um, Russia,
Germany--for Europe, for the world, for civilization, for religion
itself, seems to be gathered up in these last few moments. If war comes
now it will be the most frightful tragedy the world has ever witnessed.
Twenty millions of dead perhaps, and civil life crippled for a hundred
years. Which is it to be, peace or war? Terrible to think that as they
sit there the electric wires may be flashing the awful tidings, like a
flying angel of life or death, through the dark air all over Europe.

The four men are waiting for the bell of the telephone to ring. It does
not ring, and the fingers of the clock are moving. The world seems to
be on tiptoe, listening for a thunderstroke of Fate. The Ministers at
length sit silent, rigid, almost petrified, looking fixedly at floor
or ceiling. Then through the awful stillness of the room and the park
outside comes the deep boom of "Big Ben." Boom, boom, boom! No one moves
until the last of the eleven strokes has gone reverberating through the
night. Then comes a voice, heavy with emotion, yet firm with resolve,
"It's war."

When the clock struck again (at midnight) Great Britain had been at war
for an hour without knowing it.

If I have done wrong in lifting the curtain on this private scene, I
ask forgiveness for the sake of the purpose I put it to--that of showing
that it was not in haste, not in anger, but with an awful sense of
responsibility to Great Britain and to humanity that our responsible
Ministers drew the sword of our country.

THE MORNING AFTER

If Mr. Maeterlinck's theory is sound, that this war is the visible
reflection of a vast, invisible conflict, what a gigantic battle of
the unseen forces of good and evil must have been raging throughout the
universe when Europe rose on the morning of August 5, 1914! Think what
had happened. While the light was dawning, the sun was rising, and the
birds were singing over Europe, the greater nations were preparing to
turn a thousand square miles of it into a gigantic slaughter-house.
After forty years of unbroken peace, in which civilization, as
represented by law, science, surgery, medicine, art, music, literature,
and above all religion, in their ancient and central home, had been
striving to lift up man to the place he is entitled to in the scheme of
creation, war had suddenly stepped in to drag him back to the condition
of the barbarian. From this day onward he was to live in holes in the
ground, to be nece