urches of Germany is based on the fact that they, being organised
bodies with a definite moral mission, were peculiarly bound to protest
against the obvious political development of their country, and they
entirely failed to do so. But I should be the last to confine the
responsibility to them. Not only religious leaders like Harnack and
Eucken, but leading Rationalists like Haeckel and Ostwald, have
cordially supported the action of their country. So it was from the
first. Of that large class of men who may be said to have had some real
control of the fortunes of their country a very high proportion--I
should be disposed to say at least one half--are not Christians, or are
Christians only in name.

While we thus candidly admit that non-Christians as well as Christians
in Germany bear the moral responsibility, we must be equally candid in
rejecting the libellous charge that the principles, or lack of
principles, of the non-Christians tended to provoke or encourage war, in
opposition to the Christian principles. This not uncommon plea of
religious people is worse than inaccurate, since it is quite easy to
ascertain the principles of those who reject Christianity. In Germany,
as elsewhere, the non-Christians are mainly an unorganised mass, but
there are two definite organisations, which, in this respect, reflect or
educate the general non-Christian sentiment. These are the Social
Democrats, a body of many millions who are for the most part opposed to
the clergy, and the Monists, an expressly Rationalistic body. In both
cases the moral principles of the organisation are emphatically
humanitarian and opposed to violence, dishonesty, or injustice; in both
cases those principles are adhered to with a fidelity at least equal to
that which one finds in the Christian Churches. It is little short of
monstrous to say that the moral teaching of Bebel and Singer and
Liebknecht, or of Haeckel and Ostwald--all men of high moral
idealism--gave greater occasion than the teaching of Christianity to
this atrocious war. The Socialists, indeed, were the strongest opponents
of war and advocates of international amity in Europe. How, like the
Evangelical and the Christian Churches, they failed in a grave crisis to
assert their principles may be a matter for interesting consideration,
but it would be entirely dishonest to plead that the substitution of the
influence of Rationalists and Socialists for Christian ministers has in
any degree facil