◆ SpookStack

~ . my ' ' ren 1 } . 5 .- their a.sed forces in the Orient in order to manuain their control over strategic raw materials; their tariff policies; our Oriental Exclusion Act branding the Japanese as an inferjor People and our stubborn refusal to initiate a policy of “reconcili- ation in the Pacific by the repeal of this Act; our devious course in recent years of selling war materials to Japan and at the same time making loans to China—these and. simitar policies were factors in bringing the Japanese military clique into power and bringing the present awful tragedy upon the peoples of Japan, Amctica, and other lands. Repentance on the part of all nations is, we believe, the supreme need of this hour. We have no confidence that this war will help to advance or conserve our democracy of international security. It will post- pone rather than promote the building of an orderly and decent world. Indeed, with the entry of the United States into the war it becomes a veritable world war on a hitherto unprecedented scale, a war which threatens to drag on indefinitely and to en- gulf all peoples in nameless disaster. There ate already alarm- ing indications that even if at not too détant a date one side or the other wins a fairly decisive victory, it will impose a terrible fevenge upon the vanquished on the, plea of forever stripping them of the power to do harm and that in the name of “peace” and a “New Order” the victors will attempt to establish a world-embracing military tyranny. Even if we could anticipate better results frem the waging of war, it would be impossible for us in good cunscience to pace ticipate in it, for to us all war involves, as the Oxford Euu- menical Conference declared, “compulsory enmity, diabolical outrage against human personality, and a wanton distortion of teuth, War is a particular demonstration of the power of sin in the world and a detunce of the righteousness of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.” (3] cane ae i