Maritimers reject pacifist movement

Friday, 03 September 2010 00:00

September 2, 1924. A pacifist movement denouncing war, arising from the horrors of the First World War, swept much of Britain and North America in the 1920s and early 1930s. The movement failed to move the Maritime Provinces, as indicated in this item from the Halifax Herald.

Wolfville, Nova Scotia.-The Baptists of the Maritime Provinces are not pacifists, according to an incident that occurred in the First Baptist Church here Sunday night at the closing of the Maritime Baptist Convention. The ex-service men, some of whom had been decorated for valour and others bearing through life the scars of battle, took strong exception to a section in a resolution denouncing war, sponsored by the Social Service Board and passed at a previous session, which pronounced war as "anti-Christian and futile."

On motion of Col. Dr. J.H. MacDonald, Wolfville, and Capt. White, Truro, and with the hearty approval of the meeting, the objected-to phrase was deleted and one substituted expressing the Convention's appreciation of those who had paid the great sacrifice in the Great War and the hope that the churches and people would so co-operate as to make future wars unnecessary. One clergyman who had been decorated and promoted for conspicuous bravery in the field made a threat, previous to the meeting, that he would resign from the ministry unless the phrase was withdrawn.