tory has it put that hoary old slander
to shame, and now once again has it given the lie to it. The history
of nations has perhaps no parallel to the high humanity, the splendid
self-sacrifice, the complete disinterestedness that brought America
into this war, with nothing to gain and everything to lose. It has
broken forever with the triple monarchies of murder. To live at peace
with crime was to be the accomplice of the criminal. Therefore, in the
name of justice, of mercy, of religion, of human dignity, of all that
makes man's life worth living and distinguishes it from the life of the
brute, America, for all she is or ever can be, has drawn the sword and
thrown away the scabbard. God helping her, she could do no other.

The second of the lessons we have to learn from the services of Friday
is that, having made war in defense of the right, America will make
peace the moment the wrong has been righted. No national bargains will
weigh with her, no questions of territory, no problems of the balance
of power, no calculations of profit and loss, no ancient treaties, no
material covenants, no pledges that are the legacy of past European
conflicts. Has justice been done? Is the safety of civilization
assured? Has reparation been made, as far as reparation is possible,
for the outrages that have disgraced the name of man, and for the
sufferings that have knocked at the door of every heart in Christendom?
These will be her only questions. Let us take heart and hope from
them. They bring peace nearer.

It was not for nothing that the flags of Great Britain and America hung
side by side under the chancel arch on Friday morning. At one moment
the sun shot through the windows of the dome and lit them up with
heavenly radiance. Was it only the exaltation of the moment that made
us think invisible powers were giving us a sign that in the union of
the nations, which those emblems stood for, lay the surest hope of the
day when men will beat their swords into plowshares and know war no
more? The United States of Great Britain and America! God grant the
union celebrated in our old sanctuary may never be dissolved until that
great day has dawned.

NOVEMBER 11, 1918

Sinners are said sometimes to repent and change their ways at the
eleventh hour; and on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the
eleventh month of the year of 1918, the Kaiser, and other German war
lords, if they did not repent, at least changed