for the life of others; on the
one hand, the fight for the survival of the fittest, and on the other,
the fight to make men fit to survive. On the left hand is selfishness
and on the right service; on the one side are the red battlefields of
the enemy, and on the other is a cross red in sacrifice of a life laid
down in the serving and saving of men. There is a final issue in the
world between passion and principle, between wrong and right, between
darkness and light, between mammon and God, between self and Christ.

This ultimate issue must be faced by individuals and by nations. It is
the challenge which confronts men in this war. Seventy years ago a
crushed Europe faced the issue in the prophetic words of Mazzini,
written in the hour of darkness and defeat:

"Our victory is certain; I declare it with the profoundest conviction,
here in exile, and precisely when monarchical reaction appears most
insolently secure. What matters the triumph of an hour? What matters
it that by concentrating all your means of action, availing yourselves
of every artifice, turning to your account those prejudices and
jealousies of race which yet for a while endure, and spreading
distrust, egotism, and corruption, you have repulsed our forces and
restored the former order of things? Can you restore men's faith in
it, or think you can long maintain it by brute force alone, now that
all faith in it is extinct? Threatened and undermined on every side,
can you hold all Europe forever in a stage of siege?" [1]

Pasteur sees the same issue looming even in his day and states it in
burning words at the close of his life:

"Two contrary laws seem to be wrestling with each other nowadays, the
one a law of blood and of death, ever seeking new means of destruction
and forcing nations to be constantly ready for the battlefield; the
other a law of peace, work, and health, ever evolving new means of
delivering man from the scourges which beset him. The first seeks
violent conquests, the other the relief of humanity. The latter places
one human life above any victory, while the former would sacrifice
hundreds and thousands of lives to the ambition of one. Which of these
two laws will ultimately prevail God only knows. We will have tried,
by obeying the laws of humanity, to extend the frontiers of Life." [2]

Lincoln faced the same issue in the midst of the war weariness of our
own great conflict with words which come back to the nation