It is obvious that this is a struggle between militarism and its
evils as represented by the Hohenzollern dynasty and democracy as
represented by England and France.
ALBERT SAUVEUR.
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 5, 1914.
Militarism and Christianity
By Lyman Abbott.
_A Letter to The New York Sun._
Editor in Chief of The Outlook; author of numerous works on
theology, religion, and democracy.
_To the Editor of The New York Sun:_
In answer to your request for a statement of the causes and meaning of
the European war I write with necessary brevity, both because of the
limits on my time and the limits on your crowded columns.
What is the cause of the explosion of a powder magazine? The gases
stored in the powder. The lighted match is the occasion, not the cause
of the explosion. The cause of the European war is the spirit of envy,
jealousy, selfishness and suspicion in the so-called Christian nations.
The assassination by a Servian of the Crown Prince of Austria was only
the lighted match which set the European combustibles in flame.
In the United States we recognize the truth that the interests of each
State are identical with the interests of the Union, and that no State
can permanently prosper by reason of the misfortune of its neighbor.
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