New-York tribune., 1918-12-25
Two Christmases


It was q dark and solemn festival,
Christmas Day year ago. Perhaps the
Allied peoples did not then realize how
hard pressed their armies were and did
not foresee how desperately close would
he the issue in the coming spring But
there was little to cheer-there were
months surely and years probably of
terrible fighting yet to come before de-
cision could he hoped for. In this coun-
try we had not yet felt the cost of war,
but its shadow was rapidly deepening
across the land We were entering a
valley we knew not how black or long.
This Christmas finds all the Allied ma
tons in far different mood Even France,
so much the hardest hit of all, is show
ing a true touch of her old gayety De-
spite homes that will never be filled again
and wounds that can never be healed,
her heart leaps up to the new dawn, to
the new birth of peace on earth, good
viii toward men. We in America have
our own scars and grieving hearts, and
there will be few without some close
relative or friend to mourn in the midst
Of all our happiness. But here, as in
France, in England, in Italy, in Bel
gium, it is in truth again a Merry
Christmas that we celebrate-a relief
and promise so vast that even grief it.
self is swallowed up in the new life un-
rolling before US.
1t is the way of the world to make
these quick shifts Lucky for human
nature that it can! But it will pay us,
too, to take little longer view and see
how overgreatly we were cast down in
the var-and take care that we are not
oVerelated now Our whole religious
faith which for most Of America cele-
bratcs is beginning to-day-was subject
TO Just this process. Christianity had
failed; the war had shown it's futility,
Its falseness; it was to bring peace on
earth, and after nineteen hundred wears
1t had brought the most horrible and de-
ftructive war in all history. That was
common enough in the talk of a wear
ago. Already it is vanishing; we feel
how mistaken it was; and there are even
those among the nations who are already
again, as before the war, reaching out
1or the millennium, for that final peace
on earth which man has always hoped
Tor, yet which was not when Christ was
born, which has never been since and
the hour of which it is impossible to see
1t was from a massacre Of innocents
ihat Mary and Joseph fed in those first
Years. All these hundreds of wears
thereafter another Herod appeared, and
in Belgium and in France there was an
other massacre, not less heartrending
not less brutal and wanton. Herod's
'|9 oSANSli power, tnP rear or q
hostile rival. The organized terror of
Inc Kaiser's armies that slew little chill
dren in the villages of Belgium and
northern France was much the same in
motive. The world has turned over so
often-and Herod still lives.
So it is not, if we are wise, the mil
lennium that we celebrate to-day. There
is no word in the Christian books or
faith to justify such overfond hopes.
The truth lies between. On Christ
mas Day we celebrate not perfection
achieved but our eternal struggle toward
it, the ever fresh miracle of life. which
dies but to be born again; which. against
every restraint aud power Of evil. de-
spite all the swords of Herod, surpes
forth and upward Faint was its star
II year ago. This Christmas we see it
clearer; and It viii be Frightening
beacon through the years to come. In its
light we dare hope for q better world
and growing love Of right~for
world bora again. in the midst of