The news release from the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee meeting in Nyborg, Denmark, last August to the European press made understandable headlines, particularly that portion which indicated that a segment of the Committee went on record as favoring a free world surrender on the terms of the enemy in case of a threat of hydrogen warfare. No indication was given, in the German press at least, of the percentage of the Committee that went thus on record. Coming at the same time as the discussion of “Planning for Surrender” in Washington, it could hardly have failed to excite some comment, both on the Continent and in the United States.
In considering such a matter, we must separate the two questions, namely whether the military (which presumably must consider all eventualities) should give serious thought to the question of what terms and conditions, if any, should prompt a surrender on the part of the United States; and whether the Christian Church herself should make plans to advocate national surrender if hydrogen warfare was threatened. The answer to the first question must be left to others; the answer to the second vitally concerns us as Christians.
Among thoughtful Christians, opinions vary as to whether the Red World could be influenced by the growth of such Free World sentiment to the point of seeking control of the West by a master stroke of blackmail. Some feel that the danger lies not here but upon whether our policies may lead to disaster of another kind. Others feel that in a time in which, it is said, the older concepts of courage and freedom are not relevant, some considerable number might advocate the course of surrender under blackmail, as the only alternative to obliteration of the race. Those who might, now or in the future, propose such a surrender would doubtless do so upon idealistic grounds. The ideal of passive resistance, and of love-the-enemy-into-returning-love is sometimes held to be the only real outcome of the application of the principles of the Gospel. Taken in isolation, such idealism may appear as both noble and ultimately workable.
Pacifism And The Nation
But before any individual or group of individuals should propose this as a national policy, he or they should weigh with the utmost realism the meaning of such a surrender. In fairness it ought to be recognized, first of all, that such idealism will never appeal to more than a minority. When this minority recommends to a nation that it adopt a policy of far-reaching significance for all, it is in danger of forgetting that a government has obligations to its nonpacifist majority too. It is doubtful whether even a tiny percentage of our population could consistently follow a pacifist strategy during a period of foreign occupation. Certainly as a nation we have no background for so doing.
Communism And Peace
The advocates of planned surrender under a threat of obliteration warfare forget also that the very existence of such a “peace movement” in the West may afford the greatest possible encouragement to the “peace loving” Soviet universal state and to the so-called people’s democracies to develop a program of international blackmail. They operate in a cynical and highhanded disregard of any standard of integrity like that which we have known in the West. It would be helpful for our theorists to read “the Communist Bible” a bit. Many once refused to take Mein Kampf at face value—it was too monstrous. Will our people make a mistake with respect to the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin? (It goes without saying that the “peace” theorists are inconsistent in even suspecting that the “peace loving” people of the Red-dominated world would ever consider waging hydrogen warfare!)
The peace-at-any-price movement also rests upon a romantic view of human nature. Love, say its advocates, impresses even the hardest and most disciplined of aggressors. Can it be that such people have no knowledge of what Red imperialism is, or of the manner in which it systematically roots out of its human instruments considerations of humaneness and decency? They seem to forget that in Soviet expansion in Europe, rape and physical violence have been systematically utilized to break the spirit of invaded peoples. They forget that for years people in the Soviet state and of the people’s democracies have been virulently conditioned to hate America. In the case of occupation after a pacifist surrender, this hatred would be vented against our population, particularly women and girls, to a degree which we cannot now comprehend.
From India To Hungary
Again, the planned surrender of the theorists rests upon a romanticizing of the work of Gandhi in India, and latterly of integrationists in the Montgomery bus controversy. Without minimizing the achievements of either of these, we would point out that there is simply no proper parallel between the British administration in India on the one hand, and what would occur if the Soviet Union or Red China were allowed to occupy the United States on the other. Great Britain governed India through agreements with the local princes, and Great Britain had a conscience which was profoundly touched by Christian principles—however far removed her imperialism might seem at times from Christian ideals. Gandhi and his Indian countrymen operated within a framework of civil liberties which compared favorably with our own, and within which free expression was possible. This kind of situation would vanish at the moment of Communist occupation of America.
It must be observed that there was communication between London and Delhi over ideals which is utterly lacking between national ideals in America and those of Communist expansionists. We need expect to find no ally in the conscience of the Soviet-type man as Gandhi found in the traditions of Great Britain, or as Martin Luther King found in the municipality of Montgomery. And in the face of these facts, the success of Gandhi’s program of passive resistance to British rule is pathetically irrelevant to the consideration of resistance to a Red-occupied United States. Hungary, not India, should be the example to study as the prototype of Communist reaction to resistance. It was there, not in India, that Red tanks demonstrated their ability at murderous revolt in the streets.
Dealing With Masters Of Deceit
The ideal of “passive resistance” is one which has been grossly overglamorized. Peace theorists dream of a role of sitting cross-legged in the American equivalent of a loin cloth, and bringing the Communist aggressor to heel. They forget, however, that in our civilization there is little of the passivity which India has developed over tens of centuries. What it would mean in the United States is that most of the nation would be forced into a vast underground. This is not a pretty picture. The author has known members of the Dutch, French, and Belgian underground. Some of them have privately testified to the erosion of character that acted upon them as they were forced to lie, to steal, to sabotage, and to kill. Such would perforce be the situation in a Red-occupied United States of America in the face of pyramiding murders and enslavement.
It is the profound conviction of this author that to doom an entire people to years of such activity would be no less damaging than to expose them to the horrors of actual modern warfare. Moreover, no minority could depend upon carrying the majority with them. The number of morally nondiscerning and opportunistic persons who joined the Communist party in America in the “thirties,” simply because times were difficult, leads us to expect that large numbers of people would take the opportunist way again were there an occurrence of surrender and occupation. Some have already developed means of protecting themselves and their associates, and this has often been under the protection of our courts. With the existence of “people’s courts,” all manner of ethical deviations for self-protection would arise.
Those who advocate a planned surrender romantically assume that occupying Communists would reverse their oppressive tactics when they saw a morose and unco-operative people. But they forget that the Soviet universal state has had 41 years of experience with sullen peoples. They know how to wait, how to starve millions, bludgeon countless more, and deport masses of peoples and import others. How long is it going to take us to learn the lessons of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Hungary?
The Victory Of Our Era
But, say the theorists, if the American people refused to obey any Communist directives, the occupation of industrial America would bog down, and the whole Red strategy would fail. These speculators forget that the so-called people’s democracies do not measure success as we do. To capture the United States intact without dropping a bomb would be the major victory of this millennium! This would be the grand prix, and after getting it, the Red occupiers could afford to muddle through a generation or two of inefficiency, until they could import their own corps of technicians (complete with chauffeurs and bootblacks) and their own labor force from those ‘democratic’ areas where the population is threatening to explode.
Peace theorists further their argument by claiming that an occupying nation could only engage in so much imprisonment and mass executions, and, with a passive population, they would soon become satiated with bloodletting. Now, as the tally of unnatural deaths continues to come in from “curtained countries,” it is clear that the number of murders for which the Soviet state and people’s democracies are guilty runs into scores of millions.
Advocates of planned surrender assume the false premise that survival is the greatest human value. This is to be expected among those in whose thinking the Christian faith has no profound place. But to those who reckon with the realities of life as the Christian knows them to be, that value does not stand. It is better to come to the end of one’s life with integrity than to mark time with temporal survival, while eternal values are eroded away under a régime of absolute materialism. Families who have fled the so-called German Democratic Republic (East Germany) are discovering this the tragic way. We would be wise to learn from them and at the same time remember that they have a refuge to which they can flee. Planned surrender, under blackmail, of the United States of America would leave no haven of refuge under the sun for these millions of hopeless victims of the hammer and sickle.
END
Harold B. Kuhn is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Asbury Theological Seminary. A member of the Ohio Yearly Meeting of Friends, he has ministered in France in the mission to Russian emigres maintained by Irish Friends, in the Netherlands to Hutterite Brethren in exile. Since 1947 he has been active in Christian refugee work in West Germany and Austria.
A Carol for Palm Sunday
A Prophet you declare? When only peasants cry And wave some blighted palm leaves in the sky; When children scream “Hosanna!” at some homeless Nazarene? That silent fellow Never came from God!
A Prince you say? A Son of David’s seed? A borrowed ass’ colt his only steed? Can sweaty garments Tossed hysterically upon the dusty way Become a carpet? You cannot form a prince Of just a man!
A King you cry? This lowly carpenter of Galilee Who walked with fishermen beside the sea And smiles sadly from a throne of coats While fools scream raw their parching throats To bless the Lord? How can you make a King To bring you peace, And gain from Rome immediate release From just a man?
You call Him “thief?” Who made the blind to see And set the lifelong cripple free To leap for joy? Who offered life unto a widow’s boy, And now walks bleeding up the blackened road Bent with a cross of curses And a crown of hate? I call Him great!
“Traitor” you cry? And lift His agony into the raven sky That cannot weep for shame? You curse His name And sell the innocence of love For tarnished silver and a noose above Eternity? I weep your chosen end And hear His whisper echo through the stillness, “Friend?”
You thunder “Liar!” In a brazen acid choir While laughter rolls intentional His mocking, grim recessional From deep corroded throats To blind your ears As through His bloody tears He gasps, “Forgive!”
“A Man,” you echo From your hollow song As from his patient eyes there rolls A sad cascade of broken love To mingle with His crimson blood.
“A man,” you drone? Who fashions from a cross a throne And forms a coronet from thorns Transposing thunder into horns That echo triumph through the gloom? You cannot fashion out of God A man!
CHARLES WAUGAMAN
