EX-PRES. Tumulty, I have been asking myself whether there can be such a
thing as a "just war." There can be--please God!--there must be sometimes
a just _cause_ for war. When one sees great injustice done, sees it
backed by the power of a blindly militarised nation, marching confidently
to victory, then, if justice has any place in the affairs of men, there is
sometimes just cause for war. But can there be--a just war? I mean--when
the will to war takes hold of a people--does it remain the same people?
Does war in its hands remain an instrument that can be justly used? Can it
be waged justly? Can it be won justly? Can it, having been won, make to a
just peace? No! Something happens: there comes a change; war in a people's
mind drives justice out.... Can soldiers fight without "seeing red"--can a
nation? Not when nations have to fight on the tremendous scale of modern
war. Then they are like those monstrous mechanisms of long-range
destructiveness, which we so falsely call "weapons of precision," but
which are in fact so horribly unprecise that, once let loose, we cannot
know what lives of harmlessness, of innocence, of virtue, they are going
to destroy. You find your range, you fix your elevation, you touch a
button: you hear your gun go off. And over there, among the unarmed--the
weak, the defenceless, the infirm--it has done--what? Singled out for
destruction what life or lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?--you do not know.
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