Elements of Military Art and Science. H. W. Halleck
punishment? The whole of this argument of Dr. Wayland applies with much greater force to municipal courts than to war.
V. "Let us suppose a nation to abandon all means both of offence and of defence, to lay aside all power of inflicting injury, and to rely for self-preservation solely upon the justice of its own conduct, and the moral effect which such a course of conduct would produce upon the consciences of men. * * * * How would such a nation be protected from external attack, and entire subjugation? I answer, by adopting the law of benevolence, a nation would render such an event in the highest degree improbable. The causes of national war are, most commonly, the love of plunder and the love of glory. The first of these is rarely, if ever, sufficient to stimulate men to the ferocity necessary to war, unless when assisted by the second. And by adopting as the rule of our conduct the law of benevolence, all motive arising from the second cause is taken away. There is not a nation in Europe that could be led on to war against a harmless, just, forgiving, and defenceless people."
History teaches us that societies as well as individuals have been attacked again and again notwithstanding that they either would not or could not defend themselves. Did Mr. White, of Salem, escape his murderers any the more for being harmless and defenceless? Did the Quakers escape being attacked and hung by the ancient New Englanders any the more because of their non-resisting principles? Have the Jews escaped persecutions throughout Christendom any the more because of their imbecility and non-resistance for some centuries past? Poland was comparatively harmless and defenceless when the three great European powers combined to attack and destroy the entire nation, dividing between themselves the Polish territory, and enslaving or driving into exile the Polish people.
"Oh, bloodiest picture in the book of time,
Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime!"
We need not multiply examples under this head; all history is filled with them.
Let us to-morrow destroy our forts and ships of war, disband our army and navy, and apply the lighted torch to our military munitions and to our physical means of defence of every description; let it be proclaimed to the world that we will rely solely upon the consciences of nations for justice, and that we have no longer either the will or the ability to defend ourselves against aggression. Think you that the African and Asiatic pirates would refrain, any the more, from plundering our vessels trading to China, because we had adopted "the law of benevolence?" Would England be any the more likely to compromise her differences with us, or be any the more disposed to refrain from impressing our seamen and from searching our merchant-ships? Experience shows that an undefended state, known to suffer every thing, soon becomes the prey of all others, and history most abundantly proves the wisdom and justice of the words of Washington—"IF WE DESIRE TO SECURE PEACE, IT MUST BE KNOWN THAT WE ARE AT ALL TIMES READY FOR WAR."
But let us bring this case still nearer home. Let it be known to-morrow that the people of Boston or New York have adopted the strictly non-resisting principle, and that hereafter they will rely solely on the consciences of men for justice; let it be proclaimed throughout the whole extent of our Union, and throughout the world, that you have destroyed your jails and houses of correction, abolished your police and executive law officers, that courts may decide justice but will be allowed no force to compel respect to their decisions, that you will no longer employ walls, and bars, and locks, to secure your property and the virtue and lives of your children; but that you will trust solely for protection to "the law of active benevolence." Think you that the thieves, and robbers, and murderers of Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and New Orleans, and the cities of the old world, will, on this account, refrain from molesting the peace of New York and Boston, and that the wicked and abandoned men now in these cities, will be the more likely to turn from the evil of their ways?
Assuredly, if this "law of active benevolence," as Dr. Wayland denominates the rule of non-resistance, will prevent nations from attacking the harmless and defenceless, it will be still more likely to prevent individuals from the like aggressions; for the moral sense is less active in communities than where the responsibility is individual and direct.
Throughout this argument Dr. Wayland assumes that all wars are wars of aggression, waged for "plunder" or "glory," or through "hatred" or "revenge," whereas such is far from being true. He indeed sometimes speaks of war as being generally of this character; at others he speaks of it as being always undertaken either from a spirit of aggression or retaliation. Take either form of his argument, and the veriest schoolboy would pronounce it unsound: viz.,
All wars are undertaken either for aggression or retaliation;
Aggression and retaliation are forbidden by God's laws;—therefore,
All wars are immoral and unjustifiable.
Or,
Wars are generally undertaken either for aggression or retaliation;
Aggression and retaliation are forbidden by God's laws—therefore,
All wars are immoral and unjustifiable.
VI. "Let any man reflect upon the amount of pecuniary expenditure, and the awful waste of human life, which the wars of the last hundred years have occasioned, and then we will ask him whether it be not evident, that the one-hundredth part of this expense and suffering, if employed in the honest effort to render mankind wiser and better, would, long before this time, have banished wars from the earth, and rendered the civilized world like the garden of Eden? If this be true, it will follow that the cultivation of a military spirit is injurious to a community, inasmuch as it aggravates the source of the evil, the corrupt passions of the human breast, by the very manner in which it attempts to correct the evil itself."
Much has been said to show that war begets immorality, and that the cultivation of the military spirit has a corrupting influence on community. And members of the clergy and of the bar have not unfrequently so far forgotten, if not truth and fact, at least the common courtesies and charities of life, as to attribute to the military profession an unequal share of immorality and crime. We are declared not only parasites on the body politic, but professed violators of God's laws—men so degraded, though unconsciously, that "in the pursuit of justice we renounce the human character and assume that of the beasts;" it is said that "murder, robbery, rape, arson, theft, if only plaited with the soldier's garb, go unwhipped of justice."[1] It has never been the habit of the military to retort these charges upon the other professions. We prefer to leave them unanswered. If demagogues on the "stump," or in the legislative halls, or in their Fourth of-July addresses, can find no fitter subjects "to point a moral or adorn a tale," we must be content to bear their misrepresentations and abuse.
Sumner's Oration.
Unjust wars, as well as unjust litigation, are immoral in their effects and also in their cause. But just wars and just litigation are not demoralizing. Suppose all wars and all courts of justice to be abolished, and the wicked nations as well as individuals to be suffered to commit injuries without opposition and without punishment; would not immorality and unrighteousness increase rather than diminish? Few events rouse and elevate the patriotism and public spirit of a nation so much as a just and patriotic war. It raises the tone of public morality, and destroys the sordid selfishness and degrading submissiveness which so often result from a long-protracted peace. Such was the Dutch war of independence against the Spaniards; such the German war against the aggressions of Louis XIV., and the French war against the coalition of 1792. But without looking abroad for illustration, we find ample proof in our own history. Can it be said that the wars of the American Revolution and of 1812, were demoralizing in their effects? "Whence do Americans," says Dr. Lieber, "habitually take their best and purest examples of all that is connected with patriotism, public spirit, devotedness to common good, purity of motive and action, if not from the daring band of their patriots of the Revolution?"
The principal actors in the military events of the Revolution and of 1812, held, while living, high political offices in the state, and the moral tone which