clergymen joined associations, founded by laymen, which endeavoured to
maintain peace and to secure arbitration upon quarrels, and one Sunday
in the year was set aside by the pulpits for the vague gospel of peace.
But in almost all cases these movements were purely secular in origin,
and the few movements of a religious nature have been obviously founded
only to keep the idealism linked with a particular Church, have had no
great influence, and have been too vague in their principles to have had
any effect upon the growing chances of a European war. There is no doubt
that the Churches have remained almost dumb while Europe was preparing
for its Armageddon.

I speak of the clergy, but in our time the responsibility cannot be
confined to these. Even in the Church of England the laity have now a
considerable influence, and in the other Protestant bodies they have
even more power in the control of policy. No doubt the duty of
initiative and of work in such matters lies mainly with the more
leisured and more official interpreters of the Christian spirit, yet it
would be absurd to restrict the criticism to them. The various Christian
bodies, as a whole, have confronted a very grave and imminent danger
with remarkable indifference, although that danger could become an
actual infliction only by seriously immoral conduct on the part of some
nation. They saw, as we all saw, the vast armies preparing for the fray,
the diplomatists betraying an increasing concern about the relations
between their respective nations, the press embittering those relations,
and a pernicious and provocative literature inflaming public opinion. We
all saw these things, and knew that a war of appalling magnitude would
follow the first infringement of peace. Yet I think it will hardly be
controverted that the Churches made no serious effort to avert that
calamity from Europe. They were deeply concerned about unbelief, about
personal purity, about the cleanness of plays and books and pictures,