The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 1906. ARBITRATION OR WAR?

New Zealand Tablet, 30 August 1906, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 1906. ARBITRATION OR WAR?

HE camp is any day (according to Brownson) a bettor school than the countings house or the court-house. During the siege of Metz, a GeneraJ-a war-worn veteranobserved a battalion of young German soldiers displaying the recruits' customary lack of steadiness under fire. He shrugged his shoulders and remarked to the English war-concspondent, Archibald Forbes : < Dey vant to be a little shotted ; dey vill do better next time ' Ami your average military man will tell you that nations as well as linesmen aie the better of being « a little shooted '.and that bilood-letting is the best remedy for turning a society that' has degenerated morally and physically into a robust, vigorous, and righteous people War is not in itself morally wrong. It has had the approval and even the command of God in the Old Law And in the New Dispensation, was. not - Cornelius the centurion (a military officer) commended as ' a religious man, fearing God ' ? Declared by competent authority for a just cause, and earned on with right methods and right lnteix'ticns, ,war may be engaged in with a safe conscience. It is, however, a violent remedy, suitable only for desperate diseases. It involves such igpave evils that it is to be avoided wherever it is possible without sacrificing the public weal. And good men of every age have prayed for the coming of the day when swords should be turned into sickles and the reign of the Prince of Peace should begin upon the ear Hi.

The Church has blessed the soldier's sword to fi^ht for the right that is invaded by tyrant might, and is^to be guarded or won back in no other way. But down the ,course of the centuries she — through her Popes has sought in various ways to keep nations from oach others' throats and to mitigate as far as she could 'the calamities of the wars that she has been unable to prevent. For lages the Popes were to a tjeneficiail extent looked upon as the Chief Justices of Christendom. Pope Boniface VIII. settled, a serious dispute between Philip Le Bel of France and the First Edward of England in 1298. Alexander VI. was chosen to arbitrate" fcletween Portugal and .Spain regarding their respective rig Sits over the newly-discovered lands of the Western world. And his famous ' line ' was, in all human probability, the me#ns of preventing those two great xiv.al nations

bleeding each other white in a long and deadly struggle, la our own day, we can readily recall how, in 1886, the dispute between Spain and Germany over the Caroline Islands was adjusted by the late Pope Leo XIII. He also effected an amicable settlement of difficulties that might easily 'have led to much powder-Jblazing between Hayti and San Domingo, and between Chile and -Argentina,,, and some of the other peppery Republics of South America. The sacred mantle of the peacemaker fell from the shoulders of Leo XIII. to those of Pius X. ' By a treaty of peace made in the autumn of last year,' says the Rome correspondent of an English contemporary, ' Colombia and Peru engaged to submit all questions to Pontifical arbitration. The first case of the sort to come up has been that of the Putamayo territory, over which the public of the two countrieswas greatly agitated. Pending its decision of the ques-* turn, the Holy See has got both the contestants • to sign/ an agreement to withdraw their respective troops.' The Pope— a sovereign without fears, without territorial! cares or interests — would he the ideal sole arbiter. And the noted non-Catholic writer, Mr. Hall Came, said a few yeais ago that the geographical position of Rome, ' her religious and historical interest, her artistic charm, and above all the mystery of eternal life which attaches to her, seem to me to point to Rome as the seat of the great court of appeal in t'lie congress of humanity which (as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow) the future ,will see established '.