contributions for the Armenians are beginning to fall off since the United States entered the war. I think that American Christians do not really know what that means. If they did they would not permit it. It means that thousands of little children and women are literally lying on the roadsides slowly dying of starvation and cold. Not even a root can be found now, or the bark of trees; not a rag to add to tattered garments. (Read Lord Bryce's account of conditions as he recently found them in Armenia, and the cablegrams from the American Consul at Tiflis to Secretary Lansing.) This is what it will mean to hundreds of thousands if we withhold our gifts. Again, let me say that I believe that, could the American people really know the conditions of these starving people, there is not one who would not send something. At least every Christian should consider it his duty during this war time to give something and by his efforts to see that these relief funds do not suffer.

Other organizations that are going to suffer greatly if Christians do not rally to their support are those which have been engaged in "driving the evil thing out of the city." We refer to such bodies as the Child Labor, the Prison Reform, the Anti-Vice, the Anti-Saloon organizations; the societies fighting diseases, bad housing, exploitation of girls; the various religious bodies doing such fine work for our cities, such as the Young Men's

Christian Association, and the City Federations of Churches; the Vacation Bible Schools for the summer and all the organizations sending children into the country for the summer; the philanthropic and charitable organizations. These are only a few out of hundreds. The tendency in times of financial stringency is to cut down on these local charities. Already a warning has been sounded in New York in an editorial in the Evening Post of June 2nd, where reference is made to the falling off of receipts in the Charity Organization Society and the consequent suffering of certain families. Along all these lines the Christian has a great opportunity. He can increase his own contributions, he can show to his comrades that the keeping up of the work of these various institutions is just as essential to the real welfare and defense of the nation as is actual military service. What a calamity to our nation, if we let vice become rampant through neglect of our Y. M. C. A.'s and such institutions as provide homes for the young men and women of our cities; if we let our prisons become crime-breeding pits again; if we let the exploiters of women and children repeal all the excellent laws which, after years of contention, we have secured for their protection. Even now a group of selfish men, taking war as an excuse, are trying to have the child-labor laws repealed in Albany. And this war will increase the poverty in our great cities. It will make many

dependent families. Anyone who at this time cuts off his subscriptions to charity, except under direct necessity, is hurting his country. Neither can any nation be at its best when vice and greed are left unrestrained. The most encouraging signs of a new ideal of home defense yet manifested by our government are the rulings forbidding anyone to serve liquor to soldiers and sailors, and the determination to provide clean and helpful surroundings for the camps. It is the duty of the Christian to support at this juncture every organization which is striving to do this same thing for the whole city. So shall he serve his country most effectively.

VI

OR two years now the American papers have been full of the "shame" and "dis

Fo

grace" of Germany because of the way she treated Englishmen who happened to be living in Germany when the war broke out. It should be the duty of every Christian in America to see that no slightest stigma of this sort is ever attached to this country. There are thousands of German subjects here and they deserve the kindliest treatment at our hands. They had nothing to do with bringing on the war originally and they had nothing to do with bringing America into the war. Many of them have lived here so long that their sympathies are with America rather than with the fatherland. But they have ties with Germany that make their whole experience very sad and trying. They should receive our sympathy and help rather than our enmity. It is a splendid chance to practice the golden rule and show what real Christianity is. Even if Germany should treat Americans in Germany in an un-Christian manner let us still be Christians. The English people have just shown a remarkable example in this regard. Germany has been treating English sailors most barbarously, shelling and sinking row-boats after the sailors

have left torpedoed ships, and sinking hospital ships, dropping bombs on women and children, actions condemned by all law, humane sentiment, and practice. There have been reports of harsh treatment of prisoners. It was natural that the English should have been stirred to reprisals. Yet in a debate in Parliament, only three men in the whole British Parliament stood for reprisals in kind. The discussion was headed by the archbishop, who took a most noble Christian stand. If England, smarting under the greatest outrages any war of centuries has witnessed, can take such a stand, surely we in America, with no such irritations, can refrain from any ill-treatment, in either word or deed, of Germans, who are our enemies only in name. So far we have been quite exemplary in this regard. Two weeks after the war had opened a German singer was called before the curtain of the Metropolitan Opera House a dozen times at her farewell appearance. worried whether she was German or not. the ovation was greater because she was, and the three thousand Americans wished to give evidence of their kindly feeling and sympathy. This was as it should be. So far as New York is concerned, I have noticed no ill feeling whatever toward Germans who behave themselves. Only the other day a German, who has one of the most prominent stores on Fifth Avenue, told me that he had not received one insult since the war opened, or been

No one Perhaps