But when it saw its great ally, practically unprepared, in the cause of the weak against the strong, in the cause of international honour, to defend the freedom of the world, fling itself into the battle, then it bowed its head in respectful admiration of a nation which did not wholly in vain profess to follow One "who, though He was rich, for our sakes became poor," and who, again, to use the striking phraseology of St. Paul, "being in the form of GOD, thought it not a thing to be snatched at to be equal with GOD, but made himself of no reputation and took upon the form of a slave." It may seem a paradox to say it, but Japan was clear-sighted enough to see the truth of it, that with all our inconsistencies and imperfections, the good old British race never did a more Christlike thing than when, on August 4th, 1914, it went to war. And surely Japan was right. The fallacy of the argument with regard to the breakdown of Christianity from the War lies in the words "_Christian nations_." _Is_ a nation a Christian nation which adopts as its governing policy a pagan doctrine? There may be plenty of individual Christians _in_ the nation, as no doubt there are, thank GOD, in Germany, but no one who has ever cursorily studied Treitschke or Bernhardi, or the utterances of the governing class of Germany, who have imbibed the teaching of such leaders of thought, can imagine that the nation which has prepared for this War for forty years, which has prayed for this Day and longed for it, is really in this sense a Christian nation. We are getting tired, terribly tired--at least I am--of hearing of these wretched men who have succeeded in indoctrinating a great and powerful and efficient people with a virus which has turned them into a curse instead of a blessing to the world. I only bring them in as part of my defence of Christianity. I say it is a _monstrous misuse of language_ to talk of the breakdown of Christianity when what has produced the War is the _exact contrary to Christianity_. There is no such precise contradiction to the doctrine of the Cross as the doctrine of the Superman; there is no such absolute contrast to the principles of the New Testament as the German War Book. You can say, and justly say, that in failing to convert the German nation, Christianity has so far failed in its world-wide mission, and this I readily admit; but so has it failed at present to convert the wild tribes of Central Africa and the millions of Chinese. All that we claim is that the principles of Christianity, _when accepted and lived up to_, change the face of the world; and we Christians protest in the strongest way that a nation which avowedly acts at a great crisis on anti-Christian principles is not in this sense a Christian nation at all. (2) But we go further than this; the progress of the War has opened the eyes of other watching neutral nations besides Japan, as to the value of Christian principles in the _conduct_ of War.