We had adopted many specific rules to restrain needless barbarity in war. For example, we would not use dum-dum bullets, nor drop bombs on non-combatants, nor shell the homes of innocent dwellers on the seashore. It was considered an achievement of the civilized spirit that an army occupying enemy territory would respect the rights of the non-combatant inhabitants, set guards over private property, protect women and children from injury, and permit civilians to go about their business as long as they did not intermeddle with military matters. In three and a half horrible years we have drifted a long way from these protestations. Those of us who once studied the elements of international law may well study them again when the war is over, if, indeed, international law is still thought worth studying. In the vision the angel poured out his vial on the great river, to the early men of Mesapotamia the symbol of the great waters. In our own day we have seen strange engines of wrath placed in the great waters, foul spirits that destroy men and ships in disregard of the rules of fair fighting. And out of the mouths of dragons and other loathsome beasts, and of false prophets as well, evil spirits have issued in these sad days. They have taken their places in the hearts and minds of self-willed men and made beasts of them; so that the rest of humanity have had to fight against them and suffer themselves to be killed by them, in order that the wicked shall not triumph over the whole earth. The war has been gruesome beyond the imagination of man. No other recorded experience has told us of so much killing, and of so many different ways of killing. Men have been slain with swords, cannon, great howitzers, rifles, machine guns, tanks, liquid fire, electrified wires, and finally with the germs of disease deliberately planted. Nothing that science could invent for destroying human life has been omitted, except, possibly, dum-dum bullets; and in view of the use of much more cruel means we may well ask, “Why not dum-dums also?” We must admit that if the author of the Book of Revelations had prophetic insight and foresaw the world struggle that now is, he did not overpaint its terrors. And so, asks the man of faith, if the first part of the vision comes true, why may not the second part likewise come true? If the seer could foresee the war and its horrors, may he not also have spoken truly when he foretold that after Armageddon wars would be no more; for God would wipe away the desire for them from the hearts of men?