Christianity and War
be an efficacious, and not an illusory power, carries with it as a last appeal the subsidiary right of coercion. A perfect right, then, implies the right of physical force to defend itself against infringement, to recover the subject-matter of right unjustly withheld, or to exact its equivalent, and to inflict damage in the exercise of this coercion, wherever coercion cannot be exercised without such damage."
"The primary title of a state to go to war is, first, the fact that the state's rights are menaced by foreign aggression not otherwise to be prevented than by war; second, the fact of actual violation of right not otherwise reparable; third, the need of punishing the threatening or invading power, for the security of the future. From the nature of the proved right, those three facts are necessarily just titles, and the state whose rights are in jeopardy is itself the judge thereof."
I am aware that theology is not pop-
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