ZWINGLI
war and think how it would be with him if he were treated in the manner in which we use our fellow Christians. Think, now, that a foreign mercenary came into thy land with violence; laid waste thy meads, thy fields, thy vineyards; drove off thy cattle; bound thy house furniture together and carted it away; slew thy son in the attack, who would defend himself and thee; violated the chastity of thy daughters; kicked with his feet the dear wife of thy bosom, who went before thee and fell down at the feet of this foreign soldier, begging mercy for thee and herself; dragged out thyself, pious, worthy, old man, even in thine own house and home, from the place where thou wert crouching in fear, knocked thee down in presence of thy wife, despite her cries, and despite thine own trembling, venerable, pleading gray hairs; and then at last set fire to thy dwelling and burned it to the ground,—wouldst thou not think within thyself, if the Heaven did not open and spit fire on such villainy, if the earth did not yawn and swallow up such monsters, there were no God? And yet thou doest all this to another and callest it, forsooth, "the right of war!"
Those who, for truth, religion, justice, and native country, venture their lives in war, are true men, and their cause is sacred. But as for those bloodthirsty, mercenary soldiers who take the field for gain, of whom the world is now full, and those wars which princes carry on, from day to day, out of lust of power, filling the earth
31
