The Lord has been blamed for nearly all the evil in the world, and yet Christ's definition of God is love, and He goes on to say, "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor."
I can quite understand the early books in the Bible being written by men of the same cast of mind as the Kaiser, who solemnly and firmly believed they were chosen of God to punish their fellow-men, and incidentally achieve their ambitions.
But it has made it hard for religion. Fair-minded people will not worship a God who plays favorites. I soon quit reading the Old Testament. I was not interested in fights, intrigues, plots, and blood-letting.
But when I turned to the teachings of Christ, so fair and simple, and reasonable and easy to understand, I knew that here we had the solution of all our problems. Love is the only power that will endure, and when I read again the story of the Crucifixion, and Christ's prayer for mercy for his enemies because he knew they did not understand, I knew that this was the principle which would bring peace to the world. It is not force and killing and bloodshed and prison-bars that will bring in the days of peace, but that Great Understanding which only Love can bring.
I was thinking this, and had swung around on my chair, contrary to rules, when the guard rushed up to me with his bayonet, which he stuck under my nose, roaring at me in his horrible guttural tongue.
I looked down at the point of his bayonet, which was about a quarter of an inch from my tunic, and let my eyes travel slowly along its length, and then up his arm until they met his!
I thought of how the image of God had been defaced in this man, by his training and education. It is a serious crime to destroy the king's head on a piece of money; but what word is strong enough to characterize the crime of taking away the image of God from a human face!
The veins of his neck were swollen with rage; his eyes were red like a bull's, and he chewed his lips like a chained bulldog. But I was sorry for him beyond words—he was such a pitiful, hate-cursed, horrible, squirming worm, when he might have been a man. As I looked at him with this thought in my mind the red went from his eyes, his muscles relaxed, and he lowered his bayonet and growled something about "Englishe schwein" and went away.
"Poor devil," I thought. I watched him, walking away.... "Poor devil,... it is not his fault."...
Malvoisin came to the Strafe-Barrack a week after we did, and I could see that the guards had special instructions to watch him.