Leonard Cheshire morality of force

Leonard Cheshire morality of force

Leonard Cheshire talking on the morality of force at the RAF Staff College, Bracknell. Talks of the need to defend use of force by armed services against those opposed to the existence of armed forces. How use of force related to law, law of armed conflict and Christian concepts. Outlines main duties of armed forces and mentions use of atomic bomb.

1978-02-23

Audio recording 00:47:25

This content is property of the Leonard Cheshire Archive which has kindly granted the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive a royalty-free permission to publish it. Please note that it was digitised by a third-party which used technical specifications that may differ from those used by International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. It has been published here ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre.

SCheshireGL72021v20001-0001, SCheshireGL72021v20001-0001-Transcript

Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project

File Name: 'RAF SC 23.2.78. Morality' GLC talking on the morality of force at the RAF Staff College, Bracknell
Preservation Copy: 23/2/78
Duration: 47mis 30seconds
Transcription Date: 17/3/20
Archive Number: AV-S_002_1

Start of Transcription

00:00 Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: This is Thursday February 23rd talk to the RAF staff college, Bracknell, on the morality of force.
00:15 The Commandant, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to thank the Commandant very much indeed for inviting me again and for giving me a very nice, relaxed evening last night, which took my mind off the subject. I don't really thank for the mental effort he's caused me in trying to collect my thoughts on this subject but I do recognise it as a challenge to which I'm grateful. Because I think we all agree that this question of 'Where do we stand as regards to morality of applying force?' is one that affects everyone one of us very deeply. And it's clearly one that's intimately bound up with the aged-long quest of man for a united and a peaceful world, in which the armed forces have a very major part to play. I realise that it's a very complex subject; it's not a subject in which you can lay down any simple, all-embracing answer - that's quite clear. At one extreme there are situations where I think it's obvious to anybody - other than those who hold very individual views - that force has to be applied. There are other grey areas where one could go on discussing a long time. But I think one can by thinking about the subject - analysing it - one can discover certain principles, which at least will help us make a decision when the actual moment comes. And, although my actual brief is to talk about how to recognise the moral issues facing military men, I take that to mean moral issues regarding the use of force. Otherwise, I'm thrown into the whole field of morality which I'm not equipped to talk about and would take us more than these 40 minutes. So, that if we're going to confine ourselves to the use of force, I need to start, I think first, by defining what I understand by force for the purposes of this talk.
2:55 I'm obviously only talking about force of a degree that is going to take, or likely to take, human life and cause destruction to property. We're not talking about force required to apprehend an alleged criminal and put him - bringing him back to the police station. But I want to talk about force, not only in the actual use of it, but the circumstances preceding the use of it and the circumstances that follow after the use of it. Because I hold that all those 3 are related; they make one interrelated situation. And almost as important, I would like to talk about it not only from the morality of using - or not using force - but from the point of view our ability to be able to defend our situation as members of the armed forces against people who maybe opposed to the existence of armed forces and opposed to the use of force. I think it's very important that we should know - be prepared to hold a discussion or an argument with those who hold contrary views from ours and be able to defend what we believe to be true in a rational and in an effective way. I stress that because I have, once or twice, heard military men - though admittedly in most cases retired military men - in a public argument in front of the television camera, losing the argument simply because the other side had their facts and their arguments well-marshalled and the military men had not. So, in the course of this talk I'd like to come to that point. The most difficult thing is the question of defining morality itself.
5:20 Morality is a very general term, which can be used in all sorts of different senses and, of course, it's perfectly clear that different people from differing nations and cultures and in different periods of history hold very different views as to what is moral and what is not. And I think the best thing that I can do is to treat it from two particular aspects. I feel I have to go into this to a certain extent, so as to clear the ground so we know what we are talking about when we come to the concrete situation, but without getting drawn into it too deeply. So, I feel I should talk about it from the two aspects: firstly, of law and secondly, conscience. And in talking about it from the aspect of law, I'd like first to, briefly, touch on the notion of law - as law - consider the three different types of law that there are: the natural law, the positive man-made law, and the eternal or divine law. And then I, also, feel that I have to make a certain reference to the Christian view on this partly because we are, at any rate, nominally a Christian nation, but also because it is Christianity that is used largely by the pacifists and others who are opposed to the use of force to defend their argument.
7:02 Now law as a nation - as a, excuse me - as a notion - is defined - I suppose a classic definition of law is merely the will of the sovereign; whoever rules a country makes the law and the subjects have to obey whether they like it or not. But I think a better definition of law is that it is an ordinance, a command - of reason made, ideally speaking anyway - for the common good and promulgated by the person or persons who are in charge of the particular community or nation. I don't think I need to say much about this because everyone one of us is familiar with the idea of law and its necessity for any given community. Law is there for the protection of the community and to help it attain its goal, whatever that goal may be, and to enable it to live in harmony. And, of course, laws will vary very greatly according to what the society is. Of the three types of law, the first I'd like to talk about is the natural law. We hear people talking about the natural law. You hear of judges who will change a decision - has been upheld by actual law of the country because he feels that is goes contrary to the natural law. The natural law is a term used by philosophers to describe a system of justice that is thought to be upheld by the majority of men the world over. And it is a law that is not, as it were man-made – made by society - but that derives from the nature of man himself and his relations with - the fact that he has a relationship with other men and with society. Philosophers beginning with the Greeks, Plato and Aristotle, right up to the present day have argued about it and tried to define it. And their views have differed very widely, indeed. But despite all that - their - the appeal of the concept of a natural law based on common justice that we feel as human beings expresses justice, lingers. And the search for it, I think, still goes on today. Of course, we're a very long way from systematizing it - let alone getting it accepted by different nations. But I think we can find a common denominator. I think that most people would agree that we should in our actions, respect the human dignity of another person - that we should not do anything which offends, or degrades, another human being's dignity. Another description for it might be the golden rule: do unto others, as you would have them do to us. And I think that that rule - doing to others as we would like them to behave towards us - in many instances may be the best guide we have to tell us what is morally right and what is morally wrong.
11:15 The positive law doesn't of course concern us very much, expect as regards international law. The positive law is merely the laws of the country for its own - for the running of its own society. You know, of course, that there are such things as international laws relating to war, made at the Geneva Convention - the Hague Convention - and various assemblies and courts of the United Nations. And they relate, largely, to the justification for making war at all; for the mitigation of the effects of war upon civilians, prisoners of war and so on; and, also, limitation of the use of certain weapons. Now, there are two schools of thought amongst public lawyers - international lawyers - on this aspect. The first school which calls itself the Realists, argues that there is no point in having international laws relating to war, because no nation is willing to give up any part of its sovereignty if it feels that its own good is placed in jeopardy. In other words, when it comes to war the rules will be ignored and, in fact, the law is the law of the victor - whoever wins the war decides what is right and what is wrong. It holds that there is no such thing as a community of interests amongst the nations of the world - only each nation's national interest. The other view takes rather a loftier view and argues that, although, it is true that the rules of international law are not very often applied or adhered to and whilst agreeing that no nation can place its own survival in jeopardy in war by strictly adhering to a - one of the international laws - nevertheless, our only hope in the long term for peace in the world is the acceptance of the rule of law by the world community. And that, therefore, however difficult it may be - and however far away the goal - we should, in fact, where possible try to uphold the rule of law as regards international laws relating to war. For instance, in the treatment of prisoners and in interrogation techniques which I'd like to come to a little later.
14:27 The eternal or the divine law - which, of course, obviously some people will not accept exists - presupposes that there is a creator who created the world and everything in it, and directs it. And that the divine law could be described as the ordinance of the divine reason made for the good of the world and promulgated by its creator. It's to be compared with the law that keeps the physical universe in being. Obviously, the universe is only kept in being and in balance by the laws of nature, which material objects have to obey whether they like it or not. And in a comparable way there are laws that are not the arbitrary decision of the creator but are anchored in and derived from the nature of human beings and of our common membership of one human family. All the major religions of the world would agree with that in principle, though there would be certain differences in their idea of the particular laws. The way in which the Christian concept of the divine law - as I call it - differs from other religions is that it sees the Creator as a personal god who is a god of love and who calls us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and to express our love of God - of the Creator - firstly, by loving our neighbour, as it puts it, and by sharing responsibility for the welfare of the whole human race. Now, that faces us, of course, with the question that if the Christian believes that his first duty is to love his neighbour as himself, how can he justify him killing his neighbour, no matter what the circumstances. And this really is the central difficult problem around which a great deal of argument centres. Before I answer it, I just must make one preamble and that is that you cannot appeal to any single text of scripture or even a series of corroborating texts to prove a particular point. You must Christianity as a whole. In other words, you can't merely take one text in the bible and say 'Look, it says that he who takes up the sword will die by the sword' as a proof that Christianity refuses to accept the right to take life even when it's in the national interest. You can only interpret that text in the light of the Christian teaching as a whole. I say that because people do use isolated texts to prove a case and if one doesn't - isn't prepared for it one may find it difficult to answer.
18:30 Now, the chief antagonists of the right to go to war - as you will know - are pacifists. And I think it is very important to be prepared to answer a pacifist in a way that is going to be convincing. The first thing that one has to do, in my opinion, is to make it perfectly clear from the beginning that we, also, are men of peace. The fact that we are in the armed forces does not mean that we want to go to war the first hint of trouble. If we don't establish from the very beginning that we believe in a peaceful solution to every problem that is humanly possible and are prepared to go to extreme lengths to achieve that, what will happen is that we will both get polarised as I've seen happen two or three times. The pacifists appears to be arguing for a peaceful solution and we seem to be saying the moment there's trouble, fight. And, therefore, the audience that's listening will come down on the side of the pacifist. So, that is the first thing that we have to say that we only - we believe that in the world that we live in, it is necessary to be strong, it is necessary to be ready to stand up to an aggressor if he comes forth. But that is our last resort. Secondly, we must acknowledge the sincerity of his own views - he will hold his views with great sincerity. And we must show that we believe in his sincerity, that our goal is the same as his, we merely differ on the means whereby it is achieved. Pacifism is a very broad term, which embraces a whole range of differing views, including the non-violent movements such as those of Ghandi in India and of the civil rights movement - movements - in America. And, so, I think the next thing one needs to do is to ask the other man to define what he means by Pacifism. Otherwise, you may be arguing across purposes.
21:00 Now, the flaw in the pacifist argument, in my opinion, is this - and I'm talking now about the all-out-total-pacifist; the man who argues there are never any circumstances under which you may use force to take another man's life - In the first place, he always argues his case in the abstract. It's never in a concrete historical situation. He concentrates on how dreadful war is and, of course, what can one do but acknowledge that it is dreadful. But what he ought to be doing is to be arguing the dreadfulness or otherwise of war, compared with dreadfulness of the alternative. And he will hardly ever be realistic about the consequences of the alternative. If we look at the last war, I think it is perfectly clear that the alternative of letting Hitler have his way, both for what it would have meant to the people of Germany and outside Germany, it's perfectly clear that you had to stand up and stop him. Another thing is that Pacifism is only a theory, it is never been put into practice. Ghandi, himself, was not a Pacifist. He agreed to the sending of Indian troops - he advised the sending of Indian troops to help us in the First World War. You also find - or I find - that a Pacifist doesn't carry his argument - his belief - to its complete conclusion. If you say to him, 'What would you do if an armed man came into this room at this moment and started opening fire on us? What would you do?' Well, the pacifist - an out-and-out pacifist - will never answer that question. One of the extreme pacifists is Lord Soper and I was part of a television programme in which he was a central figure. I thought I was going to have a long discussion with him but realised that I was only going to have two minutes. So, I put that question to him. I said, 'Lord Soper, if somebody came into this studio with intent to shoot the interviewer, what would you do?' Well he said, 'I should have to know quite about the man who'd come in. I'd have to know his background, I'd have to know his motive. I said, 'Lord Soper, you'd be a little bit late, I think.' He said, 'Well, I'd advise him to go and hide behind that screen.' In other words, the out-and-out Pacifist knows that he can never answer that question. Because if he says, 'Well, I have a duty to the innocent people in this room, I'd have to stop him. And I realise that means shooting him,' then his argument collapses. He's, then, thrown back onto a discussion, 'Yes, there are circumstances under which you may use force, but where do they stop and where do they begin?' - which, of course, is true. There must be a point below which you don't use force, and a point beyond which you do use force. And the greatest intellect of all, perhaps, Bertrand Russell who was outright Pacifist in the first war argued that in the Second World War, Hitler was of such a degree of such evil that he should be fought. So, Bertrand Russell wasn't consistently a Pacifist, either.
25:20 So, if we now come to consider what do we do in the light of that commandment 'Love your neighbour as yourself'. It's the 'as yourself', of course, that gives the key to it. The first fact is that - and it needs no stressing - that in the world there is a principle of evil, as well as a principle of good. We find it in ourselves the things that we know we ought to do, we don't do. And we see it in other people. One consequence is that we have to assume the possibility of an aggressor on a global scale. We cannot - it would be naive to assume that Hitler was the last aggressor the world will ever see. I'm not attempting to say there is one now. But we have to accept the sad fact that it is always possible. And, therefore, in my opinion, we have always got to be militarily prepared whatever our nation may be according the needs of our particular nation. And what is more, we have to make it clear, which we did not do in 1938, that if there is aggression we will fight - we will not, we will not be caught unprepared. We must make any potential aggressor know that he's not going to get away with it, that we are going to resist it to the utmost of our ability. The second thing that flows from it is that because there is evil as well as good in the world, we sometimes find ourselves in a situation when we are not able to do what in itself is absolutely good. We - our only options are between one or two courses of action, both of which have a harmful element. And, in order to answer the - again to answer the argument of the pacifist who is always assuming that we are going to somebody who is an enemy - I'd like to take an example to show that there may be occasions where we have no option but to take the life of somebody who is actually on our side - a friend. And I would - for that purpose, just like to look at the example of a ship in which fire has broken out in the torpedo chamber and the Captain of the ship is faced with the decision that either he floods the torpedo chamber, in which case he drowns all those who are in it, or he lets things go with the danger that the whole ship will go up and everybody will be lost. Now, what is his duty in that case? Well, like most instances in war, he's going to have a very short time to make up his mind. He cannot be quite certain that he can get all the facts right. He can't be quite sure that he really knows how likely it is that the ship will blow up and that if it does how many will survive. He's got to take a very quick decision. If he decides that the greater good is done by flooding the torpedo bay, then he's got to do it. But in doing that he has in fact, by his own direct actions, drowned the number of people in there. I fail to see how anybody could argue that in doing that he was contravening the moral law, that he was doing something unethical. He's not doing it in order to take life, he's doing it in order to save life. But we have to take it one stage further. We have to look at whether or not, prior to this happening, he had taken all the precautions he ought to take to see that the danger of fire breaking out was reduced to the minimum. In other words, had he got an efficient ship? It's quite possible for a man to have done the right thing in flooding the torpedo chambers but to have failed in his duty prior to that by having slacked discipline on the ship or something. And this, in fact, is what I would argue happened in 1939 to us as a nation. We failed to take the steps we should have taken to stop Hitler when he was still weak. But once we got to 1939 there was no option but to fight. So, I say that our first moral duty is to make certain that we are totally professional, that we have completely mastered our particular skills, that we know the men under us, we know their capabilities, we know how much we can get out of them in state of when in case of emergency. In other words we know what our unit is capable of and what it's not. That, I consider, is our first duty of all.
31:54 Our second duty, and this is where we come to a degree to conscience is this, that I think we can say that when it comes to war, whatever happens is going to happen very quickly. We're not going to have much time to sit down and say, 'Is it right or is it wrong to do this or the other?' All of that should be a preparation that we are taking part in now, which should be a continuing preparation throughout the whole of our lives. To develop an instinct for knowing what is right and what is wrong. Now, I think that every man knows and recognises that deep somewhere in his heart, we have a conscience. And the conscience - a conscience is that inner secret core of man that prompts us and warns us when we're about to do something which is wrong. The Christian church upholds, completely, the inviolability of conscience - that if a man truly, and absolutely, believes in his heart that this is right then he must - even if he's wrong, unless he's wrong through his own fault - if it's an honest and sincere search for good and for truth, there is morality. But a conscience, of course, can either be stifled or it can be informed and improved. And we have a duty to think about these issues, to talk about them with other people or likely to have constructive views so that we develop within us an instinct that tells us, this is right, and this is wrong.
34:05 If we come to some of the situations that might occur in war - I know that none of us in this room are likely to be involved in taking the decision as to whether or not it is right to go to war - and I think that all I feel capable of saying today is that if it is a war of defence against an obvious aggressor it must be right. Whether other forms of war are right, I don't really know. But I'm happy to discuss it if you wish when we come to question time. It's very difficult to lay down a principle relating to when you may go to war other than in self-defence. But in taking that decision - to go to war to resist an aggressor - it's obvious that you've got to be very well informed, you've got to be very objective in your thinking, you've got to be quite clear that he really is going to attack and that it's not merely a bluff. You have to be very clear thinking in the timing of when you go to war, you might leave it too late, so that you had no chance of responding, you might decide to go too early. I think everybody would agree that who - those who are taking the decision have a duty to use their minds. And morality, in my view, is not so much a question of deciding between good and wrong, it's a question of using our professional ability. And I would like to quote an instance in which I feel the air force - the RAF - was at fault in the years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. In one sense in the way that is was forward-thinking and prepared for what was going to happen, you could say that it won the war - at least it won the vital stage of the war. But there was one very serious miscalculation it made in the pre-war years. It was asked to give an estimate of the effect of bombing on a city. And it over-estimated the damage that could be done to British cities by German bombing - I'm not quite sure of my figures - but by a factor of something like 20. Now, the effect of this was to make the politicians think that, 'Well, if we go to war we'll be obliterated. Therefore, whatever happens we mustn't go to war.' And one thing that 1938 - now I'm talking about Munich - shows to us is that an excessive desire for peace will sometimes make war more likely rather less likely had you been firm and definite then in that particular case Hitler could not have gone to war in 1938. The military odds were all against him.
38:08 When it comes to the actual fighting of the war I suppose you have to distinguish between a total war - which God forbid does not happen again - or a limited war. If it's a total war, then I must say that I find it very difficult to see what one can do other than to fight it with the - with one's total, complete capacity. I don't quite see what limitations one can put upon oneself other than the obvious limitation that you don't use more force than is necessary to win the battle or the war. If it comes to nuclear weapons being used against us or biological or chemical weapons, then I really can't see that we are forbidden the right to retaliate with the same weapons. If it's a limited war, we obviously have to fight it in such a way that we cause the minimum damage to civilians, if that is possible. What I feel is this - if to try and lay down a criteria by which we judge the rightness of an action - that it's up to us to weigh up all the consequences that we can foresee in the long-term, as well as the short-term, of the options open to us, and whichever we decide is going to be the better or the least harmful, that is the right one. And if we have honesty without any - if we tried to rid ourselves of emotions, of anger or whatever it might be, self interest, too - if we've approached it with an open, clear, objective mind and decided according to the information of available to us that 'A' will cause less harm than 'B', then 'A' is the only thing that we can do. But in that equation, we have to feed in the long-term consequences, as well as the short-term. We have to remember that we are all members of the one human family. We stand or fall together. We are all members of one human family destined for the same eternal life. And whatever happens in one side of the world, although we may not think it, ultimately affects us. We are truly our brother's keeper. And, therefore, when we go to war - if we have to - we've got to be able to come out of that war saying, 'Well, we never wanted to fight it, but we did our best to be just. We did our best to be merciful. And even though what the other man may to do us drives us to anger we've somehow got to hold onto the belief that he is another fellow human being, that he is capable - at least potentially capable - of being converted and becoming a better man than he is and we've still got to wish his long-term well-being.' That is how I interpret the commandment, 'To love your neighbour even if he's your enemy.' We can't love him in an emotional sense. We may feel resentment or anger or anything against him. But somehow we still got to keep in our hearts the remembrance that our real job is to ensure the triumph of good over evil. It's no use gaining a short-term advantage if it's going to operate to our long-term disadvantage, which in the field of politics I feel all too often happens.
43:00 If I take the case of the dropping of the atom bomb in the last war, I would hold against anybody that the Allies had no option but to drop it, because the alternative was an estimated loss of 3 million lives in the invasion of Japan. But I think one can question whether the dropping of the first bomb on Hiroshima, instead of an non-populated area, was the right decision. It would not have affected the course of the war - the Japanese took no notice of Hiroshima; they never warned their people that an atom bomb had been dropped. They we're still totally - the military, the Japanese military command was totally - absolutely - committed to fighting to the last man. And, of course, they received their warning that if they didn't give in there'll be a ruin from the air, such as the world has never seen. If we dropped the first bomb in open country, as I say, it would not have done - it would not have altered the course of the war - it would not have made them give in. But I think it would have altered the verdict of history. I find that even first-class - world-class - historians become very subjective and very emotional when they write about the atom bomb. You get a great many people who feel that the Allied cause was vitiated by the fact we dropped that bomb. So, what I'm trying to say is that we decide to take some action we do have to consider the long-term results, as well as the immediate results.
45:03 Before finishing, I'd like to look at rather a closer problem and that is the question of interrogation techniques. And the question is often asked, 'Is it lawful, is it ethical or moral, to use torture?' Well, of course as with pacifism you've immediately got to say, 'What do you mean by torture?' If we take a situation where we're at war and I have in front of me a man who's been captured and he possesses information which if I could get hold of would either turn the tide of a battle or, at any rate, let my side know when - where the invasion was coming and there wasn't very long to get that information from him, what is my duty? Now, this is a subject which you can go arguing for a long time and I - it'll be very difficult to come to a decision. One argument is, well, if by beating it out of him I can save 5, 10, 20,000 lives would it not be better to beat it out of him. The other argument goes as follows and there's a lot to be said for the other argument. If you once resort to sheer, physical brutality of the Nazi type the first thing that happens is that you degrade yourself in your own eyes - you become less of a man in your own eyes. Secondly, you may not get the information you want because the man who's being beaten up to that extent will probably tell you anything that he thinks you want, whether it's true or not. Thirdly, you escalate the level of violence, because once this gets known then you get retaliatory action on the other side and, so, you keep escalating the level. Now finally, they argue that the real way of getting sound information is to outwit him - in order words, by using your - a battle of wits between them - though without precluding the use of some physical intimidation.
[00:47:29] Tape Ends