Excerpt from War, This War and the Sermon on the Mount Love your enemies, ' verily and indeed - but it is also written, thou shalt love thy neighbour.' Take as literally as you like the words, If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also - yet there is one thing they cannot mean If a man smite thy sister on the cheek look the other way.' If a wanton injury is threatened to one weaker than myself and I have power to prevent that injury, then, if I fail to exercise that power, I become morally a particeps criminis, and no casuistry can absolve me from complicity in the injury itself. No act is more essentially Christlike than the deliverance of the oppressed. Even if in a particular case the threatened party would be willing in the name of Christ to submit to the injury, it is no whit less my duty to prevent the wrong being done - if possible by persuasion, if not by force. The knight-errant riding the world in search of distressed damsels to succour is as good a Christian as the Quaker literally turning the other cheek. If possible by persuasion, if not by force I have written, but it is just to the addition of the words by force that many thoughtful men, Christian and other wise, will demur. Can force ever, it is asked, prevent wrong And, if so, under what circumstances and with what limitations? On the answer to this depends the answer to the further question whether a Christian can ever justify war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.