ey do not understand. Or, rather, let
them come here, not as chaplains in the rear, but in the line of
fire, with arms in their hands. Perhaps then they will perceive
the inner change which is going on in thousands of us. In the
eyes of these parsons a man who has no passion for war is
unworthy of his age. But it seems to me that we who are
faithfully doing our duty without enthusiasm for the war, and
hating it from the bottom of our souls, are finer heroes than
the others. They speak of a Holy War. I know of no Holy War. I
only know one war, and that is the sum of everything that is
inhuman, impious, and beastly in man, a visitation of God and a
call to repentance to the people who rushed into it, or allowed
themselves to be drawn into it. God has plunged men into this
Hell in order to teach them to love Heaven. As for the German
people, the war seems to be a chastisement and a call to
contrition--addressed first of all to our German Church.

GERMANY IN PEACE TIME.

Enough has been cited to give a glimpse of the better Germany in the
time of this war. Let us remember, too, what she has been in peace.
"After all, in our saner moments we all of us know that the Germans are
a great people, with a great part in the world to play. Their boasts
about their 'culture' are not idle boasts, and, when one comes to think
of it, it is rather important to have in our midst a people that _cares_
to boast about its culture. The Englishman is more given to complaining
than boasting, and when he does boast it is certainly not about culture.
As it seems to me, the Germans excel in two things--simple tenderness of
sentiment and the work of patient observation. I am aware that it has
for a considerable time been the mode in England to slight German
literature. Personally, I consider this one of those temporary poses to
which superior persons are liable. Leave out all the great names if you
will--Goethe, Schiller, Heine, and the rest--and we still have the
folk-songs. A nation that can produce those folk-songs has got unusual
gifts for the world. And, of course, we envy the Germans their music. Of
all the contemptible utterances that this war has produced (and it has
produced a good many) none has been worse than the silly blathering
against German music just because it is German. What have Beethoven,
Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner got to do with the politics of the
present w