404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Dress a man in particular garments, call him by a particular name, and 

 he shall have authority, on divers occasions, to commit every species of 

 offense — to pillage, to murder, to destroy human felicity; and for so 

 doing he shall be rewarded. The period will surely arrive when better 

 instructed generations will require all the evidence of history to credit 

 that, in times deeming themselves enlightened, human beings should 

 have been honored with public approval in the very proportion of the 

 misery they caused." 



Bacon's words come to mind : " I am of opinion that, except you 

 bray Christianity in a mortar and mould it into new paste, there is 

 no possibility of a holy war." 



Apparently in no field of its work in our times does the christian 

 church throughout the whole world, with outstanding individual excep- 

 tions of course, so conspicuously fail as in its attitude to war — judged 

 by the standard maintained by the early christian fathers nearest in 

 time to Christ. Its silence when outspoken speech might avert war, 

 its silence during war's sway, its failure even during calm days of 

 peace to proclaim the true christian doctrine regarding the killing 

 of men made in God's image, and the prostitution of its holy offices to 

 unholy warlike ends, give point to the recent arraignment of Prime 

 Minister Balfour, who declared that the church to-day busies itself with 

 questions which do not weigh even as dust in the balance compared with 

 the vital problems with which it is called upon to deal. 



Volumes could be filled with the denunciations of war by the great 

 moderns. Only a few can be given. 



Lord Clarendon, 1608-1674, says, " We can not make a more lively 

 representation and emblem to ourselves of hell, than by the view of a 

 kingdom in war." 



Hume says, " The rage and violence of public war, what is it but 

 a suspension of justice among the warring parties ? " 



Gibbon writes, " A single robber or a few associates are branded 

 with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume 

 the character of lawful and honorable war." 



' In every battlefield we see an inglorious arena of human degrada- 

 tion,' says Conway. 



A strong voice from a St. Andrews principal is heard. Sir David 

 Brewster, 1781-1868, says, " Nothing in the history of the species ap- 

 pears more inexplicable than that war, the child of barbarism, should 

 exist in an age enlightened and civilized. But it is more inexplicable 

 still that war should exist where Christianity has for nearly 2,000 

 years been shedding its gentle light, and should be defended by argu- 

 ments drawn from the Scriptures themselves." 



One of the greatest American secretaries of state, Colonel John 

 Hay, who has just passed away, denounced war as ' the most futile and 

 ferocious of human follies.' 



