As long as we Christians have given up any shred of belief in Christian ethics, as applicable to international disputes, we must live by the law of the strongest. We do not bless the poor in spirit, but the self-confident; we do not bless the meek, but the proud; we do not bless the peace-makers, but those who urge us to prepare for war; we do not bless the reviled and the persecuted and the slandered, but those who revolt against injustice and tyranny; we do not approve the cutting off of the right hand, but admire the mailed fist; and it is only adding to the confusion to raise millions for war ourselves, and then to present a handsomely bound copy of the Beatitudes to our rivals. I shall be wantonly misunderstood if these reflections be taken as a criticism of Germany. This situation involves Germany in censure no more than other nations. It is only that Germany shows herself to be somewhat childish and peevishly provincial, in girding at an unchangeable situation, either in South America or in the North Sea. This is not altogether Germany's fault. She is suffering from growing pains, and from grave internal unrest. She is only just of age as a nation, and her constitution is so inflexible that it is a constant source of irritation. She is governed by an autocracy, and the two strongest parties numerically in her Reichstag are the party of the Catholics and the party of the Socialists. She has built up a tremendous trade on borrowed capital, and every gust of wind in the money market makes her fidgety. Her population increases at the rate of some 800,000 a year, but her educational system produces such a surplus of laborers who wish to work in uniforms, or in black coats and stiff collars, that there is a dearth of agricultural laborers, and she imports 700,000 Hungarians, Poles, Slays, and Italians every year to harvest her crops. This same system of education has taught youths to think for themselves before either the mental or moral muscles are tough enough, with the result that she is the agnostic and materialistic nation of Europe, and her capital the most licentious and immoral in Europe. This is the result of secular education everywhere. Freedom of thought, yes, but not freedom of thought any more than freedom of morals, or freedom of manners, or political freedom, in extreme youth; that only makes for anarchy political, mental, and moral.