[From the Tribune, Cambridge, Massachusetts]

Zona Gale, addressing the American Association of University Women, declared recently that outlawry of war is within the bounds of human capabilities and should be brought about. Human faculties, said Miss Gale, have potentialities for greater expressions of beauty in both art and scholarship. Extension of these faculties, she asserted, will find inevitable expression in social living and eventually will act to outlaw war.

[From the Oakland Tribune, California]

"Wars will not cease until the majority of the people want them to stop and are determined that war shall be outlawed as a means to settle international disputes," said the Rev. Clarence Reed at the First Unitarian Church, speaking on the subject, "The Book of History." "History reveals the fact," said the speaker, "that whenever a nation has given itself for a long period of time to wars of aggression, its industries have languished, the people have lost the habit of creative work, and the government has become tyrannical and generally corrupt. Militarism has been the worst enemy of the free governments of the past. Despotic governments have been the children of war. They were established by war and overthrown by war. ... Histories are needed that will glorify the achievements of peace. Our task is to dramatize peace as effectively as war has been dramatized in the past. The only wars in which there has been any real glory have been of a purely defensive character, when free institutions and the sacred rights of man have been ruthlessly assailed."

[From an editorial in the New Outlook, Toronto, Ontario, Canada]

One would welcome all the conferences and pacts and leagues that could possibly be got under way for the purpose of preventing war. But it is just as well to recognize the fact that none of them, nor all of them put together, can possibly accomplish their purpose unless something else happens as well. Until there has developed something like a world-wide realization of the horror and futility of war, and a world-wide acceptance of the fact that it can be done away with, we will not have anything like a real security against it, no matter how many pacts and conventions have had signature. Outlawing war in the thinking and planning of the people of the world—nothing less than that will be enough. And when we have got that, everything else will be comparatively easy. And even that may not be as difficult as it seems. Certainly the popular revolt against war is growing, and growing very rapidly. And even though we have to admit that such a revolt has not always had its roots in the broadest kind of intelligence, yet the prejudice in favor of war is even more irrational and stupid. Of all the irrational and stupid arguments we have ever heard that one which says that war is unavoidable and has something to say in favor of itself is quite the most hopeless. ...

That war is an old and deeply-rooted institution proves nothing, any more than did the fact that slavery also was a venerable and accepted affair, and almost everywhere held to be inevitable. Man is predestined to nothing of this sort, only to that which he of his own free will accepts; and his whole history has been a record of getting rid of things to which he seemed doomed, and rising to new heights and conditions that long seemed altogether and absolutely impossible. War can be outlawed; the red smear can be wiped out. And it ought to be one of the accepted tasks of our generation and its great gift to the future to do that outlawing and wiping out. And that is an ideal and an ambition that ought to call forth our best effort and our greatest enthusiasm. If we do that, no age in man's long history will have made a finer contribution to the future.

[From the Times Weekly Edition, London, England]

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Thousands who have been in the habit of reading or hearing read these words all their lives may have never felt their force so strongly as now, just after the meeting of the international peacemakers in London; and thousands again, having followed the drawing together of the peacemakers and its declared consequences, may feel that never before have they known such joy in applying to the doings of contemporary humanity a text so authoritative. To be able to claim for an act of statesmanship the sanction of the highest authority that either religion or simple history can adduce, befalls any given age seldom, and has befallen many ages not at all. But in so many words the peacemakers receive their beatitude. Supposing the words had never been uttered, or that they had never found their way into the collection of sayings of which they form a part, the world would be poorer than it could know for not being able to cite them at such a decisive turn of events as it has at length, after many difficulties and obstacles, seen reached. While the blessings and advantages of peace are the commonplace of religious leaders, poets, philosophers, and orators of all ages and peoples, nowhere else do those who make those blessings and advantages possible receive themselves so emphatic a blessing, and with it, attached to it, the reason why they are blessed. The sons of God must by implication be brothers of one another; but the doctrine that men are brothers has often been preached without reference to parentage. Nor is the filial relation of men to God here announced except as it depends on action to make it a valid relation.

All men, to whatever types of religion they belong, cannot but rejoice at being able to appeal to words so classically decisive after the consummation of a great joint international enterprise. The remembrance of the beatitude will for them have invested Locarno, and even London, with an aura such as no mere diplomatic instrument, however salutary to humanity, could quite impart of itself. The status given to the peacemakers reflects its glory upon all who come under the peace treaties. In so far as each citizen of each of the contracting nations has honestly striven actively to bring about the atmosphere necessary for the Locarno meeting, he may share in the beatitude; or if he durst not himself claim a part in that high reward, he will rejoice that others near him, whom he knows, and with whom he has, even if ever so little, worked in cooperation, have had it given them, as it were, by letters patent.

[From the Christian Advocate, New York, New York]

"We must mobilize the conscience of mankind," declared President Coolidge in his address to the American Legion Convention meeting at Omaha, Nebraska. The greater part of his speech was devoted to a stirring plea for more tolerance in our foreign and domestic relations. He said in part: "One of the most natural of reactions during the war was intolerance. ... The necessity for a common purpose and a united intellectual front becomes paramount to everything else. But when the need for such a solidarity is past there should be a quick and generous readiness to revert to the old and normal habits of thought. There should be an intellectual demobilization as well as a military demobilization. ... It is the ferment of ideas, ... the privilege of the individual to develop his own thoughts and shape his own character, that makes progress possible. ...

"In this period of after-war rigidity, suspicion, and intolerance, our own country has not been exempt from unfortunate experiences. Thanks to our comparative isolation, we have known less of the international frictions and rivalries than some other countries far less fortunately situated. But among some of the varying racial, religious, and social groups of our people there have been manifestations of an intolerance of opinion, a narrowness of outlook, a fixity of judgment, against which we may well be warned. It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast, than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion. To a great extent this country owes its beginnings to the determination of our hardy ancestors to maintain complete freedom in religion. Instead of a state church we have decreed that every citizen shall be free to follow the dictates of his own conscience as to his religious beliefs and affiliations. ... By tolerance I do not mean indifference to evil. I mean respect for different kinds of good. Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower or three years to the steerage is not half so important as whether his Americanism of to-day is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat."

[The Bishop of St. David's, as quoted in the Cambridge Review, England]

We may indeed "thank God and take courage" for what was done at Locarno. It was the spirit of love and understanding that did "direct and rule the hearts" of the true statesmen who met there to seek, all together, with one heart, the way of peace. It is as the church learns to thank God for His past mercy that it can hope for the future, and pray in faith that with His "perpetual mercy" He may likewise direct and rule the hearts of all the nations represented at Locarno to ratify the Security Pact to which their representatives have agreed. The problem of peace, whether between all the nations of the world or between all classes of society at home, is, through the solidarity of mankind now made manifest, essentially one problem. It is the problem of the kingdom of God, of the reign of Christ over the hearts of men. Because "God is love," "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." It is joy because it is peace. It is peace because it is righteousness, the divine granite foundation of the security of human society.

[From an editorial in the Ventura Free Press, California]

In every generation some men think that they are strong enough to triumph by force alone, and at times God has seemed to be on the side of the heaviest battalions. But not forever. No man ever built a permanent success by disregarding what the human race calls right. The qualities in the race to which Jesus appealed always are stronger in the long run than any mailed fist. ... The invincible power is not an illusion. The child of Nazareth knew the truth and proclaimed it, and during two thousand years no man has been strong enough to overturn his teaching.

[Sir William Ashley, as quoted in the Guardian, London, England]

To promote the cause of peace wisely means an effort of mind and will which will sometimes be irksome, and will not always be popular. But the best things are never easy. And Christianity is not a religion of ease but a religion of endeavor.