The events which have transformed the world since 1914 are an awful
commentary upon such naturalism and a dreadful confirmation of our
indictment. Before the spectacle that many of us saw on those sodden
fields of Flanders, both humanist and religionist should be alike
aghast. How childish not to perceive that its causes, as distinguished
from its occasions, were common to our whole civilization. How
perverse not to confess that beneath all our modern life, as its
dominating motive, has lain that ruthless and pagan philosophy, which
creates alike the sybarite, the tyrant and the anarch; the philosophy
in which lust goes hand in hand with cruelty and unrestrained will to
power is accompanied by unmeasured and unscrupulous force.

It is incredible to me how men can take this delirium of
self-destruction, this plunging of the sword into our own heart in
a final frenzy of competing anarchy and deck it out with heroic and
poetic values, fling over it the seamless robe of Christ, unfurl above
it the banner of the Cross! The only contribution the World War
has made to religion has been to throw into intolerable relief the
essentially irreligious and inhumane character of our civilization.

Of course, the men and the ideals who actually fought the contest
as distinguished from the men and ideals which precipitated it and
determined its movements, fill gallant pages with their heroism and
holy sacrifice. For wars are fought by the young at the dictation of
the old, and youth is everywhere humane and poetic. Thus, if I may be
permitted to quote from a book of mine recently published:

"Our sons were bade to enter it as a 'war to end war,' a final
struggle which should abolish the intolerable burdens of armaments and