The talk one evening turned on War; Lestrange said that he believed it was
good for a nation to have a war: "It unites them with the sense of a common
purpose, it evokes self-sacrifice, it makes them turn to God."
"Yes, yes," said Father Payne, rather impatiently. "But you can't personify
a nation like that; that personification of societies and classes and
sections of the human race does no end of harm. It is all a matter of
statistics, not of generalisation. Take your three statements. 'It is good
for a nation to have a war.' You mean, I suppose, that, in spite of the
loss of the best stock and the disabling of strong young men, and the
disintegration of families, and the hideous waste of time and
money--subtracting all that--there is a balance of good to the survivors?"
"Yes, I think so," said Lestrange.
"But are you sure about this?" said Father Payne. "How do you know? Would
you feel the same if you yourself were turned out a helpless invalid for
life with your occupation gone? Are you sure that you are not only
expressing the feeling of relief in the community at having a danger over?
Is it more than the sense of gratitude of a man who has not suffered
unbearably, to the people who _have_ died and suffered? The only
evidence worth having is that of the real sufferers. Take the case of the
people who have died. You can't get evidence from them. It is an assumption
that they are content to have died. Is not the glory which surrounds
them--and how short a time that lasts!--a human attempt to make consciences
comfortable, and to relieve human doubts? The worst of that theory is that
it makes so light of the worth of life; and, after all, a soldier's
business is to kill and not to be killed; while, generally speaking, the
worst turn that a strong, healthy, and honest man can do to his country is
to die prematurely. Of course war has a great and instinctive prestige
about it; are we not misled by that into accepting it as an inevitable
business?"
"No, I believe there is a real gain," said Lestrange, "in the national
sense of unity, in the feeling of having been equal to an emergency."
"But are you speaking of a nation which conquers or a nation which is
defeated?" said Father Payne.
"Both," said Lestrange; "it unites a nation in any case."
"But if a nation is defeated," said Father Payne, "are they the better for
the common depression of _not_ having been equal to the emergency?"
"It may make them set their teeth," said Lestrange, "and prepare themselves
better."
"Then it does not matter," said Father Payne, "whether they are united by
the complacency of conquest or by the desire for revenge?"
"I would not quite say that," said Lestrange. "But at all events a desire
for revenge might teach them discipline."
"I can't believe that," said Father Payne; "it seems to me to make all the
difference what the purpose has been. I do not believe that a nation gains
by being united for a predatory and aggressive purpose. I think the victory
of the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war has been wholly bad for them. It
has made them believe in aggressiveness. A nation naturally philosophical
and moral, and also both energetic and stupid, acquires the sense of a
divine mission like that. I don't believe that a belief in your own methods
of virtue is a wholesome belief. That seems to me likely to perpetuate
war--and I suppose that we should all believe that war was an evil, if we
could produce the good results of it without war."
We all agreed to this.
"I will grant," said Father Payne, "that if a nation which sincerely
believes in peace and wishes to cultivate goodwill, is wantonly and
aggressively attacked, and repels that attack, it may gain much from war if
it sticks to its theory, does not attempt reprisals, and leaves the
conquered bully in a position to see its mistake and regain its
self-respect. But it is a very dangerous kind of success for all that. I do
not believe that complacency ever does anything but harm. The purpose must
be a good one in the first place, the cause must be a great one, and it
must be honestly pursued to the end, if it is to help a nation. But it lets
all sorts of old and evil passions loose, and it makes slaughter glorious.
No, I believe that at best it is a relapse into barbarism. Hardly any
nation is strong enough and great enough to profit either by conquest or by
defeat."
"But what about the splendid self-sacrifice it all evokes?" said Lestrange.
"People give up their comfort, their careers, they go to face the last
risk--is that nothing?"
"No," said Father Payne; "it is a very magnificent and splendid thing,--I
don't deny that. But even so, that can't be preserved artificially. I mean
that no one would think that, if there were no chance of a real war, it
would be a good thing to evoke such self-sacrifice by having manoeuvres in
which the best youth of the country were pitted against each other, to kill
each other if possible. There must be a _real_ cause behind it. No one
would say it was a noble thing for the youth of a country to fling
themselves down over a cliff or to infect themselves with leprosy to show
that they could despise suffering and death. If it were possible to settle
the differences between nations without war, war would be a wholly evil
thing. The only thing that one can say is that while there exists a strong
nation which believes enough in war to make war aggressively, other nations
are bound to resist it. But the nation which believes in war is _ipso
facto_ an uncivilised nation."
"But does not a war," said Lestrange, "clear the air, and take people away
from petty aims and trivial squabbles into a sterner and larger
atmosphere?"
"Yes, I think it does," said Father Payne; "but a great pestilence might do
that. We might be thankful for all the good we could get out of a
pestilence, and be grateful for it; but we should never dream of
artificially renewing it for that reason. I look upon war as a sort of
pestilence, a contagion which spreads under certain conditions. But we
disguise the evil of it from ourselves, if we allow ourselves to believe in
its being intrinsically glorious. I can't believe that highway robbery has
only to be organised on a sufficiently large scale to make it glorious. A
man who resists highway robbery, and runs the risk of death, because he
wants to put a stop to it, seems to me a noble person--quite different from
the man who sees a row going on and joins in it because he does not want to
be out of a good thing! Do you remember the story of the Irishman who saw a
fight proceeding, and rushed into the fray wielding his shillelagh, and
praying that it might fall on the right heads? We have all of us
uncivilised instincts, but it does not make them civilised to join with a
million other people in indulging them. I think that a man who refuses to
join from conviction, at the risk of being hooted as a coward, is probably
doing a braver thing still."
"But I have often, heard you say that life must be a battle," said
Lestrange.
"Yes," said Father Payne, "but I know what I want to fight. I want the
human race to join in fighting crime and disease, evil conditions of
nurture, dishonesty and sensuality. I don't want to pit the finest stock of
each country against each other. That is simple suicide, for two nations to
kill off the men who could fight evil best. I want the nations to combine
collectively for a good purpose, not to combine separately for a bad one."
"I see that," said Lestrange; "but I regard war as an inevitable element in
society as at present constituted. I don't think the world can be persuaded
out of it. If it ever ceases, it will die a natural death because it will
suddenly be regarded as absurd. Meantime, I think it is our duty to regard
the benefits of it; and, as I said, it turns a nation to God--it takes them
out of petty squabbles, and makes them recognise a power beyond and behind
the world."
"Yes, that is so," said Father Payne, "if you regard war as caused by God.
But I rather believe that it is one of the things that God is fighting
against! And I don't agree that it produces a noble temper all through. It
does in many of the combatants; but there is nothing so characteristic at
the outbreak of war as the amount of bullying that is done. Peaceful people
are hooted at and shouted down; thousands of general convictions are
over-ridden; the violent have it their own way; it seems to me to organise
the unruly and obstreperous, and to force all gentler and more civilised
natures into an unconvinced silence. Many of the people who do most for the
happiness of the world can't face unpopularity. They are apt to think that
there must be something wrong with themselves, something spiritless and
abnormal, if they find themselves loathing the cruelties of which others
seem to approve. I do not believe that war organises wholesome and sane
opinion; I believe that it silences it. It is a time when base, heartless,
cruel people can become heroes. It is true that it also gives serene,
courageous, and calm people a great opportunity. But on the whole it is a
bad time for sober, orderly, and peaceable people. I believe that it evokes
a good many fine qualities--simplicity, uncomplaining patience,
unselfishness, but it reveals them rather than creates them. It shows the
worth of a nation, but it should want a great deal of evidence before I
believe that it does more than prove to people that they are braver than
they know. I can't believe vaguely in death and sorrow and disablement and
waste being good things. It is merely a question of what you are paying so
ghastly a price for. In the Napoleonic wars the price was paid for the
liberties of Europe, to show a great nation that it must abandon the ideal
of domination. That is a great cause; but it is great because men are evil,
and not because they are good. War seems to me the temporary triumph of the
old bad past over the finer and more beautiful future. Do not let us be
taken in by the romance of it. That is the childish view, that loves the
sight and sound of the marching column and the stirring music. People find
it hard to believe that anything so strong and gallant and cheerful
_can_ have a sinister side. And no doubt for a young, strong, and bold
man the excitement of it is an intense pleasure. But what we have to ask is
whether we are right in taking so heavy a toll from the world for all that:
I do not think it right, though it may be inevitable. But then I belong to
the future, and I think I should be more at home in the world a thousand
years hence than I am to-day."
"But I go back to my point," said Lestrange: "does not a great war like
that send people to their knees in faith?"
"Depend upon it," said Father Payne, "that anything which makes people
acquiesce in preventable evil, and see the beautiful effects of death and
pain and waste, is the direct influence of the devil. It is the last and
most guileful subtlety that he practises, to make us solemnly mournful and
patient in the presence of calamities for which we have ourselves to thank.
The only prayer worth praying in the time of war is not, 'Help us to bear
this,' but 'Help us to cure this'; and to behave with meek reverence is to
behave like the old servant in _The Master of Ballantrae_, who bore
himself like an afflicted saint under an illness, the root of which was
drunkenness. The worst religion is that which keeps its sense of repentance
alive by its own misdeeds!"
He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "No, we mustn't make terms
with war, any more than we must do with cholera. It's a great,
heartbreaking evil, and it puts everything back a stage. Of course it
brings out fine qualities--I know that--and so does a plague of cholera.
It's the evil in both that brings out the fine things to oppose it. But we
ought to have more faith, and believe that the fine qualities are
there--war doesn't create them, it only shows you that they are
present--and we believe in war because it reassures us about the presence
of the great qualities. It shows them, and then blows them out, like the
flame of a candle. But we want to keep them; we don't want just to be shown
them, with a risk of extinguishing them. Example can do something, but not
half as much as inheritance; and we sweep away the inheritance for the sake
of the romantic delight of seeing the great virtues flare up. No," he said,
"war is one of the evil things that is trying to hurt mankind, and
disguising itself in shining armour; but it means men ill; it is for ever
trying to bring their dreams to an end."