The noted theologian and social critic Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) makes an odd appearance in this anthology, given his famous critique of Gandhian nonviolence in Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) and his condoning of obliteration bombing during World War II; he was, as James Loeb of Americans for Democratic Action said in 1948, “the leading liberal opponent of pacifism.” But as a young man traveling in Europe after World War I he was seeing firsthand, and with fresh eyes, the consequences of war on the ground, and rejected them and their cause: “I am done,” he wrote, “with the war business.”
I HAVE been spending a few days with S—— and P—— in the Ruhr district. Flew back to London from Cologne by aeroplane. The Ruhr cities are the closest thing to hell I have ever seen. I never knew that you could see hatred with the naked eye, but in the Ruhr one is under the illusion that this is possible. The atmosphere is charged with it. The streets are filled with French soldiers in their grey-blue uniforms. Schools have been turned into barracks. Germans turn anxious and furtive glances upon every stranger. French officers race their automobiles wildly through the streets with sirens blowing shrilly. If you can gain the confidence of Germans so that they will talk they will tell you horrible tales of atrocities, deportations, sex crimes, etc. Imagination fired by fear and hatred undoubtedly tends to elaborate upon the sober facts. But the facts are bad enough.
When we arrived at Cologne after spending days in the French zone of occupation we felt as if we had come into a different world. The obvious reluctance of the British to make common cause with the French in the Ruhr adventure has accentuated the good will between the British troops and the native population. But a day in Cologne cannot erase the memory of Essen and Duesseldorf. It rests upon the mind like a horrible nightmare. One would like to send every sentimental spellbinder of war days into the Ruhr. This, then, is the glorious issue for which the war was fought! I didn’t know Europe in 1914, but I can’t imagine that the hatred between peoples could have been worse than it is now.
This is as good a time as any to make up my mind that I am done with the war business. Of course, I wasn’t really in the last war. Would that I had been! Every soldier, fighting for his country in simplicity of heart without asking many questions, was superior to those of us who served no better purpose than to increase or perpetuate the moral obfuscation of nations. Of course, we really couldn’t know everything we know now. But now we know. The times of man’s ignorance God may wink at, but now he calls us all to repent. I am done with this business. I hope I can make that resolution stick.
Talking about the possibility of the church renouncing war, as we came over on the boat, one of the cynics suggested that the present temper of the church against war was prompted by nausea rather than idealism. He insisted that the church would not be able to prove for some time that it is really sincere in this matter. I suppose he is right; though I do not know that one ought to be contemptuous of any experience which leads to the truth. A pain in the stomach may sometimes serve an ultimate purpose quite as well as an idea in the head. Yet it is probably true that nausea finally wears off and the question will then be whether there is a more fundamental force which will maintain a conviction in defiance of popular hysteria.
For my own part I am not going to let my decision in regard to war stand alone. I am going to try to be a disciple of Christ, rather than a mere Christian, in all human relations and experiment with the potency of trust and love much more than I have in the past.