Holmes Asks U.S. Intervention for Peace in Europe

Lashing out at the present neutrality policy of this country in his chapel sermon on Sunday morning, the Reverend Dr. John Haynes Holmes '02, of the Community Church in New York, issued a clarion call for the people of the United States to unite behind President Roosevelt in a supreme effort for peace in Europe.

"I believe that peace is alone consistent with what seems to be our American determination to keep out of this war," Holmes declared. Listing the three possibilities of a German victory, an Allied victory, and a long drawn-out struggle to the death, he condemned all as destructive and insane, saying that "the problem of dealing with Hitler seems to me to be easy compared with the problem of dealing with the ultimate consequences of this war."

American Policy Untenable

"It is easy to understand the attitude of the man who wants us to join up with the Allies or that of the extreme pacifist," Holmes said, but "what I cannot understand is what seems to be our policy of staying out of the war in our own interest, and at the same time providing--and at a good profit!--the arms and ammunition for others to carry it on."

The Peloponnesian and Thirty Years Wars were cited as examples of supposedly idealistic struggles upon which history has rendered a different verdict. Future historians, it was pointed out, may write that "we are today fighting a futile imperialistic war for what we think is democracy, and wrecking our world as completely as they wrecked theirs."

As a method for halting the war Holmes advocated the repeated intervention of the President and the establishment of a permanent "peace council" of neutrals, in order to impress upon the belligerents that "this country is seeking not to help one side against the other, not to prepare for the fateful moment when she herself may enter the struggle, not even to remain isolated and remote and uninterested, but every day and in every way to make peace."

"It is easy to understand the attitude of the man who wants us to join up with the Allies or that of the extreme pacifist," Holmes said, but "what I cannot understand is what seems to be our policy of staying out of the war in our own interest, and at the same time providing--and at a good profit!--the arms and ammunition for others to carry it on."

The Peloponnesian and Thirty Years Wars were cited as examples of supposedly idealistic struggles upon which history has rendered a different verdict. Future historians, it was pointed out, may write that "we are today fighting a futile imperialistic war for what we think is democracy, and wrecking our world as completely as they wrecked theirs."

As a method for halting the war Holmes advocated the repeated intervention of the President and the establishment of a permanent "peace council" of neutrals, in order to impress upon the belligerents that "this country is seeking not to help one side against the other, not to prepare for the fateful moment when she herself may enter the struggle, not even to remain isolated and remote and uninterested, but every day and in every way to make peace."