Seattle University - Aegis Yearbook (Seattle, WA)

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SEATTLE COLLEGE ANNUAL 25 the social contract. In both systems, the state becomes a sort of deity, an aggregated idol or collective monster. To that new divinity, mankind is called upon to offer undivided homage. Here we have the cult of the state. Great men, viz., the leaders, who arc to disport themselves at everybody elsc’s expense, and the plebeians, nature’s misfits and botches, must all sweat and bleed for the state’s advancement. Naturally from such bewildering premises, we may deduct strange conclusions about war. But the abstruse speculations of Hobbes and Rousseau and the teachings of Catholicism are incompatible; theirs is a comfortless creed, a philosophy which conflicts with the consoling truths that buoy men up in their struggle to merely live, a system halting, narrow and shortsighted that seems to overlook or ignore man’s brotherhood and thr fatherhood of God. J. McKenna, ’15. CLOUDLAND Those fathomless depths of sky so blue, So near, so far, so fair to view. Were made by Him, whose power they show, Were made by Him for me and you; And they His handiwork declare, And to His greatness witness bear.— Thus human minds tho much they dare, Can never pierce those depths so fair. N.

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24 T II E V A L K S T H A merous controversies. But the principle of indirect killing: is one which the police officer applies on his beat, the traveler on a highway, and the statesman in his cabinet. It merely signifies the stopping of a transgressor in his violation of a right sanctioned by the natural law. Civil governments, therefore, ethics invest with the faculty to resist an unjust attack on the part of any foreign power. The justice here referred to, however, is neither distributive nor retributive nor retrospective nor vindictive. War is waged between equals only, i. e., states are on a footing of equality, at least to the extent of being mutually independent. It is within the province of no country, therefore, to wreak vengeance on another. Punitive expeditions, as we call them, can be lawfully undertaken no otherwise than by a legitimate government against its own subjects in revolt. Rebels have no belligerent rights. Against them alone may the rigors of vindictive justice be exercised. The state, therefore, possesses the moral competency to vindicate its rights by physical force, and what’s more to do so on its own initiative. When the relations between two governments arc “strained”, as diplomats express it, and no compromise agreeable to both can be brought about, there is no tribunal of last resort to adjudicate or settle the contention. In such cases, the final argument is an appeal to arms. Such an appeal, moreover, may Ik- not only a right, but even a duty in the strictest sense. What is the scope and intrinsic aim of civil government? Is it not the temporal welfare of the citizens as citizens, or as Suarez puts it, “the natural happiness of the perfect human community, whereof the civil legislature has the care and the happiness of individuals as they arc members of such a community?” Consequently, that good which citizens as such may lay claim to, in their social and political capacity, the state is rigorously obliged to secure, protect, guarantee and safeguard. Only one idea here remains to lx insisted on, viz., the absolute immutability of primary moral principles. Their meaning nothing can adjust to the requirements of utilitarianism as expediency. One and the same set of laws binds people and individuals, the great and the lowly, statesmen and private citizens. The safest code by which to regulate quarrels among the nations of the world is the commandments of God. Of course no drollery can in any wise approach the humor of present day international ethics. Listen to the pragmatic announcement of 0:1c distinguished oracle, whose renown the world has been celebrating for nearly a twelve-month. “Might”, he writes, “is at once the supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right, the arbitrament of war decides.” Of course, it decides nothing of the kind. “War”, he continues, —and the man seems to take himself quite seriously,- -“war gives a biological just decision, since its decision rests on the very nature of things.” Biologically, it is in the nature of things that a murdered man should stay dead. But it is likewise in the nature of things that the fifth commandment should continue after the dead man’s demise, to retain the totality of its binding force. In the opinion of grand juries the murdered should be looked upon as furnishing anything like a fair sample of biological justice. Again, by itself, assassination gives the murderer no right, for instance, to his victim’s property. It changes nothing in the matter of principles or of rights, not even in the case of those who throne on the seats of the mighty. To them, no les than to the commonest plebeian, applies the command: “Thou slialt not steal.” “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods”. Moses never intended that the Decalogue should be a perfectible rough draft, a species of protocol thatwould be leisurely codified, as occasion might require, in international courts. A good deal of the confusion about ethics in warfare one may trace to the leviathan a vl

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T II E P A L E S T U A 26 “3ltt ttie at 3lholfi” THE clammy quietude was unshattered save for the muffled “crunch, crunch, crunch” of a pair of swiftly propelled snowshoes that were unwaveringly kept to the north. The undulating surface of Nature’s purest mantle was unbroken, unsullied, except where some desolate pine drooped its snow-decked shoulders in silent depression, and the whole gigantic perpetuity of white was bounded on every side by a grey, sullen horizon. And the snowshoes seemed propelled as tho some extraordinary motive spurred on the man that resolutely set his face to the chilling North. The occasional sighing groan of some idly wandering wind, Hie pale deathly blue of the Arctic sky seemed but to lighten his heart and hasten his footsteps, for now and then from his throat came a husky version of a French love song. He laughed and sang all the way along his weary trail. He was happy. But how could a man be happy in this desert waste—alone—with only the sound of his own voice to break the awful monotony of an eternal stillness? For twenty years Andre Dclac, the voyageur, had been in love. Not the artificial, shifting regard which is styled love in some higher society, but the steady, unending desire for one woman. Only she. They had been together, as children, in France. There, as boy and girl, they had spent life’s verdant, joyous springtime in that land of light hearts and smiling faces. It was there he had put the crudely fashioned ring of yellow grass upon her finger, with the boyishly earnest declaration that tho he lived a hundred years he would love her just the same. And she, his little girl, Jeanne, with cheeks as brilliant as a sun-kissed cherry, shyly at first, but with an unmistakable sense of certainty, vowed to be ever true. It had been but a childish fancy; but to Andre Dclac it was the foundation of his most precious Idol—Love. As he thought thus there would come into his eyes the faintly warm glow of the untroubled heart and his face unconsciously softened to the gentle insistence of childhood’s pleasant memories. Then, as a young man, he had left for America in search of love’s most essential assistant —wealth. Into the North he made his way; working when the opportunity presented itself. In two years he had saved enough to pay the passage of Jeanne and her father to Nome. From Nome to Illyuk they had followed a small team of six dogs, guided by an Indian who seemed stoically immune to the cold. There, in that little village, far from the touch or call of civilization, she made her home. His Idol of Love grew and grew, and often as they wandered together thru the shady depths of the forest or aimlessly along the river’s rugged bank, the aesthetic in them revolting at Nature’s wildly artistic moulding, he told her of his dreams, some strange—others impossible; but all centered about her, and the sun of Love’s bright summer dispelled every encroaching shadow. Six years ago he had left to begin the quest of the “stake” that was to carry them out into the land of sunshine and flowers, away from the frigid clutch of the “Land of Snows.” That “stake” to Andre Dclac meant the beginning of a new life—a period of sequestered joys that should drive from his heart forever the call of the voyageur. He had left her amid one of the wildest storms that ever ravaged the North. Down the mad, tumultous Yukon he sped on one