moral traits in Germany to-day is, even when we have made the most
liberal allowance for the painful and desperate circumstances of the
people, the astounding expression and cultivation of hatred. It has
transpired time after time that the _Vorwärts_ has protested against
this. Not once has it been reported that the religious press or
religious ministers have protested. The new phrase that is officially
sanctioned, "God punish England," is a religious phrase that no
Neo-Pagan could use. On the very day on which I write this page it is
reported that Socialists have protested in the Reichstag against the
official endorsement of outrages. We do not hear of any Christian
protest, from end to end of the campaign.

Yet I do not wish to disguise the fact that both Christians and
non-Christians share the guilt of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The real
difference between the two bodies appears when we take a broader view of
the war, and only in this way can any general indictment of Christianity
be formulated. Important as it is to determine the responsibility for
this war, it is even more important to conceive that the war is the
natural outcome of a system which Europe ought to have abolished ages
ago. We are not far from the time when, in spite of the official
teaching of the Churches, every Christian nation maintained the practice
of the duel which the Teutonic nations introduced fourteen centuries
ago. Although in Germany the Christian clergy have not the courage to
assert their plain principles in opposition to the Emperor's barbaric
patronage of the duel, the people of most civilised countries now regard
the duel as a crime. No one who surveys the whole stream of moral
development can doubt that a time is coming when war, the duel of
nations, will be regarded as an infinitely graver crime. The day is
surely over when sophists like Treitschke and callous soldiers like
Bernhardi could sing the praises of war. The pathetic picture drawn by