Let us now return to the more particular question of the relation of the providence of God to the present war. Before discussing again the question with which we started, viz., as to the final outcome of the conflict, we may deal with some other aspects of the problem. In the light of what has been said of the two possible methods of divine providence, it may be denied that the war was providentially caused by God in order to curb other evils, such as softness and idleness, or the selfish pursuit of wealth and pleasure, or drunkenness and vice, or thoughtlessness and irreligion. It is true enough that in the face of war conditions some of these evils have been decreased, and the martial qualities of self-sacrificing courage and fortitude have been stimulated. But it is notoriously true that the advent of war introduces a host of evils, in some cases necessarily, in others almost as inevitably. Drunkenness tends to increase greatly, unless stern measures are taken for its repression. Vice, with the resulting transmissible diseases, ordinarily becomes much more prevalent. Hatred, cruelty, and even the most fiendish brutality are given ample opportunity to develop, and in many instances they become relatively fixed attitudes and attributes of character. So far from the biologically fittest tending to survive, under modern war conditions these are the very ones who, for the most part and to the incalculable detriment of the future of the race, are killed off, even granting that of those who are "fit" enough to get to the front, the weakest are those who have the poorest chance of survival. And finally, when the stress of war conditions becomes acute, innumerable enterprises for social betterment are constrained to be given up, at least for the time being. In view, then, of all this, not to dwell upon the unspeakable suffering, physical and mental, on the part not only of combatants, but of noncombatants as well, and considering the merely problematical nature of the good to which the crisis involved in a state of war may prove a stimulus, it must be regarded as incredible that a God good enough and wise enough to be worthy of absolute dependence and worship could have ordered so stupendous a catastrophe as a possible means of human salvation. Neither is it reasonable to suppose that God is prolonging the war, in order that some social evils, such as drunkenness, may be eradicated before victory is finally secured. This might, perhaps, be the outcome, if the war were greatly prolonged; but it could not be at all certain beforehand that any such improvement would be permanent enough to offset the evils involved in the continuation of the war. We cannot suppose anyone who was wise enough and good enough to be God would be so far below our best human standards as to will either the existence or the continuation of the war as a whole, with all its attendant evils, in order that final good might abound. Any God who might be thought of as