grave injustice to _us_, so we must say of the war. No spiritual
advantages to those who survive will reconcile us to the suffering and
the loss of those who fell in the tragic combat. I speak impersonally.
It happens that I have no near relatives of military age, and neither I
nor any near relative is likely to suffer by the war. But when I brood
over the agony of the less fortunate millions, over the harrowing
experience of Belgians, Poles, and Serbs, over the whole ghastly orgy of
blood and tears in Europe, I feel unutterable disdain of these paltry
efforts to justify the ways of God to man.

Let us look a little deeper into the matter. No doubt the plain
statement that God "sent" or caused this war will excite a certain
repugnance in many Christian minds. They will prefer to say that God
"permitted" it. Man has "free will," and it is the plan of providence to
give a certain play to this free will. When man has bruised his
shins--more frequently the shins of other people--God may, on being
supplicated sufficiently, issue his veto and put matters right. I am
quite acquainted, from a severe theological education, with the more
learned language in which this theory is expressed by theologians, but
I prefer to deal with it as it exists in the words of most preachers
and the minds of most Christians.

It would be impossible here to deal at any length with the doctrine of
free will. Unless you conceive it in some novel and irrelevant sense, as
Professor Bergson does, it is a very much disputed thing amongst the
experts whose business it is to inform us on the subject--our
psychologists. The majority of modern psychologists seem to reject it
altogether. On the other hand, no theologian has ever yet reconciled it
in any intelligible scheme with the supposed omnipotence of God. But it
is not necessary to enter into these abstruse considerations. Let us