Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/102

Counter-Currents that built these churches is as unassailable as the souls of the men who died for them. There are things beyond the reach of "high explosives," and it is not for them we grieve.

It is a common saying that the New Testament affords no vindication of war, which is natural enough, not being penned as a manual for nations. But Catholic theology, having been called on very early to pronounce judgment upon this recurrent incident of life, has defined with absolute exactitude what, in the eyes of the Church, justifies, and what necessitates war. From a mass of minute detail,—laws laid down by Saint Thomas Aquinas and other doctors of the Church,—I venture to quote two salient points, the first dealing with the nature of a right, the second with the nature of a title.

"Every perfect right, that is, every right involving in others an obligation in justice of deference thereto, if it is to 86