Tárogató, 1943-1944 (6. évfolyam, 3-12. szám)
1944-03-01 / 9. szám
TÁROGATÓ 15 imagine would bother about religion go to Church and worry about churches’ services in case they miss them. I reckon a battle without faith is not possible. And our boys had faith, and they won a battle. I hope it will be so after war is finished. War may be a bad thing, but one thing it has done is that it turns all men sooner or later to the Church. And, above all, the officers who lead in battle, lead in this too, and I’m convinced that when we’ve won this war there will be a return to Church by the people at home, led by us, not in the spirit that ‘Faith without works is dead’, but the spirit that ‘Works without Faith is dead.’ “At one time I was amused when I read about Bible-thumbing generals, but, believe me, that is what has won this battle. The Boche had a faith built upon the sands of the desert, a Nazi Creed. Our lads had a faith built on the rocks of Tunisia, a Christian Faith. There could have been no other result. We suffered reverses, but stood firm, and eventually we got there. I’m sending you the Service Form for the First Army’s Thanksgiving Service.” —Onward. THREE PHILOSOPHIES There are three great philosophies in the world today. The first, based on the supremacy of might over right, says that war between nations is inevitable until such time as a single race dominates the entire world and every one is assigned his daily task by an arrogant, selfappointed fuehrer. The second, the Marxian philosophy, says that class warfare is inevitable until such time as the proletariat comes out on top, everywhere in the world, and can start building a society without classes. The third, which we in this country know as the democratic Christian philosophy, denies that man was made for war, whether it be war between nations or war between classes, and asserts boldly that ultimate peace is inevitable, that all men are brothers and that God is their father. This democratic philosophy pervades not only the hearts and minds to those who live by the Christian religion, both Protestant and Catholic, but of those who draw their inspiration from Mohammedanism, Judaism, Hinduism, Confusianism and other faiths. When we look beneath the outer forms we find that all these faiths, in one way or another, preach the doctrine of the dignity of each individual human soul, the doctrine that God intended man to be a good neighbour to his fellow man, and the doctrine of the essential unity of the entire world. Those who think most about individualism preach freedom. Those who think most about unity, whether it be the unity of a nation or of the entire world, preach the sacred obligation of duty. There is a seeming conflict between freedom and duty, and it takes the spirit of democracy to resolve it. Only through religion and education can the freedom-loving individual realize that his greatest private pleasure comes from serving the highest unity, the general welfare of all. This truth, the essence of democracy, must capture the hearts of men over the entire world if human civilization is not to be torn to pieces in a series of wars and revolutions far more terrible than anything that has yet been endured. Democracy is the hope of civilation. .... It is my belief that democracy is the only true expression of Christianity, but if it is not to let Christianity down democracy must be tremendously more efficient than it has been in the service of the common man and in resistance to selfish pressure groups. .... We of the Western democracies must demonstrate the practicality of our religion. We must extend a helping hand to China and India, we must be firm and just with Prussia; we must deal honestly and fairly with Russia and be tolerant and even helpful as she works out her economic problems in her own way; we must prove that we ourselves can give an example, in our democratic way, of full employment and full production for the benefit of the common man. (Excerpts from an address delivered by Vice-President Wallace to the Deleware Conference, printed in The United Churchman.) DINOSAUR PARK At Red Deer, Alberta, there is a unique park belonging to the Dominion of Canada which is really an open-air museum of ancient fossil remains of the great and small dinosaurs which roamed Canada about fifty million years ago, when the Rock Mountains had not yet been formed and a huge inland sea reached from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic regions, and hot winds from the Pacific swept across the swamps and swales where the
