The people of all countries were deeply involved in the general
blood-guiltiness of Europe. They made no passionate appeal in the name
of Christ or in the name of humanity for the cessation of the slaughter
of boys and the suicide of nations and for a reconciliation of
peoples upon terms of some more reasonable argument than that of high
explosives. Peace proposals from the Pope, from Germany, from Austria,
were rejected with fierce denunciation, most passionate scorn, as “peace
plots” and “peace traps,” not without the terrible logic of the vicious
circle, because, indeed, there was no sincerity of renunciation in
some of those offers of peace, and the powers hostile to us were simply
trying our strength and our weakness in order to make their own kind of
peace which should be that of conquest. The gamblers, playing the
game of “poker,” with crowns and armies as their stakes, were upheld
generally by the peoples, who would not abate one point of pride, one
fraction of hate, one claim of vengeance, though all Europe should fall
in ruin and the last legions of boys be massacred. There was no call
from people to people across the frontiers of hostility: “Let us end
this homicidal mania! Let us get back to sanity and save our younger
sons. Let us hand over to justice those who will continue the slaughter
of our youth!” There was no forgiveness, no generous instinct, no
large-hearted common sense in any combatant nation of Europe. Like
wolves they had their teeth in one another's throats, and would not let
go, though all bloody and exhausted, until one should fall at the last
gasp, to be mangled by the others. Yet in each nation, even in Germany,
there were men and women who saw the folly of the war and the crime of
it, and desired to end it by some act of renunciation and repentance,
and by some uplifting of the people's spirit to vault the frontiers of
hatred and the barbed wire which hedged in patriotism. Some of them were
put in prison. Most of them saw the impossibility of counteracting the
forces of insanity which had made the world mad, and kept silent,
hiding their thoughts and brooding over them. The leaders of the nations
continued to use mob-passion as their argument and justification,
excited it anew when its fires burned low, focused it upon definite
objectives, and gave it a sense of righteousness by the high-sounding
watchwords of liberty, justice, honor, and retribution. Each side
proclaimed Christ as its captain and invoked the blessing and aid of the
God of Christendom, though Germans were allied with Turks and France
was full of black and yellow men. The German people did not try to avert
their ruin by denouncing the criminal acts of their war lords nor by
deploring the cruelties they had committed. The Allies did not help them
to do so, because of their lust for bloody vengeance and their desire
for the spoils of victory. The peoples shared the blame of their rulers
because they were not nobler than their rulers. They cannot now
plead ignorance or betrayal by false ideals which duped them, because
character does not depend on knowledge, and it was the character of
European peoples which failed in the crisis of the world's fate, so that
they followed the call-back of the beast in the jungle rather than the
voice of the Crucified One whom they pretended to adore.