vising and perfecting of the greatest fighting machine the world has ever seen, and prostituted her soul to that ferocious hatred that has kindled the flame of war throughout the world.

Now it is against that proud and envious and blood-lusting spirit of militarism that the swift rebuke of God is heard, not only in this chapter but throughout the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. There can be no doubt about the teaching of the Scripture in regard to that. No man can study the principles of Jesus without arriving at the firm conviction that in the intention of Christ concerning the Kingdom and its progress no place can be found for the spirit of "blood and iron." It is doubtless true -and it is clear enough to my own mind-that there are times and circumstances when war is justifiable, in self preservation, in the defence of liberties, in the protection of the weak, but the war of revenge, of aggression, of might, of ambition-these and the spirit out of which they spring must pass forever under the condemnation not only of Christianity but of the whole civilized world. It is doubtless trueand it is our duty if possible to see it-that there are many great moral results secured

through war, but that is not due to the thing in itself which is evil, but to the over-ruling wisdom and power of God who is able to turn the evil to good account, and "make the very wrath of men to praise Him." After all that can be said about the moral sanctions for war and the moral results of war, the fact remains that woven into the fibre of our modern civilization there is that spirit of militarism that nothing can justify-blind, revengeful, aggressive, vaulting, drunk with sight of power, intoxicated with the taste of blood, a spirit that must be cut out like a cancer, a spirit which in the individual or the nation is condemned before the bar of God's justice and impeached before the conscience of the world.

ITS BARBAROUS MOTIVES

The utter wickedness of the spirit of militarism is apparent when you search the motives out of which it springs. It is not the noble and heroic that gives it birth. It is born out of.the baser animal passions-darkest, most cruel, most barbarous. This whirling passion that has seized the Prussian mind is not the product

of the high and honorable impulses of life. It has leaped out of the very heart of hell. Its progenitors are hatred and greed and ambition. It is always so. We have only to look into our own hearts to learn that. No matter how our judgment may condemn it, nor how we may try to crush the beast within, nor how we tell ourselves that it is devilish, it needs no more at times than the sound of fife and drum to wake these barbarous passions and make us drunk with the wild wine of war. We know quite well what Richard le Gallienne meant when he wrote,

War

I abhor,

And yet how sweet

The sound along the marching street

Of drum and fife, and I forget

Broken old mothers, and the whole

Dark butchery without a soul.

Without a soul-save this bright drink
Of heady music, sweet as hell;
And even my peace-abiding feet
Go marching with the marching feet.
For yonder, yonder, goes the fife,
And what care I for human life!
The tears fill my astonished eyes
And my full heart is like to break;

And yet 'tis all embannered lies-
A dream those drummers make.

Oh, it is wickedness to clothe
Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks
Hidden in music, like a queen

That in a garden of glory walks,

Till good men love the thing they loathe!
Art, thou hast many infamies,

But not an infamy like this.

Oh, snap the fife and still the drum,

And show the monster as she is!

And if we should see her as she is we would revolt from her. Tear open the heart of this barbarous thing and search its motives. You will find the lust for power. To rule Europe, to dominate the world, to dictate the terms of existence for other states, to hold the "place in the sun," to play the God for the universethis is the consuming passion of the Prussian mind. Or lower than the lust for power is the lust for gain. Behind all this horrible crime of war there is the restless greed of the warmakers who foster the military spirit that the race in armaments may go on; who create war scares that they may reap their millions out of the building of Dreadnoughts and siege guns; who change the fashion of weapons, scrapping

those of last year out of which they made vast profits and introducing new models this year to make vaster profits still; who bribe Parliaments and corrupt Cabinets for their unholy trade. Mr. J. A. Hobson, speaking of the book entitled "The War Traders," by Mr. G. H. Perris, says, "The story is positively fascinating in its wickedness. It is worth noting that the wealthiest woman in the world to-day is the young woman of the Krupp family which owns the immense Krupp works in which Germany has forged her mighty engines of death. Or deeper than the lust for power and the lust for gain is the lust of hate. It comes out in the ideals and literature of the German people. Here is a passage from the pen of Dr. Fuchs, a German educationist, who advocates the use of the schools for the cultivation of hate: "Therefore the German claim of the day must be-the family to the front. The state has to follow, at first in the school, then in foreign politics. Education to hate. Education to the estimation of hatred; organization of hatred. Education to the desire for hatred. Let us abolish unripe and false shame before brutality and fanaticism. We must not hesitate to an