TOO CIVILIZED FOR RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM
ONE of the greatest dangers in this time is the thought so many people have that the world has become so civilized we will never have any more religious tyrannies. Many people have been earnestly teaching, for a quarter of a century or more, that the world had become too civilized to have wars, and that even the weapons of war that were forged in this time were peacemakers. Many writers and public speakers had named the big guns and the Dreadnought battleships “peace-makers.” But Europe and a large part of Asia have burst into an active volcano of war, and this shows how easily we may be mistaken. The hearts of men are practically the same in all ages, and the people of the twentieth century need to be as much guarded against religious despotism as were the people of any other age. It is better to guard against these difficulties in their embryonic stages than to be compelled to grapple with them when their strength has reached the proportions of a giant of tyranny.