ar economic difference between
the four nations. Russia had a vast territory in which her people might
develop. France had no surplus population, and had a large colonial
field for such of her children as desired adventure abroad or would
escape the competition at home. England had, in Canada and Australasia
and South Africa, a magnificent estate for her surplus population. None
of these Powers had an economic ground for aggression. Germany was
undoubtedly in a far less fortunate position, and had an overflowing
population. Six hundred thousand men and women (mostly men) had to leave
the fatherland every year, and, as the colonies were small and
unsatisfactory, they were scattered and lost among the nations of the
earth. The proper attitude toward Germany is, not to gratify the cunning
of her leaders by superficially admitting that she was not aggressive,
but to understand clearly the very solid grounds of her desire for
expansion.

Into the whole case against Germany, however, I cannot enter here.
Familiar from their chief historical writers with the supposed law of
the expansion of powerful nations, convinced by their economists that
the country would soon burst with population and be choked by their own
industrial products unless they expanded, knowing well that such
expansion meant war to the death against France and England (who would
suffer by their expansion), the German people consented to the war.
Their official documents absolutely belie the notion that they were
meeting an aggressive England. But the Christians of Germany were
utterly false to their principles in supporting such a war. I do not
mean merely that they set aside the precept, or counsel to turn the
other cheek to the smiter, for no one now expects either nation or
individual to act on that maxim. They were false to the ordinary
principles of Christian morals or of humanity. Even if one were
desperately to suppose that, learned divines like Harnack were unable to
assign the real responsibility for the war, or that the whole of Germany
is kept in a kind of hot-house of falsehood, it would be impossible to
defend them. The Churches of Germany have complacently watched for
twenty-three years the tendency which William II gave to their schools;
they have passed no censure on the fifteen years of Imperialist
propaganda which have steadily prepared the nation for an aggressive
war; and they have raised no voice against the appalling decision that,
in o