We are sick unto death of hatred, force, brutality; blood-letting will never bring about lasting results, for it automatically plants a crop of bitterness and a desire for revenge which start the trouble all over again.  To kill a man does not prove that he was wrong, neither does it make converts of his friends.  A returned man told me about hearing a lark sing one morning as the sun rose over the shell-scarred, desolated battlefield, with its smouldering piles of ruins which had once been human dwelling-places, and broken, splintered trees which the day before had been green and growing.  Over this scene of horror, hatred, and death arose the lark into the morning air, and sang his glorious song.  “And then,” said the boy, as he steadied himself on his crutches, “he sang the very same song over again, just to show us that he could do it again and meant every word of it, and it gave me a queer feeling.  It seemed to show me that the lark had the straight of it, and we were all wrong.  But,” he added, after a pause, “nobody knows how wrong it all is like the men who’ve been there!”

Of course we know that the world did not suddenly go wrong.  Its thought must have been wrong all the time, and the war is simply the manifestation of it; one of them at least.  But how did it happen?  That is the question which weary hearts are asking all over the world.  We all know what is wrong with Germany.  That’s easy.  It is always easier to diagnose other people’s cases than our own—­and pleasanter.  We know that the people of Germany have been led away by their teachers, philosophers, writers; they worship the god of force; they recognize no sin but weakness and inefficiency.  They are good people, only for their own way of thinking; no doubt they say the same thing of us.

Wrong thinking has caused all our trouble, and the world cannot be saved by physical means, but only by the spiritual forces which change the mental attitude.  When the sword shall be beaten into the ploughshare and the spear into the pruning-hook, that will be the outward sign of the change of thought from destructive, competitive methods to constructive and cooeperative regeneration of the world!  It is interesting to note that the sword and spear are not going to be thrown on the scrap-heap; they are to be transformed—­made over.  All energy is good; it is only its direction, which may become evil.

It is not to be wondered at that the world has run to blind hatred when we stop to realize that the Church has failed to teach the peaceable fruits of the spirit, and has preferred to fight human beings rather than prejudice, ignorance, and sin, and has too often gauged success by competition between its various branches, rather than by cooeperation against the powers of evil.