Yet the whisper of our own day is, Does it? For a soldier, nowadays, enjoys equally with the civilian, who by his vote contributes to prevent or promote hostilities, the greater facilities afforded by the spread of knowledge for the exercise of his judgment; and it is to subject him to undeserved ignominy to debar him from the free use of his intellect, as if he were a minor or an imbecile, incompetent to think for himself. Putting even the difficulty of decision at its worst, it can never be greater for the soldier than it is for the voter; and if the former is incompetent to form an opinion, whence does the peasant or mechanic derive his ability? Moreover, the existence of a just and good cause has always been the condition insisted on as alone capable of sanctioning military service by writers of every shade of thought--by St. Augustine as representing the early Catholic Church, by Bullinger or Becon as representatives of the early Reformed Church, and by Grotius as representative of the modern school of publicists. Grotius contends that no citizen or subject ought to take part in an unjust war, even if he be commanded to do so. He openly maintains that disobedience to orders is in such a case a lesser evil than the guilt of homicide that would be incurred by fighting. He inclines to the opinion that, where the cause of war seems doubtful, a man would do better to refrain from service, and to leave the king to employ those whose readiness to fight might be less hampered by questions of right and wrong, and of whom there would always be a plentiful supply. Without these reservations he regards the soldier’s task as so much the more detestable than the executioner’s, as manslaughter without a cause is more heinous than manslaughter with one,[316] and thinks no kind of life more wicked than that of men who, without regard for the cause of war, fight for hire, and to whom the question of right is equivalent to the question of the highest wage.[317]