After the Somme battles
there were many other battles as bloody and terrible, but they only
confirmed greater numbers of men in the faith that the old world had
been wrong in its "make-up" and wrong in its religion of life. Lip
service to Christian ethics was not good enough as an argument for
this. Either the heart of the world must be changed by a real
obedience to the gospel of Christ or Christianity must be abandoned
for a new creed which would give better results between men and
nations. There could be no reconciling of bayonet-drill and high
explosives with the words "Love one another." Or if bayonet-drill and
high-explosive force were to be the rule of life in preparation for
another struggle such as this, then at least let men put hypocrisy
away and return to the primitive law of the survival of the fittest in
a jungle world subservient to the king of beasts. The devotion of
military chaplains to the wounded, their valor, their decorations for
gallantry under fire, their human comradeship and spiritual sincerity,
would not bridge the gulf in the minds of many soldiers between a
gospel of love and this argument by bayonet and bomb, gas-shell and
high velocity, blunderbuss, club, and trench-shovel.
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