Let us for a moment suppose that the great European Powers had disarmed fifteen years ago when the Czar of Russia broached the subject to them. What would have been the result? This war would have come just the same, and probably much sooner; and it would have been ten-fold more bloody, even had the nations flung themselves upon one another armed with scythes, carving-knives, wood-axes, and common tools of trade, or even had they fought, as the simple cave men did, with clubs and stones. Love of home and country--patriotism--on the one hand, and race hatred on the other, are far more potent in the human heart than any lately created sentiments of international brotherhood and humanity. Before this war came, it was a common preachment of the peace-men and a common belief of the multitude, that many socialists, members of brotherhoods of labor and other opponents of war, would refuse to fight, and if drafted would shoot down their officers from the rear. But nothing of this kind has happened. When this war broke out, socialist, labor unionist, and preacher of international brotherhood joined with their militant fellow-countrymen in singing the "Marseillaise," "Wacht am Rhein," "Britannia Rules the Waves," and rushed to arms and to war, and are now fighting like demons, shoulder to shoulder with the imperialist and the war lord. In order that we may be made as right-seeking as possible, God has ordained the trials of strife and hardship which force us to get busy, and thereby develop our usefulness. Human duty may be expressed in the following terms: The best preparation for the attainment of success in life is the acquisition of a thorough realization of the fact that no one deserves more from the world than he earns out of it, and that the bigness or littleness of any one is exactly proportionate to his use to the world, and that, consequently, actual self-service is impossible except indirectly through world-service. Whatever may be done in the service of an individual to help him attain success and find comfort, or to lessen his discomfort, may not be best for the general good, because individual welfare must, in the end of things, be subservient to the general welfare. It sometimes becomes perfectly right and proper that individual life should be sacrificed for national life, but never national life for individual life. The nation has, however, its obligations to the individual, and obligations as exacting as those of the individual to the nation. If a nation does not exercise due and reasonable diligence to safeguard its people against war and does not provide itself with the necessary trained men and machinery to forefend war, then the obligation of the individual to the nation in the event of war is just so much lessened. The leading of an untrained and ill-armed, improvised citizen soldiery against an army of trained veterans, with all of the equipment of modern warfare, results in useless, senseless slaughter.