The idea of national repentance seems at first sight to provide such an edifying contrast to that national self-righteousness of which England is so often accused and with which she entered (or is said to have entered) the last war, that a Christian naturally turns to it with home.
Young Christians especially - last-year undergraduates and first-year curates - are turning to it in large numbers. They are ready to believe that England bears part of the guilt for the present war, and are ready to admit their own share in the guilt of England.
What that share is, I do not find it easy to determine… Are they, perhaps, repenting what they have in no sense done?
-CS Lewis, Dangers of National Repentance