Foreign News: Point for Peace

Britain’s Anglican and Free Church leaders offered a moderate, humane program for a Christian postwar Europe within a framework of “world security.” Warned the Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, Scotland’s Presbyterian Moderator John Baillie, Free Church Moderator Roy D. Whitehorn: “We can not assume that defeat of tyranny will in itself suffice to establish peace, well-being and liberty.”

The churchmen’s most interesting point was: 1) Christian, 2) commonsensible. The point: charity towards a defeated Germany. They held that the United Nations must “remove once and for all the menace of German aggression and secure full atonement for the appalling sufferings inflicted by Nazi Germany.” But Christians must shun “a mood of vengefullness” or “breaches of basic human rights . . . against the entire German people.” If vengefulness dictates the peace, it “will be repudiated as unjust by later generations . . . permanently frustrate hopes of peace and unity in Europe.”