the extension of constitutional rights to other na- 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 59 
 
 tions by force of conquest, and Napoleon was its 
 natural fruitage. The early campaigns of the 
 French under the leadership of Napoleon were avow- 
 edly for the purpose of extending liberty to other 
 people. The fact that such a crusade resulted in an 
 empire should not obscure the fact that the success 
 of Napoleon did result in the extension of new 
 legal and political conceptions upon the Continent 
 of Europe. But the outcome was an increase of 
 military preparations. The inevitable result of re- 
 liance upon military supremacy was soon apparent 
 in Europe, and in the place of the peaceful and con- 
 tagious spread of political liberty there followed the 
 subjection of European states to a military empire. 
 Patriotism, which at the start among the French was 
 an unquestionable devotion to the vision of free 
 peoples, was transformed into a short-lived loyalty 
 to a military state. This state fell in a few years be- 
 cause its very success had induced a new group of 
 national patriotisms, each one of which was given 
 its content by the peculiar circumstances of peoples 
 whom a common danger had aroused to a new sense 
 of national significance and a new effort for national 
 self -protection. This new patriotism overcame the 
 mighty attempt to revert to military autocracy. 
 These two illustrations might suffice to bear out 
 
60 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 the fact that with the period of revolutions we enter 
 upon an era in which there emerged genuine patriot- 
 isms in the sense of loyalty to nations each with its 
 own particular mission in life. Other illustrations 
 might easily be found, but of them all it is necessary 
 to mention only the outstanding instances of Eng- 
 land. There the extension of the idea of the rights 
 of Englishmen found its particular expression at the 
 point of England's greatest historical significance, 
 namely the development of constitutional govern- 
 ment. Since the eighteenth century England has 
 never undertaken to expand by the conquest of 
 European or other politically self -sufficient states. 
 It has established colonies and gained the control of 
 states which, lacking efficient government, furnished 
 commercial opportunities. As a result, during the 
 last hundred and fifty years the English people have 
 organized great democracies in Canada, Australia, 
 and latterly in Africa. Its sense of national mission 
 has been at once that of loyalty to self-government 
 in its colonies and administrative betterment of peo- 
 ples who were not possessed of the Anglo-Saxon 
 traditions. But even among these latter peoples, as 
 in the case of India, there has been a greater or less 
 recognition of the rights of the people of the con- 
 quered territories to an increasing share in the ad- 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 6l 
 
 ministration of their affairs. The patriotism of 
 Englishmen, therefore, like that of Americans and 
 Frenchmen, has recognized that their country has a 
 role to play in history looking toward the extension 
 of the rights of the individual. The loyalty of the 
 Englishman to his country has been expressed, it is 
 true, more than once in some form of imperialism, 
 but this imperialism itself has carried in its heart 
 something vastly more than superimposed sover- 
 eignty or the enforced subjection of non-English 
 people to English social ideals. The development of 
 democracy in England has been steady, and with it 
 has gone the abolition of slavery, the emancipation 
 of women, the extension of education and suffrage, 
 and the socializing of governmental functions. And 
 with this developing democracy has gone a deep- 
 ening of the British sense of national mission to 
 protect weak nations and deal fairly with rivals. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was in America that the new patriotism ceased 
 to be ecclesiastical. Even in England the rise of 
 religious independency was for generations handi- 
 capped by the identification of national and ecclesi- 
 astical interests. The Act of Conformity and the 
 
62 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 entire policy of the Stuart family served, however, 
 to intensify the struggle between national loyalty 
 and ecclesiastical uniformity. In no other nation 
 was there a similar struggle. 
 
 How rapid would have been the rise of national 
 constitutionalism had religious independence ad- 
 vanced more readily in England, it is hard to say ; but 
 as it was, the English colonies freed patriotism from 
 subjection to ecclesiastical control. True, with the 
 exception of the thirteen American colonies, English 
 patriotism has developed into that of a cooperative 
 world-state. And it is not beyond the range of pos- 
 sibility that this sense of British solidarity, which 
 to-day characterizes Canada and Australasia, might 
 have continued in America if English toryism had 
 not been given temporary power by the German 
 junkerism of the House of Hanover. But as history 
 developed, the English people in America first de- 
 veloped a patriotism which was genuinely national 
 and religiously free, developing its own moral inhi- 
 bitions and sanctions unrestrained by state-churches. 
 
 The nineteenth century saw this patriotism first 
 worked out in the laboratory of Anglo-Saxon con- 
 stitutional history on both sides of the Atlantic 
 spread throughout the world. France after the 
 Revolution increasingly embodied this idea of per- 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 63 
 
 sonal liberty in its national ideals, but until the last 
 part of the nineteenth century no other great nation 
 included within its patriotism similar ideals. Then 
 for the first time in history there was to be seen the 
 emergence of a democratic patriotism. Under Vic- 
 tor Emmanuel, Italy joined the founders of the new 
 epoch, and in the last decade of the nineteenth and 
 through the twentieth century nation after nation 
 has developed in Europe a patriotism of like charac- 
 ter. Japan adopted constitutional government and 
 religious liberty; China under the pressure of the 
 world-spirit cast off its monarchy and has begun the 
 development of a patriotism that includes a national 
 ideal as distinguished from the older pride in a past. 
 Only in Germany, in Austria-Hungary, and in Tur- 
 key has the old type of patriotism, which consists 
 in loyalty to a divinely established irresponsible mon- 
 archy, persisted without serious modifications. 
 
 It is not of liberty that the German patriot boasts, 
 but of his KultuTy defended and enforced by arms. 
 And when Kultur is described by its evangelists it is 
 seen to be a patriotism centering about a state relying 
 upon military power rather than regard for personal 
 rights. 
 
64 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 V 
 
 Thus in our day there appear two types of patriot- 
 ism, that of democracy and that of autocracy. By 
 their morals as by their history shall they be judged ! 
 
 The patriotism of the democratic power has never 
 been militaristic and has taken up the present con- 
 flict with loathing. The patriotism of the German 
 is essentially militaristic and regards war as an 
 integral part of a foreign policy. The patriotism of 
 democracy has never demanded that its government 
 should conquer lands possessed of settled national 
 life. It has respected the rights of organized na- 
 tions and has increasingly recognized the fact that 
 loyalty to one's country involves the recognition of 
 the rights of other nations. The patriotism of Ger- 
 many has excluded all such recognition and has cen- 
 tered itself vigorously upon aggressive conquest and 
 an immoral disregard of other nations' wellbeing. 
 Justice, its leaders declare, is a civic virtue. " It is 
 foolish," says Karl Peters (1915), "to talk of the 
 rights of others; it is foolish to speak of a justice 
 that should hinder us from doing to others what we 
 ourselves do not wish to suffer from them." The 
 demand of such a patriotism has been for the ex- 
 tension of national boundaries, the appropriation of 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 65 
 
 other nations' territory, the laying of crushing in- 
 demnities. The patriotism of democracy has sought 
 to extend constitutional rights even to those less or- 
 ganized peoples over whom its power has extended ; 
 the patriotism of autocracy has subordinated per- 
 sonal rights to the power of a state, deriving its au- 
 thority from no other source than inheritance given 
 sanction by an appeal to a German God. When the 
 democratic patriotism has turned to God, it is to the 
 God who rules over other nations, who is the God 
 of law and justice. When the patriotism of Ger- 
 many has turned to God, it has been to a national 
 god whose chief aim is to inspire the courage of 
 those who draw the flashing sword and give comfort 
 to those who have perished in the extension of na- 
 tional power and the brutal imposition upon other 
 countries of its own national civilization. 
 
 Their conception of national obligation and mis- 
 sion has further given to the patriotism of free peo- 
 ples the conviction that the relations of nations must 
 ultimately be based upon mutual recognition of na- 
 tional rights and national individuality. 
 
 Such a development of international feeling was 
 inevitable in democracies. A patriotism which 
 recognizes the rights of one's fellow-citizens is slow 
 to coerce the citizens of other nations. Desire for 
 
66 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 conquest may almost be said to be inversely as the 
 extent of a nation's democratization. The relations 
 between Great Britain, France, and the United States 
 is a striking illustration of this fact. For more than 
 a hundred years these nations, despite the machina- 
 tions of those who desired to see them engaged in a 
 mutually fatal struggle, have been at peace. By this 
 token can we see that democracies do not deliberately 
 purpose to prey upon their neighbors. These na- 
 tions have argued, quarreled, and occasionally threat- 
 ened each other. But they have preferred arbitra- 
 tion to war. 
 
 How far the desire to establish some other basis 
 than war for the settlement of international dis- 
 putes has spread can be seen by a study of interna- 
 tional arbitration. Up to the outbreak of the war 
 in 1914 there had been established 208 bipartite 
 treaties and constitutions between states. In addi- 
 tion to these there had been also one sextuple and 
 one quintuple, the total number of such treaties being 
 equivalent to 233 bipartite treaties. Of these four 
 were superseded or had failed, leaving a net total of 
 229 arbitration treaties in force or expected to be in 
 force. Of these Austria-Hungary had established 
 8, Germany had established i, Bulgaria and Turkey 
 had established none. On the other hand, of those 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 67 
 
 now allied against the Central Powers, Belgium had 
 established 14, Brazil 33, China 2, Cuba 2, France 
 1 6, Great Britain 17, Greece 4, Italy 25, Japan i, 
 Portugal 1 8, Roumania i, Russia 7, Siam 5, and 
 the United States 28. Among the European neu- 
 trals, Denmark had established 13, Netherlands 7, 
 Norway 13, Spain 31, mostly with the states of Cen- 
 tral and South America, Sweden 13, and Switzer- 
 land 14. The remainder of these treaties had been 
 established by the republics of Central and South 
 America. Thus, of the significant nations concerned 
 in the present war, the Central Powers had estab- 
 lished 9 and the Entente Allies 173. 
 
 These figures are eloquent, for this new reliance 
 upon arbitration was not forced upon unwilling 
 patriots. It sprang from their own ideals. Demo- 
 cratic patriotism has included the recognition of the 
 rights of other nationalities. A world under the 
 control of this sort of patriotism would be a world 
 at peace. Differences between nations, as in the 
 case of the very important and irritating difficulties 
 between the United States and Great Britain, would 
 be settled by mutual compromise through arbitra- 
 tion. 
 
 That this consummation so devoutly to be hoped 
 for has been furthered by the present war it is diffi- 
 
68 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 cult to doubt. A League of Nations in the interest 
 of the preservation of peace and democratic insti- 
 tutions is already in existence. It is fighting nations 
 trained in a precisely opposite national policy. The 
 difference is more than that of constitutional de- 
 velopment, for constitutional development is the 
 expression of an inner national spirit. The critical 
 position in which the world finds itself to-day is the 
 result of an education on the part of the German 
 Empire in which patriotism and religion are made 
 to perpetuate conceptions of national duty and policy 
 which make wars of conquest whenever circum- 
 stances make them appear advantageous. Patriot- 
 ism of this unethical sort has been born of Prussian 
 hatred of popular rights. When Bismarck began 
 the process of reorganizing Prussia, putting her at 
 the head of a union of the German states, he could 
 build upon a national spirit which had been develop- 
 ing from the days of the Great Elector. True, out- 
 raged by the policy of Napoleon and chastened by 
 misfortune, this national spirit for a few years had 
 hoped for liberalism. The great writers who 
 flourished in Germany during the oppression of the 
 Napoleonic military empire had undertaken to give 
 an idealistic and broadly human quality to German, 
 and particularly Prussian, life. They had met with 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 69 
 
 no little success. The spiritual renaissance of Prus- 
 sia during the dark days which followed Jena was 
 noteworthy above all else for its enthusiasm for the 
 ideals of liberalism which had found expression in 
 America, England, and France, but had been prosti- 
 tuted by Napoleon to his own ambitions. When the 
 Napoleonic Empire fell, all Germany was alive with 
 men who looked forward to the beginning of a new 
 era. Constitutions, although not containing any 
 very great amount of political liberty, had been given 
 to Wiirttemberg, Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt, and 
 Saxony. One had been promised in Prussia. The 
 life of the country was full of a noble hope. 
 
 But it amounted to nothing. The Hohenzollerns 
 would not give rights to their nation, and no German 
 people dared to acquire popular rights by revolution. 
 The years that preceded the rise of Bismarck are full 
 of a persistent and successful attempt on the part of 
 the Prussian government to destroy the liberal move- 
 ment within its own boundaries. On several occa- 
 sions Prussia was on the verge of revolution, but the 
 Prussian people never went to the last extremity of 
 conquering their rights. The leaders of the liberal 
 movement were imprisoned, executed or fled the 
 country. The rise of Bismarck resulted in the re- 
 pression of constitutionalism and the institution of 
 
?O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 a series of wars which brought territorial, political, 
 and economic expansion to Prussia. The machinery 
 of education was set in operation to produce a 
 patriotism which would be ready to justify and fol- 
 low blindly a policy of national aggression. The 
 rise of social democracy was opposed bitterly, and 
 the franchise was so limited or manipulated after 
 the organization of the German Empire as to make 
 powerless any school of political thought that would 
 check the ambitions of Prussia by a recognition of 
 the rights of other nations. Prussia planned to 
 crush France, to get control of the Netherlands and 
 the mineral deposits of Lorraine; to break at last 
 the British commonwealth; to appropriate small 
 nations whenever desired ; and then, especially in the 
 last twenty years, to put the United States " in their 
 place." Parallel with this continental policy Prus- 
 sianized Germany planned to establish a great colo- 
 nial system and to appropriate the colonies of other 
 peoples, especially those of Holland and Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Such a frankly brutal policy, however, had to be 
 justified by some idealistic appeal. Germans sancti- 
 fied anti-internationalistic patriotism by appeal to 
 their Kultur. Germans were instructed from in- 
 fancy to believe in the absolute superiority of Ger- 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 7! 
 
 man civilization. The mission of the great Empire, 
 they were taught to believe, is to spread German or- 
 ganization over the world. There is to be no policy 
 of kultur without a policy of power, declared the 
 manifesto of the 352 university professors and 
 other intellectual leaders of Germany in 1915. The 
 justification of military expansion was set forth, 
 not only from the necessity of commercial expan- 
 sion and the building of a large economic state 
 supported by the army, but by the need of enforcing 
 the superiority of German methods, art, literature, 
 organization, and education upon conquered na- 
 tions by military authority. International law 
 became a chimera. To offset the rapidly devel- 
 oping movement for disarmament and universal 
 peace the German government spread the illusion of 
 the danger to the Fatherland from other nations. 
 Disregarding plain facts in the case that England 
 was without military preparation, that France was 
 so affected by peace propaganda as to be reducing 
 her standing army the German people were taught 
 to believe that their actual existence as a state was 
 endangered. The Hague Conference was opposed 
 or hindered, arbitration treaties were refused, 
 patriotism and religion alike were made militaristic. 
 Even during the last tragic days before the beginning 
 
72 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 of the war, as we know now from English sources 
 and the declaration of the German ambassador, 
 Prince Lichnowsky, England, so far from seeking 
 to injure the influence and crush the expansion of 
 Germany, had consented to Germany's having com- 
 mercial dominance in Mesopotamia. 
 
 But all this was concealed, and the people were 
 given to understand that the Fatherland was in 
 danger. Some of the grounds upon which this ab- 
 surd view was taken have been made to disappear, 
 some of them by German authorities themselves. 
 But the patriotism of the people had been so thor- 
 oughly shaped by the governing house that it was a 
 force to which the Hohenzollerns could appeal. A 
 great chorus of intellectual and junker protestations 
 of loyalty to the German Empire broke forth in a 
 paean of Deutschland iiber Alles. The only fair way 
 to describe this patriotism is to say that it is the old 
 obsession for conquest which ruled in Assyria and in 
 Rome, masquerading in an appeal to a highly or- 
 ganized and stimulated belief in the mission of Ger- 
 many to force its civilization over an unwilling 
 world. Even in the spread of kultur the German 
 state, and not human welfare, was the center of 
 patriotism. 
 
 The difference between the patriotism which thus 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 73 
 
 lies back of the German policy and that which lies 
 back of the Anglo-French-American policy is 
 grounded in a difference in the recognition of inter- 
 national justice. Democratic patriotism has never 
 sought to spread by conquest the blessings which the 
 various democratic nations possess. The United 
 States and Great Britain have been the outstanding 
 representatives of the spread of Christian civiliza- 
 tion through foreign missions. Enormous sums of 
 money have been raised for the purpose of estab- 
 lishing schools and churches among non-Christian 
 peoples. Such Anglo-American civilization has 
 never been enforced by military power. In India 
 the British have been particularly sensitive to the 
 prejudices of the natives, and in the Philippines, 
 where the United States has established itself by 
 military power, the people have been encouraged 
 and permitted to take over an increasing control of 
 political affairs. 
 
 It cannot, of course, be claimed that such exten- 
 sion of the best elements of our civilization has been 
 conducted without mistakes. We must admit what- 
 ever facts go to show that methods have been used 
 which are not consistent with the ideals for which 
 we have stood. And it must be added that the 
 Germans also, though to a far less extent, have 
 
74 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 founded missions and schools among non-Christian 
 people. But the great contrast lies in the general 
 policy and tendency which the two types of patriot- 
 ism have set forth the one making central the 
 German state and the other the furthering of human 
 rights. The two types of patriotism are radically 
 different and lead to radically different policies both 
 at home and abroad. As to which will dominate 
 the future no man of vision can doubt. 
 
 VI 
 
 We may then challenge any man who claims to be 
 a patriot to answer this question: For what does 
 your nation stand? Does it stand for the imposi- 
 tion of a national civilization upon nations whose 
 inhabitants have been killed and starved and de- 
 ported? Does it stand for the elevation of force 
 into a religion and the organization of war as a 
 legitimate and inevitable method of national expan- 
 sion ? Or does it stand for liberty and opportunity 
 for the individual, the right of weak nations to main- 
 tain their independence and their national traditions, 
 the submission of international disputes to arbitra- 
 tion, and the hatred of war as a curse? 
 
 When we as Americans face such questions as 
 
THE MORAL VALUES OF PATRIOTISM 75 
 
 these there need be no hesitation in our answer. It 
 is time that we repudiated the slander which Ger- 
 many has sedulously championed and propagated, 
 that the United States is materialistic and dollar- 
 mad. What nation in all the world has been more 
 scrupulous in its regard of the rights of other na- 
 tions ? We have made mistakes. We have had our 
 early period when we believed with other nations 
 that it was right to conquer. But for seventy years 
 we have dared follow ideals which are worthy of a 
 Christian people. A war lasting four terrible years 
 removed slavery from our constitutional life. We 
 fought a war with Spain that Cuba might be free. 
 And when we came into possession of the Philip- 
 pines we not only paid an indemnity for our victory, 
 but deliberately undertook to educate the Filipinos 
 in the ways of democracy and self-government. 
 We gave back an indemnity to Japan and refused 
 to take a punitive indemnity from China. We have 
 preserved the Western Hemisphere from European 
 spoliation, and we have helped our neighboring 
 weaker republics into financial health and interna- 
 tional safety. We have refused to intervene in 
 Mexico at the behest of concessionaires. We are at 
 this moment fighting a war entailing unmeasured 
 sacrifice, not only that we may be free from the 
 
76 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 terror that intrigues by night and arms by day, but 
 that the whole world may share in the same freedom. 
 The citizen of the United States need not be blind 
 to the crudities, the blunders, and the shortcomings 
 of his nation. Criticism is not tabooed by patriot- 
 ism. We have done things we ought not to have 
 done and we have left undone things we ought to 
 have done; but by the grace of God there is health 
 in us! We may wholeheartedly declare that we 
 stand for a nation that has a mission ; that dares to 
 help other nations who are in distress and is deter- 
 mined to right wrongs it may have done. This is 
 the patriotism of the future: a loyalty to a nation 
 which by its own existence and purpose seeks, not 
 only to make the world safe for democracy, but to 
 make democracy safe for the world. The millions 
 of fathers and mothers who see their sons swept into 
 the maelstrom of war have no conflict with their 
 consciences. These sons are not the creatures of 
 the will to power, but of the will to serve. Our 
 patriotism dares glory in its outlook and its hopes 
 because it knows that the triumph of our land is the 
 triumph of the cause of a better humanity. And 
 because of this vicarious nationalism it dares pray 
 with confidence to a god of Justice for victory in 
 battle. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 RELIGION AND WAR 
 
 Patriotism is usually joined with war. It is 
 naturally intense when a nation is fighting. Per- 
 haps that is one reason why it had grown cold among 
 us. For, long ago as it seems, it is only a few 
 years since war for Amercia was a matter of hardly 
 more than academic importance. We had peace 
 societies, several of them heavily endowed, but their 
 chief operation seemed to be with anachronistic 
 issues. We told one another that war was economi- 
 cally impossible. We were unmilitary, and as a 
 nation looked out upon war as something which 
 might be expected in remote and backward regions 
 like Africa, or in such turbulent and unmodern 
 states as those of the Balkans. We had even come 
 to believe the persistent assertion that the Kaiser 
 was the guardian of the peace of Europe. Few 
 Americans were interested in international affairs, 
 and even our attitude in the Morocco imbroglio was 
 that of benevolent aloofness. Our hopes were cen- 
 
 77 
 
78 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 tered around the Hague Conference, and we had 
 come to feel that the ever increasing intimacy and 
 interdependence of nations, indeed that the course 
 of civilization itself could be trusted to make wars 
 cease. Peace was discussed in the genial atmos- 
 phere of banquets, and pacifism in its more intelli- 
 gent moments seemed about to discover some moral 
 equivalent for war. 
 
 It is easy now to see that we were not only over- 
 complacent, but that we were being led astray by an 
 active propaganda conducted by those who wished 
 to keep us in a state of military unpreparedness in 
 the interest of their own programs and policies. 
 Most of us did not see this in 1914. The outbreak 
 of the war found us as unprepared in spirit as in 
 armament. In a sense this national attitude was to 
 our credit. We were living like a gentleman with 
 the world, and we refused to believe that any civil- 
 ized nation was less a gentleman than ourselves. It 
 was not strange therefore that the shock of conflict 
 was as great in the field of our spiritual interests as 
 on the fields of France. Its first horrors left us not 
 only bewildered, but in distress of soul. Failing to 
 understand the causes which had brought about the 
 hostilities, many of us seriously protested that not 
 only civilization but Christianity itself had collapsed. 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 79 
 
 So accustomed had we become to mistaking what 
 ought to be for what really was, that we fell into all 
 but mental and moral chaos. 
 
 Our first reaction was to reaffirm our faith in the 
 supremacy of moral ideals. We could not believe 
 the stories of atrocities which came to us with in- 
 creasing volume. The crime against Belgium 
 seemed to belong to the people of another world. 
 Our attitude of mind was not exactly ostrich-like, 
 but it was the attitude of those whose spiritual eye- 
 sight had been so accustomed to the mist of idealism 
 as to be untrustworthy in the light of reality. Re- 
 ligious leaders reasserted with new emphasis the 
 ideals of Jesus, and we believed that Christianity 
 demanded if not actual non-resistance, at least a 
 political neutrality and a detached moral attitude. 
 As Americans we felt that the war was born of 
 conditions of such thoroughly continental pedigree 
 as to make it strictly European. Whatever may 
 have been our personal sympathies, we demanded 
 peace and determined to avoid every act and ex- 
 pression that threatened peace. Christianity we 
 felt was opposed to war and the choice between war 
 and Christianity seemed absolute. 
 
 I do not need to dwell upon the bitterness of the 
 awakening. Our eyes were gradually cleared to see 
 
8O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 the real meaning of the war. At last we were 
 forced to realize that whatever may have been the 
 occasions of the conflict, its fundamental causes 
 involved us as truly as any other nation. But with 
 the awakening came fundamental questions which 
 continue to present themselves much to the disturb- 
 ance of those souls which dislike to look at humanity 
 as it is. For these fundamental questions focus in 
 the challenge war makes to religion. 
 
 I 
 
 The conventional opinion of the relation of re- 
 ligion and war is that of antagonism. The awful- 
 ness of the one and the hopes of the other appear 
 irreconcilable. It follows that the conventional 
 opinion is apt to hold that the spread of religion will 
 develop such hostility to war as to make universal 
 peace a certainty. 
 
 Unfortunately the actual facts of human experi- 
 ence do not justify this opinion. Discrimination is 
 imperative. Before religion ends war, religions^ 
 which have hitherto been dominant must be materi- 
 ally changed. As a matter of fact, none of the great 
 religions has been in practice frankly anti-militar- 
 istic. As a rule religion has been the support of the 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 8 1 
 
 warrior, and, with exceptions to which reference will 
 be made later, has never intelligently devoted its 
 moral power to making war impossible. 
 
 It needs no argument to show that ancient re- 
 ligions were militaristic. Yahweh of the Hebrews 
 was the God of battles who taught his followers the 
 use of the bow and the chariot, and who was ex- 
 pected to fight with his people's armies. There are 
 no more terrible stories in history than those which 
 describe the treatment accorded the Canaanites in 
 his name. In this respect the Hebrew religion was 
 at one with other religions. Polytheism always had 
 its god of war or its goddess of savagery, and one 
 of the chief duties of the representative of religion 
 was to prepare his people for war. 
 
 This is, of course, only to say that religion has 
 partaken of the general ethical quality of the soci- 
 eties its followers have formed. The history of 
 humanity is a succession of bloody struggles. The 
 moral content of religion has been largely drawn 
 from contemporaneous social practice, and this has 
 not been so organized as to raise the question of 
 the justice of war as an expression of the fighting 
 instinct of the race. 
 
 In addition, when one looks for the causes of wars 
 he finds religion among the most potent. Moham- 
 
82 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 medanism has notoriously been a military religion, 
 but it would not be safe to say in this particular it 
 has been any more pronouncedly militaristic than 
 Christianity itself with its Crusades and Wars of 
 Religion. 
 
 This fact, when once analyzed, is seen to mean 
 that religions have failed to deal directly with the 
 fundamental causes of wars. And it goes without 
 saying that unless the forces which have led to wars 
 shall in the future be dominated by moral vision 
 and idealism sufficient to bring about international 
 adjustments through arbitration and mutual com- 
 promise,, war will remain inevitable. 
 
 To make this thesis more intelligible, let us ask the 
 question : From what motives have wars sprung ? 
 When this is answered we shall be in a position to 
 decide what deterrent to the appeal to arms our 
 religion can render. 
 
 Referred to their basal causes wars have sprung 
 from imperialistic and economic causes. 
 
 The wars of the ancient world were in most 
 cases those of unashamed desire for conquest. That 
 this desire had origins now beyond recognition may 
 be true. Those who see only economic determin- 
 ism in human affairs posit for all social action some 
 economic force which in turn rests on geographical 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 83 
 
 foundations. And there is, of course, a large ele- 
 ment of truth in such a contention. If we recall 
 the turbulent course of history in the western world 
 it is easy to see that the desire to trade with or to 
 control the trade of other nations has led to war. 
 Commercial expansion can be discovered in the 
 struggles between the Greek cities inaugurated by 
 Pericles. Doubtless if we were better informed 
 as to the century long conflict which waged between 
 the nations of the Nile and the Mesopotamian val- 
 leys, similar causes might be found at work there. 
 But in the consciousness of these ancient states such 
 economic motives were secondary to the primary 
 desire of conquest. For conquest brought booty 
 and slaves and tribute. To fight was the one way 
 of expanding the income and the territory of the 
 state. As one traces the rise of the ancient em- 
 pires the conviction grows that the ambition for 
 mastery led to the wars of conquest. Powerful 
 nations like Egypt and Assyria wished to subdue 
 the land which lay between them, and ultimately one 
 another. The ruthless armies which swept down 
 from the north and up from the south were primarily 
 concerned in the building up of huge empires within 
 which there should be subject cities and people. 
 There is little evidence that either people sought to 
 
84 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 control foreign markets, for commerce had not 
 reached the development of modern times. The 
 world was not industrial. The forces of produc- 
 tion were very partially developed, and war sprang 
 from primitive instincts rather than from economic 
 policy. These ancient wars fill the pages of the 
 Old Testament. The Hebrew invaders of Canaan 
 were primarily conquerors who by force of 
 arms took over a land flowing with milk and 
 honey. 
 
 The same is true of the wars between Persia and 
 Greece. Persia wanted to expand her power and 
 rule the world. Greece refused to be submerged, 
 and the Persian Wars which put an end to Persian 
 ambitions and delivered Greece from fear of the 
 Orient were due to no clearly discoverable com- 
 mercial policy on the part of either of the two 
 parties. Alexander, it is true, had Napoleonic plans 
 for world-empire, but he died before he had trans- 
 formed his newly acquired divinity into economic 
 policy. 
 
 Similarly when Rome fought for supremacy in 
 the Mediterranean basin. Its one great rival, Car- 
 thage, was a commercial city, but Rome had no com- 
 merce to be protected or extended. The issue was 
 one of supremacy rather than of markets. The 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 85 
 
 Roman Empire was born of a Nietzschean will-to- 
 power. 
 
 The wars of the early Middle Ages were largely 
 fought for the purpose of extending feudal states. 
 It was not until the social forces began the organiza- 
 tion of modern nations that wars were fought pri- 
 marily for commercial ends. And even then the 
 economic motives outside of that of possession 
 of more territory were often not paramount. Lords 
 fought lords and kings fought kings to gain new 
 territories and extend their power. The long wars 
 between France and England increasingly involved 
 economic conditions, but the dynastic claims were 
 especially potent. 
 
 When, however, in the sixteenth century new con- 
 tinents were to be preempted nations became in- 
 creasingly economic. Possibilities of trade with 
 India led inevitably to international struggles, while 
 the enormous wealth of South American mines and 
 the vast opportunities for colonization offered by 
 North America became increasingly potent causes 
 of the wars which all but wrecked Europe before 
 and after that mad epoch known as the Thirty 
 Years' War. 
 
 But it was not until the industrial age fairly opened 
 in the eighteenth century and nations were forced 
 
86 
 
 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 to find new markets for their rapidly increasing 
 products that economic policy became militaristic. 
 Imperialistic motives were present in the rapid de- 
 velopment of Great Britain and in the career of 
 Napoleon, but the new nations, though fighting like 
 the ancient cities for territory and subjects, in- 
 creasingly sought economic supremacy. Modern 
 wars have been very largely economic. Some na- 
 tion has possessed the raw materials which another 
 nation wanted or determined to have in order to 
 perfect its industrial development. Nations that 
 would be commercial lacked harbors and struggled 
 for access to the sea. The rapidly narrowing op- 
 portunity for colonization incited nations to fight 
 other nations for the control of land as yet un- 
 appropriated by European states. Modern wars 
 are born of a desire for immediate expansion of \ 
 territory and for the control of world markets./ 
 The great nations who have harbors and colonies 
 have been increasingly anxious for peace, while na- 
 tions which like Russia and Germany lacked one 
 or the other or both maintained war as a part of 
 national policy. Commercial expansion was to be 
 forced by arms. The German's demand for a place 
 in the sun is traceable in no small degree to a belief 
 that political supremacy is necessary for commer- 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 87 
 
 cial expansion. To Germany, as to Assyria and 
 Ghengis Kahn, war is not a thing to be avoided, 
 but to be expected, planned for, and declared when- 
 ever the moment seemed favorable. Germanic re- 
 ligion includes and justifies this fearful purpose. 
 " A good Christian/' declared the Kaiser in a public 
 address, " is synonymous with- a^good soldier." 
 
 The ultimate relation of Christianity and war 
 must be found in the attitude of Christians to these 
 two causes of war, conquest and economic expan- 
 sion through force. Appeals to Christian prin- 
 ciples after national policies in these regards have 
 been determined, in the future as in the past, will 
 be futile. A nation's spirit, a people's loyalty, must 
 come under the "sway of Christian ideals if war is 
 to end. Patriotism itself must embody and express 
 the principles of Jesus if peace is to be on earth. 
 
 Let us at once grant that such a spiritual regen- 
 eration will not be instantaneous. It must be the 
 result of social forces themselves. If Christianity 
 is to end war it must cure the world of its lust 
 for conquest and bring economic expansion under 
 the control of justice. To this I shall return in 
 my final lecture. For the present let us look at 
 the situation the present war illustrates, considering 
 only the broad question of Christian duty in a war 
 
88 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 in which economic causes are not absent, but which 
 has clearly become a struggle between two philoso- 
 phies of the state, two national moralities. As 
 events now stand, we must determine the call of 
 duty with regard not to war in general but to a 
 war in particular. 
 
 Two views regarding war as a phase of patriot- 
 ism, each with its religious aspect, rule the world. 
 The one is set forth in the past by world con- 
 querors of Asia and Europe and to-day by the Ger- 
 man publicists, philosophers, and statesmen. The 
 other is set forth by France, Great Britain, and the 
 United States. In measuring the moral values of 
 these two attitudes of mind it is not enough to say 
 that the one is the characteristic of a growing state 
 and the other expresses the social mind of nations 
 who have sufficient territory and commercial oppor- 
 tunity. Such an interpretation of a world-crisis is 
 altogether too simple and materialistic. The deeper 
 question arises, why, in the world at the beginning of 
 the twentieth century, was it necessary for one nation 
 to expand at the expense of another? Granting as 
 we must that economic expansion in the past has 
 been by wars justified and sanctified by religion, is 
 there ground to argue that this must always be the 
 case? In a modern world must commercial ex- 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 89 
 
 pansion be dependent upon military expansion, and 
 must Christianity as a group attitude always leave 
 the relations of nations to be settled by force? 
 
 The answer of German patriotism and religion 
 is seen in the German view that aggressive war 
 is a legitimate element in a program of national ex- 
 pansion. Leaders of German religious thought in 
 published manifestoes have justified such an an- 
 swer. Might, not the Golden Rule, must fix inter- 
 national relations. Such a view was not forced 
 upon Germany. Its trade has expanded'enormously 
 without appeal to military coercion. Its fleets were 
 upon every sea, its merchants were in every port. 
 There was no let or hindrance offered by any state 
 to this expansion. Its trade with its rivals was 
 enormous, and was enriching all parties. The free- 
 dom of the seas was absolute. The passage of goods 
 upon the land was unrestricted. If the history of 
 the generation which made modern Europe shows 
 anything, it shows that governmental assistance in 
 the development of commerce was independent of 
 military forces. The war that broke out in 1914 
 had, it is true, economic motives, but it was not 
 born of simple economic necessity. The trade of 
 Germany would have been assured if there had been 
 no millions in arms. Deep beneath the present 
 
9O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 world conflict lie two different social philosophies 
 and two conceptions of morality. On the one hand 
 is the state philosophy which demands political con- 
 trol through military power, and a religion that 
 worships a German God of battles; on the other is 
 the policy that seeks commercial development 
 through the maintenance of peace and an attempt, 
 imperfect though it is, to supply Christian ideals 
 to international affairs. 
 
 Such a contrast events have shown involves not 
 merely the policy of governments. It is also the 
 expression of the mind of peoples. It embodies 
 two conceptions of patriotism and religion. Ger- 
 many, seeking commercial expansion through war, 
 has trained its citizens ninety per cent, of whom 
 must always be subjects of a ruling tenth both 
 to accept its philosophy, and to identify national in- 
 terests with militaristic policy and an imperialistic 
 program. The Kaiser's heaven where, " assembled 
 about the great Ally above " are Frederick II, Wil- 
 liam I and their generals and field marshals, is no 
 place for democrats. Democracies have trained 
 their citizenship to a belief that the economic wel- 
 fare of a nation is to be reached through non-mili- 
 taristic policies. If patriotism be loyalty to a na- 
 tion's ideals, we have, as has already been pointed 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 91 
 
 out, not only two different qualities of patriotism, 
 but also two different conceptions of the relation 
 of religion to national policies. 
 
 II 
 
 The champions of the imperialistic and conse- 
 quently the militaristic patriotism are not without 
 argument. They appeal to the alleged law of bio- 
 logical necessity. They have the history of the past 
 with its great empires of the East, of Alexander and 
 of Rome. If social evolution has within it no ideal- 
 istic creative power, if humanity is to be developed 
 by the rigorous determinism of inherited condi- 
 tions and animal evolution, it is indeed hard to see 
 why war is not to be inevitable and permanent. 
 
 The champions of war can use still other argu- 
 ments. War certainly brings group solidarity, both 
 for the group itself and for its individuals. The 
 mere aggregation of numbers under a common dis- 
 cipline and for a common end, has been of no 
 small value. Practically all the modern nations 
 have come into being through war. Humanity has 
 always yielded to the enormous unifying power 
 which lies in a socialized hatred. If you can get 
 
9 2 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 men to hate together, they will act together. A na- 
 tion's hatred reaches down to individuals and every 
 citizen finds himself possessed of a desire to injure 
 those who have been declared to be the nation's 
 enemies. Patriotism becomes a socialized hatred 
 that unites as it maddens an entire people to fight 
 for national goals. 
 
 Furthermore, we need no Bernhardi to point out 
 that war has inspired nations to common sacrifice 
 and to bravery in defense of what is regarded as a 
 supremely important common good. 
 
 One may even go further and say that it is not 
 impossible that war has stimulated moral attitudes. 
 Few modern nations have entered war without an 
 appeal to noble sentiments and the protestation of 
 loyalty to noble ideals. Out from such an attitude 
 of mind have come noble examples of individual 
 and social sacrifice and human hearts have been 
 melted together by the fires of common agony. 
 Our poetry is filled with war songs, and political 
 leaders have very generally been soldiers. 
 
 But if thus war is not without its arguments, 
 over against them must be others which modify 
 the conclusions which have been drawn in favor of 
 war. Not only does war plunge human life into 
 the abysmal misery of fathers and mothers weeping 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 93 
 
 for their children, but out from the acute hatreds 
 of war have come persistent hatreds which have 
 perverted the relations of nations and incalculably 
 hindered the development of the finer things of life. 
 Individualism has been lost in military organization ; 
 injury to nations and to individuals has been not 
 only economic but moral ; unworthy ambitions have 
 been given new life; and social reforms have been 
 obscured or abandoned because of military necessity. 
 If it be true, as must be admitted, that out from war 
 has come renewed confidence in immortality and in 
 God, it must also be admitted that just as truly from 
 war has come a lowering of moral habits, the loss 
 of momentum in social reconstruction, a brutalizing 
 of the thought of God, and a carelessness in the 
 recognition of human rights. It is no wonder that 
 the heart of a genuine Christian cries out against 
 such an evil. 
 
 How can those holding such divergent patriot- 
 isms profess the same religion? Do they not pray 
 to the same God in the name of the same Christ? 
 In answering such a supreme question it is necessary 
 first of all to look at facts. And the answer here 
 is the same in the case of Christian as in that of non- 
 Christian people. Christianity, like the religions of 
 Assyria, Egypt, Judea, Greece, Rome and Arabia, 
 
94 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 has been the servant and defender of war. Of 
 course, such an answer does not refer to Christianity 
 as an ideal religious system. A truly Christian 
 world would neither be armed nor in fear of arma- 
 ments. But such a Christian world has never ex- 
 isted any more than has the Republic of Plato. In 
 this sense is there truth in the cynical apothegm that 
 Christianity has not failed because it never has been 
 tried. The Christianity of our ideals is not the 
 Christianity of history. Christianity as an histor- 
 ical religion is the religion of Christians; an actual 
 social phenomenon; the mass of experiences, 
 thoughts, behavior, institutions and teachings of 
 a social group known as the church. It is not what 
 it ought to be but what it has been and is. Church- 
 Christianity has never been identical with the re- 
 ligion of Jesus. It has had the gospel about Jesus, 
 but it has minimized the gospel of Jesus. It has 
 progressed toward love of neighbors but it has not 
 centered itself upon socializing that love as a divinely 
 established duty for nations. 
 
 According to the authoritative formulas of Chris- 
 tian groups religious faith looks to a post-mortem 
 salvation. It involves the acceptance of certain 
 truths, which truths have been organized authorita- 
 tively by various groups and expressed in creeds, 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 95 
 
 confessions and rites. Every ecclesiastical ortho- 
 doxy has been developed in large measure outside the 
 area of morality. The Apostles' Creed, for ex- 
 ample, has within it no reference to morality. It 
 sets forth certain things about God, about Christ, 
 about the church, about the forgiveness of sins, 
 about the second coming of Christ, and about the 
 world to come. There is in it no reference to hu- 
 man relations, the need of love, the sin fulness of 
 injuring one's neighbor. So far as the Apostles' 
 Creed, the foundation of all orthodoxy, is concerned, 
 the Sermon on the Mount is non-existent. The 
 more elaborate creeds of the Catholic church, those 
 of Nicea and Chalcedon, introduce morals no more 
 than does the Apostles' Creed. The Athanasian 
 Creed puts the matter sharply: to believe in the 
 Trinity, in the two natures of the Christ is to be 
 saved; to doubt them is to be lost. Even the doc- 
 trine of original sin as organized by Augustine and 
 embodied in practically the whole mass of Christian 
 theology, gets its moral element from the sin of 
 Adam which has corrupted human nature so that 
 every person is born not only sinful but damned. 
 It is true that some are elected by God for His own 
 good pleasure from this corrupt and hopeless hu- 
 manity, but this election is explicitly said to be wholly 
 
96 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 outside the region of human morality. Arminian- 
 ism, it is true, recognizes that God's election is con- 
 ditioned by His foreknowledge of man's faith, but 
 this faith is still largely assent to metaphysical and 
 eschatological propositions. 
 
 It is not difficult, therefore, to see why Chris- 
 tianity thus conceived has never included opposition 
 to war. To it war is in an entirely different area 
 from that of religion. Combatants can pray to God 
 for victory, but their salvation from hell is not de- 
 termined by any moral attitude of their own. Al- 
 though a church may be a phase of national life, 
 religion itself has not been primarily, if indeed, 
 secondarily, concerned with the application of the 
 principles of Jesus to the activities of social groups. 
 Men have fought for their faith, but their faith has 
 not kept them from fighting. 
 
 It is no accident, therefore, that ecclesiastically 
 orthodox Christians have waged war consistently 
 and almost continuously. There was nothing in 
 their operating religion to prevent fighting. The 
 state dealt with this world; religion with the next. 
 When men like Francis of Assisi undertook to ap- 
 ply the moral principles of Jesus to life, their ef- 
 forts involved the taking of individuals out from 
 the social group. With St. Trancis those who 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 97 
 
 sought to reproduce within themselves the life of 
 Christ did so by withdrawing from the world, tak- 
 ing on the social attitude of beggary and the inter- 
 mediate activity of charity. It is a state church- 
 Christianity that supports German imperialism. 
 And in Germany state-religion has never permitted 
 any other conception of Christianity to be preached 
 to the people. The liberalism of German univer- 
 sity teaching has been academic and not socially 
 reconstructive. 
 
 A second interpretation of Christianity is the pre- 
 cise opposite of this ecclesiastical orthodoxy of 
 other-worldliness. The followers of Fox and 
 Menno have emphasized mystical elements in re- 
 ligion, and in their morality have sought to produce 
 an other-worldliness which, based upon certain 
 teachings of Jesus, elevated non-resistance to a moral 
 imperative. The effect of such a view of Chris- 
 tianity as this has been to produce a quality of soul 
 that is among our noblest inheritances. In the 
 effort of the Society of Friends to follow the guid- 
 ance of the Spirit, we see sincere and beautiful ex- 
 pressions of the Christian spirit. They have en- 
 dured the oppressions of their enemies in the spirit 
 of forgiveness, and they have given to the world 
 noble lessons in peace of soul and simple faith in 
 
9 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 a God who is not far away, but present in the be- 
 liever's heart. Such an attitude of mind has always 
 been hostile to war. The Quaker has consistently 
 followed his conscience and the inner light in re- 
 fusing to participate in war, though he has not 
 refused to be a good citizen and during war he has 
 not hesitated to endure danger in the service of his 
 fellows. 
 
 On March 29th, 1918, the Philadelphia Yearly 
 Meeting of Friends issued this noteworthy state- 
 ment: 
 
 "The basis of our opposition to war is much more than 
 any single command of the Old or the New Testament. It is 
 our faith that the way of love by which our Master, Jesus 
 Christ, met and conquered evil, remains for His followers to- 
 day the true method of combating wrong. For us, as for 
 Him, this involves refusal to use means which, like war, 
 violate love and defeat its ends ; but it does not mean a weak 
 neutrality toward evil. For us, as for Him, it means a life 
 of action devoted to the heroic purpose of overcoming evil 
 with good. The unspeakable sufferings of humanity are now 
 calling us and all men to larger sacrifices and more earnest 
 endeavors to put this faith into practice. To such endeavors 
 we dedicate ourselves. 
 
 "In accordance with this faith, we desire to maintain all 
 our relationships to-day. 
 
 "To our beloved country, we affirm the deep loyalty of 
 grateful hearts. We long to help her to realize her noblest 
 capacities as a great Republic dedicated to liberty and 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 99 
 
 democracy. But we believe that we best serve our country 
 and all humanity when we maintain that religion and con- 
 science are superior to the state. 
 
 "To President Wilson, we declare our appreciation of his 
 steadfast and courageous efforts to keep the aims of the 
 United States in this great conflict liberal, disinterested and 
 righteous. 
 
 " To our fellow-countrymen, who are following the lead- 
 ings of conscience into ways where we cannot be their com- 
 rades, we give assurance of respect and sympathy in all that 
 they endure. Finally, 
 
 "For all men, whether they he called our enemies or not, 
 we pray that the sacrificial love of Christ, stirring us to re- 
 pentance, may reconcile and unite all mankind in the brother- 
 hood of His spirit." 
 
 If the religion of the Quakers had become the 
 religion of the world war would have ceased. But 
 it has not become the religion of the world or even 
 of an appreciable section of the world. Personally 
 I believe its moral idealism is nearer the spirit of 
 Jesus than is ecclesiastical orthodoxy, but the ques- 
 tion that confronts us is not one of ideals or theories 
 but of actual social attitudes and tendencies. What- 
 ever may be our individual convictions, in the realm 
 of actual conduct we are dealing with organized 
 social groups controlled by socialized passions, con- 
 victions, and principles of conduct. Church-Chris- 
 tianity must be met by a more truly democratic re- 
 ligion if war is to end through the elimination of 
 
TOO PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 social attitudes that lead to war. And this brings us 
 to a consideration of pacifism in its larger aspects. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The pacifist is right when he claims that war is \ 
 un-Christian, but he is mistaken when he claims 
 that all participation in war is un-Christian. The 
 truth of this paradox is apparent when opposition 
 to war becomes opposition to a war. For an 
 American to refuse to share in the present war, 
 to oppose preparation for war, to induce men to 
 avoid draft, and to attack all forms of military 
 preparation for the purpose of national defense, is 
 not Christian. 
 
 But how, one may ask, can this be true? Why 
 should those who oppose war ever be under obliga- 
 tion to support a war? Pacifists, in the name of 
 Christianity, vehemently affirm the inconsistency of 
 such a thesis. Speaking generally their arguments 
 are of two sorts. 
 
 There is first that of those pacifists who do not 
 believe in human progress and who hold tenaciously 
 and sometimes joyously to the belief that the world 
 is growing worse. They reproduce the early Chris- 
 tian expectation of the speedy return of Jesus from 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 101 
 
 heaven and the imminent end of the world, and 
 consistently urge that the true Christian awaits a 
 great cataclysm due to the intervention of super- 
 natural and miraculous persons. Why then fight ? 
 
 Periods of war have repeatedly given rise to some 
 form of this belief in supernatural intervention. 
 At present the churches of America are dangerously 
 full of this expectation. To an extent unbelievable 
 by those who are out of touch with the situation, 
 clergymen and others are going about the country 
 announcing the approaching end of the world and 
 calling upon people to await the millennium and the 
 day of judgment. Prophetic conferences are be- 
 ing held in the larger cities, and throughout the 
 country districts. The motives of these evangelists 
 undoubtedly vary. Some are certainly sincere in 
 their naive centering of Christianity upon the sec- 
 ond coming of Christ. Others are so hostile to the 
 present policies of the government as to have been 
 subject to investigation on the part of the Federal 
 Government. But whatever may be the particular 
 type of doctrine, the common element in all such 
 beliefs is that history contains no hope and must 
 come to an end. Fantastic expositions of scripture 
 find in the Book of Revelation the number of the 
 Kaiser, identify him with the anti-Christ, discover 
 
PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 prophecies of tanks in the prophets, dates when the 
 war will end in Daniel and the Revelation, urge the 
 church to await the miraculous disappearance of 
 saints into heavenly " rapture," foretell a period of 
 misery in which forces of evil are to be for a time 
 triumphant, although in the end they are to be con- 
 quered by Christ and the angels. 
 
 Evidence at hand shows that the effect of such 
 teaching is in many cases a refusal on the part of its 
 followers to share in national burdens, either of 
 military service or of financial support of the gov- 
 ernment or of the Red Cross. And even when such 
 refusal is lacking, its champions, whether inten- 
 tionally or not, sap the springs of national courage 
 and make unintelligible prophesying superior to de- 
 votion to national well-being. With such pacifism 
 intelligent citizens should have no sympathy. 
 
 The other type of pacifism is of a higher character. 
 It looks to no miraculous end of the world, but 
 rather to the operation of non-resistance not unlike 
 that of the Society of Friends or the Mennonites. 
 Its champions, however, as a rule do not belong to 
 either society. Few of them are theologically ortho- 
 dox; many of them are theological radicals. Like 
 Tolstoy they are dominated by a conception of 
 Christianity gained by neglecting the historical in- 
 
RELIGION AND WAR IO3 
 
 heritances in our religion and by generalizing cer- 
 tain of the sayings of Jesus, like " resist not evil." 
 The position which these pacifists take is in effect 
 that the refusal on the part of a nation to defend 
 itself against the aggression of another nation would 
 tend to mitigate that other nation's aggressiveness 
 and shame it into peace. They recall Christ's words 
 about turning the other cheek, but overlook the 
 social philosophy involved in his saying that those 
 who take the sword shall perish by the sword. 
 A distinguished representative of this point of view 
 was recently asked as to how it would be harmonized 
 with the treatment accorded by the Germans to 
 Russia after the refusal of the Bolsheviki to engage 
 further in war. Her answer was in effect that if 
 the propaganda of the Bolsheviki had not been 
 checked among the German soldiers, peace would 
 have come. 
 
 Far be it from me to question the moral sincerity 
 of these high-minded but unpractical souls. The 
 conscientious objector provided that he does not 
 speak with a German accent should not be perse- 
 cuted. But sincerity is not synonymous with wis- 
 dom. Good people frequently lack good sense. 
 The difficulty with these particular good people 
 is two- fold : in the first place they overestimate the 
 
IO4 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 power of moral ideals to determine the action of a 
 nation which, like Germany, has organized itself for 
 war and by an un-Christian philosophy has justified 
 itself in its pursuance of war as a means of national 
 development. And in the second place, they have 
 an abstract view of morality. To them right ex- 
 ists apart from concrete human action. The actual 
 forces of social evolution are neglected and moral 
 imperatives are judged with no regard to the prog- 
 ress and impulses of men who are subject to the 
 forces of social evolution. 
 
 And this amounts to another misinterpretation of 
 Christianity. And only in a proper interpretation 
 of Christianity is the solution of the paradox which 
 we have just met. 
 
 Christianity as a religion is not to be described by 
 making an anthology of the words of Jesus. It is 
 not a generalization of the personal habits of Jesus. 
 It is the actual reaction of individuals and groups \Yrt 
 to his ideals. Christianity is a social movement 
 partly expressed and partly not expressed by the 
 churches. - Its center is not to be found in this or \ 
 that word of Jesus or in anti-social individualism; 
 it is rather to be found in the spiritual sympathies 
 and tendencies of men and women who are indis- 
 solubly members of social groups. The moral 
 
RELIGION AND WAR IO5 
 
 values which go to make up the ideals of these 
 groups are never absolute but always relative. They 
 are truly Christian in the proportion they tend to 
 express the fundamental faith and principles of 
 Jesus. The present issue is not between nations 
 equally ready to be shown the way to give justice, 
 but between nations one group of which is following 
 Caesar and the other of which is defending institu- 
 tions embodying a developing appreciation of the 
 ideals set forth by Jesus. It is for this reason 
 that the conscientious objector is in danger of de- 
 stroying the very idealism which, with the spirit of 
 the early martyrs, he professes. 
 
 The fundamental principle of Jesus is love, not 
 his own special application of this love to the par- 
 ticular duties of those preaching love. The sayings 
 of Jesus dealing with non-resistance were never 
 brought by him into the political field. They were 
 intended by him to direct the action of his followers 
 in putting the principle of love into operation. 
 When his disciples went forth to preach the triumph 
 of human brotherhood they would be setting forth 
 ideals which interfered with certain privileges and 
 customs and institutions of the world in which they 
 lived. They would undoubtedly meet with perse- 
 cution. They were not to undertake to convert men 
 
IO6 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 to love by appeal to force, nor were they to seek 
 to revenge themselves upon their persecutors. All 
 this is beyond question the true attitude of the Chris- 
 tian. You cannot make men brotherly by terror- 
 ization, neither can you spread the principle of love 
 by hatred and vengeance. 
 
 Even in the larger field of national life this is 
 true. The enforced Christianization of heathen 
 tribes like that of the Saxons by Charlemagne and 
 the Prussians by the Teutonic Knights has not 
 served to develop the moral impulses that have 
 sprung from the work of modern foreign missions. 
 A complete appraisal of German Christianity cannot 
 overlook the effect of the brutality that attended the 
 conversion of the tribes that have united in the 
 German people. 
 
 Back of its specific application is the principle of 
 love itself. Love is a way of treating other people. 
 Jesus grounds its finality in its likeness to the moral 
 nature of God. It is not a formula but social ac- 
 tion. In the case of individuals it involves much 
 more than good nature or submission to injustice. 
 We recognize this in civil affairs where laws are a 
 more or less successful attempt to organize social 
 action in accord with the principle formulated by 
 Kant: "Act so as to use humanity, whether in 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 1 07 
 
 your own person or in the person of another, always 
 as an end, never as a means." Obviously the moral 
 problems set a community which endeavors to put 
 the principle of brotherhood into operation are vastly 
 more complicated than the pacifist chooses to see. 
 The development of civilization proceeds gradu- 
 ally, by the embodiment of ideals in human institu- 
 tions. These institutions which guarantee personal 
 liberty, the right of initiative, democracy in the sense 
 of a people's, right to control its own affairs, exist 
 as an exceedingly precious heritage for succeeding 
 generations. They increasingly embody the giving 
 of justice, the social synonym of the love Jesus 
 taught and embodied. They must be preserved if 
 morality is to be preserved. To submit passively 
 to their destruction is a violation of the fundamental 
 principle of brotherhood. Society recognizes this 
 clearly enough in its attempt to protect itself from 
 evil minded men like thieves, adulterers, and op- 
 pressors of their kind. The decision as to whether 
 a citizen shall undertake such protection is not a 
 matter of individual likes and dislikes but of social 
 obligation. The fact that as human society grows 
 more responsive to ideals of justice and fraternity, 
 the protection of the finer institutions of human wel- 
 fare becomes increasingly conventional and so less 
 
IO8 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 in need of reliance upon force, serves only to ob- 
 scure the fundamental necessity of a society's being 
 able to offer protection to its members and suc- 
 cessors if institutions born of justice are endangered. 
 
 refusal to undertake the duty of guaranteeing such 
 protection, whatever may be its alleged ethical justi- 
 fication, is in reality an ant i- fraternal act. While 
 we must oppose every illegitimate appeal to force, 
 all unintelligent treatment of criminals, the hide- 
 ousness of mob violence and the excesses of puni- 
 tive justice, the basic fact still remains: for the 
 benefit of society love must protect institutions 
 which embody and preserve its own progress. 
 When a nation which despises love as effeminacy 
 and honors the " will to power " attacks those in- 
 stitutions, there is only one duty before nations who 
 love peace. They must exhaust all efforts to settle 
 international difficulties by arbitration and moral ap- 
 peal; but if these fail they must protect justice and 
 liberty by force. To do otherwise would be dis- 
 loyalty to those men and women of the future for 
 whom we are trustees of a heritage of justice and 
 liberty. 
 
 If we would apply the teaching of Jesus to na- 
 tional action we must hold fast to the principle of 
 good neighborliness. 
 
RELIGION AND WAR IOQ 
 
 It is not always safe to build hypotheses around a 
 parable, but at least it is as legitimate as are some 
 interpretations to which the parables have been sub- 
 jected. Let us suppose the Good Samaritan had 
 arrived while the robbers were attacking their vic- 
 tim. What should he have done to merit the ap- 
 proval of Jesus? 
 
 In the first place, he might have done nothing. 
 His interest might have been highly scientific. He 
 might have watched the technique of the robbers, 
 the way in which they stripped their victim, the way 
 in which they disappeared. If he had been thor- 
 oughly modern he might then have made a study 
 of their thumb marks so as to be able to identify 
 the perpetrators of similar robberies in the future. 
 Then after he had taken the necessary notes he might 
 have cared for the wounded traveler. 
 
 Can any one hold that this would be an applica- 
 tion of the principle of neighborliness ? 
 
 Or, the Good Samaritan, when he came upon the 
 traveler struggling with the robbers, might have 
 said to himself, " Here is a providential opportunity 
 to recoup myself from losses in business/' And 
 so he might have taken the traveler's baggage and 
 the robbers' baggage and gone on his way to 
 Jericho. 
 
HO PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 Would Jesus have told the lawyer to go and do 
 likewise ? 
 
 Or, he might have said, " This is a moment to 
 call a conference which shall vote measures that 
 shall police the road from Jerusalem to Jericho so 
 that there shall be no robbers." Would such action, 
 necessary as it might be at other times, have been 
 a practical expression of neighborliness ? 
 
 Or, the Good Samaritan might have said, " This 
 is certainly a sad occasion, but my obligation as a 
 Good Samaritan is one of amelioration. I will 
 therefore find a shady place where I may wait until 
 the robbers finish their work, and then I shall be 
 ready to care for the wounded man and perform the 
 other duties which are expected of Good Samari- 
 tans." 
 
 Can any sane man think that Jesus would have 
 advised such conduct? Would not the very prin- 
 ciple of love and desire to help a man in dan- 
 ger, the very spirit of Calvary itself, have led this 
 man to help the unfortunate traveler defend him- 
 self? 
 
 Let us get this principle of sacrificial social- 
 mindedness clear. Once grasped, the method in 
 which it is expressed is a matter of intelligence. 
 
 Love is not to be limited to Red Cross service. 
 
RELIGION AND WAR III 
 
 Such sacrificial social-mindedness as the Good Sa- 
 maritan might have exhibited is not militarism. 
 Just how far we should interfere in other people's 
 quarrels, how far we should use our resources to 
 protect the defenseless, how far we should under- 
 take to erect proper social defenses which would 
 make Good Samaritans unnecessary, must be left 
 to the wisdom which our trained experts may show 
 us. 
 
 But no man is a Christian who believes that any- 
 thing injurious is right. No man has the spirit of 
 Christ who is content to permit wrong to seek its 
 victims. Personal comfort, life itself, is as nothing 
 compared with the giving of justice, for which 
 Jesus himself died. 
 
 So in the case of a nation that sees the world 
 and itself attacked by another nation bent upon 
 terrorizing its neighbors into subjection and de- \ 
 stroying the most precious institutions of civiliza- 
 tion. Pacifism under such circumstances is anti- 
 social, a misguided idealism if not transcendental- 
 ized selfishness. The duty which a nation owes to 
 a world as well as to itself and its future compels 
 it to protect its institutions and its very existence 
 against the assault of a national highwayman. And 
 this duty must infiltrate the moral action of indi- 
 
112 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 viduals. Christians are not insulated individuals; 
 they are citizens. 
 
 This is the real spirit with which Christians must 
 approach the question of a war. Against our likes, 
 our hopes, our ideals, we fight because we love our 
 race. War born of a perverted patriotism, war for 
 the sake of national aggrandizement at the expense 
 of other nations is un-Christian, no matter how much 
 it may masquerade under appeals to the God of 
 Gideon and of David. But the very essence of a 
 Christian patriotism appears in the defense not of 
 national institutions as such, but of institutions 
 which are increasingly if not completely Christian. 
 Love, which is the heart of the Christian message, 
 cannot permit a nation to remain neutral while the 
 well-being of other nations is endangered. The 
 highest sacrifice which love demands is a frank recog- 
 nition of the necessity of abandoning the ideals of 
 peace when peace involves the suffering of others. 
 The true Christian patriot at the present moment is 
 in fact saying to certain ideals, " You must for the 
 moment retire from the scene. I have a desper- 
 ately nasty mess to clean up. I am not responsible 
 for the situation, but you are powerless to help. It 
 is a choice between defending institutions which 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 113 
 
 guarantee your existence and permitting these in- 
 stitutions to go down to destruction." And my own 
 conviction is clear that such self-sacrifice in the in- 
 terest of making permanent the achievement of 
 peace and justice is the most idealistic service a man 
 or a nation can render the world. Refusal at any 
 personal cost to partake in a war of oppression, of 
 conquest, of international looting, is truly Chris- 
 tian. Conscientious objectors in nations bent upon 
 waging such a war, are worthy of a martyr's crown. 
 But not to share in a war of defense of justice is 
 to distort both patriotism and religion. A nation 
 suffering and struggling vicariously is furthering 
 Christian morality. It faces new moral crises, it 
 is true. It must not be permitted to descend into 
 habitual militarism. But it demands our support. 
 In furthering its success we rightly know again the 
 patriotism that is more than aggressive nationalism. 
 In full justice, may we cry to a nation we see is more 
 than wealth or territory, 
 
 "What were our lives without thee? 
 
 What all our lives to save thee? 
 We reck not what we give thee, 
 
 We will not dare to doubt thee, 
 But ask whatever else, and we will dare!" 
 
114 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 IV 
 
 Ideals work when they draw men toward them- 
 selves. But such approach is registered not in ab- 
 stract theories, but in social accomplishment. To 
 protect such accomplishment in the interest of the 
 still more complete embodiment of ideals is loyalty 
 not only to a nation, but to our religion. In such 
 a situation, true patriots find in religion no loyalty 
 like that felt to a monarch who seeks to exploit God 
 and humanity in order to justify his own ambition 
 at the expense of others. Loathing war, determined 
 to end war by the regeneration of the forces that 
 shape national action, such patriots dedicate them- 
 selves to a national service which gets its value 
 not from uncritical loyalty to a nation but from 
 loyalty to a nation which has consecrated itself to the 
 good of humanity. It is this sort of patriotism that 
 we dare call Christian. " We hope," a well-in- 
 tending body of Christians once said to Mr. Lincoln, 
 " that God is on our side." " I am not much con- 
 cerned," said Mr. Lincoln "to know whether God 
 is on our side. What I want to know is whether 
 we are on God's side." With this desire American 
 patriotism may now face its terrible task. We pray 
 for the victory of our arms, not because we demand 
 
RELIGION AND WAR 115 
 
 that God shall give victory to our country whether 
 we are right or wrong, but because we are con- 
 vinced that the cause for which we struggle is more 
 precious than a peace bought at the expense of the 
 world's warfare; that the cause for which we fight 
 is God's cause as we know it revealed both in the 
 life and the ideals of Jesus and in the unmistakable 
 tendencies of social evolution. 
 
 A religion which will keep its followers from 
 committing themselves to the support of such pa- 
 triotism is either too aesthetic for humanity's actual 
 needs, too individualistic to be social, or too disloyal 
 to be tolerated. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 THE SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 
 
 If patriotism can be justified because of the serv- 
 ice one's nation can render the world, no argument 
 is needed to show that it must rest on a national 
 morality. In the interest of such morality religion 
 must serve patriotism in the future more wisely than 
 in the past. True, Christianity has insisted that 
 those who are saved ought not to steal or murder 
 or commit adultery; but as has already appeared, 
 the ecclesiastical doctrines of salvation have shared 
 in a general misapprehension of the moral control 
 that lies in group-life. Salvation as the supreme end 
 of religion has been presented as a rescue from a 
 world that is corrupt and hopeless. The bright 
 hopes of a blissful eternity have been presented 
 against a background of social pessimism. Until 
 our own day there has been no serious attempt to 
 apply the principles of Jesus as distinguished from 
 Hebrew legislation to economic life, or to conceive 
 of nations as under moral restraints in their deal- 
 
 116 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 117 
 
 ings with each other. War has all but never been 
 condemned. The conquest of weak nations has 
 been regarded as an evidence of divine favor, and 
 the God of battles has been the only God that kings 
 have known. Christians have always fought. 
 The extension of the principles of Jesus into group 
 morality is so modern as even yet to be vehemently 
 assailed as an abandonment of the " simple gospel." 
 As the inspirer of international morality, a church- 
 Christianity has been all but negligible. The leaven 
 was prepared but men have seldom had the good 
 sense to hide it in the meal. Only in those nations 
 in which there has been a recognition of the rights 
 of the people and the organization of governments 
 responsible to the people, each an expression of 
 fundamental Christian idealism has there been 
 any development of a social morality capable of in- 
 ternational application. 
 
 This is not to say that Christianity has had no 
 social influence. It has had decided social influence. 
 The churches have been laboratories in which in- 
 dividualistic morality has been developed and where 
 democracy has been to some extent learned. How 
 significant have been these lessons in Anglo-Ameri- 
 can politics has already been pointed out. It is no 
 small achievement to have restrained economic 
 
Il8 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 pressure by the observance of the Sabbath, given 
 moral sanction to marriage, and elevated the posi- 
 tion of women. But the influence of Christianity as 
 a church religion has by no means been the sole 
 cause of social reforms. Other forces have co- 
 operated and at times have been obliged to over- 
 come the influence of a church championing vested 
 economic and political privileges. The rise of public 
 morality is altogether too complicated a process to 
 be credited to any single cause. Judged from its 
 literature, its formulas and its teaching, the church 
 even in our own day has not frankly faced the 
 problems of group morality. It is only within re- 
 cent years that the inter-relation even of churches 
 themselves has been placed on an approximately 
 moral basis. For centuries whenever a Christian 
 group has obtained control of a state, persecution 
 has followed. Lutheran Prussia repressed the 
 Crypto-Calvinists with imprisonment and death; 
 Calvinists of Holland persecuted the Arminians; 
 the church of England has executed Catholics, Bap- 
 tists and Unitarians. Until the rise of the American 
 nation, religious liberty was unknown and the church 
 and the state were not separated. It is no wonder, 
 therefore, that if Christian groups could not live 
 together without violence, nations should have lived 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM IIQ 
 
 with even greater disregard of moral ideals, and 
 that international law should have been a matter 
 in which Christian teachers were only incidentally 
 concerned. If the salt lacked savor, how could 
 it be salted? 
 
 But we already see the rise of a simpler Chris- 
 tianity and a truer perception of the scope of Chris- 
 tian moral ideals. Our own generation has been a 
 pioneer in this extension of moral imperatives to 
 groups. The conception of Christianity as some- 
 thing richer and more vital than theological pre- 
 cision has been both the outcome and the cause of 
 an incipient social morality. So far from being dis- 
 couraged in the present crisis, we should be full of 
 hope. To the best of my knowledge, this is the 
 first war that has avowedly been fought for the 
 purpose of ending war. Therein lies hope. 
 
 The history of the international relations of de- 
 mocracies is a tribute to the change that is coming 
 into our conception of Christianity. We have un- 
 fortunately to admit that this truer conception of 
 the Christian faith is by no means universal. Too 
 many of our churches are still in the control of pro- 
 fessional churchmen whose vision is sectarian and 
 who think that the gospel has no place in social af- 
 fairs beyond the maintenance of individual respecta- 
 
I2O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 bility. Just at present forces of reaction are espe- 
 cially in evidence working mightily to keep Chris- 
 tianity within the confines set by the past, preferring 
 an infallible Pope or an inerrant Bible to the spirit of 
 Jesus and the ideals of the Kingdom of God. But 
 never before were there so many evidences of the 
 rise of a true Christianity. Denominations are ceas- 
 ing their internecine strife and are organizing Fed- 
 erations and World Conferences. The bankruptcy 
 of theological orthodoxy as an agency to prevent 
 war forces thoughtful men to reconsider the real 
 place of Christianity in our social order. We are 
 repatriating Jesus in Christianity. Out of the Cal- 
 vary of the present war will come the resurrection 
 of a faith above shibboleths, born of a tested con- 
 fidence in God, in Jesus, and human progress. 
 
 When we ask how this should and will affect pa- 
 triotism as the expression of a national loyalty, 
 we are passing from history to prophecy. Yet even 
 here we are not at the mercy of hope unregulated by 
 facts. Historical tendencies become our guide. 
 Genuine religious faith does not attempt to rehabili- 
 tate the past, but to reconstruct the future. Super- 
 ficial optimism has no place in such forecasts, for 
 the God we must worship is not the God of a fin- 
 ished world, but a God who cooperates with man- 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 121 
 
 kind in the production of a new world. From faith 
 in such a God springs new confidence in the pos- 
 sible influence of a genuinely Christian spirit in 
 national affairs. The new world has not been born, 
 but there is still opportunity for the exercise of 
 prenatal influences. 
 
 A religion fit for democracy will ennoble patriot- 
 ism* by giving moral direction to the spiritual life of a 
 nation. 
 
 As the Archbishop of York has admirably pointed 
 out, the war is teaching us the power of ideas. Un- 
 fortunately in too much education ideas have been at 
 a discount. For a generation and more our schools 
 and colleges have been increasingly emphasizing sci- 
 entific attitudes and methods. Little by little we 
 have seen the old humanistic education give way to 
 the study of the physical forces of nature. Lan- 
 guages have gradually been forced to retreat from 
 their earlier primacy, and in their place has come 
 a study of phenomena that can be understood with- 
 out recourse to personality. It would perhaps be 
 too much to say that our education has become ma- 
 terialistic, but it has certainly grown less idealistic. 
 
122 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 Technical educational discussions are largely con- 
 cerned with pedagogical mechanics. The test of a 
 successful grade teacher has been frankly said to 
 be her ability to prepare pupils to move into the 
 next grade. Muscular efforts in handwriting, the 
 height of school-room desks, the length of school- 
 periods, have been given elaborate attention. Edu- 
 cation for making a living has increasingly been 
 emphasized. Educational foundations have been 
 devoting themselves to furthering the science of 
 medicine, chemistry, and biological research. Mech- 
 anistic interpretations of life have been developed 
 until psychology has become a matter largely of 
 nerves and muscles, life a physical response to phys- 
 ical forces, and history a by-product of climates 
 and of geography. Even socialism, the one out- 
 standing movement which claims to emphasize so- 
 cial forces, has all but delivered itself over to eco- 
 nomic materialism. 
 
 Such a description of educational methods is, of 
 course, subject to many exceptions and consider- 
 able modification. No one can deny the importance 
 of the various subjects involved. But such facts 
 raise the question whether we have been moving in 
 altogether the true direction. Are not ideals also 
 of educational importance? The war has made us 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 123 
 
 realize that a difference in educational systems is 
 largely responsible for the difference in the patriot- 
 isms of Germany and the democratic states. Ideas 
 which make war desirable have been built into the 
 German soul. The materialistic tendencies of Ger- 
 man education have been accompanied by a highly 
 systematized manipulation of German intelligence 
 by the state. To German school children, patriot- 
 ism has become a form of national religion, and re- 
 ligion a phase of education in patriotism. The 
 German Kultur is not civilization in the noble sense 
 given that word by French writers, but a training 
 in the worship of national institutions, language and 
 literature, made efficient in social organization by 
 technical accomplishments in physical science. Lib- 
 erty and equality are not elements in Kultur and 
 form no part of German education. 
 
 A nation filled with megalomania has so organ- 
 ized its education as to insure a national spirit that 
 approves the subjection of the masses to the priv- 
 ileged classes. Ninety per cent, of German youth 
 are debarred by the educational system from any 
 other sort of training. They are trained to obey 
 the other ten per cent. In such a social order re- 
 ligion has carried forward the national ideal. It 
 has been made a part of national education, giving 
 
124 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 sanctity to a patriotism that knows no morality be- 
 yond national boundaries, and conferring no ability 
 to reform a government that does not derive its 
 authority from the consent of the governed. Such 
 a patriotism has never been taught the ideals of 
 Jesus, and in war is subject to small moral re- 
 straints. It exploits the technical abilities of a na- 
 tion to further national pride and the exploiting of 
 subject peoples. The religion it demands is na- 
 tional religion. " When we talk frankly and boldly 
 about the German God," says Baron Hans von Wol- 
 zogen in the Berlin Post, " what we mean to ex- 
 press thereby is the power of the divine action within 
 the German soul, for only in the German soul is 
 centered the kingdom of God." 
 
 A religion that thus yields itself to the will of 
 the state is certainly far enough from the Chris- 
 tianity of Jesus. The type of Christianity it de- 
 mands and fosters is that which writes a pious 
 preface to the articles of a Holy Alliance and in the 
 words of no less a theologian than Wilhelm Her- 
 mann likens its faith to that of Mohammedanism. 
 It is no wonder that so far as we know it is silent 
 as to the horrors of Belgium, Serbia, Poland, and 
 Armenia, except when it issues statements justi- 
 fying their perpetration. Such a religion together 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 125 
 
 with the patriotism it would sanctify, leaves Ger- 
 many no hope for a Christian patriotism until Ger- 
 man Christians, rejecting Caesar, become the dis- 
 ciples of Jesus. 
 
 If German educational methods enforcing such 
 ideas of religion and patriotism were limited to the 
 German people itself, their menace would be suf- 
 ficiently great. But they have not been so limited. 
 German patriotism has been as aggressive in 
 the world of ideas as in its search for annexations 
 and indemnities. As in their battles Germans have 
 begun their assaults by poisonous gas attacks,, so 
 during the past ten or fifteen years has our educa- 
 tional system been subject to a German attack upon 
 the ideals of democracy. Few teachers in our uni- 
 versities have escaped the miasma of German Kultur. 
 Our sociology, our history, our political economy, 
 our psychology, have all been learned in Germany 
 or markedly affected by the pre-supposition of the 
 German teaching. We have listened to attacks upon 
 the inefficiency of our institutions, the crudity of 
 our science, the amateurism of our history. Ger- 
 many has systematically undertaken to undermine 
 the American patriotism of American citizens of 
 German descent. The propaganda of anti- American 
 ideas has magnified Teutonism, belittled American- 
 
126 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 ism, forced the German language upon public 
 schools, organized societies to strengthen the alle- 
 giance of American citizens to a German Father- 
 land. 
 
 But at this point a caution is to be uttered. In 
 view of this attempt to educate a nation in self- 
 depreciation it is not surprising that we are being 
 warned against scholarship that is in any way allied 
 with Germany. But we need to preserve our com- 
 mon sense while we accomplish the destruction of 
 anti-American forces. In an assault upon Ger- 
 man propaganda every good citizen should join. 
 But scientific methods in education and religious 
 scholarship are not false because Germans have 
 used them. We do not abandon military science 
 because Germans exploit its results. Science is not 
 nationalistic. In all departments it has been as much 
 the creation of Englishmen and Frenchmen as of 
 Germans. Scientific method is the joint product 
 of the intellectual life of the entire world. To 
 abandon it because of German political propaganda 
 would be insanity. 
 
 Equally true is it insanity to abandon theological 
 science because of German misuse of the Bible. 
 Champions of reaction and obscurantism declare 
 that the war is the outcome of German higher criti- 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 127 
 
 cism. Germans, they say, first undertook to break 
 down faith in the Bible in order that they might 
 break down the peace of the world. The only hope 
 that is left to the church of Christ is a return to 
 the theories of verbal inspiration, and a belief in 
 the end of the world at the speedy coming of 
 Christ ! 
 
 Nothing could be more truly theological dema- 
 gogism. The theology of the Kaiser is not the 
 theology of the modern theological world. It is 
 the theology of orthodoxy and of confessionalism. 
 The God he sets forth is not the God of Jesus. He 
 is not the God of the prophets. He is the God of 
 the persecutor. He is the God to whom Luther ap- 
 pealed when he justified the slaughter of the peas- 
 ants; the God summoned to justify the imprison- 
 ment of Grotius, the persecution of Crypto-Calvin- 
 ists, the execution of John of Barneveldt. As such 
 he is peculiarly the property of the state. Professor 
 Ostwald never said a truer word than when he de- 
 clared " in our country God the Father is reserved 
 for the personal use of the Emperor." 
 
 The theology which is preached by all reaction- 
 aries is the theology which has justified war. It is 
 born of a misuse of the Scripture, an unwillingness 
 to face the moral demands of Jesus, and a denial 
 
128 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 of the supremacy in history of a God of love and 
 justice. 
 
 Historical criticism has not given rise to German 
 worship of force. It has opened the way to a true 
 understanding of how to do justice, to love mercy, 
 and to walk humbly before a God who is the God of 
 Amos and Hosea, of Isaiah and Jesus. 
 
 The effort to identify the historical study of the 
 Bible with German Kultur not only displays ig- 
 norance as to both Kultur and theological science, 
 but it tends to elevate a theory of inspiration above 
 a faith in the God of law and love, and limits the 
 moral power of Jesus to the rescue of individuals 
 from vulgar sins. 
 
 Such religious teaching as is now organizing pro- 
 phetic conferences and damning an honest and in- 
 telligent use of the Scripture is ruining the church 
 and hindering the spread of a genuinely Christian 
 civilization. 
 
 Such propaganda so misuses the Bible as to make 
 it a menace to genuinely religious faith. To iden- 
 tify it with piety is to make piety pre-Christian. 
 To demand that the doctrines which it draws from its 
 perversions of inspiration shall become the domi- 
 nant rule of the church is to make it certain that the 
 church will become composed of groups of men 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 129 
 
 and women who are a hindrance to the spread of 
 the gospel of Jesus. Literalism threatens the very 
 heart, not only of the Christian religion, but of 
 civilization. A theology under which the pres- 
 ent war was possible holds out no promise of lasting 
 peace. 
 
 Only he who approaches the Scripture in sympathy 
 with the historical method is capable of intelligently 
 applying its revelation of God to a travailing world. 
 Any one who knows the actual bearing of historical 
 criticism upon our religion, needs no arguments to 
 prove that the properly scientific historical approach 
 to the study of religion is the great hope of the 
 spiritual life of the future. Theological science is 
 far enough from being German propaganda. 
 
 The real significance of the Germanizing of the 
 world's thought lies not in its use or misuse of 
 scientific methods. It lies rather in a debilitating 
 skepticism regarding our national ideals and the 
 applicability of the principles of Christianity to social 
 affairs. True Christianity is as compatible with 
 scientific method as it is incompatible with political 
 autocracy. The German mind has one supreme test 
 for all applications of the principles of Jesus to the 
 social order : does such an attempt tend towards de- 
 mocracy with its recognition of the necessity of 
 
I3O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 equal opportunity for the individual ; or does it tend 
 towards an elevation of the state as the end of indi- 
 vidual life ? Only that which conforms to the second 
 alternative is to be accepted. German religion could 
 not be other than anti-social, for the development of 
 the highest social ideals will abolish privilege and 
 superimposed authority. The God of Jesus would 
 repudiate responsibility for the authority of the 
 Kaiser. But such anti-Christianity is not born of 
 scientific method but of the national spirit that re- 
 fuses to apply scientifically the results gained by the 
 method to the needs of men and women. The con- 
 trast which we have repeatedly discovered between 
 German and democratic patriotism must control dis- 
 cussion of the relations of religion to national ideals. 
 Is Christianity to perpetuate autocracy, or is the 
 gospel of Jesus to be a leaven for the transformation 
 of society in the interest of democracy ? The world- 
 situation shows that the only hope of a Christianized 
 patriotism is to be found in those countries where 
 the people themselves are free to embody the ideals 
 of Jesus in social institutions ; where reform springs 
 from a socialized regard for justice rather than from 
 feudal benevolence ; where the church like the people 
 is free to express its conviction of the need of social 
 change; and where political life is free to express 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 
 
 ; popular ideals in social transformation. None of 
 these possibilities are permitted German churches by 
 the German state. 
 
 As representatives of the democratic patriotism, 
 Americans are in particular need of a Christianized 
 public opinion. As already has been said, our de- 
 mocracy has been born of our religious liberty, and 
 our active Christian conscience has played no small 
 role in the maintenance of peace between ourselves 
 and other nations. But we need to go further if 
 our national life is to meet the crisis in world rela- 
 tions which will follow the war. National policy 
 will embody our best ideals only as those ideals spring 
 from our inner social life. International justice 
 must be grounded in domestic justice. Social serv- 
 ice in the sense of caring for the unfortunate through 
 institutions of charity is possible in an autocracy, 
 but social transformation through establishing a 
 genuine fraternity is politically possible only where 
 there is democracy. To recognize this possibility is 
 to demand the spread of justice. If our nation is to 
 be a plutocracy, it will be no more democratic than 
 an autocracy. If the rights of our working men 
 are to be gained only through more or less developed 
 revolution which forces privileges from those who 
 are unwilling to surrender them, our Christian 
 
132 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 morality is certainly weak. The center of Chris- 
 tianity is a sacrificial social mindedness. God and 
 Christ sacrifice for men ; men must sacrifice for each 
 other. The gospel appeals to those who have en- 
 joyed privileges denied their less fortunate fellows. 
 The war in bringing us a clearer insight of our 
 fundamental national unity is helping us to see that 
 justice is the obverse of fraternity. Moral advance 
 is increasingly seen to involve such concrete matters 
 as the housing of the working man, the shortening of 
 his working day, the increase of his opportunity for 
 leisure and his larger share in the product of his own 
 labor. 
 
 The last twenty-five years have shown that Chris- 
 tianity has a social power far beyond that of a mere 
 incentive to social amelioration. Amelioration it is 
 true is an approach to justice, but the creative re- 
 ligious teaching of the last quarter century has been 
 reshaping patriotism itself into a devotion to human 
 rights championed by national action. Sometimes 
 this reconstruction has expended itself in denuncia- 
 tion of evils and unlimited criticism of our life and 
 institutions. More than this, however, it has shown 
 itself in an education in moral sympathies which 
 has hastened the recognition by the capitalist class 
 of its obligations to the people. It is true this proc- 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 133 
 
 ess has still far to go before it reaches its goal. We 
 still need to learn how to share privilege intelli- 
 gently. The worth of the individual still needs to be 
 more honored than class privilege and economic 
 efficiency. Human motives, especially in the eco- 
 nomic world, need inspiration for sacrifice in the 
 interest of justice. During the last few months we 
 have rapidly learned this lesson. We see clearly 
 that our national ideals are worth fighting for. We 
 are beginning to see that the virtues which we de- 
 mand of a nation in its world affairs must rule a 
 nation's inner life. If we are to make the world 
 safe for democracy, we must make our own nation 
 more than politically democratic. The ideals for 
 which men die in war are ideals for which they must 
 live in peace. 
 
 Here the Christian religion, freed from its en- 
 tangling alliances with metaphysics and ecclesiasti- 
 cism, can be the great source of spiritual inspiration. 
 It fires our hearts with more than a reasoned convic- 
 tion that democracy is God's will ; it gives us visions 
 of what a nation should really be. Because we are 
 Christians we feel in our national life the uplift of 
 the divine presence ; the courage which comes from 
 a belief in the inevitability of God's good will and 
 the supreme value of human souls. 
 
134 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 For those who have such spiritual reserves upon 
 which to call in moments of national strain and 
 stress, patriotism ceases to be primarily a militaristic 
 virtue. A patriot must needs often become a sol- 
 dier in order that government of the people, for the 
 people, and by the people shall not perish from the 
 earth. But he needs also to be loyal to national 
 ideals which will lead him to face the duties set by 
 peace. Justice and liberty are supremely valuable 
 even when we do not go to war to protect them. 
 When the war drums sound no longer there will 
 still be demand for those who are ready to sacrifice 
 their individual comfort and privilege, it may be 
 life itself, for national ideals. Democracy as a 
 phase of actual concrete living cannot be indifferent 
 to the inner dangers that beset it from anti-demo- 
 cratic capitalism or an anti-moral materialism. War 
 itself must be outgrown through the moral adjust- 
 ment of issues from which wars have sprung. Citi- 
 zens must believe in a God who works through the 
 development of institutions that give equality of 
 opportunity to every member of a national group 
 and to nations themselves. The issues of our eco- 
 nomic life must be seen to be as exigent as battles 
 and the protection of human welfare as imperative 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 1 35 
 
 in the relation of economic classes as in the bloody 
 struggle of nations. 
 
 Any religion that shirks such duties as peace pro- 
 poses can never be the religion of the world. A 
 pessimism that blinds men's minds to the possibility 
 of ennobling social evolution and which refuses the 
 sacrificial devotion of one's life to the cause of 
 human progress in days of peace is unworthy the 
 name of Christianity. The same devotion that car- 
 ries nations into the valley of the shadow of death 
 must not grow cold as they rest beside the still 
 waters. For such devotion patriotism needs the in- 
 spiration that fundamental religion can give. The 
 course of world events has reduced all national issues 
 to a choice between Caesar and Jesus. Hitherto 
 Caesar and the church have made common cause. 
 Formulas of other-worldly salvation have shown 
 themselves incapable of elevating patriotism from 
 the virtue of the warrior into devotion to a better 
 social order. In the religion of Jesus rather than 
 in the religion of the ecclesiastic lies all hope that 
 patriotism shall be transformed from a belligerent 
 into a cooperative virtue. 
 
136 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 II 
 
 Religion is needed to strengthen the heart of the 
 patriot in days of national trial. 
 
 Strength of heart and capacity to endure national 
 defeat have always been given patriots by their re- 
 ligious faith. The records of the past are full of 
 men and women who confiding in a nation's God, 
 like the Roman Senator have never despaired of 
 their nation's future. A Jeremiah buying land in a 
 moment of national eclipse; a William of Orange 
 facing the might of an arrogant conqueror; a Wash- 
 ington praying in the snow at Valley Forge ; are but 
 examples of millions of the men and women less 
 known but equally trustful amid national sorrow. 
 The Psalms of an exiled Hebrew ; the eschatology, so 
 easily misunderstood by us moderns, of a Jew 
 crushed by Syria and Rome; the stirring words of 
 Schiller to a nation which had not yet given itself 
 over to international brutality, express hopes that 
 have thrilled innumerable nations in their defeat. 
 Strip from patriotism its belief that God will ulti- 
 mately give success to the righteous cause for which 
 their nations fight, and you have left only the lamen- 
 tations of the conquered. 
 
 Such religious faith has generally clothed itself 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 137 
 
 in the conceptions of supernaturalism but it is 
 equally the possession of those who recognize the 
 unity of the divine will and natural law. Whoever 
 believes intelligently in God, believes also in a divine 
 will present in human affairs. Human history 
 forecasts the course of human progress. Tenden- 
 cies are more eloquent than scattered events, for 
 tendencies show that God is still perfecting an un- 
 finished creation. But the eye of faith that thus 
 seeks to read the meaning of the past must be single. 
 National pride too often obscures the true meaning 
 of history. A German may believe that the world- 
 spirit finds his fullest expression in the Kultur of 
 Prussia, but he who believes in the God of the uni- 
 verse rebels against such provincial conceit. He 
 dares hope for a future that shall not be subject to a 
 conquering nationalism. Out from the storm and 
 stress of the passing moment one looks back over 
 the steady progress of personal values, of human 
 rights, of sacrificial justice, and sees therein the 
 working of a God who is no national deity but the 
 God of a developing humanity. True prophecy does 
 not lose itself like astrology in the ingenious manipu- 
 lation of facts, but sees the divine will operating in 
 current events. In such vision lies intelligent hope 
 and a faith not to be staggered by the defeat of 
 
138 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 righteous causes. Men of this spirit know that Cal- 
 varies must be endured if resurrections are to be 
 enjoyed, but they never doubt the dawn of a national 
 Easter. Time is always on the side of the inevi- 
 table. To doubt the ultimate, even though it be but 
 slowly progressing, triumph of justice, is to deny 
 the evidence of history itself. 
 
 Moments of anxiety test the moral fiber of indi- 
 viduals and nations. The patriotism that leads men 
 to join forlorn hopes is heroic; but religion does 
 more than nerve Childe Rolands to attack the giants 
 of dark towers. It gives to nations struggling 
 for the rights of humanity courage in moments of 
 despondency, self-control in the agony of evil tid- 
 ings, hope in the time of defeat. We, like the He- 
 brew prophet, can recall the doings of God in our 
 past. True, such religion may be without its con- 
 scious theology, spontaneous rather than institu- 
 tional, instinctive rather than meditative. But it is 
 religion none the less. And it is this religion we can 
 bring to our own hearts in these days. When one 
 takes a long view of the past and sees how humanity 
 in its best moments has organized for itself institu- 
 tions that insure the rights of the weak, and enforce 
 the duties of the strong; when one sees a whole world 
 with the exception of its enemies sweeping on to- 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 139 
 
 ' wards ever more democratic ideals ; it is impossible 
 to doubt that morality moves forward ; that a divine 
 purpose runs through the ages ; and that this purpose 
 will inevitably bring about a better world order. 
 With this conviction, born not only of a sense of 
 the justice of our cause, but of a sense of the pres- 
 ence in the historical process of a God who is more 
 than a metaphysical formula, we face the sacrifices 
 which the crisis of to-day demands. We who believe 
 in evolution cannot doubt that the nations who stand 
 for these goals toward which human history points 
 are on God's side. In this confidence we find 
 strength to make the sacrifices that the protection of 
 the choicest blessings of humanity demands. We 
 dare to protect our nation as an agent of a cosmic 
 God. As we summon from the past the noble army 
 of those who have kept their faith in a God of jus- 
 tice and of goodness, even though they themselves 
 perished because of their faith, we join in the Mar- 
 sellaise of Christian experience, " Seeing that we 
 are compassed about by so great a crowd of the 
 veterans of the faith, we lay aside every weight 
 and the sin that so easily besets us, and run with 
 patience the race that is set before us, looking unto 
 Jesus, the captain and perfector of our faith." And 
 so singing we carry on ! 
 
I4O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 III 
 
 Religion can serve patriotism by freeing it from 
 vindictiveness and personal hatreds. 
 
 Nationalism in its worst aspects has been hardly 
 more than arrogance and contempt. To despise 
 one's neighbors, belittle their achievements in sci- 
 ence and art, accuse them of moral turpitude, de- 
 generacy and hypocrisy, has been the consistent 
 policy of Germany. " We are morally and intel- 
 lectually superior to other nations," wrote Professor 
 Lasson in 1914, "we are without equals." " It is 
 not true," declares Wolfgang Eisenhart, "that all 
 nations have the same right of existence. There are 
 decadent nations, falling into moral decay; these in 
 the tribunal of history have forfeited the right to 
 their own national existence and must make room 
 for the higher morality of another nation destined 
 to dominion." 
 
 A nation possessed of such views of other nations 
 not only systematically educates its citizens to hate 
 successively the various countries with which it is 
 at war, but it distributes this collective passion until 
 individual Germans hate individual Englishmen and 
 Americans. The treatment accorded conquered 
 lands and prisoners of war brings German vindic- 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 
 
 tiveness into the clearest light. Hatred has become 
 an indispensable part of German patriotism. 
 
 Such a debasement of personal morality is diffi- 
 cult to avoid. Few of us can read the verified ac- 
 counts of German atrocities in every conquered ter- 
 ritory without a desire to punish both nation and 
 citizens capable of such deeds. Not to feel hot in- 
 dignation as we think of the sorrows of Belgians and 
 Frenchmen, Serbians and Poles, Armenians and 
 Bohemians, is unworthy of men who love their 
 fellows. 
 
 But religion, if only it be that of Jesus, can keep 
 this indignation from descending into hatred of 
 individuals or even of nations. The task that Ger- 
 many has set the world is much greater than that of 
 self -protection. It includes also national and indi- 
 vidual self-control. No Christian can consistently 
 desire to injure his enemies simply that they shall 
 suffer. To conquer a nation is not necessarily to 
 hate its citizens. 
 
 It must be admitted such moral demands are all 
 but beyond human powers. But such an admission 
 is only an argument for a more rigorous loyalty to 
 the morals of Jesus and for a larger influence of his 
 religion. We need divine help if we are to keep our 
 souls clear from individual hate when as citizens we 
 
142 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 must hold in a loathing which cannot stop short of 
 destruction any political power brazenly disloyal to 
 human welfare and the God of all mankind. But 
 individual hatred is not national indignation. True 
 as it is that a common hatred is one of the great 
 sources of community action, it is just as true that 
 national indignation, ferocity and relentlessness at 
 the violation of fundamental moral principles both 
 in individual and in national relations, is a call to 
 religion. He who worships the God of love will 
 never be content with a world where divine love is 
 limited to the rescue of souls from hell or even from 
 vulgar sins. He should realize that a national ideal 
 is included in that same holy will. Without such a 
 conviction, our efforts after international morality 
 are as likely to be immoral as are the relations of 
 individuals when moral principles are forgotten, and 
 hatred becomes a motive to action. 
 
 Can we then love our enemies ? Yes, we can love 
 them, but we cannot like them. Nor need we. 
 Christian love does not condone evil. Jesus insists 
 on no such miracle. To love people is to treat them 
 as we should like to be treated, and to wish them 
 well. If their enmity to us is due to our own wrong- 
 doing, we must remove the cause, cost what it may. 
 If it is due to their wrongdoing, we must try to get 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 143 
 
 them to abandon their practices. If they then re- 
 fuse to be reconciled, they are to be ostracized. 
 
 That is the plain teaching of Jesus. 
 
 But suppose as is the case that ostracized 
 evil doers seek to do men harm. Can we love our 
 enemies while they make war upon us? Not if 
 love means affection for them or indifference to 
 their wrongdoing. Love for enemies does not mean 
 that we should suffer them to do others harm ; that 
 we should approve their brutality, condone their 
 atrocities, or submit to their oppression. We have 
 a nation to preserve, a civilization, political ideals, 
 and liberties to safeguard. 
 
 We shall love the Germans in the sense that we 
 shall be reconciled with them as soon as they con- 
 vince us that we have done .them wrong or they are 
 converted to a regard for human rights and inter- 
 national justice. If they refuse such reconciliation, 
 persist in robbing other nations, justify rape, mas- 
 sacres, deportations, starvation, and terrorization in 
 the name of patriotism, love for them will not lead 
 us to neglect love for their victims. If they threaten 
 the world with the sword, we shall protect the world 
 with the sword. 
 
 Love for our enemies is not moral if it deadens 
 our indignation against the crimes they perpetrate. 
 
144 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 Love for our enemies cannot make us indifferent 
 to our obligation to protect those who are not our 
 enemies. That too is love, and of the noblest sort. 
 
 Love for our enemies will not keep us from killing 
 them if they compel us to choose that as the only 
 way in which to express our love for their victims. 
 We did not choose the method. We tried to bring 
 Germany to a regard for others and its own best 
 inheritance. We turned one cheek and then an- 
 other. We were forced into war when we sought 
 peace, into violence when we preferred reconcilia- 
 tion, to draw the sword when we pleaded for the 
 olive branch. 
 
 Love has stern duties just because it is love. Not 
 to fulfill these duties is injustice to the victims of 
 organized injustice. 
 
 We need not hate Germany in the sense that we 
 wish it ill. We have no desire to crush the nation 
 because it is un-Christian. We shall not soil our 
 souls by vengeance. German women shall not suffer 
 at our hands because Belgian women have suffered 
 unmentionable injury from German soldiers. Ger- 
 man civilians shall not be shot because Belgian and 
 French civilians have been shot in batches. German 
 workmen and farmers will not be made slaves of 
 martial law because the workmen and farmers of 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 145 
 
 Belgium, France, Poland, and the Ukraine have 
 been deported and maltreated. Germans need not 
 fear we shall violate treaties because they have made 
 a mockery of treaties. 
 
 Indignation and loathing are not hatred. Self- 
 protection is not vindictiveness. National action for 
 the sake of world-peace is not vengeance. 
 
 Christians do not hate because they fight. We 
 seek not vengeance but international justice. When 
 peace comes we shall ask no punitive suffering. We 
 shall help Germans when Germans will let us help 
 them. Our sense of justice will extend to them as 
 to all the world. 
 
 But such love will not excuse their brutalities or 
 make us indifferent to the danger of the repetition of 
 German crimes. 
 
 We shall love our enemies, but we shall not dis- 
 arm until they are harmless. If they repent and 
 bring forth fruits meet for repentance, we shall wel- 
 come their return to civilization. 
 
 Until that day we shall fight them. For love that 
 seeks to do men good is cowardice when it refuses 
 to prevent them from doing wrong. 
 
146 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 IV 
 
 Religion can serve patriotism by furnishing the 
 moral enthusiasm for organizing an international 
 order that shall make nations into moral units. 
 
 Morality is not born of abstract theories, but of 
 concrete situations. Individual morality has been 
 made possible because there has been an intimate 
 relationship of individuals in a social order sufficient 
 to build up social situations in which human conduct 
 can be standardized, under the control of the whole 
 of which they are a part. The development of 
 customs and institutions has established sanctions 
 and inhibitions which have gradually replaced the 
 reliance upon brute force with which they may have 
 been originally enforced. The institution of the 
 family has developed a morality of the relation of 
 the sexes, in so far as that relationship is clearly seen 
 to be dependent upon the maintenance of the rights 
 of the home. Even in civilizations where this patria 
 potestas has disappeared, the family and particularly 
 the welfare of the child have set certain standards 
 of conduct to which men and women must conform 
 if they are not to suffer social penalties. Honesty 
 is very largely developed in the mutual relations of 
 economic life. Civilizations which have been mili- 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 147 
 
 tary have emphasized honor rather than honesty, 
 but when transformed by commercial and industrial 
 forces they have magnified individual honesty. 
 
 Nations, however, as John Dewey has pointed out, 
 have never been subordinated to group control, other 
 than that of military power. The solidarity of na- 
 tional units in an international society has never been 
 developed. Nor is it likely that the morality of 
 national units will develop until nations act in ac- 
 cordance with the will of a well established world- 
 society. The rise of international law has been a 
 movement in this direction, and, even in its very 
 inchoate situation, is the finest fruit of moral prog- 
 ress. But its development has been consistently 
 hindered by Germany. " For the state," said von 
 Treitschke, the priest and prophet of the Hohenzol- 
 ' lern house, " self-assertion is the greatest of the 
 commandments; for it, this is absolutely moral. 
 And for this reason it must be declared that of all 
 political sins the most abominable and the most con- 
 temptible is weakness; this is, in politics, the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost.'* From such a point of 
 view patriotism is without morality. Might is not 
 only right; it obviates the necessity of discussing 
 right. The present war has made clear that there 
 is no social situation sufficiently unified to place 
 
148 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 effective inhibition against action in accord with 
 this anti-morality. No less a person than Von 
 Kohler, commonly regarded as one of the world's 
 greatest authorities in the field of international law, 
 has distinctly denied that such law exists. He 
 frankly expresses an anti-social view of national 
 relations thoroughly consistent with the egoistic 
 genius of the German state. International law, he 
 insists, cannot exist until there arises some nation 
 with conscience high enough and power great enough 
 to enforce its decisions upon the actions of other 
 nations. Such a nation he disdainfully refuses to 
 see in Russia or France, Great Britain or America. 
 Germany alone, he holds, is the nation with con- 
 science high enough and power great enough to lay 
 its will on other nations and so build up a genuine 
 international law ! 
 
 It requires no argument to see that such a position 
 is only a camouflaged plea for conquest. It recog- 
 nizes no community of practice among nations, no 
 approach to an international consensus. It is simply 
 another way of saying that there must be established 
 a pax teutonica in which all nations must yield to the 
 will of a supreme Germany. Such a view is no more 
 moral than that of any tyranny. Its religious basis, 
 if indeed it claims any, is that of faith in an ethnic 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 149 
 
 v god, and its hope for the future rests entirely upon 
 the inability of other nations to cooperate effectively 
 in a world order. It is no wonder that German 
 patriotism is not international, and no wonder that 
 German religion is boastfully tribal. 
 
 Over against such a view is to be set the expecta- 
 tion thrust upon us by a study of actual human his- 
 tory. The rise of democracies and the spread of 
 representative and responsible government over 
 nearly all the world not ruled by Germany are evi- 
 dences that we already possess an incipient social 
 morality in which the units shall be nations, and in 
 which the controlling social unity is born of na- 
 tional activity. The question as to how far the 
 ideals of individual morality can be carried into the 
 unborn group morality is one which the future alone 
 can decide. But although we cannot see just what 
 this outcome will be, we can at least see the task. 
 The League of Nations of which the democratic 
 states are speaking is certainly the most workable 
 proposal which has yet been made in this connection. 
 That it must at the start rest upon force is no argu- 
 ment against it. The choice is simply as to whether 
 this force shall be used by nations irresponsible to 
 their world, or whether, like the police power of the 
 modern state, it shall be used by the world for the 
 
I5O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 purpose of establishing the sanctions and inhibitions 
 of an international morality. The precise steps 
 which can be taken for the bringing to pass of such 
 an ideal await the decision of the future. But one 
 thing is beyond fair question : such a League of Na- 
 tions will require something more than means to 
 delay war by economic boycott and military hin- 
 drance. Just as religion has served as the great 
 foundation of individual morality, so must religion 
 serve as the basis of the new international morality. 
 The foundations for an international morality, I 
 repeat, are already laid. It is no accident that na- 
 tions which have shaped their recent development 
 upon the principles of democracy should to-day be 
 struggling to restrain the aggression of the anti- 
 democratic government of Germany. The begin- 
 nings of a League of Nations committed to the 
 maintenance of peace already exist. France, Great 
 Britain, and the United States for more than a cen- 
 tury have ordered their relations according to an 
 ever increasing recognition of moral law. As they 
 have grown democratic they have recognized each 
 other's rights. From their intercourse has sprung 
 a group of precedents which have acquired with them 
 all but final authority. In the present war, during 
 our neutrality, Great Britain appealed against us to 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 
 
 decisions establishing our claims against English- 
 men. But Germany has consistently refused such 
 recognition. " We are glad," said Wilhelm Herr- 
 man to a colleague of mine years ago, " to have re- 
 publican principles grow among other nations, for 
 they will grow less efficient in war." As Americans 
 we have no reason to lament that our nation has 
 attempted to live like a gentleman among other na- 
 tions. Our only regret is that our optimism blinded 
 us from seeing that German patriotism was social- 
 ized highway robbery. The Monroe Doctrine may 
 have sprung from motives of self -protection, but 
 thanks to the cooperation of other great democracies, 
 it has included also the protection of weaker neigh- 
 bors. That is a precedent for the internationalism 
 of the future. It is a new group-morality in which 
 nations are the individual actors. It will grow 
 dominant as nations respect the ideals of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 The emphasis here is upon actual religion rather 
 than upon a philosophy of religion or upon a the- 
 ology. The ideals of Christianity must needs be 
 operative, but the propaganda of Christianity as an 
 organized religion will be secondary to these ideals. 
 The one great demand will be for a God equal to the 
 task which such an international morality proposes. 
 
152 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 Such a God cannot be the property of any one nation 
 or of any one civilization. The God of the world 
 must be greater than the gods of the nations. He 
 must be the cosmic God, whose will in human history 
 is consistent with its own operation in other aspects 
 of our cosmic life. 
 
 The moral content given to the idea of such a God 
 cannot be drawn from any highly nationalized re- 
 ligion. A nationalized idea of God will lead to in- 
 ternational polytheism. It is a tribute to the higher 
 religious thinking of the democratic nations that in 
 this war we hear no appeal to the old English God, 
 the old French God, the old Italian God, or the 
 old American God. Such appeals are limited wholly 
 to a people who, finding no moral leadership in a 
 governing class besotted with a belief in materialistic 
 evolution, seek to reenforce the passion of an atavis- 
 tic patriotism by calls upon Odin, old Fritz, and the 
 German God. Puritans carried their guns to church 
 to protect them from Indians ; Germans draw " the 
 shining sword " to force " kultur " upon what to 
 them is a barbarian world. 
 
 It is, of course, clear enough that a patriotism 
 which is belligerently national can have little use for 
 a God of all the nations. The God of Jesus can 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 153 
 
 make no appeal to the German, unless it be to that 
 sentimental piety of Germany that refuses to look 
 upon problems of religion as other than that of the 
 individual life and the preparation for the bliss of 
 heaven. International morality must rest upon the 
 will of a God who is the property of no nation, but 
 who is the father of all men. How else can we gain 
 a true sense of national sin? How else can we see 
 that war is a product of some nation's immoral lust 
 for wealth and power? Without a God of the 
 world, we are at the mercy of a religion prostituted 
 to nationalism. We dare then not pray for justice, 
 for justice must mean that unjust national policies 
 are doomed. A God carried like the Ark into battle 
 by only one army is chained to a nation's cannon and 
 is not worth praying to. We need a God who can 
 further righteousness, not merely give victory to His 
 proprietors. 
 
 When men are ready to submit their differences to 
 the court of super-national morality, religion and 
 patriotism are sobered and hallowed. To such men 
 war is not something to be planned but to be avoided. 
 They will not want their country to win regardless 
 of justice. And if war, through no fault of theirs, 
 comes, they will not pray for the victory of their 
 
154 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 nation but for the victory of the principles of justice 
 their nation has embodied in its institutions and its 
 policies. 
 
 A patriotism that is thus inspired by the God of 
 the universe, revealed as love as well as law, is a 
 patriotism that the world has not fully reached. 
 But it is a patriotism that is in the making. We can 
 already see it as one studies the voluminous religious 
 literature put out by Englishmen since the outbreak 
 of the war. It is this plea for international morality 
 on the basis of Christian ideals that the Germans 
 delight to call hypocrisy ! By the same token the re- 
 fusal of an honest man not to steal is hypocrisy to a 
 highwayman ! 
 
 Nothing better expresses the difference in the two 
 types of patriotism than the refusal of Germany to 
 find in Christianity a basis for international policy. 
 Germans have appealed to Caesar. To a greater 
 than Caesar they must go. 
 
 Swept into a defensive war we sought to avoid 
 by appeals to a moral sense we persistently believed 
 the German government possessed, we need to be- 
 lieve in a God as noble as the ideals for which we 
 fight. For us to carry on this war in the interest of 
 the rights of other nations and at the same time at- 
 tempt to nerve ourselves by prayer to military con- 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 155 
 
 quest would be indeed immoral. A world that is 
 to be made safe for democracy must be a world that 
 is consciously seeking help of a God who is superior 
 to national policies. 
 
 It is here that the church has one of. its greatest 
 opportunities and tasks. It must champion the 
 value and function of ideals in national life. Ger- 
 man writers frankly call such a belief " sentimen- 
 tality." But we know better. Moral and religious 
 ideals are more than soft-heartedness. We shall 
 shrink from the desperate task of protecting the be- 
 ginnings of a better world order if our idealism is 
 weakened by a conception of God and of religion 
 which is indifferent to the moral tasks of a social 
 group acting as a unit. To a genuinely Christian 
 soul the thought of taking the life of another person 
 is abhorrent. But a patriotism which refuses to 
 fight to establish international peace and to protect 
 liberty because of its dislike of violence is aestheti- 
 cism. We must learn that the God of love has no 
 use for the individual who treats his ideals as a 
 luxury and his social duty as inferior to the enjoy- 
 ment of such ideals. Internationalism must be based 
 on a morality, not generically different from that of 
 the individual life, but in which these ideals are con- 
 ceived as belonging to a nation as a whole. And 
 
156 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 this morality must be given drive and passion by 
 faith in a God who is a God of international rela- 
 tions. 
 
 Finally, religion must teach patriotism to see that 
 it is better to give justice than to fight for rights. 
 
 We have already seen that the great causes of war 
 are desire for conquest and economic advantage. 
 If once any sort of international morality be de- 
 veloped, conquest and economic growth at the ex- 
 pense of other nations must cease. Such an ideal 
 for national action involves the national sacrifice 
 which will be the supreme test of a nation's soul. A 
 small nation may be content to remain a small na- 
 tion, provided only that it is permitted to manage 
 its own affairs ; but a strong nation will find it diffi- 
 cult not to use its strength for its own advantage. 
 International competition, the ambition of rulers and 
 commercial classes will combine to decry any appeal 
 to generosity as impracticable. But until a nation 
 develops an ability to withhold its hand from uni- 
 versal success, war will be inevitable. Nations will 
 arm to protect themselves against nations in pro- 
 portion as they suspect an unwillingness to recognize 
 their own right to political and economic self -deter- 
 

 SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 157 
 
 mination. So long as we dare not trust the morals 
 of our neighbors' ambitions we shall arm ourselves 
 against them. No morality can be really established 
 until the principles of democratizing privilege among 
 nations complement the democratizing of privilege 
 between individuals. But any such advance in the 
 relation of nations means that the economic policies 
 of nations must themselves be controlled by princi- 
 ples of justice. The issue is not one of abstract 
 ethical theory, but one of business policies. 
 
 How far shall a nation proceed in undermining 
 another nation's foreign trade ? How far shall na- 
 tions establish tariffs intended to cripple the com- 
 merce of other nations? What shall be a nation's 
 policy in the shipment of its products to other na- 
 tions ? 
 
 Such questions as these touch the very soul of a 
 nation's life. It is easier to fight for an abstract 
 principle than to neglect an opportunity to grow 
 rich. The task of the religious teacher will be 
 vastly more complicated as the sense of international 
 morality develops, for he will be no longer dealing 
 with the simple if perplexing problems of individual 
 conduct, but with the highly complicated question of 
 the priority of moral obligations on the part of a 
 nation. Shall a nation deliberately adopt an inter- 
 
158 PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 national policy which will prevent its citizens grow- 
 ing as rich as the citizens of more favored nations? 
 War and peace as well as morals may hang on the 
 answer. Nor can the right answer be given until a 
 people's estimate of its place in world politics is 
 intelligently moral. 
 
 Democracy in its triumph is exposed to tempta- 
 tions from which democracy struggling for existence 
 is free. The possession of power always brings 
 new moral problems. A nation conscious of its 
 sincere desire to benefit other nations, but forced to 
 maintain that duty by war, must always guard itself 
 against the temptation to make those whom it de- 
 feats the victims of its own powers. A patriotism 
 that is without the capacity to sacrifice is an un- 
 Christian patriotism. Nor does patriotism need re- 
 ligion only in these national sacrifices. No Chris- 
 tian heart has escaped the inner struggle born of the 
 knowledge that a war for the maintenance of human 
 rights means sorrow and suffering and death for 
 those it loves. How many of us during the last few 
 months have found ourselves crying out in agony 
 against the horror of a situation which robs nations 
 of millions of their finest lives, and brings sorrow to 
 millions of innocent hearts ! The hideousness of the 
 moment is too great for words. To describe it is 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM 1 59 
 
 impossible. Yet we, like other nations, have reached 
 this Calvary. But our sacrifices are not selfishness. 
 We pray to our God for victory and for the protec- 
 tion of those who are dear to us, not because we 
 wish to gain more territory or indemnities. It is im- 
 possible for me to understand how a genuinely Chris- 
 tian soul can pray for the success of its nation's 
 army when it knows that success means the horrors 
 of Belgium, and Poland, and Serbia, and Armenia. 
 How can any person, be he never so patriotic, justify 
 a prayer that God should be on the side of those who 
 undertake to crush weaker people, loot their re- 
 sources, and deport men and women into slavery 
 tempered only by disease and death? That such 
 a patriotism leads to sacrifice cannot be denied, but 
 it is a sacrifice which the savage can duplicate, ac- 
 companied by a brutality of which a savage would be 
 ashamed. 
 
 Those of us who this day share a world-struggle in 
 which our sons are offering their lives without 
 thought of national aggrandizement, solely for the 
 protection of human rights, can have no such qualms 
 of conscience as we look to God for comfort and 
 courage in our moments of sacrifice. For such a 
 patriotism is sacrificial in the truly Christian sense. 
 The brutality of the battle field has been thrust upon 
 
I6O PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION 
 
 us. The need that our victory should bring sorrow 
 to other lives is not of our making. We train our 
 armies to do their terrible duties, not that we may 
 glory in their victory, but rather because we have 
 been forced to see that this is the only method by 
 which the will of God can be done. Sad and tragic 
 as is the moment, we dare lift our hearts unafraid to 
 the God of justice. Our sacrifice and the sacrifice 
 of those who are dearer to us than life itself, are a 
 part of that strange process in which evil must be 
 repressed in vicarious suffering in order that the 
 good already accomplished may be preserved and 
 extended. 
 
 In such moments we can look to the God of bat- 
 tles no more than we can look to Moloch. We 
 willingly bear our share of suffering, looking for 
 help to Him who uplifts those who consecrate them- 
 selves to the cause of establishing justice. Our na- 
 tional life becomes ennobled as we pray for victory. 
 Our national soul becomes chastened as we find our- 
 selves suffering for the cause of others. We find 
 ourselves looking to the Christ of Calvary no longer 
 as one who in some mysterious fashion offers sacri- 
 fice to divine honor, but as one who has revealed the 
 divine will for the progress of fraternity. To the 
 God of Jesus we pray, not to the God of the Judges ; 
 
SERVICE OF RELIGION TO PATRIOTISM l6l 
 
 to the God who carries us forward through our 
 suffering to a larger realization of national mission 
 and to a nobler vision of international morality. 
 
 If we speak less boastfully of such a God than does 
 the German emperor of " the old German God," it 
 is because our hearts are hushed in the solemnity of 
 our new faith. |Our patriotism is ennobled not 
 alone by our suffering, but by the hope that we are 
 carrying on the divine will which ultimately will be 
 done upon earth. Our patriotism looks to no tribal 
 God, nor even a Weltgeist enmeshed ultimately in a 
 national Kultur. Rather while our hearts are filled 
 with groanings that cannot be uttered do we face the 
 horrors wrought by a patriotism that has discarded 
 the ideals of the one and only God, and seek to bear 
 bravely the anxiety and the sorrow of the day. For 
 we are convinced that out from this moment of 
 struggle there shall come a patriotism that dares 
 pray and fight for a nation re-dedicated to human 
 welfare, both within and without its boundaries. 
 
 THE END 
 
 FEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMIBIOA 
 
History of New Testament 
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