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Two years ago the writer published a book called The Great Discovery. It seemed to him in those days, when the nation chose the ordeal of battle rather than dishonour, that the people, as if waking from sleep, discovered God once more. But, now, after an agony unparalleled in the history of the world, the vision of God has faded, and men are left groping in the darkness of a great bewilderment. The cause may not be far to seek. For every vision of God summons men to the girding of themselves that they may bring their lives more into conformity with His holy will. And when men decline the venture to which the vision beckons, then the vision fades.

It is there that we have failed. We were called to put an end to social evils which are sapping our strength and enfeebling our arm in battle, but we refused. We wanted victory over the enemy, but we deemed the price of moral surgery too great even for victory. In the rush and crowding of world-shaking cataclysms, memory is short. We have already almost forgotten the moral tragedy of April 1915. It was then that the White Paper was issued by the Government, and the nation was informed of startling facts which our statesmen knew all the time. At last the nation was told that our armies were wellnigh paralysed for lack of munitions, while thousands of men were daily away from their work because of drunkenness; that the repairing of ships was delayed and transports unable to put to sea because of drunkenness; that goods, vital to the State, could not be delivered because of drunkenness; that Admiral Jellicoe had warned the Government that the efficiency of the Fleet was threatened because of drunkenness; and that shipbuilders and munition manufacturers had made a strong appeal to our rulers to put an end to drunkenness. It was then that the King, by his example, called upon the people to renounce alcohol, and the nation waited for its deliverance. But the Government refused to follow the King. There is but one law for nations, as for individuals, if they would save their souls: 'If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.' But our statesmen could not brace themselves to an act of surgery; they devised a scheme for putting the offending member into splints. And, since then, it looks as if the wheels of the chariot of victory were stuck in the bog of the national drunkenness. The vision of God has faded before the eyes of a nation that refused its beckoning.

This book deals, therefore, with those evils which now hide the face of God from us. If drunkenness be the greatest of these evils, there are others closely allied to it. Two Commissions have recently issued Reports, the one on 'The Declining Birthrate,' and the other on 'The Social Evil,' which reveal the perilous condition of degeneration into which the nation is falling. It is difficult for people, engrossed in the labours and anxieties of these days, to grasp the meaning of the facts as presented in these Reports. In these pages an effort is made to look the facts in the face and to make the danger clear, so that he who runs may read. And the writer has had but one purpose: to show that there is but one remedy for all our grievous ills, even a return to God.

As we think of the millions who have taken all that makes life dear and laid it down that we might live; who have gone down to an earthly hell that we might not lose our heaven; who have wrestled with the powers of destruction on sea and land that these isles might continue to be the sanctuary of freedom and the home of righteousness; who in the midst of their torment never flinched; and of the fathers, mothers, and wives who have laid on the altar the sacrifice of all their love and hope—the question arises, how can we show our love and our gratitude to those who have redeemed us? We can only prove our gratitude by making a new world for those who have saved us—a world in which men and women shall no longer be doomed to live lives of sordidness and misery. When we shall set ourselves to that task, seeking to meet the sacrifice of heroism by the sacrifice of our service, deeming no labour too great and no effort too arduous, then the vision of God will again arise upon us and will abide.

N. M.

October 7, 1916.