Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/296

274 religious pageant. More than half the man saints on the Russian Calendar are warriors, and the rest are simply monks and hermits.

Still as wars go on they change in type. Fighting has ceased to be a praising of God. There is no raining of splendid blows on the Saracen's head. War for the common soldier has ceased to be fighting, and has become "obeying orders." The soldier does not even know whither his shot has sped. He seldom or never shoots at a man; he shoots at a vague general man called the enemy. He also knows that no one is trying to kill him personally, and that he in his turn is also part of a vague impersonal man—the enemy of the man on the other side.

War becomes a standing to be killed for one's country, and an obeying of orders.

It is a noble and a Christian thing to die for one's native land. It is also one's duty to obey the orders of those put in authority over us. The question is, Are those who direct the war acting in a Christian spirit? They in their turn obey orders of those in authority over them—the Generals, the Commander-in-Chief, the Government, the Tsar. They must render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's.

Is it then Christianity in the Tsar to make war, or to answer force by force? Some Russians say, "It depends on the cause. A war to protect little Servia is a good and Christian war." Others say, "It does not depend on the cause. No cause, not even the best in the world, can justify the carrying on of war; of that wholesale and organised murder which goes by the name of war." So we come to the Russian pacifists, and those who believe that any peace is better than the justest war. They declare that war is evil in itself. They offer no compromise on the subject. In time of peace the Pacifists have a great following, and they seem to be in a majority; but when war breaks out a great number who merely