THEabolition of war is with the follower of Christ. All true progress is by the way of the Cross. To all sons of men sounds the call of the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
What shall we do then? Shall we leave our frontiers unguarded, our young men untrained? Shall we live as though the Christian ideal were already supreme in a world that has hardly yet begun to understand it? No; but we can keep the Christian ideal before us as the master light of all our seeing. We can check the foolish word that ministers to international distrust; we can try to understand the point of view of nations whose national characteristics differ from ours; we can bring the intrigues of diplomacy into the daylight. And most of all, we can realize anew the significance of the Incarnation. Tu ad liberandum, suscepturus hominem, non horruisti Virginis uterum. In the womb of the Virgin He took upon Him humanity that He might set it free—free to be its true self. For just in proportion as we surrender ourselves to the control of the brute instincts in us, in just that proportion we abrogate our freedom. The gospel of blood and iron is a gospel of slavery.
We are called to a new loyalty to the Christian ideal not only by the desperate need of the world, but also by the revelation of unsuspected capacities for sacrifice, which, as the war has shown, lie buried in human nature until some great occasion makes them spring to life. A new spirit has been born among us. Multitudes who had hitherto lived selfish lives have learned the joy of helping to bear the burdens of others. Women have eagerly sought new forms of service and leaped forward to undertake responsibilities hitherto borne by men. The manhood of the nation has freely offered itself to meet hardship, pain and death. Men have died in their thousands, not for national gain or hate of their foes, but for the sake of liberty and humanity. By their sacrifice we who still live are consecrated to the service of the ideal ends for which they unselfishly gave their lives. We are dedicated to the building up of that better and fairer world which they died to secure for their fellows. When we remember the price they paid, we cannot wish that our service should be less costly. Human society never seemed more worth saving than it does now; nor were the hearts of men ever more prepared for a great adventure.
