War is on every horizon to-day—a black cloud that, coming nearer, resolves itself into a swarm of enemy aircraft bringing death from the skies.

Fear of that black swarm is hypnotising half the civilised world, and there is no decent man or woman but detests the new horror it has brought into warfare, the Massacre of the Innocents. A dead or dying soldier on the battlefield is an ugly sickening fact, but it is possible to cover it with the decent cloak of duty or even to dress it with glory. The woman or the young child dying in torment amidst the ruins of a home is plain, unvarnished, abominable evil, beyond palliation, beyond glorification. Yet it is an inescapable part of war to-day. Spain has seen it; China has seen it; and where will modern war be waged without it?

The Catholic feels the utmost aversion from taking part in warfare that involves such horrors. If it be a necessity, it is a most evil one. But is it a necessity? There are Catholics who say it is no longer so, that modern warfare can never be justified. ‘War has become impossible,’ says Eric Gill, Catholic artist, writer and craftsman; ‘a just modern war is unthinkable,’ writes Father Gerald Vann, O.P.; and Father F. Stratmann, O.P., in a book, The Church and War considers that ‘modern warfare with the all-round ruin it brings must be immoral.’ The Catholic hating the barbaric methods of war to-day reads these and similar denunciations with sympathy but in growing perplexity of mind.