great
struggle against conditions. Life is warfare--not one set of human
beings warring upon other human beings--that is murder, no matter by
what euphonious name it may be called; but war waged against ignorance,
selfishness, darkness, prejudice and cruelty, beginning always with the
roots of evil which we find in our own hearts. What a glorious thing
it would be if nations would organize and train for this warfare, whose
end is life, and peace, and joy everlasting, as they now train and
organize for the wholesale murder and burning and pillaging whose mark
of victory is the blackened trail of smoking piles of ruins, dead and
maimed human beings, interrupted trade and paralyzed industries!

Once a man paid for his passage across the ocean in one of the great
Atlantic liners. He brought his provisions with him to save expenses,
but as the days went on he grew tired of cheese, and his biscuits began
to taste mousy, and the savory odors of the kitchen and dining-room
were more than he could resist. There was only one day more, but he
grew so ravenously hungry, he felt he must have one good meal, if it
took his last cent. He made his way to the dining-room, and asked the
man at the desk the price of a meal. In answer to his inquiry the man
asked to see his ticket. "It will not cost you anything," he said.
"Your ticket includes meals."

That's the way it is in life--we have been traveling below our
privileges. There is enough for everyone, if we could get at it.
There is food and raiment, a chance to live, and love and labor--for
everyone; these things are included in our ticket, only some of us have
not known it, and some others have reached out and taken more than
their share, and try to excuse their "hoggishness" by declaring that
God did not intend all to travel on the same terms, but you and I know
God better than that.

To bring this about--the even chance for everyone--is the plain and
simple meaning of life. This is the War that never ends. It has been
waged all down the centuries by brave men and women whose hearts God
has touched. It is a quiet war with no blare of trumpets to keep the
soldiers on the job, no flourish of flags or clinking of swords to
stimulate flagging courage. It may not be as romantic a warfare, from
the standpoint of our medieval ideas of romance, as the old way of
sharpening up a battle axe, and spreading our enemy to the evening
breeze, but the reward of victory is not seeing