He certainly won't love his enemy; quite the contrary, if he can only get at him, he will run him through with his bayonet. That is the nature of all religious teaching in this country. I do not think that that is a very good way of carrying out the precepts of religion. I think if it is a good thing for a boy to love his enemy, it is good for a grown-up man."
"There are in Europe twenty-eight millions of men under arms," says Wilson, "to decide disputes, not by discussion, but by murdering one another. That is the accepted method for deciding disputes among Christian nations. This method is, at the same time, very expensive, for, according to the statistics I have read, the nations of Europe spent in the year 1872 a hundred and fifty millions sterling on preparations for deciding disputes by means of murder. It seems to me, therefore, that in such a state of things one of two alternatives must be admitted: either Christianity is a failure, or those who have undertaken to expound it have failed in doing so. Until our warriors are disarmed and our armies disbanded, we have not the right to call ourselves a Christian nation."
In conference on the subject of the duty of Christian ministers to preach against war, G. D. Bartlett said among other things " If I understand the Scriptures, I say that men are only playing with Christianity so long as they ignore the question of war. I have lived a longish life and have heard our ministers preach on universal peace hardly half dozen times. Twenty years ago, in adrawing room, I dared in the presence of forty persons to moot the proposition that war was incompatible with Christianity was regarded as an arrant fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as unmitigated weakness and folly."
The Catholic priest Defourney has expressed himself in the same spirit. "One of the first precepts of the eternal
