strengthened in that conviction by the fact that modern conditions of war tend more and more to involve the weak, the innocent, and the helpless in the ruin and suffering wrought by industrial and financial exhaustion, invasion and blockade, and that "arms of precision" are so unprecise and blind in action that they are quite as likely, when directed against towns, to destroy the non-fighters as the fighters. And the conscientious objector finds a difficulty in seeing Christ serving a gun for the artillery of either side (however righteous the cause) which may have for immediate result the disembowelling of a mother while in the pains of child-birth, or the dismembering of young children.
He holds further (and it is a tenable argument addressed to any Power which maintains despotic sway over an alien race, declaring such sway to be acceptable to the people concerned, while treating as "seditious" any reluctance to regard it as acceptable), he holds that, if the worst comes to the worst, submission to force, or mere passive resistance thereto, is more life-saving, both morally and physically, than the setting of force against force even for the defence of "liberty." He holds, probably, that Finland, in her policy of passive resistance to Tsarist domination, has better conditions and prospects to-day than Serbia; that the present fate of India, as the result of submission to a stronger Power is preferable to the present fate of Belgium; even though the
