"Naked and Appalling"

Last fortnight, in his annual message to Congress, President Roosevelt linked with high-sounding words the fortunes of democracy and religion (TIME, Jan. 16). This week U. S. Protestantism's foremost journal, after ruminating the President's words, spewed them forth. It found in them a "naked and appalling meaning." The Christian Century declared that Mr. Roosevelt's speech was "like the attempt of a Mohammedan mullah to raise desert tribesmen to frenzy by preaching another jehad."

''To the President," said the Christian Century, "there apparently seemed left only one appeal with sufficient emotional content, sufficient power to paralyze men's rational processes, to carry his program for limitless armament spending through Congress.*. . . Every Christian voice should immediately and in unmistakable terms let Congress and the President know that this attempt to drag religion through the hell of a new holy war is resented and repudiated by the churches. . . . This [is] revelation of his utter lack of comprehension of the mind of at least the Protestant churches. . . ."

* To most Congressmen, the President's half-billion-dollar arms program was less steep than they had expected (see p. 7).

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