A HOLY WAR.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 24 May 1915, Page 8

A HOLY WAR.

CLERGYMAN'S VIEWS

The Rev. James Wilson, who recently returned from the battlefields in Belgium to Australia, referred to the present state of the war, and said: Turkey for centuries had Kept one of the most favored positions in Europe, not by her own strength, but because of the balancing of the great. Powers of Europe against each other. Now this equipoise has been destroyed, and we are likely to see very soon the brutal and infamous Turk thrust out of his position in Europe. There is a- greatness of brute force and raw, might—the prize-ring type of thing—of which, at present, Germany is the greatest ilustration. This so-called cultured nation with a "blood and iron policy" is worse than tenth century feudalism, thrusting its ugly features into the glorious dawn of the twentieth century. In her mad passion for conquest she has taken a little nation by the throat and torn it into bleeding fragments, and turned a fair land into a shambles.

The present war was a holy war, so far as the Allies were, concerned. A Christianity that would fail to draw its sword in defence of the weak, and that would stand by and allow the womanhood of any nation to be outraged by the brute soldiery of Prussia, would be unworthy of respect. Christ and His people are at war with these hounds of hell.

The Lusitarria horror added to the foul atrocities for which l Germany would have to account. They were standing in a world's crisis, in which every fighting man told, and yet, added Mr Wilson, ''I recently heard a preacher thank God that none of his sons had joined the expeditionary force. Of such Christianity I am ashamed."