Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/193

 who say that as long as sin remains war will remain. To get rid of war we must first get rid of the evil that is in men's hearts. I cannot help thinking that we may look forward hopefully to the end of war if a righteous peace is reached. I decline to accept war as the permanent condition of human society. Slavery has been all but banished from the world, and may not war be banished? When we come to the end of the weary strife we shall see many things in a new light. We shall see, as we do not see even now, the horror, the pity, the futility, the ruin and the waste, which follow in the track of war, I would fain hope that, when the course of this world-war is calmly surveyed, the appeal to the arbitrament of war will cease. We cannot look forward very far, but surely we may expect that at the end the victors will see to it that, as far as it is possible, war and menace of war shall be removed from the terrors of human life. It is for this that we are fighting, and save this we can look for little as the result of our costly sacrifice.

But if the fight goes against us there is no such hope. Imagine—if you can imagine—a triumphant Germany. Imagine—if you can imagine—Britain, France, Russia, India, Canada, Australia, Japan, all the subdued and obedient vassals of the German conqueror? Would this make an end of war? Does any one believe that such a triumph would be more than the triumph of an hour? Only by the sheer wholesale murder of all free men could such a settlement be made permanent. Such an end would be no end. So long as any Briton could lift his arm there would be conspiracies first and battles next, and soon the flames would be burning over the whole earth. There is no peace in that, neither is there a true peace if we merely beat Germany on the land and on the sea. It has been well said that we should be conquerors in that case, but we shall be more than conquerors if we can exorcize the demon of militarism from the German mind and soul, for Germany in her humiliation will learn to take her true place among the fellowship of the nations.

Our hope, however, for the true peace that is built upon righteousness is in the triumph of the King of Salem, Who was first of all King of Righteousness—Who is made of God to all His people wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. When the lightnings flash from one end of heaven to the other, and He returns to the world again, He will take to Himself His great power and reign, and then will