But this patent plea did not satisfy some militant ministers. Their religion as well as their patriotism carried them beyond Dean Mathews' interpretation of the phrase. Grant that their exemption is an insult if it "implies that ministers are not as ready to serve their country as any other citizens, that they are slackers, or that they are so effeminate that they would not make good soldiers; that if they go about their work with no increase of labor or of sacrifice, making an excuse out of their holy calling, they accept their exemption as an insult to their calling." Grant that, if this is not true, it comes to them as a great challenge to do and to dare as much in their spiritual work as the soldier does in his, toiling to the limit of costly sacrifice, possibly to overwork and to death. They are quite ready to burn out, and that quickly, when the age demands the heat and light of their lives. But there was still in their hearts a service unexpressed, an intense desire ungratified. One hears the call in the following letter from a minister, who is now a lieutenant with a Canadian regiment in France: "I expect to go to the front in Europe in the near future," he wrote to the editor of the _Outlook_. "For six years I was a Presbyterian minister, although a Canadian, in the Presbyterian Church of the United States. When the cause of liberty and the ideals of democracy were at stake, I could not withstand the 'call'--not so much of my country as of civilization--any longer. I resigned my charge and came to Nova Scotia, my boyhood home. It seems strange, but true nevertheless, that today I am a happy man. I hate war and know something about it--I served through the South African War and saw its results--but there are things worse than war. I am going, as I find many of my comrades going, not because we hate the German people, but because we believe that Prussian militarism would be an intolerable system for the world to live under."