Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1918-10-11
Ne Evening Star New.paper company
Churchless and Gasolineless.

Churchless and Gasolineless.
With a churchless and gasoineless
Sunday there is pointedly on that day
@no place to go but home"
The gasolineless Sunday confines the
conservation of gasoline to the only
day in which the week day workers can
enjoy with their families a thorough,
wholesome fresh-air bath per automo-
bile, Strengthening them to defy in
fuenza and all other noxious germs.
Men and women of wealth and leisure
can thus recreate any day and every
day, and do not feel so much the Sun
day deprivation.
There is force in the suggestion that
the wiser way to conserve gasoline will
surely eliminate this unjust discrimi-
nation against the weekday workers.
This conservation (after the analogy
of the conservation of sugar, saaa he
accomplished by allowing to each con-
sumner a certain amount of gasoline
weekly to be used on any day or in
any way the consumer pleases. Or it
may be effected in some other way.
It should not continue indefinitely to
be accomplished through the unjustly
discriminating device of gasolineless
Sundays.
Among the virtues of the gasoline
less Sunday were the enforced peace,
quiet and safety of the streets, so be-
fitting the day of rest, and the tenden-
cy to send the people churchward in
stead of, perehance, to Baltimore.
And now churchless Sunday closes
the churches also.
The reasoning was doubtless logical
and sound upon which the original dras-
tic, sweeping order is based, which
includes the churches in the list of
crowded places of public assembly to
be prohibited temporarily in the in
terest of the public health. Perhaps
no exception could at that time we'll
be made. But at the earliest possible
moment the order should be modified
so that there may be no more church
less Sundays.
Overcrowded, ill-ventilated, infuen-
za-threatened departments cannot be
emptied because these assemblages are
essential to win the war and to whip
the kaiser. Church assemblages are es-
sential to victory in the spiritual war
as we'll as the physical war and to con-
quer sin, satan and the kaiser. In both
cases war-risks are to be disregarded
in battling for vital ends.
But there is very little danger to life
to be faced in church assemblages to
save the soul. As a rule our churches
are high-ceilinged, we'll ventilated and
not crowded. The clergyman's COM
plant is that they are too often half
deserted for the golf links, or for long
automobile rides, or for social fes-
tivities.
To pronounce an untitled church o
crowded assembly, menacing the pub
lie health, and on that ground to close
it altogether is an act of grim and
ekuel irony.
IN the face of modern distractions
the church-going habit is ordinarily
hard to form and easy to break. But
when war RACES and pestilence threat
ems men and women turn naturally to
God and to Gods house. Church minis
trations with their reminders Of the
divine promises soften the grief Of
those bereaved by war, and strengthen
in every one the spirit of religious
and patriotic devotion and sacrifice
for ones God and for ones country.
An integral part of Christianity is
public worship, the collective petition
ing of the Almighty. "Where two or
three are gathered together in my
name there am l in the midst of them"
Are we to forbid for very long the
gathering together of men and women
in Christ's name for communion with
their Savior, to pray collectively for
victory in the war and, for the checking
Of threatened epidemic, to be deliv-
cred from plague and pestilencei
It should be assured that church
services are short and so distributed
through the day that no service is
crowded; and that the church build
ings are properly heated and thorough
ly ventilated. If epidemic actually
RACES simple anti-infuenza masks may
be worn. With these precautions the
churches should be put on the footing
of essential war industries and of fac
tors which tend to check and not to
promote an epidemic.
Rightly used the churches through
their influence on the minds and souls
Of men can do more to win the war
even than clerk assemblages in gov
eminent departments. Rightly used,
the churches will furnish . minimum
Of promotion agency to distribute in.
fuenza germs and a maximum contri-
button to destroy the panic fear in
which an epidemic lives and moves and
has its being.