War takes the fit and leaves the unfit. The epileptic, the consumptive, the inebriate, are left behind. They are not good enough to go out to fight. So they stay at home, and perpetuate the race! Statistics prove that the war is costing fifty millions a day, which is a prodigious sum, but we would be getting off easy if that were all it costs. The bitterest cost of war is not paid by us at all. It will be paid by the unborn generations, in a lowered vitality, the loss of a strong fatherhood, which they have never known. Napoleon lowered the stature of the French by two inches, it is said. That is one way to set your mark on your generation. But the greatest evil wrought by war is not the wanton destruction of life and property, sinful though it is; it is not even the lowered vitality of succeeding generations, though that is attended by appalling injury to the moral nature--the real iniquity of war is that it sets aside the arbitrament of right and justice, and looks to brute force for its verdict! In the first days of panic, pessimism broke out among us, and we cried in our despair that our civilization had failed, that Christianity had broken down, and that God had forgotten the world. It seemed like it at first. But now a wiser and better vision has come to us, and we know that Christianity has not failed, for it is not fair to impute failure to something which has never been tried. Civilization has failed. Art, music, and culture have failed, and we know now that underneath the thin veneer of civilization, unregenerate man is still a savage; and we see now, what some have never seen before, that unless a civilization is built upon love, and mutual trust, it must always end in disaster, such as this. Up to August fourth, we often said that war was impossible between Christian nations. We still say so, but we know more now than we did then. We know now that there are no Christian nations. Oh, yes. I know the story. It was a beautiful story and a beautiful picture. The black prince of Abyssinia asked the young Queen of England what was the secret of England's glory and she pointed to the "open Bible." The dear Queen of sainted memory was wrong. She judged her nation by the standard of her own pure heart. England did not draw her policy from the open Bible when in 1840 she forced the opium traffic on the Chinese. England does not draw her policy from the open Bible when she takes revenues from the liquor traffic, which works such irreparable ruin to countless thousands of her people. England does not draw her policy from the open Bible when she denies her women the rights of citizens, when women are refused degrees after passing examinations, when lower pay is given women for the same work than if it were done by men. Would this be tolerated if it were really so that we were a Christian nation? God abominates a false balance, and delights in a just weight.