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 Copyright }^^.. 
 
 COraRIGKT DEPOSIT. 
 
What the War Has 
 Taught Us 
 
 By 
 
 CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON 
 
 Pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle 
 New York 
 
 New York Chicago 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London 
 
 AND 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 1919, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 
 ufci, -5 /9|9 
 
 New York : 1 58 Fifth Aveiiae 
 Chicago : 1 7 North Waba:h A 'e. 
 London : 2 1 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street 
 
 ©CI.A5a68 50 
 
Preface 
 
 THE substance of the chapters contained 
 in this volume was delivered in the 
 form of sermons in the Broadway 
 Tabernacle, New York City, on the Sunday 
 evenings extending from the first of January to 
 Easter in the year 1919. In the month of Feb- 
 ruary, 1916, over a year before the United 
 States decided to enter the war, the Pastor of 
 the Tabernacle had delivered at the Ohio 
 Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, a course 
 of five lectures on " What the War is Teach- 
 ing." These lectures appeared at once in book 
 form, but as that volume is now out of print, the 
 author has incorporated in this new book sev- 
 eral paragraphs of the Delaware lectures. 
 
 The standpoint of the author is from first to 
 last that of the Christian minister. He looks at 
 everything through the eyes of a preacher, and 
 searches all experience for fresh revelations of 
 God. He is not an expert in the science and art 
 of war, and many lessons of high interest to 
 military and naval strategists are completely 
 ignored in these chapters. Nor is he learned in 
 
 5 
 
6 PEEFACE 
 
 physical science. The scientific specialist can 
 walk over the battle-fields on the land and on 
 the sea and in the air, picking up valuable les- 
 sons at every step, but many of these lessons 
 do not concern the preacher. 
 
 The war has taught the world a wide variety 
 of lessons which will engage the attention of 
 political economists and statesmen and educa- 
 tors and sociologists for many years to come. 
 Most of those lessons do not fall within the 
 scope of the author's purpose. It is the spiri- 
 tual interpretation of the war which interests 
 him supremely, and it is the religious lessons of 
 the war upon which he fastens his attention. 
 The war did not teach us anything new in re- 
 ligion, but it forced upon the public mind va- 
 rious religious truths and principles which in 
 days of peace are too commonly overlooked by 
 large classes of our people. War is vigorously 
 stimulating. War vitalizes all the faculties of 
 the mind, and arouses all the energies of the 
 heart. War makes demands on the latent 
 forces of the soul, and drives individuals and 
 groups of men into forms of conduct to which 
 they have hitherto been strangers. War com- 
 pels men and women to live not only more in- 
 tensely, but at deeper depths of their being than 
 in ordinary days, and the consequence is that 
 many of the laws of life flash out then with a 
 new significance, and men see the virtue of va- 
 
PEEFACE 7 
 
 rious principles whose operations had been 
 previously unnoticed. 
 
 At many points the war illustrated most re- 
 markably the truths which are written in the 
 New Testament. ]\Iany men who had never 
 before been interested in that book desired now 
 to read it, and those who had read it for many 
 years, found its pages becoming thrillingly vivid 
 when read in the glare of the great conflagra- 
 tion. Paragraphs which had been dull, now be- 
 came vivid, and truths which had made a feeble 
 appeal to the imagination, now gripped both the 
 understanding and the conscience. 
 
 This volume attempts to set forth a few of the 
 lessons which the war has forced upon the 
 minds of those whose work is the upbuilding of 
 Christian character, and who are in the habit 
 of thinking earnestly on the laws and processes 
 of moral life. The war has supplied the 
 Christian Church with new arguments for those 
 who ask a reason for the faith that is in her. 
 It has furnished graphic and piercing illustra- 
 tions of the fundamental truths which Jesus 
 taught. It has confirmed faith in the validity 
 of the principles which lie at the foundation of 
 the Christian philosophy. It has poured a flood 
 of light into corners which to many minds were 
 dark, and has lifted to glorious prominence the 
 central idea of the Christian religion — sacri- 
 ficial service. The whole experience of the war 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 is an illuminating commentary on the Gospels. 
 A diligent reader of recent history finds at every 
 step proofs that what Jesus and the apostles 
 said of the human heart is true. It is now more 
 clearly evident than ever before, that Peter's 
 declaration to the City of Jerusalem concerning 
 Jesus Christ, was the word of soberness and 
 truth : " There is no other name under heaven, 
 that is given among men, wherein we must be 
 saved." 
 
 C. E. J. 
 Nczv York City, 
 
Contents 
 
 I. The Mind's Thirst FOR God . , ii 
 
 II. The Hunger of the Heart for 
 
 Christ 22 
 
 III. The Naturalness of Prayer . . 34 
 
 IV. The Power of P'aith ... 46 
 
 V. The Joy of Service ... 58 
 
 VI. The Necessity of Sacrifice . . 71 
 Vn. The Majesty of the Common Man . 84 
 
 VIII. The Conquering Strength of Com- 
 
 radeship 96 
 
 IX. The Open Road to Christian Unity 108 
 
 X. The Potency of Words . . . 1 20 
 
 XI. The Range OF the Possible . .132 
 
 XII. The Might of the Spirit . . 145 
 
 XIII. The Handicap of Weights . -157 
 XIV The Ugliness of Sin . . .169 
 
 XV. The Mischief-Working Power of 
 
 Alcohol 182 
 
 XVI. The Certainty of Harvest . . 195 
 
 XVII. A Too Late 207 
 
 XVIII. The Place of Death . . . 220 
 
 XIX. The Progressive Brutality of War 233 
 
 XX. The Indispensableness of Chris- 
 
 tianity 246 
 
THE MIND'S THIRST FOR GOD 
 
 IT is significant that when the great storm 
 broke on the world in 1914, the first ques- 
 tion which pushed its way to the Hps was, 
 "Why does God permit this?" It was asked 
 by the profoundly religious, and it was asked 
 also by men who made no profession of religion. 
 Churchgoers asked it, and men who held aloof 
 from churches asked it with equal eagerness. 
 Even confirmed skeptics asked it. All at once 
 everybody seemed to become theological in his 
 thinking. 
 
 We had been living in a Scientific age. 
 Science deals with second causes. It is inter- 
 ested in gravitation, heat, light, electricity. Its 
 domain is the kingdom of forces, physical, chem- 
 ical, cosmic. Its delight is to explain phenom- 
 ena. It gives us reasons for the things we see 
 and hear. It accounts for the lightning, the 
 thunder, and the rainbow. It tells us why there 
 are eclipses of the sun and the moon, and what 
 causes the tide to rise and fall. It understands 
 the ways of the wind, and is familiar with the 
 laws of the seasons. Science had become the 
 miracle worker of our modern world, and was 
 enthroned as our most fascinating and authorita- 
 tive teacher. We had formed the habit of spell- 
 
 XI 
 
12 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 ing Nature with a big N, and in sundry circles 
 Nature had crowded out the name of God. 
 Many men were able to conduct the entire busi- 
 ness of their intellectual life with such words as 
 force and energy and law, and God was not in all 
 their thoughts. But when the big guns began 
 to belch death, all this scientific lingo was dis- 
 carded, and men began to speak at once'in Bible 
 terms. They broke through the network of 
 conceptions in which they had been long held 
 captive, and came out into the place of the 
 prophets and apostles. They did not ask, 
 " Why did not the forces of Nature prevent 
 this?" They did not place the responsibility 
 on either heat or light or gravitation or elec- 
 tricity. No one was heard to find fault with the 
 laws of Nature. Men were intent on getting 
 behind all forces and all laws to the Source of 
 things; they pushed their way boldly to the 
 throne of God. They demanded of God an 
 explanation. 
 
 Some of us had been living in a world of ab- 
 stractions. We had fallen into the habit of 
 using the pale and vague phrases of the philoso- 
 phers. We had become somewhat distrustful 
 of such a familiar and definite word as God, and 
 preferred to speak of the " Infinite," or the 
 " Absolute," or the " Eternal." We were 
 deadly afraid of anthropomorphism, and had a 
 shrinking from committing ourself to a belief in 
 the personality of God. We strove to emanci- 
 pate ourself from the conceptions and speech of 
 our fathers, and found relief in such large and 
 
THE MIND'S THIEST FOR GOD 13 
 
 modern expressions as " The infinite and eternal 
 energy " or " The tendency that makes for 
 righteousness " or the " Vital Urge." But when 
 the thunderbolts of the great war began to 
 smash to splinters the house in which we had 
 been living, we forgot all this philosophic finery, 
 and went back to the plain sensible language of 
 religion. No one was heard to ask, " Why did 
 It allow this deluge of blood and tears? " or 
 " Why did the Vital Urge plunge us into so 
 deep a ditch ? " Every one used the old word — 
 God. Every one spoke without hesitation the 
 personal pronoun " He," a pronoun used by all 
 normal men through thousands of years in their 
 references to the Deity. No one seemed afraid 
 to commit himself to the idea that God can hear 
 and see. " He that planted the ear shall he not 
 hear? He that formed the eye shall he not 
 see?" We all took it for granted when the 
 war burst upon us that God can see and hear, 
 and assuming this, we were puzzled as to why 
 He could permit the world to suffer so much. 
 The one question which came up again and 
 again was, " Why does He not stop it? " We 
 were all sure that He knew everything which 
 was going on, but we could not reconcile His 
 goodness with this deluge of woe. 
 
 This was the piercing question of the people 
 at home, and it was also the deepest question of 
 the men at the front. The soldiers all became 
 theologians. They were shoved into theolog- 
 ical thinking by the pressure of army experi- 
 ences. Thousands of them had heretofore 
 
14 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 taken no interest in religion. They had pushed 
 it aside as a superstition and a burden. They 
 were not interested in questions about God. 
 But in the trenches they found themselves now 
 and again thinking about God, wondering about 
 Him, asking themselves questions concerning 
 His character and His purposes. " If He is 
 good and almighty then how can He permit all 
 this misery? " That is the kind of question at 
 which theologians have for centuries been work- 
 ing, and the private soldier found himself work- 
 ing at it too. He worked at it because he was 
 awake. The war had aroused him from intel- 
 lectual sleep. All the questions which cluster 
 around predestination and foreordination, the 
 freedom of the will, and the divine decrees, 
 came up one after the other for consideration, 
 for the human mind when thoroughly aroused 
 has boundless curiosity to know the nature and 
 ways of God. Its thirst is insatiable. 
 
 This is the first thing which the war did for 
 us, it pushed us into deeper depths of living. It 
 compelled us to face problems which we had 
 continuously ignored. It gave the intellect a 
 jolt, and set wheels, long disused, revolving. It 
 aroused the heart. A black tragedy was thrown 
 on it, and under the weight of that tragedy the 
 heart awoke. Innumerable miseries and woes 
 came tramping in from many lands, and the soul, 
 semi-stupefied by selfishness, became more hos- 
 pitable and human. Sympathy expanded and 
 deeper depths of life were uncovered. We had 
 been sailing our boat upon a lake, and suddenly 
 
THE MIND'S THIEST FOE GOD 15 
 
 we found ourselves swept down a rapid river 
 and out to sea. Those who think superficially 
 have no need of God. Those who think deeply 
 find themselves face to face with Him. Under 
 sunny skies and on a road which is straight and 
 smooth, we do not seem to need the assistance 
 of the Almighty, our own strength is sufficient 
 for every need. But when we are caught in the 
 swirl of forces beyond our control, and are 
 swept through days of suffering onward toward 
 something we know not what, the soul awakens 
 to the fact that there is some one other than it- 
 self who is mightily at work, moulding races 
 and nations, and sweeping the world onward to 
 predetermined ends. 
 
 Christian congregations suddenly found that 
 they were interested in so-called doctrinal 
 preaching. It had become the fashion in nu- 
 merous quarters to smile at dogmas and pooh- 
 pooh all the creeds. That it makes no differ- 
 ence what a man believes in religion was ac- 
 cepted as an axiom even by persons who ought 
 to have been wiser. IMcn and women were in- 
 terested in their philanthropies and social pro- 
 grams and had lost interest in the great truths 
 which had made it possible for men in preceding 
 centuries to subdue kingdoms, work righteous- 
 ness, obtain promises, and stop the mouths of 
 lions. It was a practical age — an age bent on 
 doing things, and the pressure of the social 
 problems had so fixed the eyes of multitudes 
 upon the movements of society as to blind them 
 to the claims and purposes of God. As soon as 
 
16 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 the sky grew black and civilization seemed on 
 the point of sinking, men began to realize that it 
 is by our beliefs that we live. It is because of 
 our visions that we have strength to do our 
 tasks. Doctrinal preaching is, after all, in- 
 tensely practical preaching, for it is the sort of 
 preaching which heartens men to bear heavy 
 burdens and to meet perilous situations. Con- 
 gregations which had been interested solely in 
 community welfare work now showed a genuine 
 hunger for sermons about God. The human 
 heart was crying out everywhere for Him. 
 There was an instinctive feeling that it is with 
 their Creator that men have to deal, and that 
 the first piece of work for every man is to get 
 right with God. It was a novel spectacle which 
 we witnessed — the man in the street grappling 
 with huge problems as old as the world. " If 
 God is good how can He be Almighty? " " If 
 God is Almighty how can He be good? " The 
 old problem of suffering was forced upon every 
 sensitive heart. Men found themselves tussling 
 with the unfathomable mystery which puzzled 
 Job. They did in the midst of their tribulations 
 what Job did in the midst of his. They cried 
 out: " O that I knew where I might find him, 
 that I might come even to his seat! " All deep 
 experiences sweep us toward God. The most 
 superficial woman in the town becomes a theo- 
 logian as soon as she loses her baby. Her first 
 question is : " Why has God done this?" A 
 man followed through the years by repeated 
 failures and misfortunes asks himself: "What 
 
THE MIND'S THIKST FOR GOD 17 
 
 have I done that God has set Himself against 
 me?" A soldier losing his arms and his legs 
 has a desire to know something of the attitude 
 to him of the God who is in all things and over 
 all. Men who lie in the hospitals fatally 
 wounded find their thoughts going out toward 
 their Creator. In the words of Lieutenant John 
 Crowe Ransom : 
 
 " Now God be thanked by dying men 
 Who comrades them in times like these. 
 The whole world crumples in disease 
 But God is pitying to the end, 
 And gives an office to my knees." 
 
 New volumes of experience have been filled 
 within the last five years, confirming the testi- 
 mony of the Psalmist: "Yea, though I walk 
 through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
 will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod 
 and thy staff they comfort me." We need a 
 God to explain this world, and we need a God 
 to sustain us in making our way through it. At 
 the beginning we found ourselves peering into 
 the character and the purposes of God, and as 
 the war went on, we were compelled to fall back 
 upon Him, day by day, for courage and strength. 
 It was a disheartening and exhausting war. 
 Again and again it seemed as though the Allies 
 must inevitably go down. More than once they 
 were delivered by what seemed to be a miracle. 
 In every year of the conflict there were heart- 
 breaking disappointments. The losses were ap- 
 palling, and the best laid plans came to nothing. 
 
18 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 The German military machine was so perfect 
 that it seemed no combination of forces could 
 avail against it. The sky was black as midnight 
 again and again, and never was it blacker than 
 in the summer of the last year. 
 
 But even when the outlook was the most 
 hopeless, the hearts of the Allies never failed. 
 With every defeat their courage stiffened. The 
 darker the night the more brightly flamed their 
 hope. The French said : " They shall not pass," 
 and the Germans did not pass. The British 
 general said to his men : " You stand with your 
 back to the wall," and there they stood uncon- 
 querable. They believed in God. Marshal 
 Foch and General Haig trusted in God. The 
 great men behind the lines, Mr, Lloyd George, 
 Mr. Wilson, Mr. Asquith, were all believers in 
 God. Sir David Beatty expressed the faith of 
 all of them when he said : " Surely the Almighty 
 God does not intend this war to be just a hid- 
 eous fracas, a bloody orgy. There must be pur- 
 pose in it all. Improvement must be born out of 
 it all." It was because God was in His heaven 
 that we were certain that righteousness would 
 finally prevail. Men about to start for the front 
 loved to sing: 
 
 " O God, our help in ages past, 
 Our hope for years to come, 
 Our shelter from the stormy blast, 
 And our eternal home." 
 
 And fathers and mothers far away soothed their 
 hearts by humming: 
 
THE MIND'S THIEST FOE GOD 19 
 
 " O God, the Rock of Ages, 
 Who evermore hast been, 
 What time the tempest rages, 
 Our dvvelHng place serene." 
 
 And so from year to year we found ourselves 
 better able to read the Psalter. God became to 
 us more and more what He was to Israel, a 
 Buckler and a Shield, a Refug-e and a Rock. 
 For multitudes the Psalm Book can never be 
 again what it was before the war. Sentences 
 which were once dull now flame with a holy 
 light. Names for God which once seemed 
 rneaningless are now freighted with a rich sig- 
 nificance. War has kindled a lamp inside the 
 Psalter, and lines of poetry which once excited 
 only a languid interest now thrill us because 
 they express experiences which we ourselves 
 have passed through. We can say with the He- 
 brew poet: " i\Iy soul thirsteth for God, for the 
 living God : when shall I come and appear before 
 God.? My tears have been my meat day and 
 night, while they continually say unto me, 
 Where is thy God?" 
 
 And we can say with a jubilant confidence 
 born of experience: "God is our refuge and 
 strength, a very present help in trouble. There- 
 fore will we not fear, though the earth do 
 change, and though the mountains be moved in 
 the heart of the seas." 
 
 Not only has the war taught us our supreme 
 need of God, but it has made clear that every- 
 thing depends upon the kind of God we believe 
 
20 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 in. It is not enough to believe in God : we must 
 believe in the God who has revealed Himself in 
 Jesus Christ. The Kaiser is no doubt a con- 
 scientious believer in a Supreme Being. All 
 through his public career he has pushed to the 
 front his religious belief, and never did he speak 
 so often or so fervently of Deity as during the 
 war. But it nowhere appears that the God in 
 whom he believes is the Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. He believes in what he calls the 
 good old German God, and the good old Ger- 
 man God seems to be a compound of the Thun- 
 der god Thor, of the old Teutonic mythology, 
 and the ancient Hebrew God who appears in the 
 books of Judges and Samuel. But there is no 
 God in the heavens corresponding to either one 
 of those ancient conceptions. The God who 
 rules this universe is the Father of Jesus Christ. 
 The God who is King of Kings and Lord of 
 Lords is a God of righteousness and mercy. The 
 God who has made of one all the nations of the 
 earth, and who sets one nation up and pulls an- 
 other nation down, is a God who is sensitive to 
 the cries of little children, and zealous in the de- 
 fense of helpless women, and indignant over the 
 outrages perpetrated by brutal might on de- 
 fenseless men. At the center of the universe 
 is a heart of pity. On the throne of the universe 
 there is a soul of compassion. In this world of 
 ours there is an Eternal Spirit who works day 
 and night for righteousness, and any nation 
 which sets itself against this Spirit is scattered 
 as dust. This is the kind of God whom the war 
 
THE MIND'S THIEST FOR GOD 21 
 
 has revealed anew, and in Him we can trust to 
 the uttermost. 
 
 The influence of the war in turning the human 
 mind to God is illustrated by the experience of 
 the brilliant English novelist, Mr. H. G. Wells. 
 Mr. Wells before the war, like many another 
 popular writer, had apparently no interest in 
 God. He wrote on many subjects, but never 
 about God, He ventured into various fields, 
 but always kept far away from theology. The 
 war wrought a revolution in Mr. Wells' soul. 
 That revolution he has described for us in three 
 volumes. In the first of these the novelist tells 
 us how " Mr. Britling sees it through." 
 Through to what? To God ! The war was the 
 means of leading Mr. Britling to God. Who is 
 Mr. Britling? He is Mr. Wells. A new con- 
 vert is full of zeal, and so Mr. Wells had to 
 write a second volume. The title was " God 
 the Invisible King." He must tell us what kind 
 of a God he has found. Even this was not 
 enough. Mr. Wells had to write another book, 
 "The Soul of a Bishop." The Bishop found 
 his soul — he found God. Who is the Bishop? 
 Mr. Wells. Mr. Wells cannot be commended 
 as a theological teacher, but his experi- 
 ence is illuminating as revealing the effect of 
 the war upon an exceedingly sensitive and ex- 
 ceptionally alert mind. Mr. Wells is only one 
 of thousands whom the war has compelled to 
 think of their Creator. The war has taught us 
 that the human mind when thoroughly aUve is 
 athirst for God, 
 
II 
 
 THE HUNGER OF THE HEART FOR CHRIST 
 
 ON the last night of Jesus' earthly life, He 
 said to the men who were nearest to 
 Him : " You believe in God, believe 
 also in me. I am the way, the truth, and the 
 life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by 
 me. He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father. Believe me that I am in the Father, 
 and the Father in me." 
 
 In the long days of peace, when the sun shone 
 by day and the stars by night, it was enough for 
 many of us to believe in God as an essence, a 
 principle, a force. As the material universe 
 went on expanding under the magic wand of 
 Science, we found it impossible to localize Deity 
 after the fashion of our childish days. There 
 was no longer any " up " or any " down," and 
 the heaven with the throne in the middle of it 
 upon which God had formerly sat, vanished. 
 Science had taken away the God of our youth, 
 and we did not know where to find Him. In the 
 minds of many the idea of God had consequently 
 become vague and dim. His personality had 
 faded out. Theoretically men believed He was 
 everywhere, but practically it was difficult for 
 
HUNGER OF THE HEAET FOR CHRIST 23 
 
 them to find Him anywhere. God was lost in 
 the immensity of His universe. He remained 
 to most men a reality, but He was little more to 
 many than the First Great Cause, the infinite 
 and eternal Energy from which all things pro- 
 ceed. Pantheism of a modern brand crept into 
 the mind under the guise of the Divine Imma- 
 nence, and while men could speak of God as 
 vibrating in every atom of the material universe, 
 they did not find it easy to establish personal 
 relations with this diffused and unpicturable 
 Deity. 
 
 In many circles of thoughtful people the man 
 Jesus had receded into the background, crowded 
 out by teachers more modern, and with a mes- 
 sage seemingly more applicable to the problems 
 of our time. His name was held in reverence, 
 but He was not a vital factor in conduct or ex- 
 perience. He belonged to the distant past, and 
 men sought fountains of inspiration in other 
 quarters. 
 
 But when the sun was suddenly turned into 
 darkness, and the moon into blood, and when 
 the stars began to fall from heaven, and civiliza- 
 tion threatened to slide into chaos, the heart 
 cried out for a God of a very different sort. A 
 Principle was not sufficient, an Energy was not 
 satisfying, A God who vibrates in atoms did 
 not calm or strengthen the heart. We wanted 
 some One who would have pity on us, some 
 One who would show mercy, some One who 
 would sympathize with us in our confusion and 
 distress. The universe became chilling, almost 
 
24 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 icy, and we wanted to cuddle near a heart that 
 was warm. The world was swept by a tempest 
 of hate, and we were hungrier than ever before 
 for love. We believed in God but this was not 
 enough. Other men also believed in God. The 
 Mohammedans, for instance, believed in God. 
 All through the war they prayed daily to God. 
 The butchers who piled high the heaps of Arme- 
 nian dead no doubt said their prayers before and 
 after their horrid butchery. But the God of 
 Mohammed is a God of Power. He is almighty 
 and he is absolute. He holds all things in an 
 iron grip, he rules the universe like an Oriental 
 despot. But when the earth runs blood and the 
 air is filled with sobs and cryings, we want 
 something more than a God of Might. We 
 want some one who will say to us tenderly: 
 " Come unto me, and I will give you rest." In 
 the thunder and uproar of battle, the soul longs 
 for tones that are gentle. When all the bar- 
 baric appetites and passions leap into the saddle 
 and trample the nations into the dust, we go in 
 search of some One who will speak to us of 
 compassion and pity and love. 
 
 And so the great war did this wonderful 
 thing — it rolled the world toward Christ. Men 
 who had never cared for Him, now became in- 
 terested in Him, men who had used His name 
 only in profanity, now began to think about 
 Him with reverence, men who had followed 
 Him not because of heart allegiance, but be- 
 cause of the traditions of their fathers, drew 
 closer to Him and found in Him what they had 
 
HUNGER OF THE HEAET FOR CHRIST 25 
 
 never found before. He had said long ago: " I 
 am the bread of hfe," and when the great famine 
 came in 191-i men began to understand what He 
 meant. He had said : " I am the water of hfe," 
 and men on long marches, weary and homesick, 
 entered for the first time into the deep mean- 
 ing of His words. He had said : " I am the light 
 of the world," and when darkness fell upon the 
 lands, many a heart turned instinctively to Him 
 for guidance. The heart seemed to know the 
 hymn even though the lips had never learned it : 
 
 " We would see Jesus, for the shadows lengthen 
 Across this little landscape of our life; 
 We would see Jesus, our weak faith to strengthen, 
 For the last weariness, the final strife." 
 
 Men everywhere felt the need of a brother. 
 This was consciously felt by multitudes of the 
 people at home — it was the insistent need of the 
 men at the front. The soldier wounded and 
 deserted in No Man's Land yearned for the 
 presence of a friend who sticketh closer than a 
 brother. In the solitude and desolation of the 
 swamp or the forest many a man realized for the 
 first time how necessary is the assistance of a 
 big brother, and it was not of a brother at home 
 that he thought, but of Him who was glad to call 
 Himself the brother of us all. Men wanted a 
 brother who could pass over mountains and 
 seas, and who could walk unharmed across 
 shell-swept battle-fields, and who could breathe 
 into the heart the tonic of patience and good 
 cheer. The Christ of the Gospels was just the 
 
26 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 kind of friend which the soldier's heart cried out 
 for. This is one of the thrilhng spectacles of 
 the war — thousands of men reading the New 
 Testament with hungry and eager hearts who 
 had never read the New Testament before! 
 The New Testament is the most precious of all 
 books because it contains the portrait of Jesus — 
 the man who reveals to us what God is and also 
 what man ought to be. 
 
 Paul in writing to one of his churches said 
 that it was his purpose to do nothing but preach 
 Christ and Him crucified. The cross stands at 
 the center of the Christian religion. All the 
 New Testament writers bow before the cross. 
 Jesus Himself had said: " I, if I be lifted up, will 
 draw all men unto me." The power of the 
 cross was demonstrated all through the war, 
 and nowhere was its power more manifest than 
 at the front. Soldiers in the midst of their suf- 
 ferings could not help thinking of the Supreme 
 Sufferer of history. It was the suffering Christ 
 who came to them in their moments of medi- 
 tation, and sometimes even in their dreams. 
 The life of a soldier is dreary and disagreeable 
 beyond description. Military service has al- 
 ways been hard, but never has it been harder 
 than in the last war. What the men on the 
 fighting front suffered in the last four years can 
 never be told. Many a man on coming home 
 says : " I do not want to talk about it. I want 
 to get the whole hideous experience out of my 
 mind." To men who were suffering up to the 
 limit of human endurance there was no life 
 
HUNGER OF THE HEAET FOE CHEIST 27 
 
 which broui^ht such encouragement and com- 
 fort as the hie of Him who was a man of sor- 
 rows and acquainted with grief. Just to think 
 of Him brought the heart peace. Jesus also 
 had been loyal to a cause. He also had given 
 up everything which men count dear. He also 
 had subjected Himself to hardships and suffer- 
 ings unspeakable, all because of His devotion 
 to a high ideal. He had been willing to sacri- 
 fice His life in order that there might be a hap- 
 pier and better world. Because Jesus died for 
 a great cause it becomes easier for others to die. 
 The cross of Christ was foolishness to the 
 Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews of the 
 first century. It has been a rock of ofYense to 
 thousands in each succeeding generation. In 
 our own day scornful words have been written 
 about the crucified Jesus, and how necessary it 
 is that we should get away from the conception 
 of a suffering and dying man. But the war has 
 demonstrated that it is a crucified Jesus which 
 this world is most of all in need of. He draws 
 men to Him now as He has drawn them from 
 the beginning by His sufferings and His death. 
 So long as men live in a world in which good- 
 ness triumphs only through sacrifice, they will 
 need the inspiration of the crucifixion. God 
 makes His sympathy with us real and potent 
 through the sufferings of His Son. Many war 
 writers have dwelt upon the place which the 
 Sacrament of the Last Supper made for itself in 
 the lives of the soldiers at the front. IVIen who 
 had never cared for the sacrament at home, put- 
 
28 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 ting it aside as a needless bit of ritual, now 
 found that they needed it, and partook of the 
 bread and the wine with glad and grateful 
 hearts. There came a fresh meaning into the 
 words : " This is my body which is given for 
 you, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, 
 even that which is poured out for you. This 
 do in remembrance of me." Men who have 
 given up school or business, and kindred and 
 home, and who jeopardize their lives for others, 
 are spiritually prepared to understand the deep- 
 est passages of the Gospel story. 
 
 There is no doubt that for thousands of men 
 the cross of Jesus will shine henceforth with an 
 augmented splendour. They will sing with a 
 new accent : 
 
 " When I survey the wondrous cross, 
 On which the Prince of glory died, 
 My richest gain I count but loss, 
 
 And pour contempt on all my pride." 
 
 And their hearts will go like a tidal wave into 
 the words of the great hymn : 
 
 " In the cross of Christ I glory 
 Tow'ring o'er the wrecks of time." 
 
 To many Protestant boys the Roman Catholic 
 crucifix will no longer be obnoxious. They will 
 remember the day when a crucifix awakened in 
 their minds a train of thought which brought 
 comfort. A Protestant chaplain has told us of 
 the consolation which came often to him and 
 
HUNGER OF THE HEART FOR CHRIST 29 
 
 the men who were with him from the represen- 
 tations of the crucifixion which Hne the French 
 roads. In the daytime they imparted strength 
 to the men who marched by them, and some- 
 times at night a bronze image of Christ on a 
 stone cross, Ht up by the glare of the distant 
 guns, would bring to the heart a fresh assurance 
 of God's love. Not far away young men were 
 being sacrificed for the deliverance of the world, 
 and this cross of Christ kept reminding the heart 
 that God has declared that it is only through 
 sacrifice that the world can be saved. 
 
 What Christ on the cross meant to all the 
 men who participated in the great war agony 
 we shall never know. There is no doubt that 
 Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, who was killed in the 
 battle of the Marne, told the story of many a 
 heart in his little poem : " Prayer of a Soldier in 
 France ": 
 
 " My shoulders ache beneath my pack, 
 
 (Lie easier, Cross, upon His back) 
 I march with feet that burn and smart, 
 
 (Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart) 
 Men shout at me who may not speak, 
 
 (They scourged Thy back and smote Thy cheek) 
 I may not lift a hand to clear 
 My eyes of salty drops that sear. 
 
 (Then shall my fickle soul forget 
 
 Thy Agony of Bloody Sweat) 
 My rifle hand is stiffs and numb, 
 
 (From Thy pierced palm red rivers come) 
 Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me 
 Than all the hosts of land and sea. 
 So let me render back again 
 This millionth of Thy gift. Amen ! " 
 
30 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 But it is not simply the revelation of manhood 
 that the heart needs in its deepest hours. It 
 craves a revelation of God. " Show us the 
 Father." This is the cry of the human spirit 
 through all the generations. It is not enough 
 to know that Jesus was a patient and kind- 
 hearted peasant, a philanthropist and patriot, a 
 teacher and saint. We want to know God. 
 Can Jesus show us God? Can Jesus give us a 
 vivid conception of God? Can Jesus lead us to 
 God? Can Jesus make us sure of God? Un- 
 less we know God and are sure of Him, the 
 heart is hungry and the spirit has no rest. We 
 want an unveiling of God's mind, a revelation 
 of His heart. We want to know how He thinks 
 and feels, what is His attitude to us, and what 
 are His purposes for the world. 
 
 The New Testament assures us that Christ is 
 God manifest in the flesh, that He is the image 
 of the invisible God, that He is the very image 
 of God's substance, and that if we have the mind 
 of Christ we have the mind of God. The war 
 drove us in search of a God who could meet im- 
 perious needs. We wanted a sympathizing 
 God, one who could and would suffer with us, 
 one who could be afflicted in all our afflictions. 
 We wanted a God of mercy and compassion, one 
 who would not be deaf to the cry for help, one 
 who would pity mankind in its immeasureable 
 woe. We wanted a God of righteousness, one 
 who is on the side of justice, and before whom 
 the wicked cannot stand. We wanted a God 
 who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and 
 
HUNGER OF THE HEART FOR CHRIST 31 
 
 whose ultimate triumph over all the forces of 
 evil is certain. We wanted a God who is a con- 
 suming fire, who is infinitely holy, and who 
 blazes with wrath against all who work iniquity. 
 This is the God-ideal which arose in the deep 
 places of the heart, and when we looked upon 
 Him we discovered that He had the face of 
 Jesus. Jesus is the heart's ideal of God. He 
 combines all the traits which the soul most 
 craves in Deity. He offers us all the blessings 
 for which we long. He promises to do all that 
 we can ask or hope. We cannot think of a 
 moral perfection which He does not possess. It 
 is impossible for our imagination to add to His 
 glory. The Christian heart always sings: 
 
 " Thou, O Christ, art all I want ; 
 More than all in Thee I find." 
 
 The war subjected us to a tremendous test. 
 All our conceptions and ideals were thrown into 
 the crucible to be purged. In the darkness and 
 misery of the long night it was possible for us 
 to find out just what kind of God the heart is 
 willing to enthrone. We have found out that 
 He is the God who has manifested Himself in 
 Jesus Christ. No other God can ever win us 
 now. The war has blown away the mists of 
 misconception, and we now behold Jesus Christ 
 more clearly as He is. He is indeed King of 
 Kings and Lord of Lords. In the year of our 
 Lord 1914 certain kings of the earth set them- 
 selves, and certain rulers took counsel together 
 
32 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 against the Lord, and against His anointed, say- 
 ing: "Let us break their bands asunder, and 
 cast away their cords from us," but He who sits 
 in the heavens laughed, the Lord held them in 
 derision. It has been made certain that Jesus' 
 insight was infallible, when He declared that 
 those who take the sword shall perish with the 
 sword. It has been demonstrated that He is 
 the Commander of an army which will subdue 
 all the kingdoms of this world. He is our 
 Brother, our Friend, our Teacher, but He is 
 more than all these. He is our King — our 
 Ruler — our Master. Savonarola in the fifteenth 
 century lifted the shout: "Long live Jesus 
 Christ our King! " It was the dream of that 
 mighty preacher to make Jesus the acknowl- 
 edged King of Florence. Let it be the aim of 
 all Christians everywhere to make Jesus Christ 
 the King of all the world. God is undoubtedly 
 in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. 
 Christ's name is deservedly above every name, 
 and every knee will some day bend to Him. 
 Browning is right when he says : 
 
 " The acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 Accepted by the reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it." 
 
 The war has compelled us to face with deep- 
 ened seriousness the great mystery of the in- 
 carnation. He that hath ears to hear can hear 
 a voice saying: " Behold the Lamb of God who 
 takes away the sin of the world." War is the 
 offspring of suspicion and fear and hate, but war 
 
HUNGER OF THE HEAET FOR CHRIST 33 
 
 has revealed the world's crying need of a God of 
 love. It has made clear that v^ithout the reve- 
 lation of God in Christ w^e are lost. We cannot 
 trust the conjectures of Science, or the specula- 
 tions of Philosophy, or the maxims of the men 
 reputed wise. To know who God is and what is 
 His attitude to mankind and what are His pur- 
 poses for the world we must sit at the feet of 
 Jesus. 
 
 " So, the All-Great, were the All-loving too. 
 So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
 Saying, O heart I made, a heart beats here. 
 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself 
 Thou hast no power, nor mayst conceive of mine 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love. 
 And thou must love me who have died for thee." 
 
 The final victory was won by generals and 
 admirals who worship God in Christ. Marshal 
 Foch is a devout Christian. When men pour 
 out their praises on him for his glorious achieve- 
 ments he says: "It is not I, it is God." He 
 carries an image of Christ in his tunic. One 
 day when some men were eulogizing his prow- 
 ess and success he pulled out this image of 
 Christ, saying: " It is that crucified One on the 
 cross who has delivered France." Amid the 
 loud singing of the national anthems, the song 
 which the heart should lift highest is : 
 
 " All hail the power of Jesus' name ! 
 Let angels prostrate fall ; 
 Bring forth the royal diadem. 
 And crown Him Lord of all." 
 
Ill 
 
 THE NATURALNESS OF PRAYER 
 
 PRAYER is an instinct. It is a native part 
 of our make-up. When God created man 
 He implanted in him the impulse to pray. 
 Prayer is therefore a feature of the divine 
 world-plan. It is something conceived and or- 
 dained by the Almighty. It is natural for men 
 to breathe and to eat and to drink and to sleep, 
 and it is just as natural for them to pray. It is 
 said that when the hunted hare realizes that the 
 hounds are gaining on it, and that there is noth- 
 ing more which it can do for itself, it screams 
 aloud. When the soul is overtaken by a terri- 
 fying experience it instinctively cries out to 
 God. 
 
 In long seasons of fair weather the prayer in- 
 stinct may not be given opportunity for expres- 
 sion, and like other endowments of the soul, it 
 may become atrophied from disuse. Like all 
 our other powers, the prayer-faculty grows by 
 exercise, and the more one prays the easier it is 
 to pray and the more rewarding. But we are 
 living in a busy world, and there are many 
 things to do. The days are crowded and we are 
 compelled to run from task to task with a speed 
 
 34 
 
THE NATUEALNESS OP PKAYER 36 
 
 which is sometimes breathless. Men absorbed 
 in multitudinous details of business often forget 
 to exercise their muscles. The body is treated 
 as though it were a negligible factor in the life 
 of a human being. The penalty for the neglect 
 is rigorously exacted. The hospitals and the 
 cemeteries bear witness to the fact that the laws 
 of the human body cannot be trampled on with 
 impunity. Nor can the laws of the soul. There 
 is a law of prayer, and the soul that does not 
 pray deteriorates and gradually loses its higher 
 capacities for living. 
 
 A worldly life — a Ufe which is bounded by the 
 material horizon — makes prayer seem a super- 
 stition. Men cease to pray and later on dis- 
 cover reasons why it is not necessary to pray. 
 They can accomplish all which is included in 
 their program without speaking to God about it, 
 and why then do a superfluous thing? A shallow 
 life always makes prayer look ridiculous. If a 
 man is content to buy and sell, to read the news- 
 papers and attend the theater, without taking on 
 his heart any of the tasks or problems which 
 belong to full statured men, it is difficult to find 
 reasons why that man needs to pray. A selfish 
 life does not need for its prosperity the strength 
 and vitality which come from prayer. When 
 you hear a person say, " I never pray," you have 
 an indication of the kind of life he is living. He 
 is floating on the surface of existence, and is not 
 attempting work which calls for the forth-put- 
 ting of the deepest resources of the soul. 
 
 The world before the war was bent largely on 
 
36 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 material ends. The ambition to make money 
 was never more general or more intense. In 
 many circles it was an obsession and a fury. 
 Entire groups of men were crazy to build colos- 
 sal fortunes. Every section of society felt the 
 blighting touch of this materialistic hunger. 
 Men lived in the world of time and sense, and 
 what they supremely craved were material sat- 
 isfactions. Invention had supplied the human 
 family with numerous interesting toys, and men 
 were playing with these with the hilarity and 
 thoughtlessness of little boys and girls at 
 Christmas. 
 
 It was in a time drenched with the material- 
 istic spirit that the objections to prayer became 
 to many minds insuperable. Not only was there 
 no desire to pray, but there seemed to be many 
 and valid reasons why men ought not to pray. 
 Certain features of scientific theory were eagerly 
 seized on and converted into arguments against 
 the efficacy of prayer. The conception of uni- 
 versal and unchangeable law was diligently ex- 
 ploited, and so also was the idea that a loving 
 God will give His children all they need without 
 any trouble on their part of asking. Out of the 
 very book which insists upon it that men ought 
 always to pray and not to faint, there was taken 
 a conception of God which made all prayer ab- 
 surd. The intellect is a sort of spider which 
 spins webs in which to catch our holiest in- 
 stincts. The worldly intellect has no difficulty in 
 spinning threads to bind men toaprayerlesslife. 
 
 Under the combined influence of the worldly 
 
THE NATUEALNESS OF PEAYEK 37 
 
 heart and the so-called scientific objections to 
 prayer, multitudes of men and women grew 
 careless in the ordering of their devotional life; 
 the family altar was discontinued in thousands 
 of homes, and not a few members of the church 
 became so skeptical on the subject of prayer 
 that their prayer life became a burden and a 
 mockery. Some confessed, with a touch of re- 
 gret in their tone, that they had prayed in 
 earlier life, but had given up that habit, while 
 others openly derided prayer as an efifete form 
 of superstition. They said much about the 
 reign of law, and never suspected the power of 
 the reign of worldliness. They quoted sundry 
 scientific writers, but they never quoted Jesus. 
 They paraded the arguments of famous men to 
 prove that prayer is futile, never suspecting that 
 these arguments were all rooted in the shallow 
 soil of a worldly heart. 
 
 But when the war, like a big black storm, 
 swept in fury across the world, men and women 
 in every country fell upon their knees. The 
 same report was returned from every nation. 
 As by a flash of lightning we saw that God has 
 indeed made of one all the nations of the earth. 
 Men are everywhere alike, and in tinie of dis- 
 tress turn to a Supreme Power for succour. We 
 had often seen this fact illustrated on a small 
 scale. We knew that men and women always 
 pray on a sinking ship, that in railroad accidents 
 men cry out to Heaven, that even infidels and 
 profeF>sed atheists when trapped in a burning 
 building throw themselves on God, but never 
 
38 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 before had we seen the whole world drop sud- 
 denly to its knees. The churches became 
 crowded. Extra services were held. The most 
 satisfying part of the services was the prayers. 
 Men who had not been in a church for years 
 were found there. Men who had convinced 
 themselves that it is not worth while to pray 
 now prayed with zeal. The elemental instinct 
 of our humanity mightily asserted itself, and in 
 the twinkling of an eye all the cobwebs of the 
 brain were swept away, and men did instinc- 
 tively what they were created to do. They 
 spoke to God, 
 
 It is surprising how all the arguments against 
 prayer suddenly shrivelled and blew away. The 
 howitzers which blew to atoms the forts of Bel- 
 gium also blew down the proud structures which 
 unbelief had reared. Men were in a cell behind 
 bars harder than steel — the conceptions of the 
 universality and unchangeableness of law — but 
 these bars melted like wax in the heat of the 
 great conflagration. The speculations of the 
 intellect could not stand against a primitive in- 
 stinct. Man is by nature a praying animal. 
 The prayer instinct is deep and ineradicable. 
 Prayer will always have its difficulties, but they 
 will never permanently prevail. The intellect 
 will always find plausible reasons why men need 
 not pray, but the soul when awake will continue 
 to cry to God. 
 
 Prayer in its simplest form is a plea for per- 
 sonal deliverance. The Hebrew poet kept his 
 eye on human experience when he wrote : 
 
THE NATUEALNESS OF PRAYEE 39 
 
 " Hungry and thirsty their soul fainted in them, 
 then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble." 
 
 " They fell down and there was none to help, then 
 they cried unto the Lord in their trouble." 
 
 " They draw near unto the gates of death, then they 
 cry unto the Lord in their trouble." 
 
 "They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken 
 man, and are at their wit's end, then they cry 
 unto the Lord in their trouble." 
 
 Every man when he is at his wit's end — when 
 he has gone as far as it is possible for him to go, 
 and he realizes that that is not far enough, cries 
 out to the Almighty in his trouble. When the 
 war broke upon us we were all at our wit's end. 
 No one had wisdom enough to meet such an 
 appalling situation. The walls of our boasted 
 civilization fell flat, and the men on whom we 
 had relied for guidance and protection were all 
 impotent. Then we cried unto the Lord in our 
 trouble. Soldiers and sailors saying good-bye 
 to the loved ones at home prayed. Later on, 
 awaiting the command to go over the top they 
 prayed again. Still later, wounded and bleed- 
 ing with no one near to help, they spoke again 
 to God. The Englishman described by Donald 
 Hanky who had not prayed for years, but who 
 when alone in No IMan's Land, and so far as he 
 knew wounded unto deah, talked to God about 
 his wife and his kiddies, did only what every 
 man naturally does. That man had been living 
 an abnormal life, but when he came to himself 
 he spoke to his Heavenly Father. 
 
40 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 As the war progressed we found our prayer 
 life deepening. The first prayer is always a cry 
 for personal help. The savage prays to be de- 
 livered from some approaching calamity. The 
 barbarian becomes devout in the presence of a 
 threatening foe. Children begin their prayer 
 life by asking God for things they want. The 
 child in us keeps that form of prayer in the first 
 place. There are many adults who have never 
 gotten beyond the narrow bounds of the prayers 
 of their childhood. Their prayers are little 
 more than, "O God, give me this; O God, I 
 want that." But the man whose heart life is 
 growing is not content to pray solely for bless- 
 ings for himself. He prays for others. He 
 prays for those he loves. He prays for those he 
 knows. As he grows older he prays for those 
 also whom he does not know, and whom he has 
 never seen. 
 
 Now the difficulties of intercessory prayer are 
 more puzzling to the intellect than those of 
 prayer for blessings for oneself. A man who 
 asks God for a gift for himself can by means of 
 his philosophy of the mind explain how that 
 prayer may be answered, but how can a man by 
 speaking to God help another man who it may 
 be does not pray for himself? In what way, 
 picturable to the imagination, can my prayer 
 assist a man whom I do not know and whom I 
 have never seen? The difficulties become still 
 more baffling when we begin to pray for whole 
 groups and classes of people, and the difficulty 
 reaches its climax when we attempt to pray for 
 
THE NATUEALNESS OF PRAYER 41 
 
 the largest social groups, nations and entire 
 races. Many a plausible chapter has been writ- 
 ten against intercessory prayer, and an acute 
 skeptic can offer arguments which it is impos- 
 sible for a believer to answer. In our prayer 
 life, as in all the other kingdoms of experience, 
 we walk by faith and not by sight. It is always 
 possible to ask questions concerning prayer 
 which the wisest man on earth cannot meet. 
 How can God help a man thousands of miles 
 away from me for whom I pray? The answer 
 is, I do not know. But this ignorance on my 
 part is no valid argument against the efficacy of 
 my praying. How does the soul live in the 
 body? Nobody knows. It is impossible to ex- 
 plain it. The fact is not overturned or made 
 doubtful by our inability to furnish an explana- 
 tion. There are many facts which must be ac- 
 cepted without explanation. We must live, and 
 whatever is necessary to sustain our life we will 
 do. The explanations will come later, some of 
 them in this world, and most of them in the 
 world to come. When we are in trouble wc cry 
 to God for help. Our helplessness is the reason 
 for our crying. All the great workers of history 
 have been men of prayer. They prayed not be- 
 cause they reasoned themselves into the attitude 
 of prayer, but because their need drove them to 
 it. Our greatest leaders in their darkest hours 
 have all been found upon their knees. It was 
 the weight of the burden which turned their 
 face toward God. They could not live under 
 such pressure without the Divine aid. 
 
42 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 Now when the pressure becomes sufficiently 
 heavy we pass over into the kingdom of inter- 
 cessory prayer. We do not stop to examine 
 the arguments for and against it. We do not 
 consult any books to ascertain what the latest 
 thinkers have said about it. We go right on 
 and pray for others. When we are in distress 
 our heart is enlarged, and we spread our peti- 
 tions out over wider areas of human life. We 
 follow our instinct. We do it because our com- 
 plete life demands it. Fathers and mothers 
 have not been able in recent years to confine 
 their prayers to themselves. Even parents who 
 had not prayed often for their children found 
 themselves praying when the ship carried their 
 sons across the sea. How natural it was to 
 pray and how easy and how irrepressible. It 
 was as natural as breathing. Tens of thousands 
 of American parents have been baptized into a 
 new spirit by the war. No one has ever said 
 good-bye to his son, knowing that he was 
 going into the horror and hell of the fighting 
 line, and that he was being swept out be- 
 yond the parental reach and beyond the reach 
 of every human arm, without feeling a sense of 
 helplessness which was as novel as it is unfor- 
 getable. In that hour there was nothing to do 
 but pray. That is what parents did, and 
 brothers and sisters did it, and so did wives and 
 children and sweethearts. Intercessory prayer 
 can never be a meaningless thing again to those 
 whose hearts have spoken day after day to God 
 about a boy who was far away. The claims of 
 
THE NATUEALNESS OF PEAYEE 43 
 
 life are paramount and there are times when we 
 cannot live unless we pray. Once initiated into 
 the sweet mystery of intercessory petition, we 
 found it easy to take in others besides those we 
 knew and loved. We prayed for whole classes 
 of people whom we had never seen and whom 
 we never expected to see. The women of the 
 war-ravaged districts arose before our mind's 
 eye and we prayed for them. We could hear 
 the sobs of mothers and the moans of widows, 
 and it was not possible to approach the Mercy 
 Seat without including these in our petitions. 
 The sufferings of little children haunted us day 
 and night. We carried them on our heart, and 
 because they were on our heart, they dropped 
 into our prayers. We prayed for all Belgium. 
 We had to do it. The heart would have cried 
 out in wrath if we had condemned our lips to 
 silence. We prayed for France, and for Great 
 Britain, and for Italy, and for Russia, and for 
 Serbia, and for Roumania, and for Greece. It 
 became as easy to pray for nations as formerly 
 for individuals. God enlarged us in the day of 
 crushing calamity, and there was room within 
 us for the whole suffering world. Some of us 
 found it possible to pray for Germany. Our 
 Lord has told us to pray for our enemies. We 
 did it, and received the blessing which is prom- 
 ised to hearts that are obedient. The whole 
 war was a wonderful discipline in prayer. 
 
 We have gained new experience in the prayer 
 of confession. We as a people had grown blind 
 to the heinousness of sin. We did not realize 
 
44 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 how far short we were falHng from the divine 
 standard, and how audaciously all the nations 
 had been trampling on the law of Christ. We 
 prayed no longer for earthly blessings. Many 
 of the things we had coveted greatly now 
 seemed cheap and tawdry. We wanted the 
 blessings which abide, and above all we desired 
 forgiveness. The Pharisaic tone disappeared 
 from much of the praying of Christian people, 
 and in the place of it there came the note of the 
 Publican: "God be merciful to me a sinner!" 
 In thousands of homes the fifty-first Psalm be- 
 came the chief Psalm in the Psalter, and no sen- 
 tences expressed more fully the desire of the 
 heart than : " Hide thy face from my sins, and 
 blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a 
 clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
 within me ! " 
 
 Nor was the prayer of thanksgiving denied 
 us. Many of us had well-nigh forgotten how to 
 be grateful. The language of thanksgiving was 
 foreign to our lips. But when after long years 
 of agony the work of carnage ceased, the lan- 
 guage of the Hebrew poets became our native 
 speech. We made a joyful noise unto the Lord. 
 We were like unto them that dream. Then was 
 our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue 
 with singing, then said they among the nations: 
 " The Lord hath done great things for them." 
 Man is naturally religious, and when he is com- 
 pletely himself he speaks easily the language of 
 religion. In those great glad days which suc- 
 ceeded the signing of the armistice the Psalm 
 
THE NATUEALNESS OF PEAYER 45 
 
 book shone with an unusual splendour. The 
 devotional language of religious men- of old 
 came easily to our lips. We said: "Bless the 
 Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless 
 his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and 
 forget not all his benefits." 
 
 It is in the note of adoration and thanksgiving 
 that prayer reaches its climax. In our worldly 
 hours this form of prayer is tedious if not impos- 
 sible. When we are cumbered with many cares, 
 or when we are worried about what we are go- 
 ing to eat and wear, or when we are scrambling 
 for tinsel crowns, the heart does not engage in 
 the prayer of adoration. But in our highest 
 moods, when all the faculties of the soul are at 
 their best, it is natural for us to pour out our 
 heart to God in praise. When John heard the 
 worship in the ideal world, he saw that all cre- 
 ated beings were prostrate before the throne, 
 and that the representatives of humanity, hav- 
 ing cast their crowns at the feet of God, were 
 saying: "Worthy art thou, our Lord and our 
 God, to receive the glory and the honour and 
 the power, for thou didst create all things, and 
 because of thy will they were, and were cre- 
 ated." In the jubilant days immediately follow- 
 ing the war, the worship in our churches 
 reached ideal heights. It was natural for us to 
 say : " Unto him that sitteth on the throne, and 
 unto the lamb, be the blessing and the honour, 
 and the glory and the dominion for ever and 
 ever." 
 
IV 
 
 THE POWER OF FAITH 
 
 FAITH is not the mysterious and impos- 
 sible thing which some men imagine it to 
 be. To many persons it suggests cate- 
 chisms, and commentaries, and ponderous theo- 
 logical treatises. It is a thing distinctively 
 ecclesiastic. It belongs in churches. It is a 
 favourite theme for preachers. It is something 
 within the reach of no one but the saints. Men 
 say, " I have no faith," with an accent which 
 declares that it is impossible for them to have 
 any. It has the reputation of being a technical 
 and narrow thing which the man in the street 
 needs not meddle with. 
 
 But faith is one of the most abundant things 
 in the world, and one of the simplest. It is 
 found everywhere. Were it not universally dif- 
 fused the world would fall to pieces. Humanity 
 is held together by man's faith. It is by faith 
 that we live. Destroy all a man's faith, and life 
 for him has lost its glory and motive. Faith is 
 exercised in various directions, and up to vari- 
 ous limits. We are not all alike in the degree 
 to which we exercise faith in the different king- 
 doms of life, but no one of us is entirely without 
 
 46 
 
THE POWER OF FAITH 47 
 
 it. We all believe that the sun will come up in 
 the morning. We believe it will come up not 
 far from the same time at which it came up to- 
 day. We feel certain it will not wait till nine 
 o'clock or till half-past eleven. The sun has 
 established habits, and we entertain no fear of 
 those habits being broken. We have faith in 
 the sun, and believe he will continue to do what 
 he has done since we first saw him. In January 
 we believe in the spring. We have faith in its 
 coming. Even when there is no indication of 
 its approach, and when all the world is cased in 
 ice, we have no difficulty in believing in the 
 spring. Many springs have come and gone, and 
 another one is coming. This we steadfastly be- 
 lieve. We are content to walk by faith and not 
 by sight. 
 
 To do this is not evidence of a credulous and 
 feeble mind. We have faith in the order of 
 Nature, and are not ashamed to confess it. We 
 do not believe that the sun or the moon or the 
 stars are going to become capricious next week, 
 and that everything in the physical heavens 
 thereafter is to go on at haphazard. We be- 
 lieve in law, and we are sure that that law can 
 be depended on. We are not living in a uni- 
 verse which is crazy, or which is likely to go 
 crazy. Our faith in the order of the material 
 universe is absolute. No one is sentimental be- 
 cause he entertains such a faith, nor is he super- 
 stitious. It is natural for man to believe in the 
 reliability of the physical order, and if he lacks 
 this belief it is because his mind is sick. 
 
48 WHAT THE WAK HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 It is not enough, however, to beheve in inor- 
 ganic nature, we must believe also in human 
 nature. And we do. We begin by trusting our 
 father and mother, and we are able later on to 
 trust the whole human race. We cannot trust 
 all individuals, but we can trust humanity. We 
 cannot have faith in every man, but we can have 
 faith in man. It is only because men have faith 
 in one another that the world gets on. When 
 we board a train we have faith in the man in the 
 locomotive, we believe he understands his busi- 
 ness and will bring us to our destination. 
 When we sit down in a hotel to eat our dinner 
 we have faith in the cook. We do not suspect 
 him of a desire to poison us. When we take 
 our money to the bank and leave it there, receiv- 
 ing a scrap of paper in return, we are giving an 
 exhibition of our faith. If we had no faith in 
 men we should be obliged to dig a hole and put 
 all our gold and silver in the ground. We are 
 often disappointed in human beings. Again 
 and again we are deceived and cheated, but this 
 does not destroy our faith in human nature. 
 Our faith is too deep-rooted to be destroyed. 
 It is a part of our very soul, and without it we 
 should become something less than human. 
 
 The war gave us amazing exhibitions of the 
 power of faith ; faith in men, and faith also in 
 the moral order of the universe. There are 
 three forms of faith, faith in oneself, faith in our 
 fellows, and faith in God. All these three forms 
 of faith rose to their highest in the great con- 
 flict. What magnificent faith men had in them- 
 
THE POWEE OF FAITH 49 
 
 selves. Soldiers achieved incredible victories, 
 because they had no doubt of themselves. Even 
 when the situation seemed hopeless, and so far 
 as human calculations could go, defeat appeared 
 inevitable, men by the sheer force of the faith 
 that was in them snatched triumph out of the 
 jaws of destruction. 
 
 Men believed as never before in themselves. 
 The Frenchman never realized how much con- 
 fidence he had in himself till he met the German 
 hosts at Verdun. The Britisher gained a new 
 conception of the solidity and tenacity of the 
 British soul that was in him when, under a sky 
 out of which the sun had fallen, he still found 
 himself believing that the British army could 
 not be defeated. 
 
 Men believed in themselves, and they also be- 
 lieved in others. That is indispensable at all 
 times, especially in war. Wars are not won by 
 individuals but by groups. A man must have 
 faith not only in himself but in all the men who 
 fight with him. This form of faith grew to 
 glorious proportions during the war. We be- 
 lieved in one another. We built our hopes on 
 the fidelity and loyalty of the average man. 
 We knew that men are frail and flawed with 
 many an imperfection, but our confidence in 
 their ability to meet the supreme test never 
 wavered. We believed in the soldiers and 
 sailors of our own country, and our belief was 
 equally strong in the sailors and soldiers of 
 other lands. We Americans expected the very 
 highest things of our army and navy. We were 
 
50 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 not disappointed. Our fighting men fought all 
 the more bravely because they were backed up 
 by our glowing belief in them. How could the 
 British soldiers fail when the whole British Em- 
 pire had such faith in them? And how could 
 Frenchmen prove recreant when the heart of 
 France beat strong and hot behind the fighting 
 line? Clemenceau was not a man whom the 
 world would have expected to become France's 
 foremost citizen in a time of war. In the first 
 place he was too old, and in the second place his 
 record was against him. By his reckless and 
 eccentric denunciations of men and parties he 
 had raised up barriers to his political success. 
 But he possessed the one thing which France 
 was most in need of — faith. He took office in 
 the month of November, 1917, when there was 
 little light in the sky. The months which fol- 
 lowed were as somber as any which France has 
 ever known. Russia had fallen by the wayside, 
 bleeding and half dead. The promised Ameri- 
 can army was yet far away, and it was doubtful 
 if it could arrive in time. Germany was putting 
 forth a strength surpassing that of any preced- 
 ing year. It looked as though the doom of 
 France was sealed. But the heart of the old 
 editor never quailed. He was the most confi- 
 dent man in all France. He felt sure that vic- 
 tory was coming. His faith was contagious. 
 It penetrated the soul of the whole nation. Be- 
 fore he became Premier there had been groups 
 of defeatists in various parts of France, especially 
 in Paris. But in the presence of this man of 
 
THE POWER OF FAITH 51 
 
 faith their doubts disappeared. It is said that 
 from the day on which he took ofhce no one in 
 France doubted the outcome of the war. To 
 the eye things continued as black as ever, but in 
 the heart of France there was a new hope, kin- 
 dled by the irresistible faith of one man. Faith 
 in the human heart often sleeps, but is never 
 dead. During the war it leaped to its feet and 
 gave us fresh revelations of its beauty and its 
 measureless power. 
 
 But there were periods in the war when our 
 faith in men was not enough. It is difficult to 
 maintain a calm belief in human leaders in time 
 of storm. As the storm increases, we grow 
 more and more distrustful of those who are 
 managing the ship. We cannot help feeling 
 that under different management we might have 
 reached the desired haven sooner. In every 
 country there were seasons of deep depression. 
 The wisdom of political leaders seemed insuffi- 
 cient to grapple successfully with the problems 
 forced upon them. In some of the countries 
 leaders were changed more than once. They 
 were retired because the people had lost confi- 
 dence in them. There were times when the 
 military machinery creaked badly and threat- 
 ened to break down. We in America were tor- 
 tured by doubts as to our ability to get guns 
 manufactured in season, to raise and drill an 
 army soon enough, to transport our men to the 
 fighting line before it was too late. In more 
 than one crisis there were many doubting 
 hearts. Men straining their eyes to see means 
 
52 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 of escape from the impending calamity were 
 able to see nothing. But even then their faith 
 did not fail them. A deeper kind of faith came 
 to their rescue. After they had lost faith in all 
 the machinery which human genius had been 
 able to create, they fell back on their faith in 
 the moral integrity of the universe. They be- 
 lieved that the world is so constructed that jus- 
 tice in the long run must inevitably prevail. 
 They accepted the dictum of the poet that 
 truth crushed to earth will rise again. Just as 
 they believed in the regular rising of the phys- 
 ical sun, so they now believed more firmly than 
 ever that the Sun of Righteousness would surely 
 rise with healing in His beams. Men who did 
 not use the name of God and who made no pro- 
 fessions of belief in Him had an unconquerable 
 faith in the moral order of the world. They 
 could not admit that a righteous cause can be 
 defeated. Even though they could not tell how 
 victory could be won, they still insisted that de- 
 feat was impossible. I asked one day a French 
 chaplain who was visiting this country what he 
 thought of the outcome. His reply was that 
 the Allies were sure to win. I asked him how, 
 and he said he did not know. I suggested one 
 way after another, but none of them seemed to 
 satisfy him. He saw no hope in any direction 
 I was able to suggest, but his conviction of 
 final victory remained immovable. He could 
 not see how the victory was coming. He was 
 only sure that it would come. This is faith. 
 We walk by faith when we walk by the sight 
 
THE POWEE OF FAITH 63 
 
 of the inner eye. Faith is not shut up in 
 churches. It is not a fad or hobby of pro- 
 fessedly rehgious people. It is found in men 
 who are not identified with any form of religion. 
 Men who have no connection with Christian 
 churches, and who find all religious forms irk- 
 some, sometimes exhibit a faith which surpasses 
 that of those who are listed in the ranks of the 
 believers. Many a man had a song in his heart 
 which he did not sing with his lips. All sorts 
 and conditions of men knew the tune of the old 
 hymn : 
 
 " Right is right since God is God 
 And right the day must win, 
 To doubt would be disloyalty, 
 To falter would be sin." 
 
 This belief in the moral order of the world 
 was what sustained the Allies in the years of 
 darkness and defeat. When Germany entered 
 the war her suprerrte faith was in her military 
 machine. She had spent forty years in con- 
 structing it, bestowing on it the full energy of 
 her wonderful mind. It was no doubt the most 
 perfect military engine ever constructed by mili- 
 tary genius. So confident was the German 
 General Staff of the invincibility of this engine 
 that it was not reluctant to declare war, if neces- 
 sary, upon the whole world. Of all the nations 
 which entered the war, Germany was the only 
 one which entered it with a shining face. Her 
 heart sang because of her faith — her implicit 
 trust in the efficiency of the instrument which 
 
54 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 her hands had made. The high priests of mili- 
 tarism had by diligent instruction succeeded in 
 building up in the hearts of a majority of the 
 German people a faith similar to their own. 
 Politically the German people are docile, and 
 they accepted blindly the creed handed them by 
 their leaders. The evidence is voluminous and 
 incontrovertible that the German people were 
 on the whole firm in their belief that with the 
 help of their engine of war it was possible for 
 them to seize and hold the leadership of the 
 world. They felt this leadership belonged to 
 them because of their intellectual superiority 
 and their moral worth. Their faith was in their 
 own strong right arm. But when the military 
 engine began to give signs of breaking down, 
 the spirit of the German people collapsed. As 
 soon as it became apparent that the German 
 military hierarchy was not infallible, Germans 
 lost faith in their cause. Their faith had been 
 primarily in themselves. The moral order of 
 the universe had not greatly concerned them. 
 They wanted a larger place in the sun, and any 
 method of gaining it, however atrocious, was 
 justifiable. Treaties were only scraps of paper, 
 and the rights of humanity were fictions to be 
 laughed at. Never in history did a nation so 
 recklessly trample on all the laws of God and 
 man as did Germany in the great war. Her 
 recklessness was due to her faith. She believed 
 with all her soul and heart and mind and 
 strength in her army. By means of her army 
 she could enlarge her borders, and assess upon 
 
THE POWER OF FAITH 65 
 
 all nations which opposed her will crushing in- 
 demnities. Her frankness in telling- the whole 
 world what she was going to do was the product 
 of her colossal conceit. But she built her house 
 on the sand. When the flood came it was swept 
 away. The suddenness of her downfall amazed 
 the world. It was the fall of a colossus whose 
 feet were clay. It was the collapse of an 
 edifice whose foundation stones were rotten. 
 Germany had ceased to sing in her heart the 
 hymn of her greatest son : 
 
 " A mighty fortress is our God 
 A bulwark never failing," 
 
 and had worshipped at the shrine of Bismarclc 
 and Nietzsche and Bernhardi. IMilitary reverses 
 are disheartening to nations not certain of the 
 righteousness of their cause. Local defeats 
 spread panics through an army whose chief am- 
 bition is conquest. Even the Prussian Guard 
 was not able to stem the tide which flowed re- 
 sistlessly back toward the German frontier. 
 Surely the German soldiers were not cowards. 
 They had simply lost faith in their cause. 
 
 The collapse of Germany under the blows of 
 defeat is all the more impressive when set in 
 contrast with the effect of defeat on the armies 
 of the Allies. Often were these armies defeated, 
 but their spirit only stiffened under each suc- 
 cessive defeat. Their misfortunes were ap- 
 palling, but they did not break the French or 
 British temper. The blacker the skies the 
 
56 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 higher the French and British held their heads, 
 and the more tremendous the assaults made 
 upon them, the deeper became the determination 
 that they would never allow themselves to be 
 conquered. It was their belief in the righteous- 
 ness of the cause for which they fought which 
 rendered them invincible. It was their trust in 
 the moral integrity of the universe which 
 enabled them, thrown repeatedly to the ground, 
 to rise again. It was because of their faith in 
 God that they finally prevailed. " They en- 
 dured as seeing Him who is invisible." 
 
 We who were far behind the battle lines were 
 sustained by the same holy faith. Better even 
 than the men at the front we could see every 
 bending of the battle line, and could measure 
 the extent of each retreat. We had spread be- 
 fore us day after day the full account of the 
 awful losses, and could take in, as it was not 
 possible for a soldier to take in, the full dimen- 
 sions of each disaster. There were times when 
 the eye looking on from afar could see no 
 possibility of deliverance. In those times we 
 boldly walked by faith. We said to ourselves: 
 " Paris is not going to fall." " The channel 
 ports will not be taken." And then, perchance, 
 feeling that we had been over confident, we 
 went on to say, " But even if Paris does go 
 down, and even if the channel ports all fall into 
 German hands, even then the cause of the Allies 
 will triumph." We said this solely because of 
 our faith in God. 
 
 A New York boy marching with his regiment 
 
THE POWEE OF FAITH 57 
 
 one day through an EngHsh town, was feeling 
 homesick and very tired. It was in the late 
 afternoon. His face was toward France, and 
 in imagination he could already hear the boom 
 of the guns. Presently the regiment came 
 in front of an orphan asylum where little 
 boys and girls were singing the " Star-Spangled 
 Banner." To this American boy three thou- 
 sand miles from home, the national anthem 
 had never seemed so sweet as it seemed that 
 evening. Its sweetness was deepened by the 
 fact that it was sung by children of another 
 nation, and its words gained a pathos and a 
 power because they came from the lips of chil- 
 dren made orphans by the war. The anthem 
 was all beautiful, but there was one couplet 
 which rose in loveliness above everything else. 
 This American soldier had never been im- 
 pressed by that particular couplet before, but 
 now it seemed almost like a voice from heaven : 
 
 " Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, 
 And this be our motto, in God is our trust." 
 
 The sun was sinking in the west, and these 
 American boys were marching toward the field 
 of blood, but they forgot their weariness and 
 saw no longer the perils of the front. Their 
 hearts had been lifted to new altitudes of faith 
 by these children's voices, and they rested anew 
 in the great God who is in and over and behind 
 all causes which are just. 
 
V 
 
 THE JOY OF SERVICE 
 
 ONE of the miracles of the last four years 
 has been the abounding gladness in the 
 hearts of multitudes of our people. 
 The papers do not say much about it, but we are 
 all aware of its existence. There was a spirit 
 of cheerfulness in the air which every sensitive 
 heart could feel. There was a spiritual glow 
 in the people which we had never known be- 
 fore. This gave us great surprise. There were 
 a thousand reasons why we ought to have been 
 disconsolate. Every day we had justification 
 for being glum. The daily chronicle of the 
 world's losses was enough to drive every sun- 
 beam out of the heart. Men were dying every 
 week by the thousands. The wealth accumu- 
 lated by the sweat and toil of a century was 
 being thrown into the fire. The misery of 
 whole populations was indescribable. The 
 hunger and wretchedness and helplessness of 
 men, women and children was a tragedy black 
 enough to overwhelm us. We could not help 
 thinking of these losses. The destruction of 
 homes and of family treasures, of rare manu- 
 
 58 
 
THE JOY OF SERVICE 69 
 
 scripts and books, of famous paintings and 
 statues and renowned cathedrals — this lay like 
 a crushing weight upon our hearts. And then 
 there were the still greater losses, the loss of 
 reputation and honour by nations which we had 
 formerly revered, the loss of confidence and 
 trust by which the soul lives, the loss of faith in 
 leaders who had once been our teachers, surely 
 this was sufficient to cover the whole land with 
 gloom. Strange to say, it did not. At no time 
 during the war was our country really gloqmy. 
 Never was there a day which could properly be 
 called doleful. This was true even after we had 
 entered into the war, and after the columns of 
 the newspapers had begun to be filled with the 
 names of our own wounded and dead. Even 
 when military reverses were most dishearten- 
 ing, and when the outlook was darkened by 
 rolling masses of clouds, even then there was a 
 light in the land which kept us from stumbling, 
 and a joy in the heart which made it glorious to 
 be alive. 
 
 On looking back on it all, we are filled with 
 amazement. We can hardly understand how 
 we got on as we did. We can remember now 
 even though we may not have thought of it at 
 the time, that our hearts burned within us as we 
 walked along the darkened and perilous way. 
 There was an exhilaration, an exaltation of soul 
 in our people which cannot be remembered 
 without a thrill. The glory of the Lord seemed 
 to shine round about us. 
 
 When we seek for an explanation of this re- 
 
60 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 markable phenomenon, we find it in the fact 
 that for once the whole American people entered 
 deeply into the experience of servantship. Sud- 
 denly we were all called upon to serve. The 
 call came in 1914, and we went to work at once 
 to send needed things across the sea. The call 
 was louder in 1915, and louder still in 1916, and 
 in 1917 it became like thunder. Up to the 
 spring of 1917 we had been giving money, food, 
 clothing, medicines, bandages, all the things 
 which sick and wounded men need, but in April, 
 1917, we ourselves went into the war as com- 
 batants, and at once it became necessary for us 
 to enlarge our activities on every hand. There 
 were thousands of things to be done, and they 
 had to be done at once, and with efficiency. 
 The work of fighting is only a fraction of the 
 task of war. To keep one man in the trenches 
 seven men and women must work constantly 
 behind the lines. We found at once that the 
 work could not be accomplished by any one 
 class of our people. There was work for all. 
 We had entered on a stupendous enterprise and 
 every one had to do his bit. The spontaneity 
 and alacrity with which all classes responded to 
 this call will never be forgotten. The young 
 men of the country submitted to conscription. 
 There were predictions that such an innovation 
 would be stubbornly resisted, but the predic- 
 tions were not fulfilled. The anticipated riots 
 did not occur. Our young men responded 
 magnificently to their country's call. The ex- 
 ample of the soldiers and sailors was followed 
 
THE JOY OF SEEVICE 61 
 
 by all our people. Every one wanted to do 
 something. When the Red Cross called for 
 workers, they came in a constant procession. 
 When the Red Cross asked for millions of 
 dollars they were promptly given. When the 
 Y. M. C. A. called for workers, they responded 
 by the thousands, and when it asked for mil- 
 lions of dollars, the dollars came. A score of 
 new organizations leaped into the field calling 
 for money and volunteers, and these did not call 
 in vain. There seemed to be no limit either to 
 the willingness to give money, or to the ambi- 
 tion and capacity to serve. 
 
 This zeal was not peculiar to any one class of 
 our people. The rich were not a whit behind 
 the poor in their eagerness to help. Even many 
 of the idle rich put their hand to the plow and 
 never looked back. Men of wealth gave up 
 their mansions for the use of soldiers, and 
 women of high society worked side by side with 
 their obscure sisters in Red Cross sewing circles 
 and in canteens. Millionaires gave their money 
 lavishly, and what was even more indispensable, 
 their time and ability to the Government. 
 Business men with five talents placed all their 
 talents on the altar of their country. Men 
 capable of earning hundreds of thousands a year 
 were willing to work for one dollar. Kings of 
 finance and merchant princes and college presi- 
 dents were glad to double their hours of work, 
 and to subject themselves to the strain and 
 fatigue of numberless trips to Washington. 
 Men who had never before known what a de- 
 
62 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 light it is to work for a great cause now found 
 it; and women who had Hved exclusively for 
 themselves now had the novel and joyous ex- 
 perience of working for others. 
 
 In all great enterprises calling for generosity 
 and self-abnegation no class of human beings 
 ever surpasses the poor. All over the coun- 
 try the rich and the poor worked together in 
 serving the Allies. While the rich gave their 
 millions, the poor gave their dollars, and it was 
 out of extreme poverty that many gave. From 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific, women knitted day 
 and night in the home, in the lecture hall, in the 
 street cars, on the street corner, everywhere. 
 The poorest woman in the town felt it a privi- 
 lege to make her contribution to the world's 
 cause. Families denied themselves in some 
 cases even the comforts of life in order that they 
 might do more for those who were in need far 
 away. Girls who toiled all day in the factory 
 or store were glad in spite of their weariness to 
 give their evenings to work for the Red Cross, 
 or to serve in canteens. It would be a beautiful 
 chapter in the history of the world if one could 
 tell the full story of what the poor people of our 
 country did to achieve victory in the great 
 war. 
 
 The aged were not willing to be left out. Old 
 men who had retired from business, or ceased 
 to work at their trade because of their age, be- 
 came workers again. And aged women worked 
 with the agility and glee of girls in knitting 
 socks and sweaters for the boys at the front. 
 
THE JOY OF SEEVICE 63 
 
 Even the children were baptized into the same 
 spirit, and did with the fine zest of youth every- 
 thing that it was possible for children to do. 
 There were no more ambitious and indefati- 
 gable sellers of Liberty Bonds in the land than 
 were found among the boys and girls in the 
 schools. They too helped to win the great war. 
 How many thousands of boys and girls in Bel- 
 gium and France and Armenia were made glad 
 by the sacrifices and labours of the boys and 
 girls of America, only God will ever know. 
 From the richest to the poorest and from the 
 oldest to the youngest, the American people 
 gave themselves up to the gigantic task of mak- 
 ing the world safe for democracy. 
 
 Here then is a spectacle truly sublime. A 
 nation of a hundred million people baptized into 
 the spirit of service: a vast country dedicated 
 soul and body to the forwarding of a noble en- 
 terprise; a mighty Republic girding itself for the 
 doing of a splendid task; all classes and con- 
 ditions of men surrendering themselves to a 
 great cause. It was an awakening, a rebirth of 
 the American soul. ]\Iany selfish people be- 
 came for a season unselfish. They had lived all 
 their life for themselves, and for a season they 
 now lived for others. From their birth they 
 had been lords and ladies, and now they sud- 
 denly became servants. No wonder there was 
 a new emotion, a new thrill. Scales, as it were, 
 fell from the eyes. Manacles dropped from the 
 wrists. Men and women found themselves in 
 possession of a freedom they had never known 
 
64 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 before. The prisoners of self-indulgence and 
 selfishness came out of their dungeons, and 
 were astonished to find how full of light the 
 world is. In short, the war taught multitudes 
 for the first time the secret of a happy life. 
 
 The idea of happiness through service is an 
 old doctrine, but many had held it as a theory 
 rather than a working principle of daily life. 
 They accepted the New Testament as a book of 
 divine wisdom, but they had never been initiated 
 into its mysteries. It is one thing to read about 
 Jesus washing His disciples' feet, and it is an- 
 other thing to follow His example. It is one 
 thing to applaud the action of the Good 
 Samaritan, and it is another thing to go and do 
 likewise. In the days of peace and increasing 
 wealth, we had become more and more a pleas- 
 ure-loving people. Selfishness was our be- 
 setting sin. Personal ease and comfort was the 
 summum bonum of multitudes both young and 
 old. We did not like to be interfered with in 
 the carrying out of our own programs, we re- 
 sented any suggestion that we ought to give up 
 anything we liked to have or do. And so, many 
 of us were in the deep ruts of self-indulgence. 
 Our life was more selfish than we knew. The 
 average man gave all his time to the building 
 of his own fortune, and the average woman 
 thought too exclusively of the things that be- 
 longed to her. War laid its rude hand upon us 
 and pulled us out of our ease and egotism. 
 War compelled us to recognize the glory of do- 
 ing things for others. It opened our eyes as a 
 
THE JOY OF SEEVICE 65 
 
 nation to the truth which Jesus of Nazareth 
 long ago proclaimed. The war was a mighty 
 preacher, and one of the great lessons it illus- 
 trated and drove home is that the way of serv- 
 ice is the way of life. 
 
 The idea of servantship is written in vivid 
 characters across the pages of the New Testa- 
 ment. Jesus of Nazareth loved to think of Him- 
 self as a servant. The principle of domination 
 was abhorrent to Him, and He saw that it is 
 the root cause of much of the world's woe. 
 The way out of our conflicts and distresses, He 
 said, lies through the principle of service. One 
 of His sayings which sank deepest into the 
 hearts of His disciples was: " Whosoever would 
 become great among you shall be your min- 
 ister; and whosoever would be first among you 
 shall be your servant." He did not impose this 
 idea on others, and refuse to follow it Himself. 
 He proclaimed Himself a servant. " The son 
 of man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
 many." " I am in the midst of you as he that 
 serveth." On the last night of His earthly life, 
 He summed up what He had taught His fol- 
 lowers concerning His mission by taking a 
 basin and a towel and washing twelve men's 
 feet. After He had done it He said to tUem : 
 " Ye call me Master and Lord : and ye say well; 
 for so I am. I have given you an example, that 
 ye also should do as I have done to you." 
 Jesus stands before the world as the world's 
 great servant. He leads mankind because He 
 
66 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 serves. He masters the ages because He min- 
 isters to men. It is evidence that He came 
 from God and went back to God because He 
 was willing to become the servant of all. It is 
 the servantship of Jesus which thrills the heart 
 of Paul, and makes him proud to write him- 
 self always: " Paul the servant of Jesus Christ." 
 When Paul thinks of Jesus he is awestruck by 
 the thought that He took upon Himself " the 
 form of a servant." When he urges men to 
 become godlike he can furnish no stronger 
 motive than the example of Jesus : " Bear ye one 
 another's burdens and so fulfill the law of 
 Christ." 
 
 The great Teacher who spoke often of serv- 
 ice spoke also often of joy. He was a man of 
 sorrows and acquainted with grief, but in His 
 sorrows and grief He was always rejoicing. 
 From Nazareth to Golgotha He walked with a 
 shining face. The tragedy of the world's sin 
 did not quench the light in His eyes. He en- 
 joyed life to the utmost. It was His cheerful- 
 ness which was one of the secrets of His fascina- 
 tion, and also one of the causes of His cruci- 
 fixion. The glum-faced, pious folk of His day 
 suspected Him because He was so happy. How 
 could a man whose heart was right with God 
 go to so many dinner parties and have such an 
 enjoyable time with all sorts and stripes of peo- 
 ple? Even after the persecution became bitter 
 and venomous His heart remained jubilant. He 
 was still a servant, going about doing good. In 
 the upper chamber with the shadow of the cross 
 
THE JOY OF SEEVICE 67 
 
 upon His face, the springs of happiness in His 
 heart still kept flowing. He had enough for 
 Himself and for all. " These things have I 
 spoken unto you that my joy may be in you, 
 and that your joy may be fulfilled." He as- 
 sured them that notwithstanding the hardships 
 to which He was calling them, "Your heart 
 shall rejoice and your joy no one taketh away 
 from you." He told them that they could al- 
 ways call upon Him for new stores of gladness. 
 "Ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be 
 fulfilled." In the face of a world that was hos- 
 tile to Him, and bleeding from the wounds 
 which wicked men had inflicted on Him, He 
 said to the men who were to carry on His work : 
 "In the world ye have tribulation, but be of 
 good cheer: I have overcome the world." All 
 through the war we were in the midst of tribu- 
 lations, but our hearts did not lose the art of 
 rejoicing. We had a joy which the world had 
 not given us, and which the world could not 
 take away. It was the joy which God imparts 
 to His children who are willing to serve. 
 
 If it is possible in time of war to be lifted 
 high above despondency and gloom by a joy 
 which heaven gives to those who serve their 
 fellows, why should we not maintain this glow 
 of soul through all the years of peace? We 
 were happy when we were thinking of the 
 orphans and widows of Europe and working for 
 them, and why should we not make ourselves 
 happy by a fuller ministry to the poor people in 
 America? For years we carried on our heart 
 
68 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 the burden of Belgium's woe, making- sacrifices 
 that we might save the hves of Belgian babies. 
 Why should we not carry on our heart con- 
 stantly the burden of suffering women in our 
 own country, and work harder to save the lives 
 of American babies? We have found new joy 
 in contending for the rights of people far away; 
 are there no people in our own community 
 whose rights have been denied them, and whose 
 emancipation we might achieve? The women 
 of America have never been happier than when 
 they were feeding soldiers and sailors in our 
 canteens. What a vast amount of dishwashing 
 has been done with thankfulness which would 
 have been shirked as drudgery before the war. 
 But if it is glorious to serve men in times of 
 war, it must be equally glorious to serve them 
 in times of peace. The human heart remains 
 unchanged through all the generations, and al- 
 ways does it crave the sympathy and considera- 
 tion which have been poured out so lavishly 
 through the last five awful years. There is an 
 enormous amount of work to be done, and every 
 one should be willing to do his bit. Why should 
 this service of humanity be considered the ex- 
 clusive duty of the churches? In the time of 
 war no one suggested that only church members 
 be called upon to become servants. The call 
 went forth to everybody. The appeal was made 
 to every man and every woman and every child. 
 In time of peace the call is no less general, and 
 the appeal is no less urgent. Why should any 
 class of people slip back into their former selfish 
 
THE JOY OF SERVICE 69 
 
 mode of life? Why should not all who have 
 learned to work continue to work until the sun- 
 set hour? A selfish life is always an unhappy 
 life. God reserves the sweetest raptures of the 
 heart for those who live for others. It is only 
 when the soul is consecrated to a noble cause 
 that its faculties develop, and life mounts to 
 richness and power. The joy of service is too 
 beautiful and divine to be permitted to vanish 
 from those sections of society to which it had 
 before the war been a stranger. The war hav- 
 ing pushed us into the discovery that the New 
 Testament doctrine of service is a truth from 
 heaven, let us hold on to it, and compel it to 
 bless us all the way. 
 
 Our Republic has played gloriously the part 
 of a servant. As soon as it became clear that 
 without our assistance the Allies must go down, 
 we trampled on all traditions and crucified our 
 reluctances, and placed ourselves at their serv- 
 ice. The aid which France had rendered us in 
 the years long ago came back afresh to our 
 minds, and the joy of our nation's heart vibrated 
 in General Pershing's voice when at the tomb 
 of Lafayette he said: " Lafayette, we are here." 
 The United States was in the war solely as a 
 servant — a helper of others. We did not fight 
 for territory or money or glory. Our only 
 ambition was to help. The Allies were bearing 
 a heavy burden, and we got our shoulder under 
 the burden, and thus fulfilled the law of Christ. 
 It was this willingness to serve which accounts 
 for the wonderful sense of exaltation which per- 
 
70 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 vaded the land. A whole people consciously 
 entered into the joy of the Lord. 
 
 If we are true to our high calling, we shall al- 
 ways remain a servant. It is America's high 
 mission among the nations to be the servant of 
 all. We are big and rich and strong, and there- 
 fore our service should be constant and gener- 
 ous. There is no permanent happiness for us 
 as a people unless we go up and down the earth 
 doing good. Our foreordained place is in a 
 League of Nations because God created us to 
 serve. 
 
VI 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF SACRIFICE 
 
 CHRISTIANITY is the religion of the 
 cross. The cross is the symbol of sacri- 
 fice. Sacrifice is the surrender of one 
 thing for the sake of something else, the giving 
 up of an object in behalf of an object that is 
 higher. In its highest form it is the laying 
 down of life for others. At the center of the 
 Christian religion stands a cross with a dying 
 man hanging on it. He is dying in order to 
 build a better world. 
 
 According to the New Testament the cruci- 
 fixion is a picture of the working out of an 
 eternal principle. Jesus of Nazareth died on 
 the cross in the first century, but the Lamb of 
 God has been slain since the foundation of the 
 world. The suffering on Calvary was not 
 momentary and isolated, it has been going on 
 ever since man has lived on the earth. It is a 
 principle of the divine government that men 
 shall be lifted to higher planes of thought and 
 conduct by suffering. This suffering takes place 
 not only in the lives of men, but also in the heart 
 of God. The Creator of the universe is a suf- 
 
 71 
 
72 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 fering God. In all the afflictions of His chil- 
 dren He Himself is afflicted, and His sufferings 
 with and for men are revealed to the world in 
 the death of His Son. This is the central doc- 
 trine of the Christian religion. 
 
 The idea of self-sacrifice is naturally repellent 
 to a selfish heart. The speculative intellect has 
 always quarrelled with it. To the Greek think- 
 ers of the first century, the cross was foolish- 
 ness, and so it has been to all minds of the 
 Greek type down to the present hour. To the 
 Jews of Jesus' day, the cross was a stumbling 
 block. They could not see anything glorious in 
 a crucified Messiah. Peter was a representa- 
 tive Jew when at Ca^sarea Philippi he cried out 
 in fiery incredulity on Jesus' announcement that 
 He was going to be crucified, " This shall 
 never happen to you, Lord ! " Every drop of 
 blood in his body rose up in protest against the 
 monstrous idea. Through nineteen hundred 
 years the Jewish race has been stumbling over 
 the rock of a crucified Messiah. 
 
 In the modern mind the doctrine of vicarious 
 suffering has aroused manifold objections. To 
 many it seems incredible that God should save 
 the world through the death of His Son. It is 
 unjust, men say, that an innocent man should 
 die for the guilty, that a holy man should die for 
 the wicked. The cross is offensive because it 
 stands for an idea which cannot be justified — 
 men say — at the bar of reason. To some the 
 cross is even repulsive, and all talk about the 
 blood of Jesus is degrading and revolting. The 
 
THE NECESSITY OF SACEIFICE 73 
 
 whole idea of sacrifice has been disparaged or 
 repudiated by numerous groups of influential 
 modern thinkers. 
 
 A popular interpretation of the doctrine of 
 evolution has fortified the prejudice against the 
 New Testament teaching of the cross. When 
 evolution, years ago, was defined as " a con- 
 tinuous progressive change according to cer- 
 tain laws by means of resident forces," it was at 
 once assumed by superficial thinkers that prog- 
 ress becomes inevitable by the automatic work- 
 ing out of the vital energies which are stored 
 up in the physical and human creations. The 
 unfolding of a race of men is as natural and in- 
 evitable as the unfolding of a flower. All the 
 evolutionary processes are certain to be upward, 
 and the necessity for sacrificial effort is done 
 away with. And so we have had a deal of 
 shallow optimism. Men have believed that 
 things were bound to come out all right no 
 matter what they did, and believing this, many 
 of them made no serious effort to keep things 
 from coming out wrong. Progress is a pleas- 
 ing idea to play with, and for a generation and 
 more, men played with it to their immense satis- 
 faction. The old idea of a race having before it 
 the chance of losing itself was put down among 
 the things called antiquated, and the doctrine of 
 the cross was discarded as a speculation of a 
 school of theologians whose ideas had been 
 outgrown. 
 
 For a long time this philosophy seemed ade- 
 quate. There was no doubt that humanity was 
 
74 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 getting on. All the nations were progressing 
 in the sciences and arts. In every Christian 
 land wealth was accumulating, and evidences of 
 material prosperity were abundant. The com- 
 forts of life were yearly multiplied, and enlarg- 
 ing classes of people lived in luxury. Civiliza- 
 tion was a favourite theme for orators and 
 essayists, and we spoke of " modern " civiliza- 
 tion with an accent that revealed the mounting 
 pride of our heart. 
 
 Then all at once something happened. The 
 wagon in which we had packed our treasures 
 began to stall and then to run down hill. The 
 ship in which we had been sailing up a lovely 
 river began to drift down stream. The race of 
 men of whom we had been so proud began to 
 act like barbarians, and the civilization which 
 we had exalted above the civilizations of Greece 
 and Rome began to crumble. Our idea of 
 evolution was seen to be fallacious. There is 
 devolution as well as evolution. There are 
 processes which work downward as well as up- 
 ward. We can plunge to death as easily as 
 climb to life. Our belief in progress as a god 
 was overthrown. Some of the dull doctrines 
 which we had tossed aside when the sun was 
 shining now shone with a strange light under a 
 sky that was black. We were irresistibly driven 
 to consider the old Christian doctrine of vicari- 
 ous suffering. The day came when it was clear 
 to us all that if this world was to be saved, its 
 salvation was possible only through sacrifice. 
 We saw with our own eyes that if a step for- 
 
THE NECESSITY OF SACEIFICB 76 
 
 ward was to be taken, then some men must die 
 for others. 
 
 War cannot be carried on a day without con- 
 tinuous and incalculable sacrifice. A soldier is 
 called to live the sacrificial life. He must sur- 
 render all the things he holds dearest. First of 
 all he must give up his home, with all of its com- 
 forts and every one of its luxuries. He must 
 say good-bye to father and mother, brother and 
 sister, it may be to wife and children. From all 
 whom he loves best he must be separated. He 
 must submit to the dreary monotony of the 
 camp, and to the fatigue of the march. The idea 
 of comfort or ease cannot be in all his thoughts. 
 He must give up his liberty, and permit himself 
 to be ordered from one point to another as 
 though he were an ox or a mule. He must lay 
 down rights which are as precious as life. He 
 must face the guns of the foe. He must run 
 the risk of losing his arms, his legs, his eyes. 
 Day after day he must take this risk. He must 
 stand up daily in the face of awful perils, it may 
 be for long months, and it is not permitted him 
 to run or to hide. He must be willing to lay 
 down his life. War means the laying down of 
 life. There is no war without the shedding of 
 blood. Every soldier who marches to the front 
 goes knowing that he may never come back. 
 Every nation which went into the war went in 
 knowing the awful price which would be ex- 
 acted. When America declared war we knew 
 we were incurring a debt which would surpass 
 any which we had ever known. We knew that 
 
76 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thou- 
 sands, of our boys would come home crippled 
 and maimed. We knew that many thousands 
 would never come back. And yet we went in. 
 Great Britain knew what war meant, and yet 
 she went in. Little Belgium knew what re- 
 sistance to Germany would cost, and yet she re- 
 sisted. She was willing to pay the price. So 
 was France. So was Italy. So was Roumania. 
 The nations which came into the war late had 
 the opportunity of measuring in cold blood the 
 size of the sacrifice which would be demanded, 
 but they nevertheless went in. We Americans 
 did not rush in in a frenzy of passion, in a fury 
 of vengeance, we walked in deliberately, know- 
 ing what we were walking into, and we walked 
 in with unhesitating step. We were ready to 
 pay the price. 
 
 Why? Because it had become evident that 
 the world could not be saved without the 
 shedding of our blood. We had sent silver and 
 gold, munitions and food, but these were not 
 sufificient. It was necessary for us to contribute 
 life. If Belgium and France were to be rescued, 
 then American boys had to die. American 
 parents had to give their sons up. The old idea 
 of vicarious suffering became suddenly modern 
 and real. W^e learned what it meant in its 
 agony and we also were forced to acknowledge 
 its inevitableness. There was no escape. Many 
 men had endeavoured to prevent the war, and 
 numerous efforts had been put forth to stop it. 
 Rulers and diplomats had tried and failed. 
 
THE NECESSITY OF SACEIFICE 77 
 
 Socialists and Peace Societies had tried and 
 failed, the Hague Tribunal had in it no power 
 to deliver, the Universities of Europe were all 
 impotent, the educated and cultured classes 
 could devise no way of escape, the Christian 
 Church stood as one paralyzed. There was no 
 power under heaven whereby it was possible 
 for humanity to be redeemed, except the power 
 of sacrifice, sacrifice running throug^h the entire 
 gamut of all possible expression. To save the 
 world it was necessary for millions of women to 
 suffer, and for millions of men to die. 
 
 They did not die for themselves. They died 
 for others. They died for us. They died for 
 truth and justice. They died that there might 
 be a better world. Here certainly is a clear 
 demonstration that the principle of sacrifice is 
 embedded in the structure of the world, and that 
 it is the Divine will that the life of mankind shall 
 be lifted to higher levels through the willing- 
 ness of men to die for others. A professor of 
 Oxford University has told us how deeply im- 
 pressed he has been by the thought that so 
 many young men whom he had known in the 
 classroom had died for England— had died for 
 him. The idea of sacrifice illustrated in the 
 death of those young men came to the pro- 
 fessor with the force of a fresh revelation. 
 Never again will it be easy for any of us to 
 speak lightly of vicarious sacrifice, or to repudi- 
 ate the Christian doctrine of the cross. 
 
 The teaching of the New Testament on the 
 death of Jesus has sometimes been made re- 
 
78 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 pellent by the inadequate forms in which it has 
 been presented. When it is made to seem that 
 God saves the world by inflicting sufferings on 
 His Son, while He Himself holds aloof in the 
 deep abysses of eternal blessedness, the heart is 
 justified in entering a protest. But this is not 
 the teaching of the New Testament. The Chris- 
 tian doctrine is that God the Father suffers in 
 the death of Jesus. God so loved the world that 
 He gave His only Son. His love was so vast 
 that He was willing to pay the price which the 
 death of Jesus cost Him. Certainly the suffering 
 of the Father was not less than the suffering of 
 the Son. The Father suffered in the Son. Who 
 during the last four years have suffered most — 
 parents or their sons? God has a father's heart, 
 and this is sufficient to indicate to us what He 
 suffered in the death of Jesus. 
 
 The significance of the cross of Jesus has also 
 been lowered by isolating Jesus from all His 
 brethren. It has often been made to appear 
 that the world is saved by the sufferings of 
 Jesus alone, but there is danger of misconcep- 
 tion at this point. The world is indeed saved 
 because on the throne of the universe there is a 
 God whose heart is afflicted in our afflictions, 
 and because that love has been made manifest 
 in the sufferings and death of Jesus on Gol- 
 gotha, but it does not follow that the world can 
 dispense with the sacrificial sufferings of others. 
 The principle of sacrifice runs through all life. 
 It is a principle of God's life, and also of human 
 life. We are created in God's image, and there- 
 
THE NECESSITY OF SACEIFICE 79 
 
 fore like Him we suffer. Jesua is our brother, 
 and therefore like Him we are made perfect 
 through the things which we suffer. Paul had 
 a lofty conception of the unique personality of 
 Jesus, but he did not hesitate to write to the 
 Colossians : " I rejoice in my sufferings, and fill 
 up that which is lacking of the afflictions of 
 Christ." Many attempts have been made to 
 evade the plain meaning of those words, but 
 why should we want to evade it? Why not ac- 
 cept with gratitude the glorious fact that it is 
 possible for us to fill up that which is lacking 
 of the afflictions of Christ? The sufferings of 
 the man Jesus on the cross were surely not able 
 of themselves to bring the race where it is to- 
 day. Suppose that Paul had not died, nor 
 James nor Peter nor Stephen, nor any one of 
 the hundreds of martyrs who laid down their 
 life for humanity in the first three Christian 
 centuries, would the power of the Roman Em- 
 pire have been broken? The might of Pagan 
 Rome was shattered not simply by what Jesus 
 suffered in the year 29, but by what all His fol- 
 lowers suffered up to the time when the Roman 
 Emperor became a Christian. Thousands of 
 obscure and loyal men and women by proving 
 faithful unto death filled up that which was lack- 
 ing of the afflictions of Christ. Christ's suffer- 
 ings were continued in the lives of these dis- 
 ciples. It was by the continuation of His bloody 
 sweat in their agony that the victory was won. 
 Much of our perplexity comes from our shallow 
 conception of Christ. Once grasp the idea that 
 
80 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 we are a part of His body, and it becomes clear 
 that in His sufferings we also must suffer. It 
 is only as men suffer that they enter into the life 
 of Christ, and it is by means of this suffering 
 that the life of mankind is purified and strength- 
 ened. There was an early Christian hymn 
 which Paul loved to hum to himself in prison, 
 and which he hummed aloud in the last letter 
 he ever wrote to the dearest of his friends: 
 " If we died with him, we shall also live 
 with him, if we endure we shall also reign with 
 him." 
 
 The sufferings of men in the early centuries 
 were not sufficient to save civilization in the 
 twentieth century. Each generation must pay 
 its own bills. Each age must drink of the bitter 
 cup. The men who died in 1914 were not able 
 to break the power of Potsdam, men in 1915 had 
 to fill up what was lacking of the afflictions of 
 the men who suffered the year before. Men in 
 1916, and still others in 1917, and others still in 
 1918 had to drink of the cup of which those who 
 had gone before them had partaken. Belgium 
 had suffered much, and so had France, and so 
 had Great Britain, but their sufferings were not 
 sufficient to attain the desired end. It was 
 necessary for our Republic to fill up that which 
 was lacking of the afflictions of our European 
 allies. Our suffering was vicarious. We suf- 
 fered for others. God said to us : "Are you able 
 to drink of the cup? " and our reply was: " We 
 are able." 
 
 If, then, the principle of sacrifice is a principle 
 
THE NECESSITY OF SACEIFICE 81 
 
 of the divine government, it is operative in 
 times of peace as well as in war. In peace it is 
 often covered up, and men act on the principle 
 of self-indulgence, but when war comes we are 
 at once put to school to learn afresh that the 
 principle of self-sacrifice is the central principle 
 of life. Without a willingness to surrender 
 that which is lower for that which is higher, no 
 progress is possible. Unless men are ready to 
 spend time and money and strength for the 
 things which society needs, those blessings can 
 never be secured. It was only by multitudi- 
 nous and great sacrifices that the war was at last 
 won. The victories of peace can be obtained 
 only at the same cost. What is the matter with 
 our American cities that they are so shabby and 
 disappointing? It is because there is a lack of 
 the sacrificial spirit. City government is often 
 corrupt and inefficient because the so-called best 
 citizens refuse to take office. Their refusal is 
 due to their unwillingness to sacrifice them- 
 selves for the public good. It is surely a sacri- 
 fice for any man of sensitive heart to subject 
 himself to the mauling and mud slinging of a 
 political campaign. It means a sacrifice of per- 
 sonal comfort, and often of financial income, for 
 a man to serve his fellow-citizens in office. The 
 sacrifice is too great for the average man to 
 make. But when we entered into the war our 
 best citizens were foremost in their willingness 
 to make sacrifices. Income became of sec- 
 ondary importance and personal convenience 
 and comfort counted for nothing at all. There 
 
82 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 was only one thing worth living for, and that 
 was to win the war. The war is ended, and 
 now the only thing worth living for is to win the 
 peace. Peace is to be won only by continuous 
 and enormous sacrifices. We talk glibly about 
 making the world safe for democracy, but 
 democracy itself is impossible unless the spirit 
 of self-sacrifice abides in the hearts of the peo- 
 ple. No other forms of government demand 
 such general and heavy sacrifices as democracy. 
 Unless men in large numbers are willing to sur- 
 render money and time and energy and com- 
 fort and reputation, we cannot as a republic be 
 saved. It was a sorry spectacle and one which 
 we do well to ponder, the spectacle of one man 
 after another who had sacrificed his financial in- 
 terests for the good of the nation during the 
 war by giving to the public the very best that 
 was in him, saying openly almost as soon as the 
 armistice had been signed: " I must now hurry 
 back, and give myself, as before the war, to 
 the building of my own fortune." The reason 
 why free government is so often a scandal is be- 
 cause our best citizens call it no disgrace to 
 devote their entire time and strength to the 
 prospering of their own affairs. There never 
 would have been a war had there been in peace 
 the same spirit of self-sacrifice which was mani- 
 fested all through the war. In every country the 
 average man was content to pursue the even 
 tenor of his way, thinking largely of his own 
 pleasures and ambitions, and giving no heed to 
 the ceaseless schemings of groups of selfish men 
 
THE NECESSITY OF SACRIFICE 83 
 
 which were to render soon or late a world 
 catastrophe inevitable. 
 
 Here then is one of the cardinal lessons of the 
 war — the necessity for great and constant self- 
 sacrifice. In no other way is it possible for 
 humanity to be saved. The way of life is the 
 way of the cross. That is true in war — it is 
 equally true in peace. By the cross we con- 
 quer. That is true on the battle-field; it is no 
 less true in the church and in the state. Our 
 soldiers and sailors have been living on the prin- 
 ciple of self-sacrifice. They know now what it 
 means. They know how essential it is. They 
 themselves have all made sacrifices, and they 
 know that many of their comrades made sacri- 
 fices far greater than theirs. There are many 
 great lessons which no doubt multitudes of sol- 
 diers failed to learn in the war, but it is doubtful 
 if a man in the army or navy will come out of 
 the service without having a changed view of 
 the value and beauty of self-sacrifice. Certain 
 parts of religion will to many men remain ob- 
 scure, but this is a doctrine which every sailor 
 and soldier will understand. He will not only 
 understand it, he will believe it. If he acts on 
 his belief, if he is as ready in peace to lay down 
 his life for others as he was ready in war, who 
 can doubt that we are going to have a better and 
 happier world.? 
 
VII 
 
 THE MAJESTY OF THE COMMON MAN 
 
 THE last war was the only war which 
 gave every man a chance to show what 
 was in him. It summoned the whole 
 human race to the field of action. In olden 
 times wars were fought by professional soldiers, 
 and the men engaged on the battle-field consti- 
 tuted only a small fraction of the male popula- 
 tion. Equipment was light and simple, and to 
 prepare it did not tax the economic resources of 
 a nation. But in the twentieth century war be- 
 came more than ever before a contest between 
 entire peoples. Soldiers were enlisted by the 
 millions, and other millions of workers were 
 mobilized behind the lines in order to furnish 
 the enormous stock of supplies which was daily 
 demanded. 
 
 At first the world's attention was focussed 
 upon the men who bore arms. In every war it 
 is the man who fights who comes at once to the 
 front. Every combatant nation bent all its first 
 energies to the raising of immense armies, and it 
 was upon these that the eyes of the people were 
 fixed. The army and navy were the two giants 
 
 84 
 
THE MAJESTY OF THE COMMON MAN 85 
 
 who carried on their broad shoulders the weight 
 of the world. 
 
 But it soon became evident that other men 
 are as important as sailors and soldiers. The 
 man who manufactures munitions is as essential 
 as is the man who makes use of them; and so 
 for a season the thought of the world went out 
 toward munition factories. For the first time 
 in history, plain, ordinary workers were eulo- 
 gized in the headlines of newspapers. The 
 whole world confessed that without these muni- 
 tion workers the war could never be won. The 
 makers of guns and explosives were granted a 
 dignity and honour which had once been 
 granted to kings. 
 
 But munitions are not enough. They are in- 
 dispensable, but not more indispensable than are 
 the means of transportation. Of what value 
 are explosives and guns unless they can be car- 
 ried where they are needed? The cry went up : 
 "Ships, more ships, still more ships!" If the 
 world was to be saved it would be saved by the 
 builders of ships. And so for weeks we kept 
 our eyes on the shipyards, listening to every 
 stroke of the hammer, praising the mechanics, 
 and encouraging them by assurances that with- 
 out them the cause of humanity was lost. Mu- 
 nition makers and mechanics were seen to be 
 Atlases on whose mighty shoulders war had 
 rolled the world. But what are ships without 
 coal? Wars in modern times are won by fuel. 
 The coal miner is as indispensable as the general 
 and admiral, and should he fail humanity would 
 
86 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 be doomed. For the first time in history the 
 men who work underground, hidden from hu- 
 man sight, removed from human concern, rose 
 into the Hmehght, and upon them was fastened 
 the gaze of the world. Leading statesmen 
 spoke eulogies on their industry and patriotism, 
 and editors declared daily that upon the miners 
 depended the outcome of the war. 
 
 But of what worth is coal for the engines if 
 there is no fuel for the human body? It is man 
 after all upon whom the whole world is sus- 
 pended. He is the Titan who works the won- 
 ders, and he cannot work them unless he is fed. 
 Food, then, is the prime essential in the winning 
 of a war. Without food neither the sailor nor 
 the soldier, neither the mechanic nor the muni- 
 tion worker, neither the miner nor the forester 
 can exist, and so after all it is the farmer who is 
 the Atlas who carries on his shoulders the huge 
 world-burden. For weeks we were told by the 
 newspapers that it was food which would win 
 the war, and every day the farmer rose higher 
 and higher in the world's esteem and honour. 
 City populations which had not thought of the 
 farmer for years now thought of him daily, and 
 every heart came to feel that without the aid of 
 the man with the hoe the fate of civilization was 
 sealed. This passing round the human circle, 
 bowing now to this group and now to that, 
 placing laurel wreaths on brows which had 
 never before worn them, and lifting obscure 
 men to a renown of which they had never 
 dreamed, was one of the most dramatic inci- 
 
THE MAJESTY OF THE COMMON MAN 87 
 
 dents of the war. If one should cull from the 
 files of old newspapers all the various things 
 which we were told would win the war, we 
 should find a list long enough to call for the 
 labour of every class of men and women in the 
 land. 
 
 Nor was the language the speech of exaggera- 
 tion. It was literally true that without the 
 hearty cooperation of all sorts and conditions 
 of men the war could not have been won. We 
 now see as never before that any considerable 
 group of workers, no matter what their occupa- 
 tion, can, if they choose, so handicap a nation in 
 its military operations as to incapacitate it for 
 the successful prosecution of a war. Society 
 has become so complex, and men's lives are so 
 intertwined and inter-related that when any so- 
 cial group refuses to work, the whole fabric of 
 national life is thrown into chaos. 
 
 What the war did for men it did also for 
 women. From the start it was apparent that 
 for the winning of the war women were no less 
 indispensable than men. Without the French 
 women what could the French men have done? 
 Without the British women Great Britain would 
 have inevitably succumbed. Without our 
 American women we should have been para- 
 lyzed and undone. If victory is to be won by 
 any nation in war, the full strength of its wom- 
 anhood must be utilized. 
 
 Nor is it the women of high social circles 
 alone who are needed. All classes of women 
 are indispensable from the highest down to the 
 
88 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 lowest. There is a demand for the rich, and 
 there is a demand for the poor. Women of dis- 
 tinction can do much, and so also can women 
 who are commonplace and obscure. When the 
 time came to make munitions there was a 
 stream of women constantly moving from the 
 factories and kitchens into the cities where 
 munitions were made. And without the united 
 labours of this great army of women the war 
 could not have been won. Women who had 
 toiled in lowly places and who had often felt 
 that they were of slight value to the world, now 
 thrilled with the thought that they were making 
 a contribution to human history, that they were 
 soldiers fighting for liberty and justice. Their 
 plain, colourless lives were glorified by being 
 dedicated to the forwarding of a noble cause. 
 The soul of a woman was like unto the soul of a 
 man. Like a man she threw herself whole- 
 heartedly into the glorious task of making the 
 world safe for democracy, and like a man she 
 was eager and proud to do her bit. Enthusiasm 
 burned nowhere with a hotter or holier flame 
 than in the hearts of plain and humble women 
 of whom the world had taken no notice. The 
 tremendous importance of unimportant people 
 is one of the facts which the last four years have 
 rendered forever vivid. We were brought to 
 see that every human being has gifts and capaci- 
 ties which are indispensable, and that it is only 
 as every one of us is ready to do his bit that 
 gigantic undertakings can be accomplished. 
 Personal responsibility was rolled by the war 
 
THE MAJESTY OF THE COMMON MAN 89 
 
 on every heart. There was something for 
 everybody to do. It was not necessary to be 
 brilHant or gifted to win a place at the work- 
 table. Each one could use whatever talent had 
 been entrusted to him. Much of the work was 
 prosaic, and prosaic people could do it with 
 efficiency. Without an incalculable amount of 
 prosaic drudgery no war can possibly be won. 
 The Government went from door to door, up 
 and down the land, saying to every man, and 
 also to every woman : What can you do? What 
 can you do best? What have you been trained 
 to do? For tens of thousands it was a new 
 experience, examining oneself to ascertain what 
 one could do best. It quickened many a soul 
 into new life. Men and women arose to higher 
 things. A fresh ambition came, and with the 
 ambition a serene joy. It is a delight to feel 
 that there is a place for us on the earth, and that 
 there is really important work which we can do. 
 In the war a trumpet call came to the com- 
 mon man, and the common man responded. 
 His response in every land was magnificent. 
 This war will not go down in history as a war 
 of brilliant admirals or generals, it will be re- 
 nowned forever as the war in which the common 
 man revealed his soul. The wonder of the war 
 is not a general or an admiral, but the common 
 man. He has given the world a revelation of 
 the temper and fiber of the human spirit. He 
 has made us see the shining splendour of the 
 human heart. Some of us in times of peace 
 had become cynical and despondent. We had 
 
90 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT ITS 
 
 lost our enthusiasm over the common people. 
 We had surrendered some of our faith in human 
 nature. The schools of pessimistic writers have 
 had in recent decades a large following. Many- 
 gifted teachers have had a gift for seeing only 
 the dismal. A vast amount of literature was 
 vitiated by the poison of despair. Every day 
 somebody reminded us of the sordidness of 
 human nature and of the decadence of the 
 higher powers of the soul. 
 
 It was declared by those who sat in lofty 
 places that our civilization had eaten out our 
 heart, that men brought up in offices no longer 
 possessed the fighting edge. It was alleged by 
 those who made a pretense of knowing that lux- 
 ury had sapped the strength of all our youth, 
 and that the love of selfish ease had devoured 
 the old heroism which the Romans knew. A 
 fierce indictment was brought against our civ- 
 ilization, and all hope for the future seemed to 
 be built on shifting sand. 
 
 Then came the war, and at once millions of 
 men arose to prove that the pessimistic philos- 
 ophers are wrong, that the cynics who sneer at 
 human nature are stupid, and that the wise men 
 who see everywhere signs of decadence are 
 blind. From the first day of the war to the last 
 we had a continuous revelation of the grandeur 
 of the human soul. It was demonstrated every 
 hour of every day that man is as brave now as 
 he has ever been since his creation. No Greek 
 or Roman of the olden time can teach the man 
 of to-day anything in the book of courage. 
 
THE MAJESTY OF THE COMMON MAN 91 
 
 There are no heroes in history who will outflash 
 in glory the heroes of the past four years. 
 Never were soldiers called upon to face such 
 weapons as were our soldiers, but they faced 
 them without quailing. It had been said often 
 that the machinery of slaughter has been made 
 so frightful that human nature would refuse to 
 stand up against it. The men who said that do 
 not understand man. They do not know that 
 he is the child of God, and that in the midst of 
 danger he can be depended on to act like a god. 
 The war has demonstrated that there is no form 
 of virtue on this planet as abundant as courage. 
 It is universal. All nations have it, and they 
 have it apparently to the same degree. The 
 war was not able to show that the Frenchman 
 is less brave than the German, or that the Brit- 
 isher is less brave than the Frenchman, or that 
 the American is less brave than any of them. 
 In the realm of heroism all the nations went 
 over the top. There was nothing too hazard- 
 ous for men to face, there was nothing too awful 
 for them to endure. Never before had men 
 been ordered to fight above the clouds. They 
 did it with glee. Never before had men been 
 asked to fight below the surface of the sea. 
 They did it without a tremor. Never before 
 had men been asked to advance against machine 
 guns of such deadly construction, and never be- 
 fore had they been asked to face asphyxiating 
 and poisonous gases, but they marched forward 
 unafraid. Stories of heroism have almost ceased 
 to thrill us — they are so common. Heroes are 
 
92 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 no longer conspicuous — there are so many of 
 them. The brave days which we have seen sur- 
 pass all the brave days of old. It has been re- 
 vealed to us that in the soul of the common man 
 there is a spirit which can strike the stars. We 
 know now that under the coat of the plainest 
 man there beats a heart whose pulses can be 
 counted on to overthrow the strongest citadels 
 of evil. Most of the men in all of the armies 
 were made of common stuff. They were just 
 ordinary mortals, called from the office and 
 shop, the factory and the mill, the mine and the 
 farm. No one considered them remarkable. 
 Their own town did not call them great. To 
 themselves they appeared exceedingly common- 
 place, and commonplace they were. And yet 
 when the hour for action came they awed the 
 world by what they did. There are many weak- 
 nesses and vices which come to the front in time 
 of war, and these are likely to catch and hold 
 the eye. We should not allow the vulgarity 
 and vileness of individuals to blot out the glory 
 and majesty of human nature on the whole. 
 What a shining page has been written in human 
 achievement before our eyes ! What revelations 
 of the spiritual splendour which is hidden deep 
 in ordinary people ! AVhat fortitude, what con- 
 stancy, what persistency, what unselfishness, 
 what nobility, what endurance, what loyalty, 
 what devotion, what dauntlessness, what mag- 
 nificent forth-puttings of the intrepid human 
 spirit! And above all else what cheerfulness, 
 what good humour, what a genius for smiling 
 
THE MAJESTY OF THE COMMON MAN 93 
 
 along roads which were fearful, what uncon- 
 querable powers of hope, what inexhaustible 
 stores of energy and determination! It was 
 not a man here or there who showed these shin- 
 ing traits — they were common. Heroes did not 
 appear as single spies — they rushed across the 
 world in battalions. They romped over the 
 fields of blood! They laughed at death! 
 " Killed in action " — those are the three words 
 written over tens of thousands of graves. They 
 are the graves of just common soldiers. Stand- 
 ing by these graves we involuntarily exclaim : 
 
 " What a piece of work is a man ! how noble in 
 reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and 
 moving how express and admirable! in action 
 how like an angel! in apprehension how like a 
 god!" 
 
 It is this demonstrated worth and majesty of 
 the common man which is going to lead to a 
 reconstruction of the world. We can never go 
 back to the world as it was before the war. 
 Many of the old things have passed away and 
 they will never more return. Classes which 
 were once ignored or disparaged have a new 
 sense of their dignity and importance. During 
 the war they were told that they were essential 
 to the life of the world, and they will now be- 
 lieve that they are essential to the life of the 
 world in the days of peace. In war time their 
 labour was appreciated and exalted. In peace 
 they will expect equal recognition and reward. 
 A new consciousness of human dignity has come 
 into existence, and with this we must reckon 
 
94 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 through all coming years. When the nations 
 were fighting, the world kept ringing with beau- 
 tiful words about liberty and justice, and polit- 
 ical leaders grew eloquent on the rights of the 
 weak. Those words are not likely to be for- 
 gotten. The working classes were not neg- 
 lected in the war, and they will refuse to be 
 neglected now. Labour will never again con- 
 sent to fill the place assigned it before 1914. 
 Wage workers will demand a fuller and freer 
 life. The common man has a mind, a heart, 
 and a soul. His mind must be cultivated, his 
 heart must be fed, his soul must have a chance 
 to grow. These are his rights. He has con- 
 tributed to the saving of civilization and now 
 civilization must do something additional for 
 him. His innate gifts are splendid, his capacity 
 for achievement is amazing. He has proved 
 himself a loyal and eflficient son of our Republic, 
 and he must now be given a higher place at the 
 banquet table. 
 
 In the days of reconstruction there will be 
 many incidents to chill our hearts. A new-born 
 sense of importance is likely to show itself in un- 
 lovely ways. Individuals and groups will be- 
 come bumptious and domineering. There will 
 be many a display of selfishness and sordid 
 greed. Common men as well as uncommon 
 men have many exasperating characteristics, 
 and the crowd is as capable of folly as are the 
 anointed few. Thousands of men, petted and 
 pampered through the war, will have extrava- 
 gant expectations, and will exhibit all the ugly 
 
THE MAJESTY OF THE COMMON MAN 95 
 
 ways of a child that has been spoiled. Men who 
 have been noble on the field of battle will in 
 some instances disappoint us. Soldiers and 
 sailors when they return to civil life do not in 
 every case prove as noble in peace as they were 
 in war. But none of these unsavoury revelations 
 should daunt us, because we know that the heart 
 of the common man is sound. We trusted him 
 in the hour of the world's supreme crisis, and he 
 did not disappoint us. He is not going to dis- 
 appoint us now. The common man is coura- 
 geous. He will overcome all the obstacles he 
 meets on the upward way. He is naturally 
 magnanimous. His soul is great. In dark 
 moods he is ugly and unreasonable, but when he 
 comes to himself, he loves the thing that is fair. 
 He is persistent and patient. He will bear 
 heavy burdens without fainting. He is loyal 
 and devoted, and we can count on him to the 
 end. He is a son of the ]\Iost High, and a 
 brother of Jesus Christ; we must deal with him 
 justly and respect him as a fellow-member of the 
 household of God. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE CONQUERING STRENGTH OF 
 COMRADESHIP 
 
 IN a famous religious song written many 
 centuries ago, it is said that one shall chase 
 a thousand, and that two shall put ten 
 thousand to flight. Thus early in human his- 
 tory was there discovered the miracle-working 
 power in the bringing of men together for the 
 performance of a common task. The mathe- 
 matics which is valid in the realm of matter is 
 left behind us when we cross over into the king- 
 dom of the personal. Ten spikes may be ten 
 times more efficacious than one spike, and ten 
 ropes may sustain a weight ten times greater 
 than that which can be supported by one rope, 
 and ten horses may pull a load ten times as 
 heavy as can be drawn by one horse, but ten 
 men working together will do far more than ten 
 times what one man can do alone. The reason 
 is that when men come together for the per- 
 formance of a common work, they establish 
 points of contact with one another which set 
 free latent forces of the soul. Each man is no 
 longer what he was, he is raised to a higher 
 
 96 
 
THE STEENGTH OF COMRADESHIP 97 
 
 power. By linking his strength into the strength 
 of other men, a new strength is imparted to 
 him, and he can do many times more than he 
 can do when not energized by contact with 
 others. 
 
 War has a genius for massing men. An army 
 is a multitude of men massed. The isolated 
 individual avails little in war. In the day of 
 battle the free lance counts for nothing. From 
 the beginning until now war has always organ- 
 ized men into units. It subjects these units to a 
 common discipline, and trains them in the art of 
 acting together. It furnishes the world with 
 amazing revelations of the potencies which lie 
 wrapped up in the principle of cooperation. It 
 brings out of the experience of fellowship treas- 
 ures new and old. In war, men by necessity 
 are made comrades. In many cases they be- 
 come friends. But friendship is not a necessary 
 product of military life. Friendship is a close 
 and intimate relationship of hearts which may 
 not exist even though men may serve for years 
 on the same battle-ship, or drill through many 
 seasons in the same armoury or camp. But war 
 compels men to be comrades. It does not per- 
 mit them to remain simply companions. A 
 companion goes with us only a little way, and 
 his relationship to us is casual and transient. 
 We are companions of those who take a walk 
 with us, and of those with whom we fall in on a 
 summer excursion. Men become comrades 
 only when they are more or less permanently 
 associated in a common pursuit. Those who 
 
98 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 work by our side in the forwarding of a great 
 cause are our comrades. They are more than 
 companions and less than friends. They are 
 allies, associates whose lives are linked with 
 ours for the attainment of a desired end. The 
 best word in our language for the expression of 
 this relationship is comradeship. All the men 
 in army or navy are properly known as " com- 
 rades in arms." 
 
 War is peculiar in that it brings men together 
 in vast numbers and from all social classes. In 
 war, men meet who have never met before, and 
 who would never have met had they lived on the 
 earth a thousand years. They meet not from 
 chance, but by the command of the Govern- 
 ment. They not only meet, but their lives are 
 organized into one bundle of life. In the army 
 there is no place for a hermit. Isolation is an 
 impossibility. Soldiers must eat and sleep with 
 men who are at first strangers. They must 
 keep step with men with whom in time of peace 
 they would be unwilling to walk through a 
 street. All kinds of men are brought together, 
 the good and the bad, the disreputable and the 
 honourable, the ignorant and the learned, the 
 rich and the poor, the high and the low, the wise 
 and the foolish, the noble and the mean. All 
 these are caught in the governmental net and 
 compelled to be comrades. 
 
 In war the distinctions which ordinarily sepa- 
 rate one man from another are ignored and fade 
 out. Occupational distinctions no longer exist. 
 Men from the factory and office, from the mill 
 
THE STRENGTH OP COMRADESHIP 99 
 
 and the shop, from the school and the farm, all 
 cat in the same mess-shack, and are obedient to 
 the same rules. The distinctions between actors 
 and writers, lawyers and grocers, artists and 
 artisans, teachers and day labourers, are com- 
 pletely lost sight of, and men whom civil life 
 could never have made associates, now live to- 
 gether as members of one big family. They 
 have ceased to do things which separate them, 
 and are doing only the things which unite them. 
 
 Even the social distinctions grow misty and 
 pale. Men no longer ask : " Is he rich ? " or " Is 
 he poor? " for all carry the same kind of gun, 
 wear the same style of clothes, and eat out of the 
 same sort of dishes. No one asks: *' Has he a 
 diploma? " or '' How many years did he go to 
 school?" for in war the question is not how 
 much a man knows of books, but how much can 
 he do against the foe? In the days of peace a 
 man may be content to know things, but at the 
 battle front he must do things. Men who were 
 not comrades in study become comrades in ac- 
 tion. On the battle-field the crown goes not to 
 the man who knows, but to the man who 
 achieves. 
 
 Religious distinctions are also partially or 
 completely blotted out. The general never asks 
 whether a soldier is a Methodist or Baptist. 
 The colonel is indifferent whether his men are 
 Catholics or Protestants. The captain does not 
 concern himself about the religious convictions 
 of his Jewish lieutenant. There is no time in 
 war for the exploitation of distinctions which 
 
100 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 are often magnified in the leisurely days of 
 peace. An army is made of fighting men, and 
 the supreme question is not, after what manner 
 do they pray? but are they capable of defeating 
 the foe? They are not comrades in religion, 
 but comrades in life. 
 
 The blotting out of religious distinctions was 
 one of the outstanding features of the war. All 
 the Protestant denominations melted at once 
 into one body, and Catholics and Protestants 
 marched side by side. No one in Protestant 
 England was concerned about the religion of the 
 Belgians, and no Protestant of the United States 
 hesitated to assist Catholic France. Even the 
 Mohammedans forgot their antipathy to Chris- 
 tians, and became their comrades in contending 
 for the rights of mankind. The Buddhists and 
 Shintoists of Japan did not draw back in the 
 hour of peril because their religious convictions 
 differed from those of the men in the West. 
 Religious labels and tags were burned up in the 
 furnace of war, and men, long separated, lived 
 and worked together like brothers. They were 
 comrades in arms. 
 
 The results of this comradeship are among 
 the great gains of the war. All through the 
 war the magic working power of fellowship was 
 daily experienced. Courage rose to unprece- 
 dented heights, because men were inspired and 
 glorified by their fellows. When men act to- 
 gether they can achieve what is absolutely be- 
 yond human strength when it is attempted by 
 individual effort. When we work alone we 
 
THE STEENGTH OF COMRADESHIP 101 
 
 often fall the victims of despondency. By work- 
 ing together we feed one another's hearts. 
 Many a soldier was amazed at his own courage, 
 not realizing that he drank it in from the hearts 
 of his comrades. The spirit of rejoicing which 
 was so common even in days of midnight and 
 eclipse was due to the touching of multitudes of 
 hearts. When we think and feel and work to- 
 gether it is impossible to despair. We belong 
 to one another, and when the barriers are 
 broken down and our hearts flow together, the 
 life of God has free course in us. 
 
 Many a soldier is aware that the chief bless- 
 ing which came to him in the war is his enlarged 
 knowledge of human nature, and his increased 
 respect for his fellow-men. Before the war he 
 was narrow, and did not realize how narrow he 
 was. He had lived in his own contracted world, 
 content to allow other men to live in theirs, and 
 living thus aloof from them, false notions had 
 grown up in his heart. Against many classes 
 perhaps he was prejudiced. To many groups 
 he entertained ungenerous feelings. His stand- 
 ards were high, and he made no allowances. 
 He drew the lines straight, and they could not 
 be bent. He was stifif as well as narrow, and 
 hard as well as stiflF. The war has given him a 
 more genial estimate of his fellows. It has en- 
 larged his conception of the breadth of mankind. 
 He has seen that there is good in every man — 
 even in the most unpromising. He has discov- 
 ered that every man can do something even 
 though there are many things he cannot do. 
 
102 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 He has found his sympathies growing wider. 
 He is less of an aristocrat. Although living in 
 a democracy, many Americans are not demo- 
 cratic. Thousands of them are aristocratic in 
 their temper, even autocratic in their ways. 
 Citizens of America, they nevertheless have the 
 disposition of a Czar. The war has been a 
 teacher of democracy. It has compelled the 
 snobbish to get down off their stilts and walk 
 along dusty roads with common men. It has 
 enabled them to see what human nature really 
 is. They are surprised to find that it is so fine. 
 They are astonished that there is so much good 
 sense and so much noble feeling in the world. 
 They had no idea that men upon whom they had 
 from childhood looked down with mild con- 
 tempt are capable of such splendid conduct. 
 They did not expect to find such lovely and 
 solid character in men of religious faiths so dif- 
 ferent from their own. All this is gold, and it 
 will remain. 
 
 Comradeship is a means of grace. It should 
 be listed among the sacraments appointed by 
 the Almighty for our salvation. Touching el- 
 bows is a source not only of power but of joy. 
 Getting acquainted with one another is one of 
 the first steps toward the millennium. The rea- 
 son why labour and capital are so suspicious, 
 afraid and bitter is because the sacrament of 
 comradeship has been neglected. Men cannot 
 hate one another when they know one another. 
 To know one another they must enlist in a com- 
 mon cause. So long as employers and em- 
 
THE STRENGTH OF COMRADESHIP 103 
 
 ployecs live apart, the tragedy of the industrial 
 world will go on. The man who is most needed 
 at the present hour is the man who can proclaim 
 in tones which will reach the hearts of Capital 
 and Labour the gospel of the conquering 
 strength of comradeship. War has taught us 
 what cooperation can do when applied in the 
 realm of international problems; it now remains 
 for us to apply it in every one of the kingdoms 
 of the world's life. 
 
 Comradeship is possible at different levels, 
 and at every level it has a blessing to bestow. 
 The fellowship may be largely physical, but 
 even at this low level it is not without trans- 
 forming power. Just the physical companion- 
 ship of men marching along dangerous roads in 
 a dark night has in it immeasurable consola- 
 tion. But companionship becomes increasingly 
 satisfying in proportion to the extent to which 
 men share in one another's mental life. Men 
 who think the same things, and are interested in 
 the same things, and take delight in the same 
 things, are comrades in a higher and more re- 
 warding way. All the men in a division were 
 comrades, but in this great mass of comradeship 
 there were groups of men who were comrades 
 in a more distinctive sense. They were drawn 
 together by intellectual or aesthetic appetites, 
 and they came all the closer together because 
 of the loneliness and desolation of war. Some 
 came so close together they became friends. 
 
 But comradeship reaches a still higher level 
 when men come together in allegiance to a com- 
 
104 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 mon moral ideal, and are inspired by a com- 
 mon religious hope. In every regiment there 
 were souls with keen spiritual vision — hearts 
 that were attuned to the music which the apos- 
 tles knew. They used and understood the same 
 language, and no matter how far apart they 
 were in ability or culture, they were at one. 
 There is a fellowship of the spirit, a comradeship 
 of the soul, and the war gave many a man the 
 opportunity to find out how precious and divine 
 this is. 
 
 Music is the language by which we express 
 the reality of our comradeship. We sing to- 
 gether, because we think and feel together. 
 Music is the spontaneous language of the heart. 
 Soldiers in Y. M. C. A. huts spent entire even- 
 ings in singing rag-time songs. They did this 
 because they were not only comrades in arms 
 but also comrades in the human instincts and 
 hungers. Music brought them still closer to- 
 gether, and expressed what every one of them, 
 more or less deeply, felt. We are patriots, and 
 because we are patriots we cannot keep from 
 singing. We are comrades in our devotion to 
 our Republic, and therefore we become com- 
 rades in song. When an audience sings: "My 
 country, 'tis of thee," we join our voices. We 
 naturally keep step with our comrades. Our 
 national hymn is an expression of fellowship, 
 and when we sing it we have a deepened sense 
 of belonging together. Thousands of American 
 boys had often sung the hymn at home, but 
 when they sang it in France its words took on 
 
THE STEENGTH OF COMEADESHIP 106 
 
 new meanings. They were now comrades in 
 arms, and being comrades in arms, they could 
 become in a new way comrades in song. One 
 man can sing alone, but his song is pallid and 
 thin. It is when thousands of men sing to- 
 gether that we are surest that music is the gift 
 of heaven. 
 
 We Christians are comrades of Jesus, and 
 therefore comrades of one another. We are 
 the allies of Jesus, and are linked together for 
 the purpose of forwarding His plans and ideals. 
 All Christians belong together in a deep and 
 mystic way, and it is because we are related 
 that we find solemn joy in Christian song. At 
 home in days of peace, men did not realize the 
 strength and glory of this comradeship. Be- 
 cause the way was smooth men felt capable of 
 walking alone. But soldiers on battle-fields far 
 from home, and sailors on battle-ships tossed by 
 mad seas in bleak nights, came to know the 
 healing strength of comradeship, and drank in 
 abundant life from the old songs. The papers 
 have again and again reported to us how sailors 
 and soldiers became comrades in song. A chap- 
 lain with a lonely heart was cheered by a sentry 
 singing. The sentry on duty on dead man's 
 curve kept humming to himself: " Rock of ages, 
 cleft for me," and when asked why he was sing- 
 ing, his reply was that singing the old hymns 
 seemed like home. They brought back to him 
 the Sunday evenings when he and his sisters 
 sang these hymns around the piano, with their 
 father and mother. IMen who manage ships on 
 
106 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 tempestuous nights need the sustaining power 
 of song. In one of the fiercest of the nights 
 two companies of American gunners on a trans- 
 port, passing through a submarine zone, heart- 
 ened one another by singing: "Jesus, Saviour, 
 pilot me, over hfe's tempestuous sea." In this 
 song they bound their souls closer to one an- 
 other, and also closer to the soul of the Son of 
 God. 
 
 An American Bishop has told us that when a 
 regiment of the Scottish guards which had been 
 in service for three years, and which was about 
 to start again for the front to engage in a battle 
 which, as events proved, was to be for two- 
 thirds of them the last, when asked what hymn 
 they desired to sing, began at once: 
 
 " O God, our help in ages past, 
 Our hope for years to come. 
 Our shelter from the stormy blast 
 And our eternal home." 
 
 Comrades in arms become still more courageous 
 when they are also comrades in religious con- 
 viction and hope. 
 
 The lessons in naval and military comrade- 
 ship which have been taught us by the war sug- 
 gest those larger lessons of spiritual comrade- 
 ship which humanity has still to learn. We are 
 not intended to live and work alone. Isolation 
 is weakness, decay and death. The man who 
 holds aloof from his fellows is impotent. No 
 man lives to himself, and no man dies to him- 
 
THE STRENGTH OF COMKADESHIP 107 
 
 self. In life and also in death we belong to one 
 another, because we first of all belong to God. 
 
 The Founder of our religion is insistent on 
 the necessity of our living and working together. 
 He would not allow His disciples to go out one 
 by one. He sent them forth two and two. 
 Two men working together will accomplish 
 many times more than they both can achieve if 
 each works by himself. If still a third is added, 
 and then a fourth, the outcome is immeasurably 
 greater. What is true of our work among men 
 is likewise true of our work with God. Two 
 men praying together will open the heavens 
 wider than both men can open them if each man 
 prays by himself. Jesus promised a peculiar 
 measure of divine power when men in prayer 
 are agreed, and wherever even a few come to- 
 gether to carry on His work, He is present in a 
 way in which He cannot be present with a soul 
 which abides alone. We were created to be 
 comrades all the way to the shining gates and 
 beyond. War has simply taken the doctrine of 
 comradeship and unrolled it before our eyes that 
 we might see how beautiful it is, and how indis- 
 pensable also, to the saving of the world. 
 
IX 
 
 THE OPEN ROAD TO CHRISTIAN UNITY 
 
 THROUGH more than a generation 
 there has been an increasing sensitive- 
 ness to the misfortune of a divided 
 Church, Enlarging groups of Christian men on 
 both sides of the Atlantic have come to feel that 
 the divisions of organized Christianity are the 
 most serious of all our handicaps, and constitute 
 a scandal which must at any cost be removed. 
 The existence of competing groups of Christian 
 workers within the same field gives rise to rival- 
 ries and jealousies, and sometimes enmities 
 which eat out the very fiber of the Christian 
 spirit. Even when the rivalry does not stir up 
 bitterness there is a loss in efficiency and driving 
 power which causes all lovers of the Christian 
 cause to mourn. The wastefulness of time and 
 money and energy under our present system 
 has forced itself more and more upon the atten- 
 tion of all thoughtful observers. Nowhere has 
 the folly of our schisms been forced upon the 
 conscience with such power as upon the foreign 
 field. When Christian leaders are brought face 
 to face with the gigantic problems presented by 
 a non-Christian continent, they feel most keenly 
 
 io8 
 
THE OPEN EOAD TO CHRISTIAN UNITY 109 
 
 the tragedy of a divided Church, and long with 
 a great longing for harmonious and united ac- 
 tion. The schism between the Greek and Ro- 
 man Churches has worked disaster through 
 many a dreary century. The age-long conflict 
 between the Papacy and Anglicanism, and be- 
 tween the Papacy and the Lutheran Churches, 
 has been the fountain of immeasurable loss and 
 distress. The constant and often bitter clash- 
 ing of Anglican with Non-Conformist Churches 
 has been one of the most shameful scandals of 
 the last three hundred years. A Church torn 
 asunder by unbrotherly feelings repels by its 
 own folly the hearts it might otherwise win. 
 The multiplication of denominations in the 
 United States has excited the surprise, if not the 
 derision, of a considerable part of the civiUzed 
 world. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, 
 that in the mature judgment of many, the prob- 
 lem of church union has become the most crit- 
 ical and urgent of all current problems, and that 
 without a closer coordination of our Christian 
 forces, the Christian conquest of modern civi- 
 lization becomes an evident and mocking impos- 
 sibility. 
 
 If Christendom is to-day lamentably divided, 
 it is not because earnest men in large numbers 
 have not made honest efforts to heal these divi- 
 sions. The chapter of Christian history which 
 the workers for church union have written is as 
 pathetic as it is noble. Great loving hearts have 
 put forth their utmost efiforts to bridge the 
 chasms and burn the barriers away. Christian 
 
110 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 leaders baptized into the spirit of conciliation, 
 have again and again extended welcoming 
 hands and have devised numberlesg and promis- 
 ing schemes for the reunion of our separated 
 communions. Commissions of learned and holy 
 men have worked with fidelity and enthusiasm 
 for the obliteration of ancient prejudices, and 
 the union of hearts and hands. But almost all 
 such efforts have up to the present been disap- 
 pointing. Until the beginning of the war in 
 1914, Roman Catholics and Lutherans and An- 
 glicans seemed to be as far apart as ever. The 
 Anglicans and Non-Conformists, with conspicu- 
 ous and beautiful exceptions, looked at one an- 
 other with hopeless eyes across an abyss which 
 they were powerless to bridge. The denomina- 
 tions in our own country, while advancing year 
 by year in comity and courtesy, had as yet in- 
 augurated no wide scheme for concerted action, 
 and the success in bringing together even bodies 
 of the same general church family had been halt- 
 ing and partial. These attempts at union had 
 for the most part begun with a consideration of 
 creedal statement or of form of ecclesiastical 
 procedure. ]\Ten felt that to come together it 
 is necessary to find a common ground of agree- 
 ment, and this agreement was sought in defini- 
 tion of Christian belief, or in established form 
 of administration and worship. The question 
 always was — What must each side give up? 
 What price must each side pay for this proposed 
 union? In most cases the price seemed so great 
 that the enterprise was ultimately abandoned. 
 
THE OPEN ROAD TO CHRISTIAN UNITY 111 
 
 It is not easy for men in cold blood to sit down 
 around a table and subscribe to the surrender of 
 treasures which they and their brethren hold 
 dear. Christians who have all their life enter- 
 tained one view of clerical orders, will not 
 lightly exchange that view for another in order 
 to secure a wider concert of action. Men who 
 love the phrases of a creed which has grown 
 holy because spoken by the lips of so many gen- 
 erations of Christian iDelievers, will not readily 
 surrender that creed in the alleged interests of a 
 fuller Christian fraternity. This then was what 
 Christian leaders were doing at the beginning of 
 lOli — they were discussing questions of faith 
 and order. They were talking about the creeds 
 and the sacraments, and especially about the 
 historic Episcopate. They did not get on very 
 fast, and many a zealous champion of church 
 union had become disillusioned and despondent. 
 Christendom seemed hopelessly divided, and in 
 no direction could one see certain evidences of 
 that unity for which so many hearts were pray- 
 ing. 
 
 And then in the twinkling of an eye, the war 
 came. "Get together!" it shouted like an 
 angel from the court of heaven. " Get to- 
 gether, or you are lost," it spoke in tones of 
 thunder, and everywhere men instantly obeyed. 
 Hostile political groups came together. They 
 did it in Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, 
 Great Britain. They did it as if by magic. 
 They did it with a swiftness which was incred- 
 ible. Nothing like it had ever been witnessed 
 
112 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 in the history of the world. Political partisan- 
 ship, one of the fiercest of all human flames, died 
 down, and political opponents who had for 
 years fought one another day and night with a 
 fury that knew no batement, now worked to- 
 gether like comrades and friends. Mr. Asquith 
 and Mr. Bonar Law, riding together in the same 
 carriage through the streets of London, was a 
 picture of a psychical miracle that had been 
 wrought throughout the world. Men had 
 learned in a day how to come together. In a 
 day bottomless chasms had been bridged and 
 insurmountable barriers had been beaten down. 
 Through every belligerent country there was 
 a unity of feeling which caused men to marvel. 
 The unity of feeling led to a unity of action, and 
 the unity of action later on led to a unity of 
 organization. But all this unity sprang from 
 the impulse which had been imparted by the 
 presence of a common task. An enormous 
 weight fell upon the heart driving the heart in 
 on itself, compelling the heart to live in its deep- 
 est depths, and living thus, men found them- 
 selves possessed of a common conscience, ready 
 to act in a common cause. Social and individual 
 interests dropped at once out of consideration. 
 Personal prejudices and preferences were 
 burned up like chaff in a fire. Inconsequential 
 questions ceased to have an interest. The hour 
 of judgment had come, and men thought only 
 of the things which are supreme. Thinking of 
 these, they came naturally and inevitably to- 
 gether. The different political parties in Bel- 
 
THE OPEN EOAD TO CHEISTIAN UNITY 113 
 
 gium did not feel they were false to their past 
 or themselves, when they came together to form 
 a cabinet for the saving of Belgium. The 
 French political parties did not feel self-dis- 
 honoured when they joined hands in defense of 
 France. No Britisher felt that he was less loyal 
 to the things which all Britishers hold dear, 
 when he consented to work side by side with 
 men of different political connections. Union 
 politically came first through a common peril. 
 It was danger that fused all hearts into a glow- 
 ing mass. When hearts are one their action be- 
 comes unified. It was because men felt alike 
 that they were glad to work together, and 
 when they found themselves working together, 
 they began to devise new forms of machinery 
 through which their united purpose could be 
 most surely achieved. 
 
 The transformation which took place in the 
 political world took place also in the religious 
 world. Here also men no longer thought of 
 their differences. They had been overtaken by 
 a common danger, they were now subjected to 
 the pressure of a common task, and being thus 
 pressed together, they lost interest in all things 
 that are superficial and thought only of the 
 things that are of supreme concern. Feeling 
 together they did not hesitate to act together. 
 Men and women of all religious faiths joined 
 hands to carry on the work of the Red Cross. 
 They did it at the front, they did it behind the 
 lines. They did it abroad, they did it at home. 
 Every Red Cross corps was an illustration of 
 
114 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 religious unity. Nobody cared whether a 
 worker was a CathoHc or a Protestant, a Bap- 
 tist or an Episcopahan. There are times when 
 distinctions like that do not count. When hu- 
 manity is torn and bleeding, one cannot stop to 
 inquire concerning the religious creed of the 
 persons who are offering to bind up the wounds. 
 When boys are wounded and nigh unto death, 
 they are not interested in the ecclesiastical af- 
 filiations of the man who can tell them about 
 God, Catholic boys got comfort from Protes- 
 tant pastors, and Protestant boys were strength- 
 ened by what Roman Catholic priests had to 
 give. Protestant and Catholic chaplains worked 
 side by side like brothers. They recognized 
 often to their surprise how much alike they 
 were. Transubstantiation and Papal infallibility 
 did not keep them apart. The Protestant did 
 not feel that he was false to his own religion 
 when he was seen in public working with a 
 Catholic priest, nor did a priest feel that he was 
 becoming a Protestant when he assisted a Pres- 
 byterian or a Baptist in doing his work. Even 
 the crucifix and the rosary ceased to be counted 
 dangerous. Protestant pastors were happy to 
 secure a rosary for a boy who wanted one. 
 They held the crucifix before the dying eyes of 
 a boy who could be helped by it. It is only in 
 time of peace that we make a great ado about 
 the forms of worship. When God compels us 
 to live at our highest and to think only of the 
 things which are supreme, we sweep out of the 
 way all the prejudices and bigotries, and become 
 
THE OPEN ROAD TO CHRISTIAN UNITY 116 
 
 simple-hearted servants of Christ. Here and 
 there throughout the war there was a priest 
 who was a Cathohc first and a Christian second, 
 but his behaviour when seen in the glare of the 
 fierce light which beat upon him looked so 
 hideous that it made an impression which will 
 never fade out. When a Protestant clergyman 
 allowed his own denominational peculiarities to 
 come to the front, he became at once odious to 
 every sensible man who came near him. Men 
 who are fighting for the great things of life have 
 no patience with pedants or bigots, they are at 
 home only with men whose souls are magnani- 
 mous and high. In the fiery furnace of war 
 thousands of Catholics and thousands of Protes- 
 tants showed themselves to be genuine and 
 shining servants of God. Soldiers have seen 
 things which they cannot forget, ugly things, 
 exhibitions of bigotry which they will now hate 
 more than ever, lovely things, exhibitions of 
 breadth and charity which they will now love 
 with a love never to be extinguished. 
 
 The war then, from beginning to end, worked 
 steadily in the direction of a fuller measure of 
 Christian unity. Protestant Americans cannot 
 weep over the sufferings of Catholic Belgians 
 without thinking more kindly of all Catholics, 
 and Belgian Catholics cannot receive the bene- 
 factions of American Protestants without hav- 
 ing a more friendly attitude to all Protestants 
 everywhere. Boys of twenty different denomi- 
 nations, fighting in the same regiment for the 
 same great cause, can never consider the differ- 
 
116 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 ences of those twenty denominations as vitally 
 significant. The man who attempts to kindle 
 their zeal in any one body of Christians as the 
 only body which merits the favour of Christ, is 
 sure to speak to ears that will not hear. Many 
 of the old prejudices and alienations have gone 
 up in smoke in the war, and we are all closer 
 together than we have ever been before. This 
 does not mean that we have changed our creed, 
 or substituted a new form of worship for the old. 
 We are nearer together in feeling, in sympathy 
 and in our attitude to the things which are really 
 great. The war has trained us to think more 
 about the things on which we are all agreed. 
 
 It has also given us new hints of possibilities 
 of church union. By church union has often 
 been meant church uniformity. Men have sup- 
 posed that if Churches ever came together they 
 must of necessity become all alike, adopting the 
 same forms of worship, and ordering their life 
 after the same discipline. But the war has 
 made clear that unity is attainable without uni- 
 formity. We can have unity of spirit in the 
 midst of a wide variety of forms. The unity of 
 the British Empire as that unity was displayed 
 in the progress of the war was one of the shining 
 spiritual phenomena of the whole vast drama. 
 Not only were Scotland and England and Wales 
 really one, but Canada also was one with them, 
 and so also was Australia, and likewise New 
 Zealand, and still more wonderful so also were 
 South Africa, and likewise Egypt, and India 
 too. These different domains of the British 
 
THE OPEN EOAD TO CHRISTIAN UNITY 117 
 
 Empire are far apart in tradition, temper, habit, 
 and also in form of government, but when the 
 great crisis came, they all acted as one. They 
 did not act under political compulsion, they 
 acted under the impulse of a common con- 
 science. It was no central government which 
 decreed they should fight. Canada took up 
 arms of her own volition, and so did all the rest. 
 The Parliament in London has no authority to 
 compel New Zealand or Australia to do what 
 it does not want to do. But when Germany 
 lifted her sword against the world, then all the 
 colonies and dependencies of the British Empire 
 wanted to do one and the same thing. Unity 
 of action is therefore possible without unity of 
 organization. Unity of machinery is not essen- 
 tial in the attainment of great ends. The one 
 thing indispensable is unity of spirit. That 
 unity of spirit Great Britain possessed. With- 
 out it she would have been lost. 
 
 But there was a larger unity more wonderful 
 yet — the unity of the Allies. Here there was 
 no unity at the start of any sort. Where will 
 you find nations farther apart than Russia and 
 England, of Serbia and Belgium, of France and 
 Japan? Moreover, you cannot make them alike, 
 either in history or language, in temper or cus- 
 tom, in method or program, in precedent or 
 ideal. To the end of the chapter the Russians 
 will be Russians, France will be France, Italy 
 will be Italy, Belgium will be Belgium, and Eng- 
 land will be England. Uniformity is impossible. 
 A common government is unthinkable. And 
 
118 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 yet through trying years the Allies were pro- 
 gressively and unconquerably one. We our- 
 selves at last went into the war, and we did not 
 disturb the unity, we intensified it and enlarged 
 it. We made the Allies still more united. We 
 surrendered nothing that is an essential part of 
 our American inheritance. We brought down 
 none of our ideals, we gave up none of our 
 liberties, but in the great war we were one with 
 Great Britain and France and Belgium and 
 Serbia and Italy and Japan. Our form of gov- 
 ernment is different from that of all the others, 
 our traditions are different and our ideals are 
 different. But nevertheless we were united 
 with all those who fought with us, and the unity 
 was all the more impressive and effective be- 
 cause there was no uniformity of government, 
 and no common machinery to crush out the 
 freedom of our action. There is such a thing 
 as unity of spirit, and we kept that unity in the 
 bonds of peace. We thought kindly of our 
 allies, and we spoke generously and praisefully 
 about them, and we helped them in every way 
 we could. We differed from them in a thou- 
 sand ways, we gave up nothing which is essen- 
 tial to the integrity of our American life, and 
 yet we were one, gloriously, unconquerably, 
 triumphantly one. The supposed necessity of 
 uniformity in order to secure a unity which is 
 efficient is only a dream of the fancy and ought 
 to be banished from the world's mind. All 
 bodies of Christians can be genuinely and ef- 
 fectively one, and at the same time no one of 
 
THE OPEN ROAD TO CHRISTIAN UNITY 119 
 
 these bodies need give up anything which is 
 essential for the development and expression of 
 its richest Christian life. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that John in his Gospel 
 says nothing of the Lord's Supper. Instead of 
 telling us about the Bread and the Wine, he tells 
 us of the sacrament of the Basin and Towel. 
 After brooding over the words and deeds of 
 Jesus through more than a half century, it was 
 the sacrament of the Basin and the Towel which 
 assumed the central place in John's mind. That 
 was the sacrament which remained vivid and 
 divine after the lapse of fifty years. In the 
 basin and the towel John saw the Eternal prin- 
 ciple to which Christ summons mankind. It is 
 the principle of service. The sacrament of the 
 Basin and the Towel is the uniting sacrament. 
 It is in this sacrament that all Christians will 
 some day come together. It is a common task 
 which will deliver us from our divisions and 
 make us forever one. The war has pointed out 
 the way. Christians have never been so close 
 together since the days of the Reformation as 
 they were when in the years of war they found 
 themselves bathing the bleeding feet of a world 
 that had lost its way. 
 
X 
 
 THE POTENCY OF WORDS 
 
 THE war has been called a war of muni- 
 tions. So it was. Never before were 
 munitions used in such vast quantities 
 or with such terrific efifect. But it was also a 
 war of words. There were as many words used 
 as bullets, as many phrases as shells. The war 
 could never have been won without chemical 
 explosives, nor could it have been won with- 
 out words. A poet wrote : 
 
 " We have put the pen away 
 And the sword is out to-day." 
 
 But he did not know what he was saying. 
 
 It has been demonstrated on a vast scale to 
 our generation that words are forces, the 
 mightiest known to man. They accomplish re- 
 sults obtainable by no chemical combinations, 
 they work miracles beyond the reach of any 
 energies which the physicist controls. T. N. T. 
 is mighty, but human speech is mightier still. 
 The New Testament gives us a picture of a 
 commander conquering the world by a sword 
 which he carries in his mouth. The men who 
 carried the sword in their mouth cooperated 
 
 1 20 
 
THF. POTENCY OF WORDS 121 
 
 with the men who carried the sword in their 
 hand, and these two armies of warriors won the 
 victory of November 11, 1918. 
 
 There was much at the beginning of the war 
 to undermine our confidence in the worth and 
 efficacy of words. The advent of the war 
 seemed to prove that words, however numerous 
 and eloquent, can avail nothing in a world like 
 this. Had not men been talking peace for an 
 entire generation? Had there not been Hague 
 Conferences, and Peace Conventions, and vol- 
 umes without number extolling the beauty of 
 peace? Had not orators in every country, in 
 the presence of applauding audiences, said thrill- 
 ing and persuasive things about fraternity and 
 good will, and had not delegations of influential 
 leaders gone from one country to another, 
 setting forth in glowing periods the reasons 
 why nations should learn war no more? The 
 world had been deluged with peace talk, even 
 more than forty days and forty nights, and 
 many good people had by their words convinced 
 themselves that war could be no more. And 
 then, right in the midst of the speaking, like an 
 intruder from hell, came the biggest and black- 
 est of all the wars, saying: "You cry peace, 
 peace, but there shall be no peace! " 
 
 The war opened with a bold declaration on 
 the part of Germany of the emptiness and feeble- 
 ness of words. Idealists had loved to think of 
 language as possessing binding power. It had 
 become an adage that a man's word might be 
 as good as his bond. There had grown up a 
 
122 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 belief that words written down on parchment 
 declaring the promises of a nation are sacred, 
 and that upon such words humanity can build 
 without misgiving. But a high German official 
 spoke of treaties as scraps of paper, and the 
 whole world stood aghast at the discovery that 
 words after all are flimsy and futile things. In 
 that hour of darkness we felt that one of the 
 eternal foundations had slipped out from under 
 us, and earth's base seemed to be built on 
 stubble. 
 
 But in the depths of our bewilderment, we 
 still clung tenaciously to our belief in the 
 potency of words. All the nations testified at 
 once to their reliance on words by presenting 
 to the world documents narrating the events 
 which led up to the war. No nation was willing 
 to forego the privilege of presenting its case, 
 and its case had to be set forth in words. The 
 war opened with a battle of the books. One 
 book confirmed or supplemented or contradicted 
 another, and we all found ourselves working 
 diligently with words. War after all is a 
 venture of the reason, and every nation engaged 
 in it had to furnish reasons why it had acted as 
 it did. To do this was necessary to secure the 
 moral support of the world. This moral sup- 
 port is one of those " Imponderables " which 
 Bismarck stood in awe of. But moral support 
 could be won only by the use of words. The 
 war called for the sword, and at the same in- 
 stant it called for the pen. Pen and sword must 
 work together. 
 
THE POTENCY OF WORDS 123 
 
 The pen was indispensable not simply for con- 
 quering the opinion of neutral nations, but also 
 for fortifying each nation's own heart. Wars 
 are fought by men, and in the twentieth cen- 
 tury men will not fight with all their strength 
 unless they know for what they are fighting. 
 The aims of the war have to be set before them 
 to secure their hearty obedience to governmental 
 command. It was not always so. In the olden 
 days when men like Tiglath-Pileser and Ramses 
 II fought, or when men like Alexander or 
 Genghis Khan commanded men to do their will, 
 it was not necessary to explain the reasons for 
 the campaign, or to feed the conscience or 
 stimulate the will by arguments of tongue or 
 pen. But those days have gone. The world 
 is inhabited by free peoples, and men are no 
 longer willing to be driven like dumb cattle to 
 the field of carnage. To get them there and 
 keep them there they must be fed not only with 
 material food, but with food which the soul can 
 live on. In proportion to a nation's rank in 
 civilization, it is necessary for soldiers to be 
 supplied constantly with words. It is by words 
 that the morale of the army is maintained, and 
 by words is a nation's heart kept from fainting. 
 The swiftness with which all the belligerent 
 nations proceeded to establish departments of 
 public information was a revelation of the 
 change which has come over the world. Attila 
 needed no bureau of information, nor did even 
 Napoleon. But in the twentieth century every 
 government knew that to secure an enduring 
 
124 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 obedience it was necessary that sailors and sol- 
 diers be instructed, and that the entire popula- 
 tion should be kept informed as to the ends 
 which were aimed at in the great struggle. 
 This was best known to the governments of 
 Great Britain and the United States, and in both 
 these countries constant and eager attention 
 was paid to the work of setting forth the moral 
 aims of the war. Fully equipped bureaus of 
 propaganda were established, staffs of writers 
 and speakers were organized, the universities 
 and the churches also were mobilized in the 
 great work of increasing the volume of the na- 
 tional conscience by means of words. Every 
 man who could use either the tongue or the pen 
 was laid hold of, and his services were of equal 
 value with those of the military or naval com- 
 mander. Public opinion is after all the sov- 
 ereign of the world, and public opinion to be 
 kept sound must be nourished on words that are 
 wholesome. False words are more dangerous 
 than bullets, poisoned words are more deadly 
 than asphyxiating gases. An army can be 
 paralyzed by a traitorous pamphlet, a whole 
 nation can be overcome by a mixture of fal- 
 lacious ideas. In time of war everything that is 
 said becomes worthy of official attention. Gov- 
 ernments watch with sleepless vigilance the 
 things which come out of men's mouths, for it 
 is the things which come out of the mouth that 
 have in them the powers of life and death. 
 Words are flakes of fire, and can start vast con- 
 flagrations. Words have in them immeasurable 
 
THE POTENCY OF WOEDS 125 
 
 magic, and the magic can kill or make alive. 
 Governments henceforth must mobilize their 
 masters of words no less efficiently than they 
 mobilize the masters of howitzers and ships. 
 Great Britain could not have conquered without 
 her generals and admirals, nor could she have 
 triumphed without men like Lord Northcliffe 
 and Arnold Bennett. Directors of propaganda 
 are as important as leaders of armies, and when 
 the complete story of the war is written, there 
 will be no more interesting chapter than the one 
 in which is told what men achieved by the 
 tongue and the pen. More than any other war 
 ever waged since time began, this war was pre- 
 eminently a war of words. It is absolutely im- 
 possible in the world as it now is for any nation 
 to win a war by physical weapons alone. Im- 
 portant things are done in the laboratory of the 
 chemist, but the highest and most subtle things 
 are prepared in the laboratory of the mind of 
 the man whose weapons are words. 
 
 Even Germany won her greatest military suc- 
 cesses not by her army but by her propaganda. 
 Her army was the most perfect machine which 
 human genius had yet brought forth, but her 
 army was finally baffled in every field in which 
 it put forth its power. Germany won only two 
 smashing victories in the war, one over Russia, 
 and one over Italy, and both of these victories 
 were won not by bayonets or sabers, but by a 
 dexterous use of words. With her howitzers 
 and gases, Germany made no permanent in- 
 roads on the strength of Russia. She killed 
 
126 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 many Russians, but she did not conquer Russia. 
 It was not until she sent agents throughout the 
 Russian army, suppHed with mischievous com- 
 binations of words, that the power of Russia 
 began to crumble. Germans by means of 
 whispers accomplished what Germans with 
 machine-guns could not achieve. Simply by the 
 skillful manipulation of language, by twisting 
 syllables into plausible arguments, by holding 
 up the light of deceptive phrases, Germany 
 caused the Russian Colossus to come crashing 
 to the ground. It was one of the greatest vic- 
 tories of the war, and it was won almost entirely 
 by words. 
 
 The only other German victory comparable 
 with that over the Russians was the crushing 
 defeat of the army of Cadorna when his troops 
 were hurled back bleeding and broken to the 
 gates of Venice. That was the most unex- 
 pected and spectacular disaster of the war. To 
 the outside world it seemed inexplicable. Every 
 explanation which was offered was tossed aside 
 by an indignant public as inadequate. When 
 the facts were at last uncovered, the world saw 
 again an amazing revelation of the omnipotence 
 of words. It was not guns or explosives which 
 blew the Italian hosts out of Austria, it was the 
 words of sly and lying men. Germany by her 
 insidious and deadly propaganda ate out the 
 fiber of Italian loyalty, and left the Italians limp 
 and helpless in the clutches of their foes. 
 
 All through the war, Germany made most 
 diligent use of the tongue and the pen. Her 
 
the' POTENCY OF WORDS 127 
 
 bureau of propaganda worked day and night, 
 and its labours extended to the ends of the 
 earth. Unable to deceive long the people of 
 other countries, she succeeded in deluding her 
 own people almost to the end. In order to feed 
 the fires in the hearts of her soldiers, she made 
 use of every man in her University Faculties 
 who could in any way make the German cause 
 seem righteous. German soldiers like all other 
 soldiers of our day cannot fight victoriously un- 
 less they feel they are fighting for the right. 
 To perpetuate the delusion that Germany had 
 been attacked, and was fighting only in self- 
 defense, Germany made use of every instru- 
 ment within her control. She did not succeed 
 even for an hour in fooling the outside world, 
 nor did she succeed to the end in fooling her 
 own people. Little by little the truth from the 
 outside leaked in. One by one, prominent Ger- 
 mans themselves admitted that Germany was 
 in the wrong. Pamphlets and leaflets narrating 
 the facts were dropped by the millions over the 
 fields of Germany, and the result of this propa- 
 ganda was the progressive undoing of the Ger- 
 man soul. Thrice is he armed who has his 
 quarrel just, and when soldiers begin to doubt 
 the righteousness of their cause, the genius of 
 the General Staf? is not sufificient to ward off the 
 day of disaster. The keenest eyed of the Ger- 
 mans early saw that against the words of their 
 enemies it would not be possible for them to 
 prevail. One of them frankly confessed in a 
 communication to a leading German paper that 
 
128 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US' 
 
 the department of propaganda conducted by the 
 British government was weightier than the 
 British fleet, and more dangerous than the 
 British army. 
 
 What do you think was the most thrilHng 
 spectacle presented by the war? Different per- 
 sons will give different answers. To one, there 
 was nothing more wonderful than the action of 
 the submarine. That a little devil of a boat 
 should be able to emerge at will from the sea, 
 look around about it through its uncanny eye, 
 fix its aim upon a mighty ocean liner bearing 
 thousands of passengers, and send its victim to 
 the bottom by one dart from its half-hidden 
 mouth — this was certainly something new un- 
 der the sun, and the world will long talk about 
 it. To another, there was nothing more amaz- 
 ing than the Big Berthas. For a gun to throw 
 a shell over twenty miles high, and cause it to 
 strike the earth seventy-five miles away from 
 the point where the gun stood, was supposed to 
 lie beyond the range of the possible, and when 
 the miraculous thing really happened, men stood 
 awestruck and dumbfounded. For a moment it 
 looked as though the entire art of war would be 
 revolutionized, and that all previous plans and 
 predictions would have to undergo revision. 
 To still others the wonder of the war was the 
 bomb-dropping aeroplane. The fight in the 
 clouds was more thrilling than any fight on the 
 earth and the sea. The spectacle of an aero- 
 plane raining destruction from heaven upon 
 helpless cities in the night was at once horrible 
 
THE POTENCY OF WORDS 129 
 
 and sublime. When men began to smear the 
 heavens with blood, it made one feel that a new 
 age had dawned, and that we had just begun 
 to learn the A B C's of man's capacity for 
 destruction. 
 
 But was there not a spectacle even more 
 thrilling and wonderful than any one of these 
 three? Look at yonder aeroplane in broad day- 
 light dropping words! Is not that the climax 
 of all the wonders of the war? For centuries 
 men have fought with material missiles, but now 
 at last they are learning to fight with words. 
 They are putting the most wonderful creation 
 of human genius to the work of firing spiritual 
 ammunition. The sight brings a sense of relief 
 to the heart. The bomb-dropping aeroplane 
 fills the soul with horror. It makes no dis- 
 crimination, and women at their domestic 
 duties, and babies in their cradles are doomed 
 alike to be torn to shreds by the bursting shell. 
 It presents man in the character of a fiend. He 
 seems to have lost the characteristics of a man 
 and to have become a devil using wings. But 
 a word-dropping aeroplane is a messenger of 
 mercy. It does not lacerate human flesh, or 
 demolish the strength and beauty of human 
 homes. It makes war not upon the body but 
 upon the mind. It makes use of munitions 
 manufactured by the reason. It enables one 
 to retain his belief that man is indeed a rational 
 creature, and has not lost faith in the rational 
 nature of his fellows. Behold, then, the aero- 
 plane dropping words, as the prophetic incident 
 
130 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 of the war. Through that spectacle, as through 
 an open window, one can gaze into the future, 
 and see a world from which swords of steel have 
 been banished, and all disputes are submitted to 
 the arbitrament of reason. 
 
 It is by words and not by bayonets that 
 war at last will be permanently ended. After 
 beating down Potsdam with bayonets it is now 
 necessary to beat her down with words. Ger- 
 many will remain a menace to the world until 
 the reason of Germany has been conquered. 
 It is her ideas which make her the most danger- 
 ous of all the nations of the earth. Even with- 
 out a fleet or army, she will be dangerous still 
 so long as she retains the philosophy of Bern- 
 hardi. Until her mind has been conquered, the 
 world cannot be at peace. The mind is con- 
 quered only by the reason, and the reason works 
 its wonders solely by the use of words. Through 
 the coming generation, there will run on a cam- 
 paign in which the cohorts of reason will grapple 
 with the hosts whose behaviour has been per- 
 verted by a philosophy which is false. 
 
 The founders of the American Republic made 
 the President of the nation the supreme com- 
 mander of both army and navy. They knew 
 that he might not be either a general or an 
 admiral, but nevertheless they gave him su- 
 preme authority over all our military and naval 
 forces. Since the Revolution we have had two 
 great wars, and in both these wars our Presi- 
 dent has been unpracticed in the science and 
 art of warfare. President Lincoln carried a 
 
THE POTENCY OF WOEDS 131 
 
 sword, but it was a sword in the mouth. He 
 won battles by the things which he said. The 
 generals on the battle-fields were indispensable, 
 but without Lincoln they would have fought in 
 vain. They fought with bullets while he fought 
 with words, and it was the words and the bullets 
 together which finally overcame the South. 
 History has written two names above all the 
 other names which the war of the Rebellion ren- 
 dered lustrous, Lincoln and Grant, and the man 
 whose name is written highest is the man who 
 carried the sword in his mouth. 
 
 President Wilson is not an expert in military 
 or naval science. He is a school-teacher occu- 
 pying for a season the Presidential chair. He 
 has been supreme commander of our army and 
 navy, and he has done all of his fighting by 
 words. By his genius in the use of language 
 he became the acknowledged spokesman for 
 mankind. He towered above all the generals 
 and admirals, carrying the sword in his mouth. 
 His words had in them higher potencies than 
 were possessed by the mightiest of the shells, 
 his sentences carried farther than the longest 
 ranged of the guns. By his luminous speech he 
 did things which are beyond the power of chem- 
 icals and metals. He smote the nations with 
 the breath of his mouth. When the Muse of 
 History completes her roll of the immortals of 
 the greatest of all the wars, who knows but 
 that at the top of the list will stand that con- 
 summate master of words — Woodrow Wilson! 
 
XI 
 
 THE RANGE OF THE POSSIBLE 
 
 TO most men the range of the possible is 
 narrow, to none of us is it as wide as 
 it ought to be. We are prone to 
 measure our expectations by our experience, 
 and to Hmit our predictions to the things we 
 can see. It is what our own eyes have seen, 
 and our own ears have heard, and our own 
 hands have handled, which gives us our ideas 
 of what can be. The Hindu Prince who re- 
 jected with scorn the story of the traveller who 
 told him that in winter time the water in a 
 river in his own country became so hard that he 
 could walk across it, illustrates a tendency deep- 
 rooted in human nature to take a skeptical atti- 
 tude to whatever lies outside of the circle of 
 one's own personal experience. Men often 
 assert that something or other is contrary to 
 Nature, when all they mean is that these things 
 are contrary to their observation. They them- 
 selves have not seen these particular things take 
 place; but this does not prove that these things 
 are contrary to Nature. Jesus, for instance, is 
 said to have walked on the water. We never 
 saw a man do such a thing, but this does not 
 
 132 
 
THE RANGE OF THE POSSIBLE 133 
 
 prove it is contrary to Nature. A man might 
 have a force within him which would counter- 
 act the force of gravity. When men say that a 
 thing is contrary to Reason, they are trying to 
 say that it contradicts their own judgment. 
 Their judgment may be uneducated, and what 
 they mistake for reason is nothing more than 
 the crotchet or prejudice of an individual mind. 
 Nearly everything of importance that has ever 
 been accomplished in the world was declared 
 in advance to be impossible by large groups of 
 people who claimed to know. 
 
 One of the services rendered by war is the 
 enlargement which it gives to experience. It 
 drives us from the beaten road, pushing us into 
 fields into which we have never gone before, and 
 where we learn things which had hitherto lain 
 beyond the frontiers of our interest. War com- 
 pels us to bear things which we were sure were 
 unbearable, and to attempt things which our 
 previous life would have led us to put down as 
 undoable. 
 
 The great war has reminded us that the words 
 " possible " and " impossible " are only conven- 
 tional terms, and that we ought to use them 
 with diffidence and mental reservations. After 
 this who will dare lightly declare what can 
 happen and what can not? With the record of 
 Germany before us who will venture to predict 
 what a nation may be willing to do? With the 
 achievements of the Allies fresh before our eyes, 
 who will be audacious enough to set limits to 
 what nations may accomplish? 
 
134 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 The men who came out of the war totally dis- 
 credited were the prophets. The definition 
 given by a wag — "A prophet is a man who pre- 
 dicts what never comes to pass," seems almost 
 correct. Prophets of divers types were proved 
 to be short-sighted and mistaken. None of 
 them erred more egregiously than the financial 
 prophets, those long-headed and practical seers 
 who have an enormous reputation for knowing 
 just what human nature is and can do. But the 
 financial prophets all failed, as did also the 
 prophets of science; and the journalistic 
 prophets have made for themselves a reputation 
 which it will take a hundred years to live down. 
 Some one has said that the war was a war in 
 which the possible never happened, and every- 
 thing impossible did. Certainly no one was 
 able to predict one week what was going to 
 happen the next week, and the wisest men stood 
 side by side with the most foolish in utter igno- 
 rance of what a day was going to bring forth. 
 To turn the pages of the record of the last four 
 years and read the interminable list of predic- 
 tions which were never fulfilled, and the equally 
 long list of things that happened which no one 
 had been able to foresee, would be a melancholy 
 and chastening occupation. We are, no doubt, 
 wonderful creatures, but it is amazing how little 
 we know either about ourselves cr others. 
 
 The war reminded us every week that things 
 can happen in this world which never happened 
 before. The world has lived a long time, and 
 many wonderful things have happened, but the 
 
THE RANGE OF THE POSSIBLE 135 
 
 wonderful things have not been exhausted, and 
 any number of them may take place before 
 the next sun goes down. We have had abun- 
 dant opportunities to measure human capacities 
 and powers. We have a more or less definite 
 idea of what a man is and can do. But the war 
 has made it clear that there is even more in man 
 than has been dreamed of in our philosophy, 
 and that human nature has a range of energies 
 running beyond the reach of our furthest ex- 
 plorations. We do not know fully either our- 
 self or our fellows. Humanity remains a 
 fathomless mystery, and the powers wrapped up 
 in human personality are only partially revealed. 
 It is because of our ignorance that the future 
 becomes unpredictable. We cannot make final 
 calculations for- ourselves or for society because 
 we do not know enough of the extent of our 
 available resources. We possess no apparatus 
 by which to compute the curve along which 
 humanity is going to move. We know only 
 that we are moving from mystery to mystery, 
 from God and to God. 
 
 A volume could be filled with illustrations of 
 how the impossible turned into the possible in 
 the years of the war. Among the most aston- 
 ishing of the impossibilities which turned out 
 to be possible, a high place must be given to the 
 unions and cooperations which the war brought 
 about. Few supposed that Britishers and 
 Frenchmen could come so close together as they 
 did. The men who knew best the history of 
 the last five hundred years were the men who 
 
136 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 were the most skeptical as to the abiUty of 
 France and Great Britain to unite. And yet 
 before the war was over, not only were Brit- 
 ishers and Frenchmen fighting together on the 
 same fields, but all were under one commander, 
 and that man a Frenchman ! The linking to- 
 gether of Russia and Great Britain was one of 
 the most amazing events in the history of the 
 world. No statesman would have predicted it. 
 Everything almost was against it. It was 
 clearly impossible, and yet it came to pass. The 
 political consolidations within the various na- 
 tions were also unprecedented and manifestly 
 impossible. Politicians are supposed to know 
 human nature, and are given credit for being 
 able to forecast the sequence of events, but no 
 politician in Europe at the end of 1913 would 
 have dared predict the combinations which had 
 taken place before the end of 1014. The union 
 of churches also ran far beyond the limits of the 
 possible. Things done and permitted by An- 
 glican bishops were not listed in any of the 
 books of the soothsayers. Men rubbed their 
 eyes with amazement at the things which were 
 said and done. Men came together who had 
 been irreconcilable foes. Men worked together 
 harmoniously who had long fought each other 
 with a rancour that grew with the years. When 
 Poincare appointed Clemenceau Prime Min- 
 ister, and when Clemenceau accepted the ap- 
 pointment, men knew that the day of miracles 
 is not over, and confessed that it is impossible 
 for any man to say what is going to happen 
 
THE RANGE OF THE POSSIBLE 137 
 
 next. In the realm of mechanical invention it 
 was the impossible which came to pass every 
 day. The aeroplane simply soared over the 
 heads of the theorists, jauntily doing things 
 which defied the rules laid down in the books. 
 One aeroplane has already reached an altitude 
 of 30,500 feet, which means that the tallest of 
 earth's mountains has been left behind. 
 
 The submarine was one of the most deadly 
 and formidable of all the enemies which any 
 nation was ever compelled to fight. It seemed 
 at first impossible to curb or break its power. 
 The mightiest of the world's navies seemed to 
 lie at its mercy. The greatest of the world's 
 empires seemed likely to be ultimately strangled 
 by this devil of the sea. But the brain which 
 can devise a U-boat can also create a boat which 
 will destroy it. There is no instrument in- 
 vented by human genius whose edge cannot be 
 taken ofif by another instrument invented by the 
 same unconquerable human mind. Before the 
 war ended there were boats possessed of ears. 
 They could hear the breathing of a submarine 
 at the bottom of the sea. A submarine cannot 
 remain still unless it rests on the bottom, and 
 the bottom cannot be more than two hundred 
 feet below the surface. But if a submarine is 
 to move it must use its propeller, and if it uses 
 its propeller, it sets in motion circles of vibra- 
 tions, and these vibrations were caught up at 
 once by boats which had been provided with 
 magical ears. It was in this way that a des- 
 troyer could follow a submarine hour after hour, 
 
138 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 as a hound follows a fox, and the end was the 
 
 destruction of the fox of the sea. When bombs 
 are needed for momentous work to be done 
 below the surface of the sea, such bombs are 
 immediately forthcoming, for nothing is im- 
 possible to the genius of man. When the Allies 
 learned the art of putting into a bomb five hun- 
 dred pounds of an explosive which could be ex- 
 ploded eighty feet below the surface of the sea, 
 with a destructive radius of one hundred and 
 fifty yards, the days of the submarine were 
 numbered. The wise men of Germany, versed 
 in science and mechanics, had proved in their 
 books that to overcome the submarine was im- 
 possible. For Great Britain to escape the net 
 of submarine activity which had been skillfully 
 thrown around her, was beyond human power, 
 but men blunder egrcgiously who imagine they 
 can set limits to the power of the mind. It is 
 as hazardous to set limits to the power of the 
 finite as it is to try to set limits to the power 
 of God. God is in man and no one can know 
 what it is possible for a son of God to accom- 
 plish. 
 
 In the realm of the unexpected no nation sur- 
 passed the United States in working w^onders. 
 We amazed the world, and we certainly sur- 
 prised ourselves. The Germans had carefully 
 calculated our resources. They knew the 
 measure of our possessions as well as we knew 
 it ourselves. They had catalogued every vessel 
 in our fleet, they knew the strength of every 
 unit in our army. They knew how long would 
 
THE EANGE OF THE POSSIBLE 139 
 
 be required to raise an army of a size sufficient 
 to become a factor in the war. They knew how 
 long it would take to drill an army, and how 
 much time would be necessary to transport it 
 across the Atlantic. All these matters were 
 worked out by the experts of the German Gen- 
 eral Staff. No abler men in military and naval 
 science were alive on the earth. They were 
 masters of the whole technique of war. They 
 could calculate with greater precision the drill- 
 ing and movement of troops than any other set 
 of men on the planet. They demonstrated on 
 paper by figures that could not be questioned 
 how long it would take America to get into the 
 war. America, it was proved, could not pos- 
 sibly get in before it was too late. And there- 
 fore a policy was adopted which added America 
 to the list of the Allies. The action of the Ger- 
 man government is proof that in the judgment 
 of the shrewdest, and most learned, and most 
 capable of the military experts of the greatest 
 of the military empires, it was impossible for the 
 United States to become a determining factor 
 in the war. Germany lost the war because she 
 did not know the range of the American pos- 
 sible. She was an adept in the calculation of 
 mechanical forces, she did not understand the 
 capacities of the human soul. She could meas- 
 ure the carrying capacity of freight cars and 
 ships, she could not measure the depth of the 
 human heart. She could calculate the tenacity 
 of steel and the death-dealing power of chem- 
 icals, but she could not calculate the operation 
 
140 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 of those hidden forces which lie buried deep in 
 the human spirit. The very thing which she 
 called impossible came to pass. Realities which 
 she brushed aside as negligible arose in the day 
 of judgment to crush her. 
 
 It is not surprising that Germany failed to 
 read us truly, for we were unable to read our- 
 selves. We did not know what it was possible 
 for us to do. We have a polyglot population, 
 and to say in advance what will come out of this 
 is a hazardous undertaking. It is not easy to 
 unify a nation made up of such various and 
 clashing elements, and yet to the surprise and 
 delight of us all, we attained a unity of enthusi- 
 asm throughout our country, which was not at- 
 tained in any other nation which drew the sword 
 against the Central Powers. The clearly im- 
 possible came to pass. We had a small and 
 poorly equipped army to start with. Our peo- 
 ple were averse to the policy of conscription. 
 It was contrary to our traditions and it ran 
 against the grain of our disposition. And yet 
 conscription was adopted at the very start, with 
 a unity of support which deserves to stand in 
 the list of the miracles wrought by the war. 
 The drilling of our army and the transport of it, 
 and the achievements of it — all these ran 
 clearly beyond the limits of the possible. Men 
 who understood the situation best said such 
 things could not be done, but the wise and 
 prudent do not always know. Over two million 
 men were mobilized, clothed, trained, trans- 
 ported, put down within sight of the German 
 
THE EANGE OF THE POSSIBLE 141 
 
 army with an efficiency and speed which dumb- 
 founded the prophets. Never again will a man 
 who cares for his reputation venture to declare 
 oracularly how long it will take a nation to pre- 
 pare for war. The width of the Atlantic has 
 cut a large figure in bygone calculations, but in 
 the calculations of the future there will be no 
 more sea. We now know that the Atlantic is a 
 brook, and that fighters as well as lovers can 
 jump over it at their pleasure. 
 
 How many incredible things have been hap- 
 pening! Who would have supposed that we 
 have so much money? Who would have 
 dreamed that so much money could be raised 
 by taxation, that men would contribute such 
 enormous sums for the support of the govern- 
 ment without indignant protest? We have left 
 in the past a hundred important social duties un- 
 done because we could not get the necessary 
 funds. Taxes were already as high as the 
 patient taxpayer would submit to. To increase 
 the burden would stir up possibly an insurrec- 
 tion. The admitted range of the possible in the 
 realm of taxation was contracted. And so was 
 it also in the domain of generosity. We felt we 
 knew how much men would give, and we set 
 down the stakes at points counted safe. To ask 
 them to give too much would chill them and 
 jeopardize the causes which we had at heart. 
 Appeals for money must be reasonable, and the 
 amounts asked for must never run beyond the 
 limits which common sense can approve. But 
 in the war all the sums that were asked for were 
 
142 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 unreasonable. They were unprecedented in 
 size and in number. Considerations of prudence 
 were thrown to the winds. We asked for the 
 money which was needed and not for the money 
 we felt men were willing to give. We asked for 
 millions and tens of millions. The most enjoy- 
 able and successful of the drives were those 
 made for a hundred millions and over. When 
 the sum for a drive was fixed at one hundred 
 and seventy millions, the nation became jubilant, 
 almost hilarious. Such sums had never before 
 been thought of, because they lay outside of the 
 range of the possible. But the war swept away 
 our precedents and prtidence, and trained us to 
 live in a world with wider horizons. As we 
 went forward we discovered that we had not 
 been using more than a tithe of our resources, 
 and that we had held back from humanity many 
 things which it was our privilege to give. The 
 croaker, everywhere, fell into disrepute. The 
 man who always said: "You can't do it " lost 
 his voice. The defeatist was no longer popular. 
 He was seen to be an anaemic and feeble man. 
 The war set on fire the imagination, and in 
 every field of activity plans were formulated on 
 a larger scale. Enterprises which had been 
 taboo as quixotic now came within the range of 
 the practical, and goals which had always 
 seemed Utopian were declared to be reachable 
 by men now alive. This stretching of the scope 
 of the possible is a psychical fact which the 
 future will make fruitful use of. We have 
 learned something which our successors are not 
 
 I 
 
THE RANGE OF THE POSSIBLE 143 
 
 likely to forget. It will be easier through a 
 hundred years to attempt large things because 
 of what the war has taught us concerning the 
 range of the possible. 
 
 There will be those no doubt who will re- 
 vert to the attitude of the defeatist. We shall 
 hear from time to time the doleful cry, *' You 
 can't do it." But these doubters and falterers 
 must count on meeting a great host of workers 
 who have been baptized into a nobler spirit. 
 Men are going to say in the words of IMirabcau, 
 when they hear some timorous soul cry: " Im- 
 possible! " "Never mention to me again that 
 blockhead of a word ! " The war has taken the 
 word " impossible " out of the vocabulary of 
 earnest-hearted and clear-eyed men. We are 
 not going to be over-concerned in the future 
 about the possible. We are going to fix our 
 minds on the things that ought to be — the things 
 that must be if God's will is going to be done 
 on this earth. That is the way we argued in 
 war, and we shall not abandon that method in 
 peace. We said: " Germany has got to be de- 
 feated! " Having settled that, we were not in- 
 terested in the critics who pointed out various 
 things which it was impossible to do. " The 
 submarine must be conquered!" There were 
 all sorts of difficulties in the way, but what did 
 they matter, when it was clear as the sun at 
 noon that the submarine had to be conquered? 
 " The American army must be drilled and trans- 
 ported to France!" There were insurmount- 
 able obstacles, but we saw none of them be- 
 
144 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 cause our eyes were fixed on the inevitable goal. 
 Things become possible when we really desire 
 them, and believe them to be essential to the 
 carrying out of God's plans in the world. 
 Jesus of Nazareth never used the word impos- 
 sible. He was surrounded by defeatists, and He 
 marvelled at their temper. He met every day 
 men who could tell offhand what could not be 
 done, and He brushed their reasonings aside as 
 not worth His attention. When His disciples 
 cried out " Impossible," He checked them with 
 the reminder that when men are linked with 
 God, all things become possible. He was al- 
 ways working to enlarge the horizon, and to in- 
 duce men to believe in the all-embracing plans 
 of the Eternal. If you have faith. He said, noth- 
 ing shall be impossible unto you. It is with 
 this faith that we must enter on the task of 
 building a better world. 
 
XII 
 THE MIGHT OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 DO you remember the words which stood 
 at the top of the front page of the 
 newspapers in the autumn of 1914? 
 Those words had well-nigh disappeared at the 
 end of four years, and another set had taken 
 their place. There was a word which was 
 hardly spoken or printed in the first year of the 
 war, which gradually forged its way to the 
 front, taking each succeeding year a more con- 
 spicuous position, until in the autumn of 11)18 
 it was exalted above every other word, the 
 whole world conceding that, after all, war is not 
 won by munitions and guns, by money or food, 
 but by a mysterious something which is called 
 " Morale." The emergence of this word from 
 obscurity, and its steady ascent in public speech 
 and thought, is one of the memorable phe- 
 nomena of the great war. 
 
 In the opening months we thought and spoke 
 constantly of machinery. Our eyes were fixed 
 on howitzers and shells, on aeroplanes and ships. 
 It was the war machine which was the one thing 
 essential, and to perfect the machine was the 
 one absorbing ambition. Later on, we began 
 to think more of the men. The problems of 
 mobilizing them, and feeding them, and cloth- 
 
 M5 
 
146 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 ing them were the subjects of continuous 
 thought and discussion. Still later, we were in- 
 terested supremely in the skill and efficiency of 
 the men. The shipyards called for expert 
 mechanics, and in all the gun factories and in 
 munition plants, we eagerly followed the move- 
 ments of the workers, noting the volume of 
 their output, sometimes with disappointment 
 and at other times with joy. 
 
 But there came a time when our chief con- 
 cern was not with the steel or copper, the shell 
 or the gun, nor was it with the number or skill 
 of the workers. Our whole mind was concen- 
 trated on the disposition and the temper of the 
 men, for we discovered that unless a man's heart 
 is in his work, he cannot be relied on and will 
 disappoint us in the end. Strikes became to us 
 the most formidable of all perils. Moods of de- 
 pression or insubordination were feared more 
 than battalions of armed men. War is not an 
 episode of a day or a week; it is not a struggle 
 like that in which animals engage. It is a long 
 drawn out and reasoned thing, and the longer it 
 continues the heavier are the demands on the 
 nations engaged in it. Each succeeding year 
 it searches deeper and deeper into a nation's 
 soul, summoning to action all its mental and 
 spiritual capacities and powers. War is a bur- 
 den to be carried along a road that is slippery 
 and bloody, and it takes a firm nerve to reach 
 the end of the journey. War is fought with 
 physical weapons, but it is not these weapons 
 which determine the outcome. Guns are indis- 
 
THE MIGHT OF THE SPIRIT 147 
 
 pensable, but it is the men behind the guns from 
 whom victory must finally come. Everything 
 depends on the quality of the mind in the man 
 behind the gun, and also in the man behind the 
 man who uses the gun. It is not enough to 
 fight. It is the spirit with which nations fight 
 which determines the ultimate issue. In other 
 words, a war is won by morale. 
 
 And what is morale? It is a state of mind. 
 No one word is sufficient to express its full con- 
 tent. It is courage and endurance and hope. 
 It is zeal and confidence and loyalty. It is de- 
 termination and grit and esprit de corps. It is 
 staying power, the temper which endures to the 
 end. With morale all things become possible : 
 without morale all other things count for noth- 
 ing. 
 
 The determining factor, then, in war is some- 
 thing which is invisible and intangible. On its 
 surface war appears to be largely a physical 
 enterprise. Men seem to fight solely with their 
 bodies, their hands. On closer inspection we 
 discover that war is a spiritual venture, and 
 that men fight with their souls. Everything in 
 the long run depends on the soul. Out of the 
 heart are the issues of life. 
 
 In modern war it is not the morale of any 
 group or class which is all-controlling, for war 
 has now become a contest between peoples. 
 The whole population is implicated, and if at 
 any point the morale crumbles, the cause is lost. 
 Soldiers and sailors can do little with the 
 weapons provided them, unless the inner man is 
 
148 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 equipped and strong; but sailors and soldiers, 
 however courageous, are impotent unless sup- 
 ported by a people whose hearts are aflame. A 
 discouraged and hopeless nation cannot send 
 victorious legions to the battle-field. Morale is 
 contagious. It is a living thing and spreads. 
 It can be built up and it can be destroyed, and 
 therefore in a protracted war the supreme con- 
 cern of a belligerent nation is the task of main- 
 taining its morale. 
 
 Whatever undermines a nation's morale is of 
 the nature of treason, and whatever builds up in 
 soldier and sailor, in gun-maker and ship- 
 builder, in statesman and farmer, a frame of 
 mind which stands firm against every assault, is 
 a weapon to be seized and made use of. Every 
 government applied itself in season and out of 
 season to feeding the minds of its sailors and 
 soldiers. Men cannot live on rations alone. 
 Being spiritual creatures, they must be fed 
 daily on spiritual food. Without spiritual 
 nourishment workers in shipyards and munition 
 factories soon grow weary and faint, and with- 
 out the daily strengthening of the spirit the 
 whole nation will by and by lose heart. Morale 
 is a frame of mind, and can be built up after 
 certain patterns and in accordance with fixed 
 laws. This accounts for the high place granted 
 the psychologists in the war. They were as 
 indispensable as the chemists. It is not enough 
 to use men who understand the composition of 
 chemicals, governments must use also the men 
 who understand the structure and nature of 
 
THE MIGHT OF THE SPIEIT 149 
 
 the mind. The continuous feeding of the eyes 
 by paintings and posters and moving pictures, 
 the unceasing feeding of the ears by martial 
 music, and national anthems and patriotic 
 speeches, was not a useless or incidental work. 
 No work more essential than this was done by 
 any other group of workers. To sustain the 
 morale of the people is the crowning work of a 
 government in time of war. 
 
 All the forces which work against the main- 
 tenance of a fighting morale are suppressed 
 with a vigorous hand. The human spirit must 
 not be chilled or discouraged. Nothing can be 
 permitted to sap the courage of the army, or to 
 depress the heart of the people. This is the 
 justification for the stringent laws which every 
 government enacts in time of war. Reckless 
 talkers are compelled to cease from their talk- 
 ing, and irresponsible writers are prohibited 
 from writing, and idlers and busybodies and 
 mischief-makers of many stripes are watched 
 with a vigilance which is sleepless, for whatever 
 dampens the spirit of the people outstrips in 
 destructiveness the power of guns. The build- 
 ers and guardians of the nation's morale stand 
 side by side with the admirals and generals as 
 the men who win the war. It is not l)y physical 
 force nor by chemical reactions, but by the spirit 
 in men's souls that despotisms are overthrown 
 and righteousness is established. 
 
 In the earlier years of the war Germany won 
 repeated successes, not simply because of her 
 splendid military machine, but because of her 
 
150 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 superb morale. Upon this morale she had ex- 
 pended the tireless labour of forty years. Her 
 great achievements had not been made at Kiel 
 or Essen, but in her schools. She had given her 
 entire people an education which fitted them to 
 enter upon a war with glowing hearts. The 
 Germans were prepared not only with howitzers 
 and guns, but they had something infinitely 
 more potent, supreme confidence in their ability 
 to subdue the world. Their love for the Father- 
 land burned like a furnace. Their confidence 
 in their leaders was without a flaw. Soldiers 
 followed their generals with certainty that they 
 were marching on to victory. The war would 
 be brief and the outcome would be glorious. 
 IVIorale is based upon belief. It is what men 
 think which makes them weak or mighty. The 
 Germans were made mighty by their trust in 
 the ability of their General Staff, and by their 
 assurance that the day had arrived when by 
 God's will the envious enemies of the Father- 
 land should be overthrown. 
 
 The morale of the Allies was also splendid, 
 but it was not so perfect as that of the Ger- 
 mans. The Allies were confident of the right- 
 eousness of their cause, but they could not be 
 equally confident of the adequacy of their mili- 
 tary equipment. Physical preparedness had 
 not been carried to so high a pitch by either 
 France or Great Britain as by Germany, and 
 there was not that confidence in the heart of the 
 French and British soldier in his superior of- 
 ficer which filled the soul of the German. The 
 
THE MIGHT OF THE SPIEIT 151 
 
 military leaders of the Allies were largely un- 
 tried men, and blunders, one after another, only 
 weakened the contidence which had been none 
 too strong at the start. 
 
 But confidence in the righteousness of their 
 cause kept the courage of the British and 
 French from flagging, and as the years went on 
 a growing confidence in their military machine 
 gave the Allies augmented power. Little by 
 little the morale of the French forced itself on 
 the attention of the world. It was when North- 
 ern France lay bleeding and crushed that the 
 world was given a fresh revelation of the great- 
 ness of the French soul. No people have been 
 more continuously misunderstood by the out- 
 side world than the French. This is due in part 
 to the depravity and antics of small groups of 
 unsavoury Frenchmen. But it is never wise to 
 judge a whole nation by the sins of a few indi- 
 viduals, and the world came to see that Paris 
 is not France, nor are a few fops and harlots 
 Paris. The French soldier under fire showed 
 himself to be no weakling or coward. He was 
 magnificent. The French women were not 
 dolls, devotees of fashion. They had the 
 strength and the courage of the heroines of 
 ancient Rome. The French people were not a 
 degenerate and hysterical race, but a nation in 
 which there burned unextinguishable fires of 
 nobility and devotion. It requires time for the 
 morale of a nation to disclose itself. Year by 
 year France rose higher and higher in public 
 esteem. The voices of her critics were silenced. 
 
152 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 Many who had thrown stones at her now 
 crowned her with praise. 
 
 But in the fiber and tenacity of her morale 
 France did not stand alone. England was her 
 equal. British officers were in many instances 
 lacking in experience and skill, but the British 
 private soldier on every field proved himself a 
 hero. The British armies suffered repeated dis- 
 asters, but their misfortunes could not break 
 down the British temper. Her losses were 
 enormous, but she never thought of surrender. 
 When the Fifth army was driven back in March, 
 1918, and the whole world staggered under the 
 shock of that cruel blow, the number of enlist- 
 ments both in England and in Canada took an 
 immediate leap upward. Defeat only stiffened 
 the British will. It was her morale — the deep- 
 rooted qualities of mind and heart — the moral 
 temper fused in the fires of a great faith — which 
 carried Great Britain through the tragedies of 
 four discouraging years, and made it possible 
 for her to arrive at the day of victory. 
 
 When we study the experience of France and 
 Great Britain, we see that morale is something 
 more than emotion. All peoples are highly 
 emotional in the first years of a war. But 
 emotions are fluctuating, and cannot remain at 
 flood tide. Young men plunge into a war with 
 a zeal and heat which are beautiful and potent, 
 but which are certain to die down under the 
 fatigue of the exhausting years. Morale is 
 something more than enthusiasm, it is deeper 
 and stronger. It is finer and higher than 
 
THE MIGHT OF THE SPIRIT 153 
 
 optimism. It is not a thing of the intellect, or 
 of the emotions, it is a thing of the spirit. There 
 is a spirit in man, and it is by this spirit that he 
 conquers. 
 
 Germany did not know of what spirit the 
 Frenchman was. She underestimated him. 
 She disparaged him. She counted him a weak- 
 ling and a degenerate. Germany was ignorant 
 of the French morale. Germany had carefully 
 counted the French guns and the French sol- 
 diers; she had not measured the dimensions of 
 the French soul. It is the soul which is the de- 
 termining factor both in peace and in war. 
 Germany did not know the soul of Great Britain. 
 She knew the size of the British army. She 
 had catalogued every vessel in the British navy. 
 She had never fathomed the depth of the British 
 heart. She did not realize that the British heart 
 is the same whether in England or in Canada or 
 in Australia. Germany was blinded by her 
 materialistic philosophy. She did not know 
 how to measure spiritual values. She forgot 
 the omnipotence of morale. She did not under- 
 stand the neutral nations — including the United 
 States. She had filled countless volumes with 
 statistics gathered from all these countries, but 
 she did not know their interior life. She was 
 an expert in counting dollars and soldiers and 
 guns and ships. She knew little of the spiritual 
 forces which rule the world. Her leading men 
 confessed that they did not care what neutral 
 nations thought, and so Germany went reck- 
 lessly on to defy the moral sentiment of the 
 
154 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 world. The spirit of mankind rose against her. 
 The heart of humanity cried out in protest. 
 She did not heed the cry, for she was deaf. 
 She did not see the abyss in front of her, for 
 she was bhnd. Having eyes, she saw not, and 
 although she had ears she was unable to hear. 
 Her false ideas had quenched the light that was 
 in her, and how great was the darkness ! It was 
 the morale of the human race which laid Ger- 
 many low. No nation can defy the spirit of 
 mankind and live. 
 
 What did the United States do toward the 
 winning of the war? Various answers have 
 been given, and they differ widely from one 
 another. Some say she did much, others say 
 she did little. Some lay the emphasis on the 
 food and the money, and others lay the em- 
 phasis on what our soldiers did at St. Mihiel 
 and in the Argonne forest. But whatever im- 
 portance may be given to our food exportations 
 and to our military achievements, there is no 
 doubt that our supreme contribution was what 
 we did for morale. By coming into the war we 
 fed the heart of the Allies. Our grains were of 
 great value, but the Allies were heart-weary, 
 and we inspired them by saying: " We are com- 
 ing to fight by your side." Before even one of 
 our regiments reached France we had already 
 done a wonderful work. We had toned up the 
 hearts of millions. By our declaration of war 
 against Germany we caused the French pulse 
 to beat stronger. We sent more than two mil- 
 lions of men across the Atlantic. Many thou- 
 
THE MIGHT OF THE SPIRIT 155 
 
 sands of these never reached the fighting Hne. 
 The men who got to the front fought bravely. 
 They may not have done as much as our boast- 
 ful newspapers asserted, but whatever they may 
 have done or not done with their guns, there is 
 no doubt they worked miracles by their pres- 
 ence. The fact that they were there put new 
 vigour into the whole AUied line, and subtracted 
 strength daily from the German heart. The 
 men far behind the trenches made a contribu- 
 tion which should never be forgotten. They 
 also helped to win the war. They never fired 
 a shot, and yet they share in the everlasting 
 glory. They strengthened the morale. A mil- 
 lion men behind the lines, not yet engaged but 
 ready at a word to move forward, achieve a 
 work the size of which it is impossible to meas- 
 ure. They increase the fighting strength of 
 every man in the trenches. They hasten the 
 day when the enemy will surrender. 
 
 But there were a million Americans who did 
 not get across the Atlantic. They were in the 
 camps here. Many of them were eager to go. 
 They could not go. Their hearts were filled 
 with disappointment. They lamented the sacri- 
 fice they had made apparently in vain. But 
 even these men helped win the war. They, 
 too, deserve to wear the laurel. Without them 
 the war would not have ended when it did. 
 They also were really in the fighting line. They 
 did not go to France in ships, and yet they were 
 tliere. Their souls were there, and being there 
 in the spirit, they made themselves felt in every 
 
156 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 battle. When you make up the roll of the con- 
 querors, do not leave these men out. Men in 
 American camps fed the morale of men four 
 thousand miles away. Every soldier in France 
 was a more effective soldier because there was 
 another American soldier getting ready to come. 
 
 Let no soldier, then, feel disheartened be- 
 cause he never reached the front. He did not 
 reach it with his body, but he reached it with his 
 soul. He did not fire a gun, but he helped crush 
 the Kaiser. He did not kill a German, but he 
 helped to take the spirit of confidence out of 
 the German heart. 
 
 Here, then, is a work in which all our soldiers 
 and sailors had a part. They helped build up 
 the morale before which Germany went down. 
 We entered the war when other nations were 
 fagged. We were fresh and unwearied, and 
 our exuberant spirit caused men to forget how 
 tired they were. We went to France with 
 hearts which had not been torn by disasters, 
 and with spirits which had not been chastened 
 by cruel disappointments. Our bounce and en- 
 thusiasm were contagious. We caused nations 
 which had become downcast to lift up their 
 heads. Some may minimize the value of what 
 we did in the actual contribution of shells and 
 guns, but no one can deny that we did a mighty 
 work, a work which was absolutely indispen- 
 sable and which we alone were able to perform. 
 By our buoyancy and dash and spirit we in- 
 creased the vitality and weight of the morale 
 of the Allied armies. 
 
 1 
 
XIII 
 THE HANDICAP OF WEIGHTS 
 
 ANEW Testament writer exhorts us to 
 lay aside not only the sin which doth 
 so easily beset us, but likewise every 
 weig-ht. He thus calls attention to a distinction 
 between sins and weights which all of us who 
 are interested in perfecting ourselves in the art 
 of living should hold diligently in mind. The 
 New Testament writer pictures life under the 
 metaphor of a foot-race. We are all in the 
 arena running. Prizes have been offered to all 
 who win, and as the course is long and difficult, 
 it behooves every runner to get rid of every- 
 thing which is likely to impede him in his move- 
 ments. He must cast aside, of course, every 
 sin, and he must also toss away things which 
 in themselves are innocent, but which embarrass 
 him in the act of running. 
 
 As soon as we elevate our ideal, we imme- 
 diately discriminate more clearly the moral 
 values of the things we are doing. If our ideals 
 are low, and our ambition to excel is feeble, we 
 are content if we can keep away from the ac- 
 
 "57 
 
158 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 tions which are confessedly wicked. Society 
 has made out a list of the things which are bad, 
 and in order to be respectable these things must 
 be eschewed. There are many persons who 
 feel they have a right to do anything which so- 
 ciety has not stamped with its disapproval. If an 
 act is not sinful, then why not do it? If a prac- 
 tice is not wicked, why not engage in it? Why 
 not do anything which is not clearly and no- 
 toriously injurious? This is the viewpoint of 
 all who are mediocre in moral intelligence. The 
 world is full of morally commonplace people, 
 people who have no desire to attain superior 
 moral excellence, and who are happy if they 
 are as good as their neighbours. 
 
 The Christian religion summons men to lay 
 aside not only the sins, but the weights. Every 
 habit which obstructs the soul in doing the will 
 of God must be surrendered. Every act which 
 embarrasses a man or woman in the perform- 
 ance of his largest service to mankind must be 
 given up. Things in themselves good must be 
 sacrificed in order that still better things may 
 be gained; customs which under certain condi- 
 tions are innocent become blameworthy when 
 men are striving to reach a shining goal. The 
 life of the college athlete before he goes into 
 training is not condemned as wicked because 
 he is careless as to his diet, and is irregular 
 in his hours of going to bed. But as soon 
 as he begins to compete for a prize, he is ex- 
 pected to put himself under most rigorous dis- 
 cipline. He lays aside everything, however en- 
 
THE HANDICAP OF WEIGHTS 159 
 
 joyable and desirable, which seems likely to 
 diminish his chances of winning the race. The 
 world of athletics accepts as a cardinal doctrine 
 this idea of laying aside every weight. Every 
 garment which interferes with the free move- 
 ment of the body is discarded. Raiment is made 
 for man, and not man for raiment. Every habit 
 which reduces the energy of the nerves is ruth- 
 lessly cut off. Every article of diet which does 
 not produce muscular force is peremptorily for- 
 bidden. The program of the entire day is ar- 
 ranged with the coming contest in view. Pro- 
 fessional trainers of athletes are always on the 
 lookout for weights. They hate them. They 
 accept without question the dictum of the New 
 Testament as to the necessity of laying aside 
 every weight. The athlete who refuses to do 
 this is fatally handicapped in the race. The 
 body must submit to discipline and even cruci- 
 fixion. Every ounce of superfluous flesh must 
 be gotten rid of. It is serious business, this 
 business of winning races, and every man who 
 desires to be a successful athlete subscribes to 
 the creed which commands the elimination of 
 weights. Anything, no matter how pleasur- 
 able or innocent, how respectable or popular, 
 is an enemy to be conquered, if it stands be- 
 tween the athlete and the coveted prize. 
 
 The New Testament loves to picture the 
 Christian life, now under the image of a foot- 
 race, and now under the image of a war. The 
 Apostle Paul was fond of thinking of himself 
 as a soldier, and of the men who worked with 
 
160 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 him in the extension of Christianity as his com- 
 rades in a great campaign. In Paul's last letter 
 to the young man who was to carry on Paul's 
 work after his death, the aged apostle wrote: 
 " Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of 
 Christ Jesus. No soldier on service entangleth 
 himself in the affairs of this life; that he may 
 please him who enrolled him as a soldier." 
 Here we have the very essence of the military 
 life expressed in the phrase — " No soldier on 
 service entangleth himself." He lays aside 
 every weight. He puts himself in such condi- 
 tion as that he shall be able to obey with swift- 
 ness the orders of his Commander. War 
 sounds solemn warnings against the handicap of 
 weights. 
 
 As soon as the United States entered the war, 
 we found ourselves spontaneously beginning to 
 lay aside some of our weights. It was not our 
 sins that we first thought of, but our weights, 
 the superfluous things we had been doing, and 
 which now were only an encumbrance in the 
 life we were called to live. Some of us became 
 more economical in the use of our money. We 
 had grown to be extravagant and had not real- 
 ized how recklessly we were throwing money 
 away. We began to cut down the number of 
 our luxuries. When so many babies in Europe 
 were hungry, we could no longer enjoy things 
 which had formerly brought us pleasure. We 
 began also to redeem the time. We fell nat- 
 urally into doing the very things which the 
 Apostle exhorts us to do. The days were in- 
 
 1 
 
THE HAXDICAP OF WEIGHTS 161 
 
 deed evil, and because they were evil, it was 
 necessary for us to redeem the time. Hours 
 which had formerly been given to idleness, or 
 popular forms of selfish pleasure, were now de- 
 voted to some form of labour which would assist 
 the Allies to win the war. As soon as we got 
 our eye on the prize we saw the necessity of lay- 
 ing aside the weights. We were surprised to 
 find how much money we had on hand to give 
 to benevolence, and how much time we had on 
 hand to contribute to the canteen, or the Red 
 Cross, or to some variety of community Wel- 
 fare Work. 
 
 Nor was this laying aside of weights half so 
 disagreeable as we had imagined it would be. It 
 seemed not only a sensible thing to do, but we 
 liked to do it. When we did it we found that 
 our heart sang. It was fine to be in a great 
 race, and to be running to win a prize. We 
 did not groan when we tossed aside one weight 
 after another, we felt exuberant as we dashed 
 on toward the goal. The common notion that 
 laying aside weights is painful, and that self- 
 crucifixion is full of agony, is mistaken. It is 
 only when we surrender that we are happy, and 
 only when we die that we live. 
 
 The immediate result of our laying aside of 
 the weights was an increase in the volume of 
 our bodily health. We had been eating too 
 much meat, or too much sugar, or too much 
 butter, and our body was impeded in doing the 
 work it had to perform. By reducing the fuel 
 which was thrown into the engine, the engine 
 
162 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 did far more effective service. There is an in- 
 crease in the health of college men who go 
 into athletics. The laying aside of weights 
 causes the flesh to rejoice. There is an improve- 
 ment in health in the young men who go into 
 the army or navy. The explanation is that 
 naval and military life compels men to lay aside 
 numerous handicapping weights. The health 
 of the population throughout the whole country 
 was improved by the limited self-denial which 
 was practiced during a part of the war. A dis- 
 tinguished Scotchman said in an address de- 
 livered in this city that the health of the Scot- 
 tish people was never better than during the 
 war, that the number of the insane in the asy- 
 lums diminished, and that sickness among the 
 masses was surprisingly reduced. What was 
 true in Scotland was no doubt true in every bel- 
 ligerent country where the pinch of necessity 
 did not bring the daily ration below the amount 
 necessary for the normal sustenance of the 
 body. Men and women were on the whole 
 sounder in body and saner in mind. They had 
 something worth while to think about. They 
 had something to live for, and to sacrifice for. 
 They ceased to brood over their own petty dis- 
 appointments and trials. Troubles which in 
 peace had seemed colossal, now appeared in- 
 significant. There was no time to whine over 
 one's personal losses. Tribulations which had 
 been mountains dwindled to mole-hills. The 
 heart was set free from its selfishness and the 
 mind was lifted out of morbid and somber 
 
THE HANDICAP OF WEIGHTS 163 
 
 moods. Many of us in time of peace are 
 weighted down with memories which are de- 
 pressing. We carry along with us a crushing 
 mass of impedimenta. We have not sufficient 
 strength for the doing of our best work because 
 our vitality is exhausted in the bearing of our 
 useless load. There are a thousand things 
 which ought to be gotten rid of, and left behind 
 forever. They are weights — remembered bit- 
 ter experiences — which impede us in all our 
 journey. 
 
 War did us an invaluable service when it in- 
 duced us to let these weights go. As soon as 
 we began to run toward Berlin, we could not 
 afford to lug forward a lot of the rubbish we 
 had been carrying. We simply forgot many a 
 thing which had tormented us, and ceased to 
 care for many a prize which had once excited 
 our ambition. 
 
 In this enterprise of laying aside weights, the 
 Government came to our assistance. If we 
 grew negligent in lightening our load, the Gov- 
 ernment reminded us what it was best for us to 
 do. Vigilant officials stood at the coal bin, and 
 helped us to realize the value of coal. Others 
 stood in the meat market and compelled us to 
 think soberly, before we decided how many 
 pounds would be sufficient. It was a new ex- 
 perience to find the hand of Uncle Sam over 
 the mouth of the sugar bowl, telling us just how 
 many lumps could go into a cup of coffee. The 
 Government stood by our side all through the 
 war, saying — " Now lay aside every weight. 
 
164 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 We are running a great race, and humanity de- 
 mands that we must win the prize." 
 
 It seemed strange to find ourselves dividing 
 occupations into two classes — essential and non- 
 essential. Every occupation was summoned to 
 appear at the Judgment, and show whether or 
 not it was essential to the winning of the war. 
 Every business was judged solely on its ability 
 to contribute to the victory over Germany, and 
 men were no longer permitted to engage in 
 work which added nothing to our fighting 
 strength. We found that we had been support- 
 ing businesses which were only encumbrances, 
 and all these now stood publicly branded by the 
 Government's condemnation. This compelled 
 every thoughtful man and woman to ask: 
 " What am I doing? " " Of what value is my 
 labour?" "What contribution have I been 
 making to the forces which are making for 
 righteousness throughout the earth?" All 
 through the war the one question was : " Will 
 this occupation help us win the war? " That 
 is the question which should never be permitted 
 to fall silent. Through the days of peace the 
 question should keep sounding like a voice from 
 heaven: " Is the thing I am doing helping the 
 Son of God to save the world? " 
 
 War has a rude fashion of stripping men. It 
 strips them of their conceits, their prejudices, 
 and their traditional opinions. We grow up to 
 think that a man belongs to himself, has a right 
 to live for himself, and that with this right there 
 can be no legitimate interference. War sweeps 
 
THE HANDICAP OF WEIGHTS 165 
 
 all that away. War repeats the words of the 
 New Testament: '* No man lives to himself, and 
 no man dies to himself." Every man belongs 
 to society, to his country, to humanity, to God. 
 War strips men of the things which have al- 
 ways belonged to them. It takes away their 
 collars, neckties, dress suits, patent leather 
 shoes. It clothes them in raiment plain and 
 simple, and allows them the use only of those 
 things which are indispensable to the decent 
 maintenance of existence. A boy in the Rain- 
 bow Division, before sailing for France, took 
 me into his tent and poured out at my feet all 
 the things he was permitted to take with him. 
 It was a pathetic sight. The things were so few. 
 Everything of weight had been laid aside. I 
 thought of the home in which that boy had 
 been reared. I saw in my mind's eye the com- 
 forts and luxuries which he had known since 
 babyhood. There arose before me his entire 
 past, surrounded at every step by all the fine 
 things which money can buy. And now here 
 he stood — ready to fight in the greatest of all 
 the world's wars, and the richest of all the 
 earth's governments was willing that he should 
 carry with him only a few simple articles which 
 might be held in the hands. Was the war un- 
 important? No! Was the Government pe- 
 nurious? No! Had the Government a low 
 estimate of this young man's talents and worth? 
 No. But the nations were running a race. 
 They had all been summoned into a vast arena 
 wet with blood, and in order that armies may 
 
166 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 run with success, it is necessary to lay aside 
 every weight. It was because the American 
 RepubHc was so eager to have this Ohio boy 
 go over the top that it took from him every ob- 
 ject which was Hkcly to hinder or hamper him 
 in the race he was running for the glory of 
 mankind. When men are to cut their way 
 through Argonne forests, they cannot carry 
 with them silk coverlets or brass beds. There 
 are times when weights become curses, and to 
 insist on bearing them is to jeopardize the wel- 
 fare of the world. 
 
 Jesus is the world's supreme Commander, 
 and before He sent His disciples out to preach. 
 He stripped them almost naked. They had a 
 tremendous battle to fight, and every weight 
 had to be left behind. " Get you no gold, nor 
 silver, nor brass in your purses, no wallet for 
 your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor 
 staf¥." They were not even to carry a book 
 out of which to draw things with which to com- 
 bat their foes. They were to rely on the Spirit 
 within them, and out of their own hearts would 
 proceed the words which would meet the situa- 
 tion. Jesus reduced the life of His soldiers to 
 its simplest terms. IMen who are to bring this 
 world back to God cannot be cumbered by the 
 paraphernalia which seems essential to men en- 
 gaged in less arduous enterprises. Jesus Him- 
 self went forth on His mission with empty hands. 
 The woman of Samaria looked at Him in amaze- 
 ment when He began to speak about giving her 
 water, crying out : " You have nothing to draw 
 
THE HANDICAP OF WEIGHTS 167 
 
 with and the well is deep." He dispensed with 
 all luxuries, all comforts, even with things 
 which to most men seem indispensable. He 
 had a great race to run, and it was necessary 
 that every weight should be laid aside. As 
 there was nothing in His hands, so there was 
 nothing on His mind which could embarrass 
 Him in His labours. He had no regrets, no re- 
 morses, no petty ambitions, no foolish imagin- 
 ings. Those idle notions, and futile dreamings, 
 and empty wishes which no one of us would be 
 willing to characterize as wicked, but which fill 
 so many of our waking hours and retard us in 
 our upward way, never obstructed or hindered 
 Him. He laid aside every weight as completely 
 as He kept Himself spotless from every sin, and 
 that is why the New Testament writer, quoted 
 at the beginning of this sermon, exhorts us to 
 keep our eyes on Jesus as we run with patience 
 the race which is set before us. We often think 
 of Jesus as the sinless one. It would help us 
 also to think of Him often as the one who laid 
 aside every weight. 
 
 He has summoned us to the only war which 
 is really great. It is a war which extends over 
 all the continents, and runs continuously 
 through all the centuries. In this war there is 
 never a truce or armistice. It must be fought 
 on until the foe is overwhelmingly defeated. 
 In the last war we were fighting with flesh and 
 blood. But in the greatest of earth's wars we 
 are wrestling against the principalities, against 
 the powers, against the world rulers of this dark- 
 
168 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 ness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in 
 the heavenly places. Wherefore we are exhorted 
 to take up the whole armour of God. This 
 armour is without weight. Our soldiers in 
 France were cumbered with their packs. The 
 helmets were heavy, so also were the rifles and 
 the blankets. It is not possible, in carnal war- 
 fare, to cast aside every weight. But when we 
 light in the great army in which the Son of God 
 is the Commander, it is not necessary to carry 
 any burdens. All loads can be dispensed with. 
 The armour of the soldiers of Jesus is spiritual, 
 and it is worn not outside but inside of the flesh. 
 We can put on every piece of it and be freer in 
 our actions than we were before we put it on. 
 
 Many Christian soldiers are impeded in their 
 warfare not so much by sins as by weights. 
 They are not bad, only ineffective. They are 
 not wicked, only inefficient. They are not dis- 
 reputable, only useless. They cannot fight well 
 because of the size of their load. They faint by 
 the wayside because they are burdened by the 
 weights they attempt to carry along. They are 
 not criminals or culprits, but they are not good 
 fighters. They cannot fight victoriously be- 
 cause of the impedimenta which they are un- 
 willing to cast aside. They give their time to 
 things which are non-important, their thought 
 to things which are inconsequential, their af- 
 fections to things which are innocent but futile. 
 They have kept themselves free from the most 
 scarlet of the sins, but they have not learned 
 how to cut loose the millstone of the weights. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE UGLINESS OF SIN 
 
 BEFORE the war the crimson of sin had 
 well-nigh faded out. Many of us still re- 
 tained the word sin in our vocabulary, 
 but the fear of the thing had almost vanished 
 from our heart. In the churches sin was still 
 discussed and deprecated, but in the mind of the 
 average man the conception of sin was pallid, 
 and we were told on high authority that sensible 
 men had ceased to trouble themselves about 
 their sins. 
 
 In many quarters it was agreed that there is 
 no such thing as sin. What the old theologians 
 meant by sin is only an animal inheritance which 
 under the operation of the principle of cvulution 
 will finally disappear. Sin is only a defect, a 
 flaw, a blemish, something to be regretted but 
 nothing to be alarmed at. It is a certain raw- 
 ness, a kind of greenness, a sort of immaturity, 
 a necessary stage in the development of every 
 unfolding organism. It is virtue in the making. 
 The theory of evolution in the hands of certain 
 schools of interpreters brought great relief to 
 the conscience. According to their teaching 
 
 169 
 
170 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 there is a principle in men and things which 
 works out inevitably the result which is best. 
 The man who beats upon his breast and prays 
 God for forgiveness distresses himself need- 
 lessly, and has not freed himself from the meshes 
 of a pernicious superstition. 
 
 And so the doctrine of sin as expressed by 
 the theologians was in many quarters spoken 
 against. The idea of the atonement was rele- 
 gated to the attic of cast off mental furniture, 
 and men loved to think of themselves as mem- 
 bers not of a fallen race but of a race which had 
 from the beginning turned its face toward the 
 heights, and which is certain through the opera- 
 tion of resident forces to reach without risk its 
 far-off and unknowable goal. That was the 
 smug and smiling optimism in which many men 
 were living in the early summer of 1914. Hu- 
 man nature, by general consent, was conceded 
 to be an amiable and lovely thing. The divine 
 was incarnate in every man. Every man, 
 whether he realized it or not, was really on the 
 side of the angels. Progress w^as endless and 
 inevitable. All that is necessary to reach the 
 golden age is to allow men to follow the in- 
 stincts of their own hearts. 
 
 And then there came a crash. The whole 
 earth trembled. The heavens were rolled to- 
 gether as a scroll, and we found ourselves fac- 
 ing not theories but facts. In the twinkling of 
 an eye human nature stood unveiled, and we 
 saw that in man good and evil are mingled. 
 We got a fresh revelation of the hideousness 
 
THE UGLINESS OF SIN 171 
 
 and might of evil. Our eyes were opened to 
 the maHgnity and heinousness of sin. 
 
 War bursts open all the doors of hell, and 
 every one of the devils comes forth to plague 
 and blast mankind. War casts a flash-light on 
 the face of evil, and makes it possible for us to 
 discover its vile and repulsive features. In war 
 what is in the heart comes out, and we stand 
 aghast in the presence of the deeds of which 
 men are capable. Drunkenness, lust, adultery, 
 profanity, lying, slander, hatred, uncleanness, 
 vanity, lasciviousness, envy, jealousy, enmity, 
 wrath, revelling, fury, greed, malice, cruelty, 
 these are sins which push themselves at once to 
 the front. There is no sin mentioned in the 
 Bible which war does not exhibit. There is no 
 form of evil which history records which war 
 does not feed and cause to flourish. Human 
 nature has indeed beautiful traits, but it has 
 also traits which cause the angels to weep. 
 The human heart has many virtues, but it also 
 has many vices. The soul can climb heaven- 
 ward, but it also can descend into the pit. War 
 tears ofif the mask from the face of evil and lets 
 us see what evil is. War leaves no doubt as to 
 the accuracy of the declaration of the ancient 
 writer that the heart is deceitful above all things 
 and desperately wicked. 
 
 The ugliness of sin was first revealed to us in 
 the behaviour of Germany. When she broke 
 her word to Belgium we stood aghast at her 
 perfidy. Theoretically we had known that to 
 break one's word is dishonourable, but the 
 
172 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 deed never looked so damnable as it did when 
 Germany broke her word. The respect we had 
 had for her immediately vanished. She was 
 from that moment onward profane and unclean. 
 We did not realize the heinousness of conceit 
 until we listened to her egotistic ravings. We 
 had considered vanity a harmless frailty, and 
 the habit of bragging an innocent amusement, 
 but when we listened to the " hurrah and halle- 
 lujah " of the German savants we were nauseated 
 and wanted to spew everything German out 
 of our mouth. We had, many of us, grown 
 callous of heart. We were not sensitive to the 
 sufferings of the weak, and the injustices 
 wreaked upon the defenseless, but when Ger- 
 many trampled Belgium under her iron boots 
 we saw that cruelty must be hated. Our souls 
 recoiled from it as a loathsome thing. It was 
 interesting to note how everybody extended the 
 bounds of his vocabulary. Even those of us 
 who had generally spoken of human nature with 
 complimentary phrases, and who were quite 
 sure that the devil had been maligned by the 
 professional custodians of Christian doctrine, 
 now found ourselves calling things inhuman and 
 diabolical, infernal and demoniacal, fiendish and 
 hellish. We had no longer any quarrel with 
 the writers of the imprecatory psalms. We had 
 no dif^culty in believing in hell. The vigorous 
 and lurid language of the Bible was the only 
 language which seemed to fit the case. The 
 pale words of our ineffectual vocabulary wilted 
 on our lips. We began to use the speech of 
 
THE UGLINESS OF SIN 173 
 
 prophets and apostles. When we read in Bern- 
 hardi, "A victorious Germany is the only Ger- 
 many conceivable, and a victorious Germany 
 must not hesitate to use its superior power to 
 pulverize its enemies until their ability to rise 
 again has been made impossible for all time," 
 we felt sure we had found a man who was in 
 league with hell, and when the Liisitauia went 
 down, we found it no longer possible to doubt 
 that we belong to a fallen race. 
 
 But if Germany gave us our first insight into 
 the malignity and awfulness of sin, it was not 
 long before we saw that the very appetites and 
 passions, the vices and delusions of Potsdam are 
 also in us. At home we saw the havoc wrought 
 by innumerable devils. Lust was here, and 
 drunkenness, and greed, and falsehood, and in- 
 justice, and inhumanity, and cruelty, and all the 
 other servants of the monarch of Gehenna. 
 These sins had always flourished here, but war 
 seemed to lift them to a higher power. In the 
 glare of the world battle, we saw as never be- 
 fore the hidcousness of wrong-doing. Vice is 
 indeed a monster of frightful mien, but we see 
 it so often that we grow familiar with it, and 
 it does not lacerate and repel the heart. War 
 by turning vice into wider fields and allowing it 
 to operate on a larger scale, shakes us out of 
 our complacency and inspires in us a godly fear 
 of the enemy of souls. 
 
 Profiteering, for instance, has flourished in 
 America as perhaps nowhere else. The profiteer 
 is the man who is working for his own pocket 
 
174 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 all the time. He is the man who conducts his 
 business without regard for the interests of 
 society. He is concerned not about the men 
 who work for him, but about the size of his 
 profits. We had no name for this villain before 
 the war broke out. We knew he lived in our 
 midst, and there were many who did not like 
 him, but he was a man of influence, and there 
 were multitudes ready to do him homage. The 
 war brought this man into the limelight. He 
 continued to do in war what he had done in 
 peace. He worked for his own pocket all the 
 time. His eye was on the profits. He took 
 advantage of every need of his fellow-men to in- 
 crease his fortune. Other men were dying for 
 their country, he went serenely on piling up the 
 dollars. When we saw him do it we hated him. 
 When in a world that called for sacrifice we 
 saw him counting out his gold, we loathed him. 
 We can never henceforth get rid of that loath- 
 ing. We have found the profiteer out. Never 
 again can he have our praise or even our re- 
 spect. He is an enemy of his country. He is a 
 dangerous man. He is a traitor to humanity. 
 No man has a right, either in peace or war, to 
 work for his own pocket all the time. In time 
 of war we know that a man belongs to his coun- 
 try, and that it is his duty to do what lies in his 
 power to make his country strong and great. 
 That same responsibility rests upon him in time 
 of peace. Money-making is an abomination if 
 the money is made at the expense of society. 
 No man has a right to coin the lives of his work- 
 
THE UGLINESS OF SIN 175 
 
 men into gold for his own selfish purposes. 
 The war profiteer deserved all the contumely 
 he received. The peace profiteer must receive 
 no less. Greed is one of the ugliest of all the 
 devils. Humanity is going to hate it more and 
 more. It is Shakespeare's most devilish char- 
 acter who says: "Put money in your purse," 
 and the man who lives only to put money in his 
 purse will be burned up in the wrath of a world 
 which has learned how to hate him. 
 
 The war has made it clear to us what cruelty 
 is. It is cruel to starve women and children. 
 It is cruel to compel men to work without 
 adequate compensation. It is cruel to deprive 
 men of the just fruits of their labour. It is cruel 
 to crush out the happiness and liberty of vast 
 classes of human beings. All this we saw done 
 in Belgium. It was done before our eyes. It 
 was done by the German government. And 
 when we saw it our souls stood up aflame with 
 indignation. We made a vow that with God's 
 help that outrage should cease. We became 
 invincible in battle because of the fierceness of 
 our heat against the cruelties of Potsdam. It 
 was her manner of waging war which kindled 
 the heart of the world against her. We now 
 know what cruelty is, and we have learned 
 how to hate it. 
 
 Cruelty in peace is no less heinous than 
 cruelty in war. But peace has been filled with 
 cruelty in every nation in Christendom. Women 
 in large numbers have been overworked and 
 underfed, and children have been sacrificed by 
 
176 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 the tens of thousands to the Moloch of greed. 
 Men have in large numbers been robbed of the 
 fruits of their labours, and whole classes have 
 sunk down into paupers and slaves. When 
 society compels any class of its workers to live 
 in unsanitary houses, and to toil for a wage 
 which does not allow fullness of life, and to 
 labour at monotonous tasks seven days in the 
 week, society is on the way to judgment, and 
 no matter how long the doom may be post- 
 poned, it is certain and will be terrible when it 
 arrives. We all saw that it was inhuman that 
 Belgian babies should die for the lack of milk. 
 It is equally clear that American babies must 
 not be allowed to die because their mothers 
 cannot give them proper sustenance. We 
 were stirred by the pictures of the pinched faces 
 of the Belgian school children. Why should we 
 not be stirred by the faces of the boys and girls 
 in our American cities who go to school in the 
 morning without enough to eat? 
 
 If it is cruel to fail to feed men's bodies, it 
 is equally cruel to fail to feed their minds. The 
 war has revealed to us the number of our illiter- 
 ates. The census had often been taken, but we 
 were too busy to study the figures. The draft 
 flaunted them in our face, and we were com- 
 pelled to take note of them. What a condition 
 of affairs in a great Republic — all these millions 
 of men unable to write and to read! In this 
 land of plenty, what a tragedy that so many 
 minds should be permitted to starve. Every 
 one of the nations has sinned against the Al- 
 
THE UGLINESS OF SIN 177 
 
 mighty in its treatment of the weakest of its 
 people. It was not till the British doctors ex- 
 amined the bodies of the young men of Eng- 
 land that English statesmen realized the 
 enormity of their sin against the English race. 
 It was not until the war disclosed the miserable 
 character of the houses in which British la- 
 bourers live that Parliament took up with 
 vigour the great problem of housing the com- 
 mon people. The lesson learned by England is 
 also a lesson for us. The physical examinations 
 in the United States revealed a condition ap- 
 palling to any man capable of reading its 
 significance. We have been outrageously reck- 
 less of health and life. We have left undone 
 the weightier matters of the law. We have 
 neglected men, young men, young men of for- 
 eign birth, young men who have been doing 
 hard work for small pay, without which work 
 our prosperity would have been impossible. 
 Our inhumanity has been appalling. Our un- 
 brotherliness cries to heaven. If we can see 
 cruelty across the Atlantic, surely we can see 
 it at our own doors. Everywhere and always 
 cruelty is hideous. It arouses the indignation 
 of God. Shall it not arouse us? 
 
 It is this sin of neglect which the war has 
 brought most forcibly to the world's attention. 
 According to the Christian religion, it is the sins 
 of omission which are certain to surprise us 
 and overwhelm us on the day of judgment. 
 Men arc generally thoughtful about what they 
 do, they are not so thoughtful of the things they 
 
178 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 do not do. But it is the things we can do and 
 do not do which will rise up to condemn us at 
 the last great day. There were two men who 
 emerged from this war hated above all others. 
 The first was the profiteer, and the second was 
 the slacker. The profiteer did something, but 
 he did it for himself. By the general consent 
 of all healthy-minded men he was a culprit and 
 traitor. The man after him most hated was 
 the slacker, the man who refused to do his bit. 
 In war time we realize that every man is needed. 
 We see that every man can make a contribution 
 to the public weal. When we see this we be- 
 come sensitive to the sins of omission. When 
 every one is needed, the man who holds aloof is 
 the enemy of all. When a man hides his talent 
 in the earth when the nation is crying for the 
 use of it, men feel the need of a punishment as 
 fearful as Jesus portrayed in His solemnizing 
 parable. The teaching of Jesus concerning 
 sins of omission has always seemed to many ex- 
 cessively severe. Sometimes it has been re- 
 pudiated as irrational and atrocious. But in 
 war time this teaching receives the sanction of 
 our conscience. The only reason why we re- 
 pudiate it in the days of peace is because we are 
 not alive then to the criticalness of the contest, 
 and fail to see the magnitude of the issues which 
 are involved. When, however, we are grappling 
 with a power like Germany, and realize that the 
 destiny of the world depends upon the outcome, 
 it is not difficult to see that the man who does 
 nothing is a traitor to the world's cause. The 
 
THE UGLINESS OF Sm 179 
 
 slackers are a species of cowards. They are 
 willing to enjoy the blessings won by the sweat 
 of their brothers. They may have specious 
 theories to justify themselves in the life of aloof- 
 ness, but the majority of their fellows will al- 
 ways hold them in derision and contempt. In 
 the day of battle no man can stand with folded 
 arms. When the bugles of mankind sound the 
 note of advance, woe to the man who stands 
 still. When a great work is to be done, every 
 man must shoulder his share of it. The man 
 who refuses is a shirk. Shirking is one of the 
 most despicable of all the sins. When the Gov- 
 ernment calls men to fight for justice and liberty, 
 the man who begins to make excuses is a slacker. 
 It is a sound instinct deep rooted in the human 
 heart which sets mankind irrevocably against 
 the man who docs nothing. 
 
 If the war has warnings for us against the sins 
 of the profiteer, the savage, and the slacker, it 
 has much also to say to us concerning the sins 
 of the braggart. We have never been noted as 
 a people remarkable for meekness. No one has 
 ever praised us because as a people we have the 
 humble and the contrite heart. There is a 
 great deal of Brag in our disposition. It is our 
 nature to strut. We indulge freely in big talk, 
 and when we compare ourselves with our neigh- 
 bours, we are often foolish and sometimes in- 
 sulting. Visiting strangers are usually im- 
 pressed by our braggadocio. Foreign writers 
 have long exploited our bumptiousness as one 
 of our outstanding national traits. The war has 
 
180 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 taught us the ugHness of megalomania. The 
 Prussian type is hideous to us, and to Europeans 
 the American type is hideous too. Some sins 
 reveal their intrinsic loathsomeness only when 
 seen at a distance. We are too close to our- 
 selves to realize the dimensions of our conceit, 
 but having seen what conceit is in Germany we 
 should take heed to our steps. A bragging 
 people can never win the world's esteem. A 
 strutting nation can never bring the world to 
 Christ. A Republic with a swollen head can 
 never lead humanity into the golden age. 
 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 
 earth. If we wish our Republic to influence 
 the thought and shape the conduct of mankind, 
 then we must walk humbly with God. Christ 
 asked men to learn of Him, and He gave as the 
 reason why they ought to learn of Him the fact 
 that He was lowly of heart. He knew the in- 
 nate vanity of the human soul. He under- 
 stood how all history had been a tragedy be- 
 cause of the pride and arrogance of men. The 
 love of domination was in His eyes abominable. 
 He told His disciples to imitate the humility of 
 a little child. The war has revealed to us the 
 hideousness of conceit. It has shown us the 
 fate of a people which deluded itself with the 
 idea that it was God's chosen race. Nations 
 are not chosen to rant or to strut. They are 
 not ordained to be cock of the walk, or to rob 
 their neighbours. They are anointed to imitate 
 the example of Jesus, and to count it their 
 supreme joy to serve others. 
 
THE UGLINESS OF SIN 181 
 
 Here then we find the war confirming Bibhcal 
 teaching in regard to sin. It is a fact, as the 
 Scripture says, that sin is a reproach to any 
 people. Sin is repulsive, hideous, loathsome. 
 The Bible says so. The war said. Amen ! Sin 
 is a mighty and destructive force in the universe. 
 To overcome it we must put on the whole 
 armour of God. 
 
XV 
 
 THE MISCHIEF-WORKING POWER OF 
 ALCOHOL 
 
 ONE of the outstanding phenomena of 
 the opening months of the great war 
 was the swiftness with which the great 
 governments branded Alcohol as a deadly foe. 
 The men on whose shoulders had been rolled 
 the fearful burden of national defense all feared 
 alcohol as the foremost and most insidious of 
 their enemies. With a unanimity which was 
 remarkable, they believed that the army which 
 drank the least would be the army which would 
 win. Statesmen like Mr. Lloyd George said 
 amazing things about the power and deadliness 
 of drink. Generals in proclamations to their 
 soldiers used the language of teetotalers and 
 prohibitionists. Scientists of international repu- 
 tation expressed their convictions in terms which 
 gave delight to the Woman's Christian Temper- 
 ance Union, Kings and Princes and Lords and 
 Ladies gave up their wine and brandy to set a 
 good example to the soldiers. It seemed strange 
 to hear the lofty and mighty ones saying things 
 which humble folk had been saying amid jeers 
 for more than a generation. It had often 
 
 182 
 
THE POWER OF ALCOHOL 183 
 
 seemed as though the wise and prudent cared 
 nothing for temperance reform, and as though 
 opposition to the Hquor traffic was confined in 
 most countries to babes. But when war blew 
 her bugle, and every nation felt summoned to 
 do her best, there was an instinctive revelation 
 of the attitude of the human heart to humanity's 
 age-long foe — Alcohol. For generations the 
 leading nations of Christendom had had a vulture 
 feeding on their vitals. For long years the use 
 of alcohol had kept fountains of misery flowing. 
 In every country the liquor traffic had fattened 
 on the ruin of the souls and homes of men. On 
 both sides of the Atlantic, all the social and in- 
 dustrial problems had been made more intricate 
 and vexing by the hierarchy of Drink. The 
 trail of the liquor serpent was over the world's 
 life. Distillers and brewers counted their gains 
 by the millions, and carried on a ceaseless 
 propaganda sufficiently adroit to deceive even 
 the elect. In the columns of influential news- 
 papers there appeared from time to time 
 editorials and contributions from men of distinc- 
 tion, setting forth the failure of all restrictive 
 liquor legislation, and calling attention to the 
 hygienic values of whiskey and wine and beer. 
 Enemies of the saloon were always lampooned 
 and ridiculed, and it was made to appear that 
 every effort to curb the frightful ravages of 
 Drink was a direct blow at human liberty, and a 
 surrender of the fundamental principles of our 
 Republic. Never has the world been so success- 
 fully bullied and cowed as by the men who have 
 
184 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 made fortunes in the manufacture and sale of 
 intoxicating drinks. 
 
 But when the world was suddenly summoned 
 to put forth every ounce of her energy for the 
 accomplishment of a stupendous task, there was 
 a frank confession on the part of many who had 
 hitherto kept silent that alcohol is a peril, and 
 that men when they wish to do their best must 
 let it alone. 
 
 As soon as our own Government entered the 
 war, immediate steps were taken to safeguard 
 our sailors and soldiers from the peril of drink. 
 Not only were the old moral agencies strength- 
 ened, but new ones were created, for we said: 
 What shall it profit America if she does help win 
 the war if after the war we have a vast multitude 
 of men who have been degraded and ruined by 
 drink? The most drastic legislation was at once 
 enacted, and it was made a crime for any one 
 to sell or to give a soldier or sailor a glass of in- 
 toxicating liquor. This was indeed radical. It 
 was a bold assault on personal liberty. It was 
 a severe curtailment of the right which many 
 had felt to be an inalienable part of America's 
 inheritance. But the Government did not hesi- 
 tate to deprive our soldiers and sailors of their 
 traditional privileges. A critical hour had ar- 
 rived and the Government confessed that Amer- 
 icans cannot be relied on when a great work is 
 to be done unless they leave liquor alone. By 
 its legislation our Republic clearly declared that 
 alcoholic drinks are injurious and that it lies 
 within the province of Government to withhold 
 
THE POWER OF ALCOHOL 185 
 
 from men whatever obviously subtracts from 
 their strength and incapacitates them for ren- 
 dering to their country their largest service. 
 
 This is a far-reaching confession. If the Gov- 
 ernment can rightfully prohibit soldiers and 
 sailors from drinking, then why has it not the 
 right to prohibit every class of our population? 
 Why should soldiers and sailors be discriminated 
 against? If the right to drink alcohol is one of 
 the rights of an American freeman, how dare 
 our Government take from him this right? If 
 she is justified in curtailing the privileges of the 
 men who are fighting for her preservation, 
 surely she has the right to curtail the privileges 
 of the men who work in her factories and shops, 
 in her cities and on the farms. And if alcohol 
 is such a menace in time of war, it must be 
 equally perilous in time of peace. If in war it 
 reduces a man's efficiency, will it not do the same 
 in peace? If in war it is the cause of demoral- 
 ization which is intolerable, why should we sub- 
 mit to the demoralization which it brings in 
 peace? A nation which is wise will do her 
 utmost to keep the human physique at its best. 
 Government owes it to the people to safeguard 
 in every way the physical, mental and industrial 
 life of the population, and if alcohol works havoc 
 with the lives and homes of men, then a Govern- 
 ment is recreant to its trust which in time of 
 peace allows the liquor traffic to work its will. 
 
 It was discovered at the very start that no 
 alcohol could be allowed anywhere near any of 
 our cantonments and camps. Commanding of- 
 
186 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 fleers saw this, and said it publicly and often. 
 Army discipline becomes impossible in the 
 neighbourhood of saloons. Generals who had 
 never been prohibitionists became believers in 
 prohibition after a few months' experience. 
 
 A drunken man is always a pitiable sight, no 
 matter who he is or how he is dressed. But 
 many of us can pass a drunken man by without 
 feeling a trace of sorrow. He does not belong 
 to us. We do not know him. He is a part of 
 another stratum of society. With careless eye 
 we pass by on the other side. But with a man 
 in uniform it is different. His uniform declares 
 that he is a servant of the United States. He is 
 in service at a critical and momentous time. He 
 is called to duty when his country has special 
 need of him. She needs him at his best. When 
 we see this man reeling through the street, or 
 seated on a curbstone in a drunken stupor, or 
 when we hear him howling like a savage, and 
 see him picking quarrels with every passer-by, 
 we are overwhelmed with a sense of mingled 
 shame and indignation. This man belongs to 
 us. He is related to us. He and we have com- 
 mon responsibilities. He owes it to us to be a 
 man. When he puts an enemy into his mouth 
 to steal away his brains, we feel personally out- 
 raged. He has wronged not only himself but 
 us, and not us only but all the people of the 
 land. No nation can win victories with drunken 
 men. The flag can be held high only by men 
 in complete possession of their powers. Many 
 of us who never were shocked by the spectacle 
 
THE POWEE OF ALCOHOL 187 
 
 of a drunken man have been pierced through 
 the heart by the sight of a drunken sailor or 
 soldier. He seemed almost to belong to our own 
 family. He was our brother, and his lamen- 
 table plight filled us with shame and sorrow. 
 
 We went into the war to win, and we could 
 not win with men who were intoxicated. We 
 needed sober men and we needed a lot of them. 
 We needed more of them than we could get our 
 eyes on. We made an investigation. We 
 found that thousands of men were employed in 
 distilleries and breweries and saloons. The ag- 
 gregate turned out to be 749,000. We had 
 never taken time to think of these men before. 
 They lay outside the field of our immediate in- 
 terest. But now we were eager to make use 
 of our entire man-strength, and the size of this 
 army of Americans engaged in the liquor traffic 
 appalled us. They were doing nothing to help 
 win the war. On the other hand, they were do- 
 ing much to hold us back from victory. The 
 liquor traffic stood before us in a new light. It 
 is a traffic which wastes the lives not only of 
 the men whom it makes drunkards, but it wastes 
 the lives of those who carry it on. They add 
 nothing to the moral wealth of humanity. They 
 make no contril)ution to the brain power or the 
 heart life of the Republic. All this became clear 
 to us in the war. Never again will it be possible 
 for us with quiet heart to allow three-quarters 
 of a million Americans to squander their lives in 
 the liquor business. 
 
 As the war proceeded we thought more and 
 
188 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 more of food. Europe was on the verge of 
 starvation. The United States was called on 
 for help. It became necessary for us to take 
 stock of our resources. We had seldom done 
 it before. We always knew that in Uncle 
 Sam's house there was bread and to spare. But 
 with a hungry world knocking at our door it 
 became necessary to count the number of our 
 loaves. We had to become economical. Even 
 after various sacrifices, it was discovered that 
 there was need of still greater ones. It was at 
 this point that we scrutinized with wide open 
 eyes the bushels of our grains and fruits ; and to 
 our consternation we discovered what a wastage 
 of food materials there is in drink. When the 
 figures were set before us we were at first un- 
 believing. It did not seem possible that so 
 many thousands of tons of precious foodstuffs 
 should be consumed every year to satisfy the in- 
 satiable appetite for drink. 
 
 Here then was a new indictment against the 
 liquor traffic. We had known that it reduced 
 the efficiency of soldiers and sailors. We had 
 seen the havoc it wrought in shipyards and 
 munition factories, in mills and in mines. We 
 had been shamed and disgraced by the spectacle 
 of drunken sailors and soldiers, but now we saw 
 that the rumseller is the thief who takes away 
 from hungry mouths the bread. We had heard 
 occasionally of children going to bed hungry 
 because their father spent all his earnings at 
 the corner saloon. We had seen, now and then, 
 the pallid faces of women who were under- 
 
THE rOWEE OF ALCOHOL 189 
 
 nourished because their husbands did not fur- 
 nish them enough to eat. But the tragedy took 
 on a new meaning when Belgium stood at our 
 door crying. A few women or a few groups of 
 children had not been sufficient to tear our 
 heart, but when a whole nation stood at our 
 door beseeching us for bread, and we discovered 
 that we could not give her as much as she 
 needed because the brewers and distillers 
 wanted it for themselves, the awful waste of the 
 liquor traffic Hashed on us with a new hideous- 
 ness, and we began to realize what an awful 
 price a nation pays for drink. When Congress 
 passed the law prohibiting the sale of distilled 
 liquor after July 1, 1019, and also the manu- 
 facture and sale of wine and beer after the same 
 date until the end of demobilization, it was the 
 most radical legislation which our Republic had 
 known; but the people were heartily behind it. 
 The war from the first day on had worked 
 steadily for prohibition. The war was a school 
 in which we have learned many lessons, and 
 one of the most important of them all is the 
 mischief-working power of alcohol. The world 
 is increasingly insistent on efficiency, and we 
 cannot have it with alcohol. The world is 
 enthusiastic on the conservation of labour, and 
 this is impossible so long as we have alcohol. 
 The people of the United States are increas- 
 ingly sick of the poverty and woe of our great 
 cities. It has been demonstrated that a large 
 proportion of this woe and poverty is due to 
 alcohol. There is a growing civic conscience. 
 
190 WHAT THE \YAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 We are not going to submit forever to the dis- 
 grace of the incompetent and corrupt city gov- 
 ernments of the past. Politics have been vile 
 largely because of the saloon. The saloon is 
 the rendezvous of the assassins of Democracy. 
 It is the loafing place for those who regard 
 neither God nor man. 
 
 It was a great day when Americans got their 
 eyes fairly focussed on the saloon. We now 
 know what it is, and we know what is behind it. 
 We know the power and the program of the 
 distillers and brewers. We know the national- 
 ity of many of them, and their iniquitous schem- 
 ings have been brought to the light. Nothing 
 that has happened within the last two years can 
 surpass in importance the disclosure which has 
 been made of the character and policy of the 
 Liquor Hierarchy. It had done its work in the 
 darkness, but the darkness has been banished. 
 We now know who these rum magnates are, and 
 how they do their work. 
 
 It is because of this revelation of the temper 
 and methods of the rum oligarchy that we now 
 have national prohibition. Prohibition was com- 
 ing, but probably it would not have come in our 
 generation had it not been for the war. The 
 war opened our eyes with a swiftness which 
 would otherwise have been impossible. Most 
 of us had been lukewarm on the subject of tem- 
 perance reform. We did not know the extent 
 and might of the liquor traffic, nor did we care. 
 We did not know how many Germans were 
 growing rich by the demoralization of America's 
 
THE POWEE OF ALCOHOL 191 
 
 social and political life, nor did we care. We 
 did not know that there were in the country 
 300,000 saloons and liquor stores. We did not 
 dream that there were 236 distilleries and 992 
 breweries. War turned the flash-light on all 
 these, and they stood out clear and vivid, never 
 to be forgotten. We did not know the extent 
 to which these rum kings had bribed and brow- 
 beaten legislators. We did not know the ties 
 which bind the press and the liquor traffic to- 
 gether. It was fortunate that Congress was 
 able to compel a famous newspaper proprietor 
 in Washington City to confess that his paper 
 had been financed by the brewers. Never 
 again can that man write convincing editorials 
 on the blessings and virtues of beer. The eyes 
 of the nation are at last open. They were 
 opened by the war. In order to go over the 
 top in the great war it was necessary to put the 
 liquor traffic in chains. The people will never 
 forget that America is bound to go over the top 
 in peace, and to do it she must abolish the 
 saloon. 
 
 That is what she has decided to do. The 
 greatest event in the war, as future ages will see 
 it, was the passage by the greatest of the world's 
 republics of a Prohibition Amendment to its 
 constitution. No such step was ever taken be- 
 fore in the history of the world by a free people. 
 It was not taken thoughtlessly, or in a moment 
 of excitement. It was the deliberate action of 
 a thoughtful people at last in possession of the 
 facts. 
 
192 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 The greatness of the step has been hidden 
 from many by the hquor propaganda still carried 
 on in many of our papers. The old fallacies and 
 lies are still being repeated, but they will avail 
 nothing. The liquor traffic will not lie down 
 and give up the ghost without a struggle. It 
 will rave and rage for many a year. Like the 
 demon spoken of in the New Testament, it will 
 tear the victim before it comes out. But come 
 out it will. The people have decreed it. The 
 people will not go back. Dr. Arthur Dean 
 Bevan, president of the American IMedical 
 Association, spoke for the sane and informed 
 section of the American people when he said: 
 *' When drink has once been done away with it 
 could be no more resurrected after the war than 
 could slavery. There can be no doubt of the 
 injurious effects of alcoholic drinks on both the 
 physical and mental well-being of our popula- 
 tion. We must organize the entire nation in 
 the most efificient way possible, and this cannot 
 be done without eliminating drink." 
 
 All the arguments in defense of the liquor 
 traffic are fallacious. When the hirelings of the 
 brewers write in the papers that national pro- 
 hibition violates the laws of nature, they refer 
 to the nature of the German brewers. When 
 they say that it destroys the liberty of people in 
 their homes, they forget that it is liberty which 
 has been destroyed in many homes lo these 
 many years. We want more liberty in America, 
 and that is why the liquor traffic must go. So 
 long as it remains thousands of our people must 
 
THE POWER OF ALCOHOL 193 
 
 be slaves. We want all our women to be free. 
 But how can a woman be free who has a drunken 
 husband? We want our children to be free, but 
 how can they be free to play in safety with 
 saloons on every corner through whose open 
 doors there may reel at any moment a man 
 demonized by rum? We want release from 
 some of the burdens which the saloon has im- 
 posed upon us. We want to get rid of some of 
 the chains which the brewers have forged 
 around our wrists. We want to get out of the 
 prison into which the lords of Drink have thrust 
 us. No nation can be free which is lorded over 
 by an oligarchy of distillers and brewers. The 
 world is enjoying a new birth of freedom. We 
 are going to set ourselves free from the saloon. 
 When it is said that all prohibitory legisla- 
 tion only makes violators and evaders of the 
 law, the reply is that this is a confession that 
 the men who now deal in liquor kave no regard 
 for the expressed will of the people. Wc knew 
 that before. It is advantageous to have it 
 frankly confessed by the culprits themselves. 
 The Rum Hierarchy do not know what law is. 
 Its conscience is thoroughly Prussian, all legis- 
 lative enactments are only scraps of paper. Let 
 no one imagine that when under prohibition 
 liquor dealers become violators and evaders of 
 the law they are doing any new thing. From 
 the beginning they have trampled every law un- 
 der their feet, in every community in which 
 sentiment was not strong enough to make law- 
 lessness on their part dangerous. These men 
 
194 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 who talk about the futility of any attempt to 
 enforce the expressed will of the people are not 
 true Americans. They are traitors to the prin- 
 ciples of democracy, and the country would be 
 better ofT without them. Nor is it true, as is 
 often said, that the liquor question is merely a 
 local matter. It is a national matter. We all 
 saw its national character during the war. We 
 shall not lose sight of it now that peace has 
 come. To win the war it was necessary for the 
 entire nation to put its foot on drink; it must 
 keep its foot there forever. 
 
XVI 
 THE CERTAINTY OF HARVEST 
 
 IT is a memorable saying of St. Paul: " Be 
 not deceived : God is not mocked : for what- 
 soever a man sovveth, that shall he also 
 reap." The law of retribution is written in 
 vivid characters across the pages of the Bible. 
 From first to last the Scriptures assert that God 
 is mercifiul and gracious, keeping mercy for 
 thousands, but that He will by no means clear 
 the guilty, and will visit the iniquity of the 
 fathers upon the children and upon the chil- 
 dren's children unto the third and to the fourth 
 generation. Prophets and apostles all saw with 
 great distinctness that the soul that sins shall 
 die, and that only fools make a mock at sin. 
 
 The war has taught us that what the Bible 
 says about the punishment of sin is true. It has 
 confirmed the idea of Paul that we are under the 
 law of seed growth, and. that the character of 
 the harvest depends entirely on the character of 
 the seed we sow. We have seen in the years 
 of war appalling illustrations of what Christ 
 meant by Gehenna, and not soon will it be easy 
 for thoughtful men to make light of the Chris- 
 tian doctrine of retribution. 
 
 195 
 
196 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 Science agrees with Christianity in its empha- 
 sis on the inexorableness of law. The concep- 
 tion of a universe governed according to law is 
 the dominant scientific idea of our age. No 
 realm in the physical universe is lawless. Of 
 this science is certain ; and the Christian believer 
 is equally certain that the spiritual universe is 
 also governed according to law. Persons as 
 well as atoms are in the grip of laws they cannot 
 escape. Groups of men as well as masses of 
 matter are bound by bonds which cannot be 
 broken. There are principles built into the 
 physical universe which cannot be defied with- 
 out confusion; there are principles embedded in 
 the structure of human society which must be 
 obeyed if mankind is to escape disaster. Science 
 has made it impossible for us to believe that any 
 event is without a cause. She will not allow us 
 to think of any phenomenon which is not related 
 to something which went before it. When 
 therefore a great war lays waste the earth, we 
 cannot think of it as coming either by accident 
 or by chance. Both of these have been ban- 
 ished from the minds of men who are abreast 
 with the times. When the earth is darkened 
 at noon by an eclipse we know how to explain 
 it. When a huge shadow falls across the heart 
 of mankind we are sure there must be an ex- 
 planation. When the earth is deluged with a 
 flood we find out the reasons for it; when the 
 earth is swept by a deluge of blood and tears 
 we know this also must be according to law. 
 There was a time when the Black Plague swept 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF HAETEST 197 
 
 millions of Europeans into the grave. Science 
 had no rest until she had found the cause of the 
 plague. War has recently swept eight millions 
 of men into the grave, and the reason for it 
 must be sought for, and when found pondered. 
 We have during four years looked upon a won- 
 derful spectacle — a whole continent bristling 
 with armed men. If we should see an entire 
 continent suddenly bring forth a vast harvest 
 of briars and thorns, we should know at once 
 that it was because of what men had put into 
 the soil. When we see a continent bringing 
 forth a harvest of twenty-five million armed 
 men, covering the fields and the mountainsides, 
 we are certain that some sower has been sowing 
 seed, and that the howitzers and bayonets are 
 of the nature of a harvest. 
 
 Here then is a fact to begin with. This war 
 did not happen by chance. It was not a bad 
 streak of luck. It was not a fortuitous con- 
 course of steel atoms. It was not the hap- 
 hazard stumbling of a gawky world into a ditch. 
 The war came according to law. The seed had 
 been planted and the war came up. 
 
 The war was not an accident. The nations 
 were not climbing the slippery slope of the 
 Matterhorn of civilization, the foot of one of 
 them accidentally slipping, and dragging with 
 it all the others to perdition. This war was not 
 a mere slip of the tongue or of the foot. The 
 war was the effect of a cause. Certain seed had 
 been planted and cultivated, and the harvest 
 was the war. 
 
198 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 The war was not due to fate. There was a 
 superstition current in the ancient world to the 
 effect that all things are in the grip of a law 
 which compels men to be what they are and 
 events to happen as they do. According to this 
 superstition nobody is responsible for what he 
 does, and nobody can be justly censured for 
 what comes to pass. It is a superstition which 
 still lingers in circles which are belated. It has 
 been taught in high places that this war was an 
 irrepressible conflict, a tragedy which human 
 wisdom and foresight could not have pre- 
 vented. It is the foppery of certain schools of 
 shallow thinkers that when we are sick in for- 
 tune, our disasters are due to the sun, the moon 
 and the stars, " as if we were villains by neces- 
 sity; fools by heavenly compulsion; and all that 
 we are evil in by a divine thrusting on." Most 
 of us have outgrown this primitive form of 
 folly. The war was not due to fate. It was the 
 creation of men endowed with moral freedom. 
 Men by their deliberate choice sowed the fields 
 of Europe with certain seeds, and there came up 
 at last this tragedy. 
 
 Nor was the war the cunningly devised in- 
 strument of the Almighty which He thrust into 
 the hand of mankind at the beginning of August, 
 1914. The Father of Jesus Christ does not 
 thrust the sword into the hands of nations 
 ambitious for a larger place in the sun. It is 
 not His desire to build up in men gentle and 
 loving dispositions by exercising them in the 
 art of human butchery. Jabbing bayonets into 
 
THE CERTAmXY OF HAEVEST 199 
 
 the abdomens of boys, putting out their eyes, 
 shattering their jaws, tearing off their legs and 
 arms, crushing their skulls, strangling them with 
 poisonous gases, scalding them with liquid fire, 
 drowning them in the ocean, blowing to tatters 
 the bodies of women and children — these things 
 are not planned in heaven. They are not a part 
 of the curriculum presented by the Infinite 
 Mercy for the education of mankind. They are 
 the harvest of a certain type of planting. They 
 are the fruit which comes in the autumn as the 
 result of work done in the spring. 
 
 The only rational explanation of the war is 
 that it was retribution. It was the penalty of 
 violated law. Nations had long trampled on 
 the principles of the Almighty, and the result 
 was that the world was beaten with many 
 stripes. Nations had defied the revealed will 
 of the Eternal, and for this they were cast into 
 hell. Some of us had grown facetious over the 
 language of the New Testament, concerning the 
 weeping and the gnashing of teeth. We put 
 down all that was said concerning the outer 
 darkness and the fire as poetic and figurative, 
 pictures of the oriental fancy with no grim reali- 
 ties corresponding to them. The war has 
 taught us that the New Testament figures of 
 speech stand for something. God is not 
 mocked. He refuses to clear the guilty. It is 
 evident that whatever a nation sows, that it 
 also reaps. It has been demonstrated before 
 our eyes that one kind of sowing leads to cor- 
 ruption, and that another kind leads to life. 
 
200 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 We can confirm the testimony of an ancient ob- 
 server, and say with him that " the wicked shall 
 be turned into hell, and all the nations that for- 
 get God." We can no longer doubt that there 
 is retribution for nations as well as individuals, 
 for we have seen many nations slide into 
 Gehenna, and the smoke of their torment has 
 gone up before our eyes day and night, Dante 
 never painted pictures so horrible as the great 
 war has painted on the retina of the world's eye 
 forever. 
 
 "Whence come wars?" asks a New Testa- 
 ment writer, and he answers it in a way which 
 can never be improved. " Ye lust and have 
 not: ye kill, and are jealous and cannot obtain." 
 In other words, men fight because they are 
 greedy. Other men have what they themselves 
 desire to possess, and they attempt to take it 
 from them by force. Steam and electricity 
 opened up the whole world for commercial ex- 
 ploitation. The steamship and the railroad laid 
 Africa and Asia at the feet of the leading na- 
 tions of Europe. These nations were seized 
 with a great desire to cut up these continents 
 and use them for their own ends. Great Britain 
 and France and Holland took possession of 
 large districts in eastern Asia, and later on Ger- 
 many came in demanding her share. France 
 and Great Britain, Belgium and Italy took 
 possession of large districts in Africa. Ger- 
 many came in demanding her share. Africa 
 and Asia were luscious melons. The time had 
 come to cut them, and every great nation 
 
THE CEETAINTY OF HAEVEST 201 
 
 wanted a huge slice. When the sHces were dis- 
 tributed, Germany was not satisfied. She had 
 succeeded in grasping only a few of the scraps. 
 All the nations were rivals, eager for markets, 
 hungry for concessions. They were jealous of 
 one another. They did not trust one another. 
 At first simply competitors, they degenerated 
 into foes. To safeguard their interests they felt 
 it necessary to support huge armies and navies. 
 Every nation was armed to the teeth. The 
 policy of armed peace became the policy of all. 
 But this led to a rivalry in armaments. Each 
 nation tried to surpass its neighbours in the ex- 
 tent and efificiency of its military and naval 
 equipment. The masses of steel and explosives 
 were annually increased. In 1913 Germany was 
 spending on her army and navy $400,225,000. 
 France was spending on her army and navy 
 $404,325,000. Great Britain was spending $244,- 
 000,000 on her navy and $141,000,000 on her 
 army — $385,000,000 on both. Russia was spend- 
 ing on her army and navy $513,000,000, while 
 the United States was spending on navy and 
 army $242,273,000. Five Christian nations 
 were spending in time of peace over two billions 
 of dollars for the avowed purpose of preventing 
 war. The nations moved to and fro in heavy 
 armour. This armour irritated the nation that 
 wore it, and exasperated all of its neighbours. 
 Taxpayers grew increasingly restless, and the 
 world groaned under a burden too heavy to be 
 borne. 
 
 In order to quiet the world's mind and 
 
202 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 make the common people submissive to their 
 lot, the pedants got to work and devised a 
 theory which asserted that armed peace is ac- 
 cording to the divine intention, that universal 
 military drill is the best of all educations, and 
 that there is nothing so beautiful as a nation in 
 arms ! It was laid down as axiomatic that gov- 
 ernment is founded on force, that war is not 
 only necessary but beautiful, and that being 
 both noble and necessary it is the supreme busi- 
 ness of the State to prepare for it. This is the 
 philosophy of militarism. It was held and 
 loudly proclaimed by powerful groups in every 
 one of the European nations, and also in our 
 own, but nowhere was it taught with such 
 passionate enthusiasm, or received with such 
 general approbation as in Germany. The Ger- 
 man mind is nothing if not thorough, and seiz- 
 ing the primary assumptions of the militaristic 
 philosophy, she dared to carry them out to their 
 logical conclusions. The classic of Militarism 
 is Bernhardi's " World Power or Downfall." 
 Once accept his assumptions, and there is no 
 escape from his conclusions. 
 
 It was in the summer of 1895 that I made my 
 first trip to Europe, spending a hundred days in 
 visiting ten different countries. For the first 
 time I had my eyes opened to the condition of 
 Europe, and found myself face to face with the 
 militaristic philosophy and practice. An Intense 
 interest in the whole problem was at once 
 created in me, and my fears were deeply aroused. 
 I felt I had gotten my eyes on the open sore 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF HARVEST 203 
 
 of the world. I entered with zest upon a pro- 
 longed study of European politics. Militarism 
 in all its phases became from that year the field 
 of my constant thought and study. From time 
 to time I crossed the Atlantic, making fresh 
 observations, and extending my investigations. 
 The further I went the greater my alarm. The 
 schemings of the rings of munition makers, the 
 frenzied tactics of the Navy Leagues, the 
 poisoned propaganda carried on by unscrupu- 
 lous journalists, the wild talk of insolent jingoes 
 in every capital, all these pointed to a storm 
 which threatened to overwhelm the world. The 
 sordid selfishness of the whole European 
 political life was appalling, and the rottenness 
 of the entire military system was disgusting. 
 Europe was in the clutches of a giant which I 
 felt certain was sweeping her toward destruc- 
 tion. In 1012 it was my privilege to spend 
 eight months in Europe, giving me unusual op- 
 portunities for observation and reflection. I 
 came home early in 1013 with a heavy heart. 
 In a lecture recounting the experiences of my 
 trip, and delivered on various occasions in dif- 
 ferent parts of the country, I said this: 
 
 "As has been my custom on all my former 
 trips to Europe through twenty years, I gave 
 chief attention to the problem of militarism. I 
 have studied it now face to face, in every coun- 
 try of Europe, and I came home this time more 
 convinced than ever that modern militarism is 
 materialism in its deadliest incarnation, that it 
 is commercialism in its most voracious and piti- 
 
204 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 less development, that it is atheism in its most 
 seductive and devastating form, that it is the 
 most colossal of all extant humbugs, the most 
 gigantic swindle since Tetzel sold indulgences. 
 I am persuaded that the militaristic hierarchy 
 is the most treacherous and despotic and 
 dangerous enemy that has lorded it over the 
 nations since the power of Rome was shattered, 
 and that unless the Christian Church puts on 
 the whole armour of God and goes out united to 
 make war upon this Goliath that struts in 
 armour plate and boasts of bayonets and lyddite 
 shells, it renounces the mission to which it has 
 been called, and surrenders its position as 
 Christ's anointed leader and Saviour of man- 
 kind." A year later the war came. 
 
 The great war, then, was the result of a 
 policy, and that policy was the product of a 
 philosophy — a set of conceptions, a system of 
 ideas, which men had been industriously sowing 
 through more than a generation. The ideas 
 were born in hearts that were greedy and selfish. 
 They were promulgated by men whose eyes had 
 been blinded by the god of this world. Why 
 should we wonder that Europe was at last over- 
 whelmed? How was it possible for her to 
 escape? The marvel is that she escaped so 
 long. The fact that the war did not come till 
 1914 is another of the many exhibitions of the 
 amazing patience of God. 
 
 But persistent and outrageous defiance of the 
 laws of justice and of mercy will, unless re- 
 pented of, bring down at last the fire of heaven. 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF HARVEST 205 
 
 " Though the mills of God grind slowly, 
 Yet they grind exceeding small : 
 Though with patience He stands waiting, 
 With exactness grinds He all." 
 
 The man who stands to-day looking out across 
 a devastated world can exclaim in the words of 
 Paul : " Behold then the goodness and severity 
 of God: toward them that fell severity; but to- 
 ward thee, God's goodness, if thou continue in 
 his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut 
 off." 
 
 We are living in a moral universe. We can- 
 not do as we please. We cannot sin with im- 
 punity. Nations cannot listen to false guides 
 and teachers without falling into the ditch. 
 The harvest depends on the seed. We are un- 
 der the government of a God of mercy, and 
 therefore He will not allow a soldier to be 
 placed on every peasant's back. He is a God 
 of justice, and therefore He will not allow the 
 proceeds of men's labour to be squandered in- 
 definitely on the elaborate apparatus of blood. 
 He is a God of good will, and therefore He will 
 not permit nations to strut in shining armour, 
 or to exert so-called diplomatic pressure on 
 their neighbours by compelling them to look 
 into the mouths of guns. He is a friend of all 
 men, and His purpose is to build up a reign of 
 love, and therefore He will not forever tolerate 
 the demoralizing policy of incessant military 
 drill, or give His blessing to a nation which 
 prides itself on being a nation in arms. " I hate 
 your military paraphernalia. I take no delight 
 
206 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 in your army and navy maneuvers. Take away 
 from me the noise of your target practice. Let 
 justice roll down as waters, and righteousness 
 as a mighty stream." This is what the Eternal 
 has been saying. He that hath ears to hear, let 
 him hear. 
 
 But how can we escape the bondage and peril 
 of armed peace? There is only one way of 
 escape, and that is through world organization. 
 The war has demonstrated the utter helpless- 
 ness of unarmed nations in the midst of nations 
 which are armed. If any nations are to be 
 armed, then all nations must be armed. There 
 should be no arms except those which are in the 
 hands of an international police. Nations must 
 learn how to reason together. Nations must 
 listen to the words of Jesus. Nations must have 
 the law of Christ written on their hearts. 
 Christ is not simply a Galilean peasant, with 
 sweet suggestions and bits of mild advice. The 
 government of the world is on His shoulder. 
 He is the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. 
 His words are commands. They who trample 
 on them are doomed. His will is a stone. He 
 that falls on this stone shall be broken to pieces, 
 and on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter 
 him as dust. 
 
XVII 
 A TOO LATE 
 
 OF all the parables of Jesus none is more 
 vivid and picturesque than the parable 
 of the Ten Virgins. Once heard it can 
 never be forgotten. It sticks to the mind like 
 a burr. The artists have always loved it. From 
 the beginning they have delighted to put it on 
 the canvas, and to spread it on the walls of 
 churches and cathedrals. In the middle ages 
 it formed one of the most popular of all the re- 
 ligious plays. There was no audience which 
 was not solemnized by the fate of the foolish 
 girls who lost their chance to see the wedding. 
 The parable was told nineteen hundred years 
 ago and it has not yet lost its grip upon the 
 imagination. Its colours have not faded. Its 
 oriental form does not mar it. Our marriage 
 customs have departed widely from those of 
 ancient Palestine, but this parable with all its 
 foreign imagery seems to be a part of the world 
 in which we live. The customs and stage 
 settings have changed, but the human actors 
 remain the same. We no longer have the 
 Palestinian processions and torches, but we 
 have the same human impulses and frailties, and 
 we are in need of the same old lessons. 
 
 207 
 
208 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 The parable needs no explanation. That 
 shut door needs no commentary. That plead- 
 ing cry of the disappointed maidens demands 
 no emphasizing word. The idea which the 
 parable drives deep into the heart is that a door 
 once shut may refuse to open, that we are liv- 
 ing in a universe in which it is possible to be 
 everlastingly too late. 
 
 This lesson is written large in the New Testa- 
 ment, and it is vivid also in the Old. In the 
 first book of the Bible stands the old story of 
 Esau and his birthright and the mess of 
 pottage, and no other Bible story has gotten a 
 more tenacious grip on the world's heart than 
 that one. Hebrew fathers through successive 
 generations repeated that story to their chil- 
 dren, warning them of the peril of losing some- 
 thing which they never can regain. Nearly two 
 thousand years after the time of Esau, his figure 
 was still fresh to the imagination of the Jewish 
 people, and a Christian writer of the first cen- 
 tury, desiring to warn church members of the 
 peril of losing an opportunity which will not 
 return, holds up before them Esau knocking at 
 a door which refuses to open. Esau longed for 
 his lost birthright, but could not get it. He 
 sought for a place of repentance, but though he 
 sought it with tears, it could not be found. Re- 
 ligion has but one language — " Now is the ac- 
 ceptable time, now is the day of salvation." 
 Prophets and apostles and our Lord Himself all 
 unite in warning us against the humiliation and 
 loss which befalls those who by the neglect of 
 
A TOO LATE 209 
 
 present duties come up at last to a crisis for 
 which they are not prepared. There is no 
 tragedy more awesome than the tragedy of the 
 shut door. 
 
 The parable of the Virgins is kept fresh and 
 up to date by the daily experience of mankind. 
 We cannot forget it because life repeats it in 
 constantly changing forms. Each generation is 
 obliged to learn the lesson afresh, that there is 
 such a thing as a too late. To each one of us, 
 sooner or later, the solemn lesson is imparted. 
 We start out in life heedless and jubilant, con- 
 fident that we are able to do all that our heart 
 desires. The days are long and the years are 
 interminable, and we have no fear of a closing 
 door. Multitudes of doors stand wide open, and 
 we can enter the door of our choice. If, per- 
 chance, a door should be closed, we are sure we 
 could open it again. 
 
 But as life advances, we discover that doors 
 have a fashion of closing, and that many of 
 them when once closed cannot be opened again. 
 We did not learn a foreign language in our 
 teens. We were careless and postponed it to 
 some future day. When in middle life we 
 turned to that language, we were appalled to 
 discover we were too late. The door was shut, 
 and though we made strenuous efforts to push 
 it open, our efforts were vain. We could with 
 painful difficulty learn to read it a little, but to 
 learn to speak it was beyond our power. That 
 door was shut. When we were young we failed 
 to master the piano, or the organ, or the violin, 
 
210 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT U9 
 
 or the harp. Musical instruments lay all about 
 us, and we felt we could take up one of them 
 later on. But when the convenient season ar- 
 rived we were in middle life, and our teacher 
 frankly told us it was too late. The door was 
 shut. There was no room for repentance. In 
 the days of our youth we shunned the drudgery 
 of exercises in singing or speaking. Later on 
 our ambition awoke, and we wanted to become 
 a master of speech or of song. We envied great 
 speakers and singers, and wanted to be with 
 them. The door was shut and we could not 
 go in. 
 
 The most amazing feature of the war in 1914 
 was that nobody seemed to want it. It pushed 
 itself upon the stage in spite of the protests of 
 the nations which engaged in it. No one can 
 truly say that the peoples of Europe wanted it. 
 The peoples of Europe more than the peoples of 
 any other continent knew what war is, and 
 therefore they shrank in horror from it. The 
 common man has no desire to engage in human 
 slaughter. He hates war. He wants to stay at 
 home with his wife and children. Nor did the 
 rulers desire war. That was certainly true of 
 Emperor Franz Joseph. He was an old man 
 standing on the verge of the grave. It was with 
 sorrow that he consented to enter a war he was 
 powerless to prevent. The Emperor of Russia 
 was not a warrior. He had no love for carnage. 
 His face proclaimed to the world that he was a 
 peace lover. He tried to escape the war, but 
 failed. The President of France, and the King 
 
A TOO LATE 211 
 
 of Belgium, and the King of England were all 
 men of peace. Every one of them abhorred 
 war, and did his utmost to save his country from 
 the awful scourge. The only crowned head of 
 Europe who has ever been accused by any one 
 of desiring the war was the Kaiser. But here 
 we move in a region in which everything is dis- 
 puted. Ever since 1914 stories have been com- 
 ing out of Germany declaring that the Kaiser 
 himself went into the war with reluctance, 
 driven forward by forces he was impotent to 
 control. 
 
 A careful study of the official documents 
 issued in 1914 by the various governments is 
 sufficient to prove that the statesmen of Europe 
 did not desire the war. Many of them made 
 earnest and repeated efforts to ward it off. In 
 every country, including Germany, there were 
 men in high places whose heart was set upon 
 peace, and who made an honest struggle to save 
 Europe from the impending disaster. Among 
 the company of those who worked hardest for 
 peace. Sir Edward Grey holds the most promi- 
 nent place. He seemed likely to succeed. He 
 was apparently on the point of succeeding. If 
 he could have had forty-eight hours more it 
 looks as though he might have succeeded. But 
 in every country the effort turned out to be too 
 late. In reading the story of those fateful days 
 in July, one always feels that if this thing or 
 that thing had only been done a day sooner, 
 then the whole outcome would have been dif- 
 ferent. But every effort, no matter by whom 
 
212 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 made, was made in vain. Some mighty and in- 
 visible power seemed to have shut the door of 
 the palace of peace, and it was impossible for 
 kings or diplomats or peoples to open it. 
 
 Here then is one of the most amazing and 
 thrilling spectacles in the history of the world, 
 a continent sliding into the most horrible of all 
 wars, every nation loudly protesting that it un- 
 sheathed the sword against its will. When did 
 Alexander or Hannibal or Caesar or Tiglath- 
 Pileser or Ramses or Napoleon ever say : " I am 
 fighting, but my heart is not in it. I would 
 escape if I could"? It was reserved for the 
 twentieth century to behold rulers driving their 
 chariots of war to the field of blood not guided 
 by their own judgment, but coerced by a mys- 
 terious power in whose grip they were helpless. 
 When their eyes opened on the abyss into which 
 they were plunging, they all wanted to turn 
 back. It was too late. 
 
 Why was it too late? Because men through 
 forty years had been preparing for war. The 
 nations had neglected every warning. Prophet 
 after prophet had been sent, saying: " You are 
 on the road that leads to destruction," but not 
 one of the prophets had been heeded. They 
 had all been pelted with slander and ridicule. 
 They were called pacifists, and the name was 
 uttered with a hiss. Events one after another, 
 like so many John the Baptists endeavouring to 
 make straight the paths of the Lord, had come 
 out to warn the nations of their peril, but to the 
 teaching of every event the world's ear was 
 
A TOO LATE 213 
 
 deaf. The Algeciras crisis came and went. It 
 is amazing Europe could not see what it meant. 
 The Agadir crisis came and went. It had a 
 deep and ominous significance, but Europe gave 
 no heed. The increasing bitterness of the jour- 
 nahsts, the increasing greed of the munition 
 makers, the increasing frenzy of the mihtarists, 
 and the increasing discontent in the hearts of 
 the masses, should have caused all statesmen to 
 set their house in order, to mobilize all the 
 forces of the nations for turning their feet into 
 a different path, but Europe went on, eating and 
 drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, un- 
 til the flood came. It is the plain and emphatic 
 teaching of the physical world that you can put 
 off a needed action too long. You can fail to 
 pay attention to a cough until the best doctor in 
 the town will say when consulted : " You are 
 too late." The cancer may be allowed to eat 
 into the flesh day after day until the greatest 
 of the experts is obliged to tell the patient: " It 
 is too late." A man who is the victim of a vice 
 may stagger along the downward way squander- 
 ing the substance of his will at every step, until 
 at last he begins to say to every one who tries 
 to check him in his course — " It is too late." 
 In every life there comes a day on which there 
 is found no place of repentance even though one 
 seeks it diligently with tears. 
 
 The attempt of Sir Edward Grey to improvise 
 a tribunal for the purpose of saving Europe 
 from shipwreck is one of the most pathetic 
 events in history. His ability was great, his 
 
214 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 aim was high, his good will was genuine and 
 passionate. If any man in the world could 
 have succeeded he was the man. But he failed. 
 He was too late. He and other statesmen of 
 Europe ought to have devised the necessary in- 
 ternational machinery long before. In time of 
 peace they ought to have worked day and night 
 for the securing of a larger and deeper peace. 
 But the whole world was in bondage to a false 
 maxim — " In time of peace prepare for war," 
 and so when the clock struck, the machinery of 
 war was all ready, and the machinery of peace 
 was frail and inadequate. No nation had given 
 itself whole-heartedly in the days of peace to 
 safeguarding the world against the calamity 
 which was daily threatening it. Furious efforts 
 were made every year to increase the number 
 of the guns and the shells and the ships, and only 
 occasional and half-hearted attempts were made 
 by those in authority to get the world's life into 
 a different channel. When at last a genuine 
 effort was put forth to devise the necessary 
 machinery, it was too late. The wind was blow- 
 ing a hurricane, and nothing improvised on the 
 spur of the moment could stand in that fearful 
 gale. The firing of the shot in the street of 
 Serajevo had released forces which took the 
 direction of events out of diplomatic hands. 
 Diplomats are mighty if they act in time: if 
 they procrastinate too long, God tosses them 
 aside paralyzed and disgraced. If they seize the 
 opportunity when it is offered, they are masters 
 of events, but if they let the opportunity slip 
 
A TOO LATE 216 
 
 they are as so many straws on the surface of a 
 raging stream. It is too late to stop a glacier 
 after it has broken loose from its mountain 
 moorings. No matter what devastation it may 
 work, it will go on until it reaches the destina- 
 tion which has been determined for it by the in- 
 teraction of the forces of the world. The boat on 
 the Niagara River which ventures too close to 
 the falls will go over, no matter what its occu- 
 pants wish or do. There was a time when the 
 boat was their willing servant. It was for them 
 to determine in what direction it should go. 
 But having allowed it to pass a fateful point, its 
 management is taken over by the river, and 
 after that human strength and skill are of no 
 avail. An automobile plunging over the pali- 
 sades passes at once out of the control of the 
 chauffeur. The heavier and the more magnifi- 
 cent the car, the more speedily is it dashed to 
 pieces on the rocks below. 
 
 Everybody knows that there are times when 
 wishes are useless and when prayers count for 
 nothing. God has told us in our experience 
 that it is sometimes too late to pray. When 
 a man is plunging over a precipice it is then too 
 late to pray that he may not fall. When the 
 dam has broken it is too late to pray that the 
 water may not run down the hill. When the 
 fire is leaping from doors and windows, it is 
 too late to ask God to save the house. 
 
 There were good men and women in August, 
 1914, who felt that even then Europe might be 
 saved by prayer. The glacier had begun to 
 
216 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 move, but some imagined that prayer would 
 stop it in its course. The reservoir had broken, 
 but some fancied that by seeking repentance 
 with tears the rushing waters might be held 
 back. The chariot of European civilization had 
 tumbled over the precipice, but there were those 
 who dared to think that by prayers and wishes 
 the chariot could be kept from going to the 
 bottom. 
 
 The war has burned into the human mind the 
 appalling truth that it is possible to be too late. 
 We can sin away our day of grace, and so also 
 can nations. Rome reached a day when it was 
 impossible to save her. Europe arrived at a 
 point where rescue became impossible. The 
 uselessness of wishes, the futility of prayers, the 
 bootlessness of regrets, all these have been re- 
 vealed in the fire of the great war. It is not 
 enough to wish that peace may be preserved. It 
 is not enough to regret that war has laid waste 
 the earth. Neither wishes nor regrets suspend 
 the penalty which awaits the man or nation who 
 is too late. Prayer is efficacious within certain 
 limits. We shall pray with greater efficiency 
 when we learn to pray according to law. God 
 does not allow us to substitute prayer for work. 
 Europe was not a prayerless continent. Possi- 
 bly from no other continent in the world did so 
 many prayers ascend daily as from the conti- 
 nent which slid into the lake of fire. There is a 
 point beyond which prayer has no efficacy. It 
 becomes mere sound and fury signifying noth- 
 ing. 
 
A TOO LATE 217 
 
 If we are wise we shall go to work at once 
 to make the recurrence of this world tragedy 
 impossible. We have tried the experiment of 
 piling up explosives, and we now know that 
 after the pile has reached a certain height, 
 there is an explosion. We have tried the ex- 
 periment of multiplying guns, and we have 
 found out that after a certain number has been 
 reached the guns belch death. We have reck- 
 lessly driven along a dangerous road insuffi- 
 ciently protected from the chasms on both sides, 
 and the time has arrived for us at an enormous 
 expense of thought and gold to make the road 
 safe for our descendants. 
 
 Now is the acceptable time to take in hand 
 the work of world organization. Now is the 
 day when it is possible to work out the world's 
 salvation. This generation has a preparedness 
 of heart for creating schemes of world govern- 
 ment which the generation which comes after us 
 will not possess. Experience has taught us as 
 it has taught no preceding generation, the in- 
 calculable loss which follows the neglect of duty 
 clearly seen. Every man with eyes saw that 
 the world was moving in a direction that was 
 wrong. Every man who believed that the New 
 Testament contains a revelation of God's char- 
 acter and will was certain that the political 
 philosophy of our day was false, and that the 
 program of political action in the realm of 
 international life was under the condemnation of 
 heaven. But we allowed the world to drift. 
 We kept our hearts calm by our hopes. We 
 
218 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 hoped that all things would come out for th« 
 best. We hoped that in some way or other a 
 sudden change would take place. Our wishes 
 were fervent and noble. Our prayers were 
 frequent and honest. We postponed doing the 
 one thing which was essential. We did not 
 organize the political life of the world. We did 
 not make a drive for a closer federation of the 
 Great Powers. We did not spend either our 
 time or our money in creating the political ma- 
 chinery by which the passions of nations could 
 be held in check. 
 
 We now see our error. We know just where 
 we failed. We are still bleeding from the 
 wounds we received from a God who chastens 
 men who are dilatory and do not arrive at ap- 
 pointed destinations on time. The work of our 
 generation has been blocked out for us. We 
 are to create a new political world. We are to 
 federate all the nations. We are called to 
 sweeten the springs of international good-will, 
 and also to create channels through which these 
 waters of life may flow. The League of Na- 
 tions is a dream in the hearts of idealists. At a 
 great price it must be worked into political 
 machinery. It is a city of God high up in the 
 clouds. It is coming down, and all good men 
 should unite in hastening its coming. 
 
 The human race entered a new era of happi- 
 ness and freedom, when near the end of the 
 eighteenth century a few intrepid souls wrote 
 the Constitution of the United States. The 
 work was done in the midst of innumerable 
 
A TOO LATE 219 
 
 difficulties and obstacles, and with many fears 
 and misgivings. But the Government then 
 created has become a beacon light to all the 
 world. The men who created the American 
 Republic wrote their names on the roll of the 
 Immortals. There must be a United States of 
 Europe, and there must be a United States of 
 the world. Nations belong together, since God 
 has made of one all the inhabitants of the earth, 
 and this oneness of life must be given expres- 
 sion in laws and customs and institutions. The 
 nations are already leagued in many ways in 
 thought and feeling and action, and this work of 
 federation must be carried further in order that 
 friction may be reduced, and good-will may 
 have new instruments through which it may 
 find expression. They are poor counsellors who 
 say: " Let us put this League of Nations in the 
 future. Let us settle more pressing problems, 
 and allow this colossal problem to wait." No, 
 it must not wait. Now is the time to create the 
 Parliament of Man, the federation of the world. 
 A wide door has been opened. We must enter 
 before it is too late. 
 
XVIII 
 THE PLACE OF DEATH 
 
 THERE are many strange notions in 
 the heads of people who never go to 
 church, and one of the strangest is that 
 preachers are never so happy as when they are 
 preaching about death. There is a curious de- 
 lusion in the hearts of persons who do not read 
 the Bible. They imagine that the Bible is a 
 book which is concerned chiefly about death. 
 They think this probably because they have 
 been at a funeral at which the minister read 
 something out of the Bible. Death and the 
 Bible become associated forever afterward in 
 their thoughts. Men and women who know 
 little of the Christian religion often imagine that 
 the chief aim of religion is to prepare men for 
 death. They do not like religion because it sug- 
 gests a graveyard. They have no desire to be- 
 come religious, because in that case it would be 
 necessary for them to meditate often on death. 
 These are pathetic errors. They are the 
 creation of an ignorant fancy, specters that prey 
 on uninstructed hearts. What all such persons 
 need is information. They are the victims of 
 delusions. They walk in darkness when the 
 
 220 
 
THE PLACE OF DEATH 221 
 
 light is all around them. Preachers preach sel- 
 dom about death. Their great theme is life. 
 It is not life in some other world, but in this 
 world. Every preacher gives the bulk of his 
 time and thought to life in this world. Death 
 is only incidental in his thinking. The Bible is 
 the sanest and healthiest of all books. There is 
 not a morbid chapter in it. There is no brood- 
 ing, no moping, no whimpering. There are no 
 paragraphs devoted to cemeteries. There are 
 no soliloquizings over the mystery of death. 
 From first to last the Bible is free from sickly 
 moods, and it looks into the face of death with- 
 out a moan or tremor. 
 
 Christianity is the religion of Jesus, and Jesus 
 seldom referred to death. He did not like the 
 word. He preferred the word sleep. That was 
 the softest and sweetest word within His reach, 
 and so He used it. When He spoke of Himself 
 He said: "I am the Hfe," and when He ex- 
 pressed the purpose of His coming into the 
 world He said : " I am come that you may have 
 life, and have it more abundantly." The theme 
 on which He loved to talk was life, and to fill 
 human life fuller of peace and power and joy 
 was His supreme ambition. 
 
 The religion of Jesus Christ assumes that 
 death is a part of God's plan for man. It does 
 not dwell upon it or magnify it. It quietly as- 
 sumes it, and goes on to deal with more im- 
 portant matters. Even in the upper chamber 
 on the last night, Jesus did not dwell upon 
 death. His disciples were all thinking about it, 
 
222 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 but He was not. He was thinking of the life 
 which His disciples were going to live in this 
 world. He assumed that death is but an inci- 
 dent, a transitory event in the career of the 
 spirit. It is a circumstance which has a place 
 in the journey from the cradle to the grave. It 
 is a fleeting experience which every soul must 
 pass through. It is a cup of which every mortal 
 must drink. Death is assumed, but never mag- 
 nified. It is mentioned, but never elaborated. 
 It is glanced at, but never dwelt on. Jesus' 
 mind was always intent on life. 
 
 It was because of Jesus' love of life that He 
 looked upon death as an enemy. It was an 
 enemy, however, which is not to be feared. Its 
 power is imaginary, not real. Its horror is 
 fictitious and not genuine. When He sent His 
 disciples out to preach He knew that they would 
 be afraid of being killed, but He told them to 
 have no fear of death. That was an enemy of 
 which they need take no account. He set Him- 
 self against the traditional attitude of the world. 
 The world had always exaggerated the power 
 and terror of death. He would acknowledge 
 neither. He Himself went fearlessly to the 
 cross, and He said to His disciples: "Follow 
 me." He breathed this intrepid and tri- 
 umphant spirit into all who came near Him. 
 Paul expresses the innermost feeling of the 
 Christian believer when he says: "O death, 
 where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy vic- 
 tory?" 
 
 Jesus had no fear of death and no shrinking^ 
 
THE PLACE OF DEATH 223 
 
 from it because He knew that it cannot harm us 
 and that the soul can make use of it for advanc- 
 ing the purposes of God. A man has the privi- 
 lege of giving his life for a great cause. It is 
 possible to advance a moral principle by dying 
 for it. The life of the world may be sweetened 
 and purified by death. It is a glorious thing 
 then to die for others. Dying for others takes 
 away the sting of death and gives it an eternal 
 splendour. When Jesus thought of His own 
 death, He always thought of the things which 
 His death would accomplish. The Son of Man, 
 He said, had come to give His life a ransom for 
 many. He could not fear or hate death when 
 He knew that by His death He was going to 
 give liberty to millions. Moreover, death gave 
 Him an opportunity to reveal what was in Him. 
 He had spoken much of sacrificial love, but 
 sacrificial love cannot be expressed completely 
 in words. A man can show the deepest that is 
 in him only by dying. Devotion, loyalty, fidel- 
 ity, all these reach their highest form of beauty 
 and impressiveness in the willingness to lay 
 down one's life. " Greater love has no man 
 than this that a man lay down his life for his 
 friends." Jesus had loved His disciples. He 
 had shown this love in word and deed. He 
 was willing to show it in a still higher and more 
 convincing way. He was ready to die for them. 
 It was by His death that He expected to make 
 an unfading impression on the hard heart of the 
 world. His words had proved largely in- 
 effective. He had sowed the seed, but some of 
 
224 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 it had been devoured by the birds, some had 
 fallen in stony places, and others had been 
 choked by the thorns. He had lived a brave 
 and loving life, but even this had made only a 
 feeble impression on the masses of His country- 
 men. He was not, however, discouraged. One 
 more resource remained to Him. He could do 
 more than teach, and act; He could die. By 
 dying He could accomplish what could not be 
 achieved either by teaching or working miracles. 
 "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto 
 me." Death to Him is a form of power. It is 
 a force which God makes use of in the develop- 
 ment of the world. 
 
 And so Jesus was not made gloomy by the 
 thought of His death. He greeted it as an op- 
 portunity to help mankind. When Peter cried 
 out in protest against the thought of Jesus 
 dying, Jesus reminded him that he was think- 
 ing and feeling like a man of the world, and had 
 not yet risen to the viewpoint of a man who un- 
 derstands the nature of life and death, and who 
 has entered into the plans of God. He was 
 ready to die even the death of the cross, the 
 most horrible form of death which the imagina- 
 tion at that time was able to conceive, for He 
 was certain that by His death the purposes of 
 God would be forwarded, and that His life would 
 enter in fuller and richer ways into the mind 
 and heart of mankind. 
 
 Joyful Himself, it was His desire to keep the 
 hearts of His followers jubilant. In order to 
 help them rejoice. He told them to think often 
 
THE PLACE OF DEATH 225 
 
 of His death. They were to take bread as the 
 symbol of His broken body, and wine as the 
 symbol of His poured-out blood. They were to 
 do this in remembrance of Him, By doing this 
 they would commemorate His death until He 
 returned. 
 
 The Christian Church has kept alive through 
 nineteen hundred years this estimate of the 
 death of Jesus. When Christians think of 
 Jesus' dying, they do not think of His death 
 with sadness, but with gratitude and joy. The 
 tragedy of Golgotha does not depress them, but 
 lifts them up and helps them sing. It is amaz- 
 ing that death even in the hideous form of 
 crucifixion has lost its ugliness for the man who 
 is genuinely Christian. It is a miracle of God's 
 grace that makes it possible for millions of men 
 and women around the earth to sing with glow- 
 ing hearts : 
 
 " In the cross of Christ I glory, 
 
 Tow'ring o'er the wrecks of time ; 
 All the light of sacred story 
 Gathers round its head sublime." 
 
 The great war has brought us into a more 
 Christian attitude to the experience which over- 
 takes us all at last. The whole world is more 
 Christian in its thought of death than it was five 
 years ago. War, like the New Testament, as- 
 sumes that death is a part of the Eternal plan. 
 There can be no war without death. When the 
 military bugles blow death is immediately as- 
 sumed as an experience which cannot be 
 
226 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 escaped. No man can be a soldier without at 
 once admitting death into the circle of his daily 
 thoughts. A soldier expects to face death. To 
 face it is a part of the army and navy program. 
 A general making his plans for a battle always 
 calculates the number of the dead. He assumes 
 that thousands must be sacrificed. His only 
 questions are: Where shall the sacrifices be 
 made, and to what extent may they be wisely 
 carried? 
 
 Men in service look upon death as an incident. 
 In times of fighting it is the most common of all 
 the incidents of the crowded days. Soldiers see 
 their fellows die on the right and on the left, 
 and are not daunted by it. This is only inci- 
 dental. This is a part of the day's work. This 
 must be expected if the victory is to be won. 
 In a bloody campaign men get used to death. 
 It is as common and natural as eating. Com- 
 panies will proceed unhesitatingly into a woods 
 where the preceding company an hour ago was 
 annihilated. A regiment will march with un- 
 faltering step along a road made slippery with 
 the blood of the regiment which went on before 
 it. War adopts the New Testament assump- 
 tion that death is not of cardinal importance, it is 
 an incident, an experience, which the soul meets 
 on its progress toward a goal. 
 
 Soldiers look upon death as an enemy to be 
 conquered. They put death beneath their feet. 
 No soldier counts himself to have been per- 
 fected until he has reached the point where he 
 is ready to die. " I'll see you again some day 
 
THE PLACE OF DEATH 227 
 
 on Broadway," said an American in France to a 
 British aviator. " No you won't," was the swift 
 reply. " We go over once and come back, and 
 maybe twice, and possibly three or four times, 
 but the time will come when we shall not come 
 back. We all count ourselves dead men." 
 That man had already conquered death. There 
 was nothing more for him to fear. 
 
 War makes use of death for definite ends. 
 Men are not sacrificed aimlessly. A general 
 fights to win a victory that by the victory some 
 desired blessing may come to mankind. Liberty 
 must be bought, and the price which must be 
 paid is blood. Justice must be secured, and the 
 only way to get it is by death. Righteousness 
 must be established, and to establish it thou- 
 sands of men must lay down their lives. They 
 must give their lives for others. This was the 
 most thrilling spectacle of the war — thousands 
 of men laying down their lives for others. Men 
 who had taken little interest in religion or 
 churches found themselves on the battle-field 
 entering into the spirit of Jesus, who, when He 
 died, felt He was giving His life a ransom for 
 many. There were men, women and children 
 in Belgium, and also in France, who were under 
 the heel of the German oppressor, and when 
 they felt that by dying they could break the op- 
 pressor's power, then death no longer had 
 terrors. 
 
 Thousands of men experienced a spiritual ex- 
 altation on the battle-field which they had never 
 known before, and the cause of it was their be- 
 
228 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 lief that by dying they should share in the 
 emancipation of the world. When a cause is 
 sufificiently noble, men have no hesitation in 
 dying for it. By dying they not only break the 
 power of the tyrant, but soften and purify the 
 heart of the whole world. When the Twenty- 
 seventh Division on March 25th moved up Fifth 
 Avenue there were many features which power- 
 fully afifected the heart. Those masses of young 
 men in their helmets, fresh from the front, 
 marching between vast banks of human beings 
 eager to get a glimpse of them, the long lines 
 of automobiles filled with the wounded, the cap- 
 tured guns once the possession of the mightiest 
 military monarchy that ever frightened the 
 world, the officers on their horses, the playing 
 bands, the regimental flags, all these appealed to 
 the eye and reached the heart. But there was 
 one feature of the parade which in impressive- 
 ness surpassed all the others, it was the Service 
 Flag of the Division, containing nearly two thou- 
 sand gold stars. When that flag appeared the 
 crowds became silent. They could not cheer 
 for a long time after it had passed. Many a 
 cheek in the crowd was wet. We cannot shout 
 when we are crying. The service flag spoke as 
 nothing else in the whole parade to the imagina- 
 tion, and through the imagination it reached the 
 heart. The gold stars symbolized boys who 
 had died. They had made the complete sacri- 
 fice. They had died for us. They had given 
 their life for the world. When we looked at the 
 stars we saw also the two thousand graves in 
 
THE PLACE OF DEATH 
 
 229 
 
 France, and the two thousand empty chairs at 
 home, and the two thousand fathers and the 
 two thousand mothers for whom hfe will never 
 be the same again. As we gazed at the flag 
 the whole mystery of death stood out before 
 us-the mystery of sacrificial death-and we 
 felt as possibly never before that sacrificial 
 death is beautiful, that it is a glorious thing to 
 die for a great ideal. 
 
 This then, is what the war should do for us 
 every one-it should give us a saner and more 
 wholesome estimate of death. Some of us 
 perhaps, have been needlessly concerned about 
 the end of life. We have in our somber moods 
 allowed ourselves to brood too long upon the 
 tave We have magnified God's servant death 
 and have distorted all his features, and have 
 terrified our souls by our timid imaginations 
 The war has brought us into a more normal 
 mood We shall never be so afraid of deatli 
 aeain Ml these thousands of boys meetmg 
 death bravely have taken out of death its sting 
 If they were not afraid to die, why should we 
 fear? The road to the grave has been trave led 
 recently by so many millions of feet, we shall 
 not feel afraid when our own name shall be 
 called. Young men of all countries have shown 
 what spirit is in them. It has reminded us of 
 the spirit of Jesus. He was young and He had 
 everything to live for, but when death star d 
 Him in the face He did not cower or remble. 
 " The cup that my Father has given me to drink, 
 shall I not drink it?" In the twentieth cen- 
 
230 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 tury millions of men have met death in the same 
 spirit. No wonder the whole earth now seems 
 holy ground. 
 
 And what does death lead to? The question 
 has always been with us, but it now comes with 
 a fresh edge and power. Where have all these 
 boys gone? What are they doing? How will 
 God make up for them what they lost here? 
 We do not think so much of the moment in 
 which they died, as we think of their life before 
 they became soldiers, and of their life which is 
 now appointed them beyond our sight. In- 
 stinctively we fall into the manner of Jesus. 
 He dwelt not on the agony of death, but on 
 what went before and what is to come after. 
 The war has given us a new certainty of the 
 life eternal, and has increased our curiosity to 
 know what lies beyond the veil. For millions 
 it will be easier to die now that such vast armies 
 have gone on before them. Death we now know 
 is a stepping-stone to higher things. 
 
 Death is indeed a form of power, a force 
 which God makes use of in redeeming mankind. 
 There are on our planet eight millions of fresh 
 graves dug by the war. Western Europe has 
 become a cemetery, and on this cemetery we 
 are to build a better world. We become fitted 
 for our work by thinking lovingly of those who 
 have died. They have made the supreme sacri- 
 fice, shall we refuse to make sacrifices of our 
 own? If they in war laid down their life for a 
 noble cause, shall we do less in time of peace? 
 They gave their blood that mankind might live 
 
THE PLACE OF DEATH 231 
 
 a freer and a happier life. What are we going 
 to give to complete the work which they began? 
 War is a mighty teacher, and it is through death 
 that she teaches her most impressive lessons. 
 Death herself is a teacher, and now that she 
 has come in a colossal form, the heart must 
 needs be attentive and the soul will give a 
 swifter response to the call from the heights. 
 Death gives wings to the aspirations, death 
 cleanses the eyes. Death sheds forth a light 
 and in that light we see more clearly what is the 
 place and power of death. The war leaves us 
 with death beneath our feet. Men had told us 
 that with the increasing sharpness of the instru- 
 ments of destruction, human flesh could no 
 longer stand. We now know that death has 
 no terror for men who feel sure they are fight- 
 ing for the right. " Do not be afraid," said 
 Jesus, " of those who kill the body." He said 
 it to our soldiers, and their reply was, " We are 
 not afraid." 
 
 It was by death that the forces were released 
 which brought low the power of Potsdam. It 
 is by remembering our dead heroes that we are 
 to become strengthened and cleansed for the 
 mighty work which God has given us to do. 
 Al)raham Lincoln was touched and thrilled by 
 the sight of the graves in the cemetery at 
 Gettysburg. He felt that he stood on hallowed 
 ground. Those graves spoke to him a message 
 which he expressed in immortal speech. They 
 reminded him of a task which was incomplete, 
 they told him of a sacrifice already past: they 
 
232 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 spoke of a sacrifice yet to come. They related 
 the story of a work which had been accom- 
 pHshed: they pointed to a work which was only 
 just begun. The cemetery in Gettysburg 
 brought Lincoln to the hour of a fresh dedica- 
 tion of his soul. Pledging himself anew to the 
 great work remaining, he called upon all Amer- 
 icans to devote themselves with a spirit equal 
 to that of the dead to the bringing in of a new 
 age of freedom, and to the safeguarding of the 
 principles of the founders of our Republic, so 
 that government of the people, by the people, 
 and for the people might never perish from the 
 earth. 
 
 We, like Lincoln, are in a cemetery. Out 
 from where we stand there stretch in all direc- 
 tions lines of unnumbered graves. Here lie the 
 men who gave their lives in the greatest of all 
 the wars, not for the liberty of our country, but 
 for the liberty of all the world. Thinking of 
 what they suffered and how they died, let us 
 pledge ourselves anew to the cause of justice 
 and freedom. Let us pray that through us 
 there may come upon the earth a new baptism 
 of righteousness and good-will. Awed by the 
 consciousness that we are walking on an earth 
 which has been bought again by blood, let us 
 from this time forward be better men and 
 women working always for a better world. 
 
XIX 
 THE PROGRESSIVE BRUTALITY OF WAR 
 
 WAR is inherently and incorrigibly 
 brutal. It has always been brutal, is 
 brutal still, and brutal it must always 
 be. War would cease to be war if it laid aside 
 its brutality. It is impossible to humanize war, 
 and therefore it is impossible to Christianize it. 
 To the end it must remain what it has been from 
 the beginning, the most barbarous and heartless 
 of all forms of brutality. 
 
 The idea of brutality involves three elements. 
 First, there is the dominance of physical force. 
 A brute is nothing but a bundle of force. 
 Whatever he accomplishes he does by his 
 physical energy. War uses brain, but it achieves 
 its ends by the manipulation of physical forces. 
 It smashes, and grinds, and crushes like a wild 
 beast. A second element is heartlessness. A 
 beast lacks sensibility. It is deaf to appeals for 
 mercy. It is dead to the feeling of compassion. 
 A hyena or tiger pays no attention to human 
 pleadings. Nor does war. It is blind to the 
 helplessness of the aged man whose home it 
 blows to pieces over his head; it is deaf to the 
 
 ^33 
 
234 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 cry of the widow who pleads for the life of her 
 only son. The third mark of brutality is in- 
 discriminateness. A brute makes no distinc- 
 tions. A mad dog lacerates the legs of horses 
 and the legs of little children alike. A mad bull 
 gores an invalid woman with the same wild fury 
 with which he gores a matador's horse. War 
 has no time for distinctions. It has no taste for 
 nice perceptions. It sweeps the whole city — 
 guilty and innocent alike — to destruction ; it 
 overwhelms the evil and the good, the young 
 and the old, the virtuous and the vicious in a 
 common ruin. It has the crowning character- 
 istics and habits of a brute. 
 
 Let no one ever say then that war is a gentle- 
 man's game. Napoleon Bonaparte knew war, 
 and he called it the trade of barbarians. That 
 is what it is. Allow no one to assert in your 
 presence that war is a royal sport. It is royal 
 only in the eyes of moral idiots. Rebuke the 
 man who dares to prate about the glory of war. 
 War has no glory. Men can display glorious 
 traits in the midst of war, just as the human 
 spirit can shine in the midst of a pestilence or a 
 vast conflagration, but war itself is not glorious: 
 it is beastly, inhuman, hideous and revolting. 
 
 The latest orgy of blood has stripped war of 
 its shining robes, and we now see it in all its 
 naked loathsomeness. The Spirit of Evil has 
 industriously laboured to beguile mankind into 
 thinking that war is splendid. To do this, it 
 has used every form of art and every trick of 
 sophistry. The artist has endeavoured on can- 
 
THE PEOGEESSIYE BRUTALITY OF WAR 235 
 
 vas and in marble and in verse, to blind the eyes 
 of the world to what war really is. He has im^ 
 parted to it a glamour, a romance, a poetic love- 
 liness which has deceived many even of the 
 elect. The historian, by richly coloured descrip- 
 tions of famous generals, and by glowing pic- 
 tures of victorious armies, has kept the eyes of 
 the world away from war's infamies and horrors, 
 the agonies of men wrestling with death, and 
 the rotting corpses of the nameless dead. 
 
 The devotees of the god of war have in every 
 generation blunted the edge of the world's in- 
 stinctive detestation of wholesale butchery by 
 flaunting in the face of the people the dazzling 
 colours of military finery. Gaping crowds from 
 the sidewalks have gazed with admiration on 
 the gold and the scarlet and the purple of the 
 military parade, foolishly supposing that these 
 were the colours of war. The colours of war 
 are the colours of mud, and grime, and filth, of 
 pus and gangrened flesh and clotted blood, of 
 cheeks that are hot with pain and of faces that 
 are cold in death. A military procession on a 
 holiday is indeed a picturesque entertainment. 
 The colours appeal to the eye, and the thrilling 
 notes of the fife and drum set the corpuscles of 
 the blood all dancing. But this is not the music 
 of war. The music of war is the sobbing of 
 children, and the moans of women, and the 
 shrieks and curses of dying men. 
 
 Let no one be deceived by the bespangled 
 splendour of military maneuvers. The rhyth- 
 mical tread of disciplined feet, and the glint on 
 
236 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 the steel of the rays of the sun, and the grace- 
 ful swing of the bodies of men, as file upon file 
 they move on their way, swiftly obedient to the 
 commander's word, create a spectacle which 
 plays on the senses and intoxicates the mind. 
 But this glittering display is not of the essence 
 of war. The holiday parade is not the proces- 
 sion of war. In the procession which is mobil- 
 ized and conducted by war, men hobble on 
 crutches, and stagger on legs which have been 
 paralyzed, and are borne along in ambulances 
 and litters, and roll sightless eyeballs on the 
 beautiful world. The worshippers of Mars have 
 played upon the senses. By beguiling the eye 
 and the ear they have hoodwinked a thousand 
 generations into taking part in the stupid glorifi- 
 cation of war. 
 
 While one set of the war sophists have blinded 
 the senses another set have debauched the mind. 
 Schools of paganized thinkers have steadfastly 
 maintained that war is inevitable, a biological 
 necessity, an ineradicable feature of the present 
 world order. " Men have always fought, and 
 therefore they always will fight! " "You can- 
 not change human nature ! " Moreover, war, it 
 is claimed, is " a school of virtue." " It saves 
 men from becoming effeminate and flabby. It 
 is a tonic which the good God administers from 
 time to time to keep the moral fiber of humanity 
 from rotting." " Nations are lost unless they 
 keep the fighting edge. The fighting edge can 
 be kept only by the periodical recurrence of 
 war." These are the embroidered veils which 
 
THE PEOGEESSIYE BRUTALITY OF WAR 237 
 
 a barbaric philosophy has thrown over the face 
 of war to hide its hideousness. They are masks 
 which the miHtarists have made use of when 
 urging the world to worship the idol of military 
 preparedness. The great war has torn of¥ the 
 masks. It has burnt up the veils. The delicate 
 network of lies which the war-lords have woven 
 round the bloody head of the ancient monster 
 has been completely destroyed, and the whole 
 world now knows that war is a grizzly, ghastly, 
 damnable abomination. Its brutality stands 
 out naked, hideous, unforgetable. Philip Gibbs 
 is only one of many observers who have written 
 descriptions which are burned into the fiber of 
 the mind. The story of how British soldiers 
 were shot to pieces, buried alive, seared inside 
 and out by poison gas, driven insane by shell 
 shock, burned by liquid flame, and drowned in 
 the bogs of Flanders, is a story to strike dumb 
 the tongues of the moral imbeciles who have 
 prattled about the glory of war. All men of 
 sound sense and good-will are saying: "This 
 must be the last war." 
 
 War is brutal, indescribably and incurably 
 brutal. Certain instruments made use of for 
 the first time in this war have received hot con- 
 demnation on the ground of their brutality. 
 Because of their novelty they have given a 
 shock to the imagination which older devices 
 no longer give. But let us remember that war 
 was disgustingly brutal before the submarine 
 was invented, or the aeroplane climbed into the 
 sky, or the poisonous gases were sent creeping 
 
238 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 across the fields. The bayonet is the very 
 epitome of brutahty. No more cruel instru- 
 ment was ever invented. Every nation has 
 made use of it. No nation has ever yet offered 
 to lay it aside. It is counted indispensable by 
 all the military authorities. No one of them 
 can conceive a nation surrendering the use of it. 
 In every land battle it is the last resort. When 
 everything else is lost there is still hope, if sol- 
 diers retain their bayonets. But what is a 
 bayonet? It is a piece of sharpened steel manu- 
 factured for the express purpose of piercing a 
 human abdomen, of gouging a hole in human 
 lungs, of jabbing out human eyes. What right 
 has any nation which makes use of the bayonet 
 to protest against any other instrument on the 
 ground that it is cruel? Why cry out against 
 cruelty when the bayonet is universally exalted 
 as one of the most honoured instruments of 
 war? The bayonet is the symbol and incarna- 
 tion of the soul of war. By the bayonet war 
 stands forever condemned. 
 
 The philosophy of frightfulness amazes and 
 sickens us when we read it in the volumes of 
 the military experts who have advocated it, but 
 what is war but one long drawn act of frightful- 
 ness? Is not war human butchery? How can 
 human butchery be anything else than fright- 
 ful? Much has been said about the atrocities 
 of the war, such as the cutting ofiF of hands and 
 the murder of prisoners. These are indeed 
 atrocious, but is not war itself an atrocity? 
 What is an atrocity but a brutality which has 
 
THE PEOGEESSIVE BEUTALITY OF WAE 239 
 
 been raised to a lofty pitch, an inhumanity which 
 has been given an extra twist, a barbarity which 
 has been pushed still closer to the cruelty of 
 hell? War sanctions lying and cheating and 
 deceiving in every conceivable form. War 
 exalts and glorifies the science and art of kill- 
 ing. War is the legalized method by which 
 international disputes are settled by killing men. 
 The side that kills the largest number wins. 
 All the instruments of war are created to kill 
 men. Without shedding human blood no nation 
 can come off victorious. In war the entire in- 
 genuity of man is set to devise effective ways of 
 blotting out human life. The faster men can be 
 killed the sooner peace will come. If you cannot 
 kill them with bullets, blow them to pieces with 
 shells. If you cannot reach them with guns on 
 the earth, then annihilate them by bombs 
 dropped from the skies. If you cannot reach 
 them with steel, then asphyxiate them with gas. 
 If you cannot shed their blood on the land, then 
 drown them at sea. If you cannot reach them 
 by any instrument which will mangle the flesh, 
 then starve them to death. War lives and 
 moves and has its being in the work of killing 
 men. Soldiers are trained to kill. That is 
 their business. It is a critical and taxing under- 
 taking, and therefore a nation must send into 
 its army and navy only its strongest and best. 
 The dwarfs and the hunchbacks are not 
 wanted, nor are the blind and the deaf, nor the 
 maimed and the crippled. War is fastidious, it 
 lays its ordaining hands only on the men who 
 
240 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 are without blemish. It cannot use the weak- 
 Hngs or defectives, the lunatics or imbeciles. It 
 does not go to the asylums, but to the univer- 
 sities for its recruits. This is because war is 
 the business of taking human life, and to kill 
 men rapidly and with certainty, soldiers must 
 be young and alert and strong. 
 
 Killing men means of course the killing of 
 women, but war says: "What is that to me?" 
 Every man's life is bound up with the life of at 
 least one woman, sometimes with the lives of 
 two women, and sometimes with the lives of 
 three and four. Every man has a mother, he 
 may have a sister, and also a wife, and likewise 
 a daughter. When he dies there are hearts 
 which are pierced. The war statisticians are 
 careful to chronicle the number of killed men; 
 the number of slain women is known only to 
 God. When men die in action women die at 
 home. Surely war is brutal. What brute is so 
 furious and so heartless and so undiscriminating 
 as war? 
 
 While war from the beginning has been 
 brutal. It never reached such depths of brutality 
 as in the last war. This is not because men in 
 the twentieth century are by nature more cruel 
 than their predecessors, but Science has multi- 
 plied and sharpened the instruments of destruc- 
 tion. It has extended the range and the variety 
 of war's brutalities. In the earliest days men 
 fought with clubs and stones, later on with bows 
 and arrows, still later they made themselves 
 terrible by the use of javelins and spears, but 
 
THE PEOGEESSIVE BETJTALITY OF WAE 241 
 
 all these are only innocent toys compared with 
 the modern engines of war. Men are now killed 
 by machinery. They are mown down at great 
 distances. Brutality has been carried to a 
 higher perfection. Physical force has been 
 multiplied a million fold. War has become 
 more heartless because it has lost its eyes and 
 ears. Soldiers could once see their enemies. 
 That is not necessary now. The worst destruc- 
 tion done by the soldier is done beyond his sight. 
 Officers consult the formulas of the higher 
 mathematics, and of the new chemistry, and set 
 loose the forces of destruction without com- 
 punction. The indiscriminateness of the brute 
 has become accentuated and habitual. The 
 modern instruments make no distinctions. Men 
 firing shells at a city seventy miles away cannot 
 pick out the buildings which shall be razed or 
 the individuals who shall be slain. Aviators 
 dropping bombs from above the clouds cannot 
 distinguish hospitals from munition factories 
 or churches from arsenals. Babies in their 
 cradles have no protection, and aged women on 
 their death bed cannot hope for compassion. 
 War has become incredibly and devilishly brutal. 
 Nor is there any possible escape from this 
 brutality, A nation more brutal than its neigh- 
 bours has the power to drag them all down to 
 its level. They must be increasingly brutal in 
 order to be merciful. When Germany bombed 
 unprotected towns, blowing to shreds men, 
 women and children indiscriminately, the 
 French and British cried out against the 
 
242 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 atrocity, but later on they did the same thing 
 themselves. They did it on the ground that 
 only by such reprisals was it possible to check 
 even a little the fury of their unprincipled foe. 
 When Germany first used poisonous gases her 
 enemies indignantly protested. Such cruelty 
 was fiendishly inhuman, and beyond the limit 
 of anything allowable in civilized warfare, and 
 yet the Allies later on set all their leading chem- 
 ists to work to create gases still more deadly. 
 The American people are by no means a cruel 
 people, and yet at the close of the war we were 
 manufacturing deadly gases at the rate of two 
 hundred tons a day. Killing by gas shocked 
 the imagination because it was new. But suffo- 
 cating men by gas is not a whit worse than 
 suffocating them by water as Admiral Mahan 
 years ago pointed out, and drowning them is 
 certainly less cruel than starving them to death. 
 The method of starvation is in good and regular 
 standing in the highest courts of Christendom. 
 The learned judges and distinguished scholars 
 who codify and interpret international law have 
 never entered a protest against the infamous 
 cruelty of starving a city or nation. But until 
 this device of savagery is universally condemned 
 and abandoned, what other hellish atrocity can 
 ever be consistently arraigned on the ground of 
 its cruelty? To starve thousands of men, 
 women and children to death is not a whit less 
 Satanic because " damned custom has so brassed 
 our heart that it is proof and bulwark against 
 sense." The fact that any nation calling itself 
 
THE PROGEESSIVE BRUTALITY OF WAR 243 
 
 civilized can calmly announce that it has an in- 
 disputable right to starve a hostile neighbour 
 into submission is demonstration of the frightful 
 degradation which the traditions of war have 
 wrought in the human heart. War is brutal, in- 
 corrigibly, everlastingly brutal, but it is only 
 when its brutality takes on an unfamiliar form 
 that we are stirred deeply enough to cry out in 
 pain. 
 
 But brutal as war is to-day, it will be more 
 brutal to-morrow. The late war will stand in 
 history as the most brutal war ever waged 
 upon our planet up to the twentieth century, 
 but the next war, if there be a next war, will be 
 far more brutal. Science has not yet reached 
 her limit in any direction. Her latest inven- 
 tions are only hints of what she will produce 
 later on. The submarine as it exists to-day is 
 only a feeble and clumsy vessel compared with 
 the submarine which the genius of man will be 
 able to construct. The aeroplane of 1019 is a 
 fragile and impotent toy, faintly suggesting the 
 mighty fleets which will one day fill the sky. 
 Chemistry is yet in her infancy. The physicist 
 is only a boy in knickerbockers, the chemist is 
 scarcely more than a baby. What chemistry 
 did in the last war is only a suggestion of what 
 chemistry will do in the next war, if next war 
 there must be. There are other sciences not 
 yet yoked to the war chariot which will be made 
 use of if war is to be given a new lease of life. 
 Bacteriology did little more than show one of 
 its fingers in the last war. Who dares say what 
 
244 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 it might accomplish if allowed to enter with its 
 full powers into the arena of destruction? It 
 is clear that humanity has in its possession suf- 
 ficient freedom and power to commit suicide. 
 Mankind can, if it will, blot out our present 
 civilization and slip back into a lower mode of 
 existence. If the nations should now adopt 
 again the policy of armed peace, and proceed to 
 make preparations for the next war, there would 
 be nothing left but a certain fearful expectation 
 of judgment. Should a considerable part of the 
 brain power of the leading nations of the earth 
 be devoted through the coming forty years to 
 the still further elaboration of the machinery 
 of destruction, another war would be inevitable, 
 and in that war the hope of mankind would 
 perish. 
 
 Let no one solace himself with the thought 
 that there is a limit beyond which civilized men 
 will not go when fighting for what they conceive 
 to be their rights and liberties. There is no 
 such limit. The conduct of Germany has 
 demonstrated it. She believed that not only 
 her prosperity but her very life was at stake, 
 and believing this she was ready to trample all 
 laws and traditions under her feet, and to make 
 reckless use of every engine of destruction upon 
 which she could lay her hand. We condemn 
 her for her abominable practices, but who can 
 be sure that other nations placed in a like 
 position and fired with a similar belief will not 
 pursue a similar course? Who with the history 
 of England unrolled before him can confidently 
 
THE PKOGEESSIVE BRUTALITY OF WAR 245 
 
 assert that England would not make a Von 
 Tirpitz use of the submarine rather than lose 
 her supremacy of the sea? And who with a 
 knowledge of the American invincible spirit can 
 be sure that the United States, rather than have 
 Germany take possession of New York and 
 Washington, would not be willing by means of 
 her poisonous gases to asphyxiate the entire 
 population of cities as large as Cologne and 
 Dresden and Berlin? No one can say in ad- 
 vance what a nation will do when with its back 
 to the wall it feels it is fighting for its honour 
 and its life. All talk, then, of humanizing war, 
 and regulating war, and holding war within 
 definite and polite limits is foolish. War is by 
 nature a brute. It is more than a brute, it is a 
 devil. It is because it has in it the spirit of hell 
 that it is progressively and unconquerably 
 heartless, and will, if not driven from the earth, 
 ultimately bring man and everything he holds 
 dear down to irretrievable ruin. 
 
XX 
 
 THE IXDISPEXSABLENESS OF 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 THE New Testament assumes that with- 
 out the spirit of Jesus Christ the world 
 is lost. It is fundamental in the Chris- 
 tian religion that God so loved the world that 
 He gave His Son, and that all who believe on 
 His Son shall not perish. " How shall we 
 escape," asks a Christian writer of the first 
 century, '' if we neglect so great salvation?" 
 The greatest scholar among first century Chris- 
 tians was powerfully impressed by the bank- 
 ruptcy of all the agencies by which the uplifting 
 of mankind had been attempted. The wisdom 
 of the world had, he said, turned out to be fool- 
 ishness, for the wise men had failed to ascertain 
 the character and the purposes of God. The 
 ancient world had been rich both in philosophy 
 and religion, but none of the philosophies or re- 
 ligions had been able to save mankind from 
 misery and degradation, because not one of them 
 had caught a full glimpse of the heart of the 
 Eternal. The nature of Deity had at last been 
 revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, and it was by 
 
 246 
 
INDISPEXSABLENESS OF CHEISTIAKITY 247 
 
 building up in mankind the disposition of Jesus 
 that the age-long tragedy would be ended and 
 the world would pass into a brighter day. 
 Simon Peter, in the presence of the leading men 
 of Jerusalem, expressed the conviction of all 
 the apostles when he declared that in none other 
 than Jesus Christ of Nazareth is there salva- 
 tion, " for neither is there any other name under 
 heaven that is given among men, wherein we 
 must be saved." That this is so has been 
 freshly illustrated and confirmed by the great 
 war. The supreme lesson of the war is the m- 
 dispensableness of the Christian religion. 
 
 To the superficial observer it might seem 
 that the outstanding teaching of the war is the 
 impotency of the religion of Jesus. On the sur- 
 face there is plausible justification for this con- 
 clusion. Did not the war arise in Europe, and 
 is not Europe the oldest of all the Christian 
 continents? Is it not in Europe that the great- 
 est of Christian cathedrals have been erected, 
 and that the largest number of prayers in the 
 name of Jesus have been offered? Were not 
 all the earliest belligerents Christian nations, 
 baptized into the name of Jesus, and confessedly 
 bound to Him as their Saviour and Lord? The 
 t\vo non-Christian nations which took part in 
 the bloody struggle were dragged into it be- 
 cause leagued with Christian powers. Is not 
 Germany a Christian nation, and are not her 
 rulers and teachers confessed adherents of 
 Christ? How did it happen that the most furi- 
 ous and cruel of all the wars was rocked in a 
 
248 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 Christian cradle, and came forth from a Chris- 
 tian home to lay desolate a continent where the 
 Bible had for centuries been an open book, and 
 where the ministers of Jesus had through sixty- 
 generations expounded His teachings and glori- 
 fied His name? Here is a problem which every 
 thoughtful mind has been obliged to face, and 
 multitudes of men and women both inside and 
 outside the churches have been greatly puzzled 
 by it. 
 
 The first impulse was to say that Christianity 
 had failed. Sometimes it was said in sorrow 
 and sometimes it was said in scorn. The 
 skeptics became more skeptical, and the cynics 
 became more cynical. Timorous believers were 
 filled with dismay, and here and there a frail 
 soul slid down into despair. It was not an easy 
 time for anybody. The air was filled with ac- 
 cusing voices, some mildly sarcastic and others 
 bitterly abusive. The seat of the scornful was 
 crowded. Men declared in loud voices that 
 Christianity had failed, and that Jesus is not the 
 world's Redeemer. The time had arrived, they 
 said, v/hen we must look for another. Many 
 Christians did not know what to think or say. 
 
 The first reply which came to many lips was 
 that other agencies had also failed. Misery 
 loves company, and to look round upon other 
 discredited institutions brought relief. Art had 
 failed, and so had Philosophy, and so had 
 Science, and so had Law, and so had Commerce, 
 and so had Socialism, and so had Education, and 
 so had Statesmanship. All this was only too 
 
INDISPEIs^SABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY 249 
 
 true, but it was not an answer which satisfied. 
 We have a right to expect more of Christianity 
 than of Philosophy or Science or Art, of Social- 
 ism or Education or Law. The world is justi- 
 fied in demanding more of the Church than of 
 any other institution. When therefore Religion 
 fails to safeguard the highest interests of man- 
 kind, and when the institution which claims to 
 represent God on the earth permits mankind to 
 go sprawling into a ditch, the heart instinctively 
 sit^ down in amazement and demands an ex- 
 planation. 
 
 Is not the explanation this? If by Christi- 
 anity we mean the principles and ideals of Jesus, 
 then the cause of the world catastrophe was the 
 refusal of the world's rulers to apply these prhi- 
 ciples. It is not fair to say that Christianity 
 has failed unless Christianity has first been tried. 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw was right when he said that 
 Christianity is difficult and so had not been tried. 
 It is not at all easy to act at all times upon 
 Christian principles even in one's own private 
 life. Far more difficult is it to act upon these 
 principles at all times in commercial or political 
 relations. As soon as we begin to Hve with 
 others we are caught in the meshes of innumer- 
 able entanglements and are carried oftentimes 
 whither we would not go. But the difficulty 
 reaches its climax in the realm of international 
 relationships. Principles which seem rational 
 when applied to individuals are not equally ob- 
 vious when applied to large social groups. The 
 principles of service and sacrifice and forgive- 
 
250 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 ness are easily accepted inside the walls of the 
 home, but what can nations do with these in 
 the wide sphere of the world's life? It is not 
 surprising that many men came to the conclu- 
 sion that Christian principles are not for na- 
 tions but only for individuals, and that others 
 tossed aside Christian principles altogether, as 
 impracticable and outgrown. Surely the states- 
 men of Europe have made no strenuous and 
 continuous effort through the last fifty years to 
 apply the principles of Jesus to international 
 affairs. The old principles of the pre-Christian 
 world still maintained their grip on the minds 
 of men who counted themselves Christians, and 
 the philosophy of Macchiavelli seemed more 
 reasonable and far safer than the ideas promul- 
 gated by Jesus and His apostles. The ideals of 
 the Gospel were exalted in the church and the 
 home: they were not enthroned in the chan- 
 celleries of Europe. Europe was Christian in 
 spots, but there were wide areas of her life 
 which had never felt the breath of the Man of 
 Galilee. She had her spiritual thinkers, but in 
 the domain of practical statesmanship she was 
 frankly and thoroughly materialistic. It was a 
 maxim of her political philosophy that govern- 
 ment is founded on force. To increase the 
 power of the State was a diplomat's supreme 
 ambition. Nations became known as "Powers," 
 and those nations which had the hugest armies 
 and navies were known as the " Great Powers." 
 *' To maintain the balance of power " was the 
 chief concern of State Ministers. To do this it 
 
INDISPENSABLENESS OF CHEISTIANITY 251 
 
 was often necessary to have recourse to secret 
 diplomacy. Things were agreed upon behind 
 closed doors which were never told to the peo- 
 ple. Out of a materialistic philosophy only a 
 materialistic program can come. The program 
 was armed peace. Every nation walked clad 
 in armour. The clanking of the armour awak- 
 ened suspicion and distrust. The distrust deep- 
 ened into fear, and the fear hardened into hate. 
 Europe was nominally Christian. She used the 
 name of Jesus, and conducted worship in His 
 name; but the men who moulded the policies of 
 State did not do the things which Jesus com- 
 mands. They said, " Lord, Lord," but they re- 
 fused to do the will of their Father in heaven. 
 They did not neglect the Sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper, but they were workers of in- 
 iquity. Good-will is one of the fountains of life, 
 but unscrupulous journalists systematically 
 poisoned all the springs of international good- 
 will. Cooperation is a Christian law, but states- 
 men in every country trampled it under their 
 feet. Friendship is a principle of national life, 
 but mischief-makers in every country weakened 
 the ties which bound, and made it easier for 
 nations to be foes. If by Christianity we mean 
 the mind of Christ, surely Christianity has never 
 yet been tried on a large scale and for an ex- 
 tended period in the life of any nation. Men 
 have tried for centuries to get this poor old 
 world of ours along by the use of every con- 
 ceivable expedient except the application of the 
 law of Jesus Christ. Alas, the word " Failure ** 
 
252 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 is written across every page. Never were such 
 determined and enthusiastic efforts put forth to 
 save the world from the catastrophe of war as 
 within the half century preceding 1914. Every- 
 thing was tried by Parliaments and Kings ex- 
 cept obedience to the word of Christ, and with 
 what result the world now shudders to relate. 
 It has been demonstrated in the eyes of all man- 
 kind that Christian principles are indispensable 
 to the saving of this world. Till Jesus is recog- 
 nized as King, all our political life will continue 
 to be bound in shallows and in miseries. Until 
 we repent, and by repentance the New Testa- 
 ment means a change of mind, there is no hope 
 for the world. We have been obsessed by 
 theories which are false. We have accepted 
 ideals which are low. We have followed leaders 
 who are blind. The great war has shouted 
 again in our ears the warning of the Eternal 
 that unless we turn to Jesus we are lost, unless 
 we take up our cross and follow Him there is 
 no place for us in God's universe but the outer 
 darkness where there is wailing and gnashing 
 of teeth. 
 
 That the Christian Church has not pressed 
 home upon men's consciences the Christian 
 principles of service and sacrifice and good-will 
 with as great fidelity and passion as the times 
 demanded is a confession which no Christian 
 will hesitate to offer. All human agencies are 
 marred by imperfections, and all institutions fall 
 short of the ideal. The Church will not fail to 
 grasp the lesson which the war has made start- 
 
INDISPEJSSABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY 253 
 
 lingly clear — the indispensableness of Chris- 
 tianity, the absolute necessity of the spirit of 
 Jesus in every one of the kingdoms of the 
 world's Hfe. Nothing else will take the place of 
 this, neither ritual nor creed nor miracles of 
 philanthropic activity, nor superb acts of per- 
 sonal devotion. There is nothing which will 
 take the place of love. In the light of the great 
 war Paul's sentences glow with a thrilling 
 glory : " If I speak with the tongues of men and 
 of angels, but have not love, I am become sound- 
 ing brass, or a clanging symbol. And if I have 
 the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and 
 all knowledge; and if I have all faith so as to 
 remove mountains, but have not love, 1 am 
 nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed 
 the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, 
 but have not love, it profiteth me nothing." 
 This is as true for churches as for individuals, 
 and it is as true for nations as for churches. 
 The one thing indispensable for the health and 
 happiness of this world is the mind of Christ; 
 and the mind of Christ is the heart of God, and 
 the heart of God is love. All men and churches 
 and nations stand before the judgment seat of 
 Christ— in other words, they are judged accord- 
 ing to the measure of their love. 
 
 If love is the one thing indispensable, we 
 should not be so swift to condemn the Church 
 because it did not prevent this unprecedented 
 and unspeakable disaster. It is often assumed 
 that the Church is in possession of powers 
 which it does not have. Men too often take it 
 
254 WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 for granted that the Church can coerce men into 
 courses which are right, that it can compel men 
 to adopt moods which are ChristHke. The 
 Church has no powers of coercion. In the 
 realm of the heart the word compel is unknown. 
 The will of man cannot be forced. The tides 
 of the soul ebb and flow in obedience to forces 
 which lie beyond the reach of monarchs and 
 prelates. There was no Catholic priest strong 
 enough to bend the will of Metternich, nor any 
 Lutheran pastor saintly enough to change the 
 heart of Wilhelm II. This ought not to sur- 
 prise us. Paul was not strong enough to bend 
 the will of Felix, nor was Jesus holy enough to 
 change the heart of Herod. The Church is a 
 divine institution, but in many fields it can do 
 no mighty work because of men's unbelief. 
 From many a heart it retires discomfited be- 
 cause the door is shut. The will is free, and 
 even the Son of God must stand patiently at 
 the door until the soul decides to open it. The 
 Church has not the power to break into the 
 world's heart and drive out of it the demons 
 w^hich have so long harassed and plagued it. It 
 is not proof that Jesus was negligent or luke- 
 warm because Jerusalem went steadily on to her 
 destruction, nor is it proof that the ministers of 
 the Christian Church were recreant to their 
 trust, because the statesmen of Europe plunged 
 the world into a cauldron of blood. The one 
 thing which is incontestably proved is that the 
 leaders of nations must accept the principles of 
 Christ if they are to save mankind from destruc- 
 
INDISPENSABLENESS OF CHEISTIANITY 255 
 
 tion. Christ does not offer to save men in their 
 sins. In their sins it is impossible to save them. 
 The Church cannot do what is beyond the 
 power of the Lord Himself. It cannot save 
 nations in their sins. When nations choose to 
 live in an atmosphere of suspicion and envy and 
 ill-will, there is no power under heaven which 
 can save them. When political rulers become 
 the agents of commercial greed, and manipulate 
 weaker governments for their own selfish ag- 
 grandizement, how can the Church save them 
 from the fire which is prepared for them? 
 When the leading men of a nation fall in love 
 with the mailed fist, and think it glorious to 
 stand in shining armour, and heartlessly im- 
 poverish the common people for the upkeep of 
 enormous armies and navies, the ministers of 
 religion cannot be held responsible for the dis- 
 aster which such foolery invites and deserves. 
 Christianity is indispensable to the normal life 
 of the world. It is important that it be taught, 
 it is equally important that it be believed. The 
 war has reminded clergymen that their supreme 
 business is to proclaim the principles of brother- 
 hood and good-will, and laymen that their 
 crowning duty is to do what lies in their power 
 to work these principles into the life of Society 
 and the policy of the State. 
 
 Too many of us have been worshipping gods 
 which are idols. One of them is Science. We 
 have spelled it with a capital S. We have been 
 infatuated with this modern worker of miracles. 
 We have allowed him to usurp the place of re- 
 
256 WHAT THE WAE HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 ligion. We assumed he could put an end to 
 war. He has now shown what he is able to do. 
 He has given us a specimen of a scientific war. 
 It is the scientific experts who have contributed 
 the ingredients to form the hell-broth which 
 bubbled over the rim of the cauldron and 
 scalded the world. 
 
 Another of our modern gods is Commerce. 
 He has awed us by his achievements and dazzled 
 us by his wealth. He has blown away the 
 barriers and opened the doors, and has wrapped 
 the world round with rails and wires. We now 
 see he sows the seeds of new wars. He multi- 
 plies the points of friction. He whets the appe- 
 tite of covetousness to a keener edge. It was 
 men who were eager for new markets who let 
 slip the dogs of war. 
 
 Law is another of our discredited gods. In 
 our State capitals and in Washington City men 
 have worked with both hands writing new 
 statutes on the books, so certain have we been 
 that it is through legislation we are to reach the 
 promised land. At the Hague conferences in- 
 ternational conventions were adopted with great 
 formality and eclat, and a Palace of Peace arose 
 in the Dutch capital, announcing to all the world 
 that the ages of bloodshed were ended. Alas, 
 treaties and conventions are only scraps of paper 
 unless behind them there beat hearts which are 
 true as the heart of Jesus. 
 
 Still another of our gods has been Education. 
 We have covered our land with colleges and 
 schools, firm in the belief that knowledge is 
 
INDI9PENSABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY 257 
 
 power. So it is, but it is not a power which can 
 banish war. Knowledge may come while wis- 
 dom lingers. Knowledge puffs up; we need 
 something which will build up. This war was 
 born in the institutions of higher learning. 
 What the world most needs is not an informed 
 intellect, but a renewed heart. 
 
 To whom then shall we go? Science cannot 
 kill war, for science has not the new heart, and 
 only whets the sword to a sharper edge. Com- 
 merce cannot kill war, for commerce lacks the 
 new heart and lifts the hunger of covetousness 
 to a higher pitch. Law cannot kill war, for law 
 is nothing but a willow withe tied round the 
 wrists of humanity, and human nature when the 
 primal passions stir themselves snaps all the 
 withes asunder and carries off the gates which 
 were supposed to make the city safe. Educa- 
 tion cannot end war. If it is only the sharpen- 
 ing of the intellect, it fits men to become ten- 
 fold more masterful in all the arts of destruc- 
 tion. Who will end war? 
 
 The world has had three historic scourges: 
 famine, pestilence and war. Commerce killed 
 famine. By her railroads and steamships she 
 killed it. It lies like a dead snake by the side of 
 the road along which humanity has marched up 
 to the present day. Science killed pestilence. 
 The Black Plague, the Bubonic Plague, Cholera, 
 Smallpox, Yellow Fever — all have received their 
 death blow. These foes of mankind lie bleed- 
 ing and half dead by the side of the road along 
 which mankind presses on to a higher day. 
 
258 WHAT THE WAK HAS TAUGHT US 
 
 Who will kill war? Not Commerce, not 
 Science, nor both of them together. Only Re- 
 ligion can kill war, for religion alone creates the 
 new heart. Only the Christian religion can kill 
 war, for only Christianity reveals to us a God 
 of love. Without the religion of Jesus we are 
 without hope in this world. Without God in 
 Christ we are lost. 
 
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