argument, that if Christianity has failed civilisation also has failed. There is only one civilisation in Europe that has attempted to substitute a humanitarian for a religious training of conduct; one nation that is plainly and overwhelmingly non-Christian. That nation is France. And France has one of the best moral records in modern Europe, and has behaved nobly throughout this lamentable business. In fine, if we take Dean Welldon's words in the most generous sense, if we assume that he refers to the whole body of culture and sentiment which, in our time, aspires to mould and direct the race apart from Christian doctrine, the answer has already been given. Christianity is, as a power in Europe, fourteen centuries old; this humanitarianism is hardly a century old. But there has surely been more progress made during this last century toward the destruction of the military system, and more progress in the elimination of brutality from war, than in the whole preceding thirteen centuries. Does Dean Welldon doubt that? Or does he regard it as a mere coincidence?
Thus, whether we turn to Churchman or Nonconformist, to cleric or layman, we find no satisfactory apology. I have before me a short article by Mr. Max Pemberton on the question, "Will Christianity survive the war?" He uses the most consecrated phrases of the Church, and leaves no doubt whatever that he writes in defence of Christianity. But Mr. Pemberton practically confines himself to a very emphatic personal assurance that Christianity will survive the war, and does not honestly face a single one of the questions of "the Pagan" against whom he is writing. He does make one serious point of a peculiar character. There are, he says, "23,000 priests
