Article October 19, 1918 Issue

Victory, it is clear, implies that something has been vanquished,...

The Christian Science Monitor

Victory, it is clear, implies that something has been vanquished, and the importance of a victory is in proportion to the seeming importance of that which has been conquered or overcome. It therefore is the sanest of questions to ask what is the victory we are fighting for, what is the difficulty or the error that is to be overcome, and what is the good to be gained thereby. If victory were merely a matter of the successful clash of arms, as so many people seem to think, there really never would be a cessation of warfare and no true conquest ever could be made, for matter would just be added to matter, guns would be bigger and shoot farther, explosives would be deadlier, and armies would increase in size, and the material sense of victory to-day would be the incentive for war to-morrow. A righteous peace would of course be unattainable.

Indeed, the world's war would be more than wasted if it did not bring home to humanity the lesson of the utter uselessness of war on a material basis actually to conquer anything or to settle any human problem aright, and the final victory over war will have to recognize this great fact. What is it, then, that must be conquered and destroyed? What is the actual victory to be gained? The victory to be gained is the destruction of a belief in the power of evil which makes the attempt to use mental suggestion a possibility.

"There is no new thing under the sun," we read in Ecclesiastes, a statement that holds good especially with reference to many of the methods of the present day. If anyone will take the time to read the twenty-second to the twenty-fourth chapters of Numbers, he will have as good a description as can be had of the workings of an attempt to gain supremacy by means of mental suggestion or mesmerism. He will also notice that God, good, frustrated its workings and turned the curse into a blessing,—something divine Love will always do for those who understand divine Love. The human mortal mind may want to curse, but divine Love knows only how to bless mankind. Let us notice, then, what it was that led Balak the king of the Moabites to employ Balaam, a diviner, to curse Israel, for the reason is the same to-day that it was thousands of years ago and it should never be forgotten in this connection, for the reason for employing mesmerism is always fear. The people of Moab not knowing the true God, were "sore afraid," so the king hoped that by the means of cursing or by mesmerism, as we would call it to-day, he might cause Israel to be mystified and bewildered and thus prevail against them.

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Victory, it is clear, implies that something has been vanquished,...

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