ng in the direction of the Somme.

'Yes there is,' he cried. 'Oh, I realize the apparent anomaly of it
all, but don't you see? _It wouldn't be living by the law of love to
allow Germany to master the world by brute force_! This was the
situation. Prussianism wanted to dominate the world. The Germans
wanted to dethrone mercy, pity, kindness, love, and to set up a god who
spoke only by big guns. They wanted to rule the world by brute force,
devilry. Now then, what ought Christians to do? It would be poor
Christianity, it would be poor love to the world, to allow the devil to
reign.

'You see,' he went on, 'Christ's law is, not only that we must love our
enemies, but we must love our neighbours too. We must live for the
overthrow of wrong and the setting up of His Kingdom of truth, and
mercy, and love. But how? Here were Germany's rulers who were bent on
forcing war. They were moral madmen. They believed only in force.
For forty years they had been feeding on the poison of the thought that
might was right, and that it was right to do the thing you _could_ do.'

'And what is war but accepting that idea. It is simply overcoming
force by force. Where does Christianity come in?'

'You don't argue with a mad dog,' he said. 'You kill it. It's best
for the dog, and it's essential for the good of the community.
Germany's a mad dog, and this virus of war must be overcome, destroyed.
Oh, I've thought it all out. I believe in prayer. But it's no use
praying for good health while you live over foul drains, and it's just
as little praying for the destruction of such a system while you do
nothing. God won't do for us what we can do for ourselves. That's why
this is a holy war! That's why we must fight until Prussianism is
overthrown. We are paying a ghastly price, but it has to be paid. All
the same, we are fighting this war in the wrong way.'

'How?' I asked.

'Because we've forgotten God. Because, to a large extent, we regard
Him too much as a negligible quantity; because we have become too much
poisoned with the German virus.'

'I don't follow,' I said.

'I will try to make my meaning plain. In this war we have the
greatest, the holiest cause man ever fought for. We are struggling for
the liberty, the well-being of the world. We are fighting God's cause;
but we are not fighting it in God's way. We are fighting as if there
were no God.'

'How?'

'We started wrongly. Were our soldiers made to