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eadful loss of life. While warriors die and widows weep, the sovereign rulers of the warring powers withhold the word that would stop the war. No Chief of State has yet said, "I do not want war." No one in authority has yet publicly declared his willingness to state the terms upon which his nation is ready to negotiate peace. Are not these dying men and these sorrowing women entitled to know definitely for what their nation is fighting? Is it territory? Then how much territory, and where is it located? Is it the avenging of a wrong done? Then how much more blood must be spilled to make atonement for the blood already shed? Some day accumulated suffering will reach its limit; some day the pent-up anguish which this war is causing will find a voice. Then, if not before, the rulers in the war zone will pause to listen to the stern question, "Why do we die?"--the question which shakes thrones and marks the furthermost limits of arbitrary power. And is not the outside world entitled to know the price of peace? Must the neutrals bear the penalties which war necessarily visits upon them, and yet remain in ignorance as to the issues at stake? Their trade is interrupted, their citizens are drowned, they are the victims of stray bullets--have they no right to know what it is that, being done, will draw down the curtain of this dark tragedy? Has any nation a purpose for continuing this war which it does not dare to state to the world, or even to its own people? Surely neither side thinks it can annihilate the other. Great nations cannot be exterminated--population cannot be wiped out by the sword. The combatants, even though the war may have made them heartless, will shrink from the task of carrying this slaughter beyond the point necessary to win a victory. And it must be remembered that war plans often miscarry. Predictions made at the beginning of the war have not been fulfilled. The British did not destroy the German fleet in a month, and Germany did not take Paris in two months, and the Russian Army did not eat Christmas dinner in Berlin. But even if extermination were possible, it would be a crime against civilization which no nation or group of nations could afford to commit. If it is vandalism to destroy the finest specimens of man's workmanship, is it not sacrilege to engage in the wholesale destruction of human beings--the supreme example of God's handiwork? We may find cases of seeming total depravity among individu
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