sion. May the final treaty include specific provision for the trial
and punishment of the men who have organised and carried out the crimes of
the war. So shall resentment die, when it is realised that our victory is
unstained with injustice, and the German people themselves are helped to
return to the fellowship of civilised mankind. Thus shall the nations now
at war at last be bound together by the ties of international goodwill. If
we are able to realise these high aims then God will indeed "have sent us
to prepare a permanence on the earth and to save lives by a great
deliverance."

How great is the debt we owe to those who are bearing the brunt of the
struggle--how deeply we realise our dependence upon the manhood of this
nation! We cannot allow a day set apart for supplication to come and go
without more than a passing thought for those who have sustained wounds or
suffered hardship for the maintenance of our integrity and our rights of
existence as a nation.

Many are the movements to which the War has given rise, which aim at
alleviating the ravages of the combat. When we think that of the
seven-and-a-half million Belgians left in Belgium, more than
three-and-a-half millions are being fed by the free canteens or receiving
relief in some form from the charity provided in the first place by the
large-heartedness of the American people, we shall understand something of
the vastness of some of the problems which arise only to be dealt with by
outside agencies. The gallant stand of a gallant people is still continued
both before and behind the German lines, where the Belgians are as
stubbornly resistant to day as they were when their King drew his sword
and said: "For us there can be no other answer." And the passive
resistance of the imprisoned millions in Belgium to the compulsion and
cajolery alike of their would-be friend, the enemy, is a factor in the
German subduing process the world outside must appreciate. But the
Belgians are paying the price. Their resources are diminishing day by day.
The world's benevolence is dwindling and they are facing an immediate
future wherein life's necessities will have to be defined in terms of the
irreducible minimum. The whole nation, we are told, is growing so thin on
the small ration that can be provided, that wasting diseases, due to
under-nutrition, are increasing by leaps and bounds.

These facts are here referred to, first and foremost, that we may pay some
tribute, if