Religion: A Just War?

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"War is absolutely and eternally morally wrong, and utterly and flatly incompatible with the way of life Christ has revealed and Christianity has established." Thus writes Rufus Jones, famed Quaker patriarch, in the introduction to his collection of essays on Christian pacifism, published last week. Few of the eleven contributors to The Church, the Gospel and War (Harper; $2) are so downright. But all of them are sure that Christians should be pacifists.

Most of Jones's essayists base their pacifism on Christ's actions rather than on His words. They cite the Crucifixion as history's greatest example of victory over evil by nonresistance to force.

One of the shortest and best of the essays is by Roman Catholic Author Edward Ingram Watkin. The traditional Catholic criteria for determining when and whether a war is "just," says he, are meaningless under modern conditions. Only a nation's top leaders could possibly know enough of the facts to decide. But "the justice of the cause is not the sole criterion of justifiable war .'.. There is another test whose application is henceforth simple and plain: even a just war must not be waged by immoral means. Under modern conditions, however, war can be waged only by such aerial bombing as must involve the slaughter and maiming of innocent civilians ... To kill the innocent is not a lawful means to any end, however good. Therefore, under modern conditions, no war can be waged without employing immoral means. Therefore it must be unjustifiable."