imposes on them, will be induced by this awful experience to return to
allegiance. The number is limited, and an equal or greater number may
be, and probably will be, induced to surrender religion entirely, and
with good reason, by the reflections with which this war inspires them.
But to insinuate that this spiritual advantage, if it be an advantage,
of the few is justly purchased by the appalling suffering and disorder
brought about by the war is one of those religious affirmations which
seem to the outsider positively repulsive.

I do not speak merely of the deaths, the pain, the privation, the
outrages, the flood of tears and blood over half of Europe. This,
indeed, is of itself enough to make the theory repellent to any who do
not share the ascetic views taught in the Churches. The notion that an
evil is justified if good issue from it is akin to the notion that the
end justifies the means. But I would draw attention to an aspect of the
war which is almost ignored by these eloquent preachers. They eagerly
record every flash of heroism, every spark of charity and mercy, that
the war evokes. They refer sympathetically to the dead and the bereaved,
the outraged girls and women--whom, in the narrowest Puritanism, they
forbid to rid themselves of the awful burden laid on them by drunken
brutes--the shattered homes and monuments. But there is a side of war
which they must know, and it demands plain speaking. It relaxes the
control of moral restraints even where it was before operative. The
illegitimate-birth rate of England and France will faintly tell the
story before the year is out. Inquiry in any town where our soldiers are
lodged, or in the rear of the French and English (or any other)
trenches, will tell it more fully. I do not speak of crime and violence,
but of willing sexual intercourse where it was never known before. These
things, and the increased drunkenness and the stirring of old passions,
are regarded by the clergy as amongst the most evil things of life. Do