Article November 4, 1944 ISSUE

Self-Defense

LAURA BROWN CROWELL

Many are the weapons men have fashioned to defend themselves against aggression. Governments have equipped large armies, navies, and air fleets with all the materiel of war appertaining to them. The warfare between Truth and error has brought a contest, the proportions of which stagger human reason. No individual in the world today can isolate himself from the issues involved or blind himself to the tremendous significance of the conflict itself. While pacific nations were advocating and even practicing disarmament, aggressor nations were making the most of this opportunity to take advantage of their defenseless neighbors, even as the people of Laish, who felt themselves peaceful and secure at the moment the Danites were plotting to seize both them and their possessions, a procedure accomplished by devious design.

For a nation or an individual to advocate defenseless pacifism bespeaks an indifference to the present state of human thought. It is as a voice crying, in the words of Jeremiah, "Peace, peace; when there is no peace." What needs to be studied and analyzed is the nature of our defense. What is it? Will it stand the test when we are threatened with attack from the enemy without or the enemy within? This is a momentous question to the Christian Scientist.

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