"If you were to do that," said I, "surely you would need some of the tools for killing people, like those you blame me for inventing, would you not?"—She would not speak to me after that.
In the Dark Ages, they who were responsible for inflicting upon heretics the most exquisite tortures, were the foremost good-intentionists of their time. They believed they were following the teachings of Christ, and applying them in their business and social relations. Their aim was to practise what they preached: "Love one another," "Love thy neighbor as thyself," "On earth peace, good will toward men."
So imbued were they with what they conceived to be divine principles that it was self-evident to them that there was no excuse for any one holding any other opinion than theirs, and that any one who held a different opinion was an enemy of God and man, and should be punished accordingly. They called difference from their opinion heresy, which was branded as the most heinous of all crimes. Those good-intentionists of the Torquemada type racked, flayed, and burned, with a meek and lowly spirit, for the love of God. The horror of St. Bartholomew was to them merely a frolic of brotherly love.
Advocates of disarmament, non-resistance, and the subversion of the military spirit are themselves most militant creatures. They fail to see that, if retiring, non-resistant pacifism is the best policy for a nation to adopt in order to get what it wants, they themselves should adopt such pacifism to get what they want. While they decry every manner of aggression, still they undertake to enforce their doctrines by most aggressive practices.
Never in all human history has any person or class of persons attempted to proselyte others to a doctrine of mildness, meekness, self-sacrifice, and lowly-spiritedness without attempting to enforce the doctrine. In so doing, the practice has been the exact opposite of the preachment.
Robespierre and Marat notably exemplified this truth. Before the French Revolution, Robespierre was noted as a pacifist of the most pretentious cheek-turning type, and Marat was a pacific moralist dyed in the wool. When raised to dictatorial power, however, Robespierre became the wickedest and most venomous of all the fanged monsters of cruelty in the history of mankind; while bloody Marat, clothed with authority, used murder as the sole means of reform. The actions of Robespierre and Marat were the exact opposite of their code for the conduct of others.
The advocates of non-resistance may be perfectly conscientious. It is not to be doubted for one moment that the majority of them are actuated by the best intentions and the kindliest of motives. Torquemada sincerely hoped to do a great good by torturing heretics in the Spanish Inquisition. He is notable among those who have paved broad highways of Hell with good intentions.
The hyper-sentimental pacifists are today actively engaged in paving a broad highway through this country, over which the hell of war is invited by them.
Devotion to the end justified the means to such a well-meaning fanatic as Torquemada. The same was doubtless true of Catherine de' Medici, who mothered the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The bloody Duke of Alva, Executioner Extraordinary to Philip II of Spain, who undertook the task of killing the entire population of the Netherlands, because their religious opinion differed from the Spanish brand, could not have been so enthusiastically devoted to the monstrous villainy had he not been inspired by what was to his mind the best of intentions.
It is remarkable what an influence a very little thing may sometimes have in shaping the policy of a people or the fate of a nation. Religious sects have been formed upon the various interpretations of a single phrase; a difference of opinion about the meaning of a word has set them at one another's throats.