Religion: The World We Want

A new high in religious interventionism was set last week by the fourth biennial Williamstown Conference,* which drew 850 Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders to Williamstown, Mass. last week to discuss "The World We Want to Live In." No votes were taken, but anti-Hitler sentiment ran so strong (particularly among the Jewish delegates) that a ballot might have revealed an actual majority for a shooting war now.

"The first concern of all," said Jewish Co-Chairman Roger W. Straus in summing up the conference, "was that totalitarianism be crushed." Catholic Co-Chairman Carlton J. H. Hayes was applauded for saying America must end her "aloofness and holier-than-thou attitude." Even Protestant Pacifist Walter Van Kirk, head of the National Peace Conference and secretary of the Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, acknowledged that "the use of force is not immoral for the preservation of law and order by a world society that is heroically bent upon establishing justice."

Some other specifications for the world the conferees wanted to live in:

> Imperialism Out. Said Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Augustus Berle Jr.: "No one wants an 'American Empire' with an American Rudyard Kipling to sing the glories of the White Man's burden. . . . The American genius is the genius of a commonwealth and not of an Imperial system."

> Regional free trade, and free access to raw materials for every nation.

> A compulsory World Court, whose decisions would be binding on all countries.

> A League of Nations with teeth, "Equipped with an international police force empowered to prevent aggression and capable of doing so successfully."

> Full religious and racial toleration.

> Acceptance of Responsibility. Said Professor Hayes: "We were the finally determining factor in winning the last World War, but . . . even more than Nazi Germany, we have been responsible for losing the peace and bringing on the present World War. We insisted on our rights and spurned our duties. . . . We repudiated the League of Nations . . . and thus set the pace for all its later floutings by other powers. Moreover, we selfishly and shortsightedly refused to forgive the Inter-Allied debts and thereby prevented any timely forgiving of the fateful German reparations. The result is that Germany now has Hitler, while we are accumulating a debt for national defense which makes the Inter-Allied debts and the reparations of the last war seem trivial."

The National Conference of Christians and Jews sponsors the Williamstown Conferences, which are notable as the only full-dress occasions when leaders of the three major American faiths come together as churchmen to work on a common front for common ends. Last week's session was also the first nationwide forum on peace objectives and post-war problems.

Strength of the N.C.C.J. is that it makes no attempt to water down the religious convictions of Protestants, Catholics and Jews to a least common denominator. Instead, it tries to promote inter-faith and interracial good will by eliminating mutual mistrust based on ignorance. The movement's ultimate aim: to make the world safe for differences.