(2) any fear of the effects of Christianity on our political or commercial interests,
(3) the desire to live down prejudice and establish confidence,
(4) the preparation of a people's mind by education before introducing a new religion,
—any one of these is treachery to the All-Father and to the family of man, and a vital praeparatio evangelica is being made. Let me illustrate.
It happened in a great marquee in France. On a summer evening in 1916 the place was crowded with Indians. There was a group playing Indian card games, there was a crowd round a gramophone with Indian records, at the writing tables with great torment of spirit men were writing to their homes. At the counter foods they loved were being provided. Against one of the poles of the marquee stood a stately Indian of some rank. He had been seen there often before. He rarely spoke but seemed intensely interested. On this particular night the time arrived for the closing of the tent. The little groups gradually disappeared and the tent curtains were being replaced when the leader of the work found himself addressed by the Indian:
Why do you serve us in this way? You are not here by Government orders. You come when you like and you go when you like. There is only one religion on earth that would lead its servants to serve in this way, Christianity. I have been watching you men, and I have come to the conclusion that Christianity will fit the East as it can never fit the West. When the war is over I want you to send one of your men to my village. We are all Hindus, but my people will do what I tell them.
One of the ghastly tragedies of the war is that two great nations nominally Christian are at each other's throats. In the world's eyes Christian civilisation has broken down. We know better, but our explanations will not carry far enough to correct the impression. Our defence must be an offensive.
It is certainly within the truth to say that we have not yet seen what Christianity can do for a community or a nation where, as I put it before, "it is given a chance." May it not be that in the Providence of God the first great revelation of what Christianity can do for a nation will be seen in one of the lands that have come under the Flag, and among a people living under less complex conditions than ourselves? If that is a possibility we ought to see that wherever the Flag flies, there comes, with the unfurling of the Flag, the Gospel of Christ.
This is directly in the interest of unity, and many problems that have so far remained insoluble to our statesmen might discover the solution in Christian leadership.
I shall be pardoned I know for suggesting that the highest purposes of unity may be served by the extension and development throughout the Empire of such international organisations as the Student Christian Movement, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., and, used at its highest values, the Boy Scout Movement. There are others, but these are typical. They are established movements built up on definite principles capable of universal application, and yet each of them able to develop its organisation on lines that recognise national psychology and character. Each of them may become and aims at becoming indigenous everywhere, giving freedom of method and action and free play to the moral and intellectual activities of the people concerned, while they have certain essential elements that are universally characteristic of them. In addition, they give large numbers of Christian people an opportunity of expressing their unity in service of the right kind.