War and Loyalty
…IN ASSERTING THAT war is not necessarily unlawful, we are far from pretending that all wars are just, or that war may ever be waged for slight and trivial offences. The nation is bound studiously to avoid it, to forbear till forbearance ceases to be a virtue, and appeal to arms only as the last resort, after all other appeals have failed, or it is morally certain that they must fail. But when its rights are seriously invaded, when the offender will not listen to reason, and continues his injustice, the nation may appeal to arms, and commit its cause to the God of battles. The responsibility of the appeal rests on the offender whose injustice has provoked it.
It may be said that war is unjustifiable, because, if all would practise justice, there could be no war. Undoubtedly, if all men and nations were wise and just, wars would cease. We might then, in very deed, “beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning-hooks,” and learn war no more. We should, not in vision only, but in reality, possess universal peace. So, if all individuals understood and practised the moral and Christian virtues in their perfection, there would be no need for penal codes, and a police to enforce them. If no wrongs or outrages were committed, there would be none to be repressed or punished. If there were no diseases, there would be none to cure. If the world would be quite another world than it is, it—would be. But so long as the world is what it is, so long as man fails to respect the rights of man, the penal code and police will be necessary; so long as diseases obtain, the physician and his drugs, nauseous as they are, will be indispensable; and so long as nation continues to encroach on nation, the aggrieved party will have the right and be compelled to defend and avenge itself by an appeal to arms, terrible as that appeal may be, and deplorable as may be the necessity which demands it.
The evils of war are great, but not the greatest. It is a greater evil to lose national freedom, to become the tributaries or the slaves of the foreigner, to see the sanctity of our homes invaded, our altars desecrated, and our wives and children made the prey of the ruthless oppressor. These are evils which do not die with us, but may descend upon our posterity through all coming generations. The man who will look tamely on and see altars and homes defiled, all that is sacred and dear wrested from him, and his country stricken from the roll of nations, has as little reason to applaud himself for his morals as for his manhood. No doubt, philanthropy may weep over the wounded and the dying; but it is no great evil to die. It is appointed unto all men to die, and, so far as the death itself is concerned, it matters not whether it comes a few months earlier or a few months later, on the battlefield or in our own bed-chambers. The evil is not in dying, but in dying unprepared. If prepared—and the soldier, fighting by command of his country in her cause, may be prepared—it is of little consequence whether the death come in the shape of sabre-cut or leaden bullet, or in that of disease or old age. The tears of the sentimentalist are lost upon him who is conscious of his responsibilities, that he is commanded to place duty before death, and to weigh no danger against fidelity to his God and his country. Physical pain is not worth counting. Accumulate all that you can imagine, the Christian greets it with joy when it lies in the pathway of his duty. He who cannot take his life in his hand, and, pausing not for an instant before the accumulated tortures of years, rush in, at the call of duty, where “blows fall thickest, and blows fall heaviest,” deserves rebuke for his moral weakness, rather than commendation for his “peaceable dispositions.”
Wars, we have been told, cost money; and we have among us men piquing themselves on their lofty spiritual views, accusing the age of being low and utilitarian, and setting themselves up as moral and religious reformers, who can sit calmly down and cast up in dollars and cents the expense of war, and point to the amount as an unanswerable argument against its lawfulness. War unquestionably costs money, and so do food and clothing. But the sums expended in war would, if applied to that purpose, found so many schools and universities, and educate so many children! The amount expended for food and clothing would found a larger number of schools and universities, and educate a larger number of children. You should ask, not, Will it cost money? but, Is it necessary, is it just? Would you weigh gold in the balance with duty, justice, patriotism, heroism? If so, slink back to your tribe, and never aspire to the dignity of being contemptible.
This item 12801 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
