For months we have watched with growing frustration the tribal war rage in Eastern Europe. If only the Serbs had been met by the Branch Davidians, a Texas-style showdown might have spared thousands from attempted genocide.

Instead, the policy of caution toward a conflict that could explode across greater national, ethnic and religious lines has not only failed to stop the slaughter, it has created a window of opportunity for Croats to seize their own chunks of Bosnia and to launch their own attempt at genocide.

Clearly, here is a job beyond what heads of states and armies could perform. This is a tempest that requires creative strategies and symbolic actions.

Only a campaign on the level of the church-led Children's Crusade against the Moors could silence these guns and shame these aggressors. This time, however, let the Pope and all the patriarchs of the Eastern and Orthodox faiths lead the mission. Encourage Billy Graham to leave the farm and lead the relief convoys. If Joan Baez could postpone her Seattle engagement to sing in Bosnia's slaughter house, perhaps the Mormon Tabernacle Choir might lead a sing-along in some besieged Bosnian village.

Given the Right-to-Life's passionate defense of fetal tissue, they might welcome an opportunity to lay their bodies on the line to save real children from rape, terrorism and murder.

Only a campaign on the level of the church-led Children's Crusade against the Moors could silence these guns and shame these aggressors.

The possibilities for prime-time audiences and world-class sponsors that the situation offers to televangelists who are willing to preach from the center of shelled cities and to faith-heal victims of the carnage dwarf that of the Super Bowl and Oscars combined.

Imagine church potentates putting their persons at risk in the fields of the Lord, meeting guns with prayers, Croats with excommunication and Serbs with a crucifix, holy water and a sharp stake ...

No, the front lines of this war have not seen the likes of Billy Graham or the Pope or the Right to Lifers.

It has seen French President Mitterrand fly into Sarajevo with food and medical relief; the nation of Israel take in hundreds of Muslim refugees; Lt. General Phillippe Morillon refuse to budge from Srebrenica until a relief column could arrive and evacuate refugees. It has seen the simple decency of an American folk singer willing to perform from the back of a truck to civilians under fire in a one woman show of song and defiance.

And after months of silence, Pope John Paul II was finally moved in mid-April to plead for an end to the "atrocious drama" in Bosnia that "humiliates Europe and seriously compromises the future of peace."

But for the most part, those who symbolize the highest moral ground have not done battle with the Satan loose in Bosnia.

Overdue is their leadership. Still wanting is their shouldering of humanity's burden at the scorched-earth level where bandages, food and psychic healings are as vital as the dying soul's hope of heaven. Let the preachers reach their hands into that pit and demonstrate their creeds with deeds.