This early history is, however, as yet vague and unstudied, nor do we need to enter into any ungenerous struggle about priority. It is enough that the idealist scheme was well known in England long before the middle of the nineteenth century. Did the Christian Churches adopt and enforce it? Here, at least, no minute research is needed. The Christian bodies failed lamentably and totally (apart from the heterodox Friends) even to recognise the moral and humane greatness of the idea when it was definitely presented to them. It is only in the last few years that a Peace Sunday has--at the suggestion of lay associations--been adopted in the churches and chapels of England. It is only in quite recent times that bishops and ministers have stood on peace-platforms and advocated the reform. And even to-day, when peace associations founded by laymen have been endeavouring for decades to educate the country, no branch of the Christian Church has officially and collectively decreed that Christian principles enjoin the reform; no Pope or Archbishop or Church Council has supported it with a stern and official injunction that Christian and moral principle demands that all the members of the particular Church shall subscribe to and work for the reform. Even at this eleventh hour, when the issue of peace or war confronts the whole of mankind, one notices hesitation, reserve, ambiguity. During the fateful years between 1900 and 1914, when the nations were, in the eyes of all, preparing the most appalling armaments ever known in history, when men were speaking freely all over Europe of "the next war" and the terrific dimensions which modern science and modern alliances would give to it, the various branches of the Christian Church adhered to their ancient and futile practice of preaching general principles (as far as national conduct is concerned), and had little practical influence on the development.