THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIT 



in the aggregate, with all their science and religion, 

 are no more exempt from the operation of cosmic 

 laws than are the stocks and stones. Each party to 

 this gigantic struggle declares that he is in it against 

 his will ; the fate that rules in the solar system seems 

 to have them all in its grip; the working of forces 

 and tendencies for which no man was responsible 

 seems to have brought it about. Social communities 

 grow in grace and good-fellowship, but governments 

 in their relations to one another, and often in rela- 

 tion to their own subjects, are still barbarous. Men 

 become christianized, but man is still a heathen, 

 the victim of savage instincts. In this struggle one 

 of the most admirable and efficient of nations, and 

 one 'of the most solicitous for the lives and well- 

 being of its citizens, is suddenly seized with a fury of 

 destruction, hurling its soldiers to death as if they 

 were only the waste of the fields, and trampling 

 down other peoples whose geographic position 

 placed them in their way as if they were merely 

 vermin, throwing international morality to the 

 winds, looking upon treaties as "scraps of paper," 

 regarding themselves as the salt of the earth, the 

 chosen of the Lord, appropriating the Supreme 

 Being as did the colossal egotism of old Israel, and 

 quickly getting down to the basic principle of savage 

 life — that might makes right. 



Little wonder that the good people are asking, 

 Have we lost faith? We may or we may not have 



249 



