You Gentiles
you would examine again and again the catastrophic madness from which you have just emerged. Merciful God! You have just slain ten thousand, a hundred thousand men, fathers and sons: in the red rage of combat you have disemboweled them, suffocated them, drowned them, torn them limb from limb, blinded them. A million loving parents, children, friends have wakened sweating in the night out of a terrible vision of last despairs, of contracted, screaming agonies. And now, when it is over, do you run to your churches, and with streaming eyes, fling yourselves at the foot of priest and altar, terrified lest the murder you have committed might have been avoided, lest at least some of the guilt rest upon your head? For surely if even the faintest stain of culpability, the minutest blot, a grain, an all but invisible fleck, an oversight, momentary impatience, pride, carelessness, leave you not utterly, utterly, utterly blameless, you have need of all the Divine Compassion, all the infinite forgiveness of God.
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