"Suppose a soul arrived on earth from another world, wholly ignorant of events, and were given its choice, after a survey of the nations, which it should be born in and belong to. In May, June, and July, 1914, my choice," he says, "would have been, not France, not England, not America, but Germany.
"It was on the seventh day of June, 1914, that Frankfurt assembled her school-children in the opera-house to further their taste and understanding of Germany's supreme national art.
"But exactly eleven months later, on May 7, 1915, a German torpedo sank the Lusitania, and (this was the awful revelation) the cities of the Rhine celebrated this also for their school-children."
He then gives the Prussian creed, sentence by sentence, compiled from the utterances of Prussians, the Kaiser and his Generals, professors, and editors, of which I can only quote these sentences:
"War in itself is a good thing. God will see to it that war always recurs. The efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral. The peace of Europe is only a secondary matter for us. The sight of suffering does one good; the infliction of suffering does one more good. This war must be conducted as ruthlessly as possible."
Now, I do not quote this (and you will find four pages of similar sayings) to stir up unchristian hatred of the German race, many of whom as individuals would repudiate such sayings as their own personal belief, but I do it to defend Christianity. I only heard just before coming here, in the home of one of the many mourning families I visit, that a son who had died in Germany testified in his last letter to the great kindness with which he had been treated in hospital.
Such teaching as this is not Christianity; this is the spirit of Antichrist. You, poor brother and sister, who are allowing your faith to be shattered by the war—you are not looking deep enough.
Only one nation wanted war, as the pathetic want of preparation of every other nation proves to demonstration; only one nation has set at naught the Christian principles which have slowly been gaining ground in the conduct of war; and only one spirit has produced the war, and that a spirit avowedly and in so many words passionately opposed to the Spirit of the New Testament.
And, therefore, it is the grossest injustice to lay the blame on religion for what has been produced by its avowed opposite, and to talk about the breakdown of Christianity for what is due to the revival of avowed paganism.
II. But I can imagine my distressed brethren saying: "The answer is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Why, after nearly two thousand years, has Christianity not progressed farther? Why is not the world more completely Christian? Why was the wild beast left among the flowers? Nay, why is the wild beast still so active in our midst? Why did the Drink Bill of our country go up eight millions in the first six months of 1915? Why have the scenes in the streets of darkened London been worse than they have been for twenty years? You do not meet me fully," he says, "when you prove that it was not Christianity which produced this war; what I want to know is why it was not strong enough to stop it."