Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/83

Christianity and War help for defenceless Brussels, imploring the intercession of our Lady of Deliverance (pitiful words that wring the heart!), was this a cry to a tribal God, or the natural appeal of humanity to a power higher and more merciful than man? Americans returning from war-stricken Europe in the autumn of 1914 spoke unctuously of their country as "God's own land," by which they meant a land where their luggage was unmolested. But it is possible that nations fighting with their backs to the wall for all they hold sacred and dear are as justified in the sight of God as a nation smugly content with its own safety, living its round of pleasures, giving freely of its superfluity, and growing rich with the vast increase of its industries and trade.

What influence has been at work since the close of the Franco-Prussian War, shutting our eyes to the certainty of that war's final issue, and debauching our 67