during the last two years. The best elements in us rise in
irrepressible repugnance before such pageants of wickedness as have
clothed the famous name of Wittenberg with infamy and made the story of
naval warfare a continuing record of wanton crime. No man can think,
without shame, of the so-called civilisation and culture which could
palliate such perversions of justice as those recalled by the fate of
Nurse Cavell and Captain Fryatt.

Yet there are two considerations that may help us to feel that the German
people, so far from being truly represented by the miscreants who have
organised and carried through the atrocities on land and on sea, are
wantonly misled and disgraced by them.

History includes the record of similar horrors perpetrated by other
nations which nevertheless are justly reckoned among the best human
material. May we not hope that the crimes of Germany in the twentieth
century provide no truer index to the national character than did those of
revolutionary France in the eighteenth?

Psychology unites its testimony to that of History. Civilised man stands
as the latest link of a long chain of advancement from aboriginal
beasthood, and he retains within himself the germ of all his earlier
traits, though these are increasingly suppressed and held in check by
higher habitudes. Civilisation represents an elaborate system of auxiliary
disciplines, designed to stifle as far as may be the brute in man and to
strengthen the acquired qualities of justice, mercy and refinement.

When some sudden catastrophe such as Revolution or War befalls, there is
always great danger that that elaborate system of artificial auxiliaries
to virtue will be broken down and the beast let loose in unchecked
savagery. Unquestionably this gives the key to the atrocities that stained
the French Revolution: it probably gives the key to the crimes of German
warfare. It certainly leads us to the contemplation of the horrors from
which we ourselves would be free--a contemplation which helps to make our
Day of Intercession one not merely of prayer for victory and its material
benefits, but for the ennoblement of our minds and the purification of our
souls.

The happenings of the past two weeks have led our thoughts to the
possibilities of peace and the consideration of peace terms.

May the peace, whenever it come, be worthy of the conflict that it ends, a
peace which enthrones justice in the affairs of the world and banishes
oppres