The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-03
ATKINS WINS FIRST !. PRIZE IN CARNEGIE
 ESSAY CONTEST Providence. Pastor Gets a Thousand Dollars For
 Essay on Peace SAYS HUMANITY HAS FIGHTING EDGE YET Liberty Finds It Necessary to Make Its Way With Sword-Religious Tolerance Was Won By the
 Sword, He Says

l New York, May a-(Special 1.-The prize winners in the peace essay contest held by the Carnegie Church Peace union. which closed January of this year, were announced today. The first prize of slO0C is awarded to the Rev. Gaius Glenn At kins pastor of the Central Congregational church of Providence, R. L, well known as a leader among the Congregationalists in New England. The judges were Rob ert Underwood Johnson. former editor of Century; Canon George William Doug las of the cathedral of St. John the Di- vine. and Dr. Washington Gladden. of Columbus, o. The prize awarded to Dr. Atkins was offered to. "any pastor of any church in the United States.
 Three prizes offered to students in theo- logical seminaries were awarded to the following: R, w. Nelson. Phillips uni versity. East Enid Okla. P V. Blanch- ard Andover seminary, Cambridge, Mass, and R. Niebuhr, Yale School of Religion, Lincoln, III.
 The 10 prizes offered to church mem- bers Were all awarded to men. They are as follows: Hoyt H. Hudson, Couer d Alene, Ida; Bryant Smith, Boulder, Colo; Oliver c. Moles, Edgewater, Colo. Philip Arnold. Cranston. Ill. Benjamin Lloyd Knight, Iowa City, la; Roy Fran cis Howes, Palo Alto, Cal; Arthur Lock- wood Johnson. San Jose, Cal; Charles L. Stewart. Urbana, Ill.; Walter B. Brock, Bethesda. Md. and Clyde Eagleston, OK ford, Tex
 Some of the striking paragraphs in the essay of Dr Atkins. which is en- titled, The Causes of Var are as fol- lows:
 Dr. Atkins Essay
 This war is teaching us first of all that humanity has not lost it's fighting edge. The hopes and fears of those who believed that nae old fighting instincts were dead or so blunted as to have lost their primitive and terrible power are alike disappointed; we are offered from day to day proofs that men generally are capable of displaying a finer and more desperate kind of courage than ever before.
 So our world being what it is we see how necessary it has been for liberty again and again to make it's way with the sword. Religious wars are always quite as truly wars for religious freedom as wars of religious intolerance; a good part of all that fighting which we owe to inn perlalism is only the noble and saving resistance to those who refuse to he | imperialized. It is not too much to say that there is no real freedom today whether in the administration of the state, in the unhampered worship of God or in the operation of democracy itself that has not been won by fighting The measure of religious tolerance which holds in Europe today was. to begir with. at least won by the sword; at the edge of the sword Holland cut herself free from Spain: at the edge of the sword the divine right of kings was hopelessiy and finally beaten down in English soil at the edge of the sword the better part of the French revolution got room and chance for life; at the edge of the sword the American colonies freed themselves from their oyerzealous mother; at the edge of the sword slavery in America was ended and paid for; and no prophet is wise enough to say that this long and heroic chapter in the history of hu- ms nUy is finally closed.
 Americas Army
 ''N-c here in America have maintained q standing army which may be dismissed as negligible. have reluctantly built a re- spect-commandlng navy, and have on the whole been perhaps too careless of our ma tional defense, not because we are un- willing to pay the price or fight. if need be. there is nothing in our national his. tory to prove that ws have been afraid to fight. but because on the whole we have instinctively given expression to the peg making, peace-maintaining, peace trusting forces which are implicit in the life and temper of democracy.
 Republican France left to herself would have forgotten her military ideals and ambitions and have even foregone that cordon of steel lying over against her northern frontiers. France was rap idly becoming a peace-loving nation. and another generation without war would have gone far toward transforming her national character"
 Ir his conclusion Dr. Atkins makes a plea for educational activities toward the end that the causes of war may be elimi- mated He points out in this direction the opportunity of the church. At the heart of our American life" he says. lis the American church: free from entangline alliances with the state and it's parties with no cause to serve save the causes of an ultimate justice and regnant right eousness, she has leadership, power, in- fiuence to feed into the life of this na ton an idealsm which shall cast its light far down the futures broadening way and make plain the path along which the people shall come"
 A similar contest is now being held by the union, to close December 31.
 
 {: Await Answer From Vienna