Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/65

Rh instruments of punishment ready to hand in case of need.

Is not that an extraordinary commentary on the law of punishment; that not merely does it fail to do away with the criminal within its own jurisdiction, but reproduces his likeness in all the high places of the world—giving him his justification by showing him that, where community of interest ends, States are no other and no better than he?

We all agree that war is a very horrible thing. But at one point it has a moral value which is not shared so obviously by other penal codes; a value which people are coming more and more to recognise to-day, and which will—more than anything else perhaps—help to put an end to war.

For when you seek to punish wrong by going to war, then you yourself have to share the punishment. Innocent and guilty alike must agonise and suffer and die. To inflict that punishment you must choose out your bravest and your best, and send them to share equally with those you would punish the sentence of suffering and death.

All punishment, inflicted by penal codes, really comes back to the community; but only in war do we see it shared: actively and voluntarily by some, passively and unavoidably by others. And perhaps it is that more than anything else which will eventually persuade civilised man that war is intolerable—that he cannot punish without sharing the punishment.