n at least that the theories of
war as a Moral Test or a School of Character bear a strong resemblance
to the commonplaces of religious consolation which almost any good
Christian will offer to the bereaved and afflicted. Any one who has seen
an innocent friend slowly tortured to death by some vile disease will
know the futility of the Christian defence (for these religious
consolations amount theologically to a defence) that pain ennobles the
character and "proves" the moral courage of the sufferer.[17] The
leading fallacy of the defence that war, or pain, is valuable as a
moral test is akin to the common misunderstanding of the word "prove" in
the saying that "the exception proves the rule"; the truth being that a
strong and noble character, one of whose corollary qualities is a
capacity to bear pain, is not less strong and noble if it is never
called upon to exercise that capacity. The San Francisco earthquake was
not a blessing in disguise because it happened to "test" and "prove" the
strength and flexibility of modern American architecture.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: I cannot help reproducing here a letter which originally
appeared in the _Manchester Guardian_ at the time of the Boer War, and
is quoted by Mr. Norman Angell in _The Great Illusion_, p. 281.

"SIR,--I see that 'The Church's Duty in Regard to War' is to be
discussed at the Church Congress. This is right. For a year the heads of
our Church have been telling us what war is and does--that it is a
school of character; that it sobers men, cleans them, strengthens them,
knits their hearts; makes them brave, patient, humble, tender, prone to
self-sacrifice. Watered by 'war's red rain,' one Bishop tells us, virtue
grows; a cannonade, he points out, is an 'oratorio'--almost a form of
worship. True; and to the Church men look for help to save their souls
from starving for lack of this good school, this kindly rain, this
sacred music. Congresses are apt to lose themselves in wastes of words.
This one must not, surely cannot, so straight is the way to the goal. It
has simply to draft and submit a new Collect for war in our time, and to
call for the reverent but firm emendation, in the spirit of the best
modern thought, of those passages in Bible and Prayer Book by which even
the truest of Christians and the best of men have at times been blinded
to the duty of seeking war and ensuing it. Still, man's moral nature
cannot, I admit, live by war alone; nor do I say