The strategic weaponization of want: Breaking the enemy’s will through deprivation

“ Violence, that is to say, physical force (for there is no moral force without the conception of States and Law) , is therefore the means; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object. In order to attain this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed, and disarmament becomes therefore the immediate object of hostilities in theory. ”

“ If, in the next place, we keep once more to the pure conception of War, then we must say that the political object properly lies out of its province, for if War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to fulfil our will, then in every case all depends on our overthrowing the enemy, that is, disarming him, and on that alone. This object, developed from abstract conceptions, but which is also the one aimed at in a great many cases in reality, we shall, in the first place, examine in this reality. ”

“ If we speak of the destruction of the enemy’s armed force, we must expressly point out that nothing obliges us to confine this idea to the mere physical force; on the contrary, the moral is necessarily implied as well, because both in fact are interwoven with each other, even in the most minute details, and therefore cannot be separated. ”

“ No war between civilized people has been carried, nor anywhere near carried, to the point of extermination. The living alone retain the power to admit defeat, and since wars, therefore, are ended by surrender and not by extermination, it becomes apparent that defeat is the result not of loss of life, save, at the most, indirectly and partially, but by loss of moral.
The enemy nation’s will to resist is subdued by the fact or threat of making life so unpleasant and difficult for the people that they will comply with your terms rather than endure this misery. ”

“ Yet, should you suffer yourselves to be deluded by an imaginary prospect of our want of success; should you refuse these terms, and persist in opposition, then surely will the law of nations justify the waste of war, so necessary to crush an ungenerous enemy; and then the miserable Canadians must in the winter have the mortification of seeing their very families, for whom they have been exerting but a fruitless and indiscreet bravery, perish by the most dismal want and famine. ”

“ Accompanied by every act of cruelty and rapine, the conduct of the enemy has been destitute of that forbearance and magnanimity which civilization and Christianity have introduced to mitigate the asperities of war. ”

“ In conclusion the committee feel warranted in saying that the conduct of the war, on the part of our enemies, has not exhibited the moderation, the forbearance, the chivalrous courtesy, the magnanimity or Christian charity which the spirit of the age demands, and which the practice of civilized nations for several centuries last past has generally illustrated. It has been a war against property, both public and private; against both sexes and against all classes of society; against the political, moral and religious sentiment of our people; against their honor and their public affection ”

“ Now, driving off some of our cattle, or burning a few of our houses, can never be pleaded as a sufficient and justifiable motive for laying waste the whole of an enemy's kingdom. Polybius saw this in its proper light, observing, that vengeance in war should not be carried to its extreme, nor extend any further than was necessary to make an aggressor atone justly for his offence. And it is upon these motives, and within these limits alone, that punishment can be inflicted. But except where prompted to it by motives of great utility, it is folly, and worse than folly, wantonly to hurt another. ”

“ War is the enemy of good society, degrades the morals of the people, causes rapine and murder, destroys thousands of lives, brings misery and trouble upon the whole people, creates a government debt that our children will not see paid, makes friends enemies. God forbid that any more sectional strife ever may grow up among the people; may there be no North, no South, no East, no West, but let it be a government of the whole people, for the people and by the people. ”

“ But a portion of the enemy’s territory may also become a base for our army, or, at least, form part of it; for when an army penetrates into an enemy’s land, a number of its wants are supplied from that part of the country which is taken possession of ”

“ All that the country yields will be taken for the benefit of the retreating army first, and will be mostly consumed. Nothing remains but wasted villages and towns, fields from which the crops have been gathered, or which are trampled down, empty wells, and muddy brooks.
The pursuing army, therefore, from the very first day, has frequently to contend with the most pressing wants. On taking the enemy’s supplies he cannot reckon; it is only through accident, or some unpardonable blunder on the part of the enemy, that here and there some little falls into his hands. ”

“ In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. ”

“ Lawfulness of despoiling an enemy's country—Forbearance of using this right, where things may be useful to ourselves, and out of an enemy's power—Forbearance in the hopes of speedy conquest, or where things are not immediately necessary to support an enemy, and aid him in maintaining the war—Buildings for the purposes of religion not to be wantonly destroyed—Advantages of this moderation. ”

“ The people, who judge of measures by the effects which they see produced, complain that our armies are weak for want of energy in the government; that no care has been taken for supplying them; that they have not seen the promised accounts of the public expenditure, and how the sums which have arrived from America, those which our generous allies have given, the rents of the crown, and the voluntary contributions, have been expended: they look in vain for necessary reforms; they see that employments are not given to men of true merit, and true lovers of their country ”

“ The enemy reasons in very much the same way. Now, if one or the other finds that he has erred in his reckoning that in place of being slightly superior to the enemy, as he supposed, he is, if anything, rather weaker, still, at that moment, money and all other means, as well as sufficient moral impulse for greater exertions are very often deficient: in such a case he just does what is called “the best he can;” hopes better things in the future, although he has not the slightest foundation for such hope, and the war, in the mean time drags itself feebly along, like a body worn out with sickness. ”

“ Want and ignorance and wars interminable had impoverished the mind of man and starved his moral nature. The scanty, slashed, ridiculous garments of the nobles and the wealthy betray an absurd poverty of taste and weakness of intellect. ”

“ But the moral harm of war is no less conspicuous than the physical. It fosters cruelty, callousness, contempt of life; it kills sympathy and the gentler virtues; it coarsens and leads almost inevitably to sensuality. After a war there is always a marked increase in crime and sexual vice; ex-soldiers are restless, and find it hard to settle down to a normal life. ”

“ He makes no fuss about it, simply gives me half-a-sovereign, reiterating at the same time that it would never do to let me starve to death. I stammered an objection and did not take it all at once. It is shameful of me to . . . it was really too much. . . .
"Hurry up," he says, looking at his watch. "I have been waiting for the train; I hear it coming now."
I took the money; I was dumb with joy, and never said a word; I didn't even thank him once.
"It isn't worth while feeling put out about it," said the "Commandor" at last. "I know you can write for it." ”

“ For that is what war does; while in a physical sense it paints most things red, in a moral sense it paints them black or white; and the black is the enemy, and the white is ourselves; and the neutral, if neutral there be, is a dirty tint which badly needs washing. ”

“ War satisfies the human hunger for a sight of the enemy. All the vague sense of evil which in peace-time makes the morality of our next-door neighbour a matter of anxious concern to us is now solidified in hatred of the foe of the country. Smaller enmities are patched, national brotherhood is recognized. 100 The country at war with us becomes the target of all our moral bullets. Tyranny, cruelty, lust, greed, and all manner of abomination dwell there ”

“ The evil seen in the enemy stimulates unseen good in the masses, to whom the sacrifices of war would be impossible but for the conviction that the nations have been sharply divided into sheep and goats. The abolition of war will come about when we have learnt to eliminate sham enemies and to recognize the real one within our own hearts. ”

“ If we sum up our arguments, we shall see that, from the most opposite aspects, the efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must be stigmatized as unworthy of the human race. To what does the whole question amount? It is proposed to deprive men of the right and the possibility to sacrifice their highest material possessions, their physical life, for ideals, and thus to realize the highest moral unselfishness. ”

“ War, from this standpoint, will be regarded as a moral necessity, if it is waged to protect the highest and most valuable interests of a nation. As human life is now constituted, it is political idealism which calls for war, while materialism—in theory, at least—repudiates it. ”

“ That moral resistance, which has reduced our enemies to confusion and despair in the midst of their victories, must not receive a less reward. Those battles which are lost, those armies which are destroyed; those soldiers who, dispersed in one action, return to offer themselves for another; that populace which, despoiled of almost all they possessed, returned to their homes to share the wretched remains of their property with the defenders of their country ”

“ It will vaunt economic strength, financial resources, power of organization; it will explain difficulties in the supply of food and raw materials, give the reasons for vexatious regulations and interferences with the ordinary routine of trade. When the war appears to be going unfavourably, it will urge the need of endurance. But it will not neglect the moral appeal. It will insist that the war is one of defence, or at least for an unselfish purpose; that victory will be for the good of the world, will be a permanent triumph of right over wrong. ”

“ And more than half a million of men, who have tasted the fierce joy of battle, have suffered the moral privations and dangers of the camp, are to be returned suddenly to us, and cast adrift, with no hope of finding immediate employment, and hankering for some excitements to replace those of the distant field. If little truth and little conscience have been at stake, these are the reasons which make wars so demoralizing: they leave society restored to peace, but still at war within itself, infested by those strange cravings, and tempted by a new ambition, that of waging successful wars. ”

“ Frequent experience of counterfeited miseries, and dissembled virtue, in time overcomes that disposition to tenderness and sympathy, which is so powerful in our younger years; and they that happen to petition the old for compassion or assistance, are doomed to languish without regard, and [374] suffer for the crimes of men who have formerly been found undeserving or ungrateful.
Historians are certainly chargeable with the depravation of mankind, when they relate without censure those stratagems of war by which the virtues of an enemy are engaged to his destruction. ”

“ War is seen to be but a symptom, a horrible outbreak of malignant forces, which we have nurtured and harboured in times of peace. These forces permeate the very structure of society. A new and fierce light beats on our slums, our industrialism, on the old divisions of class and quality, on the standards of comfort and success. Poverty, sickness, and child mortality—the whole hideous war of Mammon through which millions of our fellow-creatures are condemned to the perpetual service of Want—can no longer conveniently be left outside the operations of our religious consciousness. ”