d I have tried, like him, always to preach love
and charity, I have always mistrusted warlike preparations, of
which nations seem never to tire. Some day this accumulated
material of soldiers and guns will burst into flames in a
frightful war that will throw humanity into mourning on earth
and grieve our universal Father in heaven."

As the race of armaments went forward on a scale never before thought
of, statesmen and writers began to make use of the word "Armageddon" to
describe the conflict that they saw was inevitable. Years ago the London
_Contemporary Review_ said:

"Odd things are happening everywhere.... Russia, Germany,
England--these are great names; they palpitate with great
ideas; they have vast destinies before them, and millions of
armed men in their pay, all awaiting Armageddon."

In June, 1909, Lord Rosebery, in a speech before a press convention in
London, commented gravely upon the significance of the feverish haste
with which the nations were arming themselves, "as if for some great
Armageddon, and that in a time of the profoundest peace."

To quote from a popular American magazine, of the same year:

"Today all Europe is divided into two armed camps, waiting
breathlessly for the morrow with its Armageddon."--_Everybody's
Magazine, November, 1909._

Thus, everywhere, observers saw that the rivalry of interests among the
nations was leading to a conflict so overwhelmingly vast that only the
Scriptural word "Armageddon," with its appeal to the imagination, seemed
adequately suggestive of its proportions.

Every passing year added to the intensity of feeling and the antagonism
of interests. In 1911 the London _Nineteenth Century and After_ said:

[Illustration: UNITED STATES BATTLESHIP "NEVADA"

Photograph taken from the Manhattan Bridge. New York.

COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD. N.Y.]

"Never was national and racial feeling stronger upon earth than
it is now. Never was preparation for war so tremendous and so
sustained. Never was striking power so swift and so terribly
formidable.... The shadow of conflict and of displacement
greater than any which mankind has known since Attila and his
Huns were stayed at Chalons, is visibly impending over the
world. Almost can the ear of imagination hear the gathering of
the legions for the fiery trial of peoples, a sound vast as the
trumpet of t