'It was when I read the Sermon on the Mount. I could not for a time see how a Christian could be a soldier. The whole idea of killing men seemed a violation of Christianity.'
'It is,' I said.
'Yes, in a way you are right, and when I read those words of the Lord telling us that we must love our enemies, and bless them that cursed us, I was staggered. Where could there be any Christianity in great guns hurling men by the thousand into eternity?'
'There isn't,' I persisted.
'That's what I believed at first, but I got deeper presently. I saw that I had only been looking at the surface of things.'
'How?' I asked. I was curious to see how this man who had forgotten his past would look at things.
'I found after a daily study of this great Magna Charta of Jesus
Christ, that He meant us to live by the law of love.'
'There's not much living by the law of love over yonder,' I said, nodding in the direction of the Somme.
'Yes there is,' he cried. 'Oh, I realize the apparent anomaly of it all, but don't you see? It wouldn't be living by the law of love to allow Germany to master the world by brute force! This was the situation. Prussianism wanted to dominate the world. The Germans wanted to dethrone mercy, pity, kindness, love, and to set up a god who spoke only by big guns. They wanted to rule the world by brute force, devilry. Now then, what ought Christians to do? It would be poor Christianity, it would be poor love to the world, to allow the devil to reign.
'You see,' he went on, 'Christ's law is, not only that we must love our enemies, but we must love our neighbours too. We must live for the overthrow of wrong and the setting up of His Kingdom of truth, and mercy, and love. But how? Here were Germany's rulers who were bent on forcing war. They were moral madmen. They believed only in force. For forty years they had been feeding on the poison of the thought that might was right, and that it was right to do the thing you could do.'