During the war, many found their faith in God staggering before a perdition created by human beings. But their faith should not have been unsettled, because this war was as sure to follow the way the world was living as the wheels of the cart are certain to follow the tread of the ox. Some had the blindness and audacity to blame God for what we have done. God gave us the raw material with which to build a heaven, and we constructed a hell. Through His many prophets and seers God told us what we were doing, but we would not believe Him. Thinking ourselves wise we became fools, and turned His good gifts into instruments of torture. The majority of the people, believing that they could get along without giving much heed to God, took His limitless gifts and made a grand holiday instead of a Holy Day, and then rode in automobiles and yachts to their doom. When a world is bad enough to make war, it needs war. Though I had three sons between my heart and Germany's steel, yet I realized that America had to be hurt for her own salvation, for the salvation of Germany, for the safety of the world, and for the utter destruction of the German intriguers. If the people of the allied nations, however, had been shaping the instruments of their spirits into clean bodies, happy homes, honest business, and good governments, and all of these into the Kingdom of God on earth, Prussia could not have dreamed her dream of world dominance, nor would she have dared to throw down the gauntlet before the world. But seeing our weakness, she scorned our threats. Being under tutorship to the god of power, in spite of her vices, which were equal to those of other nations, Prussia became shrewder and stronger than the nations that were too largely feasting under a bacchanalian god, or softly enjoying themselves under a Santa Claus deity, or were piling up unrighteous gains under no god, or under one that was capable of wicked favoritism. It was clear to the prophets of the Most High that something was due,--and it came. Bad as war is, that state of society which makes war possible is even worse. When society grows its body into a monster, the corrective influence of hell, in some form, is the last hope. This does not, however, exonerate Germany from the crime of launching a ruthless war to gratify her lust for world domination. God surely could not help it, since the human family shaped its body as it did against light and conscience; but if there were no retribution for sin and ignorance He would lose His family utterly. Hell inevitably came when the tools were forged and the devils were trained; but God neither forged the tools nor trained the devils.