Because our counsels were mixed with a certain modicum of Christianity, we had a reluctance early in the war to use asphyxiating gas, exploding bullets, and certain other improved devices for adding to the frightful effectiveness of war. We still hesitate to smear phosphorus on our shells so as to make wounds incurable, or to starve our prisoners because we hear that our fellow countrymen are being starved in Germany. In some instances with the help of the _Daily Mail_ the doctrine of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” has carried the day for us; but it is not a Christian doctrine, and elsewhere Christianity, or its shadow, still holds us by the leg. The _Morning Post_, seeing the national danger we were in from these divided counsels, rightly demanded a Government that would “stick at nothing,” but has only partially succeeded in securing what it wants. Now the conscientious objectors have been trying to do us the service, which we have ignored, of pointing out from the very beginning that war is not and cannot be Christian, and so showing us that when a nation goes to war Christianity is the real danger. The bigger the bulk of genuine and practical Christianity in any country, the more impossible is it for that country to adopt effective methods of war. The reluctance which we feel to shell out phosphorus, or to starve civilians, will in the genuinely Christian State make itself felt at a much earlier stage of warlike practice, long before those particular devices have been applied or even thought of; and it will arise (to the discrediting of all power which places Might above Right) from the assertion that “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is not Christian doctrine, and is, in result, no remedy for the evil it sets itself to avenge.