FATALISM.

The results of war are not entirely material. They are probably not in large part material. Their great effect, when history is written, is not in the building up of empires and the altering of maps, but in the thoughts of nations.

Thus the great war has made peoples that were esteemed cowardly heroic, and peoples that were esteemed commercial idealistic, and peoples that were esteemed senescent mighty and uncon-querable. So much the war has done to England and America and France.

On the individuals of those nations it has worked a like effect. It has gone further in making men fatalistic, a thing which a nation may never be. Those who had thought their hold on life was the surest, who talked boldly of fundamentals, and eternity, and destiny, now find themselves where all which before seemed sure is unsure, and the very meaning of existence is lacking.

It is a fine thing for a man to become oblivious to self in pursuing a higher ideal than egoism. It is a terrible thing for a man to become oblivious to self because the whole world appears as nothing stronger than a fantasy.

We must regard the course of creation as real and purposeful, we must try to find the truth behind the blind wrack, we must conceive of the single life as entrusted with a purpose. If we fall of such conception, the terrors of this war are not to be approximated in the mere mortality of those who have died. Far more agonizing than the death of many million men is the death of hope. That has come when men decide it is not worth fighting for, the poor life.