What good is war?

War is large-scale murder, clothed in the appearance of some sort of sacred cult, like the sacrifices of the firstborn that were made by the worshippers of Baal, and that was due to the terror it instilled, the rhetoric that clothed it, and the interests that were at the root of it. When humanity will have progressed spiritually, war will be catalogued alongside bloody rites, superstitions, witchcraft and savagery.

War is for humanity, what illness is to health, or sin to the soul. It is massacre and destruction, it invades both body and the soul, both individuals and collectivities.

Einstein suggested that man has a need to hate and destroy and war would satisfy this need. But this is not the case: most people, entire populations, do not manifest such a need. However, they repress them. Then reason and religion condemn them.

Saint Thomas says that all things lust after peace. In fact, they all lust after life. Only the insane and incurables are able to desire death. And war is death. It is never the desire of the people; it is willed by minorities for whom physical violence is used to ensure economic advantages or, also, to satisfy deteriorated passions. Especially now, with the cost, the victims and the ruins war seems like nothing more than a useless massacre. “Massacre” and, what is even worse, “useless”. A victory over life, which is turning into a suicide for humanity. By saying that war is a “useless massacre”, Benedict XV has offered the most precise definition so far.  

That “uselessness” was reiterated by Pius XII in 1951: “All have expressed their horror at war, with the same energetic clarity, as well as their belief that it is not – now more than ever – the way to resolve conflict and bring justice. That can only be the result of free and fair agreement. That it could be a question of popular wars – in the sense that such wars corresponded to the consent and the will of the people – that could never be  the case if not in the face of an injustice so flagrant and destructive of the essential goods of a population as to turn round the conscience of an entire nation” (To the entire diplomatic corp, January 1, 1951. Our translation.)

Just as the plague is good for plaguing, hunger is good for starving, war is good for killing – even worse – for destroying the means of life. It’s a funerary industry, a factory for producing ruins.

Only a fool could hope to derive benefit from a massacre, health from suicide, energy from pneumonia. Evil begets evil, as a palm produces palm dates. And reality demonstrates, also in this field, the practical inconsistency of that Machiavellian aphorism according to which “the end justifies the means”.

The end might be justice, liberty, honour and bread: but the means produce so much destruction of bread, honour, liberty and justice, aside from human life, including that of women and children, the elderly and innocents of every sort, that this tragically cancels out the end that was originally intended.

In essence, war isn’t good for anything outside of destroying lives and wealth.

From: Igino Giordani, L’inutilità della guerra, Città Nuova 2003, pp.9-16.