The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-09-01
WAR AND GOD .

One O1JeI1 IlSdTu, uuE1llB LL1c Wokp that, terrible as 1t was, it at least brought people back to God. The truth of this is, of course something that cannot accurately be meas ured. How many have returned? Is the return permanent? Or was 1t merely religious enthusiasm, churn- ed up by fear and lonelinness. Will those who filled the churches on D~Day and V-J Day walk blithely past the doors as the memory of the war dimsP The Destroyers' con- tend that religion is merely an out- let for emotion and lacks any spirit ual significance. The reason they put forward is the most shallow of all explanations - there is no spirit.
 The Price of War
 And this is one of the terrible consequences of war - the disillu- sionment of so many. We are stun ned by the millions who go to their graves before their lives are well begun. This is the awful price of war - cost that cannot be ball. anced against the meager pension that accrueS to wife or mother.
 But more tragic, perhaps, than
 this, are the lives that continue in
 emptiness. There arc men who
 pinned their hopes on a leader,
 or a cause. It may even be the
 Nazi, who discovered in defeat
 that the swaStika was a twisted
 cross. Can We hope that the
 shock of defeat will straighten out the cross for him, and enable
 him to focus his vision on its
 meaning? Or what of the ardent
 red brother, who thought to find
 salvation in another twisted cross,
 the sickle and hammer? These,
 the disilIusiOned. must also be
 added to the awful cost of war.
 This disillusionment is expressed. in a book by Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar.' Koestler is young and intelligent European who saw the rise of 'statism' and used his ability to fight 1t. He is not convinced that he has been Wc- torious.
 The book is extraordinary, not so much for its content, but for its title. For the yogi and the commits sar are the two representatives of modern man. It is amazing that a man of our Christian culture should be unable to find anything in our Christian thought to typify an ideal or a way of life. That he should have to turn to the east for the only possible alternatives is, per- hapS, a commentary on our educa- ton.
 Tn the east he finds the yogi as representative of one way of life. The yogi strives to loose himself, his very consciousness, in contem- plation. He forces his thoughts and attention on some exterior ob- ject, 1t may be his idea of God, or the sun, or 1t may be merely his big toe. By such concentration he hopes to solve the problem of life by obliteration. In the east, too, Koestler, finds the commissar. He Is the direct opposite of the yogi. For him life is action, the &C., complishment of a plan handed down from his superiors. Nothing interfereS with his work. Morality, fear, reverence, all are lacking. Nothing matters but the fulflllment of the plan His work can be mayhem, or May-Day celebration. of the yogi seems to intrigue him.
 we Have the Answer"
 Has there been no competent ex- precision of our Christian ideals that would serve as guide to the modern intellectual? Must we be forced to take these - the yogi or the con1- missar as our guides?
 There has been. The encyclicals of the Popes, for example, have been down through the centuries, a cer- tain and intelligent guide, for so- cial action. Perhaps the Father of Christendom suffers from his own virtues. For his pronounce ments are offered, not with a sword, but by a hand raised in benediction. The world, for some reason, is never impressed, by mildness. Noth- ing but violence seems to impress man. Nothing but the freakishness of yogi seems to intrigue him.
 The church recognizes at once
 the importance ard the unimpOr-
 tance of the world. She bids us
 to make our welfare in the here
 after the chief concern of our
 lives. But she is not unaware of
 our welfare here below. For the