law, may with humble assurance
and firm faith pray for and expect the benediction of the Lord of Hosts.
The Christian doctrine of war is admirably summarized by Burke in the
words:--"The blood of man is well shed for our family, for our friends,
for our God, for our country, for our kind; the rest is vanity; the rest
is crime."[46]

FOOTNOTE:

[46] Burke. _Regicide Peace_, vi, 145.

IV. FORCE AS A MORAL INSTRUMENT

Force, in short, has a proper and necessary place in the ethical sphere.
It is an indispensable instrument of the will to righteousness. The good
man and the good government resolve, in the spirit of the Lord, that
certain abominations shall not take place. They express their will in a
law. That law remains futile, it is a mockery and a fraud, unless they
are prepared to enforce it by all the means in their power, even if need
be by the shedding of blood. Much, no doubt, can and will be done to
secure obedience by education, by persuasion, and by appeal. Every
effort will be made to prevent the evildoer, and to convert him to the
good way. But the fact has to be faced that there are in the world
insensate scoundrels and hardened malefactors wholly beyond the reach of
education, persuasion, and appeal; men who have deliberately chosen evil
to be their good, and have made a binding compact with the powers of
darkness. With them force is the only possible argument. Unless it is
applied, there is nothing to prevent them from dominating the earth,
defying all law, and establishing the kingdom of the devil. At the back
of all effective law there is, in fact, physical force. Behind the
police stands the army. The magistrate would be wholly ineffective
without the soldier. The criminal population would laugh civilian
restraints to scorn, if it did not know that out of sight, but never far
away, are the bayonets and the guns of the ultimate defenders of the
peace. The salvation of the criminal is not everything: the salvation of
Society is more. Society would perish in a day if the basis of force
were removed from beneath the fabric of law. One of the falsest of false
generalizations is that which says that "force is no remedy." It is in
many cases the only remedy. In other cases it is better than a remedy;
it is a sovereign preventive of wrong. Force is the very essence of
government. By its means countless evils have been suppressed in the
past, such as highway-robbery, private war, duelling, piracy,
s