AFTER THE WAR

War is destructive. Concerning this fact, history bears eloquent testimony. However, amid its processes of destruction, forces and values are revealed that are ever destined to affect succeeding generations and their civilization.

A holocaust of human life is always terrifying, tragic or inspiring.

In the present war the world-wide sacrifices, suffering and destruction are so appalling in magnitude that they defy comprehension. The stupendous toll that is being taken of human life involving both youth and genius and sparing neither age nor innocence; the total obliteration in certain parts of Europe not only of the cumulative treasures of art, science and industrythe inheritance of centuries of human endeavor and aspiration-but also the obliteration of all signs of civilization, staggers the human imagination. And the end is not yet.

In saying this we but faintly suggest the price this generation is compelled to pay and still must pay for its effort to destroy autocracy and give the nations a chance to establish democracy among their people.

When the fury of battle gives place to the arts of peace which under God will

NO. 10

certain

probably begin to discover blessings bestowed upon mankind by this greatest of all conflicts. Much that men cherished, including lives, property and treasure and sacred association, will have been destroyed, but there will also have been cast into the vast discard other and seemingly lesser things. Their loss will be our gain. They were impedimenta in the way of human progress. Into this discard perhaps will go wrong conceptions of human rights; unjust economic arrangements; certain stupid philosophies of life; tepid temporizings with moral obligations, individual and social; reactionary and depressing systems of theology; narrow bigotries which had warped the conscience, dulled the efficiency and crippled the usefulness of organized religion.

It may take years for a chastened world, sad, bereaved and stunned, to appreciate the larger opportunity thus offered for a fuller expression of life.

The dawn of a new day will surely break, and shed a purer light upon men's

lives and reveal a new heaven and a new earth. As autocracy must give way to democracy, so must sacerdotalism give place to evangelicalism.

possible influence that American religious thought and service may exercise. upon France and Italy and later, possibly, upon Russia. With the steady and increasing overflow of American troops into the various war zones, there will go with it an increased number of religious workers, clerical and lay, men and women. This means that the freer and less trammeled conceptions of Christianity that have developed among the Protestant and evangelical religious bodies of the United States will have an opportunity to exercise a liberalizing influence upon those among whom they work. They will doubtless afford a demonstration of applied Christian service that will make a profound impression upon the less pliable forms of organized Christianity that have survived among and dominated the Latin countries. One of the remarkable features of the whole situation is the facility with which the Y. M. C. A. has enrolled hundreds of ministers of all Protestant denominations in its relief, recreational and religious departments, a work of tremendous proportions and one destined, together with the efforts of the regular chaplains of the American. Army, to enforce a spirit of co-operation, mutual understanding and a liberalism in specific organizations. This will do much to save the Church for democracy. Protestantism will be revived to a great extent in countries where it has suffered its greatest persecutions. A liberalized Protestantism and an unshackled Catholicism must work together to accommodate organized Christianity to the period of reconstruction in political, economic, scientific and religious organizations throughout the world. Sectarianism must rid itself of bigotry and Catholicism of sacerdotalism. The world will demand of all Churches a more Christlike evangelicalism.

RELIGIOUS FEATURE

the Y. M. C. A. The

Y. M. C. A. is the or

ganization that receives and spends the money, enlists workers, clerical and lay, of many denominations, does the work, gives the soldier his recreation, looks after his comfort when he is on permission, and even mails his letters, written on red-triangle paper. Church unity, in the sense, at least, of Protestant unity, is already attained. It is the Y. M. C. A.

Meanwhile the Y. M. C. A. is not the Church and the activities of the Y. M. C. A. are very slightly religious activities. It is social service, vaguely colored by religion, but free from dogma and from sectarian difference.

It may be that this social service, colored by religion, free from sect and dogma, is what the average layman wishes. He is getting it. When he returns to his home Church, however, he will get it no longer. His family here are learning about it. They do not find it in Church, either. It is the form into which the religious emotions called forth by the war seem to run, but, for the historic and organized denominations which form. Moreover, it is doubtful if it can we know, it is probably an impossible be a permanent form. The Y. M. C. A., of course, does not pretend to be a Church. The needs and enthusiasms of war time give the Y. M. C. A. a very great impulse. Later, in peace, this impulse will subside. The Y. M. C. A. will no longer be able to keep up its own enthusiasm. It will come back on the Churches for support. Yet will the generation which has temporarily accepted the Y. M. C. A. as its religion, ever again become deeply interested in the religion of the Churches? If not, then the net result of this strange situation will be a general religious decline or reconstruction. Perhaps a real revival of religion