"Never Again."

In the early years after the Great War of 1914-1918, a sense of revulsion swept over the Western world as the cost of that war in men and money was reckoned. Americans in particular felt they had been pulled into a conflict of little direct importance and of little positive consequence. A strong mood of "never again, never again war" developed. War itself was the enemy, since it resolved little and destroyed much. This antiwar mood intensified in the first half of the decade, when domestic issues dominated the American consciousness and when conflicts raged in Asia, Africa, and Europe in the second. The antiwar mood in the United States was not just an opposition to wars that did not affect American interests but to war itself. Pacifism became a deeply held conviction, particularly in religious circles.

Catholic Attitudes toward War.

The Roman Catholic Church was lightly affected by this...