Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/15

prayer, special to the occasion, which the Church could not or would not use was that which alone is truly Christian—prayer in identical terms both for ourselves and our enemies. To pray that spiritual strength and moral virtue might be given equally to us and them was beyond us—though in the granting of it war would have ceased. We were not content to pray merely that right should prevail—right, that most difficult of all outcomes to secure when once, even for a just cause, nations embark on war—we insisted on praying that we should prevail: and so (praying for things materially established) not that we should prevail by a clean adherence to the principles of democracy, but by the instrumentality of a corrupt and secret diplomacy. And so before long—knowingly or unknowingly—we were praying for the success of the secret treaties, for the successful repudiation of the very principles for which we had set out to fight, for the suppression of Ireland's right to self-determination, for the downfall of the Russian Revolution, which was insisting so inconveniently on a belated return to first principles, and for other doubtful advantages not at all synonymous with the coming of Christ's Kingdom. And we were praying for these things—just as really, though we did not mention them by name—because our hearts were not set on praying for the well-being of all nations and all governments alike. Had we been capable of so praying,