nd though man's sin alone has
caused the war, its issues are in the hands of God. The whole war has
been a demonstration of the result of leaving God out of His world.
The world with God left out leaves war; and life with God left out
leaves hell.

There must be a turning to God in our own national life. We speak of
the menace of German militarism, but what is militarism but armed and
aggressive materialism, the deeper principle which lies behind it? And
what is materialism but organized selfishness? Materialism and
selfishness are the dangers of our own land as well as of Germany. And
the war is a call to set our own house in order.

America can no longer live to herself alone. She is fighting for the
freedom of humanity. Here on the very field of battle, at the
throbbing heart of the conflict, we ask ourselves, What is the real
issue of the war? What are they fighting for?

Away there in Austria a young crown prince, Francis Ferdinand, was
murdered. It was the spark which set off the powder mine of Europe.
But not for him are they fighting. Behind him stood the two contending
forces of the growing nationalism of Serbia and the expanding
commercialism of Austria. These two forces clashed in conflict, but
not for them are they fighting. Behind these stood two greater powers,
those of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism, a growing Germany and a rising
Russia, which like a vast glacier for a thousand years had sought the
open sea. The ambitions of these two powers clashed in conflict at
Constantinople and elsewhere. But not for them are they fighting.

On the western front there were two deeper principles in conflict,
those of autocracy and democracy, the question whether one man and a
sinister, hidden group of plotting militarists could drag the whole
world into war and crush its liberties and its laws beneath the iron
heel of despotism, or whether man as man should stand erect in his
God-given right of freedom and work out his own destiny in friendly
brotherhood.

But behind even the great conflict between autocracy and democracy lay
a yet deeper issue. In the last analysis the final question in human
life is between a material and a spiritual interpretation of the
universe, whether might makes right and the strong are to rule, or
whether right makes might and the moral order is supreme. There is a
material and a spiritual side of life. On this side is the brute
struggle for life; on that, the struggle