Obedience to orders is the alpha and omega of army discipline; without it a cause is lost from the beginning.  Numbers are nothing compared to order; a mob is not a fighting machine; it is only a fair target.  The issue of a battle, or even of a whole war, may depend on obedience to orders.  Army men know this so well that death is not infrequently the penalty of disobedience.  Consequently, a violation of discipline is usually a serious offense; it may easily be a mortal sin.

War being slaughter, the soldier’s business is to kill or rather to disable, as many of the enemy as possible on the field of battle.  This disabling process means, of course, and necessarily, the maiming unto death of many.  Such killing is not only lawful, but obligatory.  War, like the surgeon’s knife, must often lop off much in order to save the whole.  The best soldier is he who inflicts most damage on the enemy.

But the desire and intention of the soldier should not be primarily to kill, but only to put the enemy beyond the possibility of doing further harm.  Death will be the result of his efforts in many cases, and this he suffers to occur rather than desires and intends.  He has no right to slay outside of battle or without the express command of a superior officer; if he does so, he is guilty of murder.  Neither must there be hate behind the aim that singles out a foe for destruction; the general hatred which he bestows on the opposing cause must respect the individual enemy.

It is not lawful to wantonly torture or maim an enemy, whoever or whatever he may be, however great his crime.  Not even the express command of a superior officer can justify such doings, because it is barbarity, pure and unmitigated.  In war these things are morally just what they would be if they were perpetrated in the heart of peace and civilization by a gang of thugs.  These are abominations that, not only disgrace the flag under which they are committed, but even cry to Heaven for vengeance.

CHAPTER LXXIII.  THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

Herod, the Bloody, slew all under two.  A modern Moloch, a creature of lust and blood, disguised often under the cloak of respectability, stalks through a Christian land denying the babe the right to be born at all, demanding that it be crushed as soon as conceived.  There is murder and murder; but this is the most heartless, cowardly and brutal on the catalogue of crime.

It is bad enough to cut down an enemy, to shoot him in the back; but when it comes to slaying a victim as helpless as a babe, incapable of entering a protest, innocent of all wrong save that of existing; when even baptism is denied it, and thereby the sight of God for all eternity; when finally the victim is one’s own flesh and blood, the language of hell alone is capable of qualifying such deeds.