Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project
Title
Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project
Description
Leonard Cheshire talk on the morality of force at RAF Staff College Cranwell. Defines morality and speaks of law and conscience. Covers international laws which is man-made as well as natural and divine law. Introduced aspects of Christianity with respect to law. Followed by a detail discussion on conscience. Covers rights of nations to go to war and some aspects of pacifism and religion. Uses historical analogy of lead up to the war to illustrate his points. Goes on to discuss use of air forces and bombardment. Comments on type of war and use of atom bomb. Draws conclusions. Submitted with caption 'Leonard Cheshire lecture at RAF Staff College Cranwell on 20 September 1978 on moral issues facing serving men, Leonard draws on own experience of war and Christian faith'.
Creator
Date
1978-09-20
Coverage
Language
Type
Format
Audio recording 00:47:25
Publisher
Rights
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.
Identifier
SCheshireGL72021v20005-0001, SCheshireGL72021v20005-0001-Transcript
Transcription
Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project
File Title: GLC talk on the morality of force at RAF Staff College Cranwell. Recorded 20 September 1978. Preservation copy
Duration: 47:29
Transcription Date: 15/04/2020
Archive Number: AV-S_008
Start of Transcription
00:01 Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: This is talk to the RAF Staff College, at Cranwell, on Wednesday September, I think 20th. Thank You.
00:18 Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: Deputy Commandant Ladies and Gentlemen. I'd like to thank you very warmly for your invitation to me - or the commandant's invitation to me - to come and give this talk once again. I think I'd thank the commandant even more warmly if he had written to say that he'd decided to give it this time and would I like to come and listen to him [laughter in voice] because I am sure you will know that it is a subject that is extremely complex and difficult. And I am sure if you found yourself having to stand up and talk about it you would find yourself having to do a great deal of heart searching.
01:01: But we all acknowledge that the question - the moral issues that face us - or you as military men is a subject of great importance to the whole human family. It is a subject that one can not be dogmatic about - and I will not try to be dogmatic about it. But I do think that there are certain general principles that it is possible to arrive at that may be some help to us when the actual time comes - if it ever does come - that we have in one way or another to resort to force
01:50: I have to start by defining my terms of reference. The talk is the moral issues facing military men. But I am quite certain that the commandant intends that I restrict myself to moral issues relating to force - wouldn't want me to get involved in a comprehensive talk about morality in general, for instance, what you should do on that happy day when a letter marked inspection income tax and you have got to decide who much to disclose and not to disclose. So I am going to confine myself - I think - self evidently to morality in relation to the use of force.
02:42: I would like to talk about it not only in respect of the actual use of force - and of course the decision to use it - but from the point of view of our duty, as I hold it, to be able to defend our particular views about it in discussion with other people. And particularly with non-serving civilians - in other words -because to many of them its a very burning subject. Its subject that they haven't really come into contact with - they are talking from a remote position. But the attitude of a country, regarding the use of force - as we know so well from the 1930s - is very crucial. And I hold that every serving-man has an absolute duty to defend in a very rational and very effective way - as well as a sympathetic way - our view about the right and duty in some circumstances to use force. I would like to say that I have listened to discussions between pacifists and military men and usually the pacifist has come out the strongest in the argument for the reason that he is preaching what appears to be a good end - Peace. And the military men has neglected to make it quite clear from the beginning that he too is a man of peace - that we all want peace, we all want a just and peaceful solution to any difference of opinion - to any confrontation. It's only that we hold that there may come a time that there is nothing to do but to resort to force. So if in the discussion you don't make that position clear in the beginning, the two of you become polarised. So the pacifist appears to be preaching the better doctrine and the military man appears to be saying 'the moment anything happens fight.' That is what I have witnessed on one or two occasions
05:28: Now...The most difficult of our discussion of course is morality - what is morality? It is a very general term. I suspect it is used in all sorts of different contexts. And I think I have to spend just a little bit of time studying the question of morality and what exactly it is and by what standards we are going to judge what is right and what is wrong, given the fact that differing views of morality are held in different parts of the world, and have been held, differently, in the course of history. I think I have a special obligation to touch - at least briefly - on the Christian view of morality and partly because we are basically a Christian country, but also because Christianity preaches a God of love who calls us to love not only God but our fellow men. How therefore do we reconcile the use of force involving the killing of other people with our belief in a God of love?
07:11: Before actually coming to morality itself I'd like to deal with two aspects of it. Firstly law and secondly conscience. I think we are all familiar with the notion of law. Law is defined by the jurists - or the lawyers as a concept - as an ordinance or command of reason made for the public good and promulgated by the person - or persons - responsible for the particular society. Maybe the head of state, maybe the Government, Parliament or in a smaller society, like the armed forces or the police, by the authorities responsible for that particular society. We all know that unless we are governed by laws we can't operate as a society or as a nation in an orderly - that to break the law in anyway to a major degree brings chaos and disorder. But we are only concerned with that aspect of law - by which I mean man made law - in so far as international laws concerning the use of force are concerned. There is the Geneva convention, the Hague convention, and various other United Nations resolutions, which have made laws that are supposed to be binding upon nations relating to war. They concern mostly the condition under which you have the right to go to war - I think that is restricted to defence against aggression - laws mitigating the affect of war - particularly on civilians - and the treatment of prisoners of war. I think that probably as military men you have a duty to study those laws and know, to a certain extent, what they are
09:52: There are two views on these international laws. One, that calls itself the realistic view is that 'well nobody follows them anyway and no nation is going to jeopardise its only safety ... if its safety is at risk by adhering to one of these laws, so why bother about them'. The other view is the more loftier view and says 'yes there are difficulties in the way of adhering to these laws, but unless the family of nations - our human family - is eventually governed by the rule of law - unless we uphold the rule of law - we have no hope of ever reaching a position where there is world peace and therefore we should try to uphold it - we should do our best. If in fact our safety is totally jeopardised by adhering to one of those laws - well then regretfully we have to forget it - but let us do our best to see that its upheld.
11:15: In addition to the man-made laws - or the positive laws its sometimes called - there is another kind of law altogether. There is the natural law and the divine law - although I realise that some people will deny the existence of the latter and some will even argue against the natural law. The natural law is what philosophers and others consider to be a system of justice upheld by the majority of men throughout the world. It was a concept first worked out by the Ancient Greeks and which has been worked upon by different people in different ways ever since. In spite of being rejected and denied by some people the appeal of the existence of a natural - lets say a law that arises not from mans decisions about what is necessary for the good of society - but derives from our common nature as human beings. That appeal is still very strong. Of course, it has not been codified and were it would ever be codified, let alone imposed and accepted is very doubtful.
12:54: I think that looking at its common dominator - most common denominator - that what it propounds is that in all our dealings with other people, we should respect the human dignity of other individuals. Or put in a different way - the golden rule as it is called - 'we should behave towards others as we would like them to behave towards us'. I think in our hearts most of believe there is such a thing as natural justice. In fact, judges will sometimes override the law a country as they feel it is in contradiction with natural justice.
13:47: Then finally, and only briefly will I mention this, there is the divine law. That is to say, the law that is laid down by the creator of the universe. In the same way that nature is held together - the physical creation is held together, and able to function in order and harmony by a system of natural laws - which is the object of science - so human nature is held together and can only live together in harmony and achieve its ultimate destiny by observing this system of law. Clearly those who don't believe there is a creator will not accept the existence of a divine law. But, I think we would all agree that at least this is something that we do need to make up our minds about, because if there is such a law it is very important that we should know it.
15:02: The Christian, all religion whatever they are, maintain the existence of a divine law. Where the Christian view differs is, I think in two respects. First, the Christian sees the creator as a personal creator, a personal God, who calls is to love him and to show our love for him by loving our neighbour. Loving our neighbour perhaps might be more precisely defined as by being willing to share in the responsibility for the wellbeing of all men - not just our own wellbeing and not just the wellbeing of our own immediate circle. The other way that it differs - I think - is that the Christian sees himself not under a regime of law - so the obligation to follow it is the primary concern - but under the regime of what he would call grace. In other words rather than being obliged to follow the rules he is attracted towards the good and called to an imitation of the example given to using history of how to behave.
16:50: Now conscience - coming away from the external laws - I know that conscience is perhaps a difficult subject to discuss as so many different views are held about what constitutes conscience. But if we look at our day to day lives, we know that inside ourselves there is something that tells us whether we are doing what is right or whether we are doing what is wrong. It is not a store of knowledge about morality - what is right and what is wrong - it is a faculty that responds to a given situation. If I am faced with something that calls for a decision in the moral order there is something in me that will attract me towards what is the better and will warn me about the other. And if I act against my conscience, then within me, I find a conflict. I have what we call a bad conscience, I am uneasy.
18:02: To the man who has a religion that conscience is the inner secret core of our being in which the voice of God can be heard telling what is right and what is wrong. But conscience itself is not the final arbiter of what is right and wrong. Conscience is a faculty of part of our being which we have to develop and - Both by thinking about right and wrong, seeking advice from other people - But above all following our conscience. I think we can say that where there is an upright and an honest surge for the good and the true a sincere effort to follow what we believe could be right and true and where in addition we accept a share in the responsibility for all our fellow men there is morality.
19:23: Morality is not a closed - doesn't consist of a closed system of laws, whether you believe in a divine law or not, which tells you in any instance what you can do. It is something that is dynamic, which relates to a historical situation, in other words our understanding of the good and the bad will evolve with the process of time and we ourselves have to apply as our decision in a concrete situation. We can not just, in a servile way, follow laws and advice given to us by others, that is not enough. We are called to make a personal decision. And I think we can say that morality is an area in which all men - whether we have a religion or not - can work together and should work together in trying to solve some of the many complex and many difficult moral problems that face us in our present historical situation.
20:44: Now if we come to the crucial question. The right of a nation to go to war. Now that is disputed as you know by the pacifist and so for a moment I would like to talk about pacifism. But we have to remember that pacifism is a very general term which covers a whole range of different views and opinions. It covers the non-violent movement of Gandhi, the non-violent movements that took place in America in the 1960s and all sorts of individual views and so on. There is no organised system of pacifism. The pacifism – the only we can be concerned with - is the total out and out pacifist who argues that there are never any circumstances in which one may take another persons life. Now where I personally find the pacifist argument breaks down is firstly, he always argues in what I call a vacuum. He never - or very seldom - argues in a concrete historical situation. He will speak very movingly and very sincerely and it is necessary when we discuss with him to acknowledge his sincerity about the attraction of peace and the dreadful side of war. And by stressing those two he can produce highly convincing case for people who have not thought it out. But what he does not do is to go adequately into the alternative consequences of not going to war. And if you bring him down to fundamental basics and say to him 'if a gunman came into this room now and began to open fire on everybody in it, do you have the right to stop him?' in other words, shoot him as that's the only way you could stop him. I find he will never answer that question. He'll always talk around it. If he says no you haven't the right to shoot him then his credibility really disappears because if he is willing to say I am willing to say 150 people shot down for the sake of my principal of not killing the gunman then his argument is hardly credible. If he says yes, in that case you do have the right to shoot him then he has given away his case and all he is then thrown back on is beyond what point may we use force to stop an aggressor.
24:21: I also find that when you're talking with him if he changes subject from the philosophical and the ideal and say well now let’s look at shall we say apartheid - South Africa - he suddenly changes. Now he has got something he feels very deeply about and you find him becoming almost militant. He thinks in that situation you ought to go out and do something about it. So I find if you ... if you argue in-depth with a pacifist you arrive at a point where he's forced to give up the out and out pacifist that claim. Even Bertram Russell, who was one of the most outspoken pacifists of all spoke in favour of our fighting Hitler and extraordinary enough there was a time when he argued in favour of a pre-emptive strike by the United States, with nuclear weapons, before Russia had nuclear weapons, though he then changed very radically from that position.
25:49: If we look at the question 'do we have the right to go to war in the light of the Christian commandment to love?' the answer is that our obligation to love other people extends to everybody. And if we're faced with one man's life in jeopardy and another group of peoples lives in jeopardy we have to decide which is better of the two courses of action. We live in a concrete real world in which unfortunately we have to acknowledge that there exists a principle of evil as well as good. The consequences of that are firstly that there is always the possibility of a potential aggressor. An aggressor determined to impose his will by force on other innocent people and nations. And that possibility exists at all levels globally, as in the case of Hitler, in a limited way within an area of the limited area of the world or in a very local area in our town or village or wherever it might be. And faced with the possibility of an aggressor - and a very real possibility of an aggressor even today - we have a clear and absolute duty to be prepared to be able to defend our own country and other innocent and allied countries that are liable to be the object of his aggression. And what is more we have to be ready to let any potential aggressor know that we are not going to stand for it - that if he is going to March we are going to stand up and stop him. I suppose you could argue, looking at the 1930s, Hitler might have said 'why didn't you tell me, you Britain, you never gave me the impression you were ever going to stand up and fight. If I'd known that I might have done something different.' I don't say that he would but in that instance, we never made our intentions clear.
28:48: The other implication of the existence of evil in the world is that there is a mixture in all of us of good and bad - we know it. We found the good side and the bad side in conflict. And we meet it all around us. Now that means that we are seldom ever able to do what is absolutely good. Usually, we have to choose the better of two courses of action. Sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils. I think we can say that war in itself is bad. Nobody in the world wants to fight a war, but it may be the only thing that we can possibly do. And so, if we had to lay down a criterium of how to decide whether to go to war or use force or not - I would define it in my own words as follows. That if having objectively and to the best of our ability looked at all the consequences of the two alternate courses of action - either to stand up and fight or not to fight - worked out all the implications in the long term as well as the short term, and being absolutely certain that we are objective - we are not carried away by some emotion or personal dislike or anger - but done it coolly and calmly to the best of our ability - and that we come to the conclusion that by standing up and fighting less harm is going to ensue than by not fighting - then we have done morally the right thing.
31:01: We have to look at it in three different stages - in my opinion. First - what you might call the run up to the situation - the circumstances leading to the point where we are faced with do we fight or don't we. We have an absolute duty as members of the human family - one human family - to do everything in our power to promote the good of the whole human family - not just our own good. We have an absolute duty to try and resolve every confrontation situation by peaceful means if we can to achieve justice in a peaceful way even if it means making some sacrifice ourselves. We also have a duty - in my opinion - to be very realistic, very well informed about what a potential aggressor is really going to do. And finally - as serving men, military men, we have an overriding duty to be completely professional. To be totally masters of our particular trade. And I would like to illustrate that by one or two examples.
32:51: I would like to take the outbreak of the Second World War. Now I will have to make, in the interests of time, one or two assertions without defending them but I will defend them in question time if asked to do so. Now the plain historical truth is that right up until after Munich in 1938 we - Britain and the Allies - held the military cards. Hitler's generals said to him 'what you are asking us to do in the question of Czechoslovakia is military impossible.' He said 'I know, but they won't fight.' Now we did not stand up to Hitler, we totally betrayed Czechoslovakia. And by doing that we put Hitler into a position of almost total dominance. We enabled him to do the one thing - or rather we let him off doing the one thing that whenever wanted to do, fight on two fronts at the same time. Because Czechoslovakia in the heart of Europe was given away.
34:21: Now I hold that we as a country failed in our moral duty - both to ourselves and to our allies and to the whole world community - by not being realistic in the face of Hitler. We could have stopped him at any moment had we stood firm. But we didn't.
34:46: Now although this may sound strange the Air Force, to a certain extent played a contributing part to that. Although in another sense the Air Force saved the situation. The Air Force was asked to give an estimate of the damage that would be caused by aerial bombardment and it miscalculated - I am not absolutely certain on my figures - but on a factor of something like 20. And consequently, Chamberlain and the other politicians thought that if war broke out every city would be totally demolished. So they had an exaggerated fear of going to war. They thought 'anything rather than go to war because war is so dreadful.' But that exaggerated fear only led us into war and led us as you know into a World War which cost in the end 55 million lives. So, one can argue that being firm at the right moment and risking a limited a fight, may well have been a much better and more merciful thing than by waiting too late and finding oneself faced with a World War.
36:20: When it comes to the actual decision - should we fight or should we not fight - clearly you have got to decide is force the right answer. Is the timing right? If you start too soon you may have set a war going that you needn't have set going. If you wait too late, too long, you may be overwhelmed before you can defend yourself. There is very practical, very realistic questions which have to be answered and which call for very clear thinking. I realise of course that not many of us are going to be in a position where we take part in that decision. But nevertheless whoever decides it is deciding it on part of the nation. And the nation I feel - and particularly the armed forces - should understand the basic issues that are involved and what our duty as a nation is.
37:25: When it comes to the fighting in the war itself clearly if we fight you have got to go for it wholeheartedly. You cannot fight looking over your shoulder saying 'am I doing right, am I doing wrong?' I think one of our strongest assets in World War Two was that everybody knew that it was a cause that had to be fought and had to be won. There was never a wavering or a doubt. But at the same time, one needs to be just and in so far as possible merciful. Because when everything is said and done what we are after is the triumph of good over evil. It's good that one we want justice, peace and freedom. And it may well be that if we become … too violent in our way of fighting that we may vitiate what was otherwise a good cause.
38:32: Wars fall into different categories. There is total war, limited war and what we call gorilla - or terrorist activities. And our attitude must differ according to which category we are in. If we are fighting a total war, the question arises 'Is massive bombing of cities permissible and may we use an atom bomb?' Now in a total war, I find it difficult to believe that one can renounce the right to bomb. If in World War Two we had renounced the right to bomb Germany I think we would've probably lost the war because that would mean that your enemy would know that he had the complete protection of all his cities in which to mobilise himself, build his military weapons and so on. And I feel that would give such an advantage - assuming there was more or less parity in other fields - you would lose. Furthermore, in a total war, everybody is involved. And as the human race … progresses we are becoming more and more integrated. You can't differentiate between the man who is firing the trigger and the man who is building the weapon that he is going to fire. We are all involved whether we like it or not. I think we have to accept that a total World War is the most dreadful thing that can happen to us because if it does start I myself find it very difficult to see at what point you are going to stop.
40:42: We ask the question 'may we use an atom bomb?' Well in World War Two that was the question that involved me personally because I was there in Nagasaki when it was dropped. I feel bound to answer that dropping the atom bomb was the lesser of two evils. I cannot see how we could have done anything but decide to drop it. Though I have one small qualification. The reason is that the alternative to dropping the bomb - the only known alternative - was the full-scale invasion of the mainland of Japan. Now the Japanese military mind was firstly totally committed to fighting to the last man. And the American estimate of the casualties - they were going to land 3 million men as I remember in November 1945 into the southern Island - and another 2 million men in the mainland in March '46. A years further fighting and an estimated 3 million lives. 2 million Japanese, 1 million Americans and to a certain extent allies. Adding to that every allied POW was doomed because the Japanese had written orders to their area commanders that before retreating from an area prisoners were to be shot and that the moment one allied soldier set foot on the Japanese mainland all POWs were to be shot. The two atom bombs took all in all 150,000 lives plus, regretfully, the others that were injured by radiation. So if one sets 150,000 against 3 million its very difficult, in my opinion, to argue that it would have been morally better to let the conventional war continue. I find it a slightly dishonest argument to say that the atom bomb is wrong, we mustn't drop the atom bomb, but I agree to the conventional war going on if the conventional war is going to take that much more human life. I don't honestly feel that is a fair argument.
43:33: So in the case of World War Two I feel that the decision to drop the bomb was right. I think the pity was that the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Had the bomb been dropped in open country as a warning it would not have made any difference to what the Japanese did because when it was dropped on Hiroshima, Truman did give a warning. He said if you don't give in there will be a reign of destruction from the skies such as the world has ever seen. The Japanese did not respond, they did not even tell their own people that an atom bomb had been dropped and at that stage, they were determined to carry on fighting. So they wouldn't have given in had the bomb been dropped on open country. But what would have been the difference is the verdict of history. Because the dropping of that bomb out of an unsuspecting sky onto a city has caused many people to think that we were unjust. They tend to have forgotten the concentration camps in which 20 million at least, lives were lost, and most of them not participants in the war. And is the bomb that occupies their mind. So there we have a case where the right thing was done but the way in which it was done has to a certain extent vitiated what was otherwise a just cause.
45:29: I think we have to face up to the question the present historical situation 'can there ever be a justification for using an atom bomb?'. … And I honestly think we have to say yes there could conceivably be. If an aggressor were to March with the intention of occupying major part of the world, should we say all of Europe, and it came to an all-out fight with the aggressor going to use an atom bomb - well either we say that we give in and don't fight or we use an atom bomb ourselves. I cannot see that if atom bombs are going to be used, or biological … weapons or chemical weapons are going to be used - I'd like to exclude from that biological - that if either atomic or chemical weapons are going to be used against whoever we are, I feel that whatever the results may be we have the right to use them ourselves or else to say we give in, we don't fight.
47:06: I don't believe you can give an answer in the abstract. I think it can only be decided in the actual historical situation having in mind what would be the consequences to the occupied areas if the aggressor was allowed to march.
47:28: Finally … I come to the after...[Cuts out, unclear]
47:34 Speech ends
End of Transcription
File Title: GLC talk on the morality of force at RAF Staff College Cranwell. Recorded 20 September 1978. Preservation copy
Duration: 47:29
Transcription Date: 15/04/2020
Archive Number: AV-S_008
Start of Transcription
00:01 Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: This is talk to the RAF Staff College, at Cranwell, on Wednesday September, I think 20th. Thank You.
00:18 Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: Deputy Commandant Ladies and Gentlemen. I'd like to thank you very warmly for your invitation to me - or the commandant's invitation to me - to come and give this talk once again. I think I'd thank the commandant even more warmly if he had written to say that he'd decided to give it this time and would I like to come and listen to him [laughter in voice] because I am sure you will know that it is a subject that is extremely complex and difficult. And I am sure if you found yourself having to stand up and talk about it you would find yourself having to do a great deal of heart searching.
01:01: But we all acknowledge that the question - the moral issues that face us - or you as military men is a subject of great importance to the whole human family. It is a subject that one can not be dogmatic about - and I will not try to be dogmatic about it. But I do think that there are certain general principles that it is possible to arrive at that may be some help to us when the actual time comes - if it ever does come - that we have in one way or another to resort to force
01:50: I have to start by defining my terms of reference. The talk is the moral issues facing military men. But I am quite certain that the commandant intends that I restrict myself to moral issues relating to force - wouldn't want me to get involved in a comprehensive talk about morality in general, for instance, what you should do on that happy day when a letter marked inspection income tax and you have got to decide who much to disclose and not to disclose. So I am going to confine myself - I think - self evidently to morality in relation to the use of force.
02:42: I would like to talk about it not only in respect of the actual use of force - and of course the decision to use it - but from the point of view of our duty, as I hold it, to be able to defend our particular views about it in discussion with other people. And particularly with non-serving civilians - in other words -because to many of them its a very burning subject. Its subject that they haven't really come into contact with - they are talking from a remote position. But the attitude of a country, regarding the use of force - as we know so well from the 1930s - is very crucial. And I hold that every serving-man has an absolute duty to defend in a very rational and very effective way - as well as a sympathetic way - our view about the right and duty in some circumstances to use force. I would like to say that I have listened to discussions between pacifists and military men and usually the pacifist has come out the strongest in the argument for the reason that he is preaching what appears to be a good end - Peace. And the military men has neglected to make it quite clear from the beginning that he too is a man of peace - that we all want peace, we all want a just and peaceful solution to any difference of opinion - to any confrontation. It's only that we hold that there may come a time that there is nothing to do but to resort to force. So if in the discussion you don't make that position clear in the beginning, the two of you become polarised. So the pacifist appears to be preaching the better doctrine and the military man appears to be saying 'the moment anything happens fight.' That is what I have witnessed on one or two occasions
05:28: Now...The most difficult of our discussion of course is morality - what is morality? It is a very general term. I suspect it is used in all sorts of different contexts. And I think I have to spend just a little bit of time studying the question of morality and what exactly it is and by what standards we are going to judge what is right and what is wrong, given the fact that differing views of morality are held in different parts of the world, and have been held, differently, in the course of history. I think I have a special obligation to touch - at least briefly - on the Christian view of morality and partly because we are basically a Christian country, but also because Christianity preaches a God of love who calls us to love not only God but our fellow men. How therefore do we reconcile the use of force involving the killing of other people with our belief in a God of love?
07:11: Before actually coming to morality itself I'd like to deal with two aspects of it. Firstly law and secondly conscience. I think we are all familiar with the notion of law. Law is defined by the jurists - or the lawyers as a concept - as an ordinance or command of reason made for the public good and promulgated by the person - or persons - responsible for the particular society. Maybe the head of state, maybe the Government, Parliament or in a smaller society, like the armed forces or the police, by the authorities responsible for that particular society. We all know that unless we are governed by laws we can't operate as a society or as a nation in an orderly - that to break the law in anyway to a major degree brings chaos and disorder. But we are only concerned with that aspect of law - by which I mean man made law - in so far as international laws concerning the use of force are concerned. There is the Geneva convention, the Hague convention, and various other United Nations resolutions, which have made laws that are supposed to be binding upon nations relating to war. They concern mostly the condition under which you have the right to go to war - I think that is restricted to defence against aggression - laws mitigating the affect of war - particularly on civilians - and the treatment of prisoners of war. I think that probably as military men you have a duty to study those laws and know, to a certain extent, what they are
09:52: There are two views on these international laws. One, that calls itself the realistic view is that 'well nobody follows them anyway and no nation is going to jeopardise its only safety ... if its safety is at risk by adhering to one of these laws, so why bother about them'. The other view is the more loftier view and says 'yes there are difficulties in the way of adhering to these laws, but unless the family of nations - our human family - is eventually governed by the rule of law - unless we uphold the rule of law - we have no hope of ever reaching a position where there is world peace and therefore we should try to uphold it - we should do our best. If in fact our safety is totally jeopardised by adhering to one of those laws - well then regretfully we have to forget it - but let us do our best to see that its upheld.
11:15: In addition to the man-made laws - or the positive laws its sometimes called - there is another kind of law altogether. There is the natural law and the divine law - although I realise that some people will deny the existence of the latter and some will even argue against the natural law. The natural law is what philosophers and others consider to be a system of justice upheld by the majority of men throughout the world. It was a concept first worked out by the Ancient Greeks and which has been worked upon by different people in different ways ever since. In spite of being rejected and denied by some people the appeal of the existence of a natural - lets say a law that arises not from mans decisions about what is necessary for the good of society - but derives from our common nature as human beings. That appeal is still very strong. Of course, it has not been codified and were it would ever be codified, let alone imposed and accepted is very doubtful.
12:54: I think that looking at its common dominator - most common denominator - that what it propounds is that in all our dealings with other people, we should respect the human dignity of other individuals. Or put in a different way - the golden rule as it is called - 'we should behave towards others as we would like them to behave towards us'. I think in our hearts most of believe there is such a thing as natural justice. In fact, judges will sometimes override the law a country as they feel it is in contradiction with natural justice.
13:47: Then finally, and only briefly will I mention this, there is the divine law. That is to say, the law that is laid down by the creator of the universe. In the same way that nature is held together - the physical creation is held together, and able to function in order and harmony by a system of natural laws - which is the object of science - so human nature is held together and can only live together in harmony and achieve its ultimate destiny by observing this system of law. Clearly those who don't believe there is a creator will not accept the existence of a divine law. But, I think we would all agree that at least this is something that we do need to make up our minds about, because if there is such a law it is very important that we should know it.
15:02: The Christian, all religion whatever they are, maintain the existence of a divine law. Where the Christian view differs is, I think in two respects. First, the Christian sees the creator as a personal creator, a personal God, who calls is to love him and to show our love for him by loving our neighbour. Loving our neighbour perhaps might be more precisely defined as by being willing to share in the responsibility for the wellbeing of all men - not just our own wellbeing and not just the wellbeing of our own immediate circle. The other way that it differs - I think - is that the Christian sees himself not under a regime of law - so the obligation to follow it is the primary concern - but under the regime of what he would call grace. In other words rather than being obliged to follow the rules he is attracted towards the good and called to an imitation of the example given to using history of how to behave.
16:50: Now conscience - coming away from the external laws - I know that conscience is perhaps a difficult subject to discuss as so many different views are held about what constitutes conscience. But if we look at our day to day lives, we know that inside ourselves there is something that tells us whether we are doing what is right or whether we are doing what is wrong. It is not a store of knowledge about morality - what is right and what is wrong - it is a faculty that responds to a given situation. If I am faced with something that calls for a decision in the moral order there is something in me that will attract me towards what is the better and will warn me about the other. And if I act against my conscience, then within me, I find a conflict. I have what we call a bad conscience, I am uneasy.
18:02: To the man who has a religion that conscience is the inner secret core of our being in which the voice of God can be heard telling what is right and what is wrong. But conscience itself is not the final arbiter of what is right and wrong. Conscience is a faculty of part of our being which we have to develop and - Both by thinking about right and wrong, seeking advice from other people - But above all following our conscience. I think we can say that where there is an upright and an honest surge for the good and the true a sincere effort to follow what we believe could be right and true and where in addition we accept a share in the responsibility for all our fellow men there is morality.
19:23: Morality is not a closed - doesn't consist of a closed system of laws, whether you believe in a divine law or not, which tells you in any instance what you can do. It is something that is dynamic, which relates to a historical situation, in other words our understanding of the good and the bad will evolve with the process of time and we ourselves have to apply as our decision in a concrete situation. We can not just, in a servile way, follow laws and advice given to us by others, that is not enough. We are called to make a personal decision. And I think we can say that morality is an area in which all men - whether we have a religion or not - can work together and should work together in trying to solve some of the many complex and many difficult moral problems that face us in our present historical situation.
20:44: Now if we come to the crucial question. The right of a nation to go to war. Now that is disputed as you know by the pacifist and so for a moment I would like to talk about pacifism. But we have to remember that pacifism is a very general term which covers a whole range of different views and opinions. It covers the non-violent movement of Gandhi, the non-violent movements that took place in America in the 1960s and all sorts of individual views and so on. There is no organised system of pacifism. The pacifism – the only we can be concerned with - is the total out and out pacifist who argues that there are never any circumstances in which one may take another persons life. Now where I personally find the pacifist argument breaks down is firstly, he always argues in what I call a vacuum. He never - or very seldom - argues in a concrete historical situation. He will speak very movingly and very sincerely and it is necessary when we discuss with him to acknowledge his sincerity about the attraction of peace and the dreadful side of war. And by stressing those two he can produce highly convincing case for people who have not thought it out. But what he does not do is to go adequately into the alternative consequences of not going to war. And if you bring him down to fundamental basics and say to him 'if a gunman came into this room now and began to open fire on everybody in it, do you have the right to stop him?' in other words, shoot him as that's the only way you could stop him. I find he will never answer that question. He'll always talk around it. If he says no you haven't the right to shoot him then his credibility really disappears because if he is willing to say I am willing to say 150 people shot down for the sake of my principal of not killing the gunman then his argument is hardly credible. If he says yes, in that case you do have the right to shoot him then he has given away his case and all he is then thrown back on is beyond what point may we use force to stop an aggressor.
24:21: I also find that when you're talking with him if he changes subject from the philosophical and the ideal and say well now let’s look at shall we say apartheid - South Africa - he suddenly changes. Now he has got something he feels very deeply about and you find him becoming almost militant. He thinks in that situation you ought to go out and do something about it. So I find if you ... if you argue in-depth with a pacifist you arrive at a point where he's forced to give up the out and out pacifist that claim. Even Bertram Russell, who was one of the most outspoken pacifists of all spoke in favour of our fighting Hitler and extraordinary enough there was a time when he argued in favour of a pre-emptive strike by the United States, with nuclear weapons, before Russia had nuclear weapons, though he then changed very radically from that position.
25:49: If we look at the question 'do we have the right to go to war in the light of the Christian commandment to love?' the answer is that our obligation to love other people extends to everybody. And if we're faced with one man's life in jeopardy and another group of peoples lives in jeopardy we have to decide which is better of the two courses of action. We live in a concrete real world in which unfortunately we have to acknowledge that there exists a principle of evil as well as good. The consequences of that are firstly that there is always the possibility of a potential aggressor. An aggressor determined to impose his will by force on other innocent people and nations. And that possibility exists at all levels globally, as in the case of Hitler, in a limited way within an area of the limited area of the world or in a very local area in our town or village or wherever it might be. And faced with the possibility of an aggressor - and a very real possibility of an aggressor even today - we have a clear and absolute duty to be prepared to be able to defend our own country and other innocent and allied countries that are liable to be the object of his aggression. And what is more we have to be ready to let any potential aggressor know that we are not going to stand for it - that if he is going to March we are going to stand up and stop him. I suppose you could argue, looking at the 1930s, Hitler might have said 'why didn't you tell me, you Britain, you never gave me the impression you were ever going to stand up and fight. If I'd known that I might have done something different.' I don't say that he would but in that instance, we never made our intentions clear.
28:48: The other implication of the existence of evil in the world is that there is a mixture in all of us of good and bad - we know it. We found the good side and the bad side in conflict. And we meet it all around us. Now that means that we are seldom ever able to do what is absolutely good. Usually, we have to choose the better of two courses of action. Sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils. I think we can say that war in itself is bad. Nobody in the world wants to fight a war, but it may be the only thing that we can possibly do. And so, if we had to lay down a criterium of how to decide whether to go to war or use force or not - I would define it in my own words as follows. That if having objectively and to the best of our ability looked at all the consequences of the two alternate courses of action - either to stand up and fight or not to fight - worked out all the implications in the long term as well as the short term, and being absolutely certain that we are objective - we are not carried away by some emotion or personal dislike or anger - but done it coolly and calmly to the best of our ability - and that we come to the conclusion that by standing up and fighting less harm is going to ensue than by not fighting - then we have done morally the right thing.
31:01: We have to look at it in three different stages - in my opinion. First - what you might call the run up to the situation - the circumstances leading to the point where we are faced with do we fight or don't we. We have an absolute duty as members of the human family - one human family - to do everything in our power to promote the good of the whole human family - not just our own good. We have an absolute duty to try and resolve every confrontation situation by peaceful means if we can to achieve justice in a peaceful way even if it means making some sacrifice ourselves. We also have a duty - in my opinion - to be very realistic, very well informed about what a potential aggressor is really going to do. And finally - as serving men, military men, we have an overriding duty to be completely professional. To be totally masters of our particular trade. And I would like to illustrate that by one or two examples.
32:51: I would like to take the outbreak of the Second World War. Now I will have to make, in the interests of time, one or two assertions without defending them but I will defend them in question time if asked to do so. Now the plain historical truth is that right up until after Munich in 1938 we - Britain and the Allies - held the military cards. Hitler's generals said to him 'what you are asking us to do in the question of Czechoslovakia is military impossible.' He said 'I know, but they won't fight.' Now we did not stand up to Hitler, we totally betrayed Czechoslovakia. And by doing that we put Hitler into a position of almost total dominance. We enabled him to do the one thing - or rather we let him off doing the one thing that whenever wanted to do, fight on two fronts at the same time. Because Czechoslovakia in the heart of Europe was given away.
34:21: Now I hold that we as a country failed in our moral duty - both to ourselves and to our allies and to the whole world community - by not being realistic in the face of Hitler. We could have stopped him at any moment had we stood firm. But we didn't.
34:46: Now although this may sound strange the Air Force, to a certain extent played a contributing part to that. Although in another sense the Air Force saved the situation. The Air Force was asked to give an estimate of the damage that would be caused by aerial bombardment and it miscalculated - I am not absolutely certain on my figures - but on a factor of something like 20. And consequently, Chamberlain and the other politicians thought that if war broke out every city would be totally demolished. So they had an exaggerated fear of going to war. They thought 'anything rather than go to war because war is so dreadful.' But that exaggerated fear only led us into war and led us as you know into a World War which cost in the end 55 million lives. So, one can argue that being firm at the right moment and risking a limited a fight, may well have been a much better and more merciful thing than by waiting too late and finding oneself faced with a World War.
36:20: When it comes to the actual decision - should we fight or should we not fight - clearly you have got to decide is force the right answer. Is the timing right? If you start too soon you may have set a war going that you needn't have set going. If you wait too late, too long, you may be overwhelmed before you can defend yourself. There is very practical, very realistic questions which have to be answered and which call for very clear thinking. I realise of course that not many of us are going to be in a position where we take part in that decision. But nevertheless whoever decides it is deciding it on part of the nation. And the nation I feel - and particularly the armed forces - should understand the basic issues that are involved and what our duty as a nation is.
37:25: When it comes to the fighting in the war itself clearly if we fight you have got to go for it wholeheartedly. You cannot fight looking over your shoulder saying 'am I doing right, am I doing wrong?' I think one of our strongest assets in World War Two was that everybody knew that it was a cause that had to be fought and had to be won. There was never a wavering or a doubt. But at the same time, one needs to be just and in so far as possible merciful. Because when everything is said and done what we are after is the triumph of good over evil. It's good that one we want justice, peace and freedom. And it may well be that if we become … too violent in our way of fighting that we may vitiate what was otherwise a good cause.
38:32: Wars fall into different categories. There is total war, limited war and what we call gorilla - or terrorist activities. And our attitude must differ according to which category we are in. If we are fighting a total war, the question arises 'Is massive bombing of cities permissible and may we use an atom bomb?' Now in a total war, I find it difficult to believe that one can renounce the right to bomb. If in World War Two we had renounced the right to bomb Germany I think we would've probably lost the war because that would mean that your enemy would know that he had the complete protection of all his cities in which to mobilise himself, build his military weapons and so on. And I feel that would give such an advantage - assuming there was more or less parity in other fields - you would lose. Furthermore, in a total war, everybody is involved. And as the human race … progresses we are becoming more and more integrated. You can't differentiate between the man who is firing the trigger and the man who is building the weapon that he is going to fire. We are all involved whether we like it or not. I think we have to accept that a total World War is the most dreadful thing that can happen to us because if it does start I myself find it very difficult to see at what point you are going to stop.
40:42: We ask the question 'may we use an atom bomb?' Well in World War Two that was the question that involved me personally because I was there in Nagasaki when it was dropped. I feel bound to answer that dropping the atom bomb was the lesser of two evils. I cannot see how we could have done anything but decide to drop it. Though I have one small qualification. The reason is that the alternative to dropping the bomb - the only known alternative - was the full-scale invasion of the mainland of Japan. Now the Japanese military mind was firstly totally committed to fighting to the last man. And the American estimate of the casualties - they were going to land 3 million men as I remember in November 1945 into the southern Island - and another 2 million men in the mainland in March '46. A years further fighting and an estimated 3 million lives. 2 million Japanese, 1 million Americans and to a certain extent allies. Adding to that every allied POW was doomed because the Japanese had written orders to their area commanders that before retreating from an area prisoners were to be shot and that the moment one allied soldier set foot on the Japanese mainland all POWs were to be shot. The two atom bombs took all in all 150,000 lives plus, regretfully, the others that were injured by radiation. So if one sets 150,000 against 3 million its very difficult, in my opinion, to argue that it would have been morally better to let the conventional war continue. I find it a slightly dishonest argument to say that the atom bomb is wrong, we mustn't drop the atom bomb, but I agree to the conventional war going on if the conventional war is going to take that much more human life. I don't honestly feel that is a fair argument.
43:33: So in the case of World War Two I feel that the decision to drop the bomb was right. I think the pity was that the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Had the bomb been dropped in open country as a warning it would not have made any difference to what the Japanese did because when it was dropped on Hiroshima, Truman did give a warning. He said if you don't give in there will be a reign of destruction from the skies such as the world has ever seen. The Japanese did not respond, they did not even tell their own people that an atom bomb had been dropped and at that stage, they were determined to carry on fighting. So they wouldn't have given in had the bomb been dropped on open country. But what would have been the difference is the verdict of history. Because the dropping of that bomb out of an unsuspecting sky onto a city has caused many people to think that we were unjust. They tend to have forgotten the concentration camps in which 20 million at least, lives were lost, and most of them not participants in the war. And is the bomb that occupies their mind. So there we have a case where the right thing was done but the way in which it was done has to a certain extent vitiated what was otherwise a just cause.
45:29: I think we have to face up to the question the present historical situation 'can there ever be a justification for using an atom bomb?'. … And I honestly think we have to say yes there could conceivably be. If an aggressor were to March with the intention of occupying major part of the world, should we say all of Europe, and it came to an all-out fight with the aggressor going to use an atom bomb - well either we say that we give in and don't fight or we use an atom bomb ourselves. I cannot see that if atom bombs are going to be used, or biological … weapons or chemical weapons are going to be used - I'd like to exclude from that biological - that if either atomic or chemical weapons are going to be used against whoever we are, I feel that whatever the results may be we have the right to use them ourselves or else to say we give in, we don't fight.
47:06: I don't believe you can give an answer in the abstract. I think it can only be decided in the actual historical situation having in mind what would be the consequences to the occupied areas if the aggressor was allowed to march.
47:28: Finally … I come to the after...[Cuts out, unclear]
47:34 Speech ends
End of Transcription
Collection
Citation
G L Cheshire, “Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed June 15, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/40103.