6 SEPTEMBER 1935, Page 2

The Churches and the Crisis The impressive broadcast address on

the international situation delivered by the Archbishop of York last Sunday is only one, if the most striking, of a series of declarations which in this matter at least vindicate the Churches decisively from any charge of a failure in leadership at a moment of crisis; Besides Dr. Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Berry for the Free Churches, and many others have all in different places and at different times declared the attitude of themselves and those they represent towards the threatened violation of inter- national obligations. Dr. Temple has discussed the problem more comprehensively than any of his colleagues in the Christian ministry, but his conclusions,--summed up in the declaration that the Government should make to the League Council proposals designed to secure the submission of the whole dispute to the League, and that " if this involves the use of armed forces we ought to be prepared to use them,"—would probably be accepted by all of them, except those of the school of Mr. Lansbury and Canon Sheppard, who in all sincerity answer in a different way the profoundly perplexing question of what the Christian's attitude on the use of armed force should be. But the existence of the League of Nations has at least simplified the problem, as the framers of the Lambeth resolutions on war realised.