One of the most interesting developments in connection with this present war is the publication in "The Times" of December 21, of a letter signed by the Archbishops of Canter bury and York, the Archbishop of Westminster, and the Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council, in which the signatories accepted the Pope's Five Peace Points, which His Holiness recently made known. Declaring that the present evils of the world are due to the failure of nations and peoples to carry out the laws of God, and that no permanent peace is possible in Europe unless the principles of the Christian religion are made the foundation of national policy and of all social life, the writers of the letter said that this involved regarding all nations as members of one family under the Fatherhood of God. The Peace Points which it was claimed carried out this principle were as 1. The assurance io all nations of their right to life and independence. The will of one notion, to live must never mean the sentence of death passed upon another. When this equality of rights has been destroyed, attacked, or threatened order demands that reparation shall be made, and the measure and extent of that reparation is determined, not by the sword nor by the arbitrary decision of self-interest, but by the rules of justice and reciprocal equity.
2. This requires that the nations be delivered from the slavery imposed upon them by the race for armaments and from the danger that material force, instead of serving to protect the right, may become zn overbearing and tyrannical master. The order thus established requires a mutually agreed organic progressive disarmament, spiritual as well.as material, and security for the effective implementing of such an agreement. guarantee the loyd and faithful fulfilment of conditions agreed upon and which shall in case of recognized need revise and correct them.
4. The real needs and just demands of nations and populations and racial minor ties to be adjusted as occasion may require, even where no strictly legal right can be established, and a foundation of mutuel confidence to be thus laid whereby many incentives to violent action will be removed.
5. The development among peoples and their rulers of thet sense of deep and keen responsibility which weighs human statutes according to the sacred and inviolable standards of the laws of God. They must hunger and thirst after justice and be guided by that universal love which is the com-peridium and most general expression of the Christian ideal.
is a highly significant religious document, While by some it will be claimed that this others Y undoubtedly add to that the remark that it is also one of plain common sense, though religion itself partakes of that important quality. There is certainly nothing in the foregoing to which any democratic minded man can possibly take exception, and there is not the slightest doubt that if the affairs of the world could be ordered upon some such basis it would be possible to estaplish a permanent peace and permit man to progress towards that higher destiny which should be his. Added to these basis principles for the ordering of international life the writers of the letter to "The Times" sought to associate with them five standards by which economic situations and proposals may be tested:—(1) Extreme inequality in wealth and possessions should be abolished: (2) every child regardless of race or class should have equal opportunities of education, suitable for the development of his peculiar capacities (3) the family as a social unit must be safeguarded; (4) the sense of a Divine vocation must be restored to a man's daily work; (5) the resources of the earth should be used as God's gifts to the whole human race, and used with due consideration for the needs of the present and future generations. Of the applicability of these standards there can be no question. It is apparent that, if it were possible to persuade the world at large to accept them, and the Pope's peace points, a new order which might well prove to be the long awaited millennium would come into being. But the obstacles are plainly great. They will continue to exist so long as there are nations inspired with the lust of conquest, and the desire to make themselves politically, economically and militarily secure at the expense of their neighbours. An even greater obstacle is the man who seeks to create what he believes to be a super-state with all others subservient to it. From that point of view the declared war aims of the Germans are in direct opposition to what the leaders of important Christian churches conceive to be the real basis, for the future conduct of world affairs, and until they have been taught the lesson that war does not pay, it is unlikely that they will import into their policies that degree of sweet reasonableness which these peace points indicate as necessary.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.