THE ULTIMATE ISSUE : A SOCIALIST VIEW [To the Editor
of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—All Socialists must read such a letter as that of Mr., Studdert Kennedy with gratitude and hope. Here is a sign, one amongst several recent ones, that the Church is at last
realizing that it cannot remain aloof from the great industrial problem of this age and people, or, at any rate, that it cannot remain aloof and live. He begins by condemning alike the appeal to suspicion, class hatred and force " of Communism and the " godlessness and materialism " of extreme individ- ualism. So far Socialists will have little difficulty in following
him. He heads his next section " The Only Way Out," and he defines this way out in his first sentence :- " The only way of salvation is that men should come firmly to believe in the God of Unity and Love revealed by Christ, and to see the world as a home for a family and not as a battlefield for rival armies."
To be frank it is somewhat difficult to see how this sentence helps us, though certainly it is equally difficult to take excep- tion to anything in it. Yet surely it is a somewhat hard task that Mr. Kennedy sets the homeless, unemployed worker of our industrial cities when he asks him " to see the world as a home for a family and not as a battlefield for rival armies." If the worker shuts his eyes tight he may manage it, but if he should for a second look at the world as it is the ilusion will be shattered. I fear that we Socialists shall continue to believe that the worker will be well advised if he is up and doing in the great task of turning the world into " a home for a family," rather than trying to develop the eyes of faith which can " see into " the present state of things anything he desires—and is therefore content to leave things, in fact, exactly as they are.
In a word, though we are delighted to see the Church turning its attention to the real crucial problems of to-day, yet, at the risk of seeming uncourteous we feel bound to suggest that the Church should make up its own mind about the great moral issues involved before it sets out on a preaching mission. These " sixty lay evangelists " of Mr. Kennedy's " Industrial Mission," for instance, whom we are asked to support, what do they preach ? Do they, for instance, consider that it is moral for an able-bodied citizen to live in idleness from the wealth produced by others, even though he has a perfect legal right to do so ? We Socialists say that this is as much robbery as when a burglar rifles the till. Lord Hugh Cecil says that it would be robbery to alter it ? What do -the " lay evangelists " say ?
Until the Church has faced squarely -such great moral , issues, we do not believe that she can ever resume her rightful place as spiritual teacher of the nation. She must make, up her mind whether or no she will . challenge the whole great doctrine of unmitigated self-interest which is the avowed creed of the business world of to-day.' And Socialists will- only ask that while she is doing so she will bear in mind' the clearly expressed admonitions of her Founder. Until she- does this she will remain in the position of the churches of the nineteenth century, of which Mr. R. H. -Timmy has written : - " They relieved the wounded, and comforted the dying, but they dared not enter the battle. For men will fight only for a cause in which they believe, and what the Churches lacked was not personal virtue, or public spirit, or practical wisdom, but something more simple and more mdispensable, something whieh the Children of Light are supposed to impart to the children of the world, but which they could not impart, because they did not possess it—faith in their own creed and in their vocation to make it prevail. So they made religion the ornament of leisure, instead' of the banner of a Crusade. They became the home of a fugitive and cloistered 'virtue,- unexercised and unbteathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of, the race,. where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.' They acquiesced in the popular assumption that the' acquisition of ricites was the 'main end of man,' and confined
themselves to preaching such personal virtues as did not confii3t with its achievement."
W)sen she has done so she will become the great Christian society of which the same author says :-
" It will appeal to mankind, not because its standards are identical with those of the world, but because they are profoundly different. It will win its converts, not because membership is- volves no change in their manner of life, but because it involves a change so complete as to he ineffaceable. It will expect its adherents to face economic ruin for the sake of their principles with the same alacrity as, till recently, it was faced every day by the workman who sought to establish trade unionism among his fellows. It will define, with the aid of those of its members who are engaged in different trades and occupations, the lines of conduct and organization which approach most nearly to being the practical application of Christian ethics in the varioas branches of economi3 life, and, having defined them, will censure those of its members who depart from them without 'good reason. It will rebuke the open and notorious sin of the man who oppresses his fellows for the sake of gain as freely as that of the drunkard and adulterer."—
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