2. That the war is none the less an outcome and a revelation of the un-Christian principles which have dominated the life of Western Christendom and of which both the Church and the nations have need to repent;
3. That followers of Christ, as members of the Church, are linked to one another in a fellowship which transcends all divisions of nationality or race;
4. That the Christian duties of love and forgiveness are as binding in time of war as in time of peace;
5. That Christians are bound to recognise the insufficiency of mere compulsion for overcoming evil, and to place supreme reliance upon spiritual forces and in particular upon the power and method of the Cross;
6. That only in proportion as Christian principles dictate the terms of settlement will a real and lasting peace be secured;
7. That it is the duty of the Church to make an altogether new effort to realise and apply to all the relations of life its own positive ideal of brotherhood and fellowship;
8. That with God all things are possible.
These propositions were very carefully drafted by the Committee referred to above and entirely represent my own beliefs; but there is something more which I would add. The new Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Turkey is no accident; it is the combination of just those three Powers which openly and avowedly believe in oppression—that is, in the imposition by force of the standards accepted by one race upon people of another race. All nations have at one time or another practised oppression; certainly Great Britain is not free from the charge, and the history of Russia has many dark pages in this respect. But we can all claim that when we have been guilty of oppression it has been under the influence of fear, whether of revolution, anarchism, or some other force thought to be disruptive of the State. With our enemies this is not so. We all know about Turkey; it is the essentially Mohammedan power, and Mohammedanism is the religion of oppression; it believes in imposing its faith by means of the sword. The Austrian Empire consists of three divisions in each of which one race is imposing its manner of life upon another. In Austria-proper the Germans oppress the Czechs; in Galicia the Poles have, in some degree at least, oppressed the Ruthenes; in Hungary the Magyars have systematically and avowedly oppressed the Roumanians in the east, and the Croats in the south and west. Germany has shown her political faith by her conduct in Alsace-Lorraine, and still more in Poland. Nothing has yet appeared so illuminating with regard to what is at stake in this war, as Prince Bülow’s chapter on Poland in his book, _Imperial Germany_; he describes what seems to us the most grinding oppression with obvious self-contentment and without a question of its righteousness; and there have been abundant signs that, at least, many people in Germany are willing to impose German Kultur by the sword as Mohammedans impose belief in their prophet.