Some Moral Demonstrations 
 of the World-War 
 
 PRESIDENT HENRY CHURCHILL KING 
 
Some Moral Demonstrations 
 of the World- War 
 
 A Baccalaureate Sermon 
 Delivered at Oberlin College 
 June 16, 1918 
 
 By 
 
 President Henry Churchill King 
 
 Press of the News Printing Co. 
 Oberlin, Ohio 
 
SOME MORAL DEMONSTRATIONS ; 
 OF THE WORLD-WAR 
 
 I wish to speak of some of those 
 inexorable lessons, which God seems 
 intending to teach the whole human 
 race in this war — lessons to be 
 burned into the very consciousness of 
 the men of this generation. 
 
 I. The Critical Significance of the 
 Times. 
 
 And first of all, it is hardly possi- 
 ble to exaggerate the critical signifi- 
 cance of the times in which we are 
 living. We are all far more likely 
 to dream through this crisis, and to 
 wake up too late to its true meaning. 
 If Mr. Wells could say early in the 
 war, — " This is the end and the be- 
 ginning of an age. This is something 
 far greater than the French Revolu- 
 tion . . . and we live in it — that 
 statement is ten-fold more true now 
 than when he wrote it. For practi- 
 cally the whole world is now engulfed 
 in this struggle, and there is not a 
 single people whose interests will not 
 be vitally affected by the final set- 
 tlement after the war. 
 
 The greatness of the crisis is to be 
 —3— 
 
seen not only in the fact that on the 
 western front more millions of men 
 are involved than have ever been seen 
 on any single field of war, and in a 
 battle on which, as Lloyd George 
 says, "The fate of liberty through- 
 out the world may depend; " but 
 also in the fact that in this war the 
 Allies confront — it is to be soberly 
 said — probably the most threatening 
 challenge that has ever teen Drought 
 to Christian civilization — a threat so 
 dire, so insiduous, so penetrating, 
 that the very possibility of the sur- 
 vival of democratic and Christian 
 ideals is involved. Kipling states 
 the case with incisive insight when 
 he says of the German, 
 
 He thought out the hell he 
 wished to create; he built it up 
 seriously and scientifically with 
 his best hands and brains; he 
 breathed into it his own spirit 
 that it might grow with his 
 needs; and at the hour that he 
 judged best he let it loose on the 
 world that till then had believed 
 there were limits beyond which 
 men born of women might not sin. 
 . . . Therefore all mankind are 
 against Germany. Therefore all 
 mankind must be against her till 
 she learns that no race can make 
 its way or break its way outside 
 the borders of humanity. 
 
 —4— 
 
So great is the crisis in which the 
 world is now involved. 
 
 And the critical significance of our 
 times is to be seen, not less, in the 
 greatness of the opportunity now of- 
 fered to the moral forces. When 
 President Wilson laid before Con- 
 gress January 8, 1918, the fourteen 
 points of his " program of the world's 
 peace," he was definitely attempting 
 as a practical statesman to apply 
 Christian principles to international 
 relations; and he thereby, with the 
 prestige of his far-reaching influence, 
 gave such an opportunity to the 
 forces which are working for the bet- 
 terment of the world as they have 
 never had before. For if a settlement 
 can be reached after the war in the 
 line of this program of President 
 Wilson's, it will mean a great new 
 era in human history. It will mean 
 that gains will have been made, which 
 would be in some true sense commen- 
 surate with the immeasurable sacri- 
 fices for which this war has called. 
 The fathers and mothers of the al- 
 lied nations cannot be, and ought not 
 to be, satisfied with less. For if 
 there are not to be great construct- 
 ive gains included in the final war 
 
settlement, even a decisive military 
 victory over the Central Powers 
 would still be a virtual defeat of the 
 highest aims of the Allies. No 
 greater question, therefore, confronts 
 forward-looking men and women in 
 this hour than the question, whether 
 the educational, moral, and religious 
 forces of the race are to rise to the 
 greatness of the present opportunity; 
 or whether they are to leave after- 
 the-war forecasts and planning and 
 settlements to labor and socialist 
 groups, on the one hand, or to the 
 reactionary forces which want no 
 true democracy, on the other. The 
 greatness of the present crisis is, 
 therefore, to be seen in the immen- 
 sity of the opportunity opened to the 
 moral forces of the world. 
 
 The very fact that a war so terri- 
 ble and so desolating was allowed to 
 occur at all, also suggests the great- 
 ness of the present crisis. What 
 does it mean? This probably: Under 
 the providence of God the war was 
 to make unmistakably plain Ger- 
 many's selfish and unscrupulous pur- 
 poses of world-domination, before she 
 had quite throttled Christian civili- 
 zation. We are able to see now, how 
 menacing was the danger which 
 threatened the ideals of the race be- 
 —6— 
 
fore the war. The fact was, that 
 Germany was on the high road to a 
 peaceful accomplishment of her con- 
 scienceless purposes. Through her 
 persistent and insidious propaganda, 
 through her unscrupulous policy of 
 " peaceful penetration," through her 
 despicable spy system, and through 
 her treacherous and damnable pol- 
 icy of double citizenship, Germany 
 was securing at a rapid pace a dom- 
 ination, illustrated even in Prance 
 and Italy, which can now be seen 
 to have been most threatening. 
 For all the highest interests of civ- 
 ilization, it is well that she elect- 
 ed to fight. Her greed over-reached 
 itself; and she therein revealed her 
 purpose of world-domination, and her 
 true character as an enemy of all 
 mankind. That domination the hu- 
 man race is now forever to make im- 
 possible. So great is the present 
 crisis. 
 
 The critical significance of the 
 times is also revealed in the length 
 and the unexampled extent and in- 
 tensity of this war. 
 
 The war has several times seemed 
 near its end. Why has not the end 
 come? Why instead has it gone on 
 to involve the world? Under the 
 —7— 
 
government of a righteous God what 
 does this mean? In the first place, 
 we may well believe that the war was 
 not to be allowed to end, until the 
 real nature and character of Pan- 
 Germanism, now so completely in the 
 saddle in the Central Powers, — the 
 whole German purpose and ideal, — 
 were fully laid dare, as they could 
 not be in a few months' struggle. For 
 that revealing, the whole story of the 
 terrible desolation of Serbia, Bel- 
 gium, Armenia, Russia, Russian- 
 Armenia, and Roumania was neces- 
 sary — written out in characters so 
 plain that no man could fail to see 
 them. The absolute cynicism of Ger- 
 many's aims could not be made clear 
 until this blackest page of her Rus- 
 sian record was written. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago, in spite of 
 factors in her life which men could 
 not approve, and partly misled by the 
 German propaganda itself, thousands 
 of men of all nations were giving 
 Germany an admiration and an affec- 
 tion even beyond her real desert. 
 Men were ready to recognize in her 
 the educational and scientific and mu- 
 sical leader of the world. Is It a 
 good thing for her that in this war 
 and in the long preparation for it, 
 —8— 
 
she has put her admirers and lovers 
 to shame, and has done all that the 
 most fiendish ingenuity could devise 
 to drive out of their hearts every last 
 bit of admiration and love? Well 
 may one, whose lines show that he 
 has both known and loved his Ger- 
 many and must hope that she will 
 return to sanity and her own best, 
 write in Punch of "A Lost Land," 
 
 A childhood land of mountain 
 ways, 
 
 Where earthy gnomes and forest 
 fays, 
 
 Kind foolish giants, gentle bears, 
 Sport with the peasant as he fares 
 Affrighted through the forest 
 glades, 
 
 And lead sweet wistful little 
 maids 
 
 Lost in the woods, forlorn, alone, 
 To princely lovers and a throne. 
 
 Dear haunted land of gorge and 
 glen, 
 
 Ah me! the dreams, the dreams 
 of men! 
 
 A learned land of wise old books 
 And men with meditative looks, 
 Who move in quaint red-gabled 
 towns 
 
 And sit in gravely-folded gowns, 
 Divining in deep-laden speech 
 The world's supreme arcana — each 
 A homely god to listening Youth 
 
 -9- i 
 
Eager to tear the veil of Truth; 
 
 Mild votaries of book and pen — 
 Alas, the dreams, the dreams of 
 men! 
 
 A music land, whose life is 
 wrought 
 
 In movements of melodious 
 thought; 
 
 In symphony, great wave on 
 wave — 
 
 Or fugue, elusive, swift and 
 grave; 
 
 A singing land, whose lyric rimee 
 Float on the air like village 
 chimes; 
 
 Music and verse — the deepest part 
 Of a whole nation's thinking 
 heart! 
 
 O land of Now, oh land of Then! 
 Dear God! the dreams, the dreams 
 of men! 
 
 Slave nation in a land of hate, 
 Where are the things that made 
 
 you great? 
 Child-hearted once — oh, deep de- 
 filed, 
 
 Dare you look now upon a child? 
 Your lore — a hideous mask wherein 
 Self-worship hides its monstrous 
 sin: — 
 
 Music and verse, divinely wed — 
 How can these live where love is 
 dead? 
 
 O depths beneath sweet human 
 ken, 
 
 —10— 
 
God help the dreams, the dreams 
 of men! 
 
 All this required the revelation of 
 the whole of this frightful war. 
 
 Nor, under the providence of God, 
 was the great war to be allowed to 
 end until America could come in 
 with unified conscience, with full 
 realization of the meaning of the 
 crisis, and with all her powers; as 
 having now and forever after a rec- 
 ognized organic share and responsi- 
 bility in the world-life. Her tradi- 
 tional policy of isolation was to be 
 finally shattered, and a world-life 
 more truly unified and Christian 
 made possible. 
 
 Nor was the war to be allowed to 
 end until all the liberal powers and 
 forces of the Allies were driven into 
 a genuine cooperation; though it was 
 to take the full weight of the great 
 German offensive on the west to in- 
 sure one Commander-in-Chief for the 
 allied forces. The Allies have paid 
 an enormous price again and again 
 for their independent action. The 
 world's crisis is now too great to 
 permit anything but the closest co- 
 operation among all the forces of 
 righteousness and justice in the 
 —11— 
 
earth. And we may thank God that 
 this has now become plain. 
 
 And we may be sure that another 
 of the providential reasons for the 
 length, extent, and intensity of this 
 war is to be found in the fact that 
 the Allies were to be driven to 'puri- 
 fying their own aims; to purging out 
 of their ambitions all merely selfish 
 ends and all democratic inconsisten- 
 cies. The Russian autocracy was to 
 cease; imperialistic aims to be aban- 
 doned; unwarranted Italian ambitions 
 to be reduced; and the same fiery in- 
 dignation to be manifested against 
 racial and social wrongs within their 
 own borders, as against such wrongs 
 among other belligerents. As surely 
 as the Allies are no believers in a 
 tribal God, so surely must they 
 cleanse their own hearts, and make 
 sure that their aims are the just 
 alms of a righteous God. 
 
 We may be sure, too, that under 
 the providence of God this war was 
 allowed to engulf the world, in order 
 that the great moral issues involved 
 might be made clear to all men, and 
 a significant world-decision reached, 
 by which the whole world, rather 
 than any small section of it, might 
 profit. It was to be made forever 
 —12— 
 
clear to the whole race that moral 
 obligations are binding upon nations 
 as well as upon individuals; that men 
 must choose between the ideal of a 
 true brotherhood of self-respecting 
 and mutually-respecting nations on 
 the one hand, and domination by an 
 unscrupulous autocracy on the other, 
 — an autocracy already planning for 
 another war more terrible than this. 
 For it has come to be clear that the 
 war in which we are now engaged is 
 no ordinary war of a mere clash of 
 selfish interests of certain nations. 
 All mankind are to be forced to 
 choose between democracy and au- 
 tocracy. They are to be driven to 
 see that there is no such thing as 
 divine rights of kings or aristocra- 
 cies; that there are by right no priv- 
 ileged classes through inheritance or 
 enactment; that nobody is good 
 enough for such domination as Ger- 
 many seeks, and if he were good 
 enough he would not want the domi- 
 nation. This war, thus, men are 
 coming to see, is an inevitable collis- 
 ion between two absolutely contra- 
 dictory systems, between two irrecon- 
 cilable ideals. And the war must be 
 finally so settled, that such a world- 
 
 —13— 
 
engulfing crime as this shall not be 
 possible again. 
 
 God has intended, thus, that this 
 generation should not repeat the fail- 
 ure of the French Revolution, should 
 not stop short of great constructive 
 results, in mere negative overturn- 
 ing. We are not to be allowed to 
 evade, this time, the demands of a 
 radical democracy. We are not to be 
 allowed to heal lightly the hurt of 
 the peoples. In fact, as Mr. Wells 
 says, a league of nations has become 
 "a plain necessity": 
 
 It becomes more and more plain- 
 ly a choice between the League of 
 Free Nations and famished men 
 looting in search of non-existent 
 food amidst the burning ruins of 
 our world. 
 
 Now in such a war and facing a 
 crisis like this, we may be sure that 
 no small motives will avail to keep 
 our nerve unshaken, our morale firm 
 to the end — into that last quarter of 
 an hour of which the French Pre- 
 mier has spoken. Petty self-interest 
 will not suffice. Hate and revenge 
 will come far short. Rather, if in 
 this struggle we are to endure to the 
 end, we shall need all the undergird- 
 ing of the deepest moral convictions 
 —14— 
 
and of the firmest religious faith. 
 For if a thinking man is to be a 
 fighting man, he needs a great cause 
 for which to fight, and such a cause, 
 purified and glorified, the Allies have 
 today. 
 
 II. The Plasticity of the Present 
 World Forces. 
 
 Now in this crisis in the world's 
 history, there is also being daily 
 demonstrated before the eyes of men 
 the plasticity of the present world 
 forces — a plasticity that cannot long 
 continue, and of which every advan- 
 tage must be taken now by the forces 
 of righteousness, if the largest re- 
 sults are to come out of this war. As 
 William Harbutt Dawson writes, "We 
 are living at a time when days and 
 weeks have the fulness and signifi- 
 cance of years and decades." If we 
 are blind to this, we shall sacrifice 
 great gains for the race otherwise 
 easily possible. 
 
 My chief fear as to the outcome of 
 this war is, that when peace comes, 
 whether soon or late, it will come 
 suddenly; and we shall all be so 
 war-weary, so sick and disgusted 
 with the whole strife and its conse- 
 quences, so anxious to get back to 
 —15— 
 
any kind of a patched-up peace, that 
 we shall nervelessly let slip out of 
 our hands perhaps the greatest sin- 
 gle opportunity that the race has 
 ever had for a great forward step. We 
 may not forget that there are many 
 forces even within the allied nations 
 that are thoroughly reactionary, that 
 desire no true democracy, and that 
 want to see unjust privileges perpet- 
 uated. Their desires will be fulfilled, 
 unless men and women of moral con- 
 victions and ideals are determined 
 now, not later, by and through the 
 war and not simply after it, to mold 
 these plastic forces for great gains 
 for the race. There is such a thing 
 as winning a war and losing all its 
 best possible fruits. As I have else- 
 where quoted Brailsford as saying: 
 
 The hope of the world is in our 
 grasp. At the settlement of this 
 war we may realize it. If that mo- 
 ment escapes us, we and our chil- 
 dren may expiate our cowardice 
 and our indecision in an epoch 
 which will turn to revolution as 
 a mild alternative to war. 
 III. The World's Need of Christian 
 
 Comfort. 
 
 Once more there is being brought 
 home to the consciousness of men 
 the heavy load of human sorrow and 
 —16— 
 
the world's unspeakable need of 
 Christian comfort. It is Christian- 
 ity's greatest opportunity. For no 
 religion can speak so deeply to the 
 suffering souls of men. The earth 
 has never known so many anguish- 
 torn hearts. We have only begun to 
 understand it here in America; but 
 we, too, are to be baptized into the 
 spirit of sacrifice, and to drink the 
 cup of suffering. If we are to come 
 through it at all with sanity and 
 faith and hope and love, we shall 
 need all the great motives of the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 Thousands of men at the front, 
 and thousands of those who love them 
 at home, are facing once again, as 
 no academic problem but as a mat- 
 ter of life and death, the question of 
 immortality. Are those, who are sac- 
 rificing their lives for the emancipa- 
 tion of men, to have no personal 
 share in the new age that is to come? 
 Does death end all? And to this cry 
 of the human heart for the immortal 
 life, we shall have no sufficient an- 
 swer except as we speak out of that 
 atmosphere of the eternal which is 
 the very air of Christ. 
 
 And as certainly as men need the 
 assurance of immortality, they need 
 
 —17— 
 
even more the sure sense of living 
 relation to a living God — a God who 
 has vitally to do with his children, 
 who lives and works and loves and 
 suffers in them, and is the infinite 
 Father ever at hand and never a God 
 afar off. Will the Christian church 
 greatly meet this deepest need of 
 men? 
 
 Nor can men be satisfied today, as 
 they fight to preserve the very foun- 
 dations of civilization, without the 
 assurance of the increasing coming 
 of the kingdom of God on earth. 
 Millions of men in all the belligerent 
 armies are fighting with the vivid 
 hope and the grim determination 
 that a war like this shall not occur 
 again; that their children shall be 
 spared the facing of such an inferno. 
 They are determined that the great 
 result of the war shall be the bring- 
 ing on of a new epoch for the race, 
 a new civilization of brotherly men. 
 Is the church of Christ mightily to 
 back this determination? Surely 
 those who name themselves after the 
 name of Christ cannot fail to put up 
 to God the prayer 
 
 They who shall give for Thee 
 
 Lover and son, 
 Show them Thy world set free, 
 
 Thy battles done! 
 —18— 
 
Lord God we lift to Thee 
 
 A world in pain, 
 Look down and let it be 
 
 Made whole again! 
 
 IV. A Growing Sense of the In- 
 tangible Values. 
 
 In close harmony with these con- 
 victions of the Christian faith, is the 
 growing sense of the intangible val- 
 ues which this world-war is steadily 
 disclosing. It should mean much to 
 all believers in the ideal that more 
 millions of men than ever before 
 have come to see that force and ma- 
 chinery and organization and wealth 
 and science, even, are not enough; 
 that a man or a nation may have all 
 these and still have no life worth 
 living. For something like three- 
 fourths of the population of the world 
 are now knit up in some fashion with 
 the cause of the Allies, — not for ter- 
 ritorial gains, not for commercial ag- 
 grandisement, not for purposes of 
 political domination, but because they 
 have come to see as never before that 
 all possible material gains without 
 essential liberty do but furnish forth 
 a barren life. It has become finally 
 clear to them that no material gains 
 can ever make good the heritage of 
 free men: freedom of worship, free- 
 —19— 
 
dom of thought, freedom of investi- 
 gation; political, economic, social 
 freedom; the emancipation of all the 
 powers of men. They have awak- 
 ened, thus, to the meaning of the in- 
 tangible values; they have caught 
 the vision of the things that though 
 they be not seen are yet eternal — the 
 everlasting values of faith, of hope, 
 of love. Does it mean nothing to 
 you that this war, in spite of all its 
 evils, has brought this growing sense 
 of intangible values? 
 
 V. Unparallelled Cooperation of 
 the Forces of Righteousness. 
 
 I am no panegyrist of war, and I 
 am bearing in mind its fearful train 
 of evil; but one may rejoice never- 
 theless that, under the pressure of 
 a war like this, the peoples who are 
 really seeking a free society of self- 
 respecting and mutually-respecting 
 nations, are being driven also to 
 such far-reaching cooperation and 
 companionship in high aims as the 
 world has never before seen. The 
 resources of money, of food, of ship- 
 ping, of man-power of three-fourths 
 of the world are pooled to establish 
 the great aims of the Allies. What a 
 marvelous thing it is, that we may 
 sit here surrounded by the flags of 
 —20— 
 
twenty-one allies! Something like a 
 unified Council of all these peoples 
 has been made possible — an actual 
 and potent internationalism, a super- 
 nationalism, indeed, that holds the 
 one great promise for the world's fu- 
 ture peace and progress. Coopera- 
 tion on such a scale and for such 
 ends may well send a thrill through 
 any man who can think. For here 
 is already actualized a kind of parlia- 
 ment of man, a great world unity of 
 the free nations, who seek the tri- 
 umph of freedom, of justice and of 
 peace for all the peoples of the entire 
 world. If cooperation like this for 
 great unselfish aims may be secured 
 in time of war, surely we need not 
 be without hope of the establishment 
 of a permanent league of the nations 
 after the war. For without such a 
 league the very existence of civiliza- 
 tion will be jeopardized. 
 
 VI. New Faith in Common Men. 
 
 In speaking to you a year ago, I 
 asked you then to think of the new 
 faith that had arisen in common men. 
 The year that has intervened has 
 only strengthened and deepened that 
 faith. Common men of all the nations 
 have proved themselves capable of 
 —21— 
 
an endurance we had hardly thought 
 possible to human flesh, and of a he- 
 roism unsurpassed in the history of 
 the world. Wells counts this one of 
 the characteristic things of this war: 
 
 It is the peculiarity of this war 
 — it is the most reassuring evi- 
 dence that a great increase in gen- 
 eral ability and critical ability 
 has been going on throughout the 
 last century — that no isolated 
 great personages have emerged. 
 Never has there been so much abil- 
 ity, invention, inspiration, leader- 
 ship; but the very abundance of 
 good qualities has prevented our 
 focusing upon those of any one in- 
 dividual. ... It is not that the war 
 has failed to produce heroes so 
 much as that it has produced he- 
 roism in a torrent. The great 
 man of this war is the common 
 man. It becomes ridiculous to 
 pick out particular names. The 
 acts of the small men in this war 
 dwarf all the pretensions of the 
 great man. Imperatively these 
 multitudinous heroes forbid the 
 setting up of effigies. When I 
 was a young man I imitated Swift 
 and posed for cynicism; I will 
 confess that now, at fifty and 
 greatly helped by this war, I have 
 fallen in love with mankind. 
 And this courage of the common 
 man is ground, as William Allen 
 White sees, for a great new faith in 
 democracy: 
 
 —22— 
 
That Courage — that thing which 
 the Germans thought was their 
 special gift from Heaven, bred of 
 military discipline, rising out of 
 German Kultur — we know now 
 is the commonest heritage of men. 
 It is the divine fire burning in 
 the soul of us that proves the 
 case for democracy. For at base 
 and underneath we are all equals. 
 In crises the rich man, the poor 
 man, the thief, the harlot, the 
 preacher, the teacher, the laborer, 
 the ignorant, the wise, all go to 
 death for something that defies 
 death, something immortal in the 
 human spirit. Those truck driv- 
 ers, those mule whackers, those 
 common soldiers, that doctor, 
 th^se college men on the ambu- 
 lance, are brothers tonight in the 
 democracy of courage. Upon that 
 democracy is the hope of the race, 
 for it bespeaks a wider and 
 deeper kinship of men. 
 
 The passionate tribute which one 
 of our American poets has paid to 
 the spirit of France, is typical of this 
 new faith in the common men of all 
 the nations. For there has been a 
 new birth for nations, like Serbia and 
 Belgium and France, as well as for 
 individuals in this great war. Von 
 Hindenburg said sneeringly of 
 France, " France is dying," and the 
 poet catches up this word: 
 —23— 
 
If France is dying, she dies as 
 day 
 
 In the splendor of noon, sun- 
 
 aureoled. 
 If France is dying, then youth is 
 
 gray 
 
 And steel is soft and flame is 
 cold. 
 
 France cannot die! France can- 
 not die! 
 
 If France is dying, she dies as 
 love 
 
 When a mother dreams of her 
 
 child-to-be. 
 If France is dying, then God 
 
 above 
 
 Died with His Son upon the 
 Tree. 
 
 France cannot die! France can- 
 not die! 
 
 If France is dying, true manhood 
 dies, 
 
 Freedom and justice, all golden 
 things. 
 
 If France is dying, then life were 
 wise 
 
 To borrow of death such im- 
 mortal wings. 
 France cannot die! France can- 
 not die! 
 
 VII. The Prevalence of the Sacri- 
 ficial Spirit. 
 
 And once more this war has dem- 
 onstrated afresh and on an unexam- 
 pled scale the capacity of men for 
 sacrifice. The massive heroism of 
 —24— 
 
the common men of all the nations 
 has made this fact certain. 
 
 More millions of men than ever be- 
 fore in the history of the world have 
 thrown themselves unflinchingly into 
 the support of a great unselfish 
 cause, ready for whatever sacrifice 
 that might involve. This very spirit 
 of sacrifice has given to them all a 
 new sense of the great values for 
 which they fight, and a new grip upon 
 them. Men are seeing things in bet- 
 ter proportion; the great values are 
 looming up as really great, and the 
 relative goods are forced back into 
 their relative places. So that it is 
 the " glory of the trenches," as Con- 
 ningsby Dawson says, that has eman- 
 cipated men from selfishness and 
 from the domination of petty aims 
 and fears: 
 
 There's one person I've missed 
 since my return to New York. 
 I've caught glimpses of him dis- 
 appearing around corners, but 
 he dodges. I think he's a bit 
 ashamed to meet me. That per- 
 son is my old civilian self. What 
 a full-blown egoist he used to be! 
 How full of golden plans for his 
 own advancement! How terrified 
 of failure, of disease, of money 
 losses, of death — of all the tem- 
 porary, external, non-essential 
 —25— 
 
things that have nothing to do 
 with the spirit! War is in itself 
 damnable — a profligate misuse of 
 the accumulated brainstuff of 
 centuries. Nevertheless, there's 
 many a man who has no love of 
 war, who previous to the war had 
 cramped his soul with littleness 
 and was chased by the bayonet of 
 duty into the blood-stained large- 
 ness of the trenches, who has 
 learned to say, " Thank God for 
 this war! " He thanks God not be- 
 cause of the carnage, but because 
 when the winepress of new ideals 
 was being trodden he was born in 
 an age when he could do his 
 share. 
 
 And some such emancipation as 
 has come to the men at the front 
 should come in like manner to those 
 at home, who bear them on their 
 hearts in love and prayer and make 
 common cause with them. How in- 
 evitably the home life, too, must be 
 exalted by the sacrifices of this war 
 is voiced by Miss Rittenhouse in her 
 poem, " I Have no Lover on the Bat- 
 tle-field." 
 
 I have no lover on the battle-field, 
 I do not go with sickening fear 
 at heart, 
 And when the crier calls the 
 latest horror 
 I do not start. 
 I have no lover on the battle-field, 
 —26— 
 
I am exempt from terror of the 
 night, 
 
 I can lie down, serene and disre- 
 garding, 
 Until the light. 
 
 But on the battle-field had I a 
 lover, 
 
 How life would purge itself of 
 petty pain, 
 And what would matter all the 
 petty losses, 
 The petty gain? 
 I should be one with those who 
 suffer greatly, 
 With pain all pain above, 
 And I should know then, beyond 
 peradventure, 
 The heart of Love! 
 
 But the glory of the spirit of sacri- 
 fice is not merely that it emancipates 
 and exalts the individual who feels 
 it, but that it is contagious and 
 spreads from soul to soul, and so be- 
 comes truly redemptive for other 
 men also. Mr. J. J. Chapman has no 
 doubt his own brilliant son in 
 thought, who died earlier in the war, 
 when he writes: 
 
 The young men, as of old, shine 
 as the natural heroes of the race. 
 Their readiness to die restores 
 our faith in human nature. It re- 
 minds us that the sacrificial part 
 is what counts in the spread of 
 truth. This much we know, and 
 —27— 
 
we know little else, about moral- 
 ity and religion. To count the 
 cost and dwell upon the life and 
 property sacrificed in heroic ac- 
 tion is to doubt the value of 
 truth. To what better use could 
 these young heroes and all this 
 amassed wealth have been put? 
 It was for this that they existed. 
 As for the pain involved in their 
 engulfing, as for the agony of the 
 experience, this is a part of the 
 regeneration. People seem to de- 
 sire the power of Christ, and the 
 benevolence of Christ, without 
 the Passion. The thing can not 
 be done; and nothing but an age 
 of materialism could have so 
 softened the fiber of moralists as 
 to lead men to think it possible. 
 
 The spirit of sacrifice not only in- 
 volves, thus, the uplift of high com- 
 panionship in the fulfilment of great 
 aims, but its unwonted prevalence 
 means also that more millions of 
 men than ever before in the history 
 of the world have found in their own 
 sacrificial experience the key to 
 the understanding of the deepest 
 message of religion, of Christianity, 
 of Christ's own death — the mes- 
 sage of sacrifice. Men have come to 
 see in some half-blind fashion, that 
 they can in a true sense do what 
 Hinton long ago pointed out — make 
 —28— 
 
all their pains " identify themselves 
 in meaning and end with the suffer- 
 ing of Christ." For when one turns 
 all his pains into a willing sacrifice 
 to God and to men, he makes the sac- 
 rifice itself, as one has said, "an in- 
 strument of joy." For love rejoices 
 in sacrifices for love's sake. Once 
 more, then, in this sacrificial exper- 
 ience which is sweeping over the 
 world, God is saying to men: "Be- 
 loved, think it not strange concern- 
 ing the fiery trial among you, which 
 cometh upon you to prove you, as 
 though a strange thing happened 
 unto you; but inasmuch as ye are 
 partakers of Christ's sufferings, re- 
 joice; that at the revelation of his 
 glory also ye may rejoice with ex- 
 ceeding joy." One does not wonder 
 that one of the English Chaplains 
 was able to say that the favorite 
 hymn of the London regiments, at 
 the great battle of the Somme, was 
 Watts' old Good Friday hymn: 
 
 When I survey the wondrous 
 cross 
 
 On which the Prince of Glory 
 died, 
 
 My richest gain I count but loss, 
 And pour contempt on all my 
 pride. 
 
 —29— 
 
VIII. The Promise of a New Civ- 
 ilization. 
 
 But one could not keep his faith in 
 God and the world at all, if he be- 
 lieved that these sacrifices were to 
 be all in vain, and were not the prom- 
 ise and prophecy of a better age, of 
 a new civilization of brotherly men. 
 With steadily increasing assurance, 
 if I read the signs aright, men of 
 faith and vision are forecasting a 
 new world, a great new epoch for 
 humanity, in which the interests of 
 the common man shall be guarded as 
 they have never been before in the 
 history of the world. As another has 
 said, " I believe that historians will 
 look back upon this epoch as the 
 most dynamic epoch in the world; 
 the time when the greatest social, 
 political, industrial, and spiritual 
 changes of men were made." We are 
 all to be soldiers of this great change. 
 Out of the faith, in life and death, of 
 one such soldier of the great change 
 were born these lines: 
 
 Ye that have faith to look with 
 fearless eyes 
 Beyond the tragedy of a world 
 at strife 
 
 And know that out of death and 
 night shall rise 
 The dawn of ampler life, 
 30— 
 
Rejoice whatever anguish rend 
 the heart, 
 That God has given you a price- 
 less dower, 
 To live in these great times and 
 have your part 
 In Freedom's crowning hour. 
 
 That ye may tell your sons who 
 see the light 
 High in the heavens — their her- 
 itage to take — 
 "I saw the powers of Darkness 
 put to flight 
 I saw the morning break." 
 
 Members of the Graduating Class: 
 
 You come to the end of your college 
 course in unexampled days of world- 
 crisis, when the world-forces are plas- 
 tic to men's molding as never be- 
 fore, and when men deeply need the 
 comfort which only a great faith can 
 give. Face to face with such a crisis, 
 such an opportunity, such a need, 
 you will gird yourselves about with 
 the new convictions and hopes which 
 have shone through the clouds of 
 these difficult days: the growing 
 sense of the intangible values, the 
 unparallelled cooperation of the 
 forces of righteousness, the new faith 
 in common men and nations, the 
 wide prevalence of the sacrificial 
 spirit — the holiest thing in man — and 
 —31— 
 
the promise of a new civilization. Be 
 sure, with John Oxenham: 
 
 The future lies 
 
 With those whose eyes 
 
 Are wide to the necessities, 
 
 And wider still 
 
 With fervent will, 
 
 To all the possibilities. 
 
 Times big with fate 
 
 Our wills await, 
 
 If we be ripe to occupy; 
 
 If we be bold 
 
 To seize and hold 
 
 This new-born soul of liberty. 
 
 And every man 
 Not only can, 
 
 But must the great occasion seize. 
 Never again 
 Will he attain 
 
 Such wondrous opportunities. 
 
 Be strong! Be true! 
 Claim your soul's due! 
 Let no man rob you of the prize! 
 The goal is near, 
 The way is clear, 
 Who falters now shames God, and 
 dies. 
 
 " Stir into flame the gift of God 
 which is in thee." 
 
 " Take thy part in suffering hard- 
 ship, as a good soldier of Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 —32—