"IS GOD ON OUR SIDE?" Sydney's The World's News wondered that 100 years ago this week as the Great War against the satanic Huns continued. The answer seemed obvious (yes, of course) and yet a Bishop Frodsham, a Briton, had some doubts.
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"Can God answer the prayers of both the British and the Germans? The King recently asked us to pray for the Empire. The Kaiser probably will wish the Germans to pray for Germany.
"An initial question suggests itself. What right have either the Germans or the British to expect God to grant them victory? It is not so much a question as to whether God can bless two belligerent nations as whether either nation deserves to be blessed. British and Germans visualise God like their old pagan ancestors visualised Thor, as the God of Battles; but God is a God of righteousness.
"The truth appears to be this. God cannot bless either the Germans as Germans or the British as British: But God will bless both Germans and British, in proportion to their honest desire to do His righteous will. If only the British and German Christians could unite in some such spirit, it might restore the reign of peace to this poor, bewildered, bloodstained world.
"[Those of us] who talk to the soldier in the Red Cross hospital realise how perplexed he can be at the miserable incongruity of war and the Christian religion – at the seeming inability of the Christian Church to face the problems that rack his soul to pieces."
