glories of war. For a thousand years the institutions of orthodox religion buttressed the rich and powerful. In our own day (1917) there is no evidence that the Churches do not share Father Vaughan's belief that the tenets of Christianity will prevail, provided that Germans are killed in sufficient number. Official Christianity in Germany and Austria exhibits similar characteristics of secular militancy, which it shares with primitive man. The act that ends war cannot come from the organised Churches, full of the hubbub of prayers for victory. Nor will the death knell of war be struck by descriptions of the horrors of the battlefield. Masters of literature depict the brutalising, bestial nature of war, but opposed to them, and destroying the atmosphere they create, are the most formidable forces. All national systems of education teach that the soldier is a hero, whereas in fact he is a martyr. The popular press, now an instrument for the maintenance of Governments, employed and controlled by Governments, announces that a particular nation—with whom alliances were formerly contracted, with whose ruling class marriages were effected—is composed of murderers, ruffians addicted to rapine, and · militarists. Nothing suffices but the extermination of the moral lepers. By daily agitation the desire to destroy millions of fellow men is translated into a moral necessity, sanctified by all that is holy. Forthwith the common people, their pulse now furiously beating with indignation, skilfully manufactured, fly to arms, and deeming themselves the instruments of divine justice, are immolated upon the bayonets of their foes. Be it remembered, their foes were the friends of yesterday.
In seeking the cause of war we must search also for the power that summons and largely compels science, religion, education, literature and morals, to aid the pursuit of war.
In the discussions of to-day it is held that wars arise from one or other of the following causes:
(a) The necessary conflict. between Freedom and Despotism;
(b) The establishment of Monarchies;
(c) Militarism;
(d) Capitalism.
(a) FREEDOM VERSUS DESPOTISM.
The contention that war is the outcome of unavoidable conflict between the principles of Freedom and the principles
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