there which was also his
enemy--the evil of a secret diplomacy which juggled with the lives of
humble men so that war might be sprung upon them without their knowledge
or consent, and the evil of rulers who hated German militarism not
because of its wickedness, but because of its strength in rivalry and
the evil of a folly in the minds of men which had taught them to regard
war as a glorious adventure, and patriotism as the right to dominate
other peoples, and liberty as a catch--word of politicians in search of
power. After the Somme battles there were many other battles as bloody
and terrible, but they only confirmed greater numbers of men in the
faith that the old world had been wrong in its "make-up" and wrong
in its religion of life. Lip service to Christian ethics was not good
enough as an argument for this. Either the heart of the world must be
changed by a real obedience to the gospel of Christ or Christianity must
be abandoned for a new creed which would give better results between
men and nations. There could be no reconciling of bayonet-drill and high
explosives with the words "Love one another." Or if bayonet-drill and
high-explosive force were to be the rule of life in preparation for
another struggle such as this, then at least let men put hypocrisy away
and return to the primitive law of the survival of the fittest in a
jungle world subservient to the king of beasts. The devotion of military
chaplains to the wounded, their valor, their decorations for gallantry
under fire, their human comradeship and spiritual sincerity, would not
bridge the gulf in the minds of many soldiers between a gospel of love
and this argument by bayonet and bomb, gas-shell and high velocity,
blunderbuss, club, and trench-shovel. Some time or other, when German
militarism acknowledged defeat by the break of its machine or by the
revolt of its people--not until then--there must be a new order of
things, which would prevent such another massacre in the fair fields of
life, and that could come only by a faith in the hearts of many peoples
breaking down old barriers of hatred and reaching out to one another in
a fellowship of common sense based on common interests, and inspired by
an ideal higher than this beast-like rivalry of nations. So thinking
men thought and talked. So said the soldier--poets who wrote from the
trenches. So said many onlookers. The simple soldier did not talk like
that unless he were a Frenchman. Our men only beg