The Telegraph Book of Readers' Letters from the Great War (26 page)
Read The Telegraph Book of Readers' Letters from the Great War Online
Authors: Gavin Fuller
9 December 1915
SIR â Have any special arrangements been made for stray khakis on Christmas Day? This year as last, many thousands will be feasted and amused, but not all. I happened to spend the greater part of last Christmas Day in the Strand and at Victoria. I talked to two âPrincess Pat's', a man from Carlisle and one from the Tweed, among others. And the general opinion was, âWhat a dull hole London is when you know no one, and have nowhere to go.'
Yours truly,
C. Sutcliffe Marriott
94 Boundary Road, N.W.
11 December 1915
SIR â The article which you have published today from Sir Malcolm Morris suggests certain considerations applicable to other fields than that which he traverses. He gives weighty reasons why young medical students should not be enlisted for the war, and I think his letter will carry conviction to many minds. It is absolutely necessary, in order that the medical service should be kept at its present high rate of efficiency, that young men should be allowed to finish their course, and that meanwhile they should be regarded as âwar workers' quite much as those who make munitions.
But can Sir Malcolm Morris's arguments be extended to other professions and departments of industry? Can they, for instance, be applied to the younger members of the priesthood? I know that here I am treading on rather dangerous ground, and that the problem has been rendered unnecessarily delicate by being mixed up with the question as to what Christianity means, and what is, or ought to be, its essential spirit. We shall only confuse plain issues if we insist on bringing in wider themes. We have not to deal with subjects of theory or philosophical estimates of the place of religion in a world system, but with plain, practical points which everyone can understand and appreciate. It is on this ground I venture to put aside the opinion, however dignified or magisterially expressed, of archbishops and other ecclesiastical authorities. They, no doubt, are technical experts
in their way. But they rarely are men of the world or can give practical judgments on plain matters of fact.
My contention is that in the present crisis of our fate the younger clergy should, so far from being dissuaded or left to decide the matter according to their own consciences, be encouraged in every way voluntarily to offer themselves for military service. I suppose I need not argue this on grounds of civic duties â incumbent on every citizen of military age â nor yet justify the profession of arms as one of the highest of human callings. So long as patriotism is a virtue, it must in all senses be a noble and praiseworthy thing, in fact, a moral duty, to defend one's country in war; while the suggestion that a clergyman is âa man of peace' need not embarrass us, considering that at the present moment the truest worshipper of peace is the man who is resolutely bent on prosecuting the campaign to the only legitimate and possible end.
But there are two special reasons why young clergymen should enlist, one of which affects them and the other the older members of their calling. Let me begin with the second reason. It will not be denied, I imagine, that there are vast numbers of clergy of mature age who are quite able to discharge the duties of ministers of religion with admirable efficiency. I will go further. It is notorious that many of them are at present in penurious circumstances, while, at the same time, they are entitled on the score of character and work to preferment â in other words, to a better life wage. Surely this is a consideration which might weigh with the heads of a Church who are well
aware on what a bare pittance some of the clergy â who have long since passed their youth â are forced to maintain themselves and keep up the status of gentlemen. If the younger members become soldiers, there will be more room left for earnest and conscientious men of mature age to earn on their life tasks in less needy circumstances. As for these younger members themselves, is there a single practical reason why they should not freely and joyfully offer themselves to fight their country's battles? They are young men, the red blood of youth flows in their veins, they have faith in the destiny of their race. Do they believe in goodness, and justice, and truth? Their country's cause is just, and good, and true. Are they Christians? Then for Heaven's sake let them gird their swords on their thighs and fight that Christ's Gospel be established on the ruins of the utterly Pagan and immoral creed of Prussia. For years the provost of Eton was a major commanding the Eton Volunteer Corps, which was technically called the 2nd Bucks Volunteer Battalion. I can imagine no finer example. To tell clergymen that they belong to a sacred order which exempts them from a citizen's duty is to tithe mint, and anise and cummin, and forget the weightier things of the law. It is to bid them acquiesce in a dominion of brutality and injustice and lust. War in a just cause is too fine an ideal for young clerics to neglect and pass by on the other side, as though it were none of their business. It was the Levite and the Pharisee who passed by on the other side when a wounded man was lying on their road.
Faithfully yours,
Emeritus
London
14 December 1915
Duty and Privilege
SIR â I agree with your correspondent âEmeritus'. We are now face to face with first principles, and must not allow side issues to hide them. Is this war right or wrong? If it is right, if we have been forced into it, as the evidence most clearly shows, and the only alternative to fighting is to sit down under German dominance, i.e., under the rule of a country which has openly stated in the writings and words of its Emperor, generals and most distinguished professors that the only moral law it recognises in the government of a country is âmight is right' â then surely it is a duty and privilege for all men who are deserving of that highly valuable title to draw the sword, and not to leave it to others to do so for them.
How can clergymen ever hope to have any influence with their people in the future who have let slide the greatest opportunity a man can have â that of making âthe great sacrifice' for a noble cause? How can a clergyman in a Church which teaches self-sacrifice as the great Christian virtue tell his people to exhibit this principle, while he does not act on it himself? Let the clergy offer. Let the King decide on what kind of service they shall be sent.
Your obedient servant,
Archdeacon
SIR â The Christian religion does two things:
1. It does as it would be done by.
2. It defends the weak.
If a clergyman on an open moor at midnight were attacked by two highwaymen and two of his brother clergymen were to appear on the scene, what would their duty be as Christians? It would be (1) to do as they would be done by, and (2) to defend the weak. Would it not? In that case their immediate duty would be to set to work to fight and vanquish the highwaymen, even if the fighting ended in death for one or more. That would be their plain duty, and they would do it â bishop or no bishop. If the two clergymen did not fight, they would act the part of the priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan; and they would be the very kind of mean and miserable fellows whom Jesus held up to contempt and odium in that parable.
But if the victim of attack were not a clergyman but, say, a tailor, or a young girl, the Christian obligation to defend the one or the other would be just the same, would it not? How can any mere word logic set this plain thing of duty aside?
Well, then, was not weak and unoffending Belgium attacked by two strong highwaymen â Germany and Austria? Was not Franco attacked? Was not weak Serbia? Clearly it was Britain's duty as a Christian neighbour to defend those weak
ones. Now the very same logic which makes fighting the clear duty of the unordained Christian â whom, however, St Paul describes as a âKing and a priest unto God' â makes it equally the duty of the ordained Christian priest. For, if Paul be right, the layman is as truly a priest as the clergyman. Any attempt to set up a standard of conduct and self-sacrifice for the ordained priest â and another and a higher standard for the unordained priest â has the appearance both of special pleading and unworthy shuffling; and it cannot but recoil disastrously, not only on the clergy, but on the Church of England as a whole.
Many months ago I wrote a letter urging that if five of six thousands of the younger clergy would join the fighting ranks they would do more good to Christianity and the mother church than all the sermons of all the clergy preached throughout the war. That opinion I still adhere to, and as a former churchwarden, of ten years' standing, I beg the younger clergy to lay it to heart. The bishops, I fear, want them to act as lambs, whereas the real need of the time is for British lions, and as many of them as we can get.
Your obedient servant,
Geo. W. Potter, MD
London
SIR â Your correspondent âEmeritus' seems to be one of those vast number of people who are totally ignorant of the âoffice and work of a priest in the church of God'. I would suggest to him that it would be helpful to him if he were to make a study of the office for the ordering of priests in the Prayer Book, and also study the whole history of the priesthood from the earliest times.
He is evidently, too, one of those people who feel no need of spiritual ministrations, or he would feel for many who are deprived of such help by the shortage of clergy even in normal times; and such shortage is becoming more and more serious during this time of war. There are more and more homes each day into which anxiety, sorrow and bereavement are entering, and it is part of the office and work of a priest to bear to each home and each individual the message of comfort and hope which comes from God alone, and to give them the strength of God, which alone can support them, and which He has entrusted to his Church to convey.
But, apart from this, there is the fact that the Church throughout the ages has always laid down the principle that one who is solemnly ordained to minister the Sacraments must not shed blood â even David was not allowed to build the temple because he had shed blood; how much more one who is to minister at the altar, and must give his whole life entirely and solely to his sacred function.
Men who take holy orders are expected to be men of honour, and in asking them to forsake their sacred work for combatant service your correspondent is asking them to abrogate a great principle, and to break their oath taken before God at the most solemn moment in their lives.
Finally, there are abundant signs that the nation has forsaken God in recent years, and if the nation is to deserve victory she must be brought back to her allegiance to God, and it is again part of the office and work of a priest to do this. âEmeritus' must realise that the nation is being tried; and if she is to come out of her trial purged as through fire she must adhere to the twofold principle laid down by our Lord, and not leave one or the other undone â âRender unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.'
Faithfully yours,
A Young Priest
SIR â I believe at present the congregations in many churches are unusually small, and the clergy are casting about for the reason of this falling away from the good attendances in the first few months of the war. Is it not probable that many people are feeling that the clergy seem much more anxious
to point out other people's duties to them than to do their own?
Other clergy and ministers renounce no privileges of British manhood. Why, then, should they shirk the duties, when those involve hardship and danger? I am afraid that plain people will be very little impressed by the subtleties of learned bishops and archbishops when they look at a healthy unmarried curate staging at home in safety and comfort, and sheltering himself behind a possible reading of the Ordination Service. The women whose menfolk are doing a man's part have no use for this peculiar âthird sex' which the bishops seem to wish to create.