When the young Serbian student fired the that killed Arch-Duke Ferdinand of Austria, it was really a shot heard around the world, whose repercussions shocked the world out of its complacency and whose reverberations struck upon the eardrums of all men everywhere. After nearly four years of standing on the side lines, America entered the conflict with an enthusiasm perhaps unparalleled in the life of the nation in any war period. The war message to Congress, by President Wilson, carried such an idealism as to evoke the enthusiastic response of all American citizens, especially the Negro. His pronouncement that we are fighting a war to end all wars and to extend self-determination to minority groups and to make a world safe for democracy gave the Negro the hope that he, too, would be the recipient of democratic procedures here in his own nation. Immediately the Church gave itself wholeheartedly in the support of the war effort. The Church is always needed in the time of a crisis. It gives the vision that inspires and sustains, filling men's hearts with confidence in the reality of spiritual things. The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, representing some thirty Protestant denominations, sent out a pronouncement to all of its constituent bodies calling attention to their Christian duty in conserving the social, moral and spiritual forces of the nation.