Top 15 Kirby Page Quotes

World government must progressively be established, common problems must be solved by common action, economic and racial justice and fellowship must be achieved... empires must be transformed into commonwealths, the race of armaments must be stopped and the system of balance-of-armed-power must be brought to an end, the churches must take Jesus seriously by trusting goodwill and pacific means and by disentangling themselves from the war system, a mighty movement of peoples must be created so that governments will maintain friendly and cooperative relations and will refrain from hostile and provocative actions. ...Now is the time to prevent a third world war.

The imminence of the threat hovering over civilization requires Christians to disentangle themselves from the war system as completely and as rapidly as they can. ...Every Christian has the power to support or to oppose preparedness to wage atomic war. ...He can support or oppose the delegating of wider jurisdiction and greater authority to the United Nations Organization through limitations upon national sovereignty. He can support or oppose the policy of settling every conceivable controversy with another nation by pacific means only. He can support or oppose the effort to create the international mind and heart in place of extreme nationalism and narrow patriotism. ...He can choose between the way of war and the way of Jesus.

If we trust organized and aggressive goodwill we will transform the present war-producing system into a peace system which removes the causes of war and maintains the agencies of pacific settlement of international dispute.

Faith in armed might paralyzes international action.

Feebleness of confidence in the power of international goodwill operating through appropriate agencies of international justice and friendship is at present paralyzing efforts to take the steps which must be taken if war is to be averted.

Preparedness to use atomic bombs against men and women and children is a proclamation of faith, a confession of confidence in the rightness and effectiveness of human slaughter as a means of seeking safety and of maintaining justice.

If Christians give their consent and support to preparedness to wage war with atomic bombs and other weapons of annihilation and devastation, they will thereby repudiate the way of Jesus.

We can take Jesus seriously and strive earnestly to follow him, or we can prepare to wage atomic war, but it is utterly impossible to do both at the same time.

Every basic doctrine of Christianity is nullified to the degree that we accept the ideas and practices of atomic war: the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the inestimable value of human life, the kinship of all peoples, the duty and privilege of sympathy and compassion and affection, the responsibility of the strong to bear the burdens of the weak, the overcoming of evil with goodness, the redemptive power of self-giving love, the supremacy of spiritual forces over material might.

Western man has progressively accepted the use of violence during the years since the outbreak of the First World War. In that war the Germans began the practice of indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations of British cities. ...The peoples of the Allied world and of neutral countries were shocked and outraged by this evidence of German inhumanity and bestiality... the dropping of bombs on men, women and children sleeping peacefully in their beds in great cities. ...By the year 1945 most people of the United Nations were rejoicing over the winning of the war through the destruction from the air of numerous German and Japanese cities, and were revealing scarcely a qualm of conscience over this unequaled devastation and annihilation. The practice from which they had recoiled in horror less than three decades previously, they were now using with cold premeditation and concentrated skill. And nothing like the havoc they wrought had ever before been seen on this earth.

The truth must be driven home that it is sinful to prepare to annihilate millions of God's children in other lands.

Through every legitimate educational procedure the truth must be driven home to the masses of people that the race of armaments is not a means of defense but a race to mutual suicide.

Preparedness to use the weapons of war creates the tempers, the quarrels and the crises which lead to the outbreak of war.

It is impossible to use an atomic bomb here to defend the population of our own city. Likewise we cannot use our bacterial weapons here in our own country. These weapons of annihilation must be used offensively. And against their use no effective defense is possible.

War is waged by governmental action and war can be prevented only by actions of governments. This means that individuals must act as citizens and influence the behavior of governments if they are to be effective in preventing war.