EDITORIAL by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 17, 1914

EDITORIAL

By Editor

The Great War

THE situation in Europe, already serious, is daily growing more ominous and portentous. Never in the history of the world has there been such an apparent disregard of the value of human life, and such appalling losses on the field of battle. Men are used as machines, and thousands are indifferently sacrificed provided some advantage may be obtained. Wanton cruelty is charged upon some of the contestants. As one reads of the wholesale and bloody destruction of thousands, of the burning and pillaging of cities, and of the maiming of their inhabitants, he is led almost to doubt that we live in the twentieth century, with its much-vaunted civilization and refinement. One imagines rather that he is set back two thousand years, and that the wars of the ancient barbarians are again being enacted. It is being demonstrated that human nature is the same in every age, and that man when left to himself or controlled by human passions and prejudices surrenders to the same spirit of revenge and mad excess.

Says the Washington Herald of September 3:—

Is There No Power to Stop It?

There can be no victory in the battles being fought in France and Germany but Death's. Armies may advance and retreat, capitals and even thrones may fall, but the Black Warrior stands triumphant alone. Civilization, what is left of it, well may pause today, its racial sympathies and prejudices paralyzed, as it contemplates the sickening, revolting, savage drama in mad enactment upon a blood-soaked stage. Such frightful blotting out of life and tearing of human flesh has never been witnessed under heaven. Millions of men are doing the work at the bidding of kings and emperors, who have quarreled, strewing God's earth with dead by the tens of thousands. The human mind fails utterly to measure the slaughter; a Niagara of blood is deluging Europe, blood of Belgian, Russian, Austrian, Frenchman, Englishman, German — human creatures, all. America, which was asking, Has Germany won? has France won? cares little today whether Paris falls or Berlin falls. It stands aghast, horrified at a world scourge no other generation has known.

Is there no power in all the universe to stop it? Is it too stupendous a task for the United States and South America, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, all the nations not at war, to undertake? Must all Europe be widowed and orphaned?

Where it will all end only the great Ruler of the universe understands. It is for us, in trusting faith, to possess our souls in quietness, and to prepare in our own individual experiences for the events that are coming upon the earth. Earnestly, day by day, we should watch unto prayer, remembering particularly our brethren in bonds, praying God to work for their deliverance and beseeching him to stay the tide of war and hold in check the elements of strife.

Not content with enjoying in our own hearts the peace of Christ, we should put forth earnest labor for those who know him not. God calls men today to the salvation which is in Christ Jesus. That call is felt in the silent movings of the Spirit of God upon every heart; it is sounded in the preaching of the gospel; it is emphasized by flood and fire and famine, by earthquake and war and pestilence. God's judgments proclaim the message of Christ's coming. God is seeking to awaken the world. He is making, as it were, a last supreme effort of his grace to bring men to a knowledge of himself. Let us cooperate with him and with the heavenly agencies in this work of warning, of invitation, of salvation.