Sermon Preached in the Church of Christ the King By the Rev. John K. Lipman, S. J. on arch 6 this, our present age of super-efficiency, every important activity has at some time or other been charted by means of a graph.: We have graphs that show at a glance the upward or downward trend of the stock-market, graphs that portray the increase or decrease of international trade, graphs that picture the relation bet veen the birth-rate and the dear us a qui or unimportant information.
It remained for two Russian prọ- fessors of History, teaching in ay American universit; to prepare a graph showing twenty-four hundred years of war; giving the number of wars during that time, the number of people actually engaged in fight ing, the number engaged in propo: tion to the world population of the time, the number of countries involved, the number of casualties: and the disastrous effects. Th period covered runs from five centuries before Christ up to the y 1925 of the present era.
This particular chart presents for our consideration some fa that are rather startling. During these twenty-four centuries -there have occurred 902 disturbances of the peace that have merited the name of war, ranging from the high point al the Roman pre-Christian conquest, declining to zero at the period when significantly enough, the Prince of Peace was born, then rising, falling, and rising again during the last nineteen hundred years until a new high was reached ducing the first twenty-five years of our twentieth century. And if we fake zero for absolute peace, then strangely enough, the most peaceful century the world has yet seen was the twelfth, from the year 1,100 to 1,200 of the Christian era, whose war-percentage, so to speak, was only 2.7 per cent. The Crusades of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries raised this figure of ĉl pi cent, "while the religious wars the Sixteenth and seventeenth cer-turies, consequent upon the so-called Reformation, caused the percentage to reach a new high of 567 per cent., just 210 times what it was in the twelfth century.
But this nothing compared with the first quarter of our own confu which we have always considered as having such modern civilization and cultural refinement. From 1900 to 1925 the war-percentage rose to the unbelievable mark of 13,736 ner cent, which could be interpreted to mean that our generation is over five thousand times as. blood-thirsty as the men of the twelfth century. and more than four hundred times as warlike as the knights of the Crusades, whom we have always pictured to ourselves as the models of professional warrior? As to what the second quarter of our cent: will bring, we who have been Here in China during the'past six months have received some faint idea. May God grant that present trends and indications prove to be false.
But what, we ask ourselves, can be done to prevent the increase of this terrible state of affairs? What has been the cause of it? Why our century, with all its culture and civilisation, so terrifyingly more bloodthirsty that was the twelfth? The answer to these last two questions contains "the response, at least in great part, to the first one also, and it is, because during the peaceful twelfth century we came the close: to having a perfectly united Chris-tendon, under the direction of and -rate, graphs that give mary of a thousand and one cther bits of important preme Pontiff, has always been the most potent factor in the preservation of peace.
Catholic Intervention Textbooks abound with accounts of peace having been preserved or wars terminated through the intervention of the Head of the Catholic Church. Pope St. Leo twice saved Rome from destruction by the barbarians. Urban LI and Innocent, III, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, made notable contributions towards world peace, and during the following four hundred years no less that twelve pontiffs successfully intervened between various rulers for the same end. It was only after the so-called Reformation had hopelessly and forever split Europe into a group of hostile and mutually suspicious nations—and an equal number of religious sects, instead of the one fold and one shepherd that Christ intended and for which He had prayed was only then that the secular rulers, greedy of the pope's power and influence, summarily excluded the Roman Pontiffs from further exercise of international intervention, Strangely enough, it was Bismarck who once again called on the Head of Christendom to intercede in the cause of peace when in 1885 Leo XIII settled the Caroline Archipelago question between Germany and Spain. This same pontiff was twice more called on for the same purpose. once by Portugal and England, and once by Belgium and Portugal, and was he who collaborated with Csar Nicholas LI in organizing the Hague Peace Conference, from the participation in which, however, the Vatican was excluded the request of anti-clerical Italy And this same Hague Conference passed a resolution barring the Holy See from participation in any permanent court of international arbitration, although private efforts of the Fast three popes in the role of peacemaker have never ceased, Pope Benedict XV made at least four appeals for peace during the world war, but these had no effect because Italy, France, Great Br and Russia had signed a s treaty, cne article of which bound them not to allow the Pope any diplomatic initiative tending to the conclusion of a peace or the regulation of questions arising from the war. On December 1, 1918, Benedict asked all the world to pray that the Peace Conference, from which he was excluded, might find "that gift of God which is true peace estab! the principles of Christian justice. Unfortunately this petition was futile.
The present pontiff, Pius XI, has likewise been active in his effort toward obtaining and preserving peace. As recently as 1935 he said in a public address, "If there be anyone, which God forbid should be the case, who makes preparation for hurling the nation confided to them, and the whole human race as well, into the abyss of war, then we can appointed Vicar of Christ earth. To-day. on the the world, resenting and rejecting any such guidance, is divided by deep and long-fostered hatreds, so radical that they drive men, even against their will, into devastating wars that benefit absolutely no one. ional Rivalry not withhold from our sad heart this prayer to the all-powerful God, Lord, scatter the nations which wish for war!" In view of these facts it a bit strange, to say the least, that the very ones who have excluded the Sovereign Pontiff from a part in international intervention should be the first to accuse him of alleged failure to prevent recent disturbances t the world peace.
It of this national rivalry.
g after world supremacy is that in planning the conquest of others no means of destruction has been overlooked. Death to-day strikes from land, from sea and from air indiscriminately. Human life is but a pawn 'a' the game of war, to be ruthlessly ~secrificed for any slight hope of gain. Men seem to have lost sight completely of exalted dignity of redeemed mankind, and as a prominent British statesman remarked, it is a depressing commentary on the follies of human nature that in the year of grace, 1937. civilization should be forced to defend itself h gas-masks and underground cellars. that human beings should be taught to become once again cave-men and to shelter themselves in the bowels of the earth!
What a far ery k to those di of the so-called "ai middle ages when, in spite of their pw lack of civilization, the nations together in relative peace and secur-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.