Excerpt from The Moral Issues of the Great War: Sermon of April 7th, 1918

Rarely in human history have the main facts been so indisputable or the principles involved so clear. Never in all time, perhaps, has a nation entered a great struggle more deliberately or with a greater purity and nobility of motive. We are under no illusions of ambition. We know that we can gain no territory, wealth, trade or material advantage of any kind, and we fully realize the sacrifices we are making of human life and happiness. The cost in blood and treasure will be incalculable, yet we pay it because we must, because only in this way can we protect that which gives to life its worth. And when we have won, we shall have gained nothing for ourselves which other nations, our enemies included, will not enjoy.

To the clear minds which for years have watched the coming of the storm, it is all as light as noonday. The mass of the people understood by instinct. They were, therefore, never neutral in feeling, for from the very beginning there was a recognition of the fact that the success of German policy in the world would make American democracy im possible. This feeling was profoundly just, as it is perfectly easy to show. It was morally impossible for this nation to stand apart and see others battling desperately for interests which are ours as much as theirs, and it became more and more clear that if they failed we would go down in their fall. It was well to be deliberate and reluctant, possibly even when the treatment of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusi tania showed the nature of the power that threatened us, but we could not, consistently either with our real interest or our honor and self-respect, have put off our entrance into the conflict a moment longer.

In our effort to understand the present crisis, we must first of all put aside irrelevant and merely subsidiary ques tions. It is not helpful to talk about the private virtues of the German people. These are ungrudgingly and gladly admitted. Nor is it a question of the value of German science and art. These, too, like the science and art of other peoples, are of value to all men, and nobody wishes to dis parage or depreciate them in any way. Nor is it true, as has often been asserted, that this war is a conflict without principle, a struggle of greedy powers for purely material advantage, in which case it would not matter much which side wins. False, too, is the assertion that increasing arma ments have caused the war. In fact, the armament of France and the British navy have saved Europe from the domination of the Kaiser and the men about him.

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