their country, but because they believed they were
fighting war itself. We shall not be true to their memory unless we
remember that. 'Slavery will always be,' said the defenders of slavery.
'It is impossible to prevent those things, human nature being what it
is,' said others of schools like Dotheboys Hall. A little time ago
England and Scotland were at one another's throats; a little before that
clan fell upon clan with vindictive fury. When we have beaten Germany,
who stands for the old, rotten, pagan belief in old, rotten, pagan
things we must see that we do not betray the men who died fighting
because they hated war.

But war has good in it too, they say. Yes, and amid its hideous wrong no
doubt there was good in slavery, as there is in cancer or blindness.
Almost any evil or agony may be the root of noble qualities, and war is
no exception.

These men died in the hope that it might be impossible for a civilised
nation again to thrust this evil on the human race. They died trusting
us to see that Europe would not again have to choose the alternative of
entering upon such an agony or of forgetting its honour towards God.
Force, it would seem, must long remain the last remedy, but might it not
be force resting on a pivot and striking with effect wherever
international crime seeks to disturb the peace of the nations? The mere
knowledge of such a united determination would at least be a powerful
persuasive. That may be only a dream. The immediate fact is that the
doctrine of Will to Power must first be crushed, represented as it is
to-day by Germany and her dupes. But men who have been through the
furnace will not rest content with less than the solemn attempt, in the
name of the dead, to put the nations of the world in a worthier
relationship to one another than has so far prevailed. Our brothers who
have fallen died in the hope that for succeeding generations life would
be different. They died believing that because of their sacrifice it
might be possible to substitute for the German (or any other) Will to
Power the Christian Will to Righteous Peace. This effort alone can be
their fitting monument.

* * * * *

Printed in Great Britain by T. AND A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

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