But the practical standpoint is that, if anybody is to be killed, let it be the aggressor. Why should a peace-loving man, void of evil intent, be slain and not the man of evil purpose who kills? I know well that it is easy to pass from defence to attack and that it is difficult, when resisting attack, to remain strictly on the defensive; but against doctrines like those of Tolstoy no other ethical principle can be invoked than that of the right of self-defence. I know, too, that it is sometimes hard to say precisely who the aggressor is; yet it is not impossible. Thoughtful men of honest mind can distinguish impartially the quarter whence attack proceeds. In my work “The Czech Question” and elsewhere I dealt fully with the humanitarian problem of aggressive and defensive war and of Revolution; and, shortly before the Great War began, in “Russia and Europe.”
At Geneva, Romain Rolland, who was working in the Office for Prisoners of War, represented Tolstoy’s views. His hatred of war exposed him to much hostility and he was often accused of having sold himself to the Germans. This was thoroughly unjust, as discerning readers may see from his articles collected under the title: “Au-dessus de la mêlée.” Tolstoy’s doctrine was Rolland’s starting point, and it was in the light of it that I judged his pacifism. It led me, indeed, to pass my own humanitarian ideas once more in review.
At that time pacifism was spreading everywhere. Against Rolland’s pacifism I have nothing to say for he, who could not and would not fight, worked for the prisoners of war. But there are several sorts of pacifism―for instance, a pacifism of the naturally weak and timorous, a pacifism of the terrified and sentimental, and a pacifism of speculators. Yet another variety was that of the extreme International Socialists which found vent in their Conference at Zimmerwald on September 8, 1915. Very repugnant to me were the pacifists who defended the Germans as though they had been victims of aggression whereas they had long been and then were the bitterest foes of pacifism. I refer, of course, to official Germany which wanted the war and waged it. Among the German people themselves, as elsewhere, there always had been pacifist tendencies, some of which survived even during the war.
My point of departure is that war in the field is not the worst evil that can befall human society. But in war there is much besides the fighting of heroes. By the side of it there has hitherto been a whole system of abominations—lying, greed, baseness, vindictiveness, cruelty, sexual outrages and what not.
