They
had great allies--
'Their friends were exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.'
If we are defeated we shall be defeated not by German strength but by
our own weakness. The worst enemy of the martyr is doubt and the divided
mind, which suggests the question, 'Is it, after all, worth while?' We
must know what we have believed. What do we stand for in this war? It is
only the immovable conviction that we stand for something ultimate and
essential that can help us and carry us through. No war of this kind and
on this scale is good enough to fight unless it is good enough to fail
in. 'The calculation of profit', said Burke,'in all such wars is false.
On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogs-heads of sugar
are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should
never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our
family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The
rest is vanity; the rest is crime.'
The question I have asked is a difficult question to answer, or, rather,
the answer is not easy to formulate briefly and clearly.
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