Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/26

 pacifist who ignored this aspect of old war, or denied the possibility that in such times war was beneficial.

In those days of primitive nations warfare had no rules, or very few, of mercy or decency. The conquering king and his men, undeterred by scruples, did as they pleased with the conquered. If it served their whim or purpose, they slaughtered a surrendered army, even the women and children, of a whole surrendered tribe. The kingly inscriptions of Egypt and Assyria boast of such deeds as glories of the crown. When the tribe was spared, it was often merely that it might work to pay the victor tribute, or to furnish him with slaves. If there were protesting voices they have left no record. But as early as the great days of Greece, we find a little faint criticism both of war itself and its methods. The thing, certain men thought, was an evil, a calamity. It could not be stopped, probably; but it was an evil nevertheless. There did arise, however, a dim coderudimentary morals of war. It was no longer quite ethical to kill women and children, to slaughter your prisoners. It was often done; but it required explanation and apology. When, some half-century before Christ, Julius Cæsar put to death the Usepetes and Tenectri, he was denounced in the Roman senate, and Cato even proposed that he be turned over to the Germans.

Christianity, when it came at last powerfully into human affairs, carried forward this moral