Clearly these conflicting claims and this contrast of profession and
practice suggest a problem that deserves consideration. The problem
becomes the more interesting, and the plausible theory of non-Christian
responsibility is even more severely shaken, when we reflect that war is
not an innovation of this unbelieving age, but a legacy from the earlier
and more thoroughly Christian period. Had mankind departed from some
admirable practice of submitting its international quarrels to a
religious arbitrator, and in our own times devised this horrible
arbitrament of the sword, we should be more disposed to seek the cause
in a contemporary enfeeblement of moral standards. This is notoriously
not the case. Men have warred, and priests have blessed the banners
which were to wave over fields of blood, from the very beginning of
Christian influence, not to speak of earlier religious epochs. There is
assuredly a ghastly magnitude about modern war which almost lends it an
element of novelty, but the appearance is illusory. That intense
employment of resources which makes modern war so sanguinary tends also
to shorten its duration. No military struggle could now be prolonged
into the period of the Napoleonic wars; to say nothing of the Thirty
Years War, which involved the death, with every circumstance of
ferocity, of immensely larger numbers than could be affected by any
modern war.
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