Yet I do not wish to disguise the fact that both Christians and non-Christians share the guilt of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The real difference between the two bodies appears when we take a broader view of the war, and only in this way can any general indictment of Christianity be formulated. Important as it is to determine the responsibility for this war, it is even more important to conceive that the war is the natural outcome of a system which Europe ought to have abolished ages ago. We are not far from the time when, in spite of the official teaching of the Churches, every Christian nation maintained the practice of the duel which the Teutonic nations introduced fourteen centuries ago. Although in Germany the Christian clergy have not the courage to assert their plain principles in opposition to the Emperor's barbaric patronage of the duel, the people of most civilised countries now regard the duel as a crime. No one who surveys the whole stream of moral development can doubt that a time is coming when war, the duel of nations, will be regarded as an infinitely graver crime. The day is surely over when sophists like Treitschke and callous soldiers like Bernhardi could sing the praises of war. The pathetic picture drawn by our great novelist of a worthless young lord lying at the feet of his opponent touched England profoundly and hastened the end of the duel in this country. If England, if the civilised world, be not even more deeply touched by the descriptions we have read, week after week, of tens of thousands of braver and more innocent men lying in their blood, of all the desolation and sorrow that have been brought on whole kingdoms of Europe, one will be almost tempted to despair of the race. War is the last and worst stain of barbarism on the escutcheon of civilisation.
