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We want to form a Mission Study Class on the text book "The
Christian Crusade for World Democracy" in our church and desire the
"Suggestions for Leaders" and other material that will be of help in or-
ganizing and conducting it.

Very truly yours,

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mittee, 111 Fifth Avenue, New York.

"CLEAR THROUGH TO THE FINISH!"

America is determined to see the struggle for world democracy through to
complete success

The Christian Crusade

FOR

World Democracy

S. EARL TAYLOR

and

HALFORD E. LUGCOGK

THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN

NEW YORK CINCINNATI

^^T.

/^/^,

OCT -5 1918
©Ci,,:506040

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword 7

I. Making Democracy Safe for the World 11

II. Christian Democracy for Latin America ..... 35

III. China — The Open Door to Four Hundred Million

Minds 63

IV. The Leaven of Freedom at Work in India .... 89
V. Flood Tide in the Destiny of Africa 113

VI. The Christian Mastery of the Pacific 135

VII. The Rebuilding of Europe 159

VIII. A World Program 177

Questions for Study and Discussion 195

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Clear Through to the Finish!" frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The Promise of To-morrow 46

Some of Our Chinese Allies in France 68 ^^

Students of Peking University . 68

Village Preaching in India 94

Islam on the March 123

Baseball Follows the Flag 149 t

Street Preaching in Singapore 149

MAPS

PAGE

1. The World Neighborhood. 17

2. South America 37

3. Methodist Responsibility in South America 40

4. Literacy Chart of South America 44

5. Panama. 50

6. Mexico 54

7. China 65

8. Christian University Centers of China 73 •

9. Hospital Map of China 83

10. Where the Millions are Moving Toward Christi-

anity 100

11. Comparative Size of Africa 117

12. Africa , . . . 126

13. Japan 138

14. The Philippines 146

15. Malaysia — The Melting Pot of Asia ......... 153

16. After the War — What ? 167

FOREWORD

Two men stood in the Colosseum at Rome.

^ ^ Think of the men who have stood here ! ' ' said one.

^' Think of the men who ivill!" said the other.

That is the Christian outlook in all ages. It fronts the
dawn. Its word of command is "Eyes Front!"

The one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of
Methodist Missions in 1819 is not being celebrated by a his-
tory of the past, but by a program for the future. The Cente-
nary World Program of Methodism is an expression of the
only answer which the Christian Church can make to a world
at war — a vigorous and world-wide extension of the kingdom
of God.

Two volumes dealing with the place of Christianity in
the world situation are published as part of the observance
of the Centenary of Methodist Missions.

The present volume deals with the relation of Christian
missions to world democracy. A companion volume,
"Christian Democracy for America/^ considers the place of
the church in strengthening the forces of Christian de-
mocracy in our own land.

The books are designed for use in Mission Study
Classes in Epworth Leagues, Young People's Societies,
Church groups, and Sunday Schools, as well as for general
reading.

Acknowledgment is made to Miss Gail M. Kennedy for
assistance in the collection of material.

This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something
far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation. . . . And
we live in it.

— H. G. Wells, in Mr. Britling Sees It Through.

Would that men could see that we are living not only in the crisis
of the greatest war that has ever afflicted mankind, but also in the
Advent of Revolution, at once material, moral, and spiritual; wider, I
believe, and deeper than any which in some thousand years has trans-
formed civilization on earth. We are on the eve of what must prove
to be a revaluation of our habits and thoughts. Now, in a state of
revolution things move, change, appear, and disappear with lightning
velocity. Things which we imagine to be trifles suddenly swell up into
incalculable forces. Changes which in normal times could hardly be
worked through in generations spring up completed in months or weeks.
New things which were Utopian dreams of yesterday are truisms and
facts to-day. A state of revolution is a social earthquake, in which
neither things nor persons remain what they were. All are inverted.

' — Frederic Harrison.

All the world is in the melting pot. Old things are passing away.
All things may become new, not as a result of magic, not because of
chance, not because of the war, but because through the Christian
churches there shall be sufficient leadership to take hold of these nations
of the Near East, of all parts of Europe that may need our ministry, as
well as the Far East, Southern Asia, Africa, and Latin America, to lead
them out into the new and better age.

— John B. Mott.

Trumpeter, sound for the splendor of God I
Sound the Music whose name is law.
Whose service is perfect freedom still.
The august order that rules the stars!
Bid the anarchs of night withdraw.
Too long the Destroyers have worked their will.
Sound for the last, the last of the wars !
Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us.
On to the City of God.

— Alfred Noyes.

CHAPTER I

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE FOR THE WORLD

In the years of the great war the world has crossed a
new International Date Line. It is impossible for anyone
to estimate accurately the full significance of the time in
which he lives, but there is a widespread unanimity of opin-
ion that only one date has surpassed in importance to man-
kind these days in which we live. That date is the shining
peak of time which separates A. D. from B. C. In 1910 the
world's missionary conference at Edinburgh declared, ^'The
next ten years will in all probability constitute a turning
point in human history." If ever a prophecy was fulfilled
beyond the farthest dream of those who made it, it was that
one. For while it would doubtless have proved true from
the natural development of forces then in sight, even had
there been no war, the convulsion which has shaken civiliza-
tion to its foundations is effecting changes so momentous
and has brought into action forces so powerful that no mind
can gauge their possibilities. The future will in all proba-
bility look back on these years, not merely as a turning point
in history, but as determining the destiny of mankind for
ages to come.

A World Situation

It is not an exaggerated use of language to say that for
the first time in history there has developed a ivorld situa-
tion. The phrase has often been used before, but until the
present conflict drew the whole world into its vortex, no one
train of events has ever bound up the destinies of all nations
together. During the early days of the war the question
was frequently asked, ^'What shall it be called! By what
name shall it be known in history?'' Some, with pathetic
optimism, proposed to call it ^'The War of 1914." For a

12 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOE DEMOCRACY

long time we vainly imagined it might be called, ^^The
European War." The question is asked no longer. The
titanic explosions of the conflict have burst the bonds of
geography: It has named itself — ' ' The World War." And
that very name, ^'The World War," is more than a geo-
graphical measurement. It is history. For it records one
of the greatest results of the war so far, the discovery of the
ivorld as a ivhole. It is prophecy as well. For the conflict
is not only an appalling war of the world, hut a ivar for a
tvorld, a new ivorld. The hope of mankind for that new
order of life, is gathered up in the words in which President
Wilson has voiced the mind and heart of the allied nations —
^'The world must be made safe for democracy."

There are four great aspects of the present tumultuous
days of conflict which have brought to the Church of Christ
the largest opportunity and the gravest challenge which it
has ever faced. The first is the agony and loss of battle,
which can neither be conceived nor computed, the fact that
we are living under the shadow of the greatest world trag-
edy in the history of mankind. The second is the utterly
new consciousness of the world as a whole. The third is
that the world, both as a result of the war and of forces
which preceded it, is in the most plastic and formative state
it has ever had. The fourth is the fact that by far the larger
portion of the human family has set out on a crusade for
the winning and guarding of democracy. These four aspects
of the present world situation intermingle and overlap at
many points, but each brings its distinct and overwhelming
call to the Christian Church.

A Shattered Civilization

Whatever may be thought of the causes of the war, or
its outcome, a world engaged in slaughter on an unpre-
cedented scale ; a world in agony, in mourning and in ruins
presents a searching test to Christianity. The cost of the
conflict in suffering, in death, in destruction, outruns the
power of the fleetest imagination to conceive. Colossal and

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 13

malignant forces of destruction have been at work which
make all former wars, even those of Napoleon, seem like
sham battles. Two thirds of the human race are directly
involved in the conflict, and every other human being indi-
rectly. Over forty-two million of men are under arms, not-
withstanding the losses already met with. In no previous .
war were there more than 2,000,000 men lined up against
each other. At the close of 1917 more than 6,000,000 had
been killed in action ; 1,000,000 men, women, and children had
been brutally massacred; 3,000,000 had died of starvation;
6,000,000 were lying wounded in military hospitals and as
many more were captives in prison. Unnumbered thou-
sands have been sent home permanently crippled, blinded, or
deformed. Think what these figures mean when translated
into terms of human heartache ! The cost in money, the
large burden of which future generations must bear, runs
into billions in a way that simply numbs our senses and con-
veys little meaning. At the beginning of 1918 the daily cost
was over $130,000,000. Three and a half years of war
brought an increase of $111,700,000,000 in the public debt of
the twelve leading war nations. During the first and cheap-
est year of the war the cost was greater than all the national
debts in the world combined. To this must be added things
which cannot be hinted at in figures at all, the burdens of
future years, the legacies of hatred, and the setting-back of
many forces of social progress. What message do these
things spell out to the disciples of the Prince of Peace f

Has Christianity Failed?

It was but natural that many should jump to the conclu-
sion that Christianity had failed. That after nineteen cen-
turies of Christian influence, the so-called Christian nations
should be involved in so terrible a carnage was for many a
self-sufficient proof of the failure of Christianity. And, in-
deed, let it be confessed freely, no section of the Christian
world is entitled with easy complacency to shove the entire
guilt on any other section. There is in the crisis an element

14 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

of judgment, which must bow all Christendom in humility
and contrition.

The sober thought of men, however, has come to see that
it is a travesty to call the forces which have launched the war
Christianity. It is the distortions of and substitutions for
Christianity which have failed to insure a peaceful and se-
cure world order — the crass materialistic philosophy of life,
a rampant and aggressive autocracy with an immoral theory
of the state as above law, a pagan trust in power and the ele-
vation of power as the supreme good with the denial of the
claims of human brotherhood. When these forces run their
course and produce a world holocaust, is it the gospel of the
Son of Man which has failed! There is profound truth as
well as brilliance in Mr. Chesterton's word: ^^Christianity
has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found
difficult and not tried.'' Everything else has been tried.
Commerce has been vaunted for a generation as the saviour
of the world's peace. A writer^ in 1907, in a book called The
New Internationalism, stated that ^'the dollar sign is rap-
idly supplanting the cross as a factor in international
peace." That was the kind of thing multitudes of people
were commencing to believe. We have been witnessing for
four years the kind of ''new internationalism" the dollar
mark creates, in Belgium and France, Poland and Armenia.
Scientific progress, diplomacy, military power and Western
civilization have all been exploited as the guarantee of the
world's peace and plenty — and they have all gone up in
smoke. One thing has to-day found a shining place in the
sun and that is the everlasting truth that there is none other
name given in heaven or earth whereby men must be saved
but Jesus Christ. In clear, shining sunlight such as it has
never been seen before during nineteen hundred years, is
the truth that nothing can save individuals, homes, commu-
nities and the world except Christ — Christ a living reality in
the whole life of the people throughout the world. ^'The

Harold Bolce.

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 15

world's supreme need demands the release of the world's
supreme power for righteousness."

The Only Hope of Peace

Men may devise ^^ Leagues to Enforce Peace" of a hun-
dred different varieties, and should devise them. But at the
heart of it peace means brotherhood, and to say that broth-
erhood has become the superlative necessity of the world is
to say that Christ is the sole hope of the world because none
other has been found to be a dynamic of brotherhood among
mankind.

The Church of Christ has not come to an hour of apol-
ogy. Above the crash of the guns and through them has
sounded the call for aggression, to let loose in force and di-
mensions as never before the only true peace-making power
on earth, the gospel of Christ. The United States is com-
mitted, in the words of her President, to a war to end war.
^'We shall fight," he says, *^for a universal dominion of
right, by such a consent of free peoples as shall bring peace
and safety to all nations and shall make the world itself at
last free." Such a program involves nothing less than the
evangelization of the world. Only religion can kill war, for
religion alone creates the new heart. In the words of Dr.
Fosdick, already become classic, ^^the missionary enterprise
is the Christian campaign for international good will. We
must see that it is so and handle it as though it were so.
What the nations through their governments will slowly
learn to do, loath to leave old precedents, bound by the sec-
tarian narrowness of national loyalties. Christians must do
now, and do with a lavish generosity that they have not prac-
ticed hitherto. " ^

The Discoveky of the Wokld

The earthquake which has shaken the world down has
shaken it together. It may seem like a paradox to say that

^ H. E. Fosdick, The Challenge of the Present Crisis.

16 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

out of the bitterest strife of the ages has emerged the dis-
covery that the world is one, but it is the truth. That dis-
covery places upon the Christian Church an inescapable
responsibility to shape and accomplish a program for the
evangelization and emancipation of that united world.

Millions of men have had in these last few years the
experience of Keats :

"Then felt I like some watcher in the skies
When a new planet swings into his ken."

The new planet is our old world, but it has swung into
the consciousness of men as a whole as never before.

It has long been a commonplace that steam and elec-
tricity have made the world a neighborhood, but the war has
seized the old commonplace and made it bewilderingly vivid.
The figure of a neighborhood is too spacious. The war is
not so much a neighborhood quarrel as a fire in a tenement
house where men are crowded together for life or death. A
family in a tenement house has a highly substantial interest
in the question whether the children across the hall play with
matches. You cannot very well quarantine a fire in a tene-
ment house. Nor can a war in this compacted and crowded
home of the human family be quarantined. The flames of
war which started in northern Europe soon spread down the
corridors till two thirds of the race were involved in it.

Terrible as has been the occasion which has brought the
world together, there is a profound spiritual significance in
such vast portions of the world uniting in eif ort and thought.
It raises the curtain on a new era. On that frontier of free-
dom which stretches from the English Channel clear down
into Africa and Mesopotamia over twenty-five nations on
the Allied side have answered ''Here" to the great roll
call of democracy. If ''politics makes strange bed-fellows,"
the war has made still stranger trench-fellows. The Gurkha
from India and the Arab, the Algerian, and Hottentot from
Central Africa have spilled their blood along with the New
Zealander, the Canadian and the Belgian in the cause of

18 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOE DEMOCRACY

freedom. The American airman fights with a British gun
from a French machine. The Fiji Islander has gone over
the top with his French and American brothers. The Sikh
from India rightly wears the Victoria Cross for high valor
along with his English comrade in arms. Each in his own
tongue repeats that glorious watchword of France — ^ ^ They
shall not pass.''

Hunger, one of the strongest bonds that tie men to-
gether, is playing its part too, as well as danger and hope,
in bringing this new world-consciousness to the forefront.
We cannot be parochial in our food. Hunger is teaching the
world in a stern and memorable way the old truth that Grod
Almighty has made all men of one blood to live together
and to eat together. The war has given a mighty emphasis to
President Wilson's words: "The world no longer consists
of neighborhoods. The whole is linked together in a com-
mon life and interest such as humanity never saw before
and the starting of wars can never again be a private and
individual matter for nations."

The thundering call to the Christian Church is plain —
if the luorld is one whole and a scourge in it cannot he quar-
antined, the cure for that scourge must not he. No part of
the world is safe till all is safe. Democracy cannot be safe
anywhere until it is safe everywhere. Ignorance and dark-
ness and vice and degradation can no more be quarantined
than war. We cannot save the world by homeopathic por-
tions of the gospel, here a little and there a little. A united
world demands of a world church, a world-program.

A New Woeld at Birth

The plastic condition of a world in ferment, in the melt-
ing pot of revolution and change, presents a providential but
fleeting opportunity to the church to furnish a Christian
foundation for the new structure. The world has never
stood still, and ever since the days of Pentecost there has
been abundant opportunity for Christian influence. But
never have there been at one time such revolutionary forces

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 19

of different character at work throughout the whole world.
What the character of the new structure will be no one can
prophesy ; but that it will be new no one can doubt.

"The rudiments of Empire here
Are plastic yet and warm.
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form."

^^When God rubs out/' said Bousset, ^4t is because he is be-
ginning to write. ' ' If there ever was a time in the history of
the Christian Church when the establishment of the world-
wide kingdom of God should be the dominating thought and
purpose of the united body of Christ, that hour has just
dawned upon us in these tragic, pregnant days. Every-
where we look, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, men
and nations are in upheaval and we see conditions which
demand the concentration of the unifying and guiding forces
of Christendom. If the church as a great missionary force
does not rise to a great occasion now, it will not be because
she can ever hope to get a bigger or a better one.

Not all the changes of these days are on the credit side
of the ledger. Many are terrible liabilities which will be a
peril and obstacle to the Kingdom for years to come. But
the very threatening of those new evils is itself an urgent
call to Christian campaigning.

Nor are all the revolutionary changes, particularly in
the Far East and Africa and South America, the result of
the war. They have been increasing in momentum for a
decade and more. But they have been vastly accelerated
and increased by the war. The revolution in Eussia, with
all that it means for good and ill, moved forward by a leap
of a generation at least, under the forcing process of the
upheaval.

The New Day iit America and England

In England and America, what tokens of a new world
are already before our eyes ! The passage by Congress of

20 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

the prohibition amendment, called by Bishop Bashford ''the
greatest piece of constructive legislation in American his-
tory since the amendment prohibiting slavery;" the rapid
extension of woman suffrage in America and the admission
of six million women to suffrage in Great Britain; the new
status of women industrially in both countries ; the progress
of collective effort; the wide extension of government con-
trol of industry; the progress of industrial democracy in the
greater participation of labor in the profits and direction of
industry ; the undreamt of revelation of resources in patriot-
ism, generosity, and humanity — all these are indisputable
signs of a new day.

In Non-Cheistian Lands

And if, as Kipling expresses it, taking ''hold of the
wings of the morning," we "flop around the earth," what do
we see? Not only a new Europe, but also a new Asia, and in
many respects a New Africa will emerge from the war. In
India a new national consciousness is awake and large polit-
ical changes are imminent ; China is searching for the ideas
and the men that are to shape its future destiny ; Japan has
gained a new position as a world-power and is experiencing
within its own life great industrial changes. In the near
and middle East the collapse of Islam's political power is
bringing far-reaching changes in political and economic life
of the peoples ; the Jews have won a new freedom and have
been deeply stirred by the hope of regaining after two thou-
sand years an independent national existence in their
ancient home ; conservatism and prejudice are being broken
down through new and wide contacts ; non-Christian nations
are in a serious mood, of which dissatisfaction with the tra •
ditional faiths of Asia and Africa is a convincing evidence.
The masses of plain people practically everywhere are mov-
ing toward Christ in larger numbers and with greater mo-
mentum at this present time than at any time within the last
fifty years. We are learning from the mass movement in
India and the revivals in Korea that there is such a thing as

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 21

the Cliristianizing of families, villages, and tribes. ^^ There
is such a thing as the conversion of national aspirations and
ideals. There is a sudden turning of the vast streams of hu-
man history. It was seen in the days of Constantine, again
in the days of Luther ; again under Napoleon. That stream
is turning massively, irresistibly to-day. " ^

Now OE Nevek

This vast shifting to new foundations is more than op-
portunity which Christianity can take or reject at its will.
It is menace. The cause of Christ hangs in the balance. For
the church, as far as we are concerned, it is now or never.
If once this period of upheaval passes, and the new world
which is now in the making, builds itself upon foundations
which are as hostile or indifferent to Christ as were the
foundations of the age which has gone down in ruins, the
future of the church in this and the next generation will be
an unutterable darkness. Christianity has now her chance,
the great chance of all her long existence. She holds the key
to humanity's unsolved problems. She is the steward of
that which the world supremely needs. This is no time for
a Christian leadership whose only military command is, ^^ As
you were ! ' ' The world will never be as it was. The church
cannot afford to be as it was. It must respond in an ade-
quate way to this God-given day.

The War for Democracy

The heart of the urgent call to us in the United States
for world-wide Christian advance lies in the fact that we are
engaged in a war for democracy; not merely for our own
defense, but to make the world safe for democracy. To that
sacred task we have dedicated our hearts, our money, our
lives. Underlying all the thinking and acting of individuals
and the nation must be the winning of the war.

But thoughtful men have come in increasing numbers to

W. H. p. Faunce, Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, p. 64.

22 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

see that we have set our faces as a nation to a task which no
military victory, howeA^er complete, can accomplish. The
victory of arms which we pray and believe that God will
bring to the allied nations, will remove the hindrance to a
world free for democracy which lies in an aggressive autoc-
racy bent on conquest. But with that hindrance removed,
no mass of armies can bring into being the inner mental and
moral and spiritual forces which must be created if safe
democracies are to exist and flourish on the earth. No
merely military victory can protect the two thirds of the
world which lies distant from the battlefields from its in-
ternal weakness and disorder. No military victory can
foster the intelligence and moral character which are the
foundations of democracy. Only the emancipating, educat-
ing, and stabilizing forces of the Christian religion can do
that. The task of the hour is one task. In it the two great
passions of the human heart join and fuse — patriotism and
religion.

On the patriotic side it is to rid the world of the menace
of the rampant despotism of Germany and her allies ; to free
democracy from the material obstacle of aggressive autoc-
racy.

On the religious side it may best be stated by the re-
versal of President Wilson's words, to malve democracy safe
for the ivorld; to set at work those forces of education, moral
control and religion among the backward peoples of the
world without which democracy is ^^a destruction walking at
noonday. ' '

The Patriotic Task

Never must it drop from the mind that the cause of
Christ has an overwhelming stake in the winning of the
war. Some of the fairest hopes of the kingdom of God are
bound up in it. The true freedom of the world cannot exist
under the rule of materialistic power. The kingdom of God
cannot tolerate a world where nations live by swagger and
threat, where the ambition and philosophy of a few make

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 23

miserable all mankind. We fight ^'to vindicate the prin-
ciples of peace and justice in the life of the world as against
selfish and autocratic power . . . for the ultimate peace of
the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German
people included : for the rights of nations great and small
and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of
life and of obedience.'' ^ ^^We are fighting Germany because
in this war feudalism is making its last stand against oncom-
ing democracy. We see it now. It is a war against an old
spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feu-
dalism— ^the right of the castle on the hill to rule the vil-
lage beneath. ' ' ^

Sadly as Christian men draw the sword, we need be, in
no confusion. We find in the New Testament no surrender
of the chief aim of all, the commonwealth of humanity ; no
substitution of lesser loyalties for justice, truth, and right.
We find, rather, as its climax a call to arms. There is to be
battle, but without hatred to human foe. There is to be par-
ticipation in the age-long, bitter struggle against an unseen
foe that makes his stronghold in the minds of men, inciting
them to war and conquest and the lust of selfish power. To
such times as ours comes the message of Ephesians: ^^Fi-
nally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power
of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may
be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principal-
ities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye
may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
all, to stand."

The nation has embarked on a great, unselfish, spiritual
crusade to clear the pathway for God and it follows its sons
across the sea with prayer.

^ President Wilson, April 2, 1917.

"" Franklin K. Lane, "Why We Are At War.'

24 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Where are you going, Great-Heart ?
"To cleanse the earth of noisome things,
To draw from life its poison-stings.
To give free play to Freedom's wings."
Then God go with you, Great-Heart 1

Where are you going, Great-Heart ?
"To lift To-day above the Past;
To make To-morrow sure and fast;
To nail God's colors to the mast."
Then God go with you, Great-Heart I^

The Missionaky Task

To complete the task of the soldier demands an ade-
quate and aggressive program for the world-wide extension
of the kingdom of God.

Two slogans of the third Liberty Loan campaign, when
deeply studied, make this clear. One was ' ' Halt the Hun. ' '
The other was ^'To make the world a decent place to live
in. ' ' The second is the larger and longer task, and without
its accomplishment success in the first will be largely fruit-
less. The Allied armies, please Grod, will ^'Halt the Hun.''
But nothing can make the world ^^a decent place to live in''
except the fundamental qualities of the spirit of Christ.

The war is essentially a war for opportunity. The over-
throw of tyranny means that the nations will be safe from
outside interference. But only the extension of vital Chris-
tianity throughout the world will ever mean that moral and
spiritual forces will be unchained which will create the pos-
sibility of world safety, save nations from internal sin, weak-
ness, and disorder, and undergird them with purity and the
spirit of justice and brotherhood.

We are in this war in behalf of the democracy of the
world. The greatest needs throughout this bleeding planet
are, after all, those which touch the ideals and future of
humanity. It is the function of the religion, the ethics, the

' From "The Vision Splendid," by John Oxenham. George H. Doran
Company, Publishers.

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 25

power, the love that was brought by the Son of God to make
the world safe for anything worth while. Jesus Christ alone
can save the world. Guns cannot. They leave but a desert
waste. The upbuilding of the world begins when war has
spit its last bomb and thrust its last bayonet. Governments
and armies never attempted to accomplish these results ab-
solutely fundamental to the safety of democracy. There is
but one institution in the world that has a program, the pur-
pose of which is to bring about these tremendous structural
changes ; that institution is the Church of Jesus Christ.

Democeacy Not Safe for the World To-day

The boon which more than half the world ^s a-seeking —
democracy — is not safe to-day. And after the war two
thirds of the human race in Asia, Africa, half of America,
and more than half of Europe will be as little prepared to
safeguard democracy as they are to-day.

Look at this proposition a little more closely. What is
necessary for the safety of democracy? What, after all, is
a true democracy? It is more than a republican form of
government with the machinery of popular vote. Under
republican forms of government, Mexico for years was a
despotism ruled with a hand of iron. Still under a repub-
lican form it was more closely anarchy for four recent years
than anything else. England, under the form of a mon-
archy, has had one of the freest democracies on earth. A
true democracy is more than any form. It is a moral and
spiritual order whose aim is the freedom, happiness, and
welfare of the individual. James Eussell Lowell has defined
democracy in plain words as that order in which every man
has a chance and knows that he has a chance.

Three great classic statements of the essence of democ-
racy have been made. One i^ the watchword of the French
Revolution — '^Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. ' ' The sec-
ond is in the words of the Declaration of Independence —
^^The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The third is in the immortal words of Lincoln — ^^A govern-

26 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

ment of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' At
heart democracy is a faith, a faith in a common humanity,
a belief that men are essentially the same kind of stuff and
that only by the cooperation of all, by the recognition of all
as the common partners, with equal dignity of membership,
can any progress worth the fighting for be obtained.

What Demockacy Rests On

The foregoing description of democracy is not a quota-
tion from the New Testament, but it comes from it neverthe-
less. It needs no long argument to convince that this order
of life can never be realized till it rests on the foundation of
the world 's first and greatest democrat — Jesus Christ.

Ask yourself what it is that has made democracy safe
in America. And when we speak of our own land, we speak
not as though we had attained but as though we press on to
the mark of our high calling. The more ardent our patriot-
ism the more ready we are to see and confess our imperfec-
tions of democracy, and the more ready to strive to correct
them. The call of the present day is strong on America to
free herself from all undemocratic blights — its race prej-
udices, class distinctions, economic injustices. Neverthe-
less, our heritage of freedom is large ; and it is easy to see
the forces which have made it so.

The Church

The gospel of Christ and the church which proclaims it
are the undergirding of freedom in America. Other founda-
tion for democracy can no man lay than that which is laid
in Christ. It came from him. That was a fine and uncon-
ventional tribute to Christ paid by Decker, ^'The first true
gentlemen that ever breathed.'" He was also, as Lowell
points out, the first true democrat who ever lived. The
world knew nothing of the rights of the common man till
Christ brought to earth the revelation of the infinite value of
every soul. The democracies of Greece and Rome were for

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 27

the few, resting on slavery for the many, and soon perished.
No one before ever voiced the value and unspoken hopes of
common humanity.

"He was the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."

The Bible has been woven into the very texture of
American life. ^ ' The existing government of this country, ' '
said William H. Seward, ''could never have had existence
but for the Bible. ' ' The moral foundations of national char-
acter, without which no free state can stand, have sprung
from Christian ideals and been sustained by them.

The Home

The home has played an incalculable part in the build-
ing and safe-guarding of free institutions, in America and
everywhere it has flourished. It is the training school of
reverence, of sympathy, of obedience, and self-control, with-
out which on a widespread scale a republic is a mockery.
The home as we know it, with its reverence for womanhood,
its solicitude for childhood, its ideals, has never appeared
apart from Christianity. ''The Cotter's Saturday Night,''
by Robert Burns, is more than a beautiful picture of a Chris-
tian home in the Scotch Highlands. It is a profound piece
of political philosophy :

"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs
That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad."

The School

It is an axiom that where the people rule they must be
fitted to rule. Education or chaos is the only alternative in
a democracy. The demagogue or tyrant will rule the peo-
ple who are not educated. Shipwreck is as sure as when
a blind pilot undertakes to steer a ship through the rocks.
Let the anarchy in Mexico and the collapse in Russia enforce
the truth.

28 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Public Opinion

Public opinion is king in a true democracy. With no
widespread devotion to ideals on the part of the multitude,
no capacity for moral indignation with which the govern-
ment must reckon, freedom is not sustained. ' ' Eternal vigi-
lance is the price of liberty. ' '

The Need of the World to Be Fitted for Democracy

How fares the world in respect to these essentials of
true democracy? Over one half of the population of the
globe can neither read nor write. By far the largest por-
tion of that percentage is found in the non-Christian lands.
Ninety-four per cent of the population of India are illiter-
ate as against 7.3 per cent in the United States. In China
the percentage of illiterates is even larger. What is the out-
look for true democracy there? What can it be but black
without speedy aid in education? In Latin America the
illiteracy ranges from 40 to 80 per c5nt; in Moslem lands,
with the exception of Turkey, from 75 to 90 per cent. "In
pagan Africa, apart from mission stations, the people do not
even know that writing has ever been invented!"

Nearly a billion people have never heard of Christ —
almost two thirds of the population of the globe. That
means they stand entirely apart from the whole range of
influences associated with Christianity, the sense of the
value of personality and human rights which work so
mightily as incentives to progress.

A safe democracy will come in these belated nations
when Christ comes. It will come with the Great Democrat,
not before. Up to the present time republican iyistitutions
have never 'flourished in any land where a free church has
not preceded it to set up standards of Christian living and
to lay the foundations in Christian ethics and character.

The democracy without sure foundations is a menace
to the rest of the world. The democracies of Russia, and
China, and Mexico are illustrations of the fact that the

MAKING DEMOCEACY SAFE 29

world's safety may be disturbed at any time by internal
quarrels in countries where 90 per cent of the population
are illiterate.

Has the Chuech a Pkogram"?

Has the church a program to meet this world-circling
and world-lifting task? No other institution on earth
has. The Church of God has both the program and the
credentials for the task. All that it needs is to be baptized
into a new sense of the urgency and immensity of the
task. It is a heart-breaking task, but it began in a heart-
break on Calvary, a divine heartbreak over the need and sin
of the world.

The Christian program is the same as it has ever been
since Christ sent out that first group of disciples into Gali-
lee, preaching, teaching, and healing. It is lifting the
world's life by those three levers. It preaches the gospel of
the love of God, the redemptive power of God, and the king-
dom of God as an order of righteousness, brotherhood, and
service. In every environment that message has proved a
germinating force of righteousness and social progress. In
its schools of every kind which belt the earth — primary,
secondary, and colleges, industrial and medical schools — ^it
has plowed up the earth for the growth of self-realization
and self-government. In its hospitals and social healing of
every kind it has set moving forces of vast social trans-
formation.

It has the credentials. The missionary of the gospel
has been the carrier of the democratic ideal to the four
corners of the earth. It was through the missionary and
those who came in his train that those vague forces which
we together call Western civilization were created.

The mainspring of human progress has been for nine-
teen hundred years, and is to-day, the Christian faith.
* ' The moral dynamic that transformed our wild forefathers,
the Saxons, Celts, and Scandinavian, into civilized nations
was not science, then unborn; not politics, literature or art;

30 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

it was Christianity.^' ^ And tlie power that has in the last
one hundred years aroused Asia and Africa and the islands
of the Pacific from the sleep of centuries is not commercial
or governmental but Christian. The credentials of the gos-
pel of Christ for a world-task are well urged in the words
of President Wilson : ''The gospel of Christ is the only force
in the world that I have ever heard of that does actively
transform the life ; and the proof of the transformation is to
be found all over the world, and is multiplied and repeated
as Christianity gains fresh territory in the heathen world. ' '

The Centenaey Pkogeam of Methodism

The Methodist Episcopal Church has planned to cele-
brate the one hundredth anniversary of the beginning of
Methodist missions by the only kind of a celebration that
would fit this day. It has girded itself to face adequately
its share of this world task. In a careful and thorough way
it has surveyed its world field and estimated what it needs
for a five-year term to attempt in a fair measure the
Christianization of the one hundred and fifty millions in the
non-Christian world for which it is solely responsible. It is
a program of large dimensions, for a small program in this
day would be none at all. It is the most far-reaching, the
most daring perhaps, ever undertaken by any church. It
involves a consecration of life, of prayer, and of money
which is ^revolutionary. But the church cannot stay as
a leader in a revolutionary world without becoming revolu-
tionary too. The program calls for a church on its knees,
and an offering of hundreds of its best sons and daughters
for world-service and forty millions of dollars.

It is a crusade that is God-timed. Timed, it is true, in
days of burden and stress, but timed to a day when men are
thinking in larger terms and there is a moral sacrificial
temi^er in the hearts of men and a larger horizon to their
minds than ever before.

W. H. p. Faunce, Social Aspects of Foreign Missions.

MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE 31

To accomplish this program means nothing less than to
recover for the church the horizon of Christ. If this is not
done, the church must sound a retreat at a time when the
world outside the church is moving into a new age and
drop back into a place of secondary importance in all that
pertains to constructive spiritual leadership. We must '*go
on or go under. ' '

It can be done. The spirit of the church must be mobil-
ized. The Christian spirit of adventure and of faith must
be stimulated. We are come to the Kingdom for such a time
as this. Spirit is the one really creative force in the world.
Change the spirit of the church, and all else will follow, as
the fruition of an intense life.

We must give the Christian emphasis to words that in
these days have burned themselves into the memory of every
American. ^^A supreme movement of history has come."
Our great and loved church, born with a world-parish as the
destiny of her message and experience, has squared herself
to make her world-task her supreme business. ''God help-
ing her, she can do no other. We must all speak, act and
serve together. ' '

I honestly believe that no place in all this world needs the gospel
as South America. — Bohert E. Speer.

Both the intellectual life and the ethical standards of these coun-
tries seem to be entirely divorced from religion. The absence of a reli-
gious foundation for thought and conduct is a grave misfortune for
South America. — Lord Bryce.

We are told that some day we shall have war with Mexico. How
much our own fault it will be if such a lamentable conflict comes ! What
Mexico needs is an invasion of schoolteachers and social workers and
Christian preachers, who have caught the idea of missions in their
international relationships; and if such an invasion is not forthcoming,
a military invasion may indeed be necessary. — Harry E. Fosdich.

Latin America had a population of 15,000,000 a century ago ; to-day
it has about 80,000,000. Formerly immigration was restricted to the
Latin race. With transportation facilities multiplying and cheapened,
and the Panama Canal open, these lands face all the congested areas
in the world. On the east their doors open to Europe and Africa; on
the west, to the millions of Asia. Latin America will have its day in the
twentieth century. Calderon predicts a population of 250,000,000 by the
end of the century. There are many who believe it can maintain a popu-
lation of 500,000,000, or one third the world's present total. — Commission
J — Conference on Christian Work in Latin America.

CHAPTER II
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY FOR LATIN AMERICA

Chkistopher Columbus discovered South America in
1498. About four hundred years later the United States
began to catch up with him.

The war has moved this process of rediscovering South
America, which has been going on for many years, several
speeds forward. The war has made lightning as well as
thunder, and as by a vivid flash it has shown to us far more
clearly than before our neighbors to the south. New trade
relations have developed, many of them by necessity, and a
new realization of a unity of interest between North and
South America has been stimulated. Large fruits of this
new discovery of South America are already manifest in the
political, commercial, scientific, and the religious world. We
are linked arm in arm with the largest of the republics of
South America, Brazil, an ally in the war for democracy, and
that new relationship has contributed to the new interest.

Latin America

Other causes, notably the opening of the Panama Canal
and our relations with Mexico, have brought into the mind
of the country the larger area of which South America is a
part— Latin America. It is a good name for citizens of the
United States to learn — ** Latin America." It is good for
our humility, for it reminds us of what we so easily forget,
that the United States is not all there is to '^America."
Latin America stretches from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn
and includes Mexico, Central America, Panama, and three
islands of the West Indies. Widely diverse in respect to
progress, situation, and climate it has a common background

36 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

of language, tradition, and religion and similar racial stock.
Its problems are to a large extent the same. It includes
twenty nations, a population of 80,000,000 of people and an
area of almost 8,500,000 square miles — three times the size
of the United States. Eighteen millions are whites, 17,000,-
000 Indians, 6,000,000 Negroes, and of mixed white and
Indian, 30,000,000. Of mixed white and Negro there are
8,000,000, 700,000 mixed Negro and Indian, and 300,000
East Indian, Japanese, and Chinese.

This vast area presents to the United States a maze of
interesting possibilities in politics, in trade, fascinating to
think of and plan for.

But to the heart and conscience of the Protestant
churches of the United States it presents more than that. In
an hour when our eyes are set on the shining goal of a world
safe for democracy, it presents the need of a group of na-
tions struggling against tremendous handicaps in the enter-
prise of democracy and pitifully lacking in many of the fun-
damental necessities for a safe, free, and permanent democ-
racy. It presents also the momentous question. What shall
be the ideals which shall control the life of this vast section
of the world, which unquestionably will hold within a cen-
tury over 250,000,000 people?

The Rediscovery of South America

We are learning in the United States a new set of
A B C's. That lesson is in the importance, present and
future, of the A. B. C. countries, Argentina, Brazil, and
Chile, the leading republics of South America. When these
three countries came together with the United States and
Mexico in conference at Niagara Falls in an attempt to settle
oui' differences with Mexico, the conference failed to ac-
complish that result. But it was highly successful in ac-
complishing something else, just as important or more so —
a new knowledge of South America on the part of the United
States, and a new appreciation of the need and possibilities

LATIN AMERICA

SOUTH AMERICA— THE CONTINENT OF THE FUTURE

The heavy black shading indicates the territory occupied by the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The white spaces show the unoccupied territory for which it is responsible. The lighter vertical
shading marks the countries in which the Methodist Church South is at work.

of cooperation with her countries for great purposes of
common interest.

Reasons for Neglect and Ignorance of South America

There are many reasons for the ignorance of South
America on the part of people in the United States, and most

38 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

of them are not flattering. A self-satisfied complacency is
one of the chief ones. Vague, incorrect ideas have found a
congenial soil in our national hotbed of ignorance. We have
taken Baron Munchausen as one of our leading authorities
on South America, supplemented, perhaps, by 0. Henry and
Richard Harding Davis. To large numbers of people. South
America has been, and unfortunately is to-day, a land of
^'fevers and revolutions,'' a suitable theme for comic opera
and exciting fiction.

The American business man, ^'the hustler," whom we
have raised into a myth of efficiency, has succeeded in get-
ting only 29 per cent of the trade of Latin America largely
because he has not taken the trouble to learn the facts about
it. The trade of Latin America with the rest of the world
has been growing far more rapidly than with the United
States. The assumption that there was little in South
America worth learning about has been a costly one and is
coming to an abrupt end in the world of trade.

A New Interest

Many forces fortunately have conspired in the last few
years to turn the eyes of the United States to South Amer-
ica. The Panama Canal has made a new water map of the
world and brought the west coast of South America within
easy reach. The whiz of bullets across the Mexican border
turned our eyes to the South and brought South America
within view, as well as Mexico. Real information is begin-
ning to filter through our hazy preconceptions and prej-
udices. Travel has increased between the continents. Vis-
its of eminent statesmen like Mr. Root, Lord Bryce, Mjr.
Roosevelt, and scientific expeditions, have had wide educa-
tional value. Trade with South America has increased and
expanded in many directions and a new knowledge of the
commercial and agricultural possibilities has quickened in-
terest greatly.

Striking expressions of this new interest abound. The

LATIN AMERICA 39

Pan- American Bureau, housed in a great building at Wash-
ington, is a powerful organization under the active support
of the President of the United States and the presidents of
South American republics to promote closer relationship.
In 1915 two conferences of immense importance were held
in Washington. One was a gathering of financiers repre-
senting twenty-one American republics, held under the aus-
pices of the United States government. The second was a
Pan-American Scientific Congress which brought a group of
visitors from Latin America more broadly representative
than any other group ever assembled in America. More
deeply significant than either of these was the Congress on
Christian work in Latin America which was held at Panama
in February, 1916. Four hundred and eighty-one delegates,
of whom 230 were appointed by denominational mission
boards from practically all the Christian countries of the
world, made up a congress unique in the New World's his-
tory of missions. Its reports are the most exhaustive study
of the social, educational, and spiritual conditions of Latin
America ever made. Its results in closer cooperation and
advance mark a new epoch in the history of missions in the
two Americas. The turning of all these new streams of in-
terest toward South America heralds a new day for the
whole continent.

The Magnitude of South Ameeica

To try to convey any vivid idea of the size of South
America means a riot of the imagination, Kipling tells
us that ^' there are forty different ways of inditing tribal
lays ' ' and remarks that ' ' every single one of them is right. ' '
There are also forty different ways of giving first aid to
the imagination in its effort to consider the size of South
America, and every single one of them is true. Have you
an imperial mind that delights to ^' think in continents"?
Then try this: South America is three times as large as
China and four times as large as India. Brazil itself, the

40 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

fourth largest country in the world, is larger than the whole
of EurojDe. Perhaps your own country's size means more
to you. Then remember that the whole United States could

be put into Brazil and
leave room for four
States the size of New
York. The Argentine
Republic, which is cus-
tomarily thought of as
about as large as Penn-
sylvania or, to be gen-
erous, as Pennsylvania
and New York, could
hold all of the United
States east of the Mis-
sissippi plus the first
tier of States west of it.
Perhaps we think more
clearly in terms of a
smaller area. Try a
' ' little ' ' country like
Venezuela. Texas,
which we think of as an
empire in itself, would
go into Venezuela twice,
leaving room for Ken-
tucky and Tennessee.
We call Chile ' ' the shoe-
string republic, ' ' but we
forget what a large shoe
it would make a string
for ! Narrow, it is true,
but long enough to reach from New York to San Francisco
and have enough left to tie a knot with. Its area is four
times that of Nebraska.

South America has larger areas unknown than any con-
tinent, not excepting Africa. In no other continent could a

PORTION OF SOUTH AMERICA IX WHICH

METHODIST EPISCOP.AL CHURCH

IS AT WORK

This includes the leading republics of Argentine and
Chile and a third of the population of the continent.

LATIN AMERICA 41

hunter plunge into the wilderness and emerge with a whole
new, unknown river system as his game, as Mr. Roosevelt
did in Brazil with the "River of Doubt.''

Wealth

The wealth of South America is literally boundless -
Half the rubber of the world comes from tropical America.
From Brazil alone comes four fifths of the world's coffee
supply, and from its diamond fields more gems than any
part of the world except South Africa. Argentina alone, in
1914, possessed over 123,000,000 head of live stock — sheep,
cattle, horses, pigs, etc. Chile produced in 1913 nitrates val-
ued at $128,000,000. The supposedly barren wastes of Peru
the same year yielded 1,700,000 tons of sugar cane, and from
its mines was shipped $10,000,000 worth of copper. Inter-
national trade has grown from $2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,-
000 in the last ten years ; and the Hon. John Barrett predicts
that in the five years following the war it will increase to
$5,000,000,000.

The Futuke

When we look toward the future, as we cannot help look-
ing, the natural resources, coupled with its comparatively
small population, make it clear that South America will wit-
ness as great development in population, and economic and
social transformation, as any other continent of the world,
and very probably greater. It is the last great unoccupied
area of the habitable world, except sections of Africa and
Malaysia. The stream of immigration had already set in
with a strong current before the war. In 1913 about a mil-
lion immigrants landed in South America. There are nearly
half a million Italians near Buenos Ayres in Argentina.
Most of the emigration has been from Europe, but immi-
grants are commencing to pour in from China and Japan, a
movement of vast possibilities. As soon as the war is over
streams of emigration from Europe will start and deepen.
While the United States will undoubtedly receive some of it,

42 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

there is no more free land in North America. South Amer-
ica will claim and receive the largest streams of immigration
that are going to pour into any of the Western world in the
next two hundred years. There is no other place for hu-
manity to go. One of the most conservative estimates is that
of Lord Bryce, who predicts that in two hundred years the
population will be 375,000,000; while the common estimate
that it will one day maintain half a billion, or almost one
third of the world's present population, is not at all difficult
to accept.

South America is on the threshold of a future whose
possibilities cannot be measured. The guarantees of a
future population and future wealth are here. But here also
is the certatiny of a materialistic, agnostic civilization, weak
in moral character and spiritual ideals, unless the saving
force of a free and full gospel of Christ can be built into the
life of the continent.

A Continent In Need

The appeal of South America to Christian North Amer-
ica is the same appeal which comes from any land without
the strong vitalizing influences of a free, living, spiritual
Christianity. But that appeal is strongly reenforced by two
considerations. The first is the responsibility which its
nearness and unity of interests with North America put
upon us. The second consideration is the timely one of
the needs of its democracy, the necessity of the varied influ-
ences of a vital Protestant Christianity if the democracies
of South America are to be the true homes of freedom and
justice.

It is not presumption nor ambition nor a narrow sectar-
ianism which forces the Protestant Church to regard South
America as a mission field and a desperately needy one.
The Roman Catholic Church has been in South America for
four hundred years, and the fruits of its stewardship in that
time, for the most part, constitute an urgent call for a living

LATIN AMERICA 43'

and free Christianity. Even in case one should question the
justifiableness of sending missionaries to Roman Catholic
South America, there are still the millions of neglected
people, especially the Indians, for whom the church is doing
in most cases nothing at all. It fails utterly to occupy vast
regions.

But beyond that, South America is not a Roman Cath-
olic continent in any real sense. The men in the civilized
and more enlightened centers have practically all left the
Roman Church and are swinging in a body to unbelief. An-
other thing which must not be forgotten is that the Roman-
ism of South America is not the Romanism of the United
States. In that country it is weighted down with crass mate-
rialism and dense ignorance; its moral life is weak and its
spiritual witness faint.

**No Plymouth Rock"

^^ South America had no Mayflower and no Plymouth
Rock. ' ' This famous sentence is the key to the condition of
South America and to much of its history. The Europeans
who came first to South America were impelled by the spirit
of adventure, the lust for gold, the desire for conquest. The
founders of New England were driven by a love for liberty,
the desire to worship God after the dictates of their own
conscience. The settlers of North America came from
those countries of Northwestern Europe where there was
the greatest freedom. They came to set up new homes.
The conquerors of South America were militarists from
the most absolute monarchy in western Europe, and came
bent on destroying and carrying away all they could get
their hands on. By giving proper place to this difference
of purpose and ideals and racial stock we have explained
much of the divergence between the history of the two
continents.

We have seen what are the requirements for a safe and
free democracy — universal education, a pure and elevated

44 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

home life, moral foundations in character, a strong public
opinion, and spiritual ideals. We find in South America a
continent in desperate need of these great pillars of Democ-
racy.

Need of Education

In few nations is illiteracy more pronounced. The
following percentage of illiteracy will show the appalling
situation at a glance. In Argentina the percentage of illit-
erates is 50 per cent; in Uruguay, 50 per cent; in Chile, 65
per cent ; in Paraguay, 90 per cent ; in Colombia, 80 per cent;

and in Brazil, 70 per
cent. This will mean
more when we remem-
ber that for the United
States the average is 7.3
per cent. To remedy
this stigma of illiteracy
the governments are do-
ing very little, except in
the higher branches of
education. The ele-
mentary schools are the
least developed part of
the educational system.
It should be remem-
bered that mixed races,
such as the white and
Indian or the white and
Negro, form 40 per cent
of the population of the
continent. The univer-
sities and higher schools are almost entirely for the intel-
lectuals or those of pure white blood, of whom there are
less than fifteen million. There are large and well-
equipped universities, in cities like Buenos Ayres, under
state control and a strongly marked leadership of highly

LITERACY CHART OF SOUTH AMERICA

The percentage of the population of the difTerent
countries who can read and write is indicated by the
diagonal shading.

LATIN AMERICA 45

educated men. The universities are nonreligious and the
students and professors are almost to a man agnostic or
openly infidel.

MoEAL Ideals

**We cannot," says Burke, ^ indict a whole people."
We cannot overlook the moral idealism which has been
active in South America or cast any slur on its pure, good
womanhood. But we cannot overlook the fact that countries
where from twenty to over sixty per cent of the people are
of illegitimate birth are lands of desperate moral need.
From one fifth to one sixth of the population of Brazil are
of illegitimate birth; in Venezuela it is two thirds; in
Ecuador, one half; in Chile, one third. Male chastity is al-
most unknown. Drink has nearly wiped out the Indians.
Professor Edward A. Ross says, ^'The state has entered into
a kind of partnership with the church; the former to sell
alcohol to the Indians (having a monopoly of its sale), and
the latter to provide in her festivals the occasion for its con-
sumption. ' ' ^ Alcoholism is particularly rife on the west
coast. In Valparaiso, Chile, there is one saloon for every
twenty-four men. That city, with a population of 180,000,
had 600 more cases of drunkenness reported in one year
than all London, with a population of 5,000,000.

Religious Needs

Back of moral needs is a condition of spiritual destitu-
tion. The question of the need of Protestantism in all Latin
America is not a question of church order ; not at all a his-
torical question whether the Roman Church has provided
there a true ministry. It is the inescapable conclusion that
the old, mediaeval superstitions of the church life that is
there are inadequate to furnish the moral and spiritual
leadership needed to bring South America out into the
liberty of a new national life in the faith of Christ. The

'• E. A. Ross, South of Panama.

46 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Bible in South America is an unknown book. The gospel of
a living Christ is an unknown story. Lord Bryce sums up
the moral conditions of South America in the last chapter of
his book in these words : ^'It is a grave misfortune that both
the intellectual life and the ethical standards of conduct
seem to be entirely divorced from religion.'' At least one
half of the men of these South American republics have
broken finally from Rome. The intellectual class has moved
almost in a body into skepticism and agnosticism. In a re-
cent Y. M. C. A. canvass only four students out of five thou-
sand in Buenos Ayres reported any belief in God or faith in
Christianity. That condition is typical of the universities
and educated classes everywhere. Robert E. Speer writes,
"I do not believe that of the one million peoi3le in Buenos
Ayres, there are two hundred men on any given Sunday at
service." Surely, doubt and denial of all faiths, spreading
apace and unchecked among eighty millions of people, con-
cern the entire Christian world. ''Churches with modern
religious scholarship and strong faith are bound to offer in-
tellectual Latins the torch with which to relight the falling
or darkened lamps of Christian belief and life. ' '

The Centenaky Pkogram and South America

Despite the heroic achievements of a small band of mis-
sionaries in South America and results of large promise, it
has been ''The Neglected Continent'' in Christian missions
as well as in many other ways. The total number of or-
dained foreign missionaries in all of South America in 1916
was only 320. That means one ordained clergj^man of the
evangelical churches for every 156,250 of the population.
In America the ratio is one to every 622. There are four
times as many Protestant ordained ministers in the State of
Ohio as in all of South America.

The Centenary Program of the Methodist Church plans
to build, in an adequate way, on the foundations already laid
to meet its share of responsibility and opportunity. The

"^w

^^»l:-.

LATIN AMEEICA 47

estimates do not call for the complete occupation of the fields
open to Methodism. That would involve staggering
amounts. But they do provide for a strategic advance
through the doors that have been opened. The missions in
South America have made a fine beginning, in which exploits
of heroism and persistence in the face of great obstacles
have been done which will rank with the great chapters of
missionary history. Methodism has to-day 157 missionaries
and foreign workers, 239 native preachers and workers, and
152 teachers, a membership of 15,000 and 6,000 unbaptized
adherents. There are 16 educational institutions and over
2,500 students. The church is at work in 8 of the republics
whose total population is 23,000,000. The totals of results
are not nearly so great as the obstacles and distances, but
represent a remarkable achievement in the face of all the
circumstances.

Establishment of Churches

As everywhere, the great aims is the establishment
of a self-supporting, self-propagating native church. The
method in its essence is that of the successful establishment
of Christianity anywhere, the proclamation of a ^'know-
able ' ' gospel by extensive itinerating. It is the old strategy
of the pioneer preaching on the frontier in the days of the
saddlebag, of John Wesley among the coal miners, of the
apostle Paul in Corinth and Ephesus. There is a marked
evangelical stir on both the east and west coasts. A wide-
spread evangelistic movement appears to be approaching in
South America, and the Centenary Program provides for
the occupation of new territory and the creation of new
churches. It calls for such additions to the missionary
forces as will make possible a continent-wide program of
church development. This will require 24 missionary
preachers and 84 national (that is, inhabitants of South
America) preachers; 86 churches and chapels and 31 par-
sonages and 4 missionary residences. The financial outlay

48 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

for the staff and maintenance will be $588,180 ; for property
about $1,500,000. All the figures of the Centenary survey
cover a five-year period.

Education

In the case of such crying- need as the illiteracy of South
America discloses, educational work is both large, immedi-
ate service and the pathway to ultimate leadership. To win
leadership in a non-Christian or belated Christian country
Christian education must be the very center of the move-
ment. In the republics where the Methodist Church is at
work illiteracy averages almost 75 per cent. Unless there is
developed an extensive system of education the danger ap-
pears of creating churches of illiterates. The state schools
are entirely unqualified to produce moral leadership or fur-
nish gospel ministry. In large areas the state schools do not
even exist. The educational program looks out on the need
in both directions — the need for primary schools of ele-
mentary education and higher training schools, universities,
and colleges in order to rear an educated Christian leader-
ship with which to stem the tides of infidelity and immoral-
ity among the educated classes. Bishop Homer C. Stuntz
says that the battle for the conversion of South America,
within the next hundred years, will be won or lost in the edu-
cational institutions that are planted there. To engage in
this battle with the stake of a continent for Christianity as
its prize, the Centenary Movement proposes 29 elementary
schools, 14 high schools, 3 colleges, 1 agricultural school, and
4 seminary and training schools. The staff required will be
126 missionary teachers and 158 national (South Amer-
ican) teachers. The total cost will be about $1,000,000 for
staff and maintenance and about $2,000,000 for property.
In the primary schools will be taught elementary industrial
instruction, hygiene and sanitation, and religion, as well as
the common elementary branches. The Methodist Church
will cooperate with other denominations in a union theolog-
ical seminary at Montevideo in Uruguay and in two union

LATIN AMERICA 49

evangelical universities, one for each coast. In addition to
this direct service there is now a chance to impress the edu-
cational movement in South America with the Christian
point of view, and to give character, tone, motive, and defi-
nite ends to the educational policies of all the Latin Amer-
ican republics.

Along with this program of education there is imme-
diate need to enlarge the two publishing houses already in
operation, one on the east and one on the west coast, so
that they can spread broadcast clean moral and religious
literature. Much of the general literature now accessible to
Latin America young people is of a nature so vile that if a
man were detected in an attempt to bring specimens of it
into the United States even as personal property, he would
be arrested and punished.

Medical.

The number of hospitals of the Methodist Church at the
present time in the whole of South America is a tragical
zero. And that in a land where the state hospitals are not
adequate to care for ten per cent of the people. South
America has no hospitals, no nurses' training school, nor
deaconess home under any mission board. Outside of such
progressive centers as Buenos Ayres, and in countries less
advanced than Argentina, the neglect of public hygiene is
appalling. In some sections smallpox is a continuous epi-
demic. In Chile, where there is one of the finest climates of
the world, the death rate is twice as high as that of the
United States. Dr. Speer calls Chile ^^a killing ground for
children. ' ' Seventy-five per cent of the children die before
reaching two years of age. Among the neglected and pov-
erty-stricken millions of Indians the death rate of children is
even higher than that.

The present proposal is for the establishment of a hos-
pital and nurses ' training school in the capital city of five of
the republics, both as a work of mercy and evangelizing
force of high value.

50 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Panama

The Republic of Panama has been included in these
estimates of needs of South America. Panama is a key to
the world in the new trade map and naval map which the

PANAMA— THE CROSS ROADS OF THE WORLD

opening of the canal has made. If the Church of Christ
should be located "Where cross the crowded ways of life,"
Panama is a good place, for it has become ''the crossroads
of the nations'' and will be increasingly so. In two growing
cosmopolitan cities, Panama and Colon, along what is likely
to become the greatest commercial highway on the globe,

LATIN AMEEICA 51

Methodism is already located and must be strengthened.
All of Panama, outside the Canal Zone, with 300,000 Indians,
mostly living in stark paganism with no Christian effort
directed toward them, has been given to the Methodist
Church as its sole responsibility, with churches and schools
to be provided.

The Chkistian Intekpketation of the Monkoe Doctrine

The Monroe doctrine, by which we have said to all the
world for a century, ''Keep hands off South America,'^ com-
mits the United States to a peculiar responsibility for it.
Not all the interpretations of that doctrine have been looked
on with favor in South America. The Monroe doctrine is
often regarded as patronage and as the cover for an undue
domination of South American affairs and an affront to her
independence. What is called ' ' the North American peril, ' '
the danger of aggression from the United States, has been
widely heralded and believed. A large step in an interpreta-
tion of the Monroe doctrine which will replace jealousy and
suspicion by cooperation is that which Secretary of State
Lansing gave at the Pan-American Scientific Congress in
1915 and which met with a hearty support of the South
American delegates. It is that of a Pan- Americanism which
rallies around the common standard of the rights of hu-
manity and the defense of these rights as represented in the
western hemisphere.

There is a Christian interpretation of the Monroe doc-
trine which must supplement all others. It is the responsi-
bility of the LTnited States to bring to South America the liv-
ing Christ, who came that all men might have life, and have
it more abundantly, so that in its own way and under its own
leadership that great continent may develop the moral and
spiritual forces strong enough to guide and shape its great
development.

New doors are opened. The long battle for religious
liberty is issuing in victory. Through the heroic efforts of
Protestant missionaries and often under their leadership,

52 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

constitutions have been rewritten granting religious liberty
to eight tenths of the people of South America. Old tethers
are being worn away. Will the church match the new oppor-
tunity with new endeavor?

Mexico
A Giant Mission-Study Class

Probably the most remarkable mission-study class ever
known was that conducted in Mexico during four recent
years by Victoriano Huerta and Pancho Villa. If the aim
of a mission-study class is to produce a strong realization
of a country's need, that class was an unusual success. The
revolution and anarchy which prevailed, the raids of Villa 's
bandits across the border, the imminent danger of war and
the sending of costly military expeditions by the United
States, all riveted the attention of the nation to the glaring
fact that there was something desperately wrong in Mexico.
This violent and effective projection of Mexico into the con-
sciousness of the United States led to many different con-
clusions. The, voice of the military interventionist was loud
in the land. With eloquent phrases about the vindication of
American rights, he pointed to military conquest as the only
means of quelling the disturbances which are a menace to
the peace and interests of the United States. When stripped
of its oratorical trappings, however, this remedy is seen to
involve an enormous military effort calling for millions of
men and money, and a long time, with the question of the
complete subjugation of Mexico doubtful even then. The
Mexicans as a race are proud and brave. They are bitterly
resentful of forcible intervention. The vast extent of
Mexico and the deep mountain fastnesses would make it pos-
sible for resistance to hold out indefinitely.

And even if we conquered Mexico, what result would we
have? We would either have to annex it and admit it as a
State in the Union or hold it as subject territory in an im-
perialistic manner. Either alternative is revolting. Fifteen

LATIN AMERICA 53

millions of people, 80 per cent of whom are illiterate, unused
to democratic institutions such as ours, are not ready for
statehood and cannot conceivably be ready for a generation,
perhaps for many. The United States is not ready for the
other alternative — of becoming a conquering, imperialistic
power. It would be too dangerous to the safety of our demo-
cratic institutions at home.

The Only Solutioit of ^ ^ The Mexican Problem ' '

Even when the attention which the disturbances in
Mexico drew to the country had no result except the pes-
simistic and disgusted conclusion that there was '^no hope
for order in Mexico," that result has a high value, for it
points inevitably to the conclusion that the only salvation of
democracy in Mexico is not the application of force on the
outside, but the development of new forces on the inside.
The United States has realized that its career is indissolu-
bly bound together with that of its nearest foreign terri-
tory on the south. The one great result of our mixed prob-
lems in Mexico is a growing realization that Mexico will be
a source of ceaseless anxiety and danger to the people of the
United States until the national thinking and ideals are
brought to higher levels. Democracy will never be safe in
Mexico either for that country or the United States until
the forces which make democracy safe anyivhere are brought
in}:o action and developed — universal education, freedom
from economic slavery, enlightened public opinion, strong
moral character, and religious life. The only solution of
the Mexican problem is the Christian solution, an invasion
of Christian preachers, teachers, and physicians, the estab-
lishment of churches, schools, and hospitals that will enable
Mexico to start realizing her own destiny of strong and en-
lightened self-government and moral and spiritual progress.
The United States government in 1917 spent enough money
in the patrol of the Mexican border on the Pershing expedi-
tion the first six months to build a college, a hospital, a

54 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

cliurcli, and a social settlement, all magnificently equipped,
in every town of over 1,000 people in tlie republic of Mexico,
and to provide for their maintenance for ten years. Can
there be any doubt that the latter expenditure would have
insured a safe democracy there, as the military expedition
utterly failed to do ?

The Needs of Democracy in Mexico

The strong searchlight of national interest which has
been swinging across our southern border for five years has
revealed the glaring handica^DS which democracy has in
Mexico.

Illiteracy

Eighty per cent of the population of Mexico is illiterate.
Schools are few in number, and even in times of peace the

■^^Sll

MEXICO— OUR NEAREST NEIGHBOR

Names in Roman type indicate stations of the Methodist Episcopal Church; those in Italics,
centers of the Methodist Church South. This map shows the central and commanding position
the Methodist Church holds in ^Mexico.

government has made little effort to overcome illiteracy.
Among the large percentage of the population which is the

LATIN AMERICA 55

native aboriginal stock, about forty per cent, education is
practically unknown. In a condition like this it is clearly
evident that there can be no intelligent public opinion to
make possible a stable representative government.

Slavery

A democracy must be free, and over half of the popula-
tion of Mexico is in a state of debt slavery, or peonage,
which is little to be distinguished from actual slavery.
Ninety per cent of the land is held by a small fraction of the
population. The majority of the population, both of the
aboriginal inhabitants, the Indians, and the mixed race of
Spanish and Indian stock, are peons, attached to the great
estates frequently a million acres in extent. They have no
land of their own and are kept in ignorance and poverty.
It is the operation of this system of oppression which makes
the peons so habitually ready to join a revolutionary enter-
prise or to become bandits.

Religious Darkness

Superstition and immoralit}^ are interwoven into the
very religious life of the nation. The religious destitution
of the Indians is a vivid indication of the spiritual darkness
of Mexico. For four hundred years since their discovery
by white men they have been left without the Bible and the
knowledge of the living Christ. The Roman Catholic
Church has not only failed to provide an open Bible and
the preaching of a spiritual Christianity, but it has been for
the most part the relentless foe of free thought and speech,
a free press and free public schools. It has been the agent
of the rule of oppression and the means of exploitation of
the people. For these reasons it is losing its hold on think-
ing people.

The Present Opportunity

In spite of the revolution and the famine and disease
and destruction of missionary property, the opportunity for

56 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Protestant missionary success in Mexico was never so bright.
Revolutionary conditions are gone. Organized opposition
to the present Mexican government has disappeared. Gen-
uine elections have been held and the government is grad-
ually coming into a secure position.

The attitude of the present government toward religion
as expressed in the new constitution has been interpreted
as uncompromisingly hostile. The constitution provides for
a complete separation of church and state. Foreign reli-
gious leaders, priests and ministers, are not allowed to work
in the country. But that provision is designed to kill the
political influence of the Roman Church. It was not in-
tended to interfere with Protestant religious work, and has
not in any way interfered with it. Catholicism is in marked
disfavor with the present government because of Roman
opposition to the revolutionary party now in power. The
Protestant missionaries are not allowed to administer the
sacraments, but they have remained in Mexico and are un-
hindered in their work of teaching and preaching and pub-
lishing. The courage and heroism of missionaries in stick-
ing to their posts in the time of greatest need and danger
has created an extremely favorable disposition toward
Protestant Christianity.

Never was the response to a vital Protestant Christian-
ity so large in Mexico as to-day. The weakening of the
power of the priests and the liberalizing influences of the
revolution on religious thought have furthered a marked re-
sponse to evangelizing efforts. Never have such crowds at-
tended Protestant preaching services. In 1917 a great re-
vival in Mexico City resulted in the professed conversion of
nearly one thousand people. There is a new eagerness to
read Christian literature. The sale of Bibles has increased
over four times in the last few years. In 1917 it was well
over one hundred thousand.

Many of the constitutionalist generals and other leaders
are either Protestants or attendants on Protestant service.
Mexican Protestant Christians are hopeful and active. The

LATIN AMERICA 57

various Mission Boards working in Mexico have taken ad-
vanced steps in cooperation and union activities. All these
are unmistakable signs that Mexico is at the threshold of a
new era in religious development.

The Centenaey Response

The Centenary Program of Methodism in Mexico plans
a response to this enlarged opportunity. It is not a large
financial outlay that is called for. It is in no way adequate
to completely meet the responsibility, and yet a program
that is teeming with possibilities.

Methodism in Mexico is a 'Agoing concern." The revo-
lution did not stop it. There was only one thing which could
cause the superintendent of the mission for many years,
one of the most-loved and trusted men in all the country,
John Wesley Butler, to leave Mexico. That was the sum-
mons to another world, which came in March, 1918. Under
his leadership and helped by his efforts, Methodism has
grown in Mexico to a total of members and adherents of
20,000, with 5,000 students in her schools. There is a total
staff of 21 missionaries, 143 native preachers and workers,
and 169 teachers. There are 64 churches and chapels.

Evangelistic

Methodism has a sole responsibility for three of the fif-
teen million inhabitants of Mexico. Much damage has been
inflicted by the disturbances of the revolution. Buildings
have been plundered and burned. Famine, disease, and un-
certain conditions have made the work precarious. But
these losses are more than compensated for by the new re-
sponse to evangelistic efforts which characterizes conditions
since the revolution. The largest public congregation in the
City of Mexico, Protestant or Catholic, meets in the Meth
odist church, over a thousand people as a rule, with mam
standing. An extension of direct preaching throughout the
country will produce large results. The number of evan-
gelists and pastors and local churches must be increased in

58 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

order to cover the area allotted to Methodism. Seventy-
seven additional churches, 4 missionaries and 78 native
preachers are the efficiency requirements for this need.

Education

The Methodist schools in Mexico are few, but influen-
tial out of all proportion to their size and numbers. They
have been a large means of disarming prejudice and gain-
ing the good will of the people. With proper expansion they
will be an increasing influence. The appalling illiteracy, the
absence of all moral and religious education in the govern-
ment schools, make an irresistible appeal for Christian edu-
cation. The Centenary Program calls for a minimum of 66
schools, 102 native teachers, the strengthening of the exist-
ing secondary schools and cooperation with other denomina-
tions in two great union educational enterprises, a central
Christian university, and a union theological seminary in
Mexico City.

Medical.

The conditions of war have increased the need for med-
ical help, a need that was already large. Abounding filth
and avoidable disease spread throughout the country. Only
in the large cities are there state hospitals and physicians,
and these are almost entirely for the wealthy. The one hos-
pital and dispensary which the church has, serves exclusively
an area of two hundred and fifty by four hundred miles con-
taining a million people. It is a center of healing and sani-
tation and social betterment. It must be strengthened and
medical work expanded.

The Rise of a National Church

A day of large promise for the development of a vigor-
ous Protestant Christian Church of Mexico is here. Some
idea of the vitality of the Mexican Methodist Church may be
gained from the fact that of the $200,000 a year asked for
five years for the expansion of the work of the church in

LATIN AMERICA 59

Mexico, over one third of the amount is to be raised in Mex-
ico itself! Mexicans are taking new responsibilities of
leadership and support. It is not the Americanization of
Mexico to which we are called, but to a task better than that.
It is to supply in these shaping years the fertilizing forces
of the gospel by which a strong Mexican church and nation
may rise. The urgent call, in the words of Bishop F. J. Mc-
Connell, is to ^^take the Lord Jesus Christ to Mexico to let
him work out his own plans for the Mexican people. ' *

The Chinese Question is the world question of the twentieth cen-
tury.— B. L. Putnam Weale.

The crucifixion was two hundred and eighty years old before Chris-
tianity won toleration in the Roman empire. It was one hundred and
twenty-eight years after Luther's defiance before the permanence of the
Protestant Reformation was assured. After the discovery of the New
World one hundred and fifteen years elapsed before the first English
colony was planted here. No one who saw the beginning of these great,
slow, historic movements could grasp their full import or witness their
culmination. But nowadays world processes are telescoped and history
is made at aviation speed. The exciting part of the transformation of
China will take place in our time. In forty years there will be tele-
phones and moving picture shov/s and appendicitis and sanitation and
baseball nines and bachelor maids in every one of the thirteen hundred
districts of the empire. The renaissance of a quarter of the human
family is occurring before our eyes, and we have only to sit in the parquet
and watch the stage. — Edward A. Ross, The Changing Chinese.

CHAPTER III

CHINA— THE OPEN DOOR TO FOUR HUNDRED
MILLION MINDS

Communication Tkenches

A RECENT picture in the illustrated weekly papers of a
group of several hundred Chinese laborers digging com-
munication trenches behind the Allied lines in France is a
vivid symbol of the position of China in the world to-day.
Two forces of vast significance are symbolized in that pic-
ture: the fact that the ancient autocracy of China is lined
up with the forces of democracy in the great conflict; and
also that that great people, from one fourth to one fifth of
the human race, which for ages has built around itself a solid
wall of exclusiveness, is to-day building communication
trenches out to all the world. The war has extended and
quickened the transformation of China, a process already
going on at express speed, and a movement of unsurpassed
importance in modern history.

The Awakening Giant

To try to picture the transformation which China is
undergoing puts a hard strain on the dictionary. Writers
on China in the past fifteen years have ransacked the dic-
tionary for all the words that look like the Whirlpool Rapids
below Niagara Falls and have pressed them into service.
We have had in rapid succession China in Convulsion, the
Conflict of Color, The Changing Chinese, The New Day in
China, The Uplift, The Awakening, The Emergency, The
Revolution, China Inside Out, and China Upside Down. It
takes a whole conspiracy of picturesque words to express

64 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

what is going on. It is a political revolution, a moral ad-
vance, an intellectual renaissance, a religious reformation,
and a nineteenth century of scientific and industrial develop-
ment all combined.

More than a century ago that far seeing genius. Na-
poleon, said of China, the memorable and oft-quoted words :
' ' Yonder is a sleeping giant. Do not wake him. ' ' But there
are more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in
Napoleon's philosophy. The giant has been awakened,
startled bolt upright, by forces in which Napoleon little
reckoned ; by another giant which in Napoleon's day was ly-
ing asleep in the teakettle — steam ; by the long-distance flash
of the electric wire; and last, but by no means least, by the
inspiration of the long-distance reach of the gospel of Jesus
Christ.

The awakening in China, part of the great transforma-
tion which is making a new era through Asia, can be fitly
compared only to the Renaissance in Europe in the fifteenth
century which was the transition from the Middle Age to the
Modern — a ^'new birth" to a new and larger life through
the revival of learning. Men look back to those days, the
'' spacious days" of discovery, of political and religious
reformation, of the birth of modern science, as one of the
greatest creative epochs in history. Yet the new awakening
now going on in the Far East, and notably to-day in China,
surpasses in extent, in rapidity of development, and perhaps
even in significance, that which took form in Europe in the
fifteenth century.

As we look more closely at this many-sided revolution
in China, three large aspects of it press upon our attention.
These aspects have been visible for many years, but are
brought to our minds with a sharpened intensity because of
the war and its results. The first consideration is that of the
vastness of the awakening. The second is that of the tremen-
dous importance to the world of what China becomes. The
third is the solemn one of the fleeting character of the Chris-
tian opportunity.

CHINA

The Vastness of China's Awakening

Any vivid sense of the scale of the changes already
accomplished and now going on in China must have for its

CHINA

Strategic centers in the Methodist occupation of China. Chart at the right shows the de-
velopment of membership and self-support of Methodism in China.

background a conception of the size and extent of China. A
population of nearly four hundred millions of people, set in
one of the most productive areas in the world, one half as

66 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

large as the United States, including Alaska ; with, coal and
iron resources as rich as those of any land on earth ; a labor-
ing class by far the largest and toughest, the most industri-
ous and economical to be found on the globe — surel}^ here is
the stage and here are the actors for one of the greatest
dramas of history.

This background of the mass of China has far more
meaning, however, when we add to it the fact that since the
outbreak against foreigners in the Boxer Revolution in 1901,
there has developed in seventeen years, a reversal of national
feeling, an openness to Western influence, such as can hardly
be matched in all history. The land where once all life had
crystallized into unchangeable molds has suddenly become
fluid, plastic, seeking new molds from the Western world.

The Political Revolution

The political revolution which in 1911 overthrew the
Manchu dynasty and made China a republic astounded the
world, and the world has not yet recovered from its amaze-
ment. Those who knew China at all had little idea that the
course of democracy would run smooth. The six years of
the republic have not been smooth ones. The democratic
idea is still crude. The great essentials of a safe and sound
democracy are lacking and must be supplied. The struggle
for democracy is still on. Nevertheless, the failure of the
monarchist movement under Yuan Shih Kai and the collapse
of the attempt of Chang Hsun to restore the Manchu em-
peror has shown that the heart of China is unmistakably at-
tached to democracy and to the republic.

A new emphasis to this new political day in China has
been given b}^ the response of the republic to the invitation
of the United States to associate herself with the stand taken
against the piratical submarine warfare of Germany, Feb-
ruary 9, 1917. In her affirmative response a far-reaching
foreign policy was inaugurated and China undoubtedly won
for herself a new place in the world's esteem. In that rer

CHINA 67

sponse and in the subsequent declaration of war on the
Central Powers, August 14, 1917, ^'for the first time since
treaty relations with the powers had been established,
Chinese diplomatic action had swung beyond the walls of
Peking and embraced the world within its scope. ' ' ^

The New Patkiotism

Along with the political revolution, both as cause and
effect of it, there is in China a national spirit of patriotism,
absent ten years ago, but to-day a growing and even a flam-
ing force. A new self-consciousness of national weakness
and humiliation over it have generated a nationalism the
like of which China has never known before. There is an
ardent resolve that the old, weak China must give way to a
new, strong China, made solid instead of loosely bound to-
gether, armed instead of defenseless, self-supporting instead
of dependent. The action which is resulting from this new
nationalistic feeling runs along three main lines : the provi-
sion of an army and navy so that China may be able to re-
sist foreign aggression; the development of native indus-
tries ; and the movement for universal education. It will be
readily seen that this new patriotism contains both large
promise and peril to Christian influence. It affords a
splendid new foundation in national feeling on which Chris-
tianity may build, but it also holds the possibility, that un-
less the church can so increase its effort during these
years of opportunity and make itself Chinese in leadership
and thought, the new patriotism may turn to the native
faiths as being Chinese, and Christianity may be struggling
under the odium of being foreign.

The Moeal. Reformation

Perhaps the most astounding feature of China's awak-
ing is the moral advance, strikingly illustrated by the war on

^ B. L. Putnam- Weale, The Fight for the Republic in China, p. 319.

68 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

opium begun iu tlie edict of the Empress Dowager in 1906.
Thirty years ago the majority of the people in Europe and
America would have as soon thought of gravitation being
abolished as of opium-smoking being abolished by China.
E. A. Ross calls the warfare on opium which China con-
ducted for ten years "the most extensive warfare on a vi-
cious private habit that the world has ever known. " ^ It
sprang from a sense that unless the people speedily re-
nounced the vice that was undermining its manhood, there
was no hope for China among the nations. It should be re-
membered that it was the great memorial signed by thir-
teen hundred and thirty-three missionaries from seven coun-
tries which drew forth the famous edict abolishing the opium
trade, much of the edict being the very language of the me-
morial. The enforcement of the edict against opium was
carried out strictly and strenuously. Blood was shed and
millions of dollars' worth of property destroyed.. Vol-
untary Anti-opium Leagues were formed which entered into
the fight in many places with the fervor of a religious cru-
sade. The fight on the habit has had unexpected success, due
to the rising spirit of jDatriotism which came to its aid. The
production of opium in China has been cut down seventy or
eighty per cent and in the process a new force in China is
being nourished — public opinion. Millions for the first time
in their lives have thought, "What is the public good!"
The war on oj^ium is only one phase of the awakening.
Other moral delinquencies such as the social evil and official
dishonesty have been dragged forth from their intrenched
positions and pilloried.

Educational Awakening

The educational awakening in China is the real key to
its future. It must be examined in more detail later in the
chapter, but its place is central in even the most rapid im-

The Changing Chinese, p. 146.

Asia Photo by Olive Gilbreath

SOME OF OUR CHINESE ALLIES IN FRANCE

STUDENTS OF PEKING UNIVERSITY COMING FROM THE ASBURY
METHODIST CHURCH ON THE UNIVERSITY GROUNDS

CHINA 69

pression of the vastness of the ^'new birth'' of the nation.
With the awakening to the need of universal education as
the only real preparedness for China's future, and the sub-
stitution of modern education for the ancient system in use
for two thousand years, China has embarked on the most
stupendous educational task ever attempted. It involves the
provision of a million schools to furnish instruction for the
children of school age. Only two per cent of the children are
now being educated. Temples are being confiscated in many
cities to accommodate schools and colleges. The number of
modern government students in Peking in the decade from
1905 to 1915 rose from 300 to 17,000, and the pupils in the
province surrounding from 2,000 to 200,000.^ The new sys-
tem when completed will call for nearly a million teachers.
No one with a living imagination can fail to be deeply moved
by the spectacle of this great people setting itself to the gi-
gantic task by acquiring a knowledge by which it alone can
hope to play in the world's affairs a part commensurate with
its natural strength.

The Religious Shifting

Deep as these changes go, there is one that goes deeper.
It is the moving away from old religious foundations and
the search for new ones. The religious situation in China
is an enlargement by four hundred million diameters of
that picture which has touched the heart of the world,
"Breaking Home Ties." A great people, more numerous
than all of Europe, with the exception of Russia, is faring
forth from its ancestral home of beliefs to find a power
which its old faiths have failed to supply. Through all
classes, government officials and scholars and the illiterate
masses, there is an openness to Christianity. In the classic
declaration of the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference
in 1910, truer to-day than then — ^ ^ One quarter of the human

Eddy, The New Era in Asia, p. 15.

70 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

race is slipping from its spiritual moorings. Surely, never
was richer freight derelict on tlie waters of time/'

Importance to the World of What China Becomes

Swiftly and providentially we are being led out of the
laundryman stage in our thinking of China. It is idle to
dream of a peace for the world and a democracy safe for the
world unless in these formative years the moving mass of
China settles firmly on the political, moral, and spiritual
foundations which alone can support a true democracy.
The population of China doubles itself in about eighty
years ; that of the rest of the world in about a century. It
is probable that by the year 2000 it will be close to eight
hundred million. With a similar growth in Japan, Malay-
sia, and India this means that the yellow races in a century
or two will rapidly approach the white race in numbers. It
is not ''yellow journalists" or "jingos" who foresee that
unless this inevitable growth in numbers and power is ac-
companied by a moral and spiritual transformation on the
inside of China and a truly Christian and unselfish states-
manship on the part of the powers dealing with her, we may
witness a race war in comparison with which the present
conflict will prove only a skirmish.^ It is of vast importance
to the world what conceptions of life command the alle-
giance and what principles govern the conduct of the multi-
tudes of China. There is a real yellow peril in the East, not
the bugaboo of a war with Japan with which conscienceless
"jingos" struggle vainly to start strife, but the possibility
that the new age in China as well as Japan may end in mate-
rialism. Should China successfully reorganize herself, and
become an independent industrialized state, given to militar-
ism, factories, foreign trade, and to all the allurements of
an age which has lost its head in the mad rush for wealth
which modern inventions have made possible, she may
become a great materialistic power and her weight be

^See Bashford, China: An Interpretation, p. 457.

CHINA ^ 71

thrown into the scale against the forces making for moral
progress and nobler ideals in life, to the infinite loss and
danger of the world.

The Fleeting Christian Opportunity

The Christian Church has in China an opportunity
boundless in every respect except that of time. China will
not always be in her present transition. The forces which
make for the present popularity of Christianity will spend
themselves by a natural process. China sits to-day at the
feet of the West in school. But schooldays will pass, in that
sense, and the young giant will go out from the schoolroom
door, his industrial and political lessons learned. The
prominence of the Christian missionary as a pioneer of
Western culture will some time have an end. Government
schools will equal, and possibly surpass, missionary schools.
Will Christianity in this generation so redeem the time that
when China has learned of the West its arts, its sciences, its
industry, it shall also have received its best gift, its faith,
and a virile and expanding Chinese Christianity have come
into being adequate for the titanic task of shaping the new
nation? ^^A new China is impossible without renewed
Chinese. ' '

The Eesponse of Methodism

In the Centenary Program for China the Methodist
Episcopal Church has planned a thoroughgoing and stra-
tegic response to this divine opportunity. It is a program
not based on a guess, nor on vague hopes. It is based on a
careful survey, the product of the years of study, of the
actual needs in men and money covering a five-year period
for putting the present work on an efficient basis for the
Christianizing of the eighty millions of people for whom
the church is exclusively responsible. The program rests
on seventy years of encouraging history and experience.
In 1847 the first missionaries of the Methodist Church

72 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

landed in Foocliow. After ten years of intensive labor the
first converts, thirteen adults, were baptized. In sixty years
that small company has grown to a Chinese church of 65,900
members, 7,309 nnbaptized adherents, and a strong native
leadership of 3,000 preachers. The church won a place of
educational leadership with 21,000 students in 600 primary
schools, 12 secondary schools, and 5 universities. Its 11 hos-
pitals and 2 dispensaries, though understaffed and almost
without nurses, have performed miracles of healing and
opened doors more imj)regnable than the great wall of the
northern kingdom.

The call for advance is along these three lines of pro^n.-
dential success. The estimates express the call to Christian
America to help make democracy safe for China ; to see our
struggle to admit the world to democracy clear "through
to the finish" and to help rear in China those pillars without
which any democracy must crash to the ground — education,
moral character, and religious ideals. China has wakened
up, it is true. But " it is one thing to ivalie up. It is another
thing to get up.'' China will never ''get up" until that gos-
pel, which is not in word but in power, comes to its strug-
gling democracy and bids it with a divine potency, "In the
name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk ! ' '

Let us look at this Centenary Program for China in
education, in that broad proclamation of a rounded gospel
which may be called evangelism, and in medical luork.

China's Need for Educatioit

"The fight for the reiDublic in China" will be in the
schoolroom. A safe democracy in a nation where illiteracy
averages 95 per cent of the population as it does in China,
and where only two per cent of the children are in school is
unthinkable. It is unthinkable to the leaders in China them-
selves, and the government, seeing the utter hopelessness of
a strong China without widespread education, has inaugu-
rated a movement for education without parallel.

CHINA

The key to the Christian opportunity in China is to be
found in the old ruined examination halls in Peking and
other capitals of provinces, where examinations under the

"CHINA'S ONLY HOPE "

Strategic Christian Educational Centers. Union Universities are located at Peking, Foochow,
Nanking, and Chengtu. Each of these universities is fed by secondary schools in outlying districts.

ancient system of education were held. Over thousands of
these halls reeds and vines are growing. Since the edict of
1905 abolishing the old system of education and substitut-
ing modern methods of instruction these halls are crumbling
into dust. And '^with them has crumbled, not only a kind of
examination but an attitude toward life, a system of values,

74 CHRISTIAN CEUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

a standard of character. The passing of China's old edu-
cation is the transformation of her life. Now the student
who would win governmental positions must answer ques-
tions in European history, in economics, in social science;
and the old Chinese officials, with their huge goggles, their
embroidered coats, their clinging to the far past, have gone
into hiding, never to emerge.'' ^

These crumbling halls are the symbol of present Chris-
tianity in China, not only in that they witness to the eager
open-mindedness of China, but also because they witness to
the age-long veneration of the scholar in China. China is
literally a nation of scholar worshipers. Hence for Chris-
tianity to win the educated classes through its colleges will
give it an ascendency over the masses to a degree not to be
matched in any other land. And when we add to that the
fact that the educated classes, the literati, are approachable
to a measure unknown fifteen, or even ten, years ago, the
opportunity of a strategic Christian victory through educa-
tional leadership is a large one.

Democracy's Need of Cheistian Education

China's need for Christian education is, in biblical lan-
guage, '^nuch every way." We have seen that the only
hope of her democratic experiment is in education. The
government is powerless both to provide all she needs and
the kiiid she needs. Not for a hundred years to come can
the government in China care for the education of its own
children. Even if it were to gather into schools as large a
percentage of the population as attends school in Japan, it
would need to provide buildings and teachers for forty mil-
lions of pupils.

The fertilizing truth of the gospel brought democracy
to China, and Christianity must see it through. A half cen-
tury or more of silent and ceaseless publication of the reli-

^W. H. p. Faunce, Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, p. 73.

CHINA 75

gious and economic truths of the gospel in a very real way
laid the mine whose explosion the world saw when the
Manchus were driven out. In the words of the President
of China, Li Yuan Hung, ^^ China would not be aroused to-
day as it is were it not for the missionaries/' A large num-
ber of the leaders of the new republic were educated in mis-
sion schools. But the testing of that democracy has only be-
gun. Christian education must furnish the leaders needed,
unselfish, true leaders. A live and intelligent public opinion
has begun to be created, but it nee/is nurture and the devel-
opment of conscience in the individual. Patriotism, newly
born, must be stimulated and purged of selfishness.

Industrial Education

Democracy cannot survive unless it is solvent. China
must be self-supporting if she is to be free. She needs tech-
nical education in order to develop her abundant national re-
sources, raise the standards of living, and wipe out her curse
of poverty. It is part of the task of Christianity to provide
training in scientific agriculture, forestry, and technical
branches of all kinds so that China may be able to throw
sure economic foundations under her democracy.

MOEAL AND EeLIGIOUS FOUNDATION OF CHARACTER

Here is the real problem of education for democracy,
the formation of character. It is a problem before which
China, resting only on her ancient faiths, is helpless. Con-
fucianism has furnished a great moral restraint to the peo-
ple of China in its high ethical teaching, but the religions of
China have proved utterly inadequate to save the people by
producing sustained and progressive moral character. The
widespread corruption of officials, of the new as well as of
the old, is to-day one of the chief obstacles to progress in
China. It is an obstacle which will never be solved without
a new moral and religious dynamic. There has come a

76 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

strong recognition by thoughtful Chinese that without some
power which can create and strengthen character there is
little hope of their dreams for their country being realized.
As Yuan Shih Kai confessed to John R. Mott, ''Confucian-
ism has ethical ideals but lacks the power to make them
eifective.'^ It cannot block natural inclinations and wrest
lives from the grip of appetite and passion without the doc-
trine of responsibility to God. More than that, with the
breakdown of Confucianism and the swing away from the
moral influence it had, oi^ the part of the educated classes,
the most important question China must answer is, ' 'Whence
shall come the morality of to-morrow so deeply needed T'
Christianity must help her find the only sufficient answer.

The Favoring Conditions for Christian Education

The Methodist Centenary Program for education in
China comes at a time when conditions have made a su-
premely favorable opportunity.

A Welcome to Christian Schools

China offers a welcome to Christian education such as
is met with in no other non-Christian nation. Communities
ever}"where are calling and frequently in vain for Christian
schools. The Chinese are ready to make liberal subscrip-
tions for land and buildings. The missionary school has a
wide prestige from the fact the missionary has aggressively
pioneered many reform movements. Missionary schools
were the first modern schools and are still the best. The
missionary introduced Western medicine. He has intro-
duced new trees and crops ; has been prominent in famine re-
lief and in other ways has been the pioneer of Western cul-
ture. All this has brought to Christian education an en-
thusiastic welcome. The return by the United States to
China of $50,000,000 after the Boxer indemnity was paid,
and its use by China for educating leaders in the United

CHINA 77

States, has won for the American missionary school in
China an increased regard.

QPEISr-MlNDEDNESS OF EDUCATED CLASSES

The receptiveness of the literati, or educated classes, is
one of the outstanding features of the changed attitude of
China. In 1896 John E. Mott called the literati of China
''the Gibraltar of the non-Christian student world.'' A
leading missionary to China stated that he would have felt
well repaid if he could have been the means of the conver-
sion of one of these officials or literati in his lifetime.^ A
striking evidence of this new appro achability was furnished
by the meetings for the educated classes conducted by Dr.
John E. Mott and Sherwood Eddy in 1914 and by Mr. Eddy
in 1915. In every center visited the largest halls available
were filled with audiences drawn from the educated classes.
The government and educational authorities in many cases
gave their cordial support. Public buildings were given for
the meetings and holidays declared in colleges in order that
students might attend. In 1915 in twelve cities 121,000 of
these officials, literati, and business men attended these evan-
gelistic meetings, 12,000 of them signed Bible study pledges,
and 7,000 are actually enrolled in Bible classes and making
a sincere study of Christianity.

Influence of Geaduates

Christians occupy a place of influence in the new China
out of all proportion to their numbers. Many of the lead-
ers of the reform party at Nanking, Peking and in the prov-
inces, including Sun Yat Sen, are products of mission
schools. Two thirds of China 's first constitutional congress
were graduates of mission schools. These fruits of Chris-
tian education have vastly increased the favorable disposi-
tion of the new China toward the missionary schools and

^ Eddy, The New Era in Asia, p. 115,

78 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

colleges. It should not escape our notice, in passing, what
a remarkable tribute this prominence of mission school
graduates is to the efficiency of education as a force for
Christian influence.

The Centenary Educational Peogkam

primaey and secondary schools

The Methodist Church is exclusively responsible for
16,000,000 boys and girls of school age — a part of China's
60,000,000 children who never receive a day's schooling.
Methodism, according to Bishop Bashford, who has spent
fourteen years in China, could plant primary schools for a
million jDupils this year, in her own territory, if the teachers
and means could be provided. Schools of all grades are
crowded to the doors and hundreds of applicants are turned
away annually. The survey of efficiency requirements for
China calls for 328 primary schools, with enough missionary
and native teachers to direct them. These primary schools
are needed for a twofold purpose, as feeders to the higher
schools and for creating universal literacy in the church.
At present from one half to two thirds of the converts are
illiterate. The same aims determine the need of secondary
schools. The advance program calls for 21 secondary
schools, designed especially for securing an educated mem-
bership. The aim is to fit students for life as well as prepare
them for higher schools; and agriculture, chicken-raising,
weaving, silk culture, and mechanical training are taught.

UNIVERSITIES

Methodism has located, by a wise statesmanshii^, uni-
versities in five strategic centers, with a system of tributary
schools around each. In Peking, Chengtu, Nanking, and
Foochow Methodism cooperates in union university centers.
Xanchang is to be the denominational university center in
the unmeasurably rich province of Kiangsi. This states-
manlike cooperation in educational work in China is one of

CHINA 79

the finest fruits of Christianity on the mission field. It has
added to the efficiency and prestige of Christianity and holds
large promise for the future. At Peking the church is united
with other missions, building on what was the former Meth-
odist campus, a university in the national capital, the radiat-
ing center of political life. There young men trained in a
Christian university are put in the very center of the na-
tion's life. At Foochow, the center of the largest Methodist
constituency of China, the church is cooperating in another
Union University with six denominations. At Nanking is
located the third Union University. It is the ancient cap-
ital and the center of the political and educational life of the
lower Yangtze valley. Four other denominations cooperate
with the Methodist Church. At Chengtu, the center of West
China, is the West China Union University, a triumph of
church federation, with seven denominations cooperating.
A few years ago large plans were made for this university
involving sixty buildings to be erected on the campus. To-
day thirty of these buildings are either erected or are pro-
vided for.

The magnitude of this university task may be estimated
from the fact that there are 1,000,000 teachers to be trained
for China's 60,000,000 illiterate children. The high strat-
egy of it may be seen in the fact that 80 per cent of students
desiring education above high school must come to mission-
ary institutions. The Christian Church is thus educating
the men who in five to ten years will give direction to the
government system of education. One of the largest fields
of influence for these universities is that they set uip stand-
ards of education which may become models for the gov-
ernment school system which is at the present time taking
definite shape.

To put this educational undertaking on an efficient basis
calls for 65 missionary teachers and 973 native teachers.
For property and equipment, there will be needed in the next
five years, in addition to present income, $1,879,007; for
maintenance, $1,131,978; and for endowment, $1,806,667,

80 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

making a total of $4,817,652. Plainly, this is a small price
to pay for buying up an opportunity that will never come
again.

The Evangelistic Peogram

*'What therefore God hath joined together, let not man
put asunder.'^ Education and the direct proclamation of
the gospel are parts of one Christian task in every land. In
the evangelistic program are grouped the direct work of the
church in preaching and social service. The call for advance
is based on a thrilling history of evangelistic success and a
marvelous opportunity. Three thousand native preachers
and a membership and adherents totaling 75,000 make up
a native church of genuine strength. The temper of the
church may be seen in the 100 per cent increase of self-sup-
port in ten years. The Centenary surveys for China call for
a 300 per cent increase in giving on the field by the native
church.

The Methodist Church is exclusively responsible for
eighty millions of people, a number four-fifths as large as
the population of the United States. Every fact advanced
about China in this chapter is an argument that this is the
time of times to give to the native church of China a mo-
mentum that will insure it a destiny of leadership. The
loosened grip of ancient faiths on China, the receptivity of
all classes, high and low, and the stirring of the national
mind outlined above, make an opportunity for Christian
evangelism hardly to be matched by any since the conversion
of the peoples of northern Europe.

The Centenary World Program plans the development
of self-supporting and self -propagating churches until they
are found everywhere. At present there are hundreds of
thousands of villages and towns left to Methodism alone
which are still without any regular Christian services. It
will make possible a commanding work among educated
classes in city centers, including the erection of worthy
church buildings which will command the respect of both

CHINA 81

Christian and non-Christian and the securing of strategic
sites while property is still cheap. It is planned to provide
and equip Chinese pastors qualified to lead the influential
classes and to hold for Christian life and service the pro-
ducts of mission institutions.

With great wisdom the evangelistic program calls for
social service on a broad scale. There is both statesmanship
and love in it. Social service is a direct application of the
gospel and also a means of largest appeal to the Chinese.
For the social message of Christianity is strikingly in accord
with the best of Chinese tradition.

When the missionary emphasizes medical work, famine
relief, public health, and help for the unfortunate, he meets
a hearty response in China, for the Confucian thought which
has so controlled China through the ages has stressed hu-
manitarian work.

To carry through this program there will be needed 33
new missionaries and 474 native workers. In property and
equipment it calls for 9 institutional churches, 314 city and
village churches and many missionary and native workers'
residences ; an outlay over four years of about $1,500,000.

• The Floweeing of a Centuey Plant

The church must do no less. The present readiness of
China is the divine flowering of a century plant, for the year
1919 is the one hundredth anniversary of the translation of
the Bible into Chinese by Robert Morrison, the first Protes-
tant missionary. It was a tremendous task. Little wonder
that after the task was done, Milne, Morrison's associate,
cried out, ^ ^ To learn Chinese is a work for men with bodies
of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of spring steel,
eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and
lives of Methuselah." That date of the translation of the
Bible into Chinese is one of the great red-letter days in the
history of China. Now that century plant is bursting in a
gorgeous bloom. In the five years after the revolution there

82 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

has been an increase in membershii) in the Christian Church
in China of 25 per cent !

AYestern influence is breaking down superstition in
China. Shall we put nothing else in its place? The science
and learning and commerce and the vices of Western civili-
zation are sweei^ing in pellmell. Shall we send nothing
along to supplement and redeem? If we cast out the evil
demon of superstition only to have the seven devils of com-
mercialism, agnosticism, sensuality, and materialism take
up their abode, surely the last state of China will be worse
than the first. We play the part of destroyers if we break
idols only to leave vacant shrines. China needs those idols
replaced by a deeper reverence, a more satisfying faith, a
nobler moral ideal. ''We who have sent through all the
Eastern lands our food products, our textiles, our automo-
biles, shall we also send our Bible? We who are breaking
down family life and ancient forms of worship and long-
established government, shall we also plant the faith in God
the Father and in Jesus Christ ? " ^

The Medical Task

A physician in the United States, hurrying to the house
of a patient recently, was met by a friend who inquired
where he was going. On being told the name of the patient
the friend reassured him by saying the patient had a book
on ' ' A^liat to Do Before the Doctor Comes. " " That is why
I am hurrying," the physician replied. "I am afraid he
will use it. ' '

That has been the climax of China's physical suffer-
ing. She has been using her native text-book of old wives'
fables in medicine to meet the great scourges with which
the land is afflicted and has not only been i^owerless before
them but even added to their toll of suffering and death. It
has been like the fatal sickness of George Washington.
The disease was bad enough, but he was making a brave

^W. H. p. Faunce, Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, p. 97.

CHINA

struggle against it, when the doctor arrived with his stern
cure which proved too much even for the iron constitution
of the ^'Father of his Country." Chinese medicine, al-

METHODIST HOSPITAL CENTERS IN CHINA
The figures represent the number of persons for whom Methodism is responsible

though possessing some value, is quite incapable of dealing
with such diseases as diphtheria, cholera, and plague. The
Chinese know practically nothing of surgery except as they
learn it from Western schools. Only in certain centers have
people awakened to questions of public sanitation ; cities the

84 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

size of Boston draw water from polluted rivers and wells.
Every city and village lias open sewers. Out of ten chil-
dren born in the United States three, normally the weakest
three, will fail to grow up. Out of ten children born in
China, these weakest three and probably five more besides
will die. The present death rate in China is from 50 to 55
per 1,000. In the State of New York it is 15 per 1,000; in
modernized Japan, 20 per 1,000. In North America there
is one doctor to every 625 people; in China one to every
2,500,000.

Methodism in China has 11 hospitals, 2 dispensaries,
and 16 physicians. They have performed a service vastly out
of proportion to their numbers. Native women physicians
at the head of Methodist hospitals, such as Dr. Mary Stone
and Dr. Ida Kahn, graduates of American medical schools,
and brilliant physicians and surgeons, are among the bright-
est trophies ever won by Christian missions in any land at
any time. At Dr. Mary Stone's Hospital in 1915, 10,000 new
patients were treated, 13,000 return visits and 1,000 patients
eared for in the hospital, making a total in round numbers
of 25,000 persons reached by Dr. Stone's work. In the
survey of needs the responsibility of Methodism has been
figured out carefully on the basis of figures submitted by
physicians in charge of hospitals on the fields. At Peking
the measure of responsibility for the Methodist hospital is
14,000,000 people. In Chengtu in West China it is 2,500,-
000. For that need there is one doctor. Thirty-five million
people for whom the church is responsible have 11 hospitals
and 24 physicians ! One of the saddest facts is that 40 per
cent of the Methodist hospitals in China are closed, because
there is no staff to care for them. Most of the hospitals are
manned with one physician and when he leaves, for illness,
or any cause, there is no one to take his place.

There is imperative need for equipping existing hos-
pitals with sufficient nurses, physicians, and surgeons. On
the lowest estimate 25 missionary doctors, and 101 native
doctors and assistants are needed. Two new hospitals and

CHINA 85

13 dispensaries must be provided. The total asking for
this medical work is $1,087,345. This much must be invested
to meet the church's share in the great cooperative medical
work in which it is engaged, and which the China Medical
Board is aiding in a broad-visioned, generous way.

The Prize

These are days of revolution and somersault. Deeper
than that they are days of grace. For there has appeared
to the sober, conservative, and restrained minds of Chris-
tian leaders at the heart of the whirlpool the real possibility
that if the Church of Christ will open its eyes and see and act
swiftly and grandly, the next generation will find China a
Christian republic.

IJntil India is leavened with Christianity she will be unfit for
freedom. — Si?- H. B. Edwards.

Rapid as India's progress has been in some respects, the essential
fact is that the great mass of her people are at this moment given over
to beliefs, prejudices, and habits a thousand years behind those of the
races who live efficiently in the real world. A country which has
lain for twenty or thirty centuries' under the maleficent spell of caste,
fetishism, cow-and-Brahman worship and an almost equally enervating
metaphysics, cannot all of a sudden wake up, rub its eyes and claim
to be a civilized nation. There is now every likelihood of a great and
fairly rapid change in the mental condition of the masses, and until
that change has had time to make itself felt it would be madness for
India to attempt to stand alone. — William Archer, "India and the
Future."

We are watching to-day a great and stupendous process, the recon-
struction of a decomposed society, parallel to the movement in Europe
in the fifth century. . . . Stupendous, indeed, and to guide that transi-
tion with sympathy, wisdom, and courage may well be called a glorious
mission. — Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India, 1905-1910.

CHAPTEE IV
THE LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK IN INDIA

^^What picture comes to your mind when you think of
India 1 ' ' was asked of a company of people recently.

i i rpj^g rp^j ]y[ahal, ' ' answered one traveler, as the mem-
ory of that glittering gem of architecture came to mind.

^ ' The Road to Mandalay, ' ' replied another, recalling the
glamour of Kipling's India.

^'When I think of India," said a third, ^^I always think
of the picture of a man sitting on a bed of spikes. ' '

^^ India always suggests to me," said a fourth, ^'the
pictures of famine sufferers which were so familiar years
ago, more like living skeletons than men. ' '

It is the mingling of these true pictures of different as-
pects of India that makes it such a ' ' buzzing, blooming blur ' '
to the Western mind.

The New Dream

The dominating fact in the life of India to-day, per-
vading the bewildering maze of its congress of races and
languages, castes and religions, is the throbbing of a new na-
tional consciousness. This spirit of nationalism finds ex-
pression in the political field as a movement toward national
unity and an aspiration for a larger measure of democracy
and self-government. In the social life it is a striving to
break the fetters of caste and other curses of the most en-
slaving social order ever devised. In the religious life that
same ferment of freedom finds its most striking expression
in the mass movement toward Christianity among the lowest
classes.

The presence of the picturesque and doughty fighters

90 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

from India in the battle line of democracy in France and
Egypt, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia is the outward and
visible sign of an inward sympathy with the cause. And the
very participation of India in the war is hastening the move-
ment toward unity and quickening the other forces which are
transforming her life. India no longer sits aloof from the
commotion of the Western world in inward contemplation,
as in other days when

'"She let the legions thunder past
And plunged in thought again."

The thundering legions of this war will indeed leave India
plunged in thought, but she is thinking in tune "with the rest
of the world, thinking of freedom and enlightenment and
progress.

Will the Deeam Come Tele ?

This birth of the new national consciousness of India
greatly multiplies its appeal to the Church of Christ. It had
an already great appeal as the most religious of all coun-
tries, the one most cursed by its religion, and the neediest
and most poverty-stricken of all lands. But as India has
awakened to a new feeling of unity and a striving for free-
dom she presents to the Christian Church both an increased
need and- opi^ortunity. If her dream of a larger measure of
self-government is to be realized in a safe and beneficent
manner, she must be fitted for it by the enlightening and
uplifting forces of the gospel of Christ. There is no reason
to doubt that Great Britain will admit India to the self-
government enjoyed by her other dominions, such as Canada
and Australia, when she is fitted for it.^ But beyond the
need of India for the gospel in order to make democracy
safe there lies the need of that larger freedom in the Chris-

' A new home-rule plan of government which has for its purpose eventu-
ally to set up in India a responsible self-government has been prepared
for submission to the British Parliament by the Secretary of State for
India, E. S. Montague, and the Viceroy, Baron Chelmsford (July, 1918).

LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 91

tian sense, of which political self-government is only one
incidental expression. It is the liberation and strengthening
of the soul, which frees from the power of sin and selfish-
nesSj from the bondage of superstition and custom and sets
men at liberty to serve God and their fellow men. Without
this deeper spiritual freedom, which is the gift of Christ,
self-government is a hollow gain, a prize which cannot be
fully used and which is easily lost.

Days or Ferment

The stirring of these new desires and aspirations fur-
nishes an unprecedented opportunity for Christian leader-
ship. The leaven of freedom which is the result of mission-
ary influence, British government and Western contacts, is.
at work with astounding results. Christianity has that for
which India is seeking. If in these fermenting and creative
days, when the national life is being stirred and millions
are moving toward Christianity, the church shall widen its
endeavor and furnish an adequate leadership, the process of
the Christianization of India will go forward with a mo-
mentum of which no one dared to dream a generation ago.

*^The Land of Desiee" '

Since the dawn of history India has been ^^a land of
desire" to all nations on account of its untold wealth and
strategic location. Recall for a moment some of the amaz-
ing proportions and characteristics of India.

While it embraces only one fifteenth of the world's
area, it contains one fifth of the population of the globe,
about 315,000,000. With an area a little less than one half
that of the United States, including Alaska, it has three
times the population. It has more races than in all Europe
and 147 languages. Its population is composed of 217,000,-
000 Hindus, 66,000,000 Mohammedans, 10,000,000 Buddhists,
10,000,000 animists, 4,000,000 Christians, and about 6,000,000

92 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

others. Its Mohammedan population of 66,000,000 makes it
the largest Mohammedan country in the world.

Out of a population of 315,000,000, 280,000,000 live in
villages. It is estimated that there are over 730,000 villages
in India. In the vivid picturing of Bishop Warne, ^'If
Christ had started on the day of his baptism to preach in the
villages of India, visiting one village each day, he would
still have 30,000 villages to visit. ' ' In other words, he would
not complete the trip until the year 2000.

It is a land of bewildering contrasts. Its climate ranges
all the way from that of ^^Greenland's icy mountains to
India's coral strands." It possesses unrivaled natural
beauty and some of the most artistic buildings ever created
by the hand of man, such as the Taj Mahal, side by side with
ugliness and filth beyond description. A land of amazing
wealth, it has a depth of squalor and poverty not to be
matched on earth. Justly famous for its scholars and
learned pundits, eighty-nine per cent of its men and ninety-
nine per cent of its women are unable even to read or write.
Possessed of a profound religious philosophy and literature,
the most instinctively religious people on earth, its life is
fettered with bonds of fhe grossest superstition and an op-
pressive social system.

If India has ever been a ''land of desire" to human
monarchs, how much more, with its deep religious nature
and its teeming, needy millions, must it be a ''land of de-
sire" to Christ!

Signs of the New Day

Let us glance swiftly at some of the manifestations of
the awakening in India.

'Natioi^aiasm.

The Russo-Japanese war was an alarm clock which
tingled throughout the whole of Asia. The spectacle of an
Oriental nation matching its strength successfully with a

LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 93

great European power caused a restlessness throughout
India, a consciousness of herself as a nation and an aspira-
tion that India as a people should take a share among the
nations and act her part in the great world drama. The
American occupation of the Philippines, with the educa-
tional and political progress which has resulted, has fostered
new national desires. The participation of India in the
world war has brought national patriotism to large sections
of Indian society and strengthened the feeling of sympathy
and unity among the native states. The meeting of the India
National Congress in 1916, in which Mohammedans as well
as Hindus participated, appeared as a body more fully
representing the whole population than ever before. That
body drafted a joint Hindu-Moslem program of reforms
which was presented to the viceroy and secretary of state,
an action which evidences that representatives of the masses
now think very much alike on the essentials of India's na-
tional needs and national rights.

It must be remembered that this new spirit of national-
ism is not a movement to break away from the control of
Great Britain. That fact is abundantly demonstrated by the
enthusiastic loyalty of India during the war. Notwithstand-
ing the fact that the Sultan of Turkey declared a holy war,
the Mohammedan population of India, of 66,000,000, has
stood loyal to England. The nationalist movement in India,
except for small and misguided parts, concedes that the gov-
ernment of India shall remain responsible to the British
government and Parliament in the matter of foreign rela-
tions, Indian defense, and affairs of the native states. In
other matters the desire is for home rule like that of other
British dominions.

Christianity and the National Aspiration

The point of contact between Christianity and this na-
tional aspiration is clear. It is not the purpose of Christian
missions to establish any particular form of government, not

94 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

even democratic government. That tlie longing for self-ex-
pression and development follows in the wake of Christian
teaching is not due to any political propaganda or meddling
on the part of the missionary, but to the inherent quality
of the Christian evangel as a message of the worth and pos-
sibility of every man.

The British Government has freely and fully recognized
the part which Christian missions have plaj^ed in the loyalty
of India in the present crisis. Missionaries, at the request
of the government, have gone with native troops to Europe
and by their service have greatly increased their effective-
ness. The business of Christianity in India to-day is not the
minor one of securing new political forms, but, in view of the
movement toward larger self-government, to quicken the
spiritual forces which are the soul of liberty and progress.

Economic Advance

The busy whirl of factory wheels is mingling to-day
with the sound of the temple bells. An industrial revolution
is in process and factories and industries have grown enor-
mously. In a land which from time immemorial has been
almost entirely agricultural, over 35,000,000 people are de-
pendent on industrial occupations for a living. It is a sur-
prise to most people to realize that India stands second to
the United States in railway mileage, with over 32,000 miles.
The produce of the world is carried in sacks of Indian jute.
She is second only to the United States in the i^roduction of
cotton, being responsible for one sixth of the world's output.
The iron and steel industry is just at its beginning, but al-
ready large steel plants are making rails and girders and, at
the present time, shells for the Allies. In agriculture, large
irrigation projects and canal systems with 50,000 miles of
canals are in operation which have redeemed over 20,000,-
000 acres of waste land. Recently India exported more
wheat to Great Britain than any other country with an aver-
age yield of only six bushels to the acre. With improved

LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 95

methods of cultivation and increase of acreage due to irri-
gation, this yield per acre will undoubtedly be increased six-
fold.

Educational Activity

India 's coining of age is indicated by the passing of the
old era of almost unbroken ignorance and superstition and
the organization of a new system of Western education and
knowledge. It is a movement which extends through all the
great divisions of the population. Hindus, Mohammedans,
Christians, and the government are all holding educational
congresses, establishing schools, and projecting universities.
A new recognition of the lack of education and its fatal
handicap to national progress has developed, and the un-
usual thing about this educational effort is that a part of it
concerns women. An uneducated womanhood has had the
sanction of religion in India and still has, but in spite of that,
schools for girls and even for Hindu widows are springing
up in progressive communities. A Hindu Woman's Uni-
versity is being planned. It is a colossal task — educating a
fifth of the human race. A new impetus is felt in the field of
primary education, India's greatest educational need. The
higher universities are far better developed than elementary
schools. With three times the population of the United
States India has only two fifths as many pupils in school.
Of her 315,000,000 people over 288,000,000 are unable to read
or write. This new educational interest and conscience is a
remarkable tribute to the work of Christian educators in
India during the last half century and also a remarkable
opportunity for Christian education to-day.

A New Conscience

A new conscience is an unmistakable and gratifying ex-
pression of the national awakening in India. An active
spirit of social reform is abroad in the land which is waging
a spirited attack on the prime curse of India, the caste sys-
tem, and on other social blights. Sometimes these move-

96 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

ments and tlie associations which promote them are strongly
anti-Christian, but Christian example and influence have
been unmistakable in their growth. The caste system, which
separates the population into different classes with unpass-
able boundaries, is being dealt some hard blows by Western
institutions which force intermingling, such as the railroad,
and by associations which defy the prohibitions of caste.
Public dinners at which members of many different castes,
from the highest, the Brahmans, to the lowest, the outcastes,
sat down together, have thrown down the gantlet to the caste
authorities. The war is loosening the hold of caste restric-
tions. Over 300,000 troops have crossed the sea from India
and by doing so have broken caste. It is impossible to think
that these men will be despised as outcastes on their re-
turn. On the contrary, they will be hailed as heroes and the
whole caste system will receive a severe jolt.

Reform associations for attacking many of the great
social curses of India have been formed among the Hindus,
and others of the population, as well as among Christians.
A Hindu Marriage Reform League with ninety-eight
branches is combating the evils of child-marriage and seek-
ing to raise the age of marriage. Agitation to make possible
and common the remarriage of widows, and to abolish the se-
clusion of women in the Purdah is being carried on by many
associations. The task to which the reformers have set
themselves is, of course, enormous, and progress is neces-
sarily slow. But the significant thing is not the actual suc-
cess thus far achieved, but the fact that India is awakening.

Religious Unrest

India is the greatest arena of religions in the world. It
has given two great religions to the world, Buddhism and
Hinduism, which have vitally affected every individual in
Asia. It is the greatest world center of Mohammedanism
and Hinduism. With its intense religious interest, India is
marked by deep unrest in the religious as well as in the social

LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 97

life. The most remarkable sign of that unrest is the mass
movement toward Christianity now going on among the low-
est classes. This will be discussed later. The religious un-
rest and transformation, however, are widespread through-
out all classes. The old pantheistic and polytheistic order is
breaking up and the reconstruction in many quarters of the
belief in one Grod is indication that India is beginning to rise
to grasp the conception of the Fatherhood of God.

We cannot study the census figures without realizing
that there is a great spiritual awakening going on. While
the Buddhists have increased in ten years only about eleven
per cent, the Mohammedans six per cent, the Hindus only
four per cent, Protestant Indian Christians increased forty-
eight per cent, and they are coming forward at that rate
every decade. Their rate of increase is seven times as fast
as that of the population, and twelve times as fast as that of
the Hindus; so that, even at the present rate of increase,
India would be a Christian country in one hundred and fifty
years, which would be a shorter time than it took to convert
the Roman empire. But the very rate of increase is gaining,
and when once the system of caste breaks, a great flood-tide
will flow into the Christian Church.^

The Old Needs

Significant and hopeful as these proofs of awakening
are, the dream of a new India will be futile without Chris-
tianity. The old evils and the old bondage still abide in
their intensity and make up a sum of misery beyond our
power to compute. The religions of India have forged on it
a social system which is the most unmitigated curse a land
has ever known. The caste system has held the people in a
vise for twenty-five centuries and still has its deadening grip
upon them. It is the world's arch enemy of democracy and

' Sherwood Eddy, in Students and the World-Wide Expansion of Chris-
tianity, p. 287.

98 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

a true democracy in India can rise only when it is broken.
There are upward of 19,000 castes and sub-castes, most of
them belonging to the three great groups known as
Brahmans, sudras and outcastes. Individuals belonging to
the outcastes are considered so impure in nature that to
touch them brings defilement, hence their common name —
''the untouchables.'' The higher castes, though somewhat
tolerant of each other, must not dine together nor inter-
marry, on pain of a social persecution which to most peo-
ple is intolerable. Did any land ever present such crying
need for the Christian revelation of the Brotherhood of
Man!

''One Long Ckime Against Womanhood''

Asia has been well called "one long crime against
womanhood," and the crime is intensified in India. Child-
marriage still lays its blight on the physical, mental, and
spiritual life of the land. There are over 300,000 wives in
India under six years of age and over 22,000,000 between fiye
and ten. Most girls are taken from school to be married at
ten and receive no more education, if, indeed, they have
received any at all up to that time. The suffering caused
by the oppression of ividows still continues. There are
23,000,000 widows in India of whom 112,000 are under ten
years of age. Hindu custom absolutely forbids the remar-
riage of widows, and they are condemned to a life of drudg-
ery and disgrace. The lot of a widow in India is so hard
that the number of suicides among them is large and often it
is hardly to be preferred to the old fate which awaited the
widow, that of being burned on her husband's funeral pyre.
The 7ieed of education cannot be pictured strongly enough.
In spite of the new interest in education, and in spite of the
175,000 schools in India, only one quarter of the boys and
one twentieth of the girls are receiving any instruction.
Professor D. J. Fleming has made statistics tell a graphic
story in his statement that while there are enough females in
India to replace every man, woman, and child in North and

LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 99

South America, yet all who could read or write among them
could reside comfortably in Philadelphia.^

Extreme poverty must be kept as the background of
every mental picture we form of India. Lord Cromer of
Egypt estimated the average income per capita in India as
nine dollars. Lord Curzon boasted that during his admin-
istration as viceroy the income of the agriculturists had been
raised from six dollars to seven dollars a year. Forty mil-
lions of people go to bed hungry every night; and they lie
down on a mud floor to sleep.

The spiritual need is the one that touches and under-
lies all others. This great country of 300,000,000 people, the
dominating trait of whose history through all the ages has
been the search for God, is still without him as he has shown
his fullness in Christ. The weary and yet eager search goes
on. Surely, those who are trustees of the news of God in
Jesus Christ cannot withhold it at this crucial hour of
India 's search.

The Christian Opportunity

The most arresting feature of the Christian opportunity
to-day is

The Mass Movement

It is no exaggeration to say that the present mass move-
ment toward Christianity now going on among the lowest
classes in India, a movement as a body in groups, villages,
and castes, is the greatest since the Christian Church was
founded. It is the dominating fact in the missionary situa-
tion in India. It is a movement of great waves. The Meth-
odist Episcopal Church alone baptized 40,000 in 1915, and
is at present baptizing 2,000 a week. Last year 150,000
were refused baptism for lack of Christian teachers. Back
of them are 6,000,000 calling for instruction and baptism and
back of them 50,000,000 available to Christianity.

It might be more properly called a caste or class move-

^ World Outlook, August, 1917.

100 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

ment than a mass movement, for the explanation of the
movement is found in the caste system which binds the peo-
ple of India together in an intricate social network. India

WHERE THE MILLIONS ARE MOVING TOWARD CHRISTIANITY

Map of India showing the geographical and numerical extent of Mass Movements.
A million outcastes a year might be baptized if facilities for shepherding and instruction were
provided.

has acquired the habit of moving along caste lines, for the
members of a caste are so enmeshed in common prohibitions
that if they move at all they must move together. Hinduism
is built in layers or castes, piled one upon another into the

LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 101

thousands. There are three great divisions of these castes —
Brahmans, numbering 15,000,000; the middle castes, 142,-
000,000 ; and the low castes or outcastes, 50,000,000, or one
sixth of the total population. It is among these outcastes
that the mass movement is taking place.

The Outcastes

These outcastes are so low in the scale of life that they
have to *^ reach up to touch bottom." They are depressed
classes outside the pale of Hinduism, sunk in abject ignor-
ance and squalor. It is common for them to live on one meal
of grain a day, and a frugal meal at that. The daily wage
of the members of the Methodist Church who have come in
through the mass movement averages three cents. A mis-
sionary has described how he has seen a man come home
late at night to a family of five persons with a smile of tri-
umph at his success, while all that he had brought was a
mess of millet gruel in a filthy pot, about the equivalent of
the porridge which two American children take for break-
fast, and that was the sole nourishment for five persons for
twenty-four hours.^

In addition to this poverty the outcastes labor under a
pitiless social oppression. Hindu society regards them as
so unclean that even their shadow pollutes. While under
British rule they enjoy equal rights with other members of
the population, social custom compels them to live apart,
often excluding them from the use of the village well and
public roads and bridges.

The Devil's Mastekpieoe

Caste has well been called ^'the deviPs masterpiece."
No system ever devised on earth has ever been so powerful
an instrument in holding great masses of people under the
dead hand of enslaving tradition. Each of these castes

* J. H. Oldham, The World and the Gospel, p. 96.

102 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

retains something of the guild or craft idea, and its mem-
bers are for the most part engaged in similar trades. There
is a caste of weavers, leather workers, goldsmiths, etc. Un-
like the social divisions of any other lands, these caste lines
are rigid. No possession of talent or intelligence or wealth
avails to lift a man out of his caste. The caste system is
well compared to a long line of people ascending a ladder,
where the proper procedure is to kiss the feet of the one
above and kick the face of the one beneath.

Throughout all missionary endeavor in India caste has
been an almost insuperable obstacle. But the astonishing
thing disclosed by the mass movement is that while the great
social network of caste has been powerful to hold men down
together, it is also powerful to lift them up together. This
demonstration is changing the strategy of the Christian
effort of India and is filling the future with new and en-
larged hope. It is like the movement of a glacier. It is next
to impossible to budge any part of it, but once the foundation
of the whole is loosened and the whole mass starts to move
together, it is irresistible. To win individuals out of a caste,
in the face of tLe terrible economic and social persecution
which awaits them, has been exceedingly hard and slow work.
•But when a whole village or a large part of a caste gets a
vision of the religious and social advantages which Chris-
tianity offers and becomes Christian in solid group, it can
change the social customs under which it lives to a large
extent. This, in brief, is what is happening among the out-
castes of India and is the underlying explanation of the mass
movement, in distinction from the older form of missionary
success in winning individuals by twos and threes or by
families.

Pentecost— A. D. To-day

The Pentecost in which the expansion of Christianity
began, as recorded in the second chapter of the book of
Acts, was marked by the baptism of 3,000 people. In the
1918th chapter of the book of Acts, now being written, there

LEAVEN OF FEEEDOM AT WORK 103

is a Pentecost every two weeks in India, over 3,000 people
being baptized every two weeks. It has not been a spon-
taneous movement springing suddenly from the ground. It
has been going on for twenty-five years, but with increased
momentum the last ten years. It spreads through villages
and through castes, such as the large Chamar, or leather
workers ' caste, and the Sweeper caste, whose combined mem-
bership is about 13,000,000, and among which there are large
movements toward Christianity at present.

Work among a caste is begun by missionaries and pro-
ceeds slowly. Then when the knowledge of Christian teach-
ing spreads, the village or district group, usually under
the leadership of the head man or mayor, decides to become
Christian in a body and asks for instruction and baptism.
These village leaders have been made an important factor
in the mass movement. Special effort has been made to win
them on account of their ability and recognized leadership,
and thousands of these village leaders, or chaudrisj as they
are called, have become voluntary, unpaid Christian leaders
and have had large success in bringing their whole village
to the decision to accept Christianity. Thus the movement
is seizing on the already established leadership of the de-
pressed peoples and making it a force in the native Christian
church.

The Social Gospel iisr Action

The mass movement is a social as well as a religious
movement. It is not to be denied that millions are turning to
Christianity for freedom from social and economic bondage
as well as for spiritual light. It is one of the greatest demo-
cratic movements in history. Does that social character of
the movement discount it as a Christian evangelistic success !
If anyone thinks so, let him read his New Testament over
again. It is the response of the oppressed and downtrodden
to Christ, the great Democrat, who came ''to preach good
tidings to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that

104 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

are bruised.'^ The desire for social betterment among the
outcastes is the natural response to the great invitation of
Christ, '^Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest." You can no more set the
great truths of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood
of man free among the oppressed peoples of the earth with-
out starting a social upheaval than you can drop dynamite
bombs from the sky without causing an explosion. In the
work of Christian missions among the depressed classes of
India there is a striking demonstration of the social value of
the teaching of Christ. The Christian community which has
come from the outcastes has shown great material, intellect-
ual, and moral progress. The whole standard of life has
been raised ; degrading habits and practices have been aban-
doned ; a new idea of the worth of human life has followed
the Christian teaching of the value of every human soul.

Are They Worth Lifting?

Physically, these outcaste peoples are the best in India.
They have the vigorous physique of outdoor laborers, and
the children are healthy and robust. They have a mental
caliber that compares favorably with that of classes higher
in the social scale. Many of them, when highly educated,
have become the ablest leaders of the country. With the
advantages which higher castes enjoy they would not be
inferior in any degree.

Their spiritual capacity and loyalty under persecution
has been amply demonstrated. Many of them have with-
stood a persecution which has a bitterness and sharp edge
inconceivable to the inhabitant of the United States. Let us
try to put ourselves in their places. Think what it would
mean for us to be refused work, or made to work and then
refused any pay ; to have our water supply cut off under a
scorching heat, to be put out of the houses in which our
families have lived for generations and to be denied all share
in the common life of our towns. Yet these are the persecu-

LEAVEN OF FEEEDOM AT WORK 105

tions which thousands of these ^^untouchables'' have loyally
endured. Voluntary Christian service and generous giving
out of an abysmal poverty have further proved the quality
of the converts.

The Embarrassment or Answered Prayer

For half a century the church has been praying that
people might be moved, and now that the prayer is being so
tumultuously answered, the church is embarrassed by the
calls that are put upon if. The evangelistic resources of the
church are overwhelmed. At the present time 200,000 peo-
ple in the mass movement areas are awaiting baptism in the
Methodist Church. For a dozen years or so the church has
been ^^ standing like a policeman holding back the people
that wanted to come into the church of Jesus Christ. ' ' ^ A
novel commentary, surely, on the text: ^^ Whosoever will, let
him come ! '' A million a year might be baptized if pastoral
care and teaching could be provided.

Possibilities

We cannot soberly think of the possibilities of the mass
movement without constructing what must seem like a Chris-
tian Arabian Nights. Eemember that the Hindu caste sys-
tem is like a pyramid which rests heavily on the outcastes as
a base. Let the base be undermined and the pyramid will
begin to fall. Already experience has shown that wherever
the work among the depressed classes has been most suc-
cessful, there the upper castes have been most ready to hear
and accept the message of the gospel. Thus it is shown that
work among the depressed classes at present will prove the
most successful way of opening a wide door to the middle
and upper castes. For a little above these 50,000,000 out-
castes are 142,000,000 of the middle castes, the backbone of
Indian society; and above these the higher Brahman castes.

^Bishop C. D. Foss.

106 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Indications are already at hand that these caste or mass
movements will spread upward.

Meeting the Oppoktunity

In view of the fact that the missionaries are unable to
care for the thousands who come in the mass movement, the
missionaries are frequently advised to stop it. No one can
stop it! As soon try to stop Niagara Falls by laying a few
logs across the top ! Forces have been set in motion which
are impelling vast multitudes toward Christianity. There
are only three alternatives before the church. One is to
refuse to receive them and drive them into a permanent and
bitter hostility to Christianity, as well as keep them in piti-
ful need. The second is to baptize them without the neces-
sary training. The third is to furnish the teachers and
pastors necessary to build them up into a strong intelligent
church.

The Dangeks or the Movement

If these peoples are refused baptism for a long time,
they turn away and often become implacable enemies of
Christianity. In all cases it is much harder to win them
back.

Other religions are seeking the outcastes and will re-
ceive them unless Christianity speedily opens the door. The
reformdng cult of Hinduism is eagerly seeking to keep the
untouchables from Christianity. Even more formidable is
the Mohammedan, with his incessant appeal to the depressed
classes by an offer of brotherhood. The masses in many
sections of India hesitate between Mohammed and Christ.
Once lost to Christianity they will be difficult, if not im-
possible, to recover.

The alternative of bringing multitudes into the Chris-
tian Church without sufficient training is even more danger-
ous. Under such a process the church would soon lose its
Christian distinctiveness and be submerged into the sur-

LEAVEN OF FREEDOM AT WORK 107

rounding Hinduism. Such, tragedies have often happened
in Christian history, notably in North Africa and Syria, and
there is a very real crisis on in that respect in India to-day.
' 'If the salt has lost its savor, it is good for nothing but to be
cast out. ' ' If the church is swamped with uninstructed ad-
herents and becomes a mixture of Christianity and Hindu-
ism, it will be powerless to save India.

The Call of the Hour

The Centenary program is leading the Methodist
Church along the only safe path in this crucial opportunity.
It seeks to provide the facilities for shepherding these people
who are thrusting themselves against the church doors and
educating them, particularly the children. This will re-
quire large additions to the force of missionaries and to the
force of teachers, provisions for training teachers, and to the
number of village and rural schools. At least 1,300 rural
teachers and 400 village and rural schools are called for in
the program. There are 60,000 Methodist boys and girls
who are entirely without schools, four fifths of the total
number of Methodist children. This number increases at
the rate of 5,000 a year. Unless this situation is corrected
the church is in great danger of being half heathenized in a
few years.

In addition to providing education for the illiterate and
neglected children of the mass movement areas, a large in-
crease in the evangelistic forces, both foreign and native, is
required for the large and increasing task of training the
converts coming at the rate of 40,000 or 50,000 a year.
About 275 additional rural chapels, with 75 missionaries and
over 1,000 native workers, are called for as a minimum.
Every estimate of forces needed seems small when we re-
member that Methodism's share of India's population for
which she is responsible is 54,000,000 and of the 50,000,000
of the depressed classes among which the mass movement is
going on, it is responsible for 6,000,000.

108 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

The Educationai. Program

Christianity in every land must conquer at the top as
well as at the bottom. It has always done so. While it is
true that in the early days of the church ^^not many wise, not
many noble" were called, it is also true that the most signal
successes of Christianity have been won under the leadership
of highly trained men such as Paul and Augustine. It was
so in the days of Luther and Wesley. It will be so in India.
In the intellectual and religious unrest among the student
class of India to-day there is a real opportunity. There is a
wide restlessness and ferment among the higher castes and
educated classes which makes for a new accessibility to
Christianity. In the words of J. H. Oldham, ^^the new
knowledge has kindled new desires, created new demands,
and set new dreams coursing through men's brains.
Western knowledge is slowly but surely undermining the
whole fabric of Hinduism. ' ' ^ Caste is being discovered as
an institution which thwarts the national unity which India
desires. The worship of Hindu deities and the priestly cere-
monies of the Brahmans are things in which an educated
man can no longer believe. The awakened national con-
sciousness has led to a vigorous revival of all things Indian,
religion as well as literature and art, but that has been ac-
companied by **a continuous and steadily increasing inner
decay. ' ' ^ The Hindu system is threatened with inward col-
lapse.

For such a time as this a strong type of educated Chris-
tian leadership is needed. Existing Christian colleges must
be strengthened and endowment provided sufficient to insure
an efficient staff, necessary new buildings and adequate
equipment. The government schools cannot supply Chris-
tian leaders. They are anti-Christian in sentiment and en-
tirely secular in character. The government contributes
liberally to the cost of mission schools and colleges, provided

^ The World and the Gospel, p. 100.

* J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, p. 431.

LEAVEN OF FEEEDOM AT WOEK 109

they are well equipped and maintain high standards. The
higher educational institutions of the Methodist Church,
three colleges and 28 high schools, afford an opportunity to
reach the upper class of Hindu and Moslem youth. Over
40,000 students are already enrolled in a well related system
of education through kindergarten to university.

Christian Literature

Let no one think that because the percentage of illiter-
acy is so high in India there is little place for Christian lit-
erature. The printing press is already a power in the land
through its influence with those who do read ; and the educa-
tional awakening is bringing the press to a position of domi-
nating influence. The educated classes of the population are
great readers. The social and educational advance vastly
increases the need of endowed Christian presses which can
produce Christian literature of a high type in large quan-
tities. A new interpretation of Christianity must be made
and circulated to meet the new spirit of sympathetic inquiry
now abroad. In addition to this fertile field for literary
evangelism, the rapidly expanding Christian community de-
mands an adequate literature in its own languages.

The two presses of the Methodist Church, one at Luck-
now and one at Madras, have had a remarkable record of
service. A permanent fund for publishing Christian liter-
ature is needed and the Centenary program for India in-
cludes such a fund.

The Eomance of Providence

There has been the romance of Providence over the
whole Christian enterprise in India. Great names spangle
the sky like stars, such as those of Carey and Alexander
Duff. It contains the largest Christian community in any
mission field. There has been a strange romance in the his-
tory of Methodism in India — a history in which great names

110 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

gleam forth: William Butler, William Taylor, James M.
Thoburn, and Isabella Thoburn. William Butler landed in
India in 1857, barely sixty years ago, as the first Methodist
missionary. It took long, painful years to collect a few
dozen converts. James M. Thoburn had one baptism to
show for his first year's labor, and at the close of the second
year had won only six converts. To-day there is a mem-
bership of the Methodist Church in India of over 335,000
members, with the rate of increase rising each year.

Christ and the Mh^lions

But not merely in terms of opportunity, great as it
may be, and certainly not in any columns of figures can the
appeal of India be put. Its deepest appeal is to the heart ;
the appeal of ^'the great burning heart of Asia" that for
ages has cried out for the living God and been baffled in its
search ; the appeal of toiling, suffering, hungry millions ;
the appeal of millions of wronged children and defrauded
and depressed women.

We return to the question with which we started, ''What
do you think of when you think of India?'' The question
was suddenly put to a native Christian woman, for years a
teacher in a woman's Christian college. Her eyes glistened
as she made her answer:

''I think of Christ/'

Africa has suffered many wrongs in the past at the hands of the
stronger nations of Christendom, and she is suffering wrongs at their
hands to-day; but the greatest wrong, and that from which she is suffer-
ing most, is being inflicted by the Church of Christ. It consists in with-
holding from so many of her children the knowledge of Christ. — Re-
ports of World's Missionary Conference, Edinburgh.

The problem with which we are confronted in Africa is one of the
great issues of history. Have we eyes to see its immense significance?
Shall the African races be enabled to develop their latent gifts, to
create a characteristic life of their own, and so enrich the life of hu-
manity by their distinctive contributions? Or shall they be depressed
and degraded, and made the tool of others, the instrument of their gain,
the victim of their greed and lust? — J. H. Oldham, The World and the
Gospel.

CHAPTER V
FLOOD TIDE IN THE DESTINY OF AFRICA

*^The Next Tinder-Box of the World"

Such is the startling description which H. G. Wells
gives of what Africa may become. It is a graphic statement
of the central importance of Africa in the Peace Conference
which will conclude the war and the century which follows it.
We cannot contemplate the ruin which has followed the
flare-up in ''the tinder-box of the Balkans" in the present
war, without realizing the gravity of the question of the
disposition of Africa. ''A muddling in Africa this year,"
says Mr. Wells, ''may kill your son and mine in the next
decade. ' ' In The New Map of Africa, Herbert A. Gibbons
echoes the same warning. "The happiness of our children,
in a world where peace and harmony reign, depends much
on the new map of Africa. ' ' ^

Africa and the Future

The seeds of many of the international rivalries which
bore fruit in the present conflict were in Africa. And if the
nations of Europe in the years to come regard Africa as so
much loot to be grabbed in a selfish and jealous spirit and
exploited with no regard for the benefit of the people of
Africa, they will lay up for themselves the certainty of
future conflict.

There is a far-reaching significance in the presence on
the battle line of the many varieties of soldiers from Africa
fighting under the flags of France and England, Belgium

H. A. Gibbons, The New Map of Africa, p. 491.

113

114 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

and Italy. In one sense it is not their war, in that they have
no nation of their own to fight for. But in another sense it
is emphatically their war, for they will be affected by the
outcome and the settlement moist take large account of them.
Because Africa is under control of one or another of the
European nations, it will be more vitally affected by the ulti-
mate decision of the present war than any of the main geo-
graphical divisions of the earth save only Europe. The
welfare and destiny of Africa are inextricably interlocked
with the welfare and destiny of Europe and the world. A
wise statesmanship must find some other role for the great
continent of Africa than merely that of a bone of contention.

The Religious Destiny of the Continent

The question of the religious development of Africa can-
not be separated from its tremendous importance in the
future of the world. What kind of social ideals and reli-
gious ideas and practices control the life of the 130,000,000
or more of the population of Africa will be of vast concern
to the world. However far native Africa may be from the
power of self-government, the trend of movement in the pres-
ent century will be undeniably in the direction of a larger
measure of self-rule for all peoples. The great war for
democracy which is shaking the world is bound to change
current conceptions of the justice of regarding any race as
a '^subject race." Liberal Europe cannot fight against
autocracy and at the same time perpetuate it in its treat-
ment of subject colonies. H. Gr. Wells may be too eager a
prophet in his statement, ^'Long before A. D. 2100 there will
be no such thing as a subject race in all the world." ^ Time
alone can tell. But he has stated the direction in which the
world is swiftly moving. Surely, there can be no argument
over the absolute necessity for the great mass of backward,
pagan Africa to have the mental enlightenment, social uplift
and spiritual truth of Christianity before it is ready for the

^H. G. Wells, What is Coming, p. 240.

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 115

first step of self-government. More than that, Christian
influence is necessary in order that Africa may be able to
secure the largest benefits of European rule.

The appeal of Africa comes to the Christian world to-
day with a double force. It is the old and changeless appeal
of any people in need of the uplifting power of the gospel,
the call of physical suffering, mental and spiritual darkness,
which Christian love must answer. But there is also the
urgent necessity to-day of supplying the transforming and
enlightening influences of Christianity so that developing
Africa, destined to hold so important a place in the world's
life, may not be a menace to the world's highest progress.

Africa's ^^Hat Is in the Ring"

In these days of military stride, Africa, in the words of
General J. C. Smuts, the former Boer leader and present
English general, ^ ^ has marched with great suddenness to the
center of the European stage, and must henceforth pro-
foundly influence the problems of its statesmanship. ' ' ^
Long, long lines of men from Africa have landed at Mar-
seilles and other ports of France to fight the battles of free-
dom. From Algiers and Tunis and Egypt they have come,
dark-skinned, strong as steel, quick of eye. From the
Soudan and Central Africa they have poured in. This land-
ing in France is a living symbol of the landing of Africa
in the consciousness of Europe and the world. It must be the
sign also of the landing of Africa on the conscience and
heart of Christendom. The future of Africa has as import-
ant a bearing on the future of Christianity as it has on the
political arrangements of the world. Aside from future im-
portance, however, is the great consideration of justice
which should move both state and church to Africa's welfare.
Here are these representatives of Africa fighting for the
world's freedom, thousands giving their lives for justice and
for opportunity. In all fairness, do they not deserve some
* The Geographical Journal, March, 1918.

116 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

for tliemselves ? Does not fairness demand of every govern-
ing nation in Africa that the political ideal shall be the wel-
fare of the governed peoples? And does not fairness de-
mand of the Church of Christ that the millions of Africa, a
great orphanage of backward children, be given the Chris-
tian education and healing and teaching which shall lead
them out into spiritual freedom?

The Rock of Gibraltae

The approach to Africa from the north is by the Rock
of Gibraltar and Gibraltar is a fit symbol for Africa in
Christian history. It has been a Gibraltar to Christian
missions — a continent of superlative obstacles, of deadly
oppositions, of impenetrable darkness until two genera-
tions ago. And yet, with a glaring contrast to all this dark
side, it has to show some of the greatest triumphs of Chris-
tian success in the conversion of whole tribes which have
been achieved in any land or at any age. It had always had
a magnetic, mysterious pull on great souls, and without any
question it has the longest and brightest line of truly great
missionaries of any mission field on earth. But, after all,
the contrast is not so hard to explain. It is simply the old,
old law, that the hardest tasks always attract the greatest
and most daring men.

^'I Dare You''

Nearly every fact in African geography has been a
bolted door to Christian advance. Physical and social fea-
tures of the land have shouted ^'I dare you" into Christian
ears. Christian missions in Africa have relatively less to
show than in any other continent, and many of the reasons
are not far to seek.

Begin with the size of the continent. Look at the map
on the next page, with a large section of the world tucked
away in its corners, as though Africa were a large bag into
which some giant had hurriedly dumped half the globe.

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 117

How snugly our own mighty United States nestles up in
one corner! China and India do not crowd it at all, with
plenty of room for Europe and Argentina. It is approxi-

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF AFRICA

Notice how easily Africa's great bulk accommodates the United States, France, Germany, the
British Isles, Norway, Sweden, Argentina, China and India.

mately 6,000 by 5,000 miles, over three times as large as
Europe and half as large again as North America. It is as
far around the coast of Africa as it is around the world.
To this large expanse must be added the fact that the large

118 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

island section of the continent is exceedingly difficult of
access.

The climate has been a high barrier to missionary effort.
Many mission enterprises have been stopped by tragedies
like that which overtook Methodism's first foreign mission-
ary, Melville Cox, who died of fever in Liberia four months
after landing. The low-lying coast strip of a few hundred
miles is a particularly unhealthy climate. Farther inland
the climate of the central plateau is more healthful, although
through the whole of Central Africa the climate is hard on
the white man.

Danger has been a real deterrent to Europeans and
Americans in Africa. Tigers, cobras, and lions are far more
attractive in the zoo than they are in the jungle. The savage
tribes have taken a large toll of death, and travel in the
interior until recent years has been precarious.

Lack of exploration prevented missionary occupation.
The intrepid spirit of Livingstone was the first to draw the
veil from Central Africa, and he has been dead only forty-
five years.

The Tower of Bahel in Africa has offered hindrances
of 843 different varieties. There are 843 varieties of speech
in Africa, the vast rojajority of which the missionary must
reduce to writing for the first time and patiently and pain-
fully evolve a dictionary and grammar for them. The mis-
sionaries and Bible Societies have accomplished the stu-
pendous task of translating and printing the Scriptures into
100 African tongues, but there are still 423 tongues without
the word of God ! There are 543 distinct languages and 300
dialects.

Finally the savage state of the people makes the task a
larger one than that of a land with an ancient civilization,
such as India or China. Everything must be taught. Words
for the most elementary Christian terms and ideas must
often be invented. The process of education is necessarily a
slow and exhausting one. To the difficulty of making an
approach to the pagan must be added the fact of North

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFEICA 119

Africa's domination by Mohammedanism, a religion which
has been through all Christian history the hardest to over-
throw.

The Top of the Morning

So much for the obstacles. Many of them remain and
will remain for generations. Nevertheless, such a picture
leaves out some of the most striking characteristics of the
Africa of to-day. For Africa stands to-day not at midnight,
which settled over her for centuries, but at the top of the
morning. The opening up of Africa to European civiliza-
tion has been progressing at a surprising speed. In 1875 not
more than a tenth of Africa was under white dominion. To-
day the whole of the continent, with the exception of Abys-
sinia and the small Negro republic of Liberia, is under
European rule— all in forty-three years! ^^ Black Man's
Africa" is no more. The European powers have spent
enormous sums in the development of their African posses-
sions. Steamship lines have been projected and great rail-
way systems have been built far into the interior.

The world has come upon the native with a bewildering
rush, with its railways, steamboats, electric cars, planta-
tions, factories, mines, laws, taxes, magistrates, police. In
South Africa, under British governmtent, a great industrial
European civilization has sprung into being with large cities
and the richest mines in the world. The whole equipment of
modern civilization is moving inland from all directions,
including the cultivation of plantations, cattle ranches, mer-
cantile establishments, forts, army posts, city and territorial
governments, agricultural implements, and industrial ma-
chinery. Railway systems of twenty-five thousand miles are
now in operation, nine tenths of which are included in the
British systems of the Nile Valley and South Africa and the
French systems of Algeria and Tunis. The Cape-to-Cairo
Railway, which was near completion at the beginning of the
war, will bring the southern tip of Africa within ten days
of London and Paris. The barred door is swinging and

120 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Africa is seeing a development wliicli greatly mnltiplies its
openness to Christian missions, and, as we shall see, its
urgent need of them.

Chicago Moves to North Africa

If you still think of the Pyramids and the Sphinx as the
most exciting things in North Africa, you are almost as far
behind the times as the mummies themselves ! In the French-
controlled countries of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunis and in
Egypt under British control, modern cities have been reared
which make the American visitor think he is looking at a
mirage. The European population of North Africa is over
a million and is increasing. Algiers, a city of 200,000, is
largely European. Out of its population 70,000 are French
and 42,000 other foreigners. Oran, on the coast of Algeria,
is a young and rapidly growing Chicago of 100,000 popu-
lation, with apartment houses, boulevards, and imposing
public building's. Constantine, in Algeria, is another bus-
tling city of 250,000, largely Europeanized. There are over
16,000,000 people in North Africa, and the region is capable
of supporting many more. The picturesque days of the
pirates of Tripoli and Algiers, with which is associated
such a stirring chapter of American naval history, are over,
and the swift modernization of North Africa has displaced
the old fanatical exclusiveness and changeless modes of life
and thought and thrown open that whole section of Africa to
new influences.

Enter — the "War

Prophesying just where a tornado will hit, or indicating
just what buildings and fences it will topple over, is uncer-
tain business. Particularly in connection with so great a
tornado as the present war, is it impossible to say just what
effect it will have. Nevertheless, when the tornado of war
has already flattened ancient fences it is permissible to
record the fact, without indulging in loose prophesying. It
is easy to see two clear results of the war on the Christian

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 121

opportunity in Africa. The first is that the political power
of Mohammedanism has toppled like a house of cards. The
war has divided the house against itself in such a way that
the prestige of Islam will never recover. The old dream of
a united Moslem world of 200,000,000 is a hopeless one. The
Mohamm'edans of India and Africa have been fighting
against their brothers in the faith in Constantinople.
Turkey is the only self-governing country left of all the
lands once ruled by the followers of Mohammed. The
proclamation of a holy war by the Sultan of Turkey, bidding
all Moslems to rally to the defense of the faith, had no effect
whatever, showing clearly that national bonds have been
substituted for the religious one. The second effect has been
the new contacts established by Mohammedans and the open-
ing of new doors to European and Christian influence.
Doors closed for centuries have been blown open, as it were,
by the dynamite of the world war. This does not mean that
the conversion of Islamic Africa has become in any sense an
easy problem. Far from it; but it does mean that a new
approachability has been established ; and if we believe in a
divine purpose at work in human life, we cannot neglect its
meaning of responsibility and opportunity for the Christian
Church.

The Three Problems of Africa

Africa to-day from the Christian standpoint, like all
Gaul in Caesar's time, is divided into three parts. In the
north is Mohammedan Africa, with a population of 40,000,-
000, the base of the movement of Mohammedanism to the
south. In the south is the commercial European civilization
which is just as real a peril in another way to the welfare of
Africa. There are 10,000,000 in this civilized, European-
ize'd, nominally Christian South Africa. Between these two
advancing forces on the north and south is Central, pagan
Africa with 80,000,000. The great majority are still in an
uncivilized state, devotees of pagan religions that are
doomed, backward children in mind, the easy victims of

122 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

exploitation accompanied with the white man's vices, and
the easy prey to the Mohammedan zealot. Surely, such a
spectacle cannot fail to move the noblest feelings of the
church and call forth the best in her.

The Mohammedan Peril

The Mohammedan invasion of Africa from the north,
now resulting in the wholesale conversion of native tribes, is
the most vigorous antagonistic force which Christianity is
meeting anywhere on earth. It is probably not too much to
say that it is the most active opposition which it has met
since the followers of Mohammed broke forth in their first
fury in the seventh century. Many Christian leaders in all
parts of the world regard this Mohammedan advance in
Central Africa as the greatest crisis before the Christian
Churches to-day. South fromi the lands that front on the
Mediterranean Sea and west from Egypt and the Soudan,
Islam is thrusting itself into pagan Central Africa. The
faith is being carried with a zeal that puts all other religions,
including Christianity, to shame. It is not the work of official
leaders so much as the pressing concern of every Moham-
medan. Formerly Islam followed the track of Moslem con-
querors. Later it propagated itself along the slave routes.
To-day it goes along the trade pathways, and it is one of the
ironies of history that the introduction of modern civiliza-
tion into Africa, by railways, good roads, and development
of trade, has been a large factor in making a new Moham-
medan advance possible. The movement which is winning
the tribes of Central Africa to Islam is to-day more wide-
spread, more insidious than ever, and as certain as the
rising tide. The mierchants carry the Koran and the Moslem
catechism wherever they carry their merchandise. The
Mosque follows the trader. All ranks of men are propa-
gandists :

"Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief."

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 123

The Victoky of the Crescent

The most arresting fact in connection with this advance
is that pagan Africa is becoming Mohammedan far more
rapidly than it is becoming Christian. For every 33 natives
who become Christians 100 become Mohammedans. In the
Soudan there is only one Christian missionary for every
100,000, while every Mohammedan that comes along is a
worker for Islam. Is it any wonder that the Crescent is de-
feating the Cross in the conflict! The Mohammedan gain is
so great that many observers have regarded the outcome as
already settled, that pagan Africa will become Moham-
medan.^

It is in Africa alone that Islam is making any such
advance. In India it is not keeping pace with Christianity
at all. According to the last census in India, Mohammedans
increased only at the rate of 6.7 as compared with an in-
crease of 32 per cent for Christians. At the time when
Islam is losing its prestige and relative power elsewhere,
shall Christians allow it to gain a new continent-wide
dominion in Africa, whence it can propagate itself for
centuries to come? To win the continent of Africa away
from Islam is thus, then, to be a service to the Chris tianiza-
tion of all the world, and to lose Central Africa will be to
cripple the Christian enterprise in all non-Christian lands,
perhaps for centuries.

The Appeal of Islam

There are many elements in the success of Islam among
the natives. It is propagated by traders, hence it is often to
the native's economic advantage to accept the trader's reli-
gion along with his dry goods. The Mohammedan creed is
simple: ^' There is no god but God: Mohannned is his
prophet." It is an easy faith to pass along. It is held by
the Mohammedan with flaming conviction. It comes to the
African from a man much more like himself than the ^ ^white-
faced" Christian missionary. It makes no hard moral de-

^H. G. Wells, What is Coming, p. 247.

124 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

inands, allows polygamy and many pagan customs to exist
undisturbed. In addition to these reasons, there is the fact
that Mohammedanism is undeniably favored by European
governments such as England and France. Christian mis-
sionaries have been forbidden to work in areas designated
by the governments as Moslem.^ This is done through fear
of the Moslem chiefs and the desire to refrain from arousing
their enmity. It is easy to understand this motive of polit-
ical expediency, but it has made the governments practical
partners in the spread of the Mohammedan religion.

Is Mohammedanism a Step to Christianity.^

Two classes of people will say, ^' Why be concerned over
this sweeping invasion of Mohammedanism!" One class
believes that it is the best religion for the natives. The other
believes that it is a half-way house to Christianity. Both
are wrong. All experience proves that it is much harder to
win men from Mohammedanism to Christianity than it is to
win them from their native paganism.

As for Islam being a good-enough religion for Africans,
God forbid that any Christian should ever retreat from the
position that no religion is good enough for any child of Grod
except the revelation of his love in Jesus Christ. Moham-
medanism brings to the savage in Africa many benefits. It
brings clothing, some learning and the abolition of many de-
grading superstitions. It inculcates temperance and clean-
liness. On the other hand, it degrades womanhood, allows
polygamy and sensuality. It lays the dead hand of an iron
tradition on all mental and moral progress. It fosters the
spirit of hate and violence. Its ideal of life as portrayed in
Mohammed is worlds below that portrayed in Christ. It is
a backward force socially and politically.

^^They Shall Not Pass"

The supreme demand of the hour is to throw across
Central Africa from the western to the eastern coast a line

Patton, The Lure of Africa, p. 64.

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 125

of mission stations which shall effectually occupy t|ie vacant
areas and stop the advancing Mohammedan wave. There is
need in Africa for the equivalent of that line before Ver-
dun which gave to the world the deathless watchword, ' ' They
shall not pass." There are vast areas in Central Africa
inhabited by tribes whose evangelization is not provided for
in the plans of any missionary society. A line of mission
stations across the continent has already been partly flung
and in this line the Methodist mission in Central Africa
plays a vital and strategic part. The Centenary survey
plans a wise strengthening and extension of its activity.

The other method of meeting this Mohammedan peril is
to meet it right at its base in North Africa, and that also
Methodism is doing. It has laid the beginnings of mission
stations that shall take hold of the life of these old and
solidly Moslem lands. For, as has been well pointed out,
^^We have not only to stay the advance of Islam in Africa,
we are to win the Moslem world in Africa for Christ; and
until the foundations of Islam in the north are shaken, the
Christianity that may be established in Central Africa will
be perpetually exposed to its assaults.'' ^ North Africa Mo-
hammedanism is a hard field. To convert the Mohammedan,
some one has said, is *Ho get the proudest man on earth to
take the thing he hates from the hand of the man he
despises." No easy task that. Historically, it has provided
the hardest that Christianity has ever attempted. She has
never attempted it on any large scale. But to-day European
influence is speedily disintegrating the barriers of Moham-
medan exclusiveness. Islam is not holding its own against
the unbelief which is flooding it from European civilization.^
There is large new promise for Christian effort in Northern
Africa.

Pagan Afkica

Eighty millions in pagan Africa, the largest solid block

^ students and the World-Wide Expansion of Christianity, p. 67.
^ D. B. MacDonald, Aspects of Islam, p. 12.

126 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

of paganism in the world! In ntter innocence of written
language for the most part, divided against any solid Chris-
tian advance by a multitude of languages (six hundred and

AFRICA

Eighty millioh pagans caught between two forces. Forty million Mohainmedans advancing
from the north. From the south, commerciaUsm steaming up the rivers, and building steel trails
through the jungle.

seventy languages and dialects have not yet been reduced to
writing), it is under the dominion of the crudest supersti-
tions, savage, primitive, and childlike.

Yet this one thought must be kept in mind with all the

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 127

obstacles. In pagan Africa are eighty millions of the most
accessible people on earth. Some of the brightest trophies
of the cross are found among these pagan tribes, ''Kohinoor
diamonds of the King's crown." Where is there a country
that for missionary romance and apostolic success can sur-
pass the story of Uganda?

The need of Christianity in primitive, childlike, savage
Africa cannot be truly conceived from the outside. It is the
land where fear holds sway. A hundred evil spirits and many
hundred cruel, debasing, and destructive superstitions oc-
cupy the central position of religion. The crude conditions
of savagery, with its cruelties, take a large toll of life. The
oppression of women, miarriage by barter, polygamy,
domestic slavery, the neglect.and suffering of childhood, are
constant features of life. There is no attempt at education.
^^ Apart from mission stations, they do not even know that
writing has been invented. ' ' ^ The only medicines are the
useless superstitions of the witch doctor, and the death rate
mounts accordingly. While the native African is the spoiled
child of nature, in so far as prodigal provision of food is con-
cerned, he knows so little of the cultivation of the soil that
in many parts of the continent long stretches of hunger and
famine are frequent.

The Demoe" of Civilization

But how happy, comparatively, the African would be if
those were all his troubles and perils ! There is rushing in
on him, principally from the Christian (mark the word!)
civilization of South Africa, an evil spirit far more terrible
than any Mumbo Jumbo of the forest — ;the spirit com-
mercial exploitation. In the wake of the steam engine, push-
ing its way into the center of the continent, are the deadly
attendants of the white man, drunkenness and immorality,
before which the childlike black man is helpless.

How we must bow our heads and blush when we call the

' Murray, The Call of a World Task, p. 117.

128 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

commercial greed tliat is bringing ruin to the native of
Africa, Christian! How much we prefer to call it "West-
ern'^ civilization because we dare not say Christian !

European control has brought great and undeniable
benefits to Africa. Slave raids and tribal warfare are
largely abolished. Much has been done to combat disease
and famine. Cruel practices, such as the murder of twins,
ordeals of poison, etc., are in many places things of the past.
Standards of life have been raised and laws established.
Education has been provided in many places. Let all this be
freely acknowledged. Yet there is the other side of the
shield. The relations of Europe to Africa have been stained
by the hideous iniquity of the slave traffic. And while an en-
lightened conscience has practically put an end to that, the
natives are still exposed to the danger of pitiless exploita-
tion by the white race. The forced labor, the introduction of
liquor and immorality have worked such havoc that it is a
fair conclusion that civilization has brought more evil than
good to Africa.

What Chbistians Must Do

The Christian cannot settle the vexed political problems
of Africa, but Christians in Europe and America can do
much to demand that the ideal of government in Africa shall
be for the benefit of the African and not for commercial gain.
Government is a help or hindrance to Christian progress.
Christians cannot effectually teach the natives a gospel of
love and brotherhood, when a so-called Christian govern-
ment is practicing selfish oppression of them. Lest we in
America think we have no part in this corruption, note the
fact that in 1914-15 over a million and a half gallons of rum
were shipped from Boston ! An international agreement to
protect Africa from this murderous traffic must be made.

The gospel of Christ must be supplied to the African to
meet his great needs, and to prepare him to withstand the
shock of the advent of commercialized civilization with all
its attendant vices. Western civilization is already violently

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 129

disturbing and breaking down native life and morality and
removing old restraints. ^ ^Unless some new moral sanctions
can be supplied to take the place of those swept away, the
people are left unprotected and helpless, '' says J. H. Old-
ham, ^^to face the overwhelming temptations to which they
are increasingly exposed. ' ' ^ A new spiritual basis must be
provided for the life of the people — and the Christian reli-
gion is the only force capable of achieving the necessary
transformation.

Africa and the Centenary

The Methodist Centenary program for Africa deals
with both of these perils of Africa. Look at the map and let
your eye grasp the generalship of our location in Africa. In
North, South, West, East, and Central Africa radiating
centers of influence are already located. The Methodist
Episcopal Church is located in the Mohammedan strong-
holds of Algeria and Tunis ; in pagan Africa, in Liberia on
the west coast, farther to the south in Angola and in Central
Africa in the Belgian Congo, and in the heart of Rhodesia
and in Portuguese East Africa on the east coast. In six
strategic areas the church is at work, under ^ve friendly
governments, with stations easily reached by steamship and
railroad. Our responsibility is for 20,000,000 people in ter-
ritories already occupied or assigned to us by governments
or through arrangements with other churches. There is a
total staff of 92 missionaries and about 650 native preachers
and teachers, with 364 churches, chapels, and homes, 23 edu-
cational institutions and four hospitals and dispensaries.
There are at present about 10,000 pupils in the schools and
33,000 members and adherents of the church.

In the Mohammedan Strongholds

In North Africa the most promising work is among the
children. Four homes for boys and ten for girls are supply-

^ J. H. Oldham, The World and the Gospel, p. 132.

130 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

ing Christian en-\TLroimieiit and influence for students in gov-
ernment schools, and making a strategic beginning for evan-
gelistic work. "We have converted Mohammedans who are
now local preachers. Evangelistic circuits for preaching
and distribution of Christian literature among Moham-
medans must be established and centers where native

evangelists can be stationed.

. Reaching Out in Pagan Africa

In the Republic of Liberia we have a press, a college,
industrial school, and theological seminaries. In Angola,
on the west coast, there are churches, boys' and girls'
schools, a printing establishment, and large mission farms.
In the center of the Belgian Congo there is a fast develop-
ing industrial mission, with marvelous results surrounding
that center with 80 primary schools. The beginning of that
mission is a story to rank with some of the great journeys of
Livingstone. Before our missionaries went into the Congo
region it was found that a native who had gone back into the
interior had been praying for two years that God would
send a missionary; and Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Springer were
impelled to go, though without adequate resources, and
crossed the continent on foot until they found this lone Chris-
tian. Already a great mission has been founded.

At old Umtali, in Rhodesia, we have 3,000 acres of land
and many buildings, turned over to the church by the British
government, a flourishing industrial mission of the type
most needed. Training in agriculture, carpentry, brick-
making, and other industries supplements and extends
evangelistic work. •

In Portuguese East Africa the mission comprises
churches, a mission press, training school, girls' school, and
hospitals. Our doctor there is the only medical man in a ter-
ritory populated by three and a half millions of people.
At six o'clock in the morning as many as fifty patients wlII
assemble outside the hospital to wait for him.

FLOOD TIDE IN DESTINY OF AFRICA 131

The church must occupy providential openings for
service. Native chiefs are requesting missionaries, and in
many cases are eager to grant necessary land and buildings
for schools and churches and homes. Many strong evan-
gelistic centers must be established. At least ten additional
missionaries a year must be sent to keep up present work
and insure reasonable advance. Hundreds of native pastor-
teachers must be trained. The success of work in schools
must be followed up by more schools and teachers. For the
medical work, in a field of more crying need than anywhere
on earth, the Centenary program calls for four new hospitals
to be established, and the enlargement of the two existing
ones with missionary physicians and adequate staff.

To-MOEEOW

Great souls have worked in Africa; Saint Augustine
and Athanasius; Robert Moffat and David Livingstone;
those three wonderful Marys of the modern gospel story,
Mary Moffat, Mary Livingstone and Mary Slessor; Mackay
of Uganda, Bishop Hannington and George Grenfell. Our
own record is bright with the names of Cox, William Taylor,
and Hartzell.

But think of the men and women who will follow them !
Surely, at this very tip of the new dawn in Africa the church
will not withhold the light and leading of Christ.

It is beginning to dawn upon some people that Christian missions
are really acting as a leaven in the Eastern world, and that whether the
East shall become Christian is a matter that vitally concerns every
nation and must determine the future of humanity. If the East with
its swarming millions should ever learn our civilization on its industrial
and military side only while it abandons its ancient religions and ethic
— both of which are happening before our eyes — the supremacy and even
the safety of . the West is more than threatened. We have seen what
can happen to our semi-Christianized civilization; but what a purely
atheistic civilization would be we can now perhaps begin to imagine. —
W. E. Orchard, The Outlook for Religion.

Since Christianity assimilated Greek thought and conquered
Eoman civilization it never faced a task so stupendous as that of
the conquest of the Orient. Japan, with all her progress in the arts
and crafts of civilization and all her friendliness toward Christian eth-
ical standards, is far from being a Christian nation. . . .

Yet Japan is a prize worth capturing. The situation in the whole
Orient, in fact, constitutes one of the most splendid opportunities, and
at the same time one of the gravest crises, in the whole history of the
church. With every passing year the opportunity is slipping farther
from her grasp. I make bold to say that her victory or defeat in
Japan will largely determine the future of Christianity in the whole
Far East. — Dr. Tasuku Harada, President of Doshisha University,
Tokio,

CHAPTER VI
THE CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC

Eastward Ho!

Few days in the world's history have had larger signifi-
cance than that one of which Balboa, ^'with eagle eyes," first

"Stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise.
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

The opening of the Pacific Ocean to the ships, the arts
and ideas of the Western world has vastly changed the
course of history for both East and West. Yet the real
importance of the Pacific in the world's affairs lies in the
future. To-day Europe and America are standing tiptoe
behind Balboa, gazing at the far Pacific with wonder and
expectation even larger than his. For these, too, are days of
discovery, when the world is realizing that the Pacific Ocean
will be the scene of the next great drama in its progress.
The development of the great lands and peoples which are
set in the far eastern Pacific, Japan, Korea, the Philippines,
and Malaysia, and their relation to China and the rest of
Asia, will unquestionably be the great world-movement of
this century.

The New Mediterkanean Basin

What the Mediterranean Sea has been throughout much
of the world's past history, the central arena of its great
actions, on which were played out national and racial
struggles affecting its destiny, the Pacific Ocean will be in
the future. Around the Mediterranean Sea were reared
great civilizations beginning with the ancient kingdom of

135

136 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Egypt. There sailed the ship of Tyre. Along its shores
marched the legions of Persia in a vain attempt to strangle
the freedom of Greece. Alexander the Great became the
master and built great cities. From opposite sides of the
sea, Rome and Carthage were locked in deadly struggle for
dominion of that Mediterranean world. Around its shores
great religions have contended for mastery. Here Chris-
tianity defeated paganism and struggled with Islam. So
down through the centuries it has been the seething center
of commercial, political, and religious movements and con-
flicts of world-wide meaning.

The Pacific Ocean is the new center for the world move-
ments of this century and for many to come. Our world has
outgrown the Mediterranean, important as that will always
be. Around the new arena of action in the Pacific are gath-
ered peoples whose numbers and resources far outrun those
of any other section of the world. Picture the peoples in this
new chapter of history — Japan with its fifty-five millions
crowded to the bursting point ; Manchuria and Siberia, enor-
mous, bristling question marks ; the Philippines, a salient of
American democracy thrust into the Orient; Malaysia, into
whose open fields are beginning to flock the hungry, crowded
millions from China, All these will vitally aifect China her-
self with her four hundred million ' ^ possibilities ' M

Theee Keys

Is it any wonder that 'Hhe mastery of the Pacific" is a
matter that rivets the eyes of the world! "What that
''mastery" will be in a political sense, whether peaceful or
militaristic, whether Japanese or European or Chinese, or a
mixture of all, cannot be foreseen.

But of vastly greater importance to the world is the
question of the Christian mastery of the Pacific, the domin-
ion of Christian moral and spiritual ideals in the expand-
ing life of these great peoples. Upon this Christian influ-
ence will depend the character of the political development.

CHEISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 137

The prevalence of Christian ideals will mean the opening
of this new center of development to peace, to liberty and
democratic ideals, and to cooperation between nations. A
Pacific basin without Christianity will mean a new stage set
for conflict, the play of selfish national ambitions, the ex-
ploitation of weaker peoples, and moral darkness.

It is a struggle for large stakes, in Christian warfare,
upon which we look in this chapter. Lord Fisher, recently
the First Lord of the Admiralty of Great Britain, once said :
i i There are five keys to the world. They are the Straits of
Dover, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, the Straits
of Malacca, the Cape of Good Hope.'' However this may
be true of naval supremacy, there are three keys to the
Pacific in Christian strategy — Tokyo, Manilla, and Singa-
pore. The winning of these keys will mean open doors to
Christian mastery in Japan, in the Philippines, and in that
vast real estate bonanza to the south, Malaysia. Let us look
at these three lands in turn.

Japan" and Kobea

We may very fittingly take off our hats when our
steamer dooks in Japan, for we have reached the Land of
Achievement. It is just fifty years since the Reformation
of 1868, when Japan began to adopt "Western civilization.
In that time she has become almost more modern than her
teachers. She has tried to catch up at one bound with the
progress made by other nations in centuries. This difficult
task is being done with marvelous rapidity. Japan is the
modern Aladdin who has rubbed the lamp of Western learn-
ing and a vast new modern civilization has arisen. She has a
system of universal education which enrolls ninety per cent
of the children of school age. Her genius for adapting the
machinery of the Western world has astounded all nations.
She has vanquished what was a supposedly first-class
European power, Russia, and that victory resounded
throughout all Asia.

138 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

The Leadership of Asia

Japan occupies an undoubted position of leadership
tliroughout Asia to-day. Her influence is increasing daily.

■ CBUiA SEA

PAcinc ocEAH

JAPAX
An empire st^i^•illg for leadership

How far that leadership is welcomed in all respects by other
nations in Asia ; to what extent Japan is feared in China,
and what grounds there are for it, are questions on which
wide disagreement would be found. The far Eastern situa-

CHEISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 139

tion shifts so from day to day that the vast majority of
political pronouncements should be revised every night and
morning. But of the question of Japan's leadership in the
Orient there can be no doubt. Whether it be in the educa-
tional, financial, political, military, naval, commercial, or
industrial sphere, Japanese leadership is to-day very ex-
tensive. China has had large numbers of her leaders edu-
cated in Japan. Japan has retained all the prestige won in
the Russo-Japanese war and the present war is giving her
a new position as a world power.

Japan leads Asia — ^but whither! That is the question
which confronts the world to-day.

Japan's Need of Christianity

Japan needs Christianity supremely because the moral
foundations of her national life are slipping away. The
whirling movements of the transformation to modern life
and education have swept away many of the did sanctions of
morality and idealism and have brought many new tempta-
tions. No new force has yet been found to take the place of
the old which has been weakened. In the words of Count
Okuma, the former prime minister, *' Japan at present may
be likened to a sea into which a hundred currents of Oriental
and Occidental thoughts have poured, and, not having
effected a fusion, are raging, wildly tossing, warring, roar-
ing. The old religion and old morals are steadily losing
their hold and nothing has yet arisen to take their place.'' ^
The new environment, commercial and industrial, and the
new wealth in many quarters, are increasing luxury, license
and lust. It is no exaggeration to say the life blood of the
nation is being drained off by immorality. The educational
system of Japan, so admirable in many ways, has been
powerless to prevent the moral peril. The teaching of reli-
gion and ethics founded on religion is prohibited in the
schools and the moral teaching given is shallow, urging
^Quoted in Reports of World Missionary Conference, vol. iv, p. 116.

140 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

patriotism and loyalty without giving a reasonable and
fundamental basis. Among the influential student class,
agnosticism, selfishness, contempt for the family tie and
materialism are destructive influences. As a recent writer
has said, ^^Dreadnoughts, machine guns, gold currency and
braid, electric railways and imported tailorings, are at best
only accessories. Poverty, mortality, and crime and the
condition of the subject races are the true barometers of
national welfare. ' ' ^

Break Up of Old Faiths

The old faiths of Japan, Shintoism, Buddhism, and Con-
fucianism, are loosening their hold. The vital influence of
Buddhism over educated people is practically gone, even
though outwardly Buddhism is marked by a vigorous imi-
tation of Christian methods such as Sunday schools. Young
Men's Buddhist Associations, adaptations of Christian
hymns, etc. But this outward activity is accompanied by
inward weakening of its hold and grave doubts on the part
of Japanese leaders over its ability to supply the moral
dynamic the nation needs.

Needs of the New Day

The industrial revolution brings a new demand for a
strong moral sense and quickened conscience. The increase
of factories, from 125 to 20,000 in thirty-four years, brings
grave dangers to the nation.^ A vigorous moral and social
conscience is needed to protest against the waste and cruelty
of child labor if the nation is not to suffer frightful loss.
Government statistics declare that out of every hundred
girls to enter factory work, twenty-three die within one year
of their return home, and of these fifty per cent die of tuber-
culosis. Nothing but the realization of the Christian con-
ception of the intrinsic worth of the individual will save

^ A. M. Pooley, Japan at the Cross Roads, p. 21.
^ Price, Ancient Peoples at New Tasks, p. 37.

CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 141

Japan from the wide destructiveness of modern machinery
driven by commercial greed.

*^The White Disaster *'

An able Japanese writer, Okaknra Kakuzo, says, '^You
talk of the Yellow Peril, but what about the White Dis-
aster f There is a very real meaning to the term. Western
industry and commerce, which break down old moral re-
straints without bringing any new moral or religious power
is the true White Disaster for Japan and every Oriental
country, a disaster already being felt in many quarters.
Without taking Christianity to Japan in an adequate way,
we bring serious problems without the help of the great
principles necessary to solve them and do not truly share our
best, only our second best and often our worst.

Concerning Democracy

What must be said regarding the main contention of this
volume — the necessity of the Christian gospel to Democ-
racy! Japan is one of our allies and a land where a high
degree of education and progress prevail. The truth is just
as true here as anywhere. No force for the extension of
democracy and representative government could be intro-
duced into Japan so strong and beneficent as Christianity.
It is greatly needed. If Japan is to become a modern de-
mocracy, where the welfare of the individual is the control-
ling ideal of government, she needs the Christian vision of
each man's worth and the ideal of service. If Japan is to be
a liberalizing and not a grasping power in the Orient, she
needs the Christian evangel of brotherhood and peace and
justice built into her national life.

The Christian Advance

Christianity has had a large influence in Japan, an in-
fluence, not to be measured merely by the Protestant com-

142 CHRISTIAX CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

immity of 150,000 members. Christian ideas have had wide
influence. Great missionaries such as Yerbeck and others
have had much to do with launching the new educational
system. At the present time there is wide recognition on the
part of the lea'ders of the government of the need of a moral
and religious basis of national life, coupled with a gi'owing
recognition of the failure of Buddhism and Shintoism to
supply that basis.

The three-year national evangelistic campaign which
closed last year, participated in by aU Protestant bodies, re-
sulted in the enrollment of thousands of inquirers and dis-
closed a receptive spirit toward Christianity. In the last
three years 1,200.000 coj^ies of the Bible were sold in Japan.
The demand for admittance to Christian schools and colleges
is greater than can be granted.

Xo Time to Lose

Nevertheless, every advantage must be pressed to the
utmost without delay, for this serious situation in Ja^Dan
must be honestly faced. The days of largest opportunity
are passing. Lest anyone think that Christian leaders in
other lands such as China and India are insisting on the need
of hurry in Christian effort with overheated emphasis, look
carefully at Japan. The opportunity is not so large to-day
as it was fifteen or twenty years ago. Christianity did not
enter the door when it was opened widest. That is, the op-
portunity was greater when Japan was first adojDting TVest-
ern civilization and when the national ideas and standards
were undergoing greater change. These are unwelcome and
solemn facts. A Christian traveler recently retnrning from
Japan said, ' 'I had at times in Japan the feeling that I could
hear the fateful words of the parable of the ten virgins, ' Too
late, ye cannot enter now!' '' It is not too late. But the
church must work in Japan with enlarged forces the works
of Him that sent it while it is yet day, for the night of less-
ened opportunity is coming.

CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 143

Does anyone think Japan is almost evangelized! Out
of 55,000,000 people, there are only about 150,000 native
Protestant Christians; 26,000,000 are absolutely untouched
by the Word, with no facilities for hearing it, and millions
more have never listened to Christian preaching.

The Centenary Proposals

The Centenary program for Japan and Korea is united,
as Korea is now a part of the Japanese empire: The ad-
vance proposals in Japan are designed to extend the evan-
gelistic and educational work as swiftly as possible in order
to meet the opportunity. Methodism in Japan is in a unique
position, unmatched in any other land. The Japanese Meth-
odist Church was formed in 1907 out of members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, South,
and the Canadian Methodist Church. This action was a
striking example of two growing movements destined to
have a great development in Christian missions, church
unity on the field, and the rise of the native church to self-
direction and self-support. Our church at the time of the
union contributed 45 churches and 5,500 members. Each of
the three churches which united continues its support, with
a decreasing appropriation each year, and cooperates
with the Japanese Methodist Church. The Centenary calls
for cooperation by enlarging and extending the evangelistic
work to hitherto untouched regions.

Education

A work of commanding importance has been done by the
schools of the church. With the exclusion of religion from
the state schools and the weakness of what moral instruction
is given in them, there is vital need for schools which give
to Japan the religious and ethical power it lacks. The fam-
ous Aoyama G-akuin at Tokyo provides collegiate, theolog-
ical, and preparatory training for six hundred students. An
indication of its service to Christianity in Japan is seen in

144 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

the recent gift of one of its former students of a building-
costing $100,000. This and other schools in Japan must be
strengthened for larger service. A great Union Christian
University at Tokyo is planned in which we must bear our
share.

The Battle Flag

When Admiral Togo led his fleet into action in the great
naval battle with Russia in the Sea of Japan, he flung out
this signal from the mast of his flagship — "The destiny of
an empire." That same signal flag flies from the cross as
it is raised in Japan. The destiny of the empire is at stake
in a far larger sense than it ever was in the struggle with
Russia. The whole future of Christianity in the Far East
depends much on its success in Japan.

Korea

The story of Christianity in Korea reads like a chapter
in the book of Acts. We would not feel a bit surprised to
have Paul and Silas step into a typical Korean prayer meet-
ing. One thing is sure, they would feel right at home.
Christianity has had violent opposition, just as it did in the
world in which the apostle Paul moved. But it has won
some truly apostolic successes worthy to rank with the days
of Pentecost. In thirty years 300,000 have been converted
and joined the Christian Church — a remarkable record for
a single generation in a nation whose total present popula-
tion is only 15,000,000 ! Christianity has profoundly stirred
the nation. It is confined to no class, but is a movement in the
great mass of Korea's millions. Eager multitudes in all
places listen when the gospel is preached, and churches are
too small for the crowds.

The Gateway to the East

The location of Korea gives to the task of her thorough
Christianization a high strategic value. It is located be-
tween Japan and China. It is on the great highway across

CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 145

Asia by which the East is joined to the West by the Trans-
Siberian Railroad. Seoul, the capital of Korea, is only
forty-eight hours from Tokyo and forty-six from Peking.
In times of peace it is only twelve days from London and
seventeen days from New York. Korea is well fitted, not
only by her geographical location but also by her religious
temperament, to be a vital influence for Christian evangel-
ization in Japan, China, and the rapidly developing Man-
churia. Korea will play that role if Christianity wins a de-
cisive victory there.

The Methodist Episcopal Church already has a mem-
bership of 25,000. There are five high schools and 159 ele-
mentary schools. The evangelistic, educational, and hospital
work must all be vigorously extended. The native church is
already doing Herculean labors of evangelistic work and
self-support. There is a crying need of schools, particularly
in view of the government's refusal to permit the teaching
of religion. Less than one tenth of the children of school
age are in any regularly organized school. More children
of Christian families are outside of school than in. Some
imperative items of this advance are new churches, mission-
aries, native teachers, and doctors.

The Philippines

When Admiral Dewey slipped into Manilla Bay in the
twilight of that May morning twenty years ago the United
States moved out into new world relationships and responsi-
bilities. From that day to the present there has been a
steady widening of the horizon of American interests, of
which the participation of our country in the world-wide
struggle of to-day is the culmination. We have been forced
to think in world terms. The new day in history, ushered in
by the taking of Manilla, has not meant what many feared,
an era of 'imperialism," but it has meant the breakdown
of old isolation and the acceptance of responsibilities of
service, beyond our own shores.

146 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

New Day foe the East

The first of May, 1898, not only marks a new era in
American thinking, but also a new era for the East. The
American administration of the Philippines has introduced

THE PHILIPPINES
A school where the Orient may learn the essentials of democracy

and demonstrated that a hitherto untried theory of colonial
policy could work successfully. It has been a salient of
democratic influence flung into the midst of Asia and has
awakened longings for self-determination and larger degree
of self-government among all peoples of Asia. ^^Why can't
we have government like the Philippines T ' is a question

CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 147

which has echoed from island to island through all the
Eastern Sea and over all the mainland.

A Demonstkation School foe Asia

The influence of American presence in the Philippines
already demonstrates that it opens a new day in the kingdom
of God. It affords a center from which both Christianity
and democracy are swiftly carried to the Orient. Look at
Manilla on the map and you will readily understand the
description of it as ^^the Hub around which the wheel of
Asia turns.'' What an opportunity it is, with our flag flying
over eight millions of Orientals! When God's hour for all
of Asia has com^e, we are standing in this strategic place, the
very front yard ! It is an arena around which are ranged
900,000,000 spectators in that Eastern world. What an op-
portunity for influence, if in the Philippines we can show
to that greatest audience which ever witnessed any spectacle
a successful and vigorous Christianity going hand in hand
with a beneficent democracy! It is small wonder that one
who has spent years in the Philippines, Bishop W. F. Old-
ham, has said: '^The crux of our missionary activities in
Asia is in the Philippine Islands. If we fail to Christianize
the Filipinos, we shall fail to Christianize Asia. If we suc-
ceed in Christianizing the Filipinos, we shall succeed in
all Asia."

Toward Democracy

For centuries under Spanish dominion the only spiritual
watchword the Philippines knew was ' ' Backward Ho ! ' '
The American occupation has turned them right about face
and set them marching toward democracy. The United
States is pledged to give the Philippines complete rights of
self-government as soon as the Filipinos show their fitness
for it. They are not fit for it now and will not be able to
maintain free republican institutions without the liberalizing
influences of Protestant Christianity as well as the public

148 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

schools. It is this program of an increasingly democratic
government which onr government has set for the Philip-
pines and which the Orient is watching, which makes so
urgent a call for the Christianizing of the islands.

Those who are nrging immediate independence for the
Philippines are the ones who know least of the situation
there. The educational process has not gone far enough.
The people were ninety-five per cent illiterate only eighteen
years ago and only 3,000,000 have been touched so far by the
public school system, most of them, of course, being children.
The whole body of the people have not yet had time to learn
the rights of the individual. For the United States to step
out immediately would simply be handing the people over to
the exploitation of designing leaders, and such would not
be the fulfillment of our responsibilities. If independence
can be wisely granted in another decade, or two, a free and
vital Christianity must supply the foundations and safe-
guards of true democracy.

Uncle Sam — Tel^stee

It was a high ideal with which the United States
started in the Philippines. In the words of President Me-
Kinley: ^'The Philippines are ours, not to exploit but to
develop, civilize, educate, and train in the science of self-
government. This is the path of duty which we must follow
or be recreant to a mighty trust committed to us. " We may
well be proud that our nation has been true to that trust.
We have given the Filipinos the best we have — science, edu-
cation of the masses, intellectual and religious liberty, a just
and liberal government in which they themselves have part.
It is a record of progress ^'unexampled in the contact of
any Western people with any part of Asia." ^ In eighteen
3^ears have been brought about the changes of a century.
Over 600,000 children are in American public schools, in
which the English language is used. More Filipinos are

* W. F. Oldham, India, Malaysia, and the Phili'ppines, p. 258.

BASEBALL FOLLOWS THE FLAG
One evidence of the American influence in the Philippines

PREACHING IN THE STREETS OF SINGAPORE

CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 149

speaking English to-day than ever spoke Spanish at any one
time, notwithstanding the fact that Spain was there three
hundred and forty years, while the United States has been
there only twenty years.

After eleven years of American control the trade of
the islands was three times as large as the highest figures
under Spain. Improved agricultural methods, good roads
and railroads, are vastly increasing material prosperity.
Smallpox, formerly an annual scourge, has been completely
wiped out. Cholera has virtually disappeared. The death
rate in Manilla has been cut down fifty per cent since Amer-
ican occupation.

The Christian Achievement

The Christian occupation of the Philippines has in
many respects kept pace with other American achievements.
The story of American Christian effort since our control of
the islands has many unusual features, among which are the
speed with which missionary work was begun when the door
of opportunity opened; the remarkable growth of the
Protestant churches and the spirit of cooperation which has
prevailed from the beginning. Before the firing in the city
of Manilla had ceased the missionary was on the ground. An
evangelical union organized by the missionaries, determined
that there should be no overlapping, competition, or wasted
effort, divided the territory among different denominations.
It was a heartening demonstration that the things which
separate Christian bodies are not worth carrying eight
thousand miles to sea.

The response to evangelistic effort has been remarkable.
The per cent of increase in church membership, in propor-
tion to the number of people to be reached, has been greater
in the Philippines than in any other foreign field. In the
Methodist Church alone there are 48,000 members and 13,000
unbaptized adherents, a community of over 60,000, and other
churches have met success equally remarkable. The eager-

150 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

ness with, which the inhabitants of the Islands received the
gospel after the American control replaced the old Roman
Church repression of freedom of thought and speech was
intense and pathetic. That receptivity still characterizes
the people. Twenty-five years ago the Bible was a closed
book. To-day it has been translated into ten languages and
over a million copies have been sold in the islands.

Less than fifty per cent of the people may be considered
as good Roman Catholics. Besides the number who are
totally beyond the influence of the church, there are vast
numbers of the natives who have never known any religion
whatever except their primitive savagery.

The Advaxce

The principal activity in the Philippines is evangelistic.
If one asks why there is such little i3rovision for primary
and secondary education, the answer which may be proudly
given is, ''The Stars and Stripes." The government is do-
ing many things in the PhiliiDiDines which in other lands have
to be done by the missions. The educational need is to sup-
plement the government schools among people who are not
yet reached by them, for only two fifths of the school popu-
lation are as yet in school. Mission dormitories are needed
for students in government schools in order to supply Chris-
tian environment and influence, as the government allows no
religious teaching. Cooperation in a much needed Christian
university and a theological seminary has been promised.
One of the most hopeful indications for large success in the
Philippines is the number of young men of power and self-
sacrificing spirit who have pressed into the ministry from
the very beginning of missionary work.

The minimum of church extension calls for 128
churches and chapels, 69 native preachers, and 9 mission-
aries. Our responsibility is for two and a half million peo-
ple. Two medical stations in centers distant from Manilla,
with physicians, are needed to minister to districts contain-

CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 151

ing a million and a quarter population without any medical
attention.

When a miner finds a ''paying streak" of metal he
bends every etfort to follow it. The Philippines, for the
short time missionary effort has been there, have proved one
of the best ''paying streaks" in the history of Christianity.

Malaysia

A hungry world will listen with interest to at least one
claim made for Malaysia : it could feed the globe. Perhaps
there may be a slight touch of exaggeration to that claim as
there has been to some other statements about real estate.
Nevertheless, it is within easy hailing distance of the truth.
It is not a guess or fervent hope, but the scientific appraisal
of experts. Malaysia contains a million square miles of
exceedingly fertile soil, tropical abundance, and frequent
harvests. It can produce three yearly harvests of rice or
any other tropical grain. Its resources have barely been
touched. So there is some solid foundation for the belief
that Malaysia, if her resources were properly developed,
could invite the world into her dining room and say with
calm assurance, "Ladies and gentlemen, be seated!"

The What, Where and Who of Malaysia

If the word "Malaysia" conveys any clearcut, definite
meaning to you, you are one in a thousand and are entitled
to pin the order of the Sons of Geography, First Class, on
your breast. Malaysia is the composite name for a group
of countries and islands in the Pacific, and has, in our minds,
the same blurred outlines that a composite picture has. It is
hopeless to try to dispel the fog without the light of a good
map. Study the one on page 153 for a moment. Malaysia
consists of the Malay Peninsula in the southeast of Asia,
pointing like a forefinger down at the south pole, and the
most wonderful group of islands in the world, including four
large ones, Sumatra, Borneo, New Guinea, and Java, and

152 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

thousands of smaller ones. In this area there is a population
of about 60,000,000. In spite of this large population, larger
than that of all South America, half of it is packed so closely
in Java that vast areas of the rest of Malaysia are very
sparsely populated.

Many flags wave over this group of islands. The Malay
Peninsula, with many of the islands surrounding it, includ-
ing Straits Settlements, of which Singapore is the metrop-
olis, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea, belong to Great
Britain. Holland owns Sumatra, Java, and many other
islands, an empire of over forty million people, seven times
outnumbering the population of Holland itself. Under both
of these flags nominal rule over certain areas is still held by
native chiefs and kings.

A Land or Room Enough

With the exception of Java there is plenty of room for
more in Malaysia. It would seem that Java must soon be
forced to hang out the sign ''Standing Room Only'' at all
of her ports. Under the wise rule of the Dutch the popula-
tion has increased in two centuries from 2,000,000 to 30,000,-
000. There are 720 people to the square mile, more than in
any country in Europe. If the other islands attain a density
equal to Java, they will hold 720,000,000 instead of 50,000,-
000 or 60,000,000. This gives some indication of the possi-
bilities of growth and development of Malaysia. There is
room for many millions, and large streams of immigration
are already flowing from China and India. When asked how
many Chinese he could encourage to come to Malaysia, the
governor-general at Singapore answered in an off-hand way,
' ' Fifty millions if you can spare them. ' '

Wonderland — Admission Free

The whole area of Malaysia is a gigantic Bonanza
Farm, whose possibilities and wealth the world is just begin-
ning to learn. Large and varied crops are now produced

CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 153

and no limits can be set to the increase possible. Rice, sugar,
cocoanuts, rubber, and coffee flourish. Immense oil fields
have been found in Bali, the island next to Java.

The Melting Pot of Asia

The unique importance of Malaysia in the future of the
Orient and the world lies mainly in two things — its strategic
location and the vast immigration which is flowing to it.

SCALE OF Milts

III II.

0 50 100 200 300

MALAYSIA— THE MELTING POT OF ASIA
Every year it receives hundreds of thousands of the overflow of China and India

15i CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Singapore is the great center and metropolis of Ma-
laysia, and one of the world's great pivot points of travel
and trade. Yon cannot get from India or Europe to China or
Japan or anywhere onto the Pacific ocean without passing
through the narrow straits of Singapore, or else going so far
east as to make the voyage almost impossible. The city of
Singapore is the distributing point for all Asia and a
transfer point for the world. It is probably the most cos-
mopolitan city of the world. One may stand at a crowded
street corner and count forty different nationalities passing
within an hour. In that city of 300,000, over sixty-nine dif-
ferent languages are spoken. Whatever is planted firmly in
Singapore soon spreads out through the millions of Ma-
laysia and through all the Orient. It is a nerve center of the
Eastern world and a place of supreme vantage for Chris-
tianity.

Immigration is fast making not only a vast, developing
civilization in Malaysia, but is making a new race. Over
250,000 Chinese and 60,000 from India are coming to
Malaysia every year and are rapidly interfusing with the
Malays. It is the true melting pot of Asia. The city of
Singapore at the present time is seventy-two per cent
Chinese. Many of these Chinese become wealthy through
trade. The great majority of the immigrants from China
are laborers, and they are so much more industrious and
thrifty than the native Malays that the future in Malaysia
seems to belong to the Chinese. "Walter Weyel says : '^It is
not impossible or even improbable that another century will
find 100,000,000 or 200,000,000 Chinese in this unoccupied
territory. ' ' ^ The foundations of a great populous civiliza-
tion are being newly laid in this great region, presenting the
opportunity of centuries to Christianity.

The Christian Outlook
If Malaysia is a wonderland of nature, it is in many re-

Harpefs Magazine, July, 1918, p. 162.

CHRISTIAN MASTERY OF THE PACIFIC 155

spects a wonderland of missionary adventure also. The
Methodist Church is the only American church working in
all of Malaysia. The opening of the work was a daring ven-
ture of sheer faith which has been abundantly rewarded.
The educational work has been stressed from the begin-
ning. Already we have a self-supporting educational work
that enrolls 7,500 pupils. The Anglo-Chinese School at
Singapore, founded by Bishop W. F. Oldham when he was
a missionary in Singapore, is the largest educational insti-
tution outside of Japan in the Far East, having over 1,600
4 pupils. Its graduates have been extremely influential. Sev-
eral were leaders in the Chinese Revolution.

A publishing house is self-supporting, furnishing books,
Sunday school literature, tracts and Bibles in many lan-
guages. Methodism, as the only expression of American
Christian activity, stands very high in the confidence of all
the governments and also in the trust and confidence of the
people.

In a little over twenty years a church community of
6,000 has been gathered. The quality and interest of this
community may be gauged by the fact that they are under-
taking to raise one fourth of the total Centenary asking for
Malaysia ! That group of 6,000 will raise $382,000.

The most notable advance in the educational program is
the development of the school in Singapore into a college.
A circle with a radius of 1,200 miles would enclose 60,000,000
people and in it there is not a single school of college grade.
It affords an opportunity to set the educational standard
for 60,000,000 people. Part of the money necessary is being
raised on the field. One interested Chinaman has already
made a gift of $100,000. An increase in the number of
village schools is also planned.

In connection with all these school centers there is large
evangelistic opportunity. At present the appropriation
furnishes only one missionary for each million of those for
whom our church is responsible. The religions which Chris-
tianity must meet and supplant are Mohammedanism, Bud-

156 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

dhism, Hinduism, and the native paganism. Work among
Mohammedans yields results much more readily at this tip
end of Mohammedanism, as it were, than at the center in
Turkey or North Africa.

There is an urgent need of medical service. That con-
stitutes the most promising approach to the Malay. ^'The
easiest tunnel to the heart of Mohammedanism is the one
which leads from the gate of a hospital." A hospital for
Mohammedans at Singapore is proposed and nine hospitals
on the various islands. The Dutch government has offered
to supply three fourths of the cost, with the salary of one
American doctor, nurses, and equipment. This means that
for every dollar contributed from America nine will be con-
tributed by the Dutch government.

The Pacific Pkince

In one of his finest missionary hymns Charles Wesley
uses this ascription, ^'0 thou mild pacific Prince!" We
must capitalize the word ' ' pacific ' ' and sing it with new con-
viction. Jesus Christ must be the Pacific Prince. For the
world's peace and progress, the new-world center in the
Pacific must be under his mastery.

Will the Russians build a government of, by, and for the people?
On the answer to that question the hope of a liberal Europe hangs. —
Ernest Poole, The Dark People.

While we see to it that nothing allows the foreign missionary
enterprise to suffer at this time, there is another problem of even greater
dimensions, namely, re-evangelizing of Europe. — W, E. Orchard, The
Outlook for Religion.

CHAPTEE VII

THE EEBUILDINa OF EUROPE

The rebuilding' of Europe is the largest, most heart-
breaking task which has ever awaited the hand and mind of
man. The familiar pictures of French and Belgian women,
sitting alone amid the desolate ruins of what had once been
pleasant homes, are grim symbols of a broken, bereaved,
and exhausted Europe bowed in the chaos left by the tornado
of war. Millions of rough wooden crosses give to Northern
France and Belgium the aspect of a vast cemetery where lie
buried men and hopes and possibilities. Once fruitful fields
and orchards are transformed into the barren crater of a
volcano. Villages and cities with innumerable homes and
churches have been leveled to shapeless ruins. Millions of
maimed and blinded men are seeking to take up the tangled
threads of life again under heavy handicaps. The large
tasks of reconstruction must be undertaken with depleted
human forces and wearied strength.

The Havoc of War

It is so large a task that the title of this chapter is in
many senses a mockery. Europe will never be rebuilt.
Much that has gone down to destruction can never be re-
stored. The human harvest of war, a large part of the finest
manhood of Europe, has been cut down and lost forever.
Europe in its four years of war has lavishly spent not only
its present wealth, but that of the past and future as well.
A measureless mountain of debt and toil has been thrust for-
ward to the shoulders of coming generations.

Yet the war has left more than ruins. It has left an
immortal chapter in the story of high-hearted valor, of un-

159

160 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

selfish sacrifice and true human greatness that will be one of
the most priceless and fruitful legacies of the race for all
ages to come. In the nations which have spent themselves
so fully and ungrudgingly for the world's liberties, there
have been disclosed undaunted heroism and capacity which
will face the great reconstruction tasks as resolutely as they
did the advancing armies.

A New Europe

While some things cannot be restored, many other things
must not be rebuilt. The old structures of secret and in-
triguing diplomacy, of selfish and grasping imperialism, of
oppressive autocracy and militarism must never be set up
again.

The victory of the forces of democracy in the great war
will be incomplete unless the nations of Europe replace old
jealousies by new bonds of confidence and cooperation.
Spiritual ideals of brotherhood and justice must supplant
all materialistic worship of power. It is becoming increas-
ingly clear to millions of men that only such ideals worked
out into actual institutions will ever prevent another war
like the present one or worse. It is a farseeing, practical
statesmanship which proclaims at this hour regarding the
reconstruction of Europe, ^^ Unless the Lord build the house,
they labor in vain that build it.''

Spiritual Foundations for Reconstruction

In every field of life Europe has great tasks of recon-
struction awaiting. Great changes in the political life of
every nation are bound to follow the upheaval, with the crea-
tion of new states and new forms and methods of govern-
ment. Education of every kind will be profoundly atfected.
In the industrial world many look for the most far-reach-
ing results of the war. It cannot be doubted that the idea of
democracy, which has been so much in the thought of all
Europe for the years of the war, will be rigorously ap-

THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 161

plied to industry and the power and rewards of labor greatly
increased. In religious thinking and activity equally great
transformations will occur. Nothing is surer than that the
new order will place the free Protestant church beside the
free school as essential to the achievement of democracy. A
free church with vigorous spiritual ideals and life must enter
into the foundations of the new order in Europe to make it
permanent and safe.

Methodism in Continental Europe

It is not with any small spirit of making proselytes or
competing with other churches that a free Protestantism
looks at Europe to-day. It is, rather, with the desire to
render assistance to the forces already working there to lay
a true moral and spiritual foundation for national life.
America has proved herself a minister of mercy in Europe
and a military ally of the forces of democracy. We would
seek for her also a place of service in completing the victory
of democracy by strengthening the spiritual forces essential
to its safety.

The work of Methodism in Europe, in eleven countries,
has furnished it with a unique equipment and opportunity
for service at this hour. It is the only Protestant church
without national affiliations working over all this war-af-
fected territory. Through the international scope and char-
acter of its European membership and organization it holds
a providential relationship to much of the future religious
life of Europe.

No survey of the European fields and its needs could, of
course, be made. It is rather difficult to survey a whirlwind
in action. It is clear, however, that there exists an unprec-
edented opportunity to minister to the varied needs, phys-
ical, educational, and spiritual, of some of the stricken coun-
tries of Europe. Methodism is so placed in relation to these
great needs that they constitute an immediate responsibility
which cannot be evaded.

162 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Under Three Flags

Among the countries of Continental Europe which are
opening opportunities for service of striking character, are
Russia, Italy, and France. The conditions in each of these
countries are vastly different, hut even a slight examination
of them will give an indication of the wide opportunity for
ministry that lies ahead of a free Protestant Christianity in
Europe.

Russia

Russia has become the world's rampant question mark
and will be so for a generation to come. Both history and
fiction fail to furnish a parallel to the two revolutions of
1917 by which the whole political and social order of Russia
was overturned, the course of the war changed, and the gov-
ernment placed in the hands of what looked from the outside
like a workingmen's debating society. Russia has won for
herself, during the progress of this most amazing revolution,
every possible attitude on the part of the rest of the world,
from the most extravagant applause and admiration to the
bitterest hatred and accusations of treachery. Probably no
nation has ever had to deal at one time with such great dis-
turbing undertakings as Russia has had in the last two years.
In the first place, she has had to engage in the greatest war
in the history of the world, maintaining alone a vast front
of twelve hundred miles for nearly three years. Second,
Russia has had the greatest political revolution of modern
times, perhaps also of ancient or modern times. She has
swung from a cruel and dark autocracy to a government
wholly in the hands of the working class. Third, she has
undergone a social revolution which is the greatest social up-
heaval of this or any age. Fourth, she is in the midst of a
striking religious revolution, which has not received so much
attention as the political and social revolution, but which has
already brought tolerance to faiths and sects persecuted for
centuries and which has great possibilities for the religious
future of Russia.

THE EEBUILDING OF EUROPE 163

While much of the movement of this turbulent whirlpool
in Russia cannot be rightly interpreted at present, in two
respects it is clearly to be seen that the course of events has
been inevitable. One is that the great revolution was the sure
fruit of a blind and brutal tyranny. The other is that a safe
democracy cannot exist among a people unprepared for it.
The world has never been treated to a more conclusive
demonstration that a democracy without sure foundations in
universal education and moral and spiritual enlightenment
is a menace to the world. The collapse of Russia, her failing
the allied nations at a crucial hour in the great struggle, and
the internal weakness of her improvised democracy, have
shown with terrible emphasis the havoc that may be wrought
by democracy without the essential conditions of success.

The Fruit of Tyeanny

The revolution which blew the autocracy of the Tsar to
atoms was the inevitable result of a repressive tyranny. Its
coming was as sure as the explosion of a steam boiler which
has no outlet. However disappointing the year's collapse of
Russia as an ally and the feebleness of the Bolsheviki
government was, it must not be forgotten that the freeing
of the one hundred and sixty-four millions of Russia from
the iron heel of despotism is one of the greatest results of the
war and one of the largest single steps ever taken in the
world's march to freedom. A few months before the crash
came the Tsar's brother wrote a warning letter to Nicholas
in which he said, ^'The time is by when nine tenths of the
people can be treated as manure to grow a few roses. ' ' This
handwriting on the wall was disregarded, but the rising tor-
rent of revolution soon proved the truth of the words. The
liberation of Russia has come in response to that same divine
voice which first sounded when the Israelites were oppressed
in Egypt, ^ ^ Let my people go ! "

The Dark Ages in Russia have existed up until the pres-
ent time. The autocracy of Russia was blind, untouched by

164 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

any reason whatever at times and securing few of the results
desired. The old spirit of the Russian government is well
exhibited by the system of exile to Siberia for even minor
political offenses, and the treatment of the Jews. In the
words of Professor E. A. Ross, ''The government lit no
lamps for the people, nor would it allow others to do so
freely. ' ' ^ The workmen were held down with a hard cruelty
long since abandoned in western Europe. One third of the
agricultural land of Russia was in the hands of 110,000
nobles, out of a population of over 160,000,000. The whole
social system was designed to concentrate the good things of
life in the hands of the few at the top of the social pyramid
and distribute all the burdens possible to the shoulders of the
common people at the bottom. This oppressive result was
secured by the cooperation of the absolute power of the
autocracy, the subservient spirit of office holders, a captive
church, ' ' safe ' ' teaching in what schools there were, by class
distinctions in the law code, the tax system weighing heaviest
on the poor, the police, and spies.

Unprepared for Democracy

The result of these centuries of oppression has been that
when the despotic yoke of the Tsar was overthrown, the peo-
ple of Russia were entirely unprepared to maintain a se-
cure democracy. The government kept the people in dark-
ness, and now that the despotism is overthrown, the people
do not understand the nature of liberty or the necessity of
making adjustments by law. ' ' They are too ignorant to per-
ceive the fallacies of agitators who urge them to take what
they want now. ' ' ^ Eighty-three per cent of the population
above nine years were reported illiterate in 1908, and this
figure is still given even by Russian professors.^ It is not
surprising that in its new found liberty Russia has been

^ Ross, Russia In Upheaval, p. 217.
^ lUd., p. 16.
^lUd., p. 112.

THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 165

rearing and plunging like her own wild horses on the
Steppes. ' ' To look for a national consciousness, ' ' says Prof.
Ross, ^^ among people who have no mental image of Russia,
never saw a map of the world, and could not locate their
country on such a map, would be folly. ''^ This unpre-
paredness for democracy has been a tragedy of the gravest
sort in the present world struggle. It demonstrates the
serious obstacles to world democracy which exist in the
ignorance and moral weakness upon the part of multitudes
who desire to participate in it. There can be no doubt of the
truth of the forcible words of Bishop Bashford, ^'Had
Protestantism spent forty millions of dollars in missionary
work in Russia during the last forty years, Russian democ-
racy would stand the crisis firmly and would be worth forty
billions of dollars in terminating the war. "

What of the Future?

It would be a foolhardy prophet who would risk his
reputation by trying to foretell the exact course of events
in Russia for even a few weeks.

''What do you think about Russia!'' one man asked an-
other recently on a street car.

''I haven't seen a paper since an hour ago," was the
discreet answer he received.

All predictions about Russia must be made with some-
thing of the same undogmatic discretion.

The eyes of the world are eagerly focused on Russia
to-day. Vital questions press for an answer : How long will
the present Bolsheviki^ government stand! What success
will the allied nations have in saving Russia from complete
domination by Germany? Can a famine and disease, involv-
ing the lives of millions, be averted? But amid all the com-

^ Ross, Russia In Upheaval, p. 115.

''The name "Bolshevik" means "member of a majority." The aim
of the Bolshevik party was the establishment of a state in which the
workers control. The Sovyet is a council of delegates chosen by groups
of workers.

166 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

plex maze of possibilities, one thing stands out clearly. If
Russia is ever to emerge out of her present upheaval as a
safe, solvent, and just democracy, there must develop within
it the forces which have made democracy free and safe any-
where, universal education, enlightenment, and vigorous
moral and spiritual ideals. Upon the free Christian
churches of the world rests the pressing responsibility of
bringing aid so that these saving forces may be released and
developed in the democracy of Russia.

The Present Opportunity

The throne of the Tsars is not the only thing which has
been blown sky-high in the revolutionary explosion. Old
doors of exclusiveness have been lifted off their hinges and
forbidding barriers razed to the ground. In many respects
Russia presents a unique opportunity in Christian history to
help shape the foundations of a new national life among a
great people coming out of oppression into liberty. It is
an opportunity of service not only to Russia, but to the whole
world. There are many foundations for the hope of a strong
Christian democracy in Russia if the necessary leadership
and assistance are forthcoming.

The Russian Character

The national Russian character possesses many and
strong virtues which promise an immense contribution to the
world. They are virtues intimately associated with Chris-
tianity and will undoubtedly prove an immense power in the
establishment of a spirit of brotherhood and sympathy
throughout the world. No people have such a quick impulse
of sympathy for a fellow man as the Russians. They mani-
fest a genuine Christian spirit by a hundred tokens. Trav-
elers report that early in the war peasants would give all
their stock of food to the passing Polish and Jewish refugees.
The millions who fled into Russia before the advancing
German armies met with wonderful kindness and generosity.

THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE

167

They are a prevailing peaceful people. Russian militarism is
an alien thing of Prussian origin settled upon the people.
No more democratic people by their nature and long habits

AFTER THE WAR— WHAT ?

The countries of Europe in which the Methodist Episcopal Church has work are indicated in
white

of life exists than the great mass of Russia. Nor is there
any great people more idealistic. Observers have always
been struck with the serious-mindedneas and depth of the

168 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

people. Whether this is to be ascribed, as is commonly done,
to the savage Russian winter or not, it is a trait of character
of the largest possibilities. Their characteristic of striking
orderliness has not failed them in the turbulent days of
revolution.^ In spite of all the upheaval, the period of seven
years after the French Revolution was far worse in every
respect than that through which Russia is now passing. The
Russians are great in patience. It is often predicted that
the Russians will be the first to forgive after the war is over.
These racial characteristics form a large basis for hope of a
great democratic nation.

The New Eka in the Russian Church

The State Church of Russia, the Greek Orthodox Cath-
olic Church, has been unchanged through the centuries, being
occupied far more with ritual than with teaching. Un-
like our Protestant churches it has striven neither to in-
struct nor to develop attitudes of the will. It has been the
servant of the autocratic government. But it has shared in
the democratic revolution and is at present undergoing a
transformation which holds large possibilities. Religious
toleration has at last been achieved and the long era of per-
secution and exclusiveness ended. All religions now stand
on an equality. The Orthodox Church itself is undergoing
a process of democratization and a break with the old
autocratic method of church government has been made.
Old corruptions are being corrected and many signs of spir-
itual quickening are at hand, such as improving the parish
life of the churches, the larger use of preaching. This situ-
ation points the way to the opportunity of influencing with
the principles and spirit of evangelistic Christianity that
great ecclesiastical establishment, one of the largest in the
world, with 115,000,000 members. It will require wise and
sympathetic action.

Fred P. Haggard, Journal of Race Development, January, 1918, p. 291.

THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 169

Methodism in Russia

Methodism is already located in Petrograd in a mission
which has made substantial progress under grave handicap
under the old autocratic regime. In the changed situation
which is presented in Russia that effort must be strength-
ened and enlarged. In the field of education there is a pecu-
liarly large opportunity. The planting of some strong
schools will be eagerly welcomed and will afford a strategic
center of influence and be one of the most effective ap-
proaches to the whole religious problem of Russia. Some of
the greatest weaknesses of Russia have been the lack of
standards, intellectual, economic, and moral. Christian edu-
cation of a broad and modern type under free and vigorous
Protestant auspices can do much in strengthening the
foundations of the new Russia now rising on the wreck of
the Bolsheviki regime. A close relation to young Russia is
the line of action dictated by America's pledge to Demo-
cracy, Humanity, and Freedom.

France

The strains of *^The Marseillaise" are resounding
throughout the world. In a very real sense France has
saved the world, and the largest part of the world looks to
France with feelings of reverent devotion and gratitude.
Those feelings on the part of America have already found
expression both in military comradeship in arms and in
large ministries of mercy, and will continue to find expres-
sion after the war is over. The debt which civilization owes
to France can never be reckoned and never be paid. The
heroic valor of her soldiers and the indomitable spirit and
cheerful sacrifice on the part of all her people will furnish
inspiration to the whole human race for ages to come. The
United States will surely regard the opportunity of assist-
ing in the rebuilding of France as a high privilege. The
comradeship of the two nations now expressed in arms must
be continued after the war in works of reconstruction.

170 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

To-MOKROw's Tasks

That rebuilding, as elsewhere in Europe, will take many
forms, and among them and interpenetrating all will be the
religious. A new spirit has been liberated in France dur-
ing the war, a quickening of the spiritual life of the nation.
The witnesses of that new spirit are present in a thousand
forms. Just how that spirit will affect the institutionalized
religion of France cannot be definitely predicted, but it is
evident that it otfers an increased receptivity to a free spir-
itual message.

To the established French work of Methodism, the pres-
ent and immediate days to come present two urgent calls,
which are closely related. The first is to bear an earnest
part in the great task of helping France rebuild, particularly
in caring for her orphans and educating them, thus conserv-
ing her priceless human wealth. The second is to minister to
the awakened spiritual aspiration and life. All Europe,
along with France, greatly needs a statement of Christ which
shall be modern and vital and which shall make a direct
appeal to the mind and heart.

The Spirit of Approach

Methodism approaches the opportunity of service in
France with humility, reverence, and gratitude. The large
spiritual ministry which France has given and is giving to
the United States in her heroic and sacrificing devotion to
liberty, justice, and humanity has uplifted our own national
life to a degree beyond computation. That we shall never
forget. In grateful spirit we would seek to bring to France,
so largely without definite religious connections, a Christian
evangel unfettered by ecclesiasticism, which shall strengthen
her own spiritual life. The religious situation in France
is peculiar. There is a socialistic section of the nation which
is strongly antireligious and therefore anti-Catholic. The
great middle class, which takes in four fifths of the French

THE REBUILDING OP EUROPE 171

people, from peasant to intellectual, have very little relation
to any religious institution save that they have been bap-
tized and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church. The
French Protestant Church, though influential out of propor-
tion to its numbers, has not been an aggressive propagating
force. The strong anticlerical movement which resulted in
the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church a few
years ago left large numbers entirely outside of the influence
of any form of Christianity. At the time of the disestablish-
ment Rome claimed at the most only ^ve or six million loyal
Catholics. At the present time the French man or woman
whose religious impulses have been quickened by the war,
has practically no choice between agnosticism on the one
hand and a form of Roman faith on the other.^

That the great unchurched masses of France accord a
ready hearing to the message of evangelical Christianity has
been amply demonstrated by the success of the Methodist
evangelistic work before the war, in the Savoy district.
Many churches were planted and a promising orphanage
work developed. The present activity is centered on the
orphanage work at Grenoble, where an important service is
being rendered, helping to meet two pressing needs of
France, the preservation and education of her children and
the problem of feeding her people after the war. At Grenoble
our church is conducting an agricultural school for soldiers '
orphans, in connection with which a farm is operated. It is
the nucleus for a great new agricultural and industrial
school which will be of large service. In this connection the
important war orphans' work of the Woman's Foreign Mis-
sionary Society of the Methodist Church must not be over-
looked. For this purpose $45,000 has been appropriated, of
which $30,000 will be used for building an orphanage.

After the war the evangelistic opportunity will be even
larger. The new bonds which unite France and the United
States, the service of the Red Cross and Y. M. C. A., in addi-

Tyler Dennett, World Outlook, November, 1917.

172 CHEISTIAX CRUSADE FOE DEMOCEACY

tion to the awakened religious spirit of the French, all mark
a new day of opportunity. Plans for cooperation with the
French Protestant Church are already being made.

Italy

The war has affected the Methodist work in Italy in two
diverse ways. On the one hand, it has destroyed many
churches in the battle zone of north Italy, taken toll of many
of the members and leaders and crippled the work in every
part of the country. On the other hand, it has greatly in-
creased the prestige and prosjDects of our work by disclosing
Methodism as a national force of high patriotic feeling and
vital influence. There is no doubt that Methodism has per-
manently gained increased confidence and good will, which
will lead to larger service in future years. At the Annual
Conference in Florence, in April. 1918, half of the min-
isterial forces were appointed to service in the armies. Many
of the preachers have been decorated for valor in action.
The Italian government has recognized the value of Italian
Methodism in the official appointment of Methodist chap-
lains in the army.

The Methodist work and program in Italy appeals
strongly to the liberals of the country. The authority and
prestige of the Vatican have been materially lessened during
the war by the failure of the Pope to take a stand with Italy
on the moral issues of the war. and already there are many
indications of an increased receptivity after the war toward
a free evangelical Christianity.

LixES OF Advaxce

Methodism is on a firm foundation in Italy with a col-
lege, publishing house, schools, and churches. Perhaps the
most strategic advance now planned is the completion of the
Collegio at Rome for which a magnificent site has been pur-
chased on ]\Ionte Mario overlooking Saint Peter's Cathedral.
This will insure an evangelical Christian leadership for the

THE REBUILDING OF EUROPE 173

work in the whole kingdom and will extend and increase the
already remarkable work of the Collegio. Another educa-
tional project now in successful operation which must be
strengthened for increased influence is the industrial school
in Venice. The opportunity for these institutions is many
times greater to-day than it was before the war, because the
government is too poor to maintain its school system and so
will welcome all institutions that desire to render service to
Italy.

In addition to these educational projects there is need
for extending the evangelistic work of the churches both in
men and money for the increased opportunity of the coming
years.

Italy and the United States are standing closer to-
gether than ever before. The flag of Italy, so little known
here a few years ago, is becoming almost as well known as
the Union Jack or the tri-color of France. It is coming to
be a dearly loved flag as well, all over our land. It is a
highly favorable day in which to express our feeling of
alliance with Italy in ways that will strengthen her national
life and democratic ideals.

Othee Nations

In many other countries Methodism is bearing the
strain and stress of war and will face large tasks with
slender resources after it is over. We are in Bulgaria, and
responsible for Serbia and Roumania, wholly unoccupied by
Protestantism. What needier field in which to play the
good Samaritan than these three storm-tossed Balkan
countries? In Switzerland, in Scandinavia, in Denmark,
our work has undoubtedly suffered under the strain. And
finally —

Geemany

What can be said of Germany! How can any one pic-
ture the suffering of German Methodists, or of those of

174 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

Austria? "Wliat the state of the Methodist Church in
Germany, once so vigorous and promising, will be after the
war cannot be foreseen at present. But two considerations
must be kept in mind. One is that the great ideal of brother-
hood in Christ never needed such large and compelling state-
ment as it does to-day and will need in the days that follow
the war. No force will be so effective in making that ideal
a realit}" as the church founded on that ideal. European
Methodism, located on both sides of the firing line, will be-
come immediately effective in the direly needed ministry of
reconciliation when the firing ceases.

The other consideration to be remembered in connection
with German and Austrian Methodism is its great possible
service to the growth of democracy within those countries.
It is a growth for which we long and pray. The future peace
and happiness of the world will be largely affected by the
establishment of democracy within the German empire, and
no influence will work so mightily for that result as a free
and vigorous evangelical Christianity uncontrolled by the
state, boldly declaring the freedom and inalienable rights
of every man as a child of God. For that reason we may
earnestly pray that Methodism among the Central Powers
may wax strong in numbers and influence.

It is the time of times to do something that reminds people that
we believe our religion. Things that are impossible with men have ever
been the most attractive things for Christ. — John R. Mott.

England possessed a superb architect of genius, Sir Christopher
Wren. He prepared a magnificent design for rebuilding the city of
London which he would have made the noblest and most magnificent city
in the world. The central idea was Saint Paul's Cathedral, and Wren
meant it to be approached by a stately colonnade leading up from what
is now Ludgate Hill. All the rest of the city was to be grouped around.
The king and Parliament accepted the plans, but it was a melancholy
fact that the scheme was thrust aside by the haste of the commercial
interest to begin rebuilding, and by the unwillingness of the citizens to
cooperate for the common good. The supreme moment was lost. Sel-
fishness rose and spoiled the picture. The old London, with its narrow-
ness, its crookedness, its inconvenience, remained as it will be with us to
the end. Shall the new world after the war perpetuate the crookedness,
the narrowness of the world before the war? — W. Blaclcshaw.

Never can the church say to any young missionary, "Young man, sit
down!" when the country is calling its young soldiers to enlist. Never
can the church be content to become parochial when the mind of the
country is becoming international. When the thoughts of all living men
are widened by the process of the suns, then is the very time to widen
the endeavor of the Christian Church. — W. H, P. Faunce.

CHAPTEE VIII
A WOELD PEOGEAM

The Methodist Episcopal Church has gotten her dates
mixed in a divine confusion. Coming to the one hundredth
anniversary of the beginning of Methodist missions in 1819,
she is planning to celebrate, not the first hundred years, but
the next hundred. Forgetting the things which are behind,
not unmindful of their sublimities, but stirred by their obli-
gations, she has set her face like a flint to rear as a centen-
nial observance the only monument worthy of those who
have gone out to the world with Christ's message and of the
Christ who led them. That monument is to be a world-wide
foundation for Christ's kingdom.

Two things there are in the heritage of Methodism
which commit the church irrevocably to a new and deter-
mined pressing of her world warfare.

The Obligation of History

The providential success of the first century of Meth-
odist missions lays upon the church the high obligation of
building worthily on that noble foundation. In no other con-
nection is the paradox more true that ''We must be greater
than our fathers in order to be equal to them. ' ' The begin-
ning of the first hundred years of Methodist missions saw
one man, a Negro, John Stewart, at work among the Wyan-
dot Indians in Ohio. Not an inspiring figure, surely, and
yet, making his way through the tangled forests, he was the
trail-blazer of a world-movement. The first missionary to a
foreign land soon followed in his train, Melville Cox^ — whose

177

178 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

frail body soon burned itself out with fever, but whose grave
in the African sands has made one spot of that great con-
tinent forever American, from which he still calls in his dy-
ing exhortation, ^'Let a thousand fall, before Africa be
given up!"

The close of the century sees the church set full in the
stream of modern life, building the evangel of Christ into
the life of thirty-four countries. It is raising a vigorous
native church, which is itself carrying the propaganda of
the Kingdom in the Far East, in Africa, in India, and South
America. The Board of Foreign Missions has 1,071 mis-
sionaries and 9,107 native workers. The Woman's Foreign
Missionary Society has 500 missionaries and 4,003 native
workers. The total staff, therefore, is 14,680, of whom about
nine out of every ten are native workers. The vitality of
the native church in mission lands may be fairly judged by
the fact that for every three dollars contributed by the Home
Base, about one dollar is collected on the field. When we re-
member that most of these fields are lands of dire poverty,
the showing is remarkable. On the foreign field there are
442,765 members, 2,516 churches and chapels, 106 high
schools and colleges, 36 theological and biblical schools,
2,853 primary and other schools, and 49 hospitals. There
are to-day 7,440 Sunday schools with an enrollment of
346,793. The potential strength which this Sunday school
host means to the church of to-morrow cannot be meas-
ured.

The Obligation of Democratic Ideals

In a day of democratic striving the world over, a
church born of democratic ideals, a force for social progress
in its very birth hour, and during all its historj^ a church of
the common people, cannot escape the responsibility of
world-service for democracy. In the democratic awakening
in England in the eighteenth century the Methodist revival
under Wesley played a vital part. The English historian

A WORLD PROGRAM 179

Lecky reckons the Methodist revival as one of the greatest
forces for social progress in the century, ^'The democracy
of the Methodist Movement, ' ' in the words of a recent his-
torian, ''was founded upon the eternal possibility before
every man. ' ' The religious revival preceded and made pos-
sible in large degree the steady march of democratic pro-
gress in England which went on for a hundred years, secur-
ing the extension of the right to vote, the protection of
workers in factories, and child labor laws. And now that the
democratic struggle is being fought out on a world scale,
Methodism must answer the call for service and leadership
in that struggle for which her birthright and experience
have so splendidly fitted her.

A Vision of Wokld Need

In the chapters of this book we have lifted up our
eyes to the fields to whose emancipation our church is
pledged. We have scanned the horizon of China, India,
Japan, and Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, Africa,
Europe, and Latin America. We have seen men of different
colors, but every color takes on a darker hue from the
shadow of Christless night in which the peoples sit. We
have listened to a Babel of languages, but the language of
human need is one.- It is a weary world, needing many
things, but needing nothing so desperately as it needs Christ.
We have gone in imagination through wide-open doors, and
yet the figure of a door is too passive and mechanical. It
is not so much a world of open doors that stretches out be-
fore us as a world of imploring hands. It is a darkened
world, where over one half the human race cannot read or
write a word of any language ; a sufiFering world where one
half the human race is without a knowledge of medicine,
surgery, hygiene, or sanitation.

It is a receptive world. H. G. Wells is a true seer when
he reports: ''All mankind is seeking God. There is not a
nation nor a city in the globe where men are not being urged

180 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

at this moment by the Spirit of God in them toward the dis-
covery of God. ' ' ^

For this hour, the Centenary World Program of Meth-
odism is the organized strategy of the love of Christ. It
must stir the church as the voice of God.

The Chukch's Need of a Woeld Crusade

We have thought of this program as one for the salva-
tion of the world, and so it is. But let us not deceive our-
selves into thinking that that is all. It is a necessary under-
taking for the salvation of the church. The hour has struck
when the Christian Church must get on with the business of
establishing the kingdom of God by an aggressive warfare
in deadly earnest if she is to hold the allegiance of men. In
her total task she has what the world so direly needs, ^'The
moral equivalent of war ' ' ; and only as she utilizes all her
resources for that one tremendous objective can she lead a
world which has become accustomed to a war footing.
There is no other idea large enough to serve ^^as a moral
equivalent to war" than the adventure of applying Chris-
tianity to a desperately needy world. All the ''war vir-
tues," farsighted planning, quick initiative, unselfish cour-
age, disciplined leadership, obedience, e^pri^ de corps and
effective cooperation, may find permanent and satisfying
place in the crusade of the kingdom of God. The task to
which the church calls men must be large and daring enough
to make room for these virtues, else it will not appear worth
while. For the war has taught us what we had almost for-
gotten— that a great response can always be brought out by
a great appeal. The capacity for heroism in the average
man and woman when confronted by a really big demand has
been almost a revelation. Merely dabbling with its task will
rally no army to the standard of the church. The church

H. G. Wells, God the Invisible King.

A WORLD PROGRAM 181

must be saved by her faith, a militant and aggressive faith in
the world-kingdom of God, to which she dedicates her all.

The Christian Spirit of Adventure

A program of world-evangelization and uplift such as
Methodism has before her will recover what is essential in
Christianity and what has possessed the strongest appeal
to men since the days of Christ, the spirit of adventure. The
church is an institution, of course, but Christianity is more
than that. It is an adventure, an enterprise, a crusade. ^^It
was intended for the arena ; it is helmed and girded for the
quick encounter, it sends out its knights and men-at-arms to
battle. ' ' ^ The moral and spiritual authority which we crave
for Christ's church, the power to command the enthusiasm
and service of men will be hers when she flings herself into
and holds before them a great positive offensive movement.
Mr. Clutton-Brock, in words that bite, has described the
source of much of the weakness of organized Christianity.

* ^ Christianity, ' ' he says, *^has lost its power of coher-
ence, its joy, its power of laughter, because it has been
merely on the defensive. There we stand, entrenched in our
carefully fortified lines which cover the narrow territory we
are holding on to, without the strategic initiative that goes
with victory.'' ^ <'^e are afraid — so many of us — to take
risks and make history, afraid to think imperially in the
cause of the Kingdom of God, afraid of all the reconstruc-
tion and enterprise that must go with war. We rely upon
apology, and dreading the disasters which might follow
frontal attacks upon deeply entrenched evils, we strafe them
from a distance with long-rang^ fire. Timid and divided
counsels, which would bring certain failure on the Somme or
at Arras, first limit and then wreck our scheme for progress
and reform. We have grown contented, or are only feebly

"■ P. B. MacNutt, The Church in the Furnace, p. 17.
=^ A. Clutton-Brock, The Ultimate Faith.

182 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

discontented, witli onr limitations, and year after year we
settle down to onr trenches for another winter. ' ' ^

Only one course is large enough for the emergency —
to do boldly what Jesns did, put the Kingdom and the Cross
in the very center of our message and life. And the Cross in
terms of modern life means getting under the world 's need

and burden with a force strong enough to lift it.

The Favoring Conditions To-day for the World Program

The unfavorable conditions are far more easily seen
perhaps. The great preoccupation — the war — with its long
train of financial and other calls which must be swiftly and
fully met, makes the task larger and harder in many ways.
But one who enters deeply into the temper of the times can-
not fail to feel that there are great and new forces at work
in our national life which make it a day of unprecedented
opportunity for initiating a wide and sacrificial missionary
undertaking which has a truly great challenge and promise.

A Day of Large Things

It is a day of large things. The leadership of the world
is thinking and acting in larger terms than ever before. The
scale on which resources are being mobilized in the countries
at war, the new standards of thinking in military circles, in
scientific realms, in the financial world, all present a tre-
mendous challenge to forsake the old standards forever and
to lift the program of the Kingdom into new terms greater
and more expansive than those of all other organizations.
In our first year of war the United States gave to humani-
tarian and Christian objects for which great campaigns
were conducted, $330,000,000. In no previous year had
there ever been given to corresponding objects more than
$30,000,000. The Red Cross in its first campaign asked for
$100,000,000. It received $120,000,000. The Y. M. C. A.
asked for $35,000,000 in November, 1917; it received over

^ F. B. MacNutt, The Church in the Furnace.

A WOELD PROGRAM 183

$50,000,000. People are accustomed to thinking in large
dimensions ; old standards of measuring and thinking have
been abandoned. In addition to that, while Christian peo-
ple in the United States are in the war whole-heartedly to see
it through to final victory, there is an increasing longing for
something constructive rather than merely destructive, that
builds rather than batters down. And in the words of
Bishop Bashford, *'The Centenary World Program is the
most constructive and statesmanlike project before the
world to-day."

A Day Favorable to American World-Influence

When President Wilson delivered his message to Con-
gress at its assembling, December 4, 1917, the telegraph
lines and cables of the whole world were connected up and
held in readiness, so that his words might be flashed to every
corner of the earth without the loss of an unnecessary
second. That network of wires running out to the waiting
millions of the earth is a symbol of the new position of
America to-day. President Wilson has become the enthusi-
astically accepted spokesman for the Allied nations. In the
words of Stephane Lauzanne, editor Le Matin, Paris,
'^President Wilson's addresses are the gospel of the Allied
cause. In his message of April 2, as well as in those that fol-
lowed it, the Allies found the echo of their own sentiments,
of their own will, their own hopes, strengthened in volume
by distance.''^ From England Frederic Harrison writes:
^ ^ The American President has put the whole case of the war
into unanswerable words. The material and moral forces
of the Old World seem to be passing over to the New World.
Mr. Wilson is now the most powerful ruler the world has
seen for at least one hundred years.'' ^

Never was there throughout the world so favorable a
predisposition for whatever moral and spiritual leadership
America may give. The embarking of the United States in

^ New York Times, March 10, 1918.

' The Fortnightly Review, February, 1918.

184 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

an unselfish war for the rights of mankind — a war in which
it has nothing to gain save the privilege of establishing the
victory of simple faith, humanity, and justice^ — is a unique
spectacle in history. The nation's rally to that war has
brought a new glory to Old Glory — the brightest that has
ever shone on its folds. The flag has become the revered
symbol of the consecration of a great people to an unselfish
world task of liberation. '^We have no selfish ends to serve.
We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indem-
nities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacri-
fices we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham-
pions of the rights of mankind. ' ' ^ Up to May 15, 1918, the
United States had advanced to the Allied nations $5,763,-
850,000, and the total will increase every month.

What does this new position of the United States mean
in terms of spiritual opportunity? Simply that God has
placed before us a pathway to world-spiritual influence such
as has never before been opened to a people. To fail to use
it in a large way would be an unthinkable blunder.

A New Sacrificial Temper

A new sacrificial temper is abroad which is transform-
ing the national life. Idealism has waxed strong in adver-
sity. Multitudes who had hitherto lived selfish lives have
learned the joy of helping to bear the burdens of others.
We see it supremely in the thousands of men who have
freely offered themselves to meet hardship, pain, and death
for the nation's life.

"Blow, bugles, blow. They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain.

Honor has come back, as a King, to earth
And paid his subjects with a royal wage ;

And nobleness walks in our common ways again ;
And we have come into our heritage."^

' President Wilson's War Message, April 2, 1917.

2 Rupert Brooke, "The Dead." Published by John Lane Co. From Col-
lected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

A WORLD PROGRAM 185

^^The call of national necessity, the splendid comrade-
ship of service on behalf of all that makes life moral and
spiritual and lifts it above a godless chaos that is ruled by
brute force, the high romance of giving self away for the
more-than-self which is the background of all idealism and
religion, the breaking in upon smooth, easy living of a sud-
den demand for sacrifice — these things have been a trumpet
blast to the soul of the people during these past three
years. Men who once appeared to be absorbed in trivial-
ities have ridden off into the unknown with a great glory at
heart that none can take away, and heroism which seemed
to have vanished from the earth has looked at us again out
of quiet, shining eyes, splendidly unconscious of anything
but that it is fine and yet quite natural to venture all at the
call of duty. We have seen the smaller interests of the state
merged in the great flood of patriotism, and the partisan loy-
alties of political life, while not abolished, yet certainly sub-
ordinated to the higher demands of national service. Al-
most everywhere we have heard a new spirit of self-devotion
confessing the obligation to give one 's share, however small,
to the whole effort of the nation. How different it has all
been from the deadly inertia of the past P ' ^

That spirit is abroad in the land from coast to coast.
Women have eagerly sought new forms of service and
leaped forward to undertake responsibilities hitherto borne
by tnen. Human society has never seemed more worth
saving than it does now ; nor were the hearts of men ever
more prepared for a great adventure.

Surely, it is God's time to place before the newly dis-
covered and released capacities in the manhood and wo-
manhood of America for sacrifice, leadership, and devotion,
the Christian crusade for the world's true freedom, as the
completion of conflict in which they are now engaged. It is
a time to show them that there is a battle line that extends
not merely from the English Channel to the Mediterranean,

^ F. B. MacNutt, The Church in the Furnace, p. 18.

186 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

but which stretches out against the strongholds of night and
evil around the world ; and a battle which never ceases and
in whose warfare the highest and most heroic qualities of
men are demanded. These new gains of the spirit in the
men and women of America in these days will make the re-
sponse to so great a cause sure and emphatic.

The Voice of Missionary History

That such a hope has solid foundations, the voice of
history amply testifies. Strange as it may seem to the super-
ficial glance, war time has always been the birthday of mis-
sionary advance. There is a vital relation between the for-
eign missionary enterprise and the widening of men's hor-
izon through sacrifice and struggle. It was during the "War
of 1812 that foreign missions in America began and Judson
sailed for India. ^ ' The church did not wait for the success
of our navy, but sent out its missionaries because moved in
some measure by the same impulse that sent forth our ship
— ^by a determination to assert human freedom for America
and for all the world. ' ' ^ The record of our own Civil War
days is eloquent. Seldom has a people passed through a
more exhausting crisis, and it might well be supposed that
foreign missionary societies would languish. But that was
the very period when new ones were founded. All the wo-
men's missionary organizations were founded either during
or at the close of the war. The dark and critical years of
1863 and 1864 witnessed a remarkable rally of the Christian
people of North America to maintain their missionary enter-
prises. The supporters of the American Board increased
their givings by $61,000 in 1863 and by $122,000 in 1864.^
From 1852 to 1862 the average income of the Methodist
Episcopal Church for home and foreign missions was under
$260,000 ; in 1864 there came a further increase of $150,000,
and in 1865 a still further increase of $83,000, bringing the

W. H. P. Faunce, The New Horizon of Church and State, p. 36.
J. H. Oldham, The World and the Gospel, p. 62.

A WOELD PROGRAM 187

total contribution in that year to more than $618,000. The
same is true in larger measure of our own time. The Lon-
don Missionary Society last year cleared off a large in-
debtedness and carried forward its work without diminu-
tion. The Missionary Society of the Wesleyan Church in
England, in the third year of the war, received the largest
income that it has ever received in its entire history. The
Methodist Church in Canada received a larger income than
it had ever had in any year of peace.

These records prove that the support available for mis-
sionary work is to be measured not by the material wealth
of a people, but by the spirit which animates them. They
well illustrate the truth strikingly expressed by John R.
Mott: ^^The history of the world and all Christianity shows
that periods of suffering have for some reason always been
great creative moments with God. ' '

A Day of Wokld Hokizons

The United States since 1914, and more completely
since her entry into the war, has been forced to think in
world terms. The horizon of the mind of the average citizen
has been pushed back till it touches the ends of the earth.
The map of the world has been really studied for the first
time by a hundred million people. More than that, millions
have become acutely conscious for the first time since they
trudged away to school with a big geography under their
arm, that there was such a thing as a map of the world.
Geography has suddenly leaped out of the character of a
text-book for the grammar grades into that of a gripping
romance. To the average man a few years ago Bagdad was
in the Arabian Nights — nowhere else. Jerusalem had its
sole existence in the Bible. He could not tell whether
Ukraine was a river or a breakfast food, and, more than
that, he did not care. Multitudes of Americans have lived
almost as remote from European problems as the Pequot
Indians before the Pilgrims landed. But now the great con-

188 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

flagration in Europe lias lighted up the four corners of the
globe. What comes into our dinner table depends on what
happens in Russia and the number of ships in South Amer-
ican ports. The map of the world is replacing the map of
the township and the township mind is bursting its bonds.

Physical contacts have helped to widen the horizon.
The gathering of millions of men in our own country into
great cantonments has been an incalculable educational and
social force in the removal of provincialism and mind-suft'o-
cating prejudice. Letters home from Americans over the
sea, in contact with new countries and new races, have
pushed out the walls of a million homes until a large part of
the world begins to be visible from the sitting room window.
The recent beautiful words of a Canadian soldier throw a
vivid light on the process of thought which is going on all
over Xorth America :

^^If where an Englishman is buried on a foreign soil is
called ' a little bit of England, ' then we may call the Ypres
salient a mighty bit of Canada. If anyone were to inquire
what is the most important city of Canada, we might answer
unhesitatingly, ^ The city of Ypres. ' The hosts of our young
men who have fallen in battles round that city have hallowed
the name for all Canadian hearts, and rendered the place
ours in the deepest sense. Montreal, and Halifax, and Van-
couver are among our lesser cities, but Ypres, where so
many of our brave are buried, shall remain for us the city
of our everlasting possessions.'' ^

This process has made more easy the task of spiritual-
izing this gigantic lesson in geography. That is just what
the missionary undertaking is — spiritual geography. When
a man has learned to pronounce Ypres and Prezmysl (if any
such exist) and Mesopotamia, there is a gTeater chance that
he will be able to pronounce Chengiu and Benares and Sin-
gapore and realize that they are not merely dots on the map
in some forgotten text-book, but seething centers of life

Arthur H. Chute, North American Review, March, 1918, p. 227.

A WORLD PROGRAM 189

which have a vital relation to him. The spots on the map
must be put on our conscience, and there never was a more
favorable atmosphere in which this transfer may be made
than now. ^'When the thoughts of men are widened by the
process of the suns, then is the time to widen the endeavor
of the Christian Church. ' '

The Wokld at Ouk Dinner Table

It is when we sit down at our dinner table, however, that
the new horizon becomes most evident. America in her food
conservation campaign has been keeping a world boarding
house, and the process has high spiritual values. New
boards have been put in the table to lengthen it out so that
our Allies and the hungry peoples of the earth may sit down
with us, and strange faces gather at every meal. The food-
saving regulations are in effect a knock at the door at the
beginning of every meal and the government saying to us,
^^Move along a little closer at the table. Here are six
French orphans who must dine with you to-day.'' And
when in a thin, weak voice they ask, ^'Please pass the
sugar,'' we pass it, even though we have only one spoonful,
or none at all, for our coifee. At the next meal it is four
hearty English soldiers whom we are feeding by our saving.
They have been doing hard work and need meat and wheat,
and we pass it to them, keeping the bran muffins for our-
selves. Multitudes are rising up at these demands and
throwing open the door to these hungry guests and crying,
*^In the name of God, welcome!" The United States is
making an experiment in organized sacrifice. The forces
born out of a demand for food as a universal need are gen-
erating new values in society which may be effective in turn-
ing the scale to victory. They will be effective for a longer
task than that too, for they are the fundamental virtues
necessary to the extension of the kingdom of God. It is in-
conceivable that after having had the world at our table for
years, reminded at every meal of the world fellowship of

190 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

need, France's need and Belgium's, Poland's and Ar-
menia's, as well as our own, we can ever again sit down
in the little dining room as it was before, and shut the world
from our thought. America has already appeared in a new
role among the nations as the Wheat Bringer, and the expe-
rience is preparing her in a real way for the larger task to
which she must come — that of spreading the Bread of Life
before the world and bidding the lame, the halt, the blind of
the East and West to sit down at the great democratic feast
of God.

Accomplishing the Task

THE discovery OE GOD

The discovery of a world — a world so needy as ours —
is a terrible thing unless there goes with it something else,
the discovery of God. That is the center of the Centenary
undertaking — a new discovery of God. It is not money pri-
marily. Money will not be given without the Spirit of God
to prompt it ; nor can it be used fruitfully without the Spirit
of God to direct. The neiv world-consciousness must be
matched by a new God-consciousness. It is a vast foreign
missionary program and is paralleled by one equally great
for home missions. In the face of such a task, without God
we can do nothing. That is the chief glory of the task. The
tragedy of a little task is that frequently a man or a group of
men can accomplish it and there it ends. The glory of a big
task is that men are utterly unable to accomplish it and are
thrown back on God in utter dependence. That brings them
into contact with the only power sufficient for getting God 's
work done in the world — the fullness of God himself. It is
futile for us to find again the world-horizon of Christ if we
do not find also the vantage point from which he scanned it,
that of an empowering fellowship with God. The whole
Centenary task of which every other aspect is an expression
is to increase the spiritual energy of the church by the full-
ness of spiritual life. It was that release of power which
was always in Paul's mind when he thought of the church

A WORLD PROGRAM 191

— *^Tlie church which is his body, the fullness of Him that
fillethallinall/'

THE EESPONSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

With the far horizon of Christ must go the immediate
focus of his call on the individual. It is not ^^the church''
which can do this task; it is no mythical ''they" who can do
it. It is we who must do it. It is I who must do it. Christ
lifted up his eyes afar and beheld the fields white unto har-
vest; but he also always looked squarely into the eyes of the
individual he spoke to, and flung his great imperatives.
Come, Be, Do, and Go, into the heart of the man before him.
The evangelization of the whole world demands tine whole
church.

This truth of the dependence of victory upon every
man has been greatly sharpened by the war. If the war has
resulted in the discovery of the world as one, it has made
another discovery equally great at the other end of the scale
— the discovery of the common man. It is not too much to
say that among the many things which distinguish this war
from all others, one is the emergence of the common man.
The strongest weapon in the hands of either side is the
capacity to starve. Victory depends on the capacity and
willingness of the whole people to suffer and sacrifice. It is
fought by the individual in every walk of life rather than
generals and leaders and governments. ' ' The war is being
fought to-day by all the nations in the most solid formation
imaginable — men, women, and children all roped together
after the fashion of the Ancient Cimbri when going into
battle.''^

A Militant Faith

Christ's warfare in the world is a people's warfare. If
the Centenary Program is to mean a successful epoch in that
victory, it will be only through the service and sacrifice of
every disciple.

^ Simeon Strunsky, Yale Review, October, 1917.

192 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

It means that the militant conceptions of our faith which
run all through the New Testament shall achieve a new
dominion over our lives. "The army/' says the first of the
regulations and orders for the British army, "is composed
of those who have undertaken a definite liability for serv-
ices.'' So is the church. That liability must be recognized
by more than the comparatively few. ^ ^ Christ also loved the
church, and gave himself for it ; . . . that he might pre-
sent it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or
wrinkle, or any such thing." Christ's church must not be
a church in which men enlist for a lifelong warfare, and then
pass into a permanent reserve which is never called up for
active service. Its bases must not be thronged with those
who wear its uniform but refuse to go up into the line. The
call of the hour is for the resources of the whole church,
multiplied by a new energizing of God, to be lined up to the
whole task of the Kingdom.

A NEW EEALITY IN" EELIGION

A new reality in our religion must be our primary pre-
paration to meet the day. We cannot be

"Light half -believers in our casual creeds
Who never deeply felt or clearly willed,"

and be what our own time demands of us as followers of
Christ. The only method of growth that the kingdom of
Christ has ever known has been by the overflow of an
abounding life. And as it was in the beginning it is now
and ever shall be. To nourish and sustain that new reality
of faith, the Centenary Movement calls for a new practice
of prayer. To express that reality it calls for a new practice
of stewardship.

PRAYER

The call is for a world-fellowship of intercession
throughout the church. It will mean for many entirely new
adventures in prayer, and prayer is an adventure — the most

A WORLD PROGRAM 193

rewarding and the most enabling adventure in life. Prayer
is not saying religious words with our eyes shut and a ter-
minal ^^Amen" attached. It is a venturing forth of the
soul like the voyage of Columbus across a great unchartered
deep. And as the evidence that it really finds the Father
that it seeks, it brings back the marvelous treasure of a
changed life and a reenf orced might for service. "We read in
the Gospels that when Jesus looked out over the whitened
fields ready for harvest, the first thing he said was,
^'Pray." His order must be ours. ^'It is in agonizing in-
tercession that the real conflict in our time is to be won.
Rivers of vitality have their rise in souls that are on their
knees. The deep and mighty prayers of the church are the
birth pangs of the race. ' ' ^

STEWARDSHIP

Stewardship is organized devotion. It must be a stew-
ardship of life — ^holding our personality and all its powers
as a trust. For many it will mean a dedication of life to spe-
cific service. The church needs eighteen hundred new men
every year to keep her pulpits adequately manned. The
Board of Foreign Missions has declared the need of five
hundred new missionaries every year to carry out the Cen-
tenary Program ; and the Home Board requires no less. It
is a call for the strong, daring leaders. ' ' Send forth the best
ye breed'' is the world's asking.

It must be a stewardship of money — a definitely
planned and scanned allotment of a sacrificial proportion
of money regularly given to God. We must bear in our
ledger, in our cash book, ' ' the marks of the Lord Jesus. ' '

The Available Resources

The Methodist Episcopal Church is easily able to make
the offering required to meet the financial asking of the total
world Program of Foreign and Home Missions. The budget

^ J. H. Jowett, The Church in Time of War, p. 122.

194 CHEISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

of forty million dollars in five years for foreign missions
would require an average weekly offering of only four and
one half cents per member! The present combined offering
of churches and Sunday schools is an average of less than
half a cent a week per member ! The total of eighty millions
of dollars for both Home and Foreign Mission program can
be raised by an average gift of nine cents per member each
week. Surely this is not a staggering amount! The chief
difficulty to be overcome is that at present the total offering
for all benevolences comes from a small per cent of the mem-
bership.

^'In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth.'' God is still creating. The loom of Providence is
moving swiftly. It took one hundred years of missionary
effort to win the first million converts to Protestant Chris-
tianity. It took twelve to win the second. It took six to win
the third. In the melting and reshaping world to-day the
movement of the Kingdom is accelerated. Never was the
creative hand of God more clearly visible than in this hour.
What more glorious destiny could there be for anyone than
to become in deed and truth a fellow worker, a fellow creator
of the new world he is shaping?

"Only have vision and bold enterprise,
No task too great for men of unsealed eyes.
The future stands with outstretched hands ;
Press on and claim its high supremacies."

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
CHAPTER I

1. How would you answer the contention that the war
has shown the failure of Christianity?

2. Do you believe that war can be destroyed by in-
crease of education, science, commerce, or law! Give rea-
sons for your answer.

3. Do you think that Christian principles, if they were
allowed free action, could prevent war! What principles?

4. In what ways do Christian missions make for
peace ? Can you give any examples f

5. In what ways has the war shown the. unity and in-
terdependence of the world I

6. What effects of the war in changing conditions of
life here in the United States have come under your obser-
vation?

7. How would you define ' ^ democracy ' ' ? Why do you
consider it worth fighting for?

8. What teachings of Jesus have been effective in pro-
moting democracy ? Why have they been so ?

9. What is the difference between autocracy and de-
mocracy? Which is the nearer to Christian principles?
Why?

10. What different institutions or forces have made
democracy and freedom permanent in the United States ?

11. What are the imperfections of democracy in the
United States ? How may they be corrected ?

12. What is the effect of a democracy in a country
where people are not ready for it?

13. What does a nation need in order to be fitted for
democracy?

14. How does Christianity supply those needs?

15. What is meant by a ^ Aplastic'' condition in the life

195

196 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

of a nation? Wliat evidences are there in different coun-
tries of such conditions now?

16. Why is there a better opportunity for the extension
of Christianity now than a generation from now?

17. In what way would you show that missions are a
completion of the nation's task in the war?

CHAPTER n

Latin Ameeica

1. What difference in ideals and purposes was there
between the early settlers of North and South America?
What effect did these differences have on the development
of the two continents ?

2. What reasons are there for expecting an immense
immigration to South America in this century?

3. What are the reasons for the comparative neglect
of South America by the United States.

4. What are the causes of the present new interest ? In
what ways has that interest been expressed?

5. What has been the effect of the large illiteracy on
the democracy of South America ?

6. What would you say to the contention that South
America is a Roman Catholic continent and Protestants
ought to keep out of it ?

7. What are some of the characteristics of Roman
Catholicism in South America? How does it differ from
the Catholic Church as we know it in the United States ?

8. What are the reasons for the prevalence of agnosti-
cism in South America ?

9. Why does the United States have a peculiar respon-
sibility for the welfare of South America?

10. How can it best meet that responsibility?

11. What conditions seem to you to promise most suc-
cess to Christian missions in South America now?

12. Mexico is one of the richest lands in the world,

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 197

probably the very richest in the world in proportion to its
population. Why are the majority of the people so poor?

13. What do you consider the good results of the Mex-
ican revolution?

14. Why is it a matter of intense importance to the
United States what Mexico becomes I

15. How does Mexico stand in reference to the neces-
sary conditions of a safe democracy discussed in Chapter I?

16. What are the hopeful conditions for the develop-
ment of a strong Protestant Christianity in Mexico 1

17. How would the Centenary Program of Methodism
for Latin America affect the prospects of democracy there ?

CHAPTER ni

China

1. How would you compare the probability of winning
China to Christianity to the probability of the early church's
winning the Roman empire ? Which do you think the harder
task! Why do you think so?

2. Compare the Renaissance, or Revival of Learning,
in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages with the awaken-
ing in China.

3. What were the causes of the revolution by which
China became a republic? What part had Christian mis-
sions in it?

4. Why does the fact that China is a republic increase
the obligation at this time to strengthen the Christian
Church there?

5. In what necessities of a strong and safe democracy
is China weak or lacking entirely?

6. How does the Centenary Program of Methodism
'aim to strengthen these deficiences ?

7. Why is the opportunity for the Christianization of
China one that will not wait for a long period of years?
What elements in the present opportunity are transient?

8. What advantages of popularity do missionaries en-

198 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

joy to-day in China? What are the reasons for it? Will it
always be so ?

9. ^^y is the new feeling of patriotism an advantage
to Christianity? How may it possibly become an obstacle?

10. What will be the future character of China if it
does not become a Christian nation? What effect would
such a result have on the peace and moral progress of the
world?

11. What are some of the evil effects which contact
with Western civilization has had on China ?

12. Which do you regard as the harder task — the abo-
lition of opium in China or the prohibition of liquor in the
United States?

13. ^Hiat reasons are there favorable to the influence
of the United States in educational and spiritual influence
in China?

14. What features of China's history make educa-
tion of supreme importance ?

15. What main lines of service are planned in the Cen-
tenary Program for China? Which one would you prefer
to engage in ?

16. What are the particular possibilities of influence in
the ^ve university centers involved in the Centenary Pro-
gram?

17. If China's faith in her old religions is destroyed
and Christianity is not put in their place, will she be as
well off as before ?

18. What are the reasons why many people believe
China may be made a Christian nation within a century ?

CHAPTER IV

India

1. Which is more significant for the future of Chris-
tianity in the Orient — the mass movement in India or the
turning to Christ of the educated classes in China! Why?

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 199

2. Which do you think is the greatest sorrow, that of
a widow in America or in India? Why?

3. In which foreign country do you think the worst
degradation of womanhood prevails ? Why do you think so !

4. What will be the result if the masses who are com-
ing into the Christian Church in India through the mass
movement are not given Christian training and education 1

5. What will be the effects if those now waiting for
baptism are permanently refused through lack of mission-
aries and teachers?

6. Is India ready for independent self-government
now? How can Christian missions prepare the way for
self-government ?

7. What would be some of the changes in the life of an
American city if the caste system prevailed here ?

8. How does the Christian gospel promote democracy?

9. What is the effect of the doctrine of the brotherhood
of man on the caste system?

10. Why would complete democratic government be
unsafe in India to-day?

11. How does the caste system of India make mass
movements possible?

12. What are some of the reasons for the mass move-
ment in India ?

CHAPTER V

Africa

1. What relation has Africa to the future peace of the
world?

2. Why is it harder to win the native Africans from
Mohammedanism to Christianity than to win them directly
from paganism ?

3. What have been the good results of European rule
in Africa ? What have been the evil results ?

4. What are some reasons for the successful advance
of Mohammedanism among the native Africans ?

200 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

5. "What are the evil results of the Mohammedan faith?

6. What answer would you make to the common state-
ment that Mohammedanism is the religion best suited to the
African native ?

7. If you were to go as a missionary to some one of the
great fields would you choose Africa f Give reasons for your
answer.

8. How does the collapse of the political power of
Islam favorably atfect the missionary opportunity in
Africa?

9. What would you consider to be a truly Christian
attitude in the government of African colonies by European
countries ?

10. What have been some of the reasons which have
made the evangelization of Africa a slower process than in
some other continents ?

CHAPTER VI

Japak", the Philippines, and Malaysia

1. What are the particular reasons why the future of
Christianity in the Orient depends so much on its success in
Japan?

2. How does the Pacific Ocean correspond to the Medi-
terranean Sea in the life of the world in the beginning of the
Christian era?

3. In what ways do you think the friendship between
Japan and the United States can be strengthened?

4. Wliat effect do you think the war is having on our
friendship with Japan?

5. What are the moral dangers to which Japan is ex-
posed and how can Christianity meet them?

6. Show on the map the strategic location of Korea
with reference to the through routes of travel from Europe
to Asia.

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 201

7. What are some of the benefits which American occu-
pation of the Philippines has brought to the people?

8. Do you think it wise to grant immediate independ-
ence to the Filipinos! Why do you think as you do?

9. What would be the effect on the future prospects of
Christianity in Asia of a failure to win the Filipinos I

10. How has the American government in the Philip-
pines affected the democratic movement in Asia ?

11. What reasons are there for the emigration of
Chinese to Malaysia?

12. What are the advantages for missionary influence
in a country being newly settled !

13. Why is Singapore so influential a point with refer-
ence to the rest of Asia?

14. What effect would the extension of Christianity
among the Chinese of Malaysia have on the Christian enter-
prise in China itself?

CHAPTER VII

EUEOPE

1. What are some of the handicaps which a state-con-
trolled church has in the proclamation of a full and free
gospel ?

2. What are the greatest obstacles to a permanent
peace in Europe ? How would the extension of a vital
Christianity affect these obstacles ?

3. What are some of the reasons for the failure of the
Russian Revolution to establish a strong, safe government?

4. In what ways do you think the spiritual task of re-
conciliation after the war may be performed? What fits the
Methodism of Europe for sharing in that work?

5. What is the necessity of having a vital spiritual
church in Germany after the war?

6. What characteristics of the Russian people seem to
promise hope for a future great nation?

202 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

7. What have been the effects on the Russian people
of the long tyranny of the Tsars I

8. What has been the character of the Russian Ortho-
dox Church!

- 9. What are the chief religious needs of Russia, to
strengthen it for success in democratic government?

10. What changes are being brought about by the
revolution in the Russian Church?

11. How can Protestant missions influence this reli-
gious situation!

12. What reciprocal effect would a large extension of
Protestant Christianity in Italy have on the United States ?

13. What effect would it have on the democracy of
Italy?

CHAPTER VIII

1. What are some of the results of the first century of
Methodist missions? How has this effort in foreign lands
affected the growth and life of the church at home ?

2. Why was the Methodist Revival in England, under
the leadership of John Wesley and Whitefield and others, an
influence in bettering social conditions and securing greater
political freedom?

3. What is meant by ^'a moral equivalent for war''?
In what ways can the missionary enterprise of Christianity
appeal to the same virtues which are developed by war?
Why has it not done so more in the past?

4. What do you think are the principal obstacles in the
way of making possible an advanced missionary program
at the present time?

5. Wliat are the characteristics of this time which are
favorable to an increased interest in aggressive foreign
missions?

6. What would you say to a man who argues, ^^We
ought not to think of or plan for anything except the war"?

7. What would you say to a man who says, ^'I give all

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION 203

my contributions to the Red Cross ; I haven't a cent for mis-
sions''?

8. What evidences can you give out of personal expe-
rience of the increase of men's knowledge and interest in
the rest of the world due to the war? How much geog-
raphy have you learned from the war I

9. How do you explain the fact that war times have
always been times of increased missionary activity and giv-
ing?

10. Why is the United States to-day in a favorable
position for world spiritual influence? Would it have had
such a position if it had stayed out of the war ?

11. What is the relation of prayer to the world pro-
gram of Christianity?

12. What is the meaning of ^ ^ stewardship ' ' ?

13. Wliat do you think constitutes a ^ ^ call ' ' for Chris-
tian service abroad or at home?

14. How can the sympathies and generosity which the
war has aroused be conserved after the war is over?

15. What appear to you the strongest reasons for a
thorough mobilization of Methodism for her world cam-
paign?

204 CHRISTIAN CRUSADE FOR DEMOCRACY

SUGGESTIONS FOE COLLATERAL READING

The Call of a World Task. By F. Lovell Murray.

The Soul of Democracy. By Edward Howard Griggs.

The Churches of Christ in War Time. Edited by C. S. Macfarland.

South American Neighbors. By Homer C. Stuntz.

The Renaissance of Latin America. By Harlan P. Beach.

The Changing Chinese. By Edward A. Ross.

China : An Interpretation. By James W. Bashf ord.

The New Era in Asia.- By Sherwood Eddy.

The Lure of Africa. Cornelius H. Patton.

India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. W. F. Oldham.

Since this course deals with the developments and movements of
the hour, the best reference material will be found in monthly periodi-
cals, particularly the World Outlook and the Missionary Review of the
World and the weekly Christian Advocates.

The above books may be obtained from the publishers of this
volume.

THE MISSIONARY CENTENARY

Booklets and Folders of Helpful Information

The Place of Prayer in God's Plan of World Conquest. By James M.

Campbell. 5 cents.
Preparing for Tomorrow. Free.

The Next Hundred Years. By W. E. Doughty. Free.
The Centenary World Program: What It Is and What It Propoaea.

Free.
Foreign Missions and World Democracy. 10 cents.
Why Launch a World Program in War Times. By John R. Mott. Free.

All the above will be sent on receipt of 15 cents.

Address, Joint Centenary Committee, 111 Fifth Avenue, New York,
N. Y.

TO UNDERSTAND WHAT
WORLD DEMOCRACY MEANS

You must have a

WORLD OUTLOOK

To get it, send 20 cents for a single copy or

$ 1 .50 for a year's subscription to the publishers,

150 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

you have not yet seen this magazine which gives you in
the most attractive form possible, lively, terse accounts
of the fascinating changes going on in the Orient, Africa,
South America, the United States, it will pay you to send
for a sample copy at once.

you have seen it and realized how it helps you through
its unexcelled pictorial display and authoritative articles
to understand the rest of the world in a human intimate
fashion, you will know that you cannot afford to be
without it during these coming years.

WORLD OUTLOOK will furnish you the
most helpful collateral reading you can do in
connection with the text book on the "Christian
Crusade for World Democracy." It will give
you just the background and colorful incident to
make the text doubly alive.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

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