Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1923-01-03
Clergymen Warn
Against New War

| AiiO AOaS<AASot Noty Va thS ~iiA
Church, a group of 100 prominent
Americans, including many we'll
known clergymen, educators, BUSH
ness men and editors, today issued
a New Year appeal to church pep-
pie throughout the nation. They de-
clare another war is inevitable UNI
less better mind can prevail"
Among the signers are William
J Bryan, Frank A. Vanderlip, Roger
w. Babson. George w. Wickersham,
Cardinal O'Connell. Nehemiah Boyn-
ton, chairman of the International
Church Committee of World ALI
ance; Arthur ]. Brown. secretary Of
the Presbyterian Board OF Foreign
Missions; Kenyon Il. Butterfield,
president of the Massachusetts, Agri-
cultural College; John b. Clark, OF
the Carnegie Endowment for Inter-
national Peace; Professor Irving
Fisher of Yale University; John p.
Frey, editor of the Moulders Journal,
Cincinnati; Bishop Thomas f. Gailor,
OF the Protestant Episcopal Church:
Harriet b. Laidlaw. of the Women's
Pro- League Council: Shalier Math-
ews, dean Of the Divinity School Of
Chicago University; President
Thwing, of Western Reserve Univer-
sity; Miss Mary f. Woolley, Presi-
dent of Mount Holyoke College; Mrs.
Philip North Moore, President Ma
tional Council of Women; Mrs. Percy
b. Pennybacker, President Chautau-
qua Woman's Club; Judge Henry
Wade Rogers, of the Circuit Court.
New York; John +. Mott, General
Secretary of the International Y. M.
c: A., and many of the most promin-
cnt Episcopal and Methodist Bishops
and other leading ministers of al
most every denomination.
The appeal, which is given out
through the World Alliance for In
ternational Friendship through the
Churches, follows:
1.-THE present situation in inter-
national affairs. involving as ii
does the imminent peril of war,
must give concern to every thought
full Christian. After a devastating
conflict which has cost millions OF
lives, created unreasonable hatred
and piled up debt of so dollars for
every minute of the time since Christ
was born, the nations of the earth,
apparently having learned nothing
and forgotten nothing. are once more
playing the old game of competitive
imperialism and competitive ARM
ament. The Church of Christ was
severely blamed for the occurrence OF
the last war.
That the Gospel should have been
so long on the earth and yet should
not have prevented the. great catas-
trophe with all it's hideous cruelty
and suffering was n charge agalnsA
the Church so serious that all
thoughtful ministers, felt it's force
and were driven defensively to meet
it. Even more will another war bring
down upon the Church of Christ the
charge of moral cowardice and fatal
inefficiency.
"Yet another war is being pre-
pared in the tindictive hatreds, the
nationalistc ambitions, the schemes
of racial and imperial self-aggrand-
i.ement which mark the worlds in
tcrnational relationships. The spirit
OF good will and sincere cooperation
for the welfare of mankind as
whole is so lamentably weak, is so
openly scoffed at in influential
quarters, and expectations of war
are so freely voiced and preparations
for it so frankly pushed, that an
other war is inevitable unless a
better mind can speedily prevail.
There are some among us, of
whom the signatories of this appeal
from a small group. who regard war
as the most ruinous organized sin
which mankind now faces; who are
sure that the war system and the
Christian Gospel cannot PERMANENT
ly abide together on the same earth;
who see clearly that the spirit of war
and the spirit of the Gospel are anti
thetica!, the one representing what
the other hates and would destroy:
who recognize that war is futile as a
means of furthering Christ's King
dom, even where the end sought is
righteous and where the spirit of the
combatants is sacrifical.
"Our position in this appeal does
not involve theoretical pacifism; we
are not concerned to deny the neces-
sity of using force. massed force. it
may be. in an emergency, nor of
moderate military organization for
defensive purposes. But tho war sys-
item is not an appeal to force in an
emergency-it is a long drawn out
and deliberate preparation for the use
Of every known means of cruel and
collective destruction. 1t rests upon
the assumption, that the welfare of
one people involves the ruiz: of anoth-
or and it plans far ahead of the event
to be able to compass that ruin. 1t
ton OF the world into isolated and
armed peoples, suspicious of each
other, hating each other, waiting to
fall upon each other. instead of
sanely cooperating peoples finding
the best interests of all fulfilled in a
decent, peaceable and reasonable fell
lowship.
1--WE will not believe that mankind
is so deficient in character and in
telligencc as to make the rational
solution of our international pro-
blcms impossible and to commit us
to the continued rule of insane war.
hatred and collective destruction.
And we are certain that unless the
Church of Christ takes now a clear
and consistent stand on this matter
Of life and death to our civilization
and to the world she will merit the
contempt Of men and the judgment
of God.