THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
He knows us much better than we know ourselves, and may have views for our improvement and the world's which our minds do not fathom and which do not match our plans. Nevertheless, in a vast crisis to feel one's self on the Lord's side, there to fight, win or lose, there to stay, alive or dead, is an enormous stay to the spirit. "I am hardened and set," says the English doctor, "by the thing I believe." Then truly is Providence his ally.
To work is to pray; to fight is to pray; to tend the wounded in hospitals and avert disease is to pray. The people in action are quickened and sustained in their faith by their exertions, but what of us who sit afar off in safety and look on at Armageddon?
Our case is pretty trying. When the war first came it was hard for the thousands of us who cared, to sleep in our beds. We felt it was our war, too, and it was, for we too are Europeans, and have besides as great a stake in civilization as any one has. We have kept up our habit of sleeping in our beds because that was more convenient and there was no advantage to any one in our doing otherwise. And we have gone on without much outward change in our work and our habits of life. And we have grown a little callous, and doubtless a little torpid, and lost some of the ardor that came with the first shock. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of Americans have had one continuing, underlying thought for a year and a quarter—the war, the great conflict between good and evil, and what to do about it.
There never has been a moment's doubt about which side would be ours if we went in. But how get in? Where lies duty? By what course may we best help? Is it our war? When and how will the mandate come to us, too, to resist the crushing of civilization under the Prussian jack-boot? There are millions of Americans who want to get into the war, but there are more millions who want to keep out. Our English doctor appreciates the predicament of neutral countries, and this is what he says about it:
"War being what it is, it is hopeless to expect that any nation will
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