I agree with most of your reflections about the moral justification of
war. War is an evil, because it is the product of sin and involves
more sin and much suffering. But that does not mean it is necessarily
wrong to fight. Once evil is at work, one of its chief results is to
leave good people only a choice of evils, wherein the lesser evil
becomes a duty. I'm not prepared to say we've been wholly guiltless in
the whole series of events which produced this war: but in the
situation of July, 1914, produced as it was by various sinful acts, I
am quite sure it was our duty to fight, and that it is our duty to
fight on till German militarism is crushed. And I certainly can't
believe we ought not to have made such a treaty with Belgium as we
did. You've got to face the fact that the spirit which produces war is
still dominant. Fight that spirit by all means: but while it exists
don't suppose your own duty is merely to keep out of wars. That seems
to me a very selfish and narrow view. As for our Lord in a bayonet
charge, one doesn't easily imagine it: but that is because it is
inconsistent with His mission, rather than His character. I can't
imagine a Christian _enjoying_ either a bayonet charge, or hanging a
criminal, or overthrowing the tables of a money-changer, or any other
form of violent retribution.
Your sight of the Zeppelin must have been thrilling. You don't make it
clear whether it was by day or night. I am curious to see if my next
batch of _Times_ will mention it. Clearly it is very hard to damage
Zs. by gun-fire: but I don't understand quite why our aeroplanes can't
do more against them. Do they get right back to Germany before
daylight?
I have been out shooting three times this week, with Patmore of 1/7th
Hants, and we got three partridges, six partridges and seven doves
respectively. The partridges are big black ones, as large as young
grouse, and very good to eat: but they will soon be extinct here as we
are operating much in the same way as "the officers" do at Blackmoor.
The doves were reported as sand-grouse, and certainly come flighting
in from the desert very much in the s.-g. manner: but they are very
like turtle doves when shot.
On our way home after the first shoot, I saw a falcon catch a swallow
on the wing. It had missed one and we were watching it. It flew
straight and rather fast past us, just within shot, fairly high. A
swallow came sailing at full speed from the opposite direction and
would have passed above and to the right of the falcon, and about 6ft.
from it. The latter took no notice of it till the crucial moment,
when it swerved and darted upwards, exactly as a swallow itself does
after flies, and caught the swallow neatly in its talons. It then
proceeded on its way so calmly that if you had taken your eye off it
for 1/5th second you wouldn't have known it had deviated from its
course. It then planed down and settled about 400 yards away on the
ground.
I have written to Top such details of the Kut battle as I could gather
from eye-witness: but I don't think it forms a reliable account, and
you will probably find the official version rather different, when it
comes out. Anyway it appears to be beyond doubt now that we mean to
push on to Baghdad, in spite of your _Beatus possidens_. It was only
lack of water and the exhaustion of the troops which prevented a much
larger haul this time: and now they are concentrating against the next
position, 90 miles further north. We hear again on good authority that
8,000 reinforcements are coming out. They will certainly be needed if
we are to hold Baghdad. It seems to me a very rash adventure:
especially as Bulgaria's intervention may enable the Turks to send an
Army Corps down to Baghdad, in which case we should certainly have to
retire.
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