God,
and created to be heirs of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.
Can we go on working their ruin, damning them body and soul? A race
that will not cleanse the fountains of its national life, that will not
remove from its midst the forces of degeneration, that shrinks from
that moral surgery which will alone save the body-politic--such a race
cannot hope to go on swaying the destinies of the world. But this is
our confidence, that through the horrors of war the nation will waken
to the deep issues of life and death, and that the forces of moral and
social renewal will advance a hundred years in one day. We can hear
the marshalling of the forces in our midst which will transform and
enrich the nation. There is arising the cry of the coming victory:

'The King shall follow Christ, and we the King.'

[1] In the _Record_, the official organ of the United Free Church of
Scotland, there appeared in the August number, 1916, a letter written
by a 'Special Constable' which gives a terrible word-picture of a slum
family:

'Let me give a personal experience of one of the multitude of family
tragedies directly due to drink which come under my notice. A family
of eight persons--four of them adults--occupied a single room in a slum
area.

'The eldest son, aged twenty-one years, was in the last stage of
consumption, and occupied the only bed in the room. On visiting the
house one morning, I found the lad lying on the floor, in a corner. He
had required to vacate the bed for his mother, and during the night
there had been born into these surroundings another of those immortal
souls who, in the words of Kingsley, "are damned from their birth."

'The following day the mother was sitting at the fireside, and was
never back in bed till the son died some days later. It is hardly
necessary to add that the mother, the infant, and another girl followed
him at short intervals. On the day of the mother's funeral the husband
got drunk and had to be locked up--the twentieth-century method of
remedying evils of this kind.'

[2] The distribution of licences in our cities is a crying evil. The
following are examples of the provision made in the wards of
Edinburgh:--

Number of Population to
Ward. Population. Licences. each Licence

Morningside 24,320 18 1351
Merchiston 24,436 21 1163
St. Gil