Did you fancy that will was weakened when man lays aside the brain? It is weakened in the sense that there is less freedom of choice; but there is tremendous will in following a choice already set up when the physical base of the brain was attached to the will. But now all the evil karma of Belgium is lived out, and she stands like a new soul in the face of time. Another race has taken up the load that she laid down. Will that too be expended soon, or late? Germany has woven round herself a shirt of evil causes that will cling to her and chafe her flesh for generations. “It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.” The karma of nations is known to the Masters and Adepts. The karma of England! Have you ever thought about the karma of England? Granting that she has done much wrong, as all old nations have, yet she has allowed herself to be used by the world-will. She, more than all the other old races, has been an instrument in the unifying of the races. Did you fancy that the British Empire was a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Did you think the British Empire merely happened? And now the British Empire _may_ be used further. She may be used in Belgium. And I do not mean the mere presence of her army in Belgium. It is said that the Masters, the world’s teachers, hold back the awful karma of the world. I am trying to do a little toward holding back the awful karma of Germany. She has disgraced the human race in Belgium. Everything that has been believed about German outrages in Belgium is true except one thing. So far as I know, and I have enquired of those who know more than I, German soldiers have not cut off the hands of living Belgian children. But they have murdered women, and outraged women, and mocked and insulted pregnant women, and maltreated the new-made mothers of babes that they have murdered. They have burned men alive, and they have buried men still alive. I say that Germans have done these things. Should I say that the forces of evil, the beings of evil, the superhuman and the once-human forces of evil, have done these things, using as their instruments the forms of German soldiers from which they had thrust for the moment the moral soul? Take it whichever way you please, for both ways are true. The men who ravaged and destroyed Belgium were not all obsessed, save that evil may be always an obsession. Help to hold back the awful karma that Germany has made in Belgium. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven.” _March 27._ FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The law of ethical causation.] LETTER IX UNSEEN GUARDIANS