Modern warfare has not changed the traditions of American arms. I say that there is no hymn of hate on the American front in France. There will be desperate deeds a-plenty. In the outpouring of passions men will become the instruments of appalling vengeance. War is not pretty. Americans will not lightly regard a crucifixion, and they will punish treachery. Atrocities will have their own reward. _Men_ cannot sing songs of peace while handless babies cry in pain before their eyes, and girls big with child name their despoilers. It is not difficult to be charitable with those who have seen so much and suffered so greatly, when they for the moment use the only weapon their foe seems to value and to fear. But the programme of the army has no hymn of hate. Its spirit is the spirit of punishing wrath without malice; its thrust is not for man, but for a system; it looks upon its foes with even pity and regret while it abhors and hates and destroys the power that makes them bloody pawns. I listened one evening to the address of a one-armed French colonel. He had been left for dead before Verdun. Thirty-six hours he lay in the open, suffering the tortures of a living, earth-born hell. He said: "The German 'Hymn of Hate' saved Paris. Down across Belgium the gray barbarians came, thrust forth by a philosophy of 'Might makes right' and believing that terrorizing a people will conquer its will to resist. They gave their bayonets an extra twist and lingered with them to be cruel; _they lost seconds_. In the market-places of Louvain they dishonored women and girls; _they lost minutes_. They butchered hostages, and left the scars of rapine and murder upon the cities of Flanders and Picardy; _they lost hours_. "France had her chance! Britain came! When we turned, we had no time to hate, no time for the extra bayonet-thrust. We saw no individual German. It was for France! We heard her cry in the weeping of our women; she spoke to us from her fields watered with the blood of our brothers. Vive la France! Vive la France!" I learned as a lad that to master another, or to master a task, one must first be master of himself. Once in a great football contest I saw a college defeated because her captain and star tackle was goaded into slugging by the constant "dirty work" of the lesser man opposing him. I felt at the time that the blow which knocked the unfair player into the mud with a streaming, broken nose was less than he deserved, but that same blow put my hero out of the game. I have a book, the supreme ethical, moral, and religious volume of all time. In it is written that he who treasures an evil passion in his heart, or allows it residence in his soul, is by so much less than the man he might be. No hater can be at the height of his possible efficiency in physical strength, in moral courage, or in spiritual stamina. In the long run a nation loses power in proportion as her system of faith disregards moral values.