force? Do we not fight against the plague, and strive even to repair the
disaster caused by an earthquake? Or must we bow ourselves before it,
agreeing with Luzzatti in his famous article[13] that "_In the universal
disaster, the nations triumph_"? Shall we say with him that it is good
and reasonable that "the demon of international war, which mows down
thousands of beings, should be let loose," so that the great and simple
truth, "love of our country," be understood? It would seem, then, that
love of our country can flourish only through the hatred of other
countries and the massacre of those who sacrifice themselves in the
defense of them. There is in this theory a ferocious absurdity, a
Neronian dilettantism which repels me to the very depths of my being.
No! Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those
noble and faithful souls who also love theirs, but rather that I should
honor them and seek to unite with them for our common good.

You Christians will say--and in this you seek consolation for having
betrayed your Master's orders--that war exalts the virtue of sacrifice.
And it is true that war has the privilege of bringing out the genius of
the race in the most commonplace of hearts. It purges away, in its bath
of blood, all dross and impurity; it tempers the metal of the soul of a
niggardly peasant, of a timorous citizen; it can make a hero of Valmy.
But is there no better employment for the devotion of one people than
the devastation of another? Can we not sacrifice ourselves without
sacrificing our neighbors also? I know well, poor souls, that many of
you are more willing to offer your blood than to spill that of
others.... But what a fundamental weakness! Confess, then, that you who
are undismayed by bullets and shrapnel yet tremble before the dictates
of racial frenzy--that Moloch that stands higher than the Church of
Christ--the jealous pride of race. You Christians of today would not
have refused to sacrifice to the gods of Imperial Rome; you are not
capable of such courage! Your Pope Pius X died of grief to see the
outbreak of this war--so it is said. And not without reason. The Jupiter
of the Vatican who hurled thunderbolts upon those inoffensive priests
who believed in the noble chimera of modernism--what did he do against
those princes and those criminal rulers whose measureless ambition has
given the world over to misery and death? May God inspire the new
Pontiff who has just asc