The Dominican legists part company with the deeds of Spain. Already, Isabel had been misled when her adventurous “tools”--the Conquistadores--instead of saving the Indian, enslaved him. Now the followers of Vitoria raise their voices against the behavior of Cortés and Pizarro. Bartolomé de las Casas in his _Brevissima relación de la destrucción de las Indias_ writes pages that are good reading in our own epoch of a “Society of Nations.” But the abstract logic of Vitoria was more useful to the State of Spain than the ethical conclusions of Las Casas. That supreme apologia for villainy and greed--International Law--is born and baptized under Christ. Thus Vitoria: “War is justified when it is forced on a State in the rightful pursuit of commerce, in the rightful propaganda of ideas--and _if the Spaniards have observed all precautions against taking their interests for principles, and their avarice for duty_.” What empire since has not “taken these precautions?” Christianity had been theoretically pacifistic. Jesus was reported to have declared against all violence and the resisting of evil. Being the Son of God, of course, His words were not to be literally construed. Yet such men as Tertullian, the Manichees, Saint Francis, Wyclif, More, Erasmus, had declared unconditionally against warfare. Chiefly, that prophetic Berber, Augustine, took war to be a usable weapon of the just. Vitoria, his neighbor in race and land, leans on Saint Augustine. The anarchic and endemic sin of war is lifted at last from Europe’s conscience. Spain invents the Moral War. “War,” says Vitoria, “is justified to right a wrong.” But Vitoria is careful: “Difference of religion is no just cause for war. “Aggrandizement of empire is no just cause for war. “_Principis gloria propria, aut aliud commodum, non est causa belli justa._ The Prince may not wage war to further either his glory or his own interests. And the wrong to be righted by war _must be commensurate with the results of war itself_ (death, confiscation, rapine) ere a just war can be induced to right it.” The friar seems to be going too far. Hear him: “The end of war must be, not evil to the foe, but good. “And victory must be enjoyed in Christian moderation. “The people shall not suffer through the faults of their princes. “_Finally, a treaty imposed by force--even after victory--is not valid._” Modern International Law is after all no growth from these uncomfortable precepts of a monk: it is a lapse and a decadence. The legal dicta of Vitoria are of an old tradition: they are a birth of the old breaking Synthesis of medieval Europe. International Law is the theoretic shred of what was once a spiritual Body. _e._ _The Rogue_ The Spain of Isabel and Ferdinand, of Carlos and Philip II--wherein is she great? In her idea and Will. These prove the Globe and bind it: these in their own way prove and make her one with God. But Spain, the body of men living in towns and huertas, is indigent and disordered.