Why Christianity did not prevent the war

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NOT PREVENT THE WAR

ISAAC J. LANSING, D.D

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WHY CHRISTIANITY DID NOT PREVENT THE WAR
ISAAC J. LANSING, D.D.

WHY CHRISTIANITY

DID NOT PREVENT

THE WAR

BY

ISAAC J. LANSING, D.D.

NEW ^nSJT YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Dor an Company

Printed in the United States of America

©CI.A508068

PREFACE

THESE addresses were not a series. They
were occasional. If they have not surface
sequence, they do have essential connection in
their purpose to give light and strength to our
people as aids to victory. All of them were
spoken as sermons at home. Then, being called
for, were repeated and somewhat expanded.
They were given to Preachers' Meetings in New
York, and to various clubs, among them the
Rotary Club, the New York Republican Club
and the Lawyers' Club of New York. In March,
1918, several of them were spoken to the eight
thousand public school teachers of Chicago, and
at various times to numerous popular assem-
blies. Everywhere they were called for in
printed form and it was urged that so prepared
they would multiply their influence for good.

The Rotary Club of New York published one,
circulating thousands of copies. My honored
and generous friend, Mr. Edwin O. Grover,
President of the Prang Art Publishing Com-
pany, New York and Chicago, out of patriotism

vi ^Preface

and friendship, at his own expense printed some
thousands of copies of three addresses.

The New York Republican Club prints an-
other in its series for 1917-18; and the Lawyers'
Club another in the Report of their Annual
Meeting for 1918.

Now, the George H. Doran Company, whose
devotion to the Allied Cause has given the world
an unsurpassed contribution of invaluable pa-
triotic books and pamphlets, undertakes to print
these nine speeches together, hoping thus, as I
also hope, to aid to victory.

This book is not prepared or sent forth as
literature. These are War Discourses, to rouse
the spirits of men, to assist correct thinking, to
formulate clearly war issues and to inspire the
stern justice of battle.

Every paragraph has been tested practically
on uncommonly intelligent American audiences
and approved by them in ways encouraging to
the author.

With diffidence because of their incomplete-
ness, with confidence as to their truth and with
hope of their usefulness, the author gladly pre-
sents them to the larger public and invokes the
blessing of God upon them as a force for Right-
eousness and Justice among mankind.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the

War ii

II. The Antagonism op German Political
Philosophy to Christian Truth and
Morals 40

III. The Angels' Song, As They Said It 74

IV. The Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance

to Evil 84

V. The Perils of a Premature Peace 99

VI. The Wisdom of Men that Was Foolish-
ness with God 141

VII. Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 162

VIII. Prohibition and National Defence 199

IX. Our Victory Assured 228

TU

WHY CHRISTIANITY DID NOT
PREVENT THE WAR

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent
the War

THAT was a thrilling incident told by a
prominent American journalist of his ex-
perience in August, 1914, at a little French rail-
road town which he named. He told it some-
what like this:

"We were on a causeway over a wide street
and there were troops marching in the street
below. It was an embarkation depot. My com-
panion, scion of a noble French house, had long
been known to me as a man of the world, a dare-
devil, with never a thought of God — cursing,
swearing, reckless, doing about everything that
a man ought not to do. Here he stood beside
me in a dirty military uniform, looking steadily
into my face and listening to the tramp of the
marching host below. Suddenly there came a
great darkness, and I said to him, 'It is dark all
over Europe to-day' — (there was an eclipse of
the sun) .

'Yes,' he answered, 'but darkest in France.'
11

12 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

Then he leaned out over the parapet of the
causeway, where he could see the soldiers march-
ing below, and taking off his cap he swung it in
the air as he shouted to them in thrilling tones,
'God save France!'

And the soldiers of the French Republic,
possibly atheistic once like himself, now praying
to God with him, sent back the answer in thun-
dering tones, 'God save France !' " In their
heroic distress they had turned back to God and
learned to pray.

It is good to know that in time of trouble
many do turn to God and begin to pray. They
feel the great need of His help and presence for
strength and comfort. The horrors of this war
have given to many a burden greater than they
can bear. There are brave, broken-hearted men
and women, and multitudes of innocent boys and
girls who know not how to carry their burden of
perplexity and pain. They need all the help that
we can give them and that which only God can
give besides. Many bewildered are asking, "Why
did not Christianity prevent this war?"

One prominent religious editor who was a
member of the Peace Conference assembling at

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 13

Constance, Switzerland, as the war broke out,
returning to America immediately in August as
the war began, wrote extendedly in his paper on
the "collapse of Civilisation," a phrase which
became common at the time. In a leading edi-
torial which was republished by the Church
Peace Union as having their sanction, he said:
"Already thousands of atheists are being made ;
almost every other man we met in Europe this
last week has shaken his head in sadness and
said: 'What is the use of Christianity if it can-
not stop this war?' You will notice that without
marked dissent or explanation, this editor lends
to the inquiry the force of his own uncertainty
when he speaks of thousands of atheists being
made in Europe, as though it might be expected
that such a war occurring in the world, naturally
cast a doubt on the existence of God. These
seem to be convinced that there can be no God
provided things occur as they have been and are
now occurring. They shake their heads in doubt
and say, 'What is the good of Christianity if
it cannot prevent or stop this sort of thing?' evi-
dently having in mind that Christianity ought
to have prevented or stopped 'this sort of thing.'
And inasmuch as it has not 'stopped this sort of
thing,' Christianity is not what we have supposed
it to be. Therefore, it being so visibly defective

14 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

and impotent, we cannot put our trust in Chris-
tianity as we have done heretofore. We believed
that such a war was impossible, because we be-
lieved in Christianity. Now Christianity has
failed and therefore the war is upon us."

It is not by any means clear to me that these
ready doubters ever did put their trust in Chris-
tianity to prevent war or to do anything else, but
rather were quite indifferent to it until they saw
a farther opportunity to asperse it. One of the
most distinguished publicists of the United
States in a signed article which I have in my
hand, published within a few months after the
war began, writes thus in a high class and widely
circulated journal: "Early in the progress of
the war, thinking people in all the civilised coun-
tries are asking themselves what the fundamental
trouble with civilisation is and where to look for
means of escape from the present intolerable
conditions. Christianity in nineteen centuries
has offered no relief, and so called mitigations of
war are comparatively trivial."

Proceeding, he seems to make this argument
and draw this inference: Christianity has been
nineteen hundred years in the world the enemy
of war. If Christianity had been an enemy worth
reckoning with, in nineteen hundred years it
would have done something. As a matter of

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 15

fact it "has offered no relief." It is amazing that
a grave and thoughtful man could make such an
assertion or draw such a conclusion. He had
just been round the world on a peace mission.
Had he relied on Christianity to offer relief from
war as he proceeded on this tour? Unless the
above statement of its uselessness was an after-
thought, he had not appealed to it. If he had
not, it was because he had, before the war, de-
cided that the influence of Christianity was so
inappreciable that it was not worth appealing to.
But if he did this, it was because he was an
enemy to Christianity, which indeed he has shown
himself to be, and therefore his adverse testimony
is of little account. If he ever had the idea that
Christianity might offer relief and mitigate the
horrors of war, he had concluded that nineteen
centuries had been long enough for the experi-
ment and that Christianity is no longer to be
counted on. To what then did he look, in his
tour and later in the interest of World peace?
Perhaps we may learn from the fact that, con-
tinuing the article above quoted, he affirms that
our hope and our dependence must be in and
upon International law applied to the nations
of the world. But may we not inquire if there
is not now a great body of International law?
If it has not been in actual existence and in active

16 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

application for centuries of time? And it is
presumably good law with as much force in it
as any good law has or can have? It is good
in the sense that it is eternally right, humane,
moral, wise. If Christianity, however described
and defined, has been a failure in preventing war,
so has International law, and that not because
of its defects or uselessness, but because it indi-
cated lines of conduct and practise to which men
and nations have given assent and approbation,
but to which they have not given obedience in
practise. International law has failed because
it has been set at naught. There are no advan-
tages in law except from obedience to it. And
the same is true of Christian precepts.

A considerable number of critics of Christi-
anity became vocal shortly after the war began,
who never had indicated prior to that time that
they had any special knowledge of Christianity ;
nor have they since. Take certain essayists to
whom has been given a leading place in widely
read magazines, and you will find that while
known in some lines, they have never been recog-
nised in the world of thought or information, as
being qualified to speak on the subject of Chris-
tianity.

There is no doubt that the destruction of life
and property on such a colossal scale as we are

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 17

now witnessing, by this war was not only a fearful
shock to all people but has been an occasion for
some to seriously, albeit confusedly, question the
existence of God. The dreadful slaughters,
massacres, devastation of thousands of towns and
cities, the flying fugitives, the desolation of mil-
lions of homes, all the wreck and ruin of war
have horrified our minds. Shuddering over the
awful destruction, the suffering and loss, the
myriads destroyed and incapacitated in number-
less ways, some may impulsively raise the ques-
tion, "Can it be possible that there is a God? Is
all this consistent with the existence of a good
and wise and almighty God?" Evidently it is
the greatness of the suffering and destruction, in
quantity immeasurable and in quality incon-
ceivable, which raises the doubt.

But let us ask another question, one which did
not come up in 1914 but which has been before
our eyes for succeeding centuries. It is about
a perfectly well known agency of misery and
destruction which we have observed and taken
more or less responsibility for, and which has
wrought far more horrors than this war. Of this
curse of human kind, the great English states-
man, William E. Gladstone, said that it had de-
stroyed more human beings than war, famine and
pestilence combined, in the historic ages of the

18 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

world. This he said of the manufacture, the sale
and the use of alcoholic liquors. No doubt he
stated the plain truth. This present war in all
its horrors and destructions, is far behind the
liquor curse in the misery it inflicts on mankind.
Now tell me how it happens that people who
have been patrons and apologists of the liquor
traffic, have never assumed it to be inharmonious
with the existence of a good God that such de-
struction should go on? How did they come to
the opinion all of a sudden, that God is an un-
desirable and unnecessary person in the world
because of the killed, wounded and missing of
this war, when the killed, wounded and missing
of the liquor fiend had been so many more than
those of war, in plain view of the people, for ages
and ages of time?

The truth is that they dare not deny that men,
not God, create and perpetuate the liquor traffic
and that men can stop it. The same is incontro-
vertibly true of war. The mistake has been in
assuming, as regards this war, that because a
great calamity is not fully explainable when it
suddenly falls, therefore God has not been or has
ceased to be in authority over the world. For if
the sum and aggregate of human misery gives
any reason to doubt God, we would have much
more reason for disbelieving in Him for the last

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 19

five hundred years on account of the liquor
traffic, than we have in the last three years on
account of the war in Europe and the world.
But we know of the one and no less of the other
that men, not God, make and perpetuate the
liquor evil and no less the evil of war. Neither
gives the slightest ground for accusing or doubt-
ing God, or for plunging into atheism.

In this connection I may remark that some
have found a degree of comfort even in the war
by saying of it that it is a war to destroy war
and therefore is to be looked upon as having not
merely a destructive but also a conservative force.
They might add that if the war were waged for
the destruction of the liquor evil, and success-
fully, it would save more of everything than it
has cost. So it looms up in sight, as blow after
blow is struck at the drink evil, that human right
action against it, long ago known to be essen-
tially the application of Christian principles and
teachings, will thus save more lives, rehabilitate
more manhood, and womanhood, deliver more
childhood and create more property, in a very
short period of years, than all that have been
destroyed by the war. What men do and refuse
to do let us not make a ground of accusation
against God nor an occasion for unbelief in
Him.

20 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

ii
For what is true of Christianity is true of the
moral law of the Ten Commandments which
while incorporated in the body of Christian law,
were given to the world in the form of a code
fifteen hundred years before the coming of
Christ. We may safely affirm that the moral
law has been imperative in the world for a mini-
mum of thirty-five hundred years. Why then
has it not prevented vice and immorality? Is it
because the Ten Commandments are in any wise
deficient? These are highly commendable laws
of human conduct. They bear the marks of a
wisdom in their Author, which knew mankind
and what was most advantageous for it in human
action. The Moral Law is God's law as also
Christianity is God's law and Gospel. The law
is not impeached by continued immorality, nor
is Moses, nor any who upon this code have built
the statutes of states. It is a sublime code and
comprehensive of duty toward God and man.
Why then have not the Ten Commandments of
the moral law prevented the vices which they pro-
hibit, when they have been known and operative
in the world for three and a half millenniums?
The answer is perfectly clear. Hear and ponder
it. Vices here forbidden prevail because men in
their practise have been disobedient to that law.

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 21

Would you then repudiate, repeal or ignore the
moral law or would you call on men to repent
and to obey it?

The reason why we have adultery in violation
of the Seventh Commandment is not because of
defect in the commandment. The reason why we
have murder in violation of the Sixth is not
on account of any defect in this or lack in either
of these two, or in the whole code. When obeyed
they always work well and issue in individual
and social benefit. The reason why when we
have an invaluable moral law and notwithstand-
ing its existence, vice and immorality still exist,
is because the moral law has been ignored, disre-
garded, disobeyed, unapplied in the life of men.
The just statutes of enduring civilisations are
built upon the moral law as one of the most
powerful and constructive of forces in the human
world order. Shall we turn away from these
laws ? Shall we accuse them of bringing no relief
to the moral world? This is folly.

We are comparing Christianity as a doctrine
of life from God, with the Moral Law from the
same Author, given to men with the like benevo-
lent purpose. These alike, we may say, are di-
rections prescribing human conduct and neither
is less valuable in itself because violated, nor are
they to be discarded because men have violated

22 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

them. On the other hand their value and power
are attested by obedience and even by disobedi-
ence, since such disobedience has proven disas-
trous. The nature of things and the Author of
the nature of things are on the side of both. We
cannot call either institutions, although upon the
law and the gospel institutions may be founded.

Quite likely the critics of Christianity may be
regarding it as an institution with varied organi-
sations, methods and formulas. This does not
appear to me to be a fair view of Christianity
any more than the organised state appears to be
a test of the Moral law which it does not obey.
The Christianity of Christ is not comprehended
or limited by an establishment, an ecclesiastical
order or a ritual. But wherever the Person of
Christ is revered and loved, where the word of
Christ is open freely and taught and known,
where the works of Christ are done and the spirit
of Christ shown, there is the Christianity of
Christ ; and where these are not it is lacking.

But even conceding something of an institu-
tional character to Christianity, shall men be
allowed to assume that because such an institu-
tion exists in the world and does not prevent war,
therefore institutional Christianity is to be dis-
trusted? By no means.

The family is an institution, literally such,

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 23

which has been in the world since the first be-
ginnings of the human race. The family, the
home antedate all other human institutions. Not
only on account of the esteem in which it is held
by all human beings but for many other rational
considerations, it is conceded to be invaluable
to man and society. Why then is it that in all
ages, past and present, the family has failed to
bring to the human race the benefit and bliss
which are in it? Why has not the marriage insti-
tution glorified all families everywhere in the
course of the ages past? The answer is not that
it is incapable of making such improvement in
human society. Everybody believes that the
family at its worst is better for the social order
than promiscuous associations at their best. But
the truth is that the law of the family has not
been kept and the family relation has not been
sacredly employed to make it what it has the full
power to become, and to exhibit its full influence.
If we concede for the sake of argument that
institutional Christianity so called is real Chris-
tianity, and if we reason that this institution has
not done what its claims would demand from it
as preventing war, shall we then conclude that
the institution is a failure and no more to be
reckoned with as a preventing force? Use the
same sort of an argument about the Family as

24 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

an institution : Why has not the family prevented
war ? Is not its whole spirit and tendency toward
unity, fraternity and peace? It is far more
widely recognised than the church and valued by
millions of families who do not know or esteem
the church. And yet it has not prevented war.
Therefore as it has been tried and found not to
have afforded appreciable relief, it should be
discarded for International Law, or something
else ! And since, as evidenced by nature and his-
tory, God ordered and ordained the family, be-
cause it has failed to prevent war, are His wis-
dom and even His existence to be doubted and
denied? And shall we hereafter turn to some
form of organisation of human society other
than the family? Is this reasoning? Or is it un-
reasoning prejudice? If the laws of the family
are obeyed and its duties properly performed,
it tends naturally and, doubtless, by divine ap-
pointment, to love, patience, consideration, sacri-
fice, altruism. And the reason why the family
has not accomplished all it might in society, in
the state, in education and in civilisation, is be-
cause it has not been used according to its pur-
poses and laws. If this reasoning does not make
apparent that neither Christianity nor the family
has been expressed as it seeks to be, I might
add another link to the chain of correct reason-

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 25

ing by saying that the whole force of the family
would naturally be spent against the drunken-
ness which has been one of its destructive foes.
And yet this scourge has prevailed over the fam-
ily with most deadly destructiveness. Still the
power of the family must be relied upon to turn
men from false and unnatural appetite in the
long run. The family institution is censurable
only when unprized, misunderstood and un-
developed.

The like is obvious in many other directions.
There have been books and literature in the
world we know not how long. Might we not
raise the question, Why is anybody illiterate
when literature and possible literacy have been
in the world for thousands of years? We an-
swer, because most people have not valued nor
devoted themselves to learning and literature.
Education, schools of all grades, text books of
very many kinds have long been accessible to
mankind. Evidently they have been a worthy
product of the intelligence of men and their use
is in harmony with the nature of man and the will
of God, tending to the uplift of society and the
betterment of the race. And how persistently
have we been assured that the certain effect and
influence of modern scientific education, alleged
to be the best to which the world has ever had

26 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

access, was to render war unlikely and indeed to
make it impossible. The increase of knowledge,
the cultivation of reason, modifying and con-
trolling prejudice and passion, the self control
of an educated mind were affirmed to be positive
barriers to the madness of war. Over against
this we have beheld that nation which has so
specialised in education that its schools have been
used as models for the world, a nation having
relatively few inhabitants who were not schooled,
and a people peculiarly strong in the vaunted
scientific education, giving the lie to this whole
theory, by wickedly and inhumanly plunging the
world into the most destructive war in human
history. On this great fact in detail, I do not
now comment. But if its apologists and spon-
sors told the truth, Germany as the result of
education, should have put an end to war and
brought in the reign of reason and self control.
And now shall we hear them say that education
in many centuries has afforded no relief to war
and that therefore, we must turn from it as un-
worthy of our confidence? This is much too
broad a conclusion. If the education had been
according to the laws of the mind and the heart,
if it had taught as fundamental the love of God
and the love of man, we should have found it, as
applied to life, a powerful check on war, instead

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 27

of finding it an accelerator of ferocity and
slaughter. The fault lies in the application of
the learning obtained. Let me insist on and re-
iterate the fundamental principle that it is the
application of the laws of morals, the institution
of the family, the knowledge of duty and life,
and, just as truly, of Christianity which alone
can warrant the expectation of its legitimate
effects being produced on human conduct and
society.

May I put the argument in so simple a form
as this: Since soap and water have been in the
world for thousands of years of time, why is any-
body dirty? It is not the fault of the soap and
water, because soap and water mingled on the
human skin will make it clean; but many have
not felt the need of cleanliness sufficiently to
make the application, and even yet with multi-
tudes, it is difficult to inspire them with the de-
sire to be clean. Where is the fault ? Where the
deficiency? Not surely in the soap and water.

in

Have I not arrived at a point where I may
conclude that in assuming that Christianity
ought to have prevented this war, we may be
assured that it certainly would have done so if it

28 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

had been applied? What have we meant by
Christianity? What characteristics do we assume
that it possesses? Do we regard it as a magical
power that lays hold of men irrespective of their
preferences, their resolutions, their volitions, their
characters ? Or do we mean that the possibilities
of all good are in it if men will espouse and apply
it? A fair consideration affirms this, that the
effects of Christianity in any reasonable and fair
sense have always been conditioned on its use
and application. The value of it to one or many
depends on obedience and use by the persons to
whom it is brought, and if they do not so apply
it, they cannot experience its benefits.

The critics who assume to tell us all about
Christ in the scheme of the world are quite likely
to speak approvingly of the "Sermon on the
Mount." They profess to believe it and are
almost ready to grant that they can find no fault
at all in it. Often they have been heard to say,
"If you only let us have the Sermon on the
Mount, we do not care what you do with the rest
of the Bible." In this degree only I am pre-
pared to agree with them, that in the Sermon
you have great and precious teaching. And I
suggest to these that they read it through. Let
us turn to the climax of the Sermon. I suppose
that the great Master of men and assemblies

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 29

intended to end it with a statement worthy of the
majesty of what He had said before. Here is
His closing thought and word :

"Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and
doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man who
built his house upon a rock; and the rain de-
scended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
and beat upon that house ; and it fell not : because
it was founded upon a rock.

"And every one that heareth these sayings of
mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto
a foolish man who built his house upon the sand ;
and the rain descended, and the floods came, and
the winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it
fell: and great was the fall of it."

Christ declares that if any one is to derive
advantage from this great sermon or from any
of His teachings, he must both hear and do these
teachings, and so build his character on this
foundation as the house was builded on the rock.
Whatever some college presidents and certain
editors may think about Christianity, it is fair
enough to give our Lord Himself an oppor-
tunity to tell what He means by it. If you go to
any portion of the Divine Word, you will find
that both He and those who immediately repre-
sented Him declared that the value of all that
they do and teach to the hearer depends wholly

30 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

on the application of it which he makes to him-
self.

Take even that most tender and sympathetic
word, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest
the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto
thee, how often would I have gathered thy chil-
dren together even as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Be-
hold your house is left unto you desolate."

Here is the condition given by the Lord and
Master Himself of getting the value out of
Christianity. And if the foregoing lament was
emphasised within seventy years of the time it
was spoken, by a tragedy so terrible that it can
be compared with the war tragedy of to-day, we
may well believe that giving heed to the warnings
against the neglect of the conditions which He
has stated, can alone give efficiency to His mercy
and grace. They are such that men had best
confess in the presence of God that the only
failure of Christ's doctrine is the human failure
to apply it to life. Instead of assuming to de-
throne the Judge of all the earth, men would
better humble themselves before Him and apply
the rules which He has given them for the guid-
ance of individual, national and international
conduct.

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 31

IV

"Why Christianity did not prevent this war"
is a question dependent for its answer on another,
namely, "Why did Germany accept the theories
of Nietzsche and Treitschke, which are in utter
and avowed antagonism to Christianity?" Who
will answer? For the personal and political
philosophy of these two, absolutely irreconcilable
to Christianity, are the theories which the Ger-
man Government is now applying and working
out. The philosophy of individual life, ascendant
and controlling in Germany, is that of Nietz-
sche. The accepted political philosophy is that
of Treitschke. Both are wrought into the mind
and life of the German people by the Govern-
ment, the army, the universities, and schools of
all grades. Nietzsche (born in 1845, died in
1888), Treitschke (born in 1834, died in 1895),
lead and control the thinking of Germany. The
mental concepts of both were largely ruled by
atheistic, materialistic evolution and earlier
Prussianism — the Prussianism of the eighteenth
century, which adopted it as furthering imperial
policy. The applied theory was expressed
briefly in the accepted axioms of such evolution,
"the struggle for life" and "the survival of the
fittest;" the "struggle for life" being the method

32 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

of living and the "survival of the fittest" indicat-
ing the actual consequences of the "struggle."
These gave to Nietzsche the idea of his "Super-
man" and to Treitschke, his "Superstate."

The "Superman" is the product of evolution
and the incarnation of "might," superior to his
fellows and likewise superior to all limitations
excepting his own self assertion. His "will to
power" and the exercise of it, gives him the right
to do as he wills. All morality as commonly
taught, held and practised, Nietzsche called a
"slave morality." He identified himself with this
"Superman" and declared himself a God. The
weak, the crowd, aroused his contempt. The
"Supermen" have only to think of themselves
and the masses only serve their ends.

Egoism is salvation. He blesses the doctrine
of inconsiderate self assertion. He declares that
"an altruistic morality in which the ego and its
self-selection is restrained, is in any case an evil,
blighting morality." The Superman has every
license in asserting himself.

Nietzsche hated Christianity. Christ taught
"thy will be done:" Nietzsche, "my will at all
costs." Christ sacrificed Himself. The Super-
man may sacrifice the world for his good.
Woman serves no higher mission than that of a
plaything for and a breeder of the Superman.

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 33

War he glorified: kindness, mercy, humanity he
despised.

iTreitschke, the political philosopher of most
commanding control in German thought, was at
first contemptuous and averse to Nietzsche's
thought ; later he accepted his doctrine not for the
individual but for the State. The State, that is
Prussianised Germany, was to be the "Super-
state." In the struggle for life among the States,
Germany had won, and in "the survival of the
fittest," it was proved to be the "fittest." All
other States were to be overpowered and Ger-
manised by the German army. What Nietzsche's
"Superman" was to be among men, Treitschke's
"Superstate" must be among states. All other
nations, inferior and despised, were to be ruth-
lessly overpowered and Germanised. The State
is supreme; from it there is no appeal. To this
view Treitschke came early in his career, from
much more liberal tendencies, after he had been
given a professorship by Bismarck in the uni-
versity of Kiel. For thirty-five years he de-
voted his powerful, his unsurpassed talents to
training the students, the scholars, the teachers,
the captains and military masters of Germany.
He taught that the "Will to power" and
"Might" are the sole State morality. War is
the manifestation of these, ruthless war. Treaties

34 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

have no binding authority. Spying and lying,
inhumanity, savagery are all justified by the will
of the State. Weakness in a State he blasphe-
mously declared to be the sin against the Holy
Ghost.

These two as master teachers, Germany ac-
cepted and followed. Their teachings were
adopted in theory and pursued in practise for
thirty years before the war of 1914 to which
they were daringly leading. Prussianism found
in them the prophets and in their principles the
pilotage on the course to world empire. Chris-
tianity and all its laws of righteousness, mo-
rality, self control, peace, humanity, in a word
everything Christian, Germany repudiated,
travestied and despised. Germany accepted this
anti- Christian theory of life and lived it. And
so they prepared their plan of conquest and then
flung themselves upon the world, to prove their
doctrine and to enslave mankind. Rejected thus
by the leaders, teachers and rulers of Germany
what could Christianity do to prevent this War?
Nothing could have prevented it except to have
made such thinking impossible, which was itself
impossible. All that was left to Christians
throughout the world was either to lie passive
and be destroyed or to defend all the fundamen-
tal principles of right life in the most active man-

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 35

ner and by the only method available, namely,
Defensive War. And that is a plain reason why
Christianity could not and did not prevent this
onslaught of barbarism and fiendishness and why
it met their attack with adamantine resistance.
The answer is complete and final.

But the proof is not all in. It remains to add
one more unanswerable reason why Christianity
did not prevent this war and could not prevent
this or any war under similar conditions.

That reason is found in the true philosophy
of life which is that of Christianity, and of peace
as a consequence of Christianity.

Before the war a powerful leadership in the
interests of peace had grown up which neither
regarded nor was built upon Christianity. They
had told us of peace as though it were a vital
entity in national well being, the chief desidera-
tum of national life. Many who became promi-
nent in it as the apostles of pacifism of this kind,
were not known as believers in Christ or Chris-
tianity. The peace sentiment which they fos-
tered had come to be looked upon as so great in
mass and so influential as to be in its very char-
acter and quantity, a defense against war. In

36 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

various ways they had demonstrated the value
of peace ; economically, commercially, humanely,
racially, financially. There was a widespread
feeling that peace was so buttressed by all these
reasonings, so manifestly advantageous, that war
was improbable and indeed out of the question.
Immediately, when this fair fabric of their dream
collapsed and vanished, those who had taken the
burden of its promulgation were profoundly
dismayed and disappointed, we may say cha-
grined and humiliated. And the inquiry natu-
rally became rife, "What is the matter with this
trusted peace programme that it has been as
weak as water in the face of resolved war?"

The matter was this: Precedent to peace in
Christian doctrine and philosophy, is Righteous-
ness, without which going before, we have no well
founded basis of peace. "The Kingdom of God
is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Spirit;" more fully stated "Righteousness in the
Holy Spirit, Peace in the Holy Spirit, and Joy
in the Holy Spirit." In Christian philosophy
Righteousness always goes before and antedates
Peace.

You know that the basis of peace in any life
is the rectification and direction of that life in
harmony with the law of God.

You may construct your life in accordance

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 37

with any other philosophy and fail to attain
peace, but if the principles which govern your life
are the laws of God, and the righteousness of
your life is approved of God, you have peace.
"The wicked" who turn away from God "are like
the troubled sea which cannot rest." "There is
no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." And
although this truth is far older than the hypo-
thesis of evolution, older than prevailing philoso-
phies, older than the record which is given us of
it, it is now as virile and as mighty as unchange-
able law can make it, and as sure as the emphasis
of God by ages of proof can make anything.
"There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."
If you wish to lay the foundations of peace
in individual or community life, you will never
accomplish it by waving the white flag, nor by
protesting against slaughter, nor by reasoning
about the wastes of war or presenting realistic
pictures of horrible battle fields; you will only
get it by teaching the Divine standards of Right-
eousness, from which, and from which only, can
flow the condition which we name peace. When
you become assured of the prevalence of Right-
eousness, you are assured of peace. For peace
is not passivity or stagnation, not inaction or
colorless quietness, but is rather the most intense,
harmonious, constructive, co-ordinated benevo-

38 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

lent activity. Such a peace is impossible without
keeping the law of God which is the law of right
and is the condition of all human Righteousness.

If by peace we mean the absence of conflict,
conflict arising out of opposition to evil, when
and where in the Christian scriptures was any
hope ever held out that this is possible or desir-
able? And where in the sacred writings is such
compromise with evil held up as the goal of
Christianity?

The necessary and eternal order in which peace
comes to man and society is that it springs from
and follows Righteousness as a cause. That
Righteousness is a state of human character
which is devoted to being right and doing right
according to a universal, Divine and eternal
standard of Right. The standard Right by
which all right and righteousness are measured
is Right as God wills it, reveals it and sanctions
it. It is not mere obedience to numberless pre-
cepts, but a spirit in man, expressed in his actions.
That spirit is the disposition of the man in union
and harmony with God, the Holy Spirit. Of
such Spirit and such Righteousness, love to God
is the primary fruit and manifestation, and love
to man the secondary and always present con-
comitant. Where this Righteousness prevails,
Peace follows as the unfailing consequence.

Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War 39

This, briefly stated, is the Christian way to
Peace, real and permanent, and absolutely the
only way. Until Nations are righteous by com-
pliance with God's standard of Right no secure
and unbroken peace can reasonably be expected
and none can be achieved.

Because the Germans and their allies rejected
and repudiated Christianity is the reason "Why
Christianity did not Prevent this War."

II

The Antagonism of German Political

Philosophy to Christian Truth and

Morals

THE action of Germany in precipitating this
war greatly surprised and startled man-
kind. As the Teuton assaulted Belgium and
France our wonder gave place to amazement
and astonishment, succeeded by horror and exe-
cration, and these feelings continually intensified,
have increased as the Germans have developed
and fought to execute, through inhuman sav-
agery, their long-prepared scheme of world
domination. Such barbaric expression of the life
and character of the German nation was totally
unexpected by most of us. That a people whom
we regarded with entire good will and credited
with many kindly virtues should deliberately
make such war, should be so immoral and unfeel-
ing, so treacherous and cruel, so egotistical and
rapacious, so religious and so pagan, we could
barely credit and cannot yet understand. Our
good will for them has not been wholly destroyed.
We have condemned but do not hate them as

40

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 41

we try to understand their contradictions and
misdeeds.

In seeking to account for their conduct and
to justify against them the most universal an-
tagonism of mankind, we feel that we accomplish
little by merely giving way to violent denuncia-
tion of their actions, though these deserve our
severest condemnation; and consistent with our
former good opinion of the German people, we
seek explanation, if any there be, for actions
which, by every law of morals and humanity, we
execrate and abhor. In the spirit of fairness,
not to be destroyed by our unequivocal hostility
to their behavior, we have sought to account for
their misdoings. May I detail some of the
assumptions which we have made in our endeavor
to place in an intelligent light our explanation
of the actions of which Germany has been guilty ?

We at first assumed that this brutal, bloody,
inhuman savagery is the work of the purely mili-
tary party. These we discriminated from the
people at large. They might have dragged the
nation unwillingly into the war. But from the
first the nation has been at one with these military
leaders. The state as a whole is entirely military

42 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

and has never hesitated to adopt and execute
the policy of its General Staff, lending its full
and united strength to all their plans and deeds.

Then we assumed that the rulers are responsi-
ble and that they deserve all the condemnation,
supposing that the people had not formulated
or agreed to their policy; especially has the
Kaiser been held responsible, as the incarnation
of evil, the inspirer of war. But the nation at the
beginning and ever since, and now, has unitedly
supported its rulers, and this support has been
given by Germans of all classes. The political
philosophers have honored and defended their
rulers; the theological faculties have endorsed
them; the most distinguished university profes-
sors and scholars have commended them ; masters
in science have lauded them; the whole body of
writers and artists have praised their course.
These various leaders have issued manifestoes to
the world fully upholding their rulers and ap-
plauding the national action. Spiritual leaders
like Eucken, intellectuals, a numberless host, the
Socialists, who previously denounced the war,
have given steady and uncompromising support
to their rulers without excusing or apologising
for them in any particular.

We have assumed that the people were blindly
and ignorantly following these leaders and that

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 43

when once their eyes should be opened they
would revolt and withdraw. But we must re-
member that the German people are the most
educated in books and by schools of any nation
of the world. They have given to many lands
systems of learning, from kindergarten to post-
graduate universities ; they are not ignorant and
blind for lack of schooling. They are a learned,
not an ignorant people.

We have assumed that when the German peo-
ple had received knowledge of American aims,
of the motives of the Allies, of what free govern-
ment really means, they would fall away from
their governing bodies. The President of the
United States in a long and able message fully
assumed this ; so that multitudes of men declared :
"If only this Presidential message can be placed
before the German people they will be severed
from autocracy, will revolt and establish free
government and so end the war." But now, after
three years of war, there is scarcely a trace of
such revolution, nor is there any reliable infor-
mation, however much we may desire it, showing
signs of ferment or revolution in political Ger-
many. This dream of ours is a vain dream.
Germany is not on the verge of uprising or of
revolution any more than Britain and France
have been in their cabinet changes.

44 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

We have assumed, and sometimes declared,
that the Germans are insane; that they are
obsessed by hallucinations which sanity would
repudiate ; that they are running amuck ; fanatics
among the nations; a mad dog in the streets of
the world. But we know that despite their
atrocious wickedness, this is not true. They are
not insane according to any proper definition of
insanity. It has been suggestively said, and with
some truth, that the German scholarly mind "be-
gins by assuming a large premise which has no
foundation, and then reasons with irresistible
logic to a preposterous conclusion." This may
describe a mental habit, but it does not describe
the insanity recognised by experts as mental irre-
sponsibility. We do not believe the German
nation to be intellectually insane.

We have assumed that autocracy as a scheme
of government is now making its last stand
against the world flood of rising democracy, and
that this war is to bring the end of kings, at least
of autocratic kings. But we, not the Germans,
have assumed this. They revere their autocracy,
they have had great material prosperity under it,
as we have had under democracy. Their history
is a record of remarkable advance under the gov-
ernment which we condemn. Since Frederick
William, ruling from 1713 to 1740, and Fred-

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 45

erick the Great, from 1740 to 1786, they have
made their gains, and almost unprecedented
gains they are, under the very form of govern-
ment which now controls them and for which
they now unitedly stand and heroically die.
That government has held to the theory of the
State as the army, the army as the State, and
the reigning house claiming divine right to rule
is honored and revered, if not loved, with all
sincerity to-day.

Besides, in our assertion that democracy is the
only form of government suited to popular ad-
vantage, we really have not chosen a popular
watchword. First of all, most of the people of
America when they think of democracy mean
not the general definition, but think of the
American Democratic Party. They do not ob-
jectise the idea of the rule of the people. Be-
sides, we do not define democracy clearly. We
declare as if it were final, that "all governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." By this we justify popular govern-
ment. Do we mean the consent of all those un-
der its sway? There is no government, no re-
public, where all the people in it consent to its
sway. Do we mean then that in a democracy,
government derives its just powers from the con-
sent of a majority? But a majority is only a

46 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

part of those governed. It may be but slightly
over one-half; it may even be a minority that
administers the affairs of the republic. The truth
is that no government has just powers unless
they come from those universal and eternal laws,
not made by majorities or voted or amended by
legislatures, made and announced by the eternal
God; laws which no legislature dare assume to
amend or repeal ; laws of morals and humanity ;
of universal duty and benevolence. So, then, our
expectation of the complete passing away of
autocracy before democracy is not an intelligent
conviction or an adequate clarion with which to
arouse our republic to battle against overthrow.
And, remote from democracy, the autocracy of
Germany has always been and now is a powerful
form of government.

We have broadly assumed that now the end
of kingly rule is near at hand. But Great Bri-
tain, Belgium and Italy are not contemplating
this as a result of the war. They have kings now
and expect to have them hereafter.

We have made much of the assumption that
military preparedness was the cause of the war.
We must, however, face the fact that nations
wholly unprepared are in the war, battling for
life and liberty, conspicuously ourselves. America
has evidently proceeded on wholly false theories

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 47

of Germany's action until this day, of which
those assumptions which I have sketched are
among the most prominent. None of them, nor
all of them, satisfactorily account for the war.
Yet what is more necessary than to penetrate to
the exact causes which have created the present
world-wide catastrophe and which are threaten-
ing destruction and chaos at the present time?
What has made Germany a pirate among states,
a murderer, a monster?

ii

Allow me to assume and later prove that Ger-
man political philosophy, into the acceptance and
full belief of which the German nation has been
drilled for many years, is the actual and adequate
cause and explanation of its actions, apart from
which it is neither adequately understood nor
properly antagonised. To simplify it so that I
may discuss it clearly in the time allowed, let
me affirm and later demonstrate that this is a
strife between two philosophies, two systems of
thought, two codes of morals, mutually exclu-
sive and irreconcilable; two views of humanity
and of religion, of man and of God.

I ask you to consider the antagonism of Ger-

48 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

man political philosophy to Christian truth and
morals, as indicating what we fight and what for.

So long as Germany holds the theory which
created this war, so long she will fight to carry
it out. The theory begins and ends in the avowed
right and purpose of Germany to subjugate all
other nations and to dominate the world. Let
me disclose their theory by a concrete presenta-
tion of it.

The greatest and most influential political
philosopher of Germany during the last century
is Heinrich Von Treitschke. He, more than any
single character in German political life, was
responsible for the intense anti-English senti-
ment that flamed out in the Boer War and he is
ruling the thought of the German nation, as de-
veloped at the present time. His ideals and
theories, his hatreds and persuasions precipitated
this war. Born in 1834, his father a soldier, Von
Treitschke was destined for the army. An illness
in his youth, which deprived him of his hearing,
diverted him to scholarship and the study of
politics. His heroes were the heroes of Prussia,
and having distinguished himself in the schools
of learning, at twenty-five years of age, he de-
livered his first course of political lectures at
Leipzig in 1859. Out of this grew his treatise
on the State.

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 49

From the beginning he was impressively popu-
lar. Later, at the great universities of Freiburg,
Kiel, Heidelberg and Berlin, he was followed
by admiring crowds of students, and always,
from his beginning at Leipzig in 1859, to his
death in 1895, a period of thirty-six years, his
lecture rooms were thronged as those of no other
professor in Germany; the concourse attending
them reminding one of the great gatherings to
hear Abelard in the Middle Ages. They all
heard him extol the greatness of Germany, the
unexampled dynasty of the Hohenzollerns, the
glory of the army.

In person Von Treitschke was a man of high
character, of marked intellectual aspect, of great
mentality, of utmost sincerity of purpose and of
surpassing eloquence. Generations of German
students came under his sway and acknowledged
his power. He was a friend of Bismarck, the
apologist of the Hohenzollerns and the ardent
and eager supporter of the bureaucracy of Ger-
many.

In his conviction the State was supreme, and
from the State there was no appeal. The indi-
vidual counted for nothing save as the creature
of the State. The State was an army; the army
the State. This theory was far older than Von
Treitschke, having been that of Frederick Wil-

50 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

liam and Frederick the Great in the eighteenth
century.

Foremost among the fundamental principles
taught by this remarkable man was the stoutly
affirmed belief that the Hohenzollerns, by divine
right, should rule Prussia, and that Prussia, for
the good of Germany, should rule Germany. It
was a small step from this proposition to his next
main assertion that Germany, for the good of
the world, should dominate the world. He came
to this conclusion partly through the theory of
atheistic evolution, so prevalent in German
thought, and partly on account of his exalted
idealisation of the German character and culture.
He believed that in "the struggle for life," fol-
lowed by "the survival of the fittest," Germany
had won in the struggle, and Germany of all was
the fittest. This led him to regard with ill-con-
cealed contempt all other nations and led him to
the belief that it would be for their welfare if
Germany dominated over them.

He particularly hated and despised Great
Britain. Throughout his whole career he re-
garded it with scorn, antipathy and hatred, and
he poured out contempt, rancor and insult con-
tinually upon the English character and upon the
English nation. He called them the "robber
among the nations," affirming that they held their

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 51

undeserved sway over about a fifth of the world
on account of their insular position, the supine-
ness of the other nations, the duplicity of their
diplomacy and the hypocrisy of the English
character. His denunciation of the English peo-
ple and government was a sort that, applied to
an individual, it would be insulting to the last
degree, and he evermore looked forward and
worked toward the day when Germany, assailing
England, should beat her down in war and be-
come the master of the world.

If we have raised a question as to the amaz-
ing conceit of Germany as expressed in many
a pompous phrase since the beginning of this war,
let it be said that this is a proper consequence
and expression of the philosophy of Treitschke
and his associates, the great school that grew up
around him, followed his leadership, and de-
veloped his ideals.

Germany was to dominate the world for the
good of the world, and for the domination of the
world by Germany, the army was the great in-
strument. This army was to be conterminous
with the State, and the State with the army ; the
entire State a military power, and war the
method of its supremacy. Nowhere in the seven-
teen volumes of Von Treitschke's collected
works, not in his great history, which is regarded

52 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

with the utmost respect in Germany, did he ever
say a word against war, never calling it the
scourge of mankind or deprecating its existence,
but, like his influential disciple, Bernhardi, if not
in the same words, he regarded war as a biologi-
cal necessity, indicating the virility of the nation
and leading to the highest good of mankind.
Any attempt to abolish war was unwise and im-
moral.

In order that this theory of conquest might be
carried out by an invincible army it was neces-
sary to regard as brothers only those dwelling
within the German State. Outside of those
boundaries there was no fraternal obligation.
The theory of the way the war was to be carried
on demanded that it be ruthless to the last degree.
I am not now averring that Von Treitschke him-
self elaborated every detail of the system now
being carried out ; but he originated it, inspired it
and was followed by a great multitude of intel-
lectuals who gave their assent to his leadership
and more fully worked out his theory.

Inhumanity in war, as the world understands
inhumanity, is one of the fundamental condi-
tions of war, as this school of philosophy holds it.
It stopped at nothing. It knew no mercy, hesi-
tated at no atrocity, deliberately proposed to
massacre, murder, deport, torture, starve to

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 53

death those who stood in its way. Such is the
theory and such the practise.

Quite as visibly as this philosophy repudiates
humanity it despises morals; particularly those
morals which relate to truth. Astonished, we
have heard the statement of the German Chan-
cellor that treaties were only scraps of paper.
But it is a definite part of their theory that there
are no moralities which should stand between the
nation and the development of its ideals.

Having repudiated morality and humanity,
the question arose: how should this attitude of
leading minds be made that of the entire German
nation, of whom great multitudes were both
moral and humane? Modern morality and hu-
manity, as we understand them, are distinctly
Christian in their spirit and purpose. To fulfill,
therefore, the purpose of Germany to dominate
the world by an army engaged in ruthless war,
unrestrained by morality and humanity, it be-
came necessary to dispossess the German people
of the Christian ideals of morals and humaneness
which had possessed them. Therefore, this po-
litical philosophy deliberately gave itself to the
most violent attack upon Christianity. Until
they could rid the German people of the ideals
of Christianity, their philosophy could not pene-
trate or control the nation.

54 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

The attack upon Christianity was deliberately
made, toward a hundred years ago. When, about
the middle of the last century, Strauss assailed
the Gospel and the life of Christ as mythical, he
was following out the lines of this policy, and at
that time not a few were led away by his theories.
But later the development became much more
widespread, intense and more sweepingly antag-
onistic.

Many of the German political philosophers
affirm that the greatest mistake which Germany
has ever made was in accepting Christianity from
the Roman Empire in the fifth century. They
declare that the Roman Empire was then effete
and in a decline; that Galilee, from which the
Roman Empire took the Christian faith, was also
a decadent nation, and that it has always been
a dreary spell cast upon the mind of Germany,
that they accepted this religion. For thirty gen-
erations, some of them declare, Germany has
struggled to rid itself of an alien religion; of a
vision which it did not respect ; of a God that it
would not adore; of a system of religion which
was foreign to the German genius. Germany's
native instinct for playing a creative role in reli-
gion had been stunted and thwarted. Germany,
they declare, should exercise creative powers in
the matter of religion, repudiating all but its own

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 55

creation. That religion they called "The Reli-
gion of Valor." One of its mottoes is to "Live
dangerously."

Von Treitschke's thought of the State was the
State controlled by nothing but its own ideals.
Those who followed him reaffirmed this with
additional energy. Napoleon was their ideal
rather than Christ; Corsica rather than Galilee,
became to them the seat of the ideas which they
would espouse. They travestied and do now the
Beatitudes. Instead of saying "Blessed are the
peace makers" they say "Blessed are the war
makers, for they shall conquer the earth and shall
receive the applause, if not of Jehovah, of Odin,
who is greater than Jehovah." They repudiated
the beatitude on the meek, and blessed the valiant
rather than the teachable; and instead of com-
mending the poor in spirit, they commended the
exalted and heroic in spirit who have no sense of
humanity. They prepared to found a world em-
pire and also a world religion.

This "Religion of Valor" had in it no place
for Christian virtues and was to be substituted
for the Christian faith. Sympathy, kindness, hu-
manity were labelled weaknesses.

But now, as the Christian religion, especially
in the mind of the German people, was dependent
upon the Bible, which Luther had so greatly ex-

56 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

alted in the sixteenth century, it became neces-
sary to the scheme of German philosophy and
German conquest, to break up the foundations
of Christianity by weakening the authority of the
Bible. They, therefore, set about this systemati-
cally, and during recent years have been urgent
to propagate what is called popularly "The De-
structive Criticism." The whole strength of
German scholarship, with few exceptions, has
been turned to the effort to destroy the authority
of the Bible as related to Christianity, to morals
and to humanity. So doing, they still retained
their self-created religion and morals, which they
called "The Religion of Valor."

The evil influence of their destructive work
passed to other nations, and many who called
themselves scholars surrendered to the assump-
tions of German so-called scholarship. When,
therefore, they came to the moment of war
upon the whole world, their theory, link by
link, could be stated thus: The Hohenzollerns,
for the good of Prussia, should dominate Prus-
sia; Prussia, for the good of Germany, should
dominate Germany; Germany, for the good
of the world, should dominate the world. Ger-
many should dominate the world because it
was superior and the nations of the world con-
temptible.

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 57

The agency of German domination should be
the army. The army should perform its work
with a ruthless disregard of all the so-called laws
of war, of morality and of humanity. To sweep
away the reverence of the German people for
morality and humanity it was necessary to get
rid of the Christian religion, which was the
foundation of these virtues, and to substitute
therefor, as they did, another, which was anti-
Christian, called "The Religion of Valor," as
pagan as Attila's.

To make sure that they could rid themselves
and the German people of the Christian religion,
they deemed it necessary that they should de-
stroy the authority of the Holy Scriptures. This
they did, among themselves, and considerably
among the nations of the world. But while they
had a religion left, which, though pagan, was
powerful, those of other lands who accepted their
anti-Christian and anti-Biblical theories, had
nothing left except the sentiment of religion, and
found themselves in this country, and to a con-
siderable extent also in Britain, without an au-
thoritative and divine religion and corresponding
conviction; but holding an emasculated, non-
authoritative sentiment, many among us even
questioning whether it was consistent with Chris-
tianity to fight for faith, for humanity and for

58 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

morality. So the German philosophy worked to
its own strengthening, for its own purpose, and
to the weakening of all those nations on whom
they proposed to fall. The Germans became
ruthless warriors. Many so-called Christians
became sentimental pacifists.

You have wondered why the German Em-
peror is making so many appeals to God and
nevertheless seems to lack Christian moral sense
and Christian humanity. I have given you the
reason. The God of Germany is not the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not the
God of the Christian Scriptures, but the manu-
factured patron of German conquest and world
dominion.

Many will now inquire, "How could a theory
like this, being taught, dispossess a nation of the
fundamental principles of Christianity?" My
answer is easy. Most singular illusions sweep
over and possess myriads of mankind. For ex-
ample, in the United States of America we have
the delusion known as Mormonism. It is alleged
by its devotees that in 1827 one Joseph Smith
discovered plates of gold on which, in "reformed
Egyptian" — whatever that may be — were the
statements which he afterward made to the
world. It matters not that Joseph Smith was a
person of low and vile character, notorious for

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 59

falsehood, for idleness, for immorality. It mat-
ters not to those who follow him that the stories
which he told of the possession of these plates are
totally unbelievable and contradictory. There
are now hundreds of thousands of followers of
this man in America, whom they revere as a
prophet and a saint.

He said, for example, that these golden plates
were given him in a supernatural way; but no
such golden plates have ever been seen or known.
He declared first that they were given him by a
man of Spanish aspect, whose throat was cut and
blood running down. He afterward declared
that they were given to him by an angel. He
affirmed that whoever looked upon these plates
would die. He afterward promised that he
would show them, which he never did, to a very
large circle of friends. The theology which they
developed was fantastic; the history fictitious;
the morality outrageous ; and yet, from that time
to this, there have been gathering more and more
people to the standard of Mormonism, following
Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, until to-
day they hold the balance of political power in
several States of the American Union. They
are a financial force which is recognised among
the powerful forces of the nation and is looked
upon with awe and fear. They declare their

60 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

purpose to rule the nation. They send forth
more missionaries, in proportion to their num-
bers, than any other body which calls itself reli-
gious. They obtained their statehood by per-
jury to the national government, declaring that
they had abandoned polygamy, which they never
abandoned and which their head declared after-
ward before a committee of Congress, he still
practised; and so, in unnumbered ways, they
have given the lie to their pretensions and shown
the utter folly of those who accept their theories.
If all that could be done in America within
less than one hundred years by an ignorant, dis-
honorable, superstitious and degraded leader,
what may you not expect when you see the forces
which operated in Germany to supplant Chris-
tianity, humanity and morality, and to send the
nation forth on a plan of world conquest? Be-
hind the German purpose were nearly two hun-
dred years of very great material prosperity
under their form of government. Their rulers, a
powerful family deserving well in many respects
of their people, their theory of superiority and
dominion highly satisfactory to the self-con-
sciousness, the pride and the ambitions of the
German people; their teachers, the foremost
philosophers of their time, the chief theologians,
the leading scientific and literary men. And bear

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 61

in mind that all these German teaching forces
were the creatures of the State; they were
selected by the State ; they received their salaries
from the State, from the foremost to the least
in the lowest schools. They were discharged if
they failed to please the State ; and so they flung
the sum total of the forces of a powerful govern-
ment and an immense force of highly trained
teachers into the work of justifying and leading
this great empire on a course and career of world
conquest. Such an appeal so fathered, fostered
and taught, is adequate and ample to produce
the results we now behold.

It is plain enough that this is a rational ac-
counting for the results of their theory upon the
German nation, creating a solidarity as remark-
able as that of any nation in human history.

This purpose is "inspired by the pulpits as
religion; taught by the universities as philoso-
phy; disseminated by the press as policy and
political necessity; embodied in the army as na-
tional loyalty and duty, and focused on the
Kaiser as the minister of the Almighty." Blas-
phemous, fundamentally narrow and inhuman as
it is, you can see how it became an obsession, a
very devil of pride in the breasts of seventy
million Germans.

And here let me present additional proofs of

62 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

the truth that this is the base and beginning, as
well as the strength of this war on the German
side, by calling your attention to certain collat-
eral historical evidence. All that I have pre-
sented is absolutely consistent with everything
that the German powers have done in the three
years since the beginning of this war. Do we
declare that they have violated all principles of
Christianity, of humanity or morality? The evi-
dence is before the whole world, written on the
bloodiest pages of human history. Let me dwell
upon it briefly to show how really this is true.

111

If the so-called morals of Germany during this
war, and disclosed by it, are in harmony with the
theory which I have stated, then we have a strong
proof that this theory is working out. That this
is true, let me prove from two or three considera-
tions.

First, when the United States of America sent
away the Ambassador of Germany and severed
diplomatic relations, when we finally declared
that a state of war existed between Germany and
the United States, our government acted chiefly
on moral ground, as the state papers of the
United States allege. If you turn to the docu-

rAntagonism of German Political Philosophy 63

mentary history of the breach of relations be-
tween us and Germany you find our government
asserting that this was made necessary by three
considerations : First, because Germany had vio-
lated the law of truth in breaking promises made
to us, destroying our citizens on the high seas
without warning; levying war against us while
pretending peace; endeavouring to stir up our
nearest neighbor against us to invasion and to
assault while assuming to be our friend.

The second affirmation of our government was
that Germany had violated its pledges to the
whole world of civilised nations in the matter of
international law. This we supported and sub-
stantiated by citing the case of Belgium and
northern France, as well as by other affirmations ;
and this again was a violation by the German
Empire of the law of truth, in the realm of
morals.

The third charge that our government brought
against Germany was the violation of the laws
of nations and humanity, superseding the same
by cruelty and inhumanity, as in the deportation
of the Belgian and French people, and numerous
other acts of savagery and cruelty.

All these acts and allegations, as you perceive,
are in the realm of moral laws and duties, such
as are revered and held by all civilised nations.

64 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

The course of the Allies was identical with that
of our own government and their grounds of war
practically the same. For when some months
ago, Germany assumed to make offers of peace,
in which no one had any confidence, the answer
of the Allies was mainly to the effect that Ger-
many had violated truth and pledges to such an
extent that it could not be trusted. Moral laws,
as to treaties and pledges made by the Germans,
had been set at naught, to prove which the Allies
quoted Germany's own statements, confessions
and actions.

Second, the Allies declared they could not
make peace because of the violations of plighted
faith to the nations, which Germany had volun-
tarily taken and which, regardless of truth, she
had steadily and most outrageously violated.

And third, the humanities, they alleged, had
all been violated by Germany, although interna-
tionally accepted and sanctioned by them with
others.

This common attitude of the United States
and of the Allies was met by Germany with a
practical admission of the truth of all they stated.
Germany avows, and has avowed, that it will do
whatever it judges to be necessary to attain its
ends, irrespective of any promises or engage-
ments made at any time. It has also alleged that

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 65

pledges, promises and humanities are not binding
upon it; and also that nothing shall be allowed
to stand in the way of its national aspirations and
evolution as it interprets the same. That is to
say, Germany practically admits the charges of
the United States and the Allies, that it has
repudiated all morals and all humanity as uni-
versally held and understood.

You can but perceive that we have before us
here two theories of morals and of life. The
German theory is a theory of morals made by the
German nation, operative within its own borders,
and operative on other nations only in so far as
it can enforce its will on them. Now, if one
nation has a right to make its own code of morals,
another and every other nation has the same
right. If every nation makes its own code of
morals, moral relations cannot be international.
There can be no system of universal interchange
on a moral basis of numerous nations holding dif-
ferent and presumably divergent theories of
morals. All world relations, therefore, must
cease unless they are merely relations of hostility.

On the other hand, America and the Allies
present a theory of morals universal in its charac-
ter, and of universal benevolence, founded not
on legislation or statute of the State and subject
to no State revisal or amendment, but given by

66 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

the Ruler of the universe for the promotion of
appropriate human relations between all the
peoples of the earth. It is manifest that these
two systems are not only mutually exclusive but
mutually antagonistic, and that the two can
never subsist except in a state of conflict. Which,
then, shall be overpowered and which shall re-
main as the rule of human life among the nations
of mankind?

Like morality, humanity is really a question
of moral duties, infilled with human brotherhood
and affection. In the repudiation of humanity
Germany has simply taken a step contrary to the
conviction, thought and feeling of all the other
nations of the world and in violation of their high-
est moral sense. There is no language strong
enough to express the antagonism of the civilised
world against Germany for what it has done in
Belgium, France, Armenia and Syria — in Po-
land, Serbia and Russia. Is there any law of
humanity, is there any sense of right among man-
kind, is there any sentiment of civilisation which
Germany has not absolutely repudiated in her
dealings with those who have been subjugated by
her military power?

Armenia has suffered the greatest persecution
of Christian martyrs ever known since Christian
history began. Massacre, torture, deportation,

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 67

ravishment, starvation have carried off a million
and a half of the people of Armenia within the
last two and one-half years. All missionaries,
even missionaries of German churches, have as-
serted that Germany was responsible; that it
could have prevented the horrors wrought by
Turk and Kurd; that German authorities have
countenanced and have assisted in this horrible
work. You have only to read the statements of
Von Bissing, late Governor of Belgium, and
other of the leading German authorities to un-
derstand that deliberately they planned and pro-
posed to reduce these lands to a desert and to
repopulate them with German people and with
the captives whom they might enslave in war.

It is the German who advised the Moslem to
originate a "holy war," (called the "Jehad"), by
which they expected two hundred and fifty mil-
lion Mohammedans would rise up and fall upon
the Christian peoples of the world and destroy
them, as Mohammed and the Saracens sought to
do in the first centuries of the Moslem propa-
ganda. That such a "holy war," so-called, did
not eventuate was because the Moslems, more
humane than the German, resented and repudi-
ated the demand of the German power and their
servile adherents, the Turks.

The story of the submarines is a story of cruel-

68 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

ties which no pirates in history have ever dupli-
cated. While the modes of war on the field of
battle, the destructive agencies employed, the
effort not merely to annihilate, but to torture
and to cause the most frightful suffering, the
wanton destruction and desolation of all that
civilisation cherishes — these all have been a por-
tion of the German policy, deliberately planned,
threatened, prepared, done and justified for
years.

The authorities are so many, the voice of all
nations consenting to this indictment is so unani-
mous, the investigations so fully prove all that I
have said, that I think I need add nothing to the
statement that the course of Germany since the
beginning of the war is entirely in harmony with
its political philosophy, and indicates exactly
what we are fighting and what for.

IV

And now finally: What is the battle upon
which we have entered? What the goal of the
struggle, the stake of the war, in which we are
engaged ? We have portrayed the foe, measured
by his purposes, designs and practises. Through
long years, while we have been inattentive, su-
pine, indifferent, Germany has been penetrated

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 69

and permeated with the idea of world dominion
by world war. In 1912 more than seven hundred
books on war were published in Germany, and
all that they have done in the last three years had
been forecast and really foretold by them with
the utmost audacity.

Our battle is more than a war for national
defence, great as that is; more than a war of
American patriotism, the care of our own people
on sea and land; more than a war for the in-
tegrity and rehabilitation of Belgium and
France, and the support of our Allies fighting
for the world's right; more than co-operation
with a score of nations who withstand Germany.
Our war is a war for the race in its highest ideals
and its greatest hopes. When Charles Martel
turned back the Saracen in southern France in
the early centuries he did no less than is obliga-
tory upon the nations of the world to-day in
fighting back the German invasion. Against
their overweening pride and vanity, their false-
ness, traitorousness, intolerable inhumanity,
cruelty, tyranny, spoliation and subjugation we
are fighting. Are not these causes adequate? Is
there not motive enough in these to awaken the
hundred millions of America to withstand with
the millions of Europeans the terrific forces of
German invasion aand destructiveness ?

70 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

But we are fighting for much more than these.
We are fighting for morals, universal, authorita-
tive, beneficent, divine; morals, of men as men,
against what is merely local custom, made and
applied by a tyrant. Shall we have a moral
world? is a question that we are trying to answer
in the affirmative.

We are fighting for the maintenance of hu-
manity, fraternal, universal, helpful.

Shall the world be a humane world, or shall
massacre, torture, deportation, slaughter, starva-
tion and all kinds of ravages upon men, women
and little children be the habit of the world? We
are to answer.

We are fighting for the integrity of the race,
as brothers, against German masters with the
rest of the world slaves. We are fighting for
Christianity, the last religious hope of the world,
the Christianity which avers the love of God and
the love of men as the basis of human life. This
they would displace by cruel paganism, a valor
which knows no pity, no mercy, no liberty.
Surely here is a stake worth the best that we can
spend and do.

We take on a heavy burden, for none of us
desire war for itself. We do not believe that war
is a high state of desirable human life, and so
we regard our entrance into this war as a heavy

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 71

load, a sad necessity. But no burden which we
can assume can be so heavy as having to exist
under the domination of immoral and inhuman
tyranny.

We know that we shall encounter sufferings
which we deprecate and deplore. It is not neces-
sary to describe them; they are too obvious in
Europe, as they will be in America. But the
worst sufferings and the most that we can en-
counter in resisting an unregulated and inhuman
tyranny cannot compare with the sufferings
which Germany victorious inflicts, working its
unregulated will. What sufferings we assume
are light compared with those which they have
already imposed and which they fight to impose
upon us.

We must spend vast sums of money. The
treasures of centuries must be poured out, and
this we would much prefer not to do, but rather
to spend our wealth in human help and advance-
ment. Yet this expenditure of billions is a trifle
of our wealth compared with the tribute and
plunder extorted under the rule of these im-
moral and inhuman tyrants. Let Belgium,
France and Poland tell us how much money
Germany would extort from us if she had her
will. And so let us learn the wisdom of spend-
ing any portion of the whole to protect the vast

72 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

remainder. Half of all we have we had best
spend in resisting rather than to lose all in sub-
mitting; yes, all in resisting rather than any in
submitting.

In fighting this fight we must part from
friends who go from us perhaps never to return,
who give their lives to our defence. We need
not dwell on the agony that this inflicts on those
who love and revere their own. But parting from
our friends, though they never come again, will
be infinitely easier than if we should be compelled
to stand with them and beside them while they
are suffering beyond our aid the tortures which
would be inflicted upon them by pagan and in-
human tyrants, as done these three years wher-
ever Germany has had its will. If we must
part from friends, let it rather be while we are
defending them to our utmost than when stand-
ing beside them, we see barbarians wreak their
savage will and lust on those whom our manacled
hands cannot assist and our shackled limbs can-
not help.

We may live, many of us, scarred and de-
formed by wounds received in battle. But
such wounds are few and little compared
with those inflicted under the sway of tyrants
who know no mercy, and who, as yet, have
shown no pity. Better be marred defending

Antagonism of German Political Philosophy 73

our liberty than scarred by the tortures of our
enslavers.

We may die while striving, and many no doubt
will as many already have done. But death on
the battle line, fighting for freedom and a right-
eous cause, is a thousand-fold better than living
a cowering slave under tyrants who have shown
only too clearly how valueless life is when they
have its direction and control.

But most of us will live; the vast majority of
our nation and the nations will survive. They
will survive victorious; they will rejoice over the
possession of treasures much richer than all that
they cost. And so long as the nations and the
generations live they will exult to think that we
preserved by heroism to a world which otherwise
would be worthless, a beneficent morality, a gra-
cious and tender humanity, and a priceless Chris-
tian faith and fraternity, maintained and sancti-
fied by our sacrifices and our valour.

Ill

The Angels' Song, As They Said It

THE message of the angels to the shepherds
of Bethlehem, and to the whole world
through them, has been much exploited and little
studied, greatly praised and little understood.
From the general use of it and comment upon it,
one might think it was merely a declaration of
Peace versus War. Is there anything more in it
than a text for songs, hymns, praises, sermons on
peace? We might answer that there is less of
this than of several other declarations and impli-
cations and that most of its use along the peace
line is wholly unwarranted by its form, sub-
stance and purpose. Indeed, there are few
Scriptures which have been so much used and
so misused, so often quoted and misquoted, so
freely taught and so slightly studied. It might
properly have excited our suspicions long ago
that many, not Christians, have assumed to in-
terpret the whole of Christianity which they did
not profess, in terms of passive quiet which they
scarcely helped to secure ; and that we should be
told by such that we Christians utterly failed to
• 74

The Angels' Song, "As They Said It 75

make good this first summary of Christianity,
ought to have led us to ask at least what it says
and what it means. There is very little in the
utterance, ("song" if you will), but what has
been read into it, and much in it which is never
considered. It surely is not primarily a peace
message in the sense in which it is commonly used
at Christmas and on other occasions. The proof
of this is found in the simplest examination and
study of this passage of history and Scripture.

First of all, the Bible nowhere calls it a song,
an Angels' song, or even says that the angels sang.
The first part of the message is delivered to the
shepherds by one angel. The second part by "a
multitude of the Heavenly host." Of the single
angel it is said, "And the angel said unto them" ;
and of the Heavenly multitude it is recorded that
they appeared "praising God and saying/' It
may be alleged that an angel's voice is so musical
that its sayings would be music and equivalent
in tones to song. Possibly. Or that when a
multitude of angels spoke a single message in
unison they might have sung it. But not neces-
sarily. It is as easy to speak in unison as to
sing thus. So let us start to interpret by saying
that it is germane to a careful inquiry as to what
happened that night to note and record that
there is no story of an angel's song or of the

76 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

angels' song or any song. This may not seem
very important as a correction of an unauthor-
ised interpretation, but we observe that this read-
ing into the message what is not there, is not a
matter of this one particular any more than it is
of all the details of this truly wonderful message.
It is just as true that it is not a message, pri-
marily, of peace any more than it is a message of
other great revelations which are far more impor-
tant to those who first heard it and to us. Let
us examine it solely to find out what it said and
what it revealed.

With the shepherds keeping watch "over their
flocks by night/' it is said: "The angel of the
Lord came upon them, and the glory of the
Lord shone round about them, and they were sore
afraid." This angel evidently came from an
upper sphere as one settling down from above
into the midst of their company. He was "the
angel," the messenger "of the Lord." Evidently
they so regarded him, and as bearing supernatu-
ral character. And "they were sore afraid." The
glory of the Lord, the belief that God the Lord
was represented by this Angel3 made them very
much afraid. Why? Why should the presence
of God or of a messenger of God cause men to
be very much afraid? Here is the secret of the
messenger and of the message.

The Angels' Song, As They Said It 77

Men, practically all men, who should rejoice in
the manifestation and enjoy the presence of God,
are afraid of God and the presence of God, just
as Adam and Eve were said to have been when
sinning. Adam said, "I was afraid." This fear
is a revelation of the purpose and occasion
of Christ's coming, that He might take it
away.

So the very first word of the Angel, and of the
Angelic Message, was "Fear Not/' "The Angel
said unto them, 'Fear Not.' ' This is a message
through these representatives to the whole race
of men. And the wonder is that when people
who even reject Christ and the claims of Christ
are attempting to tell dogmatically what this
early message of Christianity means, they have
not seen that its first word is "Fear Not." This
is all the more evidence of a lack of keen atten-
tion on their part because many say "there is
nothing in God to fear." Why then, in their
superficial reading, did they not snatch at this
angelic exhortation? Perhaps, because the angel
then at once told the shepherds the reason why
they should dismiss their fears and why the whole
world should dismiss its fear of being in the
presence of God.

The Angel follows his urgent word of cheer,
"Fear Not," by giving them the reason why they

78 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

should not fear. What is that reason? He says,
"For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great
joy which shall be to all people." Here is a
universal message, first to the shepherds and then
to all people, the whole race, all mankind. "Good
tidings," "News of great joy," such as to cause
a universal joy, the very opposite of fear. And
what are these tidings ? What is the news which
shall remove from men a dread and fear of the
presence and the glory of God and his messen-
gers? Hear the answer: "For unto you," says
the Angel, "is born this day in the city of David,
a Saviour which is Christ the Lord."

We read nothing into this news to make it tell
us of a universal blessing to drive away the fears
and bring great joy to the whole world, when we
say that it plainly declares :

1st. A birth, we call it an "Incarnation," that
day taking place in Bethlehem, the city of pro-
phecy.

2nd. "Of a Saviour." This great word by
implication affirms that the race needs a Saviour
to save it. And when we ask why, the answer
must be that the race is an unsaved race, a lost
race, a wasted and wandering race. The shep-
herds could not misunderstand. Neither can any-
body who knows human history. If only a
Saviour to save from fear, it is a mighty salvation

The Angels' Song, As They Said It 79

which takes away the causes of fear, as the only-
way of removing fears.

3rd. And this Saviour "is Christ the Lord,"
Christ the Anointed One; the Messiah whom
these shepherds and their nation had heard of
and longed for through ages of time. And this
new born one who is Saviour and Christ and
Messiah is "the Lord." This is a word of ex-
altation and mastery, indicating capacity, su-
periority and honor.

So far the message is of the first great herald
angel. God is made manifest in the flesh, the
Saviour, the Deliverer, the Chosen Christ of
God, the Lord and Master. Such is the actual
message of the individual angel's "Song," which
is not a song.

Then, that no mark of assurance may be lack-
ing from the messenger angel and to these repre-
sentatives of the common human race, he tells
them in detail how and where they shall find this
great One, born this day, born to be a Saviour.
In these words the individual angel has given
the main part of the heaven-sent disclosure.

"And suddenly there appeared with the Angel
a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God
and saying — " Evidently they were enforcing his
glad tidings. All being from God, all accredited
messengers, all being of the Heavenly Hosts,

80 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

they appeared to add assurance and to cheer
with gladness the shepherds who represented all
people, that is, all mankind. It is not said that
they sang. It is immaterial whether they did or
did not. But what did they say, as they praised
God?

May we pause to note that praise — the uplift
of heart and voice to God — was their attitude and
act? Let those who prate of "Peace on Earth,"
etc., bear in mind that praise to God for the
Saviour incarnate is the first thing in the angelic
heart after knowing that truth. This is the only
cause of praise mentioned here.

And what did the angels say? For what they
said is of much consequence. A misquotation of
it is the stock of those who discourse of the
"Angels' song of Peace."

First of all, they said, "Glory to God in the
highest." Here is a chance for intelligent ex-
planation, and for explanation not likely to be
of doubtful meaning. This is an ascription on
their part of the highest, most exalted place and
supremacy to God. In the highest place, holding
the highest rank, supreme over all, they declare
God to be. Among the mighty and glorious He
is mightiest and most glorious. Their word is as.
declarative as that of the first angel, and as im-
portant. God is most glorious of beings and to

The Angels3 Song, As They Said It 81

be more and especially glorified because of the
Saviour born, sent, and saving. Let those who
crave peace remember that the hope of it comes
when God is recognised, enthroned, obeyed,
praised and glorified by man, and not until then.
Exalt God to His highest throne, greatest among
the great and recognise His glory in giving a
Saviour, as beyond all other reasons the supreme
cause of adoration of Him. So they command.

On sweeps the angelic exhortation "to all peo-
ple." "And on earth" (as He is glorified among
all the powers of heaven and earth here repre-
sented) "Peace." The form of speech here is
made into English with a very slight variation,
in several ways.

"Peace among men in whom He (God) is well
pleased." "Peace among men of good pleasure."
"Peace, good pleasure among men."

Evidently peace is the prominent idea at this
point to and among men. Is it particular men?
Men of a certain character, quality, relationship
to God? Evidently and surely. Say it is "among
men in whom He is well pleased." Their peace
is conditional on the fact that God is pleased with
them. What kind of men are they in whom God
has pleasure? Who pleases Him so that He
favours them? Men of good pleasure? Men who
find their pleasure in Goodness, men whose will is

82 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

good, who agree with God and who by righteous-
ness will go among men and so make social peace.

Is there in this whole message any statement,
announcement, declaration to suggest that
"Peace," as that term has been used in regard
to the "Angels' Song," is ever coming to men
who refuse the Saviour, who reject the Messiah,
who do not recognise the supremacy of God, who
do not submit to Him and glorify His suprem-
acy? Is there a sign or suggestion that Christ
came into the world to make peace among the
nations of men who are willingly Godless; wil-
fully sinful; whose wills are not to please God
or to scatter among men the fruits of a generous
and holy life? I see no such crude and irrational
meaning. Yet that is the commonly alleged
meaning, wholly unwarranted as it is unan-
nounced.

Peace in this world in the individual, the small
neighbourhood, and the larger associated bodies
of men, is a product of Divine provision ac-
cepted, and human character adjusted to that
provision, so pleasing God and rendering right-
eousness, peace and joy possible among men. It
comes and is made through faith in God, in the
Incarnation, in Jesus Christ the Lord.

When men accept the Angels' announcement,
take hold on the grace of God, receive, seek, wor-

The Angels' Song, 'As They Said It 83

ship Christ, grasp His universal redemption ; ex-
alt His Holy Name ; glorify Him, gain His good
will by love and obedience, and the good will of
men by love and service, then they find peace in
finding its sources, conditions and causes. And
not till then.

Peace to men who will the will of God is a
great result of an adequate cause, and it comes to
those who receive Christ as here disclosed, who
exalt and obey God as He is here revealed.

IV

The Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance
to Evil

NUMBERS of believers in Christ declare
their conviction that He taught the doctrine
of non-resistance and that those who follow and
obey Him cannot, under any circumstances, fight
even in self-defence. To establish their position
they quote principally the passage at the end of
Matthew V. 38-42, the word most often cited
being: "But whosoever smiteth thee on the right
cheek turn him the other also." The eminent
Russian, Tolstoi, seems to have founded his
theory of Christian non-resistance and opposi-
tion to war mostly on this passage.

Many who cannot quite make up their minds
that it is duty to passively endure and never to
resist the evil aggressions of all assailants do,
nevertheless, take up arms against wicked and
malicious foes while avowing their theoretical
faith in the opposite policy. These seem to think
that Christ's teaching is not really practical. So
they cut loose from it under stress, resolved later

84

Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 85

to return to their allegiance after practising con-
trary to it for a season. This course seems to
us very reprehensible. If one believes in Christ
he cannot lay off for a time and then resume and
take on the obligations of Christian allegiance.
This would be, on his part, irrational as well as
treasonable. If Christ's teaching is not for life
as life, if it is "a thing of shreds and patches,"
then it is not worthy to command human faith or
respect.

The wonder is that our Lord has been so mis-
interpreted that men quote Him as against all
defensive strife, both in precept or example. Let
us examine fairly His words and seek His evi-
dent meaning. And first this passage in Mat-
thew:.

It is fair to premise that this language is not
wholly literal as is the most rigid statement of a
fact ; that it is, in part, at least, figurative or pic-
turesque. This premise asks no concession ex-
cept the use of plain common sense. Language
is not degraded, not distorted or rendered obscure
when used figuratively. It is rather elevated and
dignified. Very much of our language, common
and literary, is not in the use of the first and
primary meaning of the words but in a picture
meaning. Thousands of examples of this are
near at hand and daily on our lips.

86 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

That we may get Matthew V. 38-42 in its plain
sense, we have to take up the whole passage of
which it is a part. In verse 29, in the part relat-
ing to adultery, it is said, "If thy right eye cause
thee to stumble pluck it out and cast it from thee,
etc." A similar suggestion or direction follows
immediately about "thy right hand" ("cut it off,
etc."). No one can for a moment suppose that
this is a literal direction; that in a treatment of
lustful passion, the right eye is to be plucked out
and cast away; and so of the hand. Both are
plainly figurative expressions of the doctrine of
self-denial and self-control. Literally construed
they are absurd; figuratively used they are in-
tense and impressive instructions. I think also
that the next passage, about oaths, must be as-
sumed to contain figurative commandment as
well as literal. Whether legal and judicial oaths
are forbidden, I will not argue, though I believe
not. But let this be one way or the other; verse
37 says, "But let your yea be yea and your nay
nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh
of evil." Unexplained, to the literalist, this
means that anything spoken more or besides
"yea, yea — nay, nay, cometh of evil." This is
absurd.

There is a world of conversation which is nei-
ther "yea" nor "nay," which does not "come of

Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 87

evil." When I deny or affirm it is not of evil
that I say more than nay and yea. However,
the meaning is not at all obscure. A simple
affirmative or negative is the proper mode of
assent or denial rather than expletives and
oaths. And a disposition to multiply assevera-
tions arises from evil rather than good. They
are unnecessary to a truthful man and superflu-
ous, and the harm of such oaths is obvious to
honest thought. Here then is a second instance
of figurative language in this paragraph of
Christ's present teaching.

And now we read in verse 28, "Ye have heard
that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth, etc." It was also said "hand for hand,
foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for
wound, stripe for stripe" (Exodus 21. 24-25).
Did Christ intend to state what He stated as
being all that He recognised and allowed of the
old law? Were the other two thirds of this
original direction to be left unrepealed by Him
and was He to repeal these two particulars
alone? Evidently not so. The meaning origi-
nally in Exodus was to thus state the principle
of equity and responsibility in graphic terms.
Because nothing is said about ears or noses or
toes or legs or arms. Evidently liter alness would
destroy the whole purport of the ordinance and

88 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

confine it to a few bodily members and instances.
No rational mind can think this.

So, then, presumably what our Lord is about
to utter for which this reference paves the way,
is something which shall supersede a crude rule
of equivalents and reveal the spirit of equity and
social justice. He continues, "But I say unto
you that ye resist not evil — but whosoever
smiteth thee on the right cheek turn to him the
other also." Does Christ here teach that we must
not resist evil? What then are we to do when
we resist not evil? Do we passively agree to it,
whatever its form? No. "Evil" is a word of
breadth which includes injurious and hurtful
agents and agencies whether physical or moral.
Cold is an evil to a delicate body, so is sickness
of any sort; so fire breaking out or flood; or an
incursion of destructive insects or animals.
Whatever works visible harm, injury and suffer-
ing is evil, as vice, revenge, ignorance, prejudice.
Certainly He would never teach us to offer no
resistance, opposition or correction to any form
of evil. Then surely we must explain His word
as not literal but figurative, giving, in picture, a
statement of a principle of right conduct. So
it must be explained. So of intellectual, social,
moral and spiritual evil. Thus instructed, we
resume :

Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 89

"But whosoever shall smite thee on the right
cheek turn to him the other also." Here is one
kind of evil, if literal, a very narrow form. What
is it, if merely literal, as we are asked to take it?
Why, this — that if any man smite thee (you) on
the right cheek you turn to him the other (the
left cheek) also. Just this and no more, if
literal. But suppose I am struck on my left
cheek, what shall I do? Or on my eye, or nose
or chin or anywhere else on my body? Then
the liter alist must say, "I have no word of direc-
tion from Christ, what course I shall take." This
is being literal but ridiculous. The Great
Teacher's utterances are belittled immeasurably
by such silly interpretations. It is foolish and
absurd. Because literalness reduces it to ab-
surdity, our reverence for Christ leads us, as in
the four preceding instances (in v. 29, 30, 37,
38 ) , to inquire as to its real meaning. At once
it becomes plain. The slap on the right or left
cheek is the insult offered by an angry man who
wishes to show disesteem and provoke a quarrel.
In days of knighthood such a flick of hand or
glove was an indignity which called for a chal-
lenge and mortal combat. Our Lord virtually
says: Receive such indignity not as one who has
no further resources of patience, but as one who
could stand even more and yet keep his fullest

90 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

self-control. Better so, to show the calmness of
your spirit and your self-mastery, than to engage
in useless and passionate fighting over a slight
provocation. This makes sense of the passage
and honors the Teacher. The literal interpreta-
tion is nonsense and useless.

Proceeding to the next direction the same
principle of interpretation gives the only sensible
meaning to the text: "If any man will go to law
with thee ("sue thee at the law") and take away
thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." Shall we
be told that this forbids all legal defence and de-
mands surrender of legal rights to property
rather than contest and defence? Not so. Stated
literally what does it say? (Compare Matthew
and Luke.) "If any man will sue thee at the
law and take away thy undershirt, let him have
thine overshirt also" (the order of garments be-
ing reversed in Luke). Is this done ever any-
where? No. But explain it and wisdom at once
appears. Here is a litigious contestant over a
mere trifle who wills to sue you. There are such :
Courts and society abound in them. Then and
now, Courts of law are not certainly Courts of
Justice. The whole matter in controversy is
trifling. Better yield a trifle than to enter upon
uncertain, tedious and endless litigation. We
have known wise men in business, who in large

Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 91

matters never went to law, because of its injus-
tices and uncertainties. They were carrying out
the wisdom of Christ's teachings. The absolute
literal sense is evidently useless for our times
or any time. The true sense is full of practical
wisdom.

The next direction is likewise valuable but use-
less if literally interpreted. "If any man compel
thee to go with him a mile, go with him twain."
Nothing of this sort ever occurs in our modern
life. So then, if literal, it would now be mean-
ingless to us. But at that time, perhaps now in
distant lands, as you worked in your little field,
some nabob with his train might come past and
demand that you go a mile with them. To re-
fuse, though it were resisting petty tyranny,
would be disastrous, might cost you great loss.
On the other hand your affairs would not suffer
if you quietly and kindly went, if you also should
say, "I will freely go another mile for your con-
venience/ ' it might be the best kind of policy;
placating rather than exasperating. A good
principle under such circumstances then and
there, now and everywhere.

Following: "Give to him that asketh thee, and
from him that would borrow of thee turn not
thou away," is easily explicable and valuable in
the light of the preceding principles of interpre-

92 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

tation. It is not a command to give to anyone
and everyone anything and everything he asks,
as when your child asks for poison or a razor or
a gun — it commands and directs a generous and
helpful spirit. And when one wants to borrow,
which implies a purpose to return the thing bor-
rowed, he being now in necessity, do not disre-
gard his need by turning away, unf eeling and un-
heeding, but consider his case as it deserves and
help him if he deserves it.

And now completing the passage of Christ's
teaching, as if to demonstrate the common sense
and truth of this interpretation of divine wisdom,
we have the final word. He notes, "It has been
said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy."
Here Jesus says, "Love your enemies and pray
for them that persecute you." Is this literal or
figurative? Plainly literal. It could not rise to
a nobler sense or command a higher duty than
what it plainly teaches. It is plain, practical,
right, noble and Godlike. Therefore it needs no
explanation, only obedience. But love to an
enemy does not permit him to work injury on
himself, on you, or on another, if you can prevent
it. There is no expression of love in letting a
criminal work his will. It is every way loving to
stop him. It shows good will to him and every-
body involved.

Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 93

Thus reading and interpreting these messages
in the teachings of Christ, in their own light and
in harmony with the light of reason and all reve-
lation, we find nothing whatever to sustain the
pacifist's contention that Christ here taught the
doctrine of non-resistance and pacifism, as is
often alleged.

Again it has been said that Christ declared, "I
came not to send peace but a sword,' ' and that
this proves that he intended to generate and di-
rect war.

This passage (Matthew X. 34) is so inter-
preted but not reasonably. "Think not that I am
come to send peace on earth. I came not to send
peace but a sword. For I came to set a man
at variance against his father and the daughter
against her mother. . . . And a man's foes shall
be those of his own household."

No one supposes that Christ came into this
world to generate hostility between members of
a family. Not as a desirable end do these enmi-
ties come from His teaching; nor can the sword
be used literally here as a weapon and symbol
of war. Variance in families does not take the
form of pitched battles with weapons of war. Is
it not plain that Christ here declares that His
doctrine, so pacifying and loving, the greatest
guide for family and social harmony, will be so

94 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

resisted by the wicked that they will fiercely and
cruelly oppose it when embraced by their inti-
mates and kindred? Not that such is the purpose
of God but inseparable from the evil hearts of
men. He does not seek nor willingly generate
war, but aggressive goodness brings it on through
the evil minds of those who refuse the goodness,
and He rather teaches not non-resistance but
to withstand them and persist in obedience to
Him.

It would seem on first reading that the words
of Jesus in answer to Pilate — John 18. 36 — are
against ever fighting. "My Kingdom is not of
this world; if my Kingdom were of this world,
then would my servants fight that I should not
be delivered to the Jews ; but now is my Kingdom
not from hence." The inference hastily drawn
h that because we are the citizens of the Kingdom
of which Christ is King, therefore we will not
fight. But this inference is much too broad to
be reasonable. This error in interpretation is
drawn from several misunderstandings:

1. Though Christ's Kingdom is not of this
world, each of us is, as He was not, a part of a
Kingdom in this world, to which we owe numer-
ous duties. Therefore what was most incumbent
upon Him may not be so upon us, e. g., to vote, to
hold office, to act as jurors.

Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 95

2. We assume that we are to do exactly what
Christ did in this world. This is an inference
from undue humanising of Christ in our estimate
of Him, as if He were imitable in all respects.
The truth is, that He is in a class by Himself.
We can have likeness but never exact identity of
action. Nor do we wish to do so. In numerous
respects He did not do what we do and did what
we are under no obligation to do. For example,
He entered upon His public work at thirty years
of age. This is not a rule or a duty for us. He
was then baptized in the Jordan. We cannot be
and need not be. He never married. Our duty
does not lie in celibacy. Of numerous occupa-
tions of our time in which we engage, he followed
none. He was not an artist, or an engineer, or a
merchant, etc. He died on a cross. We do not,
need not. All these are inimitable doings of our
Lord.

Besides, latterly and erroneously, His words
"My Kingdom," "The Kingdom of Heaven,"
"of God," are asserted to mean only and always
a social state and relation in this world. This is
an excess of some modern sociologists ; it is not
New Testament teaching. The Lord's Prayer
teaches us concerning the Kingdom of the Holy
God in heaven which we pray may "come on
earth as it is in heaven"; and also of an inward

96 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

subjective psychological condition which corre-
sponding to the objective Kingdom is described
as the Kingdom of God which is not meat and
drink but "Righteousness (in the Holy Spirit),
Peace (in the Holy Spirit) and Joy in the Holy
Spirit." When Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not
of this world," in which sense did he use "King-
dom"? And who can deny that pursuant to His
purposes, his ends were to be attained by being
delivered to the Jews and not by fighting carnally
with the ecclesiastical Jewish powers on the part
of his servants ; or against the Roman powers by
"twelve legions of angels"?

The particular circumstances which Christ here
outlines seem to us as very far away from either
a command or an example that His servants
should be non-resistant in kingdoms which are
in this world and must be practically governed.

Yet another word spoken (Luke 22. 38) as a
command by Him to His apostles needs to be
listened to that we may better understand our
duty. Their equipment was to be a purse, a
wallet, "and he that hath none let him sell his
garment and buy a sword." This would seem
to be an explicit direction worth examining.
"And they said, Lord, behold here are two
swords. And He said unto them, It is enough."
Doubtless this means that two swords were

Doctrine of Jesus About Resistance to Evil 97

enough, as part of their equipment — two swords
for eleven men. Have not this command and
comment a clear meaning, and do they not cast
light on our inquiry?

Why did He direct to procure any sword?
Why was a sword so necessary that one should
sell his garment, perchance a cloak, and with the
proceeds buy a sword? And why were two
swords among eleven men enough?

The answer would seem to be that the actual
sword was a means of defence, not for enforcing
the gospel but for protecting the apostles, as did
the wallet and purse. The fewness of the swords
indicates the improbability of their being used
for aggression. Perchance the swords possessed,
and kept sheathed, indicated at once their owners'
right and ability to use them; but more, their
self-control, patience and purpose to set up a
government by teaching rather than by force.
For the spread of the gospel at the point of the
sword is not conducive to its appropriate recep-
tion and influence on men. The order, the neces-
sity, the adequacy of two swords for eleven men
means something. It certainly does not mean
passive non-resistance, however explained.

Thus examining fairly all that our Lord said
which is ever quoted as relating to fighting, it
seems to us that it cannot be truly alleged to

98 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

directly deal with the subject of war at all. These
texts are part of the general teachings of Jesus
on spirit and duty. They answer no good pur-
pose whatever if distorted into cowardice, paci-
fism, non-resistance and acquiescence in the ag-
gressions of wicked men in human society. For
Jesus Christ teaches that God governs the world
with law, righteousness and justice; with disci-
pline, reward and penalty, and that He lays
upon men the duty of maintaining, teaching and
executing these essentials of His world order.

Through men, He teaches, by men, He warns,
with men as His agents, He disciplines, chastens
and corrects. If good men should allow evil
men to practise wickedness unpunished, this
course would neither imitate God nor harmonise
with His administration. If wickedness assails,
righteousness defends and God takes the side of
righteousness.

Had Christ taught non-resistance to evil, He
would have overthrown rather than established
the Kingdom of God.

The Perils of a Premature Peace

IN our civic allegiance at this time, and in every
time and place, we are before everything else
Americans and patriots, and the bond of our
Americanism and patriotism is being strength-
ened by our common perils, of which we are be-
ginning to be aware.

During the easy-going years of the near past,
theorists have arisen, affirming that it is unmanly
and unwise to be afraid, and we have been told
how useless are the occasions, how hurtful are the
consequences of fear. But he who does not know
enough to fear when there is real danger, to be
defensively aware of it, to take heed and guard
against it, is not wise for this life or for the next.
So at this time when I try to awaken in your
minds a sense of the perilous conditions which
menace us and of the disasters that may follow
our failure to take warning, it is not to weaken
us through fear but to strengthen us through
prudence ; for while we might recklessly pass on
where danger is impending, it is the part of

99

100 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

prudent and courageous souls to keep watch and
guard.

On this occasion, I seek to convince you gen-
erally, of "The Perils of a Premature Peace," in
the midst of a colossal war; specifically, of the
numerous perils which are concentrated in that
one greatest peril of the times. We are chal-
lenged and threatened by the German purpose
to subjugate and dominate the world. The Cen-
tral powers, under Prussian and German leader-
ship, long ago openly resolved to conquer, to
enslave, and to despoil the world; to bring it by
conquest under their absolute control, to reduce
under their will all men, nations and races ; and
to seize of what we have, whatever they choose,
without our consent. So saying (and without
fear of contradiction, for I am quoting their
statements openly made), I would reveal the
purpose and spirit of that mighty and threaten-
ing force, which to secure this supremacy, has
for three years and more convulsed the world
with an unprecedented assault upon all human
rights.

The present ruler of Germany in the year
1892, at a conference at the Palace at Potsdam,
with five hundred chosen men of that great realm,
distributed to them a pamphlet beginning with
these words: "The Pan-German Empire: From

The Perils of a Premature Peace 101

Hamburg on the North Sea to the Persian Gulf.
Our immediate goal, 250,000,000 of people. Our
ultimate goal, the Germanisation of all the
world." This must be by force and conquest. It
is not to be supposed that these millions desire
or consent to be subjugated and enslaved by Ger-
many's ambition and power. It is only possible
through war and invasion. So this design of
bloody war to subvert the world is not even
veiled. It is distinctly avowed. What he says
of his heroes fully proves this to be his method.
This is what is meant by "Pan-Germanism," a
favourite term with them. It does not mean that
they were there in the interest of all Germany,
but in the interest of making all the world Ger-
man— of Germanising the whole world. He
further said: "From childhood, I have been un-
der the influence of five men: Alexander the
Great, Julius Csesar, Theodoric the Second,
Frederick the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte.
Each of these men dreamed a dream of world
empire. They failed. I am dreaming a dream
of the German world-empire, and my mailed fist
shall succeed."

Then and there in Potsdam, he launched the
enterprise with the consent and approbation of
that co-operating assembly, and this but a short
time after he became Kaiser.

102 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

The Crown Prince of Germany, the successor,
as he assumes, by Divine right, of the present
Kaiser, said in the winter of 1913-14, that either
before he became Kaiser, or after, there would
be war, as he said, "for the fun of the thing," and
to the American to whom he said this, (as quoted
by Ambassador Gerard,) he declared: "The plan
is to attack and conquer France, then England,
and after that the United States of America;
Russia was also to be conquered, and then Ger-
many would be master of the world." May I
remark in passing that three years have passed
and he has not yet captured Verdun, from which
we may entertain the hope that his plan is
doomed to failure.

If the conceited aspirations of these two
strange and yet very influential characters, father
and son, had been theirs alone, no one would have
feared. But not only did the five hundred men
in Potsdam agree to the Kaiser's proposal, the
prof oundest thinkers and most influential citizens
of Germany have also indorsed what he then
proposed. Even before his time they had in-
tended it and now they assisted him to make it
more probable.

Among these supporters was Heinrich von
Treitschke, the greatest of German political
philosophers in our time, who, born in 1834, began

The Perils of a Premature Peace 103

his public work in 1859 by lecturing at the Leip-
zig University, on the State. From that he went
to other universities, to Kiel, Freiburg, Heidel-
berg, and at length to Berlin, and through all
his life until 1895, he was the exponent of the
Pan-German idea which the Kaiser had un-
folded in 1892, after Von Treitschke had urged it
long before. He was the friend of the Kaiser and
his written history is a glorification of the house
of Hohenzollern ; he was intimate with Bismarck,
he was devoted to Germany and the Prussian
policy. He taught that power is the first prin-
ciple of the State, that the individual had no
rights apart from those allowed by the State,
and that the State, the German State, could not
do an immoral thing. He held that might was
the only right, so that if there is power to do a
thing and a power to will, then the State has the
right to do whatever it has the might and the will
to do.

Devoted as he was to this conception of the
State, he was equally sure that Germany is the
greatest State in the world and of right ought
to dominate all other States. He taught that
the Hohenzollerns should dominate Prussia, for
the good of Prussia, that Prussia should domi-
nate Germany for the good of Germany, and
that Germany should dominate the world for

104 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

the good of the world. He expressed his intense
contempt and hostility for most States other
than Germany. He was the most popular pro-
fessor in the universities and on the platforms of
any in Germany from 1866 to 1895, training gen-
erations of students, and the recognised leader of
the political life of that great empire.

Von Treitschke held that Germany should
dominate the world through its army, and so
doing, argued for the leading idea of the policy
of Frederick the Great in the second half of the
eighteenth century; that the army should be one
with the State and the State should be one with
the army, and that whatever the State wished
to do, it should do through the army by war.
Therefore, there could be no human fraternity
excepting inside the limits of the German Em-
pire, and all States outside were natural and
rather contemptible enemies.

In order that the army might work its will
on all other States than the German State, Von
Treitschke held that its activity should be with-
out any limits of morality or any restraints of
humanity; that the army's work should be ruth-
less ; that they should slaughter, torture, rob and
starve as they pleased, provided it was necessary
for the power of the German State, and that
spying and lying were privileges of the State

The Perils of a Premature Peace 105

which everybody should understand, were to be
used without explanation or apology. He fur-
ther affirmed that no religion, no system of
morals, no international law, no treaty, should
stand between the will of the State, expressed in
the army by force and power, and their desires
and designs. Nowhere in all the seventeen
volumes of his published works did he say one
word against war. He praised it rather as be-
ing desirable and necessary, and as indicating
the virility of the State. To seek to put an end
to war was immoral and unwise. As he with
extraordinary energy and unequalled popularity
lectured and taught for thirty-five years, genera-
tions of university men and military men ac-
cepted his principles and passed them on. They
taught the students in the universities, and ap-
pealed directly to the people. The students of
Von Treitschke are now the university Profes-
sors of History throughout Germany.

Among those accepting and teaching these
theories is Otto Richard Tannenberg, who in
1911, at Leipzig, published a volume extensively
influential — "The Greater Germany, the Work
of the Twentieth Century." In this volume the
author laid out a complete plan for the mastery
of the whole world by the German Empire. He
told what they should do and how to conquer

106 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

and control central and western Europe. He
openly held, as have many other German authors,
that the neutral states of western Europe, were
to be used as buffer states in the great world war
that was coming; they would not, because they
were little, dare to refuse Germany all the pro-
visions that they could raise or smuggle in. They
would, being neutral, bar the passage into Ger-
many of hostile armies. At any moment Ger-
many could take Holland, Denmark, Sweden
and Norway. It was better to have them neutral
for the service they would render ; but only for a
time, because ultimately they were all to be ab-
sorbed into the German Empire.

He pointed out how Belgium, northern
France, then all western France should come
under German dominion; sketched the plan by
which Russian Poland should be made German,
and the western part of Russia should be Ger-
manised. He saw Austria-Hungary as prac-
tically a vassal of the German Empire, and how
by subjugating the Balkans and Turkey, the
Pan-German plan from Hamburg to Bagdad,
from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, could
be worked out; thus along the line of the least
resistance how to gain the control of the East.

He described how they would by that route
go to India and gain control of it, and entering

The Perils of a Premature Peace 107

China, acquire dominant influence there. He
laid his plans for the absorption of the whole
of Africa, all the colonies of all States to be
taken over by Germany.

After this, Tannenberg by maps and details,
pictured and indicated how South America was
to be Germanised; and the procedure which,
carried on with determination and duplicity,
should bring all of the South American States
under German control. Going on from that,
flouting the Monroe Doctrine and so challenging
the United States, they would at length possess
themselves of North America. Having mean-
while overpowered England and France, they
would be in control of the whole world. This
was the modest plan of Otto Richard Tannen-
berg, a scheme immensely popular from the time
his work was issued in 1911, and which greatly
stimulated the present war of conquest.

The same expectation marked the threat of
Admiral Von Goetzen, an intimate friend of the
Kaiser, who said to our Admiral Dewey before
Manila in 1898, that, "In about fifteen years, my
country will begin a great war. Some months
after we have done Our business in Europe, we
shall take New York and probably Washington,
and we shall keep them for a time. We do not
intend to take any territory from you, but only

108 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

to put your country in its proper place with
reference to Germany. We shall extract one or
two billions of dollars from New York and other
towns." This, Admiral Von Goetzen had the
audacity to say to Admiral Dewey. If he had
possessed a little more sense, he might have re-
membered that another German Admiral, Von
Diederich, undertook to interfere with Admiral
Dewey at Manila and was told that if he really
wanted to fight, he could have the privilege then
and there. The American Admiral cleared his
ships for action, the British Admiral stood by
Dewey, and, of course, Diederich found that to
insult America was not safe. It may have
dawned upon him that to take the American
continent might be difficult. The date named by
Von Goetzen fifteen years in advance, was cor-
rect as to the beginning of the war.

Thus the spokesmen of the Kaiser announced
their policies and spread them among the people
until the entire German nation absorbed their
ideas and agreed to them, setting themselves to
the task of conquering and enslaving the world.

Their principal obstacle in the way of this plan
of world dominion was England, which they
hated with a deadly hatred. You cannot im-
agine, because you are gentlemen, in what lan-
guage the great philosophers of Germany de-

The Perils of a Premature Peace 109

nounced England, the British nation (in speech
so insulting that if passed between men, it would
be an occasion for immediate conflict) ; so further-
ing and feeding their plan and purpose to excite
their people to such animosity that they would
express themselves in deeds of inhumanity and
in Hymns of Hate. At first they howled these
against England only. But high authority now
says they have transferred their direst hatred
from England to America. Why did they hate
England? Because they saw in the British Em-
pire the chief impediment to their unholy ambi-
tion. They doubted greatly if they could con-
quer with England opposing them. With their
conceit they boasted it, but in their hearts they
knew better.

And when America entered the war, they knew
positively that their game was up; that Britain
and America co-operating, the Central Powers
were doomed to defeat. This is why they hate.
Remember it and beat them to the dust. By
their ferocity, you can imagine how they hate.
In an interview of our ambassador with the
Kaiser, that ruler said to him: "America had
better look out after this war," and, "I shall
stand no nonsense from America after this war."
This threat the Kaiser made to the ambassador
of the United States. Would he have made the

110 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

threat unless he meant to execute it? Our am-
bassador tells us that the Germans "absolutely
despised" the military and naval power of the
United States, and were "unanimous in saying
that as a military or naval factor the United
States might be considered as less than nothing,"
offering no impediment to their designs and in-
tentions. South America also bears her share
of the contempt and antagonism of the German
Empire.

In South America, through which they were
to approach us, remember that there were four
hundred thousand Germans in southern Brazil
twenty years ago, and nearly a hundred thou-
sand in other South American States, and that
a propaganda has been carried on through all
the southern half of South America for many
years by Germany ; a propaganda of persons, of
literature, of newspapers, of subsidised schools,
to entice and betray those people into subjection
under the German yoke. Brazil has just awak-
ened to it and has lately struck back. It is the
evident intention and fixed purpose of Germany
to change the free governments of South
America into dependencies of the German Em-
pire.

Everywhere, in all the world, they have pushed
their subtle and treasonable propaganda. It was

The Perils of a Premature Peace 111

in the interest of the German intention to bring
America under their control that Prince Henry
came here before he went to China. When he
went to China, as you know, to seize Kiau Chau,
the Kaiser ordered him and his troops, "Make
yourselves more frightful than the Huns under
Attila. See that for a thousand years no enemy
mentions the very name of ' Germany' without
shuddering."

Prince Henry, while our guest honoured and
feted by us, was an agent of the German propa-
ganda to organise the Germans of America, of
whom there were some fourteen or fifteen mil-
lions, so that, in the present crisis, for which they
were organised, they would stand with the Kaiser
instead of being loyal to the United States Gov-
ernment. The Prince left behind in Washington
as a token of German friendship, a statue of that
forerunner of the Kaiser, unsurpassed in du-
plicity, having a bad eminence in rascality as
well as in military power, Frederick the Great.
I wish we might change that statue into good
munitions and send it back to Germany.

And so concerning all parts of the world, the
Germans openly avowed and secretly wrought
out their purposes of conquest. Do not think
for one moment that I am saying anything which
is not amply warranted by their own statements.

112 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

They openly made them, but nobody really be-
lieved them. They said: We are going to con-
quer the world, and we doubted that they would
even try. But, let me tell you that they have
done as they threatened; they have done much
and most of all they planned as far as they have
had the power to do it.

ii

What have they already accomplished? To
what extent have they succeeded? They in-
tended, as they announced, to gain control from
Hamburg and the North Sea to Bagdad and
the Persian Gulf.

They have already done most of this. They
have conquered Belgium ; they intended to. We
have the German Governor von Bissing's last
will and testament, concerning the politics of the
German Empire, in which he shows us that from
before the beginning of this war they fully in-
tended to take Belgium entirely to themselves
and to keep it. No matter how much lying they
have done, that was what they intended to do,
and up to now they have done it.

They have taken northern France. They have
nearly all (about eighty per cent.) of the iron
ore and the coal of France, both which are vital

The Perils of a Premature Peace 113

to that nation's life. They have held it for three
years and a half, keeping it from France and
working it for themselves. We speak of France
being "bled white," but the bleeding of France
through the taking of her treasures of coal and
iron has been almost as destructive as the bleed-
ing of France in taking the blood of her men.
In 1870 they seized Alsace and Lorraine for the
same reason: to secure France's supply of min-
erals and metals so necessary to her industries
and her economic life.

They have taken Russian Poland. Before
that they had Austrian Poland and German
Poland.

They have Austria-Hungary completely in
their power, with German mastery in their army
and German control in their finances. They
have Bulgaria; they possess Serbia, which they
have brought down to the dust ; they hold Monte-
negro ; Rumania and Russia are at their mercy ;
they rule the whole Turkish empire with its
twenty millions of people, a hundred per cent,
of it. In a word, if you study the map as it now
is, you will find that so far as the first move which
the Kaiser declared that they intended to make,
they have gained (in Europe and Asia) most of
what they said they were determined to conquer
and possess. This is very startling when you

114 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

consider farther facts in connection with their
present and projected conquests.

Had Britain delayed declaring war a few days
more, and had not the British fleet blocked their
way, Germany would have seized the Channel
ports, Dunkirk, Calais and Bordeaux, and held
all the west of France; would have commanded
the Channel; would have dominated all France;
would have invaded England ; would have swept
out of the North Sea ports and covered the
waters of the Atlantic Ocean with their fleets,
and would have been in the United States of
America, firmly established three years ago. The
reason why Germany did not do this was, not
because we were "too proud to fight," but be-
cause Belgium, France and Great Britain, for
love of liberty and humanity, fought for us and
died for us while we stood supinely by. But for
their defence of us, the heel of the German in-
vader would have been on the neck of North
America to-day, and no human power, other than
of those who so stood fast and fought, could have
helped it. If now, after three years and a half of
the war, if now, after a year of preparation on
our part, we are yet entirely unready to repel
the attack of a trained army, what would have
been our status if the German fleet had escaped
from the North Sea at first, and with little diffi-

The Perils of a Premature Peace 115

culty, had steered their course to our ports, un-
defended as they would have found them at that
time? Bear in mind, when we are now asked to
fight, if we were from now on, to be alone fight-
ing for Belgium, France and England, and for
two years time, we would only be paying the debt
that we owe them for having saved us from the
horrors which Germany has carried to every
country where it has won power and dominion.

What of Germany to-day as a military power ?
I quote Ambassador Gerard as a thoroughly
informed witness. He says in the Foreword of
his book that to-day "the military and naval
power of the German Empire is unbroken."
That it now has not less than nine millions of
men, veterans of war, four hundred thousand be-
ing added by those growing up to military age
every year; that there is no likelihood of their
suffering for lack of food; that the danger of
starvation is greater to our allies than it is to
Germany. It has really little financial difficulty,
so far as known to us, because they fully planned,
and intend taking all the wealth they can possibly
plunder from the nations that they have seized
and hold. They fully purpose and expect to
compel Britain, France and the United States
to pay their war debt. That is their settled
design, and to-day, the gains of plunder and loot,

116 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

and the full payment of their debt, by tribute
levied, are among the greatest motives which
keep the German armies in the field, buoying
them up with the hope of conquest and the ex-
pectation of adequate enrichment through tribute
and plunder.

In the presence of these conditions what think
you? Are we in peril? The German fleet is
intact. Nothing keeps it where it is but the
British fleet and our fleet now helping; ours, a
small and inadequate fleet, to be increased, we
devoutly hope, as rapidly as possible. With their
fleet, and their army, their prestige, their train-
ing and supplies (for they had munitions, as it
was reported, for thirty millions of men when
they started this war) ; with all these, when I
warn you that even now, unless a gracious Provi-
dence interferes and something more than un-
armed men are put in the field against them,
they will land here as conquerors and work their
will, I am only telling you what must be plain
to your common sense and a trumpet call to
your patriotism.

in

And here let me ask you what they do to a
land when they conquer it? Proposing to Ger-
manise the world, what are they going to do with

The Perils of a Premature Peace 117

the world which they Germanise ? What is their
idea of Germanising Belgium, or of Germanising
northern France, or Serbia, or Poland, or Ar-
menia? What is their method? Here is my
answer: Where they make conquest, they pay
not the slightest respect to any law of morals,
humanity, honor or right. This indictment is
amply supported by the most indubitable testi-
mony. Of the horrible and sickening details of
their fiendish and devilish savagery only a part
is printed. But the governments of the allies
have as much of their record as can be put into
words. Volume upon volume of unimpeachable
and fully attested testimony proves their guilt.
The names of these witnesses would fill volumes.
Some of these I know. Their testimony I have
heard. From these sources I may present to you
a brief suggestion of what the Germans do when
they have the power. Consider that what they
have done where they have gained the power,
they will do everywhere when they shall gain it.

They have no love for us. Belgium had done
them no harm. France had done them no more ;
Serbia had not assailed them; Russian Poland
had shown no unfriendliness. Yet all these they
have ravaged with unrestrained ferocity. When
you dream that because you are Americans the
German hordes once here would treat you better

118 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

than they have treated Belgium, better than they
have treated France, you are labouring under a
delusion that has no possible justification in ex-
perience or reason.

What have they done with the people where
they gain control? Without hesitation or provo-
cation they have proceeded to massacre, unre-
strained, frightful, horrible. Whole cities and
villages they have wiped out. A German soldier,
riding a bicycle, falls; his rifle is discharged.
They accuse some of the inhabitants of having
shot at their soldier. They deliberately burn
every house, they ravish and kill the women and
girls, they murder, sometimes crucifying the
little children; they shoot the old men and the
old women, take hostages and slay them. They
burn the towns, the chateaux, the libraries,
churches, farmhouses, all the homes. This they
have done not once, but they have done it hun-
dreds of times to hundreds of towns in northern
France and in Belgium. They have carried out
massacre so bloody, carnage so inconceivably
horrible, with torture so fiendish, that the wildest
fury of the red Indian of North America is not
to be compared with the deliberate ferocity of
the German officers and soldiers.

Almost beyond this in cruelty, wickedness and
destructiveness is the deportation of citizens,

The Perils of a Premature Peace 119

dragged from their homes as slaves to wherever
the German powers order them to go. In an
official document of the American Red Cross, you
may read of the city of Mons, where six thousand
two hundred men and boys were dragged from
their homes at half past five in the November
morning ; the best citizens in Mons, the humblest
as well as the highest, all the great men of that
province, lawyers, statesmen, heads of trades, all
commanded to go to the railway station. There
were cattle cars with the filth of their lately
transported cattle in them. The men are forced
into these cars. One is taken and another is left.
A boy prays that he may go in the place of his
old father. He is kicked aside; the old father
is taken. The women and children come begging
to be allowed to give comforts to their men. Not
one of them is permitted to approach. The de-
ported though taken at that hour in the morning,
are none of them allowed to receive anything,
either food or clothing, or comforts of any sort.
They know not where they are going. They are
cruelly dragged away. The city from which
they were torn is left in anguish. It existed as a
funeral scene. Day and night were filled with
the woe of the women and the wailing of the
children.

Those thus deported go for days without

120 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

water, without food, in suffering untold, until
they are dumped somewhere in Germany, where
they are ordered to work for the Germans. The
witness, Mr. John H. Gade, of Mr. Hoover's
staff, went with them to the cars, pleaded for
them in vain. He saw them come back after
three weeks, broken, dying, dead. A more dia-
bolical form of slavery was never known. This
one story is so inconceivably cruel, that its de-
tails are too horrible for words.

And it is but one of hundreds and thousands
like it. Turn to Armenia and Syria, whose de-
portations were done on advice from the Ger-
mans to the Turks and Kurds, who simply fol-
lowed and repeated what Germans had planned,
ordered, begun and done in Belgium and in
northern France. Here were two millions of
people, the best people in the Turkish Empire,
many of them highly educated, many of them
graciously refined, their wives and daughters as
lovely as our own, many of the men equals of
our noblest men. See them deported, dragged
from home, driven to the desert, stripped naked,
ravished to death, poisoned, starved to death,
stabbed, thrown into the rivers to drown, or left
to perish with thirst on the sands of the desert.
This is a suggestion of what deportation is, the
infliction of agonies which beggar description.

The Perils of a Premature Peace 121

Two millions of the Armenians have perished
within the last three years under this system of
"Germanising the world." The like of this has
been practised in every land where Germany has
come as a conqueror. Missionaries, even German
missionaries charge it to Germany.

Consider the actual enslavement of popula-
tions, where peoples are compelled to toil not
only without compensation, but under the most
cruel conditions, for their military masters ; where
men are beaten with the butts of guns until the
guns are broken, because they decline to work
for these slave drivers; where they have been
hung up by their hands for thirty hours, to force
them to do a work that international law says
they shall never be asked to do.

Take note of the way in which the conquered
are robbed of all that they possess. Their fur-
niture is stolen, or if not stolen, is defiled and
defaced. Prince Eitel Frederick, one of the sons
of the Kaiser, after using an old French chateau
which was a wonder of architecture and had been
admired for centuries, stripped it of all its furni-
ture, to send away for his use, and at the last,
though he had promised to spare it, when leaving
it, ran back with bombs and combustibles, to see
to it that the chateau was burned, its lurid flame
revealing his eternal dishonour. Such deeds have

122 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

been done not merely once, but unnumbered
times.

The Huns in Belgium and France stole the
underclothing of the women and little children;
the mattresses from the beds, the bed blankets;
destroyed all farm implements, sent the machin-
ery in the Belgian and French factories to Ger-
many, and then blew up the factories. Such in
part is the conduct of Germans in regard to
persons, goods and property. All the cattle are
killed or driven off ; all the horses likewise. Thou-
sands of girls taken off by force; in numerous
towns, all girls over fifteen years of age, carried
off, nobody knew where; and of the thousands,
only a few hundred ever returned to the places
from which they were taken.

A distinguished representative of the Young
Men's Christian Association, just back from
France, said in my hearing a few days ago, that
in many of the towns in France, all girls over
fifteen years of age had been dragged away,
forced from home, as servants for German offi-
cers, driven to Germany to work in the fields,
seized as the prey and the spoil, not of brutish
men — there are no brutes like these men — but of
these fiends escaped from hell, who in their ac-
tions deny that a woman is a human being, en-
titled to reverence and protection.

The Perils of a Premature Peace 123

Nietzsche, the chief philosopher of Germany,
most influential now and for years, despising
women, says they have value only as playthings
for and as breeders of the "superman." He
writes "A man of depth can only think of women
as a piece of goods that can be put under lock
and key"; also that, "a man who went among
them, ought to go among them with a whip."
His "superman" is strong with no morals, being
superior to morality. Hear me as I tell you
that wherever any philosopher, or any person,
despises woman, rails at her, degrades her, abuses
her, that one is a devil, in whatever guise.

What cruelty have they not perpetrated? Im-
agine something horrible of which perverted men
are capable. Of such imagined wickedness, I can
think of nothing which they have not done.

For years we have kept the Belgians alive, with
the help of Great Britain and France, or rather
Britain and France kept them alive with our
help, for they gave much more than we did. We
sent supplies there by millions of dollars worth,
to keep them from hunger and cold. In not a
few instances, the Germans stole the food sent.
In some cases, they stole the goods and shipped
them away. In other instances, they used them.
And yet again, they adulterated the foods we
sent by putting with the grains, their stuff of

124 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

inferior quality, while they took the rest. All
Belgium would have been dead of starvation to-
day if it had not been for outside philanthropy,
not German. Germany would have starved them
and intended to do it. We have in proof the
statement of von Bissing himself, quoted as he
stated it to Mr. Frederick Walcott, associate of
Mr. Hoover. Von Bissing distinctly said that
their purpose was to reduce to starvation these
Belgians, and when they were reduced to starva-
tion, to send them to work in Germany, so as to
allow German working men to go to the front;
and also to carry others to Mesopotamia and
Eastern Asia to work for Germany.

We hear him talk about forcing men, women
and little children to starvation and showing not
a trace of human feeling. Never, so far as I
know, were such abominations wrought in the
history of time, as they have wrought in the lands
where they have gained the power.

Let me repeat what I have already said: Do
not imagine for one moment that you, your wife,
your daughter, would be any more sacred to
them than a Belgian or a Belgian's wife or a
Frenchman's family. Do not dream that your
babies would be any more exempt from the
cruelty of those Germans than other babies have
been. Do not suppose that your dearest, most

The Perils of a Premature Peace 125

beautiful and most precious ones would have any
defence in their being Americans more than those
others whose defences have all been broken down.

I have told you but little — and not the worst.
You cannot doubt or deny the testimony. Re-
member that just as soon as these plundering,
murdering Germans have evacuated those
French and Belgian villages, without delay gov-
ernment officials have gone there to take photo-
graphs, and other legal testimony, to get the
plain facts, to record them with affidavits, so as
to lay them up for the day of Judgment. And
the day of Judgment in the purpose of those
whose friends have suffered thus, is not merely
when the great God shall summon men before
His bar to answer for the deeds done in the body,
but when the triumphant allies, representing a
just God and an outraged humanity, shall set a
day of recompense, and shall judge and consign
to their just doom and penalty, those who are
proved by their crimes to be unfit to live in this
world or in any other.

Thus they are treating the conquered peoples.
As for the wealth of the conquered, they take it
all. Are you informed about the late German
retreat where they wilfully and maliciously de-
stroyed everything destructible? They poisoned
the springs, the wells, the brooks. They had

126 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

poison to give to the cattle, if any should survive.
This they planned would be communicated to
the people, so that cattle and people alike should
all perish through this malicious and savage
means. They have tried thus to ruin France,
Belgium, Serbia, Poland, Roumania, so that lan-
guage fails us to describe their plots and their
destructive cruelty.

How this tide of testimony rises, surge on
surge. It is a great, a stormy ocean of facts,
undeniable, incontrovertible, horrible, that are
known to God and known to men, facts which
tell you what the German means by conquest,
as he goes out to Germanise the world.

IV

Beyond all these evils which have been inflicted
and to which we are exposed, I now come to the
peril which covers and includes all the perils
which I have before named, multiplying and in-
tensifying them ; that is, The Peril of a Prema-
ture Peace. By a premature peace, I mean a
German peace, a peace without an allied victory.
I mean a drawn battle, a peace without justice,
or without the overthrow of the military power
of Germany, without the destruction of their

The Perils of a Premature Peace 127

claims and pretensions, and on making which
peace, the world would hope to settle back for a
while into what is fondly and foolishly called
peace.

The Germans began this war ; about that there
never will be any contention or successful contra-
diction. When they began it, England had an
army of two hundred and fifty thousand men.
Germany had an army of ten million men. Eng-
land's army was unready. Germany's army was
all ready to the last button. This being so, can
anybody suppose that Great Britain was pre-
pared ? In the last two and one-half years, Great
Britain has raised, almost entirely by volunteer-
ing, over four millions of men, with all their
equipment, and with heroic Belgium and France
has held Germany's millions in check. And this
is a bare fraction of what Britain has done.

Germany was ready. On the fifth day of July,
in 1914, at Potsdam we have learned that a meet-
ing was held, in which an agreement was made
with the General Staff — and Austria knew of it
— that the war should begin at the end of that
month. War was declared, on the 31st of July.
The central powers have pretended they were
surprised. If you want to vision the magnitude
of falsehood, growing out of their theory that
truth has no binding force, read the German

128 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

documents which tell their story of Germany's
action in the last few years, and especially since
this war began. They were ready, they were
precipitately ready, and when the moment came,
they went into the conflict fully prepared.

They said they did not wish to take Belgium
and that it was wrong to violate its neutrality:
but they are on record as having also said they
would take it and hold it always, and that is what
they are going to do if they possibly can.

But now, as it is true that they began the war,
from them only has come the cry for peace. You
may notice, that all the movements for peace
have come either from the Germans or from their
bloodless tools , the pacifists ; or from their
treacherous servants, the Socialists, in Europe
and America. This cry of theirs for peace has
6een always an utterly false and deceitful cry.
They have said peace when they meant war and
conquest.

Whether peril be here or there, whether it be
the Germans, by one means or another, this is
the main fact: All the peace propaganda have
started from Germany. Why is this so? Have
they said: "We seek peace because we are
beaten?" No! They have proudly boasted
whether advancing or retreating, "We are vic-
torious, victorious everywhere."

The Perils of a Premature Peace 129

Then we ask: "Are they remorseful for what
they have done?" Not in the least. They glory
in their deeds. Their soldiers, exulting, write
home even to their wives and sweethearts, about
the girls they have ruined, of the villages they
have burned, of the slaughter they have done.
Each soldier carries a little iron medal on one
side of which is a picture, supposed to represent
the German deity, who holds a weapon in his
right hand, and these words addressed to the
soldier: "Strike your enemy dead. The day of
Judgment will not ask you for your reasons."
These savages are not remorseful. Not for such
cause do they seek peace.

Are they exhausted? No, they are not ex-
hausted. Gerard says they are full of strength
and a very great peril to us to-day. Then, why
are they suggesting peace? Let me tell you:
So as to more perfectly execute their scheme of
conquest. They have about three hundred mil-
lion people — a conservative estimate — under
their control at the present time — 77 millions
Germans and 223 millions non-Germans. They
hold all of Belgium and all of northern France;
they practically have Austria-Hungary and all of
Poland; they have Bulgaria, Roumania, Serbia;
they have Turkey and much of western Russia,
so if they could now stop a little while, having

130 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

increased from sixty-eight millions in Germany
when this war began, to about three hundred
millions now, they would have opportunity to
greatly consolidate their strength.

It has been suggested that they might, for the
sake of peace, give up Belgium. Officially, they
never have intimated it. Other people may sup-
pose it, but they have never implied it. They
might restore northern France. They might pay
an indemnity for what they have destroyed.
They have never given evidence of any such in-
tention. They might temporarily give up some
territory, provided they were allowed now to
have peace. But, however they gain their ends,
this is what they plan and what they purpose:
They intend, if they can deceive the allies into
making peace, to take a few years of rest and
reorganisation, when they will be able to put
into the field an army of thirty millions of men,
gathered from those whom they have subjugated
and whom they can compel to go into the ranks ;
and with that army and with their navy, con-
tinually increased; with all the appliances of
modern warfare, after a brief period of prepara-
tion, they purpose to finish just what they
started to do: to Germanise the world. If we
are beguiled now into a drawn battle, if we
make a false peace with them, we are defeated;

The Perils of a Premature Peace 131

liberty is crushed and the whole world is
doomed.

Do not for one instant suppose that it is any
goodwill toward you, or any goodwill toward
the world, or any thought that peace is more
desirable than war, which is working in the Ger-
man mind ait the present time. Far from it.
They are working for dominion; they are bat-
tling for triumph ; they are struggling to possess
the wealth of the world; they are plunderers,
just as were the old Huns, Vandals and Goths.
They want to grasp the wealth of the world.
They have taken it as far as they could get it.
How they get it they do not care. They are
ready to drench the whole world with blood to
make this Kaiser — who says he is Godsent, who
talks about God as though he owned Him —
to make this ruler the autocrat of the whole
world.

So all the perils hitherto mentioned lie visi-
ble and measureless in the direction of a prema-
ture peace. There is only one alternative now
for the allies, slavery or victory, and the ques-
tion is — which do we claim, and which will we
take?

v

Not yet have I named all the treasures that

132 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

we are likely to lose, if Germany is allowed to
win. Let me briefly name a few of them. Cer-
tain things are exceedingly precious to us, which
we, as Americans, have grown to feel are essen-
tial, which our fathers fought to procure, and
which we must fight to preserve. These are the
very things which we are sure to lose provided
Germany has her will and her way. The first of
these, for which we ought to contend with a vigour
born of highest principle and the noblest heroism,
chief among priceless things is liberty; liberty
as contrasted with slavery. It needs little defini-
tion. While the slave belongs to a master, the
freeman belongs to himself. While the slave
does not own his family, the freeman and his
family possess each other. While the slave can-
not claim property, the freeman possesses his
earnings. The slave is ruled by his master's
caprice: the freeman by the laws which he sanc-
tions and reveres.

Whatever there is in liberty, which has called
forth the fervour of the heart in all ages of up-
ward advance in human history, that we are in
danger of losing. Have I not already proved
this? What else are Belgians than slaves when
they are dragged from their homes and forced to
work for a master who is driving them to a task
which they hate? What shall we say of the en-

The Perils of a Premature Peace 133

slaving of men when they can be taken as they
were taken at Mons, at Dinant, and many an-
other city; shipped to another country and forced
to work for a foreign master, under the most
cruel conditions? What say we of those who
in prison camps — two millions of them, as Gerard
says — were compelled to work for Germany or
starve? forced to work for Germany and against
their own people? What shall we expect of the
possibilities of liberty, of the right of a man to
himself, when Germany rules? There will be no
liberty. It will all be slavery. How long could
we exist in such conditions? And would not
multiplied cruelties break our hearts and crush
our manhood?

Sometimes the effort has been made to lead
Belgians and Frenchmen to go voluntarily to
work in Germany. I heard the Attorney-Gen-
eral of Belgium tell this story of the unbroken
spirit of his fellow-countrymen: A company of
captive Belgian men were gathered and a Ger-
man officer urging them to go to Germany to
work for their captors, said to them :

"If you go to Germany and work for us, you
will get money, so that you can keep your
families from starving and yourselves also. If
you refuse to go, you will starve without pity
and your families also will starve."

134 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

Imagine this alternative put up to us now.
How would we meet it? The Belgians stood
there, ragged, tattered and hungry, their families
behind them. Not a man of the company moved
to accept the German offer. At length one man
stepped out from the ranks and said: "I will go!"
The German officer was pleased. He thought
that his threats had prevailed, and he said: "You
will go, my man?" The Belgian assented.

"Now, men," said the officer, "look here. Here
is one of your number who is willing to go, and
you had better do as he does."

Then insinuatingly, he asked the Belgian
volunteer: "What is your business?"

The man answered: "I am a gravedigger, and
I shall be glad to serve Germany in that ca-
pacity."

So with starvation facing them, despising their
persecutors, the Belgians preferred liberty to
slavery ; they would rather die freemen than live
slaves.

Every true American, the humblest and the
highest, thanks God every day for freedom, and
prefers war to slavery. Shall Germany then
make slaves of us by a premature peade?

Remember another precious thing that we
should lose by German victory. We should lose
honour. And by losing honour I mean we would

The Perils of a Premature Peace 135

accept dishonour. Germany has no sense of
honour. You know what honour is, a man's
honour, a woman's honour. How delicate and
noble a thing it is, and how precious. If you give
your word, you keep it not merely because you
know you would be a liar if you broke it, but
because your honour prevents you from denying
what you have agreed to. Honour is such a
treasure in character and action, that we pre-
serve it at all costs, so that I may say of many
of you that you would give up life sooner than
surrender honour.

How then could you obey the mandates of
Germany to betray your country? The Belgian
has sworn loyalty to Belgium, the Frenchman to
France. Its constitution is his constitution. It
is his country. His life is devoted to it. Ger-
many arrests him and commands: "Go and work
in our machine shops, at our lathes, in our fac-
tories, in our fields, to produce material for us
to use in destroying your country."

He answers: "I cannot."

They insist: "You must."

He replies: "I have given my oath of alle-
giance to my own country, and if I work for you
to destroy it, I am a traitor to my country."

They compel him with torture. The Interna-
tional Congress at the Hague agreed that under

136 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

no circumstances should nations at war under-
take to compel peoples or prisoners to work
against the interests of their own country. No
man can keep honour and betray his own people.
But Germany is attempting to force patriots into
disloyal relations to their own country.

They are doing there only what they would
do here. You might be ordered to work for them
against our own people. You might be con-
strained by them to make the American flag a
dishonoured symbol of slavery. Would you do
it? Victorious they would try to make us do it,
and they would put all their power behind their
effort. I hope it never will come to this test
here as it has come in France and Belgium. Yet
it surely will if we consent to a false, a prema-
ture peace.

I might speak of humanity, that gentle and
gracious spirit and action which prevails among
people when inhumanity would be a sin and a
crime. You all know and feel the difference be-
tween humanity and inhumanity, between kind-
ness and cruelty, between mercy and savagery.
Toward all the weak and needy, to the aged, to
women and little children, humanity demands
care, gentleness, reverence, protection, assistance.
These gracious feelings and duties Germany
reviles and despises. What will you say of those

The Perils of a Premature Peace 137

who slaughter little children, ravish young
women, murder the aged, abuse the prisoners?
Merciless murder, insane lust, unrestrained
savagery, fiendish cruelty are common and have
been constant at the hands of German officers
and soldiery ever since the war began. The
testimony is voluminous, incontrovertible and
from unnumbered reliable sources.

A young Armenian in my hearing told us
how the Turks took men and women of the high-
est character and culture (his own parents
among them) from the city and under German
influence, tortured and crucified them with devil-
ish inhumanity; of 549 men, he alone was left;
of 2000 women all but 200 had been put to death
or lost to their friends by cruelties so infamous
that hearing of them is almost more than we can
endure.

Shall we be deprived of the privilege of being
kind ? Shall we be denied the power of defending
women and little children? Shall the aged have
no reverence? Shall the helpless have no care?
That is what Germany would crush us down to
when they had reduced us to their control. Do
you consent to pay this price for a premature
peace?

The same is true of morality. Numberless
scenes and events support my statement. They

138 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

despise morals, possess none, and seek to destroy
them in others.

As to mercy an American writer tells us that
he went to Berne and saw there a large number
of allied officers who had been prisoners and
who had been sent over from Germany into
Switzerland on account of their ill health. He
said those officers told him that when captured,
they were put into cattle cars and sent to the
prison camps. On the way they were thirty-six
hours without water and as long a time without
food. When they stopped at stations, they saw
women on the platforms with water in pails and
in cups. When they besought them, and offered
to pay them for a drink of water, the women
would sometimes come forward with a cup full,
reach it toward the parched and famishing man
and then spill it on the ground and sneer and
laugh at these thirsty and dying sufferers. Even
the women of Germany have lost their humanity,
and their moral sense, when they do thus.

Mercy has gone from the German. Pity he
does not know, and he would just as soon practise
unmercif ulness and inhumanity on you as on any-
body. How strange it seems to read their own
words in testimony of the exultation, of the
orgies at night of these assassins. After the
burning of a village, the slaughter of men, the

The Perils of a Premature Peace 139

rape of women, the destruction of little children,
how horrible it is to find the men rejoicing,
carousing, singing, because of the wonderful
things they had wrought that day! And such
orgies you will behold here if you see the Ger-
mans reinforced by a premature peace.

Perhaps I have revealed as much as you will
remember, yet not enough to half unveil what is
in my mind of the perils of this hour. What
shall we do now in the face of this supreme
danger? Shall we be awake to it? Or shall we
be indifferent? Shall we be reluctant to take
alarm? Shall we crave a peace so deadly? Shall
we in blind folly aid the enemy? Is there any
wisdom in our being overreached, sceptical,
cowardly? I could detail to you, how over fifty
great outrages have already been committed in
our country by German spies within the last
year, on munition plants, on great docks and
warehouses, on elevators, and in numerous other
ways, costing hundreds of millions of dollars and
many hundreds of lives, for which not one of
those responsible has been punished by anything
greater than a short term of imprisonment. Shall
we awaken to the fact, that with America it is
life or death? We counsel not inhumanity like
theirs, not revenge, not hate, not assassination,
but that we arise for national defence. We are

140 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

choosing liberty or death, now as did our sires
in Revolutionary days, and a premature peace is
the lull before the hurricane of destruction.

My appeal is to you, Americans and patriots.
My appeal is to your manhood, 'however de-
scribed; to your nobility, however arrived at, to
your will, your intelligence, your devotion, how-
ever it may be measured ; that you will be among
those who will stand forever against this attempt
of Germany, by a ruse, to betray and conquer
the world.

Until they abandon their avowed purpose of
world conquest, and cease to menace the peoples
and governments of the earth, until they retire
from the territory whereon as armed banditti,
they have encamped, until they restore the plun-
der they have stolen, and rehabilitate the coun-
tries which they have devastated, until they make
atonement for their awful crimes and consent to
obey the laws of honour, humanity, and morality,
let us steadily and mightily resent and resist any
concession which brings in a truce — a false and
premature peace — sure to be used by them to
initiate a still more dangerous and terrible war,
with consequences more direful, and disasters
irreparable. Now and forever let our battle cry
be, "Righteousness first, then Peace."

VI

The Wisdom of Men
that Was Foolishness with God

"T TAS not God made foolish the wisdom of
A A this world?" Concerning what? At
least, concerning war and peace. The wisdom
of this world is the confidence men have who
trust in themselves and do not seek wisdom from
God. Such assumed wisdom in the light of God's
wisdom, turns out to be foolishness.

Never was this demonstrated more clearly than
in the liberal assurances made by so-called wise
men, widely given and largely credited, that the
world's peace would continue undisturbed, when
in truth at that very hour all nations were trem-
bling on the verge of war. We are not intending
to inquire into the inexplicable blindness of
diplomats, foreign offices, statesmen and rulers.
They were caught almost utterly unready when
war burst forth. Actually, all the facts were in
sight, but the wisdom to draw correct inferences
and conclusions they did not possess.

They took little heed of Germany's threats,
plans, and preparations, announced and carried

141

142 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

on through decades. They forecast little or noth-
ing which was true but much that was erroneous
to the verge of disaster. Was it not because their
theories and reasonings were weak even to the
limit of folly, while they regarded themselves
wise?

God does not make foolish any human course
which is not so. He does not find pleasure in
thwarting and humbling men. But because they
will not receive the instruction which He places
plainly before them, He corrects them at the time
when their plans end in defeat and their pride in
overthrow.

I wish to deal with some elaborate human
schemes promising to do away with war, which
have been shown by patent facts to be totally
inadequate and disappointing.

We have discussed quite at length the causes
of the war and have adverted to conditions neces-
sary to ending it wisely and victoriously. Illu-
sions as to how to prevent and how to end wars
exist widely and generally which need to be re-
viewed. These held for many years hitherto as
barriers against the strife of peoples and nations
have been found futile. The danger is that we
will continue to hold them and put our hopes
in them. If we do, what can follow but a repeti-
tion of our disappointments? If we examine and

The Wisdom of Men 143

disprove them, we may avoid the mistaken confi-
dence which we have formerly placed in them
and at least will not be so foolish as to trust them
now to stop a war which they could not prevent.

Multitudes held four years ago that the preva-
lence of peace sentiment had made war unlikely
if not impossible. For I know not how many
years we had been told "there will never be an-
other great war. A world war is impossible."
And when we asked a reason for this belief we
were assured that peace sentiment universally
diffused would prevent it.

They who held this view wrote about it ex-
tensively. A great literature of peace grew up
and advocates of peace were multiplied. Rich
prizes were awarded to those who wrote well in
favor of it. Some books and persons became
almost world famous for such advocacy. Speak-
ers no less eloquent and confident than these
writers convinced themselves and others that war
was a thing of the past. True, wars were tran-
spiring, but they did not discourage these oracles.
The horrors of war were portrayed. They were
pictured and described with realistic precision.
Commissions were reporting the Balkan War,
whose dead were scarcely yet buried, in 1914, and

144 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

that the dreadf ulness of war as they had seen and
now described it, gave grounds of confidence that
such another would not be repeated. It was too
dreadful. Humanity would revolt from it.
Meanwhile yet others financially endowed peace
propaganda on the basis of such sentiment. By
these funds peace palaces were built, notably at
the Hague, and numerous congresses were held,
gathering representatives from many nations. In
these congresses convinced specialists who had
given much time and thought to the subject,
fairly legislated wars off the earth, so far as
sentiment could do it. They sent distinguished
scholars, publicists, educators, divines, round the
world presenting their convictions. And the
sentiments of these and their words became the
growing literature of the peace propagandists.
Of course, most of these gracious advocates could
give unnumbered arguments against arms and
armies, navies and forts and all that savoured of
expenditure for even defensive war. The matter
grew; the sentimentalists, if not the sentiment,
increased. Their congresses were in session and
were being further summoned in July, 1914.
The ships and trains had landed many delegates
and others were on the way. The deliverances
were prepared ; the members were ready to report
that further war was improbable.

The Wisdom of Men 145

All this: When suddenly, unforeseen, unex-
pectedly, Germany and Austria-Hungary, for
trivial cause, of set purpose, in accordance with
fullest readiness and preparation, declared and
immediately began war, really upon all the world.
They had said that they would do it. They had
plotted the course of conquest. They had sneered
at peace, and were ready for frightfulness. Un-
seen, unexpected, because unstudied and ignored,
the forces in leash were loosed and the carnival
of frightfulness began. The sentimentalists were
not only surprised but astounded. They were
no less utterly chagrined. They had supposed
that they were very influential. They found that
they had no appreciable influence on the situa-
tion. As specialists they seemed to feel that they
should have been consulted. No one asked their
opinion. No one waited for their verdict. They
were no more influential than chaff before the
whirlwind. Their house of cards had utterly
collapsed. We speak not in contempt but in sad
respect of these. What had they done except
to lull to sleep the assailed nations who now
sharing the pacifists' hopes, were wholly unready
to defend themselves from world robbers and
pirates? Many of these, honest and good and
amazed, caught up arms with their fellow pa-
triots and sprang into the breach. Others had

146 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

got under such headway with their too narrow
views that they kept right on prating of peace
when there was no peace. And they are at it
yet. We neither ridicule nor condemn the peace
sentimentalists whose attitude we have outlined,
whose prophecies are exploded. We only say
that peace sentiment such as theirs was not ap-
preciably influential in even retarding war, did
much harm, if some good, and must have rested
on a shallow foundation.

Let us add that no greater mistake could be
made than to revive it in the same form or to rely
upon it in the least to now stop the war which it
had no visible influence to prevent. This mis-
take we greatly fear. Let the lesson of its mis-
application and the mischief it has done warn its
honest advocates that it is as useless to end as it
was powerless to prevent the war. Sentiment
has its place. Like ornament on a work of archi-
tecture, it may be durable, beautiful and so use-
ful, if the structure which it decorates is firm,
solid and built on a much more permanent basis.

ii
Education was affirmed to be a sure barrier
to war. Perhaps it was the chief line of defence
appealed to by those who were convinced that
wars were practically a thing of the past.

The Wisdom of Men 147

Education in schools, by books and modern
appliances was the peace hope, the prosperity
guarantee of the modern world.

True, we knew that education, carried to a
high degree, had prevailed in ancient nations and
among mediaeval peoples, and that this had not
assured peace or prevented war. But our claims
were to a far superior education. Ours was
modern; ours was scientific. The ancient learn-
ing was inutile compared with ours. What that
of theirs could but feebly influence, ours, all
powerful, would control. The philosophy on
which we set our hopes was this: Education im-
parts information; information and knowledge
furnish the basis of inference and wide reason-
ing. Reasoning, in scientific education, becomes
prominent, ascendent. Wars and fightings come
from passion. Education subjugates and con-
trols passion. Passions rule where ignorance
prevails; reason comes with knowledge. So war
as always the offspring of the ruder and ungov-
erned life of men is shut out. No nation is gov-
erned by passion now. The spirit, if there is one,
is totally mastered by the intellect. We need
little to be said of spiritual education but all
scientific data are the food of the intellect making
for steadiness, calmness, self-interest and self-
control. And further, to build high this great

148 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

hope of the modern world, this great defensive
against war and blind rage and passion, the
state and the people poured out unmeasured
wealth upon schools of all grades. No expense
was considered too great for institutions of learn-
ing. Christianity was practically relegated to
an inferior place as a world hope. Is proof
asked? Here it is: Most great gifts were for
education only, not for propagating Christianity.
Men of wealth dedicated their riches to schools,
to educational foundations. They did this under
the advice of leading publicists and their own
compliant faith that school education was the
greatest good for mankind. See the vast founda-
tions devoted to education nearly all definitely
and avowedly secular; pensions specifically with-
held from Christian teachers, in Christian schools,
however devoted and learned ; very meagre gifts
to church work and few large gifts to the Chris-
tian missions which are the safest and surest
agency of international welfare the world ever
saw. And buttressing our faith in schools, we
were making them not mostly cultural but voca-
tional; not servants of the spiritual life but of
skill in handling physical facts and bringing to
the educated salaries and profits. Education was
accepted without question by most, as the
guardian of the well being of the modern world ;

The Wisdom of Men 149

guarantor of comity and amity among men and
races.

Suddenly, in absolute contradiction to our
faith in education as a peace force wiping out
war probabilities — Germany, the best schooled,
and most advanced in education, modern and
scientific, of all the nations of the earth, in a
worked up frenzy of greed and a passion for
slaughter directly caused by its education, flung
to the winds all promises of peace, including
morals and humanity, and sprung like a mad dog
at the throat of the world. Germany had given
model schools to the world, cultural and voca-
tional. It had given us great educators and
advanced methods from kindergartens to post-
graduate universities. We, the nations, had ad-
mired its methods and followed its lead. Our
American education had been not a little Ger-
manised. We had conceded German leadership
in education. Here was its fruitage — horrible,
ungovernable, merciless, inhuman war. The
German scholars, best product of its education,
hastened to declare their absolute committal to
its war purposes and policy. They signed false
documents en masse to further their plan of plun-
der and slaughter.

There was not a phase of their educational
scheme which was not put to the uses of despica-

150 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

ble cruelty and fiendish passion. All knowledge
of physics, chemistry, engineering, was given to
the service of slaughter. Their unlikeness to
savages consisted only in their more deadly
savagery. Their psychology was placed at the
service of casuistry and they lied scientifically, if
foolishly. They killed humanity and were piti-
less as rattlesnakes — as devils.

Such was the surprise which educated Ger-
many gave to the world. Her nearly three hun-
dred thousand teachers, all official slaves of Prus-
sianism, had trained the children from four years
old up to maturity to do the will of the state and
no other: to worship might as right and to re-
gard as enemies to be exterminated or enslaved,
all who resisted their demands. Say, if you
will, "Theirs was miseducation." Evidently.
And we on German models bent, are also misedu-
cating in so far as we follow them.

The principle at the basis of their education
was utter state selfishness, expressed at the top
in a1 monarch crazed by pride ; at the bottom in
the ravishers of Belgium, France, Serbia and
Armenia.

Education of such sort is discredited. Science,
knowledge, reasoning, thus appear in no case to
subdue passion or to prevent war. Contrariwise,
all the forces of German education have inten-

The Wisdom of Men \51

tionally, deliberately and successfully ministered
to exactly the diabolical purposes which have
given us the past four years of German wicked-
ness and world suffering.

As education, such as we have copied, mani-
festly does not operate to prevent war, so educa-
tion will not end it. If we continue to follow
the German model, wars will never end but
rather will increase. What better course to take
I do not discuss here. It is obvious that Ger-
many's education is wholly condemned and ours
too, if like it. Put your faith in something dif-
ferent and your money and endowments too.
Why not in Christ and Christianity ?

in

Evolution, put above God, was to prevent war.
I use evolution not as the name of the method
and sequences of God's creation, but in that pre-
vailing sense which considers evolution creative
and leaves God out ; which speaks not of original
mind, or plan or planner, or purpose or goal for
man and nature, but of things only, and the
evolution of things; of matter and force, both
non-intelligent, and what they do.

The popular putting of the thought that evolu-

152 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

tion was against recurring war is that mankind
progresses so and is so evolved that he had come
— up to 1914 — to an advanced state which made
war unlikely, improbable, possibly impossible.
The advancement of mankind assured by evolu-
tion foretells the end of war. We were supposed
to be too far evolved to fight in the old way.
So influential is evolution as a theory of the
world and its progress that it is largely claimed
to be the supreme point of view for the study of
men and nature. When we passed the calendar
date 1900, some periodicals gathered the opinions
of able and representative men as to what was
the greatest event that had marked the nineteenth
century then ended. I well recall that in these
symposiums among these men were several very
prominent Christian preachers who asserted that
in their judgment, Darwin's "Origin of Species"
and promulgation of the doctrine of evolution,
often popularly spoken of as Darwinism, was
the most conspicuous and noteworthy event of
the preceding hundred years. These did not even
mention the unequalled movement of Christian
foreign missions, too great to be characterised
or applauded except in volumes of fact, or the
Christian education movement of the Sunday
schools of the period. Evolution, as Darwin ex-
pressed it, was to them the foremost word of

The Wisdom of Men 153

progress. Our reference to this evolution
now is not to discuss it but only to take the
point of view which it assumed and implied as
to war.

Affirming that we were long ago mere ani-
mals, savages later, and cave-men in a higher
state, the changes were rung on our evolution
from these "jungle" states to our present high
civilisation and the actions and the passions we
had outgrown and left behind. The animals
which we were, had been very savage, warlike,
full of bloody, beastly, fighting instinct. These
we had left far behind. What propensity we had
left in us to do as they once did was only the
remnant of animalism, a sort of appendix (war
being its irritation, may I say appendicitis), and
we were far along in outgrowing that.

Germany led the world in accepting this gen-
eral doctrine of atheistic evolution. They be-
lieved much in materialism, equally in evolution.
And studying the matter according to their sup-
posed evolution, they concluded that they were
the most evolved, the men farthest removed from
the animalism of animal ancestors, the foremost
race, people and nation of the earth. As I have
elsewhere stated, they proved to themselves in
the evolutionary "struggle for life" that they had
made the best struggle and as to "the survival

154 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

of the fittest" they were the fittest and neces-
sarily the fittest to rule. If they chose to think
so, who could gainsay their claim? Their thought
was evolution. They were logical. They com-
pared themselves with others and despised them.
How could they do this unless really superior?
No other people who believed in evolution as the
Germans did, could deny their claim to superi-
ority in many lines. But they themselves must
determine what their superior evolution de-
manded of them as their irresistible urge and act.
What should it be? They gave their answer in
1914 and till now.

And what have they proved to the intelligent
and observing world in these four years? That
they are barbarous beyond all barbarians, savage
beyond all savages, brutal beyond all brutes.
And in doing thus they have disproved the ani-
mal origin of their passions and I think I may
add the whole theory of the evolutionary origin
of man.

Language fails to characterise the deeds of
these who claim the highest evolution. No words
drawn from the fierceness of the animal creation
can describe them fitly. Neither brutality,
bestiality, animalism, ferocity tell the whole truth
about their spirit and deeds in their methods of
carrying on war upon the innocent and defence-

The Wisdom of Men 155

less. No animal of any species ever abused the
females of their species as the Germans have
abused women and girls. No species of animals
ever took pleasure in murdering the young of
their species as the Germans have murdered
infant children. No beasts ever destroyed with
the destructive spirit which has marked German
murderousness. The terms which describe their
acts and dispositions do not arise from any ani-
mal characteristics of lower creatures. You can
only feebly portray them in terms of spiritual
description, brought down to the vilest mani-
festation of life. Call them fiends, devils, mon-
sters of cruelty, demons, and even these terms
need intensifying to meet the facts. Since they
affirm themselves to be the best product of evolu-
tion in the present century, yet are visibly worse
than the Assyrians of millenniums ago, what
promise is there in the evolutionary progress of
man which suggests a condition precluding war
as a result of evolution?

Evolutionary theories of peace made and kept
by men who define it as Germans do, give no
hope to the world. Proud atheistic philosophy
could not prevent, and will never end war. Such
progress is backwards, downwards; no progres-
sion but retrogression ; not evolution but devolu-
tion.

156 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

IV

The economic laws associated with the acquir-
ing and distribution of wealth have been alleged
as powerful preventives of war.

The acquisition of wealth in all the forms which
are destructible is not a rapid and an easy but
a slow and difficult task. The wealth of modern
times has been won by the work of millions
through long and patient effort. More people
than ever have had a voluntary part in gaining it
and more, therefore, have a strong personal in-
terest in protecting it from waste and destruc-
tion.

In the case of the treasures of the past, as in
art and architecture, these become more valuable
with passing ages. They cannot be replaced.
Prized by their custodians in modern society we
assume that men would be very reluctant to do
anything which would jeopardise them or lead to
their destruction. This would tend to opposition
to war on the part of mankind. Besides, as
wealth is more widely distributed, as more mil-
lions of people hold title to and possess property
of their own obtained by labor, saved by thrift
and guarded by prudence, so these owners would
have a corresponding interest in protecting and
preserving what they so prize and what has cost

The Wisdom of Men 157

them so much. These all, therefore, dreading the
destruction of their property and goods, will be
opposed to war.

As our times have seen a great increase of toil-
ers and owners, as intelligence has added to their
just estimate of values, a much greater bulk of
population would now oppose war as a destroyer
of wealth. This would seem to be a reasonable
hope and a sound economic barrier to wars. Per-
manency of residence, ownership, value, knowl-
edge, taste, comfort, all would be on the side of
peace if war were proposed. Besides, the pros-
perity of a people which had greatly increased its
material wealth would make them less likely to
regard plunder as necessary to their satisfactions.
Civilised and enriched they would have no covet-
ous desires to fight for the possession of their
neighbours' wealth.

The principle may be good but it must be
too weak to rely upon, as instanced by the
aggressions of Germany. For this people
have had centuries of rather remarkable in-
dustrial and material prosperity. Under autoc-
racy they have prospered materially as have
democracies.

Yet we behold them making war, despite their
riches, for the direct purpose of looting and
spoiling other states. They treat war from the

158 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

economic standpoint as good business. Prussia
has always been a robber state. By theft it has
gained most of its territory. The goods of others
as spoils of war come easier than by purchase or
labour. So their possessions obtained by war in-
cite to more war.

What though from the property side, it was
often said that the bankers of Europe, guardians
of its wealth, would not allow or finance war.
This was an idle dream. And as for property of
any kind dissuading its holders from war, the
history of the last four years shows that all pos-
sessions are at the mercy of the lowest passions
of a nation which resolves to gain by robbing
other states. kThe assailant stakes his all. The
defender draws on his all to protect what he may.
And the householder assailing proves as fierce as
the mercenary soldier who owns nothing but his
arms. Wealth, luxury, comfort, however gained,
held, distributed, are not masters of the passions
of men or the policies of nations. Germany held
up and robbed France in 1870 of a billion dollars
and invaluable provinces, put this in its war
chest and resources and planned in 1914 that
within six weeks, it would extort at the gates of
Paris ten billions more. It is the robber that
makes war. And the owner of property must
either fight defensively to keep his own or the

The Wisdom of Men 159

robber states would plunder and hold all the
treasures of mankind.

Once more, we had worked out the theory that
commerce would prevent war.

To briefly state the theory it was this: Com-
merce and trade by sea and land come through
acquaintance and mingling of peoples. Of old
the stranger was the enemy, the same word desig-
nated both. But the pacific purpose of bringing
into a community what a people would like to
buy and taking out what they would wish to sell,
tended at once to a good understanding and to
mutual profit.

Moreover, if I trade with you and you have
advantage from it, and you with me and I get
advantage, we both are pleased with one another
and goodwill springs up. Lands and states are
visited by commercial agents. Conveniences for
travel and transportation of goods are multi-
plied. Modes of quick and easy communication
are established. Good feeling is fostered. So
manufactures, exports, exchanges, railways,
ships, ports, all the unnumbered agencies of com-
merce by land and sea are mingling people to-
gether for mutual advantage, assuring mutual

160 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

respect and barring out all the waste and dis-
advantages of war.

It was said in 1913 and prior thereto, that the
closing of the channels of trade was impossible,
unthinkable. They had become necessary for the
very existence of nations.

This was a mistake in reckoning. And also
commerce instead of being the protection of
peace was made by Germany the pretext for war.
In their greed and vainglory they did not tolerate
the prosperity of others. In their vanity they
assumed that they should be first whether they
could honestly win precedence or not. Their lack
of monopoly of trade and ports they declared
contrary to the freedom of the seas. They had
all the privileges that others had. They de-
manded the foremost place. Their trade had
greatly increased, but they were impatient be-
cause it had not driven other states from the
markets of the world. And now to secure what
they regard as their right to commercial supre-
macy, they have turned pirates and assassins on
the seas, and robbers and murderers on the land.
While allowed access everywhere, they have gone
to every place with treacherous purpose to rob,
despoil, to wreck and to enslave all lands and
peoples.

Has not this crisis proved plainly that com-

The Wisdom of Men 161

merce is not a guarantor of peace, unless all
parties to it are ready to be fair, honest and kind,
willing participants in each other's prosperity?
It makes all possible difference in what spirit
commerce is carried on, whether it tends to
friendship or to enmity, to peace or war.

The prevention of wars and the prevalence of
peace are found in the practise of two principles
of statesmanship, namely:

"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
And, "AH things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so unto them."

These are the righteousness which must always
precede peace. In presence of this our philosophy
has been proven foolishness.

VII

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation*

ON a former occasion when I was privileged
to be your guest, I was expected to address
you on "The Aims of Democracy." Circum-
stances of great moment substituted another
speaker who delivered a speech of national and
international significance. For those circum-
stances I am grateful not only because of the re-
sults of that rearrangement, but because, by a
change of subject, I am now excused from trying
to state the Aims of Democracy. For truth to
tell, I am not quite assured what those aims are.
And if I may confess the fact, I do not feel at
all sure that I can tell what democracy is. Lest
you may judge me markedly incompetent on
this account, may I say that I do not know to
whom I could go to get a definition of that de-
mocracy of which we talk so largely and so freely.
I would not declare that there is not such a defini-
tion, widely and generally agreed to, but I do not
know what it is or where to go to get it.

We are told that "Governments derive their

*To the New York Republican Club.

162

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 163

just powers from the consent of the governed."
This noble phrase from the immortal Declaration
of Independence, is sometimes said to contain the
adequate definition of a democracy. But this
quotation requires explanation. If it means that
all governments derive their just powers from
the active consent of those governed, we must
urge that this is plainly untrue, since the women
living under such governments and constituting
fully one half of their responsible inhabitants,
have rarely or never been asked to consent to any
form of government. This fact alone invalidates
the quotation as a definition.

If the statement means that all who live under
a government must give active or passive consent,
it then appears that no government exists
wherein there is not a considerable minority
which lives in a constant state of protest against
it ; and these are not all law breakers necessarily,
but oftentimes are the most progressive of its
people. The truth is that governments derive
their just powers not primarily from the consent
of men but from the universal and benevolent
laws of God, laws not primarily made or
amended, neither created nor repealed by any
human legislative body. Nor can they ever be.
They are the established code of an eternal
order.

164 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

A few days ago the Premier of Great Britain,
Mr. Lloyd George, in a very impressive speech to
an industrial Convention, defining democracy,
used these words: "Democracy, in plain terms, is
the rule of the Majority." But from time to time
in our own country, which we claim to be rep-
resentatively democratic, the Administration,
under our system of voting, has been elected by
a minority of the voters voting, and a more
marked minority of all the legal voters. And in
such a case if the administration is partisan, the
will of the majority is subordinated to that of the
minority. If it is said that the maj ority passively
consent, it would not help matters to say that in a
government ruled by a minority to whose rule the
majority consents, the result is a democracy. It
might be an oligarchy.

Once again, we note that a few days ago, the
Japanese who have really an autocratic govern-
ment, hearing so much said by us and others
about our purpose to foster democracy, took
alarm and inquired whether they were to under-
stand that we purposed to make of their govern-
ment a democracy — a natural and very embar-
rassing question. To this the minister of the
United States in their country, replied that —
"The allies were fighting not for democracy in
nations but for democracy among nations."

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 165

Deft and novel as this turn of speech may be, you
cannot suppose that it satisfied the acute Jap-
anese mind. No more does it satisfy our own. It
may state a fact or it may not, but if this is the
test of democracy then our government in the
past, and that of monarchical states which have
constitutions and parliaments, are not warranted
in being classed as democracies.

Once more, by your leave, I note that a saga-
cious publicist has recently said, "In an autoc-
racy, the administration directs the people and
their representatives ; in a democracy, the people
direct their administration or administrators."
The day after I first read this, the "Overman
Bill" was presented to the Senate of the United
States, by request of the President, asking that
Congress which had recently granted him powers
in excess of those of almost any monarch on earth,
should add almost indefinitely to those powers.
Is it not obvious that the President for practi-
cally all the term of his presidency, has con-
strained and directed the representatives of the
peoples, and so the people themselves? If this is
true, as it appears to me to be, then this fourth
definition of democracy is not applicable to this
country.

You have borne with me while I have proved
to you that I do not so fully know what democ-

166 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

racy is that I would assume to define it or its aims
to you. And I shall be very glad if you know so
well what I do not know, that I need not try
farther to define it.

Our general topic to-day is "The Spiritual
Aims and Gains of the Nation." This subject I
should be able in some degree to illuminate. I am
well aware that I am in the presence of statesmen,
lawyers, soldiers, philanthropists and masters of
affairs. Each of you knows much that I do not
know as well as you know it, about statecraft,
law, military affairs, and various specialties relat-
ing to the public welfare. Toward your larger
knowledge I feel a becoming deference and re-
spect. My specialty is the things of the spiritual
life as relating to God and man. Trusting to the
large hospitality of your minds, may I be per-
mitted to reveal my own thinking on the subject
which, as a minister of God to men, I ought to
know more about than any other. Let me speak
as a Christian teacher who seeks to have also the
vision of a statesman.

All that I say will be within the limits of the
defined policies and purposes of that American
statesman now everywhere acclaimed as most
worthy of the respect and honour of all who love
liberty under law, Abraham Lincoln. Of his
spiritual vision and piety as applied to the con-

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 167

duct of weighty affairs in which he won immortal
fame, Mr. James G. Blaine, one of our most hon-
oured names, thus speaks in his "Twenty Years
in Congress": "Throughout the whole period of
the (Civil) war, he (Mr. Lincoln) constantly
directed the attention of the nation to dependence
on God. It may indeed be doubted whether he
omitted this in a single state paper. In every
message to Congress, in every proclamation to
the people, he made this prominent.

"In July, 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg,
he called on the people to give thanks because
Tt hath pleased Almighty God to hearken to the
supplications and prayers of an afflicted people,
and to vouchsafe signal and effective victories to
the army and navy of the United States,' and
he asked the people 'to render homage to the
Divine Majesty and to invoke the influence of
His Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has
produced and so long sustained a needless and
cruel rebellion.'

"On another occasion, recounting the blessings
which had come to the Union, he said, 'No hu-
man counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal
hand worked out these great things. They are
the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who
while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath
nevertheless remembered mercy.'

168 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

"Throughout his entire official career — at-
tended at all times with exacting duty and pain-
ful responsibility — he never forgot his own de-
pendence or the dependence of the people upon
a Higher Power.

"In his last public address, delivered to an im-
mense crowd assembled at the White House on
the 11th of April, 1865, to congratulate him on
the victories of the Union, the President, stand-
ing as he unconsciously was, in the very shadow
of death, said reverently to his hearers, 'In the
midst of your j oyous expression, He from whom
all blessings flow must first be remembered.' '

This reflection of Mr. Lincoln's thought and
spirit, attested by his eminent contemporary, may
well impress upon us the wisdom and the source
of true and immortal statesmanship, and vindi-
cate, if it needs vindication, my purpose to dis-
cuss the emergence out of this war of those spirit-
ual certainties which have appeared and will
more fully appear to those who watch for the
stars which are rising on the brow of this dark
and dreadful night.

What broadest principles of enduring life,
principles which are momentous and everlasting,
essential to the lif e of human society and the con-
tinuance of the civil state, have become clear
since the war began and are destined to grow

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 169

clearer as long as reason and life last? A selected
few of these permit me to discuss.

Materialism is Discredited, Stripped and
Repudiated

Materialism, affirming physical energy but
denying the soul, rejecting God and lightly re-
garding authoritative morals, has been rampant.
Its creed is atheistic; its fundamental theory is
of a godless world. It declares matter sufficient
unto itself; to produce itself, to account for it-
self, to guide itself, to be in itself an end and
goal, and all without God. It has been assumed,
allowed, promulgated, accepted as having its ade-
quate basis in atheistic evolution. Evolution
without God, blind, without foresight or mind, if
begun at all, proceeding by an irresistible force,
(whether backward or forward it offers no cri-
teria to prove), in which human life appears as
other life appears, doing what it must, without
controlling volition and without either duty or
obligation — this had become the conceived back-
ground, the alleged cause, the assumed uncon-
trolled certainty in individual and collective
life.

170 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

Germany, possessed with this prevalent idea,
has exalted to the position of axioms of interpre-
tation in social and national life, the two funda-
mental passwords, supposed to govern the origin
of species, namely, "The struggle for life," and
the "Survival of the fittest." They were logical
in assuming that if these tests are true anywhere,
they are true everywhere; that if they apply to
the human species at all they apply to it always
and under all circumstances. What is more
natural or pleasing in their life than to conclude,
as they might say, irresistibly, that they, as indi-
viduals and as a people, had made the "struggle
for life" in competition with other peoples, and
had proved in themselves by their superiority, as
they conceived it, that their fitness was the fitness
of "the fittest" and their "survival" was actually
and prophetically assured. This they had the
courage to affirm. In so doing, their main prem-
ise being allowed, they were perfectly logical.
They were carrying their theory to its practical
application and limit.

Out of this process emerged, for Nietzsche,
"The Superman" which (or who) is the finality
in his conception and philosophy of the individ-
ual, and that of Germany which follows him.
The "superman" is he who is superior to all but
himself, superior to all law but that of his own

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 171

volition, a perfect egoist, who, untrammelled and
of necessity, sacrifices all to himself. In self-
assertion he holds his might to be the only right,
and he practically worships himself, his own de-
sires and his own will.

Treitschke, chief of German's political philos-
ophers, their acknowledged master, at first
strongly averse to Nietzsche, later took advan-
tage of the latter' s suggestion to affirm, the
"superstate" as the one and only superior of the
"superman"; the state affirming its will, its un-
rivalled and uncontradicted demands, from
which there should be no appeal and beyond
which no right. The affirmation of German
superiority is a natural and logical result of the
doctrine of evolution without God — material-
istic evolution. Fixing on this their gaze, the
whole teaching force of this empire proceeded to
work out and to teach its philosophy through all
its educative agencies, until, after the lapse of
years, it came to be the fixed belief of their intel-
lectuals, their civil leaders and their military men.
Might being declared to be the only right, and
might only and always Materialism in one or an-
other form, from this they reasoned that they had
before them the duty and the destiny of subju-
gating the world. Their scheme of thought has
governed their education, has made their theory

172 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

of the Nation ; their theory has ultimated in their
policy and conduct, and ignoring all that the rest
of the world holds as the true theory and right
action of men and nations, they have undertaken
to conquer the world, which they despise as in-
ferior in its evolution, to themselves. They are
absolutely true to the doctrine of evolution as
they hold it, having no God over all and no spir-
itual nature in man. And this is called a "scien-
tific" view, that being a momentous word with
which to conjure confidence.

Asserting it, gave them an assumed leadership
in education. Their imitators were found in
many lands, their propagandists everywhere.
Their idea of themselves they wished us all to
entertain, and an idea of ourselves which subor-
dinated us to them. Mr. Poultney Bigelow, who
I believe, was in the University with the Kaiser,
well says: "The great German propaganda is
more than twenty years old and was part of a
general scheme to prepare the United States for
the war in which we are now engaged. Not only
the Imperial Staff of the German army acted as
a central bureau of information on all things
American; but the schools, the universities and
societies for the propagation of Deutschthum
and Deutsche Kultur were steered by military
officials to prepare the American mind for a bene-

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 173

ficent German Empire in which a Germanised
America would be one of the many provinces
bowing down to a Germanised Augustus Cassar."

"Every American School, university or scien-
tific institution was feeling the spell of this pro-
paganda without knowing its source. American
colleges were commencing to feel that there was
little worth learning in France or England —
that the goal of academic ambition was a Berlin
or Leipzig Ph. D. degree. The arrogance of all
Prussian professors at our seats of learning was
mistaken by us for the assertiveness of great
masters and we little dreamed that these poison-
ous Pundits thought more of a Fourth Class Red
Ribbon in Berlin than of the goodwill of their
colleagues of Harvard or Ann Arbor. And then
the Exchange Professors and the visits of Prince
Henry, and the Germanic Museum for Harvard,
and the statue of Frederic the Great for Wash-
ington and the persistent and nauseating celebra-
tion where glasses were raised to the "traditional
friendship" of the two countries — and all the
while the great general staff of Berlin was fever-
ishly at work preparing plans for an invasion
of America on the Belgian-Roumanian plan."
With Mr. Bigelow agree the best informed stu-
dents of affairs everywhere.

Plainly stated their purpose is the mastery,

174 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

enslavement and robbery of all nations. This
purpose is now resisted by all but their present
dupes and slaves, and the principles which they
profess are equally repudiated. If we were once
blindly drifting into their way of thinking, we
now renounce it. Their philosophy is no longer
philosophy, their science is no longer science to
us. Both are Prussianism at its worst. In every
realm we have partially conceded to them the
primacy which they have claimed. Now we see
their falseness and our folly. Their high priests
of science falsely so called, have not the first qual-
ity of a scientific mind, namely, truthfulness — the
love of truth. In the first year of the war nearly
one hundred of the most distinguished of them
drew up and signed a declaration addressed "to
the civilised world" in which among other state-
ments, these are given prominence: "It is not true
that Germany is guilty of having caused this war.
It is not true that the life and property of a single
Belgian citizen was injured by our soldiers with-
out the bitterest self-defence having made it
necessary. It is not true that our troops treated
Louvain brutally. It is not true that our war-
fare pays no respect to international laws." A
distinguished American specialist in physical
science truthfully says, "In these false declara-
tions by German scientists whose names, many

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 175

of them, are household words — declarations
which have never been withdrawn, German
science has met the greatest downfall in her
history." Yet these are the leaders, the masters
who have been sought, lauded and blindly fol-
lowed for two generations as having the right,
because they claimed it, to reconstruct human
ideals and thought on the basis of their scientific
dixit. We are ashamed of our fatuous folly.
These immoral, inhuman slaves of their Prussian
masters have been sought unto to teach us science,
theology, sociology. What are academic degrees
worth, given by such critics and professors?
They have sown the wind; we are now reaping
the whirlwind. Their materialism is bringing
forth its expected and legitimate fruit. Their
national goal is consistent with their characters
and word. They may be willing to be slaves to
Prussia. We are not. Their national aims may
be consistent with their theory though without a
shred of morality or humanity. One such nation
wrought out on their materialistic plan is one too
many. We repudiate their theory. We are
shamed by our own act in having followed them.
We abandon materialism as an aim for our own
or any other nation. And I hope we are penitent
for the misery which we have caused by foolishly
following such pretenders.

176 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

ii

Wealth as an Object of Worship,
is Dethroned

It had been allowed to usurp the throne of
God. Of this peril we had been warned ages
ago. The great Saviour of the world lived and
wrought in an age when sculptured and painted
idols were everywhere and mythologies about
these were religion. Of any one of these idols
of wood and stone He never spoke; concerning
them He uttered no warning. There was but one
idol to whom He alluded as disputing with the
one true and living God the homage of men. It
was Mammon. And Mammon had never been
painted or sculptured. It was merely a name,
used three times in the New Testament, for
wealth as an object of worship. Christ knew that
long after all worship of stones was abandoned,
wealth would dispute with the true God the devo-
tion of men.

Our age illustrated the fact. Money, or wealth
has been the measure and gauge of success. He
who gained it was the envied and successful man.
Gradations of society have been fixed by it. The
upper class has been the rich : the lower class the
poor. Pride, show, splendour, extravagance, have

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 177

been the touchstone of coveted life. Moral and
spiritual standards have been subordinated to
gain. The market was esteemed more than the
martyr. Lying to gain financial advantage was
accounted venial. Education was bent to money-
making vocations. At length the naked wicked-
ness of Mammon worship became clear, as the
German- Austrian-Turkish robbers began to as-
sault and plunder the world. When empires
lie, break treaties and steal, the magnitude of the
disaster frightens us. The lust of wealth in this
so-called cultured age then takes on a fury if
ever equalled, certainly never surpassed.
Wealth was so lordly and so mighty that we had
been told that there could never be a general
European war, that the bankers of Europe would
not permit it; their money power would be the
final arbiter. When the actual crisis came they
had no more power than children armed with
reeds, pushing back the avalanche. Mammon
attacked, was afraid. It could not protect itself
nor the world which had worshipped it. In dire
extremity, it called for help ; called on patriotism
to come to the rescue. But even patriotism was
enfeebled by subordination to wealth, lying with
its head in Mammon's lap, like Samson in Deli-
lah's. At length patriotism slowly broke from
deadly alliance and called on honor, liberty,

178 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

humanity, morality, to come to the rescue and
save wealth and country. And these powers, not
material but spiritual, not the creatures nor the
worshippers of wealth but the offspring of the liv-
ing God, leaped up and entered the fray. Hin-
dered so long but ever persistent, they alone could
defend Mammon which they always regarded as
a slave. Like Dagon before the ark of the Lord,
Mammon grovelled and begged. Its prestige
and its power were gone. It could not help itself,
much less defend others. Then we saw and con-
fessed that we had a primary duty to One higher
than money; that the things of the spirit were
most worth saving, that for them wle might wisely
spend all our wealth. And at the call of patriot-
ism, honor, morality, liberty, and humanity,
we began to pour forth the accumulated and
stored treasures of years. They became a sacri-
fice on the altar of eternal spiritual good. By
spiritual energy, motive and intelligence they
made wealth a powerful defensive agency.

How better can this great fact be shown than
by the motive and the act which gave fifty mil-
lion dollars to the work of the Young Men's
Christian Association? The gift was asked to
make great and noble the souls of our soldiery.
Early in the war the cry came that the first thing
in the making of a first-rate soldier was the spirit

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 179

of him. The French called it the "morale," best
paraphrased as "a state of mind." It meant
everything which operates in the inner and spir-
itual lif e of the men ; sympathy, duty, care, pur-
ity, cheer, faith, fealty, spirituality, loyalty to the
unseen and the Eternal. From the spiritual en-
ergy and wisdom which saw and urged the need,
came the outpouring of our gold, now doing its
worthiest service. And now we know that wealth
is a good servant and can ever be such ; a servant
of man, of the man with a soul, and With a duty
to God and to his fellows, but never more en-
throned as master of souls. Money is the ser-
vant of God and the servant of men. It should
cease from now on to be the boast, the hope, the
goal of life and be only its servant. We are lay-
ing it on the altar of God and humanity. It shall
never dispute His throne.

in

God is Enthroned as the Essential Head of
Government

The recent past has seen the rise of numerous
speculative theories of human life and society.
With differing labels they have had a general
likeness, and without practical tests, have gained
credence. Because new, they have been assumed

180 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

to be true, if indeed they can be said to be as orig-
inal as they are vague and novel- Private morals
and public duties have been thrown into confu-
sion. Most of these theories have had this in com-
mon, that they were atheistic efforts to do with-
out God and to be substitutes for religion and
morals. Two of these may stand for the rest,
Anarchism and Socialism.

In practical application Anarchism is adverse
to all governments and all government. It ob-
jects to all morals and moral laws, protests
against restraint, opposes rule and rulers, and
is not only oblivious of God but rages against
Him. Not definable in few words, it rejects al-
most all institutions and the principles on which
they are founded; calls all morality "slave moral-
ity," and assumes that each individual is the only
authoritative ruler. Within a few weeks a woman
now in a United States prison, holding all
these ideas in a most outspoken form, has as-
sembled an audience of three thousand in New
York, and held them for three hours in enthusi-
astic approval of her words, while she has de-
nounced practically all individual, social and
legal restraints. That audience, composed largely
of people recently come to this country, is repre-
sentative of great numbers in this and other lands
who indorse these crazy dreams. They systemat-

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 181

ically teach to young children all these subversive
ideas, and practise, defiantly, their teachings.
One prominent among them, once a Christian
minister, in a widely circulated volume, strenu-
ously objects to the idea of God as Father, de-
claring that we neither need nor want a father
God, nor any kind of relation which suggests
subordination and dependence.

Socialism in its most strenuous forms, as in the
German Social Democracy, is an association of
people, found in many countries, which is diffi-
cult to briefly define and characterise : difficult to
define because there is no authoritative represen-
tative whose definitions are standard; and not
easy to describe because there are many varying
stages of the thought, which do not agree one
with another. Allowing for these variations, we
may take the mass of the Social Democrats in
Germany and their sympathisers in Russia for
illustration. All are atheistic, selfish, intolerant,
violent against wealth and equally against work,
whose purpose is to dispossess those who have
any accumulated property, or any control of
machinery, business and goods, and to rearrange
the whole direction and ownership of the same.
The Bolsheviki represent a sufficiently large
number of these to illustrate what they may do
if they gain control in any land. The product

182 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

of these theories is in sight. It is Chaos. Russia
is illustrating it. Here is a headless nation, be-
cause it is without control, without law, without
government, and pervaded with a reckless sense
of irresponsibility to any power, human or divine.

Stability in a community, a state, a nation,
must rest on a foundation of laws; these on an
underlying foundation of principles, and these
must express reverence for duties and rights, and
goodwill for one's neighbours. The deepest prin-
ciple is a sense of Right and this has been placed
in the constitution of things by the Creator. Out
of Right as conceived and affirmed by God, come
rights, duties, authority, government, order,
harmony and prosperity. By these are upheld
honour and liberty, in their only true and reason-
able definitions and sanctions. On anarchy you
cannot predicate order. Its outcome is chaos,
confusion.

In a godless society, right, authority and gov-
ernment are impossible. These must be founded
on God and derived from Him. And He from
whom these are derived and by whom sanctioned,
is and must be much more than a Being of might,
authorising any and all actions which one can
assert the power and the will to do. Sanctioning
virtue He must possess it. If He were without
holiness, or righteousness, mercy or love, He

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 183

could neither direct nor demand these. The basis
of society is not any conception of God which a
heathen or a Prussian may conceive to best corre-
spond to his ambitions, but the one and only God,
the God of universal man, of universal right and
of universal law. Human goodwill must find its
sanction in Divine goodwill and the spring of
goodwill in man or God, is and must be love.
Out of this attribute comes and becomes all
benevolent feeling and beneficent law. As we
know God, the ultimate statute of His kingdom
is the command to men to love Him and to love
one another. Unless He is lovable in His char-
acter, no one by being commanded, could be com-
pelled to love Him. A god of mere Might or a
man in whom Might is all, does not suggest love
or show love nor show the least possibility of
evoking it. A nation to which Might is supreme,
cannot know love and cannot be loved. Unless
there is the sanction of the heart to the principles,
purposes and motives of government, it cannot
hold and direct the race. And laws arbitrarily
forced upon men by a characterless being, must
issue in characterless society.

The God who being enthroned, assures social
order (including civil) must be the God who is
revealed as Power and Love with all that these
imply. And there is but One who has ever been

184 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

revealed to men who has this character. He is
the living God whom Jesus Christ especially has
made known to us. And so Christ, revealing
Him, becomes "the chief corner-stone" of the
world order, and love becomes its vital and uni-
versal principle. Any other view; of man and
society leaves the individual selfish, greedy, cruel
and detached. At the same time it disintegrates
society, condemns law, causing repulsion instead
of attraction, confusion instead of order. It is
not possible to have society, the social order
among men, without bringing them to reverence
and obey the God whose law is wisdom and love.
To make order possible, to save the state, to
create society, to establish law we enthrone
God.

The Prelude to the Constitution of the United
States reads: "We, the People of the United
States, in order to secure a more perfect union, to
establish Justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defence, and to secure
the blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our
posterity, do ordain and establish the follow-
ing Constitution." "Order," "Union," "Tran-
quillity," "Defence," hold beneficent meanings
only when limited and defined by the Law of
God. Reverence for Constitutions must be as-
sured through reverence for God.

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 185

IV

Transcendent Spiritual Necessities Demand
and Justify Physical Sacrifices

Having wisely and rationally apprehended
that spiritual good and attributes are of the high-
est worth to us, we are readily and eagerly giv-
ing and exchanging for their maintenance all
physical possessions, and even life itself. If we
have repudiated materialism as a theory of hu-
man life and advantage, and accepted spiritual
treasures instead, we are proving our practical
faith by offering all we possess to uphold our
good confession. Unlimited material sacrifices
are being poured out by which to maintain, con-
serve and promote our spiritual possessions. Not
mere passive assent do we give to the proposition
that spiritual good is worth more than material,
but we actively offer all we have in proof. Of
our surrender of wealth and goods we have al-
ready spoken. A vastly greater gift asserts a
much deeper faith. It is the gift of life and suf-
fering.

Of this supreme, personal sacrifice an im-
mortal example is found in the martyrdom of
Edith Cavell. Serving the cause of humanity
and right, she refused to count her lif e dear unto

186 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

her at the dictate of brutal might. With her
beautiful life on the one hand and the grave on
the other, life to be preserved by inhumanity on
her part, and death to be visited upon her for
benevolence, she chose the immortal good. And
she deserves immortal fame. Yet she is only one
of her sex of whom uncounted thousands have
the same estimate of the duties and values of lif e.
Our gold is dross compared with such offerings of
flesh for spirit.

As this and these are personal sacrifices, so on
a national scale, we have seen the devotion of the
nation of Belgium to honour and truth. The
choice was deliberate. History can never de-
scribe the grandeur of that choice. There was
the offer of protection and material advantage
without limit, at the hands of the German
tempter. The alternative, undisguised, was
devastation and death. It was a clear choice
between physical riches and spiritual wealth.
And there was no hesitation ; no uncertainty, no
debate. Belgium offered all. Her rulers, her
men, women and children surrendered every vis-
ible and estimable treasure so that she might keep
an unsullied soul ; so that the honour, truth, duty
of the nation might shine as the stars forever.
.Wonder seizes us whenever we reflect on the ex-
altation of motive, and the sacrificial exchange

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 187

which Belgium made of the things which are seen
and temporal for the things wjiich are not seen
and eternal.

As Belgium illustrates this spirit of sacrifice on
a national scale, no less have the allies done like-
wise in the International policy which they have
adopted. Their choice has been of the same
nature. Their governments have staked all on
the greater value of spiritual character and qual-
ities. All that can add glory and pleasure to the
outer things of a transient world they have of-
fered up so as to gain and own forever the spirit,
and the deserved reputation of honesty and integ-
rity of life. Their whole populations, of one and
another country, have vied with each other in
proving their loyalty to morality, humanity, in-
tegrity and liberty. For Right, moral, humane,
God-revealed and God-sanctioned Right, we
offer, and if need be, will give up all our physical
possessions.

Such sacrifice is not only made but gladly and
quickly made, as we are moved by spiritual im-
pulses and guided by reason. For the law of
sacrifice is a wholly reasonable law. Seeing that
all things have value, and that some things have
a much greater value than others, we compare
and measure these things and choose that which
has the greater worth. For this we give the

188 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

lesser. The exchange is made; we are enriched;
and the act of sacrifice passes into the records of
wisdom and goodness. Thus we estimate the
things of the spirit, and we estimate the things of
the flesh. The latter are very precious; the
former are much more so. We choose the things
which we are sure are worthiest and most pre-
cious. And it is the consciousness of doing this
which exalts our seeming losses to immortal
gains.

HoW significant is this exchange when we con-
sider that now, for the things of the spirit, human
life, by countless lives are being given. This very
fact assures us of the immortality of our person-
ality. If the spiritual attributes of the man are
worthy of defence through giving up our material
goods, much more the spiritual personality which
these attributes express and adorn, is undying.
We cannot rationally hold to the theory of a
merely mortal life, ended at the grave, and then
give it for so-called spiritual good. If this life is
all, if there is no more life after it, then it is all
and the best I have. Indeed it is so valuable that
nothing can be measured against it. When it is
gone, all is gone, and as for me, I am gone.
Were that the fact, then I would not on any ac-
count or for any cause, surrender my life. Not
anything nor everything else could be weighed

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 189

or measured against it to warrant the exchange.
If I give all for nothing I am a fool. But we all
wisely postulate immortal life. After this life,
there is more life for us. We end our career
on earth, but we go on beyond. Only the cer-
tainty of this makes reasonable our offering of
life.

And so in this great day, taking inventory of
our greatest treasures, we have come to have a
clear view of our spirit and its immortal future.
This estimate is what Jesus Christ made — He
who brought life and immortality to light. He
made the sacrifice of all material things to be the
attestation of the greater value of the spiritual
things which remained, and He gave His lif e be-
cause eternal life is better and because He had
more life than can ever be subject to death. The
War is, on the German side, the battle of material-
ism, of might. Necessarily it must be stated in
physical terms. Their war is immoral, unright-
eous, unholy, unmerciful, inhuman, without
honour and with plunder and merely material
gain for its purpose. By their purpose our spirit-
ual heritage is assailed. Against their design we
array all our spiritual forces which carry with
them all our physical possessions, so that Right
may rule, that eternal Right may govern the souls
and the lives of men and nations, and the essen-

190 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

tials which are eternal may remain our immortal
possessions.

Through World-wide Co-operation We Are
Coming to World Fraternity

With our allies we are working unitedly and
drawing closer in a co-operation which is at once
a fellowship of suffering and of mutual love and
help. Hitherto we have not realised that we
are really near neighbours to them. Fraternity
has been more spoken of than felt. But now all
indifference has been dissipated and our former
isolation has ceased to exist. We could no longer
withhold from them our sympathy or our service.
Joining with them, we resist tyranny and con-
tend against a common foe. Uniting with them
in merciful service, our sympathies as well as our
courage unify us.

How could real fraternity be more assured
than by the friendly aid of which the Red Cross
Society is the most conspicuous example? Is
there any kind of need which we are not eagerly
seeking through it to alleviate? Its emblem, the
Cross, is the sign of reconciliation of two worlds,
heaven and earth; and of two continents and all
peoples. Others suffer. That is all we need to
know. And we hasten to them, bearing in our

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 191

hands and in our hearts whatever will alleviate
their distress.

Of kindred character and influence is our
policy of "Food Conservation" by which, with
self-denial, self-control and self-sacrifice, we build
up the strength of others. Even to this day, as
many times in years past, when we move against
the sale and use of alcoholic beverages, some men
remonstrate with us and ask, "Are you daring to
invade our liberties and to tell us what we shall
drink? By and by, you will tell us what to eat."
Quite true. Our government is now welcome at
our homes and tables as it comes in and tells us
what to eat. For it not only advises and urges
us what to eat but prescribes what we shall not
eat. Four years ago we should have jeered at the
possibility of such a course. Now we know that
our very life as a nation depends on our compli-
ance. And even more marvellous is the fact that
we are doing this so that what we save shall be
sent across the sea to feed and strengthen millions
whom we never saw and never will know. Our
most private and personal use of food is being
governed in the interest of the whole world. And
we are glad to have it so. "Deny yourself" is as
truly a government order as it is a command of
Christ. It is the only rule by which the nations
are to be saved.

192 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

The Salvation Army, in its extreme poverty,
used to advertise, "Self-Denial Week." We
were wont to smile at their ardour and to count it
fanaticism. Its purpose was good, but in their
poverty and manifest need, we wondered why or
how they could exercise self-denial. Now, we
who then smiled are doing as they did to save
our lives by saving others. It has been told that
when our soldiers first went to France, they were
greeted as "The Salvation Army." Such they
were and are. We are all marching with them.
They and we and all who deny themselves for
others, are the Salvation Army of the World.

And how remarkable that we are becoming
clearly aware that salvation comes through self-
denial, and wisest self -direction. No man is liv-
ing to himself if he is living usefully or rationally.
We now regulate our desires and our actions by
God's commands and by the needs of others, as
the national government makes them known to
us. Our interest affiliated with our allies make
our evident obligations. Selfish purposes are
shamed and fought. Profiteering is forbidden by
law ; that is, taking selfish advantage in the com-
mercial world of the necessities of others and en-
riching ourselves at their expense. From a new
angle we see that waste and wickedness are insep-
arable from the liquor traffic. We protest on the

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 193

broadest grounds against foodstuffs being used
to make ruinous and poisonous drinks. There is
something to be done with grains which must take
precedence of any selfish use of them. Our care
for our human brothers is being emphasised. On
it depends our own welfare, inseparable from
theirs. We are brothers in spirit and action. We
suffer and serve in love for one another. And so
we come to live as men must who live well. The
love for our neighbour is the goal of our highest
victory, the motive and result of self-mastery.

VI

The Christian Doctrine of Human World
Unity Is Vindicated

The word Christian I use unhesitatingly
because all the gains and aims which I have
named are Christian, and expressions of Chris-
tian principles and teaching. Essentially spirit-
ual, Christian truth must repudiate mere Mate-
rialism and put in its place the truths of a spirit-
ual world. Likewise Christianity dethrones
Mammon and makes wealth the servant of higher
things. It enthrones God and finds in Him the
source of the laws of life and human order. One
of its central doctrines is that of Self-sacrifice for
the good of others. And it leads the world in

194 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

announcing and cultivating the spirit of Brother-
hood in and among men. So likewise it assumes
and teaches the Unity and equality of men of
every race and clime as subjects of Divine mercy
and care.

In theory and practise this teaching has been
always contested by mankind. Men of one na-
tion or tribe have considered themselves superior
to their fellow men of other locations and char-
acteristics and have usually held a hostile rather
than a friendly relation to the stranger.

Assuming human unity Christ directed a uni-
versal propaganda of teaching and evangelising
among all men. The four universals of His final
commission to His disciples are thus given in the
Bible: "All authority hath been given me in
heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit ;
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you; and lo, I am with you all
the days, even unto the end of the world."

This is an announcement of a universal, a
world religion, having a universal application to
all men, assuming and teaching the unity of law,
of morals, of truth, of humanity, of kindness and
help everywhere.

So, obedient to this broad direction, the fol-

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 195

lowers of Christ in every age have gone into all
lands and among all peoples vindicating world
unity, a common humanity and a universal duty
of man to God and of man to man. Extensive
and inclusive as this conception is, it has by many
been opposed, traduced, belittled and scorned.
Without hesitation, those who understood their
Lord have persisted in their glorious enterprise.
By their doctrine of God and their love of hu-
manity they have profoundly impressed the mind
of the, as yet, unchristian world. And so well
have they represented and taught the doctrine of
Christ that, at this time, among other world-wide
benefits which they admittedly have conferred, is
that they have visibly given to the leaders of
every land of the Orient a lofty conception of the
Christian spirit and purpose.

Naturally the preponderating millions of Asia
might have assumed that all the peoples of the
West from whence these missionaries came, were
Christian. But they have learned to discrimi-
nate. And now when nations of the western world
who might have been expected to be Christians,
have assailed the rest of mankind in ways so
selfish and so wicked as to shock even a savage
mind, all these oriental nations understand that
such assailants are not Christians. They also
understand that the defenders of the best things

196 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

in human life, because they so defend, are not to
be classed with their assailants, and that on the
side of Germany are the foes of humanity as on
the side of the allies are its friends. The Asiatic
nations therefore are the friends of the allies.
And while by the vastness of their numbers they
might, if hostile, overwhelm the western world,
they are now its friends, ready to police the world
and to preserve and defend the things which the
missionaries have taught them are the best and
most sacred for universal man.

We owe it to-day to the work of the Christian
missionaries teaching the nature of God as
Father and the privilege of man as brothers, that
the sympathies and alliances of the Asiatic and
even the African world are with the allies.

The grounds on which Germany seeks to sub-
jugate and tyrannise over the human race are
totally unchristian. Assuming with unspeakable
conceit that they are superior to all the rest of
mankind and that they shall be masters while all
the rest are their slaves, they have not only awak-
ened Europe and America to resist them but have
shown to the far East as well, their presumption,
their savagery and their unfitness to rule.

It remains for the nations of the West to see
their duty to hereafter send their best representa-
tives to the East to give to them our very best

Spiritual Aims and Gains of the Nation 197

treasures, training and culture. Last year, by
dint of great self-denial, the Christians of the
North American Continent spent twenty million
dollars, most freely given, to carry the best of
their possessions, the truth of the Gospel, to far
lands. Last year the smokers of tobacco in the
United States spent more than a thousand mil-
lions for smoke, fifty times as much as the
Churches could send to teach and care for the
heathen world. Suppose that a spirit of self-
denial had come over those who waste this vast
sum and suppose that it were diverted to giving
our very best people and the best truth, undoubt-
edly the truth of Christianity, to the world : What
relation would that have to the consolidation,
prosperity, and peace of mankind? And suppose
even that our Government as a matter of econ-
omy, so as to save billions of American money
arid billions of value of goods, with millions of
invaluable lives, should hereafter pursue the pur-
pose of uplifting and unifying the world of man-
kind in a wholly kindly, brotherly, unselfish,
philanthropic and Christian way. What more
wonderful political economy could be launched
and out of what could spring greater universal
advantage ?

Seriously and reverently let me say that the
foregoing facts of life and reason made known to

198 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

the world and impressed on the minds of men,
seem to me a rich compensation for our defensive
war and a call far more impressive than the war
cry of "Democracy," to furnish a reason and a
means of bringing to us Victory. The form of
government is of far less concern than its purpose
and spirit — and that spirit with its form and
fruitage, the love of God and love of man, reveal
the prizes and victory now inciting us to battle.

VIII

Prohibition and National Defence*

THE British battle line is bent. Up to this
time it is not broken. Suppose it should
break, leaving nothing interposed between us and
our foes. How unspeakable the peril to us and
to the world. The very contemplation of it fills
us with anxiety and dread. So also the allied
battle line is strained through all the many miles
where British, Belgians, Italians, French, Ameri-
cans, are withstanding the foe; they have been
pushed back from thirty to fifty miles. Suppose
that strain should end in disintegration and de-
feat. Imagine that war weariness or lack of
courage should seize and possess that mighty
defensive host, so that they should cease to strug-
gle. The door would be wide open for the in-
pour of the fierce and cruel German power upon
civilisation and the whole world.

Can we imagine a more terrifying peril, a direr
catastrophe? And yet a greater foe than the
Central Powers has already broken through

♦Delivered April 27, to 2,000 people representing 14 churches, in Meriden, Conn.

199

200 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

upon the civilised nations of the world and is
working upon them greater disaster than the
Central Powers could possibly work. Two of
the greatest allied statesmen, both British, have
within a short time spoken of this greater foe and
greater peril. Mr. Lloyd George, the brilliant
Premier of Great Britain, has told us that there
is more to be feared from the alcoholic liquor
habit in Great Britain than from all its German
foes, and with enthusiasm born of the spirit of
wisdom, prophecy and warning, he has striven
to arouse his countrymen to this dire and deadly
peril.

In 1880 the unsurpassed modern English
statesman, William E. Gladstone, quoted with
approbation the statement that the liquor traffic
and drinking habit had wrought more ruin in this
world than war, pestilence and famine combined.
To this statement of historic fact, the brilliant
British statesman, with his broad outlook, gave
unhesitating assent.

With such testimony, and this is but repre-
sentative, need I have any hesitation in saying
that a greater peril confronts the allies now and
the world at large, from the dominant liquor
traffic than from all the exertions of the hosts of
barbarism in Central Europe? It is not as if
I were quoting these two statesmen alone; the

Prohibition and National Defence 201

greatest soldiers and publicists, the greatest
economists and observers of the world agree with
their opinion. Among military and naval con-
temporaries Lord Roberts, General French,
General Joffre, Admiral Fisher, Admiral Jelli-
coe, Admiral Beattie, Lord Woolsey, and nu-
merous others of equal rank give their accordant
voice as to this greater peril.

Some unthinking souls have tried to lay upon
the Lord God the responsibility of this present
war, denying to Him either goodness or care of
mankind in that He has permitted this desolating
scourge to fall upon the world. But no one has
the audacity to charge upon God the killed,
wounded, and missing, the destruction, desolation
and overthrow of the liquor traffic. We know
too well that it is of our making, through our con-
senting, by our protection that this scourge pre-
vails, and even human unbelief and irreverent
audacity, dare not attempt to lay off the responsi-
bility from us who should take it, from us who
are guilty of creating the present condition.

It is impossible to sum up the harm that alco-
hol does in the nation or the nations. It is im-
possible, on the other hand, to tell what advan-
tage is open and derivable from the destruction
of the use of alcoholic spirits as a beverage, and,
in fact, in any form. My present purpose in the

202 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

face of the perils of this great war, is to show
that parallel with it and of greater magnitude, is
another strife into which we should enter with
the utmost valour and urgency, a strife co-ordi-
nate with the assault of the Central Powers,
more destructive in all the ways in which that is
destructive, and an immediate and threatening
ally of all the evils which they propose, and
which lies quite within the realm of our own re-
sponsibility.

In undertaking to show how, as Lloyd George
has said, the liquor traffic reinforces the evil
forces of the present war, I shall excuse myself
from a multiplication of figures and statistics.
For every fact which I allege I have the most
copious proof and if any of you really desire to
get the exact facts, the precise data, which will
substantiate all that I shall say, you will find
them condensed in a little book entitled: "En-
cyclopedia of Temperance, Prohibition, and
Public Morals," issued by The Methodist Book
Concern, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York. This
is a compend of multitudinous sources of verifi-
able information and fact, demonstrating the
immediate and dire perils which have been put
upon us by the use of alcoholic drink.

The factors of national defence which I have
in mind when I speak of "Prohibition and Na-

Prohibition and National Defence 203

tional Defence," are really twofold: things ma-
terial, by which we can defend ourselves, and
man power; and while these are not separable
entirely, for the purposes of analysis they will
assist us in the contemplation of this great double
danger of war and drink. They are so related
that they must be discussed together.

First, therefore, I call your attention to the
relation of the liquor traffic to the destruction
of those material agencies which are absolutely
necessary to the winning of this war. We already
have pretty clearly before our mind that food
will win the war. It has become a watchword of
our time. Never until within the last two years
have we dreamed of lacking adequate foodstuffs
in this country or in the world. The scarcity
which we have felt is even now upon us in a most
critical way. We are told at this very moment
that there is great peril of our losing the strength
necessary to carry on the war for lack of suffi-
cient bread for our armies and for those of our
allies. The scarcity of food, which now we feel
and which we felt last year, we are likely to
experience more rather than less. That scarcity
may be said to arise in a general way from non-
production and waste.

There are various reasons why there is not an
adequate production of foodstuffs, but one of

204 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

those incontrovertible reasons which I will allege
is this: There are a multitude of non-producers
who might raise food supplies and who do not.
Many of these are idlers, and idlers on account of
vicious habits induced by alcoholic liquor. In
the State of Minnesota a few years ago, when
the wheat was spoiling in the fields, an earnest
effort was made to get the idlers in the cities
to go forth to the farms at a large wage — three
and a half to four dollars a day and board —
and work to save the crops at the harvest time.
Practically, they nearly all declined. It is incon-
ceivable that anything should have so borne them
down with reckless carelessness and idleness ex-
cepting that they were under the influence of an
unnatural appetite for strong drink.

At this present time, this fact is conceded by
the attitude of the states of New Jersey, West
Virginia, and New York, and also by the nation,
where the effort is being made to compel all
idlers to assist in production. Those who are
unwilling to work are to be compelled to work, if
that is possible, and the greatest difficulty, as well
as the greatest number of non-workers, will be
found to confront us when we deal with those
who are altogether too willing to use their powers
and their time in alcoholic dissipation.

Not only are foodstuffs wanting through non-

Prohibition and National Defence 205

production, but vast stores of grain are destroyed
directly to make liquors. In those liquors, what-
ever their name, there is almost no food value
whatever. All statements to the contrary are
simply untrue. The amount of grain made into
alcoholic liquor and so diverted from the channels
of nutrition, is almost too great to conceive.
Various figures of a colossal character are pro-
duced both in this country and Great Britain to
show how much has been destroyed. We reckon
the wasted grains by the hundred thousands and
the millions of tons. The sugar and molasses,
also, which are very important as foods, in almost
untold quantities, have been made use of for the
manufacture of liquor.

It has been openly alleged that three hundred
millions of days' support for individual soldiers
might have been conserved by saving what has
been destroyed in the United States alone in a
single year. But without attempting to limit or
measure the quantity, we know, and the whole
world agrees, that it is so vast that the preserva-
tion of these foodstuffs for food purposes instead
of their manufacture into liquor might make the
difference between famine and plenty. When
you recognise that this waste is so great in
quantity and so grievous in quality, it would
seem as though no one ought to complain of lack

206 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

of food who is not fighting with all his might to
preserve what we have.

In connection with food as a material necessity
for the winning of the war, our attention has been
called to the great necessities in the fuel line only
lately obvious; during the last year many of us
shivered with the cold, and anxiously feared for
those who could not get fuel. Families suffered,
little children died, business places were closed
at vast expense, schools were shut up, churches
discontinued their services, railroads diminished
the number of their trains, ocean transportation
was balked, victory imperilled on account of lack
of fuel.

When you come to inquire why this was and
is likely to be so, you find that a very considerable
proportion of this lack of fuel came from inade-
quate mining. That is to say, the miners failed
to produce in proportion to their power, and so
the public was deprived of necessary fuel. The
Coal, Fuel and Iron Company tell us, as do many
other mining organisations, that just as soon as
the liquor traffic by any means is temporarily
stopped in the vicinity of their mines, production
is vastly increased.

In the State of Pennsylvania, a member of the
Pittsburgh Coal Producers' Association declared
before the Interstate Commerce Commission that

Prohibition and National Defence 207

if the government would eliminate the liquor
business from the coal producing districts of
Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, the output of
coal would be increased twenty-five million tons.
That was at the height of the famine last winter.
Most distinguished experts in the anthracite
region of Pennsylvania have told us that a third
of the output of coal was lost on account of the
drinking habits of the miners, and have besought
the government of the United States to take
drastic measures to abolish the saloon in that
region. The same has been true in Illinois and
in nearly all the other coal producing states.
This is the outspoken judgment of most coal
producers lately given.

The coal shortage in Illinois was reported last
winter to be about 500,000 tons, but a statistician
figured that the amount of coal consumed in the
manufacture and sale of the beer alone used in
Chicago was more than 500,000 tons. The liquor
business in Chicago alone created the deficit in
the coal supply of Illinois.

This, however, is only one aspect of the loss
and wastage of the fuel necessary for winning
this war. The breweries consume a vast amount
of coal. Outside of war industries only two ex-
ceed breweries in quantity of coal used. During
the season when churches and schools were closed

208 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

and business was crippled, all the breweries were
wide open, and the distributing centers, the
saloons, owned so largely by the breweries, were
no less warm and full, as I may say.

In the accessories of the brewing business, that
is, in the manufacturing of boxes, barrels, bottles
and other things connected with the traffic, in the
transportation of raw material, manufactured
product, barrels, bottles, coal by the railroads,
for the liquor business — there were needed not
less than two and one-half million tons of coal.
This added to the seven and one-half million
tons used by the breweries last year, would make
ten million of the fifty millions shortage; and if
to that be added the twenty-five million tons
wasted through lack of careful mining, thirty-
five millions of tons has been accounted for
already ; and it is easy to account for the rest.

For the transportation of liquors in this coun-
try last year, two hundred thousand cars were
required at a time when we could not get trans-
portation for foodstuffs. At a time when every
interest of the country suffered for lack of ade-
quate railroad facilities, the breweries and dis-
tilleries were demanding and getting two hun-
dred thousand cars for transporting the liquor
which they made.

There was a great shortage of coal, as you

Prohibition and National Defence 209

remember, for the transport service. Very many
ships in the harbour of New York, to say nothing
of other harbours, loaded with provisions for the
allies, which they sorely needed, were prevented
from sailing because of lack of adequate coal.,
But the breweries had coal, the saloons had coal,
though the railroads and transports had not.
While our allies were bravely fighting for us,
defending our interests with their lives, they were
denied both food and fuel, while we provided
millions of tons of both for the manufacture of
alcoholic drink.

It is perfectly well known that manufactures
of an essential and valuable sort are very greatly
diminished by the use of alcoholic drink. By this
I mean that the output of factories is greatly
decreased, that the reduced capacity of drinking
and half-drunken operatives greatly diminishes
that output, and that whenever there is a release,
however temporary, from the baleful effect of.
the saloon on a community of workmen, the
manufacturing interests greatly multiply their
production. Most of the great concerns of this
country bear witness to the fact that there would
be a plenty of manufactured goods for all legiti-
mate purposes, provided the workmen were pre-
vented from diminishing their powers through
the use of alcoholic liquor.

210 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

We know that in this war iron and steel play
a very large part. Nearly all the iron and steel
mills of this country forbid the use of alcohol to
their men for numerous reasons. In the first
place, it saves a vast amount of material other-
wise wasted. It prevents a great array of acci-
dents of a most costly character. It increases
output to a very high degree. So that the manu-
facturing interests of iron and steel are invari-
ably, in this country, the antagonists of the liquor
traffic. The same is true in regard to munitions.
Great Britain had the experience of seeing a
wholly inadequate supply of munitions because
the workmen declined to work more than three
or four days in a week. Nor could they be stimu-
lated or stirred by the perils of defeat, or by the
ardours of their statesmen so long as they were
under this sinister influence. They would rather
be drunk and slaves, than to be freemen and
produce what was necessary to accomplish and
perpetuate their freedom.

In the matter of manufacture of cars and
ships, which from the very first had been one of
our chief necessities in winning this war, the
habit of alcoholisation on the part of the work-
men has stood in the way of an adequate output.
Ships in Great Britain, we have been told re-
peatedly, have been held up because the work-

Prohibition and National Defence 211

men would drink and would not work. Repairs
on the fleet and on the merchant service have been
hindered, construction has been put back, and
again and again the sailings of the ships have
been interfered with when troops were on board,
because of drunken engineers or stokers, who
were incapable of realising the peril in which
they were placing their country. Transporta-
tion has been blocked by land and by sea directly
and indirectly, between America and Great
Britain, between Great Britain and France, and
from all the ports on which the allies have relied,
by reason of the liquor traffic.

How could any enemy wish more in the way of
obstruction to the essential necessities of our
armies and navies than has been furnished by the
liquor traffic thus made manifest in the hands
and under the control of the liquor power?

I have thus too briefly discoursed of the ma-
terial powers which are withdrawn from our
service in the war where they are absolutely
needed, for the sake of maintaining the liquor
traffic.

Let me pass now to speak of the man
power, by which, of course, I include all the
human power which is necessary for the winning
of this war, and show how that man power is
diminished in all its main essentials by the per-

212 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

petuation of the liquor traffic. The amount of
testimony is so vast that I can only touch upon
it here and there, but these allusions are capable
of the fullest substantiation.

In the first place, we are wont to say that the
better the health of the soldier and of those who
stand behind him, the greater likelihood there is
of his achieving the purposes of successful war-
fare. In other words, muscular power and good
health have much to do with a fine soldiery, and
a fine citizenship. We have gloried in the fact
that many of our young men who have volun-
teered or entered the army by selective draft,
have been enormously improved in health and
bearing, in vigour and in life, by the training to
which they have been subjected. Are we equally
and distinctly aware that muscular power of the
sort necessary for soldier and citizen alike, is
destroyed effectually by the use of alcoholic
drink? If you take the work of a soldier, you
find much of it of a distinctly athletic sort; but
now for many years in the whole realm of ath-
letics we have known that liquor is the foe of
athletic power. No athlete is addicted to drink ;
no boxer, no baseball player, no football player
of any distinction, no competitive oarsman, no
champion at tennis or golf can be found who will
for a moment sanction the use of alcoholic drink

Prohibition and National Defence 213

on the part of those who expect to achieve athletic
superiority and honours.

We have had experience for years, sanctioned
by the great soldiers of Europe and America that
marching is done best and most advantageously
by total abstainers. They have the greatest en-
durance, and can effect the greatest accomplish-
ments. When it comes to the exercise of muscu-
lar power in the particular function of war, for
instance in marksmanship, we know beyond all
question that the use of alcoholic drink, whether
in smaller or larger quantities, is highly damag-
ing to correct and exact marksmanship. I am
speaking now of this one particular thing, as
illustrated, for instance, in precision, rapidity
and endurance firing. In the Swedish army, out
of a possible thirty shots, men who had taken no
liquor whatsoever and were not accustomed to
use it, made twenty-three hits. The same men
after having used a small quantity of alcohol
made only three hits out of a possible thirty. If
it is desirable to have a powerful and reliable
muscularity as the basis of successful soldiery,
then it is absolutely necessary to banish alcohol
from the soldier and sailor from the army and
navy.

In the navy, as well as in the army, it used to
be that rations of grog were given to the marines

214 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

and naval men at sea. No one would think of
doing that now. All the fine marksmanship and
endurance, the accuracy, the precision, the fac-
tors which make for the possibility of success in
this war, are associated with total abstinence
from the use of alcohol in any form.

I have spoken of muscular power, but every-
one knows that muscular power depends greatly
on nervous conditions, on the fineness and
strength, the poise and balance of nerve. We
know that the finer parts of our organisation,
the nerves and the brain, are immediately affected
by alcoholic liquor, and we know that alcoholic
liquor is not a stimulant, nor has it ever been,
but is a depressant. It destroys nervous poise;
it does not increase it. The superstition that
alcohol is a stimulant is as plainly superstitious as
any idolatry of any heathen savage of any his-
toric time in the history of the world. There is
no power to make for a stronger manhood,
whether in muscle or nerve, in alcoholic drink
however taken or applied, whether less or more.

When it comes to the combination of nerve and
muscle, the co-ordination of the fineness of hu-
man activity with the force and vigour of it, the
same is markedly true. This will appear as I
proceed.

We must know, too, that in our time with the

Prohibition and National Defence 215

extraordinary weapons that are made use of both
by land and by sea, and with the demands that
are made upon a soldier's life (and the same of
a civilian's life ) , mind power is as necessary for
an army and for achievement in the direction of
victory as muscular power. Because the brain is
the agent of the mind, the vigour of the brain as
an agency through which thought is operated, is
of the utmost power in achieving victory. We
are positively assured that mental efficiency is
impaired very greatly by any degree of the use
of alcoholic drink. Men who are accustomed to
drink on Saturday and Sunday have been found
on Monday to be diminished in mental vigour as
much as twenty-eight and one half per cent.,
more than a quarter of their power having been
lost. All the reactions of the sensibilities are
operated on adversely by the use of liquor.

Quickness of vision and accuracy of vision,
readiness of hearing, responsiveness of muscular
action to the demands of the mind, are all im-
paired by the use of alcoholic drink. Errors in
judgment, inaccuracies in sensation, defects of
memory, incorrectness of observation, all these
result, and the general lessening of the normal
ability of men, even after the use of a little
alcohol, often rises from ten to eighteen per
cent.

216 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

Every soldier who has been at the front, every
intelligent man or woman who knows what is
demanded of a soldier, understands that the
greater the mentality, the greater the self-reli-
ance. The ability to take initiative, to think for
one's self, to think quickly and to judge wisely,
is a very large share of the power of a soldier in
our time. Against all this, against everything
that makes for an efficient soldier, alcohol is a
deadly foe.

But we are getting a further and deeper
vision of war at this time than we have ever had
before. Although it has been known it has never
been talked about so much as now, that the chief
power of the soldier is his moral power ; that the
great power of a nation is its moral and spiritual
power. To get the right spirit into men and into
people is the foremost thing in assuring victory.
Nothing is so to be relied upon as spiritual ac-
tivity and spiritual strength.

The Germans have very little sense of this.
We remember how they measured the force
of England by the 250,000 of England's
little army, and called that force "contempti-
ble." They did not reckon with the Eng-
lish spirit, which measures its strength not only
as against millions of men, but measures its
strength by forces that are entirely uncount-

Prohibition and National Defence 217

able and unweighable in terms of material
force.

So we recognise the immense importance of
moral power for the making of a soldier, an
army, a nation or a victorious struggle. At the
same time, we know that vice abounds as a re-
sult of alcoholic drink; that practically all kinds
of vice are directly caused and increased by it;
that commercialised sexual vice, which has
worked such terrific havoc in the armies of the
old world, is always associated with the degrada-
tion of woman and of man also, through drink.
Observations in and about the saloons of all the
great cities of the world testify to this. And
nothing is more suggestive of the power, the
glory and the victory of the American army than
the frequent affirmation that, as to virtue over
against vice, it is the most virtuous army that
has ever been assembled. God grant that this
may prove to be the fact ; if it is a virtuous army,
it will be an invincible army.

Moral power shows itself not only in the grasp
that men have upon the purposes of this great
conflict, but in their obedience to high intelligence
and to the direction of their superiors. Equally
evident is it that the sources of all lawlessness in
this country and in every country, are found in
connection with the liquor traffic and use. None

218 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

have done more to degrade the whole legal order
of human society than have the brewers of the
United States of America. They are always
ready to violate the law. When it has been sug-
gested, where prohibition has obtained, that
possibly some of these great companies would
assist to break down the law by furnishing illicit
liquor importations, where they were otherwise
forbidden, it has always been true — the proof is
irrefutable — that no brewing company has hesi-
tated to become a violator of the law.

They have in the presence of the United States
courts within the last two years in western Penn-
sylvania, paid vast fines rather than have their
wickedness brought to light, as they have sought
to influence elections. And not only so, but
nearly all the brewers of this country are pro-
German. They not only have German names
and German directors, but their breweries and
their saloons are nests of treason. The products
of their breweries and the profits thereof, which
we have so foolishly been allowing them to make,
have been poured into the coffers of Germany;
and not a few of them have been found in direct
affiliation with the enemies of their country.
There is no patriotism in the liquor traffic, no
patriotism among those who make it, or among
those who sell it.

Prohibition and National Defence 219

Saloons are the haunts of criminals. If police-
men desire to find those who have done some
especially infamous crimes, they always go to
certain saloons where these people are found.
Every kind of criminality, every degradation of
moral power, is associated with the use of alco-
holic drink. It lowers and degrades in every
possible respect.

Now, this being true, if we are to win a great
moral victory, if we are to overcome the evil
forces of the world in the interests of the good,
it is absolutely necessary that we break with the
liquor traffic ; that we separate ourselves from it,
and separate ourselves also from its sinister and
degrading influence in lowering the moral tone
and stamina of our people.

When it comes to the fouler forms of vice,
where vice merges into crime, the whole world
knows that the greatest cause of crime in this
country is the liquor traffic. When the convicts
of the penitentiaries of our country, as they have
repeatedly done, have petitioned that the saloons
might be closed so that when they came out they
might not be tempted, as they have been tempted
before; when careful commissions have summed
up the criminality of the country as nine-tenths
of it originating in the use of alcoholic drink;
when the foremost judges, including the Su-

220 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

preme Court of the United States, have declared
that the alcoholic liquor traffic is inextricably
mixed up with criminality, we certainly have
proof enough to know that the liquor traffic can
be counted on as the foe of everything that we
seek to make victorious in this war, and de-
structive of every agency of achievement and tri-
umph.

Demoralising as war is, war has never de-
moralised as the liquor traffic has; cruel as war
is, it has never been so cruel as the liquor traffic ;
deadly and destructive as have been modern arms
and agents of destruction, they have never killed,
wounded and imprisoned anything like as many
people as have been destroyed by the use of
strong drink.

We have a very sad realisation that vast num-
bers of precious human lives are being sacrificed
in this war, that in our defensive struggle, the
noblest of our youth are offering themselves on
the altars of liberty and honor and truth. But
let us not forget that by the most careful observa-
tion, pursued through many years, it is perfectly
clearly shown that the extension of human life is
greatly diminished by even the moderate use of
alcoholic drink. There are those who say two
and one half, or three per cent, beer is not as
destructive as forty or fifty per cent, whiskey or

Prohibition and National Defence 221

rum ; but the truth is, whether it is taken a little
at a time or more at a time, the aggregate of
alcohol taken by the drinkers of beer is likely
to be fully as great, or greater, than that of
the drinkers of whiskey, and to result as ruin-
ously.

So, whether it be as moderate drinkers or
drinkers of one sort or another of liquor, the
proof is overwhelming that life is shortened any-
where from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent,
by the use of alcohol as a beverage. Forty-three
life insurance companies of the United States
and Canada, examining more than 2,000,000
cases in the last few years, have brought their
practically unanimous verdict into the high court
of the world, showing that this is true.

Longevity is greatly diminished, the sus-
ceptibility to disease is largely increased by the
use of alcoholic liquor, and I might instance, if I
had time — as I certainly have information — un-
numbered cases in which life is shortened by ten,
twenty, thirty years, and productiveness accord-
ingly, through the use of alcohol in any and
every form. I could give you a list of pages on
pages of the statements of the most eminent
physicians of the world, showing the deleterious
effect of alcohol upon life, upon young life, upon
little childhood, through heredity, producing

222 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

defectives, dependents and delinquents; upon
young children in their environment, where,
through bad example and in the homes of drunk-
ards, they are reduced to a minimum of efficiency
and power ; where through privation, their young
lives are made so weak that the likelihood of their
continuing to live is very greatly diminished.

Last year 20,000 physicians of the American
Medical Association were represented in their
convention in New York City. With scarcely
a dissenting voice, all this host of highly intelli-
gent men, who understand human life so well,
gave their verdict against the use of alcoholic
liquor, even as a medicine, and told us at length
that there was no necessity for it as a remedy
which could not be met by other remedies far
less injurious and far more practical and health-
ful.

The defences against disease are broken down
by those who use alcohol. If we take our sol-
diers, for instance, during hardships in camp and
field, their likelihood of overcoming those hard-
ships, their ability of full and effectual resistance
is in proportion to their separation from the
alcoholic liquor habit. The number of soldiers
who die of diseases is generally far more than
those who die of battle and of wounds, and the
number who have died of disease has been largely

Prohibition and National Defence 223

conditioned by those who have used alcoholic
liquor in one or another form.

We are told that among the great desolations
of France during this war is that which has been
wrought upon her soldiery by tuberculosis; but
we are assured from the investigations of twenty
years on two continents, that the greatest cause
of tuberculosis is alcoholic liquor as a beverage,
and it has been said that this great white plague
of tuberculosis can never be fought successfully
until the use of alcohol as a beverage is elimi-
nated.

Moderate drinking is practically as bad as free
drinking. Its effect is just as realisable and as
sure.

Moreover, of course, the workman or the sol-
dier, the civilian or the man of the camp and the
field, is effective in proportion to the vigour of
his life and the number of days that he is capable
of performing his tasks and his service; but we
know that days of illness are multiplied, and loss
of wages consequent to a greatly increased de-
gree in the case of those who use alcoholic drink :
$330,000,000, it was said five years ago, were
lost from preventable diseases through inability
to work, by the workingmen of this country in a
single year. Nothing could more surely indicate
the fact that if we want efficient service, the

224 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

maximum number of days of activity and of
power, whether as soldiers or civilians, for the
purposes of national defence, we shall secure the
maximum number only by total abstinence from
the use of intoxicating drink.

Have I said, if not, let me say it now — alcohol
is not a medicine. Hospitals of Europe and
America are proving it. They are using less
and less of it; using less and less beer, less and
less ale, more and more milk, and simple, nourish-
ing liquids. The attitude of the doctors, which
I cited a few moments ago, amounts to a demon-
stration, while the hospital practise which they
carry out, shows the same results, and gives prac-
tical basis to their opinion.

One thing further: (although this is a very
brief and incomplete survey), and that is, that
accidents caused by alcohol are very numerous,
and are readily preventable by abstinence, as
they are readily traceable to alcoholic drink as
a cause. Now, of course, the American soldier
and sailor, as well as those of the allies (and this
is distinctly understood abroad, as it is at home)
has to be extremely careful in handling the imple-
ments of war. Many of them are chemicals of
a highly explosive character; many of them are
the refinement of mechanism, and they need the
most extraordinary carefulness, precisely as the

Prohibition and National Defence 225

handling of fine machinery in mills and factories
needs it. The use of alcohol so distinctly causes,
both in factory and in fort, the maximum of
accidents, that no one can ignore a great fact
like this without being entirely indifferent to the
welfare of his country.

We know that some time ago when labour in-
surance was demanded by many state legisla-
tures, the proprietors of factories and employers
of men said: "Yes, we will insure our men and
will pay damages, but we will not insure drink-
ing men, nor pay damages to drunken men
for accidents which they cause. They not only
cause a vast amount of loss, but they cause a vast
amount of personal damage to themselves."
"Safety first" means total abstinence first,
whether that be in the trenches or in the fac-
tories.

It is a noteworthy fact, obtained and proven
by scientific temperance investigation, that the
effect of a drink of alcohol, whether in beer or in
some other form, comes to its maximum just
about three hours after the drinker has taken the
dose. For instance, a man taking a drink at
seven o'clock on the way to his work, will ex-
perience the full force of that drink in losing his
self-control, the co-ordination of his muscles, the
intelligence of his mind, at about ten o'clock. If

226 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

weariness was the cause of accidents, then more
accidents would occur nearer twelve o'clock,
when the man was more weary; but it is just as
truly noticed that at four o'clock in the after-
noon, three hours from the time when the man
has taken his drink at his lunch, the maximum
of accidents occurs, as it is true that a similar
condition occurs in the morning. In other words,
the high curve of accidents is immediately trace-
able to the use of alcoholic beverages; and who-
ever expects either the American munition
worker or shipbuilder, or navigator, or sailor, or
soldier, to arrive at his best, to accomplish the
highest and utmost purposes that the fine ma-
chinery on which he works can accomplish, has
got to count on the fact that he must desist from
the use of alcohol. We must keep it away from
him. We must prohibit making it, or selling it,
giving it away, or using it, in order that we may
win this war.

The perils have not all been indicated; the
proofs are not all in; the dangers have not all
been stated. The magnitude of the victory de-
pending on our right action is not greater than
the irreparable ruin which will follow if we ignore
these truthful warnings. I doubt not that liquor
drinking had much to do with making this war,
nor that it has added unmeasured ferocity to

Prohibition and National Defence 227

German barbarities in sacked towns and on
ruined peoples. To abolish it will win the war
and do more than can be estimated toward pre-
venting another.

I

IX
Our Victory Assured

"And this is the victory that overcometh the world; even our faith."

N" this war, who shall be victorious ? We shall ;
we and our allies. Does it seem presumptu-
ous to assume this knowledge of a great future
event? Does anyone but the all-wise God know
what is certain to be in the future? Our answer
is: He knows, and we know as we know Him —
from intuition, as He has given it to us, from
faith and right reason, and from the study of his-
tory. On the basis of what we know of Him we
are assured of victory in this war.

What is the object of our trust? Ourselves?
No. Even though we are very much better pre-
pared now than in 1914 and might, apparently,
put a larger faith in our positions and forces than
We formerly did. What gives us this confidence
of victory? Right. What gives right its
strength? God, who wills and so makes right;
whose nature and law, whose administration, and
whose purposes define Right. This leaves
nothing vague or uncertain either in His nature
or in our apprehension of it.

228

Our Victory Assured 229

When the Apostle John affirmed: "This is
the victory that overcometh the world, even our
faith," he meant that God, the Author of right,
of all law that makes for right, of all high goals
and purposes, is the foundation of our confidence
and our assurance of triumph. He meant the
Christians' God, not some vague, uncertain idea
of a world power imagined by men and con-
structed according to their selfish wishes ; but that
holy, just, righteous, fatherly, forgiving, guid-
ing and good Being, whose nature embraces for
us all that is desirable in human life and human
relationships. There is only this one God.
There is neither room nor place in the world for
any other ; and when we hear pagans, barbarians,
and Germans calling upon a god of their own
creation, who has no worshipful or deserving
attributes, we know that such a being cannot be
made the foundation of the hope of a righteous
victory.

"The victory that overcometh the world is our
faith." Our faith can be defined in two ways.
We can speak of "our faith," meaning the object
on which we rely, as the person, the laws, the
principles which deserve our confidence. Then
we can add to that this second idea of faith, our
own act of trust by which we come into living con-
nection with the external objects of our faith.

230 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

For example, I may say that my political faith is
the Constitution of the United States. That is
to say, that is the body of principles and laws
upon which I rely as embracing the fullest meas-
ure of political sagacity, and social wisdom.
When I take my oath of allegiance to the Consti-
tution of the United States, I exercise my per-
sonal or subjective faith in that great body of
laws. And so, my political faith embraces that in
which I believe, and also my act of believing
which attaches me to it.

This same idea is embraced in "the victory
which overcometh the world" through our Chris-
tian faith; objectively, including the whole nature
of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, and subject-
ively, embracing our act of trust and reliance
upon Him .

Our faith, then, which overcomes, is the total
of forces Divine, and external, on the one hand,
and personal and internal on the other.

In this great war there are three parties: The
assailants, the defenders, God. The assailants
are those who brought it on by attacking an un-
suspecting world. We are not they. The de-
fenders are ourselves and our allies, who under-
took to resist the assault of a fiendish and selfish
power, seeking our overthrow. God is on one
side or the other of this great conflict. He is

Our Victory Assured 231

either with our assailants in attacking all that we
defend, or with us as defenders, in protecting all
that they assail.

The human party which is in alliance with God,
must be victorious. By all we know of Him, with
whom is His favour, — with the assailants or with
the defenders ? We are not boasting ; we dare not
boast of either present or prospective victory.
We wish, we pray, we hope, we labour, we strive,
and have so done.

But now we pass beyond these into a more as-
sured realm. We claim and gain certainty on ra-
tional grounds of belief, as firm as the integrity
of Nature, or of the human mind, or of the Divine
government of the world, and on such a basis we
declare our assurance, not merely our hope, that
we shall win this war.

Let me consider the uncertainties which we
have felt; the contingencies which have raised
doubts in our mind as to who would be victorious.
And then let me recount the certainties which for
me dispel all doubt and give firm assurance as to
the result.

First, the contingencies which have formerly
raised uncertainty, apprehension and possible
doubt in our minds — what are they? What, up
to this time, has led us to be uncertain, possibly,
as to an issue which we felt must be of victory?

232 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

I answer, the contingencies have been partly
material and visible, and partly invisible and spir-
itual.

Among material contingencies which have
raised doubts of our triumph in our mind, have
been the mighty preparations and forces of the
German- Austrian power. For many years they
had prepared this stroke, gathering together all
possible forces which could make for their ad-
vantage, while we had made no preparation and
had assembled no counter powers. Surveying
the multitude of their soldiers, contrasting them
with the little armies of Belgium, of Britain, and
of France ; the immense quantity of their supplies
in a thousand details; their large resources of
knowledge of all the territory which they pur-
posed to assail and conquer; their utmost readi-
ness down to the very last item of preparation,
and the amazing manifestation of physical force
and strength of every sort with which they began
their onslaught — and which they have kept up
until this time — we have been almost over-
whelmed with the quantity and energy of their
resources. We have measured ourselves against
them with daring, with courage, with hope,
greater than our faith. And as we survey to-day
what has been accomplished already by the mass
of their powers, by the multitude of their forces,

Our Victory Assured 233

by the enormous measure of their resources, we
still sometimes raise the question whether we can
victoriously combat these with an adequate de-
fensive force. We count, we compare, we weigh,
we estimate their forces, and feel a degree of
uncertainty as to the outcome.

While this is true, there are also spiritual forces
which make us dread the issue and wonder if we
have a right to expect to succeed. The question
we ask is : Are we in the right? Are we so surely
right and they so wholly wrong that we are se-
cure? And here, in humility and modesty, we
have halted to make inquiry and to try and settle
the matter truthfully in our minds. The student
of history, studying the overthrow of nations,
can but feel extremely careful when deciding on
what rest the foundations of permanent existence
for the land which he loves. Beholding the sins
of nations on account of which they have ceased to
exist, we have tried fairly and justly to inquire
whether our national sins are such that God
should scourge and reprove us, and perhaps over-
throw us on account of them.

Taught as we have been by the sacred Scrip-
tures, we have many times considered the story of
the chosen people of God, the nation Israel,
which regarded itself as favoured by Him, some-
what as we and other nations regard ourselves as

234 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

favoured by Him. And we have been compelled
to observe that, notwithstanding their privileges,
yet their sins, their disobedience, their neglected
warnings, and their chastisements finally resulted
in their captivity and overthrow. We remember
how Babylon, a very wicked nation, was raised up
to discipline the Hebrews, and conquering, to en-
slave them for a definite period of seventy years.
Assyria is spoken of in the sacred history as "the
rod of Mine anger," that is, of Jehovah's anger,
indicating that even a worse nation might be used
to scourge a better when that better one persist-
ently violated the law of God and ignored its
duties and its vows.

Then, we have seen emerge in the history of
Israel those great prophets, the statesmen of their
times, proclaiming the perils through sin, inhu-
manity, irreligion, idolatry, injustice and op-
pression, of the nation which they loved, warning
them through a period of years, pleading with
them and persuading them in vain, as they
have shown the disasters sure to result from
abuse of God's mercy. And we have said:
"Are we dearer to God than ancient Israel?
Are we surer that He will save us than they
were that He would save them? Can we hope
that He will deliver us from the just results of
our sins?"

Our Victory Assured 235

I confess that a vision of our national sins and
of our possible overthrow has until lately, power-
fully affected my mind. At the present time, on
full and fair investigation, I see no reason to be-
lieve that we are in similar danger to that of
the ancient Israelitish nation. For, first, while
we recognise our national sins, we remember this :
That there are and have always been in this
country a multitude of most Godly and right-
eous citizens, whose prayers, whose faith, and
whose obedience have continually appealed to
God for mercy on the state. Of these there are
millions, possibly a majority of the total of our
citizens. Confessing our sins, which they have
continually done, they have asked Divine mercy
and favour, interceding for the entire people. It
has been perfectly well known to all the best of
our citizens that the way to be delivered from the
consequences of our national sins was the way of
repentance; that we should confess them, turn
back from all evil doing, choose the right way,
obtain mercy and pardon and so return to Divine
favor.

That many millions of people in this country
have been so continually right in their attitude
toward God gives us great assurance. And they
have very freely warned their fellow countrymen,
while trying to improve in every respect our gen-

236 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

eral moral and social state. We know that even
after repentance, a state has to expiate its sins;
that the chastenings of God are applied to states
and nations in this world ; for since states have no
existence beyond the grave, all in the way of dis-
cipline, or chastisement for their correction, must
be applied to them in this present time.

We, therefore, behold ourselves in this pres-
ent war as having sinned, repented of our sins,
and to be now expiating our sins by what we are
at present suffering. We have done wrong, which
we confess. When those wrongs which we have
done are compared with those of our enemies,
they are apparently very small and trifling in a
national or international sense. Nevertheless,
we do not wish to hide from ourselves the fact
that we have deserved the wrath of God. But in
expiation of our sins, we are suffering, we have
suffered, and I may say, we are ready to suffer.
We own it to be just that we should endure
chastisement and sorrow on account of the evil
that we have done.

This attitude on our part of penitence, of
prayer, of willingness to make expiation for na-
tional sins, argues most surely the certainty of
Divine mercy and forgiveness. In this spirit
could we be surer than now of God's favour? We
are greatly and further assured by a contempla-

Our Victory Assured 237

tion of our national spirit and attitude at this
time, as by those of our allies.

II

If we compare ourselves, that is, our country
and our allies on the one hand, and Germany on
the other, what a totally different attitude toward
God we allies have as contrasted with their foes.
If I can honestly see that we are seeking and
doing the will of God, even though we have
sinned, I can be sure of His forgiveness, favour
and aid, sure of His sanction and of victory. And
as I behold our nation and our associated and
allied nations, I see that our choices have been
wholly unlike those of our foes.

We have chosen for our God, the true God, the
God of fatherly goodness, of holiness, of right-
eousness, of mercy, of pity and of love.

Compare the selected object of our worship
with that horrible, characterless, fierce, immoral,
ferocious being that the Germans have named
God, Might, without moral character. If na-
tions ever suffered desolation because of wicked
worship of false idols, then Germany is likely to
suffer thus in this age ; and if nations of old found
their chief strength in obedience to the true and
living God, then our strength is assured from our
choice of Him to be our God.

238 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

Compare us in another respect with our assail-
ants. We have chosen the merciful course of lif e,
not the cruel course of tyrants and oppressors.
They struck Belgium down, crushed, ravaged,
massacred, tortured and starved this little people.
We, on the other hand, fed them, uplifted them,
bound up their wounds, comforted them, rehabil-
itated them, adopted them into our homes; have
done everything indicative of the most merciful
attitude of mind. Can anyone doubt whether the
true and living God is on the side of the spoilers
of Belgium, Serbia, Armenia, or on the side of
those who have poured millions on millions of dol-
lars, hundreds on hundreds of workers, and relief
of every kind into those suffering countries?

We announced, and it is known that our an-
nouncement is true, that we would with our
power, aid the nations by love. They announced
that they would rule by f rightfulness. They seek
to horrify a trembling world. We seek to com-
fort a suffering world. We would emancipate
the world from slavery of every type. They
would enslave it. Out of such enslavement they
would draw their riches and revenues. We, on
the other hand, seek only justice and kindness
among men, and the uplift of all types of human
society at our own expense.

They, putting forth robbers' hands, would

Our Victory Assured 239

seize and keep all kinds of treasures not their
own, as plunder. We would take nothing from
the weak but would give of what we have and so
restore to those who need what the wicked have
plundered from them. Our enemies burn for
conquest regardless of justice or right. We urge
justice and generosity, and in fact have thrown
ourselves into this war with the distinct under-
standing that the vindication of justice and of
liberty is our chief purpose and our only effort.

In a word, we are on the Christian side with
God, (the loving and merciful God, the only
God; the true and living God) in all these re-
spects. Because we are on His side, because we
stand with Him, we not only have hope, but we
have certainty. When He is defeated, we shall
be conquered; not till then. If we were over-
thrown in our present spirit and service, then He
would be dethroned, and the world would be a
Godless and chaotic world. Fighting, we have
put right and justice in the field against wrong
and cruelty.

In these main lines we are doing the will of
God, and because we are doing the will of God,
which is Right as God made it, which is Law as
God made it, all uncertainty passes away as to
the issue, as to whether He favours us or not.
That He favours us we are as sure as that He ex-

240 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

ists, and that that favour means victory is as cer-
tain as that His name is a Just and Holy name.
He as the object of our faith is the victory which
overcomes the evil world forces. So in the con-
sideration of the contingencies and uncertainties
which may hitherto have caused us to doubt,
whether the material powers of our adversaries,
or whether the possibility of our own weakness
through our own failure or sin, those contin-
gencies have passed away, and we have no more
reason to doubt on either basis.

in

As a second general proposition; Our certain-
ties are assuring to us victory. Among those cer-
tainties is this: Not one selfish, Godless or un-
christian purpose inspires us to battle. Selfish-
ness, self -worship, is the root of all sins and the
ruin of human life. You may look in vain to find
one single evidence of a selfish purpose in Amer-
ica or in her allies in carrying on this war. The
enemy has nothing that we desire, neither ter-
ritory nor wealth, nor influence. Those whom we
are defending and for whom we are fighting have
nothing that we want. Appealing to our sense of
universal justice, we wish them to have what is

Our Victory Assured 241

their right. There is not a trace of selfishness in
our purpose, as we carry on this struggle.

On the other hand, there is not one unselfish or
loving purpose which has visibly moved our en-
emies. Surveying the history of these four years,
or of many years before, or the purposes that are
disclosed as likely to control the German- Aus-
trian hordes for years to come, I find no trace,
promise or suggestion from them of an unselfish
purpose in anything that they do. They mean no
good to anyone but themselves, no advantage to
any but themselves. Any desolating scourge,
any horrifying abuse that will seem to them to
minister to their advantage, they will put upon
those whom they are trying to overwhelm and
enslave. The greed of goods and the lust of
power seem to be all that move them ; while abso-
lute good will toward all mankind is all that
moves us.

For further proof that the certainties in the
case assure us victory, I beg you to notice among
our aims, that we are striving for the universal
fraternity of humanity, to make a brotherhood of
all races, nations, tongues, and peoples; that for
men to live in less than fraternal kindness is to
live below our standard and our level, and for the
privilege on the part of all humanity to live as
brothers, we are making this mighty struggle.

242 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

We are contending in the interests of all nations,
with their varied forms of governments, as far as
those governments are beneficent and helpful.
We are endeavoring to mitigate the troubles and
sorrows of all sufferers. We are trying to deliver
from every kind of pain and distress all races,
ranks and conditions of mankind. Every gra-
cious thing in character which would make for
good neighbourhood, for peacefulness, for pros-
perity, for kindness and for goodwill, we have
put upon our banner as the purpose of our strife.
For homes, in all their sweetness and precious-
ness, we are making the most energetic defence,
building again where they have torn down, re-
making where they have been destroyed. All
women and little children, all aged and weak, are
the objects of our help, and the subjects of our
striving. Even God Himself, we say with pro-
foundest reverence, has prescribed no higher
aims for human welfare than we have literally
claimed and undertaken to realise in the interests
of mankind. And all of these high aims and pur-
poses are in direct contradistinction, and antag-
onism to the acts, purposes, deeds and history of
our enemies.

Beyond all doubt, our pure motives and pur-
poses have received upon them the Divine sanc-
tion. God could not express Himself in antag-

Our Victory Assured 243

onism to what we are doing. It is so entirely in
harmony with His will and His nature as Christ
has revealed Him, as to assure His favour.

Now what is the assurance that comes to right
reason when we see how our aims agree with those
of the Divine Being? What does this concord
assure us in regard to victory or defeat? There
can be but one answer. Victory must be given us.

If we turn to the history of our country dur-
ing the great epoch of the Civil War, we may
find an illustration of the manner in which God
blesses a nation which has a humane goal and
purpose.

You remember, to sketch it very briefly, that
in 1861 and 1862, we fought for the Union of
the states. Mr. Lincoln stated that he would
save the Union with slavery, if he could ; without
it, if he must. The Confederacy fought for a
political theory of the rights of states and of the
federation of such states. So, in fighting merely
for the Union, did the northern United States.

Underlying all this, and to a great degree
ignored by us during two years of war, was the
great question of the rights of man, of what
should be done for that human being in this
country who was denied all human rights. This
we relegated to the background and we fought
on, not blindly, but unsuccessfully, toward the

244 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

realisation of our political goal. But defeat
followed defeat with us who stood for the
Union.

On the other side there was at first the ad-
vantage of material resources, very like those of
the Central Powers when this war began. The
United States army had been made weak and
scattered, its navy dispersed to all parts of the
world, its credit destroyed, its arsenals where
they could be most easily seized upon by the
enemies of the nation. They had every advan-
tage at the beginning; and defeat after defeat
followed the efforts of the Union arms.

Profoundly impressed with the succession of
disasters, relieved only now and then by victory,
Mr. Lincoln with deep seriousness and with much
prayer to the living God, sought light as to what
his duty was concerning the emancipation of the
slave ; and at length, when the forces of the Con-
federacy were marching apparently victorious,
upon Washington in 1862, he promised God,
as he himself says, that if the battle was won and
the southern forces compelled to flee, he would
issue a proclamation for the emancipation of the
slave. On the 17th of September, 1862, the
battle of Antietam was fought, issuing in a
Union victory; on the 22nd of September, Mr.
Lincoln issued the proclamation that on the first

Our Victory Assured 245

day of January, 1863, a hundred days from then,
the slaves should be free.

Still, success did not at once crown the Union
arms. The issue of the strife was now cleared
very much. Great forces fought against the idea
of humanity on the one side, while other great
forces on the other side aligned themselves in
favour of the humane goal to issue in the manhood
of the enslaved and emancipated. But as it be-
came more and more evident that the power of
the Union arms was devoted to the emancipation
of man, the tide of success turned, and on the
fourth day of July, 1863, Vicksburg fell. On
the same day Gettysburg was won, and the vic-
torious end of the war was assured. It was with
the nation a case of a change of purpose and
goal in the midst of the war, from a political to
a humane basis, and on that change of creed,
which was the transference of our faith from
political methods to divine purposes — I say on
the strength of that faith, the great final victory
was won. No one had any doubt, from that
time on, of the assured triumph of the Union
arms. We had taken God's side.

It might be said, I think, with exact truth, that
"the victory which overcame" in the Civil War
was "our faith"; that great mass of belief and
principles, of revelation of the Christian God, the

246 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

true and living God, which could not sanction
or stand for the enslavement of man; and that
when the change took place in us, then victory
became for us a certainty.

Now, at this present time, a different state of
things appeals to us, altogether in our favour.
We began this war without a political goal. We
began it with an absolutely humane purpose.
We did not need to change our creed after we
began the war. The "victory which could over-
come the world," namely, "our faith," our living
faith in these humane and eternal purposes of a
true and living God, was from the very first
assured. We have never swerved from it ; we
have never wavered in it. We are in this war
for principle; we are in this war for humanity.
We are in this war for morality, for Christianity,
for God. We have no occasion to change, and
if it has been the method of Divine Providence
to accord victory to those who have modified
their purposes from a political to a humane ob-
jective, then much more now, when no modifica-
tion is necessary, it becomes certain beyond all
question or controversy that we are fighting in
behalf of God, on God's side. And from all
that we know of His character, we are sure of
success, the success of His cause.

We verify our love of God by our love of men.

Our Victory Assured 247

We love our neighbours as ourselves. We ex-
pect Him to vindicate that principle, and we
know that we shall triumph with Him. Christian
spirit and Christian influence are ascendent in
the allied world. We smite to heal; we fight to
make peace; we have no pride which we wish
crowned; we have no hate which we wish to in-
dulge; we have no selfish desire which we wish
to gratify. We seek to have the will of the lov-
ing God, done by Him on the earth as it is in
heaven, and by men, as learning His will and
becoming obedient thereto.

IV

Thus by our faith and our personal trust we
are assured victory. I wish in the strongest
possible manner to affirm, not that we hope for
victory merely, not that we think we shall be
victorious, not that as in the language of some
earnest patriots, "We must conquer"; but rather
I wish to say that we do conquer; we are con-
quering, we shall conquer; and that our defeat
is impossible.

President Lincoln, now so deservedly hon-
oured, when asked : "Do you think God is on our
side?" is said to have answered: "I am more
concerned that we should be on His side." Mr.

248 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

Lincoln if here now could not but be pleased in
the highest degree, as every Christian and every
thinker ought to be, to find that beyond all ques-
tion we are on God's side. It is no more a ques-
tion of defeat of the allies, or of victory for the
Central Powers. It is a question of the defeat
of God or Satan, of the victory of Heaven or
Hell; of the triumph of right or wrong; of the
substantial eternity of goodness or wickedness;
and whoever doubts what the result is sure to
be in this case, can have no faith in anything
good.

We do not want victory unless we ought to
have it. This statement may startle some of
you who hear it, at the moment, but upon reflec-
tion you will absolutely agree with me. If our
victory was to make the world unhappy, if it
was to depress and degrade, if it was to override
right and truth and justice, if it was to enslave
humanity; if our victory was to destroy civilisa-
tion; if it was to remit the world to ancient
slavery again, we would not wish it. Our prin-
ciple is wholly different from this. Because we
know that it is God's victory, we do want it. We
are ready to say, "Thine, O Lord, is the victory,"
because all the victory that we want is a victory
that could be presided over by the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by such a Deity

Our Victory Assured , 249

as is expressed in the character, the words, the
spirit and the work of Jesus Christ.

So then, we shall win this war, we and our
allies. We are certain of it on bases broader
than mere national boundaries. It is not a ques-
tion of the geographical measurements of terri-
tory; it is a question of the moral measurements
of the universe. If this universe is under control
of an infinitely beneficent Being, then we are
sure to win. If the control of this universe were
under a maleficent being, a being of evil will,
which is unthinkable, then we might possibly be
defeated.

The forces on which we depend are more
numerous than millions of soldiers, more power-
ful than the greatest aggregate of numbers that
can be put into the fight. The forces on which
we depend are the forces of the spirit. Germany
called Belgium's army and Britain's army "con-
temptible;" 300,000 of the one; 250,000 of the
other were thought to be no enemy to fear at
all. But Germany forgot to reckon among the
mighty forces that invincible spirit which trans-
formed the 250,000 of Britain into 5,000,000
within four years, and which awakened other
millions in America and lifted up Belgium,
France and Italy to the heights of national
martyrdom and glory.

250 Why Christianity Did Not Prevent the War

We depend on constructive agencies, more
powerful than the destructive inventions of any
age. Chemistry, physics, gunnery, piracy, may
all combine with the high intelligence of devilish
ingenuity in German hands to destroy. We hold
in the spirit and purpose of our work a con-
structive force much greater than all these de-
structive forces. Putting one against the other,
we remember that the humble Cross of Calvary
became mightier than all the armed hosts of the
Roman Empire, which was contemporary with
it. We depend on a Divine leadership exalted
above all civil, military and naval commanders.
We honour the leaders of the allied forces. We
doubt not that among our own Americans will go
forth men who will become renowned through
ages for their courage, their humanity, and their
devotion. But the Leadership on which we de-
pend is higher than any general staff, any agen-
cies of war, any consulting generals or military
men. We depend on the leadership which alone
can keep this world from utter chaos and ruin ; on
the leadership that will uphold goodness when
badness is destroyed, that will make love greater
than hate, that will make brotherhood greater
than antagonism, that will make humanity at its
best, greater than all the ambitious and fierce self-
ishness of the powers of the wicked.

Our Victory Assured 251

There is nothing visible in the realm of human
thought that can take away our victory. So long
as we continue to fight on God's side, as we now
do, there is nothing conceivable that can give vic-
tory to our enemies, excepting that we should
become by any means as base as they, which may
God forbid.

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