Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/97

Rh itself away by protesting that the other States which are in hostile alliance against it are behaving very wrongly indeed—though by its own doctrine (States being above morals) they are incapable of wrong. It cannot stick to its own thesis.

But what are we to say if that other school, which admits that the State can do wrong; but is not going to allow the State to be punished for doing wrong if that State happens to be its own? It is not that this school does not believe in punishment; it believes in it enthusiastically, rapturously, so long as it is directed against the wrong-doing of some other State. Punishment is good for other States, when they do wrong; without punishment the justice of God would not be satisfied. But for their own particular State punishment is bad, and is no longer to be advocated. And so you may say—looking back in history—that your country was quite wrong in waging such and such a war; but patriotism forbids the wish in that case that right should have prevailed and the justice of God been satisfied.

Now that school was very vocal in England during the Boer War; and I daresay during the Opium War with China; and I daresay, also, during the American War of Independence—very loud that we were in the wrong; but not at all admitting, for that reason, that it would be good for us to be beaten. But I think it should be one of our proudest boasts that, in the long run (not immediately—not perhaps