With Our Soldiers in France | Page 6

battle one thrills at the sound of mighty and
unearthly forces loosed, but in the din we suddenly realize that boys are
dying all about us, and that these guns bear swift death and mangling to
suffering men. Between us and the enemy are just a few deep shell
holes and a thin red line of flesh and blood, as a human rampart,
formed of men who hold their lives in their hands, ready to make the
great sacrifice. Behind us are the hidden guns and the support trenches
in the narrow strip of hard-won territory. Behind these are the moving
columns on the long roads, the pulsing arteries of traffic, and the
moving troop trains on the rails. Behind these in turn are the plying
ships, the millions of toiling workers, and the suffering hearts of the
nations in arms. Whole nations--yes, almost the whole of humanity--are
organized for war and dragged into deadly conflict as by some devil's
behest, instead of being organized for brotherhood and the building of a
better world. Oh, not for this devil's work were men made. Surely
mankind must come to its own in these birth pangs of a new era. Never,
never again must a whole humanity of the free-born sons of God be
dragged into the hell of war to sate the pride or pomp of kings, or to
glut the ambition of scheming secret groups who have taught men that
they are created as obedient slaves.

Far behind us, marking the slow advance up this ridge of death, are the
sheltered cemeteries of white crosses that tell the price that has already
been paid. There are five thousand crowded graves in yonder acre alone.
Great is the price, awful in its solid weight of agony. This is no longer a
war between two peoples, but between two principles; it is as much to
free the German people as to protect ourselves. It is not for this narrow
strip of hard-won soil, but for every foot of a world that from
henceforth must be free. The men who are fighting on grounds of moral
principle would rather pay any price than lie at ease under the false
shadow of militarism, materialism, and grasping greed. These men are
fighting, and many of them know that they are fighting, for a new
world. Not only military oppression, but industrial oppression, must go.
Not only German militarism, and Russian autocracy, and Turkish
cruelty must be done away; but American materialism must be purged
in the fiery furnace of this war. Its purposes will reach far beyond our
ken, and though man's sin alone has caused the war, its issues are in the
hands of God. The whole war has been a demonstration of the result of
leaving God out of His world. The world with God left out leaves war;
and life with God left out leaves hell.
There must be a turning to God in our own national life. We speak of
the menace of German militarism, but what is militarism but armed and
aggressive materialism, the deeper principle which lies behind it? And
what is materialism but organized selfishness? Materialism and
selfishness are the dangers of our own land as well as of Germany. And
the war is a call to set our own house in order.
America can no longer live to herself alone. She is fighting for the
freedom of humanity. Here on the very field of battle, at the throbbing
heart of the conflict, we ask ourselves, What is the real issue of the war?
What are they fighting for?
Away there in Austria a young crown prince, Francis Ferdinand, was
murdered. It was the spark which set off the powder mine of Europe.
But not for him are they fighting. Behind him stood the two contending
forces of the growing nationalism of Serbia and the expanding
commercialism of Austria. These two forces clashed in conflict, but not

for them are they fighting. Behind these stood two greater powers,
those of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism, a growing Germany and a
rising Russia, which like a vast glacier for a thousand years had sought
the open sea. The ambitions of these two powers clashed in conflict at
Constantinople and elsewhere. But not for them are they fighting.
On the western front there were two deeper principles in conflict, those
of autocracy and democracy, the question whether one man and a
sinister, hidden group of plotting militarists could drag the whole world
into war and crush its liberties and its laws beneath the iron heel of
despotism, or whether man as man should stand erect in his God-given
right of freedom and work out his own destiny in friendly brotherhood.
But behind even the great conflict between autocracy and democracy
lay a yet deeper