This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Aug. 9, 1941.
The British are the happiest people in Europe today. They have unity, a good conscience, hope for the future and confidence in their leaders. They love their country and cherish its traditions, its literature, folklore and songs.
British writers have glorified the village street, the commons where the gypsies pitch their tents, marshes, moors and mountains, thatched cottages no less than the manor houses.
Even now, in their deadly peril, the British are free; free from fear and free from doubt. They know they are going to win. Letters from friends tell of almost happy gatherings in air-raid shelters, where many activities go on and all class-lines are forgotten.
Here is a story of church union which concerns the construction of a theatre built from the wreckage of a twice-bombed Roman Catholic church. The work of salvage was done by the Quakers, and the theatre was built in the garden of the Central Baptist Mission in East London. The priest of the destroyed church, Father Andrew, wrote and spoke the prologue, a Jewish rabbi gave the blessing and the dedication was given by the pastor of the mission, Rev. Rowntree Clifford. The prologue begins:
“There lives a beauty that men cannot kill;
Yea, that shall kill all ugliness at last
And Christ in love’s white vesture moveth still
Amongst us. Hold that faith and hold it fast.
Sweetly in shattered streets the spring appears
And common cause makes comrades of us all;
And they shall reap in joy who
sowed in tears
Fair things shall fairer rise,
that seemed to fall.”
The poem goes on to speak of the birds singing blithely in the ruins, and so in the midst of war “there still may be peace in the soul.”
“Common cause makes comrades of us all.” That line has in it the keynote of British strength. Hitler’s strategy to confuse, then divide, then conquer, did not get to first base with the British, and for that clarity of mind in the common people as well as in their leaders, we should thank God daily. The British, like Atlas, are holding the world on their shoulders.
I have before me a list of the churches destroyed in London by Nazi bombs. It is a long list, and in this connection it is interesting to read what one of the great German philosophers wrote 100 years ago on the German attitude to Christianity.
Here is the quotation from Heinrich Heine’s History of Philosophy in German: “The Germans have an eagerness for battle … Christianity subdued to a certain extent the brutal warrior-ardor of the Germans, but could not entirely quench it, and when the Cross falls to pieces, there will break forth that frantic rage whereof the northern poets have sung so much … Thor with his giant hammer will rise again and he shall shatter the Gothic cathedrals.”
So there it is, written 100 years ago. Christianity with its doctrine of brotherly love, charity and justice, has no place in the heart of the Nazis, even though Hitler was ready on June 22 to proclaim himself the White Knight of Christendom who would wage war on Godless Russia. But that bit of strategy fooled no one.
What has happened to German character is not hard to understand if we remember that it is easier to slip back into barbarism than to go forward to a higher civilization. When Nazi leaders began to attack the Christian church there was set up what they called the “German Faith Movement,” whose proclamation began with these words: “The Cross must fall to make Germany live. The Christian religion must be destroyed. Jesus is the enemy of all Germany. Adolf Hitler is the true Holy Ghost.”
Pastor Neimoller protests these blasphemies and was sent to a concentration camp with many others. There were many Christians in Germany then, many of whom are now dead or in prison or gagged into silence. But the flame of truth lives on even in the concentration camps.
The battle that Britain and her allies, with the magnificent help of the United States, is waging so heroically is for the very soul of mankind. In the past 75 years, Germany has plunged the world into war many times.
They believe that war is the highest human experience, that it is not only heroic and romantic, but creative, and each time they have gone to war with the same cry that they, the superior race, must have living space. And by that they do not merely mean room, but domination, as well. Are we going to let them do it again in another quarter of a century? This is a question that many people are pondering.
When the war is over and won, we will be faced with the problem of what to do with Germany. Among our own people we will have two types of mind to deal with, the too-hard and the too-soft. The too-hard will want to exterminate all Germans, remembering their dealing with the conquered peoples. The too-soft will talk of the German arts and sciences, their medicine, music and philosophy.
I believe we will have but one mind in the matter of the leaders — for them there will be no villa on the island of St. Helena, no peaceful woodpile at Doorn. But I am thinking of the German people and how we can get them back into the family of nations.
I wish everyone would read Reaching for the Stars, by Nora Wain, and all of Rauschning’s books, as well as Berlin Diary by William L. Shirer. These give a picture of the hopeless confusion into which the German nation has fallen and the strange absence of a moral sense that we have been accustomed to connect with all humanity.
The Germans now are said to be apathetic, listless and depressed, fearful of defeat, knowing that they have incurred the hatred of all their neighbours. What have we to give this deceived and degraded nation, who have lost not only their own sense of direction but control of their families and the ordering of their own lives?
The spirit of revenge would reply: “Let us give them their own medicine, fire and sword and concentration camps, robbery and pillage; let us heat the furnace seven times hotter. That’s all they can understand.”
Christ came to a world as wicked and cruel as Nazi Germany is today. He was one young man, a carpenter by trade, without money or influence, born in a despised little village; one young man with an idea, and not a popular idea, either. The people of His time, like the Germans, believed in blood and iron and other people’s blood, and yet this young man put His mark on that generation.
The common people heard him gladly. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, and taught all of them, and though there was no record kept of His sayings except in the hearts of His followers, His words are better known today than they were on the days of their utterances.
His words, His ways, His teachings, are the hope of Nazi Germany today, just as they are our hope. No other system of philosophy or reasoning has the power to change hearts, and hearts must be changed if the world is ever to have peace, and human beings liberty. Improvement is not enough, we must have redemption.
The Germans must throw away their false gods and their false book of rules. The stony heart must be replaced by the heart of flesh. But how are we going to begin? An army of occupation will have to take charge in Germany, but not just a force of armed men. Not that alone, but every one of them must be a missionary. We have great spiritual forces in the democratic countries, great men and women who know and practise the presence of God, who know the creative power of God. We must send our best.
I know a religious faith cannot be forced on people; that has been tried and proven a failure. But Christianity can be demonstrated. It is something that can be caught, one from the other.
Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.
