Leonard Cheshire - a talk to the RAF chaplains on the morality of force
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Leonard Cheshire - a talk to the RAF chaplains on the morality of force
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Defines force and morality. Looks at the circumstance leading to use of force. Discusses natural, man-made and divine laws and their impact om use of force. Goes on to discuss place of pacifism in the argument. Loos at question of duty as Christians. Talks of the use of adequate force and uses WW2 historical analogy to illustrate his points, including the effect of the Versailles Treaty on the outbreak of that war. Discusses the use of military force in the modern situation in Northern Ireland. Goes on to discuss the bombing of Germany and the atomic bombing of Japan. Submitted with caption 'Talk given by Leonard Cheshire to RAF Chaplains on the 'Morality of Force'. Date given as 15th February (no year)'.
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Audio recording 00:53:16
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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.
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SCheshireGL72021v20024-0001, SCheshireGL72021v20024-0001-Transcript
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Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project
File Title: Group Captain Cheshire (GLC) talking to RAF Chaplains about the 'Morality of Force'. Recorded
Preservation copy
Duration: 53:21
Transcription Date: 29/07/20
Archive Number: AV-S:507
Start of Transcription
00:00: Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: This is February 15th: A talk to the RAF Chaplains on the ‘Morality of Force’.
00:09: GLC: The first thing I’d like to do is try and define the terms of reference that I feel I have been given. The title of the talk – as I understand it – is ‘Morality of Force’. By force we obviously are referring to force used by a legitimate government – or on behalf of a legitimate government - and not just by an individual. And moreover, it is force of a nature which will inevitably lead to loss of life or [unclear 00:50- 00:51] very serious injury and destruction to property. We’re not referring to the force required to arrest a man and put him in jail.
01:09: But in considering force I feel we need to look at the circumstances leading up to the decision to use force, the time during which force is being used, and the consequences of the action. I feel they are all interrelated. The definition of morality is a good deal more difficult. Morality - as I see it - is rather a loose term which can be used in a number of different senses. But I suppose strictly defined, it is ways of conduct based upon a distinction between right and wrong. Conduct based upon a distinction between what is right and what is wrong. But we immediately get into the difficulty of who decides what is right and wrong, and do these principles apply all over the world in all different cultures? Do they change with changing times as some people will argue, or are they universal and immutable? And so, I think that brings us to the point that what we’re talking about is not just conduct but a law – a moral law. If we don’t use law as the basis on which we’re going to try and examine the subject then I don’t think we have got anything concrete to start from.
03:18: And the question – as it seems to me – is: Is there such thing as a moral law analogous to the physical law – which of course keeps creation in harmony, gives it stability, and gives it a purpose, makes it a purposeful entity. Is there a moral law that applies to mankind as a whole analogous to the physical law? And I think it’s helpful at the beginning to look for a moment at the notion of law. What is law? I understand law to be an ordinance of reason made for the common good and promulgated by the person or persons responsible for the particular society. And the first thing is that it is an ordinance of reason and that it has as its objective the good of society and the realisation of the goal of that particular society. And I think most people are familiar with the concept of law, particularly in the armed forces. And I think that all of us as human beings appreciate that at whatever level, whether it’s a small community - but I mean an organised community – or a nation, there has to be a system of law. And that the better the law – the better the society in question is able to function – the more harmonious it becomes and the more it is likely to achieve its particular objective. We understand that law carries a sanction, that if it didn’t carry a sanction it wouldn’t be – given human nature – of a great deal of use. We understand that if we break the law then we introduce an element of disorder into society and I suppose most people would recognise that if we habitually break the law – become habitual breakers of the law – then we are in danger of becoming personally disorientated. Certainly, we become anti-social.
06:02: Moving to the different types of law I suppose it’s fair to say that there are 3 types of law: the positive law, the natural law, and the divine or eternal law. The positive law – if that’s the correct term – is the law that society makes, the set of rules, a system of right and wrong that society makes for its particular circumstances. It’s a man-made, arbitrary set of rules for outward conduct. But it doesn’t really have much relevance to our problem except in so far as there may be rules drawn up relating to the conduct of war and given international approval. I think that some conventions have been drawn up which regulate certain aspects of law – of the waging of war - and that clearly is apposite to our problem. The natural law I suppose one could define as a system of right or justice applicable to all mankind and deriving from the nature of man rather than – as in the case of the positive law – from society. And throughout its long history which I think must have begun with the Greeks - I don’t suppose it began with the Jews because they always had their divine law… throughout its long history it’s gone through many variations - and I suppose at the present moment it’s perhaps lost a certain amount of favour – but nevertheless, I think we can say that man has always thought about it and certainly at the present day many men look towards it as a line of guidance between all the conflicting ideologies and political systems and so on. But again, it would be very difficult to define what is the natural law. I know Lord Denning will sometimes, in making a judgement, refer to the natural law rather than to the law of this country and would probably be right. But unfortunately, we’re faced with the fact that mankind as a whole has not agreed upon what the natural law is. I suppose the best one can say if one were to look for a common denominator, is that we should act in accordance with a dignity of a human being – that we should do nothing that offends or degrades his dignity. Or others [unclear 09:48- 09:50] might use the golden rule: ‘do to others what you would have done to yourself’. But, that’s very general and even if everybody agreed upon it as a general principle, the application would be a matter of great difference of opinion and controversy. Everybody for instance would agree, I think, that it’s wrong and inadmissible to murder, but not everybody would agree in a concrete situation what was murder. A very obvious example of that is abortion, and I think one could draw other examples too.
10:54: Furthermore, I suppose we have to say that even laws that we agree about in the natural order, are relative – some are absolute, some are relative. I think it’s true that the Catholic church would claim that although it is wrong to steal, if your family is starving and there’s no other way of getting food for them, a father has a right to steal even if he then has to take the consequences. So, the natural law doesn’t really give us, as I see it, much of a basis on which we can discuss sensibly what the duty of a man is, when faced with the use of force. The divine law, which I personally think is the only basis on which we can sensibly discuss the question - even though we have to acknowledge that those we are talking to may not all agree that it exists – does give us, I think, a very much clearer picture of where we stand. If talking to a non-Catholic audience I think one has to define to a certain extent what the divine law is, and to state that it presupposes the existence of a creator who has given the creation a purpose and who holds its government in His hands. Specifically, coming to the Christian concept of the divine law, I also think that we have to – although our task is not to present the claim for the authenticity of the Catholic church - we have at least to give the man we’re talking to a short summary of what Christianity claims that it is. At any rate, in those respects that relate to the morality of using forceful means, it seems to me that we ought to state: number 1 that you can’t evaluate Christianity, or even any one of its particular laws, by referring to an isolated text in scripture – that you have to look not only at the whole of scripture, but at the whole of Christianity, of the church, including its teaching magisterium. I say this because people will use one text to build a whole case on it, and I think that needs to be clarified in advance.
14:24: Then, to become more positive I think we ought to state that Christianity is essentially an historical religion, meaning that God has intervened at certain specific moments in history. In particular, that he…we come to an area in which perhaps we may, though it’s not really pertinent to this subject, the creation of the first man. I would personally prefer to say that at a moment in man’s history after the time that man had evolved into a being capable of reflective thought, God had revealed Himself to him, entered into a personal relationship with him, given him a definite instruction as His representative on earth, and destined him for an eternal role in heaven after death. That after this had happened man fell, was tempted to think that he could achieve this end by himself without the help of God, and that the story of Christianity is very largely the story of the struggle between evil - which entered the world in consequence of the fall - and good, and the steps that god took after that to make good the effects of the fall. I also feel that we could stress the particular role that God has given man on this earth. And I personally would define that as man the unifier, that man was instructed to master the earth. And as I personally hold, his will for us is that we should unify and integrate the entire physical creation up to the point where it becomes virtually an entity of its own, the mystical body of Christ. It seems to me that throughout scripture we are being told that it’s not just we who have become – or are destined to become – eternalised, but the entire creation of which we form a part is to be eternalised, or, that part of it which God wants is to become eternalised with us. That we carry through with us not just our souls, but our works. That here on earth we are actually constructing eternity with God’s grace.
18:00: So, what I’m getting at is that we are by nature, and by destiny, essentially unifiers. And this thought has got to dominate everything that we say about making war and the use of force. So, when we come to the question of the Christian law – which of course I suppose we should state to the non-Catholic, is part of God’s gradual revelation to man as one of the principle means by which we are to attain our destiny and our purpose on earth, culminating in the person of our Lord – when we come to Christian law about the use of force, I think first we have to look at the position taken up by pacifism, because I think most of us meet pacifists of one kind or another. I know I have done ever since I was at college before the war. Pacifism clearly is, again, a very loose term. You meet all sorts of forms of it. I think strictly speaking, by pacifism, we should mean the sum total of all those movements that are aimed at the total abolition of war and believe that this is possible in the foreseeable historical future. And that includes the non-violent movements like Gandhi, and the non-violence used in the United States. Although, they are not strictly pacifist because they are confined to smaller minority groups that are trying to make their own point of view – or make their own case – accepted. The chief person that we have to consider is the individual pacifist who claims – usually appealing to Christianity – that the use of force under any circumstances is wrong. Now, although I say from the beginning that I don’t accept that, I have discovered that it’s very important when talking to a pacifist to make certain that the discussion doesn’t become polarised, so that on the one side you have the pacifist talking about peace and avoiding war and on the other hand you have the other man talking as if he’s a militarist – as if he thinks that every… that the solution to every problem is a forceful and military one. And I have sadly taken part in a number of conversations where precisely this has happened, and where the audience has inevitably felt that the pacifist was right. Because this man appeared to be talking about peace and the other man appears to be talking about nothing but war. So, I think we have at the outset to acknowledge first of all, the sincerity of the pacifist, and secondly, that his initial premise is right. In other words, that our principle concern should be peace and that we should state very categorically that we are completely at one with him on this aspect.
22:21: Where I differ is that the pacifist is usually talking about his views in a vacuum, in a hypothetical situation that doesn’t in fact exist. Whereas, we have to deal with actual historical situations and they are very different. He will argue that an individual faced with a threat to his life will do more good by not retaliating and sacrificing his life. I don’t think one could argue against that. In many cases, at least, I think we’d have to admit that to be willing to sacrifice your life rather than take the life of the man opposite you, may be a nobler and greater thing to do than to fight for your own rights. But what we’re really discussing is our duty as members of a community. And the situation where you have a community and not just an individual, is very much more complex. One has to weigh in the balance the rights of the man going to use force – ought we to avoid taking his life? – and the rights of the others whom he is intending to destroy. And I just cannot see that it is right to stand back and allow another man to take the lives of the members of one’s own community and not try to stop him. I just cannot see it. I cannot see that it has a Christian basis. I cannot see that it has a basis in any form of natural justice or right. Neither can I see that its supported by Christianity. If there are some texts where we appear to be told that we should never use force, there are a number of others where force is not excluded. You will know these better than me, but St John the Baptist didn’t tell the soldiers that they should stop being soldiers and he was telling others very emphatically what they had to do. I cannot believe that there is a case for supporting absolute pacifism. In other words, the view that under no circumstances whatsoever may you use force. I don’t believe that that case is supported by Catholic doctrine, or by the teaching revealed to the church.
25:49: Furthermore, there are certain practical objections. In the first place, no movement of pacifism – there aren’t many organised pacifist movements – but, none of them have ever shown the slightest sign of success, historically speaking. Certain non-violent movements have within very limited scope, but mostly under circumstances where the rules of the game are accepted by both sides. It’d be totally naïve to suggest that pacifism would deflect a man like Hitler. In fact, it would do the opposite and I think one can point to the evidence of history as showing that it was precisely the fact that we did not announce our intention of standing up to him – when he was in a position of weakness – that gave him his strength. I’d like to come back to that a bit more specifically later. I think that the pacifists don’t pay sufficient attention to the reality of human nature. When a group of people are determined on an end which in itself is not a good one - and intend to obtain it by whatever means they can - you are not going to divert them by passive resistance and by trying to show a good example. The Chinese had a proverb to illustrate their form of pacifism – though I think that was a negative form of pacifism – saying, as I remember it: ‘The soft water, if its flowing, will gradually wear away the hard stone.’ [laughs] It’ll take a very long time to do that. Also, I don’t think they appreciate the reality of converting a 1 to 1 situation, 1 man against another, to a communal situation, where – as I say – everything is so much more complex.
28:24: So, coming to our duty as I see it as Christians, I think that at first we must be quite clear in our minds and in what we say, that our overall aim is the peaceful solution of any argument or dispute. That we at all times recognise our fundamental goal of unifying the human family. And to come to the concrete we have, I think, 3 or 4 tests that we can put. First, I’m now talking about the actual decision to use force. I realise that that’s normally not an individual’s responsibility, it’s the government’s responsibility. But nonetheless, we form part of our country and therefore we must have some influence in the decisions that are taken, and we should be able to state where we stand and what we think. The first test is, have we done everything within our power to settle the dispute, other than by the use of force? Have we really and honestly done that? If we have and we still can’t find a solution, is force really the right answer to whatever the threat is that we’re being opposed by? It may not be. It may be the solution in the short-term, but it’s possible that it might not be in the long-term. And that is why I say that we have to consider the aftermath of force as well as the events leading up to it and its actual use. In the same way that we are taught by the moral theologians that we are not to do anything that takes us away from our final end, so I think that applies to this situation. Is it in the long run going to work towards the harmony and unity of the human race, and goodwill between the two opposing factions? Thirdly, is this the right moment to use it? By postponing the moment you give more chance of settling the dispute by peaceful means, but equally you might place yourself in a weaker position and perhaps deny yourself the opportunity of succeeding with force. If one’s answered all of those questions in the affirmative, then I think we can say that, if having taken all the possible consequences of the alternative courses of action available to us into consideration, and really thought them out to the best of our ability as objectively and as informedly as we can, and the use of force appears to be the better of the two solutions – the one that will lead either to the most good or the least harm – then we are right in using it.
32:48: I think we have to state that force in itself is a bad thing, but that given the state of human nature – given the state of the world – it may be the only thing to do…The only thing, the lesser of two evils. Therefore, if it is the better thing for us to do, I then think that we have to do it properly. That we have to be sure that we are professional and that we use adequate force, if it’s available to us, to meet the threat. Adequate force but not excessive force. But it must be adequate. If it’s not adequate then we’re only going to create a hostility and suffering, and increase the violence of people’s emotions and not solve the problem. To clarify what I’m trying to say I’d like to take 1 or 2 examples, and the first one – although I know I mustn’t get too absorbed in it – is the last World War, because this is a situation which I’ve experienced in which the facts are fairly clear and from which I think we can form certain conclusions. Now, cutting it down to its simplest there was a situation when Hitler declared quite openly that he intended to overrun and colonise Eastern Europe and Russia. And he made no bones about this being his intention. He further went on to say that the perfect human race was the Nordic race, and that others that deviated too far from that ideal should be eliminated. And therefore, he declared quite categorically that certain groups of the human race were going to be eliminated. And that wasn’t only the Jews, it included Gypsies – he was going to do away with all Gypsies – and as you probably know he drafted that famous order saying that the entire Polish nation was to be liquidated, starting with the intellectuals. But he was going to spare the working classes until they’d done the work that was required of them, and then he would liquidate them. Now, if Hitler was in a position to put those objectives… to attain those objectives, he was clearly a totally evil man who had to be stopped. But early in his career he held none of the military cards. He was militarily weak. I know that that position is confused because the argument usually runs that Hitler had so much and we had so little, and therefore we couldn’t stand up to him. But that isn’t an honest argument because you have to take the totality of the situation. In other words, all those who were opposing Hitler.
36:47: And the fact of the matter was, the key to the whole European situation was Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia lay at the heart of Europe and the Czech army was just as strong in 1938, at the time of Munich, as Hitler’s army. And Hitler’s generals told him that he would have to commit his entire army to the fight against Czechoslovakia to have a hope of overrunning them. That left him with 87 French divisions on his Western flank, an unknown quantity of Poland on the Eastern flank, and our 6 divisions over here. In other words, it was not militarily a viable situation. But Hitler said to his generals ‘You don’t have to worry, they won’t fight’. His generals in fact had prepared to overthrow him the moment we stood up and said no, we’re not going to allow you to go into Czechoslovakia. And when they heard that we had given in and allowed him to take Czechoslovakia they just wouldn’t believe it. But that decision of ours was the making of Hitler. From that moment on he was a public hero. Everybody felt in Germany that he could perform wonders, although we still have to remember that there was a German resistance – and a very brave one, even if a minority. And one of the things that contributed to that decision by Britain was the fact that the RAF had made an enormous error in calculating the effects of aerial bombardment. They had miscalculated I think by a factor of 20, or 30, or anyway, they grossly overestimated the effect of aerial bombardment. And that had given Chamberlain and the others a feeling that, at all costs, war must be avoided. They were obsessed by this thought of what would happen to British cities if war broke out. So, the result of our not facing up to those realities was that we gave Hitler the power to launch that Second World War. If we had been realistic, if we had – what I consider – done our duty, Hitler could never have done it. He would have been overthrown, and although no doubt there would have been some form of fighting it wouldn’t have been on anything like the scale of a World War in which, you probably know, 55 million people died – counting all of those that participated.
39:56: There’s another factor that comes into the outbreak of that war, and that is the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Some of those terms undoubtedly were not just, we took a certain amount of revenge on the Germans, and I hold that contributed towards Hitler’s rise to power. In the first place, he could speak for that disaffected German population that felt it was suffering under an injustice. And I think we must also hold that, by and large, human beings will not commit themselves totally to something which is absolutely wrong- to something which is absolutely evil. There must be some apparent good in it for them to give themselves wholly to it. And I think that it was this element that Hitler was able to play on and make the Germans think that they were giving themselves to something that was just. So, another contention I have is that when you have won a war or you’ve completed your action, whatever it might be, you have to be absolutely certain that in your peace terms you’re not only just – but I would say – merciful. Because after all, what is our objective? Our objective is to attain harmony and goodwill, good understanding between nations. If we move to Northern Ireland, we have a completely different situation. In the last World War, it was quite clear, one side fighting another. It was quite clear that Hitler had to be stopped. The only thing that you could call in question, is the methods that you used. You couldn’t call in question the fact that you had to fight the war in a total way. It was a total war in which everybody was involved. I don’t see that you can justly isolate the civilians from the soldier in that Second World War. Civilians were making munitions, they were doing something that was contributing, however indirectly, to the war. And they, except for the minority resistance movement, were totally committed to Hitler’s objectives, just as we were totally committed to our objectives. And therefore, I don’t really understand the distinction that some people make between the innocent civilians on the ground and the soldiers fighting a war. A total war is a completely different thing in nature from wars that were fought in the past, largely between mercenary or professional armies which usually had an understanding that they fought each other but kept clear of certain groups of the population, like the old and the sick, and so on.
44:03: In Northern Ireland - though I hesitate to speak here in any detail, because I haven’t direct experience of it – the army is faced with a completely different situation, as I understand it. And I hope that afterwards, where I’m wrong you will put me right. In Northern Ireland – as I see it, if I’m not oversimplifying – the army went in between 2 different factions of the community in Northern Ireland, hoping to keep the men of violence at bay until a political settlement could be reached. Now, when they are faced with what - for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll use – a terrorist, they’ve got to try and deal with him in such a way that they don’t antagonise the population or the community to which he belongs. If they act, as a community feels, unjustly, then the effect is going to be to harden that community, to drive it further into a corner and to make settlement of the situation even more difficult. If their task is to take out the men of violence, so that you are just left with two sides who you hope will then talk round the table and settle things. And if in the course of dealing with a terrorist the army appear to be attacking the community as a whole, then it seems to me the two sides will become even more polarised than they were before. And so, I would say that the duty of a solider in that situation is a much more difficult one than was ours in the Second World War. And although, at least I suppose, the decision to send the army in was correct - I’ve no means of telling - I’ve listened to another argument from a senior policeman who said that what should have happened – he said it at the time that the army was sent in – was that we should have relied upon good intelligence and men on the spot who knew exactly who they were dealing with, and could differentiate between an IRA, or UDA, and an ordinary member of the public. So, I imagine this was a debateable question, but granted the fact that the government in good faith decided to send the army in, I can see that the soldiers have an absolute duty – even if it increases the risk to themselves – of never using more force than is absolutely necessary, and of using it in a way which will not antagonise the local community. You may say that’s impossible, and it may be that it is impossible, but I think that we have to acknowledge that although we are – or at least I once was – members of the armed forces, that there have been occasions when the army hasn’t been completely in the right. And the repercussions are very severe. In the last World War, there probably were things that we did which should not have been done. I think probably Dresden is one of them. But that was an error, not of bad faith, but purely an error of information. The Russians said that 2 German armoured divisions were reforming in the city, and that if they were allowed to reform and come back into the battle the odds would be tipped against Russia – and ‘Would we please bomb Dresden?’. There was also the growing threat of the ME262 which threatened to change the course of the air war, and these 2 factors together persuaded bomber command that Dresden ought to be attacked, when in fact there were no soldiers in it. That was a mistake of misinformation rather than of ill will.
49:29: I’d like to pose the question – I don’t think I know the answer – but, broadly speaking I think I’ve tended to say that area bombing of a city is a dubiously moral activity. Whereas, bombing in order to destroy munitions was a necessary activity given the fact that the British army – the Allied armies – were totally incapable of taking on the German army up until later in the war. And, therefore, Germany had to be stopped and had to be attacked wherever it was possible to do so. But, Speer, the German head of munitions, and whatever he was, has stated categorically after the attack on Hamburg - which as you know burnt the whole city [unclear 50:34-35]. He evidently went to Hitler, and he said this several times both in writing and on television, that had there been 3 more Hamburg’s Germany would have had to give in. So, the question is, in view of all the lives that were in fact lost before Germany gave in, would it have been right to do another 4 Hamburg’s or would it be wrong? In the case of the atom bomb, I feel that I can be specific and I am prepared to defend this particular outlook… I’m prepared to defend it until the end. The situation in 1940 August ’45 was that Japan was totally committed to fighting until the last man. That is to say that Japanese military command was totally committed to fighting the war to the last man. The only known way, in the absence of some totally unforeseen event which you can’t bargain for when waging a war… The only foreseeable way of ending the war was the invasion of the mainland of Japan, and in order to do that the Americans were planning to land 3 million men into Kyushu, the southern island of Japan – I am right, is it the Southern Island? It doesn’t matter - in November 1945, and another 2 million men into Honshu, the main island, in March ’46. They estimated another years fighting, with all the bitterness and the frustration – everything that a years fighting involves – and they estimated 5 million casualties, sorry, 3 million casualties: 2 million Japanese and 1 million Allied. Against that, was the hope that the atom bomb might bring it all to a quick end. The difficulty was, for once again I find that whenever you discuss this with people who take the opposite view – particularly the young – they always discuss it in a vacuum, totally divorced from…
53:23: Speech ends
53:23: End of recording
End of Transcription
File Title: Group Captain Cheshire (GLC) talking to RAF Chaplains about the 'Morality of Force'. Recorded
Preservation copy
Duration: 53:21
Transcription Date: 29/07/20
Archive Number: AV-S:507
Start of Transcription
00:00: Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: This is February 15th: A talk to the RAF Chaplains on the ‘Morality of Force’.
00:09: GLC: The first thing I’d like to do is try and define the terms of reference that I feel I have been given. The title of the talk – as I understand it – is ‘Morality of Force’. By force we obviously are referring to force used by a legitimate government – or on behalf of a legitimate government - and not just by an individual. And moreover, it is force of a nature which will inevitably lead to loss of life or [unclear 00:50- 00:51] very serious injury and destruction to property. We’re not referring to the force required to arrest a man and put him in jail.
01:09: But in considering force I feel we need to look at the circumstances leading up to the decision to use force, the time during which force is being used, and the consequences of the action. I feel they are all interrelated. The definition of morality is a good deal more difficult. Morality - as I see it - is rather a loose term which can be used in a number of different senses. But I suppose strictly defined, it is ways of conduct based upon a distinction between right and wrong. Conduct based upon a distinction between what is right and what is wrong. But we immediately get into the difficulty of who decides what is right and wrong, and do these principles apply all over the world in all different cultures? Do they change with changing times as some people will argue, or are they universal and immutable? And so, I think that brings us to the point that what we’re talking about is not just conduct but a law – a moral law. If we don’t use law as the basis on which we’re going to try and examine the subject then I don’t think we have got anything concrete to start from.
03:18: And the question – as it seems to me – is: Is there such thing as a moral law analogous to the physical law – which of course keeps creation in harmony, gives it stability, and gives it a purpose, makes it a purposeful entity. Is there a moral law that applies to mankind as a whole analogous to the physical law? And I think it’s helpful at the beginning to look for a moment at the notion of law. What is law? I understand law to be an ordinance of reason made for the common good and promulgated by the person or persons responsible for the particular society. And the first thing is that it is an ordinance of reason and that it has as its objective the good of society and the realisation of the goal of that particular society. And I think most people are familiar with the concept of law, particularly in the armed forces. And I think that all of us as human beings appreciate that at whatever level, whether it’s a small community - but I mean an organised community – or a nation, there has to be a system of law. And that the better the law – the better the society in question is able to function – the more harmonious it becomes and the more it is likely to achieve its particular objective. We understand that law carries a sanction, that if it didn’t carry a sanction it wouldn’t be – given human nature – of a great deal of use. We understand that if we break the law then we introduce an element of disorder into society and I suppose most people would recognise that if we habitually break the law – become habitual breakers of the law – then we are in danger of becoming personally disorientated. Certainly, we become anti-social.
06:02: Moving to the different types of law I suppose it’s fair to say that there are 3 types of law: the positive law, the natural law, and the divine or eternal law. The positive law – if that’s the correct term – is the law that society makes, the set of rules, a system of right and wrong that society makes for its particular circumstances. It’s a man-made, arbitrary set of rules for outward conduct. But it doesn’t really have much relevance to our problem except in so far as there may be rules drawn up relating to the conduct of war and given international approval. I think that some conventions have been drawn up which regulate certain aspects of law – of the waging of war - and that clearly is apposite to our problem. The natural law I suppose one could define as a system of right or justice applicable to all mankind and deriving from the nature of man rather than – as in the case of the positive law – from society. And throughout its long history which I think must have begun with the Greeks - I don’t suppose it began with the Jews because they always had their divine law… throughout its long history it’s gone through many variations - and I suppose at the present moment it’s perhaps lost a certain amount of favour – but nevertheless, I think we can say that man has always thought about it and certainly at the present day many men look towards it as a line of guidance between all the conflicting ideologies and political systems and so on. But again, it would be very difficult to define what is the natural law. I know Lord Denning will sometimes, in making a judgement, refer to the natural law rather than to the law of this country and would probably be right. But unfortunately, we’re faced with the fact that mankind as a whole has not agreed upon what the natural law is. I suppose the best one can say if one were to look for a common denominator, is that we should act in accordance with a dignity of a human being – that we should do nothing that offends or degrades his dignity. Or others [unclear 09:48- 09:50] might use the golden rule: ‘do to others what you would have done to yourself’. But, that’s very general and even if everybody agreed upon it as a general principle, the application would be a matter of great difference of opinion and controversy. Everybody for instance would agree, I think, that it’s wrong and inadmissible to murder, but not everybody would agree in a concrete situation what was murder. A very obvious example of that is abortion, and I think one could draw other examples too.
10:54: Furthermore, I suppose we have to say that even laws that we agree about in the natural order, are relative – some are absolute, some are relative. I think it’s true that the Catholic church would claim that although it is wrong to steal, if your family is starving and there’s no other way of getting food for them, a father has a right to steal even if he then has to take the consequences. So, the natural law doesn’t really give us, as I see it, much of a basis on which we can discuss sensibly what the duty of a man is, when faced with the use of force. The divine law, which I personally think is the only basis on which we can sensibly discuss the question - even though we have to acknowledge that those we are talking to may not all agree that it exists – does give us, I think, a very much clearer picture of where we stand. If talking to a non-Catholic audience I think one has to define to a certain extent what the divine law is, and to state that it presupposes the existence of a creator who has given the creation a purpose and who holds its government in His hands. Specifically, coming to the Christian concept of the divine law, I also think that we have to – although our task is not to present the claim for the authenticity of the Catholic church - we have at least to give the man we’re talking to a short summary of what Christianity claims that it is. At any rate, in those respects that relate to the morality of using forceful means, it seems to me that we ought to state: number 1 that you can’t evaluate Christianity, or even any one of its particular laws, by referring to an isolated text in scripture – that you have to look not only at the whole of scripture, but at the whole of Christianity, of the church, including its teaching magisterium. I say this because people will use one text to build a whole case on it, and I think that needs to be clarified in advance.
14:24: Then, to become more positive I think we ought to state that Christianity is essentially an historical religion, meaning that God has intervened at certain specific moments in history. In particular, that he…we come to an area in which perhaps we may, though it’s not really pertinent to this subject, the creation of the first man. I would personally prefer to say that at a moment in man’s history after the time that man had evolved into a being capable of reflective thought, God had revealed Himself to him, entered into a personal relationship with him, given him a definite instruction as His representative on earth, and destined him for an eternal role in heaven after death. That after this had happened man fell, was tempted to think that he could achieve this end by himself without the help of God, and that the story of Christianity is very largely the story of the struggle between evil - which entered the world in consequence of the fall - and good, and the steps that god took after that to make good the effects of the fall. I also feel that we could stress the particular role that God has given man on this earth. And I personally would define that as man the unifier, that man was instructed to master the earth. And as I personally hold, his will for us is that we should unify and integrate the entire physical creation up to the point where it becomes virtually an entity of its own, the mystical body of Christ. It seems to me that throughout scripture we are being told that it’s not just we who have become – or are destined to become – eternalised, but the entire creation of which we form a part is to be eternalised, or, that part of it which God wants is to become eternalised with us. That we carry through with us not just our souls, but our works. That here on earth we are actually constructing eternity with God’s grace.
18:00: So, what I’m getting at is that we are by nature, and by destiny, essentially unifiers. And this thought has got to dominate everything that we say about making war and the use of force. So, when we come to the question of the Christian law – which of course I suppose we should state to the non-Catholic, is part of God’s gradual revelation to man as one of the principle means by which we are to attain our destiny and our purpose on earth, culminating in the person of our Lord – when we come to Christian law about the use of force, I think first we have to look at the position taken up by pacifism, because I think most of us meet pacifists of one kind or another. I know I have done ever since I was at college before the war. Pacifism clearly is, again, a very loose term. You meet all sorts of forms of it. I think strictly speaking, by pacifism, we should mean the sum total of all those movements that are aimed at the total abolition of war and believe that this is possible in the foreseeable historical future. And that includes the non-violent movements like Gandhi, and the non-violence used in the United States. Although, they are not strictly pacifist because they are confined to smaller minority groups that are trying to make their own point of view – or make their own case – accepted. The chief person that we have to consider is the individual pacifist who claims – usually appealing to Christianity – that the use of force under any circumstances is wrong. Now, although I say from the beginning that I don’t accept that, I have discovered that it’s very important when talking to a pacifist to make certain that the discussion doesn’t become polarised, so that on the one side you have the pacifist talking about peace and avoiding war and on the other hand you have the other man talking as if he’s a militarist – as if he thinks that every… that the solution to every problem is a forceful and military one. And I have sadly taken part in a number of conversations where precisely this has happened, and where the audience has inevitably felt that the pacifist was right. Because this man appeared to be talking about peace and the other man appears to be talking about nothing but war. So, I think we have at the outset to acknowledge first of all, the sincerity of the pacifist, and secondly, that his initial premise is right. In other words, that our principle concern should be peace and that we should state very categorically that we are completely at one with him on this aspect.
22:21: Where I differ is that the pacifist is usually talking about his views in a vacuum, in a hypothetical situation that doesn’t in fact exist. Whereas, we have to deal with actual historical situations and they are very different. He will argue that an individual faced with a threat to his life will do more good by not retaliating and sacrificing his life. I don’t think one could argue against that. In many cases, at least, I think we’d have to admit that to be willing to sacrifice your life rather than take the life of the man opposite you, may be a nobler and greater thing to do than to fight for your own rights. But what we’re really discussing is our duty as members of a community. And the situation where you have a community and not just an individual, is very much more complex. One has to weigh in the balance the rights of the man going to use force – ought we to avoid taking his life? – and the rights of the others whom he is intending to destroy. And I just cannot see that it is right to stand back and allow another man to take the lives of the members of one’s own community and not try to stop him. I just cannot see it. I cannot see that it has a Christian basis. I cannot see that it has a basis in any form of natural justice or right. Neither can I see that its supported by Christianity. If there are some texts where we appear to be told that we should never use force, there are a number of others where force is not excluded. You will know these better than me, but St John the Baptist didn’t tell the soldiers that they should stop being soldiers and he was telling others very emphatically what they had to do. I cannot believe that there is a case for supporting absolute pacifism. In other words, the view that under no circumstances whatsoever may you use force. I don’t believe that that case is supported by Catholic doctrine, or by the teaching revealed to the church.
25:49: Furthermore, there are certain practical objections. In the first place, no movement of pacifism – there aren’t many organised pacifist movements – but, none of them have ever shown the slightest sign of success, historically speaking. Certain non-violent movements have within very limited scope, but mostly under circumstances where the rules of the game are accepted by both sides. It’d be totally naïve to suggest that pacifism would deflect a man like Hitler. In fact, it would do the opposite and I think one can point to the evidence of history as showing that it was precisely the fact that we did not announce our intention of standing up to him – when he was in a position of weakness – that gave him his strength. I’d like to come back to that a bit more specifically later. I think that the pacifists don’t pay sufficient attention to the reality of human nature. When a group of people are determined on an end which in itself is not a good one - and intend to obtain it by whatever means they can - you are not going to divert them by passive resistance and by trying to show a good example. The Chinese had a proverb to illustrate their form of pacifism – though I think that was a negative form of pacifism – saying, as I remember it: ‘The soft water, if its flowing, will gradually wear away the hard stone.’ [laughs] It’ll take a very long time to do that. Also, I don’t think they appreciate the reality of converting a 1 to 1 situation, 1 man against another, to a communal situation, where – as I say – everything is so much more complex.
28:24: So, coming to our duty as I see it as Christians, I think that at first we must be quite clear in our minds and in what we say, that our overall aim is the peaceful solution of any argument or dispute. That we at all times recognise our fundamental goal of unifying the human family. And to come to the concrete we have, I think, 3 or 4 tests that we can put. First, I’m now talking about the actual decision to use force. I realise that that’s normally not an individual’s responsibility, it’s the government’s responsibility. But nonetheless, we form part of our country and therefore we must have some influence in the decisions that are taken, and we should be able to state where we stand and what we think. The first test is, have we done everything within our power to settle the dispute, other than by the use of force? Have we really and honestly done that? If we have and we still can’t find a solution, is force really the right answer to whatever the threat is that we’re being opposed by? It may not be. It may be the solution in the short-term, but it’s possible that it might not be in the long-term. And that is why I say that we have to consider the aftermath of force as well as the events leading up to it and its actual use. In the same way that we are taught by the moral theologians that we are not to do anything that takes us away from our final end, so I think that applies to this situation. Is it in the long run going to work towards the harmony and unity of the human race, and goodwill between the two opposing factions? Thirdly, is this the right moment to use it? By postponing the moment you give more chance of settling the dispute by peaceful means, but equally you might place yourself in a weaker position and perhaps deny yourself the opportunity of succeeding with force. If one’s answered all of those questions in the affirmative, then I think we can say that, if having taken all the possible consequences of the alternative courses of action available to us into consideration, and really thought them out to the best of our ability as objectively and as informedly as we can, and the use of force appears to be the better of the two solutions – the one that will lead either to the most good or the least harm – then we are right in using it.
32:48: I think we have to state that force in itself is a bad thing, but that given the state of human nature – given the state of the world – it may be the only thing to do…The only thing, the lesser of two evils. Therefore, if it is the better thing for us to do, I then think that we have to do it properly. That we have to be sure that we are professional and that we use adequate force, if it’s available to us, to meet the threat. Adequate force but not excessive force. But it must be adequate. If it’s not adequate then we’re only going to create a hostility and suffering, and increase the violence of people’s emotions and not solve the problem. To clarify what I’m trying to say I’d like to take 1 or 2 examples, and the first one – although I know I mustn’t get too absorbed in it – is the last World War, because this is a situation which I’ve experienced in which the facts are fairly clear and from which I think we can form certain conclusions. Now, cutting it down to its simplest there was a situation when Hitler declared quite openly that he intended to overrun and colonise Eastern Europe and Russia. And he made no bones about this being his intention. He further went on to say that the perfect human race was the Nordic race, and that others that deviated too far from that ideal should be eliminated. And therefore, he declared quite categorically that certain groups of the human race were going to be eliminated. And that wasn’t only the Jews, it included Gypsies – he was going to do away with all Gypsies – and as you probably know he drafted that famous order saying that the entire Polish nation was to be liquidated, starting with the intellectuals. But he was going to spare the working classes until they’d done the work that was required of them, and then he would liquidate them. Now, if Hitler was in a position to put those objectives… to attain those objectives, he was clearly a totally evil man who had to be stopped. But early in his career he held none of the military cards. He was militarily weak. I know that that position is confused because the argument usually runs that Hitler had so much and we had so little, and therefore we couldn’t stand up to him. But that isn’t an honest argument because you have to take the totality of the situation. In other words, all those who were opposing Hitler.
36:47: And the fact of the matter was, the key to the whole European situation was Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia lay at the heart of Europe and the Czech army was just as strong in 1938, at the time of Munich, as Hitler’s army. And Hitler’s generals told him that he would have to commit his entire army to the fight against Czechoslovakia to have a hope of overrunning them. That left him with 87 French divisions on his Western flank, an unknown quantity of Poland on the Eastern flank, and our 6 divisions over here. In other words, it was not militarily a viable situation. But Hitler said to his generals ‘You don’t have to worry, they won’t fight’. His generals in fact had prepared to overthrow him the moment we stood up and said no, we’re not going to allow you to go into Czechoslovakia. And when they heard that we had given in and allowed him to take Czechoslovakia they just wouldn’t believe it. But that decision of ours was the making of Hitler. From that moment on he was a public hero. Everybody felt in Germany that he could perform wonders, although we still have to remember that there was a German resistance – and a very brave one, even if a minority. And one of the things that contributed to that decision by Britain was the fact that the RAF had made an enormous error in calculating the effects of aerial bombardment. They had miscalculated I think by a factor of 20, or 30, or anyway, they grossly overestimated the effect of aerial bombardment. And that had given Chamberlain and the others a feeling that, at all costs, war must be avoided. They were obsessed by this thought of what would happen to British cities if war broke out. So, the result of our not facing up to those realities was that we gave Hitler the power to launch that Second World War. If we had been realistic, if we had – what I consider – done our duty, Hitler could never have done it. He would have been overthrown, and although no doubt there would have been some form of fighting it wouldn’t have been on anything like the scale of a World War in which, you probably know, 55 million people died – counting all of those that participated.
39:56: There’s another factor that comes into the outbreak of that war, and that is the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Some of those terms undoubtedly were not just, we took a certain amount of revenge on the Germans, and I hold that contributed towards Hitler’s rise to power. In the first place, he could speak for that disaffected German population that felt it was suffering under an injustice. And I think we must also hold that, by and large, human beings will not commit themselves totally to something which is absolutely wrong- to something which is absolutely evil. There must be some apparent good in it for them to give themselves wholly to it. And I think that it was this element that Hitler was able to play on and make the Germans think that they were giving themselves to something that was just. So, another contention I have is that when you have won a war or you’ve completed your action, whatever it might be, you have to be absolutely certain that in your peace terms you’re not only just – but I would say – merciful. Because after all, what is our objective? Our objective is to attain harmony and goodwill, good understanding between nations. If we move to Northern Ireland, we have a completely different situation. In the last World War, it was quite clear, one side fighting another. It was quite clear that Hitler had to be stopped. The only thing that you could call in question, is the methods that you used. You couldn’t call in question the fact that you had to fight the war in a total way. It was a total war in which everybody was involved. I don’t see that you can justly isolate the civilians from the soldier in that Second World War. Civilians were making munitions, they were doing something that was contributing, however indirectly, to the war. And they, except for the minority resistance movement, were totally committed to Hitler’s objectives, just as we were totally committed to our objectives. And therefore, I don’t really understand the distinction that some people make between the innocent civilians on the ground and the soldiers fighting a war. A total war is a completely different thing in nature from wars that were fought in the past, largely between mercenary or professional armies which usually had an understanding that they fought each other but kept clear of certain groups of the population, like the old and the sick, and so on.
44:03: In Northern Ireland - though I hesitate to speak here in any detail, because I haven’t direct experience of it – the army is faced with a completely different situation, as I understand it. And I hope that afterwards, where I’m wrong you will put me right. In Northern Ireland – as I see it, if I’m not oversimplifying – the army went in between 2 different factions of the community in Northern Ireland, hoping to keep the men of violence at bay until a political settlement could be reached. Now, when they are faced with what - for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll use – a terrorist, they’ve got to try and deal with him in such a way that they don’t antagonise the population or the community to which he belongs. If they act, as a community feels, unjustly, then the effect is going to be to harden that community, to drive it further into a corner and to make settlement of the situation even more difficult. If their task is to take out the men of violence, so that you are just left with two sides who you hope will then talk round the table and settle things. And if in the course of dealing with a terrorist the army appear to be attacking the community as a whole, then it seems to me the two sides will become even more polarised than they were before. And so, I would say that the duty of a solider in that situation is a much more difficult one than was ours in the Second World War. And although, at least I suppose, the decision to send the army in was correct - I’ve no means of telling - I’ve listened to another argument from a senior policeman who said that what should have happened – he said it at the time that the army was sent in – was that we should have relied upon good intelligence and men on the spot who knew exactly who they were dealing with, and could differentiate between an IRA, or UDA, and an ordinary member of the public. So, I imagine this was a debateable question, but granted the fact that the government in good faith decided to send the army in, I can see that the soldiers have an absolute duty – even if it increases the risk to themselves – of never using more force than is absolutely necessary, and of using it in a way which will not antagonise the local community. You may say that’s impossible, and it may be that it is impossible, but I think that we have to acknowledge that although we are – or at least I once was – members of the armed forces, that there have been occasions when the army hasn’t been completely in the right. And the repercussions are very severe. In the last World War, there probably were things that we did which should not have been done. I think probably Dresden is one of them. But that was an error, not of bad faith, but purely an error of information. The Russians said that 2 German armoured divisions were reforming in the city, and that if they were allowed to reform and come back into the battle the odds would be tipped against Russia – and ‘Would we please bomb Dresden?’. There was also the growing threat of the ME262 which threatened to change the course of the air war, and these 2 factors together persuaded bomber command that Dresden ought to be attacked, when in fact there were no soldiers in it. That was a mistake of misinformation rather than of ill will.
49:29: I’d like to pose the question – I don’t think I know the answer – but, broadly speaking I think I’ve tended to say that area bombing of a city is a dubiously moral activity. Whereas, bombing in order to destroy munitions was a necessary activity given the fact that the British army – the Allied armies – were totally incapable of taking on the German army up until later in the war. And, therefore, Germany had to be stopped and had to be attacked wherever it was possible to do so. But, Speer, the German head of munitions, and whatever he was, has stated categorically after the attack on Hamburg - which as you know burnt the whole city [unclear 50:34-35]. He evidently went to Hitler, and he said this several times both in writing and on television, that had there been 3 more Hamburg’s Germany would have had to give in. So, the question is, in view of all the lives that were in fact lost before Germany gave in, would it have been right to do another 4 Hamburg’s or would it be wrong? In the case of the atom bomb, I feel that I can be specific and I am prepared to defend this particular outlook… I’m prepared to defend it until the end. The situation in 1940 August ’45 was that Japan was totally committed to fighting until the last man. That is to say that Japanese military command was totally committed to fighting the war to the last man. The only known way, in the absence of some totally unforeseen event which you can’t bargain for when waging a war… The only foreseeable way of ending the war was the invasion of the mainland of Japan, and in order to do that the Americans were planning to land 3 million men into Kyushu, the southern island of Japan – I am right, is it the Southern Island? It doesn’t matter - in November 1945, and another 2 million men into Honshu, the main island, in March ’46. They estimated another years fighting, with all the bitterness and the frustration – everything that a years fighting involves – and they estimated 5 million casualties, sorry, 3 million casualties: 2 million Japanese and 1 million Allied. Against that, was the hope that the atom bomb might bring it all to a quick end. The difficulty was, for once again I find that whenever you discuss this with people who take the opposite view – particularly the young – they always discuss it in a vacuum, totally divorced from…
53:23: Speech ends
53:23: End of recording
End of Transcription
Collection
Citation
G L Cheshire, “Leonard Cheshire - a talk to the RAF chaplains on the morality of force,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed June 13, 2025, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/40183.