The Morals of Victory

Three of the world's leading churchmen discussed one of the world's great moral questions last week, came to conclusions which, while different, were far from violently so. The question: how should the aggressor nations be treated in defeat?

Catholicism's Pius XII* spoke of the Reich, where he had served long years on diplomatic missions. Said he: "[I will] follow developments of postwar Germany with love and, if necessary will give her . . . help."

The Church of England's second ranking hierarch, the Archbishop of York, spoke too of Germany. In June he had cried: "We are fighting against cruelty, tyranny and treachery in their most detestable forms. That is why we cannot agree with the Pope when he coupled together those who commenced the war with those who prolong it, or when he suggests a negotiated peace." While remaining stern, he ended on a softer note. Said he last week: "For us to accept into full fellowship an offender who has committed wrongs against God and man, who still exults in his wickedness and proposes to repeat it when the occasion offers, would mean that we identified ourselves with his crimes. So far from Germany there has come no voice of penitence. There must be repentance before there is forgiveness, though the Christian must do his utmost to encourage and to welcome it."

The Protestant Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, the Rt. Rev. Henry St. George Tucker, (longtime missionary in Japan), looked toward Japan, urged a more Christian attitude toward the Japanese. He recalled that President Roosevelt had refused the gift of a letter opener carved from a bone of a dead Japanese, that the skulls of Japanese soldiers have been sent to America. "However such actions . . . may have been provoked . . ." he wrote, "they cannot but be condemned. . . ."

*Last week the Pope was described in a letter from Archbishop Francis J. Spellman of New York to his flock: "I . . . found him aged, thin and saddened since I had last seen him. Fifteen months of anxiety and pain have taken a heavy toll. No robust physical stature nor strong broad shoulders has the Pope to bear the sorrows of the world, but the Christlike figure, Christlike shoulders and above all a Christlike sanctity and spirit . . . he reminds me of the wounded Christ."

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