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The World War and the Latter-Day Saints As Citizens of the United States

IT WAS in 1914 that the World's War threw its awful shadows athwart the world's peace. The outburst of it was sudden; and yet the nations of Europe had long been in actual preparation for it. When the fateful hour struck in those hectic days of the last of July and early August, 1914, which marked its beginning, it found all Europe an armed camp, needing only that "red battle stamp his foot," for nations to feel the shock of war. That signal was given and the nations rushed to war-thirty-one of them, in the final reckoning of all that directly participated in it; and all nations were affected by it.

Not the Place for a War Treatise

This is not the place for anything like a treatise of that war, its causes, the responsibility for it, the awful results of it-the still lingering evil effects of it as time with its slow pace withdraws the nations from its torn and far-flung battlefields and wrecked empires. A very limited summary respecting the number of nations entering into the war, the number in the armies that confronted each other-fifty-nine millions of men mobilized-together with the awful casualties, directly and indirectly that resulted from it-nearly seventeen millions of deaths in all!-have already been stated in a previous chapter when considering the "war to be poured out upon all nations" prophetically, and those items need not be repeated here. At a few points, however, the church of the New Dispensation touches this World War, and these must be noted.

The Relation of Prophecy to the War Event

It is written in scripture that God will do nothing but he revealeth his secrets to his servants, the prophets, and the question arises, could a calamity so large as to affect all nations so tremendously as this World War did, and the secret of it not be made known to God's prophets? I take it that this thought of the Hebrew prophet has in mind the things God permits in his economy, as well as those things of which he is the direct cause. It may be repulsive to one to regard God as the direct cause and author of this World War; but there can be no doubt but that he permitted it, let the cause of it lie where it may; as also he permits many events to come to pass among men, calamitous events, too; but can it be that such events are permitted in God's economy of things, and especially such tremendous events as this World War, and God give no warning of them through his servants the prophets? Well, we have seen in the previous brief treatise on this subject that the Lord was mindful to warn the world of the coming wars through his servant, the Prophet of this age, Joseph Smith. This Prophet sounded a note of warning in general on the subject of coming wars by saying in a preface that was to accompany the first edition of The Covenants and Commandments of God with his church in this New Dispensation, and which has since been published in all editions of the Doctrine and Covenants as God's preface to his Book of Commandments; and on the subject of war, this preface said: