The conscientious objector, on the other hand, feels bound to take the moral equation of all such particular instances as a guide to his diagnosis of the evils of war; and he comes thus to regard the expedient of war as altogether so bad a remedy for evil that he dares to doubt whether Christ would be seen bearing arms on either side; and he is probably strengthened in that conviction by the fact that modern conditions of war tend more and more to involve the weak, the innocent, and the helpless in the ruin and suffering wrought by industrial and financial exhaustion, invasion and blockade, and that “arms of precision” are so unprecise and blind in action that they are quite as likely, when directed against towns, to destroy the non-fighters as the fighters. And the conscientious objector finds a difficulty in seeing Christ serving a gun for the artillery of either side (however righteous the cause) which may have for immediate result the disembowelling of a mother while in the pains of child-birth, or the dismembering of young children. He holds further (and it is a tenable argument addressed to any Power which maintains despotic sway over an alien race, declaring such sway to be acceptable to the people concerned, while treating as “seditious” any reluctance to regard it as acceptable), he holds that, if the worst comes to the worst, submission to force, or mere passive resistance thereto, is more lifesaving, both morally and physically, than the setting of force against force even for the defence of “liberty.” He holds, probably, that Finland, in her policy of passive resistance to Tsarist domination, has better conditions and prospects to-day than Serbia; that the present fate of India, as the result of submission to a stronger Power is preferable to the present fate of Belgium; even though the Government forced upon it be more alien to the genius of its races than is the German to the Flemish. He may believe that in the long run India is more likely to escape from being Britainised by bowing to the subjugating Power, than Britain is likely to escape from being Prussianised by a hurried adoption of a similar system to that which she has set out to destroy. He may even think (for there is no limit to the contrariety of his views) that if England wins handsomely in this war by adopting the Prussian system of militarism, she is more likely to retain it than if she gets beaten. In a word he thinks war the most hazardous of all remedies for the evils it sets out to cure.