from without. "Too proud to fight" is a famous phrase which was hurled back at the President with contempt and scorn by eloquent lips; but people forget that it was matched by the correlative phrase which was uttered at a later date, when he said that times came when a man must be "too proud not to fight." Only in the combination of the elements of these two ethical ideals can the true law of life be found. The American treatment of Mexico is the triumphant fulfilment of the former, the American armies in France are the result of the latter principle.

It became increasingly clear to the whole American people, not merely that Germany had already made war upon the Republic when it attacked her innocent citizens going about their rightful business and upon her ships on the open sea, but that Germany must include an attack upon America at some date yet to come in her program of world conquest. Mr. Gerard in his book, "My Four Years in Germany," bears witness to the fact that the Kaiser himself twice uttered the threat that after the war Germany would reckon with America. What confronted the nation, therefore, was not merely a present wrong, but a future attack. The great war ceased to be merely a European affair. Already it had involved Japan, India, and the British dominions, already it had invaded Africa. It was quite clear now that the republics

of North and South America were involved. Especially was the Republic of the United States of America at last compelled to decide whether she could longer maintain her position as a State committed to the task of maintaining order and right within her own life without entering upon the great

contest.

4. It was on April 2, 1917, after some months of increasing anxiety for the American nation, that the President made his momentous address to Congress. In this address he pointed out that Germany was now engaged in "a war against all nations." "The challenge," he said, "is to all mankind." He made it clear that in respect of the United States the duty of Congress was not to initiate war, but to recognize the fact that Germany had actually begun war against the American people. "I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it." Far beyond the immediate pressure of the hour, he saw the goal towards which America must move in the conduct of this war. "Let us be very clear," he said, "and make very clear to all the world, what our motives and our objects are. . . . Our object . . . is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the

world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self-governing peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles." The most famous utterance in this momentous document, the one by which it will be known in history, is this: "The world must be made safe for democracy"; but the really most important statement of policy in the whole message is contained in an earlier paragraph, where after describing the ideal for which America and the Allies must fight, which we have quoted above, he says, "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of the democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. These are words from which the opponents of the German Empire can never resile without loss of honor and disaster to the human race. They are the central statement in the address, the essential meaning of the war.

5. We come now to answer the question for which the material is laid before us by the entire argument of the preceding chapters. The question from the point of view of Christian Ethics has already been put point-blank in the very simple words, "Was it the duty of America to enter into this war?" If we answer, "Yes," we must take all the consequences upon our shoulders. Our whole

argument has aimed at establishing the fact that behind this question there lies another: "Is it necessary for America to use force against the force of another country in order to fulfil her own functions and preserve her own existence as a State and nation?" For as we have so fully argued, if the State is a natural and divine institution, if its functions are sacred functions, then, in the largest sense, they must be looked upon as essentially Christian functions.

In view of the whole situation, the conclusion of a student of Christian Ethics must be as follows: First, the fundamental function of maintaining a moral order wherever her authority and the life and sacred rights of her citizens extend must be exercised against the attacks, present and to come, of the German Empire. This duty could not be avoided without the surrender of the life of the State.

Second, the burden of this duty involves the moral necessity of supporting and assisting those sister nations which are in danger of being destroyed by the same enemy that seeks the destruction of the State and nation of America. From the beginning of the war many American citizens maintained that the Government ought at once to have ranged itself on the side of stricken and murdered Belgium. The country as a whole was not convinced. But it has added enormously to

the sense of high moral obligation, and even of religious devotion, that America now finds herself in active defence not only of her own rights, but of those of Belgium and France, which have been so ruthlessly trampled under an iron heel.

Third, it is a moral obligation that all nations in the world which are organized for the establishment of freedom and justice and the promotion of moral and peaceful relations among the peoples of the world, should form a coalition to confront and defeat those nations which have banded themselves together with conviction of intellect and devotion of heart to maintain the contrary ideals. It is two fundamental moral principles which are at war with one another in the world today. On the one hand is the principle that the will to power is so much of the essence of a nation that war becomes its primary function and conquest its supreme ideal. On the other hand there is the conviction of those peoples which hold that the essence of the State is to secure justice, and that this justice is to be maintained not simply within the individual nation but in the relations of one State with another throughout the world. The appeal to force is made by them in order to maintain justice, and the maintenance of justice in international relations will inevitably lead to a coalition of the peoples of the world, whose final effect will be the abolition of war.