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Pamphlet No. 9

The Ethics of War
Reverend Cyprian Emanuel, O.F.M.
and

The Committee on Ethics

DEFINITION OF WAS
CONFLICTING OPINIONS
THE BIGHT OF WAR
DEFENSIVE WAR ALONE JUSTIFIABLE
THE CONDITIONS OF A JUST DEFENSIVE WAR
ARMISTICES, CAPITULATIONS, AND TREATIES OF PEACE
DISARMAMENT

*---- ------------ .

.................. —,

A Report of the Ethics Committee
PRICE 10 CENTS

THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION FOR
INTERNATIONAL PEACE
1312 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W.
Washington, D. C.

1932

rpHANKS for the issuance of this Report
are due to the Faculty and the Students
of Trinity College, Washington, D. C., in
response to the Holy Father’s recent ap­
peal, “May they all unite in the peace of
Christ in a full concord of thoughts and
emotions, of desires and prayers, of deeds
and words—the spoken word, the written
word, the printed word—and then an atmos­
phere of genuine peace, warming and benefi­
cent, will envelop all the world.”

DescWsd

--------------------------------------------- ----------

'I

'HIS is a Report of the Committee on Ethics of
the Catholic Association for International
Peace and is being issued as a Study from this
Committee. It was presented and discussed at the
regular annual meeting of the organization. The
Committee cooperated in the final form of the Re­
port and it was presented to the Executive Com­
mittee which ordered it published. As the process
indicates, this Report, being the report only of a
committee, is not a statement from the whole Asso­
ciation.

ETHICS COMMITTEE
Chairman
Rev. John A. Ryan, D.D.
Rev. J. C. Bartley, O.S.A.
Rev. Charles P. Bruehl
Rt. Rev. Alcuin Deutsch, O.S.B.
Rev. Joseph P. Donovan, C.M.
Rev. Cyprian Emanuel, O.F.M.
Rev. Gregory Feige
Rev. Adolph D. Frenay, O.P.
Rev. Leo C. Gainor, O.P.
Rt. Rev. Msgr. Michael J. Grupa
Rev. William S. Kress, M.M.
Rev. Linus A. Lilly, S.J.
Rev. Donald A. MacLean

Rt. Rev. Msgr. T. H. McLaughlin
Rev. Charles H. McKenna, O.P.
Francis E. McMahon
Rev. M. F. X. Millar, S.J.
Rev. Charles C. Miltner, C.S.C.
Rev. A. J. Muench
Kathleen Murphy
Louis J. Potts
Rev. John K. Ryan
Rev. Fulton J. Sheen
Rev. H. Ignatius Smith, O.P.
Rev. F. E. Tourschf.r, O.S.A.

THE PAULIST PRESS
401 West 59th Street
New York City

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE

I
DEFINITION OF WAR__________________________

5

II
CONFLICTING OPINIONS______________________

7

III
THE RIGHT OF WAR___________________________

10

IV
DEFENSIVE WAR ALONE JUSTIFIABLE_________

11

V

THE CONDITIONS OF A JUST DEFENSIVE WAR .
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

21

UNDERTAKEN IN VINDICATION OF A STRICT RIGHT 22
PROPORTIONATE EVIL_________________________ ____ 28
LAST RESORT_______________________________________ 30
REASONABLE HOPE OF VICTORY______ _ _ ____________ 31
INITIATED BY PUBLIC AUTHORITY.___________________ 32
RIGHT INTENTION____________________________________ 32
RIGHTLY CONDUCTED—___________________________
33
a. Observance of International Agreements___________________ 33
b. No Malicious and Slanderous Propaganda______________ 37
c. Excessive Violence to Combatants Unjustifiable_____________ 38
d. Violence to Non-Combatants Unjustifiable______________ 42
e. Prisoners of War.______________________________________ 44
f. Air Raids and Sinking of Merchant Vessels.___________
45
g. Reprisals_____________________________________________ 46

VI

ARMISTICES, CAPITULATIONS AND TREATIES
OF PEACE__________________________________

47

VII
DISARMAMENT_______________ ________________

48

FOREWORD
War is an appalling evil. Every thinking man will readily
admit it. But until quite recently the majority of men appar­
ently considered it a necessary evil to be borne with patience
and resignation as something that cannot be averted; or, at
least, they seem to have looked upon it as a matter of fact,
merely as an historical event coming to pass with greater or
less periodic regularity, as an occurrence that comes and goes
as do, for example, pleasure and suffering. For thinking men,
however, war is a problem. It demands an investigation into
its meaning, its metaphysical origin, the possibility or im­
possibility of its prevention, and its lawfulness or unlawfulness.
If traced to its ultimate source, war is found to be an
aberration of two instincts, both auxiliary to the instinct of
self-preservation, with which the Creator has equipped human
nature. The first of them is the instinct (and also the right)
to reach out beyond oneself in order to wrest a livelihood from
the material world. So long as it is held within proper limits,
it is necessary for man’s very existence and hence, also good.
But when misguided by greed and avarice, it loses the requisite
prospective, becomes extravagant and trespasses upon the like
instinct and right of others. It takes or attempts to take what
belongs to another. Discord, animosity and litigation are the
immediate and inevitable results.
The second instinct that is an issue here is the instinct
(and, again, also the right) to guard one’s rights against in­
fringement. Again, so long as it is exercised with proper re­
striction, it is genuinely necessary for man’s well-being, and
hence, also good. But when misdirected by selfishness and
covetousness it strikes out in defense of excessive demands and
imaginary rights, it, too, necessarily leads to discord and quar­
rels. When these deordinations and aberrations find expres­
sion among individuals only, we have private quarrels and
altercations. But when they assume more extensive propor­
tions and touch national rights and prerogatives, we have war.
That the treacherous instincts under discussion here can
be held within requisite check and control by men, both indi­
vidually and collectively, must be admitted by all who believe
3

4

Foreword

that men are masters of their own actions and accountable to
their Creator for them whether they perform them as private
individuals or as members of groups, called states. In particu­
lar as regards the latter, it is merely a matter of bringing to
light the factors that induce men to break through the limits
of restraint and of setting up counterfactors, sufficiently influ­
ential, that make for restraint and peace.
Never before in the annals of history have such generous
and sincere efforts been made on so universal a scale to effect
lasting peace by discovering and counteracting the forces that
make for war. But while men are studying the economic, the
industrial, the political, the racial, and the cultural and educa­
tional causes of war with a view to establishing its uselessness
and wastefulness, their efforts will be of little avail and perma­
nent peace will continue to be a taunting will-o’-the-wisp until
by religious considerations they come to realize also the sinful­
ness of war, and at the same time reënforce their attack on
the demon war at all its points with the tremendous forces for
good that lie latent in religion.
Lasting peace is unthinkable until men have learned the
real and practical bearing of the oft-cited, and we might add
the oft-abused and misapplied, truth of “the Fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man.” One of the primary effects
of the proper realization of this truth will necessarily be the
consciousness that as God is the Creator and Father of all, so,
too, will He exact a rigid account of the actions of all men
that are inimical to the brotherhood of man, whether these
actions be those of an individual directed against an individual
or of a nation directed against a nation.

THE ETHICS OF WAR
I
DEFINITION OF WAR

AR in its juridical sense is a contest carried on by force
of arms or other instruments of death or injury between
two or more independent and sovereign states, or communi­
ties having in this regard the right of states, under the au­
thority of their respective governments even though these lat­
ter be only provisional. In conditions where competent gov­
ernmental control and organization have not yet evolved, indi­
viduals, being strictly independent, may in a very wide sense
of the term, be said to go to war against one another. Among
primitive peoples war assumes the form of a contest between
families, clans, or tribes. But among so-called civilized nations
a state does not go to war with individuals or families nor
with peoples as opposed to governments, nor with governments
as opposed to peoples. It goes to war with a whole state, in­
dependent and sovereign like itself. The private persons who
make up the belligerent nations may be said to be enemies
by accident only, i. e., they are not so as men nor as citizens,
but only as combatants.
In the above definition mention is made of “communities
having . . . the right of states” and of “provisional” govern­
ments. These reservations become necessary if we wish to take
cognizance of armed contention between different parts of the
same sovereign state, e. g., our War of Revolution and our
Civil War. A mere insurrection, rebellion, or even the armed
repression of organized outlawry, is not war. Before the armed
forces can lay rightful claim to the rights and privileges of
belligerents, it would seem at least that they must represent
a considerable portion of a country’s population and that the
government under which they act and to which they are re­
sponsible, must be so organized as to be in a position to meet
the duties necessarily incumbent upon belligerents, viz., to
maintain law and order within the regions subjected to their
control and to conduct war on a large scale by land and sea.

W

5

6

The Ethics of War

Given this requisite minimum, we can speak of war; in its
absence, the uprising must be considered a rebellion and noth­
ing more.
There has been developing within recent years a doctrine
of insurgency which is used to characterize a condition mid­
way between belligerency and mere unauthorized and lawless
violence, e. g., the periodic revolutionary outbreaks in cer­
tain Latin-American States. Those who struggle for political
ends and respect the laws of war can scarcely be branded as
mere outlaws or pirates. Hence, the need of granting to insur­
gency a recognition which, while not relieving the parent state
of responsibility for the acts of the insurgents, puts the con­
test upon a more regular basis and brings into operation the
neutrality laws of recognizing states.
Since war is a contest, it follows that mere preparation for
future hostility and aggression does not constitute war. Nor is
mere commercial aggression or hostility “a contest carried on
by force of arms.” ·
Technically speaking, there is a difference between a state
of belligerency and war. The former term is employed to
designate a juridical condition of the contending parties, where­
as the latter more properly applies to the series of hostile
acts of force exercised in the contention. According to this
distinction the World War came to a close with the signing
of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, but the state of bel­
ligerency continued until the signing of the Peace Treaty of
Versailles on June 28, 1919.
Wars are just or unjust according as the conditions for
justification are present or not. Wars are also punitive (vin­
dictive), defensive, or offensive (aggressive). A war is said
to be punitive, or vindictive, when it is carried on by the state
for the sole purpose of inflicting punishment for evil done
against itself or, in some determined cases, against others.
Some writers use the term defensive to denote war on the
the side of the state against which war is first declared or
first entered upon, while they use offensive, or aggressive, to
designate war on the side of the state that first declares war
or first proceeds to wage it. This characterization, however,
loses sight of an important element which must be taken into
consideration in every discussion of the morality of war.
It is evident that in a just war the declaration of war
always presupposes some previous hostile or unjust act on the

The Ethics oj War

7

part of the state against which war is declared and, therefore,
a war even on the part of the state that first declares it, may
be defensive, i. e., a defense against those acts of hostility
and injustice that preceded and brought it about and still con­
tinue in their effects. It is, therefore, more accurate and bet­
ter suited to our purpose to apply the term defensive to a
war undertaken in defense of the people or in defense of, or
for the recovery of, the territory or property of the state; the
term offensive or aggressive applies to a war initiated without
just and sufficient cause or merely to injure or destroy a state,
or for purposes of enrichment or aggrandizement at the ex­
pense of another state.
We sometimes speak of a war of retaliation. But retalia­
tion is either a punitive act or a defensive act undertaken to
recover what one has lost in territory or property or its equiva­
lent.
II
CONFLICTING OPINIONS

According to the “conscientious objector” and the extreme
pacifist, war in all its phases is intrinsically immoral and,
hence, the employment of force among nations cannot at any
time or under any circumstances be justified.
At the opposite pole of thought stands the theory that the
state, being an end in itself (State Absolutism), can do no
wrong, that it is in no way responsible or accountable to a
Higher Being for its acts either of peace or of war. A nat­
ural offspring of this doctrine is the view that the right to
declare and to carry on war comes simply from the fact of war
itself. It is not considered necessary to attempt to justify it
by the ordinary maxims of morality. It is its own justification.
This latter philosophy finds extreme, but logical expression
in the case of the nationalist, the imperialist, and the mili­
tarist, who, to attain their respective purposes, do not hesi­
tate to put into practice, if they do not openly hold and de­
fend, a political philosophy similar to or even identical with
that of the German professor, Heinrich von Treitschke (b.
Dresden, 1834). In his work, Die Politik, Treitschke pro­
pounds and defends the doctrine that war is not merely a
remedy against possible evil or justifiable only in rare and

8

The Ethics of War

extreme contingencies, but that it is as necessary as is the
state itself. He declares that without it, in fact, “there would
be no states,” that “it is only in war that a people becomes in
very deed a people,” that war is so integrally part and parcel
of human relations that “to expel war from the universe would
be to mutilate human nature.”
Then, too, there are those who, apparently taking offense
at the philosophy of Treitschke with its harsh and bold term­
inology, seek to cast it in a milder and more acceptable mold.
In the article “War” of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, we read
that “fighting appears to be part of the order or disorder of
nature”; on the one hand, war is the natural outcome of civi­
lization and, on the other, it is necessary for its maintenance
and expansion; the ideal of perpetual peace falls little short of
a tantalizing phantom. It “seems to be that war is the out­
come of the growth of societies which can never be uniform,
but varies with varying conditions of climate, land, race, re­
ligion, and tradition. . . . The establishment of a world-state
would no doubt be the end of international wars, but they
would reappear as civil wars.”
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) taught that war of men
among themselves (bellum omnium contra omnes) is the nat­
ural state and that peace is only the suppression of nature by
an artificial and free contract. War, then, according to him,
is merely the reassertion of temporarily suppressed nature.
When we hear that these extreme views are not expounded
or practised to-day, we need but recall that it was as late as
1891 that Bismarck said: “War is a law of nature. It is the
struggle for existence in a general form and until men become
angels, it will not cease.”1 And quite in conformity with the
general trend of this philosophy, the financier and the mer­
’Franziskus Stratmann, O.P., The Church and War (Kenedy, 1928),
50. A most recent expression of this philosophy is had in the follow­
ing statement of Gen. J. G. Harbord, former A. E. F. Chief of Staff,
made in the course of an address before the American Legion of New
York State: “A large number of honest but misguided people believe
it possible to bring about that permanent peace which has been the
dream of all ages, but which the Prince of Peace Himself failed to
achieve 2,000 years ago. There is in war itself something beyond mere
logic and above cold reason. There is something in war-made values
above social comfort, above ease, and even above relieion. It is the
mysterious power war gives to life of rising above mere life . . .”
Quoted in Time, September 14, 1931.

The Ethics oj War

9

cantilist of to-day, as in ages past, seem to make no scruple
of creating and deliberately maintaining and aggravating a
complexus of conditions in the financial and commercial world
that, in the ordinary course of human events, inevitably leads
to war.
Not entirely divergent in principle from these views is the
theory that was rather prevalent prior to the World War, viz.,
that war, in the words of Fr. Stratmann, “is the blood-and­
iron cure for weakness and idleness.” Hegel (1770-1831) con­
tends that war brings home to us, as nothing else can, the
salutary lessons of the vanity of earthly things and trans­
lates into action what hitherto had been only edifying talk.
Moltke wrote in a letter to Bluntchli, December 11, 1880:
“everlasting peace is only a dream, not even a beautiful dream,
and war is an element in God’s government of the world. It
develops in man the noblest virtues—courage and self-denial,
love of duty and self-sacrifice. Without war the world would
sink into materialism.”2
Finally, there is “the materialistic concept of history”
which teaches that the human race is caught in the grip of
inexorable forces as uniform and fatalistic as are the laws of
the physical world. The elements and factors that lead to
war, and even war itself, are, in consequence, as free from
ethical control as is, for example, the law of gravitation. They
are lifted entirely out of the sphere where moral right and
moral wrong are relevant and controlling factors. Individuals,
states, and society at large must then be absolved of all moral
responsibility of war in its every phase—its causes, its declara­
tion and progress, and its effects.
In refutation of the preceding opinions and philosophies we
need but bear in mind: (1) that the extreme assumption that
all employment of force among nations is intrinsically im­
moral, finds no support either in revelation or in the natural
law; (2) that the state, no less than the individual, is de­
pendent upon, and subject and accountable to, the Creator
and Supreme Lawgiver of the universe; (3) that man is vested
with all the dignity and sacredness that the concept of human
personality involves and has not been created for the pleasure
or utility or aggrandizement of any other human being or
group of human beings; (4) that, if we were to admit that war
2Cf. Stratmann, op. cit., 52, 53.

10

The Ethics of War

is necessary for the state in the sense that “to expel it . . .
would be to mutilate human nature,” we might just as cor­
rectly contend that disunion, enmity and violence are neces­
sary among the individual citizens of the state, that to repress
them is to mutilate human nature, and that it is the duty of
the government to foment civil discord in a state threatened
with too much peace; (5) that it is not necessary for men to
graduate from the school of war in order to learn the hard
lessons of honor and stern duty and self-sacrifice; (6) that the
economic laws and world movements that are wont to ter­
minate in war are not to be regarded with a reverence amount­
ing almost to pathetic superstition, nor to be viewed as blind,
omnipotent forces over which men can exercise no dominion,
but that they are merely the sum-total of more or less con­
stant and uniform, free actions of men along certain definite
lines over which men have control; and, finally (7) that men,
whether rulers or subjects or whether taken individually or
collectively, are masters of their own actions and, in conse­
quence, are morally responsible for them before the bar of
justice, both divine and human. Only with these truths
clearly and distinctly in mind can we speak of the ethics of
war.
Ill
THE RIGHT OF WAR

The right of war is the natural right of a sovereign state
to wage armed conflict against another. It is an instance of
the general moral power of coercion. Every perfect right, i. e.,
every right which involves in others a strict obligation of
reverence, respect, and deference to itself, in order to be effi­
cacious and consequently real and not nugatory, carries with
it, as a last appeal, the subsidiary, natural right of employing
physical force to exact its just claims. This means the right
to defend itself against infringement, to recover the subject­
matter of the right unjustly withheld or to exact its equiva­
lent, and to inflict material damage and injury in the exer­
cise of this coercion whenever, as is most generally the case,
coercion cannot be exercised effectively without such damage
and injury.
We may view the state either as a moral person or as a

The Ethics oj War

11

natural institution having its natural end and endowed with
the means necessary for the attainment of that end. Under
both aspects it has corporate rights of its own which are per­
fect. It has also the duty of defending its citizens’ rights in
case of menace or violation from within and from without,
not only against foreign individuals but also against foreign
states. It has, in consequence, also the right of coercion in
safeguarding its own and its citizens’ rights in these cases. In
any other supposition its corporate rights would be illusory
and its duty towards its citizens impossible of fulfillment,
while the individual rights of citizens would be at the mercy
of the outside world. The pressure of such coercion may obvi­
ously be applied in certain circumstances without going to the
extreme of complete international conflict; but when the latter
arises, we have war pure and simple, even as the first applica­
tion of force is initial warfare.
The state’s right of war is, as is already quite evident, a
natural right. The state receives it directly from the natural
law. In giving to the state its essential purpose together with
the involved rights and duties, the natural law at the same
time vests the state with the subsidiary right of physical
coercion without which “purpose,” “rights,” and “duties”
would be mere names.
International law, it is true, may and actually does deter­
mine the limitations and extensions of the right of war by
contract (either implicit in accepted custom or explicit in
formal compact) among the nations which are party to inter­
national legal obligation. By mutual agreement nations may
surrender in common a part of the full right and so qualify
it, or they may even tolerate a limited abuse of it. But such
agreement does not constitute or confer one particle of the
original right itself, nor can it taken aught of it away except
by the consent of the nations so deprived. The original de­
termination of the right of war comes directly from the nat­
ural law alone.

IV
DEFENSIVE WAR ALONE JUSTIFIABLE

Though the right of war is a necessary and, consequently,
a natural right of the state, still it is far from being' absolute
and unrestricted. As stated before, wars may be punitive,

12

The Ethics of War

defensive, or offensive. No state at any time can licitly claim
the right to wage offensive warfare as we have defined and
are using the term, viz., “a war initiated without just and
sufficient cause.”
Stratmann,3 when speaking of wars of aggression, makes
the statement that “theoretically this kind of war can also be
justified” and cites the traditional teaching of the Church
since the time of St. Augustine (354-430) and the authority of
St. Thomas, of Francisco de Vitoria, O.P., and of Francis
Suarez, S.J. (1548-1617), to bear him out in his contention.
It is evident from the context, however, that he understands
“wars of aggression,” not in the sense in which we are using
the term, i. e., as synonymous with offensive warfare, but in
the sense of purely punitive wars.
Of the two remaining kinds of war, viz., punitive and de­
fensive, the latter alone can evidently be justified on moral
grounds. This appears to be quite clear from the arguments
that follow.4 First, when one man attempts to steal from
another, the latter has the natural right to protect his prop­
erty with physical force if necessary, and, failing in this, he
again has the natural right to resort to physical force, if
necessary, to recover it. If, however, he is able to regain his
goods without violence, he acts wrongly in having recourse
to it. He can, therefore, proceed against the aggressor defen­
sively, either to protect what is his or to recover it, but when
this goal has been attained, his right ceases. He cannot pro­
ceed punitively against his equal.
What is here right for the individual is right for the state.
If one state threatens to attack, actually attacks, or cap­
tures the territory of another, the latter has the right to pro­
tect its territory or to recover it respectively. If war is neces­
sary for this, presupposing the verification of the other requi­
site conditions, war may lawfully be undertaken; if, however,
war is not necessary, then war and, in general, all violence are
illicit. From this it would appear that war cannot be under­
taken as a purely punitive measure, but only in defense, i. e.,
either to protect the rights, territory or property of the state
or to recover them. Were punitive warfare legitimate, it could
3Cf. Stratmann, op. cit., 56, 57.
4Cf. Michael Cronin. D.D., The Science of Ethics (Benziger, 1917),
11, 665, 666.

The Ethics oj War

13

be undertaken even after full compensation and reparation
had been rendered by the delinquent state.
Secondly, if it were permissible to wage war for the pur­
poses of punishment merely, it would at times be allowed,
not only to incapacitate the enemy combatants for further
fighting, but also to put the wounded and the prisoners of war
to death, to attack unfortified cities, to assail non-combatants,
and to perpetrate similar acts of war which are commonly
condemned as unlawful. If a nation is deserving of punish­
ment and a neighbor nation has the right to inflict condign
punishment, there appears to be no valid reason to restrict the
chastisement to fortified places and to combatants when un­
fortified cities and non-combatants may well have been the
real offenders or, at least, equally guilty. Moreover, since the
state has the power of inflicting the death penalty in punish­
ment for certain crimes, why should not the punishing state
here have the power of inflicting the supreme penalty upon
the wounded and the prisoners of war? Why should its pun­
ishing power be restricted to the point merely of rendering the
actual combatants incapable of further fighting?
It will be objected obviously that it is the state as the
state, and not the individual private citizens, that disturbs the
moral equilibrium by offenses against divine and human law;
and, hence, that it is the state as represented by its fighting
forces that must directly suffer the penalty.
The objection loses its force when we bear in mind that
in legitimate warfare the attack is aimed at the repulsion of
unjust aggression; hence, of necessity it must be limited to
those who in one way or another are actually party to the
aggression. But it seems that to be just the administration
of punishment to a guilty state must be administered to the
entire state, not merely to those citizens, who as soldiers hap­
pen to be sent to the front in an effort to ward off the pun­
ishment, even though the entire state does, as a matter of
fact, suffer ultimately and indirectly.
It appears, then, that the only right of war is the right
to render the enemy combatants incapable of further action,
i. e., to repel aggression; that its right, therefore, is either to
protect or to recover, i.e., to defend itself. As soon as no fur­
ther question of defense can arise, no further aggression, either
as offensive warfare or as punitive, can be lawfully undertaken.
Finally, war is an armed conflict “between two or more

14

The Ethics oj War

independent and sovereign states,” and therefore, between free
and equal states. But where there are freedom and equality,
it is difficult to see how there can be question of the one’s
enjoying and exercising authority and jurisdiction over the
other. Punishment, however, is inflicted only by superior upon
subordinate, by ruler upon subject, by one wielding authority
upon one subservient to that authority.
On the contrary, Cajetan (Cardinal Thomas de Vio, 14691534), in spite of the acknowledged sovereignty and equality
of contending states, asserts that as the state has the right to
punish its own subjects so, too, it has the right to subject
to punishment foreigners who have sinned against the state,
because every state must safeguard its own well-being. If the
state, he continues, had not the right to punish foreign princes
and peoples, it would be imperfect and incomplete.5
Cajetan’s position stands or falls with our view of the con­
nection between the state’s right of punishing foreigners and
the state’s well-being. If the state is really an imperfect and
incomplete social entity incapable of conserving itself and
attaining its purpose in the absence of this right, then, with­
out doubt, the state is fully vested with the right, in keeping
with the general principle of the natural law that he, who has
the right to the end, has also the right to the means requisite
for the attainment of that end. If, on the other hand, such a
right is not necessary, then, of course, the state can lay no
legitimate claim to it—certainly not on the basis of Cajetan’s
argument.
The necessity of this is difficult to see. If the enemy
capitulates, ceases its aggression, and declares its readiness to
restore seized property and territory in full or its equivalent
and to give adequate assurance of security for the future—
and all these points fall within the scope of defensive warfare
—the state’s well-being can scarcely demand that the state
now proceed to inflict punishment. One may cite as a possible
objection the instance of a State that is a constant menace
and source of trouble to its neighbor state. Such a state, one
might say, must experience the horrors of war in order to
conceive proper regard and respect for the rights of its neigh­
bor, or even it must be absorbed in the neighbor state before
the security of the latter can be adequately assured. Even so,
5Cf. Summa S. Thomae, Comm. il. II., Ilae, qu. 40.

The Ethics of War

15

a war carried on under these circumstances would be defensive,
not punitive. It would be merely a matter of taking necessary
protective measures and of exacting reasonable assurance of
future security.
Vitoria, on the authority of St. Augustine, St. Thomas
and all the Masters, teaches that “aggressive warfare must
have as its object the punishment of unjust dealing.” Again
he says: “The prince has no more authority over foreigners
than over his own subjects, but he can use the sword equally
against both to punish all unjust deeds.”8
If Vitoria and the authorites referred to by him mean
defensive wars, as we are using the term, when they speak of
punishment, there is no difficulty. But if they are speaking of
punitive wars in the rigid sense of the word, either they must
base their doctrine, as Cajetan does, on the necessity of such
wars to the well-being of the state, and we argue against them
as we did against Cajetan, or they must maintain that nations
have been entrusted with the dispensation and administration
of divine justice as towards one another.
This latter supposition, however, brings us face to face
with practically unsurmountable difficulties. It is no easy
task, even under circumstances the most favorable, to deter­
mine the degree of human guilt to which justice, if it is to be
justice, must ever be proportionate. How then can the guilt
of a state be determined in any adequate manner amid the
turmoil and confusion of minds invariably occasioned by inter­
national entanglements? Even Stratmann, who insists upon
the punitive function of war, is forced to acknowledge that
“what would be practically impossible is the application of
punitive justice, the idea being that only one of the fighting
parties should bear the punishment resulting from the war and
should submit quietly like a boy being punished by his
father.”7 Can we reasonably presuppose that any nation, even
in an instance where its guilt has been established with suffi­
cient clearness and fair accuracy, would thus passively and
humbly submit to chastisement administered by one of its
peers among the nations? Still it would be obliged in justice to
do so. Evidently a practically impossible demand! And taking
human nature as it is, we might even call it a preposterous
eCf. Stratmann, op. cit., 59, 60.
r Ibid., 56.

16

The Ethics oj War

and absurd demand. Naturally the nation would bend its every
effort to ward off the punishment to the sacrifice of the lives
of many of its citizens. One might say that this very sacri­
fice of human lives is part of the nation’s punishment. Be
that as it may, what about the lives of the punishing people
that must inevitably be sacrificed in inflicting punishment?
When to this loss of human lives, we add the financial
cost and other tremendous burdens of modern warfare, the
impossibility of determining when sufficient punishment has
been administered, the extremes and excesses to which the
fighting forces will go when the dogs of war have once been
unleashed, and the hatred that is sure to rankle for years to
come in the hearts of both parties concerned, we must ac­
knowledge, it seems, that it is the restoration of the violated
moral order at too great a cost. The resulting evils, to say the
least, outweigh the good accomplished. The attempt to admin­
ister justice at the expense of the horrors and cruelties and
excesses of modern warfare, and that, too, at a time when
the degree of guilt has not been adequately determined, seems
itself to be a far greater violation of the moral order than to
permit crime to go unpunished for the time being.
We might argue also along slightly different lines. The ad­
ministration of justice in some of its phases has quite evidently
been entrusted to human authorities, but in many others it
is unmistakably God’s sole prerogative. To this latter class
does it not seem far wiser and far more beneficial to inter­
national well-being to add the instance of inflicting punishment
upon a nation, since it is a matter fraught with such danger
of abuse, at least until such time as it can be clearly estab­
lished that it is incumbent upon a nation as a strict duty?
And, again, all administration of human justice is necessarily
faulty, either defective or excessive; hence, in all instances
there is some portion of human guilt left to be weighed and
properly balanced in the scales of God’s justice. Now when
in a particular instance there is good reason to fear that, after
man’s attempt to administer justice, there will be more to
leave to God’s justice than before, it seems only reasonable
that man, in the first place, should look upon the entire mat­
ter as belonging to the domain of divine justice. Such an
instance certainly seems to be that of the moral guilt of one
nation towards another. Moreover, there are many ways of
punishing and atoning for crime, and it can very readily happen

The Ethics of War

17

that God has already exacted the full penalty of a nation’s
crime in His own way and that the nation, on its part, has
offered full atonement before its neighbor nation has taken
even the first step to inflict punishment.
Suarez differs from the authorities already quoted merely
in this that he is inclined to derive the state’s right of punitive
war, not from the natural law, since it is not necessary, he
says, in the nature of things that this right reside with the
aggrieved state (though it should be somewhere on earth),
but from international law in the sense that civilized nations
have tacitly agreed to adopt the individual state method in
preference to the establishment of a supernational tribunal
with adequate police powers.
The existence of any such agreement seems to be a mere
assumption. But even presupposing its existence, it would
fail to establish or confer a valid moral right in this instance
unless, to say the very least, the adopted method of adminis­
tering punishment be fairly just and reasonably adequate. If,
however, in practice the method prove to be a source of great
evil and abuse and of flagrant injustice, as in fact it apparently
has proved in the past, it can find no justification in interna­
tional law. Reverend Charles Macksey, S.J., who is other­
wise a defender of the state’s right of punitive warfare, very
correctly admits that “international law views the punitive
right of war with suspicion,” because, he adds, “it is open to
wide abuse.”8
The point is frequently urged that the right of punitive
war must be had somewhere on earth and, since there exists
no supernational tribunal, it must be enjoyed by the individ­
ual states. The antecedent enunciates what seems to be an­
other unproved assumption. We can, it seems, validly argue
to the contrary that, if the administration of such a right
very generally, not to say always, practically entails gross
abuses and injustices that far outweigh the blessings of a re­
stored moral order, or, in other words, if the abuse is the
general rule and the proper use is at most the extremely rare
exception, it is more in keeping with the general mode of in­
terpreting the natural law to deny its existence.
The contention that the right of punitive war must exist
somewhere on earth, i. e., either with the individual states or
8Cf. Catholic Encyclopedia, Art.: “War.'

18

The Ethics oj War

with an international or supernational tribunal, is further
weakened, not to say rendered positively untenable, by analogy
with the state’s right of inflicting punishment even upon its
own citizens. According to Victor Cathrein, S.J., who in the
various editions and versions of his Philosophia Moralis is par­
ticularly emphatic on this point, and other ethicians and mor­
alists as well, the state is by no means the divinely consti­
tuted custodian of the moral order with general and unre­
stricted punitive powers in relation to its own citizens. In
the first place, while it is true that all just punishment by its
very nature serves to restore the violated moral order in some
way, still the reparation of the disturbed moral order as exist­
ing between men and God is entirely beyond the scope and
pale of the state’s jurisdiction. And, secondly, the restoration
of the violated individual moral order, i. e., of man towards
himself, so long as it is strictly individual and does not either
directly or indirectly touch the public weal at any point, is
likewise removed from the scope of civil jurisdiction.
There remains but the moral order as existing between the
citizens and the state. Over this and over this alone, to the
absolute exclusion of the two previous ones, can the state lay
any just claim to jurisdiction. And even within this limited
sphere the state’s punitive power is not general and unre­
stricted. On the contrary, it is rigidly conditioned on the com­
mon good. The state can punish the criminal only because,
and in so far as, it is nécessary for the general welfare of
its citizens. Both the existence and the extent of its punitive
right are determined by this consideration alone. It is true,
as mentioned above, that all just punishment serves naturally
to restore the moral order, but in meting out punishment to its
guilty citizens the state must ever have in mind, not the de­
gree of the criminal’s guilt before God, but the emendation of
the criminal and the deterring of others from the commission of
like crimes. And in the same proportion in which it loses
sight of this determining norm in establishing, aggravating,
mitigating, or abrogating penalties, threatened or inflicted, it
fails according to the nature of the case either by excesses or
neglect.
The state then derives its punitive power not from the
supposition that it is the custodian of the moral order and the
minister of divine justice towards its subjects, but solely from
the fact that punitive power is a necessary adjunct of bene­

The Ethics oj War

19

ficial and effective civil authority. Without it the state would
not be adequately equipped by nature to protect its own and
its citizens’ rights against the criminal onslaughts of its re­
fractory subjects. This latter consideration leads us naturally
to the further conclusion that the only punitive power enjoyed
by the state is in reality, not strictly punitive at all, but
merely a phase of its right of self-defense. It is a right vested
with the state in virtue of which the state is empowered by
nature to protect itself and its subjects from criminal assaults
and to take necessary measures of future security.
In view of the natural and necessary restriction placed upon
the punitive function of the state in dealing with its own sub­
jects, it seems but a logical step to conclude that the punitive
powers of nations among themselves, as well as of international
and supernational tribunals, are hemmed in and restricted by
the identical determining and limiting norm—the common wel­
fare. We are justified, then, it seems, in asserting that neither
nations nor tribunals established and recognized by nations are,
or in the ordinary course of God’s providence can be, the di­
vinely constituted custodians of the international moral order
and, hence, that they cannot licitly wage punitive warfare for
the sole purpose of satisfying God’s justice. They may do so
only in so far as the common welfare of nations can demand it,
i. e., as previously expressed, only in so far as it might be nec­
essary in order to compel an offending nation to capitulate, to
cease its aggression, and to declare its readiness to restore
seized property and territory or its equivalent, and to give ade­
quate assurance of security for the future. And this brings us
again to a type of warfare which upon closer analysis is found
to be not strictly punitive at all, but defensive.
It would almost seem from the efforts that have been made
in the past to justify punitive warfare that the inflicting of
punishment by one nation upon another is a pleasant task
which nations are only too quick to perform if they can but
find reasons to justify themselves in undertaking it. Does this
•not suggest the possibility that there might be lurking here
under the guise of the guardianship of the moral order the de­
sire, even though it be unconscious, of giving vent to the human
urge for revenge?
The inflicting of punishment is an unpleasant burden even
under the most justifiable conditions, and instead of emphasiz­
ing it as a right, especially when there are concomitant evils

20

The Ethics oj War

and difficulties, would it not be more in accord with truth and
reality to view it rather as a duty? And, instead of searching
for reasons to justify the enjoyment of the right and privilege
of punishing, should one not rather limit the discussion to the
conditions that go to make it one’s bounden duty to have re­
course to it? In other words, it should not be a question:
When have I the right to inflict punishment? but: When have
I the duty to do so? Were this point of view alone rigidly ad­
hered to and properly stressed in international relations, even
though one were to reject all other considerations as uncon­
vincing, the ranks of the advocates and defenders of punitive
warfare would be considerably depleted.
Probably, after all has been said pro and con, we should be
choosing the better part if we cast our lot with those whom
Max Scheier has in mind when he says: “Many consider un­
tenable the Thomistic conception of a punitive war.”8 And
it seems perfectly safe to say that such a choice, far from run­
ning counter to, harmonizes perfectly with the ideas set forth
by Benedict XV in his various appeals for international peace
and in his pleas that it rest even more firmly on the basis of
charity and good-will among nations than upon the demands
of rigid justice.
More than once, perhaps, in the perusal of these pages the
question has suggested itself: What is the practical value of
'■'Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg. It is to be noted
that, if we except Cathrein (Philosophia Moralis) and Cronin (The
Science of Ethics), practically all modern ethicians and moralists up­
hold the lawfulness of punitive warfare. Slater (A Manual of Moral
Theology, Benziger, 1908, I, 319) goes so far as to include it in “the
certain teaching of Catholic theology.” But since the arguments ad­
duced in the preceding pages are applicable to these, as well as to those
against whom they are directly aimed, further details are unnecessary
here.
The wars of the Old Testament can be adduced neither in support
of nor in repudiation of punitive warfare, or, for that matter, of mod­
ern warfare in any of its phases. Some of them are to be judged
strictly according to the demands of morality as set forth in these
pages, and in that light they are to be declared either just or unjust
as the circumstances of the individual case warrant. For, we must re­
member, not all that is narrated in Sacred Scripture is given, either
directly or indirectly, the stamp of approval by the inspired writer.
In other instances, however, wars were conducted at the express com­
mand of God, the Sovereign Arbiter of life and death. The Israelites
were but the executioners of His supernatural sentence. The penalty
was within God’s right to assign and within the Israelites’ divinely com­
municated right to execute.

The Ethics of War

21

distinguishing between defensive, offensive, and punitive war­
fare and of insisting that, at most, defensive warfare alone is
justifiable since nations are not guided by such niceties of
thought in their declarations of war? Whatever be the atti­
tude of nations in this regard, the distinction is valid and the
insistence must be made on ethical and moral grounds. And,
in particular, the distinction between defensive and offensive
war must be stressed with ever-increasing emphasis in view of
the fact that defensive warfare is becoming more than the mere
repulsion of unjust aggression. In consequence of modern
methods of war it is, in fact, becoming as much a slaughter of
human beings as is offensive warfare. And if those who are di­
rectly responsible for the fate of nations are prone to close their
eyes to these considerations, it is time to preclude from their
immediate jurisdiction the momentous question of war and to
appeal either to the tribunal of popular opinion by the refer­
endum or to the League of Nations where less selfish interests
and more sober judgment prevail.10

V

THE CONDITIONS OF A JUST DEFENSIVE WAR
From what we have thus far said it can be readily gleaned
that war is not intrinsically evil, except in the sense that in
every war, even the most necessary and licit, there is injustice
{objective and material, if not subjective and formal) at least
on one side. Offensive warfare must always be classified as in­
trinsically wrong and it seems impossible ever to justify a pure­
ly punitive war. As for defensive warfare, it is becoming in­
creasingly difficult, if not actually impossible, to justify it as
waged between two large states in modern times, especially be­
cause of the question of proportionate evil and of the ease with
which impartial arbitration can be had in all cases. Neverthe­
less, it does at times find its justification in the natural law.
Just as it is intrinsically wrong for an individual to slay an
innocent person, but not evil to slay in necessary self-defense,
so, too, the slaying of one nation by another without proper
justification is intrinsically evil, but to undertake war in self­
10A minority of the Ethics Committee do not agree with the posi­
tion defended in the foregoing paragraphs on punitive war.

The Ethics oj War

22

defense under the requisite conditions becomes the state’s pre­
rogative and at times even the state’s duty. The very first and
most essential condition of a just war, then, is that it be defen­
sive. But there are other conditions that demand fulfillment.
1.

UNDERTAKEN IN VINDICATION OF A
STRICT RIGHT

A state may go to war only to protect or to recover (to­
gether with reasonable assurance of security for the future)
that to which it has a strict right, i. e., that to which it can lay
lawful claim on the basis of rigid justice, not on the basis of
charity nor of any other virtue.11 It must be more than an
intranational right, i. e., more than a right of private individ­
uals among themselves, or of citizens towards their govern­
ment, or of the government towards its citizens. It must be a
national right, i. e., a right that affects the nation as a na­
tion and not merely the private and selfish interests of groups
or individuals. It must at the same time be an international
right, i. e., a national right that can rightfully claim to be rec­
ognized as such before the tribunal of international justice,
not merely an imaginary right which an injured nation in its
blind self-interest might be prone to adjudge genuine.
A distinction that seems to be only too frequently over­
looked and neglected in practice by nations among themselves,
but which must, nevertheless, be made and insisted upon, is
that war may be waged lawfully only for points of the common
good, but that not all that makes for the common good is of a
nature to justify war for its attainment. Over and beyond
making for the common good, it must be a point to which the
nation has a strict right. Thus, for example, because of the
absence of such a right, a war is not morally justified which
aims at expanding national territory, at seizing even the sur­
plus and undeveloped territory of another, or at compelling a
backward nation to develop its natural resources for its own
and for other nations’ prosperity, no matter how desirable,
beneficial, or necessary these various points may be for a de­
veloping state. For the same reason it is illicit to wage war
“We are by no means here excluding the right of a nation in dis­
tress to call upon its neighbor nation for needed assistance and the
latter’s obligation of charity to respond.

The Ethics of War

23

for the purpose of enhancing national power and prestige, or of
promoting an international “balance of power.”
Much less may a just cause be found in the mere need of
exercising a standing, martial force, of escaping revolutionary
trouble at home, or of assuring the safety of the loans and in­
vestments of a country’s financial aristocracy. Utterly inade­
quate, too, are such indefinite formulae as “the good of the
community,” “necessity,” “public peace,” “the freedom of the
seas,” “the preservation of culture,” “the making of the world
safe for democracy,” and similar general terms which readily
can be, and frequently have been, distorted into pretexts for
unnecessary wars.12 Likewise, to continue a war longer than is
necessary for the protection or recovery of strict rights is quite
as immoral as to begin it without sufficient cause.
Before a state is justified in undertaking war, its rights
must either have been actually violated or stand in certain and
imminent danger of violation. A hypothetical, merely prob­
able, or distantly future menace, such as might be implied in
the growth of armaments of other nations, is not a sufficiently
justifying cause.
Moreover, the legitimate defense of rights implies that the
aggrieved state is not simultaneously violating the rights of the
state against which it is contemplating war. Otherwise, the
two nations would at once be the victims and perpetrators of
mutual injustice. Only that state which is less guilty might
possibly have a right to begin war in these circumstances.
Consequently, not even theoretically, would the more guilty
state be justified either in taking the offense or in repelling the
attack of the less guilty, so long as the latter merely sought
the vindication of its rights and was willing to refrain from
unjust conduct. And, practically speaking, even the less guilty
would be prohibited from beginning hostilities until it had
12 National honor, though ordinarily included among rights suffi­
ciently weighty to justify war if violated, is a much abused term. It
is intangible and to a great extent purely subjective. Hence, it is an
illusory element with which to deal. In the past it has frequently
played the masked rôle of a handy pretext for war at the bidding of
scheming politicians. It is difficult to see how its violation, without the
concurrence of other circumstances, can justify war. War is as utterly
inadequate to vindicate national honor as is a duel to vindicate personal
honor. Both serve to determine physical strength and dexterity in the
use of arms, but neither has ever decided who was in the right and who
in the wrong.

24

The Ethics of War

definitely and manifestly ceased to commit lesser, but real, acts
of international injustice. Failure to do so would clearly dis­
close the absence of “the right intention,” with which we shall
deal later.
At the same time the violation of international rights must
appear to the aggrieved state as morally certain. No degree of
probability, not even a great preponderance of probability, is
sufficient. Such seems to have been the clear teaching of St.
Augustine, St. Thomas and all Catholic teachers and theolo­
gians until the beginning of the seventeenth century.13 As
Dominicus Bannez, O.P. (1528-1604), expresses it, “the state
that wishes to declare war must not entertain a single doubt,
the justifying reasons must be clearer than day. A declaration
of war is equivalent to a sentence of death; to pronounce the
latter with a doubtful conscience is murder.” Vasquez, S.J.
(1551-1604), is equally emphatic in asserting the same prin­
ciple.
But with Suarez we find the first relaxation of the old strict
war morality. He was the first prominent theologian to hold
that in certain instances a ruler may go to war knowing that
a great deal of right is on the opposite side but considering
that, on the whole, there is more on his side.14 In technical
moral terminology Suarez introduced into war-making the
principle of probabiliorism. This weakening of the traditional
teaching of the Schools gave rise to a storm of protest. No one
was more vehement, however, than his contemporary, fellow
countryman, and fellow Jesuit, Vasquez. The latter bluntly re­
pudiates the new doctrine, characterizing it as untenable, capa­
ble of great harm to Christianity and implying a reversion to
barbarism.15 He declares unyieldingly that no degree of proba­
bility would suffice to justify the initiation of “the greatest evil
in Christian society.”
So great was the authority of Suarez, however, that his view
came to be adopted by a considerable number of theologians in
the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries with the
result that excuses for war were made more and more easily,
e. g., to maintain the balance of power or to prevent the exten­
sion of a neighboring state. But not all the theologians of
13Cf. Stratmann, op. cit., 61, 62.
,4Cf. De Bello, Sect. VI.
15Cf. Com. in Summa S. Thom., Disp. 64, Cap. 3.

The Ethics oj War

25

these centuries departed from the stricter teaching of the old
school. Sylvius (1648), in particular, who remained true to its
principles, says: “When it is a question of imperiling the lives
of a mass of men, the safest side must always be chosen.” St.
Alphonse Ligouri (d. 1787), while inclining to the new school,
nevertheless sympathizes with those who consider a declaration
of war so serious a matter that it can be justified only if there
be no possible doubt as to the justice of the cause. He says:
“War brings such evil with it, such harm to religion and to the
innocent, that in practice it is hardly ever justifiable.”‘e
Considering the ever-increasing terrors of modern warfare
and their results and bearing in mind also that the Catholic
Church as such has never defined the requisite conditions of a
just war, it is certainly permissible, and even obligatory, to
follow that line of argument, particularly when it appears at
the same time the more logical, which restricts as much as pos­
sible the justifiableness of war. Bannez very aptly compares
a declaration of war to a sentence of death. If a jury or judge,
he argues, is morally forbidden to condemn a man to death un­
less they have convinced themselves of his guilt beyond all
reasonable doubt, it cannot be logically maintained that a civil
ruler is justified in pronouncing what is practically equivalent
to the death sentence upon hundreds or thousands of men until
he has raised the violation of his country’s rights beyond the
realm of reasonable doubt.
The ruler might, it is true, regard actual injustice as merely
probable but future and contingent injustice as morally cer­
tain. In other words, while realizing that the evidence of pres­
ent injustice is merely sufficient to generate a high degree of
probability, still he might see that, if he failed to take belliger­
ent action, the probable injustice would, according to all hu­
man calculation, certainly become actual. In similar circum­
stances, an individual would be justified in using extreme meas­
ures of self-defense. In both cases there would be moral cer­
tainty, not merely a high degree of probability, that one was
confronted with a grave evil.
It is not sufficient, however, that the violation of a strict
right be unmistakable. It is further requisite that the guilt of
the nation involved in the violation be, to borrow the terminol­
ogy of ethicians and moralists, jormal and not merely material.*
ieCf. Lib., III., Tract. IV., Nu. 404.

26

The Ethics of War

.Guilt is said to be material only, when an act is really and ob­
jectively contrary to law, but the agent either is unaware of its
malice or, being aware of it, is compelled by external force to
place it. Such an act is not strictly an evil deed nor is he who
places it an evil-doer. On the other hand, formal guilt is had
when the trespasser not only offends against the right or law
objectively and as a matter of fact, but at the same time is
conscious of the lawlessness of his act and still deliberately
performs it.
Luis Molina, SJ. (1535-1600), was evidently the first to
break with the mooring of the past in this regard and to teach
that a material injustice on the part of the offending state is a
sufficient justification for war. In modern times the opinion
has reached the stage where some Catholic ethicians hold that
the question of formal and material guilt can be entirely dis­
regarded. Cronin, for example, says: “One state can go to war
with another if it is clear that its own rights have been violated,
without thought of, or care for, the bona fides of that other.
If wars were disallowed through the bona fides of the sup­
posed offending party, few wars would be allowed in natural
law.”17
It is true, of course, that in the case of a merely material
injustice, the unjust possession of alien property might be a
very important consideration for the holding state. But, as
Stratmann argues,18 either this unjust possession can be proved
or it cannot be proved. If it is proved and the state still per­
sists in its refusal to yield what it holds unjustly, then it imme­
diately becomes formally guilty and, in so far as the genuine­
ness of the injustice is concerned, may be justly attacked.
If, on the contrary, it cannot be satisfactorily proved, then
there is not even an evident material injustice and war is cer­
tainly out of the question. To say the least, a wrong or in­
justice without formal guilt is a most doubtful thing, and the
old school is surely right in insisting on proof of formal guilt
before plunging into the horrors of war.
Certainly material wrongdoing is to be eliminated from
the world in so far as it is possible, but war is not the proper
means. If we are told that this sets up an unjust state of
things, we can truthfully answer with Stratmann19 that war
17Cf. Cronin, op. cit., II, 666.
18Cf. Stratmann, op. cit., 64.
18Cf. Stratmann, op. cit., 65, 66.

The Ethics of War

27

without proof of formal guilt does so much more disastrously.
Lastly, we must bear in mind that as charity, and at times
justice, can demand of us under certain conditions that we
come to the assistance of our neighbor in the defense of his
rights against an unjust aggressor, so, too, the same virtues
can make identical claims upon groups of individuals, called
states. In spite of the difficulty of determining in a concrete
case whether intervention is forbidden, allowed, or com­
manded, and notwithstanding the fact that intervention is fre­
quently undertaken for selfish purposes, still the general ethical
principle is clear and incontrovertible. Whenever intervention
becomes a duty either of charity or justice, it necessarily im­
plies the right to intervene. The pretentious assertion that no
state ever has such a right ignores the truth that governments
exist essentially for the purpose of promoting human welfare
and that the right of political independence has neither logical
nor ethical foundation when it is claimed by a state which,
instead of attaining, frustrates this end. Unless we are will­
ing to embrace the absurd philosophy that political independ­
ence is an end in itself, we must insist that it ceases or is
suspended as a national right when it persistently and pro­
foundly fails to safeguard the welfare of the state and its mem­
bers. In the course of the past century this absurdity gained
so much ground among certain political writers and so-called
liberals that it provoked the formal condemnation of the
Church. No. 62 of the condemned principles in the Syllabus
of Pope Pius IX runs thus: “The principle styled non-interven­
tion is one to be proclaimed and put into practice.”
Conditions which justify and, unless the inconvenience in­
volved be disproportionately great, even require intervention
by one state in the affairs of another are, for example, grave
and long-continued oppression inflicted by a stronger state
upon a weaker, the revolt of a people or a nation against in­
tolerable tyranny, the unsuccessful efforts of a state to sup­
press an unwarranted rebellion injurious to national or inter­
national welfare, grossly immoral practices as cannibalism and
human sacrifices under the guise of religion, and continued
anarchy in a state unable for the present to maintain a tol­
erably competent government.
In order to justify, and much more, in order to require,
intervention, the foregoing evils, or any of them, must be defi­
nite, certain, and extreme; hope of any remedy from within

28

The Ethics oj War

must be wanting; the motive of the intervening nation must
be free from selfishness; armed force must not be resorted to
so long as milder methods, even those of moral coercion, are
sufficient, and finally, the aiding nation, after it has accom­
plished its task, must be ready to withdraw at the request of
the assisted people.

2. PROPORTIONATE EVIL
As in every other situation where an act is contemplated
which will lead to both good and evil results, the rules of ethics
require that the value and importance of the national right
menaced or violated be in proportion to the magnitude of the
damages to be inflicted by the war. In evaluating this
proportion the aggrieved state must bear in mind the rav­
ages and devastations of war as affecting not only itself, but
the offending nation and neutral nations as well. It must
look beyond its own individual welfare and view the evils of
war in the light of the solidarity of nations. It is true that
its own welfare commands first attention but the common in­
terests of nations must not by any means be considered lightly.
This latter consideration is ever waxing in importance because
modern methods of transportation and intercommunication are
constantly welding nations and international interests more
closely together. A striking instance is had in the boycott
declared recently by Mahatma Gandhi and his followers
against English textile products. Directly it is an act of pas­
sive resistance to English domination over India and, as its
immediate effect, it cripples a foreign market for English tex­
tiles, but it reaches far beyond this so as to affect even the
cotton growers of our Southern States.
Hence, while a nation contemplating war places on one
side of the scales the disadvantages and losses that its own
common good and that of others will suffer directly and indi­
rectly in consequence of foregoing its right in a given instance,
it must place on the other side, first, its own probable loss of
human lives and of spiritual and material goods, as well as its
prospect of victory; secondly, the price of war'in all its phases
to the other party of the combat; and, thirdly, the losses and
disadvantages that the war will bring upon neutral nations.
And only when the losses likely to accrue from waiving a
national right outbalance, or to say the very least counter­

The Ethics oj War

29

balance, the ravages of war in all its ramifications can there
be thought of justifying a people’s going to war on the basis
of proportionate evil.
War, particularly in modern times, inflicts so many, such
various and such enormous injuries upon innocent and guilty
indiscriminately and not only upon the belligerents themselves
but upon neutral nations as well, that it cannot be justified
on the score of proportionate evil except by very grave reasons
—we might even say, by the gravest known to human society.
Hence, the rights and interests that are unjustly attacked or
jeopardized must be of primary importance to the very exist­
ence and proper functioning of the state and essential to the
life and well-being of its members. Certainly such minor evils
as a slight or temporary offense against national honor or pres­
tige or comfort or property cannot be weighed in the balance
with the terrific evils inevitably involved in the devastation of
modern warfare.
There is even a conviction rapidly gaining ground, espe­
cially among the Catholic moralists of certain European coun­
tries, to the effect that no reason, however great, can ever be
proportionately grave to justify warfare between two large
states in modern times. In other words, it is contended that
the rule of proportionate evil is alone sufficient to render war­
making by any large state immoral in all instances at the
present time.
That the rule of proportionate evil has become more exact­
ing with each step in the development of war implements
from their crudest forms to the modern instruments of death
and destruction, is perfectly true. It seems also perfectly true
that the time must come sooner or later when the very deadli­
ness and destructiveness of war, if they continue to increase,
will throw the evils of war, out of all proportion to any pos­
sible good that may result and, hence, will of themselves out­
law all war except, perhaps, in its simpler forms as we shall
continue to find it among small states and among semi-civilized
and uncivilized peoples. We may even be justified in assert­
ing, with the European moralists whose contention we have
just cited, that such time has already arrived.
This opinion gathers force from the simple consideration
that in the calm forum of deliberate reason the sacrifice of a
single human life outweighs the mere offended vanity of a
king or a people. Moreover, the welfare of the aggrieved

30

The Ethics oj War

state, as well as that of the aggressor state, is always far
better safeguarded through the toleration of relatively small
wrongs until such time as they can be satisfactorily repaired
through peaceful processes. The Kellogg Pact bears witness to
the fact that nations are beginning to realize the seriousness of
these considerations.

3. LAST RESORT

Recourse to war is not justified until all peaceful methods
have been tried and found inadequate. A fair opportunity of
adjustment must be given or a reasonable assurance had that
the offense will not be rectified except solely under the stress
of war. Hence, if there is reasonable ground to think that
the offending state will withdraw its menace or repair the in­
jury done and give a fair guarantee of the future security of
the juridical order between the two states concerned (in con­
sequence of proper representation, judicious diplomacy, patient
urgency, a mere threat of war, or any other just means this
side of actual war, such as the severance of diplomatic rela­
tions, the boycott, and trade embargo), the menaced or ag­
grieved state must first experience the futility of these pacific
means and devices before it can proceed to the extreme of
war. Moreover, if an apology suffices and has been tendered,
it must be accepted; nor may the offer of adequate reparation
and indemnification ever be rejected when the alternative is
war. Likewise, if there exists a supernational tribunal which
holds out reasonable hope of settling the matter amicably, it
must be appealed to and its decision accepted as final.
Whether in the absence of a supernational tribunal the
aggrieved state must consent to arbitrate differences of judg­
ment before resorting to war, may in general be a matter of
dispute. Nevertheless, when in a particular instance the pub­
lic authority has sound reason to think that it can arrange for
an unbiased tribunal as the alternative of war, the necessity
of war in that case is certainly not final, and even though in­
ternational law leaves the state free to accept or to refuse all
arbitration, the natural law makes it strictly obligatory.
Provided the contending parties be properly minded, arbi­
tration reasonably unprejudiced is always possible today, e. g.,
through the World Court and the League of Nations. Its
superiority to war as a means of disentangling international

The Ethics of War

31

difficulties lies in its aptness to function on the basis of justice,
peace, and good-will, and not, as war, on the basis of might,
hatred and bloodshed. War, no more than a duel, has ever
decided who was right. Just as individuals are far more likely
to get justice by recourse to the courts, instead of staking life
and property on the wielding of a sword or the pulling of a
trigger, so too nations are far more likely to obtain justice
and preserve their material prosperity by recourse to arbitra­
tion rather than to war.
Should, however, all these pacific devices prove ineffectual,
then “the calm, deliberate judgment of the people, rather than
the aims of the ambitious few, should decide whether war be
the only solution. Knowing that the burdens of war will fall
most heavily on them, the people will be slower in taking
aggressive measures and, with an adequate sense of what char­
ity and justice require, they will refuse to be led or driven
into conflict by false report or specious argument. Reluctance
of this sort is entirely consistent with firmness for right and
zeal for national honor. If it were developed in every people,
it would prove a more effectual restraint than any craft of
diplomacy or economic prudence.”20

4. REASONABLE HOPE OF VICTORY
A further condition essential to the legitimate declaration
of war is that the aggrieved nation should be able to entertain
a reasonable hope of victory. Statesmen are not justified in
making war if their country is likely to find itself in a worse
condition in the end than at the beginning. The reason is clear
and simple. To declare war in the face of certain defeat is to
betray the public trust and is little short of national suicide.
As Stratmann21 informs us, Cajetan and Vitoria maintain
that the attacking party must be morally certain of victory.
Though at times moral certainty can be had, still it does not
seem reasonable that the responsible persons should be de­
manded always to possess so high a degree of certainty of vic­
tory, because, in the very nature of the case, it is generally
impossible. It seems sufficient that the government should
have solid reasons, proportionate to the evil alternative of de­
feat, for expecting victory.
2OPastoral Letter of the American Hierarchy, 69, 70.
21Cf. Stratmann, op. cit., 67.

32

The Ethics oj War
5. INITIATED BY PUBLIC AUTHORITY

The right of war rests solely with the sovereign authority
of the state. It cannot become a prerogative of any subordi­
nate in the state or of a section or province or city or an
individual. This is evident for several reasons.22 First, no
one, except the juridical guardian of the common good of all,
can have the right to imperil the common good of all the
state as happens in war. Secondly, the subordinate parts of
the state, as well as the individual citizens, can in the case of
a grievance make appeal for redress to the supreme authority
of the state; hence, they are not in a position which entitles
them to the exercise of coercion either among themselves or
against other nations. Thirdly, any such power in hands other
than those of the sovereign power would upset the peace and
order of the entire state. With the supreme authority lies also
the judicial authority to determine when war is necessary and
what is the necessary and proportionate measure of damage
it may therein inflict. On the one hand, there is no other nat­
ural tribunal to which recourse may be had, and, on the other,
without this judicial faculty the right of war would be in vain.
It is evident that a person or body designated by the sov­
ereign power through the constitution of the state may also
have the right to declare war. In England, the king declares
war through his government; in France, the president with the
consent of the two chambers; in the United States, war is de­
clared by Congress.
6. RIGHT INTENTION
Among the conditions necessary for a just war, we must
mention also a right intention. It would not be allowable,
whilst outwardly and seemingly waging war in vindication of
<·. right which has been actually violated, inwardly and really
to wage it for some such illegitimate purpose as, for example
the humiliation of a great military or naval rival, the desire
of showing one’s prowess, the desire of obtaining promotion,
or mere delight in the excitement of war.
The right intention, says St. Thomas,23 is “the intention to
further good and avoid evil. For, says St. Augustine, in De
22Cf. Catholic Encyclopedia, Art.: “War.'

22Cf. II., Ilae, 40, I.

The Ethics oj War

33

Verbis Domini, ‘with the true servants of God even wars make
for peace, as they are not undertaken for greed and cruelty
but for the sake of peace, that the wicked may be restrained
and the good protected.’ Therefore, it may be that a war is
declared by lawful authority and for a ‘just cause’ and yet
may not be justifiable because the intention of those undertak­
ing it is wrong. For what Augustine rightly censures in war
is the desire to harm, the cruelty of revenge, a vindictive
spirit, the rage of self-defense, the lust of power, and the like.”'
A bad intention can vitiate an act, otherwise good and legiti­
mate in war as well as in every other department of human
conduct.
7. RIGHTLY CONDUCTED

A final condition necessary for legitimate warfare is that it
be rightly conducted. This condition demands that the war be
conducted with a moderation which, both in the continuance
of the struggle and in its settlement, commits no act intrin­
sically immoral, nor exceeds in damage done or in reparation
exacted the measure of necessity and of proportion to the value
of the right involved, the cost of the war, and the guarantee
of future security.
The questions here involved are generally thrown into the
background by the all-absorbing question of the war itself.
When war has once been declared and sane judgment has
been tainted and biased, if not actually stifled by false patriot­
ism and national hatred, and victory over the hostile forces by
means fair or foul becomes the one supreme objective, the con­
venient but vicious saying, “all’s fair in love and war,” only
too frequently finds expression in fact. The inevitable result
is that international agreements, malicious propaganda, vio­
lence to non-combatants, and similar phases of the war scarcely
ever as much as present themselves as ethical issues. This
consideration forbids us to pass them over in silence.
(a) Observance oj International Agreements

We may conveniently distinguish four general categories
of international agreements. Some go to make up international
law, others are peace treaties, others are compacts entered
upon by two or more nations during times of peace, while the

34

The Ethics oj War

fourth class comprises the less formal conventions which we
might call “gentleman’s agreements” or friendly understand­
ings among nations.
They may include any material good or advantage con­
cerning which international disputes may arise, such as inter­
national boundaries; trade; jurisdiction over rivers and seas;
protectorates over independent peoples; pacific measures of
settling international disputes; manner of conducting war with
reference to use of poisonous gases and dumdum bullets,
aerial attacks, bombardment of unfortified cities, attacks on
non-combatants, conversion of merchant ships into warships,
laying of submarine mines, submarine warfare, and aerial
attacks; contraband articles; the rights and duties of neutral
powers and persons; the treatment of captives and wounded;
and the status of public property held by the enemy.
Generally speaking, states have both the right and the duty
to form agreements of this character. These agreements once
entered upon receive their binding force, as does every promise
or contract, proximately from the consent of the contracting
parties, but ultimately from the natural law. To attempt to
derive the sanctity of international agreements from positive
law, from some such formula as “international agreements
must be kept” is utterly futile. It merely pushes the ques­
tion of moral obligation further back. Unless we wish to face
the absurdity of an infinite series of postulates, we must admit
here the obligatory force of the natural law. The first three
categories as enumerated oblige in justice and at the same
time also in charity, while the fourth, i. e., friendly under­
standings, would seem in all cases to oblige in charity. How­
ever, this latter may in the course of time, in consequence
of long standing and mutual observance, tacitly take on the
character and acquire the binding force of a formal agree­
ment.
The consent requisite here to be valid and binding must
be internal, externally expressed, freely given, morally possible
of execution and not rendered illicit by a higher law, whether
this restraining higher law be the divine law, ecclesiastical law
or the law of a clearly and unmistakably greater common
good. The consent must also be mutual for the simple reason
that in almost all international agreements the element of
reciprocity in one way or another enters in.
Of the enumerated necessary conditions, the question of

The Ethics of War

35

internal consent, though absolutely essential to the validity
of the agreement, has but little importance in the practical
moral discussion of the subject, since it is invariably taken
for granted and insisted upon accordingly, as soon as it is
sufficiently expressed by word of mouth, in writing or by some
other recognized external sign. The requisite freedom of con­
sent, however, does offer special difficulties in certain cases.
The remaining conditions seem quite intelligible and, hence,
demand no further explanation.
These agreements no matter to what category they belong
generally retain their moral binding force so long as the cir­
cumstances that prompted or necessitated their making pre­
vail and the conditions requisite for a binding contract are had.
Hence, some of them, such as those referring to international
trade relations and in general all those which by their very
nature presuppose friendly relations between two or more
nations as a basis for their existence, necessarily lose their
moral efficacy immediately upon the declaration of war or even
upon the severance of diplomatic relations. Likewise, the
flagrant violation of the agreement by one of the contracting
parties justifies the other party in considering it terminated,
if it so desires, though it may in justice still insist upon its
observance and even take measures of proportionate severity
to accomplish it. This principle obtains certainly in reference
to the specific violated article of an agreement and probably
also to the entire agreement, i. e., as soon as an agreement
has been violated in any one of its phases by one of the con­
tracting parties, whether in time of peace or of war, it would
seem that the other party is justified in repudiating, if it so
desires, the agreement in its entirety.
But in all instances of the cessation of the obliging force of
international agreement for whatsoever reason, there can be
question of those obligations only which exist solely in virtue
of the agreement. Those points which are at the same time
points of the natural law—and they are many—lose none of
their natural binding power with the lapse of the agreement.
Thus, for example, an international agreement relating to the
humane treatment of prisoners of war, to the sinking of mer­
chant vessels, or to the use of dumdum bullets may have been
terminated because of its violation by one of the contracting
parties. This means merely that those obligations which had
their origin solely in virtue of the agreement cease to exist.

36

The Ethics of War

The demands of the natural law which have a bearing on these
points have in no way been mitigated.
As stated above, the freedom of consent necessary for the
validity of agreements offers particular ethical difficulty.
Among individuals extortionate agreements can ordinarily be
judged and rectified in the civil courts. But in the absence
of a competent and authoritative international court, no such
recourse is open to the state. It must either unquestioningly
submit to the unjust agreement or be morally authorized to
decide for itself the question of observance.
The state which has compelled another state to subscribe
to unjust commitments has no valid right to their fulfillment.
Conversely, the unjustly coerced state is not under obligation
to the offending state. The principle is clear, but its applica­
tion is difficult. According to the prevailing opinion of Cath­
olic ethicians and moralists, international good faith would
very soon be shaken to its very foundation if individual states
were left ethically free to decide for themselves when and
whether any particular agreement was extortionate and when
and whether it should be kept. Moreover, there is grave dan­
ger that the menace to the common welfare of nations re­
sulting from the concession of such a right to individual states
would outweigh the burden imposed upon particular states by
the alternative denial. And, again, the common good might
well require the unjustly treated state to observe what the
offending state has no right to exact.
Dr. Cronin, who accepts the common view with some quali­
fication, declares that an extorted agreement is not morally
binding, “if the conditions imposed are manifestly and fla­
grantly unjust; for instance, if they are such as to reduce a
state to the condition of absolute and irretrievable penury
and the duress is extreme.”24 Some writers follow Grotius in
maintaining that unjustly imposed agreements are binding
only when they are as solemn and important as those by which
peace is made at the close of a war;25 if the contrary opinion
were generally held, it would render all treaties of peace inse­
cure, cause wars to be more devastating and more prolonged
and constitute a continuous menace to international stability.
This impressive argument does not seem to be universally
24Cf. Cronin, op. tit., II, 658.
25Cf. Meyer, Institutiones Juris Naturalis, II, 770-771.

The Ethics of War

37

conclusive. It might be urged in opposition that no state is
obliged, entirely against its will and only under compulsion,
to promote the common good of nations at the sacrifice of its
own vital rights and interests and those of its members, and
that, if all unjust peace treaties were universally observed,
the stronger states would thereby be occasioned more fre­
quently to inflict unjust treaties upon the weaker.
Possibly the most reasonable is the compromise opinion
according to which unjustly imposed agreements covering
points of secondary importance are not always morally obliga­
tory, whereas the provisions of treaties that términate wars
or cover matters of like importance are universally binding,
unless made under such extreme duress and inflicting such
extreme injustice that the very notoriety of the injustice would
automatically free the coerced nation from the unjustly im­
posed conditions.26

(b) No Malicious and Slanderous Propaganda
“One of the strongest arguments against war,” says the
English Jesuit, Father Keating, “is that it necessitates a sys­
tematic spreading of falsehood in order to circumvent the
enemy. The enemy must be painted absolutely black and ac­
cused of every imaginable cruelty, as a monster outside the
pale of human consideration. If this is not done, the hateful
work of killing and being killed would be impossible.”27
We are not here concerned with the mere concealment or
suppression of the truth effected by severing the means of in­
tercommunication and by news censorship. It makes no essen­
tial difference whether the purpose be to prevent the complete
facts from becoming common knowledge at home or in enemy
territory or among neutral nations. Such restrictive measures
may well be warranted by the demands of the common good
and, in general, cannot be impugned on moral or ethical
grounds. Moreover, it is very doubtful whether news censor­
ship can be made effective in the future in view of modern
methods of air communication.
Quite another thing, however, is the systematic spreading
of positive falsehood which is so much a part of every war.
It may be carried on by paid propagandists, by conspiring
2eCf. International Ethics, 18, 19. John A. Ryan and Ethics Com­
mittee. (Catholic Association for International Peace, Washington, D. C.)
27Cf. Month, Feb., 1922.

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The Ethics oj War

newspapers, or by over-patriotic individuals. Again, it may
have as its immediate object the distortion or invention of
facts of war or the false imputation of cruelties to the enemy.
But by whomsoever it is fostered or sponsored and whatsoever
form it takes, its ultimate purpose is to instill into the hearts
of the soldiers at the front and the people at home courage,
hope of victory, and hatred for the enemy—qualities without
which no war could be carried on for any considerable length
of time.
The defense of lying, deceit, bad faith, treachery, and even
perjury as legitimate in the stratagems of war and diplomacy,
where good faith or common convention is not directly vio­
lated, seems to be a sequence of the erroneous and pernicious
doctrine of Grotius that lying is not intrinsically immoral,
but only extrinsically so, i. e., only in so far as those with
whom we deal have the right to demand the truth of us.
In the first place, we must bear in mind that the ordinary
type of war-time propaganda falls in no way short of a de­
liberate mis-statement of fact with the express motive of de­
ceiving others. It verifies, consequently, in every respect the
definition of a lie and being such it must stand condemned
as an act intrinsically evil in the eyes of all thinking people.
And what is intrinsically evil is necessarily immoral and re­
mains immoral at all times and under all circumstances.
Secondly, one type of the propaganda here in question has
all the earmarks of slander or calumny. Malicious defama­
tion is slander whether it be directed against an individual, a
body of individuals or even a nation; as such, it again stands
condemned as an act intrinsically immoral.
Thirdly, apparently war-time propaganda with its host of
deliberate falsehoods is considered justified on the score that
it is employed to serve a good purpose. But regardless of mis­
understandings and misinterpretations that stubbornly persist
in certain quarters, the “principle” (sic) that “the end justi­
fies the means,” no matter how vicious they may be in them­
selves, is absolutely and universally untenable in the code of
true morality. An intrinsic evil can never be justified.
(c) Excessive Violence to Combatants Unjustifiable
Just warfare is by its nature a series of defensive acts
directed against the onslaughts of an unjust aggressor state.
The defending state must not even for a moment lose sight of

The Ethics oj War

39

this point of view. It must judge and direct its every military
act in its light. Whatever is reasonably judged to fall under
the category of defensive acts is legitimate, provided the dam­
age inflicted be restricted to the necessary minimum and the
means employed involve no action opposed either to the nat­
ural law or to the international law. Whatever exceeds these
limits in any direction reaches out into the offensive and for­
bidden.
Now the one objective in all instances of legitimate self­
defense must be to ward off the assault, to stop the aggression
of the enemy, and to render him incapable of further attack
here and now and for the immediate future. To attain this
purpose the defender may rightfully employ only whatever
means (provided they be not intrinsically immoral) prove
actually necessary. If the aggression can be evaded by flight
or if an outcry suffices to frighten away the assailant the de­
fender may licitly resort to these measures only. If a blow of
the fist is sufficient, again the defender must limit himself to
that degree of violence. If the infliction of a wound, be it
slight or severe, be required to repel the aggressor, the defend­
er may licitly proceed to inflict it, but he may go no further.
If, however, the assailant can be halted by nothing short of
death, the defender need not hesitate on moral grounds to
proceed even to that extreme. Nor can it be said that in this
latter instance the defender is employing intrinsically immoral
means. It is life pitted against life—innocent life unjustly
attacked against guilty life voluntarily in jeopardy. The ag­
gressor has forfeited his right to life no less than has the
murderer who is executed by the state.
It seems futile to argue here, as Cronin does,28 that “no
man is empowered to forfeit his life to another, to place it at
his disposal; no man has such a right over his own life
that he can take it away: and, therefore, he cannot confer
this right on another.” One might just as well contend that
evil under certain conditions can justly claim dominance over
right and good.
We must bear distinctly in mind, however, that the defend­
er can lawfully proceed to the extreme of death only when
our supposition is verified, namely, that “the assailant can be
halted by nothing short of death.” When this supposition finds
28Cf. Cronin, op. cit., II, 98.

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The Ethics oj War

verification in fact is difficult to state. Possibly the safest posi­
tion to take is to say very seldom, if ever. To attain the one
objective of blameless self-defense, i. e., effectively to ward off
the enemy aggression, all that is necessary in any case is to
produce powerlessness in the assailant. Let the assailant be
incapacitated for further attack and the assault must neces­
sarily and invariably come to an end. Now to render the
enemy helpless, a wounding, if sufficiently severe, will appar­
ently in all cases prove adequately effective. This means, then,
that apparently death as such (in se et per se) is never neces­
sary in self-defense, and, hence, that the wounding of the
assailant, sufficiently severe to be effective, is the limit to which
one may rightfully proceed. It is true that the aggressor may
later die in consequence of the wounding or that in the heat
of the combat the defender frequently finds it impossible to
discriminate between what kills and what wounds merely.
But in both these instances death results contrary to the in­
tention of the defender (per accidens, as the ethicians and
moralists express it) and, hence, does not involve moral guilt.29
The identical application of general ethical principles ob­
tains whether it be an instance of one individual against an­
other, of a hundred against an equal number, or of a nation
against a nation. Hence, in defensive warfare, just as in indi­
vidual self-defense, the defending soldiers can lawfully em­
ploy all measures of violence, but also those alone, that prove
actually necessary in any given case for attaining the objective
of all defensive warfare, namely, the effective warding off of
the enemy attack,30 provided at the same time they do not
trespass upon natural and international law in doing so. If,
therefore, the enemy forces could be frightened into capitula­
tion, e. g., by, a display of great military power or by a volley
of shots above their heads, the defenders would be obliged to
refrain from anything more drastic. If wounding, slight or
20Cf. Victor Cathrein, S.J., Philosophia Moralis (Sth ed., 1905),
242, 243, No. 306; Michael Cronin, The Science of Ethics, II, 97-100;
Aug. Lehmkuhl, S.J., Theologia Moralis (10th ed., 1902), I, 494, 495,
No. 833; Arthur Vermeersch, S.J., Theologia Moralis (1924), II, 517,
No. 607, 2.
30It is evident that the repelling of unjust aggression is not limited
to the bare warding off of actual inimical attacks, but that it extends, if
necessary, to the point where the aggressor is sufficiently beaten into
submission to restore ill-gotten goods, make adequate reparation for
damage done, and give reasonable assurance of security for the future.

The Ethics oj War

41

severe, is sufficient to repel the attack and to incapacitate
the attackers for further aggression, the defenders are for­
bidden to resort to more violent measures. If, however, at any
time the killing of the attacking forces be genuinely neces­
sary for the effectual repulsion of the onslaught, the defenders
may proceed without moral scruple to that extreme.
But here, as in private self-defense, the question arises:
Is killing as such ever really necessary or will not wounding,
if sufficiently severe, be at all times properly effective in frus­
trating the immediate assault and in incapacitating the assail­
ants for future military action? On one’s answer will depend
one’s course of action in this delicate matter. The sufficient
effectiveness of wounding seems more in accord with the essen­
tial demands of blameless self-defense for the same reason as
in individual self-defense. It seems properly adequate at all
times to produce powerlessness in the enemy, and this in turn
must necessarily lead to the sole licit objective of defensive
warfare—the effectual breaking down of aggressive resistance.
We should be inclined to adopt this latter view also on
humanitarian grounds. It must be remembered that while the
enemy forces in defensive warfare are, of course, unjust ag­
gressors when viewed as a unit, still the individual combatants
are not such in the same complete sense as is the assailant in
private unjust aggression. The former are often engaged in
mortal conflict much against their wills. They are not free to
retire at will from the attack and, as individuals, are fre­
quently kindly disposed towards those whom they, as soldiers,
are compelled to regard as enemies.
Again as in individual self-defense so also here, death will
frequently result from the wounding. Moreover, the sudden­
ness and intensity of the attack, with its mortal danger to the
individual combatants, frequently preclude the possibility of
distinguishing between what kills and what merely wounds.
Frequently, too, the soldier is forced to discharge his instru­
ment of death merely in the general direction of the hostile
forces without being able to know in any way beforehand the
particular damage it will effect. But in all these cases, pro­
vided the combatant be properly minded, death results con­
trary to his intention (per accidens) and, hence, still remains
within the limits of blameless self-defense.
While the rule of properly moderated, as opposed to exces­
sive violence may appeal to some as mere casuistry and un-

42

The Ethics of War

doubtedly meets with difficulties when seeking practical appli­
cation on the field of battle, still the rule is valid on moral
grounds and a number of instances can be enumerated where
unmistakably it can and must be observed in all its bold
rigidity. Thus, for example, it is clearly immoral: to fire even
a single shot after the flag of truce or surrender has been
hoisted by the enemy or any other sign given indicative of
truce, armistice or capitulation; to wound or kill an enemy
who has surrendered or has been taken captive; or to inflict
death upon one already wounded beyond all reasonable pos­
sibility of further participation in military activities. Like­
wise, it is morally wrong for a soldier, from the shelter of
his trench, to aim deliberately at a vital organ of an unwary
enemy in “no-man’s” land when the infliction of a wound
would prove amply effective. The same is true of so-called
snipers, who, without any particular danger to themselves,
have ample occasion to take deliberate aim. The lawfulness of
issuing orders that the infantry at the front, irrespective of
concrete and individualizing circumstances, direct their bayo­
nets solely to the head or heart of the foe, may be rightly
questioned. While the use of gases that produce temporary
inertia or powerlessness seems to be within the restrictions of
the natural law, their use falls under the ban of international
law.
International law steadily aiming at lessening the waste of
human life and the miseries of warfare among civilized na­
tions has done much to clarify points otherwise doubtful.
Thus, for example, the use of ammunition (poisoned, explo­
sive or dumdum bullets, etc.) causing excessive destruction
of human life, extreme suffering, incurable wounds or human
defacement, beyond the requirements for rendering the com­
batants incapable of further fighting, as well as poisoning and
assassination, are barred by international agreement based
obviously upon the restrictions of the natural law.

(d) Violence to Non-Combatants Unjustifiable

Here, again, the fact that a just war is a series of defen­
sive acts must be our directing norm. While violence to com­
batants is a necessary defensive act, violence to non-combat­
ants can never be so construed. As combatants we must re­
gard not only the fighting army at the front, but also all

The Ethics of War

43

soldiers in uniform or soldiers called to arms and also all
those who in any way are actually engaged in the promotion
of war or who perform auxiliary military services, such as
manufacturers of arms and munitions, scouts, those engaged
in the transportation of food supplies and implements of war,
the operators of field telegraphy, etc. Mere sympathy with the
fighters’ cause, however, does not place one in the category
of actual combatants. Hence, the defending army cannot re­
gard the populace of the enemy country as combatants be­
cause of their known sympathy with the enemy’s cause.
The natural law demands that the immunities of noncombatants be extended to women, to children, to the aged
and feeble, to those capable of bearing arms but, as a matter
of fact, in no way participating in the war, and to the wound­
ed and prisoners. It would seem that to this class must be
added also army chaplains, surgeons, and nurses together with
the entire hospital personnel, as long as they restrict their
activities to their respective duties.
In the prosecution of the war, attacks on non-combatants
are barred by the moral law except where their simultaneous
wounding or destruction is an unavoidable accident attending
the legitimate attack upon combatant forces. That “war is
hell” is true only in the sense that a maximum of human mis­
eries inevitably follows in its wake; it is ethically untenable
in the sense that it justifies anything and everything that
makes for the suffering of the people at war. The defense that
it hastens the close of the war through sympathy with the
increased suffering, even of non-combatants, will not stand the
test of moral principles. It is but another attempted applica­
tion of the would-be principle that “the end justifies the
means.” Not only does the natural law forbid that further
violence and suffering be inflicted upon the wounded and cap­
tives, but common charity and international law both require
that they be properly cared for.
The ethical principles that restrict the application of vio­
lence to combatants only are equally restrictive in regard to
enemy property. All property and such alone, which is des­
tined either directly or indirectly for purposes of war, can be
lawfully destroyed and then even if it belongs to private per­
sons. The wanton destruction of the property of non-com­
batants or even of the state or of combatants, which does not
and will not minister aid to the hostile state or to its army,

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The Ethics oj War

is therefore illicit. The burning of the Capitol and White
House at Washington in 1814 and Sherman’s celebrated
“March to the Sea” during the American Civil War are very
commonly considered violations of this demand of the natural
law. International law expressly provides that every care must
be taken to avoid the destruction of “edifices devoted to re­
ligion, art, science, and charity, historical monuments, hos­
pitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected,
provided they are not used at the same time for military
purposes.”31
(e) Prisoners oj War

A prisoner of war is a public enemy who, While armed or
attached directly or indirectly to the hostile army for active
aid, falls into the enemy’s hands by capture or surrender. In
general, all those designated before as combatants may sur­
render or be captured as prisoners of war. Whether army
chaplains, surgeons, nurses, and hospital personnel fall under
the category of non-combatants or not, it would seem that,
because of the peculiar positions they hold, they might rightly
claim exemption from capture as prisoners of war on the
basis of the natural law. International law expressly exempts
them.
When an enemy throws away his arms and asks for quar­
ter, he ceases to be a combatant. The captured enemy when
deprived of his arms loses his enemy character. This applies
indiscriminately to soldier and sailor, to the able-bodied, the
sick, the wounded, and the shipwrecked. Immediately they
become entitled to the privileges and immunities, as well as
subject to the inconveniences of a prisoner of war.
The natural laws seems to be quite clear in determining
the status of the prisoner of war. All violence to a prisoner
must cease forthwith upon capture or surrender. Quarter may
not be denied him and to put him to death, unless some other
very grave circumstance enters in, is sheer murder. His life,
person and.property are placed under the protection of the
captor state. He is not a common criminal nor may he be
treated as such. He may licitly be subjected to that degree of
confinement only which is necessary to prevent his escape. He
must obey the just military prisons laws of the captor state
31Cf. The Hague Convention, II, Art. 27.

The Ethics of War

45

and may be punished for breaches of discipline and shot if
he attempts to escape. He may not be compelled to take up
arms against his own country. He has a right to requisite
food, clothing and shelter. The sick and wounded are strictly
entitled to medical treatment. The Geneva Convention of 1906
provides that no distinction shall be made in the treatment
accorded by a commander to his own and to enemy sick and
wounded.
The status of a prisoner once established continues so long
as the captor retains control of his person. It may end by
successful escape, by exchange of prisoners, by parole, or by
armistice or peace. If a prisoner has been liberated on parole,
i. e., freed upon an express promise not to serve in a military
capacity against the captor during the continuance of the war,
he is obliged to observe this condition. Violation of the parole
may be punished, on recapture, by death.
(f) Air-Raids and Sinking of Merchant Vessels
War by air is subject to the same general ethical prin­
ciples as regards excessive violence, non-combatants and the
like, as is war by land or sea, whether airships fight airships or
engage in battle with land forces. In particular, air raids
upon fortifications, arsenals, military barracks, munition fac­
tories and other institutions of war are lawful in a just war,
provided every precaution is taken to spare the lives and
property of non-combatants. This latter restriction is also in
perfect accord with international law which demands that “the
commander of an attacking force, before commencing a bom­
bardment, except in case of an assault, should do all he can
to warn the authorities of what is about to happen;” it de­
mands further, as stated above, that every care should be
taken to avoid the destruction of edifices devoted to religion,
art, science, and charity, historical monuments, and hospitals.32
But indiscriminate air-raids upon cities and unfortified places
are morally unlawful, because they are undertaken directly
with a view to the death of non-combatants and to the destruc­
tion of their property. Such acts fall also under the ban of
international law which expressly exempts all undefended
places “from bombardment or attack by any means whatso­
ever.”33
32Cf. Ibid., Articles 26, 27.
î3Cf. Ibid., Art. 25.

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The Ethics of War

The sinking of provision ships destined for the enemy and
even of passenger vessels or liners carrying contraband of any
nature or engaged in any other belligerent mission is lawful,
provided in both cases all possible care is taken to spare
human lives. But to sink passenger vessels not connected in
any way with the war is entirely illicit; and if loss of life
ensues, the act must be regarded as one of deliberate murder.
(g) Reprisals
Reprisal is an act of retaliation and consists in applying
to the subjects of an offending nation treatment analogous to
that which the subjects of the offended states have received.
It is resorted to when a specific wrong has been committed
and the seizure is by way of compensation in value for the
wrong. The things seized are held subject to the termination
of the controversy and are restored in kind or in value if the
controversy is amicably settled.
A reprisal, though an act of war in fact, is not such in
intent. On the contrary, it is resorted to as a means of avoid­
ing war by securing redress without resort to the graver alter­
native. It may, however, under certain conditions, constitute
or lead up to a sufficient cause of war. It generally consists
in forcibly seizing from an offending nation property equiva­
lent in value to the wrong inflicted upon the aggrieved nation
or in detaining the property of the offender with the intention
of forcing the necessary redress. The form of reprisals most
commonly employed in recent times consists in placing an
embargo on such ships of the offending state as may be lying
in the harbors of the aggrieved state, or in the seizure of its
ships at sea, or of any property within the jurisdiction of the
state whether belonging to the state or to private individuals.
Reprisals are not only lawful, but highly commendable as
a preventive of war when less severe measures of coercion have
proved futile and provided they are limited to the seizure of
enemy property and to other milder forms. But when the evil
perpetrated by the offending state is, for example, murder,
wanton pillage, or hostile attack upon women and children,
reprisals in kind are wholly illicit. The identical principles
justify reprisals or condemn them, respectively, even when re­
sorted to in the course of the war.

The Ethics of War

47

VI

ARMISTICES, CAPITULATIONS, AND
TREATIES OF PEACE
An armistice is a temporary cessation of military opera• tions by mutual agreement between belligerents. If its dura­
tion is not fixed, the belligerent parties may resume operations
at any time, provided only that previous notice of such length
as has been agreed upon be given to the enemy. In case of
violation of the conditions of the armistice, the other party
may renew hostilities without notice.
After agreeing upon or signing a capitulation, the capitu­
lator must neither injure nor destroy the vessels, property, or
stores in his possession that he is to deliver, unless the right
to do so is expressly reserved to him in the agreement or
capitulation.
Upon the termination of war, the belligerents cease to be
enemies and the residents of both countries resume their peace­
ful pursuits as though the war had not intervened. All rights
and obligations existing at the outbreak of the war may again
be enforced, provided their nature is not such as to render
their performance, through lapse of time or change of circum­
stances, useless or impossible.
War may terminate either by treaty, by cessafion of hos­
tilities or by conquest. The treaty is the usual and best meth­
od and at times well-nigh indispensable. The parties to the
war can and should settle by a careful and formal document
the various issues that caused the war and provide for peace­
ful and harmonious relations in the future.
Charity as well as justice must be manifest on both sides
in drafting the terms of peace. Victory does not give the un­
just aggressor the right to impose burdens upon the vanquished.
On the contrary, the former owes the latter full measure of
restitution. If victory crowns the arms of the state whose
cause was just, it may in justice exact full reparation of the
original injustice suffered, full compensation for all its own
losses by reason of the war, and adequate guarantee of secur­
ity for the future. The appropriation of a part of the territory
of the vanquished, or even its entire subjection as a part of,
or as tributary to, its conqueror may strictly speaking be
exacted at times under these heads. But the history of nations
would indicate that this exaction has been enforced far oftener

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The Ethics oj War

in the past than was justified by proportionate necessity.
Here, if anywhere, must justice be tempered with mercy, and
while justice may be well within its bounds in clamoring for
its “pound of flesh,” charity may require that the obligations
of reparations and indemnities be postponed or reduced or
entirely condoned and canceled.
Finally, inasmuch as both victors and vanquished always
believe they have been in the right and inasmuch as no vic­
torious nation can be assumed to treat the conquered nation
with either justice or charity, the natural law indicates, if it
does not actually command, that peace treaties should be made
under the supervision of a neutral and impartial tribunal.
VII
DISARMAMENT
Every state is entitled and obliged to maintain a land and
naval force adequate to protect itself and its citizens at any
given time against domestic and foreign foes. This right and
duty is but the extension of the state’s right and duty of em­
ploying, when necessary, physical force for the exaction of
its rightful claims against an unjust aggressor (right and duty
of coerciott). The right and duty of coercion, with which every
state is vested by nature, would be vain and meaningless were
the state denied the supplementary right of providing itself
with the means without which the exercise of coercion would
be unthinkable.
The right of armament is not absolute. As is true of every
other state right, both its existence and its extension are condi­
tioned by the common good of nations as well as by that of
the individual possessing state. And since armament is far
from being an unalloyed asset and blessing (it is simulta­
neously, both in itself and in its effects, both nationally and
internationally, a liability, a burden, and an agent of much
evil), it merits serious moral consideration in all its phases.
In the first place, to meet the demands of morality, arma­
ment must be intended for legitimate purposes only, i. e., for
defensive warfare only. To levy armies or to build navies for
purposes of offensive warfare or with the reasonable assurance
that such military activities must lead ultimately to unneces­
sary and offensive war partakes of the immorality of offen­

The Ethics oj War

49

sive warfare itself since it is but the preparation for the latter
or, we might even say, its first stages.
Secondly, because of the tremendous economic burden that
preparedness imposes upon the citizens of an arming nation
and indirectly upon the world at large, it must be limited to
the minimum requisite for national and international safety.
When we recall, that, as commonly estimated, the cost of pre­
paredness at the present time (1932) is far in excess of its
cost prior to the World War: that, according to figures taken
from The World Almanac, 20,370,625 trained men constitute
the standing armies and the reserve forces of the six Great
Towers today; and that, according to the same source, $1,411,891,441 were appropriated by five of the Great Powers during
the year 1930-1931 for naval development alone, we cannot but
see how the unbridled race for armaments is annually swal­
lowing up billions of dollars of the public wealth that might
otherwise redound to the general welfare of the citizenry in the
form of reduced taxes, or be employed in stimulating world
trade and prosperity, or be spent to provide the necessaries
of life for millions of the unemployed, or to promote benefi­
cent public undertakings such as hospitals for the poor sick
and decent dwellings for the homeless.34 One of our most
prominent contemporary statesmen has said quite truthfully:
“What the nations spend for armament and its upkeep would
wipe out the slums of the cities, educate the children of the
world, reëstablish farms and industry, and restore prosperity
to mankind.” Moreover, at the present time, the funds re­
leased from military expenditures would permit a scaling­
down of both war debts and German reparations without finan­
cial loss to any of the nations involved and thus help notice­
ably to solve one of the serious problems that bar the way to
world economic recovery. In the light of these considerations,
it is clearly the bounden duty of states to limit their ma­
chinery of war to the minimum requisite for national and inter­
national safety and to apply the staggering sums of public
money, now squandered upon instruments of mutual slaughter,
to works of genuine common welfare.
Thirdly, and this is the most serious consideration, exces­
sive armaments are a continuous menace to peace because
they are a continuous and powerful incitation to war. They
34Cf. Apostolic Letter, Pope Pius XI, Oct. 3, 1931.

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The Ethics oj War

tend to foster national egoism, arrogance, aggressiveness and
injustice towards weaker states. The error of contending that
“might is right” is not committed by unarmed nations. While
the armed nation assumes its haughty and offensive attitude
provocative of war, the unarmed nation is bent upon pursuing
its peaceful course, conscientiously avoiding what might be of
offense to its neighbor and charitably ignoring petty occur­
rences that a more prepared nation would be quick to regard
as national insults. The founders of our Union prohibited by
a clause in the Constitution the maintenance of armaments by
the single States. After our second war with Great Britain,
the statesmen of the two countries decided to dismantle the
gunboats of the Great Lakes and agreed that the 5,000 miles
of Canadian border should remain undefended by warship,
fort, or garrison. The peaceful results consequent to the pre­
cautions taken in both these instances present a spectacle
quite at variance with the European situation where force and
the threat of force have only too often been the measures em­
ployed by the Great Powers to promote their own interests
at the expense of less powerful neighbors and in defiance of
justice and equity.
Large armaments also breed fear, suspicion, ill-will, and
hostility. During the decade that preceded the World War,
German armaments aroused the fear of France, while at the
same time French army laws caused suspicion and alarm in
Germany. When a nation increases its military forces, the
nations against which these instruments of war might con­
ceivably be directed at some future time immediately and
quite naturally become suspicious and apprehensive and ordi­
narily respond with counter-increases. This action in turn
provokes new increases on the part of the first nation. When
such rivalry becomes acute as it did in Europe between the
years 1904-1914, we can expect war to be the one logical
outcome.
Finally, excessive armaments have the effect of provoking
hasty action in case of disputes and thus of interfering with
peaceful negotiations and of precipitating unnecessary conflict.
The unarmed nation, as the unarmed individual, knowing the
impossibility of violent attack and of armed resistance will at
all times think in terms of peaceful negotiations for the settle­
ment of its difficulties and will mold its entire national policy
in the light of that philosophy. But whether it be an instance

The Ethics oj War

51

of armed individuals as, for example, in the frontier days of
our country or of armed states, there is ever present the lurk­
ing danger of being too ready and hasty with the gun or the
sword. In the summer of 1914, when the clouds of war began
to gather over Europe, the military authorities immediately
urged mobilization on the plea of proximate preparedness.
But these military measures had the effect of cutting diplo­
matic negotiations short and of transferring the concern of
statesmen from the peaceful settlement of the political issues
at stake to the necessity of being in the advantageous position
of striking the first blow.35
Since, then excessive armaments are a constant menace to
peace because they are a continual incitation to war, nations
are in duty bound, also from this point of view to limit their
war machinery to the minimum requisite for national and
international safety. This obligation binds their consciences
with the same rigidity as does their obligation to avoid un­
necessary and hence unjust wars in which extravagant pre­
paredness has so commonly reached its natural culmination in
the past.
But what is the minimum of preparedness reasonably
necessary for national and international safety? Each nation
disavows any evil designs upon its neighbors and protests that
its armaments are intended for defensive purposes only. But
as the attack, justifying the defense, can come only from an­
other state equally emphatic in protesting its readiness to dis­
arm if it were not for its own need of self-protection, the
nations become entangled in a vicious circle. Each alleges de­
fense as its object and transfers to some other nation the
designs of aggression that alone can necessitate preparedness.
The result is that each arms itself against the other and the
ensuing race for armaments merely serves to augment the
mutual suspicion of each other’s motives.
The vicious circle must be broken and the obligation of
doing so rests primarily with the more powerful of the nations
involved. They must reënforce their verbal disavowals of evil
designs against their neighbors by the practical proof of scrap­
ping the very implements needed for the execution of any
such designs. This will tend to restore international confi­
*sCj. Causes of War, 9, 10. Parker T. Moon and Economic Rela­
tions Committee. (The Catholic Association for International Peace,
Washington, D. C.)

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The Ethics of War

dence and to create among nations the atmosphere of security
so essential to disarmament. When one of the powerful nations
decreases its military forces in testimony of its sincerity, the
neighbor nations will be more inclined to reply with a cor­
responding reduction, which in turn, as the sense of security
grows, will induce the first nation to look favorably upon a
further reduction. Thus again the nations will be operating
on the circumference of a circle, but now in a scaling-down
process.
It ever remains true, however, that security, arbitration,
and disarmament are inseparably inter-associated. Any one of
the three is unthinkable on a large scale over a considerable
period of time in the absence of the other two or even of one
of them. Nations must be brought to realize that, with the
possibility and feasibility of developing a system of collective
lesponsibility on the part of all nations as a body for the pro­
tection of each, there no longer exists, in the same sense as
formerly, the cruel necessity of each state’s building up an
army and navy adequate to meet all probable, if not all pos­
sible emergencies of self-defense. In particular, they must be
brought to realize that some form of conciliation or arbitra­
tion must always be preferred to war, that existing wrongs
can and must find a hearing and receive redress before a com­
mon forum of the nations, and that national security can and
must be guaranteed by concerted action of all nations against
the aggressor. When international security has been thus
established and conciliation and arbitration have come to be
the accepted methods of disentangling international difficul­
ties, the disarmament problem will no longer be a wrangle
over ratios of individual armament, but a matter of such lim­
ited forces only as, taken collectively, will suffice to uphold the
authority of the community of nations as a whole.
The desideratum of procuring security, arbitration, and dis­
armament is not merely an idealistic, unattainable utopia. On
the contrary, it is a goal well within the grasp of all rightly
minded nations at the present time. And apparently it is con­
stantly becoming more and more attainable. As it becomes
more and more possible of attainment, however, the obliga­
tion of nations to accept it as a substitute for the horrors and
savagery of war becomes more and more binding.38
38Cf. Apostolic Letter, Pope Pius XI, Oct. 3, 1931.

The Ethics oj War

53

We must also bear in mind that in matters of this nature
obligations are always in proportion to capacity. Hence, the
nations that are in a position to control the destinies of the
world, are the ones primarily obliged to throw the full weight
of their influence on the side of disarmament. In this respect
the United States is uniquely outstanding at the present time.37
In the first place, because of our country’s vast industrial, finan­
cial and political power, it is preëminently fitted for world
leadership—a fact that is becoming increasingly pronounced
as other nations look to us for help and guidance. Secondly,
our country’s very geographic position gives it the assurance
of comparatively slight danger and likelihood of armed attack.
Hence, it can set the example of disarmament without incurring
the risks that confront other nations less advantageously situ­
ated. The United States, then, is in a position to work for
reduction of armament more effectively than any other nation,
perhaps more effectively than all others combined and, further­
more, it is in a position to do so without any particular danger
to itself. Its path of strict moral duty is, in consequence, clear
and unmistakable.

CONCLUSION
War in all its phases—in its inception, its progress, and its
termination—falls within the controlling and guiding scope of
moral principles. Of these principles those that determine the
conditions of just warfare are the most important. As we have
enumerated them, they are eight in number, namely: (1) de­
fensive warfare alone is justifiable; (2) it may be undertaken
solely in vindication of a strict right; (3) there must be ade­
quate proportion between the violated right and the evils of
war; (4) recourse may be had to war only as a last appeal;
(5) there must be reasonable hope of victory; (6) war may
be initiated by public authority only; (7) the belligerents
must have the right intention; and (8) the war must be
rightly conducted.
Since ethics must look not merely to the past and present
but also to the future, one may ask whether or not future
wars, with the ever-increasing horrors and miseries which they
37Cf. Europe and the United States: Elements in Their Relationship,
24-28. R. A. McGowan and Europe Committee. (The Catholic Asso­
ciation for International Peace, Washington, D. C.)

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The Ethics oj War

inflict not only upon the belligerents themselves but upon neu­
tral nations as well, will continue to find their justification and
their condemnation in the principles here enunciated. We an­
swer in the affirmative. Whenever the eight conditions neces­
sary for a just war are verified, whatever be the place or time,
war is legitimate; whenever they fail of verification, war is il­
licit. It is true, it is becoming ever more difficult to find all
the conditions verified simultaneously in any given case. And
ih few, if any, modern wars have they been observed; nor has
even an honest attempt to observe them been made by the na­
tions that initiated hostilities. It is particularly the growing
brutality of modern warfare and the comparative ease with
which unbiased arbitration can be had in practically all in­
stances that render the justification of war so difficult at the
present time. And, undoubtedly, the time cannot be far dis­
tant and it is not improbable, perhaps, to say it is already here,
when insistence upon the rule of proportionate evil and the
rule of last appeal will outlaw all war on a large scale among
the Great Powers.
It is primarily the duty of the powers of government to see
to it that the requisite justifying conditions be fulfilled before
war is entered upon. But the conscience of the individual sol­
dier is not, in consequence, entirely exonerated. If the soldiers
are conscripted or have voluntarily enlisted prior to the out­
break of the war, they are ordinarily not obliged to inquire into
the justice of the war. They may presume that their country
is in the right unless it is evidently in the wrong, and in doubt
they must obey the commands of their lawful superiors. But
if the war is clearly unjust, the only course that is open to the
individual soldier, provided he cannot evade military service,
is to refrain from inflicting injury on the enemy; otherwise, as
is evident, he becomes a co-operator in injustice. It will sel­
dom happen, however, that the private soldier will be in a posi­
tion to declare the war undoubtedly unjust, because of his ig­
norance of many facts and considerations known frequently
only to the country’s highest officials.
It is quite different in the case of those who wish volunta­
rily to enlist after the outbreak of the war. Before these can
lawfully consider themselves free to volunteer their services,
they must assure themselves of the righteousness of the war,
just as they are obliged to form a morally certain conscience
about the lawfulness of any action that they undertake.

The Ethics oj War

55

In the course of a war justice may change sides or it may
come to be disregarded by both combatants. The latter hy­
pothesis was apparently verified in the World War when the
representatives of both groups refused to heed the peace pleas
of Pope Benedict XV.38
Whether in the future wars will come within the governing
reach of ethics, peaceful conciliation or arbitration become the
universally accepted substitute of war for determining issues
of public justice, and so great a sense of security prevail among
nations as to effect vast reductions of armaments, depends upon
the influence that economic, industrial, social, religious, and
moral considerations can be made to bear upon the philosophies
and consciences of those who control the fate of nations. Will
they be forced to acknowledge in a practical way the useless­
ness, wastefulness and sinfulness of war? If with the passing
of time it becomes evident that they are impervious to all con­
sideration of human appeal, then it is for the peoples them­
selves, upon whom the burdens and horrors of war fall most
heavily and surely, to devise some method for the settlement
of international disputes more human than war, and by every
legitimate means at their disposal to force its acceptance upon
the governments of the world.
38Cf. The Permanent Peace Program oj Pope Benedict XV, Donald
A. MacLean. (Catholic Association for International Peace, Washington,
D. C.)

The Catholic Association for International Peace

Honorary President

MOST REV. THOMAS F. LILLIS, D.D.
PARKER T. MOON, President

Vice Presidents
Mrs. William J. Bushea
Marie J. Carroll
Michael F. Doyle
Anna Dill Gamble
Frederick P. Kenkel
Rev. John LaFarge, S.J.
Rev. Linus A. Lilly, S.J.
Rev. Robert E. Lucey
Herbert Wright

Rev. Francis J. Haas, Ex-Officio
Marie R. Madden, Treasurer
Elizabeth B. Sweeney, Executive Secretary

COMMITTEES

Ethics—Rev. John A. Ryan, Chairman
Law and Organization—Charles G. Fenwick, Chairman
Economic Relations—Parker T. Moon, Chairman
Agriculture—Rev. Edgar Schmiedeler, O.S.B., Chairman
Historical—William F. Roemer, Chairman
Education—Rev. John R. Hagan, Chairman
National Attitudes—Carlton J. H. Hayes, Chairman
V. S. Dependencies—William F. Montavon, Chairman
Latin America—Rev. R. A. McGowan, Chairman
Europe—Rev. Joseph F. Thorning, S.J., Chairman
Rev. Thomas F. Divine, S.J., Acting Chairman
Asia—Elizabeth M. Lynskey, Chairman
Canada—Rev. Maurice S. Sheehy, Chairman

HE Catholic Association for International Peace has
grown out of a series of meetings during 1926-1927. Fol­
lowing the Eucharistic Congress in Chicago in 1926, represent­
atives of a dozen nations met with Americans for discussion.
In October of the same year a meeting was held in Cleveland
where a temporary organization called The Catholic Commit­
tee on International Relations was formed. The permanent
name, The Catholic Association for International Peace, was
adopted at a two-day Conference in Washington in 1927.
Three similar conferences were held in the same city in 1928,
1929, and 1930. An all-day regional Conference was held in
Chicago on Armistice Day, 1930. The Fifth Annual Meeting
was held in New York City in April, 1931. A one-day Re­
gional Conference was held February 22, 1932, in St. Louis,
and the Sixth Annual meeting was held in Cleveland on March
28, 29, 1932. Its objects and purposes are:

T

To study, disseminate and apply the principles of natural law and
Christian charity to international problems of the day;
To consider the moral and legal aspects of any action which may
be proposed or advocated in the international sphere;
To examine and consider issues whch bear upon international
goodwill ;
To encourage the formation of conferences, lectures and study
circles ;
To issue reports on questions of international importance;
To further, in cooperation with similar Catholic organizations in
other countries, in accord with the teachings of the Church, the
object and purposes of world peace and happiness.
The ultimate purpose is to promote, in conformity with the mind
of the Church, "the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ."

The Association works through the preparation of com­
mittee reports. Following careful preparation, these are dis­
cussed both publicly and privately in order to secure able
revision and they are then published by the organization.
Additional committees will be created from time to time. The
Association solicits the membership and cooperation of Cath­
olics of like mind. It is seeking especially the membership
and cooperation of those whose experience and studies are
such that they can take part in the preparation of committee
reports.
The Committees on Ethics, Law and Organization, and
Economic Relations serve as a guiding committee on the par­
ticular questions for all other committees. Questions involv­
ing moral judgments must be submitted to the Committee on
Ethics.

Publications of the Catholic Associa­
tion for International Peace
Pamphlet Series—
1—International Ethics.
2—Latin America and the United States.
3—Causes of War, and Security, Old and New.
4—Haiti, Past and Present.
5—Francis de Vitoria.
6—American Agriculture and International Affairs.
7—Porto Rico and the United States.
8—Europe and the United States—Elements in Their
Relationship.
No. 9—The Ethics of War.

No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.

Miscellaneous Series—
League of Nations in Its First Deeade.
The World State.
Permanent Peace Program of Pope Benedict XV.
Appeals for Peace of Pope Benedict XV and Pope Pius XI.
Peace Trends.

Reports in Preparation—
Tariffs and World Peace.
Is War Justifiable Today?
Disarmament.
The Church and Peace Efforts.
U. S. Relations with Asia.
The World Court.
International Cultural Relations.
Peace Education.
So-called “Over Population.”
Catholicism—the Keynote of Pan-Americanism.
National Attitudes in Children.
French-Italian Relations.

N. C. W. C. Joint Committee on Peace—
The Christian Way to Peace.
Peace Statements of Recent Popes.