C.: What, you do not admit there are just wars?
A.: I have never known any of the kind; to me it appears contradictory
and impossible.
C.: What! when the Pope Alexander VI. and his infamous son Borgia
pillaged the Roman States, strangled and poisoned the lords of the land,
while according them indulgences: was it not permissible to arm against
these monsters?
A.: Do you not see that it was these monsters who made war? Those who
defended themselves from aggression but sustained it. There are
constantly only offensive wars in this world; the defensive is nothing
but resistance to armed robbers.
C.: You mock us. Two princes dispute an heritage, their right is
litigious, their reasons equally plausible; it is necessary then that
war should decide, and this war is just on both sides.
A.: It is you who mock. It is physically impossible that both are right,
and it is absurd and barbarous that the people should perish because one
of these two princes has reasoned badly. Let them fight together in a
closed field if they wish, but that an entire people should be
sacrificed to their interests, there is the horror.--_l' A.B.C._