Chaplains on War

What is your sober judgment about war, twelve years after the Armistice?

Presbyterians throughout the U. S. who served as chaplains during the War were sent that question by the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education. Last week the Board had a mass of answers. Every former chaplain declared in one way or another that "never again would he participate in war or approve war." Examples:

"I am disillusioned. ... I now see that the War arose chiefly as the result of deep-rooted economic competition to control the raw materials and markets of the world. For the conflagration, all the nations were guilty together. ... I see a world in which more money is being spent for armaments than at any other period in human history, and that, too, at a time of acute financial depression when millions of men are on the verge of starvation. ... I am convinced that the Church must disentangle itself from the business of war."--Dr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary of the Federal Council of Churches in America.

"Every fact which has since come to light, every development of the past decade, has confirmed my conviction that the temporary checks which the war method achieves are dearly paid for by the avalanche of loss which overwhelms both vanquished and victors in the aftermath." --Professor Bruce Curry, Union Theological Seminary, Manhattan.

"Those of us who came back from France know now what war is. The mask has been stripped away from the War and we see how futile, how unChristian, how damnable the whole business is. The ghost of the past makes some of us feel bloodguilty in the sight of God."--Dr. Ray Freeman Jenney, Park Central Presbyterian Church, Syracuse, N. Y.

"I shall not, I think, be sure enough there is any sense in it to fight in it till 15 years after it is all over. No chaplaincy, either!"--Dr. Eliot Porter, Lincoln, Ill., who commanded a British trench motor battery.

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