Motives and Deeds by M. C. W.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 27, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 17.

Motives and Deeds

By M. C. W.

ONE noted newspaper correspondent who has been for some time on the bloody battle fields of Europe, and who has also been in other wars, declares that he never saw manifest such intense feelings of hatred among men as he has seen in this war among “Christian” nations. Others have remarked to the same effect.

The deeds have been on a par with the motives. The killing of non-combatants, the sinking of neutral ships by submarines, the spreading of floating mines, the ravaging of women, are in evidence. Some of these things have been characterized by the great journals of America as “brutal,” “cold-blooded,” “cowardly,” “atrocious,” “murder,” as “assassination,” “shocking blood-thirstiness,” “a massacre,” “piracy,” “barbarism run mad,” “a triumph of honor,” “a humiliation to all the world.” Floating mines and submarines are about on the same moral level.

One journal, the New York Globe, declares that if such warfare is admissible, so also are the poisoning of water supplies, introduction of disease germs, and the hiring of assassins to murder leading enemies.

How far below the conceptions of honor by the great heathen warriors! When Alexander, with his inferior force in numbers, was arrayed before Darius, Parmenio, one of Alexander’s greatest generals, suggested a night attack. Alexander refused to consider it, for he would have no man say that Alexander took an unfair advantage of an enemy. When a Greek traitor offered to poison the Greek warrior king Pyrrhus, the Romans spurned his offer, revealed the plot to Pyrrhus, and indignantly delivered up the treacherous scoundrel who made the proposal.

Twenty-five centuries have not greatly improved the morals of the world. War may humble many in these days, but it will not change the heart; and the motives and deeds manifest in this struggle do not argue for the world’s conversion, nor does a profession of Christianity justify the awful deeds.

It is better to believe with God’s word that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” 2 Tim. 3:13. Nay, more, the devout student of prophecy can see, what the Word declares, that it is the demons from the pit that are stirring men to hatred and to war. Rev. 16:13-16. The great day of God is at hand.

M. C. W.