The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1916-05-25
WOULD ABOLISH WAR
Says Most Fundamentally Religious
Duty Before Us IS to Devise
Pacific Means Of Settling
international Disputes.

Al0 le0N. IItueIiCh Lee IMaTyOn,
chaplain Of Kemper Hall, is in receipt
Of q letter from the League to En-
force Peace lii which William H. Taff.
ex-president of the United States. sgrg i
every rector and minister who breaches
a sermon in Kenosha on sunday to
incorporate the idea Of peace into ii.
This will doubtless be done in most
instances.
A special telegram to the News from
] New York reads as follows:
Ex-President Taft, as head Of a
special committee on church co-opera-
ton, has written to 10000 ministers
throughout the country, asking them to
embody in their sermons tomorrow an
explanation Of the program Of the
League to Enforce Peace, which is to
hold its first annual assemblage on
May 26 and a.
"Other signatures to the letter are
| those of L. r. Wilson, Methodist bishop
of New York; Smaller Mathews, presi-
dent of the Federal Council Of he
Churches of Christ in America; the Rev.
Charles s. MacFarland, the Rev. J. B.
Remensnyder, Rev Arthur il Brown,
Hamilton Holt and Fred B. Smith.
/ Mr.. Taft is president Of the League
to Enforce Peace, which was formed at
Philadelphia, in Independence Hall lest
June, when a platform was adopted
which proposed the establishment Of an
international court and council of con-
citation by aEleague of nations, which
should pledge its joint economic and
military forces to prevent any sigma
tory from beginning hostilities or de-
claring war, over any question until it
had first tried judicial methods.
Enclosed with the letter from Mr..
Taft and others, was an sOpen Letter
to the Ministers of America on the
Moral Challenge Of the War; which
reads in part as follows:
s'The present war has challenged the
moral ingenuity Of the world. For
years we have preached the ideals of
i
against war. While the world was at
peace it was easy to feel that we had
done our duty and discharged our re-
sponsibihty when we had lifted our
voice against war in pulpit, in univer-
sity, and in the market place. A long
period of peace had lulled the world
into a false security. We did not feel
a driving urgency about our work for
international peace. We We're going
along quietly doing what we could to
educate public opinion againstxwar, but
we did not feel an immediate hesponsi-
bility for devising actual machinery of
international organization that would
make war less probable.
sThen there burst upon the world
overnight the most brutal, the most
ruthless, and the most gigantic war of
history. The. favor. of human brother
hood that the Christian forces Of the
world had been watering and nurturing
for centuries was Withered by the hot
/ breath of hate. The result of years of
struggle for social justice, for democ-
racy, and for larger opportunity for the
common man, were thrown on the scrap
and all the energies of mind and heart
were harnessed to the machinery Of
war.
SsThis war has taught us that the
most urgent, the most necessary, the
most fundamentally religious duty now
before us is in the devising and adopt
| ing Of some method other than war for
settling the disputes that are bound
/ to arise between nations.
/ 3sThe best thinking Of the world as
well as all the lessons Of history
indicate that the only meth 0
by W h j c h the dangers Of var
can be ally eliminated,
is by substituting law for war among
nations just as we have substituted law
for war among individuals within the
nations.
There is no reasonable ground to
hope that the nations Of the world will
at this stage go so far as to disarm
and create an international army and
navy to police the world We have not
got that far in international affairs.
But we. have got to the point where
there is ground to hope that at the md
Of this war the community Of nations
will do what every primitive commun-
ity sooner or later does, namely: In a
primitive community when the hoaog
Of the women and the property Of the
town are no longer safe from outlaws,
all men, even the most peace loving,
unite in forming a Vigilance Commit
| tee, in which they agree to use their