To-day the clouds are thick, but better days are coming. For a time it may be our lot to toil on in the wilderness, but soon or late the pilgrim host will enter the Promised Land and hang out the signals of victory. Those who war for justice and humanity find that the stars in their courses fight with them, and their soldiers shall be fed on angels' bread. Truth is stronger than error, liberty is stronger than tyranny, justice is the genius of our universe, God is omnipotent, and at last, love and sympathy must prevail. In this faith we must strive on for a peace that shall defend frontier lines, vindicate the rights of little peoples and destroy militarism and autocracy. During the January snowstorms, that noble surgeon and poet, at the head of a hospital at Vimy Ridge,—Dr. now Sir Andrew Macphail—wrote me a letter which stayed my heart as the anchor holds the ship in time of storm. The ground was deep with snow. Many wounded men had been brought in from the trench. But at midnight, while the winter's wind flapped his tent, the physician wrote me thus:
"This war is of God. To-day it is peace that is hell. The soldier's life is a life of poverty, obedience, self-sacrifice; we know what the civilian's life is. But for the chastisement of this war, Berlin and Vienna, London and Paris would have descended into hell within three generations. I once spoke in your Plymouth on the blessings of peace; if ever again I have that privilege, I shall speak on the blessings of war. I never dreamed that men could be so noble. For three months I have slept on the stone; for three months before that in a tent; for six months I have not been in a bed; but I have never been so happy. I have acquired the fine freedom of a dog, and like a dog, I wear a metal tag around my neck so that they may know to whom I belong when it happens that I can no longer speak. And never was a man engaged in a cause so noble. I have seen Belgium; I have seen a lamb torn by the wolf; I am on the side of the lamb. I know the explanations the wolf has to offer—they do not interest me. I only wish that you were here with me at this battle for your own good; for right here at this western front this war will be decided, just where all the great wars of history have always been decided. It is decided already, but will take the enemy some time yet to find it out."
Vision of a Just and Lasting Peace
What does this noble scholar mean? History makes that meaning plain! No wine until the purple clusters are crushed. No linen until the flax is bleeding and broken. No redemption without shedding of blood. No rich soil for men's bread until the rocks are ploughed with ice glaciers and subdued with fire billows. Four forms of liberty achieved by our fathers, for which they paid over three thousand battle-fields, blood down. This war was not brought by God, but having come, let us believe that His providence can overrule it for the destruction of all war. When Germany is beaten to her knees, becomes repentant, offers to make restitution for her crimes, then and not till then can this war stop. Autocracy too must go. There is no room left in the world for a kaiser or a sultan. The hangman's noose awaits the peasant murderer, and already the hemp is grown to twist into the noose for the royal neck. At all costs and hazards we must fight this war through to a successful issue. Our children must not be made to walk through all this blood and muck. The burden of militarism must be lifted from the shoulders of God's poor. Any state that will not forever give up war must be shut out of the world's clearing houses and markets through finance and trade. Geologists tell us that the harbour of Naples, protected by islands, was once the crater of a volcano like unto Vesuvius, but that God depressed that smoking basin until the life-giving waters of the Mediterranean streamed in and put out that fire. Oh! beautiful emblem of a new era, when God will depress every battle-field, and every dreadnought, and bring in the life-giving waters of peace.
When we have so carried on this war as to end all wars, a golden age will come, and with it the Parliament of Mankind, the Federation of the World, a little international army policing the land, a little international navy policing the seas, an international supreme court deciding disputes between peoples. To this high end let our sons dedicate themselves. To this goal let all of us as parents, looking towards our best beloved, say, "My son he is! God's soldier let him be! I could not wish him to a fairer death." Let all our people say to the Kaiser and his War Staff, "You shall not skewer babes upon your bayonets; you shall not crucify officers upon the trees; you shall not nail young nuns to the doors of the schoolhouses; you shall not violate the sanctities of infancy and old age; you shall not mutilate the bodies of little girls and noble women; you shall not call that unspeakable butcher, the Sultan, a dear friend, and organize his soldiers for the assassination of the whole Armenian race; you shall not play fast and loose with your solemn treaties; you shall not transfix mankind with German bayonets; you shall not crush the hopes of Gladstone, Lafayette and Lincoln. You shall not grind God's children beneath the iron heel of despotism. And so help us God, despite all your atrocities, government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from God's earth!
IV
Astounding Claims and Records from German Sources
The Butcher's Charge