They have only to fill their people and
the world at large with counter-charges, resolutely mendacious, and
many will throw up their hands in presence of the mutual accusations and
declare that it is impossible to assign the responsibility. That is a
fatal concession to immorality, and we must hold that in some one or
more of the combatant nations the Churches have, for some reason or
other, acquiesced in a crime.
The plea is valid only to this extent, that the guilty nations in this
case were notoriously Germany and Austria-Hungary, and therefore one
cannot pass any censure on British Christians for supporting the war. I
have in other works dealt so fully with the guilt of those two nations
that here I must be content to assume it. The general and incessant cry
of the German people, that they are only defending their Empire against
malignant enemies, must be understood in the light of their recent
history and literature. No Power in the world had given any indication
of a wish to destroy Germany; there were, at the most, a few
uninfluential appeals in England for an attack on Germany, but solely on
the ground that it meditated an attack on England, and the accumulated
evidence now shows that it did meditate such an attack.
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