Footnote

a After World War I, the Rev. George Willis Cooke, in an article published in the Chicago Unity, declared: “The attitude of the churches in this country, and in even greater degree in the other countries, has not been such as to inspire faith in their sincerity. To a very large extent they have abandoned Christianity for patriotism. They have been committed to a brutal revengeful, and savage lust for war and all the worst that war demands. . . . The most cruel, heartless, and revengeful demands made in behalf of war have come from Christian pulpits on both sides.”—See The Watch Tower, 1919, page 356.

The Detroit Free Press, August 6, 1919, in speaking of the responsibility of the clergy for World War I, said: “They joined the most rampageous of our jingoist and war-at-any-price patriots in arousing the belligerent passions of the people . . . Nearly all of them could be brevetted for distinguished service in boosting the human slaughtering game . . . Indeed the ministers in all the belligerent countries engendered so much passion and violence that it might be called their war.”