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 AMERICA AT WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. WILLIAM B. AYERS 
 
 A sermon delivered April 8th, 191 7 
 
 at the Park and Downs Congregational Church 
 
 Wollaston Park, Mass. 
 
AMERICA AT WAR 
 
 J1510 
 AS 
 
 •A? 
 
 The long moral struggle is over. The extremists 
 have prevailed in Germany, while in America righteous- 
 ness has become another name for wrath. All the just, 
 righteous, and kindly endeavors of our government to main- 
 tain the code of international rights and human safeguards 
 have been made the object of scorn, and the instruments 
 by which royal arrogance sought to fulfill its schemes. 
 
 Our record is clean. We have leaned backward to 
 maintain the cause of peace. 
 
 In the pursuit of this cause we have been called 
 cowards and selfish people. So did we yearn for peace, 
 that the world mistook this longing for selfishness, and we 
 ourselves began to doubt and grow a little discouraged and 
 ashamed. 
 
 It seemed as if perhaps we did not realize the full 
 meaning in this crisis of the world, as if we neither rose 
 to its full apprehension nor did our share. We seemed 
 unable to adjust our lives to the tremendous condition 
 abroad, or to compress our loose-jointed thoughts and our 
 luxurious and voluptuous tastes into the compass in which 
 a century reduced itself to months. 
 
 We had grown so petty and partisan that the great 
 struggle seemed to have no meaning for us, or if it did we 
 had become indifferent to its most vital and lasting issues. 
 We could not unite upon a single great enterprise. 
 
 But America has awakened and now she is finding her 
 soul. We have been trying to ward off this moment for 
 a long time. At last it has come and our duty is clear. 
 The thought and purpose of our nation should have full, 
 immediate expression, and unqualified support. All par- 
 '•tisanship should disappear, all selfish interests should be 
 laid aside, and the unity of the nation should be proved 
 by our patriotic allegiance to duty, our devoted loyalty to 
 any plan marked by the hand of God, and our united effort 
 to make effective our Christian ideals. 
 
 In my lecture on "The Great War," October, 1914, 
 I made the statement that America would eventually be 
 drawn into the conflict. This, without regard to the poli- 
 
 Note : So many requests have come for copies of this address that it was 
 determined, by members of the church, to have the sermon printed. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 MAY 2': mj 
 
tical complexion of our government or the personality of 
 our President. The drift was all that way and we could 
 not help ourselves. America could not be true to the ideals 
 which for over a century had been hers, and not take part 
 in a struggle that, when cleared of its misapprehensions, 
 became a vast tug-of-war between tyranny and democracy. 
 We could not see democracy destroyed. Against the com- 
 mon danger all democracy must unite. 
 
 To the student of history and of current events it 
 seemed impossible for the freest people in the world, and 
 those who most loved liberty and the things which belong 
 to liberty, to keep their hearts and hands out of a struggle 
 in which autocracy and tyranny sought to wrest the liber- 
 ties from the free people of other continents. 
 
 Germany's manner of entering the war proved to some 
 of us that we could not remain out of it. 
 
 Had Germany refrained from an attack on France, 
 had she massed her troops upon her own frontier, and 
 waited upon her own land to receive the full force of the 
 French attack, our people might have had much sympathy 
 for the German cause. 
 
 If then Germany had inflicted defeat on the French, 
 and invaded the Frenchmen's territory without violating 
 the neutrality of Belgium, England and America would 
 most likely never have joined in the war. The blunders 
 of Germany have all been blunders of judgment concerning 
 high human sentiment. She has failed to reckon with the 
 moral convictions of other people. Her judgments have 
 all been based upon material considerations and material 
 rewards. 
 
 In no way is the national German character more com- 
 pletely revealed than in this failure to assign to other 
 nations any motive for heroic activity higher than that of 
 selfish ambition and criminal greed. 
 
 "Will England join in the war against us?" inquired 
 her generals. "No," answered her diplomats, "because it 
 is not in her interest to do so. She has other ambitions 
 to engage her and other fields of profitable enterprise to 
 keep her busy." 
 
 The German Ambassador to England so completely 
 misread the British mind that up to the very last he 
 informed his government that Great Britain would not 
 join in the war. 
 
The hatred of the Germans for England is based upon 
 the fact that Britain turned the tide against her, and en- 
 tered the war when the Germans, by their peculiar reason- 
 ing, could see no object in her entrance and therefore did 
 not expect her as an opponent. They will probably hate 
 us for like reasons. 
 
 It was the same with the Belgians. The Germans 
 were amazed at the opposition of that heroic people. "Why 
 should they object to our invasion of their land?" inquired 
 the Teutonic statesmen. "We will pay them back." 
 
 The Germans had gone stupid and mad with mate- 
 rialism. 
 
 They did not realize that sentiment is not dead in 
 the world and that ideals yet remain. 
 
 It was in the period between 1850 and 1880 that the 
 materialistic philosophy had its rise and development in 
 the German mind. 
 
 It is logical that out of this should grow the doctrine 
 of force and selfishness. Brutality is but a step beyond 
 materialism. In fact the Bismarck method and scheme 
 could not be imposed save on a nation philosophically pre- 
 pared to receive it. 
 
 We think our quarrel is with the German government 
 alone. But the government cannot be detached from the 
 people. We will find before we are done that the vast 
 majority of the German people stand solidly back of their 
 government, not only in the conduct but the conception 
 of the war, and of the German mission to determine the 
 destiny of the world. 
 
 Some of her representative thinkers long busied them- 
 selves trying to explain away the redemptive mission and 
 the loving nature of Jesus Christ. The theory of mercy 
 Was beyond them and they were incapable of compre- 
 hending the Sacrificial Nature of The Divine. 
 
 Before this war was dreamed of German scholars made 
 the same assault upon the person of Christ that they have 
 made upon Belgium and northern France. 
 
 With terrible ruthlessness and idiotic cruelty they 
 have laid waste that fairest land, destroying its sanctuaries 
 and its homes, carrying away into bondage, and worse than 
 bondage, its able-bodied men and fair-bodied women. This 
 is a logical outcome of the rash and meaningless assault 
 they have made on Christ. 
 
One by one, they have sought to take away from him 
 his merciful meanings, and his divine functions, until they 
 have left him spiritually naked, stumbling under the bur- 
 den of a meaningless cross. If the German thinkers would 
 denude God, they would not hesitate to rob and destroy 
 man. 
 
 The mind that thought itself equal to the task of 
 revising the Nature of the Divine would certainly not quail 
 before the task of altering the map of the world. 
 
 It was indeed but a logical and a natural step to go 
 from the Divine revision to the earthly. 
 
 If a people are wise enough to uncover God they must, 
 of all people, be those best gifted for the business of man- 
 aging this world. The dream of world dominance, in the 
 German mind, has furnished a powerful incentive to multi- 
 form activities. Societies have been formed, fostered by 
 the government, for the creation of other societies all over 
 the world, especially in the Western Hemisphere, whose 
 business it would be to make the German language a re- 
 quirement in the public high schools. It has been a boast, 
 among Germans, that the German language would become, 
 in time, the speech of America. Two days before our 
 declaration of war, a group of Germans sat in a Boston 
 audience, and whispered in their mother tongue: "The flag 
 of the Fatherland will yet fly over the golden dome of the 
 State House." 
 
 It is a race gone insane with conceit, having lost all 
 true sense of proportion. This has been a fatal flaw in the 
 German temperament. It has revealed itself in the strat- 
 egy of the war. The Germans, being materialistic them- 
 selves, assumed that the Belgians and the British were 
 likewise, and would be guided by selfish motives alone. 
 It never occurred to them that the English temperament 
 would not allow England to stand supinely by and consent 
 to the destruction of her little neighbor to the East. The 
 moment Belgium was invaded England's declaration of war 
 was inevitable. That was a fatal mistake for the German 
 cause. But Germany did not realize the seriousness of 
 this blunder, because she had lost her sense of moral values 
 and had come to that place, of which the Bible speaks, 
 where wrong looks right. 
 
 Germany has been wonderful in her mechanism of war. 
 As a machine, her army has been without a peer in his- 
 
6 
 
 tory, and the military strategy she had devised has, on the 
 whole, been sound. 
 
 The blunders she has made have been the blunders of 
 moral reasoning. Every mad foolish thing she has done 
 has been the result of moral blindness undermining her 
 strategy and making her mechanical skill of no avail. 
 
 She has multiplied her enemies by her unmorality in 
 war. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon is distinguished by the quality of 
 fairness. 
 
 From boyhood we are taught to fight fairly and cleanly 
 and to remember, even in our wrath, the rules of the game. 
 
 There have been no rules in this game of slaughter 
 that Germany has waged. 
 
 We cannot join our fortunes to such a people whose 
 mental processes are abhorrent to ours. 
 
 From the very beginning of the war, Germany has 
 steadily maintained a course of conduct which has alienated 
 our sympathies more and more, and which could not pos- 
 sibly continue without making war between us inevitable. 
 Such acts as the invasion and wasting of the land of the 
 Belgians, one of the garden spots of the earth, the soil 
 of which has been so often fertilized by the blood of heroes. 
 
 Such an act was the burning of the university city of 
 Louvain. 
 
 This was abhorrent to an age revering learning and 
 holding in high esteem the designs of beauty and utility of 
 cultured minds. 
 
 Next, the deliberate destruction of the temple of 
 Rheims, that which is the high dream of man, frozen into 
 forms of architecture. Rheims has been one of the pilgrim 
 spots of the world. It stood for the religious aspirations 
 of man, and seemed to condense in its own exquisite form 
 all those conceptions of beauty which man's high instincts 
 have been able to incorporate into stone. 
 
 Then came that thing so repugnant to us — a thing that 
 we could not do, — indeed would slay our own soldiers for 
 doing; a thing not credited to civilized peoples, the shoot- 
 ing of Edith Cavelle- as a spy. We began to wonder what 
 kind of creatures these Germans could be. 
 
 Then they deliberately bragged to the world that they 
 were to sink the most majestic vessel that plied the seas, 
 a ship that bore, as its armament, not batteries of guns, 
 
but women and children and other peaceable citizens, going 
 inoffensively about their own duties. 
 
 The unbelievable occurred. The Lusitania was sent to 
 the bottom by a blow struck in the dark, a dastardly deed 
 done secretly. We knew then that the first blow had been 
 struck at us. Not only at our liberties but at our lives. 
 
 We knew then what was bound to follow, other blows 
 would come. Our inactivity, based on Christian conceptions, 
 would be termed cowardly submission, and the full torrent 
 of insane scheming would be turned against us. 
 
 Then followed the massacre of the Armenians. Hun- 
 dreds of thousands of them driven onto the desert to starve, 
 their women and girls carted away to be ravished, ruined 
 and devoured, by the imbecile passions of the swarthy 
 Turk. We knew that a word from Germany would end 
 this, and we were amazed that such a word was not forth- 
 coming. We could not understand how Germany could 
 allow such a thing. But now we understand fully. Ger- 
 many had turned her back upon Western civilization. She 
 had joined herself to the East as against the West, to the 
 heathen world as against the Christian, to the Turk as 
 against the white ; her Emperor pretending to be a Moham- 
 medan, and her statesmen becoming the champions of the 
 faith. While destroying Belgium and making slaves of her 
 people, while bombarding from the skies the homes of 
 women and the cradles of children, and sinking passenger 
 ships without warning, Germany has been aiding Turkey 
 with military forces while Turkey massacred a million 
 Armenian Christians. Our Lord was constantly resorting 
 to measures of protection for his disciples, and it would 
 seem to be one of the duties of Christianity to protect and 
 defend the citizens of the Kingdom. 
 
 We know now why the German mind consented to the 
 ravishing of the Armenians. Not only had she renounced 
 the humanitarian ideals of Western Civilization, but she 
 had become saturated with the same consuming poison, 
 for she did in France and Belgium what she allowed Turkey 
 to do in Armenia. The German soldiers have sat at the 
 feet of the Turks and learned; and well they have learned 
 their lesson. Now the Germans are carting away the beau- 
 tiful girls of France, and the fair maidens of Belgium, to 
 what dastardly purpose we dare not think. Their fathers 
 and mothers they have separated, and driven into the 
 
8 
 
 Empire to slave in the mills and the fields. You can fancy 
 your mothers, wives, sisters and daughters in this pre- 
 dicament and then say whether you believe we should not 
 wage war against that sort of thing. 
 
 We have not mentioned the clouds of poison gas and 
 flaming oil introduced by the Teuton to become a common- 
 place of war. 
 
 Then the ships that began to go down became multi- 
 tude, not the vessels of war but the floating arks of peace ; 
 the Red Cross vessels, ships bearing the sick and wounded 
 with the word "hospital " painted large on their sides, and 
 the sign of mercy on the stack and flying from every mast- 
 head. Steamers were sunk laden with food for the starving 
 people of Belgium, gathered by generous hands and con- 
 secrated by pious hearts. These followed the bleeding 
 pathway that leads to the ocean's depths. 
 
 Unarmed cities by the seaside had long been targets 
 of Teutonic wrath. From the seas and from the skies 
 blind hate rained destruction upon them, to no apparent 
 purpose of war only the love of killing, women and children, 
 resting in innocent and unsuspecting slumbers, mangled in 
 their sleep. 
 
 Our agents in Belgium, messengers of mercy and 
 bearers of love to stricken people, were treated so meanly 
 that they must needs withdraw. 
 
 Then, in spite of promises and formal agreements to 
 the contrary, the ruthless and terrible submarine warfare 
 was resumed and we knew that our day of reckoning had 
 come. 
 
 The highways of the world Germany sought to make 
 dangerous and deadly for all. The arteries of the world's 
 trade she sought to cut, by stealth and under-the-sea 
 methods which could not be supervised, restrained or con- 
 trolled, or brought under the rules of peace or war. Our 
 ships began to go to the bottom in common with those of 
 other neutrals. American lives, whether women or men, 
 were snatched and snuffed like rats in a plagued city. 
 
 Our nation became menaced from within as well as 
 from without. Bomb outrages multiplied. The country 
 was beset by spies. The liberties we extended were shame- 
 lessly abused. Our hospitality was violated without con- 
 science. 
 
 Then it was found that German statecraft had con- 
 
spired, in the very hour of its most friendly assertions, its 
 loudest declarations of esteem, to foment strife and revolu- 
 tion within our land and assault upon our nation from 
 Mexico and Japan. Indeed, German diplomacy had con- 
 spired the dismemberment of our nation. 
 
 If there is any man who, in the face of these facts, 
 will say that to go to war against this monster of iniquity 
 is a wicked and reproachful thing, he himself has lost the 
 distinctions of conscience and the sense of sacred right. 
 Could I gather a dozen sons about me I would feel that I 
 could dedicate them to no higher duty that that of redeem- 
 ing the world from the clutches of this mad man among the 
 nations. If, in this service for the world, every one of them 
 should die I would feel that they had died gloriously to 
 make high and lasting contribution to the world's good. 
 
 America could not do other than she has. 
 
 We would be untrue to all that we have been and have 
 taught as a nation by any other course. 
 
 We have been considered as the people of all others 
 most ready to sacrifice ourselves for those whom nobody 
 else thought worthy of aid. The impoverished and op- 
 pressed and caste-bound peoples of the world have, for 
 a century, looked upon America as the place of hope and 
 friendliness and emancipation. 
 
 We would deal treacherously with our ideals if we 
 did not reach a strong arm across the seas to rescue Europe 
 from the embrace of this maniac. 
 
 We have been the rescuer of stricken peoples before. 
 We have given our best life to save. 
 
 We have been trusted and beloved, because we have 
 been willing to suffer and bleed and die for the privilege 
 of giving others a chance at life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness. 
 
 We have believed in government by the people; that 
 government is the servant of the people and not their 
 master and tyrant. 
 
 We have stood for the salvation of the people from 
 the clutches of those who would cheat and exploit them for 
 personal greed and ambition. On the whole, we have prac- 
 ticed this, faultily always, stumblingly and stupidly often, 
 many times with corruption in local means of government, 
 yet having a marvellous power of adjustment and self cor- 
 rection. 
 
10 
 
 Our general effort has been toward justice. Our faults 
 have been those arising from too much liberty; liberty 
 abused or held in light esteem. 
 
 It was a long time before the issues of this war became 
 clear to the mind of the Western Hemisphere, but they are 
 clarified now, for the alignment is very distinct. On the 
 one side are the democratic governments, on the other the 
 autocratic forms. 
 
 Among the peoples engaged, the war has been waged 
 with these two distinctive ideals in control. 
 
 One group has waged a dastardly, cruel, tyrant war- 
 fare, not considerate of any rights or liberties, or of the 
 humanities, and acknowledging no law save that of its 
 own blind greed, and the cowardly fear that passed under 
 the name of military necessity, — such was the autocratic 
 form of war. 
 
 The Democracies have, on the whole, fought fairly. 
 They have fought with a minimum of cruelty and with the 
 humanities ever in mind. So far as human life is concerned 
 they have conducted themselves according to the rules of 
 the game. 
 
 We know now that the future of this world will be 
 determined by the kind of foe that wins the war. 
 
 We know that if cruel and greedy autocracy wins, the 
 world will be veiled in a web of deceit, and scheming, dam- 
 aging plots will prevail and peace-destroying conspiracies. 
 
 The death knell of democracy will be heard if autocracy 
 wins, and the purpose of democracy will be so weakened 
 and paralyzed and discouraged as to render it unequal to 
 the task of reconstruction and self-perpetuation. In fact 
 it is the aim of autocracy to destroy popular government. 
 
 The war was hatched in the brain of an autocratic 
 clique. 
 
 Such a clique and such a power would be impossible in 
 a free governing nation. 
 
 Kaiserism knows that, if the democratic idea continues 
 to spread, kaiserism will be destroyed ; therefore the purpose 
 to discourage the democratic idea and to render impotent 
 and sterile the growing strength of popular rights and 
 popular representation. 
 
 Against such a scheme free America cannot help but 
 align herself. Willing and perpetual self-sacrifice is the 
 cost of keeping the spirit of liberty alive in the world. 
 
11 
 
 The denuded forests of France and the poisoned wells of 
 water give mute testimony to the kind of world we could 
 expect under the dominance of the Teutonic idea. 
 
 At first the Germans did not think that we would come 
 in, because they did not credit us with sentiment either. We 
 were a greedy people, eager to snatch what we could from 
 the flames of the world's destruction; a race of money 
 sharks, not at all eager to sacrifice our ease and luxury 
 and life for the things of honor and justice. 
 
 Oh, we could be counted safe while autocracy made a 
 meal of the heart and soul of the world. 
 
 Then the fortunes of war shifted. Autocracy saw that 
 it was not going to win. Its colonies were snatched away 
 and the power over the future of Europe seemed slipping 
 from its grasp. 
 
 Something must be done to save the face of autocracy 
 and to re-establish its waning prestige. 
 
 When the Russian Czar was dethroned Kaiserism 
 saw the hand-writing upon the wall. Reforms were im- 
 mediately promised: the establishment of wider franchise 
 and more liberal laws. But the thought of the people must 
 be kept engaged, that they might have little time to pon- 
 der their own condition or launch any system of their own 
 devising. 
 
 What better for this purpose than a new war, — with a 
 great, new, powerful enemy. 
 
 German diplomacy is also aware of our repugnance for 
 foreign alliances. This we have inherited from the fathers 
 of our country. 
 
 Why not engage America at war, and gamble on this 
 repugnance, to keep America from making any alliance 
 with France and Great Britain as to the conduct and ter- 
 mination of the war. 
 
 This will leave America engaged at war with Ger- 
 many after she has accepted the terms of the allies, and 
 Germany's European enemies have laid down their arms. 
 
 Defeated in Europe, having lost her colonies and able 
 to extract no indemnity from her foes, but rather com- 
 pelled to bear the cost to herself, and repay the damage 
 to her enemies, Germany will be bankrupt, and her people 
 will most likely rise in denunciation against their rulers, 
 and snatch the sceptre fram their hands. Therefore, as 
 a measure of self-preservation on the part of the Hohen- 
 
12 
 
 zollerns, some provision must be made to recover the equi- 
 valent of what has been lost. Where could this be done 
 more easily than in the Western Hemisphere? The vast 
 Central and South American Continent is a mine, the sur- 
 face of which has hardly been scratched. The United 
 States, the richest country in the world, and in many ways 
 the weakest, an unprotected and unprepared storehouse of 
 the world's treasure. 
 
 After the Allies have ceased to fight, Germany will be 
 left at war with America; Germany with five million vet- 
 eran soldiers and a navy greater than that of America, and 
 with flocks of submarines as well. 
 
 Could not the American navy be engaged at one point 
 while an army was landed at another; at that moment a 
 general up-rising of loyal Germans within the country, aid 
 from the Mexicans perhaps, the coast cities taken from the 
 rear or the sea, and a vast tribute exacted, including Alaska 
 and Panama and the Island possessions? This would leave 
 America humiliated and crushed and unable to bar Kaiser- 
 ism from a free hand in South America. 
 
 It is a foolish dream, you say? Yes, the whole war 
 was a foolish dream three short years ago. 
 
 The whole vast enterprise was pronounced by scholars 
 and statesmen improbable and absurd. The most impos- 
 sible things have become recorded facts. 
 
 Our people and our legislators should be keenly alive 
 to this condition. They should not be deluded with the 
 idea of our isolation so that they will decline to make 
 treaties laying down the limits of the war, our purposes 
 and goals, and agreeing with France and England not to 
 make a separate peace. 
 
 Our future security requires that America and France 
 and England now pool their forces, together with the new 
 Republic of Russia, whose recent assertion of popular rights 
 has made possible the exalted statement of our President, 
 that no one of them be left to battle for its existence after 
 the others have laid down their arms. 
 
 We cannot fight Germany and Austria, Bulgaria and 
 Turkey alone, with possibly Mexico in the bargain, for the 
 rumblings are already heard in the land to the south of 
 us. 
 
 The over-cautious and narrow-visioned people and 
 politicians must not be allowed to bind and gag the nation 
 
13 
 
 and leave her helpless against the international assassin. 
 
 It seems strange that laymen could foretell two years 
 ago that this nation would be drawn into the war, while 
 governmental circles scoffed at the idea. 
 
 Some of us will never forget how our fears were ridi- 
 culed, and how eagerly we awaited some clear, high enuncia- 
 tion of principle. 
 
 We were called militarists because we foresaw dark 
 events ahead and called upon the nation to prepare itself 
 for them. 
 
 We will never cease to regret that long year in which 
 so little was done to make the nation ready for the trial 
 that seemed inevitable. But all that is in the past. We 
 have crawled into war hardly buckling on our armor as we 
 did so. 
 
 We have a great naval program but it will be some 
 years before we can finish and utilize all the vessels. 
 
 We have a fine army program, and multitudes of will- 
 ing and enthusiastic men, but a year hardly suffices for the 
 creation of a vast modern army. 
 
 What we lack in arms and vessels, airships, submarines 
 and munitions must be made up by clear-visioned, sharp- 
 witted diplomacy. 
 
 We must, as the first measure of this diplomacy, 
 make impotent Germany's greedy scheme. We must not 
 leave ourselves to fight her alone, but make an immediate 
 treaty with the free governments of France and Russia and 
 England, agreeing that none of us will make separate peace, 
 but that all will safeguard the interests of each, and each of 
 all. Any early proffers of peace coming to us from Ger- 
 many will be designed to deceive us and delay the formula- 
 tion of such a treaty. We must not be misled by them. 
 
 We should immediately dispatch a unit of soldiers to 
 France and Belgium, that our flag may fly over the trenches, 
 that the hearts of liberating soldiers be cheered by its pres- 
 ence, and the world see that we are not a race of cowards 
 willing to venture food and treasure and everything but 
 ourselves. We must be willing to receive our baptism and 
 bear our part of the common burden in the forefront of the 
 battle's lines. 
 
 Our entrance into the war needs no justification. If 
 righteousness is right then our entry into this kind of 
 war cannot be called a sin. In fact it is the only thing that 
 
14 
 
 we as a Christian nation could possibly do. If we have 
 sinned it is in not going in sooner. 
 
 The genius of Christianity is self-sacrifice. The Chris- 
 tian man will venture his life to stop and dispose of the mad 
 dog that rushes through the streets snapping at children 
 and spreading the virus of his deadly disease. 
 
 The Christian man will risk his life and give his life 
 to disarm and subdue the maniac who strikes and slays 
 those within reach of his madness. 
 
 The Christian man will throw his dignity to the breezes 
 and compel the drunkard to silence his oaths and cease his 
 violence in the presence of women. The Christian man 
 will punish the seducer of children and restrain him against 
 the repetition of his crime. We have some Christian duties 
 for which we need not apologize. Indeed we must apolo- 
 gize in shame if we do them not. 
 
 Talk about the wickedness of force. Christianity itself 
 is a force. There is nothing more forceful than a quick 
 and active remedy. It takes action and power to eliminate 
 disease. 
 
 The body of man suffers violence when it is being 
 purged of fever and plague. Christ said that his kingdom 
 would set brothers and children and parents at variance, 
 one with the other. His kingdom, as a reformative element, 
 was a force that worked violently and stirred evil to retal- 
 iation. Speech is a force. The pen is a force. And pen 
 and tongue have made more wounds than swords. Surgery 
 is a force that cuts and destroys to a blessed purpose of 
 healing and salvation. Between the sword and the sermon 
 is only a matter of degree, and one can be made as redemp- 
 tive as the other. 
 
 Between Germany at war and America at war is all 
 the moral difference in the world. She is fighting to destroy 
 and to grab; we are fighting to save and to free. Our 
 action needs no other justification. We are willing to lay 
 down our best life that the principles and ideals for which 
 we have fought before shall not perish from the earth. In 
 the light of this ideal, victory will be ours if we are brave 
 and wise and farseeing. God will give us of His strength, 
 for it is true of nations, as of individuals, that to him that 
 hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be 
 taken away even that which he hath. If Germany had any 
 
15 
 
 real faith she could not do what she has done. She gave 
 up the things of the soul, and now the things of material 
 achievement must be taken away. 
 
 With the solemn prayers of Good Friday upon our lips 
 we have taken up the burden of war on the anniversary 
 of our Saviour's Crucifixion. What is to be the outcome 
 of our lenten sacrifice only the years can reveal. It must 
 be faced as a stern, sober, terrible task. It is no time for 
 wild passion, unreasoning hate or brainless excitement. 
 Let not the flame of senseless wrath consume us. Let no 
 impulse of blind consuming revenge drive us to blushing 
 extremities. 
 
 Let no greedy aspirations take hold upon the national 
 life to lead us from the paths of spiritual rectitude. There 
 must be for us no thought of conquest, no prizes save those 
 goals of the spirit which we seek to assert, to liberate and 
 redeem. We are a liberal nation, now called to subdue and 
 arrest an aggressive imperialistic one. And it is a just 
 summons. Surely the advance of democracy is compatible 
 with the spiritual enterprise of the Christian Kingdom. 
 And a league of democracies bound together by the tie of 
 a just co-operation will make fertile soil for the Christian 
 gospel. As time passes and our activities become more 
 furious, we must not permit ourselves to forget the con- 
 victions with which we began and the goal we first had in 
 mind. Our righteous purposes must be kept clearly and 
 constantly before us, or we shall become entangled in a 
 passion that is blind and furious and self-destroying. It 
 devolves upon us in a very peculiar sense to keep alive the 
 kindly spirit and those necessary spiritual elements upon 
 which only a just and lasting peace can be established. 
 We seek to proclaim the doctrine of human rights and world 
 security — then let our national and personal conduct be such 
 that we shall be able to impose upon the world at the end 
 of the war a more liberal sprinkling of this doctrine than 
 it ever knew before. We are not fighting to subdue a single 
 enemy but to keep alive a principle and to do what we can 
 to make it universal. 
 
 If we crush our enemy, but lose sight of our ideal, we 
 are defeated and the world is infinitely worse off than if 
 we had never gone into the fray. We are fighting for the 
 security of nations against imperial ambitions and the mad- 
 ness of imperial pride. 
 
16 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 018 465 799 5 
 
 We have indeed entered the war with deep and genuine 
 reluctance. Even those of us who in the past have crit- 
 icized our president's extremely pacifistic attitude will be 
 glad now that he was for so long a time doggedly opposed 
 to war. With so much division in the country, so much 
 irresolution, his method has, on the whole, proved sounder 
 than we thought. It has bound the nation together so 
 that we present a fairly solid front to the issue. We are 
 not unmindful of the suffering of Teutonic peoples, and 
 even in our hostility we shall not cease to be sorry for them 
 and compassionate toward them. 
 
 Should we allow our motives to degenerate into a blind 
 racial hatred for those people who are now our enemies 
 then our own nation will become hopelessly divided and a 
 democracy that is humanitarian will become a conglomerate 
 that is devilish. We go into battle for certain high humani- 
 tarian conceptions. They must be maintained. In the 
 minds of all people our participation must be kept clearly 
 associated with the ideals of international security and the 
 popular well-being. The nations of the world need purging. 
 America with all the rest. If governments had planned for 
 the general welfare, the world would not now be in tears, 
 and the scientific knowledge and technical skill of mankind 
 would not now be dedicated to humanity's destruction. Had 
 the nations of the world been just, the high loyalty of man- 
 hood and its enthusiastic self-dedication would all be de- 
 voted to the development of human life rather than its un- 
 doing. Had nations been wise and kind in their domestic 
 laws, the maddest tragedy this side of Calvary would not 
 today be in process of enactment, and the high attainments, 
 noble impulses and divine gifts of men would now be work- 
 ing together for the redemption of mankind and for the 
 fulfilment of his divine function. We have much that is 
 sordid and selfish of which we must be purged. Patriotism 
 must become another name for prayer. By keeping in mind 
 the Christian ideals, even as we fight to make fighting less 
 probable in the future, we should give to those ideals a 
 more universal acknowledgment and shall be able to carry 
 into the counsels of the nations the spirit of the cross. 
 
.A6 
 
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