Suspense, Volume III by Henry Seton Merriman

I have often wondered why blasphemy is excusable when it is spoken from a throne. It seems to me that many crimes have been deliberately set forth upon paper under the exculpating heading of, 'In the name of God -- Amen. We,' etc., etc. This thought cannot well escape suggestion while perusing a declaration of war. It is a subterfuge -- a mean attempt to assign the responsibility to One who is mightier than princes or potentates. God does not declare war -- it is man.

On the twenty-fourth day of April, eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, the Czar of all the Russias gave forth to his people that, bowing his head to the evident desire of the Almighty, he reluctantly declared war against the Ottoman Empire. There was much rhetoric about Christian nations suffering beneath the lash of Mohammedan hatred; stories were told of shocking cruelties practised upon an oppressed people, coldly worded statements were made of misgovernment, misappropriation, theft. And the remedy to all these was, if it may please you, war! From the formal declaration, with its pharisaical self-laudation, its rolling periods and mock reluctance, fourteen letters might have been selected, and set in order so as to spell a single word in which lay the explanation of it all. That word was -- 'Constantinople.'