not exultant, buoyantly shouting for our country's flag, but soberly, consecrated to a magnificent charge, but nevertheless humiliated, because war has come only as an accusation, a great indictment against us all, and America especially, that would-be Republic of Man, because we have not made manifest quickly enough our high destiny among the nations, have not realized to the limit even of today's human capacity the possibilities of our consecrated democracy."

In that speaks a true pacifism that faces the facts on both sides; that sees both the terror of war, and the still greater terror of an ignoble surrender of the fruits of all Christian civilization.

5. It is also a ground for hope in the present crisis that the issues are seen to be at bottom so thoroughly moral and religious and even Christian. While this fact itself adds to the gravity of the crisis, it at the same time manifestly increases its significance. Here is no mere blind brute struggle. We need not believe "that a majority of civilized mankind is fighting and sacrificing, all without reason and significance for human progress." On the contrary, as we have seen, interests of the highest conceivable order are involved in this war; so involved that it is neither travesty nor exaggeration to call this war on the part of America a truly Holy War. For grave as the crisis is, we may expect the reason and conscience of the race to reassert themselves. We may believe that national moral blind

ness and self-stultification are not permanently to continue.

6. That means, in the next place, that we may believe that the war contains in itself the incidental opportunity for a great world advance toward a more Christian civilization. For the enormous tasks that the war has compelled, we may hope, will kindle the imagination and enlist energy for still greater constructive world tasks to follow. Lloyd George said to a labour deputation:

As

"Don't always be thinking of getting back where you were before the war. Get a really new world. I firmly believe that what is known as the after-thewar settlement will direct the destinies of all classes for generations to come. I believe the settlement after the war will succeed in proportion to its audacity. The readier we are to cut away from the past the better we are likely to succeed. Think out new ways, new methods, of dealing with old problems. I hope no class will be harking back to the pre-war conditions. If every class insists upon doing that then God help this country. Get a new world."

In this new world, we may hope that there will be a completer mastery over the ambiguous forces of civilization we noted—the solidarity of the world life, the enormously increased resources of power and wealth and knowledge; the extent of forced co-operation; and, also, a more consistent working through of the positively helpful characteristics of

the world-order-the democratic trend, the league to enforce peace, and the new internationalism.

All this should lead to great social gains, and to the permeation of all civilization with the spirit, the standards, and ideals of Christ-a true conquest of Christ over individuals, classes, institutions, nations, and races.

7. A special ground of hope is to be found in the positively helpful factors, noted in the changing world-order-the democratic trend, the virtual existence already of a league of nations to enforce peace, and the new actual internationalism.

(1) First of all, the general trend, the world over, toward democracy, is most notable. Every nation, even in Asia, except Afghanistan, is living under some form of constitution. China, with its immense territory and population, has become republican, even unstably so. The Russian revolution, in spite of the grave anxieties it now stirs, was a prodigious achievement in itself, and prophetic of similar changes elsewhere. Everywhere the war bids fair, with simple justice, to extend the suffrage and the recognition of the rights of the common people among all the belligerents. The sweeping changes in the suffrage which are planned in England, including its extension to women, and the bringing of India into the Imperial Conference, are illustrations. Situations inconsistent with an essentially democratic viewpoint, men more and more feel are not be defended. Even in Germany demo

cratic aspirations have found vigorous utterance. Maximilian Harden speaks undoubtedly for many Germans when he says:

"Because our existence depends on it-demands it-must we go toward democracy. There is democracy all around; who dares stop the wheel of history? The union of peoples is on the way; do we wish to freeze outside?"

Scheidemann, leader of the majority of the Socialist Party in the Reichstag, declares:

"The whole world sees among our enemies more or less developed forms of democracy, and in us it sees only Prussians."

Ledebour dared to say in the Reichstag: "We regard a republic as a coming inevitable development in Germany."

An equally prominent English publicist similarly remarks:

"The stars in their courses, the logic of circumstances, the everyday needs and everyday intelligence of man, all these things march irresistibly towards a permanent world peace based on democratic republicanism."

(2) Moreover, it is not too much to say-and it is a most significant and encouraging fact-that, now that the cause of the Allies is cleared of the gross inconsistency of the Russian autocracy, a League of Nations to enforce peace is already in existence. As one of our most thoughtful editors puts it:

"The league of peace exists sooner than any of us dared to hope. What was a paper plan and a theoretic vision two years ago, is today a reality. The liberal peoples of the world are united in a common cause."

(3) It is of even deeper significance, that, as the war has spread and the needs of the world have become greater, a new internationalism has arisen, and a supernational control of necessities has been practically forced upon the Allies. The New Republic's statement must impress the thinking man:

"What is being arranged in Washington these days is really a gigantic experiment in internationalism. For the first time in history the food supply, the shipping, the credit, and the manpower of the nations are to be put under something like joint administration. We are witnessing the creation of a supernational control of the world's necessities. The men who are charged with conducting this war are now compelled to think as international statesmen. The old notions of sovereignty no longer govern the facts. Three of the unifying forces of mankind are at work-hunger, danger and a great hope. They are sweeping into the scrap heap the separatist theories that nations should be self-sufficing economically and absolutely independent politically. A new and more powerful machinery of internationalism is being created. It is a true internationalism because it deals not with dynastic and diplomatic alliances but with the co