D 639 .R4 C3 Copy 1 THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER HOW GOD LOOKS UPON THE PRESENT CONFLICT THE REV. REGINALD Jy CAMPBELL Great Britain's Most Popular Preacher THE DEAD WAR HEROES LIVE WITH US MAURICE MAETERLINCK "The Belgian Shakespeare" A TRIBUTE TO THE SOUL OF THE SAILOR BY GOVERNOR CHARLES H. BROUGH OF ARKANSAS INTRODUCTION, CONCLUSION AND COLLATION THE REV. JOHN L. SAUNDERS LITTLE ROCK, ARK. ."R4C3 ©CI.A481204 DEC 31 1917 /ilt^-^ { I am a Revolutionist in the realm of thought. I thank God that I owe my fealty to the grand republic of intellectual liberty, where every citizen, however humble, has a right to be free, crowned and sceptered. I believe we may safely follow the guidance of an awakening conscience, for beneath her banner the daunt- less champions of human liberty have gained their inspira- tion to nerve the eagle's wing for its majestic flight — to fling Freedom's ensign like a burst of gold and glory into a leaden sky. "New occasions new duties teach. Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward Who would keep abreast of Truth." It is only Falsehood that seeks to entrench itself behind the dust of centuries, and cries aloud, "Don't disturb me, for I was accepted by saints and statesmen, and I am unassailable." Then turn your battering rams of logic upon the false and untrue, supporting Truth as it stands unfaltering and unashamed in the bright glare of the noon-day sun, the very essence of the religion of the immaculate Son of God. Let us therefore bring forth from the storehouses of intellect some of the brilliant jewels of genius, like rare diamonds from the secret chambers of earth. It is with great pleasure that I introduce the Rev. Reginald J. Campbell, England's foremost thinker and theologian, who has spoken as by inspiration for the English-speaking race upon the subject, "How God Looks Upon the Present Conflict." British Pastor Would Not End War If He Were God By the Rev. R. J. Campbell The Most Popular Preacher in England Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod; Have mercy on my soul, Lord God, As I would do if I were God, And Thou wert Martin Elginbrod. This striking epitaph, quoted by George Macdonald, is said, though I cannot be sure, to have been placed on the tombstone of some individual of Norse extraction buried in the North of Scotland. The Norse element in certain parts of Scotland has contributed not a little to the char- acteristic sturdiness and independence of her people and to the great part they have played in the world in modern times. I hope it is true that this inscription does appear, or once did appear, in a Scottish graveyard. I may not have got it verbally exact, and have no means of verifying it, but it is near enough. To my mind there is something rather fine about it without a trace of irreverence or pre- sumption. Something similar is recorded as having been uttered in France in the Fifteenth century or thereabouts by a famous captain of freebooters, named La Hire, though not with the simple dignity of the verse given above. Men Who Have Put Themselves in Place of God. According to Hallam, this worthy was not addicted to spending much time over his devotions, and was found , fault with thereupon. He held, however, that his mode of praying was as effective as anyone else's. Before going into battle he would address Heaven thus: "So do with me this day, God, as I would do with Thee if I were God and Thou wert La Hire." This bold, even audacious, anthropomorphism, this drawing of a likeness between man and God, makes one great assumption, namely, that divine goodness is at least equal to human and not different in kind. The crudity of the sentiment in other ways need not blind us to the value of this. That it puts man and God over against each other, as it were, as distinct entities, regarding God as a kind of larger man, but stronger, abler and in possession of fuller information, holding a supreme magisterial office to which we are amenable, need not disturb us. Perhaps no religious proposition that has ever been framed has altogether escaped this inherent anthropo- morphism, or could do so. Do what we will, when we think of God, or, rather, when we think of the character of God (if I may be permitted the use of that not very satisfactory expression), we are more or less compelled to compare Him with man. We do it as a matter of course, even when we are not conscious of it. And we have high authority for doing it; in fact, the highest authority that has ever found expression through human lips, that of Christ himself. When he said, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask him?" He was saying much the same thing as La Hire and Martin Elginbrod after all. He v/as bidding us to estimate the goodness of God by the best we have learned to know of the goodness of man. And yet we ought to be careful in our employment of this comparison. Obviously we cannot press it so far as to make it explain all the ways of God in his dealings with his creatures. God is not a larger man, viewing life from man's restricted standpoint and subject to the same limita- tions of feeling and action. He is the life of all that is, the infinitely complex reality that is finding manifestation in the world of worlds, present in every grain of dust as in the farthest star. ¥/ithout him nothing exists. In him is all that is or ever shall be. To quote the words of one of the greatest of the world's spiritual seers, words that everybody knows without stopping to ponder them, "in him we live, move and have our being." How can w^e, then, enclose him in human categories v/hen we want to discuss his attributes? At least we must keep our thoughts clear while we attempt it. Of no man can it be said that others live, move and have their being in him. No man indwells in any other being than his own, except in a very limited and special sense. No man is the creator and sustainer of any universe, however small. No man ever creates anything; he only discovers. He works with nature, and nature reveals her secrets to him. It is impossible for the human mind to imagine anything that does not already exist in some form. Picture as grotesque an animal as you please, you will still have to give it limbs, mouth, teeth and eyes, or some of them. You may multiply the quantity, but you cannot invent an organ for it the like of which has never been seen or heard of before. The telephone and the wireless telegraph v/ere hidden in earth and air when Abraham marched to the rescue of Lot across the plains of Mesopotamia millenniums ago. But he did not know it and so could not advise his kinsman of his coming in the way a British force on the same spot is doing today. Moses crossing the Red sea used no aeroplanes to reconnoiter Pharaoh's host, nor had he ever heard of the submarine, but thej^ were there all right if he had only known how to summon them forth. Trying to See God in a True Light. No, man is not as God in relation to existence as a whole or in part. We have to reason from the known to the unknown. God does not. Our reason works within certain definite, sharply defined conditions. It cannot be supposed that God's does. As Henri Bergson tells us, the human mind is a by no means perfect instrument for enabling us to find our way about and do the best we can in a three-dimensional world, a world of up and down and to and fro, a world of material objects, of weights and gravitation, and dinners and teas, and clothes and houses, and cold and hot, and wet and dry, and all such like. Suppose a world of 50 dimensions — as there very well may be — or a world where none of these conditions held good at all, what then? Still it would be God's world, and His knowledge and power would pervade and control it as now. Clearly when we talk of any likeness between man and God we must make large allov/ances. Let me point out that I am taking nothing for granted so far. I am not on my own ipse dixit dogmatically de- claring that there is a God. I only say that if there be — and it is really undeniable in the last resort — He cannot be conditioned as we are, and therefore His ways of be- having must be to a large extent incomprehensible to us. Even the terms "He," "His," "Him," as applied to deity, are apt to become somewhat misleading. They at once call up the idea of a person of the male sex, like ourselves, but greater, wiser, better perhaps. Let us get that out of our heads. God is neither male nor female, and none of the other human qualities that depend upon earthly relation- ships can be exactly predicated of Him. If I had a better pronoun wherewith to designate the divine being I would use it, but it is part of our limitations that we have none. We cannot call Him "it," for that suggests something less than human, not something more. And God must be more, infinitely more, than the greatest we have yet known as man, for surely v/e have nothing that has not come from Him. How could we have? I think I could get on common ground with the most pronounced agnostic as well as the most assiduous church- goer by insisting on what I have said already — God is that, whatever it is, and it is far beyond the power of our intelli- 7 gence and imagination to grasp whence all that is pro- ceeds directly or indirectly, except where our own wills come into play. He is the eternal force that brings into existence and maintains the universe and everything in it. Hence He must be the source of everything in ourselves which we are accustom.ed to look upon as admirable — good, beautiful, sublime. Can one get away from that? I do not see how. In so far, then, as we find anything fine and worthy of reverence in human nature, we are justified in affirming that that same thing is in God. These considerations are suggested to me by remarks that have reached me concerning what I have previously written in these columns. They have not all reached me by post. Som.e of them, and these not the least piquant, have been addressed to me orally by our soldiers who have been reading my articles. But all the interrogations put together only amount to this — If God is good as man is good, or as man thinks of good, why does He permit evils to fall upon us from which we should do our best to shield our children? If I were God would I do it? How Would God Look Upon the Present Conflict.^ "There cannot be a God," cried a French essayist, "for if there were, the woes of humanity would break His heart." Are you sure of that? What if God knows as we cannot know, that the woes of humanity are but as the troubles of childhood? The troubles of childhood are real enough to children, but what do their elders think of them? It is all a matter of perspective. I can remember, as I dare say everybody can, that the griefs and fears of my childhood's days were as intense and poignant in their way as anything I have endured since. But they would not seem very serious to me now. They did not seem very serious to my preceptors then, though no doubt I had their kindly sympathy in bearing them. They knew, as I could not know, that it was not so very important to save me from them, but highly im- portant that I should come through them rightly. My playmates would have saved me from them per- haps, or those who cared most for me would. But as a rule they could not. They took my point of view and mourned their impotence. To them it really did matter a great deal that I had lost my biggest glass alley, or seen my favorite puppy drown, or been forbidden to go to the school treat, or been bowled for a duck in the cricket match. They knew all about the quarrelings and makings up again which constituted school politics, the smart of injustice at the hands of ruthless grown-ups, the humilia- tion and dismay of being plucked in exams, or given the cold shoulder by those whose favor one most ardently desired to win. That was because they took my point of view. No adult either could or would, or if, through sheer kindliness of heart, one here and there pretended to, they did it in such a way as to show me that they did not regard it in the same tragic light as I did. Is not this the clue to the matter that puzzles so many people just now? Would we treat our children thus? We cry when tragedy, dark and dreadful, invades our little world. No, we should not any more than one child would ordinarily condemn another to the experiences that to the childish mind are irksome and grievous. If I were God would I allow mankind either to inflict or endure anguish as it is doing today on such a colossal scale? If I were God would there be all this cruel welter of blood and tears? With the immortal Omar we protest: Ah, Love, could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire; Would we not shatter it to bits and then Remould it nearer to the heart's desire? If I were God would human folly and wickedness be permitted to fill the earth with horror and flame, to breed misery and injustice, to crush and trample upon the weak and innocent? Yes, if you were God. That is just the point: You are not God. If you were you would view the struggle and the pain "with larger other eyes," as Tennyson affirms, than even the angels do or our sainted dead. You are not God, nor are you yet of the great cloud from the side of Heaven. You are only a child at school, and with the eyes of a child you gaze upon this death in life, behold- ing not what lies beyond, and perceiving little of the reason why things are as they are in the somber arena where Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn. Let no one ask this question any more; it is a childish question, though it springs from a good impulse. All that is good in us is of God. It must be. Where else could it come from? You cannot get more out of the uni- verse than is already in it somewhere. Is the stream of human tenderness likely to be purer than its fountain? That is the way some people talk, but it is pathetically silly. The very heart with which you protest against the ills of life is the product of the source of life. To the riddle of existence I have no answer for myself or thee Save that I learned beside my mother's knee; All is of God that is and is to be. And God is good. Let this suffice us still, Resting in childlike trust upon His will Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill. There is comfort in this, and inspiration, too. But, someone will object, if the good is of God so is the bad. We have no more right to say He is good because there is goodness in the world than that He is bad because there is badness in the world. No? Is that the way you reckon with your friends? You do not expect the same man to be true and a liar, tender and brutal, faithful and treacherous. If your best friend is accused of dishonorable conduct, no matter how black the evidence may be, you refuse to credit it. You say: "I know him to be of strict integrity. Therefore I wait in confidence for the matter to be cleared up." . The Soldier's Chance of Getting to Heaven. Quite right. God cannot be the gentle heroism of Edith C a veil and the vile deviltry of von Bissing. That the one derives from Him renders it impossible that He could be the other. He could not be both Christ and Pilate. The other night a soldier thus addressed me publicly: "Sir, somebody has been saying in England that a man who dies for his country goes straight to Heaven whatever his life may have been beforehand. Do you think it is true that if a chap has been a bit rackety, and yet gives his life in this way, he will be all right on the other side, or will he have to go to hell?" Do not smile, reader, at the naive simplicity of the question. I thought I detected a certain wistfulness behind it, and it had evidently been widely discussed among the men who heard it put. I replied: "Probably the issue is not quite so sharp as you make it. Few of us are fit either for highest Heaven or deepest hell. But what would you do if you were God?" "I think I should give a fellow a chance," was the instant response. Need more be said? Maeterlinck Says the Dead War Heroes Live With Us By Maurice Maeterlinck "The Belgian Shakespeare." In a little book which is really a strange masterpiece, "The Enchanted City," the English novelist, Mrs. Oli- phant, describes how the dead of a provincial town sud- denly become indignant at the conduct and the morals of those who inhabit the city which they founded, rise in rebellion, invade the houses, the streets and the public places, and under the pressure of their innumerable multi- tude all powerful, although invisible, push back the living, thrust them out of doors and, mounting guard, do not allow them to return within their walls until a treaty of peace and penitence has purified their hearts, repaired the scandals they have caused and assured better conduct in the future. There is no doubt symbolized in this fiction, carried too far intentionally because we only appreciate material and ephemeral realities, a great truth. The dead live and move among us much more actively and efficaciously than the boldest imagination could depict. It is very doubtful whether they ever remained in their tombs. It appears even more and more certain that they never permitted themselves to be shut up there. There is under the tomb- stones where we think them prisoners only a little dust which no longer belongs to them, which they have aban- doned without regret and of which probably they scorn to preserve any memory. All that was really themselves remains with us. Under what form or in what manner, we do not yet know, after so many thousands, perhaps millions of years, and no religion has been able to tell us with a satisfying certainty, although all have striven to do so; but we may still, from certain indications, hope to learn the secret. Without considering farther a mighty but obscure truth which it is impossible at this moment to state pre- cisely or to make intelligible, we will confine ourselves to 12 that which is not contestable. As I have said before, what- ever may be our religious faith, there is in every case a place where our dead cannot perish, where they continue to exist as really and sometimes more actively than when they were in the flesh; it is in ourselves that this living dwelhng place is found, this consecrated abode which for those whom we have lost becomes Paradise or Hell, in the measure that we approach or depart from their thoughts and their desires. Their thoughts and their desires are always higher than our own. It is, therefore, by raising ourselves that we shall approach nearer to them. We must make the first step; they cannot descend, while it is always possible for us to rise; for the dead, whatever they may have been in life, become better than the best among us. The least good among them on losing their bodies, cast off its vices, its pettinesses, and its weaknesses, which our memory of them soon abandons also; and the spirit alone remains which is pure in every man and can desire only the good. There are no bad dead men because there are no bad souls. That is why, in the measure that we purify ourselves, we give life again to those who are no more and transform into a Heaven our memory which they inhabit. That which was always true of all the dead is today much more so because the best alone are chosen for the tomb. In the region that we think subterranean, which we call the kingdom of the shadows and which is in reality an ethereal region and the kingdom of light, there are at this moment disturbances as profound as those which we experience on the surface of our earth. The young dead invade that region from every side; and since the beginning of the world they were never so numerous, so full of strength and ardor. Whereas in the ordinary course of years, the habitation of those who leave us receives only tired and exhausted existences, there is not a single one of that kind in that in- comparable host of heroes which in the words of Pericles "leaves life at the height of glory." They have not gone down but risen to death, glorified by the greatest sacrifice that man can make for an idea which cannot die. Every- 13 thing we have believed up to this daj^ everything that we have sought to attain above ourselves, everything which has raised us to the point where we are, everything which has surmounted the evil days and the bad instincts of human nature, would be merely illusions and lies, if such heroes, such a vast amount of merit and glory, were to be really annihilated, to disappear forever, to become forever useless and inarticulate, forever without action upon a world to which they have given their lives. It is hardly possible that this can be true from the point of view of the external survival of the dead; but it is absolutely certain that it cannot be true with regard to their survival in ourselves. Here nothing is lost and nothing perishes. Our memories are today peopled with the multi- tude of heroes struck down in the flower of their age, quite different from the pale cohort of other days almost entirely composed of sick and old persons who had almost ceased to exist before leaving the earth. We must say to ourselves that now in every one of our houses, in our cities as in our fields, in the palace and in the humblest cottage lives and reigns a young dead soul in the full brilliance of his strength. He fills the humblest, darkest dwellings with a glory of which it would never have dared to dream. His presence constant, imperious and inevitable expands itself there and maintains a religion and thoughts which were not known before, consecrates everything around it, forces the eyes to look higher and the spirit not to descend again, purifies the air one breathes, the conversations that are held and the ideas that are expressed; and through communication from neighbor to neighbor, ennobles and elevates the whole people, as never before on so vast a scale. The dead of this type have a power as deep and fertile as life, and less precarious. It is terrible that this experi- ence should have taken place, for it is the most pitiless and the first on such an enormous scale that humanity has ever endured; but at this moment the trial has almost passed and we shall soon gather the most unexpected benefits. It will not be long before we shall see differences developing between the nations which have received all 14 these dead heroes and all this glory and those which were deprived of them, and we shall observe with astonishment that those who have lost the most are those which have kept their wealth and their men. There are losses which are inestimable gains and gains in which the future is lost. There are dead men whom the living could not replace and whose thoughts perform works that living bodies cannot accomplish. There are dead men whose force survives death and finds life again; and we are almost all of us at this hour heirs of a being greater, nobler, wiser, and more living than ourselves. With all those who accompany him he will be our judge, if it is true that the dead weigh the souls of the living and that upon their judgment depends our happiness. He will be our guide and our protector; for it is the first time since history has revealed to us its misfortunes that man feels hovering above his head and speaking in his heart such a multitude of glorious dead. "When we see the frightful loss of so many young lives, when we see so much physical and moral strength, so much intelligence and such magnificent promise pitilessly beaten down in their first flight, we are at the point of despair. Never have such splendid energies, such great hopes been flung down in an indiscriminate m.ass, without cessation, in one catastrophe after another, to a void from which no answer rises to us. Never has humanity, since it existed, seen such a squandering of its treasures, of its substance and of its future. For more than three years on all the fields of battle, where the bravest, the sincerest, the most ardent and the most devoted are necessarily the first to die and where the least courageous, the least generous, the weak, the sick, the least desirable, in short, have alone some chance of escaping the carnage, a sort of monstrous inverted selection is taking place which seems to be methodically pursuing the ruin of our race. We ask ourselves with anxiety what will be the state of the earth after the great trial, what will remain and what will become of a humanity decapitated and diminished by much that was highest and best? 15 It is certain that the question is one of the gloomiest that has ever presented itself to the anxiety of mankind. There is in it a material truth before which we are disarmed; and if we accept it as it presents itself, we can discover no remedy for the evil which threatens us. But material and tangible truths are never more than projecting angles of greater and deeply buried truths. The human race ap- pears to be a force of nature so necessary and so indestruct- ible, that it has always up to now not only surmounted the most desperate trials, but it has always been able to draw benefits from them and to emerge greater and stronger than it was before. It is understood that peace is preferable to war; they are two terms which it is insane to compare to one another. It is understood that if this cataclysm, unchained by a madness without name, had not fallen upon the world, humanity would without doubt have attained before long a culminating point of which it is impossible to foresee the surprises and revelations. It is understood that if one- third or one-quarter of the fabulous sums expended to exterminate and destroy had been consecrated to works of peace, all the injustices which poison the atmosphere we breathe could have been magnificently rectified, and that the social question, which is the great life and death question that justice presents to the human race, would have been once for all and definitely resolved into a happi- ness which our sons or our grandsons will perhaps not know. It is understood that the loss of many millions of young lives cut down at the moment when they were about to flourish, will leave in history an abyss which it will not be easy to fill, because it is certain that among these dead were minds of genius that will not return and which bore in them inventions and discoveries which we shall not find again perhaps for centuries. It is understood that we shall never know all the consequences of this thrusting back of progress and of these injuries without precedent. But all this being granted, it is well to keep possession of oneself. There is no irreparable loss. Everything is transformed, nothing perishes and what appears to be 16 thrown to annihilation is in no way annihilated. Our moral world, like our physical world, is an immense sphere, but hermetically closed, from which nothing can go out, from which nothing can fall to lose itself in space. Everything that exists, everything that is created on this earth remains there and bears its fruits; and the worst calamities are only spiritual and material blessings, burst- ing forth at one moment and then falling back in another form. There are no outlets from this sphere, no paths of flight, no gaps, no side paths, no losses and no oblivion. All this heroism expended on every side does not leave our globe; and if the courage of our soldiers seems so gen- eral and yet so extraordinary, it is because all the powers of the dead have passed into those that survive. All these forces of knowledge, of virtue, of patience, of honor and of sacrifice which grow from day .to day, and which we our- selves, who are far from danger, feel mounting in us without knowing whence they come, are nothing but souls of the heroes which our souls receive and absorb. It is well at times to consider invisible things as if we saw them. This is what the great religions ought to do. They represented under forms appropriate to the civili- zation they found the truths hidden, profound, instinctive, universal and essential, which guide humanity. All re- ligions have appreciated and recognized this highest thing among truths; the communion of the living and the dead. They have given it various names which evidence the same mysterious certainty: Intercession of the saints among Christians, transmigration or reincarnation of souls among the Buddhists, Shintoism or the cult of ancestors among the Japanese, who are more convinced than any other people that the dead do not cease to live, direct all our acts, are helped by our virtues and become gods. "One of the surprises of the future," says Lafcadio Hearn, the writer who has best studied and understood this remarkable cult of ancestors, "will be certainly the return to beliefs and ideas that have long been abandoned because we were persuaded that they contained no truths — beliefs which are still called barbarous, pagan and 17 mediaeval by those who condemn them from simple habit. From day to day the researches of science bring us new proofs that the savage, the barbarian, the idol worshipper and the mediaeval monk have arrived by different paths as near to certain points of eternal truth as any thinker of this century. We are learning also that theories of as- trologers and alchemists were only partially and not totally false. We have even reason to suppose that no dream of the invisible world, no hypothesis of the unseen was ever conceived, in which the science of the future will not find some germ of reality." We might add many things to these lines, especially everything that metaphysical science, the most recent of our sciences, is on the path of discovering concerning the miraculous faculties of our subconsciousness. To return more directly to what we were discussing, have we not already observed that after the great battles of the Na- poleonic era births increased in an extraordinary manner, as if the lives suddenly cut down in their flower were not really dead and were in haste to appear again among us in order to complete their career? If we could follow with our eyes what happens in the ideal world which dominates us on every side we should observe, doubtless, that the same law applies to the moral forces which appear to be lost on the fields of carnage. They know where to go, they know their goal and do not hesitate. What our dead heroes abandon they leave to us; and when they die for us, it is not metaphorically and in an indirect way, but in a very real sense and in a direct manner that they leave their lives to us. Every man who dies in a glorious action gives forth a virtue which falls back on us; and in the violence of an untimely ending, nothing goes astray and nothing evaporates. He gives in one great and single act what he would have given us in a long existence of duty and love. Death does not cut into life; it can do nothing against life. The total amount of life remains always the same. That which death takes from those who fall enters into those who remain standing. If the number of lamps dimin- ishes, the height of the flame rises. Death gains nothing as 18 long as any life exists. The more ravages it effects, the more it increases the intensity of the life it does not touch; the more it pursues its illusory victory, the better it proves to us that humanity will end by conquering it. 19 A Tribute to the Soul of the Sailor By Governor Charles H. Brough of Arkansas "O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea, Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free. Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam. Survey our empire, and behold our home! These are our realms, no limit to their sway — Our flag the scepter, all who meet obey." Our sailor boys live a romantic and enchanted life^ our Navy has ever been the greatest defense and ornament of our country — the floating bulwark of "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Our sea tars, risking their lives on the briny deep, braving the perils of the lurking submarine, which is worse than "the devil carrying a dirk in the dark," loosening cables, clearing gangways, and oftentimes manning mighty guns, they are the ancient and natural strength of a free republic. Theirs is a mighty task — the protection of sea coast and Great Lake and Gulf lines, extending over eighteen thousand miles; the guard- ing of our home ports against attacks by hostile battleships equipped with guns having a range from twelve to fifteen miles; the safeguarding of the geographical isolation of a land that is "a precious gem, set in the silvery sea, against the envy of less happier lands." The brave sailors of the United States, England, France and Italy have, for the past three and a half years, been exposed to the greatest dangers recorded in naval warfare. Germany's infamous submarine campaign lit- erally reflects the policy of piracy proclaimed by Admiral Von Tirpitz, of the German navy, on February 5, 1914, the policy of "starving England and further striking terror into her civilian population by isolation of the country from the rest of the world," and the supplementary warning of the Imperial government of February 15, 20 i 1914, that neutral nations should keep their ships out of the war zone. The torpedoing of "The Anguilla," with a loss of ten lives; of the "Fallowbar," with a loss of one hundred and seven; of the "Amaralganteaume," with a loss of forty; of the "Armenian," with a loss of thirty; of the "Hesperian," with a loss of thirty-two; of the "Ancona," with a loss of two hundred and eight; of the "Ville de Cio- tat," with a loss of eighty; of the "Persia," with a loss of three hundred and eighty-five; of the "Sussex," with a loss of fifty-two; of the Franco-Russian hospital ship "Portu- gal," with a loss of one hundred and fifteen non-com- batants; and greatest and most nefarious of all, the "Lusi- tania" on May 7, 1915, with a loss of 1198, many of whom were American women and children, are but a few of the atrocities practiced by the modern Hun and the modern "Scourge of God" on the high seas. These violations of all the rules of civilized maritime warfare reflect on the high seas the same inferno of revolting barbarity that led Manteuffel to sack beautiful Louvain, with its priceless library and time honored university; that animated Bulow and Shonmann to order the horrible massacre at Ardenne; that marked for destruction and made a target for the heaviest German guns the beautiful and richly ornamented Cloth Hall, begun by Count Baldwin the Ninth of Flanders in 1200 and completed in 1314, at Ypres; that instigated the ruthless execution of Miss Edith Cavell, the English nurse, who was the matron of the surgical institution in Brussels, by the treacherous and stone-hearted Von Bissing, that, too, despite her sex and the fact that she had spent a blameless life devoted to the alleviation of suffer- ing, and at the outset of the war had even nursed wounded German soldiers as well as those of other countries; that led to the criminal desertion by German authorities of the camps of prisoners of war at Wittenberg and Garde- kegen at a time when the unfortunate captives interned there were stricken with disease, itself aggravated, if not initiated, by callous disregard on the part of those in charge of the ordinary hygienic precautions which are essential in a crowded concentration camp; that permitted 21 the confiscation by the German government of about 20% of the remittances sent to British prisoners of war (com- batants and civilians) interned in Germany, and that sanctioned the execution of the brave Captain Fryatt of the steamship "Brussels" after he had been sentenced to death for having committed an act of self-defense well -recognized by the laws of war on sea. The torpedoing of the "Lusitania" on May 7, 1915, was a murder on so appalling a scale that, outside Germany, there was no nation of people which did not protest in horror of it. The "Lusitania" left New York on May 1st, after warnings had been issued by the German embassy that passengers would sail at their own peril. Her voyage was uneventful until she arrived ojff the south coast of Ireland, when vv^ithout warning she was torpedoed on her starboard side, and sank in twenty minutes, carrying into a watery grave 1198 unsuspecting men, women and children. The brave sea tars, many of them rough and uncouth, yet carrying in their bosoms hearts of humanity and a noble spirit of service, gave their lives freely that 962 women and children might be rescued. I believe that to these brave sailor boys, because of their chivalrous devotion to duty and their lofty conceptions of unselfish service, will be vouchsafed an immortality that "O'er sweeps all times and all fears. And peals like the eternal thunders of the deep The words, 'Man, Thou wast not born to die.' " God grant that the American Navy, which with nearly 750 vessels, including 50 battleships and an enlisted strength of 120,957 men, which is being rapidly recruited, a Navy on which a generous government has spent over three billions of dollars within the past year, may co-operate with Britannia's mJghty fleet and the splendid navies of France and Italy and other Allies, to preserve the freedom of the high seas, to rid the world forever of the menace of the submarine; to keep the ports of the world open in order that the people of our nation may bask in the sunshine of a healthful and normal commerce. God grant that the souls of our sailor boys may be kept in the hollow of His 22 Divine hand to preserve them as priceless legacies for future generations; and on the day when He shall make up his jewels may be remember our sailor boys, who have exemplified on the high seas the blessed assurance of His Divine Son that "Greater love hath no man than this, that he is willing to lay down his life for his friend." "My soul is an enchanted boat, Which like a sleeping swan doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing. And thine doth like an angel sit Beside the helm conducting it. Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing." It was the privilege of the Hon. Elihu Root, while in Petrograd as Ambassador Extraordinary from the United States, to see the Legion of Death as it marched out from the capital of all the Russias to take its place on the battle- front. There marched in the Legion the daughters of former Siberian exiles who had borne the burdens, worn the chains, and been lashed by the knouts of Russian despotism during the martyrdom of centuries. Still ringing in their ears were the stories of their fathers' sufferings. The possibility, nay, the practical certainty, of a return to such an unbearable condition should the new republic break down haunted their young hearts and inspired them to revolt from the impending danger. If the men would not fight for their country and their priceless liberty, then must the women fight for them- selves. Fearlessly, with a Heaven-born courage, they tramped away to the battlefront, with a song of freedom on their lips. And many of them will never return. 23 But their comrades need not fear for them, for they know those intrepid heroines of the World War are not the victims of the insatiable licentiousness of the enemy. Each of them carried in her belt a stiletto with which she could free her soul to enjoy the peace and comfort denied her body, should she find herself in the hands of a relentless enemy who have unsheathed their swords even in the bosom of dimpled infancy. I believe the Arch Angel of Heaven dipped the tip of his silver wing into the golden chalice and wrote across the eternal records of the All- Wise: "To the honor, glory and chivalry of the Legion of Death." The Legion of Death may not be composed of military tacticians and adepts at warfare, but when the sheaves of a victorious peace shall have been gathered, theirs may prove to have been a vicarious sacrifice. To the world they have clearly proven that the heart of the woman patrician and plebeian alike responds to the call of patriotism and purity. To me the unerring finger of destiny, pointing through the eloquent pages of history and tradition, clearly indicates the successful conclusion of this tremendous conflict. For Liberty, Truth, and Democracy, crushed to earth by the bloody heel of an unleashed Prussian autocracy, must rise again in triumph to higher and nobler heights. Pharaoh had his Moses, Julius Caesar his Brutus, King Charles his Oliver Cromwell, George the Third his Wash- ington, Napoleon Bonaparte, the man of iron and destiny, who now sleeps in the land of romance and flowers in a tomb of gilt and gold, his Lord Wellington, the Czar of all the Russias his Kerensky, and Kaiser Wilhelm his Woodrow Wilson. Copyrighted, 1917 LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS ni 020 934 972 3 «