Prayer for Our Country, a lament on the necessity of war by Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick (1917) • the Open Siddur Project

Tags: 20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., ecumenical prayers, English vernacular prayer, lamentation, Sinking of the RMS Lusitania, United States entry into World War Ⅰ, World War Ⅰ

Excerpt: "Prayer for Our Country" by Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick was selected by Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron for inclusion in his World War Ⅰ era prayerbook, Side Arms: Readings, Prayers and Meditations for Soldiers and Sailors (1918), on pages 27-28. The prayer is printed unchanged from its original publication in The Challenge of the Present Crisis (H.E. Fosdick 1917), pp. 46-47. . . .

Content:

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	O God, bless our Country! We lament before Thee the cruel necessity of war.
	But what could we do? Our dead by hundreds lie beneath the sea;^[1] A reference to the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by Germany on 7 May 1915 causing the loss of 1,198 civilian lives, including 128 US Americans. the liberties that our sires baptized with their blood and handed down to us in trust, so that they are not ours alone but all humanity’s, are torn in shreds; and a foe is loose against us whom we have not chosen, whom we have not aggrieved, and who in his will to conquer counts solemn oaths to be but scraps of paper and the chivalry of the seas an empty name.
	We have grown weary, to the sickness of our souls, sitting comfortably here, while others pour their blood like water forth for those things which alone can make this earth a decent place for man to live upon.
	What could we do? With all the evils of our nation’s life, that we acknowledge and confess with shame, we yet plead before Thee that we have not wanted war, that we hate no man, that we covet no nation’s possessions, that we have nothing for ourselves to gain from war, unless it be a clear conscience and a better earth for all the nations to live and grow in.
	We plead before Thee that if patience and good will could have won the day, we gladly should have chosen them, and patience long since would have had her perfect work.
	And now we lay our hand upon our sword. Since we must draw it, O God, help us to play the man and to do our part in teaching ruthlessness once for all what it means to wake the sleeping lion of humanity’s conscience. Amen.

“Prayer for Our Country” by Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick was selected by Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron for inclusion in his World War Ⅰ era prayerbook, Side Arms: Readings, Prayers and Meditations for Soldiers and Sailors (1918), on pages 27-28. The prayer is printed unchanged from its original publication in The Challenge of the Present Crisis (H.E. Fosdick 1917), pp. 46-47.

Source(s)

Notes[+]

Notes
1	A reference to the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by Germany on 7 May 1915 causing the loss of 1,198 civilian lives, including 128 US Americans.