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60
THE FORERUNNERS

how to 'employ such a disciplined army' in building the co-operative commonwealth."[1]

As for the men of religion, they have rushed headlong into the fray. At a meeting of Methodist ministers in New York, one of them, a pastor from Bridgeport, Connecticut, straightforwardly declared, "If I must choose between my country and my God, I have made up my mind to choose God." He was hooted and threatened by the other members of the assembly, five hundred in number; was denounced as a traitor. Newel Dwight Hillis, preaching in the Henry Ward Beecher church, said: "All God's teachings concerning forgiveness must be abrogated as far as Germany is concerned. When the Germans have been shot I will forgive them their atrocities. But if we agree to forgive Germany after the war, I shall think that the world has gone mad."

Billy Sunday, a sort of howling dervish, sprung from heaven knows where, brays to huge crowds a militarist gospel. He spouts his sermons like a sewer disgorging filth; he calls upon the Good Old God (who is apparently to be found in other places besides Berlin), buttonholes him, enrols him willy-nilly. A cartoon of Boardman Robinson's shows Billy Sunday arrayed as a recruiting sergeant, dragging Christ by a halter and shouting: "I got him! He's plumb dippy over going to war." Fashionable folk, ladies included, are infatuated with this preacher; they delight to debase themselves in God's company. The ministers of religion, too, are on Billy Sunday's side. The exceptions may be counted on the fingers of one hand. Most notable among the exceptions is the pastor of the church of the Messiah in New York, John Haynes Holmes by name, from whom I had the honour of receiving a magnificent letter in February, 1917, just before the United States entered the war. In its July number "The Masses" published an admirable declaration issued by Holmes to his flock. It was entitled, What shall I do? He refuses to exclude any nation from the human community. The church of the Messiah will not

  1. Socialists and War, June, 1917, p. 25.