wni v^imioi it\i\i i i uiu 
 
 NOT PREVENT THE WAR 
 
 ISAAC J. LANSING, D.D 
 
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 Cop}TightN°. 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
WHY CHRISTIANITY DID NOT PREVENT THE WAR 
 ISAAC J. LANSING, D.D. 
 
WHY CHRISTIANITY 
 
 DID NOT PREVENT 
 
 THE WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 ISAAC J. LANSING, D.D. 
 
 NEW ^nSJT YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 

 Copyright, 1918, 
 By George H. Dor an Company 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 ©CI.A508068 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THESE addresses were not a series. They 
 were occasional. If they have not surface 
 sequence, they do have essential connection in 
 their purpose to give light and strength to our 
 people as aids to victory. All of them were 
 spoken as sermons at home. Then, being called 
 for, were repeated and somewhat expanded. 
 They were given to Preachers' Meetings in New 
 York, and to various clubs, among them the 
 Rotary Club, the New York Republican Club 
 and the Lawyers' Club of New York. In March, 
 1918, several of them were spoken to the eight 
 thousand public school teachers of Chicago, and 
 at various times to numerous popular assem- 
 blies. Everywhere they were called for in 
 printed form and it was urged that so prepared 
 they would multiply their influence for good. 
 
 The Rotary Club of New York published one, 
 circulating thousands of copies. My honored 
 and generous friend, Mr. Edwin O. Grover, 
 President of the Prang Art Publishing Com- 
 pany, New York and Chicago, out of patriotism 
 
vi ^Preface 
 
 and friendship, at his own expense printed some 
 thousands of copies of three addresses. 
 
 The New York Republican Club prints an- 
 other in its series for 1917-18; and the Lawyers' 
 Club another in the Report of their Annual 
 Meeting for 1918. 
 
 Now, the George H. Doran Company, whose 
 devotion to the Allied Cause has given the world 
 an unsurpassed contribution of invaluable pa- 
 triotic books and pamphlets, undertakes to print 
 these nine speeches together, hoping thus, as I 
 also hope, to aid to victory. 
 
 This book is not prepared or sent forth as 
 literature. These are War Discourses, to rouse 
 the spirits of men, to assist correct thinking, to 
 formulate clearly war issues and to inspire the 
 stern justice of battle. 
 
 Every paragraph has been tested practically 
 on uncommonly intelligent American audiences 
 and approved by them in ways encouraging to 
 the author. 
 
 With diffidence because of their incomplete- 
 ness, with confidence as to their truth and with 
 hope of their usefulness, the author gladly pre- 
 sents them to the larger public and invokes the 
 blessing of God upon them as a force for Right- 
 eousness and Justice among mankind. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the 
 
 War ii 
 
 II. The Antagonism op German Political 
 Philosophy to Christian Truth and 
 Morals 40 
 
 III. The Angels' Song, As They Said It 74 
 
 IV. The Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance 
 
 to Evil 84 
 
 V. The Perils of a Premature Peace 99 
 
 VI. The Wisdom of Men that Was Foolish- 
 ness with God 141 
 
 VII. Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 162 
 
 VIII. Prohibition and National Defence 199 
 
 IX. Our Victory Assured 228 
 
 TU 
 
WHY CHRISTIANITY DID NOT 
 PREVENT THE WAR 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent 
 the War 
 
 THAT was a thrilling incident told by a 
 prominent American journalist of his ex- 
 perience in August, 1914, at a little French rail- 
 road town which he named. He told it some- 
 what like this: 
 
 "We were on a causeway over a wide street 
 and there were troops marching in the street 
 below. It was an embarkation depot. My com- 
 panion, scion of a noble French house, had long 
 been known to me as a man of the world, a dare- 
 devil, with never a thought of God — cursing, 
 swearing, reckless, doing about everything that 
 a man ought not to do. Here he stood beside 
 me in a dirty military uniform, looking steadily 
 into my face and listening to the tramp of the 
 marching host below. Suddenly there came a 
 great darkness, and I said to him, 'It is dark all 
 over Europe to-day' — (there was an eclipse of 
 the sun) . 
 
 'Yes,' he answered, 'but darkest in France.' 
 11 
 
12 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 Then he leaned out over the parapet of the 
 causeway, where he could see the soldiers march- 
 ing below, and taking off his cap he swung it in 
 the air as he shouted to them in thrilling tones, 
 'God save France!' 
 
 And the soldiers of the French Republic, 
 possibly atheistic once like himself, now praying 
 to God with him, sent back the answer in thun- 
 dering tones, 'God save France !' " In their 
 heroic distress they had turned back to God and 
 learned to pray. 
 
 It is good to know that in time of trouble 
 many do turn to God and begin to pray. They 
 feel the great need of His help and presence for 
 strength and comfort. The horrors of this war 
 have given to many a burden greater than they 
 can bear. There are brave, broken-hearted men 
 and women, and multitudes of innocent boys and 
 girls who know not how to carry their burden of 
 perplexity and pain. They need all the help that 
 we can give them and that which only God can 
 give besides. Many bewildered are asking, "Why 
 did not Christianity prevent this war?" 
 
 One prominent religious editor who was a 
 member of the Peace Conference assembling at 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 13 
 
 Constance, Switzerland, as the war broke out, 
 returning to America immediately in August as 
 the war began, wrote extendedly in his paper on 
 the "collapse of Civilisation," a phrase which 
 became common at the time. In a leading edi- 
 torial which was republished by the Church 
 Peace Union as having their sanction, he said: 
 "Already thousands of atheists are being made ; 
 almost every other man we met in Europe this 
 last week has shaken his head in sadness and 
 said: 'What is the use of Christianity if it can- 
 not stop this war?' You will notice that without 
 marked dissent or explanation, this editor lends 
 to the inquiry the force of his own uncertainty 
 when he speaks of thousands of atheists being 
 made in Europe, as though it might be expected 
 that such a war occurring in the world, naturally 
 cast a doubt on the existence of God. These 
 seem to be convinced that there can be no God 
 provided things occur as they have been and are 
 now occurring. They shake their heads in doubt 
 and say, 'What is the good of Christianity if 
 it cannot prevent or stop this sort of thing?' evi- 
 dently having in mind that Christianity ought 
 to have prevented or stopped 'this sort of thing.' 
 And inasmuch as it has not 'stopped this sort of 
 thing,' Christianity is not what we have supposed 
 it to be. Therefore, it being so visibly defective 
 
14 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 and impotent, we cannot put our trust in Chris- 
 tianity as we have done heretofore. We believed 
 that such a war was impossible, because we be- 
 lieved in Christianity. Now Christianity has 
 failed and therefore the war is upon us." 
 
 It is not by any means clear to me that these 
 ready doubters ever did put their trust in Chris- 
 tianity to prevent war or to do anything else, but 
 rather were quite indifferent to it until they saw 
 a farther opportunity to asperse it. One of the 
 most distinguished publicists of the United 
 States in a signed article which I have in my 
 hand, published within a few months after the 
 war began, writes thus in a high class and widely 
 circulated journal: "Early in the progress of 
 the war, thinking people in all the civilised coun- 
 tries are asking themselves what the fundamental 
 trouble with civilisation is and where to look for 
 means of escape from the present intolerable 
 conditions. Christianity in nineteen centuries 
 has offered no relief, and so called mitigations of 
 war are comparatively trivial." 
 
 Proceeding, he seems to make this argument 
 and draw this inference: Christianity has been 
 nineteen hundred years in the world the enemy 
 of war. If Christianity had been an enemy worth 
 reckoning with, in nineteen hundred years it 
 would have done something. As a matter of 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 15 
 
 fact it "has offered no relief." It is amazing that 
 a grave and thoughtful man could make such an 
 assertion or draw such a conclusion. He had 
 just been round the world on a peace mission. 
 Had he relied on Christianity to offer relief from 
 war as he proceeded on this tour? Unless the 
 above statement of its uselessness was an after- 
 thought, he had not appealed to it. If he had 
 not, it was because he had, before the war, de- 
 cided that the influence of Christianity was so 
 inappreciable that it was not worth appealing to. 
 But if he did this, it was because he was an 
 enemy to Christianity, which indeed he has shown 
 himself to be, and therefore his adverse testimony 
 is of little account. If he ever had the idea that 
 Christianity might offer relief and mitigate the 
 horrors of war, he had concluded that nineteen 
 centuries had been long enough for the experi- 
 ment and that Christianity is no longer to be 
 counted on. To what then did he look, in his 
 tour and later in the interest of World peace? 
 Perhaps we may learn from the fact that, con- 
 tinuing the article above quoted, he affirms that 
 our hope and our dependence must be in and 
 upon International law applied to the nations 
 of the world. But may we not inquire if there 
 is not now a great body of International law? 
 If it has not been in actual existence and in active 
 
16 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 application for centuries of time? And it is 
 presumably good law with as much force in it 
 as any good law has or can have? It is good 
 in the sense that it is eternally right, humane, 
 moral, wise. If Christianity, however described 
 and defined, has been a failure in preventing war, 
 so has International law, and that not because 
 of its defects or uselessness, but because it indi- 
 cated lines of conduct and practise to which men 
 and nations have given assent and approbation, 
 but to which they have not given obedience in 
 practise. International law has failed because 
 it has been set at naught. There are no advan- 
 tages in law except from obedience to it. And 
 the same is true of Christian precepts. 
 
 A considerable number of critics of Christi- 
 anity became vocal shortly after the war began, 
 who never had indicated prior to that time that 
 they had any special knowledge of Christianity ; 
 nor have they since. Take certain essayists to 
 whom has been given a leading place in widely 
 read magazines, and you will find that while 
 known in some lines, they have never been recog- 
 nised in the world of thought or information, as 
 being qualified to speak on the subject of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 There is no doubt that the destruction of life 
 and property on such a colossal scale as we are 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 17 
 
 now witnessing, by this war was not only a fearful 
 shock to all people but has been an occasion for 
 some to seriously, albeit confusedly, question the 
 existence of God. The dreadful slaughters, 
 massacres, devastation of thousands of towns and 
 cities, the flying fugitives, the desolation of mil- 
 lions of homes, all the wreck and ruin of war 
 have horrified our minds. Shuddering over the 
 awful destruction, the suffering and loss, the 
 myriads destroyed and incapacitated in number- 
 less ways, some may impulsively raise the ques- 
 tion, "Can it be possible that there is a God? Is 
 all this consistent with the existence of a good 
 and wise and almighty God?" Evidently it is 
 the greatness of the suffering and destruction, in 
 quantity immeasurable and in quality incon- 
 ceivable, which raises the doubt. 
 
 But let us ask another question, one which did 
 not come up in 1914 but which has been before 
 our eyes for succeeding centuries. It is about 
 a perfectly well known agency of misery and 
 destruction which we have observed and taken 
 more or less responsibility for, and which has 
 wrought far more horrors than this war. Of this 
 curse of human kind, the great English states- 
 man, William E. Gladstone, said that it had de- 
 stroyed more human beings than war, famine and 
 pestilence combined, in the historic ages of the 
 
18 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 world. This he said of the manufacture, the sale 
 and the use of alcoholic liquors. No doubt he 
 stated the plain truth. This present war in all 
 its horrors and destructions, is far behind the 
 liquor curse in the misery it inflicts on mankind. 
 Now tell me how it happens that people who 
 have been patrons and apologists of the liquor 
 traffic, have never assumed it to be inharmonious 
 with the existence of a good God that such de- 
 struction should go on? How did they come to 
 the opinion all of a sudden, that God is an un- 
 desirable and unnecessary person in the world 
 because of the killed, wounded and missing of 
 this war, when the killed, wounded and missing 
 of the liquor fiend had been so many more than 
 those of war, in plain view of the people, for ages 
 and ages of time? 
 
 The truth is that they dare not deny that men, 
 not God, create and perpetuate the liquor traffic 
 and that men can stop it. The same is incontro- 
 vertibly true of war. The mistake has been in 
 assuming, as regards this war, that because a 
 great calamity is not fully explainable when it 
 suddenly falls, therefore God has not been or has 
 ceased to be in authority over the world. For if 
 the sum and aggregate of human misery gives 
 any reason to doubt God, we would have much 
 more reason for disbelieving in Him for the last 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 19 
 
 five hundred years on account of the liquor 
 traffic, than we have in the last three years on 
 account of the war in Europe and the world. 
 But we know of the one and no less of the other 
 that men, not God, make and perpetuate the 
 liquor evil and no less the evil of war. Neither 
 gives the slightest ground for accusing or doubt- 
 ing God, or for plunging into atheism. 
 
 In this connection I may remark that some 
 have found a degree of comfort even in the war 
 by saying of it that it is a war to destroy war 
 and therefore is to be looked upon as having not 
 merely a destructive but also a conservative force. 
 They might add that if the war were waged for 
 the destruction of the liquor evil, and success- 
 fully, it would save more of everything than it 
 has cost. So it looms up in sight, as blow after 
 blow is struck at the drink evil, that human right 
 action against it, long ago known to be essen- 
 tially the application of Christian principles and 
 teachings, will thus save more lives, rehabilitate 
 more manhood, and womanhood, deliver more 
 childhood and create more property, in a very 
 short period of years, than all that have been 
 destroyed by the war. What men do and refuse 
 to do let us not make a ground of accusation 
 against God nor an occasion for unbelief in 
 Him. 
 
20 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 ii 
 For what is true of Christianity is true of the 
 moral law of the Ten Commandments which 
 while incorporated in the body of Christian law, 
 were given to the world in the form of a code 
 fifteen hundred years before the coming of 
 Christ. We may safely affirm that the moral 
 law has been imperative in the world for a mini- 
 mum of thirty-five hundred years. Why then 
 has it not prevented vice and immorality? Is it 
 because the Ten Commandments are in any wise 
 deficient? These are highly commendable laws 
 of human conduct. They bear the marks of a 
 wisdom in their Author, which knew mankind 
 and what was most advantageous for it in human 
 action. The Moral Law is God's law as also 
 Christianity is God's law and Gospel. The law 
 is not impeached by continued immorality, nor 
 is Moses, nor any who upon this code have built 
 the statutes of states. It is a sublime code and 
 comprehensive of duty toward God and man. 
 Why then have not the Ten Commandments of 
 the moral law prevented the vices which they pro- 
 hibit, when they have been known and operative 
 in the world for three and a half millenniums? 
 The answer is perfectly clear. Hear and ponder 
 it. Vices here forbidden prevail because men in 
 their practise have been disobedient to that law. 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 21 
 
 Would you then repudiate, repeal or ignore the 
 moral law or would you call on men to repent 
 and to obey it? 
 
 The reason why we have adultery in violation 
 of the Seventh Commandment is not because of 
 defect in the commandment. The reason why we 
 have murder in violation of the Sixth is not 
 on account of any defect in this or lack in either 
 of these two, or in the whole code. When obeyed 
 they always work well and issue in individual 
 and social benefit. The reason why when we 
 have an invaluable moral law and notwithstand- 
 ing its existence, vice and immorality still exist, 
 is because the moral law has been ignored, disre- 
 garded, disobeyed, unapplied in the life of men. 
 The just statutes of enduring civilisations are 
 built upon the moral law as one of the most 
 powerful and constructive of forces in the human 
 world order. Shall we turn away from these 
 laws ? Shall we accuse them of bringing no relief 
 to the moral world? This is folly. 
 
 We are comparing Christianity as a doctrine 
 of life from God, with the Moral Law from the 
 same Author, given to men with the like benevo- 
 lent purpose. These alike, we may say, are di- 
 rections prescribing human conduct and neither 
 is less valuable in itself because violated, nor are 
 they to be discarded because men have violated 
 
22 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 them. On the other hand their value and power 
 are attested by obedience and even by disobedi- 
 ence, since such disobedience has proven disas- 
 trous. The nature of things and the Author of 
 the nature of things are on the side of both. We 
 cannot call either institutions, although upon the 
 law and the gospel institutions may be founded. 
 
 Quite likely the critics of Christianity may be 
 regarding it as an institution with varied organi- 
 sations, methods and formulas. This does not 
 appear to me to be a fair view of Christianity 
 any more than the organised state appears to be 
 a test of the Moral law which it does not obey. 
 The Christianity of Christ is not comprehended 
 or limited by an establishment, an ecclesiastical 
 order or a ritual. But wherever the Person of 
 Christ is revered and loved, where the word of 
 Christ is open freely and taught and known, 
 where the works of Christ are done and the spirit 
 of Christ shown, there is the Christianity of 
 Christ ; and where these are not it is lacking. 
 
 But even conceding something of an institu- 
 tional character to Christianity, shall men be 
 allowed to assume that because such an institu- 
 tion exists in the world and does not prevent war, 
 therefore institutional Christianity is to be dis- 
 trusted? By no means. 
 
 The family is an institution, literally such, 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 23 
 
 which has been in the world since the first be- 
 ginnings of the human race. The family, the 
 home antedate all other human institutions. Not 
 only on account of the esteem in which it is held 
 by all human beings but for many other rational 
 considerations, it is conceded to be invaluable 
 to man and society. Why then is it that in all 
 ages, past and present, the family has failed to 
 bring to the human race the benefit and bliss 
 which are in it? Why has not the marriage insti- 
 tution glorified all families everywhere in the 
 course of the ages past? The answer is not that 
 it is incapable of making such improvement in 
 human society. Everybody believes that the 
 family at its worst is better for the social order 
 than promiscuous associations at their best. But 
 the truth is that the law of the family has not 
 been kept and the family relation has not been 
 sacredly employed to make it what it has the full 
 power to become, and to exhibit its full influence. 
 If we concede for the sake of argument that 
 institutional Christianity so called is real Chris- 
 tianity, and if we reason that this institution has 
 not done what its claims would demand from it 
 as preventing war, shall we then conclude that 
 the institution is a failure and no more to be 
 reckoned with as a preventing force? Use the 
 same sort of an argument about the Family as 
 
24 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 an institution : Why has not the family prevented 
 war ? Is not its whole spirit and tendency toward 
 unity, fraternity and peace? It is far more 
 widely recognised than the church and valued by 
 millions of families who do not know or esteem 
 the church. And yet it has not prevented war. 
 Therefore as it has been tried and found not to 
 have afforded appreciable relief, it should be 
 discarded for International Law, or something 
 else ! And since, as evidenced by nature and his- 
 tory, God ordered and ordained the family, be- 
 cause it has failed to prevent war, are His wis- 
 dom and even His existence to be doubted and 
 denied? And shall we hereafter turn to some 
 form of organisation of human society other 
 than the family? Is this reasoning? Or is it un- 
 reasoning prejudice? If the laws of the family 
 are obeyed and its duties properly performed, 
 it tends naturally and, doubtless, by divine ap- 
 pointment, to love, patience, consideration, sacri- 
 fice, altruism. And the reason why the family 
 has not accomplished all it might in society, in 
 the state, in education and in civilisation, is be- 
 cause it has not been used according to its pur- 
 poses and laws. If this reasoning does not make 
 apparent that neither Christianity nor the family 
 has been expressed as it seeks to be, I might 
 add another link to the chain of correct reason- 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 25 
 
 ing by saying that the whole force of the family 
 would naturally be spent against the drunken- 
 ness which has been one of its destructive foes. 
 And yet this scourge has prevailed over the fam- 
 ily with most deadly destructiveness. Still the 
 power of the family must be relied upon to turn 
 men from false and unnatural appetite in the 
 long run. The family institution is censurable 
 only when unprized, misunderstood and un- 
 developed. 
 
 The like is obvious in many other directions. 
 There have been books and literature in the 
 world we know not how long. Might we not 
 raise the question, Why is anybody illiterate 
 when literature and possible literacy have been 
 in the world for thousands of years? We an- 
 swer, because most people have not valued nor 
 devoted themselves to learning and literature. 
 Education, schools of all grades, text books of 
 very many kinds have long been accessible to 
 mankind. Evidently they have been a worthy 
 product of the intelligence of men and their use 
 is in harmony with the nature of man and the will 
 of God, tending to the uplift of society and the 
 betterment of the race. And how persistently 
 have we been assured that the certain effect and 
 influence of modern scientific education, alleged 
 to be the best to which the world has ever had 
 
26 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 access, was to render war unlikely and indeed to 
 make it impossible. The increase of knowledge, 
 the cultivation of reason, modifying and con- 
 trolling prejudice and passion, the self control 
 of an educated mind were affirmed to be positive 
 barriers to the madness of war. Over against 
 this we have beheld that nation which has so 
 specialised in education that its schools have been 
 used as models for the world, a nation having 
 relatively few inhabitants who were not schooled, 
 and a people peculiarly strong in the vaunted 
 scientific education, giving the lie to this whole 
 theory, by wickedly and inhumanly plunging the 
 world into the most destructive war in human 
 history. On this great fact in detail, I do not 
 now comment. But if its apologists and spon- 
 sors told the truth, Germany as the result of 
 education, should have put an end to war and 
 brought in the reign of reason and self control. 
 And now shall we hear them say that education 
 in many centuries has afforded no relief to war 
 and that therefore, we must turn from it as un- 
 worthy of our confidence? This is much too 
 broad a conclusion. If the education had been 
 according to the laws of the mind and the heart, 
 if it had taught as fundamental the love of God 
 and the love of man, we should have found it, as 
 applied to life, a powerful check on war, instead 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 27 
 
 of finding it an accelerator of ferocity and 
 slaughter. The fault lies in the application of 
 the learning obtained. Let me insist on and re- 
 iterate the fundamental principle that it is the 
 application of the laws of morals, the institution 
 of the family, the knowledge of duty and life, 
 and, just as truly, of Christianity which alone 
 can warrant the expectation of its legitimate 
 effects being produced on human conduct and 
 society. 
 
 May I put the argument in so simple a form 
 as this: Since soap and water have been in the 
 world for thousands of years of time, why is any- 
 body dirty? It is not the fault of the soap and 
 water, because soap and water mingled on the 
 human skin will make it clean; but many have 
 not felt the need of cleanliness sufficiently to 
 make the application, and even yet with multi- 
 tudes, it is difficult to inspire them with the de- 
 sire to be clean. Where is the fault ? Where the 
 deficiency? Not surely in the soap and water. 
 
 in 
 
 Have I not arrived at a point where I may 
 conclude that in assuming that Christianity 
 ought to have prevented this war, we may be 
 assured that it certainly would have done so if it 
 
28 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 had been applied? What have we meant by 
 Christianity? What characteristics do we assume 
 that it possesses? Do we regard it as a magical 
 power that lays hold of men irrespective of their 
 preferences, their resolutions, their volitions, their 
 characters ? Or do we mean that the possibilities 
 of all good are in it if men will espouse and apply 
 it? A fair consideration affirms this, that the 
 effects of Christianity in any reasonable and fair 
 sense have always been conditioned on its use 
 and application. The value of it to one or many 
 depends on obedience and use by the persons to 
 whom it is brought, and if they do not so apply 
 it, they cannot experience its benefits. 
 
 The critics who assume to tell us all about 
 Christ in the scheme of the world are quite likely 
 to speak approvingly of the "Sermon on the 
 Mount." They profess to believe it and are 
 almost ready to grant that they can find no fault 
 at all in it. Often they have been heard to say, 
 "If you only let us have the Sermon on the 
 Mount, we do not care what you do with the rest 
 of the Bible." In this degree only I am pre- 
 pared to agree with them, that in the Sermon 
 you have great and precious teaching. And I 
 suggest to these that they read it through. Let 
 us turn to the climax of the Sermon. I suppose 
 that the great Master of men and assemblies 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 29 
 
 intended to end it with a statement worthy of the 
 majesty of what He had said before. Here is 
 His closing thought and word : 
 
 "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and 
 doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man who 
 built his house upon a rock; and the rain de- 
 scended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, 
 and beat upon that house ; and it fell not : because 
 it was founded upon a rock. 
 
 "And every one that heareth these sayings of 
 mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto 
 a foolish man who built his house upon the sand ; 
 and the rain descended, and the floods came, and 
 the winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it 
 fell: and great was the fall of it." 
 
 Christ declares that if any one is to derive 
 advantage from this great sermon or from any 
 of His teachings, he must both hear and do these 
 teachings, and so build his character on this 
 foundation as the house was builded on the rock. 
 Whatever some college presidents and certain 
 editors may think about Christianity, it is fair 
 enough to give our Lord Himself an oppor- 
 tunity to tell what He means by it. If you go to 
 any portion of the Divine Word, you will find 
 that both He and those who immediately repre- 
 sented Him declared that the value of all that 
 they do and teach to the hearer depends wholly 
 
30 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 on the application of it which he makes to him- 
 self. 
 
 Take even that most tender and sympathetic 
 word, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest 
 the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto 
 thee, how often would I have gathered thy chil- 
 dren together even as a hen gathereth her 
 chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Be- 
 hold your house is left unto you desolate." 
 
 Here is the condition given by the Lord and 
 Master Himself of getting the value out of 
 Christianity. And if the foregoing lament was 
 emphasised within seventy years of the time it 
 was spoken, by a tragedy so terrible that it can 
 be compared with the war tragedy of to-day, we 
 may well believe that giving heed to the warnings 
 against the neglect of the conditions which He 
 has stated, can alone give efficiency to His mercy 
 and grace. They are such that men had best 
 confess in the presence of God that the only 
 failure of Christ's doctrine is the human failure 
 to apply it to life. Instead of assuming to de- 
 throne the Judge of all the earth, men would 
 better humble themselves before Him and apply 
 the rules which He has given them for the guid- 
 ance of individual, national and international 
 conduct. 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 31 
 
 IV 
 
 "Why Christianity did not prevent this war" 
 is a question dependent for its answer on another, 
 namely, "Why did Germany accept the theories 
 of Nietzsche and Treitschke, which are in utter 
 and avowed antagonism to Christianity?" Who 
 will answer? For the personal and political 
 philosophy of these two, absolutely irreconcilable 
 to Christianity, are the theories which the Ger- 
 man Government is now applying and working 
 out. The philosophy of individual life, ascendant 
 and controlling in Germany, is that of Nietz- 
 sche. The accepted political philosophy is that 
 of Treitschke. Both are wrought into the mind 
 and life of the German people by the Govern- 
 ment, the army, the universities, and schools of 
 all grades. Nietzsche (born in 1845, died in 
 1888), Treitschke (born in 1834, died in 1895), 
 lead and control the thinking of Germany. The 
 mental concepts of both were largely ruled by 
 atheistic, materialistic evolution and earlier 
 Prussianism — the Prussianism of the eighteenth 
 century, which adopted it as furthering imperial 
 policy. The applied theory was expressed 
 briefly in the accepted axioms of such evolution, 
 "the struggle for life" and "the survival of the 
 fittest;" the "struggle for life" being the method 
 
32 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 of living and the "survival of the fittest" indicat- 
 ing the actual consequences of the "struggle." 
 These gave to Nietzsche the idea of his "Super- 
 man" and to Treitschke, his "Superstate." 
 
 The "Superman" is the product of evolution 
 and the incarnation of "might," superior to his 
 fellows and likewise superior to all limitations 
 excepting his own self assertion. His "will to 
 power" and the exercise of it, gives him the right 
 to do as he wills. All morality as commonly 
 taught, held and practised, Nietzsche called a 
 "slave morality." He identified himself with this 
 "Superman" and declared himself a God. The 
 weak, the crowd, aroused his contempt. The 
 "Supermen" have only to think of themselves 
 and the masses only serve their ends. 
 
 Egoism is salvation. He blesses the doctrine 
 of inconsiderate self assertion. He declares that 
 "an altruistic morality in which the ego and its 
 self-selection is restrained, is in any case an evil, 
 blighting morality." The Superman has every 
 license in asserting himself. 
 
 Nietzsche hated Christianity. Christ taught 
 "thy will be done:" Nietzsche, "my will at all 
 costs." Christ sacrificed Himself. The Super- 
 man may sacrifice the world for his good. 
 Woman serves no higher mission than that of a 
 plaything for and a breeder of the Superman. 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 33 
 
 War he glorified: kindness, mercy, humanity he 
 despised. 
 
 iTreitschke, the political philosopher of most 
 commanding control in German thought, was at 
 first contemptuous and averse to Nietzsche's 
 thought ; later he accepted his doctrine not for the 
 individual but for the State. The State, that is 
 Prussianised Germany, was to be the "Super- 
 state." In the struggle for life among the States, 
 Germany had won, and in "the survival of the 
 fittest," it was proved to be the "fittest." All 
 other States were to be overpowered and Ger- 
 manised by the German army. What Nietzsche's 
 "Superman" was to be among men, Treitschke's 
 "Superstate" must be among states. All other 
 nations, inferior and despised, were to be ruth- 
 lessly overpowered and Germanised. The State 
 is supreme; from it there is no appeal. To this 
 view Treitschke came early in his career, from 
 much more liberal tendencies, after he had been 
 given a professorship by Bismarck in the uni- 
 versity of Kiel. For thirty-five years he de- 
 voted his powerful, his unsurpassed talents to 
 training the students, the scholars, the teachers, 
 the captains and military masters of Germany. 
 He taught that the "Will to power" and 
 "Might" are the sole State morality. War is 
 the manifestation of these, ruthless war. Treaties 
 
34 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 have no binding authority. Spying and lying, 
 inhumanity, savagery are all justified by the will 
 of the State. Weakness in a State he blasphe- 
 mously declared to be the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 These two as master teachers, Germany ac- 
 cepted and followed. Their teachings were 
 adopted in theory and pursued in practise for 
 thirty years before the war of 1914 to which 
 they were daringly leading. Prussianism found 
 in them the prophets and in their principles the 
 pilotage on the course to world empire. Chris- 
 tianity and all its laws of righteousness, mo- 
 rality, self control, peace, humanity, in a word 
 everything Christian, Germany repudiated, 
 travestied and despised. Germany accepted this 
 anti- Christian theory of life and lived it. And 
 so they prepared their plan of conquest and then 
 flung themselves upon the world, to prove their 
 doctrine and to enslave mankind. Rejected thus 
 by the leaders, teachers and rulers of Germany 
 what could Christianity do to prevent this War? 
 Nothing could have prevented it except to have 
 made such thinking impossible, which was itself 
 impossible. All that was left to Christians 
 throughout the world was either to lie passive 
 and be destroyed or to defend all the fundamen- 
 tal principles of right life in the most active man- 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 35 
 
 ner and by the only method available, namely, 
 Defensive War. And that is a plain reason why 
 Christianity could not and did not prevent this 
 onslaught of barbarism and fiendishness and why 
 it met their attack with adamantine resistance. 
 The answer is complete and final. 
 
 But the proof is not all in. It remains to add 
 one more unanswerable reason why Christianity 
 did not prevent this war and could not prevent 
 this or any war under similar conditions. 
 
 That reason is found in the true philosophy 
 of life which is that of Christianity, and of peace 
 as a consequence of Christianity. 
 
 Before the war a powerful leadership in the 
 interests of peace had grown up which neither 
 regarded nor was built upon Christianity. They 
 had told us of peace as though it were a vital 
 entity in national well being, the chief desidera- 
 tum of national life. Many who became promi- 
 nent in it as the apostles of pacifism of this kind, 
 were not known as believers in Christ or Chris- 
 tianity. The peace sentiment which they fos- 
 tered had come to be looked upon as so great in 
 mass and so influential as to be in its very char- 
 acter and quantity, a defense against war. In 
 
36 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 various ways they had demonstrated the value 
 of peace ; economically, commercially, humanely, 
 racially, financially. There was a widespread 
 feeling that peace was so buttressed by all these 
 reasonings, so manifestly advantageous, that war 
 was improbable and indeed out of the question. 
 Immediately, when this fair fabric of their dream 
 collapsed and vanished, those who had taken the 
 burden of its promulgation were profoundly 
 dismayed and disappointed, we may say cha- 
 grined and humiliated. And the inquiry natu- 
 rally became rife, "What is the matter with this 
 trusted peace programme that it has been as 
 weak as water in the face of resolved war?" 
 
 The matter was this: Precedent to peace in 
 Christian doctrine and philosophy, is Righteous- 
 ness, without which going before, we have no well 
 founded basis of peace. "The Kingdom of God 
 is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy 
 Spirit;" more fully stated "Righteousness in the 
 Holy Spirit, Peace in the Holy Spirit, and Joy 
 in the Holy Spirit." In Christian philosophy 
 Righteousness always goes before and antedates 
 Peace. 
 
 You know that the basis of peace in any life 
 is the rectification and direction of that life in 
 harmony with the law of God. 
 
 You may construct your life in accordance 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 37 
 
 with any other philosophy and fail to attain 
 peace, but if the principles which govern your life 
 are the laws of God, and the righteousness of 
 your life is approved of God, you have peace. 
 "The wicked" who turn away from God "are like 
 the troubled sea which cannot rest." "There is 
 no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." And 
 although this truth is far older than the hypo- 
 thesis of evolution, older than prevailing philoso- 
 phies, older than the record which is given us of 
 it, it is now as virile and as mighty as unchange- 
 able law can make it, and as sure as the emphasis 
 of God by ages of proof can make anything. 
 "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." 
 If you wish to lay the foundations of peace 
 in individual or community life, you will never 
 accomplish it by waving the white flag, nor by 
 protesting against slaughter, nor by reasoning 
 about the wastes of war or presenting realistic 
 pictures of horrible battle fields; you will only 
 get it by teaching the Divine standards of Right- 
 eousness, from which, and from which only, can 
 flow the condition which we name peace. When 
 you become assured of the prevalence of Right- 
 eousness, you are assured of peace. For peace 
 is not passivity or stagnation, not inaction or 
 colorless quietness, but is rather the most intense, 
 harmonious, constructive, co-ordinated benevo- 
 
38 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 lent activity. Such a peace is impossible without 
 keeping the law of God which is the law of right 
 and is the condition of all human Righteousness. 
 
 If by peace we mean the absence of conflict, 
 conflict arising out of opposition to evil, when 
 and where in the Christian scriptures was any 
 hope ever held out that this is possible or desir- 
 able? And where in the sacred writings is such 
 compromise with evil held up as the goal of 
 Christianity? 
 
 The necessary and eternal order in which peace 
 comes to man and society is that it springs from 
 and follows Righteousness as a cause. That 
 Righteousness is a state of human character 
 which is devoted to being right and doing right 
 according to a universal, Divine and eternal 
 standard of Right. The standard Right by 
 which all right and righteousness are measured 
 is Right as God wills it, reveals it and sanctions 
 it. It is not mere obedience to numberless pre- 
 cepts, but a spirit in man, expressed in his actions. 
 That spirit is the disposition of the man in union 
 and harmony with God, the Holy Spirit. Of 
 such Spirit and such Righteousness, love to God 
 is the primary fruit and manifestation, and love 
 to man the secondary and always present con- 
 comitant. Where this Righteousness prevails, 
 Peace follows as the unfailing consequence. 
 
Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 39 
 
 This, briefly stated, is the Christian way to 
 Peace, real and permanent, and absolutely the 
 only way. Until Nations are righteous by com- 
 pliance with God's standard of Right no secure 
 and unbroken peace can reasonably be expected 
 and none can be achieved. 
 
 Because the Germans and their allies rejected 
 and repudiated Christianity is the reason "Why 
 Christianity did not Prevent this War." 
 
II 
 
 The Antagonism of German Political 
 
 Philosophy to Christian Truth and 
 
 Morals 
 
 THE action of Germany in precipitating this 
 war greatly surprised and startled man- 
 kind. As the Teuton assaulted Belgium and 
 France our wonder gave place to amazement 
 and astonishment, succeeded by horror and exe- 
 cration, and these feelings continually intensified, 
 have increased as the Germans have developed 
 and fought to execute, through inhuman sav- 
 agery, their long-prepared scheme of world 
 domination. Such barbaric expression of the life 
 and character of the German nation was totally 
 unexpected by most of us. That a people whom 
 we regarded with entire good will and credited 
 with many kindly virtues should deliberately 
 make such war, should be so immoral and unfeel- 
 ing, so treacherous and cruel, so egotistical and 
 rapacious, so religious and so pagan, we could 
 barely credit and cannot yet understand. Our 
 good will for them has not been wholly destroyed. 
 We have condemned but do not hate them as 
 
 40 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 41 
 
 we try to understand their contradictions and 
 misdeeds. 
 
 In seeking to account for their conduct and 
 to justify against them the most universal an- 
 tagonism of mankind, we feel that we accomplish 
 little by merely giving way to violent denuncia- 
 tion of their actions, though these deserve our 
 severest condemnation; and consistent with our 
 former good opinion of the German people, we 
 seek explanation, if any there be, for actions 
 which, by every law of morals and humanity, we 
 execrate and abhor. In the spirit of fairness, 
 not to be destroyed by our unequivocal hostility 
 to their behavior, we have sought to account for 
 their misdoings. May I detail some of the 
 assumptions which we have made in our endeavor 
 to place in an intelligent light our explanation 
 of the actions of which Germany has been guilty ? 
 
 We at first assumed that this brutal, bloody, 
 inhuman savagery is the work of the purely mili- 
 tary party. These we discriminated from the 
 people at large. They might have dragged the 
 nation unwillingly into the war. But from the 
 first the nation has been at one with these military 
 leaders. The state as a whole is entirely military 
 
42 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 and has never hesitated to adopt and execute 
 the policy of its General Staff, lending its full 
 and united strength to all their plans and deeds. 
 
 Then we assumed that the rulers are responsi- 
 ble and that they deserve all the condemnation, 
 supposing that the people had not formulated 
 or agreed to their policy; especially has the 
 Kaiser been held responsible, as the incarnation 
 of evil, the inspirer of war. But the nation at the 
 beginning and ever since, and now, has unitedly 
 supported its rulers, and this support has been 
 given by Germans of all classes. The political 
 philosophers have honored and defended their 
 rulers; the theological faculties have endorsed 
 them; the most distinguished university profes- 
 sors and scholars have commended them ; masters 
 in science have lauded them; the whole body of 
 writers and artists have praised their course. 
 These various leaders have issued manifestoes to 
 the world fully upholding their rulers and ap- 
 plauding the national action. Spiritual leaders 
 like Eucken, intellectuals, a numberless host, the 
 Socialists, who previously denounced the war, 
 have given steady and uncompromising support 
 to their rulers without excusing or apologising 
 for them in any particular. 
 
 We have assumed that the people were blindly 
 and ignorantly following these leaders and that 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 43 
 
 when once their eyes should be opened they 
 would revolt and withdraw. But we must re- 
 member that the German people are the most 
 educated in books and by schools of any nation 
 of the world. They have given to many lands 
 systems of learning, from kindergarten to post- 
 graduate universities ; they are not ignorant and 
 blind for lack of schooling. They are a learned, 
 not an ignorant people. 
 
 We have assumed that when the German peo- 
 ple had received knowledge of American aims, 
 of the motives of the Allies, of what free govern- 
 ment really means, they would fall away from 
 their governing bodies. The President of the 
 United States in a long and able message fully 
 assumed this ; so that multitudes of men declared : 
 "If only this Presidential message can be placed 
 before the German people they will be severed 
 from autocracy, will revolt and establish free 
 government and so end the war." But now, after 
 three years of war, there is scarcely a trace of 
 such revolution, nor is there any reliable infor- 
 mation, however much we may desire it, showing 
 signs of ferment or revolution in political Ger- 
 many. This dream of ours is a vain dream. 
 Germany is not on the verge of uprising or of 
 revolution any more than Britain and France 
 have been in their cabinet changes. 
 
44 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 We have assumed, and sometimes declared, 
 that the Germans are insane; that they are 
 obsessed by hallucinations which sanity would 
 repudiate ; that they are running amuck ; fanatics 
 among the nations; a mad dog in the streets of 
 the world. But we know that despite their 
 atrocious wickedness, this is not true. They are 
 not insane according to any proper definition of 
 insanity. It has been suggestively said, and with 
 some truth, that the German scholarly mind "be- 
 gins by assuming a large premise which has no 
 foundation, and then reasons with irresistible 
 logic to a preposterous conclusion." This may 
 describe a mental habit, but it does not describe 
 the insanity recognised by experts as mental irre- 
 sponsibility. We do not believe the German 
 nation to be intellectually insane. 
 
 We have assumed that autocracy as a scheme 
 of government is now making its last stand 
 against the world flood of rising democracy, and 
 that this war is to bring the end of kings, at least 
 of autocratic kings. But we, not the Germans, 
 have assumed this. They revere their autocracy, 
 they have had great material prosperity under it, 
 as we have had under democracy. Their history 
 is a record of remarkable advance under the gov- 
 ernment which we condemn. Since Frederick 
 William, ruling from 1713 to 1740, and Fred- 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 45 
 
 erick the Great, from 1740 to 1786, they have 
 made their gains, and almost unprecedented 
 gains they are, under the very form of govern- 
 ment which now controls them and for which 
 they now unitedly stand and heroically die. 
 That government has held to the theory of the 
 State as the army, the army as the State, and 
 the reigning house claiming divine right to rule 
 is honored and revered, if not loved, with all 
 sincerity to-day. 
 
 Besides, in our assertion that democracy is the 
 only form of government suited to popular ad- 
 vantage, we really have not chosen a popular 
 watchword. First of all, most of the people of 
 America when they think of democracy mean 
 not the general definition, but think of the 
 American Democratic Party. They do not ob- 
 jectise the idea of the rule of the people. Be- 
 sides, we do not define democracy clearly. We 
 declare as if it were final, that "all governments 
 derive their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed." By this we justify popular govern- 
 ment. Do we mean the consent of all those un- 
 der its sway? There is no government, no re- 
 public, where all the people in it consent to its 
 sway. Do we mean then that in a democracy, 
 government derives its just powers from the con- 
 sent of a majority? But a majority is only a 
 
46 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 part of those governed. It may be but slightly 
 over one-half; it may even be a minority that 
 administers the affairs of the republic. The truth 
 is that no government has just powers unless 
 they come from those universal and eternal laws, 
 not made by majorities or voted or amended by 
 legislatures, made and announced by the eternal 
 God; laws which no legislature dare assume to 
 amend or repeal ; laws of morals and humanity ; 
 of universal duty and benevolence. So, then, our 
 expectation of the complete passing away of 
 autocracy before democracy is not an intelligent 
 conviction or an adequate clarion with which to 
 arouse our republic to battle against overthrow. 
 And, remote from democracy, the autocracy of 
 Germany has always been and now is a powerful 
 form of government. 
 
 We have broadly assumed that now the end 
 of kingly rule is near at hand. But Great Bri- 
 tain, Belgium and Italy are not contemplating 
 this as a result of the war. They have kings now 
 and expect to have them hereafter. 
 
 We have made much of the assumption that 
 military preparedness was the cause of the war. 
 We must, however, face the fact that nations 
 wholly unprepared are in the war, battling for 
 life and liberty, conspicuously ourselves. America 
 has evidently proceeded on wholly false theories 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 47 
 
 of Germany's action until this day, of which 
 those assumptions which I have sketched are 
 among the most prominent. None of them, nor 
 all of them, satisfactorily account for the war. 
 Yet what is more necessary than to penetrate to 
 the exact causes which have created the present 
 world-wide catastrophe and which are threaten- 
 ing destruction and chaos at the present time? 
 What has made Germany a pirate among states, 
 a murderer, a monster? 
 
 ii 
 
 Allow me to assume and later prove that Ger- 
 man political philosophy, into the acceptance and 
 full belief of which the German nation has been 
 drilled for many years, is the actual and adequate 
 cause and explanation of its actions, apart from 
 which it is neither adequately understood nor 
 properly antagonised. To simplify it so that I 
 may discuss it clearly in the time allowed, let 
 me affirm and later demonstrate that this is a 
 strife between two philosophies, two systems of 
 thought, two codes of morals, mutually exclu- 
 sive and irreconcilable; two views of humanity 
 and of religion, of man and of God. 
 
 I ask you to consider the antagonism of Ger- 
 
48 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 man political philosophy to Christian truth and 
 morals, as indicating what we fight and what for. 
 
 So long as Germany holds the theory which 
 created this war, so long she will fight to carry 
 it out. The theory begins and ends in the avowed 
 right and purpose of Germany to subjugate all 
 other nations and to dominate the world. Let 
 me disclose their theory by a concrete presenta- 
 tion of it. 
 
 The greatest and most influential political 
 philosopher of Germany during the last century 
 is Heinrich Von Treitschke. He, more than any 
 single character in German political life, was 
 responsible for the intense anti-English senti- 
 ment that flamed out in the Boer War and he is 
 ruling the thought of the German nation, as de- 
 veloped at the present time. His ideals and 
 theories, his hatreds and persuasions precipitated 
 this war. Born in 1834, his father a soldier, Von 
 Treitschke was destined for the army. An illness 
 in his youth, which deprived him of his hearing, 
 diverted him to scholarship and the study of 
 politics. His heroes were the heroes of Prussia, 
 and having distinguished himself in the schools 
 of learning, at twenty-five years of age, he de- 
 livered his first course of political lectures at 
 Leipzig in 1859. Out of this grew his treatise 
 on the State. 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 49 
 
 From the beginning he was impressively popu- 
 lar. Later, at the great universities of Freiburg, 
 Kiel, Heidelberg and Berlin, he was followed 
 by admiring crowds of students, and always, 
 from his beginning at Leipzig in 1859, to his 
 death in 1895, a period of thirty-six years, his 
 lecture rooms were thronged as those of no other 
 professor in Germany; the concourse attending 
 them reminding one of the great gatherings to 
 hear Abelard in the Middle Ages. They all 
 heard him extol the greatness of Germany, the 
 unexampled dynasty of the Hohenzollerns, the 
 glory of the army. 
 
 In person Von Treitschke was a man of high 
 character, of marked intellectual aspect, of great 
 mentality, of utmost sincerity of purpose and of 
 surpassing eloquence. Generations of German 
 students came under his sway and acknowledged 
 his power. He was a friend of Bismarck, the 
 apologist of the Hohenzollerns and the ardent 
 and eager supporter of the bureaucracy of Ger- 
 many. 
 
 In his conviction the State was supreme, and 
 from the State there was no appeal. The indi- 
 vidual counted for nothing save as the creature 
 of the State. The State was an army; the army 
 the State. This theory was far older than Von 
 Treitschke, having been that of Frederick Wil- 
 
50 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 liam and Frederick the Great in the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 Foremost among the fundamental principles 
 taught by this remarkable man was the stoutly 
 affirmed belief that the Hohenzollerns, by divine 
 right, should rule Prussia, and that Prussia, for 
 the good of Germany, should rule Germany. It 
 was a small step from this proposition to his next 
 main assertion that Germany, for the good of 
 the world, should dominate the world. He came 
 to this conclusion partly through the theory of 
 atheistic evolution, so prevalent in German 
 thought, and partly on account of his exalted 
 idealisation of the German character and culture. 
 He believed that in "the struggle for life," fol- 
 lowed by "the survival of the fittest," Germany 
 had won in the struggle, and Germany of all was 
 the fittest. This led him to regard with ill-con- 
 cealed contempt all other nations and led him to 
 the belief that it would be for their welfare if 
 Germany dominated over them. 
 
 He particularly hated and despised Great 
 Britain. Throughout his whole career he re- 
 garded it with scorn, antipathy and hatred, and 
 he poured out contempt, rancor and insult con- 
 tinually upon the English character and upon the 
 English nation. He called them the "robber 
 among the nations," affirming that they held their 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 51 
 
 undeserved sway over about a fifth of the world 
 on account of their insular position, the supine- 
 ness of the other nations, the duplicity of their 
 diplomacy and the hypocrisy of the English 
 character. His denunciation of the English peo- 
 ple and government was a sort that, applied to 
 an individual, it would be insulting to the last 
 degree, and he evermore looked forward and 
 worked toward the day when Germany, assailing 
 England, should beat her down in war and be- 
 come the master of the world. 
 
 If we have raised a question as to the amaz- 
 ing conceit of Germany as expressed in many 
 a pompous phrase since the beginning of this war, 
 let it be said that this is a proper consequence 
 and expression of the philosophy of Treitschke 
 and his associates, the great school that grew up 
 around him, followed his leadership, and de- 
 veloped his ideals. 
 
 Germany was to dominate the world for the 
 good of the world, and for the domination of the 
 world by Germany, the army was the great in- 
 strument. This army was to be conterminous 
 with the State, and the State with the army ; the 
 entire State a military power, and war the 
 method of its supremacy. Nowhere in the seven- 
 teen volumes of Von Treitschke's collected 
 works, not in his great history, which is regarded 
 
52 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 with the utmost respect in Germany, did he ever 
 say a word against war, never calling it the 
 scourge of mankind or deprecating its existence, 
 but, like his influential disciple, Bernhardi, if not 
 in the same words, he regarded war as a biologi- 
 cal necessity, indicating the virility of the nation 
 and leading to the highest good of mankind. 
 Any attempt to abolish war was unwise and im- 
 moral. 
 
 In order that this theory of conquest might be 
 carried out by an invincible army it was neces- 
 sary to regard as brothers only those dwelling 
 within the German State. Outside of those 
 boundaries there was no fraternal obligation. 
 The theory of the way the war was to be carried 
 on demanded that it be ruthless to the last degree. 
 I am not now averring that Von Treitschke him- 
 self elaborated every detail of the system now 
 being carried out ; but he originated it, inspired it 
 and was followed by a great multitude of intel- 
 lectuals who gave their assent to his leadership 
 and more fully worked out his theory. 
 
 Inhumanity in war, as the world understands 
 inhumanity, is one of the fundamental condi- 
 tions of war, as this school of philosophy holds it. 
 It stopped at nothing. It knew no mercy, hesi- 
 tated at no atrocity, deliberately proposed to 
 massacre, murder, deport, torture, starve to 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 53 
 
 death those who stood in its way. Such is the 
 theory and such the practise. 
 
 Quite as visibly as this philosophy repudiates 
 humanity it despises morals; particularly those 
 morals which relate to truth. Astonished, we 
 have heard the statement of the German Chan- 
 cellor that treaties were only scraps of paper. 
 But it is a definite part of their theory that there 
 are no moralities which should stand between the 
 nation and the development of its ideals. 
 
 Having repudiated morality and humanity, 
 the question arose: how should this attitude of 
 leading minds be made that of the entire German 
 nation, of whom great multitudes were both 
 moral and humane? Modern morality and hu- 
 manity, as we understand them, are distinctly 
 Christian in their spirit and purpose. To fulfill, 
 therefore, the purpose of Germany to dominate 
 the world by an army engaged in ruthless war, 
 unrestrained by morality and humanity, it be- 
 came necessary to dispossess the German people 
 of the Christian ideals of morals and humaneness 
 which had possessed them. Therefore, this po- 
 litical philosophy deliberately gave itself to the 
 most violent attack upon Christianity. Until 
 they could rid the German people of the ideals 
 of Christianity, their philosophy could not pene- 
 trate or control the nation. 
 
54 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 The attack upon Christianity was deliberately 
 made, toward a hundred years ago. When, about 
 the middle of the last century, Strauss assailed 
 the Gospel and the life of Christ as mythical, he 
 was following out the lines of this policy, and at 
 that time not a few were led away by his theories. 
 But later the development became much more 
 widespread, intense and more sweepingly antag- 
 onistic. 
 
 Many of the German political philosophers 
 affirm that the greatest mistake which Germany 
 has ever made was in accepting Christianity from 
 the Roman Empire in the fifth century. They 
 declare that the Roman Empire was then effete 
 and in a decline; that Galilee, from which the 
 Roman Empire took the Christian faith, was also 
 a decadent nation, and that it has always been 
 a dreary spell cast upon the mind of Germany, 
 that they accepted this religion. For thirty gen- 
 erations, some of them declare, Germany has 
 struggled to rid itself of an alien religion; of a 
 vision which it did not respect ; of a God that it 
 would not adore; of a system of religion which 
 was foreign to the German genius. Germany's 
 native instinct for playing a creative role in reli- 
 gion had been stunted and thwarted. Germany, 
 they declare, should exercise creative powers in 
 the matter of religion, repudiating all but its own 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 55 
 
 creation. That religion they called "The Reli- 
 gion of Valor." One of its mottoes is to "Live 
 dangerously." 
 
 Von Treitschke's thought of the State was the 
 State controlled by nothing but its own ideals. 
 Those who followed him reaffirmed this with 
 additional energy. Napoleon was their ideal 
 rather than Christ; Corsica rather than Galilee, 
 became to them the seat of the ideas which they 
 would espouse. They travestied and do now the 
 Beatitudes. Instead of saying "Blessed are the 
 peace makers" they say "Blessed are the war 
 makers, for they shall conquer the earth and shall 
 receive the applause, if not of Jehovah, of Odin, 
 who is greater than Jehovah." They repudiated 
 the beatitude on the meek, and blessed the valiant 
 rather than the teachable; and instead of com- 
 mending the poor in spirit, they commended the 
 exalted and heroic in spirit who have no sense of 
 humanity. They prepared to found a world em- 
 pire and also a world religion. 
 
 This "Religion of Valor" had in it no place 
 for Christian virtues and was to be substituted 
 for the Christian faith. Sympathy, kindness, hu- 
 manity were labelled weaknesses. 
 
 But now, as the Christian religion, especially 
 in the mind of the German people, was dependent 
 upon the Bible, which Luther had so greatly ex- 
 
56 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 alted in the sixteenth century, it became neces- 
 sary to the scheme of German philosophy and 
 German conquest, to break up the foundations 
 of Christianity by weakening the authority of the 
 Bible. They, therefore, set about this systemati- 
 cally, and during recent years have been urgent 
 to propagate what is called popularly "The De- 
 structive Criticism." The whole strength of 
 German scholarship, with few exceptions, has 
 been turned to the effort to destroy the authority 
 of the Bible as related to Christianity, to morals 
 and to humanity. So doing, they still retained 
 their self-created religion and morals, which they 
 called "The Religion of Valor." 
 
 The evil influence of their destructive work 
 passed to other nations, and many who called 
 themselves scholars surrendered to the assump- 
 tions of German so-called scholarship. When, 
 therefore, they came to the moment of war 
 upon the whole world, their theory, link by 
 link, could be stated thus: The Hohenzollerns, 
 for the good of Prussia, should dominate Prus- 
 sia; Prussia, for the good of Germany, should 
 dominate Germany; Germany, for the good 
 of the world, should dominate the world. Ger- 
 many should dominate the world because it 
 was superior and the nations of the world con- 
 temptible. 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 57 
 
 The agency of German domination should be 
 the army. The army should perform its work 
 with a ruthless disregard of all the so-called laws 
 of war, of morality and of humanity. To sweep 
 away the reverence of the German people for 
 morality and humanity it was necessary to get 
 rid of the Christian religion, which was the 
 foundation of these virtues, and to substitute 
 therefor, as they did, another, which was anti- 
 Christian, called "The Religion of Valor," as 
 pagan as Attila's. 
 
 To make sure that they could rid themselves 
 and the German people of the Christian religion, 
 they deemed it necessary that they should de- 
 stroy the authority of the Holy Scriptures. This 
 they did, among themselves, and considerably 
 among the nations of the world. But while they 
 had a religion left, which, though pagan, was 
 powerful, those of other lands who accepted their 
 anti-Christian and anti-Biblical theories, had 
 nothing left except the sentiment of religion, and 
 found themselves in this country, and to a con- 
 siderable extent also in Britain, without an au- 
 thoritative and divine religion and corresponding 
 conviction; but holding an emasculated, non- 
 authoritative sentiment, many among us even 
 questioning whether it was consistent with Chris- 
 tianity to fight for faith, for humanity and for 
 
58 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 morality. So the German philosophy worked to 
 its own strengthening, for its own purpose, and 
 to the weakening of all those nations on whom 
 they proposed to fall. The Germans became 
 ruthless warriors. Many so-called Christians 
 became sentimental pacifists. 
 
 You have wondered why the German Em- 
 peror is making so many appeals to God and 
 nevertheless seems to lack Christian moral sense 
 and Christian humanity. I have given you the 
 reason. The God of Germany is not the God 
 and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not the 
 God of the Christian Scriptures, but the manu- 
 factured patron of German conquest and world 
 dominion. 
 
 Many will now inquire, "How could a theory 
 like this, being taught, dispossess a nation of the 
 fundamental principles of Christianity?" My 
 answer is easy. Most singular illusions sweep 
 over and possess myriads of mankind. For ex- 
 ample, in the United States of America we have 
 the delusion known as Mormonism. It is alleged 
 by its devotees that in 1827 one Joseph Smith 
 discovered plates of gold on which, in "reformed 
 Egyptian" — whatever that may be — were the 
 statements which he afterward made to the 
 world. It matters not that Joseph Smith was a 
 person of low and vile character, notorious for 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 59 
 
 falsehood, for idleness, for immorality. It mat- 
 ters not to those who follow him that the stories 
 which he told of the possession of these plates are 
 totally unbelievable and contradictory. There 
 are now hundreds of thousands of followers of 
 this man in America, whom they revere as a 
 prophet and a saint. 
 
 He said, for example, that these golden plates 
 were given him in a supernatural way; but no 
 such golden plates have ever been seen or known. 
 He declared first that they were given him by a 
 man of Spanish aspect, whose throat was cut and 
 blood running down. He afterward declared 
 that they were given to him by an angel. He 
 affirmed that whoever looked upon these plates 
 would die. He afterward promised that he 
 would show them, which he never did, to a very 
 large circle of friends. The theology which they 
 developed was fantastic; the history fictitious; 
 the morality outrageous ; and yet, from that time 
 to this, there have been gathering more and more 
 people to the standard of Mormonism, following 
 Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, until to- 
 day they hold the balance of political power in 
 several States of the American Union. They 
 are a financial force which is recognised among 
 the powerful forces of the nation and is looked 
 upon with awe and fear. They declare their 
 
60 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 purpose to rule the nation. They send forth 
 more missionaries, in proportion to their num- 
 bers, than any other body which calls itself reli- 
 gious. They obtained their statehood by per- 
 jury to the national government, declaring that 
 they had abandoned polygamy, which they never 
 abandoned and which their head declared after- 
 ward before a committee of Congress, he still 
 practised; and so, in unnumbered ways, they 
 have given the lie to their pretensions and shown 
 the utter folly of those who accept their theories. 
 If all that could be done in America within 
 less than one hundred years by an ignorant, dis- 
 honorable, superstitious and degraded leader, 
 what may you not expect when you see the forces 
 which operated in Germany to supplant Chris- 
 tianity, humanity and morality, and to send the 
 nation forth on a plan of world conquest? Be- 
 hind the German purpose were nearly two hun- 
 dred years of very great material prosperity 
 under their form of government. Their rulers, a 
 powerful family deserving well in many respects 
 of their people, their theory of superiority and 
 dominion highly satisfactory to the self-con- 
 sciousness, the pride and the ambitions of the 
 German people; their teachers, the foremost 
 philosophers of their time, the chief theologians, 
 the leading scientific and literary men. And bear 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 61 
 
 in mind that all these German teaching forces 
 were the creatures of the State; they were 
 selected by the State ; they received their salaries 
 from the State, from the foremost to the least 
 in the lowest schools. They were discharged if 
 they failed to please the State ; and so they flung 
 the sum total of the forces of a powerful govern- 
 ment and an immense force of highly trained 
 teachers into the work of justifying and leading 
 this great empire on a course and career of world 
 conquest. Such an appeal so fathered, fostered 
 and taught, is adequate and ample to produce 
 the results we now behold. 
 
 It is plain enough that this is a rational ac- 
 counting for the results of their theory upon the 
 German nation, creating a solidarity as remark- 
 able as that of any nation in human history. 
 
 This purpose is "inspired by the pulpits as 
 religion; taught by the universities as philoso- 
 phy; disseminated by the press as policy and 
 political necessity; embodied in the army as na- 
 tional loyalty and duty, and focused on the 
 Kaiser as the minister of the Almighty." Blas- 
 phemous, fundamentally narrow and inhuman as 
 it is, you can see how it became an obsession, a 
 very devil of pride in the breasts of seventy 
 million Germans. 
 
 And here let me present additional proofs of 
 
62 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 the truth that this is the base and beginning, as 
 well as the strength of this war on the German 
 side, by calling your attention to certain collat- 
 eral historical evidence. All that I have pre- 
 sented is absolutely consistent with everything 
 that the German powers have done in the three 
 years since the beginning of this war. Do we 
 declare that they have violated all principles of 
 Christianity, of humanity or morality? The evi- 
 dence is before the whole world, written on the 
 bloodiest pages of human history. Let me dwell 
 upon it briefly to show how really this is true. 
 
 111 
 
 If the so-called morals of Germany during this 
 war, and disclosed by it, are in harmony with the 
 theory which I have stated, then we have a strong 
 proof that this theory is working out. That this 
 is true, let me prove from two or three considera- 
 tions. 
 
 First, when the United States of America sent 
 away the Ambassador of Germany and severed 
 diplomatic relations, when we finally declared 
 that a state of war existed between Germany and 
 the United States, our government acted chiefly 
 on moral ground, as the state papers of the 
 United States allege. If you turn to the docu- 
 
r Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 63 
 
 mentary history of the breach of relations be- 
 tween us and Germany you find our government 
 asserting that this was made necessary by three 
 considerations : First, because Germany had vio- 
 lated the law of truth in breaking promises made 
 to us, destroying our citizens on the high seas 
 without warning; levying war against us while 
 pretending peace; endeavouring to stir up our 
 nearest neighbor against us to invasion and to 
 assault while assuming to be our friend. 
 
 The second affirmation of our government was 
 that Germany had violated its pledges to the 
 whole world of civilised nations in the matter of 
 international law. This we supported and sub- 
 stantiated by citing the case of Belgium and 
 northern France, as well as by other affirmations ; 
 and this again was a violation by the German 
 Empire of the law of truth, in the realm of 
 morals. 
 
 The third charge that our government brought 
 against Germany was the violation of the laws 
 of nations and humanity, superseding the same 
 by cruelty and inhumanity, as in the deportation 
 of the Belgian and French people, and numerous 
 other acts of savagery and cruelty. 
 
 All these acts and allegations, as you perceive, 
 are in the realm of moral laws and duties, such 
 as are revered and held by all civilised nations. 
 
64 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 The course of the Allies was identical with that 
 of our own government and their grounds of war 
 practically the same. For when some months 
 ago, Germany assumed to make offers of peace, 
 in which no one had any confidence, the answer 
 of the Allies was mainly to the effect that Ger- 
 many had violated truth and pledges to such an 
 extent that it could not be trusted. Moral laws, 
 as to treaties and pledges made by the Germans, 
 had been set at naught, to prove which the Allies 
 quoted Germany's own statements, confessions 
 and actions. 
 
 Second, the Allies declared they could not 
 make peace because of the violations of plighted 
 faith to the nations, which Germany had volun- 
 tarily taken and which, regardless of truth, she 
 had steadily and most outrageously violated. 
 
 And third, the humanities, they alleged, had 
 all been violated by Germany, although interna- 
 tionally accepted and sanctioned by them with 
 others. 
 
 This common attitude of the United States 
 and of the Allies was met by Germany with a 
 practical admission of the truth of all they stated. 
 Germany avows, and has avowed, that it will do 
 whatever it judges to be necessary to attain its 
 ends, irrespective of any promises or engage- 
 ments made at any time. It has also alleged that 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 65 
 
 pledges, promises and humanities are not binding 
 upon it; and also that nothing shall be allowed 
 to stand in the way of its national aspirations and 
 evolution as it interprets the same. That is to 
 say, Germany practically admits the charges of 
 the United States and the Allies, that it has 
 repudiated all morals and all humanity as uni- 
 versally held and understood. 
 
 You can but perceive that we have before us 
 here two theories of morals and of life. The 
 German theory is a theory of morals made by the 
 German nation, operative within its own borders, 
 and operative on other nations only in so far as 
 it can enforce its will on them. Now, if one 
 nation has a right to make its own code of morals, 
 another and every other nation has the same 
 right. If every nation makes its own code of 
 morals, moral relations cannot be international. 
 There can be no system of universal interchange 
 on a moral basis of numerous nations holding dif- 
 ferent and presumably divergent theories of 
 morals. All world relations, therefore, must 
 cease unless they are merely relations of hostility. 
 
 On the other hand, America and the Allies 
 present a theory of morals universal in its charac- 
 ter, and of universal benevolence, founded not 
 on legislation or statute of the State and subject 
 to no State revisal or amendment, but given by 
 
66 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 the Ruler of the universe for the promotion of 
 appropriate human relations between all the 
 peoples of the earth. It is manifest that these 
 two systems are not only mutually exclusive but 
 mutually antagonistic, and that the two can 
 never subsist except in a state of conflict. Which, 
 then, shall be overpowered and which shall re- 
 main as the rule of human life among the nations 
 of mankind? 
 
 Like morality, humanity is really a question 
 of moral duties, infilled with human brotherhood 
 and affection. In the repudiation of humanity 
 Germany has simply taken a step contrary to the 
 conviction, thought and feeling of all the other 
 nations of the world and in violation of their high- 
 est moral sense. There is no language strong 
 enough to express the antagonism of the civilised 
 world against Germany for what it has done in 
 Belgium, France, Armenia and Syria — in Po- 
 land, Serbia and Russia. Is there any law of 
 humanity, is there any sense of right among man- 
 kind, is there any sentiment of civilisation which 
 Germany has not absolutely repudiated in her 
 dealings with those who have been subjugated by 
 her military power? 
 
 Armenia has suffered the greatest persecution 
 of Christian martyrs ever known since Christian 
 history began. Massacre, torture, deportation, 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 67 
 
 ravishment, starvation have carried off a million 
 and a half of the people of Armenia within the 
 last two and one-half years. All missionaries, 
 even missionaries of German churches, have as- 
 serted that Germany was responsible; that it 
 could have prevented the horrors wrought by 
 Turk and Kurd; that German authorities have 
 countenanced and have assisted in this horrible 
 work. You have only to read the statements of 
 Von Bissing, late Governor of Belgium, and 
 other of the leading German authorities to un- 
 derstand that deliberately they planned and pro- 
 posed to reduce these lands to a desert and to 
 repopulate them with German people and with 
 the captives whom they might enslave in war. 
 
 It is the German who advised the Moslem to 
 originate a "holy war," (called the "Jehad"), by 
 which they expected two hundred and fifty mil- 
 lion Mohammedans would rise up and fall upon 
 the Christian peoples of the world and destroy 
 them, as Mohammed and the Saracens sought to 
 do in the first centuries of the Moslem propa- 
 ganda. That such a "holy war," so-called, did 
 not eventuate was because the Moslems, more 
 humane than the German, resented and repudi- 
 ated the demand of the German power and their 
 servile adherents, the Turks. 
 
 The story of the submarines is a story of cruel- 
 
68 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 ties which no pirates in history have ever dupli- 
 cated. While the modes of war on the field of 
 battle, the destructive agencies employed, the 
 effort not merely to annihilate, but to torture 
 and to cause the most frightful suffering, the 
 wanton destruction and desolation of all that 
 civilisation cherishes — these all have been a por- 
 tion of the German policy, deliberately planned, 
 threatened, prepared, done and justified for 
 years. 
 
 The authorities are so many, the voice of all 
 nations consenting to this indictment is so unani- 
 mous, the investigations so fully prove all that I 
 have said, that I think I need add nothing to the 
 statement that the course of Germany since the 
 beginning of the war is entirely in harmony with 
 its political philosophy, and indicates exactly 
 what we are fighting and what for. 
 
 IV 
 
 And now finally: What is the battle upon 
 which we have entered? What the goal of the 
 struggle, the stake of the war, in which we are 
 engaged ? We have portrayed the foe, measured 
 by his purposes, designs and practises. Through 
 long years, while we have been inattentive, su- 
 pine, indifferent, Germany has been penetrated 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 69 
 
 and permeated with the idea of world dominion 
 by world war. In 1912 more than seven hundred 
 books on war were published in Germany, and 
 all that they have done in the last three years had 
 been forecast and really foretold by them with 
 the utmost audacity. 
 
 Our battle is more than a war for national 
 defence, great as that is; more than a war of 
 American patriotism, the care of our own people 
 on sea and land; more than a war for the in- 
 tegrity and rehabilitation of Belgium and 
 France, and the support of our Allies fighting 
 for the world's right; more than co-operation 
 with a score of nations who withstand Germany. 
 Our war is a war for the race in its highest ideals 
 and its greatest hopes. When Charles Martel 
 turned back the Saracen in southern France in 
 the early centuries he did no less than is obliga- 
 tory upon the nations of the world to-day in 
 fighting back the German invasion. Against 
 their overweening pride and vanity, their false- 
 ness, traitorousness, intolerable inhumanity, 
 cruelty, tyranny, spoliation and subjugation we 
 are fighting. Are not these causes adequate? Is 
 there not motive enough in these to awaken the 
 hundred millions of America to withstand with 
 the millions of Europeans the terrific forces of 
 German invasion aand destructiveness ? 
 
70 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 But we are fighting for much more than these. 
 We are fighting for morals, universal, authorita- 
 tive, beneficent, divine; morals, of men as men, 
 against what is merely local custom, made and 
 applied by a tyrant. Shall we have a moral 
 world? is a question that we are trying to answer 
 in the affirmative. 
 
 We are fighting for the maintenance of hu- 
 manity, fraternal, universal, helpful. 
 
 Shall the world be a humane world, or shall 
 massacre, torture, deportation, slaughter, starva- 
 tion and all kinds of ravages upon men, women 
 and little children be the habit of the world? We 
 are to answer. 
 
 We are fighting for the integrity of the race, 
 as brothers, against German masters with the 
 rest of the world slaves. We are fighting for 
 Christianity, the last religious hope of the world, 
 the Christianity which avers the love of God and 
 the love of men as the basis of human life. This 
 they would displace by cruel paganism, a valor 
 which knows no pity, no mercy, no liberty. 
 Surely here is a stake worth the best that we can 
 spend and do. 
 
 We take on a heavy burden, for none of us 
 desire war for itself. We do not believe that war 
 is a high state of desirable human life, and so 
 we regard our entrance into this war as a heavy 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 71 
 
 load, a sad necessity. But no burden which we 
 can assume can be so heavy as having to exist 
 under the domination of immoral and inhuman 
 tyranny. 
 
 We know that we shall encounter sufferings 
 which we deprecate and deplore. It is not neces- 
 sary to describe them; they are too obvious in 
 Europe, as they will be in America. But the 
 worst sufferings and the most that we can en- 
 counter in resisting an unregulated and inhuman 
 tyranny cannot compare with the sufferings 
 which Germany victorious inflicts, working its 
 unregulated will. What sufferings we assume 
 are light compared with those which they have 
 already imposed and which they fight to impose 
 upon us. 
 
 We must spend vast sums of money. The 
 treasures of centuries must be poured out, and 
 this we would much prefer not to do, but rather 
 to spend our wealth in human help and advance- 
 ment. Yet this expenditure of billions is a trifle 
 of our wealth compared with the tribute and 
 plunder extorted under the rule of these im- 
 moral and inhuman tyrants. Let Belgium, 
 France and Poland tell us how much money 
 Germany would extort from us if she had her 
 will. And so let us learn the wisdom of spend- 
 ing any portion of the whole to protect the vast 
 
72 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 remainder. Half of all we have we had best 
 spend in resisting rather than to lose all in sub- 
 mitting; yes, all in resisting rather than any in 
 submitting. 
 
 In fighting this fight we must part from 
 friends who go from us perhaps never to return, 
 who give their lives to our defence. We need 
 not dwell on the agony that this inflicts on those 
 who love and revere their own. But parting from 
 our friends, though they never come again, will 
 be infinitely easier than if we should be compelled 
 to stand with them and beside them while they 
 are suffering beyond our aid the tortures which 
 would be inflicted upon them by pagan and in- 
 human tyrants, as done these three years wher- 
 ever Germany has had its will. If we must 
 part from friends, let it rather be while we are 
 defending them to our utmost than when stand- 
 ing beside them, we see barbarians wreak their 
 savage will and lust on those whom our manacled 
 hands cannot assist and our shackled limbs can- 
 not help. 
 
 We may live, many of us, scarred and de- 
 formed by wounds received in battle. But 
 such wounds are few and little compared 
 with those inflicted under the sway of tyrants 
 who know no mercy, and who, as yet, have 
 shown no pity. Better be marred defending 
 
Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 73 
 
 our liberty than scarred by the tortures of our 
 enslavers. 
 
 We may die while striving, and many no doubt 
 will as many already have done. But death on 
 the battle line, fighting for freedom and a right- 
 eous cause, is a thousand-fold better than living 
 a cowering slave under tyrants who have shown 
 only too clearly how valueless life is when they 
 have its direction and control. 
 
 But most of us will live; the vast majority of 
 our nation and the nations will survive. They 
 will survive victorious; they will rejoice over the 
 possession of treasures much richer than all that 
 they cost. And so long as the nations and the 
 generations live they will exult to think that we 
 preserved by heroism to a world which otherwise 
 would be worthless, a beneficent morality, a gra- 
 cious and tender humanity, and a priceless Chris- 
 tian faith and fraternity, maintained and sancti- 
 fied by our sacrifices and our valour. 
 
Ill 
 
 The Angels' Song, As They Said It 
 
 THE message of the angels to the shepherds 
 of Bethlehem, and to the whole world 
 through them, has been much exploited and little 
 studied, greatly praised and little understood. 
 From the general use of it and comment upon it, 
 one might think it was merely a declaration of 
 Peace versus War. Is there anything more in it 
 than a text for songs, hymns, praises, sermons on 
 peace? We might answer that there is less of 
 this than of several other declarations and impli- 
 cations and that most of its use along the peace 
 line is wholly unwarranted by its form, sub- 
 stance and purpose. Indeed, there are few 
 Scriptures which have been so much used and 
 so misused, so often quoted and misquoted, so 
 freely taught and so slightly studied. It might 
 properly have excited our suspicions long ago 
 that many, not Christians, have assumed to in- 
 terpret the whole of Christianity which they did 
 not profess, in terms of passive quiet which they 
 scarcely helped to secure ; and that we should be 
 told by such that we Christians utterly failed to 
 • 74 
 
The Angels' Song, "As They Said It 75 
 
 make good this first summary of Christianity, 
 ought to have led us to ask at least what it says 
 and what it means. There is very little in the 
 utterance, ("song" if you will), but what has 
 been read into it, and much in it which is never 
 considered. It surely is not primarily a peace 
 message in the sense in which it is commonly used 
 at Christmas and on other occasions. The proof 
 of this is found in the simplest examination and 
 study of this passage of history and Scripture. 
 
 First of all, the Bible nowhere calls it a song, 
 an Angels' song, or even says that the angels sang. 
 The first part of the message is delivered to the 
 shepherds by one angel. The second part by "a 
 multitude of the Heavenly host." Of the single 
 angel it is said, "And the angel said unto them" ; 
 and of the Heavenly multitude it is recorded that 
 they appeared "praising God and saying/' It 
 may be alleged that an angel's voice is so musical 
 that its sayings would be music and equivalent 
 in tones to song. Possibly. Or that when a 
 multitude of angels spoke a single message in 
 unison they might have sung it. But not neces- 
 sarily. It is as easy to speak in unison as to 
 sing thus. So let us start to interpret by saying 
 that it is germane to a careful inquiry as to what 
 happened that night to note and record that 
 there is no story of an angel's song or of the 
 
76 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 angels' song or any song. This may not seem 
 very important as a correction of an unauthor- 
 ised interpretation, but we observe that this read- 
 ing into the message what is not there, is not a 
 matter of this one particular any more than it is 
 of all the details of this truly wonderful message. 
 It is just as true that it is not a message, pri- 
 marily, of peace any more than it is a message of 
 other great revelations which are far more impor- 
 tant to those who first heard it and to us. Let 
 us examine it solely to find out what it said and 
 what it revealed. 
 
 With the shepherds keeping watch "over their 
 flocks by night/' it is said: "The angel of the 
 Lord came upon them, and the glory of the 
 Lord shone round about them, and they were sore 
 afraid." This angel evidently came from an 
 upper sphere as one settling down from above 
 into the midst of their company. He was "the 
 angel," the messenger "of the Lord." Evidently 
 they so regarded him, and as bearing supernatu- 
 ral character. And "they were sore afraid." The 
 glory of the Lord, the belief that God the Lord 
 was represented by this Angel 3 made them very 
 much afraid. Why? Why should the presence 
 of God or of a messenger of God cause men to 
 be very much afraid? Here is the secret of the 
 messenger and of the message. 
 
The Angels' Song, As They Said It 77 
 
 Men, practically all men, who should rejoice in 
 the manifestation and enjoy the presence of God, 
 are afraid of God and the presence of God, just 
 as Adam and Eve were said to have been when 
 sinning. Adam said, "I was afraid." This fear 
 is a revelation of the purpose and occasion 
 of Christ's coming, that He might take it 
 away. 
 
 So the very first word of the Angel, and of the 
 Angelic Message, was "Fear Not/' "The Angel 
 said unto them, 'Fear Not.' ' This is a message 
 through these representatives to the whole race 
 of men. And the wonder is that when people 
 who even reject Christ and the claims of Christ 
 are attempting to tell dogmatically what this 
 early message of Christianity means, they have 
 not seen that its first word is "Fear Not." This 
 is all the more evidence of a lack of keen atten- 
 tion on their part because many say "there is 
 nothing in God to fear." Why then, in their 
 superficial reading, did they not snatch at this 
 angelic exhortation? Perhaps, because the angel 
 then at once told the shepherds the reason why 
 they should dismiss their fears and why the whole 
 world should dismiss its fear of being in the 
 presence of God. 
 
 The Angel follows his urgent word of cheer, 
 "Fear Not," by giving them the reason why they 
 
78 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 should not fear. What is that reason? He says, 
 "For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great 
 joy which shall be to all people." Here is a 
 universal message, first to the shepherds and then 
 to all people, the whole race, all mankind. "Good 
 tidings," "News of great joy," such as to cause 
 a universal joy, the very opposite of fear. And 
 what are these tidings ? What is the news which 
 shall remove from men a dread and fear of the 
 presence and the glory of God and his messen- 
 gers? Hear the answer: "For unto you," says 
 the Angel, "is born this day in the city of David, 
 a Saviour which is Christ the Lord." 
 
 We read nothing into this news to make it tell 
 us of a universal blessing to drive away the fears 
 and bring great joy to the whole world, when we 
 say that it plainly declares : 
 
 1st. A birth, we call it an "Incarnation," that 
 day taking place in Bethlehem, the city of pro- 
 phecy. 
 
 2nd. "Of a Saviour." This great word by 
 implication affirms that the race needs a Saviour 
 to save it. And when we ask why, the answer 
 must be that the race is an unsaved race, a lost 
 race, a wasted and wandering race. The shep- 
 herds could not misunderstand. Neither can any- 
 body who knows human history. If only a 
 Saviour to save from fear, it is a mighty salvation 
 
The Angels' Song, As They Said It 79 
 
 which takes away the causes of fear, as the only- 
 way of removing fears. 
 
 3rd. And this Saviour "is Christ the Lord," 
 Christ the Anointed One; the Messiah whom 
 these shepherds and their nation had heard of 
 and longed for through ages of time. And this 
 new born one who is Saviour and Christ and 
 Messiah is "the Lord." This is a word of ex- 
 altation and mastery, indicating capacity, su- 
 periority and honor. 
 
 So far the message is of the first great herald 
 angel. God is made manifest in the flesh, the 
 Saviour, the Deliverer, the Chosen Christ of 
 God, the Lord and Master. Such is the actual 
 message of the individual angel's "Song," which 
 is not a song. 
 
 Then, that no mark of assurance may be lack- 
 ing from the messenger angel and to these repre- 
 sentatives of the common human race, he tells 
 them in detail how and where they shall find this 
 great One, born this day, born to be a Saviour. 
 In these words the individual angel has given 
 the main part of the heaven-sent disclosure. 
 
 "And suddenly there appeared with the Angel 
 a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God 
 and saying — " Evidently they were enforcing his 
 glad tidings. All being from God, all accredited 
 messengers, all being of the Heavenly Hosts, 
 
80 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 they appeared to add assurance and to cheer 
 with gladness the shepherds who represented all 
 people, that is, all mankind. It is not said that 
 they sang. It is immaterial whether they did or 
 did not. But what did they say, as they praised 
 God? 
 
 May we pause to note that praise — the uplift 
 of heart and voice to God — was their attitude and 
 act? Let those who prate of "Peace on Earth," 
 etc., bear in mind that praise to God for the 
 Saviour incarnate is the first thing in the angelic 
 heart after knowing that truth. This is the only 
 cause of praise mentioned here. 
 
 And what did the angels say? For what they 
 said is of much consequence. A misquotation of 
 it is the stock of those who discourse of the 
 "Angels' song of Peace." 
 
 First of all, they said, "Glory to God in the 
 highest." Here is a chance for intelligent ex- 
 planation, and for explanation not likely to be 
 of doubtful meaning. This is an ascription on 
 their part of the highest, most exalted place and 
 supremacy to God. In the highest place, holding 
 the highest rank, supreme over all, they declare 
 God to be. Among the mighty and glorious He 
 is mightiest and most glorious. Their word is as. 
 declarative as that of the first angel, and as im- 
 portant. God is most glorious of beings and to 
 
The Angels 3 Song, As They Said It 81 
 
 be more and especially glorified because of the 
 Saviour born, sent, and saving. Let those who 
 crave peace remember that the hope of it comes 
 when God is recognised, enthroned, obeyed, 
 praised and glorified by man, and not until then. 
 Exalt God to His highest throne, greatest among 
 the great and recognise His glory in giving a 
 Saviour, as beyond all other reasons the supreme 
 cause of adoration of Him. So they command. 
 
 On sweeps the angelic exhortation "to all peo- 
 ple." "And on earth" (as He is glorified among 
 all the powers of heaven and earth here repre- 
 sented) "Peace." The form of speech here is 
 made into English with a very slight variation, 
 in several ways. 
 
 "Peace among men in whom He (God) is well 
 pleased." "Peace among men of good pleasure." 
 "Peace, good pleasure among men." 
 
 Evidently peace is the prominent idea at this 
 point to and among men. Is it particular men? 
 Men of a certain character, quality, relationship 
 to God? Evidently and surely. Say it is "among 
 men in whom He is well pleased." Their peace 
 is conditional on the fact that God is pleased with 
 them. What kind of men are they in whom God 
 has pleasure? Who pleases Him so that He 
 favours them? Men of good pleasure? Men who 
 find their pleasure in Goodness, men whose will is 
 
82 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 good, who agree with God and who by righteous- 
 ness will go among men and so make social peace. 
 
 Is there in this whole message any statement, 
 announcement, declaration to suggest that 
 "Peace," as that term has been used in regard 
 to the "Angels' Song," is ever coming to men 
 who refuse the Saviour, who reject the Messiah, 
 who do not recognise the supremacy of God, who 
 do not submit to Him and glorify His suprem- 
 acy? Is there a sign or suggestion that Christ 
 came into the world to make peace among the 
 nations of men who are willingly Godless; wil- 
 fully sinful; whose wills are not to please God 
 or to scatter among men the fruits of a generous 
 and holy life? I see no such crude and irrational 
 meaning. Yet that is the commonly alleged 
 meaning, wholly unwarranted as it is unan- 
 nounced. 
 
 Peace in this world in the individual, the small 
 neighbourhood, and the larger associated bodies 
 of men, is a product of Divine provision ac- 
 cepted, and human character adjusted to that 
 provision, so pleasing God and rendering right- 
 eousness, peace and joy possible among men. It 
 comes and is made through faith in God, in the 
 Incarnation, in Jesus Christ the Lord. 
 
 When men accept the Angels' announcement, 
 take hold on the grace of God, receive, seek, wor- 
 
The Angels' Song, 'As They Said It 83 
 
 ship Christ, grasp His universal redemption ; ex- 
 alt His Holy Name ; glorify Him, gain His good 
 will by love and obedience, and the good will of 
 men by love and service, then they find peace in 
 finding its sources, conditions and causes. And 
 not till then. 
 
 Peace to men who will the will of God is a 
 great result of an adequate cause, and it comes to 
 those who receive Christ as here disclosed, who 
 exalt and obey God as He is here revealed. 
 
IV 
 
 The Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance 
 to Evil 
 
 NUMBERS of believers in Christ declare 
 their conviction that He taught the doctrine 
 of non-resistance and that those who follow and 
 obey Him cannot, under any circumstances, fight 
 even in self-defence. To establish their position 
 they quote principally the passage at the end of 
 Matthew V. 38-42, the word most often cited 
 being: "But whosoever smiteth thee on the right 
 cheek turn him the other also." The eminent 
 Russian, Tolstoi, seems to have founded his 
 theory of Christian non-resistance and opposi- 
 tion to war mostly on this passage. 
 
 Many who cannot quite make up their minds 
 that it is duty to passively endure and never to 
 resist the evil aggressions of all assailants do, 
 nevertheless, take up arms against wicked and 
 malicious foes while avowing their theoretical 
 faith in the opposite policy. These seem to think 
 that Christ's teaching is not really practical. So 
 they cut loose from it under stress, resolved later 
 
 84 
 
Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 85 
 
 to return to their allegiance after practising con- 
 trary to it for a season. This course seems to 
 us very reprehensible. If one believes in Christ 
 he cannot lay off for a time and then resume and 
 take on the obligations of Christian allegiance. 
 This would be, on his part, irrational as well as 
 treasonable. If Christ's teaching is not for life 
 as life, if it is "a thing of shreds and patches," 
 then it is not worthy to command human faith or 
 respect. 
 
 The wonder is that our Lord has been so mis- 
 interpreted that men quote Him as against all 
 defensive strife, both in precept or example. Let 
 us examine fairly His words and seek His evi- 
 dent meaning. And first this passage in Mat- 
 thew:. 
 
 It is fair to premise that this language is not 
 wholly literal as is the most rigid statement of a 
 fact ; that it is, in part, at least, figurative or pic- 
 turesque. This premise asks no concession ex- 
 cept the use of plain common sense. Language 
 is not degraded, not distorted or rendered obscure 
 when used figuratively. It is rather elevated and 
 dignified. Very much of our language, common 
 and literary, is not in the use of the first and 
 primary meaning of the words but in a picture 
 meaning. Thousands of examples of this are 
 near at hand and daily on our lips. 
 
86 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 That we may get Matthew V. 38-42 in its plain 
 sense, we have to take up the whole passage of 
 which it is a part. In verse 29, in the part relat- 
 ing to adultery, it is said, "If thy right eye cause 
 thee to stumble pluck it out and cast it from thee, 
 etc." A similar suggestion or direction follows 
 immediately about "thy right hand" ("cut it off, 
 etc."). No one can for a moment suppose that 
 this is a literal direction; that in a treatment of 
 lustful passion, the right eye is to be plucked out 
 and cast away; and so of the hand. Both are 
 plainly figurative expressions of the doctrine of 
 self-denial and self-control. Literally construed 
 they are absurd; figuratively used they are in- 
 tense and impressive instructions. I think also 
 that the next passage, about oaths, must be as- 
 sumed to contain figurative commandment as 
 well as literal. Whether legal and judicial oaths 
 are forbidden, I will not argue, though I believe 
 not. But let this be one way or the other; verse 
 37 says, "But let your yea be yea and your nay 
 nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh 
 of evil." Unexplained, to the literalist, this 
 means that anything spoken more or besides 
 "yea, yea — nay, nay, cometh of evil." This is 
 absurd. 
 
 There is a world of conversation which is nei- 
 ther "yea" nor "nay," which does not "come of 
 
Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 87 
 
 evil." When I deny or affirm it is not of evil 
 that I say more than nay and yea. However, 
 the meaning is not at all obscure. A simple 
 affirmative or negative is the proper mode of 
 assent or denial rather than expletives and 
 oaths. And a disposition to multiply assevera- 
 tions arises from evil rather than good. They 
 are unnecessary to a truthful man and superflu- 
 ous, and the harm of such oaths is obvious to 
 honest thought. Here then is a second instance 
 of figurative language in this paragraph of 
 Christ's present teaching. 
 
 And now we read in verse 28, "Ye have heard 
 that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
 a tooth, etc." It was also said "hand for hand, 
 foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for 
 wound, stripe for stripe" (Exodus 21. 24-25). 
 Did Christ intend to state what He stated as 
 being all that He recognised and allowed of the 
 old law? Were the other two thirds of this 
 original direction to be left unrepealed by Him 
 and was He to repeal these two particulars 
 alone? Evidently not so. The meaning origi- 
 nally in Exodus was to thus state the principle 
 of equity and responsibility in graphic terms. 
 Because nothing is said about ears or noses or 
 toes or legs or arms. Evidently liter alness would 
 destroy the whole purport of the ordinance and 
 
88 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 confine it to a few bodily members and instances. 
 No rational mind can think this. 
 
 So, then, presumably what our Lord is about 
 to utter for which this reference paves the way, 
 is something which shall supersede a crude rule 
 of equivalents and reveal the spirit of equity and 
 social justice. He continues, "But I say unto 
 you that ye resist not evil — but whosoever 
 smiteth thee on the right cheek turn to him the 
 other also." Does Christ here teach that we must 
 not resist evil? What then are we to do when 
 we resist not evil? Do we passively agree to it, 
 whatever its form? No. "Evil" is a word of 
 breadth which includes injurious and hurtful 
 agents and agencies whether physical or moral. 
 Cold is an evil to a delicate body, so is sickness 
 of any sort; so fire breaking out or flood; or an 
 incursion of destructive insects or animals. 
 Whatever works visible harm, injury and suffer- 
 ing is evil, as vice, revenge, ignorance, prejudice. 
 Certainly He would never teach us to offer no 
 resistance, opposition or correction to any form 
 of evil. Then surely we must explain His word 
 as not literal but figurative, giving, in picture, a 
 statement of a principle of right conduct. So 
 it must be explained. So of intellectual, social, 
 moral and spiritual evil. Thus instructed, we 
 resume : 
 
Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 89 
 
 "But whosoever shall smite thee on the right 
 cheek turn to him the other also." Here is one 
 kind of evil, if literal, a very narrow form. What 
 is it, if merely literal, as we are asked to take it? 
 Why, this — that if any man smite thee (you) on 
 the right cheek you turn to him the other (the 
 left cheek) also. Just this and no more, if 
 literal. But suppose I am struck on my left 
 cheek, what shall I do? Or on my eye, or nose 
 or chin or anywhere else on my body? Then 
 the liter alist must say, "I have no word of direc- 
 tion from Christ, what course I shall take." This 
 is being literal but ridiculous. The Great 
 Teacher's utterances are belittled immeasurably 
 by such silly interpretations. It is foolish and 
 absurd. Because literalness reduces it to ab- 
 surdity, our reverence for Christ leads us, as in 
 the four preceding instances (in v. 29, 30, 37, 
 38 ) , to inquire as to its real meaning. At once 
 it becomes plain. The slap on the right or left 
 cheek is the insult offered by an angry man who 
 wishes to show disesteem and provoke a quarrel. 
 In days of knighthood such a flick of hand or 
 glove was an indignity which called for a chal- 
 lenge and mortal combat. Our Lord virtually 
 says: Receive such indignity not as one who has 
 no further resources of patience, but as one who 
 could stand even more and yet keep his fullest 
 
90 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 self-control. Better so, to show the calmness of 
 your spirit and your self-mastery, than to engage 
 in useless and passionate fighting over a slight 
 provocation. This makes sense of the passage 
 and honors the Teacher. The literal interpreta- 
 tion is nonsense and useless. 
 
 Proceeding to the next direction the same 
 principle of interpretation gives the only sensible 
 meaning to the text: "If any man will go to law 
 with thee ("sue thee at the law") and take away 
 thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." Shall we 
 be told that this forbids all legal defence and de- 
 mands surrender of legal rights to property 
 rather than contest and defence? Not so. Stated 
 literally what does it say? (Compare Matthew 
 and Luke.) "If any man will sue thee at the 
 law and take away thy undershirt, let him have 
 thine overshirt also" (the order of garments be- 
 ing reversed in Luke). Is this done ever any- 
 where? No. But explain it and wisdom at once 
 appears. Here is a litigious contestant over a 
 mere trifle who wills to sue you. There are such : 
 Courts and society abound in them. Then and 
 now, Courts of law are not certainly Courts of 
 Justice. The whole matter in controversy is 
 trifling. Better yield a trifle than to enter upon 
 uncertain, tedious and endless litigation. We 
 have known wise men in business, who in large 
 
Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 91 
 
 matters never went to law, because of its injus- 
 tices and uncertainties. They were carrying out 
 the wisdom of Christ's teachings. The absolute 
 literal sense is evidently useless for our times 
 or any time. The true sense is full of practical 
 wisdom. 
 
 The next direction is likewise valuable but use- 
 less if literally interpreted. "If any man compel 
 thee to go with him a mile, go with him twain." 
 Nothing of this sort ever occurs in our modern 
 life. So then, if literal, it would now be mean- 
 ingless to us. But at that time, perhaps now in 
 distant lands, as you worked in your little field, 
 some nabob with his train might come past and 
 demand that you go a mile with them. To re- 
 fuse, though it were resisting petty tyranny, 
 would be disastrous, might cost you great loss. 
 On the other hand your affairs would not suffer 
 if you quietly and kindly went, if you also should 
 say, "I will freely go another mile for your con- 
 venience/ ' it might be the best kind of policy; 
 placating rather than exasperating. A good 
 principle under such circumstances then and 
 there, now and everywhere. 
 
 Following: "Give to him that asketh thee, and 
 from him that would borrow of thee turn not 
 thou away," is easily explicable and valuable in 
 the light of the preceding principles of interpre- 
 
92 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 tation. It is not a command to give to anyone 
 and everyone anything and everything he asks, 
 as when your child asks for poison or a razor or 
 a gun — it commands and directs a generous and 
 helpful spirit. And when one wants to borrow, 
 which implies a purpose to return the thing bor- 
 rowed, he being now in necessity, do not disre- 
 gard his need by turning away, unf eeling and un- 
 heeding, but consider his case as it deserves and 
 help him if he deserves it. 
 
 And now completing the passage of Christ's 
 teaching, as if to demonstrate the common sense 
 and truth of this interpretation of divine wisdom, 
 we have the final word. He notes, "It has been 
 said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy." 
 Here Jesus says, "Love your enemies and pray 
 for them that persecute you." Is this literal or 
 figurative? Plainly literal. It could not rise to 
 a nobler sense or command a higher duty than 
 what it plainly teaches. It is plain, practical, 
 right, noble and Godlike. Therefore it needs no 
 explanation, only obedience. But love to an 
 enemy does not permit him to work injury on 
 himself, on you, or on another, if you can prevent 
 it. There is no expression of love in letting a 
 criminal work his will. It is every way loving to 
 stop him. It shows good will to him and every- 
 body involved. 
 
Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 93 
 
 Thus reading and interpreting these messages 
 in the teachings of Christ, in their own light and 
 in harmony with the light of reason and all reve- 
 lation, we find nothing whatever to sustain the 
 pacifist's contention that Christ here taught the 
 doctrine of non-resistance and pacifism, as is 
 often alleged. 
 
 Again it has been said that Christ declared, "I 
 came not to send peace but a sword,' ' and that 
 this proves that he intended to generate and di- 
 rect war. 
 
 This passage (Matthew X. 34) is so inter- 
 preted but not reasonably. "Think not that I am 
 come to send peace on earth. I came not to send 
 peace but a sword. For I came to set a man 
 at variance against his father and the daughter 
 against her mother. . . . And a man's foes shall 
 be those of his own household." 
 
 No one supposes that Christ came into this 
 world to generate hostility between members of 
 a family. Not as a desirable end do these enmi- 
 ties come from His teaching; nor can the sword 
 be used literally here as a weapon and symbol 
 of war. Variance in families does not take the 
 form of pitched battles with weapons of war. Is 
 it not plain that Christ here declares that His 
 doctrine, so pacifying and loving, the greatest 
 guide for family and social harmony, will be so 
 
94 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 resisted by the wicked that they will fiercely and 
 cruelly oppose it when embraced by their inti- 
 mates and kindred? Not that such is the purpose 
 of God but inseparable from the evil hearts of 
 men. He does not seek nor willingly generate 
 war, but aggressive goodness brings it on through 
 the evil minds of those who refuse the goodness, 
 and He rather teaches not non-resistance but 
 to withstand them and persist in obedience to 
 Him. 
 
 It would seem on first reading that the words 
 of Jesus in answer to Pilate — John 18. 36 — are 
 against ever fighting. "My Kingdom is not of 
 this world; if my Kingdom were of this world, 
 then would my servants fight that I should not 
 be delivered to the Jews ; but now is my Kingdom 
 not from hence." The inference hastily drawn 
 h that because we are the citizens of the Kingdom 
 of which Christ is King, therefore we will not 
 fight. But this inference is much too broad to 
 be reasonable. This error in interpretation is 
 drawn from several misunderstandings: 
 
 1. Though Christ's Kingdom is not of this 
 world, each of us is, as He was not, a part of a 
 Kingdom in this world, to which we owe numer- 
 ous duties. Therefore what was most incumbent 
 upon Him may not be so upon us, e. g., to vote, to 
 hold office, to act as jurors. 
 
Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 95 
 
 2. We assume that we are to do exactly what 
 Christ did in this world. This is an inference 
 from undue humanising of Christ in our estimate 
 of Him, as if He were imitable in all respects. 
 The truth is, that He is in a class by Himself. 
 We can have likeness but never exact identity of 
 action. Nor do we wish to do so. In numerous 
 respects He did not do what we do and did what 
 we are under no obligation to do. For example, 
 He entered upon His public work at thirty years 
 of age. This is not a rule or a duty for us. He 
 was then baptized in the Jordan. We cannot be 
 and need not be. He never married. Our duty 
 does not lie in celibacy. Of numerous occupa- 
 tions of our time in which we engage, he followed 
 none. He was not an artist, or an engineer, or a 
 merchant, etc. He died on a cross. We do not, 
 need not. All these are inimitable doings of our 
 Lord. 
 
 Besides, latterly and erroneously, His words 
 "My Kingdom," "The Kingdom of Heaven," 
 "of God," are asserted to mean only and always 
 a social state and relation in this world. This is 
 an excess of some modern sociologists ; it is not 
 New Testament teaching. The Lord's Prayer 
 teaches us concerning the Kingdom of the Holy 
 God in heaven which we pray may "come on 
 earth as it is in heaven"; and also of an inward 
 
96 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 subjective psychological condition which corre- 
 sponding to the objective Kingdom is described 
 as the Kingdom of God which is not meat and 
 drink but "Righteousness (in the Holy Spirit), 
 Peace (in the Holy Spirit) and Joy in the Holy 
 Spirit." When Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not 
 of this world," in which sense did he use "King- 
 dom"? And who can deny that pursuant to His 
 purposes, his ends were to be attained by being 
 delivered to the Jews and not by fighting carnally 
 with the ecclesiastical Jewish powers on the part 
 of his servants ; or against the Roman powers by 
 "twelve legions of angels"? 
 
 The particular circumstances which Christ here 
 outlines seem to us as very far away from either 
 a command or an example that His servants 
 should be non-resistant in kingdoms which are 
 in this world and must be practically governed. 
 
 Yet another word spoken (Luke 22. 38) as a 
 command by Him to His apostles needs to be 
 listened to that we may better understand our 
 duty. Their equipment was to be a purse, a 
 wallet, "and he that hath none let him sell his 
 garment and buy a sword." This would seem 
 to be an explicit direction worth examining. 
 "And they said, Lord, behold here are two 
 swords. And He said unto them, It is enough." 
 Doubtless this means that two swords were 
 
Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 97 
 
 enough, as part of their equipment — two swords 
 for eleven men. Have not this command and 
 comment a clear meaning, and do they not cast 
 light on our inquiry? 
 
 Why did He direct to procure any sword? 
 Why was a sword so necessary that one should 
 sell his garment, perchance a cloak, and with the 
 proceeds buy a sword? And why were two 
 swords among eleven men enough? 
 
 The answer would seem to be that the actual 
 sword was a means of defence, not for enforcing 
 the gospel but for protecting the apostles, as did 
 the wallet and purse. The fewness of the swords 
 indicates the improbability of their being used 
 for aggression. Perchance the swords possessed, 
 and kept sheathed, indicated at once their owners' 
 right and ability to use them; but more, their 
 self-control, patience and purpose to set up a 
 government by teaching rather than by force. 
 For the spread of the gospel at the point of the 
 sword is not conducive to its appropriate recep- 
 tion and influence on men. The order, the neces- 
 sity, the adequacy of two swords for eleven men 
 means something. It certainly does not mean 
 passive non-resistance, however explained. 
 
 Thus examining fairly all that our Lord said 
 which is ever quoted as relating to fighting, it 
 seems to us that it cannot be truly alleged to 
 
98 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 directly deal with the subject of war at all. These 
 texts are part of the general teachings of Jesus 
 on spirit and duty. They answer no good pur- 
 pose whatever if distorted into cowardice, paci- 
 fism, non-resistance and acquiescence in the ag- 
 gressions of wicked men in human society. For 
 Jesus Christ teaches that God governs the world 
 with law, righteousness and justice; with disci- 
 pline, reward and penalty, and that He lays 
 upon men the duty of maintaining, teaching and 
 executing these essentials of His world order. 
 
 Through men, He teaches, by men, He warns, 
 with men as His agents, He disciplines, chastens 
 and corrects. If good men should allow evil 
 men to practise wickedness unpunished, this 
 course would neither imitate God nor harmonise 
 with His administration. If wickedness assails, 
 righteousness defends and God takes the side of 
 righteousness. 
 
 Had Christ taught non-resistance to evil, He 
 would have overthrown rather than established 
 the Kingdom of God. 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 
 
 IN our civic allegiance at this time, and in every 
 time and place, we are before everything else 
 Americans and patriots, and the bond of our 
 Americanism and patriotism is being strength- 
 ened by our common perils, of which we are be- 
 ginning to be aware. 
 
 During the easy-going years of the near past, 
 theorists have arisen, affirming that it is unmanly 
 and unwise to be afraid, and we have been told 
 how useless are the occasions, how hurtful are the 
 consequences of fear. But he who does not know 
 enough to fear when there is real danger, to be 
 defensively aware of it, to take heed and guard 
 against it, is not wise for this life or for the next. 
 So at this time when I try to awaken in your 
 minds a sense of the perilous conditions which 
 menace us and of the disasters that may follow 
 our failure to take warning, it is not to weaken 
 us through fear but to strengthen us through 
 prudence ; for while we might recklessly pass on 
 where danger is impending, it is the part of 
 
 99 
 
100 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 prudent and courageous souls to keep watch and 
 guard. 
 
 On this occasion, I seek to convince you gen- 
 erally, of "The Perils of a Premature Peace," in 
 the midst of a colossal war; specifically, of the 
 numerous perils which are concentrated in that 
 one greatest peril of the times. We are chal- 
 lenged and threatened by the German purpose 
 to subjugate and dominate the world. The Cen- 
 tral powers, under Prussian and German leader- 
 ship, long ago openly resolved to conquer, to 
 enslave, and to despoil the world; to bring it by 
 conquest under their absolute control, to reduce 
 under their will all men, nations and races ; and 
 to seize of what we have, whatever they choose, 
 without our consent. So saying (and without 
 fear of contradiction, for I am quoting their 
 statements openly made), I would reveal the 
 purpose and spirit of that mighty and threaten- 
 ing force, which to secure this supremacy, has 
 for three years and more convulsed the world 
 with an unprecedented assault upon all human 
 rights. 
 
 The present ruler of Germany in the year 
 1892, at a conference at the Palace at Potsdam, 
 with five hundred chosen men of that great realm, 
 distributed to them a pamphlet beginning with 
 these words: "The Pan-German Empire: From 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 101 
 
 Hamburg on the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. 
 Our immediate goal, 250,000,000 of people. Our 
 ultimate goal, the Germanisation of all the 
 world." This must be by force and conquest. It 
 is not to be supposed that these millions desire 
 or consent to be subjugated and enslaved by Ger- 
 many's ambition and power. It is only possible 
 through war and invasion. So this design of 
 bloody war to subvert the world is not even 
 veiled. It is distinctly avowed. What he says 
 of his heroes fully proves this to be his method. 
 This is what is meant by "Pan-Germanism," a 
 favourite term with them. It does not mean that 
 they were there in the interest of all Germany, 
 but in the interest of making all the world Ger- 
 man — of Germanising the whole world. He 
 further said: "From childhood, I have been un- 
 der the influence of five men: Alexander the 
 Great, Julius Csesar, Theodoric the Second, 
 Frederick the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 Each of these men dreamed a dream of world 
 empire. They failed. I am dreaming a dream 
 of the German world-empire, and my mailed fist 
 shall succeed." 
 
 Then and there in Potsdam, he launched the 
 enterprise with the consent and approbation of 
 that co-operating assembly, and this but a short 
 time after he became Kaiser. 
 
102 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 The Crown Prince of Germany, the successor, 
 as he assumes, by Divine right, of the present 
 Kaiser, said in the winter of 1913-14, that either 
 before he became Kaiser, or after, there would 
 be war, as he said, "for the fun of the thing," and 
 to the American to whom he said this, (as quoted 
 by Ambassador Gerard,) he declared: "The plan 
 is to attack and conquer France, then England, 
 and after that the United States of America; 
 Russia was also to be conquered, and then Ger- 
 many would be master of the world." May I 
 remark in passing that three years have passed 
 and he has not yet captured Verdun, from which 
 we may entertain the hope that his plan is 
 doomed to failure. 
 
 If the conceited aspirations of these two 
 strange and yet very influential characters, father 
 and son, had been theirs alone, no one would have 
 feared. But not only did the five hundred men 
 in Potsdam agree to the Kaiser's proposal, the 
 prof oundest thinkers and most influential citizens 
 of Germany have also indorsed what he then 
 proposed. Even before his time they had in- 
 tended it and now they assisted him to make it 
 more probable. 
 
 Among these supporters was Heinrich von 
 Treitschke, the greatest of German political 
 philosophers in our time, who, born in 1834, began 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 103 
 
 his public work in 1859 by lecturing at the Leip- 
 zig University, on the State. From that he went 
 to other universities, to Kiel, Freiburg, Heidel- 
 berg, and at length to Berlin, and through all 
 his life until 1895, he was the exponent of the 
 Pan-German idea which the Kaiser had un- 
 folded in 1892, after Von Treitschke had urged it 
 long before. He was the friend of the Kaiser and 
 his written history is a glorification of the house 
 of Hohenzollern ; he was intimate with Bismarck, 
 he was devoted to Germany and the Prussian 
 policy. He taught that power is the first prin- 
 ciple of the State, that the individual had no 
 rights apart from those allowed by the State, 
 and that the State, the German State, could not 
 do an immoral thing. He held that might was 
 the only right, so that if there is power to do a 
 thing and a power to will, then the State has the 
 right to do whatever it has the might and the will 
 to do. 
 
 Devoted as he was to this conception of the 
 State, he was equally sure that Germany is the 
 greatest State in the world and of right ought 
 to dominate all other States. He taught that 
 the Hohenzollerns should dominate Prussia, for 
 the good of Prussia, that Prussia should domi- 
 nate Germany for the good of Germany, and 
 that Germany should dominate the world for 
 
104 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 the good of the world. He expressed his intense 
 contempt and hostility for most States other 
 than Germany. He was the most popular pro- 
 fessor in the universities and on the platforms of 
 any in Germany from 1866 to 1895, training gen- 
 erations of students, and the recognised leader of 
 the political life of that great empire. 
 
 Von Treitschke held that Germany should 
 dominate the world through its army, and so 
 doing, argued for the leading idea of the policy 
 of Frederick the Great in the second half of the 
 eighteenth century; that the army should be one 
 with the State and the State should be one with 
 the army, and that whatever the State wished 
 to do, it should do through the army by war. 
 Therefore, there could be no human fraternity 
 excepting inside the limits of the German Em- 
 pire, and all States outside were natural and 
 rather contemptible enemies. 
 
 In order that the army might work its will 
 on all other States than the German State, Von 
 Treitschke held that its activity should be with- 
 out any limits of morality or any restraints of 
 humanity; that the army's work should be ruth- 
 less ; that they should slaughter, torture, rob and 
 starve as they pleased, provided it was necessary 
 for the power of the German State, and that 
 spying and lying were privileges of the State 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 105 
 
 which everybody should understand, were to be 
 used without explanation or apology. He fur- 
 ther affirmed that no religion, no system of 
 morals, no international law, no treaty, should 
 stand between the will of the State, expressed in 
 the army by force and power, and their desires 
 and designs. Nowhere in all the seventeen 
 volumes of his published works did he say one 
 word against war. He praised it rather as be- 
 ing desirable and necessary, and as indicating 
 the virility of the State. To seek to put an end 
 to war was immoral and unwise. As he with 
 extraordinary energy and unequalled popularity 
 lectured and taught for thirty-five years, genera- 
 tions of university men and military men ac- 
 cepted his principles and passed them on. They 
 taught the students in the universities, and ap- 
 pealed directly to the people. The students of 
 Von Treitschke are now the university Profes- 
 sors of History throughout Germany. 
 
 Among those accepting and teaching these 
 theories is Otto Richard Tannenberg, who in 
 1911, at Leipzig, published a volume extensively 
 influential — "The Greater Germany, the Work 
 of the Twentieth Century." In this volume the 
 author laid out a complete plan for the mastery 
 of the whole world by the German Empire. He 
 told what they should do and how to conquer 
 
106 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 and control central and western Europe. He 
 openly held, as have many other German authors, 
 that the neutral states of western Europe, were 
 to be used as buffer states in the great world war 
 that was coming; they would not, because they 
 were little, dare to refuse Germany all the pro- 
 visions that they could raise or smuggle in. They 
 would, being neutral, bar the passage into Ger- 
 many of hostile armies. At any moment Ger- 
 many could take Holland, Denmark, Sweden 
 and Norway. It was better to have them neutral 
 for the service they would render ; but only for a 
 time, because ultimately they were all to be ab- 
 sorbed into the German Empire. 
 
 He pointed out how Belgium, northern 
 France, then all western France should come 
 under German dominion; sketched the plan by 
 which Russian Poland should be made German, 
 and the western part of Russia should be Ger- 
 manised. He saw Austria-Hungary as prac- 
 tically a vassal of the German Empire, and how 
 by subjugating the Balkans and Turkey, the 
 Pan-German plan from Hamburg to Bagdad, 
 from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, could 
 be worked out; thus along the line of the least 
 resistance how to gain the control of the East. 
 
 He described how they would by that route 
 go to India and gain control of it, and entering 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 107 
 
 China, acquire dominant influence there. He 
 laid his plans for the absorption of the whole 
 of Africa, all the colonies of all States to be 
 taken over by Germany. 
 
 After this, Tannenberg by maps and details, 
 pictured and indicated how South America was 
 to be Germanised; and the procedure which, 
 carried on with determination and duplicity, 
 should bring all of the South American States 
 under German control. Going on from that, 
 flouting the Monroe Doctrine and so challenging 
 the United States, they would at length possess 
 themselves of North America. Having mean- 
 while overpowered England and France, they 
 would be in control of the whole world. This 
 was the modest plan of Otto Richard Tannen- 
 berg, a scheme immensely popular from the time 
 his work was issued in 1911, and which greatly 
 stimulated the present war of conquest. 
 
 The same expectation marked the threat of 
 Admiral Von Goetzen, an intimate friend of the 
 Kaiser, who said to our Admiral Dewey before 
 Manila in 1898, that, "In about fifteen years, my 
 country will begin a great war. Some months 
 after we have done Our business in Europe, we 
 shall take New York and probably Washington, 
 and we shall keep them for a time. We do not 
 intend to take any territory from you, but only 
 
108 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 to put your country in its proper place with 
 reference to Germany. We shall extract one or 
 two billions of dollars from New York and other 
 towns." This, Admiral Von Goetzen had the 
 audacity to say to Admiral Dewey. If he had 
 possessed a little more sense, he might have re- 
 membered that another German Admiral, Von 
 Diederich, undertook to interfere with Admiral 
 Dewey at Manila and was told that if he really 
 wanted to fight, he could have the privilege then 
 and there. The American Admiral cleared his 
 ships for action, the British Admiral stood by 
 Dewey, and, of course, Diederich found that to 
 insult America was not safe. It may have 
 dawned upon him that to take the American 
 continent might be difficult. The date named by 
 Von Goetzen fifteen years in advance, was cor- 
 rect as to the beginning of the war. 
 
 Thus the spokesmen of the Kaiser announced 
 their policies and spread them among the people 
 until the entire German nation absorbed their 
 ideas and agreed to them, setting themselves to 
 the task of conquering and enslaving the world. 
 
 Their principal obstacle in the way of this plan 
 of world dominion was England, which they 
 hated with a deadly hatred. You cannot im- 
 agine, because you are gentlemen, in what lan- 
 guage the great philosophers of Germany de- 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 109 
 
 nounced England, the British nation (in speech 
 so insulting that if passed between men, it would 
 be an occasion for immediate conflict) ; so further- 
 ing and feeding their plan and purpose to excite 
 their people to such animosity that they would 
 express themselves in deeds of inhumanity and 
 in Hymns of Hate. At first they howled these 
 against England only. But high authority now 
 says they have transferred their direst hatred 
 from England to America. Why did they hate 
 England? Because they saw in the British Em- 
 pire the chief impediment to their unholy ambi- 
 tion. They doubted greatly if they could con- 
 quer with England opposing them. With their 
 conceit they boasted it, but in their hearts they 
 knew better. 
 
 And when America entered the war, they knew 
 positively that their game was up; that Britain 
 and America co-operating, the Central Powers 
 were doomed to defeat. This is why they hate. 
 Remember it and beat them to the dust. By 
 their ferocity, you can imagine how they hate. 
 In an interview of our ambassador with the 
 Kaiser, that ruler said to him: "America had 
 better look out after this war," and, "I shall 
 stand no nonsense from America after this war." 
 This threat the Kaiser made to the ambassador 
 of the United States. Would he have made the 
 
110 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 threat unless he meant to execute it? Our am- 
 bassador tells us that the Germans "absolutely 
 despised" the military and naval power of the 
 United States, and were "unanimous in saying 
 that as a military or naval factor the United 
 States might be considered as less than nothing," 
 offering no impediment to their designs and in- 
 tentions. South America also bears her share 
 of the contempt and antagonism of the German 
 Empire. 
 
 In South America, through which they were 
 to approach us, remember that there were four 
 hundred thousand Germans in southern Brazil 
 twenty years ago, and nearly a hundred thou- 
 sand in other South American States, and that 
 a propaganda has been carried on through all 
 the southern half of South America for many 
 years by Germany ; a propaganda of persons, of 
 literature, of newspapers, of subsidised schools, 
 to entice and betray those people into subjection 
 under the German yoke. Brazil has just awak- 
 ened to it and has lately struck back. It is the 
 evident intention and fixed purpose of Germany 
 to change the free governments of South 
 America into dependencies of the German Em- 
 pire. 
 
 Everywhere, in all the world, they have pushed 
 their subtle and treasonable propaganda. It was 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 111 
 
 in the interest of the German intention to bring 
 America under their control that Prince Henry 
 came here before he went to China. When he 
 went to China, as you know, to seize Kiau Chau, 
 the Kaiser ordered him and his troops, "Make 
 yourselves more frightful than the Huns under 
 Attila. See that for a thousand years no enemy 
 mentions the very name of ' Germany' without 
 shuddering." 
 
 Prince Henry, while our guest honoured and 
 feted by us, was an agent of the German propa- 
 ganda to organise the Germans of America, of 
 whom there were some fourteen or fifteen mil- 
 lions, so that, in the present crisis, for which they 
 were organised, they would stand with the Kaiser 
 instead of being loyal to the United States Gov- 
 ernment. The Prince left behind in Washington 
 as a token of German friendship, a statue of that 
 forerunner of the Kaiser, unsurpassed in du- 
 plicity, having a bad eminence in rascality as 
 well as in military power, Frederick the Great. 
 I wish we might change that statue into good 
 munitions and send it back to Germany. 
 
 And so concerning all parts of the world, the 
 Germans openly avowed and secretly wrought 
 out their purposes of conquest. Do not think 
 for one moment that I am saying anything which 
 is not amply warranted by their own statements. 
 
112 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 They openly made them, but nobody really be- 
 lieved them. They said: We are going to con- 
 quer the world, and we doubted that they would 
 even try. But, let me tell you that they have 
 done as they threatened; they have done much 
 and most of all they planned as far as they have 
 had the power to do it. 
 
 ii 
 
 What have they already accomplished? To 
 what extent have they succeeded? They in- 
 tended, as they announced, to gain control from 
 Hamburg and the North Sea to Bagdad and 
 the Persian Gulf. 
 
 They have already done most of this. They 
 have conquered Belgium ; they intended to. We 
 have the German Governor von Bissing's last 
 will and testament, concerning the politics of the 
 German Empire, in which he shows us that from 
 before the beginning of this war they fully in- 
 tended to take Belgium entirely to themselves 
 and to keep it. No matter how much lying they 
 have done, that was what they intended to do, 
 and up to now they have done it. 
 
 They have taken northern France. They have 
 nearly all (about eighty per cent.) of the iron 
 ore and the coal of France, both which are vital 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 113 
 
 to that nation's life. They have held it for three 
 years and a half, keeping it from France and 
 working it for themselves. We speak of France 
 being "bled white," but the bleeding of France 
 through the taking of her treasures of coal and 
 iron has been almost as destructive as the bleed- 
 ing of France in taking the blood of her men. 
 In 1870 they seized Alsace and Lorraine for the 
 same reason: to secure France's supply of min- 
 erals and metals so necessary to her industries 
 and her economic life. 
 
 They have taken Russian Poland. Before 
 that they had Austrian Poland and German 
 Poland. 
 
 They have Austria-Hungary completely in 
 their power, with German mastery in their army 
 and German control in their finances. They 
 have Bulgaria; they possess Serbia, which they 
 have brought down to the dust ; they hold Monte- 
 negro ; Rumania and Russia are at their mercy ; 
 they rule the whole Turkish empire with its 
 twenty millions of people, a hundred per cent, 
 of it. In a word, if you study the map as it now 
 is, you will find that so far as the first move which 
 the Kaiser declared that they intended to make, 
 they have gained (in Europe and Asia) most of 
 what they said they were determined to conquer 
 and possess. This is very startling when you 
 
114 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 consider farther facts in connection with their 
 present and projected conquests. 
 
 Had Britain delayed declaring war a few days 
 more, and had not the British fleet blocked their 
 way, Germany would have seized the Channel 
 ports, Dunkirk, Calais and Bordeaux, and held 
 all the west of France; would have commanded 
 the Channel; would have dominated all France; 
 would have invaded England ; would have swept 
 out of the North Sea ports and covered the 
 waters of the Atlantic Ocean with their fleets, 
 and would have been in the United States of 
 America, firmly established three years ago. The 
 reason why Germany did not do this was, not 
 because we were "too proud to fight," but be- 
 cause Belgium, France and Great Britain, for 
 love of liberty and humanity, fought for us and 
 died for us while we stood supinely by. But for 
 their defence of us, the heel of the German in- 
 vader would have been on the neck of North 
 America to-day, and no human power, other than 
 of those who so stood fast and fought, could have 
 helped it. If now, after three years and a half of 
 the war, if now, after a year of preparation on 
 our part, we are yet entirely unready to repel 
 the attack of a trained army, what would have 
 been our status if the German fleet had escaped 
 from the North Sea at first, and with little diffi- 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 115 
 
 culty, had steered their course to our ports, un- 
 defended as they would have found them at that 
 time? Bear in mind, when we are now asked to 
 fight, if we were from now on, to be alone fight- 
 ing for Belgium, France and England, and for 
 two years time, we would only be paying the debt 
 that we owe them for having saved us from the 
 horrors which Germany has carried to every 
 country where it has won power and dominion. 
 
 What of Germany to-day as a military power ? 
 I quote Ambassador Gerard as a thoroughly 
 informed witness. He says in the Foreword of 
 his book that to-day "the military and naval 
 power of the German Empire is unbroken." 
 That it now has not less than nine millions of 
 men, veterans of war, four hundred thousand be- 
 ing added by those growing up to military age 
 every year; that there is no likelihood of their 
 suffering for lack of food; that the danger of 
 starvation is greater to our allies than it is to 
 Germany. It has really little financial difficulty, 
 so far as known to us, because they fully planned, 
 and intend taking all the wealth they can possibly 
 plunder from the nations that they have seized 
 and hold. They fully purpose and expect to 
 compel Britain, France and the United States 
 to pay their war debt. That is their settled 
 design, and to-day, the gains of plunder and loot, 
 
116 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 and the full payment of their debt, by tribute 
 levied, are among the greatest motives which 
 keep the German armies in the field, buoying 
 them up with the hope of conquest and the ex- 
 pectation of adequate enrichment through tribute 
 and plunder. 
 
 In the presence of these conditions what think 
 you? Are we in peril? The German fleet is 
 intact. Nothing keeps it where it is but the 
 British fleet and our fleet now helping; ours, a 
 small and inadequate fleet, to be increased, we 
 devoutly hope, as rapidly as possible. With their 
 fleet, and their army, their prestige, their train- 
 ing and supplies (for they had munitions, as it 
 was reported, for thirty millions of men when 
 they started this war) ; with all these, when I 
 warn you that even now, unless a gracious Provi- 
 dence interferes and something more than un- 
 armed men are put in the field against them, 
 they will land here as conquerors and work their 
 will, I am only telling you what must be plain 
 to your common sense and a trumpet call to 
 your patriotism. 
 
 in 
 
 And here let me ask you what they do to a 
 land when they conquer it? Proposing to Ger- 
 manise the world, what are they going to do with 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 117 
 
 the world which they Germanise ? What is their 
 idea of Germanising Belgium, or of Germanising 
 northern France, or Serbia, or Poland, or Ar- 
 menia? What is their method? Here is my 
 answer: Where they make conquest, they pay 
 not the slightest respect to any law of morals, 
 humanity, honor or right. This indictment is 
 amply supported by the most indubitable testi- 
 mony. Of the horrible and sickening details of 
 their fiendish and devilish savagery only a part 
 is printed. But the governments of the allies 
 have as much of their record as can be put into 
 words. Volume upon volume of unimpeachable 
 and fully attested testimony proves their guilt. 
 The names of these witnesses would fill volumes. 
 Some of these I know. Their testimony I have 
 heard. From these sources I may present to you 
 a brief suggestion of what the Germans do when 
 they have the power. Consider that what they 
 have done where they have gained the power, 
 they will do everywhere when they shall gain it. 
 
 They have no love for us. Belgium had done 
 them no harm. France had done them no more ; 
 Serbia had not assailed them; Russian Poland 
 had shown no unfriendliness. Yet all these they 
 have ravaged with unrestrained ferocity. When 
 you dream that because you are Americans the 
 German hordes once here would treat you better 
 
118 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 than they have treated Belgium, better than they 
 have treated France, you are labouring under a 
 delusion that has no possible justification in ex- 
 perience or reason. 
 
 What have they done with the people where 
 they gain control? Without hesitation or provo- 
 cation they have proceeded to massacre, unre- 
 strained, frightful, horrible. Whole cities and 
 villages they have wiped out. A German soldier, 
 riding a bicycle, falls; his rifle is discharged. 
 They accuse some of the inhabitants of having 
 shot at their soldier. They deliberately burn 
 every house, they ravish and kill the women and 
 girls, they murder, sometimes crucifying the 
 little children; they shoot the old men and the 
 old women, take hostages and slay them. They 
 burn the towns, the chateaux, the libraries, 
 churches, farmhouses, all the homes. This they 
 have done not once, but they have done it hun- 
 dreds of times to hundreds of towns in northern 
 France and in Belgium. They have carried out 
 massacre so bloody, carnage so inconceivably 
 horrible, with torture so fiendish, that the wildest 
 fury of the red Indian of North America is not 
 to be compared with the deliberate ferocity of 
 the German officers and soldiers. 
 
 Almost beyond this in cruelty, wickedness and 
 destructiveness is the deportation of citizens, 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 119 
 
 dragged from their homes as slaves to wherever 
 the German powers order them to go. In an 
 official document of the American Red Cross, you 
 may read of the city of Mons, where six thousand 
 two hundred men and boys were dragged from 
 their homes at half past five in the November 
 morning ; the best citizens in Mons, the humblest 
 as well as the highest, all the great men of that 
 province, lawyers, statesmen, heads of trades, all 
 commanded to go to the railway station. There 
 were cattle cars with the filth of their lately 
 transported cattle in them. The men are forced 
 into these cars. One is taken and another is left. 
 A boy prays that he may go in the place of his 
 old father. He is kicked aside; the old father 
 is taken. The women and children come begging 
 to be allowed to give comforts to their men. Not 
 one of them is permitted to approach. The de- 
 ported though taken at that hour in the morning, 
 are none of them allowed to receive anything, 
 either food or clothing, or comforts of any sort. 
 They know not where they are going. They are 
 cruelly dragged away. The city from which 
 they were torn is left in anguish. It existed as a 
 funeral scene. Day and night were filled with 
 the woe of the women and the wailing of the 
 children. 
 
 Those thus deported go for days without 
 
120 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 water, without food, in suffering untold, until 
 they are dumped somewhere in Germany, where 
 they are ordered to work for the Germans. The 
 witness, Mr. John H. Gade, of Mr. Hoover's 
 staff, went with them to the cars, pleaded for 
 them in vain. He saw them come back after 
 three weeks, broken, dying, dead. A more dia- 
 bolical form of slavery was never known. This 
 one story is so inconceivably cruel, that its de- 
 tails are too horrible for words. 
 
 And it is but one of hundreds and thousands 
 like it. Turn to Armenia and Syria, whose de- 
 portations were done on advice from the Ger- 
 mans to the Turks and Kurds, who simply fol- 
 lowed and repeated what Germans had planned, 
 ordered, begun and done in Belgium and in 
 northern France. Here were two millions of 
 people, the best people in the Turkish Empire, 
 many of them highly educated, many of them 
 graciously refined, their wives and daughters as 
 lovely as our own, many of the men equals of 
 our noblest men. See them deported, dragged 
 from home, driven to the desert, stripped naked, 
 ravished to death, poisoned, starved to death, 
 stabbed, thrown into the rivers to drown, or left 
 to perish with thirst on the sands of the desert. 
 This is a suggestion of what deportation is, the 
 infliction of agonies which beggar description. 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 121 
 
 Two millions of the Armenians have perished 
 within the last three years under this system of 
 "Germanising the world." The like of this has 
 been practised in every land where Germany has 
 come as a conqueror. Missionaries, even German 
 missionaries charge it to Germany. 
 
 Consider the actual enslavement of popula- 
 tions, where peoples are compelled to toil not 
 only without compensation, but under the most 
 cruel conditions, for their military masters ; where 
 men are beaten with the butts of guns until the 
 guns are broken, because they decline to work 
 for these slave drivers; where they have been 
 hung up by their hands for thirty hours, to force 
 them to do a work that international law says 
 they shall never be asked to do. 
 
 Take note of the way in which the conquered 
 are robbed of all that they possess. Their fur- 
 niture is stolen, or if not stolen, is defiled and 
 defaced. Prince Eitel Frederick, one of the sons 
 of the Kaiser, after using an old French chateau 
 which was a wonder of architecture and had been 
 admired for centuries, stripped it of all its furni- 
 ture, to send away for his use, and at the last, 
 though he had promised to spare it, when leaving 
 it, ran back with bombs and combustibles, to see 
 to it that the chateau was burned, its lurid flame 
 revealing his eternal dishonour. Such deeds have 
 
122 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 been done not merely once, but unnumbered 
 times. 
 
 The Huns in Belgium and France stole the 
 underclothing of the women and little children; 
 the mattresses from the beds, the bed blankets; 
 destroyed all farm implements, sent the machin- 
 ery in the Belgian and French factories to Ger- 
 many, and then blew up the factories. Such in 
 part is the conduct of Germans in regard to 
 persons, goods and property. All the cattle are 
 killed or driven off ; all the horses likewise. Thou- 
 sands of girls taken off by force; in numerous 
 towns, all girls over fifteen years of age, carried 
 off, nobody knew where; and of the thousands, 
 only a few hundred ever returned to the places 
 from which they were taken. 
 
 A distinguished representative of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association, just back from 
 France, said in my hearing a few days ago, that 
 in many of the towns in France, all girls over 
 fifteen years of age had been dragged away, 
 forced from home, as servants for German offi- 
 cers, driven to Germany to work in the fields, 
 seized as the prey and the spoil, not of brutish 
 men — there are no brutes like these men — but of 
 these fiends escaped from hell, who in their ac- 
 tions deny that a woman is a human being, en- 
 titled to reverence and protection. 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 123 
 
 Nietzsche, the chief philosopher of Germany, 
 most influential now and for years, despising 
 women, says they have value only as playthings 
 for and as breeders of the "superman." He 
 writes "A man of depth can only think of women 
 as a piece of goods that can be put under lock 
 and key"; also that, "a man who went among 
 them, ought to go among them with a whip." 
 His "superman" is strong with no morals, being 
 superior to morality. Hear me as I tell you 
 that wherever any philosopher, or any person, 
 despises woman, rails at her, degrades her, abuses 
 her, that one is a devil, in whatever guise. 
 
 What cruelty have they not perpetrated? Im- 
 agine something horrible of which perverted men 
 are capable. Of such imagined wickedness, I can 
 think of nothing which they have not done. 
 
 For years we have kept the Belgians alive, with 
 the help of Great Britain and France, or rather 
 Britain and France kept them alive with our 
 help, for they gave much more than we did. We 
 sent supplies there by millions of dollars worth, 
 to keep them from hunger and cold. In not a 
 few instances, the Germans stole the food sent. 
 In some cases, they stole the goods and shipped 
 them away. In other instances, they used them. 
 And yet again, they adulterated the foods we 
 sent by putting with the grains, their stuff of 
 
124 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 inferior quality, while they took the rest. All 
 Belgium would have been dead of starvation to- 
 day if it had not been for outside philanthropy, 
 not German. Germany would have starved them 
 and intended to do it. We have in proof the 
 statement of von Bissing himself, quoted as he 
 stated it to Mr. Frederick Walcott, associate of 
 Mr. Hoover. Von Bissing distinctly said that 
 their purpose was to reduce to starvation these 
 Belgians, and when they were reduced to starva- 
 tion, to send them to work in Germany, so as to 
 allow German working men to go to the front; 
 and also to carry others to Mesopotamia and 
 Eastern Asia to work for Germany. 
 
 We hear him talk about forcing men, women 
 and little children to starvation and showing not 
 a trace of human feeling. Never, so far as I 
 know, were such abominations wrought in the 
 history of time, as they have wrought in the lands 
 where they have gained the power. 
 
 Let me repeat what I have already said: Do 
 not imagine for one moment that you, your wife, 
 your daughter, would be any more sacred to 
 them than a Belgian or a Belgian's wife or a 
 Frenchman's family. Do not dream that your 
 babies would be any more exempt from the 
 cruelty of those Germans than other babies have 
 been. Do not suppose that your dearest, most 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 125 
 
 beautiful and most precious ones would have any 
 defence in their being Americans more than those 
 others whose defences have all been broken down. 
 
 I have told you but little — and not the worst. 
 You cannot doubt or deny the testimony. Re- 
 member that just as soon as these plundering, 
 murdering Germans have evacuated those 
 French and Belgian villages, without delay gov- 
 ernment officials have gone there to take photo- 
 graphs, and other legal testimony, to get the 
 plain facts, to record them with affidavits, so as 
 to lay them up for the day of Judgment. And 
 the day of Judgment in the purpose of those 
 whose friends have suffered thus, is not merely 
 when the great God shall summon men before 
 His bar to answer for the deeds done in the body, 
 but when the triumphant allies, representing a 
 just God and an outraged humanity, shall set a 
 day of recompense, and shall judge and consign 
 to their just doom and penalty, those who are 
 proved by their crimes to be unfit to live in this 
 world or in any other. 
 
 Thus they are treating the conquered peoples. 
 As for the wealth of the conquered, they take it 
 all. Are you informed about the late German 
 retreat where they wilfully and maliciously de- 
 stroyed everything destructible? They poisoned 
 the springs, the wells, the brooks. They had 
 
126 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 poison to give to the cattle, if any should survive. 
 This they planned would be communicated to 
 the people, so that cattle and people alike should 
 all perish through this malicious and savage 
 means. They have tried thus to ruin France, 
 Belgium, Serbia, Poland, Roumania, so that lan- 
 guage fails us to describe their plots and their 
 destructive cruelty. 
 
 How this tide of testimony rises, surge on 
 surge. It is a great, a stormy ocean of facts, 
 undeniable, incontrovertible, horrible, that are 
 known to God and known to men, facts which 
 tell you what the German means by conquest, 
 as he goes out to Germanise the world. 
 
 IV 
 
 Beyond all these evils which have been inflicted 
 and to which we are exposed, I now come to the 
 peril which covers and includes all the perils 
 which I have before named, multiplying and in- 
 tensifying them ; that is, The Peril of a Prema- 
 ture Peace. By a premature peace, I mean a 
 German peace, a peace without an allied victory. 
 I mean a drawn battle, a peace without justice, 
 or without the overthrow of the military power 
 of Germany, without the destruction of their 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 127 
 
 claims and pretensions, and on making which 
 peace, the world would hope to settle back for a 
 while into what is fondly and foolishly called 
 peace. 
 
 The Germans began this war ; about that there 
 never will be any contention or successful contra- 
 diction. When they began it, England had an 
 army of two hundred and fifty thousand men. 
 Germany had an army of ten million men. Eng- 
 land's army was unready. Germany's army was 
 all ready to the last button. This being so, can 
 anybody suppose that Great Britain was pre- 
 pared ? In the last two and one-half years, Great 
 Britain has raised, almost entirely by volunteer- 
 ing, over four millions of men, with all their 
 equipment, and with heroic Belgium and France 
 has held Germany's millions in check. And this 
 is a bare fraction of what Britain has done. 
 
 Germany was ready. On the fifth day of July, 
 in 1914, at Potsdam we have learned that a meet- 
 ing was held, in which an agreement was made 
 with the General Staff — and Austria knew of it 
 — that the war should begin at the end of that 
 month. War was declared, on the 31st of July. 
 The central powers have pretended they were 
 surprised. If you want to vision the magnitude 
 of falsehood, growing out of their theory that 
 truth has no binding force, read the German 
 
128 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 documents which tell their story of Germany's 
 action in the last few years, and especially since 
 this war began. They were ready, they were 
 precipitately ready, and when the moment came, 
 they went into the conflict fully prepared. 
 
 They said they did not wish to take Belgium 
 and that it was wrong to violate its neutrality: 
 but they are on record as having also said they 
 would take it and hold it always, and that is what 
 they are going to do if they possibly can. 
 
 But now, as it is true that they began the war, 
 from them only has come the cry for peace. You 
 may notice, that all the movements for peace 
 have come either from the Germans or from their 
 bloodless tools , the pacifists ; or from their 
 treacherous servants, the Socialists, in Europe 
 and America. This cry of theirs for peace has 
 6een always an utterly false and deceitful cry. 
 They have said peace when they meant war and 
 conquest. 
 
 Whether peril be here or there, whether it be 
 the Germans, by one means or another, this is 
 the main fact: All the peace propaganda have 
 started from Germany. Why is this so? Have 
 they said: "We seek peace because we are 
 beaten?" No! They have proudly boasted 
 whether advancing or retreating, "We are vic- 
 torious, victorious everywhere." 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 129 
 
 Then we ask: "Are they remorseful for what 
 they have done?" Not in the least. They glory 
 in their deeds. Their soldiers, exulting, write 
 home even to their wives and sweethearts, about 
 the girls they have ruined, of the villages they 
 have burned, of the slaughter they have done. 
 Each soldier carries a little iron medal on one 
 side of which is a picture, supposed to represent 
 the German deity, who holds a weapon in his 
 right hand, and these words addressed to the 
 soldier: "Strike your enemy dead. The day of 
 Judgment will not ask you for your reasons." 
 These savages are not remorseful. Not for such 
 cause do they seek peace. 
 
 Are they exhausted? No, they are not ex- 
 hausted. Gerard says they are full of strength 
 and a very great peril to us to-day. Then, why 
 are they suggesting peace? Let me tell you: 
 So as to more perfectly execute their scheme of 
 conquest. They have about three hundred mil- 
 lion people — a conservative estimate — under 
 their control at the present time — 77 millions 
 Germans and 223 millions non-Germans. They 
 hold all of Belgium and all of northern France; 
 they practically have Austria-Hungary and all of 
 Poland; they have Bulgaria, Roumania, Serbia; 
 they have Turkey and much of western Russia, 
 so if they could now stop a little while, having 
 
130 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 increased from sixty-eight millions in Germany 
 when this war began, to about three hundred 
 millions now, they would have opportunity to 
 greatly consolidate their strength. 
 
 It has been suggested that they might, for the 
 sake of peace, give up Belgium. Officially, they 
 never have intimated it. Other people may sup- 
 pose it, but they have never implied it. They 
 might restore northern France. They might pay 
 an indemnity for what they have destroyed. 
 They have never given evidence of any such in- 
 tention. They might temporarily give up some 
 territory, provided they were allowed now to 
 have peace. But, however they gain their ends, 
 this is what they plan and what they purpose: 
 They intend, if they can deceive the allies into 
 making peace, to take a few years of rest and 
 reorganisation, when they will be able to put 
 into the field an army of thirty millions of men, 
 gathered from those whom they have subjugated 
 and whom they can compel to go into the ranks ; 
 and with that army and with their navy, con- 
 tinually increased; with all the appliances of 
 modern warfare, after a brief period of prepara- 
 tion, they purpose to finish just what they 
 started to do: to Germanise the world. If we 
 are beguiled now into a drawn battle, if we 
 make a false peace with them, we are defeated; 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 131 
 
 liberty is crushed and the whole world is 
 doomed. 
 
 Do not for one instant suppose that it is any 
 goodwill toward you, or any goodwill toward 
 the world, or any thought that peace is more 
 desirable than war, which is working in the Ger- 
 man mind ait the present time. Far from it. 
 They are working for dominion; they are bat- 
 tling for triumph ; they are struggling to possess 
 the wealth of the world; they are plunderers, 
 just as were the old Huns, Vandals and Goths. 
 They want to grasp the wealth of the world. 
 They have taken it as far as they could get it. 
 How they get it they do not care. They are 
 ready to drench the whole world with blood to 
 make this Kaiser — who says he is Godsent, who 
 talks about God as though he owned Him — 
 to make this ruler the autocrat of the whole 
 world. 
 
 So all the perils hitherto mentioned lie visi- 
 ble and measureless in the direction of a prema- 
 ture peace. There is only one alternative now 
 for the allies, slavery or victory, and the ques- 
 tion is — which do we claim, and which will we 
 take? 
 
 v 
 
 Not yet have I named all the treasures that 
 
132 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 we are likely to lose, if Germany is allowed to 
 win. Let me briefly name a few of them. Cer- 
 tain things are exceedingly precious to us, which 
 we, as Americans, have grown to feel are essen- 
 tial, which our fathers fought to procure, and 
 which we must fight to preserve. These are the 
 very things which we are sure to lose provided 
 Germany has her will and her way. The first of 
 these, for which we ought to contend with a vigour 
 born of highest principle and the noblest heroism, 
 chief among priceless things is liberty; liberty 
 as contrasted with slavery. It needs little defini- 
 tion. While the slave belongs to a master, the 
 freeman belongs to himself. While the slave 
 does not own his family, the freeman and his 
 family possess each other. While the slave can- 
 not claim property, the freeman possesses his 
 earnings. The slave is ruled by his master's 
 caprice: the freeman by the laws which he sanc- 
 tions and reveres. 
 
 Whatever there is in liberty, which has called 
 forth the fervour of the heart in all ages of up- 
 ward advance in human history, that we are in 
 danger of losing. Have I not already proved 
 this? What else are Belgians than slaves when 
 they are dragged from their homes and forced to 
 work for a master who is driving them to a task 
 which they hate? What shall we say of the en- 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 133 
 
 slaving of men when they can be taken as they 
 were taken at Mons, at Dinant, and many an- 
 other city; shipped to another country and forced 
 to work for a foreign master, under the most 
 cruel conditions? What say we of those who 
 in prison camps — two millions of them, as Gerard 
 says — were compelled to work for Germany or 
 starve? forced to work for Germany and against 
 their own people? What shall we expect of the 
 possibilities of liberty, of the right of a man to 
 himself, when Germany rules? There will be no 
 liberty. It will all be slavery. How long could 
 we exist in such conditions? And would not 
 multiplied cruelties break our hearts and crush 
 our manhood? 
 
 Sometimes the effort has been made to lead 
 Belgians and Frenchmen to go voluntarily to 
 work in Germany. I heard the Attorney-Gen- 
 eral of Belgium tell this story of the unbroken 
 spirit of his fellow-countrymen: A company of 
 captive Belgian men were gathered and a Ger- 
 man officer urging them to go to Germany to 
 work for their captors, said to them : 
 
 "If you go to Germany and work for us, you 
 will get money, so that you can keep your 
 families from starving and yourselves also. If 
 you refuse to go, you will starve without pity 
 and your families also will starve." 
 
134 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 Imagine this alternative put up to us now. 
 How would we meet it? The Belgians stood 
 there, ragged, tattered and hungry, their families 
 behind them. Not a man of the company moved 
 to accept the German offer. At length one man 
 stepped out from the ranks and said: "I will go!" 
 The German officer was pleased. He thought 
 that his threats had prevailed, and he said: "You 
 will go, my man?" The Belgian assented. 
 
 "Now, men," said the officer, "look here. Here 
 is one of your number who is willing to go, and 
 you had better do as he does." 
 
 Then insinuatingly, he asked the Belgian 
 volunteer: "What is your business?" 
 
 The man answered: "I am a gravedigger, and 
 I shall be glad to serve Germany in that ca- 
 pacity." 
 
 So with starvation facing them, despising their 
 persecutors, the Belgians preferred liberty to 
 slavery ; they would rather die freemen than live 
 slaves. 
 
 Every true American, the humblest and the 
 highest, thanks God every day for freedom, and 
 prefers war to slavery. Shall Germany then 
 make slaves of us by a premature peade? 
 
 Remember another precious thing that we 
 should lose by German victory. We should lose 
 honour. And by losing honour I mean we would 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 135 
 
 accept dishonour. Germany has no sense of 
 honour. You know what honour is, a man's 
 honour, a woman's honour. How delicate and 
 noble a thing it is, and how precious. If you give 
 your word, you keep it not merely because you 
 know you would be a liar if you broke it, but 
 because your honour prevents you from denying 
 what you have agreed to. Honour is such a 
 treasure in character and action, that we pre- 
 serve it at all costs, so that I may say of many 
 of you that you would give up life sooner than 
 surrender honour. 
 
 How then could you obey the mandates of 
 Germany to betray your country? The Belgian 
 has sworn loyalty to Belgium, the Frenchman to 
 France. Its constitution is his constitution. It 
 is his country. His life is devoted to it. Ger- 
 many arrests him and commands: "Go and work 
 in our machine shops, at our lathes, in our fac- 
 tories, in our fields, to produce material for us 
 to use in destroying your country." 
 
 He answers: "I cannot." 
 
 They insist: "You must." 
 
 He replies: "I have given my oath of alle- 
 giance to my own country, and if I work for you 
 to destroy it, I am a traitor to my country." 
 
 They compel him with torture. The Interna- 
 tional Congress at the Hague agreed that under 
 
136 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 no circumstances should nations at war under- 
 take to compel peoples or prisoners to work 
 against the interests of their own country. No 
 man can keep honour and betray his own people. 
 But Germany is attempting to force patriots into 
 disloyal relations to their own country. 
 
 They are doing there only what they would 
 do here. You might be ordered to work for them 
 against our own people. You might be con- 
 strained by them to make the American flag a 
 dishonoured symbol of slavery. Would you do 
 it? Victorious they would try to make us do it, 
 and they would put all their power behind their 
 effort. I hope it never will come to this test 
 here as it has come in France and Belgium. Yet 
 it surely will if we consent to a false, a prema- 
 ture peace. 
 
 I might speak of humanity, that gentle and 
 gracious spirit and action which prevails among 
 people when inhumanity would be a sin and a 
 crime. You all know and feel the difference be- 
 tween humanity and inhumanity, between kind- 
 ness and cruelty, between mercy and savagery. 
 Toward all the weak and needy, to the aged, to 
 women and little children, humanity demands 
 care, gentleness, reverence, protection, assistance. 
 These gracious feelings and duties Germany 
 reviles and despises. What will you say of those 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 137 
 
 who slaughter little children, ravish young 
 women, murder the aged, abuse the prisoners? 
 Merciless murder, insane lust, unrestrained 
 savagery, fiendish cruelty are common and have 
 been constant at the hands of German officers 
 and soldiery ever since the war began. The 
 testimony is voluminous, incontrovertible and 
 from unnumbered reliable sources. 
 
 A young Armenian in my hearing told us 
 how the Turks took men and women of the high- 
 est character and culture (his own parents 
 among them) from the city and under German 
 influence, tortured and crucified them with devil- 
 ish inhumanity; of 549 men, he alone was left; 
 of 2000 women all but 200 had been put to death 
 or lost to their friends by cruelties so infamous 
 that hearing of them is almost more than we can 
 endure. 
 
 Shall we be deprived of the privilege of being 
 kind ? Shall we be denied the power of defending 
 women and little children? Shall the aged have 
 no reverence? Shall the helpless have no care? 
 That is what Germany would crush us down to 
 when they had reduced us to their control. Do 
 you consent to pay this price for a premature 
 peace? 
 
 The same is true of morality. Numberless 
 scenes and events support my statement. They 
 
138 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 despise morals, possess none, and seek to destroy 
 them in others. 
 
 As to mercy an American writer tells us that 
 he went to Berne and saw there a large number 
 of allied officers who had been prisoners and 
 who had been sent over from Germany into 
 Switzerland on account of their ill health. He 
 said those officers told him that when captured, 
 they were put into cattle cars and sent to the 
 prison camps. On the way they were thirty-six 
 hours without water and as long a time without 
 food. When they stopped at stations, they saw 
 women on the platforms with water in pails and 
 in cups. When they besought them, and offered 
 to pay them for a drink of water, the women 
 would sometimes come forward with a cup full, 
 reach it toward the parched and famishing man 
 and then spill it on the ground and sneer and 
 laugh at these thirsty and dying sufferers. Even 
 the women of Germany have lost their humanity, 
 and their moral sense, when they do thus. 
 
 Mercy has gone from the German. Pity he 
 does not know, and he would just as soon practise 
 unmercif ulness and inhumanity on you as on any- 
 body. How strange it seems to read their own 
 words in testimony of the exultation, of the 
 orgies at night of these assassins. After the 
 burning of a village, the slaughter of men, the 
 
The Perils of a Premature Peace 139 
 
 rape of women, the destruction of little children, 
 how horrible it is to find the men rejoicing, 
 carousing, singing, because of the wonderful 
 things they had wrought that day! And such 
 orgies you will behold here if you see the Ger- 
 mans reinforced by a premature peace. 
 
 Perhaps I have revealed as much as you will 
 remember, yet not enough to half unveil what is 
 in my mind of the perils of this hour. What 
 shall we do now in the face of this supreme 
 danger? Shall we be awake to it? Or shall we 
 be indifferent? Shall we be reluctant to take 
 alarm? Shall we crave a peace so deadly? Shall 
 we in blind folly aid the enemy? Is there any 
 wisdom in our being overreached, sceptical, 
 cowardly? I could detail to you, how over fifty 
 great outrages have already been committed in 
 our country by German spies within the last 
 year, on munition plants, on great docks and 
 warehouses, on elevators, and in numerous other 
 ways, costing hundreds of millions of dollars and 
 many hundreds of lives, for which not one of 
 those responsible has been punished by anything 
 greater than a short term of imprisonment. Shall 
 we awaken to the fact, that with America it is 
 life or death? We counsel not inhumanity like 
 theirs, not revenge, not hate, not assassination, 
 but that we arise for national defence. We are 
 
140 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 choosing liberty or death, now as did our sires 
 in Revolutionary days, and a premature peace is 
 the lull before the hurricane of destruction. 
 
 My appeal is to you, Americans and patriots. 
 My appeal is to your manhood, 'however de- 
 scribed; to your nobility, however arrived at, to 
 your will, your intelligence, your devotion, how- 
 ever it may be measured ; that you will be among 
 those who will stand forever against this attempt 
 of Germany, by a ruse, to betray and conquer 
 the world. 
 
 Until they abandon their avowed purpose of 
 world conquest, and cease to menace the peoples 
 and governments of the earth, until they retire 
 from the territory whereon as armed banditti, 
 they have encamped, until they restore the plun- 
 der they have stolen, and rehabilitate the coun- 
 tries which they have devastated, until they make 
 atonement for their awful crimes and consent to 
 obey the laws of honour, humanity, and morality, 
 let us steadily and mightily resent and resist any 
 concession which brings in a truce — a false and 
 premature peace — sure to be used by them to 
 initiate a still more dangerous and terrible war, 
 with consequences more direful, and disasters 
 irreparable. Now and forever let our battle cry 
 be, "Righteousness first, then Peace." 
 
VI 
 
 The Wisdom of Men 
 that Was Foolishness with God 
 
 "T TAS not God made foolish the wisdom of 
 A A this world?" Concerning what? At 
 least, concerning war and peace. The wisdom 
 of this world is the confidence men have who 
 trust in themselves and do not seek wisdom from 
 God. Such assumed wisdom in the light of God's 
 wisdom, turns out to be foolishness. 
 
 Never was this demonstrated more clearly than 
 in the liberal assurances made by so-called wise 
 men, widely given and largely credited, that the 
 world's peace would continue undisturbed, when 
 in truth at that very hour all nations were trem- 
 bling on the verge of war. We are not intending 
 to inquire into the inexplicable blindness of 
 diplomats, foreign offices, statesmen and rulers. 
 They were caught almost utterly unready when 
 war burst forth. Actually, all the facts were in 
 sight, but the wisdom to draw correct inferences 
 and conclusions they did not possess. 
 
 They took little heed of Germany's threats, 
 plans, and preparations, announced and carried 
 
 141 
 
142 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 on through decades. They forecast little or noth- 
 ing which was true but much that was erroneous 
 to the verge of disaster. Was it not because their 
 theories and reasonings were weak even to the 
 limit of folly, while they regarded themselves 
 wise? 
 
 God does not make foolish any human course 
 which is not so. He does not find pleasure in 
 thwarting and humbling men. But because they 
 will not receive the instruction which He places 
 plainly before them, He corrects them at the time 
 when their plans end in defeat and their pride in 
 overthrow. 
 
 I wish to deal with some elaborate human 
 schemes promising to do away with war, which 
 have been shown by patent facts to be totally 
 inadequate and disappointing. 
 
 We have discussed quite at length the causes 
 of the war and have adverted to conditions neces- 
 sary to ending it wisely and victoriously. Illu- 
 sions as to how to prevent and how to end wars 
 exist widely and generally which need to be re- 
 viewed. These held for many years hitherto as 
 barriers against the strife of peoples and nations 
 have been found futile. The danger is that we 
 will continue to hold them and put our hopes 
 in them. If we do, what can follow but a repeti- 
 tion of our disappointments? If we examine and 
 
The Wisdom of Men 143 
 
 disprove them, we may avoid the mistaken confi- 
 dence which we have formerly placed in them 
 and at least will not be so foolish as to trust them 
 now to stop a war which they could not prevent. 
 
 Multitudes held four years ago that the preva- 
 lence of peace sentiment had made war unlikely 
 if not impossible. For I know not how many 
 years we had been told "there will never be an- 
 other great war. A world war is impossible." 
 And when we asked a reason for this belief we 
 were assured that peace sentiment universally 
 diffused would prevent it. 
 
 They who held this view wrote about it ex- 
 tensively. A great literature of peace grew up 
 and advocates of peace were multiplied. Rich 
 prizes were awarded to those who wrote well in 
 favor of it. Some books and persons became 
 almost world famous for such advocacy. Speak- 
 ers no less eloquent and confident than these 
 writers convinced themselves and others that war 
 was a thing of the past. True, wars were tran- 
 spiring, but they did not discourage these oracles. 
 The horrors of war were portrayed. They were 
 pictured and described with realistic precision. 
 Commissions were reporting the Balkan War, 
 whose dead were scarcely yet buried, in 1914, and 
 
144 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 that the dreadf ulness of war as they had seen and 
 now described it, gave grounds of confidence that 
 such another would not be repeated. It was too 
 dreadful. Humanity would revolt from it. 
 Meanwhile yet others financially endowed peace 
 propaganda on the basis of such sentiment. By 
 these funds peace palaces were built, notably at 
 the Hague, and numerous congresses were held, 
 gathering representatives from many nations. In 
 these congresses convinced specialists who had 
 given much time and thought to the subject, 
 fairly legislated wars off the earth, so far as 
 sentiment could do it. They sent distinguished 
 scholars, publicists, educators, divines, round the 
 world presenting their convictions. And the 
 sentiments of these and their words became the 
 growing literature of the peace propagandists. 
 Of course, most of these gracious advocates could 
 give unnumbered arguments against arms and 
 armies, navies and forts and all that savoured of 
 expenditure for even defensive war. The matter 
 grew; the sentimentalists, if not the sentiment, 
 increased. Their congresses were in session and 
 were being further summoned in July, 1914. 
 The ships and trains had landed many delegates 
 and others were on the way. The deliverances 
 were prepared ; the members were ready to report 
 that further war was improbable. 
 
The Wisdom of Men 145 
 
 All this: When suddenly, unforeseen, unex- 
 pectedly, Germany and Austria-Hungary, for 
 trivial cause, of set purpose, in accordance with 
 fullest readiness and preparation, declared and 
 immediately began war, really upon all the world. 
 They had said that they would do it. They had 
 plotted the course of conquest. They had sneered 
 at peace, and were ready for frightfulness. Un- 
 seen, unexpected, because unstudied and ignored, 
 the forces in leash were loosed and the carnival 
 of frightfulness began. The sentimentalists were 
 not only surprised but astounded. They were 
 no less utterly chagrined. They had supposed 
 that they were very influential. They found that 
 they had no appreciable influence on the situa- 
 tion. As specialists they seemed to feel that they 
 should have been consulted. No one asked their 
 opinion. No one waited for their verdict. They 
 were no more influential than chaff before the 
 whirlwind. Their house of cards had utterly 
 collapsed. We speak not in contempt but in sad 
 respect of these. What had they done except 
 to lull to sleep the assailed nations who now 
 sharing the pacifists' hopes, were wholly unready 
 to defend themselves from world robbers and 
 pirates? Many of these, honest and good and 
 amazed, caught up arms with their fellow pa- 
 triots and sprang into the breach. Others had 
 
146 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 got under such headway with their too narrow 
 views that they kept right on prating of peace 
 when there was no peace. And they are at it 
 yet. We neither ridicule nor condemn the peace 
 sentimentalists whose attitude we have outlined, 
 whose prophecies are exploded. We only say 
 that peace sentiment such as theirs was not ap- 
 preciably influential in even retarding war, did 
 much harm, if some good, and must have rested 
 on a shallow foundation. 
 
 Let us add that no greater mistake could be 
 made than to revive it in the same form or to rely 
 upon it in the least to now stop the war which it 
 had no visible influence to prevent. This mis- 
 take we greatly fear. Let the lesson of its mis- 
 application and the mischief it has done warn its 
 honest advocates that it is as useless to end as it 
 was powerless to prevent the war. Sentiment 
 has its place. Like ornament on a work of archi- 
 tecture, it may be durable, beautiful and so use- 
 ful, if the structure which it decorates is firm, 
 solid and built on a much more permanent basis. 
 
 ii 
 Education was affirmed to be a sure barrier 
 to war. Perhaps it was the chief line of defence 
 appealed to by those who were convinced that 
 wars were practically a thing of the past. 
 
The Wisdom of Men 147 
 
 Education in schools, by books and modern 
 appliances was the peace hope, the prosperity 
 guarantee of the modern world. 
 
 True, we knew that education, carried to a 
 high degree, had prevailed in ancient nations and 
 among mediaeval peoples, and that this had not 
 assured peace or prevented war. But our claims 
 were to a far superior education. Ours was 
 modern; ours was scientific. The ancient learn- 
 ing was inutile compared with ours. What that 
 of theirs could but feebly influence, ours, all 
 powerful, would control. The philosophy on 
 which we set our hopes was this: Education im- 
 parts information; information and knowledge 
 furnish the basis of inference and wide reason- 
 ing. Reasoning, in scientific education, becomes 
 prominent, ascendent. Wars and fightings come 
 from passion. Education subjugates and con- 
 trols passion. Passions rule where ignorance 
 prevails; reason comes with knowledge. So war 
 as always the offspring of the ruder and ungov- 
 erned life of men is shut out. No nation is gov- 
 erned by passion now. The spirit, if there is one, 
 is totally mastered by the intellect. We need 
 little to be said of spiritual education but all 
 scientific data are the food of the intellect making 
 for steadiness, calmness, self-interest and self- 
 control. And further, to build high this great 
 
148 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 hope of the modern world, this great defensive 
 against war and blind rage and passion, the 
 state and the people poured out unmeasured 
 wealth upon schools of all grades. No expense 
 was considered too great for institutions of learn- 
 ing. Christianity was practically relegated to 
 an inferior place as a world hope. Is proof 
 asked? Here it is: Most great gifts were for 
 education only, not for propagating Christianity. 
 Men of wealth dedicated their riches to schools, 
 to educational foundations. They did this under 
 the advice of leading publicists and their own 
 compliant faith that school education was the 
 greatest good for mankind. See the vast founda- 
 tions devoted to education nearly all definitely 
 and avowedly secular; pensions specifically with- 
 held from Christian teachers, in Christian schools, 
 however devoted and learned ; very meagre gifts 
 to church work and few large gifts to the Chris- 
 tian missions which are the safest and surest 
 agency of international welfare the world ever 
 saw. And buttressing our faith in schools, we 
 were making them not mostly cultural but voca- 
 tional; not servants of the spiritual life but of 
 skill in handling physical facts and bringing to 
 the educated salaries and profits. Education was 
 accepted without question by most, as the 
 guardian of the well being of the modern world ; 
 
The Wisdom of Men 149 
 
 guarantor of comity and amity among men and 
 races. 
 
 Suddenly, in absolute contradiction to our 
 faith in education as a peace force wiping out 
 war probabilities — Germany, the best schooled, 
 and most advanced in education, modern and 
 scientific, of all the nations of the earth, in a 
 worked up frenzy of greed and a passion for 
 slaughter directly caused by its education, flung 
 to the winds all promises of peace, including 
 morals and humanity, and sprung like a mad dog 
 at the throat of the world. Germany had given 
 model schools to the world, cultural and voca- 
 tional. It had given us great educators and 
 advanced methods from kindergartens to post- 
 graduate universities. We, the nations, had ad- 
 mired its methods and followed its lead. Our 
 American education had been not a little Ger- 
 manised. We had conceded German leadership 
 in education. Here was its fruitage — horrible, 
 ungovernable, merciless, inhuman war. The 
 German scholars, best product of its education, 
 hastened to declare their absolute committal to 
 its war purposes and policy. They signed false 
 documents en masse to further their plan of plun- 
 der and slaughter. 
 
 There was not a phase of their educational 
 scheme which was not put to the uses of despica- 
 
150 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 ble cruelty and fiendish passion. All knowledge 
 of physics, chemistry, engineering, was given to 
 the service of slaughter. Their unlikeness to 
 savages consisted only in their more deadly 
 savagery. Their psychology was placed at the 
 service of casuistry and they lied scientifically, if 
 foolishly. They killed humanity and were piti- 
 less as rattlesnakes — as devils. 
 
 Such was the surprise which educated Ger- 
 many gave to the world. Her nearly three hun- 
 dred thousand teachers, all official slaves of Prus- 
 sianism, had trained the children from four years 
 old up to maturity to do the will of the state and 
 no other: to worship might as right and to re- 
 gard as enemies to be exterminated or enslaved, 
 all who resisted their demands. Say, if you 
 will, "Theirs was miseducation." Evidently. 
 And we on German models bent, are also misedu- 
 cating in so far as we follow them. 
 
 The principle at the basis of their education 
 was utter state selfishness, expressed at the top 
 in a 1 monarch crazed by pride ; at the bottom in 
 the ravishers of Belgium, France, Serbia and 
 Armenia. 
 
 Education of such sort is discredited. Science, 
 knowledge, reasoning, thus appear in no case to 
 subdue passion or to prevent war. Contrariwise, 
 all the forces of German education have inten- 
 
The Wisdom of Men \51 
 
 tionally, deliberately and successfully ministered 
 to exactly the diabolical purposes which have 
 given us the past four years of German wicked- 
 ness and world suffering. 
 
 As education, such as we have copied, mani- 
 festly does not operate to prevent war, so educa- 
 tion will not end it. If we continue to follow 
 the German model, wars will never end but 
 rather will increase. What better course to take 
 I do not discuss here. It is obvious that Ger- 
 many's education is wholly condemned and ours 
 too, if like it. Put your faith in something dif- 
 ferent and your money and endowments too. 
 Why not in Christ and Christianity ? 
 
 in 
 
 Evolution, put above God, was to prevent war. 
 I use evolution not as the name of the method 
 and sequences of God's creation, but in that pre- 
 vailing sense which considers evolution creative 
 and leaves God out ; which speaks not of original 
 mind, or plan or planner, or purpose or goal for 
 man and nature, but of things only, and the 
 evolution of things; of matter and force, both 
 non-intelligent, and what they do. 
 
 The popular putting of the thought that evolu- 
 
152 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 tion was against recurring war is that mankind 
 progresses so and is so evolved that he had come 
 — up to 1914 — to an advanced state which made 
 war unlikely, improbable, possibly impossible. 
 The advancement of mankind assured by evolu- 
 tion foretells the end of war. We were supposed 
 to be too far evolved to fight in the old way. 
 So influential is evolution as a theory of the 
 world and its progress that it is largely claimed 
 to be the supreme point of view for the study of 
 men and nature. When we passed the calendar 
 date 1900, some periodicals gathered the opinions 
 of able and representative men as to what was 
 the greatest event that had marked the nineteenth 
 century then ended. I well recall that in these 
 symposiums among these men were several very 
 prominent Christian preachers who asserted that 
 in their judgment, Darwin's "Origin of Species" 
 and promulgation of the doctrine of evolution, 
 often popularly spoken of as Darwinism, was 
 the most conspicuous and noteworthy event of 
 the preceding hundred years. These did not even 
 mention the unequalled movement of Christian 
 foreign missions, too great to be characterised 
 or applauded except in volumes of fact, or the 
 Christian education movement of the Sunday 
 schools of the period. Evolution, as Darwin ex- 
 pressed it, was to them the foremost word of 
 
The Wisdom of Men 153 
 
 progress. Our reference to this evolution 
 now is not to discuss it but only to take the 
 point of view which it assumed and implied as 
 to war. 
 
 Affirming that we were long ago mere ani- 
 mals, savages later, and cave-men in a higher 
 state, the changes were rung on our evolution 
 from these "jungle" states to our present high 
 civilisation and the actions and the passions we 
 had outgrown and left behind. The animals 
 which we were, had been very savage, warlike, 
 full of bloody, beastly, fighting instinct. These 
 we had left far behind. What propensity we had 
 left in us to do as they once did was only the 
 remnant of animalism, a sort of appendix (war 
 being its irritation, may I say appendicitis), and 
 we were far along in outgrowing that. 
 
 Germany led the world in accepting this gen- 
 eral doctrine of atheistic evolution. They be- 
 lieved much in materialism, equally in evolution. 
 And studying the matter according to their sup- 
 posed evolution, they concluded that they were 
 the most evolved, the men farthest removed from 
 the animalism of animal ancestors, the foremost 
 race, people and nation of the earth. As I have 
 elsewhere stated, they proved to themselves in 
 the evolutionary "struggle for life" that they had 
 made the best struggle and as to "the survival 
 
154 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 of the fittest" they were the fittest and neces- 
 sarily the fittest to rule. If they chose to think 
 so, who could gainsay their claim? Their thought 
 was evolution. They were logical. They com- 
 pared themselves with others and despised them. 
 How could they do this unless really superior? 
 No other people who believed in evolution as the 
 Germans did, could deny their claim to superi- 
 ority in many lines. But they themselves must 
 determine what their superior evolution de- 
 manded of them as their irresistible urge and act. 
 What should it be? They gave their answer in 
 1914 and till now. 
 
 And what have they proved to the intelligent 
 and observing world in these four years? That 
 they are barbarous beyond all barbarians, savage 
 beyond all savages, brutal beyond all brutes. 
 And in doing thus they have disproved the ani- 
 mal origin of their passions and I think I may 
 add the whole theory of the evolutionary origin 
 of man. 
 
 Language fails to characterise the deeds of 
 these who claim the highest evolution. No words 
 drawn from the fierceness of the animal creation 
 can describe them fitly. Neither brutality, 
 bestiality, animalism, ferocity tell the whole truth 
 about their spirit and deeds in their methods of 
 carrying on war upon the innocent and defence- 
 
The Wisdom of Men 155 
 
 less. No animal of any species ever abused the 
 females of their species as the Germans have 
 abused women and girls. No species of animals 
 ever took pleasure in murdering the young of 
 their species as the Germans have murdered 
 infant children. No beasts ever destroyed with 
 the destructive spirit which has marked German 
 murderousness. The terms which describe their 
 acts and dispositions do not arise from any ani- 
 mal characteristics of lower creatures. You can 
 only feebly portray them in terms of spiritual 
 description, brought down to the vilest mani- 
 festation of life. Call them fiends, devils, mon- 
 sters of cruelty, demons, and even these terms 
 need intensifying to meet the facts. Since they 
 affirm themselves to be the best product of evolu- 
 tion in the present century, yet are visibly worse 
 than the Assyrians of millenniums ago, what 
 promise is there in the evolutionary progress of 
 man which suggests a condition precluding war 
 as a result of evolution? 
 
 Evolutionary theories of peace made and kept 
 by men who define it as Germans do, give no 
 hope to the world. Proud atheistic philosophy 
 could not prevent, and will never end war. Such 
 progress is backwards, downwards; no progres- 
 sion but retrogression ; not evolution but devolu- 
 tion. 
 
156 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 IV 
 
 The economic laws associated with the acquir- 
 ing and distribution of wealth have been alleged 
 as powerful preventives of war. 
 
 The acquisition of wealth in all the forms which 
 are destructible is not a rapid and an easy but 
 a slow and difficult task. The wealth of modern 
 times has been won by the work of millions 
 through long and patient effort. More people 
 than ever have had a voluntary part in gaining it 
 and more, therefore, have a strong personal in- 
 terest in protecting it from waste and destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 In the case of the treasures of the past, as in 
 art and architecture, these become more valuable 
 with passing ages. They cannot be replaced. 
 Prized by their custodians in modern society we 
 assume that men would be very reluctant to do 
 anything which would jeopardise them or lead to 
 their destruction. This would tend to opposition 
 to war on the part of mankind. Besides, as 
 wealth is more widely distributed, as more mil- 
 lions of people hold title to and possess property 
 of their own obtained by labor, saved by thrift 
 and guarded by prudence, so these owners would 
 have a corresponding interest in protecting and 
 preserving what they so prize and what has cost 
 
The Wisdom of Men 157 
 
 them so much. These all, therefore, dreading the 
 destruction of their property and goods, will be 
 opposed to war. 
 
 As our times have seen a great increase of toil- 
 ers and owners, as intelligence has added to their 
 just estimate of values, a much greater bulk of 
 population would now oppose war as a destroyer 
 of wealth. This would seem to be a reasonable 
 hope and a sound economic barrier to wars. Per- 
 manency of residence, ownership, value, knowl- 
 edge, taste, comfort, all would be on the side of 
 peace if war were proposed. Besides, the pros- 
 perity of a people which had greatly increased its 
 material wealth would make them less likely to 
 regard plunder as necessary to their satisfactions. 
 Civilised and enriched they would have no covet- 
 ous desires to fight for the possession of their 
 neighbours' wealth. 
 
 The principle may be good but it must be 
 too weak to rely upon, as instanced by the 
 aggressions of Germany. For this people 
 have had centuries of rather remarkable in- 
 dustrial and material prosperity. Under autoc- 
 racy they have prospered materially as have 
 democracies. 
 
 Yet we behold them making war, despite their 
 riches, for the direct purpose of looting and 
 spoiling other states. They treat war from the 
 
158 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 economic standpoint as good business. Prussia 
 has always been a robber state. By theft it has 
 gained most of its territory. The goods of others 
 as spoils of war come easier than by purchase or 
 labour. So their possessions obtained by war in- 
 cite to more war. 
 
 What though from the property side, it was 
 often said that the bankers of Europe, guardians 
 of its wealth, would not allow or finance war. 
 This was an idle dream. And as for property of 
 any kind dissuading its holders from war, the 
 history of the last four years shows that all pos- 
 sessions are at the mercy of the lowest passions 
 of a nation which resolves to gain by robbing 
 other states. k The assailant stakes his all. The 
 defender draws on his all to protect what he may. 
 And the householder assailing proves as fierce as 
 the mercenary soldier who owns nothing but his 
 arms. Wealth, luxury, comfort, however gained, 
 held, distributed, are not masters of the passions 
 of men or the policies of nations. Germany held 
 up and robbed France in 1870 of a billion dollars 
 and invaluable provinces, put this in its war 
 chest and resources and planned in 1914 that 
 within six weeks, it would extort at the gates of 
 Paris ten billions more. It is the robber that 
 makes war. And the owner of property must 
 either fight defensively to keep his own or the 
 
The Wisdom of Men 159 
 
 robber states would plunder and hold all the 
 treasures of mankind. 
 
 Once more, we had worked out the theory that 
 commerce would prevent war. 
 
 To briefly state the theory it was this: Com- 
 merce and trade by sea and land come through 
 acquaintance and mingling of peoples. Of old 
 the stranger was the enemy, the same word desig- 
 nated both. But the pacific purpose of bringing 
 into a community what a people would like to 
 buy and taking out what they would wish to sell, 
 tended at once to a good understanding and to 
 mutual profit. 
 
 Moreover, if I trade with you and you have 
 advantage from it, and you with me and I get 
 advantage, we both are pleased with one another 
 and goodwill springs up. Lands and states are 
 visited by commercial agents. Conveniences for 
 travel and transportation of goods are multi- 
 plied. Modes of quick and easy communication 
 are established. Good feeling is fostered. So 
 manufactures, exports, exchanges, railways, 
 ships, ports, all the unnumbered agencies of com- 
 merce by land and sea are mingling people to- 
 gether for mutual advantage, assuring mutual 
 
160 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 respect and barring out all the waste and dis- 
 advantages of war. 
 
 It was said in 1913 and prior thereto, that the 
 closing of the channels of trade was impossible, 
 unthinkable. They had become necessary for the 
 very existence of nations. 
 
 This was a mistake in reckoning. And also 
 commerce instead of being the protection of 
 peace was made by Germany the pretext for war. 
 In their greed and vainglory they did not tolerate 
 the prosperity of others. In their vanity they 
 assumed that they should be first whether they 
 could honestly win precedence or not. Their lack 
 of monopoly of trade and ports they declared 
 contrary to the freedom of the seas. They had 
 all the privileges that others had. They de- 
 manded the foremost place. Their trade had 
 greatly increased, but they were impatient be- 
 cause it had not driven other states from the 
 markets of the world. And now to secure what 
 they regard as their right to commercial supre- 
 macy, they have turned pirates and assassins on 
 the seas, and robbers and murderers on the land. 
 While allowed access everywhere, they have gone 
 to every place with treacherous purpose to rob, 
 despoil, to wreck and to enslave all lands and 
 peoples. 
 
 Has not this crisis proved plainly that com- 
 
 
The Wisdom of Men 161 
 
 merce is not a guarantor of peace, unless all 
 parties to it are ready to be fair, honest and kind, 
 willing participants in each other's prosperity? 
 It makes all possible difference in what spirit 
 commerce is carried on, whether it tends to 
 friendship or to enmity, to peace or war. 
 
 The prevention of wars and the prevalence of 
 peace are found in the practise of two principles 
 of statesmanship, namely: 
 
 "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." 
 And, "AH things whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do to you, do ye even so unto them." 
 
 These are the righteousness which must always 
 precede peace. In presence of this our philosophy 
 has been proven foolishness. 
 
VII 
 
 Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation* 
 
 ON a former occasion when I was privileged 
 to be your guest, I was expected to address 
 you on "The Aims of Democracy." Circum- 
 stances of great moment substituted another 
 speaker who delivered a speech of national and 
 international significance. For those circum- 
 stances I am grateful not only because of the re- 
 sults of that rearrangement, but because, by a 
 change of subject, I am now excused from trying 
 to state the Aims of Democracy. For truth to 
 tell, I am not quite assured what those aims are. 
 And if I may confess the fact, I do not feel at 
 all sure that I can tell what democracy is. Lest 
 you may judge me markedly incompetent on 
 this account, may I say that I do not know to 
 whom I could go to get a definition of that de- 
 mocracy of which we talk so largely and so freely. 
 I would not declare that there is not such a defini- 
 tion, widely and generally agreed to, but I do not 
 know what it is or where to go to get it. 
 
 We are told that "Governments derive their 
 
 *To the New York Republican Club. 
 
 162 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 163 
 
 just powers from the consent of the governed." 
 This noble phrase from the immortal Declaration 
 of Independence, is sometimes said to contain the 
 adequate definition of a democracy. But this 
 quotation requires explanation. If it means that 
 all governments derive their just powers from 
 the active consent of those governed, we must 
 urge that this is plainly untrue, since the women 
 living under such governments and constituting 
 fully one half of their responsible inhabitants, 
 have rarely or never been asked to consent to any 
 form of government. This fact alone invalidates 
 the quotation as a definition. 
 
 If the statement means that all who live under 
 a government must give active or passive consent, 
 it then appears that no government exists 
 wherein there is not a considerable minority 
 which lives in a constant state of protest against 
 it ; and these are not all law breakers necessarily, 
 but oftentimes are the most progressive of its 
 people. The truth is that governments derive 
 their just powers not primarily from the consent 
 of men but from the universal and benevolent 
 laws of God, laws not primarily made or 
 amended, neither created nor repealed by any 
 human legislative body. Nor can they ever be. 
 They are the established code of an eternal 
 order. 
 
164 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 A few days ago the Premier of Great Britain, 
 Mr. Lloyd George, in a very impressive speech to 
 an industrial Convention, defining democracy, 
 used these words: "Democracy, in plain terms, is 
 the rule of the Majority." But from time to time 
 in our own country, which we claim to be rep- 
 resentatively democratic, the Administration, 
 under our system of voting, has been elected by 
 a minority of the voters voting, and a more 
 marked minority of all the legal voters. And in 
 such a case if the administration is partisan, the 
 will of the majority is subordinated to that of the 
 minority. If it is said that the maj ority passively 
 consent, it would not help matters to say that in a 
 government ruled by a minority to whose rule the 
 majority consents, the result is a democracy. It 
 might be an oligarchy. 
 
 Once again, we note that a few days ago, the 
 Japanese who have really an autocratic govern- 
 ment, hearing so much said by us and others 
 about our purpose to foster democracy, took 
 alarm and inquired whether they were to under- 
 stand that we purposed to make of their govern- 
 ment a democracy — a natural and very embar- 
 rassing question. To this the minister of the 
 United States in their country, replied that — 
 "The allies were fighting not for democracy in 
 nations but for democracy among nations." 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 165 
 
 Deft and novel as this turn of speech may be, you 
 cannot suppose that it satisfied the acute Jap- 
 anese mind. No more does it satisfy our own. It 
 may state a fact or it may not, but if this is the 
 test of democracy then our government in the 
 past, and that of monarchical states which have 
 constitutions and parliaments, are not warranted 
 in being classed as democracies. 
 
 Once more, by your leave, I note that a saga- 
 cious publicist has recently said, "In an autoc- 
 racy, the administration directs the people and 
 their representatives ; in a democracy, the people 
 direct their administration or administrators." 
 The day after I first read this, the "Overman 
 Bill" was presented to the Senate of the United 
 States, by request of the President, asking that 
 Congress which had recently granted him powers 
 in excess of those of almost any monarch on earth, 
 should add almost indefinitely to those powers. 
 Is it not obvious that the President for practi- 
 cally all the term of his presidency, has con- 
 strained and directed the representatives of the 
 peoples, and so the people themselves? If this is 
 true, as it appears to me to be, then this fourth 
 definition of democracy is not applicable to this 
 country. 
 
 You have borne with me while I have proved 
 to you that I do not so fully know what democ- 
 
166 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 racy is that I would assume to define it or its aims 
 to you. And I shall be very glad if you know so 
 well what I do not know, that I need not try 
 farther to define it. 
 
 Our general topic to-day is "The Spiritual 
 Aims and Gains of the Nation." This subject I 
 should be able in some degree to illuminate. I am 
 well aware that I am in the presence of statesmen, 
 lawyers, soldiers, philanthropists and masters of 
 affairs. Each of you knows much that I do not 
 know as well as you know it, about statecraft, 
 law, military affairs, and various specialties relat- 
 ing to the public welfare. Toward your larger 
 knowledge I feel a becoming deference and re- 
 spect. My specialty is the things of the spiritual 
 life as relating to God and man. Trusting to the 
 large hospitality of your minds, may I be per- 
 mitted to reveal my own thinking on the subject 
 which, as a minister of God to men, I ought to 
 know more about than any other. Let me speak 
 as a Christian teacher who seeks to have also the 
 vision of a statesman. 
 
 All that I say will be within the limits of the 
 defined policies and purposes of that American 
 statesman now everywhere acclaimed as most 
 worthy of the respect and honour of all who love 
 liberty under law, Abraham Lincoln. Of his 
 spiritual vision and piety as applied to the con- 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 167 
 
 duct of weighty affairs in which he won immortal 
 fame, Mr. James G. Blaine, one of our most hon- 
 oured names, thus speaks in his "Twenty Years 
 in Congress": "Throughout the whole period of 
 the (Civil) war, he (Mr. Lincoln) constantly 
 directed the attention of the nation to dependence 
 on God. It may indeed be doubted whether he 
 omitted this in a single state paper. In every 
 message to Congress, in every proclamation to 
 the people, he made this prominent. 
 
 "In July, 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg, 
 he called on the people to give thanks because 
 Tt hath pleased Almighty God to hearken to the 
 supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, 
 and to vouchsafe signal and effective victories to 
 the army and navy of the United States,' and 
 he asked the people 'to render homage to the 
 Divine Majesty and to invoke the influence of 
 His Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has 
 produced and so long sustained a needless and 
 cruel rebellion.' 
 
 "On another occasion, recounting the blessings 
 which had come to the Union, he said, 'No hu- 
 man counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal 
 hand worked out these great things. They are 
 the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who 
 while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath 
 nevertheless remembered mercy.' 
 
168 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 "Throughout his entire official career — at- 
 tended at all times with exacting duty and pain- 
 ful responsibility — he never forgot his own de- 
 pendence or the dependence of the people upon 
 a Higher Power. 
 
 "In his last public address, delivered to an im- 
 mense crowd assembled at the White House on 
 the 11th of April, 1865, to congratulate him on 
 the victories of the Union, the President, stand- 
 ing as he unconsciously was, in the very shadow 
 of death, said reverently to his hearers, 'In the 
 midst of your j oyous expression, He from whom 
 all blessings flow must first be remembered.' ' 
 
 This reflection of Mr. Lincoln's thought and 
 spirit, attested by his eminent contemporary, may 
 well impress upon us the wisdom and the source 
 of true and immortal statesmanship, and vindi- 
 cate, if it needs vindication, my purpose to dis- 
 cuss the emergence out of this war of those spirit- 
 ual certainties which have appeared and will 
 more fully appear to those who watch for the 
 stars which are rising on the brow of this dark 
 and dreadful night. 
 
 What broadest principles of enduring life, 
 principles which are momentous and everlasting, 
 essential to the lif e of human society and the con- 
 tinuance of the civil state, have become clear 
 since the war began and are destined to grow 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 169 
 
 clearer as long as reason and life last? A selected 
 few of these permit me to discuss. 
 
 Materialism is Discredited, Stripped and 
 Repudiated 
 
 Materialism, affirming physical energy but 
 denying the soul, rejecting God and lightly re- 
 garding authoritative morals, has been rampant. 
 Its creed is atheistic; its fundamental theory is 
 of a godless world. It declares matter sufficient 
 unto itself; to produce itself, to account for it- 
 self, to guide itself, to be in itself an end and 
 goal, and all without God. It has been assumed, 
 allowed, promulgated, accepted as having its ade- 
 quate basis in atheistic evolution. Evolution 
 without God, blind, without foresight or mind, if 
 begun at all, proceeding by an irresistible force, 
 (whether backward or forward it offers no cri- 
 teria to prove), in which human life appears as 
 other life appears, doing what it must, without 
 controlling volition and without either duty or 
 obligation — this had become the conceived back- 
 ground, the alleged cause, the assumed uncon- 
 trolled certainty in individual and collective 
 life. 
 
170 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 Germany, possessed with this prevalent idea, 
 has exalted to the position of axioms of interpre- 
 tation in social and national life, the two funda- 
 mental passwords, supposed to govern the origin 
 of species, namely, "The struggle for life," and 
 the "Survival of the fittest." They were logical 
 in assuming that if these tests are true anywhere, 
 they are true everywhere; that if they apply to 
 the human species at all they apply to it always 
 and under all circumstances. What is more 
 natural or pleasing in their life than to conclude, 
 as they might say, irresistibly, that they, as indi- 
 viduals and as a people, had made the "struggle 
 for life" in competition with other peoples, and 
 had proved in themselves by their superiority, as 
 they conceived it, that their fitness was the fitness 
 of "the fittest" and their "survival" was actually 
 and prophetically assured. This they had the 
 courage to affirm. In so doing, their main prem- 
 ise being allowed, they were perfectly logical. 
 They were carrying their theory to its practical 
 application and limit. 
 
 Out of this process emerged, for Nietzsche, 
 "The Superman" which (or who) is the finality 
 in his conception and philosophy of the individ- 
 ual, and that of Germany which follows him. 
 The "superman" is he who is superior to all but 
 himself, superior to all law but that of his own 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 171 
 
 volition, a perfect egoist, who, untrammelled and 
 of necessity, sacrifices all to himself. In self- 
 assertion he holds his might to be the only right, 
 and he practically worships himself, his own de- 
 sires and his own will. 
 
 Treitschke, chief of German's political philos- 
 ophers, their acknowledged master, at first 
 strongly averse to Nietzsche, later took advan- 
 tage of the latter' s suggestion to affirm, the 
 "superstate" as the one and only superior of the 
 "superman"; the state affirming its will, its un- 
 rivalled and uncontradicted demands, from 
 which there should be no appeal and beyond 
 which no right. The affirmation of German 
 superiority is a natural and logical result of the 
 doctrine of evolution without God — material- 
 istic evolution. Fixing on this their gaze, the 
 whole teaching force of this empire proceeded to 
 work out and to teach its philosophy through all 
 its educative agencies, until, after the lapse of 
 years, it came to be the fixed belief of their intel- 
 lectuals, their civil leaders and their military men. 
 Might being declared to be the only right, and 
 might only and always Materialism in one or an- 
 other form, from this they reasoned that they had 
 before them the duty and the destiny of subju- 
 gating the world. Their scheme of thought has 
 governed their education, has made their theory 
 
172 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 of the Nation ; their theory has ultimated in their 
 policy and conduct, and ignoring all that the rest 
 of the world holds as the true theory and right 
 action of men and nations, they have undertaken 
 to conquer the world, which they despise as in- 
 ferior in its evolution, to themselves. They are 
 absolutely true to the doctrine of evolution as 
 they hold it, having no God over all and no spir- 
 itual nature in man. And this is called a "scien- 
 tific" view, that being a momentous word with 
 which to conjure confidence. 
 
 Asserting it, gave them an assumed leadership 
 in education. Their imitators were found in 
 many lands, their propagandists everywhere. 
 Their idea of themselves they wished us all to 
 entertain, and an idea of ourselves which subor- 
 dinated us to them. Mr. Poultney Bigelow, who 
 I believe, was in the University with the Kaiser, 
 well says: "The great German propaganda is 
 more than twenty years old and was part of a 
 general scheme to prepare the United States for 
 the war in which we are now engaged. Not only 
 the Imperial Staff of the German army acted as 
 a central bureau of information on all things 
 American; but the schools, the universities and 
 societies for the propagation of Deutschthum 
 and Deutsche Kultur were steered by military 
 officials to prepare the American mind for a bene- 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 173 
 
 ficent German Empire in which a Germanised 
 America would be one of the many provinces 
 bowing down to a Germanised Augustus Cassar." 
 
 "Every American School, university or scien- 
 tific institution was feeling the spell of this pro- 
 paganda without knowing its source. American 
 colleges were commencing to feel that there was 
 little worth learning in France or England — 
 that the goal of academic ambition was a Berlin 
 or Leipzig Ph. D. degree. The arrogance of all 
 Prussian professors at our seats of learning was 
 mistaken by us for the assertiveness of great 
 masters and we little dreamed that these poison- 
 ous Pundits thought more of a Fourth Class Red 
 Ribbon in Berlin than of the goodwill of their 
 colleagues of Harvard or Ann Arbor. And then 
 the Exchange Professors and the visits of Prince 
 Henry, and the Germanic Museum for Harvard, 
 and the statue of Frederic the Great for Wash- 
 ington and the persistent and nauseating celebra- 
 tion where glasses were raised to the "traditional 
 friendship" of the two countries — and all the 
 while the great general staff of Berlin was fever- 
 ishly at work preparing plans for an invasion 
 of America on the Belgian-Roumanian plan." 
 With Mr. Bigelow agree the best informed stu- 
 dents of affairs everywhere. 
 
 Plainly stated their purpose is the mastery, 
 
174 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 enslavement and robbery of all nations. This 
 purpose is now resisted by all but their present 
 dupes and slaves, and the principles which they 
 profess are equally repudiated. If we were once 
 blindly drifting into their way of thinking, we 
 now renounce it. Their philosophy is no longer 
 philosophy, their science is no longer science to 
 us. Both are Prussianism at its worst. In every 
 realm we have partially conceded to them the 
 primacy which they have claimed. Now we see 
 their falseness and our folly. Their high priests 
 of science falsely so called, have not the first qual- 
 ity of a scientific mind, namely, truthfulness — the 
 love of truth. In the first year of the war nearly 
 one hundred of the most distinguished of them 
 drew up and signed a declaration addressed "to 
 the civilised world" in which among other state- 
 ments, these are given prominence: "It is not true 
 that Germany is guilty of having caused this war. 
 It is not true that the life and property of a single 
 Belgian citizen was injured by our soldiers with- 
 out the bitterest self-defence having made it 
 necessary. It is not true that our troops treated 
 Louvain brutally. It is not true that our war- 
 fare pays no respect to international laws." A 
 distinguished American specialist in physical 
 science truthfully says, "In these false declara- 
 tions by German scientists whose names, many 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 175 
 
 of them, are household words — declarations 
 which have never been withdrawn, German 
 science has met the greatest downfall in her 
 history." Yet these are the leaders, the masters 
 who have been sought, lauded and blindly fol- 
 lowed for two generations as having the right, 
 because they claimed it, to reconstruct human 
 ideals and thought on the basis of their scientific 
 dixit. We are ashamed of our fatuous folly. 
 These immoral, inhuman slaves of their Prussian 
 masters have been sought unto to teach us science, 
 theology, sociology. What are academic degrees 
 worth, given by such critics and professors? 
 They have sown the wind; we are now reaping 
 the whirlwind. Their materialism is bringing 
 forth its expected and legitimate fruit. Their 
 national goal is consistent with their characters 
 and word. They may be willing to be slaves to 
 Prussia. We are not. Their national aims may 
 be consistent with their theory though without a 
 shred of morality or humanity. One such nation 
 wrought out on their materialistic plan is one too 
 many. We repudiate their theory. We are 
 shamed by our own act in having followed them. 
 We abandon materialism as an aim for our own 
 or any other nation. And I hope we are penitent 
 for the misery which we have caused by foolishly 
 following such pretenders. 
 
176 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 ii 
 
 Wealth as an Object of Worship, 
 is Dethroned 
 
 It had been allowed to usurp the throne of 
 God. Of this peril we had been warned ages 
 ago. The great Saviour of the world lived and 
 wrought in an age when sculptured and painted 
 idols were everywhere and mythologies about 
 these were religion. Of any one of these idols 
 of wood and stone He never spoke; concerning 
 them He uttered no warning. There was but one 
 idol to whom He alluded as disputing with the 
 one true and living God the homage of men. It 
 was Mammon. And Mammon had never been 
 painted or sculptured. It was merely a name, 
 used three times in the New Testament, for 
 wealth as an object of worship. Christ knew that 
 long after all worship of stones was abandoned, 
 wealth would dispute with the true God the devo- 
 tion of men. 
 
 Our age illustrated the fact. Money, or wealth 
 has been the measure and gauge of success. He 
 who gained it was the envied and successful man. 
 Gradations of society have been fixed by it. The 
 upper class has been the rich : the lower class the 
 poor. Pride, show, splendour, extravagance, have 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 177 
 
 been the touchstone of coveted life. Moral and 
 spiritual standards have been subordinated to 
 gain. The market was esteemed more than the 
 martyr. Lying to gain financial advantage was 
 accounted venial. Education was bent to money- 
 making vocations. At length the naked wicked- 
 ness of Mammon worship became clear, as the 
 German- Austrian-Turkish robbers began to as- 
 sault and plunder the world. When empires 
 lie, break treaties and steal, the magnitude of the 
 disaster frightens us. The lust of wealth in this 
 so-called cultured age then takes on a fury if 
 ever equalled, certainly never surpassed. 
 Wealth was so lordly and so mighty that we had 
 been told that there could never be a general 
 European war, that the bankers of Europe would 
 not permit it; their money power would be the 
 final arbiter. When the actual crisis came they 
 had no more power than children armed with 
 reeds, pushing back the avalanche. Mammon 
 attacked, was afraid. It could not protect itself 
 nor the world which had worshipped it. In dire 
 extremity, it called for help ; called on patriotism 
 to come to the rescue. But even patriotism was 
 enfeebled by subordination to wealth, lying with 
 its head in Mammon's lap, like Samson in Deli- 
 lah's. At length patriotism slowly broke from 
 deadly alliance and called on honor, liberty, 
 
178 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 humanity, morality, to come to the rescue and 
 save wealth and country. And these powers, not 
 material but spiritual, not the creatures nor the 
 worshippers of wealth but the offspring of the liv- 
 ing God, leaped up and entered the fray. Hin- 
 dered so long but ever persistent, they alone could 
 defend Mammon which they always regarded as 
 a slave. Like Dagon before the ark of the Lord, 
 Mammon grovelled and begged. Its prestige 
 and its power were gone. It could not help itself, 
 much less defend others. Then we saw and con- 
 fessed that we had a primary duty to One higher 
 than money; that the things of the spirit were 
 most worth saving, that for them wle might wisely 
 spend all our wealth. And at the call of patriot- 
 ism, honor, morality, liberty, and humanity, 
 we began to pour forth the accumulated and 
 stored treasures of years. They became a sacri- 
 fice on the altar of eternal spiritual good. By 
 spiritual energy, motive and intelligence they 
 made wealth a powerful defensive agency. 
 
 How better can this great fact be shown than 
 by the motive and the act which gave fifty mil- 
 lion dollars to the work of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association? The gift was asked to 
 make great and noble the souls of our soldiery. 
 Early in the war the cry came that the first thing 
 in the making of a first-rate soldier was the spirit 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 179 
 
 of him. The French called it the "morale," best 
 paraphrased as "a state of mind." It meant 
 everything which operates in the inner and spir- 
 itual lif e of the men ; sympathy, duty, care, pur- 
 ity, cheer, faith, fealty, spirituality, loyalty to the 
 unseen and the Eternal. From the spiritual en- 
 ergy and wisdom which saw and urged the need, 
 came the outpouring of our gold, now doing its 
 worthiest service. And now we know that wealth 
 is a good servant and can ever be such ; a servant 
 of man, of the man with a soul, and With a duty 
 to God and to his fellows, but never more en- 
 throned as master of souls. Money is the ser- 
 vant of God and the servant of men. It should 
 cease from now on to be the boast, the hope, the 
 goal of life and be only its servant. We are lay- 
 ing it on the altar of God and humanity. It shall 
 never dispute His throne. 
 
 in 
 
 God is Enthroned as the Essential Head of 
 Government 
 
 The recent past has seen the rise of numerous 
 speculative theories of human life and society. 
 With differing labels they have had a general 
 likeness, and without practical tests, have gained 
 credence. Because new, they have been assumed 
 
180 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 to be true, if indeed they can be said to be as orig- 
 inal as they are vague and novel- Private morals 
 and public duties have been thrown into confu- 
 sion. Most of these theories have had this in com- 
 mon, that they were atheistic efforts to do with- 
 out God and to be substitutes for religion and 
 morals. Two of these may stand for the rest, 
 Anarchism and Socialism. 
 
 In practical application Anarchism is adverse 
 to all governments and all government. It ob- 
 jects to all morals and moral laws, protests 
 against restraint, opposes rule and rulers, and 
 is not only oblivious of God but rages against 
 Him. Not definable in few words, it rejects al- 
 most all institutions and the principles on which 
 they are founded; calls all morality "slave moral- 
 ity," and assumes that each individual is the only 
 authoritative ruler. Within a few weeks a woman 
 now in a United States prison, holding all 
 these ideas in a most outspoken form, has as- 
 sembled an audience of three thousand in New 
 York, and held them for three hours in enthusi- 
 astic approval of her words, while she has de- 
 nounced practically all individual, social and 
 legal restraints. That audience, composed largely 
 of people recently come to this country, is repre- 
 sentative of great numbers in this and other lands 
 who indorse these crazy dreams. They systemat- 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 181 
 
 ically teach to young children all these subversive 
 ideas, and practise, defiantly, their teachings. 
 One prominent among them, once a Christian 
 minister, in a widely circulated volume, strenu- 
 ously objects to the idea of God as Father, de- 
 claring that we neither need nor want a father 
 God, nor any kind of relation which suggests 
 subordination and dependence. 
 
 Socialism in its most strenuous forms, as in the 
 German Social Democracy, is an association of 
 people, found in many countries, which is diffi- 
 cult to briefly define and characterise : difficult to 
 define because there is no authoritative represen- 
 tative whose definitions are standard; and not 
 easy to describe because there are many varying 
 stages of the thought, which do not agree one 
 with another. Allowing for these variations, we 
 may take the mass of the Social Democrats in 
 Germany and their sympathisers in Russia for 
 illustration. All are atheistic, selfish, intolerant, 
 violent against wealth and equally against work, 
 whose purpose is to dispossess those who have 
 any accumulated property, or any control of 
 machinery, business and goods, and to rearrange 
 the whole direction and ownership of the same. 
 The Bolsheviki represent a sufficiently large 
 number of these to illustrate what they may do 
 if they gain control in any land. The product 
 
182 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 of these theories is in sight. It is Chaos. Russia 
 is illustrating it. Here is a headless nation, be- 
 cause it is without control, without law, without 
 government, and pervaded with a reckless sense 
 of irresponsibility to any power, human or divine. 
 
 Stability in a community, a state, a nation, 
 must rest on a foundation of laws; these on an 
 underlying foundation of principles, and these 
 must express reverence for duties and rights, and 
 goodwill for one's neighbours. The deepest prin- 
 ciple is a sense of Right and this has been placed 
 in the constitution of things by the Creator. Out 
 of Right as conceived and affirmed by God, come 
 rights, duties, authority, government, order, 
 harmony and prosperity. By these are upheld 
 honour and liberty, in their only true and reason- 
 able definitions and sanctions. On anarchy you 
 cannot predicate order. Its outcome is chaos, 
 confusion. 
 
 In a godless society, right, authority and gov- 
 ernment are impossible. These must be founded 
 on God and derived from Him. And He from 
 whom these are derived and by whom sanctioned, 
 is and must be much more than a Being of might, 
 authorising any and all actions which one can 
 assert the power and the will to do. Sanctioning 
 virtue He must possess it. If He were without 
 holiness, or righteousness, mercy or love, He 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 183 
 
 could neither direct nor demand these. The basis 
 of society is not any conception of God which a 
 heathen or a Prussian may conceive to best corre- 
 spond to his ambitions, but the one and only God, 
 the God of universal man, of universal right and 
 of universal law. Human goodwill must find its 
 sanction in Divine goodwill and the spring of 
 goodwill in man or God, is and must be love. 
 Out of this attribute comes and becomes all 
 benevolent feeling and beneficent law. As we 
 know God, the ultimate statute of His kingdom 
 is the command to men to love Him and to love 
 one another. Unless He is lovable in His char- 
 acter, no one by being commanded, could be com- 
 pelled to love Him. A god of mere Might or a 
 man in whom Might is all, does not suggest love 
 or show love nor show the least possibility of 
 evoking it. A nation to which Might is supreme, 
 cannot know love and cannot be loved. Unless 
 there is the sanction of the heart to the principles, 
 purposes and motives of government, it cannot 
 hold and direct the race. And laws arbitrarily 
 forced upon men by a characterless being, must 
 issue in characterless society. 
 
 The God who being enthroned, assures social 
 order (including civil) must be the God who is 
 revealed as Power and Love with all that these 
 imply. And there is but One who has ever been 
 
184 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 revealed to men who has this character. He is 
 the living God whom Jesus Christ especially has 
 made known to us. And so Christ, revealing 
 Him, becomes "the chief corner-stone" of the 
 world order, and love becomes its vital and uni- 
 versal principle. Any other view; of man and 
 society leaves the individual selfish, greedy, cruel 
 and detached. At the same time it disintegrates 
 society, condemns law, causing repulsion instead 
 of attraction, confusion instead of order. It is 
 not possible to have society, the social order 
 among men, without bringing them to reverence 
 and obey the God whose law is wisdom and love. 
 To make order possible, to save the state, to 
 create society, to establish law we enthrone 
 God. 
 
 The Prelude to the Constitution of the United 
 States reads: "We, the People of the United 
 States, in order to secure a more perfect union, to 
 establish Justice, insure domestic tranquillity, 
 provide for the common defence, and to secure 
 the blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our 
 posterity, do ordain and establish the follow- 
 ing Constitution." "Order," "Union," "Tran- 
 quillity," "Defence," hold beneficent meanings 
 only when limited and defined by the Law of 
 God. Reverence for Constitutions must be as- 
 sured through reverence for God. 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 185 
 
 IV 
 
 Transcendent Spiritual Necessities Demand 
 and Justify Physical Sacrifices 
 
 Having wisely and rationally apprehended 
 that spiritual good and attributes are of the high- 
 est worth to us, we are readily and eagerly giv- 
 ing and exchanging for their maintenance all 
 physical possessions, and even life itself. If we 
 have repudiated materialism as a theory of hu- 
 man life and advantage, and accepted spiritual 
 treasures instead, we are proving our practical 
 faith by offering all we possess to uphold our 
 good confession. Unlimited material sacrifices 
 are being poured out by which to maintain, con- 
 serve and promote our spiritual possessions. Not 
 mere passive assent do we give to the proposition 
 that spiritual good is worth more than material, 
 but we actively offer all we have in proof. Of 
 our surrender of wealth and goods we have al- 
 ready spoken. A vastly greater gift asserts a 
 much deeper faith. It is the gift of life and suf- 
 fering. 
 
 Of this supreme, personal sacrifice an im- 
 mortal example is found in the martyrdom of 
 Edith Cavell. Serving the cause of humanity 
 and right, she refused to count her lif e dear unto 
 
186 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 her at the dictate of brutal might. With her 
 beautiful life on the one hand and the grave on 
 the other, life to be preserved by inhumanity on 
 her part, and death to be visited upon her for 
 benevolence, she chose the immortal good. And 
 she deserves immortal fame. Yet she is only one 
 of her sex of whom uncounted thousands have 
 the same estimate of the duties and values of lif e. 
 Our gold is dross compared with such offerings of 
 flesh for spirit. 
 
 As this and these are personal sacrifices, so on 
 a national scale, we have seen the devotion of the 
 nation of Belgium to honour and truth. The 
 choice was deliberate. History can never de- 
 scribe the grandeur of that choice. There was 
 the offer of protection and material advantage 
 without limit, at the hands of the German 
 tempter. The alternative, undisguised, was 
 devastation and death. It was a clear choice 
 between physical riches and spiritual wealth. 
 And there was no hesitation ; no uncertainty, no 
 debate. Belgium offered all. Her rulers, her 
 men, women and children surrendered every vis- 
 ible and estimable treasure so that she might keep 
 an unsullied soul ; so that the honour, truth, duty 
 of the nation might shine as the stars forever. 
 .Wonder seizes us whenever we reflect on the ex- 
 altation of motive, and the sacrificial exchange 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 187 
 
 which Belgium made of the things which are seen 
 and temporal for the things wjiich are not seen 
 and eternal. 
 
 As Belgium illustrates this spirit of sacrifice on 
 a national scale, no less have the allies done like- 
 wise in the International policy which they have 
 adopted. Their choice has been of the same 
 nature. Their governments have staked all on 
 the greater value of spiritual character and qual- 
 ities. All that can add glory and pleasure to the 
 outer things of a transient world they have of- 
 fered up so as to gain and own forever the spirit, 
 and the deserved reputation of honesty and integ- 
 rity of life. Their whole populations, of one and 
 another country, have vied with each other in 
 proving their loyalty to morality, humanity, in- 
 tegrity and liberty. For Right, moral, humane, 
 God-revealed and God-sanctioned Right, we 
 offer, and if need be, will give up all our physical 
 possessions. 
 
 Such sacrifice is not only made but gladly and 
 quickly made, as we are moved by spiritual im- 
 pulses and guided by reason. For the law of 
 sacrifice is a wholly reasonable law. Seeing that 
 all things have value, and that some things have 
 a much greater value than others, we compare 
 and measure these things and choose that which 
 has the greater worth. For this we give the 
 
188 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 lesser. The exchange is made; we are enriched; 
 and the act of sacrifice passes into the records of 
 wisdom and goodness. Thus we estimate the 
 things of the spirit, and we estimate the things of 
 the flesh. The latter are very precious; the 
 former are much more so. We choose the things 
 which we are sure are worthiest and most pre- 
 cious. And it is the consciousness of doing this 
 which exalts our seeming losses to immortal 
 gains. 
 
 HoW significant is this exchange when we con- 
 sider that now, for the things of the spirit, human 
 life, by countless lives are being given. This very 
 fact assures us of the immortality of our person- 
 ality. If the spiritual attributes of the man are 
 worthy of defence through giving up our material 
 goods, much more the spiritual personality which 
 these attributes express and adorn, is undying. 
 We cannot rationally hold to the theory of a 
 merely mortal life, ended at the grave, and then 
 give it for so-called spiritual good. If this life is 
 all, if there is no more life after it, then it is all 
 and the best I have. Indeed it is so valuable that 
 nothing can be measured against it. When it is 
 gone, all is gone, and as for me, I am gone. 
 Were that the fact, then I would not on any ac- 
 count or for any cause, surrender my life. Not 
 anything nor everything else could be weighed 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 189 
 
 or measured against it to warrant the exchange. 
 If I give all for nothing I am a fool. But we all 
 wisely postulate immortal life. After this life, 
 there is more life for us. We end our career 
 on earth, but we go on beyond. Only the cer- 
 tainty of this makes reasonable our offering of 
 life. 
 
 And so in this great day, taking inventory of 
 our greatest treasures, we have come to have a 
 clear view of our spirit and its immortal future. 
 This estimate is what Jesus Christ made — He 
 who brought life and immortality to light. He 
 made the sacrifice of all material things to be the 
 attestation of the greater value of the spiritual 
 things which remained, and He gave His lif e be- 
 cause eternal life is better and because He had 
 more life than can ever be subject to death. The 
 War is, on the German side, the battle of material- 
 ism, of might. Necessarily it must be stated in 
 physical terms. Their war is immoral, unright- 
 eous, unholy, unmerciful, inhuman, without 
 honour and with plunder and merely material 
 gain for its purpose. By their purpose our spirit- 
 ual heritage is assailed. Against their design we 
 array all our spiritual forces which carry with 
 them all our physical possessions, so that Right 
 may rule, that eternal Right may govern the souls 
 and the lives of men and nations, and the essen- 
 
190 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 tials which are eternal may remain our immortal 
 possessions. 
 
 Through World-wide Co-operation We Are 
 Coming to World Fraternity 
 
 With our allies we are working unitedly and 
 drawing closer in a co-operation which is at once 
 a fellowship of suffering and of mutual love and 
 help. Hitherto we have not realised that we 
 are really near neighbours to them. Fraternity 
 has been more spoken of than felt. But now all 
 indifference has been dissipated and our former 
 isolation has ceased to exist. We could no longer 
 withhold from them our sympathy or our service. 
 Joining with them, we resist tyranny and con- 
 tend against a common foe. Uniting with them 
 in merciful service, our sympathies as well as our 
 courage unify us. 
 
 How could real fraternity be more assured 
 than by the friendly aid of which the Red Cross 
 Society is the most conspicuous example? Is 
 there any kind of need which we are not eagerly 
 seeking through it to alleviate? Its emblem, the 
 Cross, is the sign of reconciliation of two worlds, 
 heaven and earth; and of two continents and all 
 peoples. Others suffer. That is all we need to 
 know. And we hasten to them, bearing in our 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 191 
 
 hands and in our hearts whatever will alleviate 
 their distress. 
 
 Of kindred character and influence is our 
 policy of "Food Conservation" by which, with 
 self-denial, self-control and self-sacrifice, we build 
 up the strength of others. Even to this day, as 
 many times in years past, when we move against 
 the sale and use of alcoholic beverages, some men 
 remonstrate with us and ask, "Are you daring to 
 invade our liberties and to tell us what we shall 
 drink? By and by, you will tell us what to eat." 
 Quite true. Our government is now welcome at 
 our homes and tables as it comes in and tells us 
 what to eat. For it not only advises and urges 
 us what to eat but prescribes what we shall not 
 eat. Four years ago we should have jeered at the 
 possibility of such a course. Now we know that 
 our very life as a nation depends on our compli- 
 ance. And even more marvellous is the fact that 
 we are doing this so that what we save shall be 
 sent across the sea to feed and strengthen millions 
 whom we never saw and never will know. Our 
 most private and personal use of food is being 
 governed in the interest of the whole world. And 
 we are glad to have it so. "Deny yourself" is as 
 truly a government order as it is a command of 
 Christ. It is the only rule by which the nations 
 are to be saved. 
 
192 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 The Salvation Army, in its extreme poverty, 
 used to advertise, "Self-Denial Week." We 
 were wont to smile at their ardour and to count it 
 fanaticism. Its purpose was good, but in their 
 poverty and manifest need, we wondered why or 
 how they could exercise self-denial. Now, we 
 who then smiled are doing as they did to save 
 our lives by saving others. It has been told that 
 when our soldiers first went to France, they were 
 greeted as "The Salvation Army." Such they 
 were and are. We are all marching with them. 
 They and we and all who deny themselves for 
 others, are the Salvation Army of the World. 
 
 And how remarkable that we are becoming 
 clearly aware that salvation comes through self- 
 denial, and wisest self -direction. No man is liv- 
 ing to himself if he is living usefully or rationally. 
 We now regulate our desires and our actions by 
 God's commands and by the needs of others, as 
 the national government makes them known to 
 us. Our interest affiliated with our allies make 
 our evident obligations. Selfish purposes are 
 shamed and fought. Profiteering is forbidden by 
 law ; that is, taking selfish advantage in the com- 
 mercial world of the necessities of others and en- 
 riching ourselves at their expense. From a new 
 angle we see that waste and wickedness are insep- 
 arable from the liquor traffic. We protest on the 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 193 
 
 broadest grounds against foodstuffs being used 
 to make ruinous and poisonous drinks. There is 
 something to be done with grains which must take 
 precedence of any selfish use of them. Our care 
 for our human brothers is being emphasised. On 
 it depends our own welfare, inseparable from 
 theirs. We are brothers in spirit and action. We 
 suffer and serve in love for one another. And so 
 we come to live as men must who live well. The 
 love for our neighbour is the goal of our highest 
 victory, the motive and result of self-mastery. 
 
 VI 
 
 The Christian Doctrine of Human World 
 Unity Is Vindicated 
 
 The word Christian I use unhesitatingly 
 because all the gains and aims which I have 
 named are Christian, and expressions of Chris- 
 tian principles and teaching. Essentially spirit- 
 ual, Christian truth must repudiate mere Mate- 
 rialism and put in its place the truths of a spirit- 
 ual world. Likewise Christianity dethrones 
 Mammon and makes wealth the servant of higher 
 things. It enthrones God and finds in Him the 
 source of the laws of life and human order. One 
 of its central doctrines is that of Self-sacrifice for 
 the good of others. And it leads the world in 
 
194 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 announcing and cultivating the spirit of Brother- 
 hood in and among men. So likewise it assumes 
 and teaches the Unity and equality of men of 
 every race and clime as subjects of Divine mercy 
 and care. 
 
 In theory and practise this teaching has been 
 always contested by mankind. Men of one na- 
 tion or tribe have considered themselves superior 
 to their fellow men of other locations and char- 
 acteristics and have usually held a hostile rather 
 than a friendly relation to the stranger. 
 
 Assuming human unity Christ directed a uni- 
 versal propaganda of teaching and evangelising 
 among all men. The four universals of His final 
 commission to His disciples are thus given in the 
 Bible: "All authority hath been given me in 
 heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make 
 disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the 
 name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit ; 
 teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
 have commanded you; and lo, I am with you all 
 the days, even unto the end of the world." 
 
 This is an announcement of a universal, a 
 world religion, having a universal application to 
 all men, assuming and teaching the unity of law, 
 of morals, of truth, of humanity, of kindness and 
 help everywhere. 
 
 So, obedient to this broad direction, the fol- 
 
Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 195 
 
 lowers of Christ in every age have gone into all 
 lands and among all peoples vindicating world 
 unity, a common humanity and a universal duty 
 of man to God and of man to man. Extensive 
 and inclusive as this conception is, it has by many 
 been opposed, traduced, belittled and scorned. 
 Without hesitation, those who understood their 
 Lord have persisted in their glorious enterprise. 
 By their doctrine of God and their love of hu- 
 manity they have profoundly impressed the mind 
 of the, as yet, unchristian world. And so well 
 have they represented and taught the doctrine of 
 Christ that, at this time, among other world-wide 
 benefits which they admittedly have conferred, is 
 that they have visibly given to the leaders of 
 every land of the Orient a lofty conception of the 
 Christian spirit and purpose. 
 
 Naturally the preponderating millions of Asia 
 might have assumed that all the peoples of the 
 West from whence these missionaries came, were 
 Christian. But they have learned to discrimi- 
 nate. And now when nations of the western world 
 who might have been expected to be Christians, 
 have assailed the rest of mankind in ways so 
 selfish and so wicked as to shock even a savage 
 mind, all these oriental nations understand that 
 such assailants are not Christians. They also 
 understand that the defenders of the best things 
 
196 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 in human life, because they so defend, are not to 
 be classed with their assailants, and that on the 
 side of Germany are the foes of humanity as on 
 the side of the allies are its friends. The Asiatic 
 nations therefore are the friends of the allies. 
 And while by the vastness of their numbers they 
 might, if hostile, overwhelm the western world, 
 they are now its friends, ready to police the world 
 and to preserve and defend the things which the 
 missionaries have taught them are the best and 
 most sacred for universal man. 
 
 We owe it to-day to the work of the Christian 
 missionaries teaching the nature of God as 
 Father and the privilege of man as brothers, that 
 the sympathies and alliances of the Asiatic and 
 even the African world are with the allies. 
 
 The grounds on which Germany seeks to sub- 
 jugate and tyrannise over the human race are 
 totally unchristian. Assuming with unspeakable 
 conceit that they are superior to all the rest of 
 mankind and that they shall be masters while all 
 the rest are their slaves, they have not only awak- 
 ened Europe and America to resist them but have 
 shown to the far East as well, their presumption, 
 their savagery and their unfitness to rule. 
 
 It remains for the nations of the West to see 
 their duty to hereafter send their best representa- 
 tives to the East to give to them our very best 
 
Spiritual Aims an d Gains of the Nation 197 
 
 treasures, training and culture. Last year, by 
 dint of great self-denial, the Christians of the 
 North American Continent spent twenty million 
 dollars, most freely given, to carry the best of 
 their possessions, the truth of the Gospel, to far 
 lands. Last year the smokers of tobacco in the 
 United States spent more than a thousand mil- 
 lions for smoke, fifty times as much as the 
 Churches could send to teach and care for the 
 heathen world. Suppose that a spirit of self- 
 denial had come over those who waste this vast 
 sum and suppose that it were diverted to giving 
 our very best people and the best truth, undoubt- 
 edly the truth of Christianity, to the world : What 
 relation would that have to the consolidation, 
 prosperity, and peace of mankind? And suppose 
 even that our Government as a matter of econ- 
 omy, so as to save billions of American money 
 arid billions of value of goods, with millions of 
 invaluable lives, should hereafter pursue the pur- 
 pose of uplifting and unifying the world of man- 
 kind in a wholly kindly, brotherly, unselfish, 
 philanthropic and Christian way. What more 
 wonderful political economy could be launched 
 and out of what could spring greater universal 
 advantage ? 
 
 Seriously and reverently let me say that the 
 foregoing facts of life and reason made known to 
 
198 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 the world and impressed on the minds of men, 
 seem to me a rich compensation for our defensive 
 war and a call far more impressive than the war 
 cry of "Democracy," to furnish a reason and a 
 means of bringing to us Victory. The form of 
 government is of far less concern than its purpose 
 and spirit — and that spirit with its form and 
 fruitage, the love of God and love of man, reveal 
 the prizes and victory now inciting us to battle. 
 
VIII 
 
 Prohibition and National Defence* 
 
 THE British battle line is bent. Up to this 
 time it is not broken. Suppose it should 
 break, leaving nothing interposed between us and 
 our foes. How unspeakable the peril to us and 
 to the world. The very contemplation of it fills 
 us with anxiety and dread. So also the allied 
 battle line is strained through all the many miles 
 where British, Belgians, Italians, French, Ameri- 
 cans, are withstanding the foe; they have been 
 pushed back from thirty to fifty miles. Suppose 
 that strain should end in disintegration and de- 
 feat. Imagine that war weariness or lack of 
 courage should seize and possess that mighty 
 defensive host, so that they should cease to strug- 
 gle. The door would be wide open for the in- 
 pour of the fierce and cruel German power upon 
 civilisation and the whole world. 
 
 Can we imagine a more terrifying peril, a direr 
 catastrophe? And yet a greater foe than the 
 Central Powers has already broken through 
 
 ♦Delivered April 27, to 2,000 people representing 14 churches, in Meriden, Conn. 
 
 199 
 
200 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 upon the civilised nations of the world and is 
 working upon them greater disaster than the 
 Central Powers could possibly work. Two of 
 the greatest allied statesmen, both British, have 
 within a short time spoken of this greater foe and 
 greater peril. Mr. Lloyd George, the brilliant 
 Premier of Great Britain, has told us that there 
 is more to be feared from the alcoholic liquor 
 habit in Great Britain than from all its German 
 foes, and with enthusiasm born of the spirit of 
 wisdom, prophecy and warning, he has striven 
 to arouse his countrymen to this dire and deadly 
 peril. 
 
 In 1880 the unsurpassed modern English 
 statesman, William E. Gladstone, quoted with 
 approbation the statement that the liquor traffic 
 and drinking habit had wrought more ruin in this 
 world than war, pestilence and famine combined. 
 To this statement of historic fact, the brilliant 
 British statesman, with his broad outlook, gave 
 unhesitating assent. 
 
 With such testimony, and this is but repre- 
 sentative, need I have any hesitation in saying 
 that a greater peril confronts the allies now and 
 the world at large, from the dominant liquor 
 traffic than from all the exertions of the hosts of 
 barbarism in Central Europe? It is not as if 
 I were quoting these two statesmen alone; the 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 201 
 
 greatest soldiers and publicists, the greatest 
 economists and observers of the world agree with 
 their opinion. Among military and naval con- 
 temporaries Lord Roberts, General French, 
 General Joffre, Admiral Fisher, Admiral Jelli- 
 coe, Admiral Beattie, Lord Woolsey, and nu- 
 merous others of equal rank give their accordant 
 voice as to this greater peril. 
 
 Some unthinking souls have tried to lay upon 
 the Lord God the responsibility of this present 
 war, denying to Him either goodness or care of 
 mankind in that He has permitted this desolating 
 scourge to fall upon the world. But no one has 
 the audacity to charge upon God the killed, 
 wounded, and missing, the destruction, desolation 
 and overthrow of the liquor traffic. We know 
 too well that it is of our making, through our con- 
 senting, by our protection that this scourge pre- 
 vails, and even human unbelief and irreverent 
 audacity, dare not attempt to lay off the responsi- 
 bility from us who should take it, from us who 
 are guilty of creating the present condition. 
 
 It is impossible to sum up the harm that alco- 
 hol does in the nation or the nations. It is im- 
 possible, on the other hand, to tell what advan- 
 tage is open and derivable from the destruction 
 of the use of alcoholic spirits as a beverage, and, 
 in fact, in any form. My present purpose in the 
 
202 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 face of the perils of this great war, is to show 
 that parallel with it and of greater magnitude, is 
 another strife into which we should enter with 
 the utmost valour and urgency, a strife co-ordi- 
 nate with the assault of the Central Powers, 
 more destructive in all the ways in which that is 
 destructive, and an immediate and threatening 
 ally of all the evils which they propose, and 
 which lies quite within the realm of our own re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 In undertaking to show how, as Lloyd George 
 has said, the liquor traffic reinforces the evil 
 forces of the present war, I shall excuse myself 
 from a multiplication of figures and statistics. 
 For every fact which I allege I have the most 
 copious proof and if any of you really desire to 
 get the exact facts, the precise data, which will 
 substantiate all that I shall say, you will find 
 them condensed in a little book entitled: "En- 
 cyclopedia of Temperance, Prohibition, and 
 Public Morals," issued by The Methodist Book 
 Concern, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York. This 
 is a compend of multitudinous sources of verifi- 
 able information and fact, demonstrating the 
 immediate and dire perils which have been put 
 upon us by the use of alcoholic drink. 
 
 The factors of national defence which I have 
 in mind when I speak of "Prohibition and Na- 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 203 
 
 tional Defence," are really twofold: things ma- 
 terial, by which we can defend ourselves, and 
 man power; and while these are not separable 
 entirely, for the purposes of analysis they will 
 assist us in the contemplation of this great double 
 danger of war and drink. They are so related 
 that they must be discussed together. 
 
 First, therefore, I call your attention to the 
 relation of the liquor traffic to the destruction 
 of those material agencies which are absolutely 
 necessary to the winning of this war. We already 
 have pretty clearly before our mind that food 
 will win the war. It has become a watchword of 
 our time. Never until within the last two years 
 have we dreamed of lacking adequate foodstuffs 
 in this country or in the world. The scarcity 
 which we have felt is even now upon us in a most 
 critical way. We are told at this very moment 
 that there is great peril of our losing the strength 
 necessary to carry on the war for lack of suffi- 
 cient bread for our armies and for those of our 
 allies. The scarcity of food, which now we feel 
 and which we felt last year, we are likely to 
 experience more rather than less. That scarcity 
 may be said to arise in a general way from non- 
 production and waste. 
 
 There are various reasons why there is not an 
 adequate production of foodstuffs, but one of 
 
204 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 those incontrovertible reasons which I will allege 
 is this: There are a multitude of non-producers 
 who might raise food supplies and who do not. 
 Many of these are idlers, and idlers on account of 
 vicious habits induced by alcoholic liquor. In 
 the State of Minnesota a few years ago, when 
 the wheat was spoiling in the fields, an earnest 
 effort was made to get the idlers in the cities 
 to go forth to the farms at a large wage — three 
 and a half to four dollars a day and board — 
 and work to save the crops at the harvest time. 
 Practically, they nearly all declined. It is incon- 
 ceivable that anything should have so borne them 
 down with reckless carelessness and idleness ex- 
 cepting that they were under the influence of an 
 unnatural appetite for strong drink. 
 
 At this present time, this fact is conceded by 
 the attitude of the states of New Jersey, West 
 Virginia, and New York, and also by the nation, 
 where the effort is being made to compel all 
 idlers to assist in production. Those who are 
 unwilling to work are to be compelled to work, if 
 that is possible, and the greatest difficulty, as well 
 as the greatest number of non-workers, will be 
 found to confront us when we deal with those 
 who are altogether too willing to use their powers 
 and their time in alcoholic dissipation. 
 
 Not only are foodstuffs wanting through non- 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 205 
 
 production, but vast stores of grain are destroyed 
 directly to make liquors. In those liquors, what- 
 ever their name, there is almost no food value 
 whatever. All statements to the contrary are 
 simply untrue. The amount of grain made into 
 alcoholic liquor and so diverted from the channels 
 of nutrition, is almost too great to conceive. 
 Various figures of a colossal character are pro- 
 duced both in this country and Great Britain to 
 show how much has been destroyed. We reckon 
 the wasted grains by the hundred thousands and 
 the millions of tons. The sugar and molasses, 
 also, which are very important as foods, in almost 
 untold quantities, have been made use of for the 
 manufacture of liquor. 
 
 It has been openly alleged that three hundred 
 millions of days' support for individual soldiers 
 might have been conserved by saving what has 
 been destroyed in the United States alone in a 
 single year. But without attempting to limit or 
 measure the quantity, we know, and the whole 
 world agrees, that it is so vast that the preserva- 
 tion of these foodstuffs for food purposes instead 
 of their manufacture into liquor might make the 
 difference between famine and plenty. When 
 you recognise that this waste is so great in 
 quantity and so grievous in quality, it would 
 seem as though no one ought to complain of lack 
 
206 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 of food who is not fighting with all his might to 
 preserve what we have. 
 
 In connection with food as a material necessity 
 for the winning of the war, our attention has been 
 called to the great necessities in the fuel line only 
 lately obvious; during the last year many of us 
 shivered with the cold, and anxiously feared for 
 those who could not get fuel. Families suffered, 
 little children died, business places were closed 
 at vast expense, schools were shut up, churches 
 discontinued their services, railroads diminished 
 the number of their trains, ocean transportation 
 was balked, victory imperilled on account of lack 
 of fuel. 
 
 When you come to inquire why this was and 
 is likely to be so, you find that a very considerable 
 proportion of this lack of fuel came from inade- 
 quate mining. That is to say, the miners failed 
 to produce in proportion to their power, and so 
 the public was deprived of necessary fuel. The 
 Coal, Fuel and Iron Company tell us, as do many 
 other mining organisations, that just as soon as 
 the liquor traffic by any means is temporarily 
 stopped in the vicinity of their mines, production 
 is vastly increased. 
 
 In the State of Pennsylvania, a member of the 
 Pittsburgh Coal Producers' Association declared 
 before the Interstate Commerce Commission that 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 207 
 
 if the government would eliminate the liquor 
 business from the coal producing districts of 
 Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, the output of 
 coal would be increased twenty-five million tons. 
 That was at the height of the famine last winter. 
 Most distinguished experts in the anthracite 
 region of Pennsylvania have told us that a third 
 of the output of coal was lost on account of the 
 drinking habits of the miners, and have besought 
 the government of the United States to take 
 drastic measures to abolish the saloon in that 
 region. The same has been true in Illinois and 
 in nearly all the other coal producing states. 
 This is the outspoken judgment of most coal 
 producers lately given. 
 
 The coal shortage in Illinois was reported last 
 winter to be about 500,000 tons, but a statistician 
 figured that the amount of coal consumed in the 
 manufacture and sale of the beer alone used in 
 Chicago was more than 500,000 tons. The liquor 
 business in Chicago alone created the deficit in 
 the coal supply of Illinois. 
 
 This, however, is only one aspect of the loss 
 and wastage of the fuel necessary for winning 
 this war. The breweries consume a vast amount 
 of coal. Outside of war industries only two ex- 
 ceed breweries in quantity of coal used. During 
 the season when churches and schools were closed 
 
208 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 and business was crippled, all the breweries were 
 wide open, and the distributing centers, the 
 saloons, owned so largely by the breweries, were 
 no less warm and full, as I may say. 
 
 In the accessories of the brewing business, that 
 is, in the manufacturing of boxes, barrels, bottles 
 and other things connected with the traffic, in the 
 transportation of raw material, manufactured 
 product, barrels, bottles, coal by the railroads, 
 for the liquor business — there were needed not 
 less than two and one-half million tons of coal. 
 This added to the seven and one-half million 
 tons used by the breweries last year, would make 
 ten million of the fifty millions shortage; and if 
 to that be added the twenty-five million tons 
 wasted through lack of careful mining, thirty- 
 five millions of tons has been accounted for 
 already ; and it is easy to account for the rest. 
 
 For the transportation of liquors in this coun- 
 try last year, two hundred thousand cars were 
 required at a time when we could not get trans- 
 portation for foodstuffs. At a time when every 
 interest of the country suffered for lack of ade- 
 quate railroad facilities, the breweries and dis- 
 tilleries were demanding and getting two hun- 
 dred thousand cars for transporting the liquor 
 which they made. 
 
 There was a great shortage of coal, as you 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 209 
 
 remember, for the transport service. Very many 
 ships in the harbour of New York, to say nothing 
 of other harbours, loaded with provisions for the 
 allies, which they sorely needed, were prevented 
 from sailing because of lack of adequate coal., 
 But the breweries had coal, the saloons had coal, 
 though the railroads and transports had not. 
 While our allies were bravely fighting for us, 
 defending our interests with their lives, they were 
 denied both food and fuel, while we provided 
 millions of tons of both for the manufacture of 
 alcoholic drink. 
 
 It is perfectly well known that manufactures 
 of an essential and valuable sort are very greatly 
 diminished by the use of alcoholic drink. By this 
 I mean that the output of factories is greatly 
 decreased, that the reduced capacity of drinking 
 and half-drunken operatives greatly diminishes 
 that output, and that whenever there is a release, 
 however temporary, from the baleful effect of. 
 the saloon on a community of workmen, the 
 manufacturing interests greatly multiply their 
 production. Most of the great concerns of this 
 country bear witness to the fact that there would 
 be a plenty of manufactured goods for all legiti- 
 mate purposes, provided the workmen were pre- 
 vented from diminishing their powers through 
 the use of alcoholic liquor. 
 
210 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 We know that in this war iron and steel play 
 a very large part. Nearly all the iron and steel 
 mills of this country forbid the use of alcohol to 
 their men for numerous reasons. In the first 
 place, it saves a vast amount of material other- 
 wise wasted. It prevents a great array of acci- 
 dents of a most costly character. It increases 
 output to a very high degree. So that the manu- 
 facturing interests of iron and steel are invari- 
 ably, in this country, the antagonists of the liquor 
 traffic. The same is true in regard to munitions. 
 Great Britain had the experience of seeing a 
 wholly inadequate supply of munitions because 
 the workmen declined to work more than three 
 or four days in a week. Nor could they be stimu- 
 lated or stirred by the perils of defeat, or by the 
 ardours of their statesmen so long as they were 
 under this sinister influence. They would rather 
 be drunk and slaves, than to be freemen and 
 produce what was necessary to accomplish and 
 perpetuate their freedom. 
 
 In the matter of manufacture of cars and 
 ships, which from the very first had been one of 
 our chief necessities in winning this war, the 
 habit of alcoholisation on the part of the work- 
 men has stood in the way of an adequate output. 
 Ships in Great Britain, we have been told re- 
 peatedly, have been held up because the work- 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 211 
 
 men would drink and would not work. Repairs 
 on the fleet and on the merchant service have been 
 hindered, construction has been put back, and 
 again and again the sailings of the ships have 
 been interfered with when troops were on board, 
 because of drunken engineers or stokers, who 
 were incapable of realising the peril in which 
 they were placing their country. Transporta- 
 tion has been blocked by land and by sea directly 
 and indirectly, between America and Great 
 Britain, between Great Britain and France, and 
 from all the ports on which the allies have relied, 
 by reason of the liquor traffic. 
 
 How could any enemy wish more in the way of 
 obstruction to the essential necessities of our 
 armies and navies than has been furnished by the 
 liquor traffic thus made manifest in the hands 
 and under the control of the liquor power? 
 
 I have thus too briefly discoursed of the ma- 
 terial powers which are withdrawn from our 
 service in the war where they are absolutely 
 needed, for the sake of maintaining the liquor 
 traffic. 
 
 Let me pass now to speak of the man 
 power, by which, of course, I include all the 
 human power which is necessary for the winning 
 of this war, and show how that man power is 
 diminished in all its main essentials by the per- 
 
212 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 petuation of the liquor traffic. The amount of 
 testimony is so vast that I can only touch upon 
 it here and there, but these allusions are capable 
 of the fullest substantiation. 
 
 In the first place, we are wont to say that the 
 better the health of the soldier and of those who 
 stand behind him, the greater likelihood there is 
 of his achieving the purposes of successful war- 
 fare. In other words, muscular power and good 
 health have much to do with a fine soldiery, and 
 a fine citizenship. We have gloried in the fact 
 that many of our young men who have volun- 
 teered or entered the army by selective draft, 
 have been enormously improved in health and 
 bearing, in vigour and in life, by the training to 
 which they have been subjected. Are we equally 
 and distinctly aware that muscular power of the 
 sort necessary for soldier and citizen alike, is 
 destroyed effectually by the use of alcoholic 
 drink? If you take the work of a soldier, you 
 find much of it of a distinctly athletic sort; but 
 now for many years in the whole realm of ath- 
 letics we have known that liquor is the foe of 
 athletic power. No athlete is addicted to drink ; 
 no boxer, no baseball player, no football player 
 of any distinction, no competitive oarsman, no 
 champion at tennis or golf can be found who will 
 for a moment sanction the use of alcoholic drink 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 213 
 
 on the part of those who expect to achieve athletic 
 superiority and honours. 
 
 We have had experience for years, sanctioned 
 by the great soldiers of Europe and America that 
 marching is done best and most advantageously 
 by total abstainers. They have the greatest en- 
 durance, and can effect the greatest accomplish- 
 ments. When it comes to the exercise of muscu- 
 lar power in the particular function of war, for 
 instance in marksmanship, we know beyond all 
 question that the use of alcoholic drink, whether 
 in smaller or larger quantities, is highly damag- 
 ing to correct and exact marksmanship. I am 
 speaking now of this one particular thing, as 
 illustrated, for instance, in precision, rapidity 
 and endurance firing. In the Swedish army, out 
 of a possible thirty shots, men who had taken no 
 liquor whatsoever and were not accustomed to 
 use it, made twenty-three hits. The same men 
 after having used a small quantity of alcohol 
 made only three hits out of a possible thirty. If 
 it is desirable to have a powerful and reliable 
 muscularity as the basis of successful soldiery, 
 then it is absolutely necessary to banish alcohol 
 from the soldier and sailor from the army and 
 navy. 
 
 In the navy, as well as in the army, it used to 
 be that rations of grog were given to the marines 
 
214 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 and naval men at sea. No one would think of 
 doing that now. All the fine marksmanship and 
 endurance, the accuracy, the precision, the fac- 
 tors which make for the possibility of success in 
 this war, are associated with total abstinence 
 from the use of alcohol in any form. 
 
 I have spoken of muscular power, but every- 
 one knows that muscular power depends greatly 
 on nervous conditions, on the fineness and 
 strength, the poise and balance of nerve. We 
 know that the finer parts of our organisation, 
 the nerves and the brain, are immediately affected 
 by alcoholic liquor, and we know that alcoholic 
 liquor is not a stimulant, nor has it ever been, 
 but is a depressant. It destroys nervous poise; 
 it does not increase it. The superstition that 
 alcohol is a stimulant is as plainly superstitious as 
 any idolatry of any heathen savage of any his- 
 toric time in the history of the world. There is 
 no power to make for a stronger manhood, 
 whether in muscle or nerve, in alcoholic drink 
 however taken or applied, whether less or more. 
 
 When it comes to the combination of nerve and 
 muscle, the co-ordination of the fineness of hu- 
 man activity with the force and vigour of it, the 
 same is markedly true. This will appear as I 
 proceed. 
 
 We must know, too, that in our time with the 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 215 
 
 extraordinary weapons that are made use of both 
 by land and by sea, and with the demands that 
 are made upon a soldier's life (and the same of 
 a civilian's life ) , mind power is as necessary for 
 an army and for achievement in the direction of 
 victory as muscular power. Because the brain is 
 the agent of the mind, the vigour of the brain as 
 an agency through which thought is operated, is 
 of the utmost power in achieving victory. We 
 are positively assured that mental efficiency is 
 impaired very greatly by any degree of the use 
 of alcoholic drink. Men who are accustomed to 
 drink on Saturday and Sunday have been found 
 on Monday to be diminished in mental vigour as 
 much as twenty-eight and one half per cent., 
 more than a quarter of their power having been 
 lost. All the reactions of the sensibilities are 
 operated on adversely by the use of liquor. 
 
 Quickness of vision and accuracy of vision, 
 readiness of hearing, responsiveness of muscular 
 action to the demands of the mind, are all im- 
 paired by the use of alcoholic drink. Errors in 
 judgment, inaccuracies in sensation, defects of 
 memory, incorrectness of observation, all these 
 result, and the general lessening of the normal 
 ability of men, even after the use of a little 
 alcohol, often rises from ten to eighteen per 
 cent. 
 
216 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 Every soldier who has been at the front, every 
 intelligent man or woman who knows what is 
 demanded of a soldier, understands that the 
 greater the mentality, the greater the self-reli- 
 ance. The ability to take initiative, to think for 
 one's self, to think quickly and to judge wisely, 
 is a very large share of the power of a soldier in 
 our time. Against all this, against everything 
 that makes for an efficient soldier, alcohol is a 
 deadly foe. 
 
 But we are getting a further and deeper 
 vision of war at this time than we have ever had 
 before. Although it has been known it has never 
 been talked about so much as now, that the chief 
 power of the soldier is his moral power ; that the 
 great power of a nation is its moral and spiritual 
 power. To get the right spirit into men and into 
 people is the foremost thing in assuring victory. 
 Nothing is so to be relied upon as spiritual ac- 
 tivity and spiritual strength. 
 
 The Germans have very little sense of this. 
 We remember how they measured the force 
 of England by the 250,000 of England's 
 little army, and called that force "contempti- 
 ble." They did not reckon with the Eng- 
 lish spirit, which measures its strength not only 
 as against millions of men, but measures its 
 strength by forces that are entirely uncount- 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 217 
 
 able and unweighable in terms of material 
 force. 
 
 So we recognise the immense importance of 
 moral power for the making of a soldier, an 
 army, a nation or a victorious struggle. At the 
 same time, we know that vice abounds as a re- 
 sult of alcoholic drink; that practically all kinds 
 of vice are directly caused and increased by it; 
 that commercialised sexual vice, which has 
 worked such terrific havoc in the armies of the 
 old world, is always associated with the degrada- 
 tion of woman and of man also, through drink. 
 Observations in and about the saloons of all the 
 great cities of the world testify to this. And 
 nothing is more suggestive of the power, the 
 glory and the victory of the American army than 
 the frequent affirmation that, as to virtue over 
 against vice, it is the most virtuous army that 
 has ever been assembled. God grant that this 
 may prove to be the fact ; if it is a virtuous army, 
 it will be an invincible army. 
 
 Moral power shows itself not only in the grasp 
 that men have upon the purposes of this great 
 conflict, but in their obedience to high intelligence 
 and to the direction of their superiors. Equally 
 evident is it that the sources of all lawlessness in 
 this country and in every country, are found in 
 connection with the liquor traffic and use. None 
 
218 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 have done more to degrade the whole legal order 
 of human society than have the brewers of the 
 United States of America. They are always 
 ready to violate the law. When it has been sug- 
 gested, where prohibition has obtained, that 
 possibly some of these great companies would 
 assist to break down the law by furnishing illicit 
 liquor importations, where they were otherwise 
 forbidden, it has always been true — the proof is 
 irrefutable — that no brewing company has hesi- 
 tated to become a violator of the law. 
 
 They have in the presence of the United States 
 courts within the last two years in western Penn- 
 sylvania, paid vast fines rather than have their 
 wickedness brought to light, as they have sought 
 to influence elections. And not only so, but 
 nearly all the brewers of this country are pro- 
 German. They not only have German names 
 and German directors, but their breweries and 
 their saloons are nests of treason. The products 
 of their breweries and the profits thereof, which 
 we have so foolishly been allowing them to make, 
 have been poured into the coffers of Germany; 
 and not a few of them have been found in direct 
 affiliation with the enemies of their country. 
 There is no patriotism in the liquor traffic, no 
 patriotism among those who make it, or among 
 those who sell it. 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 219 
 
 Saloons are the haunts of criminals. If police- 
 men desire to find those who have done some 
 especially infamous crimes, they always go to 
 certain saloons where these people are found. 
 Every kind of criminality, every degradation of 
 moral power, is associated with the use of alco- 
 holic drink. It lowers and degrades in every 
 possible respect. 
 
 Now, this being true, if we are to win a great 
 moral victory, if we are to overcome the evil 
 forces of the world in the interests of the good, 
 it is absolutely necessary that we break with the 
 liquor traffic ; that we separate ourselves from it, 
 and separate ourselves also from its sinister and 
 degrading influence in lowering the moral tone 
 and stamina of our people. 
 
 When it comes to the fouler forms of vice, 
 where vice merges into crime, the whole world 
 knows that the greatest cause of crime in this 
 country is the liquor traffic. When the convicts 
 of the penitentiaries of our country, as they have 
 repeatedly done, have petitioned that the saloons 
 might be closed so that when they came out they 
 might not be tempted, as they have been tempted 
 before; when careful commissions have summed 
 up the criminality of the country as nine-tenths 
 of it originating in the use of alcoholic drink; 
 when the foremost judges, including the Su- 
 
220 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 preme Court of the United States, have declared 
 that the alcoholic liquor traffic is inextricably 
 mixed up with criminality, we certainly have 
 proof enough to know that the liquor traffic can 
 be counted on as the foe of everything that we 
 seek to make victorious in this war, and de- 
 structive of every agency of achievement and tri- 
 umph. 
 
 Demoralising as war is, war has never de- 
 moralised as the liquor traffic has; cruel as war 
 is, it has never been so cruel as the liquor traffic ; 
 deadly and destructive as have been modern arms 
 and agents of destruction, they have never killed, 
 wounded and imprisoned anything like as many 
 people as have been destroyed by the use of 
 strong drink. 
 
 We have a very sad realisation that vast num- 
 bers of precious human lives are being sacrificed 
 in this war, that in our defensive struggle, the 
 noblest of our youth are offering themselves on 
 the altars of liberty and honor and truth. But 
 let us not forget that by the most careful observa- 
 tion, pursued through many years, it is perfectly 
 clearly shown that the extension of human life is 
 greatly diminished by even the moderate use of 
 alcoholic drink. There are those who say two 
 and one half, or three per cent, beer is not as 
 destructive as forty or fifty per cent, whiskey or 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 221 
 
 rum ; but the truth is, whether it is taken a little 
 at a time or more at a time, the aggregate of 
 alcohol taken by the drinkers of beer is likely 
 to be fully as great, or greater, than that of 
 the drinkers of whiskey, and to result as ruin- 
 ously. 
 
 So, whether it be as moderate drinkers or 
 drinkers of one sort or another of liquor, the 
 proof is overwhelming that life is shortened any- 
 where from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent, 
 by the use of alcohol as a beverage. Forty-three 
 life insurance companies of the United States 
 and Canada, examining more than 2,000,000 
 cases in the last few years, have brought their 
 practically unanimous verdict into the high court 
 of the world, showing that this is true. 
 
 Longevity is greatly diminished, the sus- 
 ceptibility to disease is largely increased by the 
 use of alcoholic liquor, and I might instance, if I 
 had time — as I certainly have information — un- 
 numbered cases in which life is shortened by ten, 
 twenty, thirty years, and productiveness accord- 
 ingly, through the use of alcohol in any and 
 every form. I could give you a list of pages on 
 pages of the statements of the most eminent 
 physicians of the world, showing the deleterious 
 effect of alcohol upon life, upon young life, upon 
 little childhood, through heredity, producing 
 
222 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 defectives, dependents and delinquents; upon 
 young children in their environment, where, 
 through bad example and in the homes of drunk- 
 ards, they are reduced to a minimum of efficiency 
 and power ; where through privation, their young 
 lives are made so weak that the likelihood of their 
 continuing to live is very greatly diminished. 
 
 Last year 20,000 physicians of the American 
 Medical Association were represented in their 
 convention in New York City. With scarcely 
 a dissenting voice, all this host of highly intelli- 
 gent men, who understand human life so well, 
 gave their verdict against the use of alcoholic 
 liquor, even as a medicine, and told us at length 
 that there was no necessity for it as a remedy 
 which could not be met by other remedies far 
 less injurious and far more practical and health- 
 ful. 
 
 The defences against disease are broken down 
 by those who use alcohol. If we take our sol- 
 diers, for instance, during hardships in camp and 
 field, their likelihood of overcoming those hard- 
 ships, their ability of full and effectual resistance 
 is in proportion to their separation from the 
 alcoholic liquor habit. The number of soldiers 
 who die of diseases is generally far more than 
 those who die of battle and of wounds, and the 
 number who have died of disease has been largely 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 223 
 
 conditioned by those who have used alcoholic 
 liquor in one or another form. 
 
 We are told that among the great desolations 
 of France during this war is that which has been 
 wrought upon her soldiery by tuberculosis; but 
 we are assured from the investigations of twenty 
 years on two continents, that the greatest cause 
 of tuberculosis is alcoholic liquor as a beverage, 
 and it has been said that this great white plague 
 of tuberculosis can never be fought successfully 
 until the use of alcohol as a beverage is elimi- 
 nated. 
 
 Moderate drinking is practically as bad as free 
 drinking. Its effect is just as realisable and as 
 sure. 
 
 Moreover, of course, the workman or the sol- 
 dier, the civilian or the man of the camp and the 
 field, is effective in proportion to the vigour of 
 his life and the number of days that he is capable 
 of performing his tasks and his service; but we 
 know that days of illness are multiplied, and loss 
 of wages consequent to a greatly increased de- 
 gree in the case of those who use alcoholic drink : 
 $330,000,000, it was said five years ago, were 
 lost from preventable diseases through inability 
 to work, by the workingmen of this country in a 
 single year. Nothing could more surely indicate 
 the fact that if we want efficient service, the 
 
224 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 maximum number of days of activity and of 
 power, whether as soldiers or civilians, for the 
 purposes of national defence, we shall secure the 
 maximum number only by total abstinence from 
 the use of intoxicating drink. 
 
 Have I said, if not, let me say it now — alcohol 
 is not a medicine. Hospitals of Europe and 
 America are proving it. They are using less 
 and less of it; using less and less beer, less and 
 less ale, more and more milk, and simple, nourish- 
 ing liquids. The attitude of the doctors, which 
 I cited a few moments ago, amounts to a demon- 
 stration, while the hospital practise which they 
 carry out, shows the same results, and gives prac- 
 tical basis to their opinion. 
 
 One thing further: (although this is a very 
 brief and incomplete survey), and that is, that 
 accidents caused by alcohol are very numerous, 
 and are readily preventable by abstinence, as 
 they are readily traceable to alcoholic drink as 
 a cause. Now, of course, the American soldier 
 and sailor, as well as those of the allies (and this 
 is distinctly understood abroad, as it is at home) 
 has to be extremely careful in handling the imple- 
 ments of war. Many of them are chemicals of 
 a highly explosive character; many of them are 
 the refinement of mechanism, and they need the 
 most extraordinary carefulness, precisely as the 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 225 
 
 handling of fine machinery in mills and factories 
 needs it. The use of alcohol so distinctly causes, 
 both in factory and in fort, the maximum of 
 accidents, that no one can ignore a great fact 
 like this without being entirely indifferent to the 
 welfare of his country. 
 
 We know that some time ago when labour in- 
 surance was demanded by many state legisla- 
 tures, the proprietors of factories and employers 
 of men said: "Yes, we will insure our men and 
 will pay damages, but we will not insure drink- 
 ing men, nor pay damages to drunken men 
 for accidents which they cause. They not only 
 cause a vast amount of loss, but they cause a vast 
 amount of personal damage to themselves." 
 "Safety first" means total abstinence first, 
 whether that be in the trenches or in the fac- 
 tories. 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact, obtained and proven 
 by scientific temperance investigation, that the 
 effect of a drink of alcohol, whether in beer or in 
 some other form, comes to its maximum just 
 about three hours after the drinker has taken the 
 dose. For instance, a man taking a drink at 
 seven o'clock on the way to his work, will ex- 
 perience the full force of that drink in losing his 
 self-control, the co-ordination of his muscles, the 
 intelligence of his mind, at about ten o'clock. If 
 
226 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 weariness was the cause of accidents, then more 
 accidents would occur nearer twelve o'clock, 
 when the man was more weary; but it is just as 
 truly noticed that at four o'clock in the after- 
 noon, three hours from the time when the man 
 has taken his drink at his lunch, the maximum 
 of accidents occurs, as it is true that a similar 
 condition occurs in the morning. In other words, 
 the high curve of accidents is immediately trace- 
 able to the use of alcoholic beverages; and who- 
 ever expects either the American munition 
 worker or shipbuilder, or navigator, or sailor, or 
 soldier, to arrive at his best, to accomplish the 
 highest and utmost purposes that the fine ma- 
 chinery on which he works can accomplish, has 
 got to count on the fact that he must desist from 
 the use of alcohol. We must keep it away from 
 him. We must prohibit making it, or selling it, 
 giving it away, or using it, in order that we may 
 win this war. 
 
 The perils have not all been indicated; the 
 proofs are not all in; the dangers have not all 
 been stated. The magnitude of the victory de- 
 pending on our right action is not greater than 
 the irreparable ruin which will follow if we ignore 
 these truthful warnings. I doubt not that liquor 
 drinking had much to do with making this war, 
 nor that it has added unmeasured ferocity to 
 
Prohibition and National Defence 227 
 
 German barbarities in sacked towns and on 
 ruined peoples. To abolish it will win the war 
 and do more than can be estimated toward pre- 
 venting another. 
 
I 
 
 IX 
 Our Victory Assured 
 
 "And this is the victory that overcometh the world; even our faith." 
 
 N" this war, who shall be victorious ? We shall ; 
 we and our allies. Does it seem presumptu- 
 ous to assume this knowledge of a great future 
 event? Does anyone but the all-wise God know 
 what is certain to be in the future? Our answer 
 is: He knows, and we know as we know Him — 
 from intuition, as He has given it to us, from 
 faith and right reason, and from the study of his- 
 tory. On the basis of what we know of Him we 
 are assured of victory in this war. 
 
 What is the object of our trust? Ourselves? 
 No. Even though we are very much better pre- 
 pared now than in 1914 and might, apparently, 
 put a larger faith in our positions and forces than 
 We formerly did. What gives us this confidence 
 of victory? Right. What gives right its 
 strength? God, who wills and so makes right; 
 whose nature and law, whose administration, and 
 whose purposes define Right. This leaves 
 nothing vague or uncertain either in His nature 
 or in our apprehension of it. 
 
 228 
 
Our Victory Assured 229 
 
 When the Apostle John affirmed: "This is 
 the victory that overcometh the world, even our 
 faith," he meant that God, the Author of right, 
 of all law that makes for right, of all high goals 
 and purposes, is the foundation of our confidence 
 and our assurance of triumph. He meant the 
 Christians' God, not some vague, uncertain idea 
 of a world power imagined by men and con- 
 structed according to their selfish wishes ; but that 
 holy, just, righteous, fatherly, forgiving, guid- 
 ing and good Being, whose nature embraces for 
 us all that is desirable in human life and human 
 relationships. There is only this one God. 
 There is neither room nor place in the world for 
 any other ; and when we hear pagans, barbarians, 
 and Germans calling upon a god of their own 
 creation, who has no worshipful or deserving 
 attributes, we know that such a being cannot be 
 made the foundation of the hope of a righteous 
 victory. 
 
 "The victory that overcometh the world is our 
 faith." Our faith can be defined in two ways. 
 We can speak of "our faith," meaning the object 
 on which we rely, as the person, the laws, the 
 principles which deserve our confidence. Then 
 we can add to that this second idea of faith, our 
 own act of trust by which we come into living con- 
 nection with the external objects of our faith. 
 
230 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 For example, I may say that my political faith is 
 the Constitution of the United States. That is 
 to say, that is the body of principles and laws 
 upon which I rely as embracing the fullest meas- 
 ure of political sagacity, and social wisdom. 
 When I take my oath of allegiance to the Consti- 
 tution of the United States, I exercise my per- 
 sonal or subjective faith in that great body of 
 laws. And so, my political faith embraces that in 
 which I believe, and also my act of believing 
 which attaches me to it. 
 
 This same idea is embraced in "the victory 
 which overcometh the world" through our Chris- 
 tian faith; objectively, including the whole nature 
 of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, and subject- 
 ively, embracing our act of trust and reliance 
 upon Him . 
 
 Our faith, then, which overcomes, is the total 
 of forces Divine, and external, on the one hand, 
 and personal and internal on the other. 
 
 In this great war there are three parties: The 
 assailants, the defenders, God. The assailants 
 are those who brought it on by attacking an un- 
 suspecting world. We are not they. The de- 
 fenders are ourselves and our allies, who under- 
 took to resist the assault of a fiendish and selfish 
 power, seeking our overthrow. God is on one 
 side or the other of this great conflict. He is 
 
Our Victory Assured 231 
 
 either with our assailants in attacking all that we 
 defend, or with us as defenders, in protecting all 
 that they assail. 
 
 The human party which is in alliance with God, 
 must be victorious. By all we know of Him, with 
 whom is His favour, — with the assailants or with 
 the defenders ? We are not boasting ; we dare not 
 boast of either present or prospective victory. 
 We wish, we pray, we hope, we labour, we strive, 
 and have so done. 
 
 But now we pass beyond these into a more as- 
 sured realm. We claim and gain certainty on ra- 
 tional grounds of belief, as firm as the integrity 
 of Nature, or of the human mind, or of the Divine 
 government of the world, and on such a basis we 
 declare our assurance, not merely our hope, that 
 we shall win this war. 
 
 Let me consider the uncertainties which we 
 have felt; the contingencies which have raised 
 doubts in our mind as to who would be victorious. 
 And then let me recount the certainties which for 
 me dispel all doubt and give firm assurance as to 
 the result. 
 
 First, the contingencies which have formerly 
 raised uncertainty, apprehension and possible 
 doubt in our minds — what are they? What, up 
 to this time, has led us to be uncertain, possibly, 
 as to an issue which we felt must be of victory? 
 
232 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 I answer, the contingencies have been partly 
 material and visible, and partly invisible and spir- 
 itual. 
 
 Among material contingencies which have 
 raised doubts of our triumph in our mind, have 
 been the mighty preparations and forces of the 
 German- Austrian power. For many years they 
 had prepared this stroke, gathering together all 
 possible forces which could make for their ad- 
 vantage, while we had made no preparation and 
 had assembled no counter powers. Surveying 
 the multitude of their soldiers, contrasting them 
 with the little armies of Belgium, of Britain, and 
 of France ; the immense quantity of their supplies 
 in a thousand details; their large resources of 
 knowledge of all the territory which they pur- 
 posed to assail and conquer; their utmost readi- 
 ness down to the very last item of preparation, 
 and the amazing manifestation of physical force 
 and strength of every sort with which they began 
 their onslaught — and which they have kept up 
 until this time — we have been almost over- 
 whelmed with the quantity and energy of their 
 resources. We have measured ourselves against 
 them with daring, with courage, with hope, 
 greater than our faith. And as we survey to-day 
 what has been accomplished already by the mass 
 of their powers, by the multitude of their forces, 
 
Our Victory Assured 233 
 
 by the enormous measure of their resources, we 
 still sometimes raise the question whether we can 
 victoriously combat these with an adequate de- 
 fensive force. We count, we compare, we weigh, 
 we estimate their forces, and feel a degree of 
 uncertainty as to the outcome. 
 
 While this is true, there are also spiritual forces 
 which make us dread the issue and wonder if we 
 have a right to expect to succeed. The question 
 we ask is : Are we in the right? Are we so surely 
 right and they so wholly wrong that we are se- 
 cure? And here, in humility and modesty, we 
 have halted to make inquiry and to try and settle 
 the matter truthfully in our minds. The student 
 of history, studying the overthrow of nations, 
 can but feel extremely careful when deciding on 
 what rest the foundations of permanent existence 
 for the land which he loves. Beholding the sins 
 of nations on account of which they have ceased to 
 exist, we have tried fairly and justly to inquire 
 whether our national sins are such that God 
 should scourge and reprove us, and perhaps over- 
 throw us on account of them. 
 
 Taught as we have been by the sacred Scrip- 
 tures, we have many times considered the story of 
 the chosen people of God, the nation Israel, 
 which regarded itself as favoured by Him, some- 
 what as we and other nations regard ourselves as 
 
234 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 favoured by Him. And we have been compelled 
 to observe that, notwithstanding their privileges, 
 yet their sins, their disobedience, their neglected 
 warnings, and their chastisements finally resulted 
 in their captivity and overthrow. We remember 
 how Babylon, a very wicked nation, was raised up 
 to discipline the Hebrews, and conquering, to en- 
 slave them for a definite period of seventy years. 
 Assyria is spoken of in the sacred history as "the 
 rod of Mine anger," that is, of Jehovah's anger, 
 indicating that even a worse nation might be used 
 to scourge a better when that better one persist- 
 ently violated the law of God and ignored its 
 duties and its vows. 
 
 Then, we have seen emerge in the history of 
 Israel those great prophets, the statesmen of their 
 times, proclaiming the perils through sin, inhu- 
 manity, irreligion, idolatry, injustice and op- 
 pression, of the nation which they loved, warning 
 them through a period of years, pleading with 
 them and persuading them in vain, as they 
 have shown the disasters sure to result from 
 abuse of God's mercy. And we have said: 
 "Are we dearer to God than ancient Israel? 
 Are we surer that He will save us than they 
 were that He would save them? Can we hope 
 that He will deliver us from the just results of 
 our sins?" 
 
Our Victory Assured 235 
 
 I confess that a vision of our national sins and 
 of our possible overthrow has until lately, power- 
 fully affected my mind. At the present time, on 
 full and fair investigation, I see no reason to be- 
 lieve that we are in similar danger to that of 
 the ancient Israelitish nation. For, first, while 
 we recognise our national sins, we remember this : 
 That there are and have always been in this 
 country a multitude of most Godly and right- 
 eous citizens, whose prayers, whose faith, and 
 whose obedience have continually appealed to 
 God for mercy on the state. Of these there are 
 millions, possibly a majority of the total of our 
 citizens. Confessing our sins, which they have 
 continually done, they have asked Divine mercy 
 and favour, interceding for the entire people. It 
 has been perfectly well known to all the best of 
 our citizens that the way to be delivered from the 
 consequences of our national sins was the way of 
 repentance; that we should confess them, turn 
 back from all evil doing, choose the right way, 
 obtain mercy and pardon and so return to Divine 
 favor. 
 
 That many millions of people in this country 
 have been so continually right in their attitude 
 toward God gives us great assurance. And they 
 have very freely warned their fellow countrymen, 
 while trying to improve in every respect our gen- 
 
236 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 eral moral and social state. We know that even 
 after repentance, a state has to expiate its sins; 
 that the chastenings of God are applied to states 
 and nations in this world ; for since states have no 
 existence beyond the grave, all in the way of dis- 
 cipline, or chastisement for their correction, must 
 be applied to them in this present time. 
 
 We, therefore, behold ourselves in this pres- 
 ent war as having sinned, repented of our sins, 
 and to be now expiating our sins by what we are 
 at present suffering. We have done wrong, which 
 we confess. When those wrongs which we have 
 done are compared with those of our enemies, 
 they are apparently very small and trifling in a 
 national or international sense. Nevertheless, 
 we do not wish to hide from ourselves the fact 
 that we have deserved the wrath of God. But in 
 expiation of our sins, we are suffering, we have 
 suffered, and I may say, we are ready to suffer. 
 We own it to be just that we should endure 
 chastisement and sorrow on account of the evil 
 that we have done. 
 
 This attitude on our part of penitence, of 
 prayer, of willingness to make expiation for na- 
 tional sins, argues most surely the certainty of 
 Divine mercy and forgiveness. In this spirit 
 could we be surer than now of God's favour? We 
 are greatly and further assured by a contempla- 
 
Our Victory Assured 237 
 
 tion of our national spirit and attitude at this 
 time, as by those of our allies. 
 
 II 
 
 If we compare ourselves, that is, our country 
 and our allies on the one hand, and Germany on 
 the other, what a totally different attitude toward 
 God we allies have as contrasted with their foes. 
 If I can honestly see that we are seeking and 
 doing the will of God, even though we have 
 sinned, I can be sure of His forgiveness, favour 
 and aid, sure of His sanction and of victory. And 
 as I behold our nation and our associated and 
 allied nations, I see that our choices have been 
 wholly unlike those of our foes. 
 
 We have chosen for our God, the true God, the 
 God of fatherly goodness, of holiness, of right- 
 eousness, of mercy, of pity and of love. 
 
 Compare the selected object of our worship 
 with that horrible, characterless, fierce, immoral, 
 ferocious being that the Germans have named 
 God, Might, without moral character. If na- 
 tions ever suffered desolation because of wicked 
 worship of false idols, then Germany is likely to 
 suffer thus in this age ; and if nations of old found 
 their chief strength in obedience to the true and 
 living God, then our strength is assured from our 
 choice of Him to be our God. 
 
238 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 Compare us in another respect with our assail- 
 ants. We have chosen the merciful course of lif e, 
 not the cruel course of tyrants and oppressors. 
 They struck Belgium down, crushed, ravaged, 
 massacred, tortured and starved this little people. 
 We, on the other hand, fed them, uplifted them, 
 bound up their wounds, comforted them, rehabil- 
 itated them, adopted them into our homes; have 
 done everything indicative of the most merciful 
 attitude of mind. Can anyone doubt whether the 
 true and living God is on the side of the spoilers 
 of Belgium, Serbia, Armenia, or on the side of 
 those who have poured millions on millions of dol- 
 lars, hundreds on hundreds of workers, and relief 
 of every kind into those suffering countries? 
 
 We announced, and it is known that our an- 
 nouncement is true, that we would with our 
 power, aid the nations by love. They announced 
 that they would rule by f rightfulness. They seek 
 to horrify a trembling world. We seek to com- 
 fort a suffering world. We would emancipate 
 the world from slavery of every type. They 
 would enslave it. Out of such enslavement they 
 would draw their riches and revenues. We, on 
 the other hand, seek only justice and kindness 
 among men, and the uplift of all types of human 
 society at our own expense. 
 
 They, putting forth robbers' hands, would 
 
Our Victory Assured 239 
 
 seize and keep all kinds of treasures not their 
 own, as plunder. We would take nothing from 
 the weak but would give of what we have and so 
 restore to those who need what the wicked have 
 plundered from them. Our enemies burn for 
 conquest regardless of justice or right. We urge 
 justice and generosity, and in fact have thrown 
 ourselves into this war with the distinct under- 
 standing that the vindication of justice and of 
 liberty is our chief purpose and our only effort. 
 
 In a word, we are on the Christian side with 
 God, (the loving and merciful God, the only 
 God; the true and living God) in all these re- 
 spects. Because we are on His side, because we 
 stand with Him, we not only have hope, but we 
 have certainty. When He is defeated, we shall 
 be conquered; not till then. If we were over- 
 thrown in our present spirit and service, then He 
 would be dethroned, and the world would be a 
 Godless and chaotic world. Fighting, we have 
 put right and justice in the field against wrong 
 and cruelty. 
 
 In these main lines we are doing the will of 
 God, and because we are doing the will of God, 
 which is Right as God made it, which is Law as 
 God made it, all uncertainty passes away as to 
 the issue, as to whether He favours us or not. 
 That He favours us we are as sure as that He ex- 
 
240 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 ists, and that that favour means victory is as cer- 
 tain as that His name is a Just and Holy name. 
 He as the object of our faith is the victory which 
 overcomes the evil world forces. So in the con- 
 sideration of the contingencies and uncertainties 
 which may hitherto have caused us to doubt, 
 whether the material powers of our adversaries, 
 or whether the possibility of our own weakness 
 through our own failure or sin, those contin- 
 gencies have passed away, and we have no more 
 reason to doubt on either basis. 
 
 in 
 
 As a second general proposition; Our certain- 
 ties are assuring to us victory. Among those cer- 
 tainties is this: Not one selfish, Godless or un- 
 christian purpose inspires us to battle. Selfish- 
 ness, self -worship, is the root of all sins and the 
 ruin of human life. You may look in vain to find 
 one single evidence of a selfish purpose in Amer- 
 ica or in her allies in carrying on this war. The 
 enemy has nothing that we desire, neither ter- 
 ritory nor wealth, nor influence. Those whom we 
 are defending and for whom we are fighting have 
 nothing that we want. Appealing to our sense of 
 universal justice, we wish them to have what is 
 
Our Victory Assured 241 
 
 their right. There is not a trace of selfishness in 
 our purpose, as we carry on this struggle. 
 
 On the other hand, there is not one unselfish or 
 loving purpose which has visibly moved our en- 
 emies. Surveying the history of these four years, 
 or of many years before, or the purposes that are 
 disclosed as likely to control the German- Aus- 
 trian hordes for years to come, I find no trace, 
 promise or suggestion from them of an unselfish 
 purpose in anything that they do. They mean no 
 good to anyone but themselves, no advantage to 
 any but themselves. Any desolating scourge, 
 any horrifying abuse that will seem to them to 
 minister to their advantage, they will put upon 
 those whom they are trying to overwhelm and 
 enslave. The greed of goods and the lust of 
 power seem to be all that move them ; while abso- 
 lute good will toward all mankind is all that 
 moves us. 
 
 For further proof that the certainties in the 
 case assure us victory, I beg you to notice among 
 our aims, that we are striving for the universal 
 fraternity of humanity, to make a brotherhood of 
 all races, nations, tongues, and peoples; that for 
 men to live in less than fraternal kindness is to 
 live below our standard and our level, and for the 
 privilege on the part of all humanity to live as 
 brothers, we are making this mighty struggle. 
 
242 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 We are contending in the interests of all nations, 
 with their varied forms of governments, as far as 
 those governments are beneficent and helpful. 
 We are endeavoring to mitigate the troubles and 
 sorrows of all sufferers. We are trying to deliver 
 from every kind of pain and distress all races, 
 ranks and conditions of mankind. Every gra- 
 cious thing in character which would make for 
 good neighbourhood, for peacefulness, for pros- 
 perity, for kindness and for goodwill, we have 
 put upon our banner as the purpose of our strife. 
 For homes, in all their sweetness and precious- 
 ness, we are making the most energetic defence, 
 building again where they have torn down, re- 
 making where they have been destroyed. All 
 women and little children, all aged and weak, are 
 the objects of our help, and the subjects of our 
 striving. Even God Himself, we say with pro- 
 foundest reverence, has prescribed no higher 
 aims for human welfare than we have literally 
 claimed and undertaken to realise in the interests 
 of mankind. And all of these high aims and pur- 
 poses are in direct contradistinction, and antag- 
 onism to the acts, purposes, deeds and history of 
 our enemies. 
 
 Beyond all doubt, our pure motives and pur- 
 poses have received upon them the Divine sanc- 
 tion. God could not express Himself in antag- 
 
Our Victory Assured 243 
 
 onism to what we are doing. It is so entirely in 
 harmony with His will and His nature as Christ 
 has revealed Him, as to assure His favour. 
 
 Now what is the assurance that comes to right 
 reason when we see how our aims agree with those 
 of the Divine Being? What does this concord 
 assure us in regard to victory or defeat? There 
 can be but one answer. Victory must be given us. 
 
 If we turn to the history of our country dur- 
 ing the great epoch of the Civil War, we may 
 find an illustration of the manner in which God 
 blesses a nation which has a humane goal and 
 purpose. 
 
 You remember, to sketch it very briefly, that 
 in 1861 and 1862, we fought for the Union of 
 the states. Mr. Lincoln stated that he would 
 save the Union with slavery, if he could ; without 
 it, if he must. The Confederacy fought for a 
 political theory of the rights of states and of the 
 federation of such states. So, in fighting merely 
 for the Union, did the northern United States. 
 
 Underlying all this, and to a great degree 
 ignored by us during two years of war, was the 
 great question of the rights of man, of what 
 should be done for that human being in this 
 country who was denied all human rights. This 
 we relegated to the background and we fought 
 on, not blindly, but unsuccessfully, toward the 
 
244 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 realisation of our political goal. But defeat 
 followed defeat with us who stood for the 
 Union. 
 
 On the other side there was at first the ad- 
 vantage of material resources, very like those of 
 the Central Powers when this war began. The 
 United States army had been made weak and 
 scattered, its navy dispersed to all parts of the 
 world, its credit destroyed, its arsenals where 
 they could be most easily seized upon by the 
 enemies of the nation. They had every advan- 
 tage at the beginning; and defeat after defeat 
 followed the efforts of the Union arms. 
 
 Profoundly impressed with the succession of 
 disasters, relieved only now and then by victory, 
 Mr. Lincoln with deep seriousness and with much 
 prayer to the living God, sought light as to what 
 his duty was concerning the emancipation of the 
 slave ; and at length, when the forces of the Con- 
 federacy were marching apparently victorious, 
 upon Washington in 1862, he promised God, 
 as he himself says, that if the battle was won and 
 the southern forces compelled to flee, he would 
 issue a proclamation for the emancipation of the 
 slave. On the 17th of September, 1862, the 
 battle of Antietam was fought, issuing in a 
 Union victory; on the 22nd of September, Mr. 
 Lincoln issued the proclamation that on the first 
 
Our Victory Assured 245 
 
 day of January, 1863, a hundred days from then, 
 the slaves should be free. 
 
 Still, success did not at once crown the Union 
 arms. The issue of the strife was now cleared 
 very much. Great forces fought against the idea 
 of humanity on the one side, while other great 
 forces on the other side aligned themselves in 
 favour of the humane goal to issue in the manhood 
 of the enslaved and emancipated. But as it be- 
 came more and more evident that the power of 
 the Union arms was devoted to the emancipation 
 of man, the tide of success turned, and on the 
 fourth day of July, 1863, Vicksburg fell. On 
 the same day Gettysburg was won, and the vic- 
 torious end of the war was assured. It was with 
 the nation a case of a change of purpose and 
 goal in the midst of the war, from a political to 
 a humane basis, and on that change of creed, 
 which was the transference of our faith from 
 political methods to divine purposes — I say on 
 the strength of that faith, the great final victory 
 was won. No one had any doubt, from that 
 time on, of the assured triumph of the Union 
 arms. We had taken God's side. 
 
 It might be said, I think, with exact truth, that 
 "the victory which overcame" in the Civil War 
 was "our faith"; that great mass of belief and 
 principles, of revelation of the Christian God, the 
 
246 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 true and living God, which could not sanction 
 or stand for the enslavement of man; and that 
 when the change took place in us, then victory 
 became for us a certainty. 
 
 Now, at this present time, a different state of 
 things appeals to us, altogether in our favour. 
 We began this war without a political goal. We 
 began it with an absolutely humane purpose. 
 We did not need to change our creed after we 
 began the war. The "victory which could over- 
 come the world," namely, "our faith," our living 
 faith in these humane and eternal purposes of a 
 true and living God, was from the very first 
 assured. We have never swerved from it ; we 
 have never wavered in it. We are in this war 
 for principle; we are in this war for humanity. 
 We are in this war for morality, for Christianity, 
 for God. We have no occasion to change, and 
 if it has been the method of Divine Providence 
 to accord victory to those who have modified 
 their purposes from a political to a humane ob- 
 jective, then much more now, when no modifica- 
 tion is necessary, it becomes certain beyond all 
 question or controversy that we are fighting in 
 behalf of God, on God's side. And from all 
 that we know of His character, we are sure of 
 success, the success of His cause. 
 
 We verify our love of God by our love of men. 
 
Our Victory Assured 247 
 
 We love our neighbours as ourselves. We ex- 
 pect Him to vindicate that principle, and we 
 know that we shall triumph with Him. Christian 
 spirit and Christian influence are ascendent in 
 the allied world. We smite to heal; we fight to 
 make peace; we have no pride which we wish 
 crowned; we have no hate which we wish to in- 
 dulge; we have no selfish desire which we wish 
 to gratify. We seek to have the will of the lov- 
 ing God, done by Him on the earth as it is in 
 heaven, and by men, as learning His will and 
 becoming obedient thereto. 
 
 IV 
 
 Thus by our faith and our personal trust we 
 are assured victory. I wish in the strongest 
 possible manner to affirm, not that we hope for 
 victory merely, not that we think we shall be 
 victorious, not that as in the language of some 
 earnest patriots, "We must conquer"; but rather 
 I wish to say that we do conquer; we are con- 
 quering, we shall conquer; and that our defeat 
 is impossible. 
 
 President Lincoln, now so deservedly hon- 
 oured, when asked : "Do you think God is on our 
 side?" is said to have answered: "I am more 
 concerned that we should be on His side." Mr. 
 
248 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 Lincoln if here now could not but be pleased in 
 the highest degree, as every Christian and every 
 thinker ought to be, to find that beyond all ques- 
 tion we are on God's side. It is no more a ques- 
 tion of defeat of the allies, or of victory for the 
 Central Powers. It is a question of the defeat 
 of God or Satan, of the victory of Heaven or 
 Hell; of the triumph of right or wrong; of the 
 substantial eternity of goodness or wickedness; 
 and whoever doubts what the result is sure to 
 be in this case, can have no faith in anything 
 good. 
 
 We do not want victory unless we ought to 
 have it. This statement may startle some of 
 you who hear it, at the moment, but upon reflec- 
 tion you will absolutely agree with me. If our 
 victory was to make the world unhappy, if it 
 was to depress and degrade, if it was to override 
 right and truth and justice, if it was to enslave 
 humanity; if our victory was to destroy civilisa- 
 tion; if it was to remit the world to ancient 
 slavery again, we would not wish it. Our prin- 
 ciple is wholly different from this. Because we 
 know that it is God's victory, we do want it. We 
 are ready to say, "Thine, O Lord, is the victory," 
 because all the victory that we want is a victory 
 that could be presided over by the God and 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by such a Deity 
 
Our Victory Assured , 249 
 
 as is expressed in the character, the words, the 
 spirit and the work of Jesus Christ. 
 
 So then, we shall win this war, we and our 
 allies. We are certain of it on bases broader 
 than mere national boundaries. It is not a ques- 
 tion of the geographical measurements of terri- 
 tory; it is a question of the moral measurements 
 of the universe. If this universe is under control 
 of an infinitely beneficent Being, then we are 
 sure to win. If the control of this universe were 
 under a maleficent being, a being of evil will, 
 which is unthinkable, then we might possibly be 
 defeated. 
 
 The forces on which we depend are more 
 numerous than millions of soldiers, more power- 
 ful than the greatest aggregate of numbers that 
 can be put into the fight. The forces on which 
 we depend are the forces of the spirit. Germany 
 called Belgium's army and Britain's army "con- 
 temptible;" 300,000 of the one; 250,000 of the 
 other were thought to be no enemy to fear at 
 all. But Germany forgot to reckon among the 
 mighty forces that invincible spirit which trans- 
 formed the 250,000 of Britain into 5,000,000 
 within four years, and which awakened other 
 millions in America and lifted up Belgium, 
 France and Italy to the heights of national 
 martyrdom and glory. 
 
250 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 
 
 We depend on constructive agencies, more 
 powerful than the destructive inventions of any 
 age. Chemistry, physics, gunnery, piracy, may 
 all combine with the high intelligence of devilish 
 ingenuity in German hands to destroy. We hold 
 in the spirit and purpose of our work a con- 
 structive force much greater than all these de- 
 structive forces. Putting one against the other, 
 we remember that the humble Cross of Calvary 
 became mightier than all the armed hosts of the 
 Roman Empire, which was contemporary with 
 it. We depend on a Divine leadership exalted 
 above all civil, military and naval commanders. 
 We honour the leaders of the allied forces. We 
 doubt not that among our own Americans will go 
 forth men who will become renowned through 
 ages for their courage, their humanity, and their 
 devotion. But the Leadership on which we de- 
 pend is higher than any general staff, any agen- 
 cies of war, any consulting generals or military 
 men. We depend on the leadership which alone 
 can keep this world from utter chaos and ruin ; on 
 the leadership that will uphold goodness when 
 badness is destroyed, that will make love greater 
 than hate, that will make brotherhood greater 
 than antagonism, that will make humanity at its 
 best, greater than all the ambitious and fierce self- 
 ishness of the powers of the wicked. 
 
Our Victory Assured 251 
 
 There is nothing visible in the realm of human 
 thought that can take away our victory. So long 
 as we continue to fight on God's side, as we now 
 do, there is nothing conceivable that can give vic- 
 tory to our enemies, excepting that we should 
 become by any means as base as they, which may 
 God forbid. 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: ^ ^ 
 
 PreservationTechnoiogies 
 
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