"When war came in 1914 I felt this at first mainly as a senseless interruption of social-economic progress. I felt that war must be got rid of so that the threat of war might not interrupt and distort the course of this progress. Only gradually I came to understand at least partly how deeply war is intertwined with our whole economic and social system, our scale of values, our ideas of what is right and of supreme importance."

“There is a powerful current of feeling of the duty and happiness of merging self in the community whether in Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia or Hitler Germany. It is powerfully stimulated by government propaganda but apart from this it seems to me clear that it is a psychological current which has deeper sources than the self-interest of those who are in power.”

“It is shallow to be so impressed by the blatant victories of violence and unreason as to fail to recognize the more permanent and more significant forces which are constantly working in the contrary direction. 16”

“We believe that nothing can be settled right by the method of fighting nor in the midst of fighting. Everything sould be done to secure a truce, at least, so that reason could have a chance to make itself heard.”

“This wide-spread determination to put an end to war is a new thing in history.”

“It seems as though when things look as bad as possible each day brought some item of news for the worse. My naturally resilient optimism is hard put to it. May I some day look back and think how much I feared unnecessarily. I pick up crumbs of comfort. Frau Seger and her baby have been released from their German concentration camp.”

“I tried today to interrupt my occupiedness, my sense of duties and busyness, to free and open myself — such a creaking and dust choked door to open-I have not succeeded, yet it is something to be beginning once more to try to live not only in the ordinary dimensions but also, in however tiny a degree, in that other dimension which we call God.”