Awful as are the waste and suffering caused by war, hideous as modern warfare is, there are worse evils for humanity. To my thinking the perpetuation of the lawless, materialistic creed of the new Germany would be infinitely worse for the world than any war could be. When the German tide broke into Belgium and poured out over northern France, sweeping all before it, killing, burning, raping, the pacifists no doubt would have accepted the conqueror as the will of God and have made peace then!... There are none more eager for peace than the soldiers in the trenches who are giving their lives to press back the barbarian flood. But no peace until their "work has been done, the cause won." I have heard Americans express the fear that European civilization is in danger of annihilation from the prolonged conflict. Even that were preferable to submission to the wrong ideal. But I see, rather, the possibility of a higher civilization through the settlement of fundamental principles, the reaffirmation of necessary laws. It is surely with this abiding faith that the enormous sacrifices are being freely made by the allied nations. "It is of little importance what happens to us," a Frenchman said to me in Rheims, whose home had been destroyed that morning, whose son had already been killed in the trenches. "There will be a better world for the generations to come because of what we have endured." That is what the American pacifist cannot seem to understand--the necessity of present sacrifice for a better future, the cost in blood and agony of ultimate principles. * * * * *