AT THIS season of the year the message of peace renews its
appeal to Christian hearts. We would all be pacificists if we
could, but the times seem to be out of joint, and we are all at
cross-purposes at home and the nations are more like military
encampments than civilised communities. This latter fact exposes
some of us to the charge of inconsistency, when we support the
strengthening of our naval armaments while we advocate the
doctrines of peace. It is the unfortunate fact that pacificists are
at present urging counsels of perfection, none the less necessary,
yet practicable only when the work of conversion shall have been
much further advanced. In existing circumstances, the strengthening
of our armaments, and particularly of the Navy, is to be regarded
as an insurance against war. Now, as so often in the past, the
truth of the venerable paradox, Si vis pacem, para bellum,
holds good. We could wish that those who are for international
peace at any price were equally desirous of promoting domestic
peace, but truth compels us to confess that the party spirit of our
time is as bitter as it ever was in the past. The celebration of
the great festival of peace should, if we rightly observe it, stir
within us a better spirit of kindliness and mutual esteem. We
foresee in the coming new year many things that will endanger the
advance of that spirit, and we can only pray that this may not be
so. Once more we have the happiness to wish our readers a Merry
Christmas.