Preachers Present Arms
(Ray H. Abrams Ph.D.)

“…the battles on the various home fronts have received scant attention,
I have chosen a group out of the civilian population, the clergy and the churches of the US, and endeavored to indicate their place in the social pattern during the years 1914-18.”

THE World War is fast disappearing down the horizon. Yet so tremendous was this social upheaval and so far-reaching that the wisest of men are just now beginning to comprehend its ramifications and actual significance. Whatever keener insight and clearer judgment have been achieved are due, in part at least, to the great mass of first-hand materials for study which have arisen out of the war; to certain events since 1918; and to the perspective given by time and reflection. However, of the myriads of books written about the World War, relatively few have been concerned with the integral relationship of the civilian population to the whole configuration of war. The part played by the citizens at home has seemed so lacking in the glamorousness of warfare that the battles on the various home fronts have received scant attention. In the present work, I have chosen a group out of the civilian population, the clergy and the churches of the US, and endeavored to indicate their place in the social pattern during the years 1914-18. In addition to portraying the attitudes and activities of these organizations and their leaders, I have sought to provide insight into the mechanisms of social control and into the causes for the various types of social and individual behavior manifested in the great melodrama enacted in those days.