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