[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
SIR,—The articles by the Dean of St. Paul's entitled " War: the Christian Dilemma " raise certain points which seem to me, a humble and unlearned Christian, to require challenging. The "Dilemma" with which the Dean is concerned arises from the conflict in the mind of the Christian between the claims of his Christianity on the one hand, and those of a misty entity, variously called " the State," " the community," and " secular civilisation," on the other. The claim of this " State " is based on the benefits which every man within it has derived from it. Such benefits include, according to the Dean, culture, freedom, and the protection of the Law, and these benefits are to be regarded by every citizen as a debt of honour which must be repaid even by engaging in a " just " war. His assumptions, then, seem to be three: first, that we have voluntarily incurred this debt ; second, that going to war will pay the debt ; and, third, that what will be benefited by our engaging in a just war will, in fact, be the source of those privileges which he mentions.
To this I would respectfully reply that the source of our culture, freedom, and security is not what we call the " State." That is, when we enjoy these privileges we are not bound to feel ourselves indebted for them to the British Government. We owe our culture, freedom, and personal security not to our own Government alone, but to Mankind, to the accumulated culture and knowledge of several scores of nations in about eight millenia. We owe our culture to English poets, German musicians, Italian artists, French philosophers. The Greeks had democracy, the Romans had drains. Culture and Law are not the invention of the " State " or the " community," they are an accumulated heritage which is claimed as justifiably by Germans as by Englishmen. If, then, we are indebted for these privileges to mankind, are we to defend them by slaughtering mankind?
Moreover, there is an unhappy fallacy into which anyone who uses the word " defence " is liable to fall. The plain truth is that, in these days of highly civilised warfare, " defence " has no meaning. Everybody knows, in spite of gas-masks and air-raid shelters, that it is impossible to " defend " people and property from a hail of fire and disease. All we can do is to go and pour fire and disease on somebody else's family and property—but this can hardly be called defence. The word is useless in connexion with modern warfare, even in speaking of concrete matters like wives and houses: how much more misleading to talk of " defending " so abstract a conception as " culture " or " freedom." It's simply a question of blowing somebody else's wife and children to pieces, which, according to the Dean, can in certain circumstances be the duty of a
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