When we meet anyone who is inclined to grumble at the necessary restrictions

imposed by the Government on individual freedom of action and speech, we silence his

objection by the observation, "There's a War on". Traveling facilities are curtailed;

certain discomforts are inevitable;  passengers have to wait a little longer for their

particular bus, or a convenient train service has been suspended. Certain areas that once

were common property or open of access become restricted and prohibited. But it were

folly to murmur and wise to recognize that these things must be, if "there is a War on".

One of the things that strike us as sad is to realize, that by reason of the fact that they

were born after 4th September, 1939, there are children suffering the consequences of

War who have never lived in any other atmosphere. For them, the air has never been

without its menace: for them, there has never been unlimited supply of the fruits of the

earth: for them, there has never been the ability or opportunity of abundant life. Thus,

also, it is of the utmost importance that we should remember that since the creation of

Adam, it can be as truly said of mankind as of the children born since 4th Sept., 1939,

that it has never yet known what it is to live without the conditions of War. Before Adam

was formed in the image of his Maker, the spiritual conflict had broken out. The

Anointed Cherub had rebelled against his Lord; he had attempted the usurpation of

Heaven's dominion, and at the reconstruction of this present world and the creation of

man with dominion in it, he immediately recognized in this new being his incipient foe,

and laid plans for his overthrow. Man has never yet known true liberty. The presence of

spiritual foes;  the threat of invasion of his territory;  the destruction of his fair

inheritance; the employment of every artifice of deceit; all these have rendered the odds

against him very great.  They have beset man before and behind with all the spiritual

equivalents of War conditions, so that, even though by his very constitution as a moral

agent, whose will can remain "will" only if it be "free", he finds himself so surrounded

by the consequences of conflict as to realize that his "liberty" must, for the time being, be

seriously curtailed, and can only be fully enjoyed when the present conditions of conflict

shall cease.

We find this limitation of full liberty in the command to abstain from one tree in the

garden of Eden. We find it in operation when, in order that weaker brethren might not be

stumbled, the Apostle Paul gladly and willingly curtailed some of the very liberty he

might as a Christian legitimately have enjoyed. Had anyone challenged the Apostle on

this point, asserting that his actions denied the championship of liberty and freedom with

which his epistles abound, he might pertinently have replied, "There's a War on". His

advice to the Corinthians regarding buying and selling, marriage or abstinence, was

governed by "the present necessity" (or "distress") (I Cor. 7: 26). He urged those who

used this world, not to "use it to the full" ("abuse") (I Cor. 7: 31); and that while they

knew that "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof", they might recognize that it

might, on occasion, nevertheless be incumbent on them to allow another man's

conscience to limit their own individual freedom (I Cor. 10: 28, 29).

For over a thousand years the peoples of these islands of Great Britain have slowly

and patiently acquired a liberty that has become the envy of other lands. Yet, with less