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 Wovih Har 
 
 THE REV. WILLIAM E. BARTON, D.D., L.L.D. 
 
 PASTOR 
 
 in 4ie 
 
 First Congregational CKurcK of Oak Park, Illinois 
 Sunday, June 16, 1918 
 
 Published by 
 
 The Men's Bible Class 
 
 First Congregational Church 
 
 Oak Park 
 
Soumtith 
 
 The favor with which this sermon was received is sufficiently indicated by the 
 fact that at its close the congregation, quite unaccustomed to such demonstrations, 
 burst into prolonged applause. On every side were requests for the printing of the 
 sermon; and the Men's Bible Class immediately waited upon Dr. Barton and 
 requested a copy of the manuscript. 
 
 Our pastor preached a sermon at the time of the declaration of war which also 
 deeply impressed the congregation. It was entitled "Our Fight for the Heritage of 
 Humanity," and was delivered on Sunday morning, April 15, 1917. Coming as it 
 did immediately after the declaration of war, and before people generally had 
 formulated their convictions in utterances of this character, it proved of interest 
 and value not only to the members of this congregation, but to others far outside. 
 It was quoted in many addresses, and favorably commented upon by men in high 
 positions, as well as by newspapers in this country and in Great Britain. The Men's 
 Bible Class was compelled to put it on the press several times in order to meet the 
 requests that were received for it. 
 
 We are sending this sermon forth not only as the honest and forceful utterance 
 of our minister, but also as a fair statement of the views of this congregation. 
 If it is significant, as we believe it is, the significance lies not alone in the fact that 
 our minister said it, but also in the fact that this congregation is in accord with him. 
 
 We believe that many people will be glad to read this sermon, and will find in it 
 
 an effective presentation of the view which Christian America holds concerning the 
 
 great world war. 
 
 E. W..F?^ATT. 
 
 • .; President of the Men's Bible Class. 
 Oak Park, June 17. 1918. 
 
 Gift 
 Autlior 
 

 Text: "And when David rose up in the morning, the word of Jehovah came 
 unto the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, Go and speak unto David, Thus saith 
 Jehovah, I offer thee three things: Choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto 
 thee. So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years 
 of famine come unto thee in thy land? Or wilt thou flee three months before thy 
 foes while they pursue thee? Or shall there be three days pestilence in thy land? 
 Now advise thee and consider what answer I shall return to him that sent me. 
 And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: Let us now fall into the hand 
 of Jehovah; for his mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man'' 
 II Samuel 24;11-14. 
 
 In this strange passage we have the remarkable incident of a righteous God 
 offering to his servant David a choice of three apparent evils. No wonder David 
 was in perplexity. The fact that this choice was the logical and inevitable con- 
 sequence of a sin on the part of David need not concern us now. That sin, whose 
 nature is obscure in the narrative, lay behind him. had been repented of and for- 
 saken; yet here he was confronting a tragic trilemma. 
 
 Mast We Choose Between Evils? 
 
 This text teaches that there come to men and nations, and that by divine ap- 
 pointment, crises in which it becomes necessary to choose among courses of conduct 
 no one of which is in itself desirable. Of such choices, the superficial thinker in the 
 realm of casuistry short-circuits his process of moral definition by saying, "Of two 
 or more evils, choose the least." But the profounder student of moral philosophy 
 cannot thus arrive at an ethical ultimate. Nor can he consent to have his course 
 charted for him by dogmatists who affirm that good and evil stand so related as 
 that what is once good must always be good, and vice versa. It is repugnant to 
 clear thinking and to sound ethical theory to hold that a man can ever be so situated 
 as that whatever he does he sins. We cannot justify the world as a sphere of moral 
 endeavor unless it is certain always that a man or a nation should possess the 
 possibility of one right course. Choosing among physical evils may be a necessity, 
 and is indeed often a necessity, but it is not so with moral evil. 
 
 If in any situation it becomes necessary to make a moral decision, there is always 
 a course that ought to be chosen, and but one; and because it ought to be chosen, 
 that course in these circumstances is right. Not to choose that course is sin, and 
 to choose it is meritorious. However undesirable that course might be in itself, 
 chosen in its relation to other possible courses of conduct it is right, and the only 
 right course. 
 
 It does not answer this reasoning to say that this removes the eternal distinction 
 between good and evil and makes it possible to re-label all courses of conduct in 
 terms of expediency. Good and evil exist for us in terms of relativity, and we are 
 
 —3— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 compelled to choose, not those philosophical abstractions, things-in-themselves, if 
 there be any such things, but things in relation. 
 
 There was a day in the autumn of 1916, the fifth of September, to be specific, 
 when it became the positive duty of men to rush into this church with muddy feet, 
 to drag the sacred furniture of this temple out into the rain, to chop great holes in 
 the woodwork with axes, and drench the entire interior of this building with water. 
 You may call it if you like a choice between the two evils of fire and water; physically 
 speaking, the definition suffices, but morally it will not answer the demands of 
 clear thinking. Morally speaking, the use of water on that day was not an evil. 
 Morally, and according to statute law, it became men's duty on that day to commit 
 acts which on the day before would have been trespass, misdemeanor and possibly 
 felony. 
 
 With David and the circumstances which confronted him, we have little to do 
 today. God offered to him, according to the ancient tradition, the choice of 
 seven years of famine, three months of military disaster, or three years of pestilence. 
 There came a day when David had to choose for himself and his people one of three 
 courses, no one of them in itself desirable; and the imperative chcke became a duty. 
 In like manner, the time came to America when it had to choose whether to go to 
 war, which it did not desire to do, and which selfishly speaking it had good reason 
 not to do, or whether it should become by its inertia, its love of wealth, and its moral 
 detachment from the rest of the world in the day of its desolation, an accessory 
 in the perpetration of shameful wrongs that threatened the very foundations of our 
 civilization. 
 
 Confronted by that alternative. America made her choice. Not lightly or boast- 
 fully, not in the heat of passion, but with a terrible deliberation, with an awe-inspiring 
 calmness of soul, America decided to cast herself into the hands of God rather than 
 into the hands of men, and to suffer affliction with the bleeding world rather than 
 enjoy the profits of the great refusal.. 
 
 There are those to whom this course appeals only as a choice of evils ; but a sound 
 ethical philosophy cannot rest there. If it was our duty to do it. then the thing 
 which it was our duty to do was not evil. It is never evil to do one*s duty. If the 
 thing ought to be aone, then not to do it is a sin. and to do it is not only not sin. 
 but is meritorious. More than that, it is imperative duty. To hold to anything 
 short of this is to confess one's inability to think through a problem of practical 
 conduct to a moral solution. 
 
 I am eager to get on with this sermon, for I have much to say, but I dwell on 
 this at the outset because it goes to the very core of the question of right and wrong 
 in the course we have chosen. We cannot rest till we have assured ourselves that 
 we are acting in accordance with sound ethical principles. We must fight with 
 our consciences speaking their word of approval, or we cannot fight at all. If we 
 are sure we are right, then, and not otherwise, we can go straight forward. For 
 myself, I have tried to think this matter through, as sanely and calmly as I knew 
 how. Hating war as I do, I believe that in the situation that confronted us in 
 April, 1917, we had no moral right not to go to war. I believe, furthermore, that 
 having gone to war when we did, and as we did, we have an imperative duty now 
 to press the war to a completely successful issue. 
 
 We are engaged in the war, but that is not all we are engaged in. We are in 
 the midst of a world-revolution in which the political, educational and social systems 
 of the human family are undergoing violent readjustment. War is only one phase 
 of an irrepressible conflict. We are in the war partly by our own deliberate choice 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 and partly by the force of circumstances which we could not control. We are too 
 deeply involved in it to extricate ourselves immediately even if we wished to do so, 
 but we are not too deeply involved to make clear to ourselves the deeper meanings 
 of the things we are striving for. 
 
 The Mental Readjustment of a Peave-LoTing People at War 
 
 A people nurtured through successive generations in the ideals, and deeply 
 immersed in the arts and industries of peace, finding itself in the midst of a war 
 that taxes all its resources and monopolizes its interests, may go unthinking into the 
 conflict, shouting such battle cries as are taught to it, and asking no questions of 
 right or wrong; but that is not the way America has been taught. A nation such as 
 this, founded on the right and duty of the people to think, must reckon at every 
 step with the people's conscience. To interpret, and so far as it may to guide, the 
 conscience of the nation must be in a peculiar sense the duty of the pulpit; and that 
 is not a light responsibility. The preacher is a man of like passions with his fellow 
 men, and with limitations in knowledge, breadth of vision and personal character, and 
 his message, truthfully presenting his own view, may vary all the way from extreme 
 pacifism to wild shouting for revenge and appeal to international hatred in the 
 name of religion. But if he can discern, as did the nobler prophets of Israel in the 
 days of its national crises, the moral and spiritual meanings of the events in the 
 midst of which his nation is moving, then may his service be of inestimable value in 
 steadying the faith and clarifying the vision of his people while the war wages, and 
 be a contribution also toward the rebuilding of the institutions of peace in the days 
 when peace shall come again, as come it surely must. 
 
 We still are able to think clearly and to make our choice deliberately, but it 
 will be increasingly difficult for us to think dispassionately in coming months. 
 Every day witnesses the closer approach of the hour when our own forces are to 
 bear the brunt of this gigantic struggle. Every day makes it plainer that the 
 final burden is to be chiefly borne not by England, France or Italy, but by the 
 United States. The Central Powers of Europe have suffered losses, but they ar« 
 flushed with victory and confident of final success. From them has come no word 
 which indicates that they have considered peace upon the basis of their acknowledged 
 defeat. They consider it a concession when they intimate that they might be willing 
 to make peace upon the basis of the status quo ante, a peace vkithout indemnities or 
 annexation; and by their conduct they show that even this is a concession which 
 they do not intend to make. It is their deliberate expectation that the United 
 States, rich in money but as they believe with an enfeebled manhood, will pay the 
 greater part of the financial cost of this war. It is the hope of the Central Powers 
 that they will be able to defeat the armies of England and France before that of 
 the United States is ready, and that in the final settlement this country will pay s 
 very large part of the cost of the war. 
 
 Germany and Austria have subjugated Russia, terrorized Italy, devastated Bel- 
 gium, bled France nearly white and taken terrible toll of the young manhood 
 of Great Britain. Our American forces are fresh, but they have been reared with 
 the ideals of peace; and save for the intensive training of a few weeks* military dis- 
 cipline they are without experience either mental or physical which might have 
 seemed to fit them for their present situation. All our education, all our home life, 
 all the ideals of our nation in the midst of which these young men have been 
 reared, have been those of peace. Suddenly as if they had gone to sleep at the 
 end of a day on earth and wakened in hell, these young men are torn from their 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 homes and sent forth to confront armies that indeed have suffered losses but have been 
 hardened by conflict, made confident by victory, and trained to bUnd obedience of a 
 perfectly organized mihtary machine. Every day makes it more evident that the 
 ultimate conflict must be largely between the German armies and the American 
 armies, between the German ideals and the American ideals, and it grows increas- 
 ingly important that we should define from time to time the ends for which we are 
 fighting. 
 
 A clear definition of the moral ends for which we fight is the duty of the Christian 
 Church in America. We have no state church in this country. The Church is the 
 bride of Christ, and not the concubine of the State. If the Church gives of its mem- 
 bership and its prayers to the winning of this war, the Church must be able to give 
 a reason for its faith and for its fighting, and that reason must be something else 
 than the word of Stephen Decatur, 
 
 "My country right or wrong." 
 It must be something other than an appeal to hatred and brute passion. I am 
 proposing, therefore, before I leave you for the summer vacation which you so 
 generously give to me, and -.vhich always seems so long when I look forward to it 
 and so short when I look back upon it, to define to you as the definitions lie in my 
 own mind the moral aims for which Christian America, including this church and its 
 minister, is striving, and for which we are giving our money and our sons. 
 
 Three Principles Which we Are Fighting 
 
 (1.) The German Adaptation of the Survival of the Fittest. The first thing 
 we are fighting is the German adaptation of the theory of evolution as it has been 
 developed in that countiy in a philosophy of the survival of the fittest. How this type 
 of neo-Darwinisra has taken possession of the German scientific mind was set forth 
 by Professor Vernon Kellogg in his papers in "The Atlantic Monthly," called. 
 "Headquarters Nights." Professor Kellogg is himself a biologist, and his intimate 
 association with German scientific men and officers of high rank during the first two 
 years of the war enables him to speak with a high degree of authority. The same 
 fallacy has been analyzed by another American biologist. Dr. George W. Crile, 
 who is himself a thorough going evolutionist, and who from that standpoint discusses 
 the German theory as an American scientist. He thus characterizes the German 
 adaptation of Darwin's conclusions: 
 
 In nature the strongest and the most clever species of animal is best adapted 
 for existence, hence that species survives and its competitors perish. German 
 philosophy assumes that, among the peoples of the earth, the Germans, collectively 
 and individually, are the strongest and the inost clever. They conclude, therefore, 
 that the German people are the fittest to survive; and that they, therefore, have 
 the right to exercise their higher survival qualities. 
 
 That this brief summary represents the German biologic theory as applied to 
 the present crisis may be easily proved by innumerable published and authoritative 
 statements of their own; and the question is whether this is true and ought to be 
 accepted by the world. 
 
 When a German speaks of "kultur" he does not mean that superficial polish 
 which Matthew Arnold called "A genius for small fault finding"; he means a scheme 
 or system, embracing all human activities, in which the product of the German 
 mind is so superior to that of the rest of the world that the rest of the world must 
 for its own good accept it, peaceably if it will, and otherwise forcibly. 
 
 Dr. Crile in the little book to which I have referred shows clearly that neo- 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 Darwinism, as it is now popularly held in Germany, though it is in its essence pro- 
 fessedly religious, is fundamentally immoral, and that its utter lack of morality is its 
 fatal weakness. Speaking as a biologist, he brings into the forefront the social side 
 of evolution, and shows that only by reason of this has mankind been able to 
 survive in a world where man with no sharp claws or powerful teeth, and being 
 neither so fleet, so strong, nor so prolific as the animals against whom he must con- 
 tend, has himself been able to survive and establish his supremacy. The German 
 theory of biology is weak just where the might of the megatherium was weak. Com- 
 munity adaptation and social solidarity and the establishment of morality and law 
 gave humanity its biologic supremacy. As the community develops a 
 protective reaction against the individual who shows himself an enemy to 
 the community stage of evolution, so an outlaw nation, a nation so intoxicated with 
 its power and sense of its own right to survive that it becomes the enemy of the 
 race, writes its own death warrant in the very terms of its own ambition and its 
 own initial success. 
 
 I take this argument from Dr. Crile's little book because he is not a minister, 
 nor does he profess to approach this subject from the point of view of casuistry. 
 He is a biologist. Speaking as an evolutionist of the application of the principle 
 of social protection in the advance of community life he says: 
 
 If an individual unjustly takes through stealth or by force what belongs to 
 his neighbor, a protective reaction is awakened in the community against that 
 individual. He is isolated from his fellows. He may even be killed for the 
 
 general good, because he is unfitted for the community stage of evolution The 
 
 individual who is most fair and just, most useful to his race, is most 
 fitted to survive. The successful dominance of the earth by m.in is due 
 to the fact that, through experience, through religion, through training by parents 
 and fellow men, the majority of human beings strive to make the race better and 
 to strengthen the bonds of social cohesion, or at least they do not strive to 
 destroy social cohesion.... 
 
 This individualistic German reaction interferes with the progress of the 
 human race just as the robber and the murderer interfere with local progress 
 within the state. The individual is punished so that his neighbor may live. Unfit 
 Germany must be punished, so that the human race may live; that, through 
 altruism, it may maintain and increase its fitness to occupy the earth. — Fallacy of 
 the German State Philosophy, pp. 19, 21. 
 
 (2.) The German Theory of the State. The second element in the irreconcilable 
 conflict in which we are engaged is the German theory of the State. Perhaps there 
 is no completely satisfactory definition of the State. Viewed in its simplest aspect 
 it is an expression of the impulse toward co-operation which lies at the basis of 
 human society. Man's dependence upon other individuals of his own species 
 begins at the cradle. No individual is for the purposes of the race complete in 
 himself. Fatherhood is a normal function of adult male life, yet it is a function 
 which it is utterly impossible for any man living alone to attain: the first and 
 fundamental institution of human life, therefore, is the family. The family is com- 
 plete in itself for a limited purpose and within a limited period, but if there are to be 
 any more families each family must go outside of itself for purposes of marriage, 
 trade, and the common defense. The law is compelled to recognize artificial person- 
 alities, corporate entities inclusive of other interests than those of the individuals com- 
 posing them. Most comprehensive among these are the Church and the State. Among 
 the many theories of human government are two which stand at the antipodes. One 
 assumes that the monarch is virtually the State, ruling by a divine fiat and having 
 authority not only over the will but over the conscience of the people. It says 
 
 —7— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 with Louis XIV, "The State? I am the State." The other assumes that govern- 
 ments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and that govern- 
 ments rule rightfully only so long as they promote the public good and give expres- 
 sion to the public will and the public sense of right. 
 
 The present Emperor of Germany has many times addressed bodies of his soldiers, 
 and rarely, if ever, has he failed to insist upon the military profession as the founda- 
 tion of the national life of Germany and of the duty of the soldier to have no vsall 
 nor conscience save those of the king. Here are some of the sentences from his 
 published speeches to his soldiers, as I gather them from a recent publication of the 
 University of Chicago: 
 
 Now, as ever, the one pillar on which the empire rests is the army. The chief 
 pillars of the army are courage, honor, and unconditional blind obedience. The 
 soldier has not to have a will of his own; you must indeed all have one will, and 
 that is my will; there is only one law and that is my law. 
 
 Presidents of the United States have frequently addressed bodies of troops, and 
 this is what Abraham Lincoln said to a regiment on its way to the front in 1864: 
 
 I always feel inclined when I talk to soldiers to try to impress upon them the 
 importance of success in this contest...! happen temporarily to occupy this 
 White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to 
 come here as my father's child has. It is in order that each one of you may have 
 an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; 
 that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life with all its desirable 
 human aspirations; it is for this that the struggle should be maintained, not for 
 one year only, but for two or three. 
 
 Both these rulers were endeavoring to inspire their soldiers to fight and win. 
 One did it by telling his men that they were to have no will, no conscience, but 
 to obey their sovereign blindly; the other told his men to fight that every man 
 in America might have a fair and equal chance in life. 
 
 German soldiers go to the front bearing a medal which says, "Strike him dead; 
 in the day of judgment no questions will be asked." American soldiers go to the 
 front, knowing that even military authority cannot supplant personal conscience 
 and individual responsibility to God. They bear in mind the homely words of Hosea 
 Bigelow. as recorded by James Russell Lowell: 
 
 Ef you take a sword and dror it. 
 
 And go stick a feller through, 
 Gov'raent haint to answer for it, 
 
 God'll send the bill to you. 
 
 The German theory is of a State existing by divine right, and its will per- 
 sonified in the person of its sovereign wherein the individual must subordinate hi» 
 conscience and obey. The American theory is that the State expresses the will 
 and the conscience of a free and sovereign people. There are two irreconcilable 
 principles here. We may call them autocracy and democracy, and those are as good 
 terms as we perhaps are likely to get. As lined up in the present war they stand 
 for two conceptions of the State, two theories of its relation to the individual will 
 and conscience, and between these two there is no compromise. 
 
 (3.) The Legitimacy of Frightfolness. The third thing we are fighting is the 
 German theory of the legitimacy of frightfulness. America recognizes the possibility 
 of war. We have had wars, several of them, and none of them have been gentle; 
 but even in the midst of our fighting the United States in common with other civilized 
 nations has observed certain humanities. We do not fire upon a white flag; we do 
 not wilfully destroy the lives of non-combatants; we do not fire upon undefended 
 towns where there are women and children; we do not attack hospitals or hospital 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 ships; we do not poison wells, nor ruthlessly destroy orchards. We recognize that 
 there is such a thing as international law, and we obey it until there is an agree- 
 ment among nations as to how it shall be amended. War is not native to the spirit 
 of democracy. Only the supreme peril of the country, or an occasion that unifies 
 the popular will and carries with it the popular conscience can easily sweep democ- 
 racy into war. When a democratic country goes to war it regards war as an evil, 
 and it looks upon peace not only as the ideal, but as the normal status of a free 
 people. It is not so with Germany. With Germany's theory of the State it was 
 inevitable that Germany should be at heart a warlike nation, and if such a nation as 
 Germany goes to war it is entirely logical for her to declare as her great war teacher 
 has taught her and as Germany believes, that "War is the application of force, to 
 which no bounds can be assigned." This being the case, Germany's treaty-breaking, 
 her hateful spy system, her secret plotting, her treacherous dealing with nations at 
 peace with her, were the legitimate expression of her theory of the State. It was this 
 which led her to erect in 1913 throughout northern France advertisements of beef 
 extracts, which by their varied language and color were designed to give information 
 either to spies or invading armies of the conditions of roads, bridges, and possible 
 places for the planting of guns. It was this which led Bethmann-Hollweg in Decem- 
 ber, 1916. to talk to us of peace, though afterward admitting that he was merely 
 seeking to gain time to build submarines and make the war more than ever ferocious. 
 It was this that led Zimmerman while professing peace and love toward America 
 to attempt to incite Mexico and Japan to attack us. It was this which led Germany 
 to drop bombs on kindergartens and hospitals. It is this which caused her to sink 
 the Lusitania and to glory in her shame. 
 
 This is what we are fighting in all its forms. It is a fallacy which begins in 
 its scientific conception of the law by which human life has been evolved, and it goes 
 straight up through German sociology, German politics, and German theology. 
 
 Do you know what I regard as the most terrible and ominous fact about the 
 present war? It is not that avsrful acts of atrocity have occurred. It is that these 
 acts are scientifically organized, authoritatively commanded, and philosophically de- 
 fended by Germany. 
 
 When I first heard of the atrocities which Germany had perpetrated, I refused to 
 credit them. I said, "The German army is too well disciplined for this to be true." 
 But that is just the reaspn why they occur. I had read in somewhat desultory fashion 
 some things which German military authorities had said of the conduct of war, 
 but what I did not understand at the outset, and now see clearly, is that this fright- 
 fulness comes not as the expression of the lust and brutality of the soldiers acting 
 against orders, but as the expression of a definite military policy, which has been 
 sedulously taught to every German officer. 
 
 How Long Haye We Known This? 
 
 It would be very natural to ask of me, or of any minister uttering such accus- 
 ations as this, "How long have you known that Germany stood for these principles? 
 You were not entirely ignorant of German teaching in years before the war. Did 
 it ever occur to you before the war broke out that these were the real teachings 
 of Germany, and if you did not discover it then, are you quite certain that you are 
 able to discuss these matters now with unerring judgment?" 
 
 If I were asked this question, I should have to say that I have, indeed, been 
 somewhat familiar with German teaching, and have held much of it in high regard: 
 that there is still much of it that seems to me excellent in the thoroughness of its 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 scientific method. I should have to admit that I have learned many things since 
 this war began and that some things which I knew before have come to me in a 
 new light, but whether I learned them soon or late, I learned them from German 
 authority and not from the enemies of Germany, and in so far as they showed in Ger- 
 many a spirit of ruthlessness and brutality that I had not expected, I learned them 
 with reluctance and with sorrow. 
 
 Aristotle taught us that "The causes of war are profound and the occasions of 
 war are slight." There is no more popular fallacy than that which mistakes the 
 occasion for the cause. The occasion of this war was the assassination of the Arch- 
 duke Francis Ferdinand of Austria; the cause lay deep in the German theory of 
 the survival of the fittest, in the German determination to force her kultur upon a 
 benighted and reluctant world, the German scheme of Pan-Germanism, which was 
 intended to put the world, commercial and political, in bondage to Berlin, the Ger- 
 man theory of the State with a supra-moral soul, and the German theory of 
 frightfulness. 
 
 Are These Prmdples Fit to SurviTe? 
 
 Now just as he who defies social adaptations may be fit to survive among the 
 brutes but not fit to survive in a civilized world, so Germany has brought her un- 
 social gospel to the test of the world's judgment, and having taken up the sv;ord 
 on its behalf she will either win or perish by the sword. We are fighting for victory, 
 but that victory is a means to an end and the end is peace. We are fighting for 
 peace but the peace for which we are fighting is not that negative peace which is 
 the mere absence of restraint; we are fighting for the inherent rights of humanity, 
 personal, social, national and international. 
 
 We have a right thus to assure ourselves that the attitude we have taken in this 
 contest is in accordance with the will of God. God is not neutral. It was the con- 
 victions of Jesus, not the lack of them, that drove Him to the cross. The Good 
 Shepherd of the New Testament lays down his life for his sheep; that is to say. 
 He lays it down in vigorous and bloody battle with the wolves. Between the sheep 
 and wolves the Good Shepherd is not a neutral. 
 
 Up to a certain point America was justified in a policy of neutrality. Personally, 
 I am not sorry that she maintained that attitude until the cup of Germany's iniquity 
 was full to the brim. Now the issue is on between that conception of government in 
 which the supreme power of the State is vested in irresponsible autocracy and a State 
 in which the supreme right is based on moral power, vested in the sovereign will 
 of the people. 
 
 Four Reasons Why We Must Win This War 
 
 I should like to give four reasons why we must win this v/ar: 
 (1.) A Mflitaxy Reason. If Germany wins this war, or if it ends otherwise 
 than in a decision against her, the armies of the world will be reorganized on the 
 German plan and Clausewitz will be master of the world. Other nations will be 
 driven to it just as they have been driven to the use of poison gas, — not because they 
 love it, but because they v^ll be forced to the conviction that it is the only effective 
 way to organize armies. The army will be, as Emperor William says it is, "the one 
 pillar of the State." The army will have as Emperor William says, a single vAW and 
 that the will of a despot. The army will have one article in its creed, and that will 
 be the creed of Clausewitz, that no moral considerations can be recognized in war, 
 which is the application of force unbounded by any ethical or humanitarian con- 
 
 —10— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 siderations. Make no mistake about this. Whether other armies acknowledge it or 
 not, that is the way they will be trained to fight if Germany wins this war. 
 
 (2.) A Diplomatic Reason. The second reason why we must win this war is 
 that if Germany wins, her hateful and immoral spy system will become accepted in 
 the diplomacy of the world. No nation will accept the plighted word of any other 
 nation. Every nation will believe and have reason to believe that every other nation 
 is its secret enemy, and by means, of bribery, perjury, and every possible form of 
 intrigue it will carry its system of deceit and hostility into every nation with which 
 it has diplomatic dealings, and will do it all under the camouflage of peace and 
 international good will. Our hired foes will exist all the way from the offices of the 
 State Department to our own kitchens, and the same v/ill be true all over the earth. 
 
 (3.) An Industrial Reason. The third reason is that if Germany wins all in- 
 dustry will be put on a war basis. The competition for the markets of the world, 
 already so keen that it has been not unjustly denominated "cut-throat competition," 
 will be carried farther as Germany has carried it in her cartel system, v.hich is a 
 system of trusts, protected and stimulated by government differentials. Government- 
 controlled railroads and government-subsidized steamship lines will carry the 
 products of government-fostered industries into the ports of the world, not simply to 
 gain markets for the years of peace, but to establish relationships that can be 
 utilized in the certain event of war. 
 
 Not only so, but every new factory erected in our own country will be erected 
 with a vieu' to its possible utilization in the manufacture of munitions. Not only 
 will the armies and navies of all nations be maintained on a basis of preparedness 
 never before dreamed of, but every man who undertakes to erect a factory for the 
 manufacture of sewing machines, or typewriters, or gas stoves will be required to 
 submit his blue prints to a Government inspector, who will consider before the permit 
 is issued whether the building will require essential modifications in case the Govern- 
 ment should take it over at an hour's notice for the manufacture of shrapnel. Not in 
 our own land only, but in all the world, the plowshares of humanity will be 
 hammered out with primary reference to their easy convertability into swords. Even 
 in the midst of peace, war \\i\\ continually be the mainspring of our industrial life. 
 
 (4.) An Educational Reason. The fourth reason is that if Germany should win, 
 our whole educational system would be transformed. Our schools and colleges 
 would no longer focus their curriculum upon the humanities. The natural sciences, 
 especially physics and chemistry, would be the end and aim of a liberal education. 
 Every college laboratory would become an experiment station in the manufacture of 
 poison gas. Every high school student would be taught new processes that might 
 be utilized in the manufacture of high explosives. Every government on earth would 
 provide a huge safe in which it would lock up against the day of need all secret 
 processes which its scientists would have been able to devise for the destruction of 
 life. Our whole system of education from the grammar school to the university 
 would crystallize around the ability to discover methods of murder. 
 
 What Germany Has Lost Already 
 
 Germany believes she is going to win on the basis of the theory of the survival 
 of the fittest, but America believes that the anti-social, anti-moral theories which lie 
 at the root of the present war are not fit to survive anywhere unless it be in the 
 place prepared for the Devil and his angels. We are not deceived by apparent 
 gains of Germany upon the battlefield. Germany has been winning the battles, but 
 losing the war. 
 
 —11— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 Think what Germany has lost. She has lost her colonies. Neither in Africa 
 nor in the islands of the Pacific is there an acre where now the German flag flies. 
 She has lost her manufactures and the market for them; she intended to turn the 
 commercial world upside down and stamp on its under side "Made in Germany." 
 The nations that formerly imported millions of dollars worth of her manufactures 
 have established factories of their own for the production of those commodities. 
 She has lost the carrying trade of the world. Not a single ship of those splendid 
 vessels which sailed from Bremen and Hamburg now traverses for her the pathways 
 of the ocean. She has lost her access to the raw materials of the world, its rubber, its 
 copper, its cotton, and the nations from which she must buy these commodities 
 have no mind to sell to her or to buy from her when the war is over. A sad day of 
 reckoning is coming for the factories of Germany when they cease to manufacture 
 munitions and look about for raw material and markets for their former products. 
 
 Germany is just beginning to realize the possibility of these stupendous losses. 
 She rouses now and then from her delirium and faces the awful fact that the world 
 must some day return to sanity, and she asks herself where her supply of raw 
 material is to come from, and where she is to find her markets. The current issue 
 of the Literary Digest quotes from a number of German authorities since Germany 
 began to realize that America was really in the war. The Berlin Arbeiter Zeitung 
 says: 
 
 However big the victory is to-day, and however big it may become, it can 
 never do what the cheap mouth-heroes of the Hinterland expect of it. It may, 
 possibly it can, break the warspirit of the French or make England and Italy 
 more disposed to accept a peace by understanding, but no victory gained on 
 land can make England and the United States defenseless or force them to lay 
 down their arm.s or bring them, like Russia, into the position of a completely 
 conquered nation which has to accept unconditionally the terms of the victor — 
 nor can any Power do this as long as the British Fleet rules the waves. 
 
 And even if Hindenburg's genius and German bravery won a complete victory 
 on .land, even if the English Army fell into our hands to the last man, and France 
 was disarmed and had to submit to Germany's terms, even then England and 
 America could not be compelled to the capitulation that the Pan-German word- 
 heroes prophesy daily. Even then they would blocade our coasts and the war 
 would continue at sea. And even if they could not or would not do that, even 
 if peace was concluded and all the battles ended, they would still have a terrible 
 weapon to use against us. Our domestic economy can not exist permanently 
 without the wheat, the copper, and the cotton from America, the nickel from 
 Canada, the cotton from Egypt and India, the phosphates from the North African 
 coasts, the rubber from the English tropical colonies, Indian jute, and the oil- 
 plants of the South Sea Islands. 
 
 There will be a scarcity of all these things after the war and there will be 
 great competition for them. If England and America do not deliver to us these 
 raw materials after the war, then we as conquerors are conquered. 
 
 Dr. Helfferich, once Vice-Chancellor of the German Empire, in an address a few 
 days ago before the National Import Trades Association, said, according to the 
 Frankfurter Zeitung: 
 
 If the final peace does not return to us what our enemies hav^ taken and 
 destroyed in the outside world, if it does not restore to us freedom m our work 
 and our spirit of enterprise in the world, then the German people is crippled tor an 
 immeasurable period. 
 
 Germany has lost something more valuable than all this. She has lost her place 
 in the leadership of the intellectual life of the world. Millions of young people in 
 America and other lands who would have studied German two years ago will now 
 elect French, Spanish or Italian instead. German books will find a limited market, 
 
 —12— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 and what is worse, a diminished influence. Up to the outbreak of the war, the 
 world sat at the feet of Germany, and her universities were thronged with graduate 
 students from all the world taking their postgraduate degrees. That may never 
 occur again. After the war broke out, and while America was still neutral, the 
 scholars of Germany to the number of ninety-three joined in the preparation of a 
 letter to the scholars of America, justifying the conduct of the war on the part 
 of Germany. It was signed by the great names of Germany's learned men, — Eucken 
 and Harnack and Haeckel and a long list of others, and it went as a personal letter 
 to practically every American scholar whose name is in the catalogue of an American 
 university or in "Who's Who." Those American scholars read that letter each in 
 his own study. They noted its specious arguments, its false logic, its perverted 
 morals, and they formed their opinions separately, but with wonderful unanimity. 
 That letter did more to discredit Germany in the eyes of America than anything 
 else except the sinking of the Lusitania. Germany can never recover her place of 
 leadership in the intellectual life of the world. She has lost it, and the loss is 
 incalculable. 
 
 Germany has lost something more valuable than this. She has lost the con- 
 fidence of the world in her integrity. The whole world now knows her to be a liar, 
 and Germany stands among the nations a moral bankrupt. This ethical insolvency 
 is a more terrible drain upon her resources than even the staggering war debt which 
 she is accumulating. 
 
 Let me remind you of a few dates. The Lusitania was sunk on Friday, May 7. 
 1915. Germany defended that action v^th perjured affidavits declaring that the 
 Lusitania was armed. The Arabic was sunk on Thursday, August 19, 1915. She 
 was westward bound, unarmed, carried no munitions, and so Germany said that 
 the Arabic was trying to ram the submarine which, the Arabic in fact never saw 
 until the submarine fired the torpedo from astern. On October 5, 1915, Bernstorff 
 on behalf of his government promised that nothing of the kind should occur again, 
 and on February 9, 1916, Germany made a shuffling promise that was supposed 
 to close the Lusitania incident. Six weeks after this promise, Germany sunk the 
 Sussex, a French channel boat, entirely unarmed, carrying no munitions, but loaded 
 with 380 passengers, 270 of them women and children, and among them a number 
 of Americans. Germany answered the demand of the United States Governent in 
 this matter by saying that she did not sink the Sussex, but sank another ship at 
 the same hour and in the same spot; and produced as evidence a sketch made 
 by the captain of the submarine of the ship he had sunk, which, Germany said, 
 did not look like a picture of the Sussex in the London Graphic. President Wilson, 
 in his note of April 26, practically told Germany that this was a lie worthy of having 
 had its origin in a home for the feeble minded. He said it in diplomatic language. 
 but that was what it meant. Then Germany promised that she would not sink 
 merchant vessels without warning and without saving life. This was the promise 
 that kept us out of war with Germany from May, 1916. till February 1, 1917; 
 and it was the notice of Germany, delivered to President Wilson on the evening 
 of January 31, that precipitated the war. 
 
 In connection with the note which Bernstorff handed to Secretary Lansing on 
 January 31, 1917, it was definitely stated by the German Chancellor, before the 
 Imperial Diet, that the reason Germany had kept her promise as long as she did 
 was that she was not earlier in a position to break it. This fact is definitely stated 
 by the Government of the United States. (How the War Came to America, p. 18.) 
 Moreover, before this date, on January 16. 1917, Herr ZimmermaH. Germao 
 
 —13— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 Secretary of Foreign Affairs, secretly dispatched a note to their minister in Mexico 
 informing him of this intention, and instructing him to endeavor to incite Mexico 
 to attack us in the rear, and promising her New Mexico and Arizona as a reward. 
 
 But, what moves the date of deliberate bad faith still further back is the 
 evidence published by Secretary Lansing in his address last Monday, June 10, 1918: 
 
 It is a fact not generally known that within six weeks after the Imperial 
 Government had, in the case of the Sussex, given this Government its solemn 
 promise that it would cease ruthless slaughter upon the high seas, Count Bernstorff, 
 appreciating the worthlessness of the promise, asked the Berlin Foreign Office to 
 advise him in ample time before the campaign of submarine murder was renewed 
 in order that he might notify the German merchant ships in American ports to 
 destroy their machinery, because he anticipated that the renewal of that method 
 of warfare would, in all probability, bring the United States into the war 
 
 The very blnntness of his message shows he was sure his superiors would not 
 take offense at the assumption that their word was valueless and had only been 
 given to gain time, and that when an increase of Germanj^'s submarine fleet war- 
 ranted, the promise would be broken without hesitation or compunction. What 
 a commentary on Bernstorflf's estimate of the sense of honor and good faith of his 
 Government. 
 
 In view of this spirit of hypocrisy and bad faith, manifesting an entire lack 
 of conscience, we ought not to be astonished that the Berlin Foreign Office never 
 permitted a promise or a treaty engagement to stand in the way of a course of 
 action which the German Government deemed expedient. 
 
 W|ien this war is over and Germany sends her representatives, as she will, to 
 the governments at London, Paris, Washington, Petrograd and Rome, those repre- 
 sentatives will be welcomed with carefully measured official courtesy, but in every 
 one of those capitals it will be remembered how Germany with duplicity and 
 shameless falsehood sent her representatives to us before to betray our hospitality 
 and if possible work our ruin. Not without reason has the government of the 
 United States issued under the authority of the Secretary of State, the Secretary 
 of War, and the Secretary of the Navy this blunt indictment: 
 
 Honest efforts on our part to establish a firm basis of good neighborliness 
 with the German people were met by their government with quibble, misrepre- 
 sentations and counter accusations against their enemies abroad. And meantime 
 in this country official agents of the Central Powers — protected from criminal 
 prosecution by diplomatic immunity — conspired against our internal peace, placed 
 spies throughout the length and breadth of our fend, and even in high positions 
 
 of trust in departments of our government Proof of their criminal violations of 
 
 our hospitality was presented to their governments. But these governments in 
 reply offered no apologies, nor did they issue reprimands. It became clear that 
 such intrigue was their settled policy. — (How the War Came to America, p. 9.) 
 
 This is Germany's saddest loss, a loss of confidence which has compelled America 
 and other civilized nations to brand her a liar. 
 
 Nations go to war and shoot each other sometimes on very slight provocation, 
 but they are accustomed to the use of polite words in their diplomatic correspond- 
 ence. Uusally, the more strained iheir relations, the more frigidly polite are -heir 
 notes. But the President of the United States, and his Secretaries of State, War 
 and the Navy, have issued separately and unitedly documents employing such 
 blunt language as looks strange in official documents of this character. The words 
 are carefully chosen, but they are uncompromising, and they brand the German 
 Government with the terrible name of liar. 
 
 I have considered this at length, because I want to make it plain how irretriev- 
 able are the losses of Germany in this present war. What are a few hundred square 
 miles of devastated territory which her ruthless armies have gained at awful cost? 
 
 —14— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 Her gains are trifling as compared with her losses. Germany is already defeated, 
 and her defeat is moral 
 
 What America Can Contribate 
 
 If we are right in what we have been saying thus far, then there can be no 
 compromise, no cross-cut path to peace. We must make the future secure, and 
 America must stand with her Allies, unfaltering as they have stood, and ready 
 to give to the utmost that the future may be spared the doom of despotism. 
 Germany is now a world-menace, and must be decisively defeated for her own 
 salvation, and for the salvation of the world. 
 
 America has something to give immediately, money and bread. She is giving 
 her sons, of whom nearly a million are already in France. What splendid boys 
 they are! How I have admired them as I have seen them go forth! Not boast- 
 fully have they gone. I do not wonder that London wondered, expecting to find 
 them overflowing with American boistrousness, and finding them so terribly calm. 
 I do not wonder that a London writer, Stacy Auminer, wrote of them in the Century: 
 
 This is no longer a war; it is a crusade. As I stood on the flags of Cockspur 
 Street, I think I understood the silence of those grim men. They seemed to 
 epitomize not merely a nation, not merely a flag, but the unbreakable sancity of 
 human rights and human life. And I knew that whatever might happen, whatever 
 the powers of darkness might devise, w^hatever cunning schemes or diabolical plans, 
 or whatever temporary success they might attain, they would ultimately go down 
 into the dust before "the fateful lightning." "After Zeus will come other gods." 
 
 Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. 
 
 Nothing could live and endure against that steady and 'rresistible progression. 
 And we know how you can do things, America. We have seen your workshops, 
 your factories, and your engines of peace. And we have seen those young men 
 of yours at the Olympic Games, with their loose, supple limbs, their square, strong 
 faces. When the Spartans, lightly clad, but girt for war, ran across the hills to 
 Athens and, finding the Persian hosts defeated, laughed, congratulated the Athen- 
 ians, and ran back again — since those days there never were such runners, such 
 athletes, as these boys of yours from Yale and Harvard, Princeton and Cornell. 
 
 And so on that day, if we cheered the flag more than we cheered the men, 
 it was because the flag was the symbol of the men's hearts, which were too 
 charged with the fires of Prometheus to trust themselves expression. 
 
 At least that is how it appeared to me on that forenoon in Cockspur Street, 
 and I know that later in the day, when I met a casual friend, and he addressed 
 me with the usual formula of the day: 
 
 "Any news? 
 
 I was able to say: 
 
 "Yes, the best news in the world." 
 
 And when he replied: 
 
 "What news?" 
 
 I could say with all sincerity: 
 
 "I have seen a portent. The world is safe for democracy." 
 
 Some day the last shell will be fired and flags of truce will hang over the 
 sandbags out in "No Man's Land," and the armies that so long have been at war 
 v^rill come out of their dugouts and bury their dead and wait for the signing of a 
 treaty of peace. Somewhere the representatives of all the powers that have been 
 at war will sit down round a table and draw up a document which the representa- 
 tives plenipotentiary all will sign. I was present at Portsmouth when the Russo- 
 Japanese war reached that stage, and I watched for a few days the evolution 
 of peace as it emerged from a state of war. Where the next peace treaty will be 
 signed I do not know, but I have an opinion where it ought to be. It ought to 
 be signed in Berlin, with the victorious armies of America and their brave allies 
 
 —15— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 holding the city and its fortified defenses. When those representatives gather round 
 that table there will be four important, contributions which America can make to 
 the discussion. 
 
 (1.) An Unselfish Motive. The first will be this, that America had nothing to 
 gain either in money orln territory by entering this war and will stand at its close as 
 the guardian of the rights of humanity and not as the agent of any set of selfish 
 interests. 
 
 (2.) The Longest Boandary Line on Earth and the Safest The second will be 
 an interesting exhibit which America in common with Great Britain Vk-ill be able to 
 display. It will be the world's longest boundary line unguarded by a single ceinnon, 
 warship, or soldier, and so maintained for a hundred years. That long line begins 
 where tidewater washes the rocky shores of Maine, extends by river and lake 
 through forest and over plains, stretches across the continent to Puget Sound and 
 is the safest boundary on earth and has been so for more than a hundred years, 
 because it is guarded only by mutual confidence and international good will. 
 
 That boundary line will be "Exhibit A," in the world's court for the establish' 
 ment of peace, proving that the way to defend the world's frontiers is not with 
 cannon, loaded v^ath international hate, but with confidence and mutual respect. 
 
 (3.) The Monroe Doctrine. The third contribution which America can make to 
 that interesting discussion will be the Monroe Doctrine which already has made 
 one-half the world safe for democracy. Under its protection the little republics to 
 the south of us, poorly prepared as some of them have been for independence, 
 have been free from the peril of aggression and exploitation and have been able 
 to work out their own salvation. Pitifully slow as has been their progress toward 
 intelligent self-government they have been sheltered in their struggle by a big 
 brother republic that has been for a hundred years since the days of James Monroe, 
 their protector and friend. That will stand as an example to the strong nations 
 of the world. 
 
 (4.) The Open Door. The fourth contribution which America can make will 
 be John Hay's doctrine of the open door in China and the kindly attitude of 
 America toward a belated people with whom she had had a grievance. When 
 the Boxer movement rose in China and the native people rose and put to death 
 merchants and missionaries from America and the states of Europe and shut up 
 their ambassadors as prisoners in Peking, American troops marched shoulder to 
 shoulder with German troops and British troops to the rescue of our citizens. But 
 there was this difference, the Emperor of Germany sent his troops with specific 
 instructions to take no prisoners, to treat the people of China as Attila, the Hun, 
 treated the people whose lands he invaded. Not without reason are the German 
 armies called by the uncomplimentary name of "Hun." The Emperor William 
 himself baptized them with that name when they marched on Peking. But the 
 United States, while fighting as fiercely as any of the European countries, for the 
 rescue of our citizens, wrecked no vengeance on the conquered people of Peking. 
 Rather America prayed, "Father forgive them ; they know not what they do." 
 
 When the nations of Europe stood watching the internal agonies of China prior 
 to the Boxer movement and leading to it, and most of them were hoping for its 
 dismemberment that they might pounce upon a slice, John Hay addressed to them 
 all his famous not© of September 9, 1899, in which he stated that the United 
 States stood for fair play for China, and called on any other nation that did not 
 agree with this nation to say so or stand committed to the same policy. The 
 
 — Ifr— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 nations stood aghast, and wondered what trick of diplomacy lay concealed behind 
 this undiplomatic directness. No nation so invited had quite courage enough to 
 stand up and admit that it was a thief, and so Hay closed the matter in another 
 note in which he accepted their grudging acquiescence as "final and definitive." 
 They spoke of this in Europe as "shirt-sleeve diplomacy." I rather like the term. 
 
 There was no legerdemain in that diplomacy; no box of tricks up America's 
 sleeve; no rabbits or fried eggs to drop into anybody's hat. It was shirt-sleeve 
 diplomacy, the sleeve rolled up to the elbow, and a strong right hand of friendship 
 reached out to a nation in distress. When that Boxer movement followed, John 
 Hay and Elihu Root upheld the same standard for America and the other nations 
 concerned. We would march with them to Peking and rescue our citizens there 
 imprisoned and under fire, but we would go no farther than was necessary for 
 the protection of our own people. I am interested in discovering how even then 
 John Hay discerned the radical difference in the spirit of America and Germany; 
 for, after the close of this incident, he wrote to a confidential friend on November 
 21, 1900, expressing satisfaction that the policy of the open door had been main- 
 tained, and saying: 
 
 "At least we are spared the infamy of an alliance with Germany," (Thayer's 
 Life of John Hay, ii:248.) 
 
 Where America stood then with reference to China that had wronged us and 
 from which we might have exacted whatever damages we demanded, America 
 stands now in its relation to all struggling and helpless peoples. It is our policy 
 that the strong must shelter and protect the weak, and not exploit the weak. It is 
 the policy of a Monroe Doctrine big enough to reach around the world. It is the 
 kind of policy that accepted our share of the indemnity which the injured nations 
 required of China, and then gave it back to her for the education of her youtJi. 
 That is the spirit of America. 
 
 The Duty of American Christians 
 
 What is the duty of Christian people in a time like this? 
 
 (1.) Preserve the Normalities of Life. First they should preserve so far »s 
 possible the normalities of life. As, far down below the waves and upper currents 
 of the ocean, there is a place of calm, so there should be in the life of a people 
 engaged in a righteous war, a great reservoir of normal living. In time of war we 
 should not only prepare for peace but preserve every possible normal relationship 
 and activity. 
 
 (2.) Discountenance the Mob Spirit. We should discountenance everywhere 
 the mob spirit. It is a time when people easily grow hysterical and entertain wild 
 suspicions, a time when the popular imagination is easily inflamed. Already in 
 Illinois has a mob put a man to death on suspicion of being a German sympathizer. It 
 was a shocking crime, and one that gives Germany an answer to fling back at us 
 when we charge her with atrocities. We have laws, and the machinery for their 
 enforcement. Let us beware lest at any time we go with a multitude to do evil, or 
 make the righteousness of our national cause the occasion of unrighteousness in 
 our dealing with individuals. 
 
 (3.) Refrain from Intemperate Speech. It is the duty of Christian people to 
 refrain from intemperate speech and appeals to hatred. There is no merit or sure 
 proof of patriotism in consigning the Kaiser to hell; moreover, it is superfluous; 
 he is in hell now. What other pulpits may utter is not our concern, but so far as 
 
 —17— 
 
THE MORAL MEANINGS OF THE WORLD WAR 
 
 this pulpit is concerned, its strong conviction that our cause is just shall not become 
 the occasion of wild harangue or ecclesiastical billingsgate. We will do our 
 stern duty, and we will seek to do it in a Christian spirit.. 
 
 I can but deprecate the tendency toward profanity in much of our public 
 utterance, and some of it, I am sorry to say in our pulpits. So far as I am concerned. 
 I can say anything that I feel needs to be said about Germany without blasphemy. 
 If God sends the Kaiser to hell, I may not, if present, interpose any objections; 
 but it will be of the Lord's doing, and not mine. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, 
 saith the Lord." 
 
 (4.) Sacrifice Cheerfully. It is our duty to make our sacrifices cheerfully and 
 gladly. Whether it be the eating of less wheat and meat and the burning of less 
 coal or the purchase of more liberty bonds than we can easily afford, the sacrifice 
 is relatively small in comparison with what our boys are doing, and we can test 
 our patriotism by the spirit in which we perform these necessary self-denials. 
 They will not grow less; they are certain to grow more; and we can bear them 
 gladly for the sake of our cause, and not seek to evade thera or to lessen their 
 moral value by complaint. 
 
 (5.) Preserve Faith in God and in the Sure Victory That Is to Come. Finally, 
 it is the duty of Christian people to preserve calm faith in the righteousness of God 
 and the sure triumph of our cause. Our prayers are no sure protection against 
 bullets; if they were, no one would ever be killed in war. Our faith is not the 
 sure promise of immediate triumph; many good causes have suffered temporary 
 defeat, and some have seemed to suffer it permanently. Even the cause of Christ 
 suffered an awful defeat at the cross, and we have our Gethsemane and our Calvary 
 in sight. The principles for which v/e fight are worth fighting for, even if for their 
 sake we suffer defeat. But we shall not be permanently defeated. God is on the 
 side, not of America against Germany, but on the side of humanity against in- 
 humanity, on the side of justice against injustice. We shall win, not because by 
 our selfish prayers or servile worship we shall be able to bribe God to favor our 
 cause, but because we have allied ourselves with the cause of humanity, which 
 is God's own cause. 
 
 As yet we have not suffered much. Our brave Allies have suffered, and part 
 of their suffering has been vicarious for us. We have suffering ahead. But we 
 have victory ahead. The war is not going to end on the Marne. The Allies that 
 have been fighting on the defensive, will, when America is fully in, assume the 
 offensive, and there will be a forward drive with tragic loss, but certain success. 
 Our flag and the flags of our Allies will move across the Marne, across the desolated 
 area, back to the German frontier, the retreat before them growing daily into panic 
 and rout. Our flag will not stop at the frontier. It will go over the Rhine, and 
 wherever it goes, it will wave stainless and unconquerable, the symbol of liberty 
 and the hope of the world. 
 
 "The Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave. 
 O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave," 
 
 and its principles will be recognized in every land, with liberty, justice, and a peace 
 that is based upon righteousness. 
 
 —IS— 
 
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