April – June 2019

The Bulwark Magazine of the Scottish Reformation Society APRIL - JUNE 2019 // £2 April - June 2019 1 The Bulwark Magazine of the Scottish Reformation Society The Magdalen Chapel A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF 41 Cowgate, Edinburgh, EH1 1JR Tel: 0131 220 1450 Email: [email protected] www.scottishreformationsociety.org Registered charity: SC007755 THE FIRST Chairman Committee Members » Rev Kenneth Macdonald » Rev Maurice Roberts WORLD WaR Vice-Chairman » Rev Alasdair Macleod » Mr Allan McCulloch Part II » Mr Matthew Vogan Secretary » Rev Douglas Somerset » Rev John Keddie Rev. John MacLeod, Portmahomack Treasurer » Rev David Campbell » Rev Andrew Coghill » Dr Robert Dickie CO-OPERATION OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY In pursuance of its objects, the Society may co- (a) To propagate the evangelical Protestant faith operate with Churches and with other Societies and those principles held in common by those Churches and organisations adhering to This is the second part of a paper delivered at the whose objects are in harmony with its own. th the Reformation; Aberdeen Branch meeting on 30 March 2018. The first two sections were introductory and looked Magazine Editor: Rev Douglas Somerset All literary contributions, books for review and (b) To diffuse sound and Scriptural teaching on at the decades leading up to World War One. papers, should be sent to: the distinctive tenets of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism; The Magdalen Chapel 41 Cowgate, Edinburgh III. THE WAR ITSELF (c) To carry on missionary work among EH1 1JR 1. The war which was not over in a few weeks be over within six weeks. The Germans adherents of the latter faith with a view to [email protected] winning them to the doctrines of grace and to That there should be a war was not a did indeed get, rapidly, to within thirteen the fellowship of the true Gospel; complete surprise, because there were miles of Paris. A massive resistance and The views expressed in articles are those of indeed many international tensions. There counter-attack by the defenders, however, the contributor and may not necessarily reflect (d) To produce and distribute evangelistic, was, however, a general idea that any war prevented the success of the Schlieffen those of the Editor or the Committee of the religious and other literature in connection with would be very short and sharp – a matter of Plan. Of the two million men who fought Society. Scriptural references are from the A.V. the promotion of the Protestant religion; weeks, not of many months. in the Battle of the Marne, a quarter except where stated otherwise. became casualties. It was something of (e) To promote the associating together of men German strategic planning had also an indication of what was to come. The Unattributed material is by the Editor. and women, and especially young people, envisaged a very quick manoeuvre against opposing armies dug in and the scene was The section entitled “Young Bulwark” is edited for systematic Bible Study and holding of by Matthew Vogan. meetings for the above specified purposes. France, circumventing the extensive set not for a lightning war, but for years of defensive fortifications between the two trench warfare. countries by moving troops rapidly through DESIGNED & PRINTED BY: neutral Belgium. In terms of the German 2. A new sort of warfare www.peppercollective.com Schlieffen Plan, the whole action would There is a sense in which trench warfare Tel:028 9851 2233 2 The Bulwark April - June 2019 3 was not a completely new concept, but The high loss-rate became apparent very British plane trench warfare in that particular area, early on. On 22nd August 1914, the French and especially in winter, meant living and lost 27,000 men. In August and September fighting in a sea of mud. The trenches 1914, 400,000 French soldiers died. By the stretched, at their greatest, over 475 end of 1914, the total death toll on both miles of front. Supplies of food were not sides had already reached two million. particularly reliable in the trenches, but filth, fleas, and rats were everywhere. Relatively primitive and largely impractical machine guns had existed for several This war was different and horrific in another decades before WWI broke out, but rapid way – the weapons in use took the horror development in the years immediately to an entirely new level. This was not a war preceding and during WWI led to the with nineteenth-century weapons – the design, production, and deployment of weapons were very definitely twentieth- machine guns with a practical automatic century: machine guns, poison gas, and action and capable of sustained high rates tanks, not to mention the start of the use of fire; terrifying weapons of which the of aerial warfare. All these would make this Germans had by 1916 deployed no less war different from any which had preceded than 16,000 on the Western Front alone. it, and made the scale of the death toll vastly greater than anything anticipated in Chemical warfare has in recent days been the pre-war years. considered newsworthy because of the use of the Russian-developed nerve gas Whilst accurate figures are impossible Novichok in an attempt, in the English to come by, it is widely assumed that town of Salisbury, on the lives of a Russian German machine gun British tank deaths of combatants were in the region émigré and his daughter. Primitive forms of ten million. Of those, approximately of chemical warfare have been known and 3.3 million were German and 1.1 million used for many centuries. Concern about lifelong incapacity. A weapon so dreadful purposes there proceeded attempts to were Austro-Hungarians. On the other the use of nerve agents was serious enough as to have been banned more than once use aircraft as primitive bombers, and by side, Russia suffered the heaviest losses, for them to have been banned under The as being too fearful to use even in warfare the middle of WWI fighter aircraft were followed by France and then the British Hague Declaration of 1899 and the Hague became a terror weapon early on in WWI. being produced in significant numbers Empire. Perhaps it gives a better idea of Convention of 1907 which forbade the and machine guns synchronised to fire the scale of the conflict to indicate that use of “poison or poisoned weapons” in The tank, a key element of much modern between the blades of the propeller were by 1918 Serbia had lost 25% of its 1914 warfare, yet more than 124,000 tons of gas warfare, was developed during WWI to being perfected. population. were produced during World War I. overcome the stalemate of trench warfare. The British Army’s Mark I tank, the first Sophisticated technology was producing It is, of course, true that other wars in the It is probable that the French forces were the tank used in combat, went into action in not just killing machines, but terror in the past had led to extreme results in term of first to deploy mild nerve agents in WWI, but September 1916 during the Battle of the troops. Nor was all the horror particularly human loss: at the end of the Thirty Years the German army was certainly using nerve Somme – a machine that was designed to sophisticated. Infantry going “over the War (1618-1648) the population of what gases by October 1914 and engaged in be unstoppable and against which infantry top” in an attempt to gain territory and we might describe as “Germany” was full-scale deployment of major nerve gases in its path had little or no effective defence. to overwhelm the enemy in the enemy’s only half of what it had been at the start at Ypres in April 1915. Gas warfare was not own trenches faced not only the horror of that war. The rate of loss of life in WWI, only deadly to many combatants; it spread Aircraft as tools of war came into service of machine-gun fire but the probability of however, was much higher and the effects uncontrollably to civilian populations and during WWI. From early successful being caught in barbed-wire entanglements accordingly traumatic. many of those who survived suffered experiments with aircraft for reconnaissance and gunned down while trapped, if not 4 The Bulwark April - June 2019 5 shredded previously by the wire. Barbed To get to the root of such thinking in wire of the modern sort was not developed Germany, it is necessary to examine the until the 1870s, but it added another links that exist between Tübingen, Martin element to the horror of trench warfare. Luther, and German national militarism. German Protestantism was overwhelmingly The trenches, then, were places not only of Lutheran, and in Lutheran circles respect extreme physical danger, but places where for Luther amounted almost to veneration. much of the suffering imposed was mental and some of it already banned as morally A number of prominent theologians who unacceptable. had studied in Tübingen, noted as being the leading centre for Higher Criticism which 3. A war with openly religious aspects downplayed the authority of Scripture, WWI was a war in which the principal were extremely active in promoting a new antagonists were professedly religious. “Luther Renaissance”. Karl Holl (a Tübingen Germany was, in 1914, a country of graduate) and one of his former students, some 40 million (nominally) Protestants Emanuel Hirsch, became leaders of a as opposed to some 24 million Roman church-based extreme right-wing political Catholics. Russia was overwhelmingly grouping. The point will not be missed University of Tübingen Russian Orthodox in terms of religion. that 1917 would mark the quatercentenary France and Italy were overwhelmingly of Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Roman Catholic.

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