the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding
direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in
reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does
nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not
even protest against the most obvious outrages upon that phantom of a
world-conscience--international law.

Pacificists in their search for some definite starting-point, about
which the immense predisposition for peace may crystallise, have
suggested the Pope and various religious organisations as a possible
basis for the organisation of peace. But there would be no appeal from
such a beginning to the non-Christian majority of mankind, and the
suggestion in itself indicates a profound ignorance of the nature of the
Christian churches. With the exception of the Quakers and a few Russian
sects, no Christian sect or church has ever repudiated war; most have
gone out of the way to sanction it and bless it.

It is altogether too rashly assumed by people whose sentimentality
outruns their knowledge that Christianity is essentially an attempt to
carry out the personal teachings of Christ. It is nothing of the sort,
and no church authority will support that idea. Christianity--more
particularly after the ascendancy of the Trinitarian doctrine was
established--was and is a theological religion; it is the religion that
triumphed over Arianism, Manichseism, Gnosticism, and the like; it is
based not on Christ, but on its creeds. Christ, indeed, is not even its
symbol; on the contrary, the chosen symbol of Christianity is the cross
to which Christ was nailed and on which He died. It was very largely a
religion of the legions. It was the warrior Theodosius who, more than
any single other man, imposed it upon Europe.