WAR
548
WAR
State is itself the possessor, and of which there is no
natural guardian but the sovereign authority of the
State; or directly the rights of subordinate parts of
the State or even of its individual citizens, and of
these the sovereign authority is the natural guardian
against foreign aggression. The sovereign authority
is the guardian, because there is no higher power on
earth to which appeal may be made; and, moreover,
in the case of the individual citizen, the protection of
his rights against foreign aggression will ordinarily
become indirectly a matter of the good of the Com-
monwealth. It is clear that the right of war cannot
become a prerogative of any subordinate power in
the state, or of a section, a city, or an individual, for
the several reasons: that none such can have the right
to imperil the good of all the state (as happens in war)
except the juridical guardian of the common good of
all : that subordinate parts of the state, as well as the
individual citizen, having the supreme authority of
the state to which to make appeal, are not in the case
of necessity required for the exercise of coercion;
finally, that any such right in hands other than those
of the sovereign power would upset the peace and
order of the whole state. How sovereign authority
in matter of war reverts back to the people as a whole
in certain circumstances belongs for explanation to the
question of revolution. With the supreme power lies
also the judicial authority to determine when war is
necessary, and what is the necessary and propor-
tionate measure of damage it may therein inflict:
there is no other natural tribunal to which recourse
may be had, and without this judicial faculty the
right of war would be vain.
IV. The Title and Purpose op War. — The primary title of a state to go to war is: first, the fact that the state's rights (either directly or indirectly through those of its citizens) are menaced by foreign aggre.ssion no otherwise to be prevented than by war; secondly, the fact of actual violation of right not otherwise reparable; thirdly, the need. of punishing the threatening or infringing power for the security of the future. From the nature of the proved right these three facts are necessarily just titles, and the state, whose rights are in jeopardy, is itself the judge thereof. Secondary titles may come to a state, first, from the request of another state in peril (or of a people who happen themselves to be in possession of the right) ; secondly, from the fact of the oppression of the innocent, whose unjust suffering is propor- tionate to the gravity of war and whom it is impossible to rescue in any other way; in this latter ease the innocent have the right to resist, charity calls for assistance, and the intervening state may justly assume the communication of the right of the innocent to exercise extreme coercion in their behalf. Whether a state may find title to interfere for punishment after the destruction of the innocent who were in no wise its own subjects, is not so clear, unless such punishment be a reasonable necessity for the future security of its own citizens and their rights. It has been argued that the extension of a state's punitive right outside of the field of its own subjects would seem to be a necessity of natural conditions; for the right must be somewhere, if we are to have law and order on the earth, and there is no place to put it except in the hands of the state that is willing to undertake the puni.shment. Still, the matter is not as clear as the right to interfere in defence of the innocent.
The common good of the nation is a restricting con- dition upon the exercise of its right to go to war; but it is not itself a sufficient title for such exercise. Thus the mere expansion of trade, the acquisition of new territory, however beneficial or necessary for a devel- oping state, gives no natural title to wage war upon another state to force that trade upon her, or to extort a measure of her surplus territory, as the common
good of one state has no greater right than the com-
mon good of another, and each is the judge and guar-
dian of its own. Much less may a just title be found
in the mere need of exercising a standing martial
force, of reconciUng a people to the tax for its main-
tenance, or to escape revolutionary trouble at home.
Here, also, it is to be noted that nations cannot draw a
parallel from Old-Testament titles. The Israehtes
lived under a theocracy; God, as Supreme Lord of all
the earth, in specific instances, by the exercise of His
supreme dominion, transferred the ownership of alien
lands to the Israelites; by His command they waged
war to obtain possession of it, and their title to war
was the ownership (thus given them) of the land for
which they fought. The privation thus wrought upon
its prior owners and actual possessors had, moreover,
the character of punishment visited upon them by
God's order for ofTences committed against Him.
No state can find such title existing for itself under the
natural law.
Furthermore, a clear title is limited to the condition that war is necessary as a last appeal. Hence, if there is reasonable ground to think that the offending state will withdraw its menace, repair the injury done, and pay a penalty sufficient to satisfy retributive justice and give a fair guarantee of the futiu'e security of juridical order between the two states concerned — aU in consequence of proper representation, judicious diplomacy, patient urgency, a mere threat of war, or any other just means this side of actual war — then war itself cannot as yet be said to be a necessity, and so, in such premises, lacks full title. A fair oppor- tunity of adjustment must be given, or a reasonable assurance had that the offence will not be rectified except under stress of war, before the title is just. Whether the aggrieved state should consent to arbi- trate differences of judgment before resorting to war, is within its own competency to decide, as the natural law has established no judge but the aggrieved state itself, and international law does not constrain it to transfer its judicial right to any other tribunal, except in so far forth as it has by prior agreement bound itself so to do. None the less, when the grievance is not clear, and the pubUc authority has sound reason to think that it can arrange for a tribunal where justice will be done, it would seem that the necessity of war in that individual case is not final, and even though international law may leave the state free to refuse all arbitration, the natural law would seem to commend if not to command it. Towards this solution of inter- national differences, in spite of the difficulty of secur- ing an unbiassed tribunal, we have in the last fifty years made some progress.
Again, the question of proportion between the damages to be inflicted by war and the value of the national right menaced or violated must enter into consideration for the determination of the full justice of a title. Here we must take into accoimt the conse- quences of such right being left unvindicated. Na- tions are prone to go to war for almost any \-iolation of right, and its reiiaration absolutely refused. This tendency argues the common conviction that such violation will go from bad to worse, and that, if sovereign right is not recognized in a small thing, it will be far less so in a gi'eat. The conviction is not without rational ground; and yet the pride of power and the sensitiveness of national vanity can readily lead, in the excitement of the moment, to a mistaken ju<lgment of a gravity of otTence proportionate to all the ills of war. Neither is force a successful means of securing honour, unless it be to a.ssure the due recog- nition of the rights of the sovereign ]M)wer behind that honour; while in the calm forum of dehbcrate reason the loss of one human life oiitweighs the mere offended vanity of a king or a [leople. The true proportion between the damage to be inflicted and the right vio- lated is to be measured by whether the loss of right
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