In our civil war there was at first only a minority in most of the Southern States in favor of secession, but when the national troops invaded Virginia the South was as united for State independence as the North was for national union, and yet today it will be difficult to find anywhere in the South an intelligent man who does not recognize the truth that the defeat of secession and the emancipation of the slave have been of inestimable benefit to the Southern States.

I make no attempt here to apportion the responsibility for this war between the several powers engaged in it.  However this responsibility must be shared among them I can see but one meaning in the awful campaign.  The victory of Germany would mean the victory of Prussian militarism.  The defeat of Germany will mean the defeat of Prussian militarism, the rehabilitation of Germany as a great industrial and educational power in the world, and probably the practical overthrow of military autocracy in all Western Europe.

Divine Right of Kings Obsolete.

The campaigns of Napoleon ended for Western Europe the Divine right of Kings.  The campaigns of the Allies will end for Western Europe the Divine right of the armed man.  The Russo-Japanese war gave to Russia its first representative assembly, the Duma.  It is not unreasonable to hope that the present European war will result in greatly enlarging the powers of the Duma and establishing true constitutional government in Germany, a government in which the Ministry will be responsible not to the Emperor but to the Reichstag; and the power both of the purse and the sword will not be in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy but in the hands of the common people.

It is not strange that men should point to this, perhaps the greatest war of history, as an evidence that Christianity is a failure.  If Christianity professed to be able by a miracle to transform human nature at once, such a war would be fatal to its claim.  But no such claim can be made for Christianity.  It is a great human movement, a phase of the gradual evolution of man, governed by conscience and reason, out of the brute, governed by appetite and passion.

Man as he is seen in the world to day is an unfinished product.  He is in the making.  The best that can be said of a Christian is that he is further along toward the goal of humanity than the barbarian.  Theological doctrines such as the Trinity, the Atonement, and the like are not the essential doctrines of Christianity.  The essential doctrine is that life is a struggle for others as well as for self; that in this struggle every one owes a duty to his neighbor, and the stronger he is and the greater the need of his neighbor the more imperative is his duty; that as the father and the mother care for, educate and govern their child until he grows able to care for, educate and govern himself, so always the strong men and women owe the duty of protection, education, and, in some measure, government to the weaker of the human race until they have outgrown the need for it.