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PRESIDENT WILSON 
 
 and the 
 
 MORAL AIMS of the WAR 
 
PRESIDENT WILSON 
 
 and the 
 
 MORAL AIMS of the WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. FREDERICK LYNCH, D.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " The New Opportunities of the Ministry" " What Makes 
 
 a Nation Great," "The Challenge," etc. 
 
 WITH ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS 
 BY 
 
 Rev. John Clifford, D.D., LL.D., of London 
 
 Rev. Arthur J. Brown, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 William I. Hull, Ph.D. 
 
 Rev. Henry Churchill King, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Rev. William Pierson Merrill, D.D. 
 
 New York Chicago 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright, 19 '8, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 
 JUL -5 I9I& V: 
 
 New York : 158 Htth Avenue 
 Chicago : 1 7 North Wabash Ave. 
 
 ©G..;.499536 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Moral Aims of the War ... 9 
 
 Frederick Lynch, D.D. 
 
 II. President Wilson's Ideal for America . 15 
 
 Frederick Lynch, D.D. 
 
 III. The Christian Measure of Greatness . 22 
 
 Frederick Lynch, D.D. 
 
 IV. The World After the War . . . .30 
 
 Frederick Lynch, D.D. 
 
 V. Labour and the Coming Peace . . .37 
 Frederick Lynch, D.D. 
 
 VI. A League of Nations 43 
 
 John Clijford, D.D. 
 
 VII. The Moral Conflict 50 
 
 Arthur J. Brown, D.D. 
 
 VIII. The President's International Ideal . 59 
 William I. Hull, Ph.D. 
 
 IX. Grounds of Hope in the Present Crisis 67 
 Henry Churchill King, D.D. 
 
 X. The Church and the League of Nations 82 
 William Pier son Merrill, D.D. 
 
 Appendices 91 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IN November, 191 7, the National Committee on 
 the Churches and the Moral Aims of the War 
 was organized for the purpose of keeping before 
 the people of the United States the lofty and disin- 
 terested character of the aims of the great struggle, 
 so far as our nation was concerned, and especially 
 to create an overwhelming resolution in the hearts 
 of our people to insist that out of this war must 
 come some new international order that shall make 
 such wars as this in which the world is engaged im- 
 probable, if not impossible, forever. It was decided 
 that conferences with groups of clergymen and 
 other Christian workers should be held throughout 
 the country, and that the various programmes of 
 this new world order, now everywhere engaging the 
 minds of statesmen and scholars, with chief empha- 
 sis upon a League of Nations, should be laid before 
 these groups. Especially was it agreed upon that the 
 aims of this war as expressed in the messages and 
 addresses of the President of the United States 
 should be laid before the people, for they mark a 
 new departure in the history of the world. They 
 
 7 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 are not only moral in their character — they are 
 Christian. 
 
 This little book contains editorials written and 
 addresses delivered by myself and others in con- 
 nection with these meetings, with an appendix 
 containing valuable lists of utterances by President 
 Wilson and others on a League of Nations and the 
 moral aims of the war. I think the extracts from 
 President Wilson's addresses and messages cover 
 nearly all he has said on these particular subjects. 
 When brought together as here they reveal a new 
 epoch in history. It is the first time the head of a 
 great nation has ever said such things. The Presi- 
 dent of the United States is demanding of the 
 nations the same standard of conduct as that which 
 prevails among all Christian gentlemen. 
 
 These various chapters are brought together here 
 especially for the sake of the many clergymen and 
 other Christian workers who are becoming inter- 
 ested in establishing the new world order. It seemed 
 better to print the editorials as originally written 
 and this accounts for some repetition. 
 
 New York. F. L. 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 WE have just been re-reading the various ad- 
 dresses of the President of the United 
 States delivered to Congress and to other 
 audiences since the entrance of the United States 
 into the war. Again we have been impressed with 
 the remarkable fact that in every utterance the 
 moral aims of the war are those which receive 
 chief and almost only emphasis. It is a new thing 
 in history, with one exception, England's dec- 
 laration of war to uphold the rights of Belgium. 
 There have been innumerable declarations of war 
 and statements of war aims by rulers which dwell 
 upon the vindication of national honour, the preser- 
 vation of the rights of the nation entering upon the 
 war, the protection of property, the preservation of 
 the lives of citizens, and national defence, but no 
 others which put the service of humanity first, regard- 
 less of the gain to the nation itself. To quote from 
 President Wilson's address of November 5, 1916: 
 "Why, my fellow citizens, it is an unprecedented 
 thing in the world that any nation in determining 
 its foreign relations should be unselfish, and my 
 ambition is to see America set the great example." 
 
 9 
 
10 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 The United States lost millions of dollars worth 
 of property and hundreds of lives through the ruth- 
 less acts of submarines. As the war progressed the 
 country faced endless complications in the future, 
 should Germany triumph. Evil machinations were 
 going on inside our nation itself, and the nation 
 was being used as a tool against the Allies. It would 
 have been perfectly natural for the United States 
 to have gone to war because of all these attacks 
 and of the innumerable violations of her honour. 
 But when at last the President declared war it 
 was not these things he emphasized, and he was 
 meticulously careful to say it was not for gain of 
 territory or for revenge. In every utterance it 
 was moral, ethical, religious aims that were em- 
 phasized. This marks a new era in history. It 
 was one of the great steps forward in civilization, 
 when civilization seemed tottering to the ground. 
 
 Five aims are mentioned again and again in these 
 addresses. It is well that we should dwell upon 
 these five aims, for they are all moral, religious 
 aims. 
 
 i. In almost every address Mr. Wilson says we 
 have entered upon this war to secure democracy for 
 the whole world. "The world must be made safe 
 for democracy." But democracy is a religious thing. 
 It came straight from Jesus Christ. It is born out 
 of the sense of the worth of every human soul as 
 a child of God. It is a corollary of that truth for- 
 ever on the lips of Jesus, the Fatherhood of God. 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 11 
 
 Christianity began as a democracy of equal souls 
 in the kingdom of God. And in democracy lies the 
 peace of the world. It is not — it never has been — 
 democracies that originate wars of aggrandizement 
 or of dominion. Mr. Wilson has seen this: "Great 
 democracies are not belligerent. They do not seek 
 or desire war. Their thought is of individual lib- 
 erty and of the free labour that supports life and the 
 uncensored thought that quickens it." World de- 
 mocracy means world peace, thinks the President, 
 and therefore he puts it as one of the chief aims of 
 this war. But again, democracy is a moral aim. 
 And the desire to win it for the whole world is an 
 act of service, which is a Christian act. 
 
 2. We have entered upon this war, says the Pres- 
 ident, to secure "the right of those who submit to 
 authority to have a voice in their own government." 
 Here again we have a moral aim. We are fighting 
 not for territory, not for revenge, but to insure for 
 other peoples than ourselves the right to say what 
 course their nation shall pursue in the common life 
 of the world. The President assumes, and, we be- 
 lieve rightly, that were it left to the people of any 
 nation to determine the nation's policy, they would 
 not vote for aggrandizement, for expansion at the 
 cost of war, or for the despoliation of other peoples. 
 
 3. "We shall fight . . . for the rights and lib- 
 erties of small nations," says Mr. Wilson in his 
 address of April 2, 191 7. And he has said it many 
 times. Here again the United States has set before 
 
12 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 it a moral aim. We are to make untold sacrifices 
 not for ourselves but for the right of the small and 
 weak nations of the earth to live their own lives 
 without fear of dictation, domination or invasion. 
 They must no longer be mere pawns to be moved 
 about the map as suits the purposes of great and 
 ambitious powers. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, 
 they are peace-loving nations, and they have the 
 right to pursue their own happy lives without fear 
 or interference. "America seeks no material profit 
 or aggrandizement of any kind. She is fighting for 
 no advantage or selfish objects of her own, but for 
 the liberation of peoples everywhere from the ag- 
 gressions of autocratic force." 
 
 4. In almost every address which Mr. Wilson 
 has made during the last year he has put as the 
 great objective of the war a league of nations 
 pledged to settle its own disputes by peaceful 
 methods and committed, through its united power, 
 to preserve the peace of the world. "We shall fight 
 . . . for a universal dominion of right by such 
 a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and 
 safety to all nations and make the world itself at 
 last free." (The many utterances of the President 
 to this effect have been collated in Appendix III.) 
 This is simply brotherhood, co-operation, good-will, 
 mutual service, the common life, applied to nations 
 as Christianity has applied them to individuals from 
 the beginning. It is putting the kingdom of right- 
 eousness above the selfishness of nationalism. It 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 13 
 
 is the realizing of "each for all, and all for each" in 
 the realm of nations as we have long since realized 
 it among men within the nation. It is establishing 
 a democracy of nations similar to the democracy of 
 men. It is a great, sublime, moral aim. 
 
 5. Finally the President has declared that we 
 have entered upon this war to secure a Christian 
 standard of conduct between nations similar to that 
 which obtains among good men. It has not been 
 so in the past. We have had a double standard of 
 ethics, Christian for individuals, pagan for nations. 
 We have said it was wrong for men to steal from 
 each other, but permissible for nations; wrong for 
 men to kill each other, but permissible for the 
 mighty nation to destroy the weaker nation ; wrong 
 for men to settle their disputes by guns and swords, 
 right for nations; wrong for men to seek revenge, 
 the natural thing for nations. We have condemned 
 the man who lives for self alone, for his rights 
 alone, and we have called that man a knave who 
 would seek his rights at the cost of the community's 
 suffering, but we have expected nations to live for 
 self and to plunge the whole world into misery to 
 vindicate their own rights or honour. We have called 
 the man who served most the great man; we have 
 called the nation which could get the most, by any 
 means, the great nation. All this must be changed, 
 says the President. The nations must observe the 
 same Christian rule of conduct that men observe in 
 their relations with each other. In other words, 
 
14 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 we find the President applying the gospel to nations. 
 When was there ever before a ruler who used such 
 words as these: "We are at the beginning of an age 
 in which it will be insisted that the same standards 
 of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done 
 shall be observed among nations and their govern- 
 ments that are observed among the individual citi- 
 zens of civilized states." "It is clear that nations 
 must in the future be governed by the same high 
 code of honour that we demand of individuals." 
 
II 
 
 PRESIDENT WILSON'S IDEAL FOR 
 AMERICA 
 
 IN Appendix VI we have brought together thirty- 
 four utterances of President Wilson, chosen 
 from almost as many addresses, on the ideals 
 he cherishes for America. We believe that we run 
 no risk of contradiction when we say that in no 
 collection of utterances on national ideals by any 
 ruler of past or present times could any such selec- 
 tion as this be made. As Mr. Wilson himself has 
 said in one of his addresses: "It is an unprecedented 
 thing in the world that any nation in determining 
 its foreign relations should be unselfish, and my am- 
 bition is to see America set the great example." 
 But in every utterance of Mr. Wilson the ideals for 
 America are as unselfish as those that the finest 
 Christian gentleman would set for himself. The 
 American people seem to be just realizing to how 
 high a pitch the President is raising these national 
 ideals. Some are even beginning to get frightened, 
 for there are many individuals who are not as un- 
 selfish as Mr. Wilson wishes to have the nation 
 become. He is demanding that the nation act in a 
 
 15 
 
16 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 Christian way, become a Christian nation — not in 
 the sense that everybody in it will be Christian, 
 but that it conform as a government to the stand- 
 ards of a Christian gentleman. 
 
 It is interesting to note the effect that these ideals 
 are having abroad. At first England was a little 
 sceptical of them. Now her statesmen and prophets 
 are using Mr. Wilson's words, and her labour parties 
 are introducing them into their constitutions. Ger- 
 many naturally looks upon them as either hypocrit- 
 ical or the vagaries of a visionary and dreamer. 
 No echo of any such sentiments as ideals for nations 
 has yet come from any of her statesmen. It would 
 mean the end of this war — and perhaps of all 
 war — should the German government be willing 
 sincerely to propound these sentiments as the 
 national ideals. But it is a great thing that the ruler 
 of one nation propounds them in his every utter- 
 ance. It is not too much to hope that the preachers 
 in the churches may follow him, and help to make 
 these really Christian ideals the ideals of the United 
 States. If one will closely study the thirty-four 
 extracts he will find they may be grouped somewhat 
 as follows: 
 
 i. "America exists not to serve itself, but to serve 
 mankind." The philosophy of nations has always 
 been that the one aim and purpose of the nation 
 was to serve itself, and generally to serve itself at 
 the expense of other weaker nations. No wonder 
 that the German papers said, when Mr. Wilson ut- 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 17 
 
 tered just these words in his address of September 
 28, 1915, that the President was pharisaical. He 
 said: "There have been other nations as rich as we; 
 there have been other nations as powerful; there 
 have been other nations as spirited ; but I hope we 
 shall never forget that we created this nation, not 
 to serve ourselves, but to serve mankind." Nobody 
 could believe that a ruler of a great nation held 
 such ideals for his country. It would be the end 
 of a nation's existence, said the Germans, should it 
 hold such views. But Mr. Wilson insists that this 
 shall be the ideal for America, and he has uttered 
 it again and again. 
 
 "Come, let us renew our allegiance to America, 
 conserve her strength in its purity, make her chief 
 among those who serve mankind" ; "We did not set 
 this government up in order that we might have a 
 selfish and separate liberty, for we are now ready to 
 come to your assistance and fight upon the field of 
 the world the cause of human liberty"; "She is 
 fighting for no advantage or selfish object of her 
 own, but for the liberation of people everywhere 
 from the aggressions of autocratic force" ; "For we 
 are part of the world, and nothing that concerns the 
 whole world can be indifferent to us. We want 
 always to hold the force of America to fight for 
 what? Not merely for the rights of property or of 
 national ambition, but for the rights of mankind." 
 And thus one may go on through the addresses. 
 Just as the ideal of the Christian gentleman is ser- 
 
18 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 vice to the weak and needy, so the ideal of the 
 Christian nation should be service to the other na- 
 tions of the world. And just as the Christian does 
 not count the cost of his service, but is ready to 
 make all sacrifices when the need calls him, so, says 
 Mr. Wilson, the modern Christian nation will count 
 no cost, will make any sacrifice, as America now is 
 doing, when the opportunity to serve the world ar- 
 rives. Nations have not gone to war before to serve 
 the world. Let us be glad that when America did 
 enter upon her sacrifice it was in service of others, 
 not of herself. 
 
 2. The ideal for America which finds commonest 
 expression in the President's addresses is this, that 
 America shall never desire anything for herself that 
 she does not desire for all mankind. This lofty 
 sentiment is as new for nations as Christianity was 
 new for individuals two thousand years ago. We 
 know not where to find it among utterances of rul- 
 ers and governments outside of the addresses of the 
 President of the United States. Its adoption by 
 all other nations would end war between nations 
 forever. It is the ideal of the Christian community 
 for the community of nations. Its universal adop- 
 tion will mark the beginning of a commonwealth 
 of nations which shall be as a new order established 
 in the earth. Yet, so far as Mr. Wilson can claim 
 the right to speak for America, it is the American 
 ideal. It shines out in almost every address he has 
 made during the last two years. Sometimes we can 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 19 
 
 hardly believe our own eyes when we read on page 
 after page of a ruler's addresses such words as 
 these: "The interesting and inspiring thing about 
 America, gentlemen, is that she asks nothing for 
 herself except what she has a right to ask for hu- 
 manity itself"; "In the day to come men will no 
 longer wonder how America is going to work out 
 her destiny, for she will have proclaimed to them 
 that her destiny is not divided from the destiny of 
 the world, that her purpose is justice and love of 
 mankind" ; "No other nation was ever born into the 
 world with the purpose of serving the rest of the 
 world just as much as it served itself" ; "And Amer- 
 ica will have forgotten her traditions whenever on 
 any occasion she fights for herself under such cir- 
 cumstances as will show that she has forgotten to 
 fight for all mankind"; "The position of America 
 in this war is so clearly avowed that no man can be 
 excused for mistaking it. She seeks no material 
 profit or aggrandizement of any kind. She is fight- 
 ing for no advantage or selfish object of her own, 
 but for the liberation of peoples everywhere from 
 the aggression of autocratic force" ; "My dream is 
 that as the years go on . . . America will come 
 into the full light of the day when all shall know 
 that she puts human rights above all other rights, 
 and that her flag is the flag not only of America 
 but of humanity." 
 
 This is all Christian and we are a long way to- 
 ward a stable and civilized world when even one 
 
20 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 nation can make this her ideal, that she desires noth- 
 ing for herself that she does not desire for all hu- 
 manity. 
 
 3. The other ideal for America which runs 
 through the President's addresses like a thread of 
 fine gold is that she shall, herself, as a nation, act 
 always only as a Christian gentleman would act, 
 and thus convince the world by her example that the 
 time has come when nations must conform to the 
 same standard of conduct as that which obtains 
 between gentlemen within the nation. Nations have 
 souls as well as individuals and there is only one 
 standard of right and wrong for souls. Respect- 
 able nations must not in the future do anything 
 respectable men do not do. The same civilization, 
 the same code of honour, the same Christian attitude 
 must obtain among nations in the world as obtains 
 among gentlemen in the community. This is strange 
 gospel to some nations. There are individuals in 
 every nation, even our own, who deny it. But it is 
 the ideal the President of the United States is hold- 
 ing up to the world through the clash and din of 
 this great war. They should be committed to mem- 
 ory by every American: "It is clear that nations 
 must in the future be governed by the same high 
 code of honour that we demand of individuals"; 
 "When I have made a promise to a man I try to 
 keep it, and I know of no other rule permissible to 
 a nation. The most distinguished nation in the 
 world is the nation that can and will keep its prom- 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 21 
 
 ises, even to its own hurt"; "What I intend to 
 preach from this time on is that America must show 
 that as a member of the family of nations she has 
 the same attitude toward the other nations that she 
 wishes her people to have toward each other" ; "We 
 are at the beginning of an age in which it will be 
 insisted that the same standards of conduct and of 
 responsibility for wrong done shall be observed 
 among nations and their governments that are ob- 
 served among the individual citizens of civilized 
 states." 
 
 There must henceforth be but one ethic, one mo- 
 rality, the same for men and nations, says our Pres- 
 ident, and insists that America be the prophet of 
 this new gospel. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN MEASURE OF 
 GREATNESS 
 
 WE use the words Christian measure of great- 
 ness deliberately, for the ideal of greatness 
 held by the world is quite antipodal to that 
 given by Christ. Christ was very conscious of this 
 and put his own ideal over against it most emphat- 
 ically — 'The world says this, but I say . . ." runs 
 all through his words either in direct utterance or 
 by implication. But the line is as sharply drawn 
 after two thousand years as it was in Christ's mind. 
 One has only to talk ten minutes with the first man 
 he meets, or read the first paper, magazine or book 
 he chances upon, or see a play, to realize how far 
 the world's idea of greatness is from Christ's. 
 
 Thus the great man from the world's point of 
 view is the man who can get the most. Christ's 
 ideal of the great man is he who gives the most. 
 Christ never sought anything for Himself. His life 
 was one of self-giving. His meat and drink was 
 to do the will of God, and that will was the giving 
 of all He had, even His life, to the world. 
 
 The great man from the world's point of view is 
 22 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 23 
 
 he who can make others serve him, who can free 
 himself from the necessity of inconvenience and sac- 
 rifice, who can make everything minister to his 
 pleasure. Christ's ideal of the great man was he 
 who, forgetting himself, passed his life in minis- 
 tering, even at the cost of inconvenience, pain and 
 sacrifice, to the needs of the world. "Ye know 
 that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and 
 their great ones exercise authority over them. Not 
 so shall it be among you ; but whosoever would be- 
 come great among you shall be your minister; and 
 whosoever would be first among you shall be your 
 servant; even as the Son of man came not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His 
 life a ransom for many." 
 
 The world's ideal of greatness is power. Power 
 is worshiped by the world. Ask the world who 
 are the great men and it answers Alexander, Caesar, 
 Napoleon, Bismarck. In Germany the great men 
 are the war lords. In America the great men, from 
 the world's point of view, have been our steel 
 kings, our coal barons, our railroad magnates, our 
 famous brokers and financiers, our successful 
 politicians. He is great who has power. Christ 
 never seems to have given any thought to power. 
 Love was to him the distinguishing mark of great- 
 ness. The gentle, meek, merciful, ministering man 
 was His great man. "By this shall all men know 
 that ye are my disciples (that is, share his great- 
 ness), that ye have love one toward another." And 
 
24 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 Paul, who knew the mind of Christ, puts love as the 
 final test of greatness. Likewise John, who leaned 
 upon Christ's breast, when he comes to write upon 
 Christian greatness has only one word, love, not 
 power. 
 
 Another outstanding trait of greatness in Christ's 
 mind was the possession of a great measure of the 
 life of God in the soul. He was greatest who had 
 most of God in him. He closes His last great 
 prayer with the ardent supplication that his dis- 
 ciples may remain "in us," in the Father and Him- 
 self. So they shall be great and bear much fruit 
 by abiding in Him and the Father. Humanity 
 becomes great when infused with divinity. Men 
 are great when they are sons of God. Human 
 weakness becomes transfigured into divine great- 
 ness when God permeates it. Creatures of time 
 become eternal, the mortal puts on immortality here 
 and now, when God is in possession. The great 
 man, no matter what his station, condition, rank, 
 position, is he who is filled with God. This was 
 what made Christ great, this, with the love and 
 compassion which always flow out of this great- 
 ness — that he was God-filled. 
 
 We cannot leave this subject without expressing 
 our extreme joy that at last the Christian Church 
 is beginning to demand that nations submit to the 
 same test of greatness it applies to men. In Eng- 
 land, France and America the leaders of the 
 churches are everywhere beginning to say that the 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 25 
 
 things which make a man great are those which 
 make a nation great. It is one of the fine fruits of 
 the war. The great nation of the future will be the 
 nation which lives to give instead of living only 
 to get; which lives to serve humanity and the 
 weaker nations of the world instead of living purely 
 for its own rights and privileges ; which speaks for 
 the world in terms of good will, instead of in terms 
 of power; which wants nothing for itself it does 
 not want for other peoples. Great Britain is in- 
 finitely greater giving of her life for Belgium than 
 in giving it to acquire South Africa. The United 
 States is infinitely greater going to war for the sav- 
 ing of civilization and the right to live, for all the 
 world, than it would have been in going to war to 
 secure the safety of property or the lives of its own 
 people. When a nation which has nothing to gain 
 for itself makes a great sacrifice, laying down its 
 life for the sins of other nations and to save the 
 nations sinned against, it is measuring up to the 
 gospel standard of greatness. 
 
 Nowhere have these gospel ideals of greatness 
 been applied to nations more strikingly than in the 
 various utterances of the President of the United 
 States, made since the outbreak of the European 
 war. Let us rejoice that in these things our nation 
 leads. It will be well to bring some of these appli- 
 cations of gospel greatness to nations to our atten- 
 tion once more: 
 
 "We are at the beginning of an age in which it 
 
26 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 will be insisted that the same standards of conduct 
 and of responsibility for wrong done shall be ob- 
 served among nations and their government that 
 are observed among the individual citizens of civi- 
 lized states." 
 
 "Only free peoples can hold their purpose and 
 their honour steady to a common end and prefer 
 the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of 
 their own." 
 
 (We quote the above sentence because of the 
 striking implication that the great nation, the nation 
 of the future, will prefer the interests of mankind 
 to any interest of its own. This is straight gospel 
 greatness. ) 
 
 "When I have made a promise as a man I try to 
 keep it, and I know no other rule permissible to a 
 nation. The most distinguished nation in the world 
 is the nation that can and will keep its promises, 
 even to its own hurt." 
 
 "The only excuse that America can ever have for 
 the assertion of her physical force is that she asserts 
 it in behalf of the interests of humanity." 
 
 "It means that you have not only got to be just 
 to your fellowmen, but that as a nation you have 
 got to be just to other nations. It comes high. It 
 is not an easy thing to do. It is easy to think first 
 of the material interest of America, but it is not 
 easy to think first of what America, if she loves 
 justice, ought to do in the field of international 
 affairs. I believe that at whatever cost America 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 27 
 
 should be just to other peoples and treat other peo- 
 ples as she demands that they should treat her. She 
 has a right to demand that they treat her with jus- 
 tice and respect, and she has a right to insist that 
 they treat her in that fashion, but she can not with 
 dignity or self-respect insist upon that unless she is 
 willing to act in the same fashion toward them. 
 That I am ready to fight for at any cost to myself ." 
 
 "Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. 
 What shall we do with it? Who is there who does 
 not stand ready at all times to act in her behalf in a 
 spirit of devoted and disinterested patriotism? We 
 are yet only in the youth and first consciousness of 
 our power. The day of our country's life is still 
 but in its fresh morning. Let us lift our eyes to 
 the great tracts of life yet to be conquered in the 
 interests of righteous peace. Come, let us renew 
 our allegiance to America, conserve her strength in 
 its purity, make her chief among those who serve 
 mankind, self-reverenced, self-commanded, mistress 
 of all forces of quiet counsel, strong above all 
 others in good will and the might of invincible jus- 
 tice and right." 
 
 "The mission of America in the world is essen- 
 tially a mission of peace and good will among men. 
 She has become the home and asylum of men of all 
 creeds and races. Within her hospitable borders 
 they have found homes and congenial associations 
 and freedom and a wide and cordial welcome, and 
 they have become part of the bone and sinew and 
 
28 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 spirit of America itself. America has been made up 
 out of the nations of the world and is the friend of 
 the nations of the world." 
 
 "We shall, I confidently believe, never again take 
 another foot of territory by conquest. We shall 
 never in any circumstances seek to make an inde- 
 pendent people subject to our dominion; because we 
 believe, we passionately believe, in the right of every 
 people to choose their own allegiance and be free 
 of masters altogether. For ourselves we wish noth- 
 ing but the full liberty of self-government ; and with 
 ourselves in this great matter we associate all the 
 peoples of our own hemisphere. We wish not only 
 for the United States, but for them the fullest free- 
 dom of independent growth and of action, for we 
 know that throughout this hemisphere the same 
 aspirations are everywhere being worked out, under 
 diverse conditions but with the same impulse and 
 ultimate object." 
 
 "We are participants, whether we would or not, 
 in the life of the world. The interests of all nations 
 are our own also. We are partners with the rest. 
 What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as 
 well as the affair of the nations of Europe and 
 Asia." 
 
 Speaking of the Western Hemisphere, the Pres- 
 ident said: 
 
 "I think that thoughtful men in all the democra- 
 cies of the hemisphere are beginning to see the real 
 purpose and character of the United States. She 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 29 
 
 is offering in every proposal that she makes to give 
 the most sacred pledges on her own part that she 
 will in no case be the aggressor against either the 
 political independence or the territorial integrity of 
 any other state or nation, at the same time that she 
 is proposing and insisting upon similar pledges from 
 all the nations of the world who have its peace at 
 heart and are willing to associate themselves for the 
 maintenance of that peace." 
 
 In every one of the quotations given above the 
 President of the United States makes the standard 
 of greatness for the nations the same standard the 
 gospels give for men. 
 
IV 
 THE WORLD AFTER THE WAR 
 
 THERE must be a new world after this war. 
 Indeed, the old order has already largely 
 gone. A Sunday school teacher had her class 
 about her one hot August Sunday when a terrific 
 tempest came. The thunder boomed, the lightning 
 flashed and crashed. She asked the boys if any of 
 them knew why the lightning never struck twice in 
 the same place. One of the boys answered : "When 
 the lightning strikes a place, the same place ain't 
 there any more. ,, The lightning has struck the 
 world, and the same world is not here any more. 
 People will never be satisfied to go back to the old 
 order. It has failed and they know it. 
 
 What the new world order will be no one can 
 foresee in detail; but the world will demand that 
 it be something radical, wonderful, based on new 
 principles of conduct, on some new relationship of 
 nations. It must be something commensurate with 
 the awful price zve are paying for it. Nothing less 
 than an absolutely new international order and one 
 that can insure the world against such calamity ever 
 
 30 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 31 
 
 again coming, something that will bring to interna- 
 tional relationships that good will and security that 
 now obtains among individuals is in any way worth 
 the price we are paying. 
 
 We will pay fifteen or twenty million human lives 
 lost, five million of them killed, before we are 
 through, and these five million our youngest and our 
 best. We are paying the incalculable sorrows of 
 millions of mothers, wives, and orphaned children. 
 We are paying the sufferings and starvation of mil- 
 lions of women and children. We are paying a sum 
 of money beyond the comprehension of the human 
 mind, a sum which will demand large parts of every- 
 thing every man shall earn for centuries. We are 
 paying in devastated lands, ruined homes and cities. 
 We are paying the social progress of a hundred 
 years, not only losing reforms we had gained but 
 mortgaging the future. We are paying in enmities, 
 hatreds and revenges that will last for generations. 
 All these things, and infinitely more, we are paying. 
 Surely the result must be something big, wonderful, 
 audacious even, for such price. We are paying hell 
 — we ought at last to get something approximating 
 heaven, one would think. 
 
 What we shall get and whether we shall get it or 
 not will depend largely upon the leadership of the 
 Christian people of the world. Now two great 
 things, one political, one spiritual, are everywhere 
 beginning to take possession of the minds of Chris- 
 tian statesmen, thinkers and prophets, as the war 
 
32 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 goes on, as the necessary result of the years of strife 
 and sacrifice. Simultaneously, in many lands these 
 aims of the war are finding expression. More and 
 more as the war goes on are the ablest minds calling 
 for them as the only satisfactory rewards of the 
 awful cost, and as the only guarantees of perma- 
 nent peace. We refer first to some form of a League 
 of Nations pledged to settle disputes by judicial and 
 Christian methods, and secondly, to the extension 
 of the Christian ethic to the relationships of nations, 
 as it has been practised among individuals for a 
 hundred years. 
 
 It is a most noteworthy fact, that, quite inde- 
 pendent of each other, several of the most prom- 
 inent English statesmen, Lord Bryce, Viscount 
 Grey, Mr. Asquith, Lord Robert Cecil, G. Lowes 
 Dickinson, W. H. Dickinson, M.P., and several of 
 our most prominent American statesmen and think- 
 ers, Mr. Taft, President Lowell, Ambassadors 
 Straus and Marburg, Hamilton Holt, led by Pres- 
 ident Wilson, have everywhere been saying that un- 
 less some "concert of nations," "league of nations," 
 "partnership of nations," composed of the great 
 powers, and all others that may come in, shall be 
 achieved, this war has been fought in vain. 
 
 It has been in every message and address of the 
 President of the United States since the famous 
 address to the Senate on January 22, 19 17. In that 
 address he says that this war must end in a "concert 
 of nations." Perhaps nowhere has the desire been 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 33 
 
 more forcibly expressed than in his famous Des 
 Moines address: 
 
 "I pray God that if this contest have no other 
 result, it will at least have the result of creating 
 . . . some sort of joint guarantee of peace on the 
 part of the great nations of the world." 
 
 Mr. Asquith in his recent widely quoted address 
 at Manchester put this as the chief aim of the war. 
 He said that he saw no hope for any future civiliza- 
 tion that was not based on "a partnership of na- 
 tions" pledged to the peaceful settlement of inter- 
 national disputes, and engaged in co-operative work 
 for the welfare of the world instead of in the selfish 
 advancing of national interests, and also there must 
 come with this some beginning at universal disar- 
 mament. 
 
 We cannot go into the details of these various 
 proposals here, although they are very simple, 
 namely, to extend those principles of political or- 
 ganization and conduct that already prevail within 
 every civilized nation. But we would earnestly 
 urge upon every clergyman and upon all other 
 Christian leaders that they be instructing the people 
 in the aims of this war as expressed by our Pres- 
 ident, so that when our delegates go to the peace 
 conference they may be prepared to demand, with 
 the voice of the nation behind them, that new polit- 
 ical order for which the President went to war, 
 and which, as it looks now, England and France 
 will demand. Many books dealing with this new 
 
34 PRESIDENT : WILSON; AND 
 
 order, and with some form of a league of nations 
 have been published recently and should have the 
 careful study of every intelligent man. Above all, 
 we wish every one would secure a copy of the book 
 just published, called " Why We Are at War," con- 
 taining the messages of the President of the United 
 States, and would go through it with pencil, mark- 
 ing the passages that state "the aims of this war." 
 And, more and more, the allied nations are accept- 
 ing our President as their spokesman. 
 
 The other conviction that is everywhere emerging 
 and finding expression in the utterances of Chris- 
 tian leaders in both Europe and America is that 
 there can be no world safe for democracy, civiliza- 
 tion, or religion itself, so long as the present double 
 standard of ethics, Christian for people, pagan for 
 nations, prevails. The conviction is seizing the 
 prophetic men everywhere that this war must put 
 an end to that sort of thing for ever, and that 
 nations must be brought under the ethics of Jesus 
 Christ as individuals have been brought, that nations 
 must be held accountable to the same laws of God 
 and man that govern the relationships of all decent 
 men. It has not been so. We have had two stand- 
 ards of right and wrong, one for men, another for 
 nations. It has been wrong, even a crime, for man 
 to steal from man; we have condoned, yes, even 
 praised stealing by nations. It has been wrong, even 
 a crime, for man to kill his brother man, except in 
 self-defence, but we have not raised our voice, until 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 35 
 
 very recently, when a big nation went out ruthlessly 
 to destroy a weaker nation. We put the man in 
 prison who attempts to act as his own judge and 
 juror, and to inflict punishment with his own hands, 
 but we have expected nothing but that on the part 
 of nations. All Christian gentlemen long ago aban- 
 doned the settlement of disputes by brute force, 
 fists, guns, knives, and have learned to settle them 
 peaceably, under the law of Christ; but the first 
 thought, when two nations have a quarrel, is to 
 rush to arms. We have long ago learned to call 
 that man great who gives most to the world, who 
 serves his fellowmen; we call that nation greatest 
 which can get the most by any means. The Chris- 
 tian man does not live by a doctrine of rights alone. 
 He is thinking of his duty and opportunity before 
 the weak ones of the world. He would never insist 
 upon getting his rights when the process involved the 
 innocent. But nations have lived for rights alone 
 until recently, and have known no duties to any 
 but themselves. 
 
 All this must be changed now, and nations must 
 live by those same principles of action, laws of con- 
 duct, common relationships that prevail universally 
 among good men, and are enforced against evil 
 men. We have brought the realm of human rela- 
 tionships up into the kingdom of God ; now we must 
 bring up the nations until all the kingdoms of this 
 world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of 
 His Christ. We must insist that as a result of 
 
36 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 this war there be but one standard of ethics in the 
 kingdom of God. There is no other security for 
 religion or even for life itself. 
 
 We would say in encouragement of those who 
 read, that during the last two years the sermons 
 of both England and America, those published in 
 journals and in books, are everywhere saying this 
 thing. It runs through the best books of the last 
 two years. 
 
LABOUR AND THE COMING PEACE 
 
 FEW conferences of recent years have been 
 followed with more interest than that of the 
 American Federation of Labour held in Buf- 
 falo. The President of the United States was 
 there and made an address which may be taken as 
 the official utterance of the Government as to its 
 attitude toward the great world conflict. Every 
 problem affecting labor was discussed, and on the 
 whole wisely, and always with the world after this 
 war in mind. But by far the most significant con- 
 tribution of all was the remarkable "Basis for Peace 
 Negotiations" adopted by the Conference. It is one 
 of the most statesmanlike pronouncements that has 
 been issued in America since we went into the war. 
 If it truly represents the mind of the masses it 
 augurs well for the future and casts upon these 
 troubled times a great ray of encouragement. We 
 hope it will be read and pondered by every man in 
 America — and in Europe, for that matter. It is as 
 follows: 
 
 37 
 
38 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 BASIS FOR PEACE NEGOTIATIONS 
 
 "We urge the adoption of the following declarations as 
 the basis upon which peace must be negotiated. 
 
 "(i) The combination of the free peoples of the world 
 in a common covenant for genuine and practical co-opera- 
 tion to secure justice and, therefore, peace, in relations be- 
 tween nations. 
 
 "(2) Governments derive their just power from the con- 
 sent of the governed. 
 
 "(3) No political or economic restrictions meant to benefit 
 some nations and to cripple or embarrass others. 
 
 "(4) No indemnities or reprisals based upon vindictive 
 purposes or deliberate desire to injure, but to right mani- 
 fest wrongs. 
 
 "(5) Recognition of the rights of small nations and of 
 the principle, 'No people must be forced under sovereignty 
 under which it does not wish to live.' 
 
 "(6) No territorial changes or adjustments of power 
 except in furtherance of the welfare of the peoples affected 
 and in furtherance of world peace. 
 
 "In addition to these basic principles, which are based 
 upon declarations of our President of these United States, 
 there should be incorporated in the treaty that shall con- 
 stitute the guide of nations in the new period and condi- 
 tions into which we enter at the close of the war, the fol- 
 lowing declarations, fundamental to the best interests of all 
 nations and of vital importance to wage-earners: 
 
 "(1) No article or commodity shall be shipped or deliv- 
 ered in international commerce in the production of which 
 children under the age of sixteen have been employed or 
 permitted to work. 
 
 "(2) It shall be declared that the basic work-day in in- 
 dustry and commerce shall not exceed eight hours. 
 
 "(3) Involuntary servitude shall not exist except as a 
 punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been 
 duly convicted. 
 
 "(4) Establishment of trial by jury." 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 39 
 
 We wish to comment on three or four of these 
 most momentous resolutions. 
 
 Number one calls for "the free combination of 
 the world in a common covenant for genuine and 
 practical co-operation to secure justice and, there- 
 fore, peace, in relations between nations.'* The 
 exact words, "League of Nations" or "League of 
 Peace," are not used here, but this is manifestly 
 what the workingmen had in mind. Labour in the 
 United States has put itself alongside the President 
 of the United States and the leading statesmen of 
 England, France and America in demanding that 
 this war shall issue in some league of the great 
 powers that shall have as its fundamental article the 
 settlement of international disputes by judicial proc- 
 esses, and shall lift the relationships of nations up on 
 to that high level where they shall correspond to those 
 now pertaining to individuals. In England, inspired 
 by the utterances of such men as Lord Bryce, Vis- 
 count Grey, Lord Balfour, Mr. Asquith and Mr. 
 Dickinson, and by eminent leaders in all branches 
 of the church, a "League of Nations Society" has 
 been formed, which is advocating this idea with 
 great response. In the United States such men as 
 ex-President Taft, President Lowell, Ambassador 
 Marburg, Hon. Oscar S. Straus and Dr. Hamilton 
 Holt have created the "League to Enforce Peace," 
 which has met with wide response, and attracted 
 to itself hundreds of the leading minds of the 
 nation. President Wilson has again and again 
 
40 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 maintained in his messages and speeches that some 
 form of a league of nations must issue out of this 
 unparalleled conflict. In fact, most thinking people 
 are beginning to feel, as Mr. Asquith put it a while 
 ago, that there is no hope for the future of civiliza- 
 tion except in some "partnership of nations." Are 
 we not all of us beginning to feel that only some 
 such partnership or league of nations is the suffi- 
 cient result of the terrible cost and sacrifice the 
 world is paying? If we go back to the old inter- 
 national order all this unconfutable price will have 
 been paid in vain, all this sacrifice of pain and life 
 have been of no avail. This new political order is 
 the only adequate reward of the unspeakable agony. 
 We are glad that labour has put itself upon record to 
 this effect. 
 
 Number three declares that there should be "no 
 political or economic restrictions meant to benefit 
 some nations and to cripple or embarrass others." 
 Here again the words are general, but it is at once 
 patent that they are called forth by the Paris con- 
 ference of the Allies, where the question of continu- 
 ing the war against Germany by economic measures 
 after the military victory against her should be won, 
 was discussed. The best minds in every nation have 
 revolted against this. The revolt was manifested 
 not only in America — we were not in the war at 
 that time — but in England, France and Japan. It 
 would be not only an unchristian act, but it would 
 make any future peace of the world impossible. 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 41 
 
 It would sow the most prolific seeds of future wars, 
 it would defeat the very ends for which all the 
 nations are fighting, and it would make any league 
 of nations for permanent peace impossible. It is 
 well to recall the words of our own President here: 
 "Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, 
 the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic 
 leagues we deem inexpedient and in the end worse 
 than futile ; no proper basis for a peace of any kind, 
 least of all for an enduring peace.' ' We are glad 
 the workingmen have spoken so emphatically upon 
 this point. They will carry the world with them. 
 
 Number four reads: "No indemnities or reprisals 
 based upon vindictive purposes or deliberate desire 
 to injure, but to right manifest wrongs." Thij 
 sounds very much like the Sermon on the Mount and 
 we are glad it comes from labour. It comes, too, at 
 an opportune time, for many voices are urging the 
 contrary. But, if, with the labour group, the world 
 can rise above revenge at the close of this war, it 
 will be one of the steps surest to guarantee per- 
 manent peace, and to win the heart of the German 
 people to that friendship our President insistently 
 says he hopes may sometime obtain again, and 
 to that democracy for the German people for 
 which we profess to be fighting. With the clause 
 to the effect that there may be indemnity for mani- 
 fest wrong no one can quarrel. The entrance into 
 Belgium, with deportation, was a pure act of bur- 
 glary, and nations that commit burglary must of 
 
42 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 course be made to make reparation just as an in- 
 dividual who burglarizes is always forced to do. 
 
 As to five and six, no comment is necessary. The 
 whole world is fast turning to that conclusion, and 
 we doubt if it will need any urging by the time this 
 war closes. But, while the Allied nations are saying 
 this more and more, they must be sure that they 
 themselves remember it after the war. For they 
 have all sinned here, as well as has Germany. This 
 war must see the end of "subject races." 
 
VI 
 
 A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 By Rev John Clifford, D.D., LL.D., of London 
 
 EVERY day of 19 17 lifted to view the urgent 
 necessity of a League of Nations, a league 
 framed to secure and to maintain as far as 
 possible to our fractious human nature the perma- 
 nent peace of the politically organized peoples of 
 the earth. 
 
 It is not the first time men have been stirred by 
 that divine vision. In the faraway ages of the 
 world the Greeks felt the charm of it, and framed 
 their councils to give it an operative place in the life 
 and action of their conflicting States — not, we regret 
 to say, with conspicuous success. Prophets and 
 righteous men of the Hebrew race longed to create 
 a Tribunal which should make wars to cease from 
 the rivers to the end of the earth, but they died 
 without setting it at work. Again and again in 
 the Christian centuries our troubled fellows have at- 
 tempted the colossal task of "ingeminating peace" 
 amongst the warring tribes of the world; but the 
 desire has never before been so strong, or the deter- 
 
 43 
 
44 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 mination so fullblooded, or the prospect so bright 
 as now, of casting out war, once and for ever, from 
 the commonwealths of the world. 
 
 Surely war has to go. Slavery as an institution 
 has gone, never to return. Duelling has gone from 
 the practice of deeply and sanely cultured nations, 
 although it lingers in Germany, along with other 
 brutalities ; and war, a relic of the state of savagery, 
 though it has suddenly pounced upon the civilized 
 world from its Prussian den like a tiger thirsting 
 for blood, is doomed to destruction. We used to 
 say so — at least every Christmas before 19 14, when 
 we joined in the angel song of "peace on earth to- 
 ward men of good will" ; but now we have a million 
 more reasons for unrelenting hate of war and in- 
 flexible will to get rid of it. 
 
 "War" a "biological necessity"? Never! It is 
 peace which is life, and life for evermore. The soul 
 of the world can grow broad and strong and pure 
 only in an atmosphere of peace. "War the healing 
 medicine for nations?" Impossible! It is their 
 death. Already it has smitten with paralysis the 
 moral life of the people who prepared through thirty 
 years for this Armageddon, and then plunged the 
 whole world into its abysses. It is written in the 
 annals of the ages that the people are "scattered who 
 delight in war." 
 
 The fact is, the Ideal Peace and the Ideal Right 
 are one. They are not in conflict; they are neces- 
 sary parts of the same whole, and dwell together in 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 45 
 
 Him who is at the same time King of Righteousness 
 and King of Peace, and are destined to dwell to- 
 gether in His Kingdom. That ideal of the righteous 
 peace is our ultimate objective in this war. That 
 goal is clear. We know what we seek, and for what 
 we are fighting ; but the road to the goal is hidden, 
 and alas, at present we have to travel through a 
 river of blood and death, so that we may arrive on 
 the shores of a peace permanent as the everlasting 
 hills and beneficent as the sunshine of God. 
 
 It is for the sake of securing this peace and 
 creating a League of Nations to guard it from at- 
 tack, and to make it abiding, that President Wilson 
 has brought the United States over to the side of 
 the Allies. He insists at all times that "America 
 has no grievance of her own" ; that they "came into 
 the war because they are the servants of mankind, 
 and will not accept any advantage from it." They 
 seek "the peace of the world in and through right- 
 eousness." To the President that is the alpha and 
 omega of the situation, the end of ends. To attain 
 that coveted goal he is devoting his masterly genius 
 for statesmanship, his strong sense of justice, his 
 broad democratic sympathies, his love of humanity, 
 and the inexhaustible resources of the great Re- 
 public. 
 
 In like manner Mr. Asquith declares that such a 
 League has been one of our aims from the begin- 
 ning, and he speaks with authority, for on him, 
 along with Viscount Grey, rests the responsibility 
 
46 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 of calling us to take our place in defence of the soul 
 and the soil of wronged and invaded Belgium. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George goes further, and sees in what 
 has been recently achieved in France the setting up 
 of a "complete machine for dealing not merely with 
 military and naval matters, but also with the finan- 
 cial, economic, shipping and other affairs essential 
 to the life of the nation." "This," he adds, "will 
 have a greater effect on international relations than 
 anyone can imagine at this particular moment." 
 
 British Labour, with one mighty voice, affirmed 
 the urgent necessity for creating such a "Super- 
 National Authority." 
 
 Representatives of other countries have spoken 
 to the same effect, if not with the same strength and 
 coherence, so that it is the manifest intention of 
 the leaders of the peoples to get a League of Nations 
 established, and assuredly it is the fixed determina- 
 tion of the people in America and on the Continent 
 not to rest until they get it. That is the beatific 
 vision of the largest and best part of mankind. 
 That is the clearly revealed purpose of God for the 
 world. That is His plan for humanity's future, and 
 it is ours to carry it out in the best way we can. 
 
 For the new era in our international life can only 
 be established on a basis that distinctly and com- 
 pletely excludes all causes of war. War is an effect, 
 and there is only one way of preventing it, and that 
 is by getting at the roots of the causes and destroy- 
 ing them. Men of good will in all lands, chosen 
 
THE MORAL^ AIMSlOF THE WAR 247 
 
 and authorized by the people, must work together 
 to form a Court of Conciliation, and determine its 
 rules and methods of procedure. 
 
 The basis on which the Court is founded must 
 ( i ) give equal liberty and status to all the political 
 groups concerned, both small and great; (2) provide 
 for economic expansion and economic restraint, and 
 the exclusion of all legitimate grounds of unrest; 
 (3) arrange for the settlement of disputes by arbi- 
 tration; (4) start with the immediate reduction of 
 armaments, and prepare for the ultimate extinction 
 of all armed forces; (5) be universal in its range, 
 embracing all nations that can be brought within 
 its bounds; and (6) be worked so that it shall be 
 manifest to all that it is impartial, holds the balance 
 fair and even, inclines to no party or class or in- 
 terest, but is mediatory, and reconciling all to one 
 another in pursuit of the common good of the whole 
 of the Commonwealths. 
 
 So worked, it will be magnetic. Each nation will 
 wish to come in and share the ministry to the 
 world's peace and happiness it will afford. It is a 
 high ideal, and difficult to reach; but it is our pal- 
 pable duty to undertake the task and actualize the 
 ideal as far as we can. 
 
 Surely we have enough of the old system. It is a 
 political order that inevitably sooner or later pro- 
 duces war; and, even when we are not actually 
 fighting, we are living in what we call an "armed 
 peace," which is fatal to social well-being, aggran- 
 
48 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 dizes the few, and pauperizes and debases the many; 
 wastes not only the financial but the moral and spir- 
 itual resources of the nations ; condemns men to be 
 the slaves and tools of those who arrogate the right 
 to control them ; hinders the free and full develop- 
 ment of the manhood of the individual ; and blocks 
 the way to the true progress of mankind. What we 
 need is a system that makes peace as inevitable as 
 war is now. The safety of the people is the supreme 
 law, and that safety must be guarded against the 
 intrigues of wild and unbalanced despots, the wiles 
 of diplomatists, and the fevered ambitions of mili- 
 tarists, to whom war is meat and drink, and all in 
 all. 
 
 Now, it is certain that America could not have 
 taken its place by our side in this strife, after long 
 and mature deliberation, had not our aims and ob- 
 jects been directed to that end. No people has done 
 more for peace than the Americans. Year after 
 year her most capable and illustrious citizens, law- 
 yers and editors, preachers and statesmen, have met 
 at the Mohonk Conference to devise methods of 
 ending war. Millions of dollars have been freely 
 given and spent in promoting that holy cause. No 
 country has a literature on war, its causes, its evils, 
 and its cure, surpassing in extent or in ability and 
 practical value that which her sons and daughters 
 have produced for the guidance of the world. In 
 June, 191 5, a League to Enforce Peace was formed 
 in Philadelphia by 400 of the most representative 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 49 
 
 and influential men of the United States; and that 
 League is, like the rest of the millions of America, 
 heart and soul and will with us in this war, because 
 it is a war to enforce peace, and to make peace 
 eternal. 
 
 They know, and we know, that we are not fight- 
 ing for fighting's sake, or for revenge, or to punish 
 the authors of this war, or for territory or trade, 
 or to interfere directly with the internal government 
 of the Central Powers; but for universal peace, a 
 "clean" peace, "secure" from war's alarms, anxieties 
 and uncertainties, not dependent on the caprice of 
 military powers, but the abiding peace our modern 
 world must have to accomplish its God-given mis- 
 sion in these times. 
 
VII 
 
 THE MORAL CONFLICT 
 By Rev. Arthur Judson Brown, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 NARLY two million Americans are under arms. 
 Five hundred thousand are in France and 
 more are going every month. There is no 
 audience in the United States which does not include 
 those who have sons or other relatives in the Army 
 or Navy. Seventeen nations are waging war and 
 forty millions of men are in uniform. Battles have 
 been fought not only in Europe but in Asia, Africa 
 and South America. Northern France is in ruins. 
 Belgium is a military prison. Every child in Poland 
 and Serbia is said to be dead or dying. Syrians 
 and Persians are starving. Armenians have been 
 nearly exterminated by murder or privation. Black 
 men in Africa have killed each other at the orders 
 of white officers. Villages have been burned in the 
 South Sea Islands. Canada, Australia, and New 
 Zealand, have sent their sons to die in the trenches 
 of Flanders. One hundred and twenty-five thou- 
 sand Chinese are in France. Four hundred thou- 
 sand men of India are on the firing line. Japan, 
 
 50 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 51 
 
 China, and Siam have declared war. The scenes 
 of ancient wars are again the scenes of conflict. 
 Egypt is a military camp. Mesopotamia is a bat- 
 tle field. The wilderness of Sinai has once more 
 seen marching men. The Mount of Olives and 
 the Hill of Golgotha bristle with cannon. The 
 streets of the Holy City resound with the tramp 
 of armed men. Judea is seamed with trenches, 
 and airships fly over the land where Hebrew proph- 
 ets spoke and where walked before men the Son of 
 God. 
 
 As for our part in this gigantic struggle, we have 
 said through President Wilson that "what we de- 
 mand in this war is nothing peculiar to ourselves. 
 It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in ; 
 and particularly that it be made safe for every peace- 
 loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its 
 own life, determine its own institutions and be as- 
 sured of justice and fair dealing by the peoples of 
 the world as against force and selfish aggression." 
 Never has a people entered a war in such an altru- 
 istic spirit. We love peace and hate war. We were 
 not prepared for war. We are three thousand miles 
 away from the scene of conflict. Our historic pol- 
 icy is to avoid entangling alliances with other na- 
 tions. But in spite of these things, in spite of our 
 knowledge of the horrors that war involves, we have 
 entered the struggle; and we are unhesitatingly 
 spending billions of money and giving up our be- 
 loved sons; and we say, as Martin Luther said at 
 
52 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 the Diet of Worms: "God help us, we can do no 
 other !" 
 
 The churches have a special duty in this time of 
 world emergency. Except the press, no other 
 agency has such access to intelligent public opinion 
 and therefore such responsibility for helping to 
 shape it aright. They ought to be deeply concerned 
 in this war. True patriotism is a religious virtue. 
 We do not love our country in any narrow or sel- 
 fish sense. We refuse to baptize greedy profiteering 
 and lust of power with the name of patriotism. But 
 we believe that the cause for which our country is 
 standing in this war is directly related to those 
 great truths for which the Church stands and to 
 which it is the duty of the Church to testify ; namely, 
 righteousness, justice, liberty and brotherhood. We 
 do not claim that our country is perfect, but we do 
 claim that on this issue it is right — unreservedly, 
 unequivocally and absolutely right, and that as such 
 the churches ought to support it with all their 
 strength. 
 
 We should emphasize the moral aims of the war. 
 We are interested in its political aims, but they are 
 not what the churches are best qualified to achieve. 
 As citizens, we are concerned with them, but as 
 churchmen it is not for us to decide matters which 
 belong to the President. We stand by him with full 
 confidence in his wider knowledge and patriotic pur- 
 pose as our nation's Commander-in-Chief. But the 
 churches are specifically concerned with the moral 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 53 
 
 aims of the war. For its aims are essentially 
 moral. President Wilson has said that we do not 
 seek territory nor indemnity nor revenge. We 
 have been grievously wronged; but while the 
 wrongs committed against us undoubtedly had 
 much to do with forcing us into the war, we 
 are not fighting on their account alone. Amer- 
 ica's part in the war would be justified if not an 
 American had been killed and not a dollar's worth 
 of American property destroyed. We are in this 
 war because it is fundamentally a war between 
 Pagan and Christian ideas of the organization of 
 the world; because it is a conflict between the law 
 of the jungle and the law of brotherhood in inter- 
 national relations; because it is to determine 
 whether the people exist for the State or the State 
 for the people; whether nations are to be ruled by 
 emperors who claim divine right to do as they 
 please, or by rulers who are responsible to the peo- 
 ple; because no people on the planet is safe as long 
 as a powerful nation comes into the family of na- 
 tions armed to the teeth and animated by principles 
 and ambitions which make it an intolerable menace 
 and compel all other peoples also to arm and fight 
 or to accept serfdom. On these issues there can be 
 no compromise. Others may be susceptible of ad- 
 justment, but this must be decided one way or the 
 other. The whole future of the human race is at 
 stake. No peace which leaves these fundamental 
 issues undecided can be permanent. The war must 
 
64 PRESIDENT WILSON ANB 
 
 be won either by a victory of the Allies or by a 
 reform of the German Government by the German 
 people, or by both. I do not venture to prophesy 
 regarding its duration. I hope that the end is near. 
 But if the war must go on until far greater sacrifices 
 shall have been made and we shall be crippled or 
 destroyed, we can only say that such a cause is 
 worth dying for, even as Christ Himself died that 
 the world might be saved. Some things are worse 
 than death. 
 
 And after the war, we must have a League of 
 Nations so constituted and with such powers that it 
 can prevent, or at least minimize, the danger of 
 future wars. Nations hitherto have been at the 
 stage of a frontier mining camp two generations ago 
 when the individual had no protection for his life 
 and property except what he could enforce with his 
 own revolver, nor was there any external restraint 
 upon him in case he chose to rob or kill another man. 
 Orderly society began with a public sentiment which 
 found expression in courts and police. To-day in 
 a civilized land, the individual is not permitted to 
 be jury, judge and executioner in his own case. He 
 is not permitted to attack his fellow men, and if he 
 does so he is sternly punished. If he himself is 
 wronged, he can appeal to the law. The time has 
 come when governments should act upon the same 
 principle in their international relations. There 
 must be a League of Nations with its courts and 
 boards of arbitration and conciliation, and with the 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 55 
 
 means of enforcing its decisions against lawless and 
 unprincipled governments which make themselves 
 world criminals. 
 
 The churches can mightily help in this time of 
 need. Most of us are debarred by age or sex from 
 military service, but we have "our bit" to do in 
 making these aims clear ; in unwavering support of 
 the Government ; in aiding in the moral and spirit- 
 ual welfare of our army and navy; and in oppos- 
 ing those evils in our national life which impair our 
 ability to wage a great war for noble ends. Our 
 heroic soldiers and sailors will be heartened by the 
 knowledge that the nation at home is united in sup- 
 porting them and praying for them, and in creating 
 those world conditions which will conserve the re- 
 sults of the triumph of the cause to which they are 
 giving "the last full measure of devotion." 
 
 This is the wider battle field on which we fare 
 forth as a people. It is not merely the strife of 
 arms, but the strife of ideals, the effort to advance 
 the Kingdom of God upon earth. Our primary 
 object is not peace but righteousness, not only be- 
 cause righteousness is more important than peace 
 but because, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah, 
 "the work of righteousness shall be peace and the 
 effect of righteousness quietness and confidence for- 
 ever." That is to say, peace is not the cause of 
 righteousness but the result of it, and in making 
 righteousness prevail we are securing permanent 
 peace; "quietness and confidence forever" 
 
56 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 For this titanic struggle the duty of Americans 
 is not confined to the young men of military age 
 and fitness who enter the army and navy. They 
 have a great service to render and may God give 
 them strength and courage for it. We want them 
 to feel that we are behind them with unmeasured 
 sympathy and determination and prayer. But of 
 what avail for them to win a victory on the battle- 
 field if the nation and the world for which they win 
 it shall not be able to utilize it aright? In making 
 the world safe for democracy and democracy safe 
 for the world every one of us, old and young, men 
 and women, should have a part. Field Marshal 
 Haig has recently said that "the war will be won 
 by twenty-five per cent of military and seventy-five 
 per cent of other forces of which those represented 
 by the churches are the greatest. ,, 
 
 Because we are waging a war for moral ends and 
 expect the blessing of God in doing it, let us keep 
 our motives and conduct upon a moral plane worthy 
 of our cause and of the Divine help that we seek. 
 Let us not kill women and children because our 
 enemies do so. Let us be on our guard against 
 evils in America which we denounce in Germany. 
 Let us realize that this is a war not merely of armies 
 and governments but of peoples, and that for its 
 successful prosecution the whole nation must co- 
 operate. Shirking, profiteering, extravagance, self- 
 indulgence, graft, and vice, bad at any time, are 
 high treason now. "Sanctify yourselves/' said 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 57 
 
 Joshua to the Hebrew people as they stood upon 
 the bank of the Jordan just before they began their 
 struggle to conquer the promised land. "Observe 
 to do according to all that is written" in the "Book 
 of the Law." Then and then only "thou shalt make 
 thy way prosperous and have good success," and 
 "the Lord thy God" be "with thee whithersoever 
 thou goest." 
 
 This is the splendid duty to which we are called. 
 To have any part in it, however small, is to have 
 one of the most inspiring privileges that can come 
 to the sons of men. As Whittier said a generation 
 ago, so we may now say with even greater truth 
 and with reference to this more stupendous crisis: 
 
 "Our fathers to their graves have gone ; 
 Their strife is past, their triumph won ; 
 But sterner trials wait the race 
 Which rises in their honoured place; 
 A moral warfare with the crime 
 And folly of an evil time. 
 
 "So let it be. In God's own might 
 
 We gird us for the coming fight, 
 
 And, strong in Him whose cause is ours 
 
 In conflict with unholy powers, 
 
 We grasp the weapons He has given, — 
 
 The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven." 
 
 What Mordecai said of old to Esther at a crisis 
 in the history of the Hebrew people, God is surely 
 
68 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 saying to the American churches: "If thou alto- 
 gether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall relief 
 and deliverance arise from another place, but thou 
 and thy father's house shall perish ; and who know- 
 eth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for 
 such a time as this?" 
 
VIII 
 
 THE PRESIDENT'S INTERNATIONAL 
 IDEAL 
 
 By Wm. I. Hull, Ph.D. 
 
 AS we look out upon the world to-day, it is 
 r\ obvious that the future will be ruled, at least 
 for a time, by one of four ideals. 
 
 These are the ideals of nationalities and of small 
 nations to survive and to develop unhindered their 
 own cultural ideals, of large nations to grow ever 
 larger and more unified, of rival alliances among 
 great powers, and of genuine internationalism. 
 
 The sentiment of nationality, in the first place, 
 has received such strong stimulus during the present 
 war, both from attacks upon and concessions to it, 
 that it may assert itself far more strongly than ever 
 before and, in its contest with nationalism, succeed 
 in breaking up such nations as Austria-Hungary, 
 Russia, Turkey, Germany, and the British Empire 
 into their constituent elements. Whether these ele- 
 ments will become autonomous members of loose 
 confederations, or politically independent, will de- 
 pend on how far the pendulum swings back from 
 
 59 
 
60 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 the nationalistic ideals of the Nineteenth Century. 
 If the Bolsheviki succeed in making their revolution 
 world-wide we may expect to see, in addition to an 
 industrial transformation, a world made up politi- 
 cally of small self-governing communities similar to 
 the city-states among the ancient Greeks. 
 
 On the other hand, if the nationalistic ideal of 
 union is to be carried still further in the Twentieth 
 Century, we may look forward to the complete sup- 
 pression of the aspirations of small nationalities for 
 civil, political, linguistic, religious and educational 
 rights, and to their entire absorption in one or an- 
 other of the Great Powers. This process may even 
 apply to small nations which have hitherto been in- 
 dependent ; for the world to-day and for some time 
 in the past has been a very unsafe place for the little 
 fellows in the Family of Nations. Even the Great 
 Powers have felt none too secure in their bigness, 
 and it is probable that they may strive to increase 
 to the utmost both their size and their military 
 strength. Hence a continuation and intensification 
 of the competitive increase of armaments, and of all 
 those rivalries in trade, commerce, foreign invest- 
 ment, and the exploitation of backward lands and 
 peoples, which have made the nations of the world 
 like a nest of African serpents, each striving fiercely 
 to raise its head above its fellows and sting them 
 to death or submission. 
 
 Again, since only one can be first, in such a strug- 
 gle, and the other Great Powers must yield to the 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 61 
 
 first, the plan of alliances which gave rise to the 
 Entente Cordiale and the Triple Alliance may be 
 carried still farther and divide the earth and domin- 
 ion over it among such world-centres as Central 
 Europe, the British Empire, and Pan-America. Or, 
 if the imperial dream of the extreme Pan-German- 
 ists and Pan-Jingoes everywhere comes true, the 
 earth may be divided politically as well as geograph- 
 ically into two hemispheres, with Central Europe 
 joining hands with Islam, Russia, China, Japan and 
 India, and lined up against the remnants of the 
 British Empire allied with Pan-America. What the 
 intensification of rivalry in militarism of every form 
 and in economic imperialism would mean under such 
 circumstances, and what an armageddon would 
 probably result, the imagination and the moral sense 
 refuse to contemplate. 
 
 Since our country is relatively free from the 
 problems of nationality such as beset nearly all the 
 other great powers, and we are optimistic about the 
 forces which still threaten even our Union, we are 
 more interested in the second and third alternatives 
 noted above. Some of our fellow-countrymen fore- 
 see a future of unprecedented nationalistic assertion, 
 and demand that, while still continuing to profess 
 a trust in God, we shall "take our own part" and 
 "keep our powder dry." Divested of persiflage, this 
 counsel means that our navy shall exceed Great 
 Britain's, our army Germany's, and our air-fleet that 
 of France. It means, also, as German "efficiency" 
 
62 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 in warfare has taught us, that the men at the front 
 shall be supported by a nation whose political, in- 
 dustrial, educational, religious, moral, domestic and 
 personal life has been revolutionized and made fully 
 consonant with the demands of successful warfare. 
 It means that our part of the earth's surface, as 
 well as the rest of the planet, shall be dominated 
 by Mars; and this in no faint-hearted, halfway 
 measure, but "up to the hilt," and "with both hands 
 and feet." Others of our countrymen believe 
 in a future ruled by alliances and pin their faith to 
 a diplomatic policy of "entangling alliances" which 
 would make Washington and the other founders of 
 the Republic turn over in their graves, and which 
 would probably send most of our posterity into their 
 graves. These advocates of a "strenuous" inter- 
 national life have no confidence in the ability of 
 even the United States of America to "go it alone," 
 and are eager to line up the New World of the 
 West against the Old World of the East, with the 
 survival of the fittest, — the fittest to fight, — and 
 world domination by the survivor, as the issues be- 
 tween them. With such stakes and such combatants, 
 the war of a half-century or a hundred years hence 
 would as far outrank the war of today as this does 
 the Napoleonic wars of a century ago ; while during 
 the interval of recuperation and preparedness man- 
 kind would bid farewell to all that is worth while in 
 a world of democracy, civilization and Christianity. 
 It is small wonder, then, that lovers of God and 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 63 
 
 humanity should be eagerly scanning the future's 
 horizon for still another alternative to political dis- 
 integration, nationalistic extravagance, and defen- 
 sive and offensive alliances to the nth degree. Pres- 
 ident Wilson has caught the vision of this alterna- 
 tive, which comes in the guise of genuine interna- 
 tionalism and he has given prophetic utterance to 
 its meaning, its imperative summons, and its ulti- 
 mate triumph. 
 
 Even as the true statesman in the midst of a bitter 
 political campaign refuses to sacrifice his ideals on 
 the altar of victory, so President Wilson refuses to 
 adopt as his motto, "Anything to win the war!" 
 He is constantly pressing home upon the American 
 people and the Allies the insistent question, "What 
 is the use of winning the war, if we do not win its 
 real objects? Why lose the good we have, the good 
 which generations of heroes and martyrs have won 
 for us, in blind, unreasoning quest of victory?" 
 And thus, once more, to our nation, as nineteen cen- 
 turies ago to individuals, is pressed home the great 
 inquiry, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain 
 the whole world, and lose his own soul." 
 
 Into the heart of the world's intercourse, our 
 President is making a gallant effort to infuse the 
 life-blood of Christianity. For the law of the jun- 
 gle, he would substitute the law of Christ; for de- 
 structive competition, the golden rule, co-operation, 
 mutual service. He would apply in internal rela- 
 tions the doctrine, — so familiar in our churches, so 
 
64 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 foreign to our chancelleries,— of "bear ye one an- 
 other's burdens." For a suicidal struggle to force 
 "a place in the sunshine," he would put into practice 
 the policy of conciliation and the doctrine of recon- 
 ciliation. Instead of international anarchy, he 
 would substitute international government. Instead 
 of exploiting the "backward peoples," he would ap- 
 ply the maxim of Noblesse oblige, and would sum- 
 mon all nations to mutual aid in their ascent of "the 
 world's great altar-stairs" up to the law and order, 
 peace and justice which constitute the true sunshine 
 of God. 
 
 Governments representative of the people in every 
 land; the democratic control of diplomacy; self- 
 determination of nations large and small; freedom 
 of the seas and free access to the seas ; no "economic 
 war after the war," but "the open door" to every 
 one; restoration of devastated lands as a world 
 task; the reduction and limitation of armaments; 
 the development of genuinely international means of 
 conciliating differences, adjudicating disputes, and 
 performing the world's work by and for all the 
 world's people. Such is the Magna Carta, the Fifth 
 Symphony, the Sermon on the Mount, of the new 
 internationalism. 
 
 Will America follow this leadership? Will 
 America blaze the way? As the Founders of the 
 Republic in 1787 summoned Americans to "think 
 Continentally" and to rise upon the stepping-stones 
 of extreme State Sovereignty to the heights of the 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 65 
 
 new Constitution and Union, so to-day the sum- 
 mons has gone forth to our fellow-countrymen and 
 the world to "think Internationally" and to rise 
 upon the stepping-stones of extreme National Sov- 
 ereignty to the heights of the new Internationalism. 
 Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much 
 be required; unto America much has been given. 
 The Old World which now lies wounded nearly unto 
 death has done its best for us in centuries past ; can 
 we repay that debt in part by leading its nations 
 along the path of disarmament and judicial settle- 
 ment, of conciliation and co-operation, which has 
 led the States of our Union to such abounding peace 
 and progress? 
 
 "Once to every man and nation 
 Comes the moment to decide, 
 
 In the strife of truth with falsehood, 
 For the good or evil side. 
 
 Hast thou chosen, oh my people ?" 
 
 Just now our ears are deafened by the tumult and 
 the shouting of the present conflict; but under its 
 cover are rallying among every nation the forces 
 of reactionary imperialism, preparatory to carrying 
 on after the war the old, old struggle of militarism 
 and industrial or political autocracy against the 
 rights of men and the peace of nations. With the 
 national flag as a fetich, with an appeal to the fears 
 
66 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 and prejudices of nations, they are entrenching 
 themselves in readiness for the impending conflict. 
 Already the lines are drawn through every nation, 
 with the junkers, the special interests, the old gods 
 of lust and selfishness and bloodshed on one side and 
 the hosts of forward-looking men and the God of 
 peace and righteousness on the other. The leaders 
 on one side in this struggle are skulking under 
 ground, evading the true issue, dulling the thoughts 
 and sharpening the passions of their followers ; the 
 leader on the other side has made his gallant appeal 
 to all the world and sent it forth on the wings of the 
 morning to the farthest confines of the night. Will 
 America be the first to respond whole-heartedly and 
 aright, as the Israelites did of old, to the challenge 
 of this, our modern, American Joshua: "And if it 
 seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose ye this 
 day whom ye will serve: whether the gods which 
 your fathers served on the other side of the flood, 
 or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell ; 
 but as for me and my house, we will serve the 
 Lord." 
 
IX 
 
 GROUNDS OF HOPE IN THE PRESENT 
 CRISIS 
 
 By Rev. Henry Churchill King, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 WHAT are some of the grounds of hope in 
 this supreme crisis? 
 
 I. We may rejoice first of all that the 
 issues are clearing, that the great ends are coming 
 out, that the significant trends in this world struggle 
 are becoming clear. This itself is a cause for hope, 
 — that we are beginning to be able to trace some law 
 and order in the chaos, and therefore becoming able 
 to act both intelligently and unselfishly. 
 
 2. As a consequence, it is a further ground for 
 hope that the present world situation can be seen 
 to be no accident, no mysterious divine providence, 
 but a logical moral outcome of what preceded. We 
 are being compelled to see the logical consequences 
 of the positions of the nations, and that on a world- 
 wide scale. The inescapable consequences of Chris- 
 tian and of anti-Christian policies are becoming un- 
 mistakably manifest. We must choose between 
 
 67 
 
68 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 them. The inevitable final results to all men, of 
 exclusive national selfishness and of immeasurable 
 national arrogance, are to be read in Belgium and 
 Armenia. The folly, the ultimate impossibility, and 
 the terrors of an anti-Christian philosophy of the 
 state are to be seen, too, in that indescribably deso- 
 lated Belgium and France and in outraged Armenia, 
 demonstrable to every sense and faculty of man. 
 For there has been there made a veritable hell on 
 earth, in which life is not worth living. There is 
 here revealed, not merely the savagery of barbarism, 
 but a deliberately adopted, scientifically developed, 
 and philosophically defended fiendish terrorism, in- 
 finitely more threatening than native barbarism. 
 
 The terrible consequences upon the perpetrators 
 themselves bear witness. Is there any spectacle 
 more terrifying than that a Christian nation should 
 be proud of the desolation which it has produced, 
 (witness the legend on the ruins of France — "Do 
 not curse ; just wonder") and be morally blind to its 
 own shame and to the abhorrence which it has 
 awakened in the rest of the civilized world? Out 
 of this same national arrogance and selfishness has 
 grown Germany's utter inability to read any other 
 people aright. 
 
 But it should be remembered at the same time 
 that the progress of events in this war is bringing 
 out with similar increasing clearness all the incon- 
 sistencies of the Allies. Wherever there has been 
 unfair treatment of other races; wherever there has 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 69 
 
 been failure in a true democracy, there the Allies 
 too are forced to face a new challenge. Ireland and 
 India and Persia and Finland and the Balkans and 
 Madagascar, our own treatment of coloured races, 
 and unwarranted Italian ambitions, all demand to 
 be faced. It is a day of world judgment. "There 
 is nothing covered up, that shall not be revealed; 
 and hid, that shall not be known." And such a day 
 of judgment is at the same time a day of hope. 
 
 3. The terribleness of the cost of the struggle 
 is for religious faith, as I have elsewhere said, also 
 a ground of hope. That the cost in money of this 
 single war should months ago have been more than 
 twice the total debt of the world in 1914, and have 
 now grown to more than eighty billion dollars ; that 
 nations with more than a billion of population 
 should already be directly involved in the war,— 
 these are only external signs of the still more ter- 
 rible cost in physical and mental anguish, in loss of 
 life and in waste of moral resources. Men's own 
 indignant sense of this awful price will demand that 
 the future shall show some corresponding advances. 
 We can hardly believe in the overruling providence 
 of God at all, and not look for commensurate gains 
 for the race. Surely such immeasurable sacrifice, 
 however blind it may have been at given points, is 
 not, under God, to be poured out in vain. 
 
 4. Nor are we to leave out of consideration as 
 a reason for hope the lasting value of the extensive 
 peace propaganda which preceded the war. That 
 
70 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 has undoubtedly opened the eyes of men, as they 
 have never been opened before, to the barbaric bru- 
 tality, to the terrible and manifold cost of war, and 
 to the challenge which it brings to all rational civil- 
 ization and to every ideal interest. At best this war 
 must be felt to be — what some one has declared it — 
 "the savagery of civilization on the march to save 
 the world from the civilization of savagery." How- 
 ever short-sighted some pacifists may be, the great 
 essentials of the peace propaganda were sound, and 
 they ought to help all the nations, and America 
 especially, to hate war, to keep free from war mad- 
 ness, to retain sense of proportion, and to cherish 
 a deep care for a better civilization than the world 
 yet knows. 
 
 It is quite possible to believe that a nation must 
 take its part in this war, — as I certainly do believe 
 for America, — and still to believe that war is an 
 essentially evil thing. It is an English publicist who 
 says: 
 
 "I avow myself an extreme pacifist! I do not 
 merely want to end this war, I want to nail down 
 war in its coffin. Modern war is an intolerable 
 thing .... It is disaster. It may be a necessary 
 disaster, .... but for all that I insist it remains 
 waste, disorder, disaster." 
 
 To these words a thoughtful American has 
 added : 
 
 "It is in hearty accord with the spirit of this state- 
 ment of Wells that some pacifists enter this war, 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 71 
 
 not exultant, buoyantly shouting for our country's 
 flag, but soberly, consecrated to a magnificent 
 charge, but nevertheless humiliated, because war has 
 come only as an accusation, a great indictment 
 against us all, and America especially, that would-be 
 Republic of Man, because we have not made mani- 
 fest quickly enough our high destiny among the 
 nations, have not realized to the limit even of to- 
 day's human capacity the possibilities of our conse- 
 crated democracy." 
 
 In that speaks a true pacifism that faces the facts 
 on both sides ; that sees both the terror of war, and 
 the still greater terror of an ignoble surrender of 
 the fruits of all Christian civilization. 
 
 5. It is also a ground for hope in the present 
 crisis that the issues are seen to be at bottom so 
 thoroughly moral and religious and even Christian. 
 While this fact itself adds to the gravity of the 
 crisis, it at the same time manifestly increases its 
 significance. Here is no mere blind brute struggle. 
 We need not believe "that a majority of civilized 
 mankind is fighting and sacrificing, all without 
 reason and significance for human progress." On 
 the contrary, as we have seen, interests of the high- 
 est conceivable order are involved in this war; so 
 involved that it is neither travesty nor exaggeration 
 to call this war on the part of America a truly Holy 
 War. For grave as the crisis is, we may expect the 
 reason and conscience of the race to reassert them- 
 selves. We may believe that national moral blind- 
 
72 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 ness and self -stultification are not permanently to 
 continue. 
 
 6. That means, in the next place, that we may 
 believe that the war contains in itself the incidental 
 opportunity for a great zvorld advance toward a 
 more Christian civilization. For the enormous 
 tasks that the war has compelled, we may hope, will 
 kindle the imagination and enlist energy for still 
 greater constructive world tasks to follow. As 
 Lloyd George said to a labour deputation : 
 
 "Don't always be thinking of getting back where 
 you were before the war. Get a really new world. 
 I firmly believe that what is known as the after-the- 
 war settlement will direct the destinies of all classes 
 for generations to come. I believe the settlement 
 after the war will succeed in proportion to its 
 audacity. The readier we are to cut away from the 
 past the better we are likely to succeed. Think out 
 new ways, new methods, of dealing with old prob- 
 lems. I hope no class will be harking back to the 
 pre-war conditions. If every class insists upon 
 doing that then God help this country. Get a new 
 world." 
 
 In this new world, we may hope that there will 
 be a completer mastery over the ambiguous forces 
 of civilization we noted — the solidarity of the world 
 life, the enormously increased resources of power 
 and wealth and knowledge; the extent of forced 
 co-operation; and, also, a more consistent working 
 through of the positively helpful characteristics of 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 73 
 
 the world-order — the democratic trend, the league 
 to enforce peace, and the new internationalism. 
 
 All this should lead to great social gains, and to 
 the permeation of all civilization with the spirit, the 
 standards, and ideals of Christ — a true conquest of 
 Christ over individuals, classes, institutions, nations, 
 and races. 
 
 7. A special ground of hope is to be found in 
 the positively helpful factors, noted in the changing 
 world-order — the democratic trend, the virtual 
 existence already of a league of nations to enforce 
 peace, and the new actual internationalism. 
 
 (1) First of all, the general trend, the world 
 over, toward democracy, is most notable. Every 
 nation, even in Asia, except Afghanistan, is living 
 under some form of constitution. China, with its 
 immense territory and population, has become re- 
 publican, even unstably so. The Russian revolution, 
 in spite of the grave anxieties it now stirs, was a 
 prodigious achievement in itself, and prophetic of 
 similar changes elsewhere. Everywhere the war 
 bids fair, with simple justice, to extend the suffrage 
 and the recognition of the rights of the common 
 people among all the belligerents. The sweeping 
 changes in the suffrage which are planned in Eng- 
 land, including its extension to women, and the 
 bringing of India into the Imperial Conference, are 
 illustrations. Situations inconsistent with an essen- 
 tially democratic viewpoint, men more and more 
 feel are not be defended. Even in Germany demo- 
 
74 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 cratic aspirations have found vigorous utterance. 
 Maximilian Harden speaks undoubtedly for many 
 Germans when he says: 
 
 "Because our existence depends on it — demands 
 it — must we go toward democracy. There is democ- 
 racy all around; who dares stop the wheel of his- 
 tory? The union of peoples is on the way; do we 
 wish to freeze outside?" 
 
 Scheidemann, leader of the majority of the So- 
 cialist Party in the Reichstag, declares: 
 
 "The whole world sees among our enemies more 
 or less developed forms of democracy, and in us it 
 sees only Prussians." 
 
 Ledebour dared to say in the Reichstag: "We 
 regard a republic as a coming inevitable develop- 
 ment in Germany." 
 
 An equally prominent English publicist similarly 
 remarks: 
 
 "The stars in their courses, the logic of circum- 
 stances, the everyday needs and everyday intelli- 
 gence of man, all these things march irresistibly to- 
 wards a permanent world peace based on democratic 
 republicanism." 
 
 (2) Moreover, it is not too much to say — and it 
 is a most significant and encouraging fact — that, 
 now that the cause of the Allies is cleared of the 
 gross inconsistency of the Russian autocracy, a 
 League of Nations to enforce peace is already in 
 existence. As one of our most thoughtful editors 
 puts it: 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 75 
 
 "The league of peace exists sooner than any of us 
 dared to hope. What was a paper plan and a theo- 
 retic vision two years ago, is today a reality. The 
 liberal peoples of the world are united in a common 
 cause." 
 
 (3) It is of even deeper significance, that, as the 
 war has spread and the needs of the world have be- 
 come greater, a new internationalism has arisen, and 
 a supernational control of necessities has been prac- 
 tically forced upon the Allies. The New Republic's 
 statement must impress the thinking man: 
 
 "What is being arranged in Washington these 
 days is really a gigantic experiment in internation- 
 alism. For the first time in history the food supply, 
 the shipping, the credit, and the manpower of the 
 nations are to be put under something like joint 
 administration. We are witnessing the creation of 
 a supernational control of the world's necessities. 
 The men who are charged with conducting this war 
 are now compelled to think as international states- 
 men. The old notions of sovereignty no longer 
 govern the facts. Three of the unifying forces of 
 mankind are at work — hunger, danger and a great 
 hope. They are sweeping into the scrap heap the 
 separatist theories that nations should be self-suffic- 
 ing economically and absolutely independent po- 
 litically. ... A new and more powerful ma- 
 chinery of internationalism is being created. It is 
 a true internationalism because it deals not with 
 dynastic and diplomatic alliances but with the co- 
 
76 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 operative control of those vital supplies on which 
 human life depends. . . . This is the birth of the 
 League of Nations." 
 
 Such internationalism — built upon a true nation- 
 alism, for they are not inconsistent — opens up a 
 vision of a new world. For the problems here forced 
 by the war are in truth always the only less critical 
 problems of peace also. The earth and the race 
 are perfectly capable of producing an adequate sup- 
 ply of all that men need, the world over. Famines 
 anywhere are truly unnecessary. The great prob- 
 lems of peace are these same problems of an humane 
 and scientific control of production, distribution and 
 consumption. Here is opportunity for men's high- 
 est powers in times of peace ; here, a great challenge 
 for that liberation of human energies in peaceful 
 outlets for which Bertrand Russell pleads. 
 
 "The United States, we believe and hope (says 
 another editor), is already permanently a member 
 of an international federation that will finally, in 
 some form or other, embrace all progressive coun- 
 tries, and decide at a joint council table, those ques- 
 tions which involve conflict of interests." 
 
 There is thus opened the hope of such companion- 
 ship on high aims, as the world has never seen, 
 that should send a thrill of expectation through 
 every aspiring man. Are we to allow this opportu- 
 nity to be lost? 
 
 8. The war has also brought new faith in the 
 common men of all the nations. It is significant, 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 77 
 
 that Barbusse's novel, Under Fire, which a distin- 
 guished French dramatist calls the "first great work 
 the war has given us," and which was recently 
 awarded the Goncourt prize of 1916, is "an ardent 
 tribute to the mute, inglorious millions of ordinary 
 men constrained to heroism by circumstances, brave, 
 determined, reliable, but not imbued with any mili- 
 tary spirit — those millions of uprooted civilians who 
 differ in every respect from the professional sol- 
 dier": 
 
 "They are not reckless of their lives, like bandits, 
 nor blind with wrath, like savages. Despite the ef- 
 forts to excite them, they are not excited. They are 
 superior to every sort of transport. They are not 
 drunk either literally or figuratively. They have 
 come together, in full consciousness, as in full force 
 and full health, to play once more the role imposed 
 upon them by the madness of their kind. In their 
 silence, in their immobility, in the masks of super- 
 human calm on their visages, reflection and fear and 
 longing are discernible. They are not the sort of 
 heroes they are popularly supposed to be; but their 
 sacrifice is nobler than those who have not seen them 
 will ever be able to divine." 
 
 9. With this new faith in the heroic quality of 
 common men, there has come a like new faith in the 
 rank and file of the nations. Men can talk no longer 
 of degenerate France or England or of materialis- 
 tic America. Belgium has proved itself possessed 
 of a soul which she was not willing to sell. Nation 
 
78 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 after nation has refused to take the course that mere 
 economics might dictate. Every belligerent has 
 known that it must defend its cause before the public 
 opinion of the world, and has devoted immense 
 sums and energies to that end. Even the bitterest 
 belligerents have been obliged to learn from one an- 
 other, and so tacitly at least to acknowledge the 
 worth of their enemies. It would be dastardly 
 treachery for the Allies to forget the unstinted ser- 
 vice of coloured races. Surely a practically demon- 
 strable ground has thus been laid in this war for a 
 parliament of nations — occidental and oriental, 
 white and coloured. Races who are good enough to 
 die for a cause, are good enough to live with and 
 in it. 
 
 'Thank God that man is more than all his hoarded 
 
 gold, 
 And in the storm of death his faith and valour hold. 
 Thank God that peace is forging upon the anvil war, 
 And a people's truth and honour more than riches 
 
 10. There are specific hopes also, especially for 
 the smaller nations, which this war permits us to 
 cherish, in line with the avowed aims and principles 
 of the Entente Allies, and with President Wilson's 
 recent messages. Oh for a fairer, juster world! 
 What Mr. Balfour says of the Central Powers, as 
 Gibbons urges, must be said of all the powers : their 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 79 
 
 "aggressive objects and unscrupulous methods" 
 must be "discredited in the eyes of their own peo- 
 ples." Belgium and France must be fully restored, 
 and Belgium at least truly indemnified. Ranker in- 
 justice cannot well be proposed, if less than this is 
 done for Belgium; as even most socialists of all 
 nations seem to believe. Serbia, too, must be re- 
 stored. In general, the Balkan peninsula should be 
 honestly guaranteed to the Balkan peoples. We 
 should look for a new and independent Finland; 
 for a new, united and independent Poland. One 
 cannot help hoping that Japan will be large enough 
 to fulfil her original promise and hand back the 
 Shantung peninsula to China. The unspeakable Ar- 
 menian massacre should be ample demonstration 
 that the Turk should be driven absolutely out of 
 Europe, and that Armenia and Syria should be 
 entirely released from Turkish rule. If any power 
 has ever demonstrated its utter unfitness to rule over 
 other peoples, Turkey has done so. Some true doc- 
 trine of the freedom of the seas should be wrought 
 out and upheld by the league of nations to enforce 
 peace — a freedom of the seas that is not simply 
 dependent on the favour and good will of even the 
 best nation, but is grounded in justice and due re- 
 spect for the rights of all nations. 
 
 ii. No Christian survey of the issues and out- 
 comes of this world war could be complete, that did 
 not note the religious bearings of the war. It may 
 perhaps be said, in a word, that, while the war has 
 
80 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 unquestionably shaken the religious faith of many, 
 the faith so shaken has been in general a faith not 
 wholly Christian in the beginning. The shallow and 
 sentimental types of Christianity have certainly 
 proved themselves inadequate to the world's need, 
 and we may rejoice in it. But on the other hand 
 there seems to be as little doubt, that the great ma- 
 jority of men haye been irrevocably driven back to 
 a new sense of the absolute and indispensable need 
 of moral purpose and deep religious faith both for 
 significant personal living and for any high civiliza- 
 tion, and that the Christianity of Christ himself has 
 a clearer field than ever for the conquest of the 
 world. As Mr. Britling says, "Religion is the first 
 thing and the last thing, and until man has found 
 God, and been found by God, he begins at no be- 
 ginning, and works to no end." That Christian men 
 should fail to see this great new opportunity would 
 be disaster indeed. 
 
 But we cannot honestly cherish these great hopes 
 for humanity, and not work that they may come to 
 pass. To that end, in the first place, we need to be 
 unceasingly vigilant that we keep steadily before 
 us the high aims with which we entered the war, 
 and refuse to sully those aims by any unworthy con- 
 duct of the war, and that we keep our spirits purged 
 clean of all arrogance and hatred and bitterness. 
 That will be no easy task. 
 
 And by and through the war, and not merely 
 after it, — for now is our opportunity — we may well 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 81 
 
 have steadily in mind some such war programme as 
 that briefly suggested by Mr. A. M. Simons: 
 
 "Millions have died that the trampling war mad- 
 ness might end. It is better to see that they have 
 not died in vain than to bewail their dying. War 
 burdens must become a means of expropriation, not 
 exploitation. Military mobilization at the front 
 and in the shops and on the farms must end in dem- 
 ocratic industrial mobilization for peace. The place 
 that has been won for labour in the parliaments of 
 the world must be strengthened and used for the 
 protection of workers when the war has ended. The 
 war need for women's services must lead to her 
 complete political and social emancipation. The care 
 of peoples in war must show the way to the aboli- 
 tion of poverty in peace." 
 
X 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE LEAGUE OF 
 NATIONS 
 
 By Rev. William Pierson Merrill, D.D. 
 
 (Abstract of an address given in connection with 
 the campaign on the Moral Aims of the War.) 
 
 THE question may arise, "Why should this 
 campaign be pushed among the churches ?'' 
 The campaign has two objects: First, to 
 show why the war must be won by America and 
 her allies and to arouse a spirit of determined loyalty 
 and enthusiasm, and second, to create a strong and 
 intelligent interest in the idea to establish, as one 
 outcome of the war, a League of Nations, pledged 
 to maintain the peace of the world and to substitute 
 judicial processes for war. If such a League of 
 Nations is to be formed at the conclusion of the war, 
 people must be thinking about it intensely and con- 
 tinuously from now on. 
 
 But it may be said that these matters are not par- 
 ticularly related to the church. The winning of the 
 
 82 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 83 
 
 war is a national and governmental concern; the 
 establishment of a League of Nations is a political 
 idea. Why then should we not push this campaign 
 among the people generally, rather than among the 
 people of the Christian church? 
 
 The answer is not simply that the churches have 
 power and influence, which we desire to enlist on the 
 side of the prosecution of the war and the establish- 
 ment of a League of Nations. The reason for our 
 pushing this campaign among the churches is rather 
 in the fact that the church acknowledges a higher 
 loyalty than that expressed in patriotism; a loyalty 
 to truth, to God and His word, to Christ and His 
 kingdom. We are convinced that Christian people 
 will not be, and ought not to be, loyal to a govern- 
 ment simply as a matter of course, or at least that 
 their loyalty will be far more intense and vital if 
 they understand that these higher issues are involved 
 in the stand their government is taking. We believe 
 we can show the people of the churches that their 
 noblest faiths and dearest hopes are bound up with 
 the success of America in this war and with the es- 
 tablishment of a League of Nations as the outcome 
 of the war. 
 
 I. The War. The church is concerned in the win- 
 ning of the war because of the issues directly in- 
 volved in the war itself. 
 
 i. The issue between the people and the kings. 
 
 Our American history and traditions are no more 
 vitally concerned in this struggle for popular rights 
 
84 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 against alleged divine rights than is our Christianity. 
 Christ was and is the leader of true democracy. He 
 saw the independent worth of individual manhood. 
 He said, "call no man your master on the earth," 
 and, "ye shall know the truth and the truth shall 
 make you free." The church has been, on the whole, 
 the great champion of human freedom. True de- 
 mocracy and true religion have depended each upon 
 the other. 
 
 2. The issue between the heathen and Christian 
 conception of greatness. 
 
 Christ told his disciples that they were to have a 
 different idea of greatness from that which prevailed 
 in the world. The heathen counts great the man 
 who lords it over his fellowmen, "But it shall not 
 be so among you, but whosoever would be great 
 among you, let him be your servant." These two 
 ideas of greatness are locked in the struggle of this 
 war. Germany turned aside from the path to great- 
 ness through service and took the old discredited 
 path through attempted lordship over others. 
 
 3. The issue between nationalism and internation- 
 alism, between selfishness and unselfishness, as the 
 motive of international action. 
 
 Germany is in the war because she did not trust 
 other nations, because she frankly accepts the phi- 
 losophy which says that there is no authority, and 
 can be none, superior to an individual nation. 
 America is literally and absolutely in the war with 
 nothing to gain except the establishment of an inter- 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 86 
 
 national order. This war is an issue between the 
 spirit which seeks the best "place in the sun" and 
 the spirit which seeks only one's proper place in a 
 family of nations. Christianity is essentially inter- 
 ested in all, rather than any group. It is based on a 
 faith in the universal fatherhood of God and the 
 universal brotherhood of man. The Christian 
 church ought therefore to be vitally concerned in 
 this contest between nationalism and international- 
 ism. 
 
 The church then has a great part to play in 
 connection with the war, for the strength of such a 
 war as America is waging is in the realm of the 
 spirit, rather than anywhere else. It is of the ut- 
 most importance that America's motives be kept 
 high, her ideals pure, and that the disinterested 
 spirit in which she entered the war be preserved 
 blameless to the end of it. Here the church can give 
 vital support. 
 
 II. The League of Nations. With the details of 
 the policy of the League of Nations, I am not now 
 concerned, but I want to urge that the church ought 
 to give itself to any extent that may be required 
 to support the ideal of an international organization. 
 The church is vitally interested in helping to estab- 
 lish such a League of Nations. Why: 
 
 i. Because the church can give to this movement 
 indispensable support. 
 
 (a) The church can impart a sanctity to the inter- 
 national organization without which it can scarcely 
 
S6 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 hold its own in the world. People cannot arouse 
 any great amount of enthusiasm over a world court 
 or any cold scheme of organization. They need 
 something which will give a sanctity to the move- 
 ment, even as the flag stands for our country and 
 helps to stimulate and support the instinct of pa- 
 triotism. The international organization will need 
 something which will exalt it above all local patriot- 
 isms. Here the church can render indispensable 
 aid. 
 
 (b) The church can put a spirit into the inter- 
 national organization without which it will fail. 
 Nothing is more significant than the fact that Sir 
 Edward Carson and Sir Frederick Smith and other 
 speakers, who have recently discussed the project 
 of a League of Nations, declare that the idea can 
 never be put into successful operation without a 
 very great extension of goodwill between nations. 
 That is the peculiar function of the church. 
 
 (c) The church can impart faith which is vital 
 to the success of this movement. The great obstacle 
 at present in the way of a League of Nations is 
 the fact that people call it impracticable or Utopian. 
 Many are saying "it is almost hopeless to try to 
 establish a League of Nations, and yet there is no 
 hope unless we can establish it." Now Christ came 
 into human life to be the author and finisher of 
 faith. It is the peculiar function of his church to 
 infuse faith, the faith that can move mountains, into 
 just such undertakings as this. The Christian church 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 87 
 
 should welcome the opportunity to show that things 
 that are impossible with men are possible with God. 
 
 2. The second main reason why the church 
 should be vitally interested in the movement to es- 
 tablish a League of Nations is that the church will 
 find itself in this movement. 
 
 It is painfully evident that the church at present 
 is not sure of itself, its function, its place, its power. 
 To throw its energies into the movement for a 
 League of Nations would help greatly. 
 
 (a) As has been said, it would afford a chance for 
 the church to develop and show a strong, living, 
 practical faith. The church has suffered for lack 
 of objects at once practical and daring. Such an 
 object is here afforded. 
 
 (b) Most important of all, this movement affords 
 the church an opportunity to recover its interna- 
 tional character. Time was when the church was 
 an international organization. Say what we may in 
 criticism of the church in the Middle Ages, there 
 was this magnificent fact about it, that it was a 
 supra-national organization calling for a loyalty 
 greater than that paid to any separate nation or 
 state. With all its immense gains, the Reformation 
 brought one serious loss to Christianity, it split the 
 church into separate bodies divided along national 
 and social lines. Protestant Christianity has largely 
 lost its consciousness of an international or supra- 
 national character. Yet there has always lingered 
 in the hearts of Christians a consciousness that the 
 
88 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 church ought to transcend the bounds of nationalty. 
 Christians all over the world were shocked when the 
 German church leaders at the outbreak of the war 
 stood blindly for the national cause. The hesitancy 
 of churchmen in America to speak sharply and de- 
 cisively on the moral issues of the war, when it 
 broke out, was largely due to a consciousness that 
 the church should stand as an international fellow- 
 ship. What a marvellous opportunity is afforded to 
 the church to recover its international character 
 through linking its life to an international organi- 
 zation to which it may give something of the sanc- 
 tity attaching to the idea of the Kingdom of God. 
 Christianity would recover some of its lost artic- 
 ulateness through uniting its fortunes with the cause 
 of international organization. 
 
 There are immense and weighty considerations in 
 favour of the establishment of a League of Nations 
 which appeal to us as citizens of America and of the 
 world. It seems to be the only ground for hope 
 of a durable peace. We should determine to fight 
 on unflinchingly until the issue has been fought out 
 between isolation and co-operation, between the 
 waning cause of nationalism and the waxing cause 
 of internationalism. The outcome of the war must be 
 world organization. But above and beyond these 
 considerations are the reasons which appeal to the 
 Christian church. The League of Nations holds the 
 promise of the future for Christianity. Through it 
 once more will be realized the ideal so finely stated 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 89 
 
 in an anonymous writing of the second century of 
 the Christian era, "As the soul holds the body to- 
 gether, so Christians hold the world together. God 
 has assigned them this illustrious position, which it 
 were unlawful for them to forsake." 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 THE LEADERS OF THE BRITISH CHURCHES 
 SUMMON CHRISTIANS TO A LEAGUE OF 
 NATIONS 
 
 Base the Appeal on the Proposals of the President 
 of the United States 
 
 THE following appeal has been issued over the 
 signatures of the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 the Bishop of Winchester, the Bishop of Oxford, 
 the Bishop of Southwark, the Bishop of Peterborough, 
 the Rev. Dr James Cooper, Moderator of the Established 
 Church of Scotland ; the Rev. Dr. W. B. Selbie, the Rev. 
 Dr. J. Scott Lidgett, the Rev. Dr. F. B. Meyer, the Rev. 
 Dr. D. S. Cairns, the Rev. Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter, the 
 Rev. Dr. Alexander Connell, the Rev. Father Plater, Lord 
 Henry Bentinck, Lord Parmoor, the Rt. Hon. Arthur 
 Henderson, George Lansbury, Arthur Mansbridge, Pro- 
 fessor A. S. Peake, and Principal T. F. Roberts: 
 
 "We, the signatories of this document, belonging to 
 various Christian bodies, have noted with the greatest 
 satisfaction the prominent place given by the President 
 of the United States and by successive Prime Ministers 
 and Foreign Secretaries of our own country to the pro- 
 posal of a League of Nations. The idea has also, as was 
 to be expected, won wide support among the official repre- 
 
92 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 sentatives of Christian communions, e.g., in the Pope's 
 appeal to the powers last summer and in the recent Con- 
 vocation of Canterbury. 
 
 "But more is yet needed to make manifest and effective 
 the full force of Christian conviction in its favour, still 
 largely latent, but capable of being evoked if only the 
 vital import of the idea be brought forcibly home to 
 Christian people at large. 
 
 "In the name, then, of the Prince of Peace, we would 
 call on them duly to consider and openly to welcome the 
 idea of such a league as shall safeguard international 
 right and permanent peace and shall also have power in 
 the last resort to constrain by economic pressure or armed 
 force any nation refusing to submit to arbitration or inter- 
 national adjudication in the first instance any dispute 
 with another tending to war. 
 
 "We believe that a new system of international law 
 and authority, acting through an inclusive League of 
 Nations in place of any balance of power, is a condition 
 of a just and lasting peace, particularly as it affords 
 means whereby the fresh demands of national life as they 
 arise can be adjudicated upon and equitably satisfied. 
 
 "Accordingly, we hold it to be of the utmost importance, 
 as President Wilson has just emphasized, that such a 
 league should not merely be contemplated as a more or 
 less remote outcome of a future settlement, but should be 
 put in the very forefront of the peace terms as their pre- 
 supposition and guarantee. 
 
 "Whether it be or be not practicable, without any slack- 
 ening of the energy with which the war must be waged, 
 to make a beginning upon the league as regards the Allies 
 and neutrals, even before the peace conference, we do 
 not venture to decide, though we think this course has 
 much to commend it. But we are sure of the pressing 
 need there is here and now of giving the League of 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 93 
 
 'Nations the backing of an organized body of strong con- 
 viction; sure, also, that this task offers to the Christian 
 consciousness an opportunity to make its own spirit felt 
 in national policy such as has not occurred heretofore 
 since the outbreak of this war." 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 ANGLICAN BISHOPS ENDORSE LEAGUE OF 
 NATIONS 
 
 Sitting in Convocation during February, 1918, the 
 Bishops of the Church of England gave definite and 
 clearly expressed support to the idea of a League of 
 Nations. The Bishop of Oxford proposed the following 
 resolution : 
 
 "That this House notes with special satisfaction the 
 prominent place given by the President of the United 
 States, and successive Prime Ministers and Foreign Sec- 
 retaries of our country, to the proposal for a League of 
 Nations. We desire to welcome in the name of the Prince 
 of Peace the idea of such a league as shall promote the 
 brotherhood of man and shall have power at the last resort 
 to constrain by economic pressure, or armed force, any 
 nation which should refuse to submit to an International 
 Tribunal any dispute with another nation. And further 
 we desire that such a League of Nations should not merely 
 be regarded as the more or less remote consequence of 
 peace, but that provision for its organization should be 
 included in the conditions of the settlement." 
 
 Dr. Gore said that no one in that House could have any 
 doubt about the duty of fighting through the war, because 
 it is a war in a great cause. Every time he went over 
 the old ground he came out with the same assurance on 
 this point. At the same time he was certain that the 
 Church could not be true to its mission if it were not 
 
 94 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 95 
 
 alive to the danger of taking mere patriotism by itself 
 as a complete guide. From time to time the Church had 
 an opportunity of saying not the popular but the right 
 thing at the moment. They had the call that a great 
 statesman had given them, and they ought to welcome the 
 idea of a League of Nations and keep it to the fore, not 
 as a remote idea belonging to some Utopia, but as some- 
 thing that could be brought into effect as the basis of 
 an actual settlement at the end of the war. It was an 
 opportunity that the Church must not miss. A consider- 
 able section of the nation was watching anxiously to see 
 what the Church would do, and as yet was disappointed. 
 He felt that the time was fully ripe for such a resolution 
 as he brought before the House. Before he sat down 
 Dr. Gore emphasized the fact that the resolution was not 
 in any way opposed to the sedulous prosecution of the 
 war, which they all desired. 
 
 The Bishop of Hereford said that the imagination of 
 the working classes in the country had been touched by 
 the utterances of President Wilson and our own Prime 
 Minister on the subject of the League of Nations. They 
 felt that the great sacrifices of the war could only be 
 justified if some such scheme took practical shape as the 
 outcome of it. He felt sure they were right, and it was 
 with a real conviction that the Church was acting in this 
 matter on the lines of her own divine and public duty 
 that he seconded the motion. The people were filled with 
 a passionate longing for peace, but also with a grim de- 
 termination, from which nothing could turn them, to see 
 the thing through to the only conclusion that could have 
 justified its beginning or compensate for its sacrifices. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury said that the moment 
 was one of supreme importance. They were one, heart 
 and soul, in what they desired to say and do. The matter 
 was a little outside their ordinary orbit of work, which 
 
96 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 was not concerned with politics, national or international. 
 At such an hour as this all Christians were in the widest 
 sense political, and those on whom special burdens of 
 responsibility were laid could find no nobler interest than 
 that of helping to make the coming peace of such a nature 
 as to render the recurrence of the events of the last three 
 years impossible. There were two ways of bringing about 
 the escape from the war idea. In the first place by a 
 change in the hearts and minds of men — the work to 
 which the Church has set itself from the beginning, but 
 wherein it has many times and in many ways lamentably 
 failed. They did not, of course, despair of accomplishing 
 that work, but they saw that it would be long before this 
 change would come about. The other way was by turn- 
 ing to account what was certainly at the moment growing 
 in Europe — the desire for peace — by forming somehow 
 a convention of nations, each of which would pledge itself 
 to employ its power to protect any one of the members 
 of the convention from aggression, by finding a satis- 
 factory means of settling by arbitration the difficulties 
 that arise. If this were done we should have adopted 
 the best means of preventing a recurrence of the horrors 
 of the last three years. They were right to do all in 
 their power to bring about the accomplishment of the 
 hopes inspired by the suggestion of a League of Nations, 
 because in so doing they were looking forward to some- 
 thing which is in accord with the mind of our Master 
 Christ, the Prince of Peace. The Bishops of Norwich 
 and Peterborough also spoke in support and the House 
 of Convocation carried the resolution by a unanimous 
 vote. 
 
APPENDIX III 
 Extract from The Inter-Allied Labour War Aims 
 
 MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY 
 
 II. Whatever may have been the objects for which the 
 war was begun the fundamental purpose of the Inter- 
 Allied Conference in supporting the continuance of the 
 struggle is that the world may henceforth be made safe 
 for democracy. 
 
 Of all the conditions of peace none is so important to 
 the peoples of the world as that there should be hence- 
 forth on earth no more war. 
 
 Whoever triumphs, the peoples will have lost unless 
 an international system is established which will prevent 
 war. What would it mean to declare the right of peoples 
 to self-determination if this right were left at the mercy 
 of new violations, and were not protected by a super- 
 national authority? That authority can be no other than 
 the League of Nations, in which not only all the present 
 belligerents, but every other independent state, should 
 be pressed to join. 
 
 The constitution of such a League of Nations implies 
 the immediate establishment of an International High 
 Court, not only for the settlement of all disputes between 
 states that are of justiciable nature, but also for prompt 
 and effective mediation between states in other issues 
 that vitally interest the power of honour of such states. 
 It is also under the control of the League of Nations 
 that the consultation of peoples for purposes of self- 
 
 97 
 
98 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 determination must be organized. This popular right can 
 be vindicated only by popular vote. The League of 
 Nations shall establish the procedure of international 
 jurisdiction, fix the methods which will maintain the free- 
 dom and security of the election, restore the political 
 rights of individuals which violence and conquest may 
 have injured, repress any attempt to use pressure or cor- 
 ruption, and prevent any subsequent reprisals. It will be 
 also necessary to form an International Legislature, in 
 which the representatives of every civilized state would 
 have their allotted share and energetically push forward, 
 step by step, the development of international legislation 
 agreed to by, and definitely binding upon, the several 
 states. 
 
 By a solemn agreement all the states and peoples con- 
 sulted shall pledge themselves to submit every issue be- 
 tween two or more of them for settlement as aforesaid. 
 Refusal to accept arbitration or to submit to the settle- 
 ment will imply deliberate aggression, and all the nations 
 will necessarily have to make common cause, by using any 
 and every means at their disposal, either economical or 
 military, against any state or states refusing to submit 
 to the arbitration award, or attempting to break the 
 world's covenant of peace. 
 
 But the sincere acceptance of the rules and decisions 
 of the super-national authority implies, complete democ- 
 ratization in all countries; the removal of all the arbitrary 
 powers who, until now, have assumed the right of choos- 
 ing between peace and war; the maintenance or creation 
 of legislatures elected by and on behalf of the sovereign 
 right of the people; the suppression of secret diplomacy, 
 to be replaced by the conduct of foreign policy under the 
 control of popular legislatures, and the publication of all 
 treaties, which must never be in contravention of the 
 stipulation of the League of Nations, with the absolute 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 99 
 
 responsibility of the government, and more particularly 
 of the foreign minister of each country to its legislature. 
 
 Only such a policy will enforce the frank abandonment 
 of every form of imperialism. When based on universal 
 democracy, in a world in which effective international 
 guarantees against aggression have been secured, the 
 League of Nations will achieve the complete suppression 
 of force as the means of settling international differences. 
 
 The League of Nations, in order to prepare for the 
 concerted abolition of compulsory military service in all 
 countries, must first take steps for the prohibition of fresh 
 armaments on land and sea and for the common limitation 
 of the existing armaments by which the peoples are bur- 
 dened; as well as the control of war manufactures and 
 the enforcement of such agreements as may be agreed 
 to thereupon. The states must undertake such manufac- 
 tures themselves, so as entirely to abolish profit-making 
 armament firms, whose pecuniary interest lies always in 
 the war scares and progressive competition in the prepara- 
 tion for war. 
 
 The nations, being armed solely for self-defence and 
 for such action as the League of Nations may ask them 
 to take in defence of international right, will be left 
 free, under international control either to create a volun- 
 tarily recruited force or to organize the nation for 
 defence without professional armies for long terms of 
 military service. 
 
 To give effect to the above principles, the Inter-Allied 
 Conference declares that the rules upon which the League 
 of Nations will be founded must be included in the treaty 
 of peace, and will henceforth become the basis of the 
 settlement of differences. In that spirit the Conference 
 expresses its agreement with the propositions put for- 
 ward by President Wilson in his last message: 
 
 (i) That each part of the final settlement must be 
 
100 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 based upon the essential justice of that particular case, 
 and upon such adjustments as are most likely to bring 
 a peace that will be permanent. 
 
 (2) That peoples and provinces are not to be bartered 
 about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were 
 mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game 
 now forever discredited of the balance of power; but that 
 
 (3) Every territorial settlement involved in this war 
 must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the 
 populations concerned, and not as a part of any mere 
 adjustments of compromise of claims amongst rival states. 
 
 (4) That all well-defined national aspirations shall be 
 accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded 
 them without introducing new or perpetuating old ele- 
 ments of discord and antagonism that would be likely in 
 time to break the peace of Europe, and, consequently, of 
 the world. 
 
APPENDIX IV 
 
 THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ON 
 A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 "I have said, and shall say again, that when the great 
 present war is over it will be the duty of America to 
 join with the other nations of the world in some kind 
 of a league for the maintenance of peace/' — Woodrow 
 Wilson. 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF MAY 27, 1916 
 
 "The longer the war lasts the more deeply do we be- 
 come concerned that it should be brought to an end and 
 the world be permitted to resume its normal life and 
 course again. And when it does come to an end we 
 shall be as much concerned as the nations at war to see 
 peace assume an aspect of permanence, give promise of 
 days from which the anxiety of uncertainty shall be 
 lifted, bring some assurance that peace and war shall 
 always hereafter be reckoned part of the common interest 
 of mankind. 
 
 "We are participants, whether we would or not, in the 
 
 life of the world. The interests of all nations are our 
 
 own also. We are partners with the rest. What affects 
 
 mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the affair of 
 
 the nations of Europe and of Asia 
 
 ****** 
 
 "Only when the great nations of the world have reached 
 some sort of agreement as to what they hold to be funda- 
 
 101 
 
102 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 mental to their common interest, and as to some feasible 
 method of acting in concert when any nation or group of 
 nations seeks to disturb those fundamental things, can 
 we feel that civilization is at last in a way of justifying 
 its existence and claiming to be finally established. 
 ****** 
 
 "Repeated utterances of the leading statesmen of most 
 of the great nations now engaged in war have made it 
 plain that their thought has come to this, that the prin- 
 ciple of public right must henceforth take precedence 
 over the individual interests of particular nations, and 
 that the nations of the world must in some way band 
 themselves together to see that right prevails as against 
 any sort of selfish aggression; that henceforth alliance 
 must not be set up against alliance, understanding against 
 understanding, but that there must be a common agree- 
 ment for a common object, and that at the heart of that 
 common object must lie the inviolable rights of peoples 
 and of mankind. 
 
 "The nations of the earth have become each other's 
 neighbours. It is to their interest that they should under- 
 stand each other. In order that they may understand 
 each other, it is imperative that they should agree to 
 co-operate in a common cause, and that they should so act 
 that the guiding principle of that common cause shall be 
 even-handed and impartial justice. 
 
 "We believe these fundamental things : First, that every 
 people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which 
 they shall live. Like other nations, we have ourselves 
 no doubt once and again offended against that principle 
 when for a little while controlled by selfish passion, as 
 our franker historians have been honourable enough to 
 admit; but it has become more and more our rule of life 
 and action. Second, that the small states of the world 
 have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sov- 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 103 
 
 ereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and 
 powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, 
 that the world has a right to be free from every disturb- 
 ance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and 
 disregard of the rights of peoples and nations. 
 
 "So sincerely do we believe in these things that I am 
 sure that I speak the mind and wish of the people of 
 America when I say that the United States is willing 
 to become a partner in any feasible association of nations 
 formed in order to realize these objects and make them 
 secure against violation. 
 
 "There is nothing that the United States wants for 
 itself that any other nation has. We are willing, on 
 the contrary, to limit ourselves along with them to a 
 prescribed course of duty and respect for the rights of 
 others which will check any selfish passion of our own, 
 as it will check any aggressive impulses of theirs. ^ 
 
 "If it should ever be our privilege to suggest or initiate 
 a movement for peace among the nations now at war, 
 I am sure that the people of the United States would wish 
 their Government to move along these lines: 
 
 "First, such a settlement with regard to their own 
 immediate interests as the belligerents may agree upon. 
 We have nothing material of any kind to ask for our- 
 selves, and are quite aware that we are in no sense or 
 degree parties to the present quarrel. Our interest is only 
 in peace and its future guarantees. 
 
 "Second, an universal association of the nations to 
 maintain the inviolate security of the highway of the 
 seas for the common and unhindered use of all the nations 
 of the world, and to prevent any war begun either con- 
 trary to treaty covenants or without warning and full sub- 
 mission of the causes to the opinion of the world—a 
 virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political in- 
 dependence." 
 
104 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 FROM Am ADDRESS OF MAY 30, 1916 
 
 "And I also said that I believed that the people of the 
 United States were ready to become partners in any alli- 
 ance of the nations that would guarantee public right 
 above selfish aggression. Some of the public prints have 
 reminded me, as if I needed to be reminded, of what 
 General Washington warned us against. He warned us 
 against entangling alliances. I shall never myself con- 
 sent to an entangling alliance, but I would gladly assent 
 to a disentangling alliance — an alliance which would dis- 
 entangle the peoples of the world from those combina- 
 tions in which they seek their own separate and private 
 interests and unite the people of the world to preserve 
 the peace of the world upon a basis of common right and 
 justice. There is liberty there, not limitation. There is 
 freedom, not entanglement. There is the achievement 
 of the highest things for which the United States has 
 declared its principle." 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF OCTOBER 5, 1916 
 
 "America up to the present time has been, as if by 
 deliberate choice, confined and provincial, and it will be 
 impossible for her to remain confined and provincial. 
 Henceforth she belongs to the world and must act as part 
 of the world, and all of the attitudes of America will 
 henceforth be altered. ,, 
 
 I ... • 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF OCTOBER 12, 1916 
 
 "I have said, and shall say again, that when the great 
 present war is over it will be the duty of America to 
 join with the other nations of the world in some kind of 
 league for the maintenance of peace. Now, America was 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 105 
 
 not a party to this war, and the only terms upon which 
 we will be admitted to a league, almost all the other 
 powerful members of which were engaged in the war and 
 made infinite sacrifices when we apparently made none, 
 are the only terms which we desire, namely, that America 
 shall not stand for national aggression, but shall stand for 
 the just conceptions and bases of peace, for the compe- 
 titions of merit alone, and for the generous rivalry of 
 liberty." 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF OCTOBER 26, 1916 
 
 "... What I intend to preach from this time on 
 is that America must show that as a member of the 
 family of nations she has the same attitude toward the 
 other nations that she wishes her people to have toward 
 each other: That America is going to take this position, 
 that she will lend her moral influence, not only, but her 
 physical force, if other nations will join her, to see to 
 it that no nation and no group of nations tries to take 
 advantage of another nation or group of nations, and 
 that the only thing ever fought for is the common rights 
 of humanity. 
 
 "We must have a society of nations, not suddenly, 
 not by insistence, not by any hostile emphasis upon the 
 demand, but by the demonstration of the needs of the 
 time. The nations of the world must get together and 
 say, 'Nobody can hereafter be neutral as respects the 
 disturbance of the world's peace for an object which the 
 world's opinion cannot sanction.' The world's peace ought 
 to be disturbed if the fundamental rights of humanity 
 are invaded, but it ought not to be disturbed for any 
 other thing that I can think of, and America was estab- 
 lished in order to indicate, at any rate in one Government, 
 the fundamental rights of man. America must hereafter 
 
106 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 be ready as a member of the family of nations to exert 
 her whole force, moral and physical, to the assertion of 
 those rights throughout the round globe." 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF JANUARY 22, 1917 
 
 ". . .In every discussion of the peace that must end 
 
 this war, it is taken for granted that that peace must be 
 
 followed by some definite concert of power which will 
 
 make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe 
 
 shall ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of mankind, 
 
 every sane and thoughtful man must take that for granted. 
 ****** 
 
 "It is inconceivable that the people of the United States 
 should play no part in that great enterprise. To take 
 part in such a service will be the opportunity for which 
 they have sought to prepare themselves by the very prin- 
 ciples and purposes of their polity and the approved prac- 
 tices of their Government ever since the days when they 
 set up a new nation in the high and honourable hope 
 that it might in all that it was and did show mankind the 
 way to liberty. They cannot in honour withhold the 
 service to which they are now about to be challenged. 
 ****** 
 
 "That service is nothing less than this, to add their 
 authority and their power to the authority and force of 
 other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout 
 the world. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "No covenant of co-operative peace that does not in- 
 clude the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the 
 future safe against war; and yet there is only one sort 
 of peace that the peoples of America could join in guar- 
 anteeing. The elements of that peace much be elements 
 that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 107 
 
 the American Governments, elements consistent with their 
 political faith and the practical convictions which the 
 peoples of America have once for all embraced and under- 
 taken to defend. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "Mere agreements may not make peace. It will be 
 absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guar- 
 antor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater 
 than the force of any nation now engaged or any alli- 
 ance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no 
 probable combination of nations could face or with- 
 stand it. 
 
 "If the peace presently to be made is to endure it 
 must be a peace made secure by the organized major force 
 
 of mankind. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "The equality of nations upon which peace must be 
 founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; 
 the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor 
 imply a difference between big nations and small, between 
 those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right 
 must be based upon the common strength, not upon the 
 individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert 
 peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources 
 there of course cannot be; nor any sort of equality not 
 gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate develop- 
 ment of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or 
 expects anything more than an equality of rights. Man- 
 kind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equi- 
 poise of power. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid en- 
 tangling alliances which would draw them into compe- 
 titions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and 
 selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influ- 
 
108 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 ences intruded from without. There is no entangling alli- 
 ance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the 
 same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the 
 common interest and are free to live their own lives under 
 a common protection. 
 
 "I am proposing government by the consent of the gov- 
 erned; that freedom of the seas which in international 
 conference after conference representatives of the United 
 States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the 
 convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of 
 armaments which makes of armies and navies a power 
 for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of 
 selfish violence. 
 
 "These are American principles, American policies. We 
 could stand for no others. And they are also the prin- 
 ciples and policies of forward looking men and women 
 everywhere, and of every modern nation, of every en- 
 lightened community. They are the principles of man- 
 kind and must prevail." 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF APRIL 2, 1917 
 
 "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained 
 except by a partnership of democratic nations. No auto- 
 cratic government could be trusted to keep faith within 
 it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, 
 a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals 
 away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what 
 they would and render an account to no one would be a 
 corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can 
 hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common 
 end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow 
 interest of their own. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "We shall fight for the things which we have always 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 109 
 
 carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right 
 of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their 
 own governments, for the rights and liberties of small 
 nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a con- 
 cert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to 
 all nations and make the world itself at last free." 
 
 FROM A COMMUNICATION TO RUSSIA, 
 JUNE 9, 1917 
 
 "We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government, 
 and the undictated development of all peoples, and every 
 feature of the settlement that concludes this war must 
 be conceived and executed for that purpose. Wrongs 
 must first be righted and then adequate safeguard must 
 be created to prevent their being committed again. 
 ****** 
 
 "And then the free peoples of the world must draw 
 together in some common covenant, some genuine and 
 practical co-operation that will in effect combine their 
 force to secure peace and justice in the dealings of nations 
 with one another. 
 
 "The brotherhood of mankind must no longer be a fair 
 but empty phrase; it must be given a structure of force 
 and reality. The nations must realize their common life 
 and effect a workable partnership to secure that life 
 against the aggressions of autocratic and self-pleasing 
 power." 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF DECEMBER 4, 1917 
 
 "The worst that can happen to the detriment of the 
 German people is this, that if they should still, after the 
 war is over, continue to be obliged to live under am- 
 bitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb the 
 
110 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other 
 peoples of the world could not trust, it might be impos- 
 sible to admit them to the partnership of nations which 
 must henceforth guarantee the world's peace. That part- 
 nership must be a partnership of peoples, not a mere part- 
 nership of governments." 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF JANUARY 8, 1918 
 
 "A general association of nations must be formed under 
 specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual 
 guarantees of political independence and territorial in- 
 tegrity to great and small States alike." 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS OF FEBRUARY 11, 1918 
 
 "This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights 
 of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the 
 union and the force to make good their claim to determine 
 their own allegiances and their own forms of political 
 life. Covenants must now be entered into which will 
 render such things impossible for the future; and those 
 covenants must be backed by the united force of all the 
 nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it 
 at any cost." 
 
APPENDIX V 
 
 EXTRACT FROM ADDRESS OF LLOYD GEORGE 
 BEFORE THE BRITISH TRADES UNIONS ON 
 JANUARY 3, 1918 
 
 "So long as the possibility of a dispute between nations 
 continues — that is to say, so long as men and women are 
 dominated by impassioned ambition and war is the only 
 means of settling a dispute — all nations must live under 
 a burden, not only of having from time to time to engage 
 in it, but of being compelled to prepare for its possible 
 outbreak. 
 
 "The crushing weight of modern armaments, the in- 
 creasing evil of compulsory military service, the vast 
 waste of wealth and effort involved in warlike prepara- 
 tion — these are blots on our civilization, of which every 
 thinking individual must be ashamed. For these and 
 other similar reasons we are confident that a great at- 
 tempt must be made to establish by some international 
 organization, an alternative to war as a means of settling 
 international disputes. 
 
 "After all, war is a relic of barbarism, and, just as law 
 has succeeded violence as a means of settling disputes 
 between individuals, so we believe that it is destined ulti- 
 mately to take the place of war in the settlement of con- 
 troversies between nations. 
 
 "If, then, we are asked what we are fighting for, we 
 reply, as we have often replied : We are fighting for a just 
 and a lasting peace, and we believe that before permanent 
 
 in 
 
112 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 peace can be hoped for three conditions must be fulfilled : 
 First, the sanctity of treaties must be re-established; 
 secondly, a territorial settlement must be secured, based 
 on the right of self-determination or the consent of the 
 governed, and lastly, we must seek, by the creation of 
 some international organization, to limit the burden of 
 armaments and diminish the probability of war. On these 
 conditions its peoples are prepared to make even greater 
 sacrifices than those they have yet endured." 
 
APPENDIX VI 
 
 FROM THE PLATFORM ADOPTED BY THE 
 BRITISH NATIONAL LABOUR CONFERENCE, 
 LONDON, DECEMBER 2$, 1917 
 
 "Whatever may have been the causes for which the 
 war was begun, the fundamental purpose of the British 
 labour movement in supporting the continuance of the 
 struggle is that the world may henceforth be made safe 
 for democracy. 
 
 "Of all the war aims, none is so important to the peo- 
 ples of the world as that there shall be henceforth on 
 earth no more war. Whoever triumphs, the people will 
 have lost unless some effective method of preventing war 
 can be found. 
 
 "As means to this end, the British labour movement 
 relies very largely upon the complete democratization of 
 all countries; on the frank abandonment of every form 
 of imperialism; on the suppression of secret diplomacy, 
 and on the placing of foreign policy, just as much as 
 home policy, under the control of popularly elected legis- 
 latures; on the absolute responsibility of the foreign min- 
 ister of each country to its legislature; on such concerted 
 action as may be possible for the universal abolition of 
 compulsory military service in all countries, the common 
 limitation of the costly armaments by which all peoples 
 are burdened, and the entire abolition of profit-making 
 armament firms, whose pecuniary interest lies always in 
 war scares and rivalry in preparation for war. 
 
 "But it demands, in addition, that it should be an essen- 
 
 "3 
 
114 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 tial part of the treaty of peace itself that there should be 
 forthwith established a super-national authority, or league 
 of nations, which should not only be adhered to by all 
 the present belligerents, but which every other independ- 
 ent sovereign state in the world should be pressed to 
 join; the immediate establishment of such league of 
 nations not only of an international high court for the 
 settlement of all disputes between states that are of 
 justiciable nature, but also of appropriate machinery for 
 prompt and effective mediation between states at issue 
 that are not justiciable; the formation of an international 
 legislature, in which the representatives of every civilized 
 state would have their allotted share; the gradual de- 
 velopment, as far as may prove to be possible, of inter- 
 national legislation agreed to by and definitely binding 
 upon the several states, and for a solemn agreement and 
 pledge by all states that every issue between any two or 
 more of them shall be submitted for settlement as afore- 
 said, and that they will all make common cause against 
 any state which fails to adhere to this agreement." 
 
APPENDIX VII 
 
 PRESIDENT WILSON AND THE NEW INTER- 
 NATIONAL MORALITY 
 
 "Fellow-citizens, it is an unprecedented thing in the 
 world that any nation in determining its foreign rela- 
 tions should be unselfish, and my ambition is to see 
 America set the great example; not only a great example 
 morally, but a great example intellectually ... In the 
 days to come men will no longer wonder how America 
 is going to work out her destiny, for she will have pro- 
 claimed to them that her destiny is not divided from the 
 destiny of the world; that her purpose is justice and love 
 of mankind'* 
 
 "Come, let us renew our allegiance to America, con- 
 serve her strength in its purity, make her chief among 
 those who serve mankind, self-reverenced, self-com- 
 manded, mistress of all forces of quiet counsel, strong 
 above all others in good will and the might of invincible 
 justice and right." 
 
 "Tradition is a handsome thing in proportion as we live 
 up to it. If we fall away from the tradition of the fathers, 
 we have dishonoured them. If we forget the tradition 
 of the fathers, we have changed our character; we have 
 lost an old impulse; we have become unconscious of the 
 principles in which the life of the nation itself is rooted 
 and grounded. ... 'No other nation was ever born into 
 
 H5 
 
116 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 the world with the purpose of serving the rest of the 
 world just as much as it served itself." 
 
 "We desire neither conquest nor advantage. We wish 
 nothing that can be had only at the cost of another people. 
 We have always professed unselfish purpose and we 
 covet the opportunity to prove that our professions are 
 sincere." 
 
 "There have been other nations as rich as we; there 
 have been other nations as powerful; there have been 
 other nations as spirited; but I hope we shall never forget 
 that we created this Nation, not to serve ourselves, but to 
 serve mankind." 
 
 "America is particularly free in this, that she has no 
 hampering ambitions as a world power. We do not want 
 a foot of anybody's territory. If we have been obliged 
 by circumstances, or have considered ourselves to be 
 obliged by circumstances, in the past, to take territory 
 which we otherwise would not have thought of taking, 
 I believe I am right in saying that we have considered 
 it our duty to administer that territory, not for our- 
 selves, but for the people living in it, and to put this 
 burden upon our consciences — not to think that this thing 
 is ours for our use, but to regard ourselves as trustees 
 of the great business for those to whom it does really 
 belong, trustees ready to hand it over to the cestui que 
 trust at any time when the business seems to make that 
 possible and feasible. That is what I mean by saying 
 we have no hampering ambitions. We do not want any- 
 thing that does not belong to us. Is not a nation in that 
 position free to serve other nations, and is not a nation 
 like that ready to form some part of the assessing opinion 
 of the world?" 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 117 
 
 "America has a great cause which is not confined to the 
 American continent. It is the cause of humanity itself." 
 
 "The one thing that the world cannot permanently resist 
 is the moral force of great and triumphant convictions." 
 
 "Our ambition, also, all the world has knowledge of. 
 It is not only to be free and prosperous ourselves, but also 
 to be the friend and thoughtful partisan of those who 
 are free or who desire freedom the world over. If we 
 have had aggressive purposes and covetous ambitions, they 
 were the fruit of our thoughtless youth as a nation and 
 we have put them aside. We shall, I confidently believe, 
 never again take another foot of territory by conquest. 
 We shall never in any circumstances seek to make an 
 independent people subject to our dominion; because we 
 believe, we passionately believe, in the right of every 
 people to choose their own allegiance and be free masters 
 altogether." 
 
 "The mission of America in the world is essentially a 
 mission of peace and good-will among men. She has 
 become the home and asylum of men of all creeds and 
 races. Within her hospitable borders they have found 
 homes and congenial associations and freedom and a wide 
 and cordial welcome, and they have become part of the 
 bone and sinew and spirit of America itself. America 
 has been made up out of the nations of the world and 
 is the friend of the nations of the world." 
 
 "... America will have forgotten her traditions 
 whenever on any occasion she fights merely for herself 
 under such circumstances as will show that she has for- 
 gotten to fight for all mankind. And the only excuse 
 that America can ever have for the assertion of her 
 
118 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 physical force is that she asserts it in behalf of the inter- 
 est of humanity. 
 
 "What a splendid thing it is to have so singular a 
 tradition — a tradition of unselfishness ! When America 
 ceases to be unselfish, she will cease to be America. When 
 she forgets the traditions of devotion to human rights in 
 general, which gave spirit and impulse to her founders, 
 she will have lost her title deeds to her own nationality." 
 
 "... We are part of the world, and nothing that con- 
 cerns the whole world can be indifferent to us. We 
 want always the force of America to fight for what? 
 Not merely for the rights of property or of national 
 ambition, but for the rights of mankind." 
 
 "We wish to serve no selfish ends." 
 
 "Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious asser- 
 tion of the physical might of the nation, but only the 
 vindication of right, of human right, of which we are 
 only a single champion." 
 
 "Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles 
 of peace and justice in the life of the world as against 
 selfish and autocratic power, and to set up amongst the 
 really free and self-governed peoples of the world such 
 a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth 
 ensure the observance of those principles." 
 
 "We have said in the beginning that we planted this 
 great Government that men who wish freedom might 
 have a place of refuge and a place where their hope could 
 be realized, and now, having established such a Gov- 
 ernment, having preserved such a Government, we are 
 saying to all mankind: 'We did not set this Government 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 119 
 
 up in order that we might have a selfish and separate 
 liberty, for we are now ready to come to your assist- 
 ance and fight upon the field of the world the cause of 
 human liberty/ In this thing America attains her full 
 dignity and the full fruition of her great purpose." 
 
 "The position of America in this war is so clearly 
 avowed that no man can be excused for mistaking it. 
 She seeks no material profit or aggrandizement of any 
 kind. She is fighting for no advantage or selfish object 
 of her own, but for the liberation of peoples every- 
 where from the aggressions of autocratic force " 
 
 "We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government, 
 and the undictated development of all peoples, and every 
 feature of the settlement that concludes this war must 
 be conceived and executed for that purpose." 
 
 "The purposes of the United States in this war are 
 known to the whole world— to every people to whom 
 the truth has been permitted to come. They do not need 
 to be stated again. We seek no material advantage of 
 any kind." 
 
 "My dream is that as the years go on and the world 
 knows more and more of America it will also drink at 
 these fountains of youth and renewal; that it also will 
 turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie 
 at the basis of all freedom; that the world will never 
 fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some 
 enterprise which is inconsistent with the rights of 
 humanity; and that America will come into the full light 
 of the day when all shall know that she puts human 
 rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag 
 not only of America, but of humanity." 
 
120 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 "And now, by circumstances which she did not choose, 
 over which she had no control, she has been thrust out 
 into the great game of mankind, on the stage of the world 
 itself, and here she must know what she is about, and 
 no nation in the world must doubt that all her forces 
 are gathered and organized in the interest of justice, 
 righteousness, and humane government. 
 
 "What I intend to preach from this time on is that 
 America must show that as a member of the family of 
 nations she has the same attitude toward the other nations 
 that she wishes her people to have toward each other: 
 That America is going to take this position, that she will 
 lend her moral influence not only, but her physical force, 
 if other nations will join her, to see to it that no nation 
 and no group of nations tries to take advantage of 
 another nation or group of nations, and that the only 
 thing ever fought for is the common rights of humanity." 
 
 "It is clear that nations must in the future be gov- 
 erned by the same high code of honour that we demand 
 of individuals." 
 
 "We are at the beginning of an age in which it will 
 be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of 
 responsibility for wrong doing shall be observed among 
 nations and their governments that are observed among 
 the individual citizens of civilized states." 
 
 "When I have made a promise as a man I try to keep 
 it, and I know of no other rule permissible to a nation. 
 The most distinguished nation of the world is the nation 
 that can and will keep its promises, even to its own 
 hurt." 
 
 "I am proud to belong to a strong nation that says: 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 121 
 
 This country, which we could crush, shall have just as 
 much freedom in her own affairs as we have. If I am 
 strong, I am ashamed to bully the weak. In proportion 
 to my strength is my pride in withholding that strength 
 from the oppression of another people." 
 
 "A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly 
 and selfish in the things he enjoys that make for human 
 liberty and the rights of man. He wants to share them 
 with the whole world, and he is never so proud of the 
 great flag under which he lives as when it comes to 
 mean to other people as well as to himself a symbol of 
 hope and liberty. I would be ashamed of this flag if 
 it ever did anything outside America that we would not 
 permit it to do inside America." 
 
 "I am sometimes very much interested when I see 
 gentlemen supposing that popularity is the way to suc- 
 cess in America. The way to success in this great coun- 
 try, with its fair judgments, is to show that you are not 
 afraitl of anybody except God and His final verdict. If 
 I did not believe that, I would not believe in democracy. 
 If I did not believe that, I would not believe that people 
 can govern themselves. If I did not believe that the 
 moral judgment would be the last judgment, the final 
 judgment, in the minds of men as well as at the tribunal 
 of God, I could not believe in popular government. But 
 I do believe these things, and therefore I earnestly believe 
 in the democracy not only of America but of every awak- 
 ened people that wishes and intends to govern and con- 
 trol its own affairs." 
 
 "But the right is more precious than peace, and we 
 shall fight for the things which we have always carried 
 nearest our hearts— for democracy, for the right of those 
 
122 PRESIDENT WILSON AND 
 
 who submit to authority to have a voice in their own 
 governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, 
 for the universal dominion of right by such a concert 
 of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all 
 nations and make the world itself at last free." 
 
 "My theme is of those great principles of compassion 
 and of protection which mankind has sought to throw 
 about human lives, the lives of non-combatants, the lives 
 of men who are peacefully at work keeping the industrial 
 processes of the world quick and vital, the lives of women 
 and children and of those who supply the labour which 
 ministers to their sustenance. We are speaking of no 
 selfish material right but of rights which our hearts 
 support and whose foundation is that righteous passion 
 for justice upon which all law, all structures alike of 
 family, of state, and of mankind must rest, and upon the 
 ultimate base of our existence and our liberty. I cannot 
 imagine any man with American principles at his heart 
 hesitating to defend these things." 
 
 "I want you to realize the part that the United States 
 must play. It has been said, my fellow-citizens, been 
 said with cruel emphasis in some quarters, that the people 
 of the United States do not want to fight about anything. 
 . . . But the people of the United States want to be 
 sure what they are fighting about, and they want to be 
 sure that they are fighting for the things that will bring 
 to the world justice and peace. Define the elements; 
 let us know what we are not fighting for the prevalence 
 of this nation over that, for the ambitions of this group 
 of nations as compared with the ambitions of that group 
 of nations; let us once be convinced that we are called 
 in to a great combination to fight for the rights of man- 
 kind, and America will unite her force and spill her blood 
 
THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR i23 
 
 for the great things which she has always believed in and 
 followed." 
 
 "Are we ready always to be the friends of justice, of 
 fairness, of liberty, of peace, and of those accommoda- 
 tions which rest upon justice and peace? In these two 
 trying years that have just gone by we have forborne, 
 we have not allowed provocation to disturb our judg- 
 ments, we have seen to it that America kept her poise 
 when all the rest of the world seemed to have lost its 
 poise." 
 
 "Only upon the terms of retaining that poise and using 
 the splendid force which always comes with poise can we 
 hope to play the beneficent part in the history of the 
 world which I have just now intimated." 
 
 "America does not want any additional territory. She 
 does not want any selfish advantage over any other nation 
 in the world, but she does wish every nation in the world 
 to understand what she stands for and to respect what 
 she stands for." 
 
 "They are based, in short, upon the solid, eternal foun- 
 dations of justice and humanity. No man can turn away 
 from these things without turning away from the hope 
 of the world. These are things, ladies and gentlemen, 
 for which the world has hoped and waited with prayerful 
 heart. God grant that it may be granted to America 
 to lift this light on high for the illumination of the world." 
 
 "No one who really comprehends the spirit of the great 
 people for whom we are appointed to speak can fail to 
 perceive that their passion is for peace, their genius best 
 displayed in the practice of the arts of peace. Great 
 
124 THE MORAL AIMS OF THE WAR 
 
 democracies are not belligerent. They do not seek or 
 desire war. Their thought is of individual liberty and 
 of the free labour that supports life and the uncensored 
 thought that quickens it. Conquest and domination are 
 not in our reckoning, nor agreeable to our principles. 
 But just because we demand unmolested development and 
 the undisturbed government of our own lives upon our 
 own principles of right and liberty, we resent, from what- 
 ever quarter it may come, the aggression we ourselves 
 will not practise." 
 
 "The interesting and inspiring thing about America, 
 gentlemen, is that she asks nothing for herself except 
 what she has a right to ask for humanity itself. We want 
 no nation's property. We mean to question no nation's 
 honour. We do not wish to stand selfishly in the way 
 of the development of any nation. We want nothing 
 that we cannot get by our own legitimate enterprise and 
 by the inspiration of our own example; and, standing 
 for these things, it is not pretension on our part to say 
 that we are privileged to stand for what every nation 
 would wish to stand for, and speak for those things which 
 all humanity must desire." 
 
 "My urgent advice to you would be, not only always 
 to think first of America, but always, also, to think first 
 of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to 
 divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be 
 welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, 
 not by jealousy and hatred." 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 1092 
 

 
 
 
 
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