The Effects of War | 3-7

7. Implicit submission to superiors
- Its effects on the on the moral character

It becomes a subject yet more serious if military obedience requires the relinquishment of our moral agency – if it requires us to do, not only what may be opposed to our wills, but also what is opposed to our consciences. And it does require this.

A soldier must obey, howsoever criminal the command, and howsoever criminal he knows it to be.

It is certain that of those who compose armies many commit actions that they believe to be wicked, and which they would not commit but for the obligations of a military life.

Although a soldier determinately believes that the war is unjust, although he is convinced that his particular part of the service is atrociously criminal, still he must proceed;

he must prosecute the purposes of injustice or robbery; he must participate in the guilt and be himself a robber.

When we have sacrificed thus much of principle, what do we retain?

If we abandon all use of our perceptions of good and evil, to what purpose has the capacity of perception been given? It would be as well to possess no sense of right and wrong, as to prevent us from the pursuit or rejection of them.

To abandon some of the most exalted privileges which heaven has granted to mankind, to refuse the acceptance of them, and to throw them back, as it were, upon the Donor, is surely little other than profane.

He who hid a talent was of old punished for his wickedness. What then is the offence of him who refuses to receive it? Such a resignation of our moral agency is not contended for or tolerated in any other circumstance of human life.

War stands upon this pinnacle of depravity alone. She only, in the supremacy of crime, has told us that she has abolished even the obligation to be virtuous.

To what a situation is a rational and responsible being reduced, who commits actions, good or bad, mischievous or beneficial, at the word of another?

I can conceive no greater degradation. It is the lowest, the final abjectness of the moral nature. It is this if we abate the glitter of war, and if we add this glitter it is nothing more.

Surely the dignity of reason, the light of revelation, and our responsibility to God should make us pause before we become the voluntary subjects of this monstrous system.