Now. in conclusion, note the language

(President of the Northwestern States Mission.) ¶

The responsibility which was placed upon the shoulders of the priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a tremendous one. It now seems greater as we look back over the years that ¶

have passed since the organization of this Church, and since that priesthood was given. I am just beginning to see, in a small way, I think, some part of the responsibility which I, together with my brethren and our fathers and grandfathers, have borne, and I am beginning to feel and understand better than I ever have heretofore, how significant and how tremendous was the mission that was given to the prophet Joseph Smith. ¶

It wasn't an easy task, and never will be, for the elders of this Church to carry the particular message which the Lord delivered to them. A good many of us have felt very much like Jonah did, who was sent to warn Nineveh. We have trembled, we have feared to raise up our voices on the street corners and elsewhere and deliver the message of warning. We believe the promise made by John has been fulfilled when he said, that in due time another angel should fly through the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell upon the earth, crying with a loud voice, "Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come." We believe that the message the angel delivered has been committed into the hands of the elders of this Church, and it has been a message of warning to the children of men. ¶

God our Father knew what was coming. We shall not charge him with the responsibility of the war nor of the distress among the nations, for as we sow, as nations as well as individuals, so shall we reap And the Lord knowing what was coming, though he were God himself, he could not avert it. The natural consequences of sinning ¶

or wrongdoing, men must reap. Knowing that he sent this message to warn men of that which was to come, we have delivered it; but we have been filled with fear sometimes in delivering it, because we have been unwelcome. But we remember that those servants of God who were given the commission to warn men of dangers, and troubles that were coming, were never welcome, whether it was John the Baptist, who stood before the wicked king and told him of his sins and suffered to lose his head because of it, or whether it was the Christ, who because he chastised men and called them to repentance was despised and finally put to death. ¶

It is not an easy thing to meet men and women and tell them they are wrong, tell them they are in sin and they must repent, for we don't get a very glad hand from the majority of the people when we tell them these things. And so some of our missionaries have trembled very much and have been very fearful to meet the people and deliver the message which the Lord committed into their hands, and yet, my brethren and sisters, when I look back over the valiant and faithful way in which the elders of this Church have discharged their duty towards the nations of the earth, and under the command of our Father, I am proud to be an elder in this Church and to be affiliated with a band of men who have rid their skirts of the blood of this generation. From the day that President Young, President Woodruff and others of the earlier brethren, left their families and their homes, as they were just driven out of Missouri, and went on that unknown journey across the water ¶

and suffered much during that period, until this time, thousands and tens of thousands of the elders of this Church have gone without purse and without scrip delivering this message. Nothing has turned them away from their course. Whether gold had been discovered in California and the whole world was afire with desire, the elders of the Church have not been deterred from the delivery of their message. They have acted like men who believed they had a real mission. ¶

How would you feel if you knew above this city or any other city where you lived there was a great dam, and reservoir, containing an immense quantity of water and you had been given to understand that there was danger and that at an approximate time that dam would break and the lives of the people would be in danger, what would you do? Sit down or find a place of safety yourself and look upon the distress that should come? No, you would bestir yourself, you would go up and down the valley or through the streets and warn men and women to flee from the danger that was to come, and if they did not believe you, you who knew what was coming, with all your heart and soul, you would try to impress men and women to escape from the calamity that was coming. How then should men act if they have indeed received a message like the elders of this Church have received? ¶

Recently I have had the opportunity to read carefully and ponder over the many very wonderful things which the Lord has delivered to this Church, in the book of Doctrine and Covenants. You do not need to hunt out in the world ¶

among the monks of the past ages some supposed prophecy, coming from some hidden or obscure source. Read the open revelations of the Lord, and you will find that there everything that we now see and witness we were told about distinctly many years ago. The warning has been given to the nations of the earth and they were called upon to escape from danger and I say that men who had this kind of commission could not in honesty do other than the elders of this Church have done: they have acted as if they believed what they said. All honor to them. ¶

I want to say to you, brethren and sisters, that when the warning comes, always from the very beginning until this time, there has been connected with that warning the means of escape. God provided a means of escape from this war. When God restored the everlasting gospel through his prophet Joseph Smith, he gave the invitation to the world, in connection with the warning of judgments that were to come, the invitation that provided the way of escape. It may seem a very bold thing for me to stand here and say, but yet I say it, for I have a living testimony that it is true: that if Germany, instead of imprisoning the elders we sent her, if instead of banishing them she had repented of her sins and accepted the Lord's invitation, Germany would not have plunged the world into this war. ¶

Over in the cantonment, at American Lake, where all our drafted boys from this intermountain country first went, we held a conference in connection with brother George Albert Smith and President McMurrin and a great many of those ¶

boys were present. We heard the testimony of brethren who had been engaged in the missionary work when the war broke out. They stood up, six and eight and ten of them at a time, eager to bear testimony— men who were in Germany, some of them had been banished. They saw the mobilization of the German army. They had been preaching wherever they could, warning Germany of the dangers that were to come. There were men who were in Liege who fled before the oncoming Germans. There were men in France and all those nations, who now stood up in the uniforms of the United States. They were witnesses that they had delivered to those nations the means of escape. ¶

Now, brethren and sisters, I am just as anxious as any man that lives to see established the principles of freedom and liberty for which we fight, and I think we ought to fight for them. I feel that President Smith's words found echo in the heart of every true Latter-day Saint. With every bone and fibre we believe in this country and its institutions and we want to see America and America's principles succeed, but let me say to you, brethren and sisters, there shall be something else necessary, if we shall find peace on earth and good will to men, in addition to the establishment of the principles of righteousness in political government and freedom ; let me tell you that the nations that have passed the way of all the earth did not come to their destruction because their governments were particularly bad, but they came to wreck and ruin because they were wicked and they sinned and broke the law of God. The most perfect law of political liberty will never save men and women except they shall obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in connection with the principles of righteousness in political government. I want to say to you that while I shall rejoice in seeing the standards of liberty and freedom carried forward among the nations of the earth, I see in that only the preparatory way, and there must necessarily follow that which is indeed the fundamental of peace, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. ¶

Now, brethren and sisters, I do rejoice to know that we have here those men who are inspired to tell us what we shall do. When the nations of the earth do not accept the invitation which was given, providing the means of escape, then they must take the consequences ; but I thank the Lord that there are in the hearts of the majority of the civilized nations of the earth a willingness to defend the principles of righteousness in government. Thank God for that, and for their stand ; and there is nothing else for us to do than to co-operate with them in defending the glorious principles of liberty which they have espoused and which are ours. O how my heart rejoices to know that instead of a little band fighting as our forefathers fought for those very principles in the establishment of this country, we have now allied with this the mighty nations of the earth; and this is the day of the triumph of the truth, when political liberty shall come ! ¶

But O, brethren and sisters, I want to say to you that the Lord does not love a wicked American any better than he loves a wicked German. I want to say to you that my heart is touched when I look at my America. I love America, but I know that my America shall not succeed, nor shall she survive, except by and through her own humility and repentence and turning away from sin ! ¶

I have had the opportunity to talk to thousands of boys in the cantonments, and this has been my plea to them : You are entitled to the blessings of the Lord. Your cause is just ; and that it shall succeed means that you must humble yourselves, cease to take the name of God in vain, keep yourselves morally clean, and you will have a power and a strength that no soldiers have ever experienced who have gone into the battle. ¶

Brethren and sisters, what shall we do, we who have been called here — one of a city and two of a family, away from these troubles? When the Lord knew that the nations would not accept the invitation that was given, he called our fathers out from them. What for? To save us? Yes, but for something else than to save us, just for ourselves. He has committed into our hands the most precious and sacred things in all the world to hold the nations of the earth. ¶

In British Columbia we have a conference. We have had soldiers go out from that section, you know, for three years now, and this is what I witnessed : when these boys left their homes and got into the front of the battle, you know the death rate was very high in the beginning of the struggle. They fell on the right and on the left and when the casualty lists appeared each morning there were thousands of fathers and mothers who began to pray who never prayed before ¶

in their lives. When they learned that their boys were prisoners or lying wounded in the hospitals, the spirit of humility and repentance came. In the last year we have had an increase in our baptisms in that conference. There have been ten times as many baptisms in that conference, in the last year, as we have had in any preceding year with the same number of missionaries. When I saw it, I wondered if the same good blessings should not, in God's providence, come to all this goodly land. I see it coming. The by-products of this war shall be the saving of our own blessed America, for her salvation, her perpetuity, her being favored of God, depends not only upon the money that we put up, and upon the boys we send, but upon the righteousness of our own lives ! ¶

O my America, humble yourself, and turn unto God, your Father, and keep his commandments, and he will stand by you in the battle for right. ¶

That is my testimony ; and let us listen to the voice of these servants of God. You do not need to go anywhere else, all that the Lord wants us to know he will give. I have that confidence. He has inspired these brethren. Let us follow their leadership, and listen to their warning voices. O that more of us had believed the message which President Young gave us concerning home industry and the things President Smith has referred to. O that we had believed it with all our hearts, and practiced it. We would have been better. ¶

We stand in the most favored position of the nations of the earth. We shall sit at the first table always, but we will share with others. God ¶

has thus favored us that we stand in the best place in all the earth, but let us improve that place and that opportunity, and let us conserve the things that God has given us ; and when the war is over and when the wounds need healing, behold here is the balm that shall heal the wounds of the nations ! God help us conserve it, prepare ourselves to be ministers in very deed, in the calling to which we have been assigned, that we may be faithful and not disappoint him, and that we may be triumphant in the struggle for eternal and everlasting peace, which may God grant, in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶