War Mothers and War Babies
The news of the day reports that some twenty thousand young girls in England, mostly fifteen or sixteen years of age, are about to become the mothers of illegitimate children. This is one of the indescribable results of the war now in progress. As soon as the war broke out, soldiers were encamped and drilled in all parts of the country. In many localities, so the dispatches say, the people had never seen a soldier in uniform. The glitter and the manufactured halo that was thrown around the heroism of going to war, made these soldiers akin to gods in the eyes of the people, and thousands of these inexperienced young girls were seduced to their downfall and ruin. The reports say that “members of Parliament and reverend bishops are planning how best to stage the forgiveness” of these “war mothers.” It is suggested by some of the bishops and members of Parliament that “at a specified time a general edict of forgiveness will be read from the pulpits throughout the country which will automatically remove the stigma from the mothers.” In other words, though the fathers of these children are in the army and unknown, many of them without doubt having already been killed, yet the state will undertake to make the children legitimate. But such a wholesale process cannot remove the sin. And this occurrence in the British army is but one399of the many illustrations which show the low morals of society in general, and the degraded condition of humanity. But we hear people say that things of this sort have always existed, and are part of the results of mobilizing armies and quartering them in any territory. This is true. The pagan nations of the world have never risen above such a standard as that. But we have heard the statement, from every quarter, that the great nations of Europe are “Christian nations.” We have been told that England is foremost in this respect. Then why should a Christian nation present a spectacle of this kind? And why should “bishops” and “leading members of Parliament” lay plans to condone things of this character? The moral sense of the people of this world, taken as a mass, is blunted. Men do not see clearly. Let it be granted that such conditions have existed in connection with every army that has ever been mobilized, and that they have been characteristic of many periods of the history of the past. Lust and violence characterized the time of Noah, but the Flood had to come and sweep away the wicked inhabitants. The cities of the plain in the days of Lot were overthrown for a similar reason. Old Babylon went down under the weakening influences of her moral degeneracy; and so did Rome, and all the rest of the great nations of antiquity. But men have insisted on telling us that the moral condition of the world to-day is of the highest order. Men talked the same in Rome when her vices were eating away her foundations. The men who are engaged in sensual sins have always vehemently declaimed, even while standing on the brink of ruin, that they were all right; but people who are acquainted with the actual condition of things in this world know that everything is not all right. They know that our great civilization is one of the most colossal shams that the world has ever seen. Our boasted Christianity is a shame to the name of the Christ whom it claims to represent. The great mass of humanity may insist on not seeing these things; but the individual with clear vision must see them, and should lay his plans accordingly. The moral tone of this world is such that it cannot mean anything else than universal ruin. The prophets have foretold it, and we ought to see it through the light of divine foreknowledge. And those who shut their eyes to this clear light, ought to see, from the pages of history, that this world cannot go on much longer in the course it is pursuing. Those twenty thousand poor girls in England are to be pitied. But when twenty thousand girls at the inexperienced age of fifteen or sixteen are permitted to be seduced and degraded in a single nation, it ought to puncture completely the bubble of the claim of “Christian nations” and “great Christian armies.” Christianity cannot condone sin; and calling a thing Christian does not make it such, as the facts abundantly show. Yet we would not for anything leave the impression that conditions are worse in England than in the other nations involved in this strife. And should the United States be drawn into it, thousands of the people of this nation, as soon as the artificial restraints are removed, will manifest the same degenerate tendencies.