The State, on the other side, sees the very gravest danger to that edifice of worldly power which is summed up in the word “imperial,” if once it allows the individual conscience to pick and choose the moral terms of its allegiance. And the better the argument the conscientious objector can present from political parallels in other countries, or from the failures and blunders of past history, the more dangerous becomes his propaganda and the more rigorously must it be suppressed. The State’s claim to our duty to-day is precisely the same, neither more nor less, than it would be if it required our services for the prosecution of a second Boer War, a second Opium-trade war against China, or a second war against the Independence of America. The causes of the war might be no more reputable than in these cases, but the State’s claim on our allegiance would remain the same. “It is not for you,” the State says, in effect, “to judge whether I am right or wrong, if I come to claim your services for war.” Now nobody, I presume, is so convinced of the perennial purity of his country’s motives, or that its foreign policy has in the past been so safe-guarded by democratic control, as to claim that it has never waged foolish or unjust wars. Most reasonable people will admit that the State is, in matters of morals, a fallible authority. The claim is, therefore, that of a fallible authority for the unquestioning obedience of its citizens in a course of action which may involve the ruin, torture, and death of an innocent people, or the subjugation of a liberty-loving race. That claim by a State which stands based on the doctrine that Might is a surer remedy and defence than Right, is a perfectly logical one. I have not a word to say against it. But when that claim is made for the State by followers of Christianity on Christian grounds, then I am anxious to relieve the State of the entanglement they would thrust upon it. I am sure that a State which bases its authority on Might is weakened and not strengthened by any attempt to sanction its claim as being compatible with the Christianity taught by Christ. The less Christianity a State pretends to when it goes to war, the more is it likely to conduct its war effectively, and to find no mental hindrance in its way as it advances to its true end--the destruction of its enemies.