If we look for the influence of Christianity, we can find it in the daily lives of people, in the family, in business, in politics, and in military bodies; everywhere, in fact, in Christian countries, so long as we keep inside of any organization the members of which feel bound together. This we must all admit, even the heathen know it; but where do we see any evidence of the sweetening effect of Christianity in the dealings of one organization with another with which it has no special bonds of friendship? Christianity is invoked in every warring nation now to stimulate the patriotic spirit of the nation and intensify the hate of the crowd against the enemy; and even if we think that such invoking is a perversion of religious influence to unrighteous ends, we must admit the fact that the Christian religion itself is at this moment being made to exert a powerful influence--not toward peace but toward war! And this should not amaze us; for where does the Bible say or intimate that love among nations will ever be brought about? The Saviour said: "I bring not peace but a sword." So what reasonable hope does even Christianity give us that war between nations will cease? And even if it did give reasonable hope, let us realize that between reasonable hope and reasonable expectation there is a great gulf fixed. Therefore, we seem forced to the conclusion that the world will move in the future in the same direction as in the past; that nations will become larger and larger and fewer and fewer, the immediate instrument of international changes being war; and that certain nations will become very powerful and nearly dominate the earth in turn, as Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain, France, and Great Britain have done--and as some other country soon may do. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, a certain law of decadence seems to have prevailed, because of which every nation, after acquiring great power, has in turn succumbed to the enervating effects which seem inseparable from it, and become the victim of some newer nation that has made strenuous preparations for long years, in secret, and finally pounced upon her as a lion on its prey. Were it not for this tendency to decadence, we should expect that the nations of the earth would ultimately be divided into two great nations, and that these would contend for the mastery in a world-wide struggle. But if the present rate of invention and development continues, improvements in the mechanic arts will probably cause such increase in the power of weapons of destruction, and in the swiftness and sureness of transportation and communication, that some _monster of efficiency_ will have time to acquire world mastery before her period of decadence sets in. In this event, wars will be of a magnitude besides which the present struggle will seem pygmy; and will rage over the surface of the earth, for the gaining and retaining of the mastery of the world. CHAPTER II NAVAL A, B, C