Dr. Hillis was reminded here that a number of people were said to have left the church last night in the course of his sermon as a sign of protest against the expression of his views.  Asked if it were true, Dr. Hillis answered: 

“I did not see many leave,” and then declared that it was impossible to imagine that war should not be discussed in the churches as it was being discussed everywhere else.  He continued with the assertion that he believed it was his duty as the minister of Plymouth Church to say what he had, and then made this assertion with a vehemence that was almost startling: 

“Whenever the time comes that I have to add God and the devil together and divide by two in the name of neutrality, I’ll withdraw.  I’m not going to sacrifice my manhood for what some people call neutrality.”

It was on this score that Dr. Hillis came out with his unequivocal declaration that he was against Germany and against the Kaiser.  He asserted that the viewpoint of the German people would have to be changed if they were to take the place in the world he had thought their due, five months ago, and he stated there could be no doubt but that the war was occasioned by Germany’s lust for power—­political, industrial, economic.

“I believe that the real issue of this war is largely industrial,” continued Dr. Hillis.  “It is an industrial war and not a political war.  Some days ago I said that the real fight between Germany and the nations opposed to her was a fight for the possession of the iron fields recently discovered in Northern France.  That statement regarding Germany’s iron deposits and the whole economic situation has been challenged.

“Instead of modifying my position, I wish to reaffirm it.  This is an age of steel.  Without hematite iron deposits Germany cannot build her steamships, her cannon, her railways, her factories.  German engineers have been saying for five years that another five years will exhaust her present iron supply.  On Page 221 of the volume ‘Problems of Power,’ the author says that within a generation 20,000,000 of Germany’s people will have to leave their native land.  The pressure of iron and the call of steel led to Germany’s development of the Morocco situation, where there are valuable iron mines.  A short time ago French engineers discovered the largest and richest body of iron ore in Europe.  Fullerton, in his book on the subject, expresses the judgment that one province has enough hematite iron ore to last Europe for the next 150 years.

“This diplomat and author said plainly two years ago, in one of his review articles, that Germany would go to war to obtain the iron deposits in Northern France, and that if she loses the war, she will fall behind in the manufacturing race, and that the French bankers and French engineers will make France the great manufacturing force and the richest people in Europe.  The Napoleonic wars were wars between political ideas.  The collision was between autocracy and bureaucracy and French democracy and radicalism.  The new antagonism grows out of economic conditions.  Germany wants to supersede England upon the seas, and Germany wants the iron mines of France, and this is the whole situation in a nutshell.