This editorial was first published in the December 31, 1950, issue of The Living Church.
By Clifford Morehouse, Editor
That this country is in a real National Emergency, as officially proclaimed by President Truman, can no longer be doubted. We have virtually lost the war in Korea, lost it to treachery and to overwhelming force which we could successfully counter only at the risk of destruction of the cream of our military forces, and of involvement in an all-out war on the continent of Asia. These are risks that we cannot afford to take, in view of the gravity of the situation in Europe, which is of equal concern to the United States.
For the second time in a decade we are threatened with involvement in war simultaneously in the Atlantic and the Pacific areas. To avoid war now, without making the Munich-like concessions that will lead straight to war in the near future, requires statesmanship of a higher calibre than that which appears to be currently available in Washington, or in any other of the capitals of the Western democracies.
The grim fact that Korea has revealed to us—and to all the world—is that this country is pitiably weak, at a time when strength is of the utmost importance. We are weak not only in military strength, though that is the most obvious; we are weak also in political and economic strength, and even more in moral and spiritual strength.
After five years of “cold war” and six months of actual conflict in Korea, the country is still confused, hesitant, and doubtful. We have tried the policy of “business as usual,” and it has failed. Now we are beginning to try a partial mobilization and a partial control of our economic life. That policy is likely to fail also, because it is half-hearted. It is enough to arouse the Russians and possibly to precipitate the conflict we are trying to avoid, but not enough to prepare us for that conflict if it should come suddenly, as well it may. Civilian defense is still in the talking stage; so is the European army that General Eisenhower has been appointed to command. Must we have another Pearl Harbor to arouse us to our peril?
We badly need unified leadership in Washington. A nominal bi-partisan program is not enough. The times call for a genuine coalition government, with the best brains of both parties, and of no party affiliation, devoted to planning at the highest level. This is no time for Republicans and Democrats to be sniping at each other, in a Congress almost equally divided; or for attack upon and defense of the Secretary of State [Dean Acheson] while he is engaged in vital planning with the foreign ministers of our allies.
It would greatly encourage the country if the President would reconstitute his Cabinet on a non-partisan basis, and if Congress would also forget politics and appoint a coalition steering committee for the duration of the Emergency. Then perhaps we could rapidly develop the unity of leadership that is so vitally important if unity of action is to be achieved. Let’s forget party politics entirely, until the present danger is over.
We also need real leadership in the realm of the moral and spiritual. Some of our religious leaders have spoken out, but they speak with different voices and with an uncertain sound.
At a crucial point in World War II the leaders of British Christianity—Anglican, Roman, and Free Church—made a united ten-point declaration which gave genuine moral leadership to their people. They spoke with a single voice, and that voice commanded the respect and loyalty of Christian men and women, despite religious differences. Archbishop [William] Temple [of Canterbury], Cardinal [Arthur] Hinsley [of Westminster], and the heads of the Free Churches set forth a unified spiritual program, and the nation and the world listened.
Our religious leaders ought to get together and do the same thing for our country and our perilous times. Think what it would mean if [Presiding] Bishop [Henry Knox] Sherrill, Cardinal [Francis] Spellman [of New York], and [Methodist] Bishop [G. Bromley] Oxnam, with half a dozen of the other top religious leaders of this country, were to issue a joint statement on the responsibilities of American Christians in this National Emergency. Such a statement could capture the imagination of members of all churches, and lift the drooping morale of the country as perhaps nothing else could.
Needless to say, we are not asking for anything like a declaration of a Holy War against Communism, nor a blessing upon an international armament race. God forbid! What we are asking is definite spiritual and moral guidance, at the highest levels of Church leadership. Is this too much for the rank and file of church members to ask?
United leadership in both Church and State is the overarching need of our day. The times are late; but not yet too late.
May God give us in the New Year that united and inspired leadership that we so badly need in this country, and in the world.
On October 13, 1950, Communist China entered the Korean War on the side of Kim il-Sung’s Communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, forcing American and United Nations troops to retreat from much of the North Korean territory they occupied. On December 16, 1950, President Truman signed Presidential Proclamation 2914, declaring “a national emergency, which requires that the military, naval, air, and civilian defenses of this country be strengthened as speedily as possible.”
The U.S. Secretary of State was Dean Acheson, an advocate of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine. Despite this, he was criticized for taking too soft of a stance on communism by his political opponents, including the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had claimed to have a list of over 200 “known communists” in the State Department the previous February in a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia.
Earlier in 1950, the World Council of Churches had released a “Statement on the Korean Situation and World Order,” which commended UN involvement in Korea, but an ecumenical decree of the nature Morehouse desired never was made. Chinese and North Korean forces would capture Seoul in January 1951, but by midsummer, the front stabilized near the 38th Parallel, and armistice talks began. The conflict officially ended on July 27, 1953, and the 38th Parallel remains the border between North and South Korea.
Philip Michael is a student at Saint Anselm's Abbey School and a member of St. Francis Church, Potomac, Maryland.
