We are told that Germany is conducting this war in the interest of civilization, that her chief purpose is to protect Europe from the domination of the Slav. And to ward off this Muscovite danger Germany is at present making desperate efforts to crush England and France, the standard bearers of democracy in Europe! In her war for civilization she is employing the methods of barbarian tribes, methods condemned by civilized nations and which have already horrified the world. It is hardly conceivable that Russia, which the German Chancellor describes as a semi-Asiatic, slightly cultured barbaric nation, could have committed in Belgium the atrocities imputed to the Germans had she conquered that country in similar circumstances. It is manifest that Germany's supreme desire is to fasten Teutonic rule on Europe, to crush Russia, to be sure, but also to crush France and French civilization and to reduce England to the rank of a second-class nation. It is obvious that this is a struggle between militarism and its evils as represented by the Hohenzollern dynasty and democracy as represented by England and France. ALBERT SAUVEUR. Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 5, 1914. Militarism and Christianity By Lyman Abbott. _A Letter to The New York Sun._ Editor in Chief of The Outlook; author of numerous works on theology, religion, and democracy. _To the Editor of The New York Sun:_ In answer to your request for a statement of the causes and meaning of the European war I write with necessary brevity, both because of the limits on my time and the limits on your crowded columns. What is the cause of the explosion of a powder magazine? The gases stored in the powder. The lighted match is the occasion, not the cause of the explosion. The cause of the European war is the spirit of envy, jealousy, selfishness and suspicion in the so-called Christian nations. The assassination by a Servian of the Crown Prince of Austria was only the lighted match which set the European combustibles in flame. In the United States we recognize the truth that the interests of each State are identical with the interests of the Union, and that no State can permanently prosper by reason of the misfortune of its neighbor. In the German Empire since its unification each principality similarly recognizes that the interests of the German Empire and the interests of the several principalities are essentially identical. But there is no such recognition of the common interest binding the warring nations of Europe together.