The churches alone can remedy this. There ought to be an international movement of all the churches, Catholic and Protestant, Protestant and Catholic. I know it is difficult to compass. The divisions in Christendom are too often fatal to common action for the attainment of common aims. They ought to be overcome. They must be overcome. There was a time in the Middles Ages when religion exercised a direct as well as an indirect influence in the domain of government and social relations. It helped to win for Englishmen their great charter. It gradually emancipated the serfs. It preserved the peace of Europe many a time when it was gravely imperilled by the quarrels of kings. In the days of Puritanism, and the days of the Covenant, the partnership between religion and politics won for us the two great boons of parliamentary liberty and liberty of conscience. When Methodism spurred the conscience of England, its influence was felt in the political movement that emancipated the slaves throughout the British Empire.
That was one of the greatest feats of disinterested righteousness ever exhibited by a nation. The tasks awaiting religion to-day in the sphere of government are even greater—emancipation of the worker from the tyrannies of economic greed, the saving of the nation from the curse of alcohol, and the spreading of the angels' message heard on the hills of Bethlehem until the obdurate heart of man shall at last re-echo it: "Peace on earth and goodwill amongst men."
II EUROPE STILL ARMING
Marshal Foch once told me that he considered the German army of 1914 the finest army the world ever saw, in numbers, organisation, training, and equipment.
What set that army in motion?
Much has been written and spoken as to the origin of the Great War, and as to who and what was responsible for so overwhelming a cataclysm. No one ever believed that it was the assassination of a royal archduke. Some said it was the working out of the pan-German scheme to rule the earth; some contended it was the German fear of the growing power of Russia, the nervous apprehension of what looked like an encircling movement by Russia, France and Britain.
The great French marshal's dictum is the real explanation. Unless due weight is given to this outstanding fact the diplomatic muddle of July, 1914, becomes unintelligible.
Were it not that the German army was more perfect and more potent than either the French or the Russian army—were it not that every German officer was convinced that the German military machine was superior to all its rivals—there would have been no war, whatever emperors, diplomatists, or statesmen said, thought, or intended.