The time will
come when historians will study with amazement the wonderful system we
have devised in Europe for the suppression of breaches of the social
order at a time when we complacently suffer these appalling periodical
destructions of the entire social order of nations.
It is quite natural to arraign the Christian Churches in connection
with this disastrous outbreak. Unless they discharge the high task of
the moral direction of men, in international as well as in personal
conduct, they have no _raison d'etre_. Few of them to-day will plead
that their function is merely to interpret to their fellows what they
regard as the revealed word of God. In face of the challenging spirit of
our time they maintain that they discharge a moral mission of such
importance that society is likely to go to pieces if Christianity is
abandoned. We therefore ask very pertinently where they were, and what
they were doing, during the months when the nations of Europe were
slowly advancing toward a declaration of war.
In examining the charge that, for some reason or other, they neglected
their mission at a crisis of supreme importance, we must recall that few
of us believed that a great war would occur until we actually heard the
declaration.
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