and the significance of their future for the Kingdom of God and the welfare of mankind-whether it is a greater or holier thing for a State to allow its citizens to be destroyed by murderous invaders or to repel their purpose by putting them to the death which they seek to inflict. Death at human hands will eventuate in either case. Is the mere act of killing, of putting an end to the life of a man, itself so inherently sinful that it cannot be considered in relation to any purpose had in view, to any results which may flow from it? From all this it seems to be the one conclusion which the most sincere Christian thinker ought to reach that a country has the same right to fight invaders from another country as it has to put down by force its own criminals; and if in order to do this the infliction of death is inevitable, then the function of the State clears it of guilt in the matter, turns the act into a solemn duty.

It is an obvious corollary from this that another country has not only the right but has it as a most sacred obligation to aid the country which has thus been invaded, to rid itself of the enemy and to punish him for the breach of international rights.2

2 "Every nation should be an armed nation, not because it regards any other with hostility, not because it imagines that any other has an interest in assaulting it, but because its own soil, its own language, its own laws, its own government, are given to it and are beyond all measure precious to it.' F. D. Maurice, "Social Morality." 2d Ed., p. 191.

3. Of course in writing all this we have in view constantly the supreme event in modern history, which at once illustrates the depths to which a State may descend when it invades a land, and the heights to which another State may go when it seeks in the name of righteousness and of God to maintain the order, the freedom of its citizens. Belgium had exactly the same obligations to resist Germany when the German soldiers were within her border as to punish her own criminals; and Great Britain and France, apart from all questions of danger to themselves, had a moral obligation to intervene for the protection of a neighboring State, in the fulfilment of a divine obligation. without that solemn covenant or treaty which bound both countries to do this thing, and even if there had been no further danger incurred by themselves, when Germany set out brutally to overwhelm and absorb the Belgian people and State, it was a righteous act for Great Britain and France to prevent the crime and to maintain the existence, integrity, and honor of the Belgian people.

Even

These are the deep and universal moral principles which underlie the action of America in her entry upon the war. First, she was actually invaded, for her own citizens and property were attacked against all law and all human considerations when her ships were sunk, her citizens drowned. It certainly aggravates the crime of Germany, and

casts a luster upon the will of this people, that it was only after a long series of protests against the German policy and when every means of avoiding the issue had been carefully and deliberately employed, that the Government of America at last found itself face to face with a duty which it could not escape without surrendering the very meaning of government and losing the sense not merely of national security but of that sacred and intensely Christian thing, national honor. It is an added, although not the primary consideration, and one which adds a high and generous zest to her great undertaking, that America found herself side by side with nations which were in danger of being overwhelmed. The foe against which they struggle acts, as we shall see later, with flawless consistency and tremendous energy upon a theory of national life which at crucial points is the direct contradiction of that which we have adopted and described in these pages, and which we believe to represent in the main the spirit, the conscience, the will of all the other great nations of the world. It is in pursuit of ends which no Christian civilization can tolerate as a permanent element in human history that the German Empire entered upon this war. It is in meeting the assault not merely of one State upon another, but of one reasoned system of morality, which is deeply immoral, upon a system of morality which is founded on conscience

enlightened by the will of God through the mind of Christ, that America fights beside Great Britain and France. On the outcome of the struggle the future of righteousness depends.

4. If we pursue the argument to the end it works out in this way. If the invaded State submits with only verbal protest, with only an appeal to the law and judgment of God and to the better self, the conscience, of the foe, it refuses to do its essential duty in the suppression of crime within its borders. And the refusal is then based on the fact that the criminals are foreign and powerful. That is what the State of Luxemburg did when German hordes poured into its territory across the Rhine. And none has called her act sublime. Further, if the State proceeds, not believing perhaps in capital punishment, to arrest the invaders and to imprison them, and refuses to smite them lest they should die, its representatives will certainly themselves be killed and the invaders will quell the land. If, still further, seeing the futility and wickedness and weakness of all this, the State determines to do all it can to put down this lawlessness within its borders, to fulfil its sacred duty as the guardian of moral order, it must create a force which shall be able to execute capital punishment upon the socalled invading army-which is only a traditional name for criminals, for murderers, ravishers, and See below, pp. 94-96.

robbers within its own borders. Whatever dignity they may claim, these terms describe accurately the invading soldiers from the point of view of the invaded nation. The resisting force it creates is called an army, and its operations are called war. But a State using such a force and for such an end in such a spirit is simply carrying out to the limit of its power the duty inherent in its nature, the essential task for which, in the will of God and in the nature of man's life, it was created.

This is no mere recondite and subtle argument. This is exactly what happened when Belgium was ruthlessly trampled under foot by the German armies, and, losing her life for a while, saved her soul; while Luxemburg, saving her life, lost it.

The Armenians for long centuries lay at the mercy of the Turkish Empire, unarmed, meek, helpless. If any appeal to the generosity of human nature could be imagined more direct, more pathetic, more prolonged, let it be named and described. Yet even today the Moslem Government is carrying on the work of systematic massacre and complete abolition of that race. It is not true that a State can save its life from an enemy by submission and trust and sacrifice. The Russians the other day, or rather the Bolsheviki acting in their name, flung themselves at the feet of Germany, unarmed, appealing to the pledged word, the sense of honor of a great military Empire; and immediately all