'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH’

New Zealand Tablet, 18 March 1915, Page 9

' STAND FAST IN THE FAITH ’

(A Weekly > Instruction specially written for the N.Z. Tablet by Ghimel.) PRETEXTS FOR WAR. When nations go to war they are not slow in putting forward some reason for so doing. That is man’s nature: a reason, good or bad, he must give for his actions. Nations, too, have a conscience, and to satisfy it they must act on some sort of principle. It may not then be useless to consider some of the various objects lor which men, in Christian times, have gone to war. Perhaps one of the most striking features of life in the Middle Ages was the place occupied by warfare: it was accepted as the natural condition of things. ‘Kings,’ remarks Father Ryder, ‘hunt a good deal between whiles to keep themselves in wind, but fighting is the serious engagement of their life. Thus theologians, commenting on the sin of David, insist that he fell precisely because “at the time when kings go forth to war ’ he was lounging idly in his garden after his noonday sleep. Then if you have an army, and kings were bound to have armies, you must exercise it, or its armor will grow rusty and its horses wanton or weary in their stalls. And then what a shame to possess so noble an instrument and make no adequate use thereof!’ One would be hard pushed to defend such wars. When England and ‘Scotland -were not on happy terms, the inhabitants of the borderland spent a great deal of their time'in fighting. ‘The object was defence, but it was carried out by a succession, at longer or shorter intervals, of what were called “warden raids ”; each country in turn invaded the other, with the object, it would seem, of emphasising the blessings of peace, and of impressing upon its neighbor the necessity of practically confining itself to its own land ; the limitation of the ebbing and flowing tide ultimately constituting a barrier. This is on a strictly conservative principle, and, regard being had to the wild habits of the time, may pass.’ The Crusades were, undertaken for a noble object, even if some of the Crusaders had a keen eye to business. They were organised for the recovery of the Holy Places in Palestine, ,‘ with their storage of pious emotion that was lying useless, and worse than useless, in the hands of the infidel.’ The modern philanthropic nation claims the right to open lip countries, by force of arms if necessary, in the name of progress and civilisation. And no doubt in the abstract a savage race has no special claim, no exclusive right to a particular part of the world : others must live by the land as well as they ; but that does not in any way justify the newcomers in their usual policy of absolutely conquering or enslaving the original inhabitants. In this connection too, we hear much of outlets required for expanding trade and surplus population, distractions necessary for - unhappy peoples weighed down by taxation, spheres of influence, rectification of frontiers. ‘ Not one of these, nor all of them combined, give a just title to go to war. Statesmen allege the public good of their nation as a palliation for such predatory wars. But what may be for the common good of one nation, may be for the common evil of anotherand no one State has a right to seek the common good of its own subjects by inflicting an injustice on another.’